Storyline over! Standalones begin Monday, but another storyline looms….
Shortpacked! by David Willis
Toys are serious business.
Convention appearances:
Calgary Expo Calgary, AB: April 26-28
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
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Sorcery 101
Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
Axe Cop
The Book of Biff
Butt-Taco
Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
Diesel Sweeties
Dinosaur Comics
Dr. McNinja
Dresden Codak
Fans!
Fleen
Gastrophobia
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Goats
Hark, a vagrant
Hijinks Ensue
Intrepid Girlbot
Legend of Bill
Medium Large
Not Invented Here
Octopus Pie
Overcompensating
Penny Arcade
PhDcomics
Power Nap
Questionable Content
Real Life
Rob and Elliot
Bad Machinery
Schlock Mercenary
Sheldon
So Far Apart
Something Positive
Two Lumps
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Malaya and Ultra-Car need to form a club or something.
THE ULTRA BITTER CLUB
I thought they already did.
Making misery…
Welcome to the good ship Misery
Making Misery, Making Misery! (Read to the Tune of Making Christmas)
THE MISERY’S…ALL YOURS!
(Man that was bad movie, but not a horrible one. I’m a sucker for anything with Tim Curry haming it up.)
Frustrated, incorporaaaaated…
No Leslie, do not give in to the bitchiness! You’re better than that!
Annnd let the Malaya hate commence anew! Let’s see if someone out does yesterday’s crazed comment!
FUCK YOU MALAYA, YOUR HITLER U GOY THE MUSTATCHE AND IBET YOUR THESAME BODY WEIGHT
OBAMA IS ITLER AND MALAYA IS DARK SKINNED LIKE OBAMA
THEY SHGOULD GO BACK TO KENYA AND MAKE LITTLE COMMIE BABIES
HITLER WAS A COMMIE
LIKE MALAYA
U ALL SUCK
That good enough for you?
Can’t speak for the other guy but no. I mean you hit all the right points but where’s the passion? Where’s the incoherent Rage? Where’s my beer?
Beer’s in the fridge, and the incoherent Rage was left somewhere in that pile under Wack’d's good sense and dignity. The passion? That’s still over on pornhub.
From the look on Emily’s face, it’d appear your avatar had also just browsed for porn.
Allow me *ahem*
Malaya is Satin reincarnated with a heaping helping of neo-nazi, a spritz of scientology, and a dash of M. Night Shamalan dna. She is so unlikeable that if they cloned a good version of her, the good version would be slightly detestable. The Emporor from Star Wars would not touch her with the force. The narrator from the Grinch would rather hug the Grinch than touch Malaya with a 10,000 foot pole. I would go as far as paraphrasing the Angry Video Game Nerd by saying “She sucking f***s, she f***ing sucks and quite frankly I do not like her”.
Good, but we’re still short the truly random political commentary that has nothing to do with anything. These are still actually mentioning Malaya.
Romney lost. Deal with it.
See? THAT’S the kind of insane non sequitur I expect from a truly magnificent… whatever that comment yesterday was. I’m still not sure.
I really want to agree with you, but with the spelling of Satan as Satin, makes me think of a very angry fabric doing the nazi stomp.
… I think the misspelling of Satan as Satin might actually be a reference to Wreck-It Ralph.
… As opposed to the other intentional misspellings.
I did not think anybody would catch that XD
And here I thought I disliked Malaya before.
Fuck you, Malaya.
Hey, man. Don’t hate the messenger.
The messenger giving you the message that you suck.
Hating the messenger is no the problem – killing him is. Ask the Khwarezmian shah.
Leonidas had no problem with that.
He was later killed by the Persians, but Greece continued existing – while Khwarezm more or less ceased to exist that very moment they killed another Mongol ambassador.
And now I want to see a Spartans vs Mongols movie.
As a history student I can tell you it would be waaay more boring than you imagine (two or three Mongol hit-and-run attacks tops to break the Hoplite lines). As a histroy enthusiast I can tell you: BEST MOVIE EVAR!
Aaand now I am conflicted about stealing your idea and making a webcomic out of it.
I wouldn’t call it “stealing” as I can draw as good as a cucumber. Feel free to use the idea, just mention me as your source.
I like her when she’s being a dick to make a point. Like she kind of is here.
So you like her when she’s Mike?
Well we do need a new Mike…
WHAT point? What, exactly, has Malaya’s bitchiness gotten her? And there’s a hell of a HUGE gap between being nice and the increased bitterness that Malaya’s suggesting. And getting an endorsement of “you’re the nicest person I know” from MALAYA just rings pretty fucking hollow. It shouldn’t make Leslie feel good coming from MALAYA. It’s like when Satan puts his arm around me, pulls me in, laughs, and goes “Hey, Arkham! Y’know what? You’re all right!”
That doesn’t make me feel good and I really wish he’d stop doing that!
Amen.
I don’t normally express dislike through coitus, but to each their own.
To some people, every fuck is a hatefuck.
I dunno, I like this better than most of her shenanigans… at least this speaks to a coherent worldview which motivates her misanthropy, however warped that worldview may be. Consistent characters are always more interesting -not to say sympathetic – than ones that just kick the puppy randomly in order to fulfill plot points or establish themselves as the badguy.
The noises from Joe’s beard scraping could be heard for miles.
Due to his Abductee powers, by a bizarre series of acoustic miracles, the sound of Joe’s rugged beard scraping against lady flesh is indistinguishable from Barry White’s Greatest Hits album.
That’s horrifying.
In a sexy kind of way.
Pretty sure Joe doesn’t have abductee powers, he is just a regular super-genius.
In year zero it was confirmed that he is an abductee.
And his abductee power is being a super-genius.
Malaya’s never going to get what she wants if she hinges her happiness on all of these other workings of the world. Especially Joe’s hormones.
Actually since Galasso said Leslie is his best employee in that scene a while back it probbably gets her Ambers old job since Ambers managing the new Shortpacked.
Just saying.
Not to mention that she was assistant manager during Amber’s final month-or-so of pregnancy.
Ooh, wow, the assistant manager position, THAT’S the summation of Leslie’s hopes and dreams, all right.
*shrug* Could be. I can’t recall her aspiring to anything career-wise, and if she is the comic doesn’t focus on it enough for me to remember.
Besides, neither of these people are saying it’s a reason for Leslie to be happy, just that it’s something that could not only happen but be important later.
Being the nicest person around doesn’t really equal being Galasso’s best employee. After all, the nicest person around probably doesn’t sell many CPRs.
Yeah Malaya, real smart to remind someone of all the times they’ve been screwed over when you’re one of the people who screwed her over.
Like I said, one of the more inept ones.
Will this result in Leslie’s Start of Darkness?
Tune in for next time,
Same Bat time,
Same bat channel.
I thought her Start of Darkness was selling Customer Protection Rackets for Galasso, and subsequent confrontation with Ethan.
Though admittedly, that one’s been on a very long fuse…
Leslie’s not always good, she’s just (almost) always ACCOMMODATING. That usually makes her a force for good but it can be turned toward evil.
I read the first part of the comment in the voice of “The most interesting man in the world”.
Aesop’s fable of the snake and the farmer. It’s needs to brought up in ethics debates a hell of a lot more.
Basically looking at a situation of two opposite extremes. Malaya’s attitudes have gotten her about as much as Leslie’s. Perhaps they could both learn a little something from eachother.
You teach me and I’ll teach you!
ShortPAAACKED
Gotta Shelve ‘em all! Gotta shelve ‘em All!!!
SHORTPACKED!
She’s a little bit country, she’s a little bit jerk.
Ah, but , Malaya’s attitude has lowered her expectations re: other people and life in general, and therefore she *thinks* that she’s doing much better for herself! So, she comes out ahead.
Okay, now that was just mean. Leslie did NOT deserve that.
I think that actually was Malaya being nice. Or at least her best approximation of it.
Yep. Remember, Malaya’s defining characteristic is believing she has everything figured out and understands the world better than everyone else, so sharing her bitter, mercenary wisdom is the closest thing to altruism she can comprehend.
Counterpoint: Unlike Malaya, Leslie isn’t an obnoxious air-headed bitch.
CounterCounterpoint: She’s still as unhappy as Malaya.
CounterCounterCounterpoint: Leslie has been happy before and being nice to others has gotten her a huge house
CounterCounterCounterCounterpoint: true. but her heart has also been broken. Malaya has far less of a place to fall than Leslie. Do you know what’s really depressing? A big ol’ empty house and your ex’s sister constantly reminding you of her.
Counterpoint^5: Well that is the risk of having a loving heart as opposed to having a chest cavity where absolute zero is as warm as it gets. Where as Leslie has friends for fall back on and Malaya is running out of reasons for people to be around because of her “assetts” are becoming “less desirable” in her own mind. Which is far more empty and warm then a house where the possibility of hooking up with the ex’s sister is not off of the table.
Being mean to people seems to have gotten Malaya an apartment. Hell, it landed her a job. Malaya’s still got Leslie and yet Leslie’s lost Robin.
Both her apartment and her job are things she does not like and in panel 5 Malaya may have just lost Leslie too.
And this is Leslie’s dream job? Doesn’t seem very happy with it as of late. Or the house for that matter. It’s almost like she accepted both the house and the job are part of a life she was building with another individual without taking her own interests into account, and now that those lives are separated these commodities have very little to offer her but pain and discomfort.
Agreed. Retail might not be Leslie’s dream job but she doesn’t feel disdain everyday she comes to work nor to superiority to her co-workers and those around her. Yes she is in a slump relationship wise, yes her life is not perfect, but here’s the thing about living on Earth, it keeps on spinning. Leslie knows that pain and discomfort are easier to compound then to get rid of. If her current situation is so bad, I think Leslie has the where with all to realize that she can always make changes to it. But maybe I am getting too deep into a webcomic.
Leslie lost Robin after a much longer time period than we’ve seen Malaya.
Leslie’s got twenty years on Malaya. Everything she’s gained and lost has been done over a much longer period of time. All the years of Malaya’s adult life can be counted on one hand. She’s about the age where Leslie was taking her first steps towards a heterosexual marriage and Ethan was fumbling through his attempts at making a career out of stand-up comedy. Robin wasn’t built in a day and she didn’t fall in a day either.
Point is when Malaya wanted to continue to be with Leslie she said so pretty clearly even if it meant being a tad inconsiderate and taking advantage of Leslie’s good nature. When Leslie wanted to be with Robin again she just kind of started stewing in her own pain and desire.
Those are actually some really solid points.
To be fair, when Leslie had been around as long as Malaya has been now, she was still a completely one-dimensional prop for Robin, with no independent personality or goals. Malaya still has room for character development before she can be fairly compared to modern-day Leslie.
Then your wife seems to think you’re part of the furniture
Oh it’s peculiar
She used to be…so…NICE–Supertramp
That’s just mean; like verging on Mike levels mean, but with an added layer of biting.
Use your jealous feelings, Leslie. Let the bitterness flow through you!
If she were to Join The Bitch Side…She’d be a powerful Ally…
I don’t think followers of the Bitch Side get along well, though.
Since we’re parodying the sith here, that’s pretty appropriate.
God, what I wouldn’t give to just take a power sander to Malaya’s face and just beat what’s left of it to a bloody pool with a sledgehammer. I didn’t think it was possible to hate her more than I did, but since I do, I guess I was wrong.
Welp.
Now imagine somebody corralling you in the corner of a bar and telling you this to your face.
If Malaya’s assholiness every combined with Mike’s, the SP! universe would be DOOMED I tell you, DOOMED!
Together, their hate would release a depth charge that would topple buildings, kill nerds, and bang mom’s within a 200 mile radius.
Except, chances are, she’d snark at Mike, and Mike would punch her in the face. Then she’d rant at him, insult his wife and child; prompting him to throttle her hard enough to cause her to void her ovaries–just so he could kick her in the lady-balls.
…..you know what? I’m okay with this happening.
No way, Mike wouldn’t do that.
Mike greatly prefers psychological torture. He would start by making cutting comments that finally force her to realize what a sad, lonely, pathetic little bitch she is, and them move up from there.
I bet Malaya was one of the popular kids in high school, and that’s where Skullomania’s crush on her came from. And now it’s all catching up to her; she’s peaked, and this is it for her.
We haven’t got Ken’s reaction to her weight gain yet. Maybe he won’t mind so much. I mean, dude got with Conquest just to make Malaya jealous. If he’s still interested in Malaya when he knows Connie is available to him, then he must like her for SOMETHING other than her looks, right?
Ken Like’s big butts and he cannot lie.
I’ll bet she was unpopular and that was the source of her bitterness. And she has taken on the oppressor’s tools and is now oppressing everyone else. You know, like you do.
“Look at what being nice has gotten you: specifically, look at that consequence of you not being nice”
…Willis, why do you do this to us?
Revenge for all the times we damned him.
It’s an endless circle. Doing this will only cause more damning!
Actually it’s not revenge; to him the damning is like the joyous laughter of cute little children. He does things like this because he wants to hear more of it.
Man, Malaya’s so bitter, you could use her as medicine.
Really – and here I thought Bitter Almond was only to be used for pest control?
I haven’t read any of the comments yet but 10-1 stands that it’s all about hating Malaya (and intermittent jokes)
They are, which is funny because this is one of the few times where Malaya is making a point. A very cynical one yes, but it’s a real observation.
I’m not saying Leslie should become a bitch and Malaya’s a good role model (even if I do personally find her amusing, she’s still an asshole), but this is one of the cases where Malaya’s comment makes sense in context – being a good person has gotten Leslie almost nothing but heartache.
Hell, if Leslie would get proactive about her own interests for just half a second and talk to Robin about her feelings this entire painful situation could be resolved.
Malaya has her faults but she makes her feelings known. Leslie could stand to do a little bit more of that even if it means disregarding the feelings of others to do so.
Seriously! She hadn’t spoken a SINGLE word to Robin about this sort of thing ever since their big break-up. One way or another this thing needs to be settled because otherwise she’s either (a)never going to be with Robin and/or (b) never get over Robin. Either way she needs to DO something. And if she wasn’t ready to give up Robin she shouldn’t have kept her at such a distance.
Has pushing someone away you care for EVER not resulted in more emotional pain than necessary?
Agreed. At least when it comes to romance, Leslie’s got codependency issues, a bit like a more effectual Ethan. For who knows how long, she let Robin call her “my lesbian” for Cheese’s sake! Not even a real pet name.
A band from my day called Offspring had a hit song called No Self-Esteem or something about a spaz in a abusive relationship, in which he let a cheating liability of a girlfriend get away with anything at his expense, because he couldn’t stop being pacified by her sexual forwardness. That relates to Leslie’s real problem as opposed to simply being ‘too nice.’
Wait, I thought Leslie’s “troubles” (note the quotes) started when she DID stand up for herself and kicked Robin out of her life after a huge argument? I’m getting mixed signals here.
It happened offscreen, but I think the gist wasn’t that she so much dumped Robin as “gave her up” for her own good. So it was at least an attempt to be selfless. Didn’t really work out for either of them.
To add on to Doctor Who’s comment, Had Leslie have been a bit more assertive with Robin and Not let her go off, it wouldn’t have snowballed like it did. But she felt she was doing Robin a favor by letting her go. So… :T
She kicked Robin out of her life because she cheated on her.
No she didn’t, that was an assumption the readers made during the break. Leslie left Robin because she thought she was holding Robin back from really being happy.
Her current troubles are related to deciding she should take Robin back, but then deferring and staying silent when she saw Robin hooking up with Joe.
Damn, man.
While Malaya’s comment is…debatable at best, it is kinda rude for Robin and Joe to just randomly make out in a store.
Why? Normally when you’re with your signifigant other, you make out casually.
Eh, because it’s kinda tacky for a store owner to make out with an employee at work. Even if Robin isn’t working.
Personally, I think public makeouts, at least in the context presented, are always tacky.
To be fair, they defeated various alien races together as part of a cloistered, super-secret government agency, in an interstellar war that claimed the lives of many of their friends and family, during which time they were roommates and shared an intense psychological and emotional relationship. Also, Robin is a retired Senator. Store owner/employee is really an inadequate description of their relationship.
On the other hand… he does still own the store and she does still work there. Their prior relationship voids the risk of this being horrifically skeevy, but the tackiness definitely still remains.
On the other hand, when it comes to the ladies, Joe is all about tacky.
I am a horrible person, but I do not feel bad for Leslie in this strip. She put Robin through hell by her own choice, and now that Robin has finally moved on, she wants what is no longer available? I love the both of them, but I cannot feel bad for someone when the repercussions of a decision they made bite them in the ass.
I gotta agree. Robin tried to win Leslie back for quite a while, and she wasn’t having any of it. Leslie got here by her own choices.
Agreed. Since Shortpacked! moves in real time, Leslie has had quite the time to talk about this stuff with Robin, especially since they’ve been amicable recently. Robin had finally accepted that Leslie was a no-go and moved on. Leslie’s fault for not giving Robin any clues to think otherwise.
Wow….that was unpleasant..
…remember when this comic was funny and not dark and depressing?
Those were good times…
Like that time when Amber punched Mike and had an existential crisis over how she might be turning into her verbally and physically abusive father? Funny stuff that.
Or that time when Robin came home after a Cadbury Cream Egg cereal induced sugar high and found out she’d dumped Leslie to sleep with some dude? Hilarious.
There’s absolutely no precedent for real character development in this comic. No sir. None whatsoever. Always jokes from Willis.
Yeah, good times….
Okay point taken, at least those instances mostly worked out okay in the end, I don’t feel a real sense of resolution here, just depressed. =/
Robin pulled the drama tag, like, a bajillion years ago. This is not anything new.
I know I know, doesn’t mean I always have to like it. =/
Yeah, agreed. I always try to take the perspective of archival vs. up-to-date readers – it can get tiresome to have to wait weeks or months for a lighthearted story to come back around, but when you get to read an emotional storyline in a few minutes through the archives, it’s much more engaging and meaningful to the arc of the strip. Striking a balance between the two is important, but I try to appreciate both when possible.
You know, I don’t really like Malaya but I can’t help but sympathize with her, she’s spiteful and bitter but really she’s the one who suffers the most from it, she has no friends besides Leslie and she spent her birthday alone.
I guess what really gets to me is that the girl is only 23 years old! she’s got her whole life ahead of her, yet she’s acting like she has one foot in the grave because she gained, what, like five pounds (Of what is most likely water weight due to how fast it acculated). It reminds me of women who think that being like one pound over dangerously underweight means the end of the world. And she’s so angry and lacking perspective that the only way to cope is to foist her bitterness onto others. Guess it just rubbed me the wrong way.
Interestingly enough it seems she would have preferred to spend her birthday alone or at least in a small intimate gathering of close friends. Then some people who “cared” for her went and ambushed her with a large party with lots of people.
Friends aren’t always a numbers game. She and Leslie have something pretty solid for how long they’ve known eachother. Ultracar too. What’s more noteworthy is the quality of her relationships in general. She basically lives with multiple people who she seems to think very poorly of. If she doesn’t hate them she certainly disrespects them. She enters a room of strangers and it takes her ten seconds to start manufacturing enemies.
At least half of how her behavior bites her in the ass is that she is never just left to her own devices. She can’t just have her quiet birthday gathering like she wanted. She can’t just decide to go after somebody she thinks is cool without some enemy she’s made antagonizing her over it. She hates nerds and yet she finds herself working at this store with a bunch of other nerds catering to the needs of nerds expecting her to have a working knowledge of all sorts of nerdery.
It’s not like she’s driving people away and leaving herself alone with her behavior. If anything she’s actively drawing people she would rather be without into her life.
Just yesterday Lucy was using the historical Jesus’s body to protect herself from Malaya.
Yeah, I know that feeling, I went through it while Amber was having her character development.
The comic has certainly shifted from being primarily funny with some character development tossed in to primarily character driven with occasional humor tossed in (well humour and unfunny comics about fandom stupidity but whatever).
bam, just got mike’d bitch
If you are going to hate on someone, why not Ken who brought her to the store to begin with?
Are we going to have to pay a premium to see Amber and Mike comics now?
Amber and Mike comics are free over at dumbingofage.com.
Are they free now?? Awesome! I’d gotten kind of sick of their faces being blurred out whenever they appeared.
Yes, but that Amber and Mike have no canonical relationship to this Amber and Mike, right?
ya know…it would be ever so wonderful if you could…i don’t know
maybe still make Amber and Mike (and Donna) appear again in “Shortpacked”
instead of writing them out!
honestly I prefer them instead of DoA Amber and Mike!
Alternate universe counterparts don’t really count as seeing them.
Maybe we can plant the bug of an idea in Dave’s head – like, I don’t know, maybe a cut-over to a little bit of Ambike er Mamber … er any-who …. I think you know what I mean .. bat logo spin cycle out, spin cycle in … meanwhile in the other shortpacked store Mike is dealing with …. Dirty Diapers …. and unreasonable Geek customers …. Hilarity ensues …
Nooo Malaya. Bad. Don’t say these things! Bah.
“another storyline looms”
I’m assuming “The Big One” you mentioned a while back?
possibly
A strong, confident, thumbs-up avatar accompanied by an evasive, vague, one word response may be the funniest thing I’ve seen all day.
So if Malaya’s this embittered about her turn of fortune, why hasn’t she just locked lips with the business end of a shotgun?
As horrifying as that might be, it would be a logical extension of her present mindset.
Instead we seem to get a corruption of Leslie. Who really has no room to feel self pity. She and Robin had been on the outs for awhile and Leslie decided to run off with Malaya. At that point, Robin understandably decided maybe it was time to move on.
But that wouldn’t make some drama to exploit I suppose. Well, I guess time to settle in for the “Leslie becomes a bitch” arc.
Hmmm, not sure if I’m completely accurate, but isn’t Robin/Joe caused by the one time in Leslie’s life she wasn’t super nice. I mean, talking in the abstract and not about whose right or wrong, but if Leslie had outwardly forgiven Robin just a little bit sooner, they would be together.
And the initial heartbreak had nothing to do with Leslie’s niceness either – that was all on Robin. Although I guess a case could be made that Robin wouldn’t have slept with that dude if she had thought Leslie wasn’t going to forgive her – but that would require Robin to think things through.
Leslie decided to take Robin back, and was going to tell her, when she overheard Robin and Joe hooking up, and decided to stay silent and not assert her own desires by interfering and fighting for Robin. So her immediate problem – the one which is referenced in this strip – is most proximally caused by being too nice and not standing up for herself, again.
Robin had every right to sleep with that dude, she and Les had already broken up. It was making the video of it public that hurt Leslie.
Boy am I glad this arc is over. Maybe I can stop singing What’s My Age Again? now.
(A cookie to the first person to guess why I’ve been singing it since the arc started. Except the person I explained it to. >_>)
Nobody likes you when you’re 23?
But people do like cookies. Like the one you just earned.
My friends say I should act my age.
I don’t ever act my age … maybe that’s why I still get carded?
We may all be getting older but we can still be immature if we try hard enough….. its more fun.
Am I slowly transforming into a partisan hack, or is Malaya a metaphor for the republican party?
yes.
I thought she was a metaphor for AIDS.
That Willis is surely a master of his craft.
No, she’s a metaphor for cancer. Her weight gain is unchecked tumor growth and her attempt at “converting” Leslie is metastasis.
Well she can’t really be cancer, because that’s illegal, so it’s the closest we could get.
No, no, that legislation fell through, remember? Sadly, cancer is still legal.
I thought she was a metaphor for metaphors.
Damned metaphors.
When does Robin dump the scruffy dude and get back with Leslie?
I think that depends heavily on whether or not Mr. Willis starts drawing lesbian makeouts over at DumbingOfAge, and how long both he and the fandom can stand to go without them. So, watch the current storyline with Billie and Ruth very carefully!
Leslie and Robin parted ways due to their own decisions. Leslie left because Robin cheated on her, and couldn’t find it in her self to forgive her. Robin is moving on. Both may be sad about it, but that’s life.
Malaya pulled a good ‘Mike’ there, shoving Leslie’s observation back on her in a hurtful way. But, as far as I’m concerned, Leslie should have known better. She is nice, but trying to be nice to a snake just get you bitten.
Also, being nice got Leslie a large circle of friends and a position of authority in her workplace.
Not being nice got Malaya………………….. er…………….
On the other hand, many people have used Leslie for their own ends, because she is easy to push around (starting with Robin); however, all of them have dodged taking responsibility for those actions by being kind and placating to her afterwards. In a sense, Malaya is doing Leslie a huge character-development favor, by being someone who used her and is unabashedly honest about how shitty that was and how foolish Leslie is to keep letting people do that to her.
If you look at how Leslie was first introduced, Robin was being way, way shittier to Leslie than Malaya ever has been; if Malaya being shitty now helps Leslie realize this, she may actually learn something important to her future development.
Robin did not cheat on her.
Leslie left Robin because she thought she was holding Robin back from being happy. Robin didn’t have sex with that guy until after that and the big heartbreak came because Robin uploaded the video of it and made it public by accident.
What a silly bitch.
Damnit Malaya.
Why do you have to be right?
Hmm. Deliberately hurting the one person who has been consistently kind and forgiving to you despite having very good justification for kicking your selfish ass to the curb. Yep. You just stay classy there, Malaya.
Well, at least now we can see some kind of motivation…
And I don’t think it was meant as an attack on Les… it can be taken as such but likely wasn’t meant. Just an explanation of why she’s even more pissed off at the world in general. Maybe at one point she WAS a nice person… and was royally screwed over as a result…
“I mean, seriously, if it’s not your ex tongue-wrestlin’ with the guy who might be the REAL Love of her Life or whatever, it’s confused girls using you as their experiment and the historical Jesus running around as an affront to everything you don’t believe.” I know, that doesn’t really sound like Malaya. Needs more “fucks.”
I feel like this is one time we could’ve used a little less succinctness. I would’ve liked to hear Malaya say how she went from wanting to emulate Leslie to pitying her. Did we miss a whole scene where Les used Malaya as a shoulder to cry on at the end of the wedding, and Malaya’s perception of Les shifted as a result? It’s clear to US now that Leslie is smarting anew over Robin’s new relationship, but why’s it clear to Malaya and not, say, Ethan, her tenant-roommate?
This is indeed one of Malaya’s more likable moments, though. She really thinks she’s helping. And maybe she even is.
If we’ve got a “big one” coming up that’s going to disrupt everything, I hope we get a little more time to see Robin and Joe’s relationship, and how well it’ll stand or fall on its own terms, first.
Sooo, this “big one.”
Shortpacked did seem like it might be wrapping up during parts of the wedding arc, and it’s still got a certain “resolvedness” hanging over a lot of it right now. Ken and Jacob have resolved their most pressing issues, or so it seems. Amber and Mike (and Donna) are safely settled in Denver, and I imagine we’ll look in on them once in a while, but they seem pretty stable at this point. Ethan and Faz(!) have found partners with whom they seem 100% compatible. The addition of Joe is a complication in some ways and a resolution in others, effectively hitting the pause button on Galasso’s business troubles and sort of resolving an arc begun all the way back in It’s Walky.
Who else? Right now, Lucy is a cipher, a good mouthpiece for empowered female fans and very little else. I don’t mean she’s been poorly portrayed, but she’s in an embryonic stage like “Les Bean” in Les’s early appearances. We haven’t got any reasons to worry about her health or happiness yet.
I care about Malaya, so help me, but I don’t think too many of us are exactly writhing in suspense about whether she’ll smile tomorrow, any more than we are about Ultra Car. The days when Galasso and Ninja Rick seemed like they might be effective and dangerous are a distant memory. Jesus, like Reagan before him, is mostly ornamental. The only one really worth worrying about is Leslie, and it wouldn’t be out of character for her to simply suffer in silence.
In short, much as I love Shortpacked, I think it’s in need of a jolt, something like a karate chop dealt to its current cast dynamics, in order to regain some momentum. I won’t speculate about what that’ll be, but I’m glad to hear something ambitious is in the works.
How’s Sydney Yus been?
Malaya: Well on her way to becoming a crazy cat lady. Let the bitterness commence!
That was low even for me. ( and I vote Republican)
Les is probally the only person that likes her ( and is probally the only reason she still has a job)
Wow. The Transformers Prime season ender was kind of a bummer.
Not to say Malaya’s right or anything (though I don’t hate her the way everyone else seems to. Every good story needs someone to cause conflict after all), but in this case I can’t really blame her for being angry. Something happened to her that she’s embarrassed about, and every single person she works with is not only drawing attention to it, but offering really patronizing advice. What I imagine Malaya is hearing is, “Hey fatty, I noticed you’re a little bit fatter, but that’s okay. It happens, fatty. Well no, not to me, but to you, obviously. You should use your fatness as an excuse to fix your awful personality.” I’d probably be in strangle mode in that case too.
I kind of agree with you, though looking back through the strips I’m going to have to put most of the blame on Leslie. Lucy was barely even awake and mostly expressing surprise (I’m sure that hearing about her awesome metabolism didn’t make Malaya any happier, but Malaya started that one), and Ethan made a joke he didn’t realize applied to her and then went overboard trying to dig himself out of the hole. But Leslie has now brought it up twice, unsolicited, and Leslie, if you really do want to help, I’m pretty sure that what Malaya wants is for you to stop talking about it.
You can’t really blame them, considering Malaya has consistently done nothing but antagonize everybody around her. Somebody has to show that they have actual human emotions before you can worry about hurting their feelings.
But that’s just it. If it were some sort of comeuppance for her misdeeds and the others were taking perverse satisfaction in what they were saying, I think it would be one thing, but most of them think they’re helping! My guess is that only makes it worse. Someone like Malaya can handle hostility better than pity and condescension.
Aw, poor Les. ):
Friends.
It’s gotten her friends. You know, Mayala, people you care about who are not you and are not family? Human interaction? Yes? No?
Harsh but true. I’m gonna be killed for agreeing with Malaya Ain’t I?
Someone had to say it -but why did it have to be Malaya? Damn you, Willis! TwT
Man, if this was It’s Walky!, Malaya would eventually get ripped in half by a Martian or crushed under a rock.
Instead we have to put up with her being a towering bitch forever.
Beware the nice ones, Malaya.
Maybe if Leslie wasn’t willing to jump on every pretty girl she sees, I’d be likely to sympathize with her. But since she basically tried Malaya out because Robin told her not to, she deserved everything she got in that situation.
Leslie’s no perfect angel.
Wow, good to know that a.) being “slutty” makes you a bad person, b.) dating two girls over the course of a couple of years now makes you slutty.
Seriously? “Willing to jump on every pretty girl she sees”?
Yeah, that slut, having been in two whole relationships with girls!
3 actually. There was that one gag girl where we learned Leslie has a type.
That was a guest strip!
And even if the guest strip DOES get considered as canon (which is always my secret dream when I do a guest sequence, but don’t tell anyone), it STILL refutes any argument that Leslie isn’t choosy. See also the other discussion of Leslie’s type, her “sexy rebels” speech to Malaya. See also her complete disinterest in Amber. If you have a type, that means you don’t jump on people who are not your type.
Hey, let’s not discount jumping on people who aren’t your type! Get outta your comfort zone every once in a while! You’ll never know what you’ll learn! Going outside your type is GOOD!
Anyway, I’d be inclined to give Leslie that woman as canon in my head just because she hasn’t been involved with that many people. Throw her a bone, y’know?
But not boners. That’s the opposite of what she wants.
Is it just me, or do reactions to Malaya in these comment sections STRONGLY derive from readers’ own unhealed wounds because in high school the pretty girl thought they were a nerd? So much vitriol, and so much reveling in her gained weight, so much and such loud insistence that not only is she unlikable and a villain but also worse than Hitler.
I’m in the group of people who says “She’s not really a worse human being than Mike, and you all love Mike, so…?”
I think Malaya is still fresh out of her teenagerness, and she will someday stop being an immature jerkface. I don’t, however, think she is worse than Hitler, and I think Leslie consistently brings out a pretty cute side of her.
Nope, it’s just you. There are many perfectly legitimate reasons to hate Malaya and to hate her with such passion.
Though I dunno what the problem is with those who say she’s worse than Hitler, if there are folks saying that (I haven’t read all the comments). That’s just wrong hyperbole unless someone actually has 6 million+ murders under their belt.
Actually there’s really not any good reason to hate Malaya with such passion.
My personal theory is that people hate Malaya because they see themselves in her. Malaya is what each of us can and has become in weak moments of selfish bitterness, and her blind pathetic ego is far too familiar. Seeing that part of themselves portrayed in a way they can’t ignore drives them mad.
Mike, on the other hand, is unique; nobody is like him. Thus we can view him with the impartiality of an observer and enjoy his antics accordingly.
I’m going to disagree. The difference is Malaya can remind people of someone they know, be it themselves or someone else they had to deal with. Mike is so ridiculously over the top mean that it’s just simply funny and he seems like a cartoon. Mike’s meanness will never, ever remind someone of anyone except for a weird despot in a country.
I think Malaya both reminds people of themselves and of people they know. We are much more likely to be angered by another persons behavior than our own and therefore are much more likely to point out and disparage their behavior than our own.
Malaya is like this all the time and therefore we (as in the reading audience) can constantly act nasty to her even though – honestly – we’ve all acted that way at some point and just rationalized it away (as Malaya always does).
A person like Mike would be far worse in real life, however Mike is so over the top we laugh. Most of the Mike’s of the world are in jail or are someone we don’t know (if they exist at all), therefore we are disconnected on some personal emotional level.
When we think of Malaya we want to think of that one rude “bitch” at the cash register (for example) who was rude to us and not ourselves. After all, she had to be an unsympathetic bitch and wasn’t just having an off day. “I never act that way!” or to be more proper “I’m justified when I act that way”.
Now Malaya is that mindset taken to the extreme yes, but there is no question that we’ve all fallen into that mindset and shall again at some point. And despite it being a logical fallacy normally I’m gonna have to say that denying it is probably a sign that it’s true since anything else would simply imply you aren’t human…
It doesn’t help that Malaya is rude to nerds and we’re nerds – yes even you in back who thinks otherwise…
That being said – a far more realistic explanation exists -
We’re a bunch of nerds reading far to much into this! Malaya is just intended to be the “rude” character. I admit that there is a dissonance between the way people treat Mike and the way people treat Malaya, but it’s probably because of Mike’s over the top nature.
The real question is: Does David Willis plan to change Malaya in anyway or is her character always going to be the bitch character?
Ta hell if I know, Willis obviously isn’t telling.
Also the fan base of Shortpacked is very divided on a lot of things. I imagine that Malaya could somehow become an angel who loves all things nerdy and some people would still complain, bringing up how she was a bitch in the past well others would complain how they miss old Malaya.
This is the same fanbase where almost every dramatic/depressing storyline someone will react like it’s the first time ever and complain about “I remember when it used to be about Batman jokes!” or some such…
Even I’ve had some pretty odd fanboy-ish reactions to things that looking back on – I’m not proud of.
And I’m willing to provide examples like when Ethan broke up with Drew (I was one of those people over-reacting and thinking Ethan was going to turn into a hoarder. It’s funny that at the time I was “sorta” siding with Drew’s PoV when Ethan is my favorite character).
Now I try to get so worked up. I wanna Willis takes us and he doesn’t have any characters I hate so whatever…
Did I really type that much? -_-’
Nerd.
… where the hell is all this depth coming from? My reason for hating Malaya is simple. She acts like a bitch and doesn’t see anything wrong about it. That behavior just pisses me off, personally, because it’s a shitty way to act, period. Ain’t nothin’ deep to it. She isn’t acting as a “mirror” that we see ourselves in because of a lot of us aren’t actually like that! Disliking a person because they act horribly is reason enough to dislike them.
Yeah, same here. I hate Malaya because she’s a miserable person who ruins the lives of everyone she comes into contact with.
You know you have a point about hating rude people, but there is nothing wrong with hating Malaya anyway. You can’t deny that a real dissonance exists in how much people hate Malaya compared to Mike.
My conclusion is because Malaya is more realistically cruel, petty, and nasty towards people. She’s a hypocrite about it to boot which is also realistic than Mike’s “I know I’m an asshole” ways. We’ve all met someone like her and we’ve all acted like her – even if we don’t want to admit that.
Although I do wonder: how many people has Malaya really ruined the life of? No speculation – I mean shown in comic. Fan-speculation is the death of legitimate research into these kinds of things.
I’m fairly certain we’ve seen Mike ruin or at least attempt to ruin other people’s lives without a shred of guilt. I still like him!
We can relate to Malaya’s brand of nastiness because we’ve encountered it well Mike’s brand of nastiness is – well “Mike’s a force of nature”.
There are tons of reasons to dislike Malaya (even if it’s overblown and taken way to seriously in my personal opinion). She’s rude, obnoxious, and generally cruel to established and beloved characters – she’s been that way since day one. I for one don’t think she’s a “mirror” of people – I doubt she was intended to be that deep (in fact I think people are over examining things), but I do think she’s hated more than Mike because people can relate to her better even if they don’t want to admit it.
I’m more fascinated by the fan reaction to certain character. Lucy for example is still embryonic and the fans overall adore her. First impressions are important of course and Lucy had a very good first impression – twice in fact (if you count her “one-off” Starfire commentary comic and then her official into to the cast).
I think my favorite part of Shortpacked! is the fanbase in some odd sense…
That and Ethan, Mikey loves him some Ethan!
I agree with your sentiments to why people like Mike while hatting on Malaya.
It’s quite fascinating.
Actually, I hate Mike too. I find his character to be uninteresting and largely one note, with his only redeeming features coming from his portrayal in It’s Walky. Helping save the world tends to buy you a lot of credit.
As for Malaya…she doesn’t have anything to redeem her. She complains, attacks people randomly, and generally treats people like shit.
But “horribly” seems like a strong word for her behavior. And then there are people like Zach who say she “ruins the lives of everyone she comes into contact with”. You have to admit that’s kind of over the top. If I knew Malaya in real life, I would find her kind of annoying, but I wouldn’t hate her or crow over her failures and humiliations, big and small. She dismisses nerds, and I feel like that’s really the only concrete sin she has committed; her lack of sexual attraction to Ken is not her fault, and if she felt a little jealous when he stopped paying attention to her — then that’s perfectly human. I myself have been in situations where a guy had feelings for me, I didn’t reciprocate them, we remained friends — a few years passed, he started going out with someone, and I felt jealous. It was not that I’d suddenly realized I had feelings for him; but having someone who liked you move on, especially if you are romantically unattached at the time, can make you reexamine your own life and feel bad.
If Malaya were a more mature person, she would handle everything better, but immaturity all by itself is not really reason enough for the hate. IMHO, of course.
I’m pretty sure the Hitler comment was riffing on a really insane comment from Thursday’s section, not actually seriously bashing on Malaya.
The pretty girls in the high school didn’t think I was a nerd. They just thought I was horribly creepy because I had no idea how to act.
NEXT WEEK: Galasso changes out the Hostess vending machine in the store Break Room–with one from BIMBO.
Oooh topical!
Lest You Believe I Jest, Mere Mortals…
I feel bad for Leslie but I hope she moves on. I don’t want this to end up one of those strips where “Oh, they’re soulmates so OF COURSE they’ll get back together.” Why not be realistic and have Leslie find someone new. I was kind of annoyed when Malaya wasn’t gay. That was just cruel to Leslie.
Whenever someone starts talking about realism here I go into hysterics.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Don’t give up, Leslie, Joe would be down with it.
Several threads in these comments seem to tie together in the observation that, now that Mike and Amber have moved to Colorado, the store here seems to have replaced them by turning Malaya physically into Amber and mentally into Mike.
What most confuses me about this, I think, is the fact that Leslie got Robin by being nice, by being herself, but when she LOST Robin that was when she was being distant, angry, bitter. Of course, she had good reason. Lord knows she did. But the point still stands that it was not her being ‘nice’ that drove Robin away.
Malaya’s utter self-absorption and lack of any kind of awareness is the thing that grates on me more than anything else. It doesn’t bother me that I hate her: it bothers me that I don’t feel that she adds anything to this series. If anything, Leslie’s interest in her made me lose some respect for Leslie just because it seemed so shallow.
You just… enjoy making me cry, don’t you Willis…? NO! I’m not over it! I will never be over it!