It’s really still just one option: Billie. Billie has an option, however. She can just grab a key which is close, or she can invite Ruth into her bedroom to “find a key.” 🙂
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but this comes off as extremely creepy. I’ve never heard of anyone just making multiple copies of keys to someone else’s room, even if they were dating them. It’s like “Billie, you realize you just ruined any chance of Ruth ever being able to sleep soundly at night anymore right?” I feel like this will become a plot point later on, like somebody finds one of the keys, or multiple people find them, and then Billie has to go around getting those keys but also try to remember where she placed the others.
It’s another string of trust from Ruth that Billie just cut. She keeps doing these things that are pushing Ruth further and further away, and each time acts surprised that Ruth would get mad. Newsflash, nobody likes the idea of their partner breaking their promise to lay off booze, nobody likes it when someone their dating makes twelve damn copies of a key to their room and then hides them all over the place.
Also damn, that final line in the second panel. That’s what she’s doing to you Billie? Giving you addiction after addiction? But then you still say that neither of you really want this over?
No, it’s just you Billie, it’s just you. You’ve taken a person’s trust multiple times and shown that you don’t value it. At the end of the day there’s really only one thing left to say.
Forget you.
And thank you all for listening to this long, LONG rant of mine. Needed to get that off my chest. Know some people aren’t going to agree with me here, but that’s what dialogue is all about. Can’t wait to discuss this one with ya’ll.
Also do you think I gave Cerberus a run for their money with panel by panel analysis? 🙂
Uh, no. Billie and Ruth’s relationship is built on them lying to each other about alcohol use. Billie does not want Ruth to kill herself, and is legitimately worried about such a thing. I think your analysis is completely wrong.
Ruth gave up the booze at one point because she thought Billie was too. Then she found out otherwise. That doesn’t sound like she cares enough to stop her addictions. This relationship isn’t healthy in the least, not from beginning to end. Ruth was literally fat shamming and destroying pieces of property that belonged to Billie when they first met. But then they’re in the hallway and Ruth plants a kiss on Billie and that’s when the relationship started.
These two are not good for each other. And I get it, they’re a good ship because they give plenty of decent banter and create some good situations for the story, but they ARE bad for each other.
“Ruth gave up the booze at one point because she thought Billie was too. Then she found out otherwise. That doesn’t sound like she cares enough to stop her addictions. ”
Of course they’re not, if they were then there wouldn’t be counselling and therapy for that stuff.
But the main issue here is that Billie lied to Ruth. If she had just come out and told her that she was having trouble staying on the wagon, they could’ve worked it out and helped each other.
But it’s once again something that Billie thought she could just keep from Ruth. If she wants to save Ruth then she needs to be honest.
I may be looking too deep into this, but I’d say Billie’s biggest enemy besides herself is her pride. SHE can save Ruth. SHE can stop drinking anytime she wants. SHE can keep secrets because she knows that’s the right thing to do.
Look, I think a lot of people here seem to think that I hate these characters. I don’t, well I dislike Ruth a little but who didn’t at first, what I can’t stand is that we’re shown these two people’s lives, their relationship with one another, and it’s just pothole after pothole of sadness and anger. I can’t see what other people see, that Billie is trying to save Ruth, because all I’m seeing is two alcoholics who promised a suicide pact, and both of them are too stupid to just admit they can’t handle this by themselves and seek help.
Newsflash Billie and Ruth, the world is heavy, and it’s issues tend to lighten up when you have some other people on the outside to help you.
This relationship doesn’t work by pretending to curb your urges orhiding them. This relationship is about being broken, about admitting to each other about being broken, and about having acceptance anyway. “Outside help” is acceptance for money.Itis necessary for both of them to feel accepted, and while that may help sustain addictions,it also provides for a basis to not deny them to themselves.
I think up to that point Ruth has not realized how important she is to Billie because (like Billie) she’s putting herself down. Billie’s words (and her key fetish) make her realise that, and they make her feel what she’s putting Billie through by forcing her to move out again.
Given the massively codependent style of their relationship and their addictive personalities, I can definitely see one or both of them seeing their attraction for each other as yet another addictive behavior they can’t quit no matter what… which is super healthy and not at all bound to blow up spectacularly when the NRE fades in another couple of weeks.
i mean i get where youre coming from, but… billie started doing all of this in the first place because she wanted to save ruth.
she lied about quitting drinking because she couldnt manage it, but she wanted ruth to quit. getting copies of her key is a little fucked up, but she did it because of that time she found ruth drunk and unconcious in her room.
Not gonna’ argue with you there, if it weren’t for the magical hallway that makes you kiss the person you currently throttling who knows what might’ve happened.
Hang on I’ve just figured out a way to settle the Carla/Mary debacle.
Totes. Ruth has been pushing her away for a while now, but Billie is fully aware that she’s been doing so largely to create a firm justfication for finally offing herself because “no one cares”. Additionally, Billie has decided it’s 100% her responsibility to stop this offing by any means necessary and even if Ruth actively pushes her away or hurts her to try and get her to stop being a thing holding her to the Earth. And Billie has placed her own sense of self for fighting her own depression on “being able to save Ruth” and thus is terrified of failing as it would mean in her eyes that she’s a failure who can’t get anything right (this is not true, this is just what she believes).
Add a bit of addictive personality and an already born fear of losing access to things caused by Ruth’s early abusive and gaslighting behavior where she regularly stole things from her and changed her locks as a response to Billie breaking a major promise to her as well as kept her constantly in a whirl on whether or not she was at suicidal risk or liked her at all, and…
Well, you get Billie reflexively and unhealthily creating key after key for a desperate illusion of control and power. Like, if she had more of them, ones that couldn’t disappear, then Ruth couldn’t ever make her fail and she would still be head cheerleader, problem solver.
I guess what I’m saying is that these two are the healthiest. Super, not at all fucked up beyond belief.
It’s not just you, the keys thing is mad creepy. You can justify ONE, because Ruth may kill herself if they break up, so it’d be good to have. After that it gets weird and creepy.
I do agree with Billie in her last panel though, considering that they’re both shitty to each other and Ruth isn’t being honest as to why if she actually wants a break up. At this point Ruth has been saying that they need to break up, but then blaming Billie for abandoning her? That’s… approaching abuse territory?
Point is shit’s bad and neither of them are good for each other. It started in a toxic way where Ruth forced a kiss on Billie after insuring her, so it won’t end cleanly either.
Ruth blaming Billie might just be her way of making it easier for Billie to leave, because if she says “We can’t keep being together because it’s not healthy.”, Billie would just try to cut the booze again and most likely fall off the wagon. This way Ruth gives Billie something to hate.
It’s not her way of making it easier for Billie to leave.
It’s her way of making it easier for herself to believe that nobody loves her, so she can kill herself.
If you drive away the people who care about you, you can’t kill yourself because nobody cares about you.
If you convince yourself the people you drove away “abandoned” you, then you can totally tell yourself that nobody cares about you, then kill yourself because nobody cares about you.
I’m guessing she bothered with more than one mainly because Ruth had already demonstrated a penchant for finding and taking things when she stole and desecrated the Dragons uniform.
ehhhhhhhh, even then, that was when they were “enemies”. I don’t think Ruth has stolen from Billie since they’ve been together since they shared a dorm for like a week anyway and all of Billie’s stuff was in there. Plus, the uniform was something Ruth knew about, and knew it’s emotional importance. an extra key hidden away wouldn’t get found, let alone stolen
plus Billie could pick the lock anyway, since she’s done that exact thing before. this isnt for a practical purpose. this is some sort of compulsion. not healthy
That… doesn’t seem right. I don’t know, I don’t think her behavior in these instances can be considered OCD. She has an interest in cheerleading, which she isn’t even involved in anymore. She’s an alcoholic, which is addiction. She’s in a toxic, semi-abusive relationship with relatively normal behavior when not around Ruth… no, I’m sorry, but she has other issues not pertaining to OCD, at least from what I’ve seen.
This makes key making something she is specifically obsessed with, which doesn’t automatically qualify her for having OCD. To be honest, this information sort of came out of left field, especially since she’s picked Ruth’s lock before and already has more than one key. It’s just… odd, considering her previous behavior patterns. While this could be a sign of OCD, the other behaviors you mentioned don’t match up, and I can’t think of anything else she really did to point us in that direction.
… occurs to me that I should probably explain what OCD actually is like.
(full disclosure: I dunno if I have it. I am enough like OCD that people with OCD and pros alike have advised me to get evaluated for it and my freaking anxiety jerkbrain that may or may not be OCD won’t let me initiate the process. Anyway.)
Basically, your brain latches on to something upsetting and won’t let go. If you’ve ever had a playful kitten do that thing where they wrap themselves around one of your limbs and try to bite and tear it to shreds and are impossible to pry off? That’s kind of like your brain with the thought line. For me, it’s disasters. If I’m at home, it’s what if a plane crashes in my neighbourhood? If I’m driving, it’s what if there’s a pileup? If I’m at the grocery store, it’s what if the boiler explodes and the building collapses? If there’s a blizzard it’s what if my roof collapses under the snow? I could go on.
But basically your brain latches on to that thing and won’t let go. And you can’t stop thinking about it. And something about it provokes an anxiety response – this can be the thing itself, like with me worrying about disasters, or it can be your fear of acting out the thing (like with people who have OCD about an urge to self-injure when they are neither depressed or suicide) or it can be your fear of how others will respond to you as a result of the thing (people who have stigmatized obsessions can run into this). People who just have this have obsession-type OCD.
Some people find things that help alleviate the anxiety their obsessive thoughts cause. For me, it’s disaster planning. I need to have a plan for the possible disaster and I need to follow preventative tricks. I shut off and unplug all appliances before I leave – even the stove, drier, and washer. I never do laundry at night and get very upset with anyone who does it if they let the laundry machine run while everyone is asleep. I check the fire extinguishers daily, and the fire alarms. I have one fire alarm per room, spares, and spare batteries. I could go on here. And for literally every single disaster I can think up, I have a plan. If I don’t have a plan, I need to stop everything I’m doing until I do. This is a problem if a potential disaster becomes obvious to me at work, for obvious reasons (I’m paid to work, not to plan what to do if a truck careens into the building from the highway). This is the classical obsessive-compulsive type.
Then there’s people who only have compulsions, but I’m not really sure how that works but I know they exist.
Anyway, underlying thing is: You don’t do OCD stuff because it makes you feel good, you do it because it makes you stop feeling awful. Briefly. Until your brain starts on the obsession again.
By all accounts, Billie did her cheerleading stuff because it made her feel good about herself. She stays with Ruth because the NRE makes her feel good. She drinks probably for a similar reason to why a person with OCD does their compulsion, but in that case it’s addictive behavior, because she’s not responding to a specific stress (i.e., the obsessive thoughts), she just drinks in response to stress in general. The keys might be an OCD thing or they might be her correctly anticipating that Ruth would try to push her away again, we don’t know.
Bottom line is: Doing stuff with great enthusiasm or even uncontrollably does not OCD make, and it’s a misconception that irritates the hell out of me.
Yup. Billie has an addictive personality. A really bad one. It leads her to things like alcoholism and makes it extremely hard for her to quit on her own. It leads her to being extremely codependent in her relationships (Alice noted that Billie had a way of making the two of them both of their entire world while simultaneously denying how serious it was). It leads her to cling to cheerleading and trying to resurrect the memory of it for the same sense of self it used to give her.
And it’s sabotaging her constantly, both in her relationship with Ruth as well as her self-esteem and self-regard.
She’s dead on that Ruth and the keys are just as much an addiction as the alcoholism and it’s one of the things I noted early on in their relationship as a major potential problem in that because Billie is addicted to Ruth and has made her her new cheerleading that she needs to cling to to ever get a rush of happiness, it makes her more and more prone to putting up with abuse and bullshit in order to “save” Ruth.
But, what if your untreated possibly-OCD gets worse and worse? It can, over time, especially when left untreated… You’d better go get professional help for it before it gets *really* bad, eh?
It’s a matter of convincing myself that not-doing is worse than doing.
(I don’t get into new things through “what’s best for me” but usually through brow-beating myself until the anxiety of what happens if I don’t do the thing that makes me anxious is worse than the anxiety of doing it. It’s a process. I am trying. It’s probably gonna take a few more months, though.)
That seems more like an anxiety disorder, rather than OCD. I’ve heard some people WITH OCD describe how they are often late for work because they had to rearrange their sock drawer 12 times (or some similar, trivial behavior that you or I might just go “f-it, it can wait until I get home.” Or in the case of a sock drawer perhaps “f-it, who cares if the socks are not arranged in perfect black descending to white chromatic order?” is a lot more accurate) before they could get themselves to leave their home.
I understand that Billie is afraid, after Ruth stayed in her room for three days just drinking. Ruth is suicidal, and I see why Billie wants to keep an eye on her.
But, yeah, it’s also super creepy. They’re codependent. They don’t trust each other. And they are so many personal feelings involved, they’re likely to bail on each other at their lowest. Like, of course Ruth was upset when Billie broke her promise, but relapsing on an addiction is so common it’s almost inevitable when first trying to quit. So something that should be completely expected in the rehabilitation process left both Ruth and Billie feeling betrayed and with support – that is a horrible situation for everyone. Billie needs to realise that her additions and issues are hers alone. And they both need help from people with less at stake in this equation.
I think I see the thought pattern that would lead to her having multiple copies made. She starts thinking of Ruth in there either dying of accidental alcohol poisoning or an intentional suicide attempt, and what if she can’t get in and save her? Sure, she’s got a key. What if she loses it though?
So she gets a copy made. And the copy makes her feel better. Until the thought creeps in again, and the only way to make it go away is to get a copy of the key made. And the thought just keeps coming back.
That’s possible. And/or, she could be remembering the time that Ruth first trusted her with the key. That was a big moment. Getting a new key might help relieve her stress and ping that good feeling.
I don’t find it creepy or a breach of trust in this case because the entire reason Billie was given a key was in case Ruth wouldn’t answer the door because she’s tried to kill herself by drinking herself to death again.
Ruth’s depressive tendencies WARRANT Billie keeping a few extra copies so that she wasn’t able to push her away and piss her off to get the key back because well, as we can see here, that was entirely a strategy Ruth was capable of deploying
Personally, I feel like Ruth has done more to hurt Billie than the other way around. Ruth has arguably crossed the line into being abusive more than once.
However, I think that we can all agree (and please correct me if I’m wrong here) that both Billie and Ruth have done some shitty things to each other, both before and during their relationship. I don’t think it’s productive or healthy to keep track of who has hurt who more. If you love someone, you have to forgive and forget in order for the relationship to survive. I would even say that if you truly love someone, you can’t help but to forgive and forget, regardless of whether or not you SHOULD forgive him or her.
Also, I know I’m probably in the minority here, but I actually think that their relationship has helped them grow into better people. At the very least, the relationship has forced them to confront some of the not-so-good parts of themselves, and THAT caused them to become better. If it wasn’t for the rampant alcoholism (and, holy cheezus, I know that’s a huge “if”), I’d be able to endorse the relationship wholeheartedly. As things are right now, I think that one or both of them has a better chance of having an epiphany about the booze while they are together rather than on their own. I think it’s easier to pretend you don’t have a problem when you aren’t watching someone you care about struggle with the exact same thing. That’s my take on it anyway.
My point is: despite all of the shitty things that they’ve done, I still think that Billie and Ruth are good people at heart and that they can make this thing work. They both have serious problems that need some professional help, but I don’t think breaking up will help them deal with those.
It’s worth noting that Billie is recognisably mentally ill too (depression, although not as intense as Ruth’s and maybe a soupçon of self-esteem issues). Is she blameless? No but I would argue that she is not as self-destructive as Ruth and that she genuinely wants to help, no matter how bad she is at it.
As others have noted. They’re both massively mentally ill with addiction problems and depression (albeit in different flavors) and while they have done some things to mutually support each other, they have also intertwined their lives in deeply unhealthy and stress-enducing co-dependent ways and have massively bad relationship practices (Ruth started the relationship with rather intense emotional abuse, Billie has had a habit of creating really unhealthy self-destructive co-dependent relationships as she did with Alice, and both see the relationship as something to save them rather than a connection between two people who are hurting and have strong attraction and care for each other).
And yeah, Billie making so many copies of keys is critically demonstrative of how Ruth is not the only mentally ill person in this relationship with poor boundaries. And some of it is understandable given that Billie is terrified that Ruth will kill herself the second her back is turned and what that would mean to her already shattered self-esteem and belief in her own power, her desperate need for power and a feeling of safety given the abusive beginnings of her relationship and Ruth’s habit of pushing away and shutting her out, and her addictive personality.
And that last part is key. It marks it as something she did to regain power for a potential future power play like this and since it gave her a fleeting rush of that power feeling, she’s now just stuck doing it over and over chasing that initial rush while simultaneously knowing it’s unhealthy and kinda super creepy.
And I don’t think that that final line is about Ruth giving her addictions, but rather being an addiction. That Billie is unhealthy and an addict and is addicted to the NRE of being with Ruth and how that makes her feel valued to someone at least. Which makes something positive in her life into something that’s also partially toxic and fucked up. Which is the central tragedy of Billie. Anything that can make her feel good is something her addictive personality is going to sink its claws in and poison in much the same way as Ruth’s suicidal depression poisons her side of the relationship.
And I’m not sure that it’s her lack of trustworthiness that’s on display here. Billie lied about breaking the addiction, yes, but that’s because she’s in denial about how badly addicted she is (honestly, this is the first time she’s actually acknowledged it as an addiction she can’t stop rather than a simple thing she could stop at any time if she wanted to that isn’t as bad as everyone is making it).
So when Ruth tried to make it a mutual pact, Billie found herself physically unable to keep up with it (I think Billie and Ruth have mirror intensities of addictive personalities and depression. Ruth’s depression is much more intensely consuming of her life and impossible for her to resolve even with love and care and reasons to hope, whereas Billie can at least forestall the worst of it with unhealthy coping strategies that prevent it from being as all consuming. And they’re the opposite for addiction, with Billie utterly helpless to keep it from just consuming her life without aid and (probably) rehab whereas Ruth can at least make genuine efforts to quit cold turkey from time to time).
Everything else hasn’t been a genuine breach of trust (the Becky thing was not her truth to tell and expecting her to betray a confidence is a shitty thing to do and the key thing is not her breaking a trust, but rather an initially rational response to Ruth’s habit of pushing people away and then attempting suicide that has turned utterly awful due to Billie’s addictive personality.
Overall, this comic really highlights both their central tragedies. Ruth cannot consistently value the positives that Billie brings to her life because her depression is too prone to viewing every slight bit of motion as a means of abandoning her and to pushing away Billie as much as possible through abuse and cruel comments (the fact that Billie has decided that this is flirting doesn’t exactly make the comments less acerbic in intention). And Billie is wrapped up in her addictions and their poison leaks into her dynamics, keeping her from establishing more healthy dynamics that would make less of her self-esteem tied into things like saving Ruth despite herself, putting up with awful treatment, and making seventy billion keys as a means of trying to grasp the eel of elusive power.
And here is where we see if they have the power to bring their demons into the foreground and let them be part of the discussion rather than the true ringmasters of the circus that is their relationship.
Am I the only one that noticed this is the first time Billie has recognized her drinking as an addiction? And she probably realizes the key thing is super creepy, but that doesn’t mean she can do anything about it yet. Addiction is strange.
Anyone who finds one gets to go on a tour of the dorms with her, and are promised a lifetime supply of booze. Over the course of the tour, all but one of them will suffer horrible accidents. The final winner gets to be the partner in her next unhealthy relationship.
Becky wasn’t allowed to play those games, because they feature goddesses and magic. She instead played that Zelda ripoff game the AVGN covered in his Bible Games video.
…Who am I kidding, she was barely even around for the tail end of the 90s (and soon none at all), and never touched an NES in her life. I’m assuming someone came along and made Christian games for more current systems? Probably not for consoles, it’s harder to bootleg these days, but surely there’s some PC Christian gaming companies. If there’s a niche, someone will fill it.
Actually, it seems to me that if she got her hands on a console, it would have been an older model like the NES kept around by an adult Ross trusted enough to leave his daughter with.
Iirc you can do it for $3-4 at Walmart–I could be wrong, though, it’s been a while. Not cheap when it’s in that quantity, but you could get like two or three dozen for around $100.
It’s at worst $5/key, and less-rich people easily blow $5 daily on Starbucks or parking. Billie’s only making one each time she’s downtown, which *probably* isn’t daily.
I like to think that she’s going to some master black smith, a muscular guy with a huge beard, who has been secretly teaching her to wield the great sword Vocatus! passed down through generations!
I guess it’d depend on how many dozens? Keys are like $0.50-$1.50 around here, depending on where you get them made. $2.50 if you end up having to go to a local lumber yard (not Menard’s) or something ma-n-pop-ish.
I’m pretty sure i’ve seen places where it’s like “get a copy of a key made for free!” though that might still have a fee or you buying something else with it (…and now kinda dodgy now that i think about it, if they’ll just make a copy for you w/o questioning it)
**raises hand**
My local Walmart has a machine that automatically copies keys for a small fee. Not sure how cheap, but there’s no human operator (other than the customer) so it could be used to copy Do Not Duplicate keys.
If that machine doesn’t supply the mold key to use for the copy, you couldn’t make a do not duplicate. And I don’t think the store will stock that mold in the machine.
Some keys labeled Do Not Duplicate are just regular blanks with an engraving on them. I’d guess these are mostly used for rentals where the owner is hoping the label will prevent attempts to duplicate.
Some keys are marked like that and are more obscure locksets. However, if the lockset’s obscure enough, the key doesn’t really need to be marked with anything. At my job, we keep key blanks on hand for the local school system’s locksets, but it’s an uncommon enough blank that a random rack of keyblanks wouldn’t have it stocked.
I don’t think any of my dorm keys when I was in college were either of the two most common keyways, but that was years ago and before I learned anything much about key blanks. I don’t think they were marked do not duplicate.
This. And that’s presuming there’s even a do not duplicate on the key to start with rather than a note in the student residential rules telling residents to not get copies made.
It’s possible Ruth bought her new lock herself after changing it, rather than have to formally request a new one, in which case it wouldn’t be a university-issued key.
It’s not something that’d make sense for her to do. Last time she ran into trouble with Ruth, Ruth changed her lock, and then Billie figured out how to pick it anyway. So it’s not something that’d make sense for her to even feel the need for.
If she’s telling the truth, I don’t think it’s even that she feels like she needs them. The key’s a symbolic thing; iirc, it was a big moment when Ruth gave it to her. Every time she copies it, she’s trying to duplicate that feeling.
Yup. Plus the power of “she can’t take this back if she pushes me away, I won’t abandon her.”
She’s got an addictive personality, so everything with a rush of awesome or a memory of awesome becomes a ritual of repetition she cannot break even once it loses its luster and just becomes straight up unhealthy and off.
It depends on whether or not she’s developing anxiety (or has had it all along and has been managing it on-screen). Until I started leaving a copy of all my keys with my in-laws, I used to make tons of multiples and squirrel them away, “just in case” I lost one. I was paranoid I would lose my keys and be locked out of my apartment and car and unable to get help (my anxiety extends to social anxiety, and I have severe trouble talking to strangers, including building managers, police officers, etc). Billie might have felt like she was in a similar situation, but instead of social anxiety knew she wouldn’t be able to get help because she couldn’t out Ruth as dating her and an alcoholic.
Mary was our third most recent. Carla was the second most recent, and harvested some of Mary’s happiness in the process; and Agatha and Sierra are tied for first most recent, using their plentiful natural reserves to (in)advertently bomb out Mary’s remaining reserves.
It’s their campuses fault for not stamping them with that lovely “do not copy” bullshit that was on all the keys at our campus and kept us from getting dupes made in case we lost one. Lost keys on our campus meant getting the lock changed on our door, paying for the old key, and paying for the new key. Our front door fob was usually attached to our key, so a lost key meant paying for a new fob, too. :/
Actually, there’s no “s” after the apostrophe; it’s implied, since there’s already one written before the apostrophe. I love English.
Sleeeep. Sleep is good.
Actually actually, you can have an _s_ after the apostrophe or not. It’s at the writer’s discretion as long as its presence or absence is applied consistently to all instances in a single work.
IU DOES tag their keys with the “DO NOT COPY” stamp. Trust me, I have accumulated many of their keys over the years (I was a graduate researcher then a visiting faculty member at the Bloomington campus, which meant I was granted access to a lot of locked areas and needed those keys. Now that I think about it, I never returned most of them. I bet if I dug them up I could get all of my deposits back and take my wife out to dinner.) This, like the thickness of the woods in Dunn Meadow (where Dina and Toedad fought), is a case of artistic license and therefore okay with me.
Then again, it could simply be that Billie slips a $20 to the keymaker at the local hardware store to get him to ignore that little tag each time she wants a new key made.
pff. more like $5. I only once had a key copier ask about that once, and I just told him that we had a new maintenance guy who needed a supply closet key. They don’t -actually- give a damn, and that stamp isn’t legally binding anyway.
Are they finally over or will the arc fatigue continue? Because in the end, I personally am tired of their relationship, it’s terrible for both parties and it can’t get any better from any point I look at it.
The building doors had… that new thing where you just put your card next to the sensor? So each student uses their ID to access their specific building. After that, I had to use my key to get on my floor, though I think the key worked for the other floors as well. And my key for my room. The buildings with elevators have you use your key to be able to get off at any floor.
Alright seriously, we need to get to the root of this issue now, is the tree a tree inside another tree or is it just Becky camouflaged in because of her naturally Autumn like hair?
I have literally nothing to say about these two anymore except GO SEE A FUCKING THERAPIST. Seriously.
It’s also not helping that Jeff Buckley’s ‘Lover You Should’ve Come Over’ just came on my spotify playlist (which is a sad, beautiful fucking song anyway) and it has the line “Maybe I’m too young to keep good love from going wrong” and that’s so relevant to these two and now I’m crying.
Now as a person who has Careless Whisper playing in the background, I can honestly say that therapy is a life saver. I used to be an annoying little shit with issues I could never figure out.
Now I’m an annoying little shit with my whole life together.
But no seriously, the therapy helped. Turns out my parents lied about me going to a different elementary school for two months when I was younger because the teacher called us some pretty racist things and smacked one of the girls.
I’m also in therapy and I literally don’t know where I’d be without it, if I would even exist in this world anymore, so you don’t have to convince me of the merits of therapy – I’m a big believer!
That’s why I’m saying this. These two girls, they have…. issues, to put it mildly. And not just the alcoholism, but everything that usually comes *with* that. So. If I knew these girls personally, I’d heavily recommend to them to see a counselor or just even talk to ANYONE. Because it just. fucking. helps.
The fact that therapy gives you a person to just vent all that frustration and worry you keep bottled up is just so damn refreshing, it’s like I couldn’t talk to my family about this, even though I did after a while, and this person sitting across from me just listening was the best thing to ever happen.
Yup, therapy and psychiatric medication can be critical just for finding the groove to start pushing back at one’s life and stop being just bowled over by psychological illnesses. Both of them desperately need it and if there is one bright spot in all of this its that both of them are getting close to admitting that.
Billie by actually referring to her suite of addictive behaviors as addictions for the first time. Ruth by recognizing the direct damage her illness has been causing to her ability to function in her job.
As an aside to all the analysis, I love that Willis can drop something as significant as Billie referring to her problems as addictions for the first time so casually. Understated, easy to miss, but very important.
Huh, I hadn’t actually noticed that. That is a good sign that she can at least call her alcoholism an addiction, since the last time this came up she refused to acknowledge she had a problem.
probably important to note though even if someone found a key its not like they say RUTH in big red letters on them
even anyone who saw her plant them would assume it was her own key
At the college I attended, the keys had the room numbers on them. You didn’t necessarily know which building it came from, but it’s not that hard to check room #230 or. whatever in every single building
That’s the part I’m most proud of here. Billie is actually calling Ruth out on her shit and trying to use the circumstances of their blackmail and how hard it is on both of them to justify a “I knew Billie would abandon me in the end” worldview. And she’s also pointing out, finally, how hurtful Ruth’s constant accusations of abandonment and pushing away really is. She’s starting to finally not put up with Ruth’s casual abusive bullshit and that’s a critical step in making her relationship less unhealthily codependent.
She’s also finally recognizing her addictions and stating them as such including the codependent way she’s viewed and gone in to her relationship with Ruth.
Whether or not this will lead to either healthy relationship dynamics or her starting to more healthily deal with her own shit is up in the air but this is a solidly impressive single moment for her and deserves recognition for how big of a step it really is.
If that leaf is an indicator of someone in the tree we probably won’t find out this week. If the preview panels are anything to go on the next couple of strips will probably take us back to Joyce and Becky.
Copying your girlfriend’s key is creepy, but understandable given their dysfunctional relationship, in which Billie is regularly afraid that Ruth will die any moment. And, didn’t Ruth teach Billie to pick locks? (Maybe she just offered to do so, I forget whether they got around to it.)
Anyway, saying that Billie was abandoning Ruth was some serious BS, and I’m glad that Billie told her off about it.
I don’t think that this is nearly the end of their romantic entanglement, though. Billie has already made forever-promises, and mentally prepared herself for Ruth pushing her away. Which is unfortunate, because they are not good for each other.
Wild prediction time: Ruth will do something very special for Billie, to make it alllll up to her, which will seem really sweet and lovely, but which is actually indicative of a classic abuse cycle. Speculation!
I’d say that’s very very likely. Bonus points if she undercuts it immediately by either raging at Billie for something minor, tries to push Billie away a comic later, or tries and bury the significance of her grand romantic gesture.
And I just realized that, in comic, it hasn’t been months and months since Ruth gave Billie the original of that key. (Which isn’t the one from the first link there; that’s a key to Ruth’s old lock, which she got changed after the cold turkey pact broke down.) I don’t think we ever saw Billie get this key, but it’s only been nine days since Billie had to pick Ruth’s lock because she didn’t have a key. Billie’s made all those key copies in like a week.
So I take it back. That’s not kind of weird. That’s a lot weird.
Actually, Ruth never gave her a new key, she’s just been picking the lock as needed.
Those are all copies of the original key. Which makes it even weirder.
Video Games, I think.
Though I also tend to favor the “Atomic Shakespeare” episode of Moonlivghting when Cybil Shepard (sp?) was going ballistic on Bruce Willis (damn him!) with dozens of vases.
Literally dozens means at least 24 keys. Such an obsession with having copies made of 1 key is by itself reason enough for some serious intervention by mental health professionals.
Telling Ruth about this was clearly nuts as well because Ruth may now have the lock changed and, hey presto, all those keys would become useless at once.
also, come on guys, there’s absolutely no way she has “literally dozens” of keys. it’s only been a week and a day since she moved in with ruth. unless she’s been going downtown multiple times a day every single day, there’s just no way. she might have several extras (assuming she’s not flat out bluffing) but it’s obvious hyperbole.
So, am I the only one who DOESN’T find the key thing creepy?
One key is normal, two keys is prepared, three keys is crazy prepard. But if you’re making a copy every time you go into town, it isn’t about the keys anymore. You’re just repeating a behavior that makes you feel good, because it makes you feel good.
Ruth then gives up looking for the key.
For there are other copies, and she cannot see.
Mary appears from the darkness with glee.
Evil thoughts in her mind there be.
(My poor foray into poetry. It won’t happen again).
“Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We are all of us looking for the key. And, I wonder, how many of you here tonight have wasted years of your lives looking behind the kitchen dressers of this life for that key.”
argh post was eaten by a grue (ok mebe by fat fingers)
I dont see why having a key is fine but 20 copies is creepy. its not like she can double u7nlock Ruths door and end out inside her soul or septum or whever the door would lead after that, i never actually finished that matrix movie
Ruth has already breached her trust by breaking into her room on several occasions to steal her shit; Billie has ample reason not to trust that she won’t do it again, only to steal what could be life-saving.
This. Billie threw out the last thing she unhealthily clung to because it held the memory of something that made her happy once (cheerleading), and so wants a means of protecting the next one (Ruth and the memory of being in her life).
The thing to remember is that Ruth isn’t doing this based on malice. She’s doing it because, on a fundamental level, she doesn’t believe she can be happy or even deserves to be happy. She is simply taking action to ensure that this is the case.
Yup, depression is a piece of shit and it’s really really good at convincing you that all of your friends and lovers are lying to you about how important you are to them and how much better off they’ll be if you can shove them away once and for all. And it’s really good at just pissing over every scrap that you’re still using to try and grab seconds of happiness until you can’t even remember what happiness felt like anymore.
Poor Ruth. and now i am worried big time for them both. Billie may drink untill she dies from it or worser.. getting invalid.
Ruth. all alone in the World. can’t trust anyone right now. i feel sorry for them both.
Will you guys please stop blaming Billie for this?!
Seriously, it was Ruth who starting their relationship by kissing her, and as soon as she got what she wanted so much, started to wail “I could get fired”. Like her alcohol addiction wasnt a much bigger reason for getting fired.
And, Billie lying too much? Gimme a break. Ruth is lying to herself all the time.
No, this is not about Billie at all. This is Ruth selfdestructing again.
No one is blaming Billie. We’re pointing out that the key thing is creepy. Nothing about it being Ruth’s fault has anything to do with whether the key thing is creepy. It’s been 8 days.
Granted, people did blame Billie yesterday, but that’s as day ago.
The problem here remains Billie is trying to be Ruth’s therapist and healer when she’s also her girlfriend. There’s no need to be all three when she is better for being just the first two.
It’s case-specific, IMO. Ruth’s issues are deeply ingrained enough and have passed through the usefulness horizon of any community/family influence so long ago that she needs stronger measures.
Not the only answer for every situation, but for Ruth? Yep. She’s not getting better on her own and her relationship with Billie is making her even worse.
Yup. It’s not great for a relationship to be each other’s therapist… especially in lieu of an actual therapist and it’s even less healthy when you have so thoroughly wrapped your entire self-esteem around the relationship and expect it to work miracles (“curing” Ruth of her suicidal ideation and depression or at least reawakening all her dead emotions and solving Billie’s complete lack of self-regard or confidence because NRE and someone cares about her and “she can save this one”).
They’ve been putting all the stressors on their relationship and now Mary has added one hell of an external one. If they’re going to make it through, they need to reduce that weight by more healthily approaching their relationship and their treatment of themselves.
So yeah, therapy and psychiatric medicine, lots and lots of it.
There is a list of people who could be considered qualified to lecture Ruth on her personal relationships and her wrong moves with them. Amber is pretty much at the bottom next to Joe although for very different reasons.
She has been forsaken by the deities of her people. Now she will be besieged by irate moose, maple syrup will taste as ash in her mouth, and her favourite hockey team will never know victory.
Well I guess that last one isn’t really any different.
A lot of the people hating on Ruth need to familiarize themselves with her history. Alternate universe or not, Ruth is the one that sacrifices herself to protect others. Right now it seems like she’s trying to protect Billie from her mistakes.
Ruth has been the same character for, jeez, almost twenty years. She’s just more fleshed out here. Honestly y’all need to just step back and stop trying to psychoanalize a character in a comic strip.
The point I think that I should make is that we’re not doubting that Ruth is putting others before her own happiness and possibly even her survival. What we’re questioning is WHY she has this need to sacrifice herself, even when it is not strictly necessary. Why would she be so quick to make herself unhappy and disliked?
People are hating on Ruth right now because she told Billie that, by staying away from her for a bit so she could actually do her job to protect one of the students under her care, then that meant she was just totally abandoning her.
That’s a shit thing to do to your partner. I get that she vaguely means well but she should pick less horrible ways of expressing it.
Having nearly every action you make in your life revolving around -one- other person is pretty much the complete opposite of being a person that frequently enjoys sexual interactions with different people.
Looks like Ruth finally figured out the secret combo of irrationality, self-victimization and blame to actually successfully push Billie away. Great job, Ruth!
you know. Some times I get worried about people when I read these comments. I see people talking about how evil, despicable, <> Ruth, Billie, Mary, Carla, <> is, but I think that many of you are too quick to judge. Yeah, Sure, some characters have more bad points than others, but for the most part they are just humans who do both good and wrong. Yes, a large number of them are what you might consider “damaged” or “abnormal” but so far the only characters I’ve seen that could be considered irredeemably evil are Amber’s dad and Becky’s dad.
Sure. What Mary did was shitty, but shes a product of the same brainwashing factory as toedad. At best she’s an ignorant and unwitting victim of religious extreemism, at worst she’s a biggot, but she hasn’t tried/seriously threatened to murder someone.
As for Ruth? She’s led a shitty life and never learned how to cope. People may hate on her for what she’s doing to billie, but she’s doing it because in her mind it’s the only way she can protect the students in her hall from mary’s abuse, a case of doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Just because WE can think of a better way doesn’t mean Ruth can. We have more information than she does, for one, and for another she’s blinded by panic and we aren’t.
Don’t fucking downplay evil. Mary and Ross are at a completely different level than anything with Ruth or Billie. (And Becky or Carla aren’t anything.)
“Toedad” is a psychopath. He is not the product of any upbringing. The whole comic is about Joyce (who is really Willis) and how she’s still a decent person despite that same upbringing.
Mary not being as bad as Ross is small comfort. Ross is in jail for kidnapping and attempted murder. Yeah, Mary’s “just a bigot,” but a bigot is about the worst thing you can be without breaking the law. There’s a reason why so many countries actually make “hate speech” an exception to freedom of speech.
(And she’s not “just a bigot.” She’s got the same Dark Tetrad traits that “ToeDad” has–the ones that define define evil. She’s just ToeDad before he goes crazy.)
People who go around and find excuses for this bullshit are ultimately enabling them. Yes, I know you want to fix them. So do I. But that doesn’t mean we have to pretend like what they are doing isn’t as bad as it is. Sympathy doesn’t mean ignoring evil.
The people treating Mary and Russ the way they do actually is one of the things that gives me hope. That when this happens in real life, they won’t just sit on the sides and make excuses.
Hell, even though I think they go off the deep end with Ruth, the fact that they recognize how abusive her relationship with Billie is gives me hope, as well. Hell, even people shitting on Amber (who I think is actually a good person) gives me hope.
Yes, I think Carla is annoying as hell and completely inconsiderate but Ruth is mentally ill and needs help not condemnation. Mary and Ross? They’re criminals who hide behind religion.
Okay. First. Get a grip. It is a comic – a work of fiction.
Second. I never said that toedad wasn’t evil. I never said amber’s dad wasn’t evil, And I NEVER said that Mary was right or justified in what she did. What i said was that those were the only two people so far that deserve the kind of vilification that people are piling on to other characters. Toedad is clearly beyond redemption, I’ll grant you that, But I still hold firm that Mary is almost as much a victim as she is a victimizer. Even still she is still MILES away from the level of Ross or Amber’s dad. I’m sorry, but if people vilifying people who are in need of help instead of hatred gives you hope, then you are full of the same kind of hatred and you are a sick person, and I hope that you go and get the help you need.
Still don’t think it’s that easy. She put in a request for replacing a broken lock before. And it might get suspicious if it gets broken again.
Maybe someone who is good at finding old comics (like Cerberus–hint, hint) could find that comic. I’ll try, but since he doesn’t index his text, I may not find it.
And that right there is why my phone’s photo album has a solid red rectangle. It’s easier to find things in the dark under a red light because it doesn’t rob you of your night vision.
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well, now Ruth has more options if she’s ever locked out
Maybe stealing that cheerleader uniform wasn’t a bad thing after all….
Or I’m just messing stuff up like I normally do.
It’s really still just one option: Billie. Billie has an option, however. She can just grab a key which is close, or she can invite Ruth into her bedroom to “find a key.” 🙂
‘key’ being Mike’s penis.
for a nickel?
With the lock being your mom, of course.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but this comes off as extremely creepy. I’ve never heard of anyone just making multiple copies of keys to someone else’s room, even if they were dating them. It’s like “Billie, you realize you just ruined any chance of Ruth ever being able to sleep soundly at night anymore right?” I feel like this will become a plot point later on, like somebody finds one of the keys, or multiple people find them, and then Billie has to go around getting those keys but also try to remember where she placed the others.
It’s another string of trust from Ruth that Billie just cut. She keeps doing these things that are pushing Ruth further and further away, and each time acts surprised that Ruth would get mad. Newsflash, nobody likes the idea of their partner breaking their promise to lay off booze, nobody likes it when someone their dating makes twelve damn copies of a key to their room and then hides them all over the place.
Also damn, that final line in the second panel. That’s what she’s doing to you Billie? Giving you addiction after addiction? But then you still say that neither of you really want this over?
No, it’s just you Billie, it’s just you. You’ve taken a person’s trust multiple times and shown that you don’t value it. At the end of the day there’s really only one thing left to say.
Forget you.
And thank you all for listening to this long, LONG rant of mine. Needed to get that off my chest. Know some people aren’t going to agree with me here, but that’s what dialogue is all about. Can’t wait to discuss this one with ya’ll.
Also do you think I gave Cerberus a run for their money with panel by panel analysis? 🙂Uh, no. Billie and Ruth’s relationship is built on them lying to each other about alcohol use. Billie does not want Ruth to kill herself, and is legitimately worried about such a thing. I think your analysis is completely wrong.
Ruth gave up the booze at one point because she thought Billie was too. Then she found out otherwise. That doesn’t sound like she cares enough to stop her addictions. This relationship isn’t healthy in the least, not from beginning to end. Ruth was literally fat shamming and destroying pieces of property that belonged to Billie when they first met. But then they’re in the hallway and Ruth plants a kiss on Billie and that’s when the relationship started.
These two are not good for each other. And I get it, they’re a good ship because they give plenty of decent banter and create some good situations for the story, but they ARE bad for each other.
“Ruth gave up the booze at one point because she thought Billie was too. Then she found out otherwise. That doesn’t sound like she cares enough to stop her addictions. ”
Because addictions are just that easy to give up.
Of course they’re not, if they were then there wouldn’t be counselling and therapy for that stuff.
But the main issue here is that Billie lied to Ruth. If she had just come out and told her that she was having trouble staying on the wagon, they could’ve worked it out and helped each other.
But it’s once again something that Billie thought she could just keep from Ruth. If she wants to save Ruth then she needs to be honest.
I may be looking too deep into this, but I’d say Billie’s biggest enemy besides herself is her pride. SHE can save Ruth. SHE can stop drinking anytime she wants. SHE can keep secrets because she knows that’s the right thing to do.
Look, I think a lot of people here seem to think that I hate these characters. I don’t, well I dislike Ruth a little but who didn’t at first, what I can’t stand is that we’re shown these two people’s lives, their relationship with one another, and it’s just pothole after pothole of sadness and anger. I can’t see what other people see, that Billie is trying to save Ruth, because all I’m seeing is two alcoholics who promised a suicide pact, and both of them are too stupid to just admit they can’t handle this by themselves and seek help.
Newsflash Billie and Ruth, the world is heavy, and it’s issues tend to lighten up when you have some other people on the outside to help you.
This relationship doesn’t work by pretending to curb your urges orhiding them. This relationship is about being broken, about admitting to each other about being broken, and about having acceptance anyway. “Outside help” is acceptance for money.Itis necessary for both of them to feel accepted, and while that may help sustain addictions,it also provides for a basis to not deny them to themselves.
I think up to that point Ruth has not realized how important she is to Billie because (like Billie) she’s putting herself down. Billie’s words (and her key fetish) make her realise that, and they make her feel what she’s putting Billie through by forcing her to move out again.
pretty sure she was bluffing and only had the one key…
Hasn’t Ruth already changed her lock on Billie once before?
She said that Ruth WAS an addiction, not that Ruth was giving her addictions, though I guess that means she gave her at least one.
I can just imagine how this might go:
“Hi there, my name is Billie and I’m a Ruthaholic…”
Hi I’m Billie and I’m an alcohoLESSIC
New Relatonship Energy, it’s a helluva drug.
Given the massively codependent style of their relationship and their addictive personalities, I can definitely see one or both of them seeing their attraction for each other as yet another addictive behavior they can’t quit no matter what… which is super healthy and not at all bound to blow up spectacularly when the NRE fades in another couple of weeks.
i mean i get where youre coming from, but… billie started doing all of this in the first place because she wanted to save ruth.
she lied about quitting drinking because she couldnt manage it, but she wanted ruth to quit. getting copies of her key is a little fucked up, but she did it because of that time she found ruth drunk and unconcious in her room.
also ruth has been way shittier and abusive to billie literally the entire time theyve known each other
Not gonna’ argue with you there, if it weren’t for the magical hallway that makes you kiss the person you currently throttling who knows what might’ve happened.
Hang on I’ve just figured out a way to settle the Carla/Mary debacle.
I can honestly not see anything going wrong with that ship.
Mainly because the about 340 million things that can and will go wrong are blurring by so fast that I cannot see them.
Totes. Ruth has been pushing her away for a while now, but Billie is fully aware that she’s been doing so largely to create a firm justfication for finally offing herself because “no one cares”. Additionally, Billie has decided it’s 100% her responsibility to stop this offing by any means necessary and even if Ruth actively pushes her away or hurts her to try and get her to stop being a thing holding her to the Earth. And Billie has placed her own sense of self for fighting her own depression on “being able to save Ruth” and thus is terrified of failing as it would mean in her eyes that she’s a failure who can’t get anything right (this is not true, this is just what she believes).
Add a bit of addictive personality and an already born fear of losing access to things caused by Ruth’s early abusive and gaslighting behavior where she regularly stole things from her and changed her locks as a response to Billie breaking a major promise to her as well as kept her constantly in a whirl on whether or not she was at suicidal risk or liked her at all, and…
Well, you get Billie reflexively and unhealthily creating key after key for a desperate illusion of control and power. Like, if she had more of them, ones that couldn’t disappear, then Ruth couldn’t ever make her fail and she would still be head cheerleader, problem solver.
I guess what I’m saying is that these two are the healthiest. Super, not at all fucked up beyond belief.
very well said.
Last time Billie ran into trouble with Ruth, Ruth immediately changed her locks. Billie was aware of this and figured out how to pick it.
So I’m not sure why she’d say this, but I’m pretty sure she’s bullshitting.
Hopefully she is, because having twelve damn keys just scattered about is super unsafe.
at least 24 actually…
It’s not just you, the keys thing is mad creepy. You can justify ONE, because Ruth may kill herself if they break up, so it’d be good to have. After that it gets weird and creepy.
I do agree with Billie in her last panel though, considering that they’re both shitty to each other and Ruth isn’t being honest as to why if she actually wants a break up. At this point Ruth has been saying that they need to break up, but then blaming Billie for abandoning her? That’s… approaching abuse territory?
Point is shit’s bad and neither of them are good for each other. It started in a toxic way where Ruth forced a kiss on Billie after insuring her, so it won’t end cleanly either.
Ruth blaming Billie might just be her way of making it easier for Billie to leave, because if she says “We can’t keep being together because it’s not healthy.”, Billie would just try to cut the booze again and most likely fall off the wagon. This way Ruth gives Billie something to hate.
And then she can.. drink out of spite? You may be right! But it’s still not a very good excuse, and may not even work if that were the case.
It’s not her way of making it easier for Billie to leave.
It’s her way of making it easier for herself to believe that nobody loves her, so she can kill herself.
If you drive away the people who care about you, you can’t kill yourself because nobody cares about you.
If you convince yourself the people you drove away “abandoned” you, then you can totally tell yourself that nobody cares about you, then kill yourself because nobody cares about you.
+1 to all of this
(er, I mean +1 to all the points in Russ’s post. Not to how Billie and Ruth are together. That is a -100.)
I’m picking up what you’re putting down. And that is a point. For me, not for toxic relationships. Thanks!
I’m guessing she bothered with more than one mainly because Ruth had already demonstrated a penchant for finding and taking things when she stole and desecrated the Dragons uniform.
ehhhhhhhh, even then, that was when they were “enemies”. I don’t think Ruth has stolen from Billie since they’ve been together since they shared a dorm for like a week anyway and all of Billie’s stuff was in there. Plus, the uniform was something Ruth knew about, and knew it’s emotional importance. an extra key hidden away wouldn’t get found, let alone stolen
plus Billie could pick the lock anyway, since she’s done that exact thing before. this isnt for a practical purpose. this is some sort of compulsion. not healthy
It’s not creepy so much as OCD. Billie has been OCD since forever. Cheerleader OCD, alcohol OCD, Ruth OCD, and now key making OCD.
That… doesn’t seem right. I don’t know, I don’t think her behavior in these instances can be considered OCD. She has an interest in cheerleading, which she isn’t even involved in anymore. She’s an alcoholic, which is addiction. She’s in a toxic, semi-abusive relationship with relatively normal behavior when not around Ruth… no, I’m sorry, but she has other issues not pertaining to OCD, at least from what I’ve seen.
This makes key making something she is specifically obsessed with, which doesn’t automatically qualify her for having OCD. To be honest, this information sort of came out of left field, especially since she’s picked Ruth’s lock before and already has more than one key. It’s just… odd, considering her previous behavior patterns. While this could be a sign of OCD, the other behaviors you mentioned don’t match up, and I can’t think of anything else she really did to point us in that direction.
Being super into a recreational activity, or having an addiction does not mean OCD. Neither does New Relationship Energy mean OCD.
… occurs to me that I should probably explain what OCD actually is like.
(full disclosure: I dunno if I have it. I am enough like OCD that people with OCD and pros alike have advised me to get evaluated for it and my freaking anxiety jerkbrain that may or may not be OCD won’t let me initiate the process. Anyway.)
Basically, your brain latches on to something upsetting and won’t let go. If you’ve ever had a playful kitten do that thing where they wrap themselves around one of your limbs and try to bite and tear it to shreds and are impossible to pry off? That’s kind of like your brain with the thought line. For me, it’s disasters. If I’m at home, it’s what if a plane crashes in my neighbourhood? If I’m driving, it’s what if there’s a pileup? If I’m at the grocery store, it’s what if the boiler explodes and the building collapses? If there’s a blizzard it’s what if my roof collapses under the snow? I could go on.
But basically your brain latches on to that thing and won’t let go. And you can’t stop thinking about it. And something about it provokes an anxiety response – this can be the thing itself, like with me worrying about disasters, or it can be your fear of acting out the thing (like with people who have OCD about an urge to self-injure when they are neither depressed or suicide) or it can be your fear of how others will respond to you as a result of the thing (people who have stigmatized obsessions can run into this). People who just have this have obsession-type OCD.
Some people find things that help alleviate the anxiety their obsessive thoughts cause. For me, it’s disaster planning. I need to have a plan for the possible disaster and I need to follow preventative tricks. I shut off and unplug all appliances before I leave – even the stove, drier, and washer. I never do laundry at night and get very upset with anyone who does it if they let the laundry machine run while everyone is asleep. I check the fire extinguishers daily, and the fire alarms. I have one fire alarm per room, spares, and spare batteries. I could go on here. And for literally every single disaster I can think up, I have a plan. If I don’t have a plan, I need to stop everything I’m doing until I do. This is a problem if a potential disaster becomes obvious to me at work, for obvious reasons (I’m paid to work, not to plan what to do if a truck careens into the building from the highway). This is the classical obsessive-compulsive type.
Then there’s people who only have compulsions, but I’m not really sure how that works but I know they exist.
Anyway, underlying thing is: You don’t do OCD stuff because it makes you feel good, you do it because it makes you stop feeling awful. Briefly. Until your brain starts on the obsession again.
By all accounts, Billie did her cheerleading stuff because it made her feel good about herself. She stays with Ruth because the NRE makes her feel good. She drinks probably for a similar reason to why a person with OCD does their compulsion, but in that case it’s addictive behavior, because she’s not responding to a specific stress (i.e., the obsessive thoughts), she just drinks in response to stress in general. The keys might be an OCD thing or they might be her correctly anticipating that Ruth would try to push her away again, we don’t know.
Bottom line is: Doing stuff with great enthusiasm or even uncontrollably does not OCD make, and it’s a misconception that irritates the hell out of me.
Yup. Billie has an addictive personality. A really bad one. It leads her to things like alcoholism and makes it extremely hard for her to quit on her own. It leads her to being extremely codependent in her relationships (Alice noted that Billie had a way of making the two of them both of their entire world while simultaneously denying how serious it was). It leads her to cling to cheerleading and trying to resurrect the memory of it for the same sense of self it used to give her.
And it’s sabotaging her constantly, both in her relationship with Ruth as well as her self-esteem and self-regard.
She’s dead on that Ruth and the keys are just as much an addiction as the alcoholism and it’s one of the things I noted early on in their relationship as a major potential problem in that because Billie is addicted to Ruth and has made her her new cheerleading that she needs to cling to to ever get a rush of happiness, it makes her more and more prone to putting up with abuse and bullshit in order to “save” Ruth.
Yes, listen to this more-informed person. They have a grip on what OCD can be like. Billie doesn’t have the behaviors that reflect what OCD really is.
((Trigger warning to your potential OCD.))
But, what if your untreated possibly-OCD gets worse and worse? It can, over time, especially when left untreated… You’d better go get professional help for it before it gets *really* bad, eh?
It’s a matter of convincing myself that not-doing is worse than doing.
(I don’t get into new things through “what’s best for me” but usually through brow-beating myself until the anxiety of what happens if I don’t do the thing that makes me anxious is worse than the anxiety of doing it. It’s a process. I am trying. It’s probably gonna take a few more months, though.)
Good luck!
That seems more like an anxiety disorder, rather than OCD. I’ve heard some people WITH OCD describe how they are often late for work because they had to rearrange their sock drawer 12 times (or some similar, trivial behavior that you or I might just go “f-it, it can wait until I get home.” Or in the case of a sock drawer perhaps “f-it, who cares if the socks are not arranged in perfect black descending to white chromatic order?” is a lot more accurate) before they could get themselves to leave their home.
I understand that Billie is afraid, after Ruth stayed in her room for three days just drinking. Ruth is suicidal, and I see why Billie wants to keep an eye on her.
But, yeah, it’s also super creepy. They’re codependent. They don’t trust each other. And they are so many personal feelings involved, they’re likely to bail on each other at their lowest. Like, of course Ruth was upset when Billie broke her promise, but relapsing on an addiction is so common it’s almost inevitable when first trying to quit. So something that should be completely expected in the rehabilitation process left both Ruth and Billie feeling betrayed and with support – that is a horrible situation for everyone. Billie needs to realise that her additions and issues are hers alone. And they both need help from people with less at stake in this equation.
*without support
Has Billie shown any OCD tendencies in the past?
I think I see the thought pattern that would lead to her having multiple copies made. She starts thinking of Ruth in there either dying of accidental alcohol poisoning or an intentional suicide attempt, and what if she can’t get in and save her? Sure, she’s got a key. What if she loses it though?
So she gets a copy made. And the copy makes her feel better. Until the thought creeps in again, and the only way to make it go away is to get a copy of the key made. And the thought just keeps coming back.
That’s possible. And/or, she could be remembering the time that Ruth first trusted her with the key. That was a big moment. Getting a new key might help relieve her stress and ping that good feeling.
I don’t find it creepy or a breach of trust in this case because the entire reason Billie was given a key was in case Ruth wouldn’t answer the door because she’s tried to kill herself by drinking herself to death again.
Ruth’s depressive tendencies WARRANT Billie keeping a few extra copies so that she wasn’t able to push her away and piss her off to get the key back because well, as we can see here, that was entirely a strategy Ruth was capable of deploying
I think multiple dozens counts as more than “a few extra copies.”
Ruth can just get the lock changed.
Personally, I feel like Ruth has done more to hurt Billie than the other way around. Ruth has arguably crossed the line into being abusive more than once.
However, I think that we can all agree (and please correct me if I’m wrong here) that both Billie and Ruth have done some shitty things to each other, both before and during their relationship. I don’t think it’s productive or healthy to keep track of who has hurt who more. If you love someone, you have to forgive and forget in order for the relationship to survive. I would even say that if you truly love someone, you can’t help but to forgive and forget, regardless of whether or not you SHOULD forgive him or her.
Also, I know I’m probably in the minority here, but I actually think that their relationship has helped them grow into better people. At the very least, the relationship has forced them to confront some of the not-so-good parts of themselves, and THAT caused them to become better. If it wasn’t for the rampant alcoholism (and, holy cheezus, I know that’s a huge “if”), I’d be able to endorse the relationship wholeheartedly. As things are right now, I think that one or both of them has a better chance of having an epiphany about the booze while they are together rather than on their own. I think it’s easier to pretend you don’t have a problem when you aren’t watching someone you care about struggle with the exact same thing. That’s my take on it anyway.
My point is: despite all of the shitty things that they’ve done, I still think that Billie and Ruth are good people at heart and that they can make this thing work. They both have serious problems that need some professional help, but I don’t think breaking up will help them deal with those.
It’s worth noting that Billie is recognisably mentally ill too (depression, although not as intense as Ruth’s and maybe a soupçon of self-esteem issues). Is she blameless? No but I would argue that she is not as self-destructive as Ruth and that she genuinely wants to help, no matter how bad she is at it.
They’re super unhealthy.
As others have noted. They’re both massively mentally ill with addiction problems and depression (albeit in different flavors) and while they have done some things to mutually support each other, they have also intertwined their lives in deeply unhealthy and stress-enducing co-dependent ways and have massively bad relationship practices (Ruth started the relationship with rather intense emotional abuse, Billie has had a habit of creating really unhealthy self-destructive co-dependent relationships as she did with Alice, and both see the relationship as something to save them rather than a connection between two people who are hurting and have strong attraction and care for each other).
And yeah, Billie making so many copies of keys is critically demonstrative of how Ruth is not the only mentally ill person in this relationship with poor boundaries. And some of it is understandable given that Billie is terrified that Ruth will kill herself the second her back is turned and what that would mean to her already shattered self-esteem and belief in her own power, her desperate need for power and a feeling of safety given the abusive beginnings of her relationship and Ruth’s habit of pushing away and shutting her out, and her addictive personality.
And that last part is key. It marks it as something she did to regain power for a potential future power play like this and since it gave her a fleeting rush of that power feeling, she’s now just stuck doing it over and over chasing that initial rush while simultaneously knowing it’s unhealthy and kinda super creepy.
And I don’t think that that final line is about Ruth giving her addictions, but rather being an addiction. That Billie is unhealthy and an addict and is addicted to the NRE of being with Ruth and how that makes her feel valued to someone at least. Which makes something positive in her life into something that’s also partially toxic and fucked up. Which is the central tragedy of Billie. Anything that can make her feel good is something her addictive personality is going to sink its claws in and poison in much the same way as Ruth’s suicidal depression poisons her side of the relationship.
And I’m not sure that it’s her lack of trustworthiness that’s on display here. Billie lied about breaking the addiction, yes, but that’s because she’s in denial about how badly addicted she is (honestly, this is the first time she’s actually acknowledged it as an addiction she can’t stop rather than a simple thing she could stop at any time if she wanted to that isn’t as bad as everyone is making it).
So when Ruth tried to make it a mutual pact, Billie found herself physically unable to keep up with it (I think Billie and Ruth have mirror intensities of addictive personalities and depression. Ruth’s depression is much more intensely consuming of her life and impossible for her to resolve even with love and care and reasons to hope, whereas Billie can at least forestall the worst of it with unhealthy coping strategies that prevent it from being as all consuming. And they’re the opposite for addiction, with Billie utterly helpless to keep it from just consuming her life without aid and (probably) rehab whereas Ruth can at least make genuine efforts to quit cold turkey from time to time).
Everything else hasn’t been a genuine breach of trust (the Becky thing was not her truth to tell and expecting her to betray a confidence is a shitty thing to do and the key thing is not her breaking a trust, but rather an initially rational response to Ruth’s habit of pushing people away and then attempting suicide that has turned utterly awful due to Billie’s addictive personality.
Overall, this comic really highlights both their central tragedies. Ruth cannot consistently value the positives that Billie brings to her life because her depression is too prone to viewing every slight bit of motion as a means of abandoning her and to pushing away Billie as much as possible through abuse and cruel comments (the fact that Billie has decided that this is flirting doesn’t exactly make the comments less acerbic in intention). And Billie is wrapped up in her addictions and their poison leaks into her dynamics, keeping her from establishing more healthy dynamics that would make less of her self-esteem tied into things like saving Ruth despite herself, putting up with awful treatment, and making seventy billion keys as a means of trying to grasp the eel of elusive power.
And here is where we see if they have the power to bring their demons into the foreground and let them be part of the discussion rather than the true ringmasters of the circus that is their relationship.
Am I the only one that noticed this is the first time Billie has recognized her drinking as an addiction? And she probably realizes the key thing is super creepy, but that doesn’t mean she can do anything about it yet. Addiction is strange.
Hey, that’s true, isn’t it. Step one!
“Billie, you realize you just ruined any chance of Ruth ever being able to sleep soundly at night anymore right?”
– Can’t sleep Billie will eat me…
– Can’t sleep Billie will eat me…
– Can’t sleep Billie will eat me…
And the problem with this is?
Or does she just want to be sure to be awake?
so theres copies of ruths key hidden all over the campus?
scavenger hunt time!
Anyone who finds one gets to go on a tour of the dorms with her, and are promised a lifetime supply of booze. Over the course of the tour, all but one of them will suffer horrible accidents. The final winner gets to be the partner in her next unhealthy relationship.
It’s called “Who wants to drink themselves to death!” And it premiers this summer on CBS daytime!
Much to Ruth’s dismay, the winner insists on bringing their family along to live with them.
It’s the key to the Wonkavator?
Whoever wins gets to own the whole university (Or at least her dorm and position) 😉
Take a drink
And you’ll sink
To a world of pure inebriation…
Lets hope mary does not find that key.
Ruth will just change the locks again.
Come to think of it, are there university regulations on changing dorm room locks?
My understanding is that she was able to replace the lock because it was broken.
And, sure, they could break it again, but that would start to look suspicious.
If Billie did actually make these keys and hide them, she’s a fucking idiot, because other people can find them.
Fuck you indeed Ruth.
Fuck you indeed.
And don’t make that face, you know you fucked up, own up to it.
Billie: Fuck you Ruth.
Ruthie: Not you Billie, not anymore…
Me: …damn Willis.
Amazi-leaf hears all!
I think you might be on to something, like
AmberAmazi-Girl is in the tree above Ruth.nah, it’s a free couch if Ruth wants it
Maybe it’s actally an astronaut suit!
This was exactly what I was thinking.
dang, if only i’d thought of that! ‘amazi-leaf’…what was i thinking?
Heh heh heh. Yuuuuup.
When Becky finds one of the keys, does she whistle a Legend of Zelda-type “Item Found!” tune to herself? Because I know I would.
Becky wasn’t allowed to play those games, because they feature goddesses and magic. She instead played that Zelda ripoff game the AVGN covered in his Bible Games video.
…Who am I kidding, she was barely even around for the tail end of the 90s (and soon none at all), and never touched an NES in her life. I’m assuming someone came along and made Christian games for more current systems? Probably not for consoles, it’s harder to bootleg these days, but surely there’s some PC Christian gaming companies. If there’s a niche, someone will fill it.
Hope fully she wasn’t stuck with Zoo Race.
Actually, it seems to me that if she got her hands on a console, it would have been an older model like the NES kept around by an adult Ross trusted enough to leave his daughter with.
Zoo Race has way to little righteous murdering going on, though. It seems more like something Joyce’s parents would get. Ross, on the other hand, seems like exactly the sort of person that was made for. I mean you set out to assemble the armor of god to save the children from “Simon B Goth’s wizarding school”. Tell me that doesn’t have Toedad written all over it.
I am fail at link. I tried to link was a playthrough of Prayer Warriors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWC-n73G6i8&feature=youtu.be&t=118
Considering this is Becky we’re talking about, the daughter of the worst dad in webcomic history, I don’t think she knows to do it.
No, that’s
notcreepy no matter how you look at it.Making dozens of keys seems really expensive, I know she’s rich but still.
Iirc you can do it for $3-4 at Walmart–I could be wrong, though, it’s been a while. Not cheap when it’s in that quantity, but you could get like two or three dozen for around $100.
It’s at worst $5/key, and less-rich people easily blow $5 daily on Starbucks or parking. Billie’s only making one each time she’s downtown, which *probably* isn’t daily.
One bottle of booze less would easily pay for a key.
Let’s not be ridiculous here.
Yea one bottle should pay for all the keys.
You’re talking about buying less alcohol. That’s not going to happen. They’re both important, but you’ve got to prioritize.
Billie can buy both things! It’s how the ‘other half’ lives.
I like to think that she’s going to some master black smith, a muscular guy with a huge beard, who has been secretly teaching her to wield the great sword Vocatus! passed down through generations!
by the way, if you get the sword name joke, I will love you forever.
Latin: “We Work”?
It’s supposed to mean alcholol according to google translate, the most reliable of all sources.
I guess it’d depend on how many dozens? Keys are like $0.50-$1.50 around here, depending on where you get them made. $2.50 if you end up having to go to a local lumber yard (not Menard’s) or something ma-n-pop-ish.
I’m pretty sure i’ve seen places where it’s like “get a copy of a key made for free!” though that might still have a fee or you buying something else with it (…and now kinda dodgy now that i think about it, if they’ll just make a copy for you w/o questioning it)
Depending on the type of key (and the wrapping if any at the top), you can get them for $1.50 at most hardware stores (when I’ve needed keys).
Not that bad, really, costwise.
She found a guy who duplicates “DO NOT DUPLICATE THIS”-engraved dormroom keys, though, that would be concerning to me if it were real.
**raises hand**
My local Walmart has a machine that automatically copies keys for a small fee. Not sure how cheap, but there’s no human operator (other than the customer) so it could be used to copy Do Not Duplicate keys.
If that machine doesn’t supply the mold key to use for the copy, you couldn’t make a do not duplicate. And I don’t think the store will stock that mold in the machine.
Some keys labeled Do Not Duplicate are just regular blanks with an engraving on them. I’d guess these are mostly used for rentals where the owner is hoping the label will prevent attempts to duplicate.
Some keys are marked like that and are more obscure locksets. However, if the lockset’s obscure enough, the key doesn’t really need to be marked with anything. At my job, we keep key blanks on hand for the local school system’s locksets, but it’s an uncommon enough blank that a random rack of keyblanks wouldn’t have it stocked.
I don’t think any of my dorm keys when I was in college were either of the two most common keyways, but that was years ago and before I learned anything much about key blanks. I don’t think they were marked do not duplicate.
This. And that’s presuming there’s even a do not duplicate on the key to start with rather than a note in the student residential rules telling residents to not get copies made.
It’s possible Ruth bought her new lock herself after changing it, rather than have to formally request a new one, in which case it wouldn’t be a university-issued key.
This was actually my first thought as well, but I brushed it aside because it probably isn’t important to the story.
Billie better hope that Mary hasn’t somehow found one of those keys.
TWIST:
Mike finds one.
Mike finding one wouldn’t lead to anything. He’d probably just toss it in the trash.
That’s…that’s a bit worrying, Bills…
I do kind of wonder if she’s telling the truth, though. That look kind of says “bluffing” to me.
It’s not something that’d make sense for her to do. Last time she ran into trouble with Ruth, Ruth changed her lock, and then Billie figured out how to pick it anyway. So it’s not something that’d make sense for her to even feel the need for.
If she’s telling the truth, I don’t think it’s even that she feels like she needs them. The key’s a symbolic thing; iirc, it was a big moment when Ruth gave it to her. Every time she copies it, she’s trying to duplicate that feeling.
Yup. Plus the power of “she can’t take this back if she pushes me away, I won’t abandon her.”
She’s got an addictive personality, so everything with a rush of awesome or a memory of awesome becomes a ritual of repetition she cannot break even once it loses its luster and just becomes straight up unhealthy and off.
It depends on whether or not she’s developing anxiety (or has had it all along and has been managing it on-screen). Until I started leaving a copy of all my keys with my in-laws, I used to make tons of multiples and squirrel them away, “just in case” I lost one. I was paranoid I would lose my keys and be locked out of my apartment and car and unable to get help (my anxiety extends to social anxiety, and I have severe trouble talking to strangers, including building managers, police officers, etc). Billie might have felt like she was in a similar situation, but instead of social anxiety knew she wouldn’t be able to get help because she couldn’t out Ruth as dating her and an alcoholic.
My instant first thought was that Billie is suffering from anxiety.
yeah thats exactly what i’m thinking
Making copies of keys: The destroyer of relationships America’s ignoring!
Chekhov’s leaf?
Definitely. It’s there for a reason. Someone already guessed that AG is the tree.
AG *is* the tree? OMG attack of the tree people! And she seemed so human! Just goes to show, you can never tell! :O
*AG is in the tree* Spell check, but no sanity check! (I’d fail that anyway!)
Rambo could disguise himself as a tree, why not Amazi-Girl?
Let’s hope it is AG and not Mary spying on Ruth, hoping to record her and Billie having a moment.
It’s referencing the first strip of this storyline: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/deep/
Wow! That’s the same background as yesterday with a different color palette. Willis knew he would be drawing this three months ahead of time.
PREACH IT BILLIE!
In another startling twist, Sexy Lesbian Suicide Pacts(tm) do not a healthy relationship make.
In other news, the sky is blue and water is wet.
Real Reason Ruth is Sad:
She has no LED flash on her phone.
One day. One day, one of the characters will be happy again.
I mean hell, right now our most recent not-miserable person was Mary. It’s not looking good.
Mary was our third most recent. Carla was the second most recent, and harvested some of Mary’s happiness in the process; and Agatha and Sierra are tied for first most recent, using their plentiful natural reserves to (in)advertently bomb out Mary’s remaining reserves.
And yes, I know I’m mixing metaphors.
Key duplication can be quite a monkey on your back.
I think that leaf needs its own tag.
And fan club. But I don’t know about a slipshine.
Coming soon: “Get Blown”, a Dumbing of Age pornographique by David “Seriously You Guys?!” Willis.
It’s their campuses fault for not stamping them with that lovely “do not copy” bullshit that was on all the keys at our campus and kept us from getting dupes made in case we lost one. Lost keys on our campus meant getting the lock changed on our door, paying for the old key, and paying for the new key. Our front door fob was usually attached to our key, so a lost key meant paying for a new fob, too. :/
campus’s*
I am getting way too tired already tonight. :/
Actually, there’s no “s” after the apostrophe; it’s implied, since there’s already one written before the apostrophe. I love English.
Sleeeep. Sleep is good.
Actually actually, you can have an _s_ after the apostrophe or not. It’s at the writer’s discretion as long as its presence or absence is applied consistently to all instances in a single work.
I’ve literally never seen any key copier care. Plus they have automated ones that can’t read.
IU DOES tag their keys with the “DO NOT COPY” stamp. Trust me, I have accumulated many of their keys over the years (I was a graduate researcher then a visiting faculty member at the Bloomington campus, which meant I was granted access to a lot of locked areas and needed those keys. Now that I think about it, I never returned most of them. I bet if I dug them up I could get all of my deposits back and take my wife out to dinner.) This, like the thickness of the woods in Dunn Meadow (where Dina and Toedad fought), is a case of artistic license and therefore okay with me.
Then again, it could simply be that Billie slips a $20 to the keymaker at the local hardware store to get him to ignore that little tag each time she wants a new key made.
pff. more like $5. I only once had a key copier ask about that once, and I just told him that we had a new maintenance guy who needed a supply closet key. They don’t -actually- give a damn, and that stamp isn’t legally binding anyway.
Clay vases ain’t good, Link is gonna smash them all and find the keys.
“Smashes vase” Wait, that’s no key..*BOOM* Wrong one.
Your love is my drug~…. that was mistake I feel dirty for making that reference now
♪You are the perfect drug, the perfect drug, the perfect drug♫
Ruth, you’re really bad at the whole “pushing away the one person who loves you while making it look as if it’s their fault” thing.
It’s good that you’re bad at it.
Are they finally over or will the arc fatigue continue? Because in the end, I personally am tired of their relationship, it’s terrible for both parties and it can’t get any better from any point I look at it.
She has copies?? Every key I’ve gotten from my schools say “Duplucation Prohibited” on them. Does no one check?
As the comment section’s resident Person Who Actually Lived In the IU Dorms Last Year and Won’t Stop Mentioning It, I don’t think mine did.
Curious, were your dorm’s main doors locked with electronic fob access? It might be a case of different levels of dorm security at different unis.
The building doors had… that new thing where you just put your card next to the sensor? So each student uses their ID to access their specific building. After that, I had to use my key to get on my floor, though I think the key worked for the other floors as well. And my key for my room. The buildings with elevators have you use your key to be able to get off at any floor.
Same, and they do check. I tried at Menard’s once, and they turned me away. Same with post box keys.
Even if they did there are self-service key-copiers now. There’s one at the Wal-mart two blocks from my house.
Self service most likely does not have the master mold that you need to match up to your key to be able to make a copy. No mold, no copy.
It’s amazing what a piece of masking tape with the word ‘shed’ written on it can do.
Please don’t be Mary in the tree. Please don’t be Mary in the tree.
Damn telltale falling leaf.
I have trouble imagining Mary climbing into a tree. She doesn’t seem like the type. If it’s not Amazi-girl my guess is that it’s Carla. Or maybe Sal.
Or maybe it’s a tree.
A tree… is in the tree? We’re talking Treeception here now?
Treecursion. Yess.
the tree is an Ent?!
A leaf is just a leaf, and a cigar is just a cigar?
It’s Becky, happy that her camouflage is finally working
Alright seriously, we need to get to the root of this issue now, is the tree a tree inside another tree or is it just Becky camouflaged in because of her naturally Autumn like hair?
Root
DAMMIT!
HA ha! XD
Becky is with Joyce right now, so clearly it must be Becky from the darkest timeline.
is that tree listening in on them?
If this was Shortpacked I’d say it was a Decepticon.
i wonder where she’s stashing them all, if she’s (up until recent events) been living in ruth’s room.
also i gotta say, i really like billie’s pose in panel 1
That’s kind of weird, Billie.
Of course Billy then realizes that she actually stashed all of her spare keys in Ruth’s room.
I have literally nothing to say about these two anymore except GO SEE A FUCKING THERAPIST. Seriously.
It’s also not helping that Jeff Buckley’s ‘Lover You Should’ve Come Over’ just came on my spotify playlist (which is a sad, beautiful fucking song anyway) and it has the line “Maybe I’m too young to keep good love from going wrong” and that’s so relevant to these two and now I’m crying.
*sigh*
Now as a person who has Careless Whisper playing in the background, I can honestly say that therapy is a life saver. I used to be an annoying little shit with issues I could never figure out.
Now I’m an annoying little shit with my whole life together.
But no seriously, the therapy helped. Turns out my parents lied about me going to a different elementary school for two months when I was younger because the teacher called us some pretty racist things and smacked one of the girls.I’m also in therapy and I literally don’t know where I’d be without it, if I would even exist in this world anymore, so you don’t have to convince me of the merits of therapy – I’m a big believer!
That’s why I’m saying this. These two girls, they have…. issues, to put it mildly. And not just the alcoholism, but everything that usually comes *with* that. So. If I knew these girls personally, I’d heavily recommend to them to see a counselor or just even talk to ANYONE. Because it just. fucking. helps.
The fact that therapy gives you a person to just vent all that frustration and worry you keep bottled up is just so damn refreshing, it’s like I couldn’t talk to my family about this, even though I did after a while, and this person sitting across from me just listening was the best thing to ever happen.
Also hell yeah, therapy high-five!
Yup, therapy and psychiatric medication can be critical just for finding the groove to start pushing back at one’s life and stop being just bowled over by psychological illnesses. Both of them desperately need it and if there is one bright spot in all of this its that both of them are getting close to admitting that.
Billie by actually referring to her suite of addictive behaviors as addictions for the first time. Ruth by recognizing the direct damage her illness has been causing to her ability to function in her job.
As an aside to all the analysis, I love that Willis can drop something as significant as Billie referring to her problems as addictions for the first time so casually. Understated, easy to miss, but very important.
Huh, I hadn’t actually noticed that. That is a good sign that she can at least call her alcoholism an addiction, since the last time this came up she refused to acknowledge she had a problem.
probably important to note though even if someone found a key its not like they say RUTH in big red letters on them
even anyone who saw her plant them would assume it was her own key
At the college I attended, the keys had the room numbers on them. You didn’t necessarily know which building it came from, but it’s not that hard to check room #230 or. whatever in every single building
oh, whoops
The original would, but it’s not like they engrave the same things on the copy.
Damn, that’s pretty creepy. I wonder if the key thing’s going to become a future plot point.
Cue Mary happening upon it.
Mary is most likely in the tree having filmed it all. >.> The suspicious leaf in the last panel is suspicious.
Making dozens of copies of the key to your girlfriend’s room kind of passes “romantic” and enters “creepy stalker”
well she did literally start this relationship out of fear that ruth was gonna kill herself, the compulsion is understandable
Yup to both. The compulsion is understandable and is unhealthy, borderline stalkerish behavior.
We’ve entered Faz territory.
can you feel the lurv tonite
Billie is having none of Ruth’s bullshit… Which IS part of why Ruth love her, but it makes the whole pushing-away awkward.
That’s the part I’m most proud of here. Billie is actually calling Ruth out on her shit and trying to use the circumstances of their blackmail and how hard it is on both of them to justify a “I knew Billie would abandon me in the end” worldview. And she’s also pointing out, finally, how hurtful Ruth’s constant accusations of abandonment and pushing away really is. She’s starting to finally not put up with Ruth’s casual abusive bullshit and that’s a critical step in making her relationship less unhealthily codependent.
She’s also finally recognizing her addictions and stating them as such including the codependent way she’s viewed and gone in to her relationship with Ruth.
Whether or not this will lead to either healthy relationship dynamics or her starting to more healthily deal with her own shit is up in the air but this is a solidly impressive single moment for her and deserves recognition for how big of a step it really is.
Awareness is a big step. You’ve still got to do something about it (and probably fail, several times), but you can’t even start until you see.
If that leaf is an indicator of someone in the tree we probably won’t find out this week. If the preview panels are anything to go on the next couple of strips will probably take us back to Joyce and Becky.
The sad part is most of those keys probably don’t even work since they’re all copies of copies.
I feel like that was an Anime plot at one point.
Copying your girlfriend’s key is creepy, but understandable given their dysfunctional relationship, in which Billie is regularly afraid that Ruth will die any moment. And, didn’t Ruth teach Billie to pick locks? (Maybe she just offered to do so, I forget whether they got around to it.)
Anyway, saying that Billie was abandoning Ruth was some serious BS, and I’m glad that Billie told her off about it.
I don’t think that this is nearly the end of their romantic entanglement, though. Billie has already made forever-promises, and mentally prepared herself for Ruth pushing her away. Which is unfortunate, because they are not good for each other.
Wild prediction time: Ruth will do something very special for Billie, to make it alllll up to her, which will seem really sweet and lovely, but which is actually indicative of a classic abuse cycle. Speculation!
I’d say that’s very very likely. Bonus points if she undercuts it immediately by either raging at Billie for something minor, tries to push Billie away a comic later, or tries and bury the significance of her grand romantic gesture.
Ruth offered, but I don’t think she ever got around to it. Billie taught herself.
And I just realized that, in comic, it hasn’t been months and months since Ruth gave Billie the original of that key. (Which isn’t the one from the first link there; that’s a key to Ruth’s old lock, which she got changed after the cold turkey pact broke down.) I don’t think we ever saw Billie get this key, but it’s only been nine days since Billie had to pick Ruth’s lock because she didn’t have a key. Billie’s made all those key copies in like a week.
So I take it back. That’s not kind of weird. That’s a lot weird.
Actually, Ruth never gave her a new key, she’s just been picking the lock as needed.
Those are all copies of the original key. Which makes it even weirder.
Is that hovertext a “Young Sherlock Holmes” reference, or is my hopelessly obscure movie knowledge showing?
Video Games, I think.
Though I also tend to favor the “Atomic Shakespeare” episode of Moonlivghting when Cybil Shepard (sp?) was going ballistic on Bruce Willis (damn him!) with dozens of vases.
MOONLIGHTING. As said, damn him.
Legend of Zelda, I assumed. No clay pot is safe in those games.
Literally dozens means at least 24 keys. Such an obsession with having copies made of 1 key is by itself reason enough for some serious intervention by mental health professionals.
Telling Ruth about this was clearly nuts as well because Ruth may now have the lock changed and, hey presto, all those keys would become useless at once.
We know that Billie isn’t always honest. She’s usually worse at it, but still, she could well be exaggerating.
Doesn’t literally mean the opposite of what it used to mean now?
Billie is learning to use key magic, in fact almost every character will eventually learn to use some form of magic relating to their personality.
Joyce and Becky will learn religious magic (magic powered by a deity, like a cleric)
Dorothy will learn scholarly magic
Walky will learn trickery magic (most erratic magic, involves exploding cards and the like)
Danny will learn loyalty magic (involves being able to give your energy to power your allies)
Amber will learn disguise magic (able to make instant disguises)
Dina will learn Illusionary magic (able to create illusions of t-rexs and raptors and such, as well as maker herself invisible)
I need a fanfic with this setup, stat!
Mike will learn asshole magic (involves harvesting peoples’ anger hatred for your own use)
I think Amber actually learns squirrel magic. Or does Amazi-Girl get a separate specialty?
When I was in college the keys all were etched “do not duplicate”. I never tried, so I don’t know if key duplication places would have balked or not.
But now I wonder if Billie has ties with the sinister key duplication underworld…
….Heh, I just thought of this, but do you think Billie keeps the keys attached to wood blocks like they do at convenience stores for the restrooms?
Like, I’m not imagining a dozen keys hanging on the wall with “Ruth” written on the blocks.
She has them glued together in a sculpture of Ruth. Or perhaps a metaphorical representation of the spirit of the Maple Leafs. It’s kinda abstract.
Maybe she’s working on a giant-sized version of this.
a couple people are suspicious that the leaf in the final panel means someone’s hiding in the tree, but isn’t it just a callback to
i mean…it could be both, i guess…
how did i screw up the html that badly
that was supposed to say “isn’t it just a callback to the first comic in this storyline”
Whoa I didn’t notice that… good find!
also, come on guys, there’s absolutely no way she has “literally dozens” of keys. it’s only been a week and a day since she moved in with ruth. unless she’s been going downtown multiple times a day every single day, there’s just no way. she might have several extras (assuming she’s not flat out bluffing) but it’s obvious hyperbole.
Billie’s been running in real time as every other character has been running in DoA time. A big fourth wall break, really.
Does this means the Magneto is her father?
wait, if billie can break the fourth wall, does…does she know we’re watching
is she reading these comments right now
So, am I the only one who DOESN’T find the key thing creepy?
One key is normal, two keys is prepared, three keys is crazy prepard. But if you’re making a copy every time you go into town, it isn’t about the keys anymore. You’re just repeating a behavior that makes you feel good, because it makes you feel good.
Certainly I don’t find it any creepier than anything else they’ve gotten up to
Billie did say that it was an addiction on a par to alcohol dependency. I don’t think such things are meant to sound or be healthy!
And what you described is exactly why it’s creepy. She went through all the other stages, and is still doing it. It’s obsessive.
Ruth then gives up looking for the key.
For there are other copies, and she cannot see.
Mary appears from the darkness with glee.
Evil thoughts in her mind there be.
(My poor foray into poetry. It won’t happen again).
“Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We are all of us looking for the key. And, I wonder, how many of you here tonight have wasted years of your lives looking behind the kitchen dressers of this life for that key.”
– Beyond The Fringe, Alan Bennett
A throwback to the first comic in the arc, or someone, likely AG, in the tree?
argh post was eaten by a grue (ok mebe by fat fingers)
I dont see why having a key is fine but 20 copies is creepy. its not like she can double u7nlock Ruths door and end out inside her soul or septum or whever the door would lead after that, i never actually finished that matrix movie
Because it’s a bit of an obsession showing thought behind possibly losing her, and giving her a way to keep sneaking in even after losing a key or 20
It’s already a breach of trust to make a copy of the key without asking. Now multiply that breach of trust by several dozen.
Ruth has already breached her trust by breaking into her room on several occasions to steal her shit; Billie has ample reason not to trust that she won’t do it again, only to steal what could be life-saving.
This. Billie threw out the last thing she unhealthily clung to because it held the memory of something that made her happy once (cheerleading), and so wants a means of protecting the next one (Ruth and the memory of being in her life).
Ruth continues to be both incredibly unlikable and incredibly unsympathetic.
The thing to remember is that Ruth isn’t doing this based on malice. She’s doing it because, on a fundamental level, she doesn’t believe she can be happy or even deserves to be happy. She is simply taking action to ensure that this is the case.
Yup, depression is a piece of shit and it’s really really good at convincing you that all of your friends and lovers are lying to you about how important you are to them and how much better off they’ll be if you can shove them away once and for all. And it’s really good at just pissing over every scrap that you’re still using to try and grab seconds of happiness until you can’t even remember what happiness felt like anymore.
Poor Ruth. and now i am worried big time for them both. Billie may drink untill she dies from it or worser.. getting invalid.
Ruth. all alone in the World. can’t trust anyone right now. i feel sorry for them both.
The booth is unattended again!
*Plays “With or Without You” on the hacked campus PA system*
Aight maybe make one copy of the key Billie, but lots of copies is a bit weird.
Still I’m glad she stood up for herself here and wasn’t gonna take Ruth’s BS. Cause seriously Ruth what the fuck
Will you guys please stop blaming Billie for this?!
Seriously, it was Ruth who starting their relationship by kissing her, and as soon as she got what she wanted so much, started to wail “I could get fired”. Like her alcohol addiction wasnt a much bigger reason for getting fired.
And, Billie lying too much? Gimme a break. Ruth is lying to herself all the time.
No, this is not about Billie at all. This is Ruth selfdestructing again.
No one is blaming Billie. We’re pointing out that the key thing is creepy. Nothing about it being Ruth’s fault has anything to do with whether the key thing is creepy. It’s been 8 days.
Granted, people did blame Billie yesterday, but that’s as day ago.
The problem here remains Billie is trying to be Ruth’s therapist and healer when she’s also her girlfriend. There’s no need to be all three when she is better for being just the first two.
AND enemy/hatefuckbuddy. AND patient when Ruth is trying to be HER therapist…. yeah, their relationships do have some hiccups.
I wonder where the modern notion that people can only be healed by therapists comes from.
It’s case-specific, IMO. Ruth’s issues are deeply ingrained enough and have passed through the usefulness horizon of any community/family influence so long ago that she needs stronger measures.
Not the only answer for every situation, but for Ruth? Yep. She’s not getting better on her own and her relationship with Billie is making her even worse.
Yup. It’s not great for a relationship to be each other’s therapist… especially in lieu of an actual therapist and it’s even less healthy when you have so thoroughly wrapped your entire self-esteem around the relationship and expect it to work miracles (“curing” Ruth of her suicidal ideation and depression or at least reawakening all her dead emotions and solving Billie’s complete lack of self-regard or confidence because NRE and someone cares about her and “she can save this one”).
They’ve been putting all the stressors on their relationship and now Mary has added one hell of an external one. If they’re going to make it through, they need to reduce that weight by more healthily approaching their relationship and their treatment of themselves.
So yeah, therapy and psychiatric medicine, lots and lots of it.
I’m calling that the falling leaf in the last panel means Amazigirl was in the tree the WHOLE TIME!
There is a list of people who could be considered qualified to lecture Ruth on her personal relationships and her wrong moves with them. Amber is pretty much at the bottom next to Joe although for very different reasons.
Duplicating school keys is a violation of IU rules! Billie must be punished!
Definitely the worst thing any character in the entire series has done.
I have a horrible feeling that Ruth will act out in some self-destructive way over this.
Aren’t those keys rather expensive?
The falling leaf symbolizes that Ruth, by being a dick, is now a little less Canadian.
She has been forsaken by the deities of her people. Now she will be besieged by irate moose, maple syrup will taste as ash in her mouth, and her favourite hockey team will never know victory.
Well I guess that last one isn’t really any different.
Is it just me, or is that last panel referencing a famous poem by e.e. cummings?
A lot of the people hating on Ruth need to familiarize themselves with her history. Alternate universe or not, Ruth is the one that sacrifices herself to protect others. Right now it seems like she’s trying to protect Billie from her mistakes.
Ruth has been the same character for, jeez, almost twenty years. She’s just more fleshed out here. Honestly y’all need to just step back and stop trying to psychoanalize a character in a comic strip.
The point I think that I should make is that we’re not doubting that Ruth is putting others before her own happiness and possibly even her survival. What we’re questioning is WHY she has this need to sacrifice herself, even when it is not strictly necessary. Why would she be so quick to make herself unhappy and disliked?
People are hating on Ruth right now because she told Billie that, by staying away from her for a bit so she could actually do her job to protect one of the students under her care, then that meant she was just totally abandoning her.
That’s a shit thing to do to your partner. I get that she vaguely means well but she should pick less horrible ways of expressing it.
¨Dozens of keys¨ Is that an innuendo for her being a slut?
Having nearly every action you make in your life revolving around -one- other person is pretty much the complete opposite of being a person that frequently enjoys sexual interactions with different people.
Looks like Ruth finally figured out the secret combo of irrationality, self-victimization and blame to actually successfully push Billie away. Great job, Ruth!
you know. Some times I get worried about people when I read these comments. I see people talking about how evil, despicable, <> Ruth, Billie, Mary, Carla, <> is, but I think that many of you are too quick to judge. Yeah, Sure, some characters have more bad points than others, but for the most part they are just humans who do both good and wrong. Yes, a large number of them are what you might consider “damaged” or “abnormal” but so far the only characters I’ve seen that could be considered irredeemably evil are Amber’s dad and Becky’s dad.
Sure. What Mary did was shitty, but shes a product of the same brainwashing factory as toedad. At best she’s an ignorant and unwitting victim of religious extreemism, at worst she’s a biggot, but she hasn’t tried/seriously threatened to murder someone.
As for Ruth? She’s led a shitty life and never learned how to cope. People may hate on her for what she’s doing to billie, but she’s doing it because in her mind it’s the only way she can protect the students in her hall from mary’s abuse, a case of doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Just because WE can think of a better way doesn’t mean Ruth can. We have more information than she does, for one, and for another she’s blinded by panic and we aren’t.
that didn’t post correctly. Inside the brackets was supposed to be ” negative adjective” and ” whatever disliked character”
Don’t fucking downplay evil. Mary and Ross are at a completely different level than anything with Ruth or Billie. (And Becky or Carla aren’t anything.)
“Toedad” is a psychopath. He is not the product of any upbringing. The whole comic is about Joyce (who is really Willis) and how she’s still a decent person despite that same upbringing.
Mary not being as bad as Ross is small comfort. Ross is in jail for kidnapping and attempted murder. Yeah, Mary’s “just a bigot,” but a bigot is about the worst thing you can be without breaking the law. There’s a reason why so many countries actually make “hate speech” an exception to freedom of speech.
(And she’s not “just a bigot.” She’s got the same Dark Tetrad traits that “ToeDad” has–the ones that define define evil. She’s just ToeDad before he goes crazy.)
People who go around and find excuses for this bullshit are ultimately enabling them. Yes, I know you want to fix them. So do I. But that doesn’t mean we have to pretend like what they are doing isn’t as bad as it is. Sympathy doesn’t mean ignoring evil.
The people treating Mary and Russ the way they do actually is one of the things that gives me hope. That when this happens in real life, they won’t just sit on the sides and make excuses.
Hell, even though I think they go off the deep end with Ruth, the fact that they recognize how abusive her relationship with Billie is gives me hope, as well. Hell, even people shitting on Amber (who I think is actually a good person) gives me hope.
Yes, I think Carla is annoying as hell and completely inconsiderate but Ruth is mentally ill and needs help not condemnation. Mary and Ross? They’re criminals who hide behind religion.
Okay. First. Get a grip. It is a comic – a work of fiction.
Second. I never said that toedad wasn’t evil. I never said amber’s dad wasn’t evil, And I NEVER said that Mary was right or justified in what she did. What i said was that those were the only two people so far that deserve the kind of vilification that people are piling on to other characters. Toedad is clearly beyond redemption, I’ll grant you that, But I still hold firm that Mary is almost as much a victim as she is a victimizer. Even still she is still MILES away from the level of Ross or Amber’s dad. I’m sorry, but if people vilifying people who are in need of help instead of hatred gives you hope, then you are full of the same kind of hatred and you are a sick person, and I hope that you go and get the help you need.
Ahahaha, Alt-text, I get your Legend of Zelda references.
So Ruth only has to change the lock again, then. Hell, it’s not like Billie won’t be able to pick it anyway, so there are no downsides.
Still don’t think it’s that easy. She put in a request for replacing a broken lock before. And it might get suspicious if it gets broken again.
Maybe someone who is good at finding old comics (like Cerberus–hint, hint) could find that comic. I’ll try, but since he doesn’t index his text, I may not find it.
Or maybe I just picked it up from the comments, and it’s just an assumption. All I found was a comic where her key doesn’t work.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/changed/
However…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/pick-2/
and that is Amazigirl’s phone.
Damnit. That is Amazigirl’s leaf.
And that right there is why my phone’s photo album has a solid red rectangle. It’s easier to find things in the dark under a red light because it doesn’t rob you of your night vision.
What a delightful little lifehack!
Billy is like: Haha, like I only have the one key.
Billie: tellings facts straight to the face.
THERE’S SOMEONE IN THAT DAMN TREE!!