Mary?! Nono nono, send her back!
on January 19, 2014 at 12:01 amChapter: Girls at the Door
Location: Danny's parents' house
Oh good, it’s Mary.
Mary was a very calculated character addition. Â I needed someone cheerful to replace Joyce and I needed someone with a strong sense of moral rightness to replace Danny’s sudden lack of it. Â I was super excited about Mary! Â I piled on every damn trait onto her I thought I thought was attractive. Â Check out that sweater vest and those luscious brown locks and bright dark eyes. Â She was an artist, too. Â And, hell, she was into Jesus! Â Total hottie manic pixie dream girl, for Christ.
when i created her i did not realize my list of turn-ons was out of date
but danny knows
danny knooooooows
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I find it hilarious Mary was initially made to be “attractive” at least to you. Especially since everything afterwards is basically “mary sucks yo”
“Sweater vest” is a very specific turn on.
Also “bright dark eyes”?!
It runs pretty rampant through DoA…
I can’t say I share the same level of interest, but they do look pretty darn good. And especially on Willis’ characters…
How long before you decided to make her evil?
Hrm… hard to say and really depends on what you mean by “Evil.” She’s hypocritical, self-righteous, unpleasant, manipulative, and vindictive in this continuity — a plenty cruel and unpleasant person — but the “literally Satan” stuff is more Dumbiverse.
Oooooh boy… Everybody loves Maryyyyyy….
I need a drink…
So wait… If Mary is supposed to be like… amazing and attractive and awesome, why is Danny upset about her arrival? I thought Danny was young Willis’ author avatar/insert/mouthpiece/whatever. Shouldn’t his reaction mirror your own?
Except Danny’s in his dark, troubled phase, so is having the opposite reaction he should (at least, that’s how I would reason it).
… are you all intentionally having the same avatar?
The first two are the same person
Obviously, in
the darkest timelinethe “first draft”, Mary would be the shining beacon of hope that would pull Danny from the darkness. You know, like most Manic Pixie Dream Girls in a romantic comedy, she’d shake up his life and force him to evolve and change!… You know, that stuff that Billie ends up doing when she becomes the love interest instead.
One of the most annoying things when you are unhappy is when people try to cheer you up. efforts usually range from annoyance at all the attention and weird stuff they do, to utter frustration that its apparent that either no one understands what you are going through and are just trying whatever they can to stop you, which leads to, feeling that everyone around you are selfish jerks who are so burdened by you feeling like crap they are willing to make you miserable because your existence is SUCH a burden on them they cant BEAR to deal with the fact that you are ruining their day by being unhappy.
If anything the fact that she is appearling (heck you might even a sexist move on Mom’s part if she knew that She was danny’s type) is a big red flashing sign that says “I’m trying to fix you because you are broken”
Well, add that to the list of things I completely misread the first time around.
How quickly did yo figure out that you hated Mary?
Mary was cheerful in the Walkyverse? Huh.
It only seemed to be a facade, at least to me.
Briefly.
I…I legit don’t remember. I can’t recall her being anything other than Holier-Than-Thou.
As someone who got into the Walkyverse about halfway through Shortpacked, I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what Mary did to earn so much hate.
…should I be?
How about being self-righteously indignant at the sins of others, only to be caught “hoisted upon her petard” for the same thing she snubbed others about?
It’s… It’s bad. Seriously, Cholma sums it up, with the addition of her doing all of this during the worst point of the characters she’s being self-righteously indignant at’s lives.
Yeah… she’s a self-righteous hypocrite in some of the worst ways, and pretty much seems to exist just to point out the characters flaws at the absolutely worst moments.
She’s like Mike, only she’s not funny, or insightful like he is.
And Mike’s not a hypocrite either. And he knows he’s being a jerk.
WEll in Dumbing of Age she’s seen to be what Joyce could have been. Joyce is ignorant and raised to think a certain way, but most of the stupid stuff she says is because of IGNORANCE and she’s quick to try to put accepting other people into her worldview and if anything the thing that upsets her is when her acceptance and love of others seems to question her views, not frustration for being unable to accept people because of her views.
While Mary is just judgmental and looks down on people. If anything she ISNT as ignorant as Joyce and seems like ACTIVELY choose to look down on people because she thinks she knows better.
So the main walkyverse was basically the first incarnation of these characters so I can extrapolate that Mary is going to get bad.
Mary was a vicious self-righteous hypocrite with no regard for others in the pursuit of doing what she thought was righteous and moral. Dumbiverse Mary is… a lot worse, though I’m not sure that was clear when you were posting.
So one of your least liked characters was originally made to be pure author appeal? That’s an interesting bit of irony
It’s the mark of a good writer who can create a completely detestable character and make people love him/her/it, or vice-versa.
Unless it’s just “I made a Mary Sue/Marty Stu” [which may be the case]
[[wow, Willis, Is Mary’s middle name Sue by any chance??]
It’s weird. Even here. When I first read it. I didn’t especially like her. Even later, when she started talking, I realized she didn’t even seem to care about Danny. She just cared about having someone who she could feel superior to. She didn’t even seem to care about context. It’s strange. Now that I read that she was supposed to be pretty much Mr. Willis’ “Mary” Sue of a character, I feel, like I probably might not have liked him at my age.
Also she’s not wearing glasses.
Of course, she doesn’t have his current list of turn-ons.
I actually like Mary, largely because I feel so justified in hating her character! Also, her design is pretty, except that her DoA incarnation is basically the Queen of Scowls.
Dumbiverse Mary is still pretty. Character be damned.
That one commenter gravatar of her smiling makes her the cutest girl in DoA for me, hands down.
Granted, I still wouldn’t touch her personality with a ten foot pole.
I would. I’d touch her very hard and repeatedly.
….
I mean hit her with a bat.
Wow…
That just sounds.
Really.
I keep waiting for her to redeem herself, or at least show some significant facet of her personality beyond a deep-seated commitment to judging everyone and everything. I have a feeling I’ll be waiting for some while.
Good news: She did since you posted that.
Bad news: That facet was “Sheer gleeful, unrepentant sadism.”
No kidding. I can even pinpoint the moment at which I officially gave up on her.
I love that when you hover above the comment link for this comic it goes, ‘Comment on Mary?! Nono nono, send her back!’
“Waiter, there’s a hypocritical religious fanatic in my soup!”
Does not look like the same Mary in DoA.
Bright and bubbly religious nuts are worse than bitter mean religious nuts.
Guess I don’t like Mary in either universe.
I thought that was Alex in panel 1 at first.
Impossible, she’s not looking at a computer screen.
She appears… Potentially overbearing.
Originally posted:
June 28, 1999