wait have we been able to read any of her writing? I mean I’m not really defending a straight girl’s writing of m/m stuff but assuming we haven’t seen a sample, don’t discount fanfiction writers just because it’s fanfic.
I was willfully unclear on what “coming” meant, 1st semester freshman year. (As in I didn’t know the slang word.)
I’d read The Vagina Monologues, and could tell that coming was a big deal? but I was still mildly confused where all these ladies were going.
I know Jennifer’s her first name but how do we in the comments refer to her now. “Billie” as the tags say or “Jennifer” as she wants? I mean I’m gonna say “Jennifer” but the tags at least imply that’s not gonna last or is it just a convenience thing cause she’s been “Billie” for ten years. What do I do?!?!
Naw, she is in legit therapy, she told Ruth as such, back in August, this year. So, even if Asher was an Undergrad in Psychiatry/Psychology, there is no way he would be given patients, for treatment.
While I’m like 90% sure I wouldn’t get called out for still referring to Jennifer as Billie and I’m sure some people still will I do also know a lot of commenters come from backgrounds where consistently misnaming someone when they’ve expressed a preferred name is triggering. Especially just coming off a chapter where the first thing the new non binary character noted was their last roommates inability to respect their name choice. So it’s good to at least have some clarity on this.
This is half of it! The other half is that… There’s degrees on the morality of “call people what they want”? Like, using an old nickname for someone will *probably* bother them less than dead naming a trans person would. So, like, even though I’d be sus of someone who consistently called Jocelyne “Joshua” in the comments, someone calling Jennifer “Billie” probably is a lot less malicious.
Exactly. One the one hand, there’s the respecting a persons identity and how they want to be refered to, but also, there’s the history of a name being something that a person *earns*. In Ms. Billingsworth’s case, an aspect of her rebranding herself may be associated with distancing herself from her past behaviour and DUI. However, the people she met at IU and Walky were not part of the scene that she perpetrated her crime in, so why she’s distancing herself from them is less clear.
There may be a cultural element at play here (in our discussion), as in the west we typically value individual identity over family identity, whereas there exists a more traditionally eastern emphasis on family identity (to the point that family names are spoken before personal). Where and how one identity supercedes the other and the responsibilities that interplay between them is worth consideration, as well as the desire of people to distance themselves from their own pasts.
Jennifer being a fictional character and using her preferred name is also is a very safe way to practice being mindful about using people’s preferred names in general. For those who don’t have many out trans friends or fam in their life it can be a very easy mistake to make consistently (using their dead name, even with the best of intentions) so I’d suggest taking that opportunity to normalize thinking that way.
Jocelyne is also unique in that she isn’t out much so most of the characters who know her are likely to unknowingly dead name her. (Nb I’m not a patreon so I haven’t seen any of her bonus comics this is based on in comic stuff)
I mean, if it helps I’m like 90% certain she’ll have a story arc where whatever distance has developed between her and Walky and the rest of her friends gets bridged and she started accepting the nickname ‘Billie’ again.
I’m still not a fan of that tag change. DoA was my introduction to these characters (and I had a late start to it, compared to some other commenters), and I would’ve been surprises by Jocelyne’s reveal had it not been spoiled in her first appearance.
I get WHY DYW did it, but I still reserve my right to saltiness.
Amen! And amen.
Just for the record, I’m appalled. There’s real character growth, and then there’s yanking my chain. To what purpose? To show that she wasn’t Billie all along? To erase her past? To show he made a mistake? To confuse who she is, or confuse where she’s going? Was he naming her Billie to needle someone they know and got called out? This Makes NO sense to me.
And doesn’t have to, it’s their (The Willis’) show.
Perhaps it will become clear as we see more of Jennifer? That it’s not all spelled out in the first strip where the change is referenced isn’t a bad thing.
So, Billie hasn’t regressed…. Billie actually DID get better.
So that means two things…..
1) Ruth actually DID “lose” her (and if Rachel did have anything to do with it, her shoving it in Ruth’s face is uber-evil)
2) Billie isn’t with Asher because he’s a bad boy. It’s cause she actually thinks he’s good. Which is super concerning and not at all an arc later on.
As far as most the cast knows, he turned over a new leaf. None of them know what he did with the mob.
My spicy theory/take is that he called the hit on Blaine after he found out Blaine had lied to him, and that he did it specifically to help the cast members, and to try to make up for the role he played in the first place. The morality is obviously…questionable, but I think his intentions were good. And…Amber and AG thought they were going to have to kill him before it would ever stop, and historical evidence (Ross getting out of prison and showing right back up again, WITH Blaine) wasn’t exactly encouraging.
The other reason to kill Blaine of course is that Blaine was blackmailing him. With a good excuse to kill Blaine without giving him a chance to talk to Gramps, there’s no longer a threat of him spilling the bean about Asher stealing from the mob.
I’m still not totally convinced he called the hit (or at least, knew for sure it would be a murder). Maybe he contacted some goon directly for it, but I kind of assumed he told his gramps some stooge was blackmailing him (reporting Blaine before Blaine reports him also seems like a good way to make it look like Blaine is trying to get himself out of trouble by accusing Asher), maybe with an update on what ended up happening with the blackmail.
He’d know there was a good chance it would end in murder, of course, but they could have just beat the shit outta him and told him to stay away from the boss’ family
Unlikely he even hinted at the blackmail, but just reported that Blaine was using family resources in an unauthorized high-profile crime and needed to be shut up before he got questioned by the cops.
I doubt he called the hit directly himself, but it may well have gone through him, since someone reported to him when it was done.
Wait hold up. I thought Billie’s whole deal was that she felt like she was being left behind/couldn’t keep up with Ruth’s recovery and struggles to be better. And now we’re finding out she willingly got therapy? Why the hell did she and Ruth split?
(of course there’s also the possibility of it just having been brought up that staying in a relationship with someone you at one time had a suicide pact with might not be the healthiest thing)
Is Asher a sociopath? He’s done shitty things, but he doesn’t seem to be incapable of empathy or remorse. Actually a pretty consistent character trait of his in the few appearances he’s made has been guilt for previous actions.
The truth is that there’s just not enough information yet. This is why a lot of people are frustrated by the time skip cause we did in fact miss out on pretty significant moments. The breakup probably being the biggest aside from Mike’s death. We don’t even know what Jennifer really means by “therapy” yet. We would like to assume professional help but “therapy” could mean anything without context.
What I do know is that I don’t trust Asher. That is all.
What we know about Asher is troubling. He’s at minimum an accomplice to both kidnapping and murder, and at maximum, he’s an accomplice to kidnapping and a murder as well as guilty of first degree murder.
I have to disagree here… though I can understand the argument that ridding the world of evil people may be okay, this murder was done for the wrong reason (the guy was a liability), and the general improvement his dead may bring is only a byproduct.
The result may be the same, but I strongly believe that the motive matters when counting points.
Well, Asher’s motive wasn’t him being a liability, it was to keep him from being able to blackmail Asher because seriously, Asher will DIE if it gets out he stole that money from the mob.
Yes, but’s it’s a key point that Asher wasn’t a willing accomplice to kidnap or murder, Blaine had to force him into it. And the person he did murder was Blaine, the guy that forced him into being an accomplice. Not saying he’s definitely good, but there’s still room for him to shake out as ‘basically decent guy who did some shitty things in past and got forced into a shitty situation by Blaine’.
One of the strips before the timeskip had her come back after attending therapy for the first time seeming happy about how it went. It’s why my current theory is that Billie both made real progress in her self-image yet also now commits to some of her worst behaviours more confidently like you know, spending all of her time with her partner while shutting out every other single person for the most part. Who has time for siblings anyway amiright? (I say that jokingly, as I would make time for any of my siblings in a heartbeat if asked.)
Sometimes when two people who find each other when their both in low places then grow together, find that they also grow apart. Can’t really speculate since we know nothing after the time skip, but it’s feasible. I’ve been there. Sometimes being in a better place means no longer being together no matter how much you want to be.
Not that I like the whole Asher situation or anything cause I don’t. Billie and Ruth was my favorite relationship in this comic and I don’t think a single relationship has lasted so far.
Becky and Dina are still going strong. In fact they are the only relationship that seems to have survived first semester. This is probably one of the more accurate things about college life. Most starting relationships don’t last.
Actually I think the background lesbian poly group is still going and we have no evidence (or interest probably) in whether Mary’s still making out with that one guy that could still be a thing.
Maybe they both realized that their relationship had an extremely toxic beginning, what with Ruth stealing Billie’s stuff and messing it up then forcing her into a kiss.
(It might be a hot take but I never liked the Billie/Ruth ship for that main reason so I must admit to being pleased by this turn of events)
I don’t think a toxic beginning necessarily means it’s a bad relationship. They didn’t continue that pattern and had gotten a lot better. They seemed in a good place when we last saw them before the time skip.
Sometimes therapists ‘get it’ and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they round up your ideas for you to look at in the corral (good), and sometimes they bring their own ideas to the corral, passing them off as yours (Bad/evil). If the therapist didn’t hear Jennifer say that Ruth actively tried to get Jennifer to stop drinking and get help, the Therapist may have seen Ruth as destructive.
He literally sees his childhood friend going onto a different name, a different personality, and now dresses completely different over the semester. So I don’t really blame Walky for being rather assholey to the point of not understanding that people change throughout time. And it seems that Billie/Jennifer is having some rather regretful decisions on the past that she used to have. It’s clearly affecting her on a big level where she even states: Hey. It’s time for a change. It’s time for a new me. And I have to be better. Even if that means leaving my old pals behind. Also Walky is gonna become a complete college drop out for not accepting how the real world works.
Following her tried and true modus operandi, she’s going to try and box up the last chapter of her life so she never has to address it again.
– Fall in with the high school popular clique, bully her childhood friend/pseudo-sibling to maintain appearances. Meet Billie, alpha bongo cheerleader and problem solver.
– Partying leads to drinking leads to a DUI and alienating the high school popular clique. Get rejected by the college popular clique and cheerleaders, fall into a relationship with another depressed alcoholic. Meet Billie, disgraced former cheerleader, problem causer, half of a lesbian suicide pact.
– Uh-oh, her relationship built on mutually assured destruction and a lopsided power balance got found out! Surprise, she’s moving to a new dorm. A clean slate! “Take two”! Meet Billie, Queen of the Nerds, at least until it turns out other people from the old dorm show up.
– Stuff happens, relationship from the Disgraced Former Cheerleader chapter ends. Now meet Jennifer, pillion motorcycle rider.
Honestly, I’m more surprised that everyone involved in the kidnapping/murder storyline isn’t going through some sort of therapy.
But this sharp a change in “Billie”, in such a short period of time – I have to wonder if she’s getting good therapy, or someone is just telling her what she wants to hear.
Oooh, good catch! Yeah, that’s… definitely a pattern of behavior with her, which does make it more worrisome. (Also, we know even though she almost certainly doesn’t that Asher has serious mob ties, and hasn’t been as successful breaking free of them as he told Sal he wanted to be. I think he was at least sincere then – you don’t steal over $100,000 from your mob boss grandpa if you DON’T want to get out – but Blaine’s blackmail definitely brought him back towards the fold one way or another. At the VERY least, he reached out to Lester, but it seems way more likely he ended up a go-between, or that Gramps knew he’d stolen the money and will forgive a little teenage rebellion in the name of education. Assuming he comes home when he’s done, of course. Lester wasn’t going to make that hit without Gramps’s approval, after all. Regardless of the how, that is GUARANTEED to come crashing down sooner or later, and I’d prefer Jennifer not be in the blast radius when it does.)
That’s uh… interesting. If Billie actually did attend therapy and is doing better then I’m happy for her. On the other hand, if she didn’t attend therapy or only went through the motions of it, then I’m concerned by this behavior.
Nah, but they are more friendly than before. Joyce is no longer jealous of him, for starters. Also, they were kidnapped together and Walky’s refusal to relent to the situation probably helped Joyce cope.
I think it’s less flirting and more becoming acclimated to Walky. After all he does have a similar personality to her best friend in the entire world after Dorothy.
I admit my ability to understand what the hell is going on here is limited by the fact I have always been the dorky left-behind ex-friend in this exchange. Anytime I’ve tried to change seriously nobody believes me anyway.
I’m worried she didn’t actually go to therapy, or that she went through the motions of therapy while not actually changing anything. But if she did go to therapy and has gotten better then I wish her well.
Bikes are good therapy. Time to be alone with your thoughts. (As long as said thoughts aren’t destructive. If they are, it’s bad therapy and you should seek out the regular kind instead.)
Has anyone yet asked what’s up with Jennifer’s eyebrows? Is she filling them in now? Did her newfound relationship generate some extra hair follicles? Did she previously pluck them into one millimeter thick lines and has now given up that habit?
Put me in the camp of “this ‘all new, all different, all better’ Jennifer is either lying about how much better she’s doing or in denial about her issues and, if she even went to therapy, just said the things the therapist needed to hear and learned how to fake being okay, and this is all going to come crashing down later.” If only because I’m not sure how much meat is on the “and now she’s all better” bone, story-telling wise.
Usually it’s a process that can take ages and people who go through it may lose old friends and gain new ones. Nobody said she’s all better right away. Not even her. She’ll need time to find her feet. Also, I’m not sure one who is spending all her time with someone else is necessarily gotten much better, but it’s probably a step up from doing that AND being an alcoholic.
Okay, how about this. She wasn’t wearing glasses till she got off the bike and wasn’t so much ghosting people as not seeing them except as blobs. Walky was unmistakable when he started mocking her goodbyes with Asher, but was worth ignoring on that basis.
Maybe Billie is better, but the fact that she seems to be trying to ignore Walky and most of the friends that she made in the previous semester makes me suspicious that she isn’t actually as better as she wants people to think.
I agree with that. This is my current thinking too of ‘better in one or two ways doesn’t mean better in all ways or confronting her every flawed way of thinking’.
I feel like saying “wee-wee juice” is way more explicit, but then again, I don’t feel like typing the other word. It’s definitely a funnier thing to say
I got all confused when I was trying to update appearance counts on the scoreboard, and Billie’s tag didn’t work.
Anyway, I vote Joyce just gets everyone to start calling Fuckdamn Cumshitter “Fuckdamn Cumshitter” all the time. That’d teach him. Maybe she could even get Amber to correct his student records.
Now there’s a question. If some jackass jokingly insists on being called something stupid (like Ghostfondle Humperdink, Jiggleocity, or Tyler, for example) to make fun of someone changing their name, would it be bullying for that person’s social circle to then refer to them by that name?
With that, Walky would have one because it would force Joyce to say those words, and his whole point here is making fun of Joyce‘s hangup about those words.
Grrr, I means to write „won“ not „one“ I the first line and now I don’t get a cursor the change that word. I sometimes hate touch devices.
Been awhile since I’ve posted. Not sure if I’m using the correct login info. Might as well test it on a strip where Walky isn’t being shown in the best light (which, admittedly, is most strips involving Walky).
Asher may have helped with the kidnapping, everyone knew Blaine’s plan was shitty and he would get caught (Unless Asher actually requested the murder after the whole van driving in the campus, but that’s something for later). That being said, let’s see how Asher interacted with Sal and Walky/Amber.
He got punched in the face by Walky and just told him to back off. That on itself makes him a nice enough lad imo, because seriously, he could have kicked his ass. And with Sal, despite being a little flirty, he had a good time and even confessed that he got some of his granpa’s money to pay tuition. That’s… not the kind of stuff I’d tell someone, but he tells that to Sal of all people.
Asher may be an actual ok lad, his mob conections are what makes him dangerous… But other than that?
Genuine question, while I like Billie and Ruth, why do people think they’re the best thing for each other? Granted, Asher isn’t exactly a step up but that’s another story. I mean, almost everything in their relationship was either toxic or just borderline abusive. I mean didn’t Ruth basically bully Billie at first?
It always felt to me later on that they were too codependent on each other. Like neither one was going to get better as long as the other one was around. Neither one wanted to get better for themselves, they wanted to get better for the other one. And while that may seem good, was it really?
Everything about this situation seems complicated and while I think Billie is certainly in the wrong for dating Asher, I do think that if the therapy thing is true for both of them that in the long run it’s better for both Ruth AND Billie to just stay friends, rather than a couple.
Personally, I hope this just ends well for Billie. I feel like for as shitty a person that she can sometimes be, she deserves some sort of self improvement and happiness, which I don’t think she’ll get from Asher.
I don’t think many people think they are the “best thing” for each other, I feel like most people agree that their relationship was pretty toxic and fed into both of their problems pretty significantly. I just think people liked the flawed relationship and are particularly against the Ashifer ship for reasons you probably agree with.
This and the ending of the previous storyline involving her pretty much bait-and-switched us. The last time we saw Jennifer, she was doing well and the future of Ruth x Billie was pretty hopeful and moving to a better place. And now it is Dead On Arrival and we will likely see flashbacks to why eventually, but right now it is just frustrating.
Personally I’m not of an opinion that they were best for each other, if Billie would date just about anyone else… maybe short of Ryan, I would be like “eh, life goes on.” With Asher however it’s no longer just a case of “he is bad for her”. With Asher Billie is entering a very dangerous territory involving ruthless people who kill out of convenience. It’s not even that Asher himself is a bad person, it’s that he is connected to a very dangerous part of the world which will be a threat to Billie.
Oh yeah, by no means do I think Asher is A+ material for Billie (or anyone for that matter). Especially with her relationship with Sal and Walky. And I feel like this relationship has a possibility of ending whatever good streak Billie might be having at the moment.
People think that these two characters are the semi-best thing for each other because of the constant fictional fantasy of destructive One True Pairing trope. We are lead to believe that garbage/trash fire people are great for each other when in reality they are very not.
The more I think about it? She’s gone. Jennifer Billingsworth doesn’t want to be Billie anymore and is slowly moving away from all the relationships and behaviours that characterised her. That includes leaving Ruth and maybe also slowly marginalising all of Billie’s friends and crypto-kin.
went to therapy for 3 months and doesn’t talk to her friends and broke up with her girlfriend. Something’s reaaaaaaaaal suspicious now. She’s an imposter, she probably vented after killing Billie.
Sounds to me like she is disassociating herself. By using her given name instead of her long held nickname she is saying I am no longer who I was. She didn’t really have friends before either. Hell I reread and still don’t get why she suddenly went to Ruth except to steal her booze. When they both had to become sober she started her disassociating.
This is one of those failed therapies by the way. It is like someone going for maybe a month and thinking they are cured.
Hot take: We don’t like this new Billie because she’s different than we’re used to. And we see her dating Asher as a complete negative because we’ve been all but programmed to hate him. I mean he smokes! He ratted Sal out. He’s got lingering connections to the Mob and lied about it. But the fact is that we simply don’t know enough about Asher to properly pass judgement.
At this point all Jenn’s done to really turn us on is ignore Walky as they walk in. Nobody else has even attempted to reach out to her so we can’t even pretend she’s freezing everyone out. And even if she is, she has the right to. People move on. I’m not still friends with everyone I was friends with in college. Because we all might want different things out of life. Would you rather someone stay the same and always be your friend or someone find comfort with who they are and move on in their life.
If I’m reading between the lines correctly, Billie as we knew her is dead. Jennifer is now. Just like how the Yoto who started reading Dumbing of Age in 2012 is dead. I killed him. And eventually the Yoto of 2025 will kill me. I think it’s easy to see her changes as inherently bad because of how theyre framed,which I think is intentional. But I don’t necessarily buy into the fact that it’s for the worse.
Though there was an earlier comment from Walky about Billie being elusive, so it’s not just Walky being annoying here. She seems to have blown off everyone in the old dorm too.
People do move on and friendships can fade, but Walky at least wasn’t just a college friend, but a childhood near brother. That’s not so lightly cast aside.
And breaking off contact with all your friends at once when you start a new relationship is rarely a good sign. Isolating yourself into dependence on the new romance? Not healthy.
Honestly, this seems like a pretty reasonable course for her life to take given the direction she was going beforehand. Jennifer said in the past she didn’t want the old Billie back (Chick-fil-A) and that she just wanted to be happy (drinking with Dorothy). As much as we may have rooted for it, the relationship with Ruth was always precarious at best; toxic at worst. While a healthy relationship can grow out of a start based on physical attraction, anger, and shared alcoholism, that is not a solid foundation for a relationship.
Moving on from friends you knew during a time that you didn’t like yourself and embracing a new you isn’t unreasonable either. A less healthy Billie would have relished in burning bridges with Walky. I’m friends with people I knew in high school (which may be the case with Billie and Asher), but not all of them. I didn’t keep touch with any of the friends I made during the first year and a half of college. The friends that stuck came later.
Remember that this is less than a year after she was in a drunk driving accident. It’s been ten years for us, but it was only last summer for her. Wanting to meet huge changes to be a better person and grow is very reasonable after that plus a lesbian suicide pact and spiral deeper into alcoholism.
It’s probably not all for the better. Asher is pretty unknown, maybe leaning a bit negative, but Billie doesn’t know about his involvement with the kidnapping, so that doesn’t necessarily reflect on her. Plus, even after making changes for the better, it would be both boring and unrealistic for her to be perfect and have no issues anymore.
My first instinct was definitely “Whoa what the hell?” when she first showed up, but hearing Jennifer speak up for herself and her situation, I’m cautiously optimistic.
I fear you are being overoptimistic.
If she hadn’t totally ignored the people she had been close to three months ago, but rather, acknowledged their in some way but made no move to talk to them, I could get behind your idea of what she is doing. But in combination with that, it seems like she is probably serious about the „Jennifer“ stuff but the line of „this is the way therapy change me is just her bullshitting, making excuses for behaving like an asshole.
Ok, the tag for the entity formerly known as Billie changed to Jennifer. So either Willis makes himself a lot of work to play with us, or she actually wants to go by Jennifer in the future.
Willis should every so often change someone’s name with no notice and go back and make the retroactive changes, not just to the tags, but also to the strip and the comments. By making a name change every month or two, in a couple of years all the major characters could have traded names and the process could start over again.
I guess the therapist helped her come to the conclusion that she needed to leave old things in the past to move forward and heal. Even her name. That would explain why Ruth insists that she didn’t lose Billie. Billie left as part of her healing, and Ruth wanted her to get better, so I can see her understanding the breakup.
Sure would be nice if “Call people what they want to be called” was applied more in real life. My birthname doesn’t even register in my head anymore, but it’s all anyone calls me outside of D&D, so I had to retrain myself to answer to it.
I literally just realised with this strip what felt off to me about DoA since the Time Skip – it felt like it offered us hope and instead we’ve got a dead Mike, a dead relationship, Lucy pining for someone that won’t notice her, Booster stepping on everyone’s toes, Dorothy going to Yale bomb, Joyce being an atheist bomb. And it feels like we are just waiting for answers, so strips that are not answers or direct catharsis are not interesting me as much as normal as there is a LOT to learn right now, and it honestly feels like with a lot of these emotional bombs, there’s not a whole lot to be happy about in DoA right now for me.
Jennifer long claimed not to be queer or bi or anything like that. She was normal and everyone was sometimes attracted to girls.
It’s also not clear she thought of her thing with Alice as “dating”, though they definitely were having sex. At least in between drunken flings with boys at parties.
Just because you’ve had a previous opposite sex relationship doesn’t mean you’re really bisexual. She could have just not yet accepted that she was only attracted to women.
It’s most likely, given the clues we have, that she is, but she wouldn’t have had to lie about the relationship.
So Ruth and Jennifer/Billie had a struggling relationship that is over. She’s probably avoiding Sal and Walky because of their shared history with Asher? (Three months seems like a long time to avoid the ‘I used to rob stores with your old roommate’ conversation.) Avoiding Joyce because she’s kinda nosey, avoiding Sarah because that’s how Sarah likes it. Not to mention… She lives in a different building, and coming to visit other friends with Ruth as an RA is awkward. Even without Billie/Jennifer being obsessed with image, it would be natural to drift apart a bit.
Walky regained the relationship with his genetic sister and lost the one with his oldest friend, who was like a sister… This is unfair. But, on the other hand, having the chance to break any relationship with a pretentious, obnoxious “I know all” like Billie sounds like a great thing that can only be good for him.
Hmmm. Sometimes people change, and that alone can be uncomfortable and confusing. Maybe she actually has changed for the better, but given every decision Bi- Jennifer has made up to now, I have a massive pile of doubts. I mean, the lesbian suicide pact was problematic, too, but Asher seems even worse? Time well tell, I guess.
Assuming EVERYTHING is in good faith (the pause before busy gives me pause), I’m just thinking Billie didn’t land with the greatest therapist in the world.
My personal experience with therapists is they always recommend a breakup if it’s anything non-traditional. Now, the situation with Ruth would have any therapist go with that recommendation, but a shitty person-therapist would probably just go “hm lesbian couple? yea that’s not good”
Even then, assuming everything in good faith also means assuming that Asher actively wants to be done with his criminal background but something in it has a hold over him. Is that the case? Dunno, because this isn’t Asher’s story. We’ll probably find out when he saves the day or causes the day to be worse.
‘cept she just had a character arc where she was just casually swearing as part of her early onset loss of faith.
So while “Cumshitter” I could see giving her pause, just because of the sexual nature, the complete regression to “I can’t say those words because Jesus” seems out of place here.
Like, I could see her telling him “Oh, grow up,” or words to that effect, but the deer-in-headlights reaction just straight up ignores where she’s been and what’s happened.
Yeah, if she is walking away from a toxic environment…..we all read the comic…kinda walking out of the comic would be healthy except she is with one of the villains without knowing it…but she doesn’t know it
Walky and Billie were childhood friends who both went by short versions of their last names. Is it possible that was something they started together or that one picked up from the other?
If so, then this change is a rejection of that friendship. Or at least could easily be seen that way by Walky.
Back in the old Walkyverse, David taunted Jennifer by calling her Billie (“a boy’s name”). Their babysitter, Ruth (yes, really), told her to call him “Walky” in retaliation, and the names stuck.
I still don’t really dig new Jennifer, because she’s leaving behind her found-family brother Walky and in-her-own-words best friend Joyce. For what? Hot dick? A supposed better self? The red flags are everywhere.
Not a Hubberdite, but I’m pretty sure that your Thetan is what needs to become clear in order to become operational, and not at all the the thing you need to be cleared of. It would be like going to an exorcist to be rid of your soul.
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I’m a little surprised Joyce knows that bodily function in the first place
and still won’t say what it is
“you still say 45 instead of Tr–” THAT’S DIFFERENT it’s like invoking Voldemort
There’s no way she didn’t at least learn that when she read Batman v. Superman, Dawn of Buttstuff.
She’s been reading Amber’s fanfics. She knows. Infact, it’s a quote.
Of course she would read that trash. There’s better BL in webtoon than whatever Amber writes, and I am a straight man.
She even called it literature in fancy lettering.
wait have we been able to read any of her writing? I mean I’m not really defending a straight girl’s writing of m/m stuff but assuming we haven’t seen a sample, don’t discount fanfiction writers just because it’s fanfic.
It included a scene where a guy “unfurled” his “massive sirloin”, his partner knowing that it would “soon be well-done”.
That sounds rather more painful than sexy. Not kinkshaming, but I think I’d rather keep the triple-digit temperatures away from my sensitive bits.
You don’t like your metaphors well done?
I have been calling him Agent Orange since shortly after the inaugural. Based on how everything he touches dies, and his bad make-up job.
Larfleeze is actually competent and has more depth, though.
Not the original Agent Orange.
Oh now I get it! I was wondering what 45 might mean and if triangles were somehow bad.
I have a buddy who summons up new names each time: Dolt 45, Hair Furor, Cheeto Hitler, Orange ShartStain…
Commander in Cheeto.
So, which was your favorite Willis comic, “It’s Fuckdamn” or “Shitpacked”?
I was willfully unclear on what “coming” meant, 1st semester freshman year. (As in I didn’t know the slang word.)
I’d read The Vagina Monologues, and could tell that coming was a big deal? but I was still mildly confused where all these ladies were going.
Whoops, wasn’t meant as a reply. Here, have some self-repressed-kid memories!
Much obliged, I collect those.
Jennifer? Therapy? I’m confused.
Also she’s still Billie in the tags so now I’m VERY confused!
Jennifer Billingsworth I believe … Billy for short, at least she used to be called that by her friends.
I know Jennifer’s her first name but how do we in the comments refer to her now. “Billie” as the tags say or “Jennifer” as she wants? I mean I’m gonna say “Jennifer” but the tags at least imply that’s not gonna last or is it just a convenience thing cause she’s been “Billie” for ten years. What do I do?!?!
Discover the joy of pronouns.
It’s a bit of a stretch, but based on her pleased expression in panel 2, I float the theory that Asher is her therapist.
Her therapist, or her “therapist”? Cause one’s a gross ethics violation, and the other’s just…. gross.
‘I’ll take “the rapists” for 500 Alex’.
The day ish mine!
Naw, she is in legit therapy, she told Ruth as such, back in August, this year. So, even if Asher was an Undergrad in Psychiatry/Psychology, there is no way he would be given patients, for treatment.
She’s a fictional character. You won’t be hurting the feelings of any real person if you call her by a different name. Call her whatever pleases you.
While I’m like 90% sure I wouldn’t get called out for still referring to Jennifer as Billie and I’m sure some people still will I do also know a lot of commenters come from backgrounds where consistently misnaming someone when they’ve expressed a preferred name is triggering. Especially just coming off a chapter where the first thing the new non binary character noted was their last roommates inability to respect their name choice. So it’s good to at least have some clarity on this.
I can’t upvote you (sirksome) so I’m doing this
I don’t think we have any other Jennifers in the comic do we? So people will probably know who you mean if you use either.
Jennie Bloodrose.
This is half of it! The other half is that… There’s degrees on the morality of “call people what they want”? Like, using an old nickname for someone will *probably* bother them less than dead naming a trans person would. So, like, even though I’d be sus of someone who consistently called Jocelyne “Joshua” in the comments, someone calling Jennifer “Billie” probably is a lot less malicious.
Exactly. One the one hand, there’s the respecting a persons identity and how they want to be refered to, but also, there’s the history of a name being something that a person *earns*. In Ms. Billingsworth’s case, an aspect of her rebranding herself may be associated with distancing herself from her past behaviour and DUI. However, the people she met at IU and Walky were not part of the scene that she perpetrated her crime in, so why she’s distancing herself from them is less clear.
There may be a cultural element at play here (in our discussion), as in the west we typically value individual identity over family identity, whereas there exists a more traditionally eastern emphasis on family identity (to the point that family names are spoken before personal). Where and how one identity supercedes the other and the responsibilities that interplay between them is worth consideration, as well as the desire of people to distance themselves from their own pasts.
Jennifer being a fictional character and using her preferred name is also is a very safe way to practice being mindful about using people’s preferred names in general. For those who don’t have many out trans friends or fam in their life it can be a very easy mistake to make consistently (using their dead name, even with the best of intentions) so I’d suggest taking that opportunity to normalize thinking that way.
See also, Jocelyne. (Yeah, Carla and Booster too, but Jocelyne’s unique in that we know her deadname.)
Jocelyne is also unique in that she isn’t out much so most of the characters who know her are likely to unknowingly dead name her. (Nb I’m not a patreon so I haven’t seen any of her bonus comics this is based on in comic stuff)
I mean, if it helps I’m like 90% certain she’ll have a story arc where whatever distance has developed between her and Walky and the rest of her friends gets bridged and she started accepting the nickname ‘Billie’ again.
The tags have apparently changed since your comment.
So they have and now I seem like a lunatic for even noting it. Darn.
Wow! They’ve been changed all the way back to the beginning. For ecample, Jen is thrown for a loop back in https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/pun/
Not the first time Willis has retroactively changed all tags. Example: Jocelyne J. Brown
And for whatever it’s worth, Willis is still maintaining the jocelynejbrown.com website as a reflector to the actual Dumbing of Age page.
I’m still not a fan of that tag change. DoA was my introduction to these characters (and I had a late start to it, compared to some other commenters), and I would’ve been surprises by Jocelyne’s reveal had it not been spoiled in her first appearance.
I get WHY DYW did it, but I still reserve my right to saltiness.
That is impressive. I hope that wasn’t done by hand. 0_0
I kinda hope it WAS all done by hand. If Willis is gonna do this to me I hope he has to suffer too.
Amen! And amen.
Just for the record, I’m appalled. There’s real character growth, and then there’s yanking my chain. To what purpose? To show that she wasn’t Billie all along? To erase her past? To show he made a mistake? To confuse who she is, or confuse where she’s going? Was he naming her Billie to needle someone they know and got called out? This Makes NO sense to me.
And doesn’t have to, it’s their (The Willis’) show.
Perhaps it will become clear as we see more of Jennifer? That it’s not all spelled out in the first strip where the change is referenced isn’t a bad thing.
Remember he’s had a buffer’s worth of time to prepare for this.
Just gotta say early DoA is crazy to read now. Everyone looks so short. It’s like they all grew at least a foot in height over the semester!
It’s the head-to-body proportions gradually shifting from “cartoony” to “more realistic but still cartoon-ish” doing that.
Oh, wow. It’s like someone armed with a spray paint can went back and painted a new name all over the existing one wherever it was.
…. yup, the archives have been tagged.
Not anymore! Tag says Jennifer now 🙁
omg all Billies are Jennifers now in the entire archive…
So, my theory just got thrown for a loop.
So, Billie hasn’t regressed…. Billie actually DID get better.
So that means two things…..
1) Ruth actually DID “lose” her (and if Rachel did have anything to do with it, her shoving it in Ruth’s face is uber-evil)
2) Billie isn’t with Asher because he’s a bad boy. It’s cause she actually thinks he’s good. Which is super concerning and not at all an arc later on.
The therapy is a good sign, but otherwise I wouldn’t take her saying/thinking she’s better for her actually getting better.
As far as most the cast knows, he turned over a new leaf. None of them know what he did with the mob.
My spicy theory/take is that he called the hit on Blaine after he found out Blaine had lied to him, and that he did it specifically to help the cast members, and to try to make up for the role he played in the first place. The morality is obviously…questionable, but I think his intentions were good. And…Amber and AG thought they were going to have to kill him before it would ever stop, and historical evidence (Ross getting out of prison and showing right back up again, WITH Blaine) wasn’t exactly encouraging.
The other reason to kill Blaine of course is that Blaine was blackmailing him. With a good excuse to kill Blaine without giving him a chance to talk to Gramps, there’s no longer a threat of him spilling the bean about Asher stealing from the mob.
I’m still not totally convinced he called the hit (or at least, knew for sure it would be a murder). Maybe he contacted some goon directly for it, but I kind of assumed he told his gramps some stooge was blackmailing him (reporting Blaine before Blaine reports him also seems like a good way to make it look like Blaine is trying to get himself out of trouble by accusing Asher), maybe with an update on what ended up happening with the blackmail.
He’d know there was a good chance it would end in murder, of course, but they could have just beat the shit outta him and told him to stay away from the boss’ family
Unlikely he even hinted at the blackmail, but just reported that Blaine was using family resources in an unauthorized high-profile crime and needed to be shut up before he got questioned by the cops.
I doubt he called the hit directly himself, but it may well have gone through him, since someone reported to him when it was done.
There is a non-0 chance that Billie’s therapist said that Ruth was a toxic influence and to dump her fast.
Because adults are useless.
What if she and Ruth just didn’t have anything in common besides alcoholism and depression?
Therapy with Dr Jack Daniels?
Wait hold up. I thought Billie’s whole deal was that she felt like she was being left behind/couldn’t keep up with Ruth’s recovery and struggles to be better. And now we’re finding out she willingly got therapy? Why the hell did she and Ruth split?
(of course there’s also the possibility of it just having been brought up that staying in a relationship with someone you at one time had a suicide pact with might not be the healthiest thing)
Now I am realizing that maybe things weren’t so black and white in thsi break up.
Still, Billie dating a sociopath like Asher is a bad idea even if she is at a better mental state.
Is Asher a sociopath? He’s done shitty things, but he doesn’t seem to be incapable of empathy or remorse. Actually a pretty consistent character trait of his in the few appearances he’s made has been guilt for previous actions.
The truth is that there’s just not enough information yet. This is why a lot of people are frustrated by the time skip cause we did in fact miss out on pretty significant moments. The breakup probably being the biggest aside from Mike’s death. We don’t even know what Jennifer really means by “therapy” yet. We would like to assume professional help but “therapy” could mean anything without context.
What I do know is that I don’t trust Asher. That is all.
What we know about Asher is troubling. He’s at minimum an accomplice to both kidnapping and murder, and at maximum, he’s an accomplice to kidnapping and a murder as well as guilty of first degree murder.
But the murder victim is Blaine so that is +200 points to the Good Place.
I SENSE CONFLICT.
I have to disagree here… though I can understand the argument that ridding the world of evil people may be okay, this murder was done for the wrong reason (the guy was a liability), and the general improvement his dead may bring is only a byproduct.
The result may be the same, but I strongly believe that the motive matters when counting points.
Well, Asher’s motive wasn’t him being a liability, it was to keep him from being able to blackmail Asher because seriously, Asher will DIE if it gets out he stole that money from the mob.
Yes, but’s it’s a key point that Asher wasn’t a willing accomplice to kidnap or murder, Blaine had to force him into it. And the person he did murder was Blaine, the guy that forced him into being an accomplice. Not saying he’s definitely good, but there’s still room for him to shake out as ‘basically decent guy who did some shitty things in past and got forced into a shitty situation by Blaine’.
One of the strips before the timeskip had her come back after attending therapy for the first time seeming happy about how it went. It’s why my current theory is that Billie both made real progress in her self-image yet also now commits to some of her worst behaviours more confidently like you know, spending all of her time with her partner while shutting out every other single person for the most part. Who has time for siblings anyway amiright? (I say that jokingly, as I would make time for any of my siblings in a heartbeat if asked.)
Before my therapy, I used to feel guilty about [ ]. Now I feel great about it!
[ asshole behavior ]
Depends on whether the therapist tells her what she wants to hear, or what she needs to hear.
Sometimes when two people who find each other when their both in low places then grow together, find that they also grow apart. Can’t really speculate since we know nothing after the time skip, but it’s feasible. I’ve been there. Sometimes being in a better place means no longer being together no matter how much you want to be.
Not that I like the whole Asher situation or anything cause I don’t. Billie and Ruth was my favorite relationship in this comic and I don’t think a single relationship has lasted so far.
Ah sorry, Jennifer not Billy.
Becky and Dina are still going strong. In fact they are the only relationship that seems to have survived first semester. This is probably one of the more accurate things about college life. Most starting relationships don’t last.
Actually I think the background lesbian poly group is still going and we have no evidence (or interest probably) in whether Mary’s still making out with that one guy that could still be a thing.
Maybe they both realized that their relationship had an extremely toxic beginning, what with Ruth stealing Billie’s stuff and messing it up then forcing her into a kiss.
(It might be a hot take but I never liked the Billie/Ruth ship for that main reason so I must admit to being pleased by this turn of events)
I don’t think a toxic beginning necessarily means it’s a bad relationship. They didn’t continue that pattern and had gotten a lot better. They seemed in a good place when we last saw them before the time skip.
Sometimes therapists ‘get it’ and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they round up your ideas for you to look at in the corral (good), and sometimes they bring their own ideas to the corral, passing them off as yours (Bad/evil). If the therapist didn’t hear Jennifer say that Ruth actively tried to get Jennifer to stop drinking and get help, the Therapist may have seen Ruth as destructive.
Wait, Billie got therapy?
Also, you are an asshole, Walky.
I would not be surprised to find out that as with Pudding Head and that British redhead that all the adults in Indiana U are useless but Leslie.
So maybe Billie’s therapist said to dump Ruth and break off with other “toxic” influences.
Billie who?
Come on, it’s only been two days, give us a chance to get up to speed.
He literally sees his childhood friend going onto a different name, a different personality, and now dresses completely different over the semester. So I don’t really blame Walky for being rather assholey to the point of not understanding that people change throughout time. And it seems that Billie/Jennifer is having some rather regretful decisions on the past that she used to have. It’s clearly affecting her on a big level where she even states: Hey. It’s time for a change. It’s time for a new me. And I have to be better. Even if that means leaving my old pals behind. Also Walky is gonna become a complete college drop out for not accepting how the real world works.
Ah, is she trying to create a new version of herself in the hopes of leaving the problems of the old version behind?
It’s hard not to see leaving Walky behind as a good thing.
Following her tried and true modus operandi, she’s going to try and box up the last chapter of her life so she never has to address it again.
– Fall in with the high school popular clique, bully her childhood friend/pseudo-sibling to maintain appearances. Meet Billie, alpha bongo cheerleader and problem solver.
– Partying leads to drinking leads to a DUI and alienating the high school popular clique. Get rejected by the college popular clique and cheerleaders, fall into a relationship with another depressed alcoholic. Meet Billie, disgraced former cheerleader, problem causer, half of a lesbian suicide pact.
– Uh-oh, her relationship built on mutually assured destruction and a lopsided power balance got found out! Surprise, she’s moving to a new dorm. A clean slate! “Take two”! Meet Billie, Queen of the Nerds, at least until it turns out other people from the old dorm show up.
– Stuff happens, relationship from the Disgraced Former Cheerleader chapter ends. Now meet Jennifer, pillion motorcycle rider.
Some of the time, it works every time.
This is my theory also.
The problem with running from yourself, though, is accurately summed up by the great Dr. B. Banzai:
“No matter where you go… there you are.”
Exactly.
Honestly, I’m more surprised that everyone involved in the kidnapping/murder storyline isn’t going through some sort of therapy.
But this sharp a change in “Billie”, in such a short period of time – I have to wonder if she’s getting good therapy, or someone is just telling her what she wants to hear.
Oooh, good catch! Yeah, that’s… definitely a pattern of behavior with her, which does make it more worrisome. (Also, we know even though she almost certainly doesn’t that Asher has serious mob ties, and hasn’t been as successful breaking free of them as he told Sal he wanted to be. I think he was at least sincere then – you don’t steal over $100,000 from your mob boss grandpa if you DON’T want to get out – but Blaine’s blackmail definitely brought him back towards the fold one way or another. At the VERY least, he reached out to Lester, but it seems way more likely he ended up a go-between, or that Gramps knew he’d stolen the money and will forgive a little teenage rebellion in the name of education. Assuming he comes home when he’s done, of course. Lester wasn’t going to make that hit without Gramps’s approval, after all. Regardless of the how, that is GUARANTEED to come crashing down sooner or later, and I’d prefer Jennifer not be in the blast radius when it does.)
That’s uh… interesting. If Billie actually did attend therapy and is doing better then I’m happy for her. On the other hand, if she didn’t attend therapy or only went through the motions of it, then I’m concerned by this behavior.
So what are the odds she’s actually doing better?
Only Willis now, and considering how much of a troll and cynical writer he is… we will find out in 8 months, or 8 years.
Are Joyce and Walky . . . *squints* . . . flirting?
Walky hasn’t thrown any toys at her yet, so…
Nah, but they are more friendly than before. Joyce is no longer jealous of him, for starters. Also, they were kidnapped together and Walky’s refusal to relent to the situation probably helped Joyce cope.
I think it’s less flirting and more becoming acclimated to Walky. After all he does have a similar personality to her best friend in the entire world after Dorothy.
Joyce, and Walky? Maybe in some other universe…
ngl this is kinda weird. good kind of weird hopefully?
Surprised by the sudden level of mouth on Walky there… but maybe I shouldn’t be.
They came at night leaving fear behind
Shadows were on the ground
Nobody knew where to find ’em
Nobody else was found…
Hard to lose it when it’s as memorable as 867-5309
Or PE6-5000.
BEechwood 4-5789
KLondike 5-3226
If anyone is interested, my preferred form of address is Clif, Lord High Pubah, Rightful Ruler of the Asmovian Spaces and All Lesser Orbs Therein.
But you won’t mind if I call you “Hotshot”, will you?
Oh, lighten up, Francis.
Got it, Clifford.
A Wilde reference appears! Question mark?
It was definitely a reference in the wild.
Wow, I take back my comment from yesterday, I’m pleasantly surprised by what I assume to be her initiative.
Hopefully the inevitable disaster that is her current relationship doesn’t compromise this momentum at all, down the line.
Jennifer’s looking kind of sus, has anyone considered the possibility that she’s an imposter
Are you saying she killed Mike?
I mean, I don’t recall anyone going with her to see what she was up to, so she might indeed have snuck into Mike’s room via a vent.
No, clearly “Jennifer” is Mike’s new identity.
That’s not a plot twist, that’s a fuckin’ plot turbopretzel.
I thought Mike was the bike?
He’s anything you don’t want him to be.
Can your mum ride him for a nickel?
Uh… hmm.
I admit my ability to understand what the hell is going on here is limited by the fact I have always been the dorky left-behind ex-friend in this exchange. Anytime I’ve tried to change seriously nobody believes me anyway.
You need a dorkier ex-friend. Hire an actor to dump. 🙂
I wonder if there’s money to be made by renting out of work actors on the cheap and hiring them out for therapy purposes. Not on the cheap, obviously.
Well, at least she WENT to therapy, she said hoping Jennifer isn’t bullshitting to get Walky off her back.
I’m worried she didn’t actually go to therapy, or that she went through the motions of therapy while not actually changing anything. But if she did go to therapy and has gotten better then I wish her well.
Bikes are good therapy. Time to be alone with your thoughts. (As long as said thoughts aren’t destructive. If they are, it’s bad therapy and you should seek out the regular kind instead.)
Killfuck Soulshitter is more classic
Weren’t they the music group that played post-traditional love ballads on the theremin and electronic lap steel?
I very much doubt it.
Has anyone yet asked what’s up with Jennifer’s eyebrows? Is she filling them in now? Did her newfound relationship generate some extra hair follicles? Did she previously pluck them into one millimeter thick lines and has now given up that habit?
Hell, she even styles her hair so she looks like she has ‘sideburns’ like Asher’s. Nope. perfectly normal.
You can call me Captain Fatcock.
Have you got a ship, Captain? Also, is Fatcock a family name? It’s Swedish-looking.
Yeah my ship is Walky and Amber.
Then, smooth sailing to thee!
Aye Captain.
Put me in the camp of “this ‘all new, all different, all better’ Jennifer is either lying about how much better she’s doing or in denial about her issues and, if she even went to therapy, just said the things the therapist needed to hear and learned how to fake being okay, and this is all going to come crashing down later.” If only because I’m not sure how much meat is on the “and now she’s all better” bone, story-telling wise.
Usually it’s a process that can take ages and people who go through it may lose old friends and gain new ones. Nobody said she’s all better right away. Not even her. She’ll need time to find her feet. Also, I’m not sure one who is spending all her time with someone else is necessarily gotten much better, but it’s probably a step up from doing that AND being an alcoholic.
Well, she’s ghosting Walky and Joyce, broke up with Ruth, and is dating Asher.
But I could buy she’s actually happy.
Because Walky makes everyone miserable.
Okay, how about this. She wasn’t wearing glasses till she got off the bike and wasn’t so much ghosting people as not seeing them except as blobs. Walky was unmistakable when he started mocking her goodbyes with Asher, but was worth ignoring on that basis.
Maybe Billie is better, but the fact that she seems to be trying to ignore Walky and most of the friends that she made in the previous semester makes me suspicious that she isn’t actually as better as she wants people to think.
I agree with that. This is my current thinking too of ‘better in one or two ways doesn’t mean better in all ways or confronting her every flawed way of thinking’.
If she’s still not drinking, I’ll take it as a huge improvement.
I feel like saying “wee-wee juice” is way more explicit, but then again, I don’t feel like typing the other word. It’s definitely a funnier thing to say
“Gentleman’s juice” is the classy way.
How about euphoria fluid? That’s pretty dang classy.
“Baby batter”.
Lad liquid.
Loving Spoonful or maybe 10cc.
was gonna make a joke about the tags, but instead i made a fool of myself
It wasn’t just Ruth who lost Billie. Everyone lost Billie. The Matrix has corrected itself.
Lost who now?
The best part is she leaves Walky with no regrets. No need to overplay how she’s outgrown him.
Does this make her the Seventh Jennifer?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/countryside/
Jennifers of the world, unite!
(Nice callback.)
“Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth…”
Asher: I killed Blaine.
Billie: That is so hot.
Who is Billie? And is Jennifer jealous?
*citation needed*
Well, on the bright/less confusing side, I’m digging her new haircut!
Okay, now I’m confused
So am I. I thought you were Sporky.
Hm. If Jennifer got herself straightened up then I need to adjust my previous preemptive disgust.
Bad Billie! No changing your name!
I got all confused when I was trying to update appearance counts on the scoreboard, and Billie’s tag didn’t work.
Anyway, I vote Joyce just gets everyone to start calling Fuckdamn Cumshitter “Fuckdamn Cumshitter” all the time. That’d teach him. Maybe she could even get Amber to correct his student records.
Now there’s a question. If some jackass jokingly insists on being called something stupid (like Ghostfondle Humperdink, Jiggleocity, or Tyler, for example) to make fun of someone changing their name, would it be bullying for that person’s social circle to then refer to them by that name?
With that, Walky would have one because it would force Joyce to say those words, and his whole point here is making fun of Joyce‘s hangup about those words.
Grrr, I means to write „won“ not „one“ I the first line and now I don’t get a cursor the change that word. I sometimes hate touch devices.
I can’t believe I’m saying… Billie needs to get Dan’d up
The change in the character tag for Jennifer is a nice touch.
Been awhile since I’ve posted. Not sure if I’m using the correct login info. Might as well test it on a strip where Walky isn’t being shown in the best light (which, admittedly, is most strips involving Walky).
Important addition in the last panel, Joyce
Jennifer’s new preferred name came with a new character model.
A new haircut, at least.
I’m laughing maniacally at everyone who was sure that Jennifer’s relationship with Asher was a sign of doom and gloom and her backsliding.
Asher may have helped with the kidnapping, everyone knew Blaine’s plan was shitty and he would get caught (Unless Asher actually requested the murder after the whole van driving in the campus, but that’s something for later). That being said, let’s see how Asher interacted with Sal and Walky/Amber.
He got punched in the face by Walky and just told him to back off. That on itself makes him a nice enough lad imo, because seriously, he could have kicked his ass. And with Sal, despite being a little flirty, he had a good time and even confessed that he got some of his granpa’s money to pay tuition. That’s… not the kind of stuff I’d tell someone, but he tells that to Sal of all people.
Asher may be an actual ok lad, his mob conections are what makes him dangerous… But other than that?
Asher even told Sal he thought he deserved that punch. (And he hoped she wouldn’t punch him too, because she can undoubtedly hit harder.)
Sister lost, Sister gained
Ah sorry, I replied to the wrong post
Genuine question, while I like Billie and Ruth, why do people think they’re the best thing for each other? Granted, Asher isn’t exactly a step up but that’s another story. I mean, almost everything in their relationship was either toxic or just borderline abusive. I mean didn’t Ruth basically bully Billie at first?
It always felt to me later on that they were too codependent on each other. Like neither one was going to get better as long as the other one was around. Neither one wanted to get better for themselves, they wanted to get better for the other one. And while that may seem good, was it really?
Everything about this situation seems complicated and while I think Billie is certainly in the wrong for dating Asher, I do think that if the therapy thing is true for both of them that in the long run it’s better for both Ruth AND Billie to just stay friends, rather than a couple.
Personally, I hope this just ends well for Billie. I feel like for as shitty a person that she can sometimes be, she deserves some sort of self improvement and happiness, which I don’t think she’ll get from Asher.
I don’t think many people think they are the “best thing” for each other, I feel like most people agree that their relationship was pretty toxic and fed into both of their problems pretty significantly. I just think people liked the flawed relationship and are particularly against the Ashifer ship for reasons you probably agree with.
This and the ending of the previous storyline involving her pretty much bait-and-switched us. The last time we saw Jennifer, she was doing well and the future of Ruth x Billie was pretty hopeful and moving to a better place. And now it is Dead On Arrival and we will likely see flashbacks to why eventually, but right now it is just frustrating.
Personally I’m not of an opinion that they were best for each other, if Billie would date just about anyone else… maybe short of Ryan, I would be like “eh, life goes on.” With Asher however it’s no longer just a case of “he is bad for her”. With Asher Billie is entering a very dangerous territory involving ruthless people who kill out of convenience. It’s not even that Asher himself is a bad person, it’s that he is connected to a very dangerous part of the world which will be a threat to Billie.
Oh yeah, by no means do I think Asher is A+ material for Billie (or anyone for that matter). Especially with her relationship with Sal and Walky. And I feel like this relationship has a possibility of ending whatever good streak Billie might be having at the moment.
People think that these two characters are the semi-best thing for each other because of the constant fictional fantasy of destructive One True Pairing trope. We are lead to believe that garbage/trash fire people are great for each other when in reality they are very not.
Walky would totally use the stupid “Attack Helicopter” joke at least once, wouldn’t he
Fairly unlikely.
This isn’t that far from it. Mitigated by being aimed at teasing Joyce, not at invalidating anything about Jennifer.
Are we sure Billie hasn’t been replaced with a pod person or something?
Who are you and what happened to Billie?
The more I think about it? She’s gone. Jennifer Billingsworth doesn’t want to be Billie anymore and is slowly moving away from all the relationships and behaviours that characterised her. That includes leaving Ruth and maybe also slowly marginalising all of Billie’s friends and crypto-kin.
went to therapy for 3 months and doesn’t talk to her friends and broke up with her girlfriend. Something’s reaaaaaaaaal suspicious now. She’s an imposter, she probably vented after killing Billie.
Sounds to me like she is disassociating herself. By using her given name instead of her long held nickname she is saying I am no longer who I was. She didn’t really have friends before either. Hell I reread and still don’t get why she suddenly went to Ruth except to steal her booze. When they both had to become sober she started her disassociating.
This is one of those failed therapies by the way. It is like someone going for maybe a month and thinking they are cured.
Jennifer 7 is the Impostor, eject her!
Maybe Jennifer 6. Six of seven.
Damn… That must be some therapist.
They might as well have been a miracle worker.
Seriously though I want to hope for the best for Billie. But she’s dating Asher.
Jennifer*
Hot take: We don’t like this new Billie because she’s different than we’re used to. And we see her dating Asher as a complete negative because we’ve been all but programmed to hate him. I mean he smokes! He ratted Sal out. He’s got lingering connections to the Mob and lied about it. But the fact is that we simply don’t know enough about Asher to properly pass judgement.
At this point all Jenn’s done to really turn us on is ignore Walky as they walk in. Nobody else has even attempted to reach out to her so we can’t even pretend she’s freezing everyone out. And even if she is, she has the right to. People move on. I’m not still friends with everyone I was friends with in college. Because we all might want different things out of life. Would you rather someone stay the same and always be your friend or someone find comfort with who they are and move on in their life.
If I’m reading between the lines correctly, Billie as we knew her is dead. Jennifer is now. Just like how the Yoto who started reading Dumbing of Age in 2012 is dead. I killed him. And eventually the Yoto of 2025 will kill me. I think it’s easy to see her changes as inherently bad because of how theyre framed,which I think is intentional. But I don’t necessarily buy into the fact that it’s for the worse.
Yeah, in getting the vibe that this is overall a positive direction, too.
WhyWouldYouSaySomethingSoControversialYetSoBrave.jpg
Since there are no likes: This ^!
Though there was an earlier comment from Walky about Billie being elusive, so it’s not just Walky being annoying here. She seems to have blown off everyone in the old dorm too.
People do move on and friendships can fade, but Walky at least wasn’t just a college friend, but a childhood near brother. That’s not so lightly cast aside.
And breaking off contact with all your friends at once when you start a new relationship is rarely a good sign. Isolating yourself into dependence on the new romance? Not healthy.
yea, this
I feel like Jeniffer is actually in a good place, for the first time in the comic timespan.
I am happy for her.
Honestly, this seems like a pretty reasonable course for her life to take given the direction she was going beforehand. Jennifer said in the past she didn’t want the old Billie back (Chick-fil-A) and that she just wanted to be happy (drinking with Dorothy). As much as we may have rooted for it, the relationship with Ruth was always precarious at best; toxic at worst. While a healthy relationship can grow out of a start based on physical attraction, anger, and shared alcoholism, that is not a solid foundation for a relationship.
Moving on from friends you knew during a time that you didn’t like yourself and embracing a new you isn’t unreasonable either. A less healthy Billie would have relished in burning bridges with Walky. I’m friends with people I knew in high school (which may be the case with Billie and Asher), but not all of them. I didn’t keep touch with any of the friends I made during the first year and a half of college. The friends that stuck came later.
Remember that this is less than a year after she was in a drunk driving accident. It’s been ten years for us, but it was only last summer for her. Wanting to meet huge changes to be a better person and grow is very reasonable after that plus a lesbian suicide pact and spiral deeper into alcoholism.
It’s probably not all for the better. Asher is pretty unknown, maybe leaning a bit negative, but Billie doesn’t know about his involvement with the kidnapping, so that doesn’t necessarily reflect on her. Plus, even after making changes for the better, it would be both boring and unrealistic for her to be perfect and have no issues anymore.
My first instinct was definitely “Whoa what the hell?” when she first showed up, but hearing Jennifer speak up for herself and her situation, I’m cautiously optimistic.
I fear you are being overoptimistic.
If she hadn’t totally ignored the people she had been close to three months ago, but rather, acknowledged their in some way but made no move to talk to them, I could get behind your idea of what she is doing. But in combination with that, it seems like she is probably serious about the „Jennifer“ stuff but the line of „this is the way therapy change me is just her bullshitting, making excuses for behaving like an asshole.
How is “fuckdamn cumshitter” not the name of today’s strip? Not a phrase that’s going to up much, surely?
It will be the name of the next book instead?
I’m just sad they didn’t change Walky’s tags – even if only for the day.
Because Willis doesn’t make punchlines the strip name. It’s not very fun for folks who read via twitter.
Ok, the tag for the entity formerly known as Billie changed to Jennifer. So either Willis makes himself a lot of work to play with us, or she actually wants to go by Jennifer in the future.
Willis should every so often change someone’s name with no notice and go back and make the retroactive changes, not just to the tags, but also to the strip and the comments. By making a name change every month or two, in a couple of years all the major characters could have traded names and the process could start over again.
I guess the therapist helped her come to the conclusion that she needed to leave old things in the past to move forward and heal. Even her name. That would explain why Ruth insists that she didn’t lose Billie. Billie left as part of her healing, and Ruth wanted her to get better, so I can see her understanding the breakup.
I hope she really is happy like this.
Jennifer! Good stuff.
Also, she’s not gone full asshole like a lot of people predicted. I was suspish too, glad to be wrong. She seems Nicer than she used to!
I just hope this Jennifer trainwreck won’t end up dating Danny.
so one night stands count ?
. . . her therapist convinced her to use her old name ?
I get the impression they discussed it and she decided she’d like to use it again, based on those discussions.
Unless the therapist is bad at their job, but then I doubt they’d have gotten through to Jennifer then.
Sure would be nice if “Call people what they want to be called” was applied more in real life. My birthname doesn’t even register in my head anymore, but it’s all anyone calls me outside of D&D, so I had to retrain myself to answer to it.
I love your avatar
I’m a grown man but I laughed way too much at this
I’m not sure I believe her.
(alt: “I’ve been to therapy.” “Really. How many times?”)
“Look, I spent upward of 43 minutes talking to a therapist, okay? I’m totally fine now.”
Billie sounds like she’s under some sort of mind control (or has been replaced by a pod person)! Gah! o_O
I literally just realised with this strip what felt off to me about DoA since the Time Skip – it felt like it offered us hope and instead we’ve got a dead Mike, a dead relationship, Lucy pining for someone that won’t notice her, Booster stepping on everyone’s toes, Dorothy going to Yale bomb, Joyce being an atheist bomb. And it feels like we are just waiting for answers, so strips that are not answers or direct catharsis are not interesting me as much as normal as there is a LOT to learn right now, and it honestly feels like with a lot of these emotional bombs, there’s not a whole lot to be happy about in DoA right now for me.
All this IN 2020 the bad time where we kinda need some happy too, geeze.
BAND NAME !
So it was a conversion therapy seeing who she dropped and who Jennifer is dating now?
She has always been in denial about being bi. She actually had an argument about it when she first started dating Ruth.
Was she? I don’t think so. She was dating a girl in high school, too. She just had complicated feelings for Ruth.
Jennifer long claimed not to be queer or bi or anything like that. She was normal and everyone was sometimes attracted to girls.
It’s also not clear she thought of her thing with Alice as “dating”, though they definitely were having sex. At least in between drunken flings with boys at parties.
IIRC Jennifer and Ruth are both bisexual.
Either that or Ruth lied about her previous relationship.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/dawdled/
(TW: Ruth’s grandfather is in this one.)
Just because you’ve had a previous opposite sex relationship doesn’t mean you’re really bisexual. She could have just not yet accepted that she was only attracted to women.
It’s most likely, given the clues we have, that she is, but she wouldn’t have had to lie about the relationship.
Willis has said both of them are bi.
That’s fair and I wasn’t really objecting to anything but the “Either that or Ruth lied” part.
Sorry, “lied” was bad phrasing, I meant more “hid the truth from Sir”. Of course the plot hole there is that we know he’d find out regardless…
I’m guessing that Walky is dealing with his frustrations with Billie by trying to get promoted to Joyce’s official annoying sibling!
Sister lost, Sister gained
So Ruth and Jennifer/Billie had a struggling relationship that is over. She’s probably avoiding Sal and Walky because of their shared history with Asher? (Three months seems like a long time to avoid the ‘I used to rob stores with your old roommate’ conversation.) Avoiding Joyce because she’s kinda nosey, avoiding Sarah because that’s how Sarah likes it. Not to mention… She lives in a different building, and coming to visit other friends with Ruth as an RA is awkward. Even without Billie/Jennifer being obsessed with image, it would be natural to drift apart a bit.
Walky regained the relationship with his genetic sister and lost the one with his oldest friend, who was like a sister… This is unfair. But, on the other hand, having the chance to break any relationship with a pretentious, obnoxious “I know all” like Billie sounds like a great thing that can only be good for him.
Hmmm. Sometimes people change, and that alone can be uncomfortable and confusing. Maybe she actually has changed for the better, but given every decision Bi- Jennifer has made up to now, I have a massive pile of doubts. I mean, the lesbian suicide pact was problematic, too, but Asher seems even worse? Time well tell, I guess.
Assuming EVERYTHING is in good faith (the pause before busy gives me pause), I’m just thinking Billie didn’t land with the greatest therapist in the world.
My personal experience with therapists is they always recommend a breakup if it’s anything non-traditional. Now, the situation with Ruth would have any therapist go with that recommendation, but a shitty person-therapist would probably just go “hm lesbian couple? yea that’s not good”
Even then, assuming everything in good faith also means assuming that Asher actively wants to be done with his criminal background but something in it has a hold over him. Is that the case? Dunno, because this isn’t Asher’s story. We’ll probably find out when he saves the day or causes the day to be worse.
You can take the deeply religious out of someone but darn if you can make them say forbidden words.
– From, a non-practicing Catholic
‘cept she just had a character arc where she was just casually swearing as part of her early onset loss of faith.
So while “Cumshitter” I could see giving her pause, just because of the sexual nature, the complete regression to “I can’t say those words because Jesus” seems out of place here.
Like, I could see her telling him “Oh, grow up,” or words to that effect, but the deer-in-headlights reaction just straight up ignores where she’s been and what’s happened.
I’d argue for her it’s a “Too Much Too Fast” situation, she started with damn and I don’t remember if she got much harder than that.
She says shit now, but we’ve never heard her say cum or fuck.
Plus, hasn’t Damn You said that Joyce saying “fuck” is supposed to be a big moment before? I feel like they have.
Yeah, if she is walking away from a toxic environment…..we all read the comic…kinda walking out of the comic would be healthy except she is with one of the villains without knowing it…but she doesn’t know it
Walky and Billie were childhood friends who both went by short versions of their last names. Is it possible that was something they started together or that one picked up from the other?
If so, then this change is a rejection of that friendship. Or at least could easily be seen that way by Walky.
Back in the old Walkyverse, David taunted Jennifer by calling her Billie (“a boy’s name”). Their babysitter, Ruth (yes, really), told her to call him “Walky” in retaliation, and the names stuck.
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/one-day-part-2-page-3/
Presumably it went about the same way here, but with someone else in Ruth’s role.
I still don’t really dig new Jennifer, because she’s leaving behind her found-family brother Walky and in-her-own-words best friend Joyce. For what? Hot dick? A supposed better self? The red flags are everywhere.
Also I miss her ponytail
Refresh my memory on where the Jennifer formally known as Billie said that Joyce was her best friend.
I’m sorry Joyce, but weeweejuice sounds infinitely more lewd than just cum
Patton Oswalt’s got some pretty choice words on the subject.
Sounds like Beetlejuice’s perverted cousin.
Alright that is 110% not her
… It’s like mind control…
What if it turns out Jennifer’s idea of “therapy” was getting cleared of her Thetans?
Not a Hubberdite, but I’m pretty sure that your Thetan is what needs to become clear in order to become operational, and not at all the the thing you need to be cleared of. It would be like going to an exorcist to be rid of your soul.
weejuice…………………..
Dumbing of Age Book 10: Fudgedarn Weeweejuicepooper
So I binged the entire archive over the weekend, did Willis retroactively change all the tags to Jennifer or is that how she was always tagged?