1152 You 2.

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Halloween apparently did not go well. So, I guess that’s a thing I’ll have to do things about. I have to say I like the holiday a lot better as it happens in Animal Crossing. Halloween hasn’t been a thing for me in a long time.

Ah well…

Let’s just talk about Nina’s irrational behavior in the comments instead.

98 Comments

So, wait Nina just went feral on Queen of all bitchood, i can dig this halloween event…

Not exactly “feral”. Did you notice that Dawn is the only one shouting here? Nina is merely coupling harsh words with spiteful tones in a normal volume, whereas “feral” would more imply a shouting match breaking out or physical violence.

I can totally understand Nina’s perspective… if there is someone who has hurt one of your really good friends you hate them… no questions asked. I think it’s perfectly rational

While I understand this way of looking at the world, I just can’t personally give that kind of unquestioning loyalty. Dawn and Thoams grew apart. It’s Thomas that inflicted a lot of the rage and misery he feels on himself.

That said, gotta agree with Shaggy-Donahugh below about Dawn flaunting her new life in Thomas’ face. She didn’t need to do that. Raises the question of whether she *chose* the store because Thomas was there.

Damn, now I’m wondering if this is all some kind of passive-aggressive game run by Dawn.

She’s lucky it’s Nina standing there, not Carol.

I think its perfectly normal, but it is the opposite of perfectly rational. It’s perfectly emotional and human for sure. The rational does not make use of shutdown sentences that start “The ONLY thing I need to know”. This is very human of Nina and her desire to defend her friend speaks well of her, but I don’t see how she steers this anywhere Thomas would want it to go. Not like this.

Makes for fun story though. Passionate Nina is Passionate. I can watch that as long as the artist is will draw it. (I’m still geeking over when she jumped on Ed).

It didn’t exactly help that her crack about expecting him to do something with his life was pretty insulting, implying that working here was wasting his life. Since Nina also works there, it pretty much insulted her as well. If you go around insulting my friend and me, it’s certainly not going to leave me very well disposed towards you.

Ello Crave.
Och, your Halloween didn’t go well I gather? Mine either, it’s sucked so far.
ANYWHO, while preggo-McBitchy pants does have a valid point about the fact that she grew up and he didn’t, doesn’t excuse the fact that she’s so damned stuck on herself that she couldn’t see how uncomfortable he was, then had the nerve to both introduce him to her new husband AND tell Nina, who’s been friends with him forever and seen how badly he suffered, that it was HIS fault and HIS problem, not hers.

In a few words, screw her, Nina’s right.

i think the ex basically pulled a cartman (“screw you guys, I’m going home”when she left him…..

personally I side with Nina on this even if Thomas dragged his feet.

And behold, the true colors of Constance Willowbrooke.

Self-Centered
Short-Sighted
Ignorant as all hell
Apathetic

She also appears to love to shove blame off onto others. What could she have done? Oh I don’t know… that thing where couples talk the problems out? Or did that disappear with the last generation before us?

I’m behind Nina on this, it’s almost impossible to like someone who broke your friend’s heart – especially with a piss-poor excuse like that to justify it.

Also wtf? Dawn specifically asked for Thomas to be working. Why? So she could rub it in his face that all her dreams are coming true without him… and then she asks one of his oldest friends what’s wrong with him… anyone that stupid or vindictive deserves everything Nina dishes out!

I’ve never commented before, but I love the comic and couldn’t say nothing today!

No, I think she’s just willfully ignorant.
She doesn’t want to think that she might be hurting anyone so she pushes the blame on the people she hurts in order to keep herself from being hurt from the realization that she’s hurt others.
I don’t doubt that she did miss him, but she thinks that he’s all fine and dandy, because that’s how her little world is supposed to be.
She’s happy, why can’t everyone else be happy.
Or as my ex put it
“Every time I feel even a little bit happy you just have to bring me down”
Because no one else in the world has problems except for when she has problems, and whenever she has problems everyone is supposed to drop everything and pay attention to her.

That’s actually a good way of saying it and it’s definitely possible. To me it sounds so obvious that she’s putting him down for where he is in life and flaunting her own successes, but to her there’s nothing wrong with anything she says, it’s his own fault from the start, and Nina’s just being irrational about it. Not the best way for Nina to go about it by the way, but I probably would have felt the same way and did the same thing, so I’m all for whatever Nina has to say to her.

I do thank you for letting me visit your town last night. I had an easier time finishing my Creepy set because of it. I hope you get yours finished, too. I’d come, but midnight is less than 10 minutes away in my time zone, and I’m already an hour and a half past my bedtime.

As far as Dawn and Nina go, these things happen. Hopefully the clue by four leaves enough of an impression for Dawn to either make up or stay away.

Not knowing Dawn’s whole story is causing me to reserve some judgment, but agreeing to disagree at this point and calling it a day might be the quickest resolution for Dawn at this point. Her level of common sense seems to suggest this won’t happen.

Funny thing, Dawn. Pushing your amazing new boy friend in your boyfriend’s face during a fight? That’s not usually the sort of thing that really prompts someone to stop digging in. Neither is drifting away from your boyfriend, which does sound like a thing that happened.

In other words, Thomas might have been digging in no matter what you tried, but you might not have been trying the right things.

Dawn had a plan and Thomas wasn’t keeping up with it, therefore Thomas had to go. That’s the way she sees it anyway.

Not just new boyfriend….New husband, pregnancy, self-published book, happy perfect life, except for moving into a rinky-dink little town that isn’t good enough for her, new hubby, and almost child. I’m not going to say this was calculated, just that she is so wrapped up in everything being about her that she doesn’t even realize what’s wrong here.

I find it curious how everyone blames this on Dawn.
True, she did break up with him. But it happens. You don’t stay dating someone once you’ve realized that you can do better.
Also, she probably doesn’t realize the extent of how deep his obsession went, and is still currently going. You can’t expect her to pick up on something if she isn’t with him to see it.
Dawn can’t really be blamed for how Thomas took the breakup. All of that was his flaws, and his fault.
And now, consider this!
Dawn knows nothing about what Thomas is going through. Putting aside the breakup and fight, all she has of him is happy memories. Can she really be blamed for thinking she could try and rekindle the old friendship they once had?
There was no way to hide the fact that she was married, so why bother? In the very least let Thomas meet the man, so he knows she’s not in bad hands.
I’m just saying. Stop hating Dawn so much for trying to be happy.

Ok sure, but Dawn did know that it wasn’t a good break up and now she’s back in town andrrubbing it in Thomas’ face that she has the better life. I’m gonna go out on a limb a bit here and say Dawn has no right being upset with Thomas for not growing up because she still seems a little stuck in high school drama

Yeah… no. I can’t agree with you.

Yeah you can break up with someone – but it’s how she did it that pisses people off, not the breakup in itself. There are good breakups, and bad ones too – Constance is very far off the deep end of the ‘bad breakups’ side, fyi.

You are right about her being ignorant to the details of Thomas – however, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that with how their relationship ended – bitter feelings will remain. And if she actually does simply ignore the breakup of their relationship, then that proves even further how apathetic she actually is.

“Yeah never mind that heart-shattering breakup we had where I was able to just go to my soon-to-be husband and you were left alone… How about those comic books!?! Hey can we read those just like good ol’ times?” – Yeah that’s pretty much how it comes off to the one who got broken up with.

But let’s just say she sets that aside – It seems that she already had hubby in Texas so the breakup became nothing more than throwing out the trash in her perspective. Thomas – still loving her – had to take that treatment and roll with it.

But obviously from her perspective things are going to be peachy keen when she comes back, she never actually lost anything during the breakup so why should she care? Given her utter childish mentality, I doubt she’s going to sense anything wrong until it gets slapped in her face… which is exactly how it had played out since her appearance.

She’s not wrong in showing him her husband I’ll give you that – it was inevitable – but the husband deserved the hand-crushing shake for the comments he made. As a guy attempting to be a gentleman, you just don’t say shit like that to the guy when you meet him… you just don’t unless you’re a bona-fied douche-bag.

I will continue hating Constance because it’s women like her that throw guys away once the ‘next best thing’ comes along that give women a bad reputation. And her ridiculous ignorance of this entire situation does absolutely nothing to help her out here.

You might feel sorry for her – but for those of us who have stood in Thomas’ shoes and watched a girl we loved throw us away like trash, only to turn around and go right to the new guy…. I want her to hurt; I want to see her weeping by the end of this once she realizes the damage she has done… yet somehow given how ignorant and immature she’s proven herself to be, I doubt that will happen.

I can only hope that one of my friends would do the same thing as Nina, honestly. Immature as she might seem to the unbiased, this is anything but an unbiased situation.

No one’s hating Dawn for trying to be happy. Dawn’s life isn’t what makes her offensive. It’s her attitude. Being successful doesn’t give you any right to critique anyone else’s life. Her exit from Thomas’ life was of her own orchestration, and waltzing back in to sneer “What happened to him” is a fairly hateful thing to do, from my opinion. Nina is fully justified in going off on her.

I agree with you that its not that she’s trying to be happy, its her attitude that’s driving everyone nuts.

But, Nina isn’t complaining about her attitude. Nina is complaining about the breakup. Dawn has a point that Thomas has had a really long time to get over it, and his current situation isn’t Dawn’s fault.

So, on what they’re talking about, Dawn is right and can’t understand why people are angry at her. But on all the stuff they’re not talking about, Dawn has a serious holier than thou attitude problem.

I really wish someone would call Dawn out on what’s actually the problem. She might apologize, she might not. But, at least she’d have the opportunity to learn.

Eh, I think it’s both. Nina lashes out precisely when Dawn asks “What happened to him?” like one might inquire what happened to the dog that used to live in the last house on the block. If Dawn had been different this whole time, I don’t know that Nina would have flipped out. So, it’s the combination of the two, causing pain and then casually shrugging at that pain, that Nina can’t take.

I broke up with my one serious ex, and we are still friends. Why? Because when things were rough, I asked her seriously about how she felt, and she honestly answered that “it” was gone. Okay, we split up. And this was a long-distance relationship. There was no cheating, certainly not done and then used as a weapon to wound the other, there was no fake claims, no criticism, no blame. And even all of that could be forgiven, if she sought forgivness. That doesn’t mean take all the blame herself, but to come and say “I’m sorry you were hurt, I never wanted to do that, I hope you are happy.” But, she never really asked Thomas much about anything, never tried to contact him before now, nothing. She walked in, said “Hi”, told him she was waltzing back into his life like nothing had happened, except that now she’s achieved her dream AND is happily married AND is pregnant, and wonders what the problem is. Clearly the breakup was fine for her; she got tired of ol’ Thomas, found a new man, moved on. She simply assumes that Thomas is just as happy, then when he’s not, she assumes something is “wrong” with him, like he’s got a disease because he didn’t take being cheated on and dumped as well as she took cheating and dumping.

Except he wasn’t cheated on. If he had been, Thomas would have brought that up, and brought that up a lot. Whatever name she brought up then, it was a friend she had made. Was it likely a friend that wanted more? Possibly. Was it likely a friend she then began to date? Maybe! We don’t know. But we do know he wasn’t cheated on.

And it wasn’t just that she got tired of him. As stated by BOTH Thomas and Dawn? She tried. She really really did. And when she tried, they would argue because he had no intention of doing any actual work for what he wanted. So she left what was a toxic relationship. And when he came back to her at a creepy hour, she took him back. But found that nothing had changed, so she broke it off for real, and likely decided that cutting off most contact was for the best, since him showing up was doing nothing.

Now I’m not saying she’s blameless. It was not a clean break up, but not many high school relationships ARE clean. And she should not have to seek forgiveness, especially since SHE gave THOMAS the chances. Thomas is the one who should be seeking forgiveness in this. He made it a point to badmouth his ex whenever he could. People were even surprised when she showed up that she wasn’t some horrible bitch, so now they’re attributed side-comments she’s making in frustration that he STILL hasn’t done anything to reach the goals he stated as being major attacks against anyone who works retail, or projecting feelings of exes in general.

I’m not so sure Dawn didn’t cheat on Thomas. At one point when Thomas and her husband met, she said that he didn’t steal her away because she and Thomas weren’t “technically” dating at the time. Interesting choice of words, I think.

As for Dawn really, really trying, that’s probably true, by her standards anyway. I don’t think she really, really loved Thomas though. It seems that Thomas really loved her, but the relationship was only convenient for Dawn when he was doing what she wanted.

I think Dawn’s husband is getting a dose of some of the stuff she gave Thomas. You may remember the comment she made that only one of them can be “the Creative” at a time. How absurd and egotistical. What Dawn means is that only one of them can grab the attention at a time. How delightful.

Thomas did not particularly badmouth his ex. Not that I remember anyway. In fact he didn’t really talk much about her at all. Probably did to Nina though, “off panel”. Thomas owes her no apology, but clearly still cares. Otherwise why pay to have a horde of “fans” show up? He knows she’d be crushed to realize nobody knows or cares about her work.

Yeah, she did cheat. Why else did she throw a guy’s name in his face? See, THAT is a “toxic relationship”. Two people with different views of life? That’s fair. Cheating, and then using that break of trust as an argument? That’s the definition of a toxic relationship. Dawn wanted Thomas, I buy that, but for her own sake, not his. The fact that Thomas did not want to do what she did is not a bad thing, and he shouldn’t apologize for it. That doesn’t mean she had to do what he wanted; it’s a choice she had to make. But the WAY she made that choice, and expressed it, was awful and selfish. Her behavior since then has not been an improvement.

Nina is the kind of friend everyone should have. Going to bat for a friend who might definitely be in the wrong, but doing it anyway.

Ahhhhhumm….
Dear Dawn…

YOU’RE A CREEP! GO AWAY! WE WERE HAVING A GOOD TIME UNTIL YOU SHOWED UP!
GEEEZ!
GO HAVE SOME COFFEE! WITH CREAM! OR SOMETHING!
‘CAUSE I’LL TELL YOU SOMETHING!
THIS IS A HAPPY PLACE!

Mind you this is only about Thomas
He has his own problems… that I have gone through before…
Not a happy time… she ended up getting with my best friend and boom, tootles to the both of them…
Might be why I’m quoting Freakazoid up there…

Reposting from yesterday, since it still pertains to today

I’m seeing a lot of hate upon Constance when…really…she didn’t do much of anything wrong? They were dating in high school. Okay. Then she went to college, and her mind opened up, for good or bad. She saw there was more out there than just her one town. And Thomas, for all his self-assured intelligence (and let’s be frank, he can be arrogant about how smart he is) had no interest in leaving. And she saw that he had no intentions of doing anything with his life. He was going to be the smartest guy working at a department store forever. And she had bigger goals in her life. So of course they argued. Thomas didn’t want anything to change, and she had to change to be happy. So they broke up.

And Thomas, not wanting anything to change, refused to change. Yes he made it so he blamed everything on her, but he still focused his entire life around her. He overblew his hatred about her so much that when people actually saw her, they were amazed that she was nothing like the image he put in everyone’s head. All she did was break up with someone she dated in high school who she could tell had no interest in expanding his horizons. Heck she even gave him a second chance later when he showed up at her house early in the morning, but she could tell that even after their separation he still had no interest in changing his life.

Say you were dating a guy in high school. You had a lot of the same interests. That’s great! But when you graduate, you find out the guy had no real aspirations beyond getting high and drunk every night with his friends. Sure he TALKED a big game, about all the great things he would do, and how smart he was, but he never acted on it. It was always talk. Eventually you’d leave him too.

And so Nina may may not be happy with someone who broke her friend, but at some level she has to realize that it was something Thomas did to himself. He wanted someone to blame his bad decisions on, and she was the perfect target because she wasn’t around to correct him. Heck, he didn’t even remember most of the stuff they did together. She was just all his bad decisions balled up into a person with a face. And that was entirely his fault.

And there are people saying “Well, it’s because of how she’s acting”.

But really, as someone who currently does interact with an ex on a regular basis, I don’t see her as acting smug or trying to rub it in Thomas’s face. They broke up a LONG time ago. We have no real evidence that the person she’s married to was even the guy she dated after Thomas. For all we know she dated a lot more people to find someone whose goals matched hers.

Also, she moved back to town to support her husband’s teaching job. And from past conversations we heard with Nina and the others, there is really no other big literature place in this town. If she wanted to have a book signing at all, it would have had to be in that place to get the most attendants. She didn’t pick it “just to rub it in Thomas’s face”, she picked it because it was honestly the best venue. And if she did ask for Thomas to be there it was because, from what we’ve been hearing, writing books is something they BOTH dreamed about doing so she probably wanted to talk with him about it again. Because that’s something Exes can still do.

I’m reading over it all, and while I can see some self-centeredness (she wanted to leave this town because people have a habit of never leaving it, and was disappointed in herself for having to come back but is making the best of it to support her husband), I don’t see anything smug or spiteful. She’s acting like she saw an old friend for the first time in YEARS. She has no clue, nor SHOULD she really be suspecting, that her high school boyfriend that it sounds like she only dated for a little under a year would have vocally put the blame of halting his entire life on her.

Sorry. Just real-life interaction with an ex (which was rocky at first but we both came to terms with it) plus my occupation of dealing with such things just has all these negative feelings aimed at someone who doesn’t deserve it leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

THANK YOU!!!! I couldn’t have said it better myself!!! Yes we all love Thomas, but jeez man, it’s been YEARS!!! If this was his worse break-up he should consider himself lucky.

An example of her actions that are really rude is that she’s insulted working in retail several times in front of retail employees. Not that its hard or unpleasant work, but that something is wrong with you if you’re not doing something else with your life.

That’s really rude to say to someone’s face. Its not her fault that Thomas is working retail. Its not her fault he is still hurting. But, she shouldn’t tell a retail employee “I always thought he’d do something with his life” with respect to working retail as if working retail isn’t doing something with your life, and it somehow makes him less valuable as a person that her. That doesn’t just insult Thomas, it insults Nina.

And, Dawn’s modus operandi is to throw around backhanded insults like this constantly, disguised as caring. I don’t think she’s doing it on purpose or with mal-intent. I wish someone would call her out on it.

So what if it’s rude, she’s right. Working in retail isn’t doing something with your life. Most of the employees in this store are here temporarily. They have talents and dreams that will hopefully take them beyond this place. Nina has writing, Jo has movies, Carol has leadership potential (maybe manage her own store someday?), even Reggie and Ed seem to be in a stage of figuring out who they are (and by extension, what they will do with their lives). But Thomas is content to stay right where he is–right where he’s been–never going up, never going anywhere.

So many people are vilifying Dawn for breaking up with Thomas, or the way that she broke up with Thomas. Firstly: it was her first boyfriend, therefore her first breakup,do you expect her to be an expert on letting someone down gently? She did the best that can be expected of her. Secondly: why was it so wrong to break up with him? She went and followed her dreams, was she supposed to drag him along like an anchor? Breaking up was the right move, and there was no way to do it gracefully.

But finally let’s address Nina’s view, which is shared by many of the comments here. It seems that Dawn is on trial for ‘breaking’ Thomas, like she casually shattered his world and left a broken shell. Dawn didn’t break Thomas, Thomas was already broken. Dawn ‘happened’ to Thomas in the same magnitude that Thomas ‘happened’ to Dawn. The problem is that after Dawn ‘happened’ to Thomas, Thomas ‘happened’ to Thomas. The disaster that befell Thomas was himself. He’s as much as admitted it. If they hadn’t broken up, Thomas would still be doing nothing with his life, so how is Dawn the villain in this story?

Dawn is not my favorite character. Every time she says ‘sugoi’ (or something similar), somewhere in my head a fingernail scrapes briefly against a chalkboard. But I find this which trial against her obnoxious. People are throwing in their own baggage from their own lives. Grow up, people.

Dawn followed her dreams, she did something with her life, and she knows Thomas could have done the same. She sees him here, doing nothing with his life, have done nothing with his life, this whole time. They were best friends, she has every right to still care about him, and to be sad that he’s still wasting his life away.

Why does it matter whether or not Thomas is doing something with his life? He’s happy enough, or he was before Dawn wandered back. Seems to me that if he’s happy, everyone else can go shove it up their asses.

As for the breakup, no, she won’t be a genius at letting someone down her first time. But it doesn’t take a genius to realize that bringing up another guy when you’re in an argument with your boyfriend is a serious faux pas. And leaving your boyfriend and starting to date that guy shortly after? Total. Dick. Move.

I’ll admit Nina’s a little off base by saying that Dawn’s the reason Thomas is still where he is, but there’s a lot of repressed anger that Dawn is the cause for, and it’s just easiest to generalize.

Why does it matter whether or not Thomas is doing something with his life? It matters because she does actually care about Thomas, just like Thomas care’s about her (although he wasn’t so great at dealing with that, his attitude wanders between neutral good and chaotic evil). Thomas has given her the distinct impression that he isn’t happy (1098-dead-in-here), and so far she has every reason to believe he hasn’t changed a bit.

Yes it was totally a dick move for her to bring up the guy’s name. But dating the guy a couple months after? Dawn and Thomas had a high school relationship that had been downhill since they went to different colleges (long distance relationships are almost universally downhill). Is it criminal for her to rebound quickly? It’s not like she was sleeping with the guy a week later.

You could say Dawn is the cause of Thomas’s anger, but Thomas’s anger is way out of proportion.

I just noticed that in my post above, I spelled witch trial ‘which trial’… *facepalm*

Maybe the comic was updated later to make Dawn’s position more clear. But the current comic in question has Dawn stating that she “didn’t technically start dating him until we broke up”. Based on the people I’ve known who have used that wording, that basically means she was unofficially hanging out with Lewis, doing heavy petting and probably sex with Lewis, but they weren’t scheduling dates or referring to each other as boyfriend/girlfriend. Given the way Dawn has focused so much on her own actions, I would only trust that she wasn’t referring to Lewis as her boyfriend.

Every time I’ve heard of someone in high school or college claim they weren’t technically dating someone, they were engaging in activity with that person they knew their significant other would object to, or that the person they were talking to would consider dating activity.

Golly, That was very well worded, I agree whole heartedly with this opinion. Thank you very much for it. ^^

That’s entirely accurate, if we leave out all the details. But those change the whole story. She moved off to college, saw a new life, okay. So, what does an adult do? Well, they try and drag their boyfriend along, maybe even say openly at one point “I’m sorry, but I want to be with someone who wants to go through life with me, not sit here at home.” Then, they finally break up, calmly, openly. They don’t mention fucking around behind someone’s back, in the middle of an argument, like being a cheating slut is a debate tactic. If that person comes around again, they explain “No, I’m sorry, I’ve moved on”, not continue dragging it out.

Oh, but then she comes back. Never calls, never writes a letter, nothing; she just comes back and asks, through an intermediary, for Thomas to be there. With no concern or thought to how Thomas is feeling, she just starts throwing everything in his face, how her life is so super-awesome now that she’s a writer, a wife, and an expectant mother. THEN she follows up with, basically, “What the fuck is wrong with YOU, loser?” because Thomas didn’t take being cheated on and dumped very well. In fact, she says it to everyone, because being an unpopular author who can’t get people to show up for book signings without bribery is way better than retail. Notice how she never honestly said “Hey Thomas, I came a bit early, because I wanted to talk to you, and see how you were doing”? She never apologizes for anything (not even just saying she’s sorry things didn’t work out), she doesn’t really care. She seems to, at first, but only to the extent that Thomas isn’t the person she thinks he should be. That’s not caring, that’s judging. She sounds like my father.

We can’t blame her for everything, but we can blame her for being the spark that started the fire, and not even caring.

Grief has no statute of limitations.

I think the proper thing to do was not just stroll on in like nothing was ever wrong, but to open a discussion with him. It is not her call to place a value judgement on his feelings. It is her job as a human to look out for others, particularly those she has interacted with.

These are powerful emotions at play. To pretend like nothing was wrong is to denigrate the force of his humanity. If she wasn’t willing to face it head on (understandable), the next town over has a comic book store or a wal-mart.

Grief totally has a statute of limitations. There is a limit to how long you can hold grudge and still be considered a mature adult. Especially when you consider the magnitude of the offense, and Dawn’s offense wasn’t all that great.

That depends. Should you obsess? No. You seem childish if you do for years. But that’s not the same as saying you should be totally happy to see people who fucked you over royally. Uh, no. There’s no reason to demand people be okay with that. In fact, THAT is childish, it’s something children and teenagers often actually say, that you should “get over” being screwed, by them, when they never pay the price or apologize.

Yes, there are some relationship crimes where the statute of limitations never runs out. For example: if someone cheats, the you have never-ending rights to be angry with them. But Dawn never “fucked [Thomas] over royally”. The two of them grew apart, a break-up was inevitable. Sure, the breakup didn’t go very smoothly, but it wasn’t that bad. Thomas was fucked over by himself more than he was fucked over by Dawn. His long standing anger is unjustified

I would like to say that I love this comic, and this is my first time commenting. Nina is right, Constance is being an ass, and I’ll have my popcorn for the next page.

Thanks for reminding us why we l?ve Nina Grace! As we’ve learned from her back-story, she’s put up with enough B.S. in her life, and she hates to see misery inflicted on her friends. It might be instructive if Carol and Thomas were to walk in on this catfight. Or Brooksie, for that matter.

I have this thing floating around in my head comparing and contrasting Jess and Dawnstance.

My bet for how this plays out: Nina will let it slip that the “hundreds of book buyers” were totally because of Thomas. Remember, she had 0 people in line until Thomas made the call to Edwards sister. So her day, as great as it is, is totally because of Thomas. Will she believe it? Maybe, maybe not.

I went on my first date, as a Freshman in High School, with an old family friend. She brought her five bff’s on the date. When I was introduced to one of her friends, I found out that night that love at first sight is a thing. The next day at school, I told my girlfriend that I couldn’t see here any more, because I’ve totally fallen for her bff. I didn’t find out until years later, how totally in love with me that first girl was. She was crushed, utterly. I didn’t care, because I had met my life mate. The first one has reconciled with it, especially since I married her bff and we celebrated our 30th anniversary last year. None of that matters, to her. To her, her ‘life’ ended that day, and she didn’t recover and date anyone else until college. I never knew at the time, but that does not change the fact that I interrupted her life, for years. She and my wife only made up a few years ago.

So, my point is? Dawn basically derailed Thomas for years. She didn’t know she did it. But she did. She came back clueless and is having it thrown in her face, and if I’m right, it’ll only get worse for a comic or two, before it gets better.

If Dawn changes her mind and goes back to whereever she lives now, then this is an emotional event that Thomas can work through with Carol. If, however, Dawn and hubby (and child) do actually ‘return home,’ well now Thomas will have to finally reconcile his emotional attachments/detachments over Dawn, or he and Carol are doomed before they begin.

My 2 cents, hope it isn’t too erratic.

By ‘return home’ I mean move back to the town where Between Failures occurs.

Sadly, there seems to be little to no chance for Carol to move back away from Thomas and Co.

Her husband is invested in a career with extremely limited growth. He has to move at this point, if he wants that specific job. He can try in other states, but it sounds like there is no going back for them if he wants that career.

You know what JUST occurred to me today? Something that could have happened during this arc, and I’m not really sure whether to be relieved or disappointed it didn’t? If in just one or two strips, where Thomas was having an especially hard time dealing with Dawn, the strip’s color had started to look a bit washed out…

…okay, yeah, kindalike third panel in strip 1115, now that I go back and look. Only without the flames and for at least a few panels in a row. In the event that I should be relieved, thank God Jess showed up just then.

I think what irritates me about Dawn is that she thought she could waltz back into Thomas’ life without consequence. Sorry honey, but once you’ve burned your bridges you can’t go back that way again, and knowing that is supposed to be part of all that “growing up” she’s supposedly been doing. Not that I believe she’s grown up at all or she wouldn’t still be sprinkling her speech with Japanese for no reason, it just makes her sound childish, and that’s only a couple of the most obvious signs of her immaturity.

The thing is, I don’t think she really wanted to just “waltz back into Thomas’ life,” as you put it. I saw her actions as more of someone coming back into town after years of being gone and trying to reach out to people she knew who were still there. And what bridges did she burn, anyways? Yeah she broke up with Thomas, but the burning was all on his end, not hers. Her actions show a large amount of maturity, the random japanese aside, like how she wasn’t going to tiptoe around Thomas because they had broken up, and instead tried to reach out to him like a friend. It’s not her fault that he obsessed over her like a nutter, and didn’t let his grudge go. Between the two of them, Thomas is by far the more immature one of the two.

She cheated on him? Yelled at him? Stormed off and never spoke to him for all these years? That’s a pretty clear way to burn a bridge. Then to come back and literally pretend it never happened…that’s immature. She doesn’t realize the effects of her actions, she never even takes the time to try and talk to Thomas and ask how he is doing, she just starts mouthing off about HER life and HER happiness (and then treating Thomas like a loser). I don’t see her trying to connect with old friends, I see her wanting people to adore her for being so great.

Hold the phone, cheated on him? Is my memory that bad? Did I miss something of this magnitude? Would you care to cite a page on that one? The closest I can come is this strip (/comics1/1146-fixation) where Thomas says “she threw this guy’s name in my face”. What I take from that is that she met a guy that she like more than Thomas. It would be a bit of a stretch to conclude that she cheated on him.

Why does Nina’s behavior have to be rational? Good grief. She’s has her friend’s back. And Dawn, for all of her obliviousness, has a point too. Chalk this one up to a well done foray into the human psyche and how humans randomly act and react to the emotional crap that occurs.

Yes! I think everyone who is picking sides is missing the point … I may be reading more into this comic than the author intends, but I think there just might be a message about not rushing to judgment lurking between the lines …
… to paraphrase Spider Robinson {we are all assholes some of the time, the trick to not being a complete asshole is to acknowledge it, try to repair the damage and move on} (at least I think something like that was in something he wrote somewhere … my Google-fu has failed – and as for my memory, forget it)

I love this comic for the complexity and depth of characterization … so … while, we have recently been shown Thomas making good progress and not (yet) been shown similar efforts by Dawn, I would be shocked to not be surprised by future revelations … remember how irredeemably hateful Reggie seemed at first?

I agree with both of you. Both of them have their points and their irrationalities, its not right to just pass judgement before you know everything.

Yay! You go, Nina! Lay that smug, egotistical bitch out. I pity that poor schmuck that tied the knot with her and knocked her up. He must be a born Subbie. His nickname must be ‘Alimony’ or it soon will be.

I like Jess. She’s locked and loaded and willing to experiment. She’ll never pass this way again and if she grabs a double handful of life and savors it, more power to her.

My Halloween was kinda bumming, as well. It rained… ALL… DAY! Not even an exaggeration! All. Day. We got like… 2-4 families total. And it being Year of Luigi and all, I finally got my brother to me the Luigi to my Mario costume! We spent months grooming mustaches, and it was gonna be awesome…. but wasn’t. Ah well, more candy for us… I guess….

I love this comic and I like this story arc, but reading this page, one all-consuming question is running through my mind – did Nina just quote Deekin of Neverwinter Nights fame? “I don’t know and I don’t care. All I need to know is I don’t like you!”

No. I’m not familiar with the Nights series apart from art recognition. But if it makes you enjoy the story more then yes that was intentional. X3

Crave…
Don’t You go Moffat on us, man.

I don’t know what that means.

I think TheWatcher means Steven Moffat. He is or was a writer for the newer Doctor Who seasons, and did some British teen dramas and sitcoms.

On an unrelated note, I have a suspicion I had mentioned in an old post, I think. I can’t find it though. Since Nina has read Dawn’s book and Thomas hasn’t, I believe she will make a startling discovery. When she reads Thomas’s material I suspect she will find there are striking similarities between his works and Dawn’s book.

Not that Dawn stole intentionally, but I bet they worked on stuff together in the old days, and she just figured she could use it. Either that, or she remembered stuff he did himself and just assumed it was okay to use it. It seems totally in character with what we have seen of Dawn. She isn’t evil or particularly bitchy (on purpose), just clueless about certain areas of human interaction.

I love the many reader comments about the relationship between Dawn and Thomas. While many of them have valid points, we don’t know what really happened between them, apart from what Thomas said.

Relationships are complicated, ex-relationships even more so.

As Caerelon noted;
Steven Moffat wrote/produced the Doctor Who series regeneration starting from the parody: Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death.

Also wrote the script for The Adventures of Tintin,
And wrote/produced Sherlock.

His writing style has transformed his name into a verb.

It’s funny, I really hated Dawn at first, now I just dislike them both.

I’m best friends with an ex, he fucked me over royally and I did so to him too.
We kept in contact and found a where our line lies with what we can do or say so that there’s no hurt feelings. Obviously this doesn’t always work but you have to get over it.

Thomas talked big game but never backed it up. He’s an ass honestly. He treats everyone as if they’re below him at some point, has an obsession with pulling the strings, and really he just can’t stand to not have control. Which is why he never did anything, going to somewhere new you have no control. Doing something like writing, comics, or even I dunno.. Screen writing if he gets into it would make him loose it, he wouldn’t be able to force his book to sell and if it fell through he would chalk it up to failure and be broken up.

He was creepily obsessed with her, I mean if my ex had ever been driving around my house while I was away and then showed up late one night I would call the cops. That’s stalking, and the hatred he has for her is mental. Yes her husband did deserve the hand squeeze (he was a prick as well talking about stealing..that’s just wrong) but did he really need to go into physical abuse of the guy he never met? Hell Dawn could have told him the horror stories that Thomas put her through.

I’m sure he’s not innocent, look what happened when Carol was offered a promotion? He went behind her back and then talked her out of something that she wanted. It was her choice to make and being obsessed with control he stopped it. So maybe hubby heard some stories and wanted to make it clear that Dawn was with him? Hubby also seemed kinda odd to leave his wife with Thomas, he even asked her if she’d be okay..there’s something behind that.
But if hating Dawn made Thomas cope then well he did what was best for him, she did some pretty crappy things to him and he might of felt like a kicked puppy. Dawn insulted his job, came back with out a word, requested he be there for the signing then kind of went all out on insulting the coworkers. Yeah, he has a right to be upset.

Now onto Dawn.
She took a guy and started dating him. When she decided to come back and fight with him she had absolutely no right to bring up another guy to make him feel worse. Did she cheat? Maybe, maybe not. Did she imply something like that? Yes. Did she mean to hurt him? Yes. Then she broke off what was a toxic relationship, I mean now how many years late does Thomas still curse her name? Imagine if they had gotten married and then divorced.. Not a pleasant sight. So I get this. Then she gives it another go, she obviously knew they weren’t meant to be together ( Thomas was unstable so I put more responsibility on her as she saw the signs.) yet she dragged out the relationship more and be littler him for not doing what she thought was right. If he wants to work in retail then who is she to say no? He has a job, he pays his bills so seems like a good deal.

Dawn also insulted Nina is ways that she were pretty bitchy. “He’s way to smart to be in retail! He’s not doing anything with his life.” Is really something you want to say to a stranger when they have the same job. She also requested Thomas be there, picked his store (one that is failing was probably not first on the list), and never bother to ask him what had changed in his life. She didnt care if he had a girlfriend, she did not ask if he was working on anything, hell for all she knows he could have been doing online courses!

These two are both at fault, and both act childish.

And then there’s Nina.

She has loyalty and I respect that, but she’s being blind with it.
She has the right to be angry, here is some woman who blew off her best friend and then insulted her own intelligence and life style! She should choose her words a bit more carefully and maybe be open to the fact that Thomas isn’t perfect but then she did admit to having a crush on him a few chapters back. So.. I can’t really blame her..

Right now the character I feel bad for is Carol.
She’s dealing with Jessica trying to take her boyfriend, her boyfriend dealing with his issues with his ex, seeing Thomas state he hates Dawn but then pays money to make her feel better, and then there’s probably some thoughts about what will happen if her and Thomas do break up.

Squeezing during a handshake=abuse? Driving around randomly (he explicitely says this) and, one of those times, seeing her car=stalking? Not wanting to move away and start a new life=toxic relationship? I guess anyone can be a bastard if we twist definitions far enough. And he’s awful nice and friendly for an ass. If anything, he’s rather self-sacrificing. His anger isn’t health, no, but like he said, basically his whole life and all his hobbies and dreams were all things he shared with Dawn. Anything he did reminded him of her. THAT isn’t her fault, but it’s understandable. Reminds me of my grandmother, who had to quit doing crossword puzzles when she stopped smoking, because she always did those two things together.

So shady of Thomas, explaining to Carol his worries ’bout said promotion’s risks, after going behind her back and doing similar to the boss that asked him ’bout his opinion on said promotion.

To be honest I think everyone is looking at Dawn the wrong way. There are some people who do things with out realizing they are doing it. I think she asked Thomas to be there just because she assumed he was over her and that they could and can be friends. Second the whole rubbing it in his face deal… I am not sure that is the case. The way I see it, she was merely catching him up on what she has done with her life. point to this case lies right there, what seemed to be merely a conversation starter for her to begin with Thomas was merely “rubbing it in” to him. However this depends on a persons point of view and everyone has their own point to look at.

Dawn moves back to the place she left, the place where nothing’s happening, because of a lack of options (failure). She self-publishes a book because no publisher thinks it’s worthy (failure). She insults the guy she used to date with her failure of a book (fail). She goes on to insult the people at the place he works at (fail). He might be between failures, but she’s full of it.
It makes me wonder if her going away to school and getting married was really stepping up and being independent or was she just going with the flow and doing what other people wanted her to do. Could it be that T’s anger is rooted in his frustration of what he sees as her refusing to live up to her potential?

I’m not sure I would count Dawn’s failure at finding a publisher as a failure. I can think of one author off the top of my head who published the first book she ever wrote. (Zilpha Keatley Snyder.) That book was published with a tremendous amount of input from an employee at the publisher, and it went through many submissions before it was published.

Well, maybe it is a failure, but she will only truly fail if she gives up and quits writing.

The point being, authors normally have several works under their belt before they’re picked up by publishers.

Also, I’m pretty sure what you’ve stated isn’t what Thomas is angry about, since this whole arc has been about that.

holy! a lot of comments here. Anyways, how can you say Nina is irrational? She is a dear friend. I would look out for my dear friends just as much… simply using less anger to play mind games.

Both of them have valid points. Nina is understandably ticked off at Dawn for breaking Thomas’s heart but Dawn is also right to point out that it had been a while ago so still being mad about it isn’t rational either. Nina is also right in that some people have long memories for better or worse.

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