Even odds Jason is already in there and won’t object. Possibly out of fear. I feel like Asher’s only reaction will be being upset he didn’t get to watch like Jason.
YW. This channel helps me a lot. I listen every day.
My concentration is absolutely shot, and my joint pain is killing me. Way too much work left to do.
(…So I come here and read the comments. *Facepalm*)
Also, I still think it’s possible to do both work AND comments! 15 minutes of work followed by 5 minutes of comment reading on repeat should do the trick! 😉
At least that’s how I would do it. Whatever works for you! 😊
What a coincidence! For years I imagined that when I meet my relationship partner(s) in the future, be them neurodivergent or not, “parallel play” is exactly what I imagine as my ideal way of bonding with them. So wonderfull! 😭
Sorry if that sounds awkward (and definitely don’t mean it as love-bombing you), just so weird how i always wanted to intellectually bond with someone just like this, and now it even has a name! Not only for partners and Pog Champs, but all kinds of human friends should embrace this!
Thanks, friend. No discomfort taken – all good.
My family’s all about the parallel play.
Let’s go to someone’s house and flop down on their couch with a good book or a crossword puzzle, maybe pet the animals or take a nap.
That’s our idea of a really social evening. 🙂
Warm silence can be magical.
I know we’re supposed to keep it on-topic for the strip…
I think that’s how Amber/Amazi-Girl and Danny bonded, and later Danny with Sal: just having projects (music, games, comic books…) to work on, side by side and together. That was all the interaction they needed.
You see that sometimes with Joyce and Dorothy. Dorothy will be sitting doing homework, and Joyce will be sociable in the background. It’s nice.
I could imagine all that right now, that Jason Lois playlist you posted makes the PERFECT background music for it. Simply wonderful! 🥰
Re:articles, this is why I feel neuro-diversity is so important, as well language to make it more conceptually accessible, not for people to read it as “disorder”, but as different ways of being, different ways of living from which all humans can learn from example.
Imagining all those characters happily parallel-processing in their relationships, I predict that all of this will really come to form the models of modern human relationships we see in the future! 🤩
Yeah. Right around midnight, the fog lifts, the music kicks in, and I can remember what it feels like to concentrate and get things done.
…It’s like being a different person.
We need to find strategies that WORK, to help us be all we really are.
I think Joyce is beginning to come to terms with her own special and unique gifts, and how learning strategy from folks like Dina and amber who’ve been practicing longer can help her. I hope so, anyway.
Re: being a different person, the times I feel that cognitive euphoria myself are much fewer and further between no matter what I try, sometimes I worry whether or not I’ll be able to achieve it ever again 😭. Glad you can get that tho, makes me more hopeful 🥲
Re: Joyce, yeah ideally that would happen, but yet again this isn’t Smarting of Age. Considering Joyce is no stranger to black-and-white thinking, it’s really likely that Joyce is gonna go from freaking out and loathing about her potential autism straight to the other extreme of toxic positivity about it, much to the annoyance of others, especially Dina.
I just wanted to point out the The Wellerman the fact that is well known to Science that Galasso’s is topologically incorrect and not to scale. If your map is to be accurate, it must be true of your map as well.
I think Jennifer wants Ruth to get angry at her like she used to. Ruth appears to just suck up all her feelings when it comes to her and that doesn’t fly with Jennifer.
Yeah, I think Ruth initiated the breakup and feels guilty about it, so she’s giving Jennifer a lot of slack and probably pretending a bit that she’s better than she really is.
It’s just a theory based on little clues of dialogue but i don’t think Jen broke up with her. She talked about caring too much and that was pretty obviously in reference to Ruth.
You keep saying that and I don’t really get why it’s a clue that Ruth broke up with her? I took it to imply the opposite. Ruth cared too much and was being overbearing and so Billie broke up with her.
It’s hard to confirm which is why it’s just a theory. She could have been applying that in reference to Ruth or herself. I would assume since Jennifer was the one talking she was talking about herself but just having to make an assumption leaves this and hypothetical because text media can’t convey tone.
To me Billie cared too much about their health in the relationship and Ruth who has kind of backslid into alcohol didn’t and broke up with her. Cause if Ruth cared more for Billie they’d both be together and sober instead of broken up and one hopefully sober while the other flounders in muted depression and insecurity. (Also dating Jason)
I have a suspicion that Jennifer is the one that fucked it up. Ruth keeps acting like it’s her fault, and Jennifer is acting like it’s her fault, and it reads too… suspicious? Like, considering Jennifer’s ego, and Ruth’s own depressive and self-destructive tendencies, I have a feeling that it was actually Jennifer who fucked up, blamed Ruth for her own fuck up, and Ruth just went “yeah, this was my fault somehow I guess”. I already suspected this beforehand, but the way Mary talked to Jennifer just now, and the way she’s getting pissed off and demanding Ruth stop lying to her when Ruth is basically saying ‘yeah, I’d understand why you’re mad at me’, it reads to me like their breakup was Jennifer’s fault, and she’s pissed off that Ruth isn’t fighting her on it and giving her the blame she feels she deserves, that Ruth isn’t indulging her guilt complex the way she wants her to.
REALLY toxic, physically abusive relationship. Whole thing was bullying from start to finish, with a little sweetness tucked in the middle, just to keep the bitter palatable. …That’s how I see it, anyway. 🙁
I never thought there needed to be anything extra having happened on Halloween, for their relationship to have ended. I figured Ruth’s actions that we’ve seen on camera were bad enough.
Took the comment right out of my mouth. They were just awful together. I don’t need much more context to know that them staying together definitely ends with one or both of them dead.
This behavior certainly cements a “Ruth needs to get the fuck away from Billie whatever it takes” feeling. I liked Jennifer and her hypocritical, social climbing acquaintances much better than this out-of-control rage machine. Although I’m guess we’ll find that she thinks “Ruth being polite to her ex” is the same as “Ruth is trying to die.” Exes are people you are polite to, you don’t know them anymore, you have to grow the scab over before you can be normal around them.
That reminds me of my youngest sibling talking about eventually reconnecting with their ex-partner as friends. It took several attempts separated by months each before they managed it, and it took the valiant sacrifice of a worker bee from their previously shared hive to succeed.
The good part about skipping all those holidays is you can now have flashbacks to those times near the actual months without speeding up time. A single year hasn’t gotten over for the story, yet so much has changed during that half a year.
Probably happens more often than one would like in a full dorm building with hundreds of individual dorms. Plus, she has her own habit of kicking doors in on college dime…. she probably does all the installs herself to keep that between the students.
Consensual is incredibly important. Pre-communicated and safe-word-backed is certainly one way to do it, with a lot to recommend it. But humans have all kinds of communication channels and it’s not the only way to do it. What works for people is tricky to judge from the outside. Coming up with rules that apply outside of the local cultural understandings held by the participants and trying to apply them moralistically is not useful. There are billions of ways to say I love you and some of them are downright weird. And that’s okay.
If they’d kept going, it would have sucked. They’ve openly admitted that they were more or less out of ideas for the show, so finishing where they did seems for the best.
I’m honestly glad it ended when it did, rather than mid-way through the Buu saga. If they had tried pressing on, I think they would have burned out and left it unfinished. This way it at least has a satisfying ending.
Considering thaf I’m still a quarter convinced that this might be flirting for them, I do have to agree they were awful for each other. Still, the fact that Billie and Ruth saved each other from alcoholism more or less, and that Ruth finally started trying medication that works for her, it was a kinda stepping stone relationship.
Mmh. What was the lie tho? How Ruth would try to date her editor in chief…? Honestly she’s clearly not entirely stable right now anyways, so… the Sir will be good for her, not another emotional wreck who’ll need attention and convincing, preening and complimenting, when Ruth can’t always trust her own self discipline….
It’s not necessarily a good thing to have a stable partner doing the stabilising for you. Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom before you can start taking self-responsibility. Having a partner hold you up can keep you from growing your own strength. And might create dependency which potentially opens the door to being taken advantage of.
Having a partner who doesn’t have the habit of saving you from yourself, and instead encourages you to take responsibility yourself, and supports you by cheering the progress you make, now THAT would be helpful.
I just gotta say this wing does not have proper problem-solving skills. It’s mostly just Jennifer and Ruth, but most of the girls here have shown they’ll turn to violence in an instant.
This is not convincing. Dorothy and Carla are the only ones with any viability, maybe Roz too. We have no idea what those other girls get up too. In fact I think two of those girls are known for regularly getting into lover’s quarrels. And we know what hotheads the girls that actually get panel time are. This wing is like the Wild West.
That doesn’t mean they turn to violence. Quarreling isn’t violent. There is a difference between hotheadedness and violence.
Dina turns to violence far more readily than most of the girls in the dorm. I wouldn’t call her hotheaded. Rachel’s hotheaded. I wouldn’t call her violent.
Like the amount of people that are actually ‘violent hotheads’ would just be Joyce, Ruth, Sal, Malaya (Jennifer no longer lives here). Sarah’s a misanthrope and she’s only actually been violent against people she has a grudge against or who actually deserve it (Ryan, people who take her hostage). Amber’s cooled down a lot since the timeskip.
Are you listing people you think *do* have problem-solving skills, or people who *don’t*?
Dorothy is pretty good at it! (Particularly if it involves spreadsheets.) Sometimes she orders people around, to varying degrees of success, and she hasn’t figured out how to tell anyone that she’s been accepted to Yale. But she’s got a lot of maturity, integrity, and calm, plus major executive function skills like prioritization and organization. When people around Dorothy are okay with her taking the lead, she can go Future President on it. When they aren’t, her attempts backfire.
Carla’s solution is to be bigger and louder than the problem, and Carla saw that this was Good.
We haven’t really seen those other characters solve many problems, though anyone in a longterm throuple without apparent drama is probably skillful at it.
Whatever went down between Rachel and Ruth, that problem didn’t get solved, as Rachel holds a grudge about it to this day.
I rather like Roz, but, shall we say, problem-solving isn’t one of her strengths.
— oh, you were listing people who don’t act physically violent.
People who are ready for violent action include: Joyce but usually it’s appropriate, Sarah if she has to, Dina but it’s played for laughs, Amber/AG but nowadays they’re channeling it successfully into Roller Derby. Mary evilly attempts to get people to hurt themselves.
And of course, Ruth and Jennifer, and it’s actively terrible.
Jennifer’s already doing therapy, and even that’s not doing jill shit.
Gotta work her way up from booze somehow. Maybe weed? Hundreds of times less poisonous and damaging to the body and brain than alcohol, and nearly impossible to OD, so it would be a step in the right direction, at least.
about your second point, I foresee two other possibilities other than her still doing therapy:
A. She discontinued because it really didn’t work for her, either on a personal basis or was really turned off by a “professional” that was insensitive or even downright bigoted.
B. She only went a few times or even once just to be able to say that she did without technically lying, and brag about it as a part of her being All-Grown-Up™ “Jennifer”.
My experience of college counseling centers at a school comparable to IU is that they just kind of rush you along. You might get someone who sets up “regular” sessions with you, but those might only be for six to eight weeks. (Even that’s lucky; there’s also a lot of inaccessible referrals given after an initial assessment.) That can definitely help in some cases, and I think it’s possible Jennifer got something out of it, but I don’t think it’d go deep enough for all that she has going on.
If by “got something out if it” you mean bourgeois bragging rights, then yes, that pretty much sums up the benefits for her.
You think Yoga would get any deeper? Weed could go deep too, but I’m starting to think that maybe the problem is less about what would help her and more about her actually wanting to change.
And no, I meant a more temporary and surface level sense of calm, and maybe assistance in stopping drinking. And those things aren’t nothing, especially depending where one’s at when seeking therapy. They’re just not everything.
Eh, it might just be me, but the way she’s reacting here (YIKES), it seems to me more like a “holding it all in with ducktape” kinda way? With ducktape being recognition from her bourgeois friends and ego inflation from being the problem-solving alpha-bongo.
The old Billie and all her habits and attitudes are still there, tightly packed inside. Once she looses her incentive to keep up her facade (which I’m guessing will come during the big bourgeois breakfast), Billie’s gonna burst out and spiral right into relapse.
Hot yoga actually could provide a welcome release, though. Endorphins, adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, melatonin… all the brain chemicals you can get from sex or drama or alcohol (or other substances), you can get from sustained strenuous exercise, especially in a class with others.
I tried Yoga myself a few times, didn’t quite work on account of my barely cooperative host body. 😓
I find that walking or other light exercise works, on account of release of all those, especially when I use it in conjunction with half a thc gummy bear. Whatever works!!!
Yoga doesn’t have to be about physical exercise, BTW. It can be done through just breathing, or chanting/singing (Kirtan dubstep is among my fave dance musics) or meditation, or study and reading, or even just while sleeping or “doing stuff that your body enjoys”. Lots of ways to yog’. Anything you do thoughtfully and deliberately, with intention and purpose, can be an expression of yoga.
(I’d link to the Wikipedia article on the topic, but it’s a little religious, and I know we try to keep the discussion secular.)
Well, exactly. Yoga is a form of martial arts. There’s even a fighting style based on it. It’s pretty badasse. There’s a movie that really showcases it — I think it’s just called “Indian”. Tragic plot, but wild fight scenes.
Yoga really just means “discipline,” or “practice”.
Although there is a brand of duct tape called “Duck Tape”. There’s another one called “Gorilla Tape”. Strangely, though, they are not actually used to tape up ducks OR gorillas. Just ducts.
Q. Why is duct tape like the Force?
A. Because it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Ironically, ducts are one thing “duct tape” is terrible for. Use the silver foil tape on ductwork, duct tape will just dry up and fall off, leaving horrible sandy residue behind.
For everything else, gaffer’s tape is superior anyway. (Well, until it dries out or the adhesive turns into goo. That usually takes a few months, but at least it peels off cleanly until thrn.)
Jennifer looks like she’s out for blood. Barring a literal arrow shot from the bow of Cupid himself, I can’t imagine any way that she’d be up for anything more intimate than a fist fight (NON-EUPHAMISTIC) with Ruth.
Well now I’m confused. Why did Ruth step out into the hallway? She was still in the doorway in the third panel. The wall in the last panel isn’t blue like her room.
Well we haven’t seen Jacob, so we can’t confirm him vs Joyce/Raidah/Sarah/Roz. Ethan’s probably over Danny. Amber’s over Walky, if not the other way round. Joyce is probably over Ethan.
Yeah okay, fine. I’m intrigued. What the heck went down between them that has Jennifer not just bitter, but *violently* bitter, while Ruth is abjectly apologetic about it all?
Jennifer: “I have a BOYfriend now. You were just a phase. I don’t want to be around you, and I’m better off without you. I’m going to drop a class because you’re in it and set you up with someone else so you stop bugging me (and for my personal gain).”
Ruth: “I’ve found someone else, and I’m moving on. You are better off without me.”
Jennifer: “Everything you say makes me hate you more. How dare you try to be fine without me!”
Haha yes I don’t understand Billie at all here and I think Ruth needs to get a restraining order. This is the kind of person I will avoid and be extra polite to. I think a nice freezingly polite British “good day to you, mam!”, a shut door, and a call to security is called for.
Only makes sense if you are using toxic high school logic or toxic romance ideas I think currently but we’ll need to see what Jennifer says next. But it does look like it is building to a ‘you are supposed to chase me, not move on, WTF!’ Which is not healthy reasoning.
I’m fairly sure what’s happening is that Jen thinks Ruth is lying about “having moved on”, in regards to earlier. And what’s going to happen next strip is that “the bartender” is going to peek out and be like “what’s this now”, and then Jennifer’s going to just be sad, in shock, and perhaps walk away.
Or maybe she’ll confront things outright, that’s also in her personality style, but my guess is her disengaging after that reveal.
Jennifer isn’t any better than Mary at this point. She literally believes that other people cannot possibly be independent of her (and I’m starting to understand that their run-in was more than witty banter), and rather than accept that, she resorts to extremes in order to “force the truth out”.
Ruth may be mean, but Jennifer is toxic and going down a dark path.
No, this was meant to address comparisons to Mary, which I think are kind of the DOA version of Godwin’s (First) Law. No one has done anything equivalent to Mary, because Mary is like three inches from being an actual Nazi. I do not agree that she’d fold if her actions harmed people. I think she’d talk herself into feeling justified and emboldened.
Oh, that makes more sense. Sorry, I’ve been high for the waking majority of the past week and it might be addling my brain a little bit. Yeah, I can totally see Mary as half a blink away from full-on uniform wearing.
Let’s just say there are times when lucid sobriety may be more helpful to a person, and other times they get more benefit from essentially transporting their brain to another dimension to cope with the base state of existence. This is a little too far into that second bit lmao.
“Only people who intend to commit crimes know the names of the parts of [foods like tuna casserole]. Knowledge is suspicious and people who learn things are the devil.”
– Joyce, probably 😛
I know it’s probably lil over from the Halloween incident (yet to be revealed), but I also wonder if Mary’s comments/attitude somehow gave Billie a clue that Mary has been blackmailing Ruth and that’s why Billie is pissed. I mean, Mary was terrified of Billie after Billie decked her. If I remember correctly, this is the first time since then that Mary was directly antagonistic to Billie’s face. She seems a bit too cocky unless she feels she has some kind of leverage.
Oh shit, that’s actually a really good theory that hadn’t occurred to me at all.
I’d assumed it was just Mary being stuck reliving her glory days- the blackmail incident, aka the only time in her life she’s held power over someone else.
And then Jason fucks off and Ruth and Billie are now girlfriends again now but this time with only the good stuff and it’s fucking insufferably sweet to the point that they’re out of focus for several in-story weeks the end
Come back in an hour for our bow-ties. Make that two hours. No, leave your bow-ties. I’ll be out of your hair by sundown. I have to get back to my boyfriend.
And then the camera smash-zooms out and reveals that Billifer and Jason have been smoking a transparent .png of Ruth’s model sheet from this storyline.
I have no idea what the hell happened on Halloween to make Jennifer act this way, but her behaviour is totally wrong and impossible to justify. Jennifer is reacting to something Mary said by getting mad at Ruth, this is the only thing we see and I don’t like it because Jennifer looks very dangerous right now, she could beat up Ruth and maybe even Jason if he comes out of the room just to see what’s going on. I wonder if Mary is watching this.
It’s true, she can toss her pretty well. I’d say something closer to “like a sack of rice” though, since it’s more a more flexible object and doesn’t have anti-fat connotations. Not to sound like a scold, of course.
Interesting how the lack of humor changes the view on violence, Dina pouncing people and attacking them due to innacuracies? Hilarious!
Radia getting slapped by Sarah? Justified! Jennifer shoulder slams Ruth? horrific violent individual.
Tone really is everything and Willis has mastered it
Absolutely. Imagine Jennifer was drawn with a big sharp-toothed ‘clever girl’ type of grin, instead. And rather than having your eye go straight to the impact on Ruth’s shoulder, which makes the slam look strong, have Billie’s cute rar-face be the emphasis — or better yet, have the actual impact happen offscreen. (Definitely don’t showcase Ruth looking concerned about it.)
…that would give a totally different, no-real-consequences, cartoony kind of vibe, which is the tone Dina gets, but it’s not the tone for these two characters.
It was nice to think for a moment that the Jennifer change helped her to reach a better place. But the better place was Archer and Raidah, so we really knew it was fake. Billie/Ruth fireworks are fine entertainment, though.
I really hope this is what it is. Ruth has grown as a person (at least somewhat; I’m well aware she has a ways to go still, though Jason actually seems to be helpful in that regard), while Jennifer has yet to really work through some things despite her whole “oh gosh we’re all real grown-ups now!” thing with her new crew. And frankly, I can understand why Jennifer might not have actually put in the work around these people; they’re very catty and shallow, so better to throw up a mask than deal with constant put-downs and exclusion. I mean best of all not to spend time with them, but that’s something she’ll have to figure out for herself. Maybe she’s going to shortly, which would be a healthy step.
She filled one out a while ago and then just scanned it onto her phone so she can print an exact copy out whenever she needs it. At this point, they’ve stopped asking questions and assume she just gets pranked a lot.
Mary’s comments triggered this, along with Joyce. Reading this daily gets in the way of understanding sequential art. Mary was there for a narrative reason and has no story of her own, unlike Joyce.
my guess is billie got dumped, “i don’t find you attractive anymore” or something. and jennifer can’t handle not being desired and the center of everyone’s world. the “i understand” is just ruth’s depression and feeling like she’s hurt jennifier and I wouldn’t mind if sir accent walks out and just PHYSICALLY STOPS this assault and opens a dialog on why ruth allows it to go on
My guess is she pulled her “how dare you let me leave you” play one too many times. Ruth got tired of her guessing games and realized Jennifer’s toxicity was holding her back, so she either dumped her or did/said something hurtful enough to make Jennifer break it off.
That would explain Jennifer’s self-reinvention tonal whiplash, and the progression we’ve seen as her mask has been slipping. “I’m not a problem! I don’t have a problem! I’m normal! YOU’RE the problem!”
It’s like how we really know deep down that we’re going to get a recap of Halloween without ever seeing anyone in costume.
Or finding out how Amber and Walky broke up or finding out how Mike really died. Or learning how Jennifer and Ruth broke up without having our hearts broken.
Jennifer is mad. We don’t currently understand why, so it seems irrational.
There’s little in her history that actually hints at “psycho” though. She’s fairly low on the list of characters here who react with inappropriate anger and violence.
These two are so bad for each other. Like, SO bad. Suicide-pact-having, abuse-as-foreplay levels of bad. If Billie was the catalyst for Ruth to address her alcoholism and depression, that’s great, but I don’t think they’re a healthy match overall.
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This is where I came in! *walks out of theatre*
coincidentally I just finished the first Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, and he ALSO has a thing about destroying doors
Your avatar is incredibly appropriate.
In the eternal words of Snagglepuss: “Exit, Stage Left”
Next time, Ruth exits, pursuing a bear
I promise not to run too fast.
Grizzly bears can run at 35 mph while Polar bears max out at about 25mph.
The literature is suspiciously silent about KT bears.
Nobody has ever outrun a KT bear, I guess!
that is an interesting stage direction to bring up, given current events
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/25528801-exit-pursued-by-a-bear
I mean…this is kind of how their relationship started so how do I know this isn’t just flirting for them?
That and/or foreplay.
**pulls up a chair**
I’m in.
Me, too. Popcorn?
Popcorn. Chocolate-flavored, even. (It’s good. I promise.)
But… they’re both dating other people. Have they discussed this with their current partners and are they on board?
Even odds Jason is already in there and won’t object. Possibly out of fear. I feel like Asher’s only reaction will be being upset he didn’t get to watch like Jason.
Suggesting that Jennifer and Ruth would make healthy choices re: relationships
IDS HEADLINE: HACKED MUZAKS SEIZED; HACKER STILL AT LARGE
oops sorry, did you want it back? 😅
YO!!!! BILLIE!!!! 🤯
Sure hope she know’s what she’s doing! 😵
*Doom music or something starts playing on hacked muzak, I dunno*
This is what they get when they ask for “Billie”.
(Hi, NG. 🙂
…Joyce rattled her confidence. Now she’s turning to force to get it back.
Welp, at least things get a lot more exciting when she’s “Billie”, I give you that! 😮😅
And hello Laura! How have you been?
I spent all day working on a rough map of Galasso’s Pizza (and Subs), and I’m almost done!
Good luck with it, NG!
I’m exhausted.
(Plays Jason Lewis on the hacked muzak:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wELOA2U7FPQ )
This literally sounds like it’ll really help! Thanks! 😁
YW. This channel helps me a lot. I listen every day.
My concentration is absolutely shot, and my joint pain is killing me. Way too much work left to do.
(…So I come here and read the comments. *Facepalm*)
Ooooo! Sorry about your joints! 😟
Also, I still think it’s possible to do both work AND comments! 15 minutes of work followed by 5 minutes of comment reading on repeat should do the trick! 😉
At least that’s how I would do it. Whatever works for you! 😊
Yes, that works, NG.
Been reading about “neurodivergent love languages”:
https://stimpunks.org/2022/01/22/the-five-neurodivergent-love-languages-2/
Being here is kind of like getting my “body double” (https://www.additudemag.com/getting-stuff-done-easier-with-a-friend-body-double/) — while I work, I’ll know folks are chatting among themselves, and having that kind of “parallel play” with y’all helps me keep calm and connected.
What a coincidence! For years I imagined that when I meet my relationship partner(s) in the future, be them neurodivergent or not, “parallel play” is exactly what I imagine as my ideal way of bonding with them. So wonderfull! 😭
Sorry if that sounds awkward (and definitely don’t mean it as love-bombing you), just so weird how i always wanted to intellectually bond with someone just like this, and now it even has a name! Not only for partners and Pog Champs, but all kinds of human friends should embrace this!
Thanks, friend. No discomfort taken – all good.
My family’s all about the parallel play.
Let’s go to someone’s house and flop down on their couch with a good book or a crossword puzzle, maybe pet the animals or take a nap.
That’s our idea of a really social evening. 🙂
Warm silence can be magical.
I know we’re supposed to keep it on-topic for the strip…
I think that’s how Amber/Amazi-Girl and Danny bonded, and later Danny with Sal: just having projects (music, games, comic books…) to work on, side by side and together. That was all the interaction they needed.
You see that sometimes with Joyce and Dorothy. Dorothy will be sitting doing homework, and Joyce will be sociable in the background. It’s nice.
I could imagine all that right now, that Jason Lois playlist you posted makes the PERFECT background music for it. Simply wonderful! 🥰
Re:articles, this is why I feel neuro-diversity is so important, as well language to make it more conceptually accessible, not for people to read it as “disorder”, but as different ways of being, different ways of living from which all humans can learn from example.
Imagining all those characters happily parallel-processing in their relationships, I predict that all of this will really come to form the models of modern human relationships we see in the future! 🤩
Yeah. Right around midnight, the fog lifts, the music kicks in, and I can remember what it feels like to concentrate and get things done.
…It’s like being a different person.
We need to find strategies that WORK, to help us be all we really are.
I think Joyce is beginning to come to terms with her own special and unique gifts, and how learning strategy from folks like Dina and amber who’ve been practicing longer can help her. I hope so, anyway.
Re: being a different person, the times I feel that cognitive euphoria myself are much fewer and further between no matter what I try, sometimes I worry whether or not I’ll be able to achieve it ever again 😭. Glad you can get that tho, makes me more hopeful 🥲
Re: Joyce, yeah ideally that would happen, but yet again this isn’t Smarting of Age. Considering Joyce is no stranger to black-and-white thinking, it’s really likely that Joyce is gonna go from freaking out and loathing about her potential autism straight to the other extreme of toxic positivity about it, much to the annoyance of others, especially Dina.
Woo-hoo! Work is finally finished!
I just wanted to point out the The Wellerman the fact that is well known to Science that Galasso’s is topologically incorrect and not to scale. If your map is to be accurate, it must be true of your map as well.
Don’t you worry, I just mapped the restaurant on which Galassos is based — Mother Bear’s Pizza at IU, of course! 😋
She might! I mean, there’s a first time for everything
Well whatever this is, looks like it’s been simmering for a while.
Kinda not sure what provoked this, eager to find out though
I think Jennifer wants Ruth to get angry at her like she used to. Ruth appears to just suck up all her feelings when it comes to her and that doesn’t fly with Jennifer.
Yeah, I think Ruth initiated the breakup and feels guilty about it, so she’s giving Jennifer a lot of slack and probably pretending a bit that she’s better than she really is.
I think more likely Ruth fucked up real bad, bad enough for Jennifer to end the relationship, and feels guilty about that
It’s just a theory based on little clues of dialogue but i don’t think Jen broke up with her. She talked about caring too much and that was pretty obviously in reference to Ruth.
You keep saying that and I don’t really get why it’s a clue that Ruth broke up with her? I took it to imply the opposite. Ruth cared too much and was being overbearing and so Billie broke up with her.
It’s hard to confirm which is why it’s just a theory. She could have been applying that in reference to Ruth or herself. I would assume since Jennifer was the one talking she was talking about herself but just having to make an assumption leaves this and hypothetical because text media can’t convey tone.
To me Billie cared too much about their health in the relationship and Ruth who has kind of backslid into alcohol didn’t and broke up with her. Cause if Ruth cared more for Billie they’d both be together and sober instead of broken up and one hopefully sober while the other flounders in muted depression and insecurity. (Also dating Jason)
Also I don’t 100% know if Jennifer is sober but I believe she is because we haven’t seen her drink so far. Willis could drop a reveal like that.
no boozles
I have a suspicion that Jennifer is the one that fucked it up. Ruth keeps acting like it’s her fault, and Jennifer is acting like it’s her fault, and it reads too… suspicious? Like, considering Jennifer’s ego, and Ruth’s own depressive and self-destructive tendencies, I have a feeling that it was actually Jennifer who fucked up, blamed Ruth for her own fuck up, and Ruth just went “yeah, this was my fault somehow I guess”. I already suspected this beforehand, but the way Mary talked to Jennifer just now, and the way she’s getting pissed off and demanding Ruth stop lying to her when Ruth is basically saying ‘yeah, I’d understand why you’re mad at me’, it reads to me like their breakup was Jennifer’s fault, and she’s pissed off that Ruth isn’t fighting her on it and giving her the blame she feels she deserves, that Ruth isn’t indulging her guilt complex the way she wants her to.
My gut is telling me that Jennifer ended up backsliding on/kept consuming alcohol and Ruth couldn’t handle the temptation in her life.
It’s certainly possible, but it’s worth remembering that Ruth is drinking now and as far as we’ve seen Jennifer isn’t.
Ruth drinked the day of her 21st birthday. I think it was like a ritual and no more.
Ruth’s an alcoholic. “It’s my 21st birthday is just an excuse.”
Same, I’ve suspected for a long time now that Jennifer caused their breakup, and Ruth is just taking the blame for some reason.
REALLY toxic, physically abusive relationship. Whole thing was bullying from start to finish, with a little sweetness tucked in the middle, just to keep the bitter palatable. …That’s how I see it, anyway. 🙁
I never thought there needed to be anything extra having happened on Halloween, for their relationship to have ended. I figured Ruth’s actions that we’ve seen on camera were bad enough.
Took the comment right out of my mouth. They were just awful together. I don’t need much more context to know that them staying together definitely ends with one or both of them dead.
This behavior certainly cements a “Ruth needs to get the fuck away from Billie whatever it takes” feeling. I liked Jennifer and her hypocritical, social climbing acquaintances much better than this out-of-control rage machine. Although I’m guess we’ll find that she thinks “Ruth being polite to her ex” is the same as “Ruth is trying to die.” Exes are people you are polite to, you don’t know them anymore, you have to grow the scab over before you can be normal around them.
“out-of-control rage machine” yeah ok
That reminds me of my youngest sibling talking about eventually reconnecting with their ex-partner as friends. It took several attempts separated by months each before they managed it, and it took the valiant sacrifice of a worker bee from their previously shared hive to succeed.
Probably Halloween. Which I believe is starting very soon…
I am here for a year of All Hallow’s Eve.
The next chapter starts on Saturday, July 2nd. I get the feeling this week is an extended segue…
Ruth doesn’t exactly look scared in the last panel. Maybe a different feeling though
i would dare to say that she looks confused.
…
So, this ends up in one of two ways. Crying or Fuckin.
or both!.
Jennifer’s one hundred percent right– Ruth had no intention of actually filling out the repair form.
Perfect comment!
Ruth was going to get Jason to fill out the form, and she’d just sign her name at the bottom.
Is this another case of “What in gods name happened on Halloween?”
Fortunately we should be finding out the answer to that question in the near future
Clearly it’s because they both had the same costume.
Incidentally, can’t wait to see what costumes everyone winds up wearing
Random guess time? Random guess time.
Grace, Mandy, and Sierra: Charlie’s Angels.
Joe and Joyce: The main characters from Tangled.
Roz: Mystique from the live-action X-Men movies.
I don’t know if Joe and Joyce are at “couple’s costumes” yet, not intentionally anyways.
Yeah, it was one of those two-person horse costumes, but then they both wanted to wear the front half.
“I’m not changing.”
“Well, I’m not changing either.”
Decide for yourself if this was about their costumes, or their personalities — the end result would be the same
No. It’s the SAME case.
I’m hoping that will be revealed in a few days, when the next chapter starts.
The good part about skipping all those holidays is you can now have flashbacks to those times near the actual months without speeding up time. A single year hasn’t gotten over for the story, yet so much has changed during that half a year.
Incidentally, not a great sign when something breaks so often you start learning the individual part names
Probably happens more often than one would like in a full dorm building with hundreds of individual dorms. Plus, she has her own habit of kicking doors in on college dime…. she probably does all the installs herself to keep that between the students.
are…are they gonna kiss
I hope not.
Shoves isn’t love someone once said
Or something similar
‘Twas Carla the great!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/secretly/
I hope so.
@shrub – as long as they are consensual shoves, it’s all good.
Well, as long as they’re consensual, pre-communicated, and safe-word-backed shoves.
Consensual is incredibly important. Pre-communicated and safe-word-backed is certainly one way to do it, with a lot to recommend it. But humans have all kinds of communication channels and it’s not the only way to do it. What works for people is tricky to judge from the outside. Coming up with rules that apply outside of the local cultural understandings held by the participants and trying to apply them moralistically is not useful. There are billions of ways to say I love you and some of them are downright weird. And that’s okay.
that sounds like something Becky would say
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/03-see-you-in-the-funny-page/phase/
You are quite correct
Freeza: Have we been here before? I feel like we’ve been here before…
Dragon Ball Abridged right? My friends and I loved that.
DBZ Abridged is/was one of the best youtube series and I’m still super bummed that they won’t be finishing it.
If they’d kept going, it would have sucked. They’ve openly admitted that they were more or less out of ideas for the show, so finishing where they did seems for the best.
I’m honestly glad it ended when it did, rather than mid-way through the Buu saga. If they had tried pressing on, I think they would have burned out and left it unfinished. This way it at least has a satisfying ending.
Well it’s nice to see these two getting along so well.
I beg for backstory. XD
Considering thaf I’m still a quarter convinced that this might be flirting for them, I do have to agree they were awful for each other. Still, the fact that Billie and Ruth saved each other from alcoholism more or less, and that Ruth finally started trying medication that works for her, it was a kinda stepping stone relationship.
Mmh. What was the lie tho? How Ruth would try to date her editor in chief…? Honestly she’s clearly not entirely stable right now anyways, so… the Sir will be good for her, not another emotional wreck who’ll need attention and convincing, preening and complimenting, when Ruth can’t always trust her own self discipline….
It’s not necessarily a good thing to have a stable partner doing the stabilising for you. Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom before you can start taking self-responsibility. Having a partner hold you up can keep you from growing your own strength. And might create dependency which potentially opens the door to being taken advantage of.
Having a partner who doesn’t have the habit of saving you from yourself, and instead encourages you to take responsibility yourself, and supports you by cheering the progress you make, now THAT would be helpful.
Awwww a reverse of their first kiss … I my literary symmetry senses are a tingling, though I hope they don’t kiss again (cheating is mean).
Some Jennifer strips end up sticking that one song in my brain way too hard.
“Billie, don’t be a hero
Don’t be a fool with your liiiiife”
I just gotta say this wing does not have proper problem-solving skills. It’s mostly just Jennifer and Ruth, but most of the girls here have shown they’ll turn to violence in an instant.
We know Carla’s good with practical problems, at least.
Dorothy, Carla, Agatha, Mandy, Sierra, Grace, Meredith, Rachel, Other Rachel, Roz…
This is not convincing. Dorothy and Carla are the only ones with any viability, maybe Roz too. We have no idea what those other girls get up too. In fact I think two of those girls are known for regularly getting into lover’s quarrels. And we know what hotheads the girls that actually get panel time are. This wing is like the Wild West.
That doesn’t mean they turn to violence. Quarreling isn’t violent. There is a difference between hotheadedness and violence.
Dina turns to violence far more readily than most of the girls in the dorm. I wouldn’t call her hotheaded. Rachel’s hotheaded. I wouldn’t call her violent.
Like the amount of people that are actually ‘violent hotheads’ would just be Joyce, Ruth, Sal, Malaya (Jennifer no longer lives here). Sarah’s a misanthrope and she’s only actually been violent against people she has a grudge against or who actually deserve it (Ryan, people who take her hostage). Amber’s cooled down a lot since the timeskip.
Are you listing people you think *do* have problem-solving skills, or people who *don’t*?
Dorothy is pretty good at it! (Particularly if it involves spreadsheets.) Sometimes she orders people around, to varying degrees of success, and she hasn’t figured out how to tell anyone that she’s been accepted to Yale. But she’s got a lot of maturity, integrity, and calm, plus major executive function skills like prioritization and organization. When people around Dorothy are okay with her taking the lead, she can go Future President on it. When they aren’t, her attempts backfire.
Carla’s solution is to be bigger and louder than the problem, and Carla saw that this was Good.
We haven’t really seen those other characters solve many problems, though anyone in a longterm throuple without apparent drama is probably skillful at it.
Whatever went down between Rachel and Ruth, that problem didn’t get solved, as Rachel holds a grudge about it to this day.
I rather like Roz, but, shall we say, problem-solving isn’t one of her strengths.
— oh, you were listing people who don’t act physically violent.
People who are ready for violent action include: Joyce but usually it’s appropriate, Sarah if she has to, Dina but it’s played for laughs, Amber/AG but nowadays they’re channeling it successfully into Roller Derby. Mary evilly attempts to get people to hurt themselves.
And of course, Ruth and Jennifer, and it’s actively terrible.
Carla’s an engineer. She’s good with practical problems
For example, how am I going to stop some mean mother hubbard from kicking a structurally superfluous hole in my door
Her dispensers dispense sweet pranks instead of health and ammo.
There’s a little pie arm for dealing with troublesome sappers.
She respects the idea of sappers, but won’t sit idly by while they ruin her fun.
Most *people* don’t have proper problem-solving skills.
It’s a problem, but I don’t know how to solve it.
This is America.
[Careless Whisper blares out on hacked PDA speakers]
Jennifer should try yoga.
Are you kidding me?
Jennifer’s already doing therapy, and even that’s not doing jill shit.
Gotta work her way up from booze somehow. Maybe weed? Hundreds of times less poisonous and damaging to the body and brain than alcohol, and nearly impossible to OD, so it would be a step in the right direction, at least.
1. Yes.
2. We don’t know that she’s still doing therapy, just that she said she “got therapy.”
and now she’s all better, see?
She is doing so well.
glad we’re on the same page re:Jennifer and weed
about your second point, I foresee two other possibilities other than her still doing therapy:
A. She discontinued because it really didn’t work for her, either on a personal basis or was really turned off by a “professional” that was insensitive or even downright bigoted.
B. She only went a few times or even once just to be able to say that she did without technically lying, and brag about it as a part of her being All-Grown-Up™ “Jennifer”.
Oh, we’re not on the same page about weed, I just didn’t want to get into that with you. My points were going in order of what you had said.
Oh woops, i guess i misread that 😅
But yeah which one of those possibilities re:therapy you think is most likely. My bet is with option B, so much like her. 🙄
I think B is most likely, based on how she brought it up:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/soundlike/
Doesn’t sound like A to me.
My experience of college counseling centers at a school comparable to IU is that they just kind of rush you along. You might get someone who sets up “regular” sessions with you, but those might only be for six to eight weeks. (Even that’s lucky; there’s also a lot of inaccessible referrals given after an initial assessment.) That can definitely help in some cases, and I think it’s possible Jennifer got something out of it, but I don’t think it’d go deep enough for all that she has going on.
If by “got something out if it” you mean bourgeois bragging rights, then yes, that pretty much sums up the benefits for her.
You think Yoga would get any deeper? Weed could go deep too, but I’m starting to think that maybe the problem is less about what would help her and more about her actually wanting to change.
Like I said, the yoga comment was a joke.
And no, I meant a more temporary and surface level sense of calm, and maybe assistance in stopping drinking. And those things aren’t nothing, especially depending where one’s at when seeking therapy. They’re just not everything.
Eh, it might just be me, but the way she’s reacting here (YIKES), it seems to me more like a “holding it all in with ducktape” kinda way? With ducktape being recognition from her bourgeois friends and ego inflation from being the problem-solving alpha-bongo.
The old Billie and all her habits and attitudes are still there, tightly packed inside. Once she looses her incentive to keep up her facade (which I’m guessing will come during the big bourgeois breakfast), Billie’s gonna burst out and spiral right into relapse.
Hot yoga actually could provide a welcome release, though. Endorphins, adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, melatonin… all the brain chemicals you can get from sex or drama or alcohol (or other substances), you can get from sustained strenuous exercise, especially in a class with others.
I tried Yoga myself a few times, didn’t quite work on account of my barely cooperative host body. 😓
I find that walking or other light exercise works, on account of release of all those, especially when I use it in conjunction with half a thc gummy bear. Whatever works!!!
Yoga doesn’t have to be about physical exercise, BTW. It can be done through just breathing, or chanting/singing (Kirtan dubstep is among my fave dance musics) or meditation, or study and reading, or even just while sleeping or “doing stuff that your body enjoys”. Lots of ways to yog’. Anything you do thoughtfully and deliberately, with intention and purpose, can be an expression of yoga.
(I’d link to the Wikipedia article on the topic, but it’s a little religious, and I know we try to keep the discussion secular.)
I never thought of it that way!!! 😮
It’s kinda like martial arts then! 😆
Or are least I hears that somewhere I dunno. 😅
Anyway thanks a million Laura! 😊
(So much for Wikipedia keeping a “neutral point of view”, but of course oh wells we shouldn’t be relying on it anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Well, exactly. Yoga is a form of martial arts. There’s even a fighting style based on it. It’s pretty badasse. There’s a movie that really showcases it — I think it’s just called “Indian”. Tragic plot, but wild fight scenes.
Yoga really just means “discipline,” or “practice”.
Duct tape – wholly unrelated to ducks.
Although there is a brand of duct tape called “Duck Tape”. There’s another one called “Gorilla Tape”. Strangely, though, they are not actually used to tape up ducks OR gorillas. Just ducts.
Q. Why is duct tape like the Force?
A. Because it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Ironically, ducts are one thing “duct tape” is terrible for. Use the silver foil tape on ductwork, duct tape will just dry up and fall off, leaving horrible sandy residue behind.
For everything else, gaffer’s tape is superior anyway. (Well, until it dries out or the adhesive turns into goo. That usually takes a few months, but at least it peels off cleanly until thrn.)
Wow! The more you know…
Today I learned something new!
Objectively untrue. Duck tape will work just fine for taping ducks together. You just have to apply it to their legs and not to feathers.
Duck tape won’t work on gorillas though, they can easily tear it. That’s what Gorilla tape is for.
it’s like poetry, it rhymes
The poem in question: T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”
But we aren’t in April yet.
Jennifer looks like she’s out for blood. Barring a literal arrow shot from the bow of Cupid himself, I can’t imagine any way that she’d be up for anything more intimate than a fist fight (NON-EUPHAMISTIC) with Ruth.
Huh?????
Shoves are not hugs, Billie.
We’re passing into an actively abusive relationship.
Loves, not hugs, I think. I don’t remember who said that, though.
It was the great Carla! https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/secretly/
Well now I’m confused. Why did Ruth step out into the hallway? She was still in the doorway in the third panel. The wall in the last panel isn’t blue like her room.
now i’m just imagining between panels a polite “can you step over here? thanks”
Is everyone not over anyone in this comic over the last 4 months?
exactly!
Dorothy’s pretty decidedly over Danny.
the exception to the rule
Well we haven’t seen Jacob, so we can’t confirm him vs Joyce/Raidah/Sarah/Roz. Ethan’s probably over Danny. Amber’s over Walky, if not the other way round. Joyce is probably over Ethan.
Danny is sort of like Felicity. Chasing after his dream date across college.
Except Dorothy is creeped out and wanted to be rid of him.
Yeah okay, fine. I’m intrigued. What the heck went down between them that has Jennifer not just bitter, but *violently* bitter, while Ruth is abjectly apologetic about it all?
Jennifer: “I have a BOYfriend now. You were just a phase. I don’t want to be around you, and I’m better off without you. I’m going to drop a class because you’re in it and set you up with someone else so you stop bugging me (and for my personal gain).”
Ruth: “I’ve found someone else, and I’m moving on. You are better off without me.”
Jennifer: “Everything you say makes me hate you more. How dare you try to be fine without me!”
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.
Haha yes I don’t understand Billie at all here and I think Ruth needs to get a restraining order. This is the kind of person I will avoid and be extra polite to. I think a nice freezingly polite British “good day to you, mam!”, a shut door, and a call to security is called for.
Like I said.
Jennifer is fucking around and is very close to finding out.
Only makes sense if you are using toxic high school logic or toxic romance ideas I think currently but we’ll need to see what Jennifer says next. But it does look like it is building to a ‘you are supposed to chase me, not move on, WTF!’ Which is not healthy reasoning.
the confrontation a long time coming
I’m fairly sure what’s happening is that Jen thinks Ruth is lying about “having moved on”, in regards to earlier. And what’s going to happen next strip is that “the bartender” is going to peek out and be like “what’s this now”, and then Jennifer’s going to just be sad, in shock, and perhaps walk away.
Or maybe she’ll confront things outright, that’s also in her personality style, but my guess is her disengaging after that reveal.
Yeah. Yup.
Jennifer isn’t any better than Mary at this point. She literally believes that other people cannot possibly be independent of her (and I’m starting to understand that their run-in was more than witty banter), and rather than accept that, she resorts to extremes in order to “force the truth out”.
Ruth may be mean, but Jennifer is toxic and going down a dark path.
can we please stop comparing people who are engaged in problematic behaviors to an actual fascist
like, the gap between Mary and a Nazi is just that she would think armbands are “larping”
Jennifer has got Bad Problems, and you don’t have to like her, she’s frequently DEEPLY unpleasant
but she’s not a fuckin’ Nazi
I think Mary likes the idea of fundamentalism but would crumble like a house of cards if she actually did get Ruth or Jennifer killed.
Is this meant to go under a different comment? RockerRelM and Bryy didn’t say the word Nazi at all
No, this was meant to address comparisons to Mary, which I think are kind of the DOA version of Godwin’s (First) Law. No one has done anything equivalent to Mary, because Mary is like three inches from being an actual Nazi. I do not agree that she’d fold if her actions harmed people. I think she’d talk herself into feeling justified and emboldened.
Oh, that makes more sense. Sorry, I’ve been high for the waking majority of the past week and it might be addling my brain a little bit. Yeah, I can totally see Mary as half a blink away from full-on uniform wearing.
No worries, I only wish I had bought some supplies for which to be high the past week myself.
Let’s just say there are times when lucid sobriety may be more helpful to a person, and other times they get more benefit from essentially transporting their brain to another dimension to cope with the base state of existence. This is a little too far into that second bit lmao.
I did not expect to get slapped in the face with Déjà vu when I came here.
The build up to Halloween is excellent
Do you mean there are people who *don’t* know all the parts of a lockset?
Only people who intend to commit crimes know the names of the parts of things. Knowledge is suspicious and people who learn things are the devil.
What you said, only with even more sarcasm.
“Only people who intend to commit crimes know the names of the parts of [foods like tuna casserole]. Knowledge is suspicious and people who learn things are the devil.”
– Joyce, probably 😛
Stop… flirting? …fighting? …something else?
that part comes later
(on Slipshine)
I know it’s probably lil over from the Halloween incident (yet to be revealed), but I also wonder if Mary’s comments/attitude somehow gave Billie a clue that Mary has been blackmailing Ruth and that’s why Billie is pissed. I mean, Mary was terrified of Billie after Billie decked her. If I remember correctly, this is the first time since then that Mary was directly antagonistic to Billie’s face. She seems a bit too cocky unless she feels she has some kind of leverage.
Oh shit, that’s actually a really good theory that hadn’t occurred to me at all.
I’d assumed it was just Mary being stuck reliving her glory days- the blackmail incident, aka the only time in her life she’s held power over someone else.
This can’t be THAT serious, Billie only used one A in “face”.
“The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the victim. Now I am the instigator.”
“Only an instigator of problems, Jennifer.”
Former cheerleader. Alpha bongo. Problem
solvercauser.Ruth: The truth? Very well. I haven’t moved on. You’re my heart. You’re my life. I need you. Please come back.
Billy [to Jason]: You. Fuck off.
And then Jason fucks off and Ruth and Billie are now girlfriends again now but this time with only the good stuff and it’s fucking insufferably sweet to the point that they’re out of focus for several in-story weeks the end
Jason: YOU FORCED ME TO RELOCATE ALL MY THINGS IN THERE, LESSICK! AT LEAST LET ME GET MY DAMNED BOW-TIES!
Come back in an hour for our bow-ties. Make that two hours. No, leave your bow-ties. I’ll be out of your hair by sundown. I have to get back to my boyfriend.
your bow-ties. Not our bow-ties. We don’t have joint bow-ties. Just a joint woman.
Plot twist: when Jason returns at sundown, Jennifer and Ruth have used all his bow-ties for NSFW purposes.
Jason experiences the British form of despair, which I am told is not readily discernible from “existing in Britain”, or what the French call “ennui”.
I love that our gravatars make it look like Amber and Carla are co-writing a fanfic.
(With help from Taffy.)
And then the camera smash-zooms out and reveals that Billifer and Jason have been smoking a transparent .png of Ruth’s model sheet from this storyline.
(It’s a sight gag)
THERE she is.
I have no idea what the hell happened on Halloween to make Jennifer act this way, but her behaviour is totally wrong and impossible to justify. Jennifer is reacting to something Mary said by getting mad at Ruth, this is the only thing we see and I don’t like it because Jennifer looks very dangerous right now, she could beat up Ruth and maybe even Jason if he comes out of the room just to see what’s going on. I wonder if Mary is watching this.
I think that Billie is reacting to something Joyce said…
Or possibly a delayed reaction to something Ruth said.
I hear Guilty Gear music playing, does anybody else?
We do like a bit of Big Blast Sonic now and again.
Where the F did that come from??
A two-month-long and extremely intense sapphic relationship with a lot of issues bound up in it that fell apart on Halloween, I’d wager
I can’t believe Jennifer is slamming the residence assistant 😯
Wait til tomorrow, when she busts out the Kaio-ken. Ruth is about to learn the difference between a low-class warrior and a Saiyan elite.
You mean crying like a little baby when Frieza steps on you?
Exactly.
Are we losing sight of the fact that Ruth can toss Jenifer around like a tub of lard?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/pun/
It’s true, she can toss her pretty well. I’d say something closer to “like a sack of rice” though, since it’s more a more flexible object and doesn’t have anti-fat connotations. Not to sound like a scold, of course.
Damn, we’re learning some things this week
Interesting how the lack of humor changes the view on violence, Dina pouncing people and attacking them due to innacuracies? Hilarious!
Radia getting slapped by Sarah? Justified! Jennifer shoulder slams Ruth? horrific violent individual.
Tone really is everything and Willis has mastered it
Absolutely. Imagine Jennifer was drawn with a big sharp-toothed ‘clever girl’ type of grin, instead. And rather than having your eye go straight to the impact on Ruth’s shoulder, which makes the slam look strong, have Billie’s cute rar-face be the emphasis — or better yet, have the actual impact happen offscreen. (Definitely don’t showcase Ruth looking concerned about it.)
…that would give a totally different, no-real-consequences, cartoony kind of vibe, which is the tone Dina gets, but it’s not the tone for these two characters.
It was nice to think for a moment that the Jennifer change helped her to reach a better place. But the better place was Archer and Raidah, so we really knew it was fake. Billie/Ruth fireworks are fine entertainment, though.
So does that mean they’re hooking up again sooner than expected or
Unexpected reunion, with a brit to bully to keep things fresh and entertaining.
Will we finally know why everyone hate Billie? I mean Jennifer? Whatever.
Who hates her? (other than Sarah, who has since she met her)
Jimmy does. We haven’t met him yet.
Mary?
This is so sudden. Let me think about it.
Oh, wait. You said Mary.
Okay true, but Mary also always hated her, so there’s not really a reason to find out.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlapSlapKiss
Round… 371?
Ha! You can’t trap me with your innocent looking tvtropes link.
But what could one tiny peek hurt?
It’s a trap!!!
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tab_explosion.png
We’ll certainly learn but if it’s something so bad you get all toxic in the comments, I’ll just remind you of Mary.
Jennifer: “STOP LYING TO ME! You’re not over me! You AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE be over me! Stick to the teen drama script I wrote in my head!!”
Ruth: “ha ha boyfriend go pip pop cheerio”
Jason, from inside the room: “NO I DO NOT.”
Seriously, I feel like that’s where this is going. She fucked around playing those guessing games before, now she’s finding out.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/refusing/
I kinda wish the truth were just so pathetic, without any big revelation.
I have a hunch we’re going to find out this week.
I really hope this is what it is. Ruth has grown as a person (at least somewhat; I’m well aware she has a ways to go still, though Jason actually seems to be helpful in that regard), while Jennifer has yet to really work through some things despite her whole “oh gosh we’re all real grown-ups now!” thing with her new crew. And frankly, I can understand why Jennifer might not have actually put in the work around these people; they’re very catty and shallow, so better to throw up a mask than deal with constant put-downs and exclusion. I mean best of all not to spend time with them, but that’s something she’ll have to figure out for herself. Maybe she’s going to shortly, which would be a healthy step.
Maybe. I don’t think either of them are in good shape. Jennifer’s got her obvious issues, but Ruth is drinking again and Jen doesn’t seem to be.
the idea of Ruth saying that around Jason and him being offended really tickles my funny bone
Something tells me Billie isn’t over her!
Congratulations, Joyce! You had learned to summon a Billie.
But you need to figure out how to send it back.
billie what the heck
she… won’t fill in another repair form?
She filled one out a while ago and then just scanned it onto her phone so she can print an exact copy out whenever she needs it. At this point, they’ve stopped asking questions and assume she just gets pranked a lot.
Yeah, I was just wondering about that. “Another” just…yeah. Get on with it, get us to Halloween already.
everybody is straight up having a bad day lol
Something tells me that Jennifer should take Luke’s advice. This isn’t going to go the way she wants.
Ahh, there is the violent psychopath I know and hate.
Everyone is entitled to their own wrong opinions.
Mary’s comments triggered this, along with Joyce. Reading this daily gets in the way of understanding sequential art. Mary was there for a narrative reason and has no story of her own, unlike Joyce.
No one has a story all their own, but Mary has had a number of stories. Her approach to art is a source of frustration, for example. But her best story line ended with her being billed for the pie on her face.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/ruttech/
my guess is billie got dumped, “i don’t find you attractive anymore” or something. and jennifer can’t handle not being desired and the center of everyone’s world. the “i understand” is just ruth’s depression and feeling like she’s hurt jennifier and I wouldn’t mind if sir accent walks out and just PHYSICALLY STOPS this assault and opens a dialog on why ruth allows it to go on
My guess is she pulled her “how dare you let me leave you” play one too many times. Ruth got tired of her guessing games and realized Jennifer’s toxicity was holding her back, so she either dumped her or did/said something hurtful enough to make Jennifer break it off.
That would explain Jennifer’s self-reinvention tonal whiplash, and the progression we’ve seen as her mask has been slipping. “I’m not a problem! I don’t have a problem! I’m normal! YOU’RE the problem!”
I guess we’ll find out by the end of summer!
I’m just amused by the idea of Jason “PHYSICALLY STOPPING” anything. I mean, him intervening might, but physically Jennifer would just toss him aside.
I can only assume they’re gonna make out
We can always hope.
I mean, we know Willis is toying with us, but we can hope anyway.
It’s like how we really know deep down that we’re going to get a recap of Halloween without ever seeing anyone in costume.
Or finding out how Amber and Walky broke up or finding out how Mike really died. Or learning how Jennifer and Ruth broke up without having our hearts broken.
Billie is a goddamn psycho. This is genuinely disturbing.
Jennifer can be a psycho. So can Ruth. It’s one of the many things they have in common.
Jennifer is mad. We don’t currently understand why, so it seems irrational.
There’s little in her history that actually hints at “psycho” though. She’s fairly low on the list of characters here who react with inappropriate anger and violence.
Nor hallucination to the point of clinical psychosis.
Yeah, this. I want to know what happened!
Are we just throwing around the word “psycho” now? I mean, if that’s the vibe we’re going for.
And to think she was telling Joyce that she would be a good resource to rely on as a ‘normal’ person.
These two are so bad for each other. Like, SO bad. Suicide-pact-having, abuse-as-foreplay levels of bad. If Billie was the catalyst for Ruth to address her alcoholism and depression, that’s great, but I don’t think they’re a healthy match overall.
Something about this strip makes me think they don’t have good conflict resolution skills.
Cute couple. Hard to believe they ever grew apart.
In the words of the Philosopher Sifre
“It must be love”
Oh yeah, we’ve all seen where this leads to.
They’re getting back together
Or Ruth will ask for a restraints order against her crazy jealous and violent ex girlfriend. Using Jason and.Mary as witnesses of the facts.
This is Dumbing of Age, not Taking Appropriate actions of age
Doom spiral doom spiral dooooommmmm spiiirrrraaaallll
Let’s get this fuckin trainwreck GOING baybee
Let’s mess it UP
lying? what, did she say that mary was ‘gonna behave’ or so? (which woudln’t last long without constant authority figures she respects anyways lol)
I think “it’s fine” was the lie that put her over the edge this time.
I sense a twinge of jealousy. Billie + Ruth ftw XD
me too wtf