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Early update for August 22, 2026 (Patreon)

Published:
2026-08-21 03:55:00
Imported:
2026-08

Content

let the record show that we felt bad

Files

Comments

Minzoku Bokumetsu

"We even worked it into small print in our flyers"

Jamie (QueenofSodor)

oh neat, they're sitting on a throne built out of the bones of acceptable losses, because they'd be better than a worse person attempting the same thing. cool.

Sajuuk-Khar

Oops! We Did A War Crime!

Logibear

I was gonna comment saying "wow, when was this one written? look how prescient Willis is" but then I remembered. It's always been this way. Something something "road to hell is paved with good intentions"

Logibear

Hey, it wasn't oops. It was a calculated string of war crimes because the other people would have done worse war crimes

Ragtime

That means the help you make is tainted, the important causes they speak of are paid for in children's blood.

Ria

Lmao not the ruttens saying exactly what I commented on yesterday's post right as I finished commenting 🫠

Sajuuk-Khar

But they FEEL like it’s a whoopsie, and that’s the important part

5099 5618 v2.0

This almost feels like how Runaways started. Except Carla doesn't know enough other people her age with superpowers, yet.

Karel P Kerezman

Interesting echo, there, of a recent "I love that for you."

Irene Knapp

HAH. good job Carla, using Asma's line. I did not see that coming. (I saw the rest of it coming; I've done activism on this topic and this is a classic direction the conversation plays out in. So, it's well written in that way for sure. There's nothing particularly important about fiction being hard to predict, to me, but being true-to-life is awesome.)

5099 5618 v2.0

(Although if Dina had a dinosaur I would be only a little surprised....)

Harold

Panel 3 is basically Emil and Janneke saying, in the gosh-darn-nicest way possible, "And just think about where YOU might be if it weren't for our wealth and influence," isn't it? I was hoping they wouldn't go there (so was Carla, I'm guessing), but here we are.

Logibear

I would kill for a Runaways-Style spinoff to come from the Dumbiverse.

Ria

Honestly this is one of the first times I've felt legitimately furious at a character from this comic, let alone two of them

Maude Reads Things

Point of fact - you do not, in fact, get to pick and choose with military contracts. They can stop bidding for them, but that's about it.

Ria

I've never really been that pissed at the main cast bc they're baby, and Blaine / Ross have been punished enough by the narrative that the rage had a good channel – but these two are like, legit monsters!!! And they have all the money and power in the fuckin world!!!!!

Crunchos cereal

I think I called this already a couple of days ago. 'It's better we, the good people, sell the weapons than they, the bad people'.

voyager-ngc5195

"Many people died, but think of the value we created for our shareholders!"

Crunchos cereal

And how much of that aid you use your wealth for is because there are billionaires?

Ria

Anyways thank/damn you Willis the peak fiction continues to deliver

Tim Mitchell

Can we go back to fun lesbian shenanigans? This is hurting my heart. You do like putting your characters through it.

Tessea

It's unfortunate, but that's literally the world we live in. :(

Spartacus

It's a very common aerospace problem I've experienced. If you don't take defense contracts, there's very little business, and it's very competitive with businesses that also do defense contracting. Notably, I've heard the same arguments from Channel 5ive's interview with the people who sell fentanyl in Philly

Tessea

It absolutely sucks but they are right. At least the Ruttens are trying to turn the profits into ways to benefit people rather than just hoarding it like the Orange Crayon Brain, or actively using it to dump on others like JKR did with her Harry Potter money. It's not optimal, and there aren't going to be any good solutions to this sort of issue until we as a _species_ finally learn to stop using violence large and small to push opinions and make money. Didn't someone once say that this tech had positive uses as well?

GundamBradley

Growing up means seeing the parts of your parents that contrast with your own traits or values, or sometimes worse, seeing where they line up in a way that only leaves you more frustrated. Carla loves her parents very much, but she has reached the point where she can't overlook this.

Maude Reads Things

Comic Runaways or TV Runaways? Those are two very different things and the first one is way better.

I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

beefing with fictional billionaires isn’t gonna do much in the grand scheme of things but damn im beefin’ with the Ruttens right now. incredible how the bigger picture still requires thousands of innocent lives to become brutalized and murdered without any iota of serious reparation for the victims of that (perpetual, propagandized) violence

Siriustar

strong run here, Willis

Maude Reads Things

There are 100% positive uses for guidance systems. Ships and planes, military and civilian, use them.

Kazo

Something I also keep thinking about is if they DID try to stop taking defense contracts, the shareholders and the board might very well try ousting them. Long ago I heard of a company that had a hostile takeover to oust the founder because he DIDN'T want to take defense contracts and they did. I wish I remembered which company.

I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

Yadda yadda nuances blah blah “this issue is more complicated than you think” OFC it is !!!! i’m fully fucking aware that there is no easy clean way to stop human violence from happening forever, thats why im so mad!!!! I’m still gonna think that it is deeply disturbing that the fucking place I live has turned murdering people overseas in new and exciting ways for profit into a massively successful normal industry without any ideas to offset murdering innocent people en mass outside of “we gotta learn how to kill the ***bad guys*** (scare quotes) better” !!!

I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

anyways despite the tone this isn't a callout against any specific person or anything like that as much as it is me just. feeling insane. very fun very cool being an usamerican while also having a cultural background from one of the "third world" countries that the USA and other places in the global north has exploited and propagandized against deeply for their own geopolitical gain. its so cool its so great.

Omnithea

How does an organ extricate itself from the body?

Maude Reads Things

I don't think there's a way out of this that doesn't come with losses, unfortunately. The state of international politics has made sure of that. Sure, they can stop bidding on government and military contracts, but that also means vulnerable people who may have benefitted from their technology won't get it either (like we said, for a real life example, Ukraine desperately needs weapons that the government gets from the same contracts).

IAmDeltaS

Oooooof yeah, that went. Badly

KiasyonSFM

Thems the breaks kiddo. Sadly this ain't ironman where they can just crush the weapons trade and take back all their tech in a battlesuit.....unless?

Star Ringer

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Tessea

They likely do that already, but when the military buys parts, the supplier doesn't get to choose what they install them into.

Zesstra

Panel 3: is that meant to be "think of" instead of "think if"?

Gwen Sanger

It's possible they're right. They might be the best choice in the world they're in, since the ones ultimately to blame are the ones purchasing and shooting the missiles. But they're sure as hell complicit in war crimes, and they don't get to sweep that under the rug.

Jesse

So hard for the the sweaties.

Shane Wegner

Hmm. If nobody at all was willing to sell the Bulmerian government precision weapons, they’d have to either manufacture them by themselves, or go fight the rebels the old fashioned way, with mortars and snipers and such. Maybe casualties would be higher and they’d be more likely to negotiate? The root of the problem is, why do Bulmerians even want to kill each other? Land? Economics? Politics? Greed? In a Utopia, the high tech world would be competing to sell them farming equipment. Maybe if everyone had enough to eat, no one would want to kill each other? I sometimes think if the world’s entire military budget were spent on productivity, everyone might be satisfied enough that they’re unwilling to kill their fellow humans.

Maude Reads Things

Talking about potential avenues forward and the consequences of those avenues isn't whataboutism. The point being made isn't 'It's fine for Bulmerians to get killed because what about other countries' it's 'Yeah, it's terrible that Bulmerians are being killed, I dunno what can be done in this situation that doesn't also have terrible consequences for others in vulnerable positions.' Sometimes there's no good option. If you (general you, not you specifically, Jamie) can't acknowledge the harm even the least bad option does, you're never going to find ways to address it.

Tessea

They are selling a part that the military is installing into weapons, not weapons themselves. Not trying to excuse anything, we just need to stay clear on what's happening :)

Maude Reads Things

Yeah, they don't. I was just saying there are indeed positive, legitimate usages for guidance systems outside weapons (and hell, sometimes with weapons too - Ukraine uses them too).

Maude Reads Things

Unfortunately, there's always going to be assholes who want to hurt others for reasons of personal ambition, simply not caring what happens to them, or because they ENJOY hurting others. Double unfortunately for the rest of us, they tend to get pretty good at maneuvering into positions of authority because they give other people permission to be THEIR worst selves too. Fortunately, I do think pouring money into productivity and human standards of living would be a great fix for a LOT of the harm in our world and that's worth doing, even if it can't get all of it.

LexiByDay

We worship Greed, we adore Wrath, we fucking love Lust and no one is going to make that change because Pride gives us excuses like these for why we're good and it's everyone else who's in the wrong. So long as humans exist, humans will never be alowed to improve.

Johanne

Just look at how far Carla has come since she thought it was a hilarious prank to change a counter protester sign a few days ago and didn't give a second thought to the protest. She's grown so much, I'm so proud of her.

Avian

yeah, we all saw this coming unfortunately, it's just been a slow burn 😑

Beck Chonigman

Harm reduction is not always the prettiest option. It's just not the same level of bad as the alternatives. You can either acknowledge getting filthy when you stand in the way of worse, or be covered in blood that you're trying to claim isn't there from refusing to engage, thus refusing to stop the worse.

Johanne

Even if they can't stop atrocities from happening they could have a modicum of principles and refuse to profit any further off those atrocities. They already have more than enough blood money to last them a lifetime.

Richard

Came here to say this.

Zesstra

(This is of course basically Jamie Queen of Sodor's comment but with the receipt)

Kit Kittredge

right like obviously it is better not to be responsible for mass killing than to be responsible for it its pretty simple

thejeff

Or they'd just use less precise weapons. Which might or might not make a difference, depending on what's happening there. But even in this fictional reality somebody's going to sell them weapons. It's certainly not true that all arms companies (or descending to the Rutten's level, all guidance system companies) are going to stop making weapons entirely because of Bulmeria. Though it would have a much larger effect, even if US policy changed and we stopped supplying them, there are others who would step up, assuming Bulmeria has money to work with. And I'm far less optimistic about that Utopia than you sound. We are in many ways far richer and far, far more productive than ever in history and we haven't reached the point of being unwilling to kill yet.

Katrina Marie Paton

Wow, look at us getting all self righteous about the military industrial complex. Like we think that if only America disarmed the world would miraculously become a better place. I love that for us.

C.T. Phipps

Because I wasn’t thinking of the Indiana U protests in particular and remembered when Alex (the character) was a stand-in for Edward Snowden fleeing to Russia/Bulmeria, I assumed when this started that Bulmerias conflict was a stand-in for UKRAINE. Which would be a very different conversation about selling armaments. I’m a progressive anarchist and normally a pacifist but support all the military aid being given that nation. Thankfully, they’re doing well without it but imagine if they’d had it continuously with no strings attached. Honestly, I'm glad Willis went for Palestine because the current administration has an almost supernatural ability to side with every possible evil and do no good. I'd rather NOT support any arms dealers.

Maude Reads Things

Sure and if you're willing to accept the consequences of bowing out (in this case, not being able to supply those systems to vulnerable people who do need them) then that's a viable option. What it's not is a 'no cost, not negative consequences' option.

JTFree

What good are your principles doing anyone when someone else is gonna take the seat you're leaving behind? We don't know what the blood might or might not be funding, but the implications are they have helped various "important causes." Would you rather the blood money go to an organization actively funding anti humanitarian policies? Not participating seems like virtue signaling to me. Imagine someone saying "well I could have taken the profits from this and funneled it into humanitarian efforts or lobbying to end the war, but I decided to go home instead."

Kit Kittredge

what horrible people. may your bloodlust consume you

Julian Williams

Folding your guilt complex into a rational excuse that allows you to keep doing the thing that's beneficial for you despite knowing it's awful. Crying while shooting. CIA agents who did torture and now are in therapy. Whatever gets you away from the moral dilemma of having to say "I will not do this"

Ashura Atsu

This makes me recall a quote I liked from the old Justice League: "Our enemy is never as evil as we imagine, and maybe we're nearly quite as good." The "bigger picture" isn't always "hehe we like our profits too much to have morals," it's sometimes them making sure their products don't get into the wrong hands, only for someone to steal them anyway. It could also be them being visibly upset at the recent events but told by the board they can walk if they don't like it. The owners of a company aren't always the real ones in power sometimes, after all. If they fight too hard, they risk losing the company and any chance they had to change it from the inside. Any noticeable change Carla & everyone else would be happy with wouldn't be an instant-fix, either. If they suddenly refused "bad" contracts, someone else would step in, possibly with bad systems that get more people killed. But "hey, at least WE didn't do it, hehe, we can sit on that innocent high horse now." It might be best that, even if they can't do anything right now at this second, they have enough morals to be trying to change but at a slower more sustainable place (both to keep the company alive and make a positive difference). As other people have pointed out, they probably already use and sell their technology for positive causes but it's not always enough and/or they don't get to choose what it's used or repurposed for. There are possibly so many variables and classified info they can't tell Carla over a video line so "trust me, we are TRYING" might be the best they can tell her right now, especially if there is a leak in their company or a dangerous situation that caused the recent events. I'm curious where this is going to go. WTF are you gonna do, Carla? Renounce your name, quit college, and start an anti-war nonprofit? Sneak into your parents company trying to sabotage and find out it's better/worse than you thought? Are her parents going to have a change in thought and do something? This is really good writing by Willis, though. It perfectly sums up the wake-up dialogues one finds in college, especially Carla's stance feeling bad and wanting a magical fix-me all, especially since she has an in with a position of power. Then she's going to find out the situation is way more complicated than she thinks and way, way worse. TL;DR This is way worse and complex than you think, Carla. You're just one cog in the machine trying not to turn. Have fun going down the rabbit hole.

Jamie (QueenofSodor)

i would've added that receipt to my own comment but i got self-concious about being that much of a poindexter, bwaaa

Zesstra

I've got absolutely no such concern about being a poindexter, I was called a pedant by a teacher in middle school and wore that badge with pride 😅

Harold

Invigorated by her Amazi-Girl impersonation experience, Dorothy devises her own secret identity: Bone E. Poindexter, Lesbian Love Pedant

thejeff

The current admin definitely makes it worse, though the US has done a lot of shit under many administrations. It's also a bit odd since the storyline stayed focused on it as a Gaza stand-in while this admin has moved on to a completely unnecessary failure of a war with Iran, but then much of the online discussion remains on things like the Democrat's support for Israel while Trump's acting far more directly. (I hate that this forum submits your post when you press enter for a new paragraph.) Very much agree on Ukraine. That's one of the few times I've actually been glad we had that much weaponry available. Wish we'd sent more faster. And that, along with reading more history in general, helped turn me away from knee-jerk opposition to the arms industry. It may be evil, but it's a necessary evil. It's up to the political side to rein it in. I'd rather see pressure on government policy than focused on trying to stop corporations from building weapons.

Astariel

I mean, it is better to have rich people who spend money on supporting trans rights than rich people who do the opposite.

Maude Reads Things

Saying that there are negative consequences to getting out of the business and that you need to accept those consequences in order to do it isn't bloodlust, it's reality. That doesn't mean that the Ruttens shouldn't do it, just that it's not a 'no downsides' option, or even a 'not responsible for lots of people dying' option, depending how you look at responsibility.