Turns out when Billie decides to do something, she really means it. And good for you getting back into the swing of things Ruth. I’m sure those people weren’t using their femurs anyway.
I think Nono is giving the parameters for the callback, using “>” as an arrow symbol, not a “greater than”. In the original (9/27/2010), Ruth had to track down Sarah, who was eating pizza instead of attending the floor meeting. In this one (2/6/2020), she’s going after Nash, who is studying.
That last panel is a thing of beauty. And I’m noticing Billie’s still wearing her glasses into the hallway – either she didn’t want to explain the ‘chose to show no signs of vulnerability and now they worship me’ thing to Ruth or she’s ready to have Forest Quad see her as a real person and not Perfect Cheerleader.
If it’s the latter, proud of you, Billie. If it’s the former… eh, I’ll still take it.
That was literally the fourteenth strip of the entire webcomic. The first strip of this storyline was a flashback to the picture Joyce tapes to the wall in the eleventh strip. So it might be the longest callback in all of Dumbing of Age, though not the earliest.
Yeah, I’m thinking still in the running in the old universe, you’d have the Mike explanation, the Drama Tag arc (said arc being itself incited by romantic tension that’d been running since It’s Walky), and Soggies May Rule. Cross-universe… I mean, every couple years Danny ends up talking on the phone about Joe and consequences, and we get references to both ‘Act with integrity’ and ‘It was the best I could do’ pretty frequently. But those are such long-running and frequent references I feel like they don’t count the same way. They’re just there, part of the framework the way Ethan hooking up with Drew doesn’t feel like a reference.
Though I do submit for approval Mike’s current last strip here and ask you all to compare it to his final strip in It’s Walky. I still swear it’s deliberate and that one ISN’T used that frequently beyond general Mike nickel jokes.
*shakes at the Walkyverse* Darn you≤a title=” And I won’t let you make Billie, Sarah or Nash do the same thing to Ruth! Next semester maybe, but NO!”>, alt!
It’s hard not to cheer for Ruth actually functioning something like a human being, but you’re right about her behavior being pretty bad – then and now. Can’t just go dragging people around or threatening them or however she gets grown adults to stop what they’re doing and go to her meeting. Doubt you could get away with it in real life.
I frigging love fifth-panel Ruth, there. Probably reading more into the expression than was meant, but it just seems like she’s getting to embrace her own Ruthness without all the emotional baggage that shaped it for the first time in her life and it feels gooood.
The sword of Dad-a-skeeze is hanging over Mike’s head …
(That ain’t no crime!)
And I’ve got a feelin’ Willis will be cuttin’ the thread …
(That ain’t no crime!)
Oh, woe is he! Mike is such a mystery
Planned a hero-to-be,
But he’s at the start of a pretty big downer!
-sung to the tune of Rocky’s theme from Rocky Horror Picture Show
And he who is answering in the form of a Broadway musical is completely insane so don’t listen to anything he says or sings because it’s totally wrong and seriously stop listening right this minute crap you know too much.
As the guy who had to have his femur re-attached to the rest of his leg (and got a lovely set of scars in the process) way back in 2001, can I just say that the concept is… unsettling… for me. Especially when someone mentions femurs “tingling”…
Had my computer not bricked itself, you would all be looking at a shopped image of Panel 4 as my Grav. Except Billie would be saying “Guess you better f*** me” and Ruth would be a Nobody.
OT: I do hate people who play with the democratic process. The Liberals and parts of the CDU in Germany just made themselves stirrup holders of the fascists. No matter how it plays out, the fascist will point to themselves as being treated unfairly or they will have distinct influence on the lawmaking process in Thüringen. It’s a win-win for them, a loose-loose for everybody else. Just like the Republicans playing with the impeachment process.
Unrelated to the current page, but who’s going to be our next Big Bad once the Dumbass Duo is finally gone? I know who I’m hoping for, but I’d like to hear other’s thoughts on this matter.
Robin’s likely to be more of a growth/redemption arc than a full on Big Bad, though that doesn’t mean she won’t play a role as such along the way.
There’s still Carol (and John and that whole church crowd). They’ll be tied into the fallout from this one though.
Clint will come back in a starring villain role at some point, though I don’t know if it’ll be a superhero fisticuffs story or not.
I’m personally expecting some serious Carol stuff coming to a head around Thanksgiving or winter break, myself – too many plot threads building with Joyce’s conflict with the evangelical culture and Jocelyne eventually coming out for them to NOT eventually explode. (Thanksgiving just strikes me as rife for interpersonal drama in general.)
Raidah has also made it clear she’s going to hold a grudge against Joyce for the breakup, and while she’s not nearly as dangerous as the Evil Parents, the ‘Joyce was acting badly in this’ factor and possible tie-ins back to Sarah and Dana will both make that interesting. (Similarly, while I hesitate to call her a villain, the reveal that Rachel and Ruth were roommates freshman year seems prime for Rachel to be an active antagonist.)
On another cast axis we have Linda Walkerton. She’s already affecting the twins without being present in the pressure she puts on them, and I expect she will not be pleased about current grade situations. (Or Walky not fully applying himself to be the doctor she wants him to be.) Her ties to the Dean also seem like something that’ll come up again.
I’m also not sure Asher and his grandfather are going to be exclusively contained to the Blaine plot – while Asher may want out of that life, I suspect it might not be so easy and Sal might be willing to intervene.
And there’s always Mary. There will always be Mary. Plus any FUTURE revelations we haven’t anticipated yet.
I’d meant to mention Mary. Asher and his family will likely play a future role, but I was leaving them out, since their role in the Toedad and the Blaine drama hasn’t played out yet. They’re part of this arc and unlikely to be the next.
I wasn’t thinking of Raidah or Rachel, though I think both will fall more in the way of intercast drama than actual villains.
The Asher subplot’s definitely going to be part of the Evil Dads one, I’m just not entirely convinced it’ll ONLY be part of theirs because Willis.
And agreed with Raidah and Rachel. I listed them because they’ll be primarily antagonist roles, but neither of them is likely to need dealing with by superhero antics.
Yes. Rachel is an antagonist because she won’t put up with Ruth’s abuse of power shit. Speaking of I really would like her to walk by while Ruth is bullying Billie’s roommates. Good luck explaining how you’ve changed when you’re reveling in being Ruthless.
Yeah, there was a reason why I used the antagonist term for her specifically – all the adults I listed merit villain proper as actively in the wrong, and Mary has no redeeming qualities and exists solely to stir trouble for the cast.
Raidah and Rachel are both reasonably rounded characters who are right about at least one thing that puts them in conflict with the main cast. Rachel went too far with her speech (even ignoring Joyce and Amber as splash damage, that was REALLY dangerous to say to someone who’s just been released from the hospital for suicidal ideation,) but she had a clear reason to be upset and I suspect the flashbacks are going to reveal some SERIOUS shit from Ruth. Raidah, meanwhile, is right in the Joyce situation and may have known about Dana’s dad not being safe in ways Sarah wasn’t privy to. (That said, ignoring Sarah’s concerns that, say, having weed in her dorm could actually jeopardize SARAH’S enrollment – and possibly even legal trouble – puts her further in the wrong than Rachel in my book. Also the undercurrent of ableism and elitism.) They’re antagonists – because like it or not, Ruth’s more central to the cast than Rachel – but they’re not actually villains.
Oh, one more I forgot: The mention of Dargon Chesterfield reminds me that over in the Joyce and Walky reruns, Willis just mentioned something to the effect of eventually seeing at least one of the Billingsworth parents here eventually. Whenever that happens they will DEFINITELY not be likable.
Antagonist does not mean ‘bad guy’, it means ‘against the protagonist’. The protagonist can be the bad guy or even the worst person in the situation. At this moment though, we have only seen the worst thing Rachel has done to Ruth (screaming in a depressed person’s face how people never change is not what one would call a wise move especially when such a comment did have splash damage for both Joyce and Amber) and not whatever originally started Rachel’s distaste for Ruth that is both strong enough to hate her but not enough to move away to a different dorm or to you know, actively do anything to stop the abuse of power she is glad to complain about to whoever will listen except you know, people who could do something about it.
But yeah, Rachel is currently an antagonist to Ruth and will likely have more prominence later as we get more flashbacks for them and learn the truth of what happened when they were roommates.
Honestly, gotta say that if I was one of the people in that dorm and Ruth, an RA from a completely different building, came up to me like that, I would just tell her to go pound sand and walk away.
I really like how her character has grown over the course of the story, but man, how she acted at the beginning, I would not have put up with that from anybody.
Two long low mounds are left, the shovel dropped to the forest floor as Mike walks off away from town. As he walks he pulls out his wallet and tosses his id and cell phone.
In his hand he holds Amazi-Girl’s mask, he ties it on as he is lost in the underbrush
In a few weeks report come in from Cincinatti about a violent vigilante killing an attempted rapist
The next week he is seen dealing with a gas station robbery outside Buffalo.
@PB I got tired of telling non-stories about Mike bleeding out unnoticed in an alley. Until the story gets back to it I’m gonna go with Masked Mike as a “Legend of Kung-Fu/Incredible Hulk” style wandering vigilante
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oh god
“I need my femurs to live!”
Look on her femur collection, ye mighty, and despair.
**points at Ana**
I’ll have what she’s having.
Nash: “That’s weird, never had my femurs spontaneously start tingling before.”
Oh Cheese! That got an honest-to-Cheese rolling laugh out of me.
Oops. Used the wrong email on that.
Dumbing of Age Book 10: [just the last panel, really]
Where can we vote for the next magnet to be Creepy Ruth Silhouette that we can position looming ominously behind our other magnets?
Probably here, at least until it’s Kickstarter time.
Also, seconded!
I’m currently on a Mortal Kombat kick, so I kinda want to call it Ruth Saibot.
Thirded!
DoA Book 10: The ghastly floor meeting
Playing hooky Nash? This won’t do.
“Why do I hear the Kill Bill siren?”
Ruth has it on her phone for just such an occasion.
I remember when that was the opening of the “Ironside” TV show theme.
Hey, you’re and olde Phart too!
Your femurs await…
Turns out when Billie decides to do something, she really means it. And good for you getting back into the swing of things Ruth. I’m sure those people weren’t using their femurs anyway.
Pizza > studying
Sarah > Nash
While I agree, on principle, that Pizza is superior to studying, that kind of thought process is how you need up failing a year.
And fat.
I would know.
*End up
I think Nono is giving the parameters for the callback, using “>” as an arrow symbol, not a “greater than”. In the original (9/27/2010), Ruth had to track down Sarah, who was eating pizza instead of attending the floor meeting. In this one (2/6/2020), she’s going after Nash, who is studying.
Is this what people mean when they talk about a power couple?
That last panel is a thing of beauty. And I’m noticing Billie’s still wearing her glasses into the hallway – either she didn’t want to explain the ‘chose to show no signs of vulnerability and now they worship me’ thing to Ruth or she’s ready to have Forest Quad see her as a real person and not Perfect Cheerleader.
If it’s the latter, proud of you, Billie. If it’s the former… eh, I’ll still take it.
Wanting them to meet Ruth strongly suggests the latter.
“they can never really know me without knowing you.”
Agreed. I also went back to yesterday’s comic after writing that comment and realized she wasn’t wearing glasses then. This is intentional.
Nash senses a disturbance in the Force.
(This post brought to you by “Get It While You Can” by Gary O’.)
Callback is to: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/pizza/
That’s from 10 years ago, dang. Not the longest callback Willis has done, for sure, but maybe in the top 10?
That was literally the fourteenth strip of the entire webcomic. The first strip of this storyline was a flashback to the picture Joyce tapes to the wall in the eleventh strip. So it might be the longest callback in all of Dumbing of Age, though not the earliest.
Even counting callbacks to the previous universe, it’s still up there.
Yeah, I’m thinking still in the running in the old universe, you’d have the Mike explanation, the Drama Tag arc (said arc being itself incited by romantic tension that’d been running since It’s Walky), and Soggies May Rule. Cross-universe… I mean, every couple years Danny ends up talking on the phone about Joe and consequences, and we get references to both ‘Act with integrity’ and ‘It was the best I could do’ pretty frequently. But those are such long-running and frequent references I feel like they don’t count the same way. They’re just there, part of the framework the way Ethan hooking up with Drew doesn’t feel like a reference.
Though I do submit for approval Mike’s current last strip here and ask you all to compare it to his final strip in It’s Walky. I still swear it’s deliberate and that one ISN’T used that frequently beyond general Mike nickel jokes.
*shakes at the Walkyverse* Darn you≤a title=” And I won’t let you make Billie, Sarah or Nash do the same thing to Ruth! Next semester maybe, but NO!”>, alt!
*shakes at the code*
Double darn.
And Ruth is wearing Billie’s shirt from that strip.
Hey, not her charges, not her problem.
I enjoy the character arc of the comments section moving from calling Ruth’s RA behavior abusive to cheering it’s return. This is great 🙂
It’s hard not to cheer for Ruth actually functioning something like a human being, but you’re right about her behavior being pretty bad – then and now. Can’t just go dragging people around or threatening them or however she gets grown adults to stop what they’re doing and go to her meeting. Doubt you could get away with it in real life.
Honestly, I’m much more worried when they are out of sight than if they are being weird where I can see them.
what are they up to?
My college dorms had paper-thin walls. Maybe they heard the whole thing and decided to up and leave.
We all know they’re not on that level of respecting boundaries
Abduction plans.
… is this really a relapse into abusing her authority if she doesn’t have official authority?
Saved by a technicality.
You know what, fuck it, meeting time.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/pizza/
This strip just makes me 5 kinds of happy!
And that is how you start a femdom doujinshi… or a slasher movie.
Or… both?
Pretty sure I’ve actually read a doujinshi about a femdom serial killer before… there’s a lot of fascinating Ero Guro doujin around though.
COLLECT THE FEMURS!
Collect them all!
Each sold separately, batteries not included, you put it together!
I frigging love fifth-panel Ruth, there. Probably reading more into the expression than was meant, but it just seems like she’s getting to embrace her own Ruthness without all the emotional baggage that shaped it for the first time in her life and it feels gooood.
I agree, but I’d say “embrace her own ruthlessness”.
No femurs are safe tonight.
Just so the topic doesn’t get lost and forgotten — WHAT’S THE WORD ON MIKE AND DIABOLIC DUO OF DAD-DOM??
let’s please not call it dad-dom
Doomsdads? There’s gotta be a dastardly cursed moniker for them nevertheless
I’m still sold on calling them “Toedad and the Blaine”.
One is a doofus, the other’s inane.
I’ll just leave this here.
See what this dangling Mike’s fate in front of us is doing? It’s causing us to make up terms like Dad-dom!
Mike Dad-domed your dad for a dime.
The sword of Dad-a-skeeze is hanging over Mike’s head …
(That ain’t no crime!)
And I’ve got a feelin’ Willis will be cuttin’ the thread …
(That ain’t no crime!)
Oh, woe is he! Mike is such a mystery
Planned a hero-to-be,
But he’s at the start of a pretty big downer!
-sung to the tune of Rocky’s theme from Rocky Horror Picture Show
Well, I wasn’t gonna, but now that you’ve said it…
I’m still going with Sinister Sires.
“He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.”
He who mumbles might have known, but has forgotten.
And he who is answering in the form of a Broadway musical is completely insane so don’t listen to anything he says or sings because it’s totally wrong and seriously stop listening right this minute crap you know too much.
This ain’t your gosh dang wing, Ruth!
Then again, the intimidation is apropos.
Oh shit this is gonna be good.
NASH: “No! That’s my femur! I need that! Put it back! Put it baaack!!!“
“Look, it’s very simple. Your femur is coming to the meeting. Whether the rest of you comes along with it is up to you.”
As the guy who had to have his femur re-attached to the rest of his leg (and got a lovely set of scars in the process) way back in 2001, can I just say that the concept is… unsettling… for me. Especially when someone mentions femurs “tingling”…
My problem, not yours, carry on!
Had my computer not bricked itself, you would all be looking at a shopped image of Panel 4 as my Grav. Except Billie would be saying “Guess you better f*** me” and Ruth would be a Nobody.
So Ruth can also teleport, just like Joyce. But while Joyce’s teleport seems to be in response to friendship and love, Ruth’s works based on fear.
We’ve got the Skilled hero with Amber, and Mike has (had?) manipulation powers.
Dina has a SEP (somebody else’s problem) field.
What other super powers have we seen so far?
Walky has an ‘Iron Gut’ omnivoric mutation and Danny seems to have a localised ultra-bad-luck probability distortion field that only affects himself.
Excellent! I’ll add them to the list!
Is it weird that the last panel made me go, “Yay!”?
Yes, but that’s okay because we’re all weird here to a greater or lesser degree!
Seriously though, Ruth in the last panel is a good design for a stalker style enemy in an indie horror game.
OT: I do hate people who play with the democratic process. The Liberals and parts of the CDU in Germany just made themselves stirrup holders of the fascists. No matter how it plays out, the fascist will point to themselves as being treated unfairly or they will have distinct influence on the lawmaking process in Thüringen. It’s a win-win for them, a loose-loose for everybody else. Just like the Republicans playing with the impeachment process.
You thought Billie was Alpha… now meet the Femur Goddess.
Come on, don’t go bother the whole floor with power abuse to introduce your GF, wtf
Unrelated to the current page, but who’s going to be our next Big Bad once the Dumbass Duo is finally gone? I know who I’m hoping for, but I’d like to hear other’s thoughts on this matter.
Robin
Robin’s likely to be more of a growth/redemption arc than a full on Big Bad, though that doesn’t mean she won’t play a role as such along the way.
There’s still Carol (and John and that whole church crowd). They’ll be tied into the fallout from this one though.
Clint will come back in a starring villain role at some point, though I don’t know if it’ll be a superhero fisticuffs story or not.
I’m personally expecting some serious Carol stuff coming to a head around Thanksgiving or winter break, myself – too many plot threads building with Joyce’s conflict with the evangelical culture and Jocelyne eventually coming out for them to NOT eventually explode. (Thanksgiving just strikes me as rife for interpersonal drama in general.)
Raidah has also made it clear she’s going to hold a grudge against Joyce for the breakup, and while she’s not nearly as dangerous as the Evil Parents, the ‘Joyce was acting badly in this’ factor and possible tie-ins back to Sarah and Dana will both make that interesting. (Similarly, while I hesitate to call her a villain, the reveal that Rachel and Ruth were roommates freshman year seems prime for Rachel to be an active antagonist.)
On another cast axis we have Linda Walkerton. She’s already affecting the twins without being present in the pressure she puts on them, and I expect she will not be pleased about current grade situations. (Or Walky not fully applying himself to be the doctor she wants him to be.) Her ties to the Dean also seem like something that’ll come up again.
I’m also not sure Asher and his grandfather are going to be exclusively contained to the Blaine plot – while Asher may want out of that life, I suspect it might not be so easy and Sal might be willing to intervene.
And there’s always Mary. There will always be Mary. Plus any FUTURE revelations we haven’t anticipated yet.
Yeah, Mary can only stay dormant for so long.
Asher’s grandpa seems prime to be the most dangerous, life and limb wise, if he gets involved.
I’d meant to mention Mary. Asher and his family will likely play a future role, but I was leaving them out, since their role in the Toedad and the Blaine drama hasn’t played out yet. They’re part of this arc and unlikely to be the next.
I wasn’t thinking of Raidah or Rachel, though I think both will fall more in the way of intercast drama than actual villains.
Ah good, I was hoping other people wanted to see that sociopathic puppet master get what’s coming to her as well.
The Asher subplot’s definitely going to be part of the Evil Dads one, I’m just not entirely convinced it’ll ONLY be part of theirs because Willis.
And agreed with Raidah and Rachel. I listed them because they’ll be primarily antagonist roles, but neither of them is likely to need dealing with by superhero antics.
Yes. Rachel is an antagonist because she won’t put up with Ruth’s abuse of power shit. Speaking of I really would like her to walk by while Ruth is bullying Billie’s roommates. Good luck explaining how you’ve changed when you’re reveling in being Ruthless.
Antagonist doesn’t necessarily mean wrong. It just means against the protagonist.
Yeah, there was a reason why I used the antagonist term for her specifically – all the adults I listed merit villain proper as actively in the wrong, and Mary has no redeeming qualities and exists solely to stir trouble for the cast.
Raidah and Rachel are both reasonably rounded characters who are right about at least one thing that puts them in conflict with the main cast. Rachel went too far with her speech (even ignoring Joyce and Amber as splash damage, that was REALLY dangerous to say to someone who’s just been released from the hospital for suicidal ideation,) but she had a clear reason to be upset and I suspect the flashbacks are going to reveal some SERIOUS shit from Ruth. Raidah, meanwhile, is right in the Joyce situation and may have known about Dana’s dad not being safe in ways Sarah wasn’t privy to. (That said, ignoring Sarah’s concerns that, say, having weed in her dorm could actually jeopardize SARAH’S enrollment – and possibly even legal trouble – puts her further in the wrong than Rachel in my book. Also the undercurrent of ableism and elitism.) They’re antagonists – because like it or not, Ruth’s more central to the cast than Rachel – but they’re not actually villains.
Oh, one more I forgot: The mention of Dargon Chesterfield reminds me that over in the Joyce and Walky reruns, Willis just mentioned something to the effect of eventually seeing at least one of the Billingsworth parents here eventually. Whenever that happens they will DEFINITELY not be likable.
Antagonist does not mean ‘bad guy’, it means ‘against the protagonist’. The protagonist can be the bad guy or even the worst person in the situation. At this moment though, we have only seen the worst thing Rachel has done to Ruth (screaming in a depressed person’s face how people never change is not what one would call a wise move especially when such a comment did have splash damage for both Joyce and Amber) and not whatever originally started Rachel’s distaste for Ruth that is both strong enough to hate her but not enough to move away to a different dorm or to you know, actively do anything to stop the abuse of power she is glad to complain about to whoever will listen except you know, people who could do something about it.
But yeah, Rachel is currently an antagonist to Ruth and will likely have more prominence later as we get more flashbacks for them and learn the truth of what happened when they were roommates.
I know is unlikely, but a vengeful Penny would be glorious. With a cameo by Jason’s father from England. Because of reasons. Or Brexit. Whatever.
*it’s* (damn!)
Ruth’s grandpa.
She’ll destroy them.
Hey Nash, someone on this floor I actually enjoy seeing.
I’m reading Book 8, and I just want to say that it’s a travesty that Agatha didn’t get a birthday party. A TRAVESTY!
I choose to believe her family was in town and took her for dinner and brownies, and that is why.
Headcanon.
That does sound lovely!
Honestly, gotta say that if I was one of the people in that dorm and Ruth, an RA from a completely different building, came up to me like that, I would just tell her to go pound sand and walk away.
I really like how her character has grown over the course of the story, but man, how she acted at the beginning, I would not have put up with that from anybody.
The season is coming.
Don’t encourage her. Seriously their floor RA might have something to say about this.
Best callback ever.
Billie seems to really enjoy the “Ruthless” side of Ruth, doesn’t she.
Starting to think the students weren’t entirely wrong to guess the relationship involved dominatrix shenanigans.
Confident Ruth is one of my favorite characters.
Meanwhile:
In a patch of woods outside town
Mike, bloody and bruised, finished shoveling
Two long low mounds are left, the shovel dropped to the forest floor as Mike walks off away from town. As he walks he pulls out his wallet and tosses his id and cell phone.
In his hand he holds Amazi-Girl’s mask, he ties it on as he is lost in the underbrush
In a few weeks report come in from Cincinatti about a violent vigilante killing an attempted rapist
The next week he is seen dealing with a gas station robbery outside Buffalo.
This may not be canon in the comic, but it will always be canon in my heart.
@PB I got tired of telling non-stories about Mike bleeding out unnoticed in an alley. Until the story gets back to it I’m gonna go with Masked Mike as a “Legend of Kung-Fu/Incredible Hulk” style wandering vigilante
And I am SO here for it.
Oh! I didn’t realize this was going to be FUN! >:D
This would be the worst time for Rachel to walk by and witness Ruth being Ruthless.
Uh, I think you misspelled BEST.
Ruthless brought to you by Kouta Hirano. (I couldn’t resist.)