What I really think
on June 22, 2014 at 12:01 amWhat I really think is that Danny can’t spell “happiness.”
That’s right, I’m scapegoating him for my mistakes. Anyone object?
What I really think is that Danny can’t spell “happiness.”
That’s right, I’m scapegoating him for my mistakes. Anyone object?
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I object
I also object!
Not many relationships under my belt, but he essentially just said being with you doesn’t make me happy, right? That’s bad, right?
And also that she had no real hope of ever improving herself, yeah, pretty much. Grats, Dan.
Is this a “relationship”? ‘Cause despite their clumsy attempt at fornication, I don’t really know. I don’t think they know, either.
It’s more like Billie’s only been hanging around Danny and Joe because she has no other friends, and as shown here, Danny’s become too nihilistic to care either way, not even in the vain, dumb hope of eventually getting laid.
… Are you really asking US if we object to scapegoating Danny for all of society’s ills?
Because I mean, he poisoned our water supply, burned our crops, and delivered a plague unto our houses!
He did?!?
NO, but are we just gonna wait around until he does?!
He turned me into a newt!
…a newt?!
You got better…
As for Danny, he walks abroad a-nights
And kills sick people groaning under walls.
Sometimes he goes about and poisons wells,
And now and then, cherishes Mary-ish thieves.
He is content to lose some of his crowns
That he may, walking in his gallery,
See ’em go pinioned along by his door.
Being young, he studied physic, and began
To practise first upon the Italian.
There he enriched the priests with burials
And always kept the sexton’s arms in ure
With digging graves and ringing dead men’s knells.
And after that was he an engineer,
And in the wars ‘twixt France and Germany,
Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth,
Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems.
Then after that was he an usurer,
And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting,
And tricks belonging unto brokery,
He filled the gaols with bankrupts in a year,
And with young orphans planted hospitals,
And every moon made some or other mad,
And now and then one hang himself for grief,
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll
How he with interest tormented him.
But mark how he is blest for plaguing them.
I have as much coin as will buy the town.
[Adapated from The Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marlowe.]
Brave Sir Danny Danned it up, [no!]
Bravely Danned it up, it up… [I didn’t!]
When Mary reared her ugly head,
He bravely lost his balls and said, [no!]
He dropped the ball, he had no spine,
He Danned it up, he really whined, [that’s not true!]
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Danny Danned it up…
“Robin” may refer to
Robin, Sir – legendary English knight
Hood, Robin – legendary English outlaw
Desanto, Robin – Congresswoman
Robin (Dick Grayson) – the original Robin
Robin (Jason Todd) – the second Robin
Robin (Tim Drake) – the third Robin
Robin (Stephanie Brown) – the fourth Robin
Robin (Damian Wayne) – the fifth Robin, protege to Batman (Dick Grayson)
Carrie Kelly – the future Robin (sixth Robin) of Earth-31
Various Bird species from at least four families
A Mupped character?
It’s your fault I’m bald!
It’s your fault I’m old!
It’s your fault I can’t talk!
It’s your fault America has lost its way!
He shot the archduke Franz Ferdniad and triggered WWI.
Also, I object to scapegoating Danny. He makes enough on his own. OWN YOUR MISTAKES WILLIS! GROW! GROW! GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!
…What the fuck, Danny?!
What is this fauxlosophical bullshit?! Billie is trying to have a real conversation with Danny about his lack of trust in her; after being verbally bullied by Mary with no one, not even her boyfriend to back her up; and here he is spewing out this nonsense?
What does this even have to do with anything going on right now? That’s not an answer to the question, Danny! That’s not an answer to anything! Your angsty ramblings were cute when it was just you overreacting to things, but now your refusal to make a stance is really hurting people.
Then Billie’s all like, “oh, is that how you feel?”, not even bothered by the fact that Danny seems to be trying to dodge the issue of not calling out one of his “friends” for viciously insulting his girlfriend.
I’m tempted to call this the worst Roomies strip ever.
I was gonna comment my own thoughts, but you summed it up pretty well. “Fauxlosophical,” I like that. I was also like “wow, way to try and be meaningful without actually saying anything.”
I suppose Danny’s responding to Billie’s Quest from Beer, saying that abstinence won’t make her happy. That makes some sense. But this conversation was never really about beer.
Billie said it best herself two strips ago: “Either you trust me or we have no business talking.”
Maybe it’s meant to be an explanation for his attempt at not taking a position; it’s a clunky, melodramatic way of saying he just doesn’t care.
Maybe he’s trying to suggest she wouldn’t be any happier if he gave the response she actually wanted.
I dunno, it comes across as such a non-sequitor. Either way it’s just an awful response, socially and logically.
But Billie’s response to just up and walk away from that is about right. The only thing that would make it better is to just take out Billie’s word balloons.
Or maybe he’s understandably flummoxed by her picking a fight with one of his friends (recall- she started the whole thing with Mary, just for Mary being present. She hadn’t done anything- yet.), then proceeding to put him in a position where he had to decide between his friend and his girlfriend, based entirely on a “he said, she said” situation, and then got pissed when he didn’t feel like taking sides.
And then, at the end of it, he said something that was actually some decent advice- aside from the nihilism. Her obsession with abstinence (both from sex and alcohol) in the wake of Ruth’s death was doing nothing to make her happier.
Just this once, JUST this once, I think Danny was right. Billy was acting crazy, yo.
Yeah it’s pretty bad Pod.
In answer to ‘don’t you have the balls to answer a real question on how you feel”, we get “things don’t make you happy or unhappy”.
After which Billy takes that as a ‘real’ answer to her question and goes away?
Ah yeah, right.
The only thing right here is that Billy is getting the Hell outta his area of influence.
I guess if the question is “do you think I’m a liar?” and the reply is “I’m not happy”, then sadly, I guess that it is an answer to Billie’s question.
Wow – if Billie is “the addition of things”, does that make Ruth “the subtraction of things”? And neither changes his level of happiness? Danny, you’re a bigger shit than I could have imagined.
Considering his reaction to Ruth’s death was ‘try and avoid Howard’ it’s not really surprising.
Eric Schtuppenstein was a having-sex-robot.
Danny Wilcox is clearly a not-having-sex-robot.
Danny gonna dan.
The fuck is this, Danny? Your girlfriend is calling you out for not supporting her in the argument she had with your “friend”, and you come back with this bullshit?
Danny Wilcox, you are the Actual Worst (TM).
What in the actual fuck? If my girlfriend did that, I’d tell her to piss off. You don’t pick fights with people’s friends just for existing, and then expect people to take your side. He was already being fairly reasonable by staying the fuck out of it.
A decent girlfriend wouldn’t pull that kinda shit in the first place, whether Mary is a bitch or not.
I can’t say Billie has handled this well. But seeing as how Mary told Danny lies about her, and even greeted her with an angry “You”, painting at Billie as picking fights with Danny’s friends just for existing is really slanted.
The thing is, Danny has reason to doubt Mary. She’s already told a lie about Billie being drunk when she wasn’t (though she did have a beer) and when Danny tried to get an explanation from her, she dodged the question.
Nah, Mary’s still the Actual Worst® for knowing Danny’s a pushover and taking full advantage of it for that “haha I’m right ur rong” smug superiority.
Ooh, yeah, you’re right. I guess Danny is just the Mostly Worst (TM), but that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
So is Danny admitting to being depressed here? He apparently doesn’t think happiness is theoretically possible.
I’m gonna step up to defend this strip.
The first time I read this, it hit me pretty hard. I sympathized and agreed with Danny. I was away at college myself and in a really bad place emotionally. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was depressed. Like, real, serious type of depression. And afterwards I always kinda figured it was the same with Danny. Danny has not been okay since before Ruth died. He may have seemed to be happy this past semester, but he’s still stuck in the same rut.
So, say what you will about Danny being a sanctimonious wet blanket, I don’t think he’s terrible for this at least. He’s just unwell, so much so that he doesn’t even comprehend he’s even able to not be/feel this way.
Anyway, don’t mean to preach. I was just a tad surprised. This strip signals a turning point, and it just happened to be one that meant something to me at a crucial point in my life.
I’ve said before and I’ll say again, Danny’s “fun” to hate because he’s made a bunch of mistakes we’ve all made, and we’re hating on the stupid people we used to be. I don’t think I understood for a long time that your partner [for simplicity’s sake–I hate “significant other”] should be your best friend moreso than your best-friend-who-doesn’t-have-to-eventually-share-life-with-you best friend.
Danny’s made a lot of mistakes, but he’s learning. How to make new ones, anyway =p [or the old ones in different hats]
When we talk about teenagers, we adults often talk with an air of scorn, of expectation for disappointment. And this can make people who are presently teenagers feel very defensive.
But what everyone should understand is that none of us are talking to the teenagers that exist now, but talking back to the teenager we ourselves once were – all stupid mistakes and lack of fear, and bodies that hadn’t yet begun to slump into a lasting nothing.
Any teenager who exists now is incidental to the potent mix of nostalgia and shame with which we speak to our younger selves.
May we all remember what it was like to be so young. May we remember it factually, and not remember anything that is false, or incorrect.
May we all be human – beautiful, stupid, temporal, endless.
… I have very few memories of myself as a Teenager. Mostly a high school experience so hellish and stressful my Mom made me drop out (No overt bullying, but basically everyone was against to me to greater or lesser degrees, even the staff, who had traditionally been on my side and helped keep me safe in my school experiences) — I got the equivalent of a degree with honors from a test –, realizing I was trans the time that actually stuck, and crushing depression related in part to my transness, accompanied by suicidal desires and thoughts I was too scared to meaningfully follow through on.
… Yeah, it was an awful time for me, but not in a way that can actually meaningfully inform my views of teenagers.
Seriously Danny. You’ve MET happy people before. You were happy initially and then you became unhappy by the subtraction of Ruth and the addition of pathetic philosophy. This is pretty pathetic.
To be fair, the addition of Ruth made him unhappy too, and he kind of hates the ways in which those happy people were happy.
…No wonder Mary likes him.
He wasn’t happy before Ruth either.
“Wait, my hypothesis on the effect of subtraction of things has changed in light of new data. Come back and we’ll repeat the experiment until we obtain a positive result.”
NO BILLIE DON’T G-oh wait I don’t give a shit
The pursuit of happyness!
…Okay yeah nope never mind I’m withdrawing what last shreds of my support Danny had. Instead of calling Billie out for dragging him into a personal conflict between two people he cares about, he just goes full-on Teenage Niesche Wannabe? Wow. Just… wow. Fuck you, Roomies!Danny. At least your Dumbiverse incarnation isn’t so bad once he has all the information.
Originally posted:
December 3, 1999