This strip right here! Which was a bongo to find, since Jennifer’s the only named character in it– the one real weakness of an otherwise easy-to-search archive.
Said strip also has her give a specific (albeit fake) birth date of October 19, 1993, which is just going to get more and more hilarious as the timescale slides on. Alt-text says that October 19 may not be her actual birthday either.
Way back when, Jennifer uses a fake ID, and it has her real name, “Yunru”. She tells the liquor store guy that it’s Chinese, as is her mom, and her dad is English.
Hard Up Climber-Lady need to squeeze all her fat-cat connections for all they’re worth (MUCH less than she expected) and that includes her surrogate daughter’s parents, ’cause that karen-assed lawsuit against the broke fringe church and the ex-family of the dead gangster cost her more than expected?
I don’t think so, but I don’t read as much of the social climber thing in her as others do. Not sure how this would really tie into that. She knows Jennifer’s parents are basically absent.
Of course that make wrapping this supposed praise of Jennifer with mentions of her parent worse, she knows it’s a sore spot.
We didn’t really see Chef in the last episode of Enterprise. We saw Will Riker deciding that the best thing to do in the middle of the Pegasus crisis was to cosplay as him, because Will Riker makes very poor decisions.
i wouldn’t mind seeing carlas parents. XD; tho idk how jen would react given that they’re seemingly not around, either aloof or desperate for their attention
tho i imagine at this point i imagine she’d want ‘distance’ like she said (or, maximum drama of them showing up on campus and running into ruth first XD)
Yep whoever the child is it’s always about how they make Linda look and Linda wants to look like the caring mother in a safely white passing biracial family, the minute the cast in her mind looks too dark she searches for a replacement.
This. Also because she’s a Billingsworth….For which Fair Lady Linda took a back-to-back pregnancy for…..Linda did act as Jennifer’s surrogate mother, correct?
Definitely. Linda wishes she had a title like ‘Lady’ shes a wannabe social elite who can’t get into their social circles so instead takes in an emotionally neglected child of said elite instead.
Holy shit, Linda. (Also, I’m very curious about the extent to which she doesn’t know Billie’s issues. Did she hear about the drunk driving thing and excuse it? Did that information never reach her?)
Walky mentioned it at the very beggining of the comic, and it’s well known enough that it’s mentioned in her file, so I’m thinking that Linda’s excusing it as a “youthful indiscretion.”
Linda continues her path of not understanding the people around her, or at least she doesn’t understand “her”* children.
What would it take for Linda to learn to be kind?
I’d ask what it would take to make her a good person, but I think we should go for reasonable wishes.
*I know Billie/Jennifer isn’t actually Linda’s kid, but she sure acts that way sometimes.
given how she once called herself their ‘white passing daughter’ i can imagine a younger jen maybe going to their house often when she was lonely/basically spent more time with the walkertons versus her own house
Linda knows, so she could be fishing for Jen to fall over herself adulating her for the positive attention. It’s a narcissist’s passive-aggressive power move.
Disclaimer: I’m not qualified to offer a real diagnosis. But in basic psychology terms Linda has a lot of signs of anti-social or narcissistic disorders, meaning she looks at other people as means to access resources for her own benefit; financial security, social standing, political influence, whatever they’ve got. It’s possible she wants these things for her kids and this unofficial ward of hers out of a genuine wish for their wellbeing, limited to these terms she understands, or just because she wants for them to reflect well on her, but it would be a mistake to take her approach to her relationships with her kids as any indication for her approach to human relationships in general anyway.
In so far as it’s possible for her to learn kindness, learn to value other people’s lives beyond their usefulness to her, it depends on having motivation to do so. Which is not very likely to happen with the very financially secure high status life she has. A long, long period of being without human contact while also needing to rely on other people’s kindness to survive on a day to day basis might help.
Jesus, Linda let her take the wad of cash her dad gives her as his emotionally constipated way of saying ‘I love you’. It’s bad enough you’ll ditch your own recently disabled kid in another state when she disappoints you without turning up to the rich family friend with adoption papers.
Fuuuuuck offff.
I wonder if Asher passes the boyfriend test – he’s from a rich, probably influential family.
I think there’s a pretty good chance Linda’s in the dark there. Walky didn’t initially know as I recall, and Linda doesn’t strike me as all that aware. (Also, because the irony of Linda objecting to Sal hanging out with Marcie while calling Asher a “nice young boy/man” is just SUCH low-hanging fruit for us all.)
Walky looked it up pretty easily. It’s really a question of whether or not Linda “Charles, google whether or not we can sue a church” Walkerton has bothered looking it up.
Sal actually looked it up, but all she looked up was whether Asher was on campus.
When Walky goes to look for Asher, he already knew Asher was involved with the robberies.
I would not be shocked if Linda never knew of Asher’s involvement, and maybe didn’t even know Asher and Sal were once friends, since by the time she associated with him, she was already probably trying to keep her mom out of her business.
i’m not sure if she knows asher specifically, if not just knowing his ‘family’ or whatever but i can imagine “well, sal still made her own decisions, regardless of influence” /saw marcy as a ‘bad influence’ on her even tho she didn’t do anything esp bad as a kid before then
I don’t think anyone suggested she did — just whether she knew he was involved in the robberies at all.
Honestly, if she did know that, she’d probably take the view that Asher and Sal both made mistakes, but one of them did the responsible thing afterwards. And no, that doesn’t make sense.
I think sal did know, or she figured it out eventually b/c “boarding school/juvie gives you a l ot of time to think”/it’s not like she would’ve name dropped any of her other ‘friends’ besides marcie
It’s because she keeps acting like theres something she’s expecting/came for. Here she says “they” aka herself might stay a few more hours depending,which leads to the question what is Linda expecting in the next few hours?
Oof, the deflecting. Either their constant absence IS a sore spot for Jennifer or she doesn’t enjoy spending time with them when they deign to be around. Realistically I can see it being a bit of both. The money was always used as a substitute for affection, and what little we’ve heard of the Senior Billingsworths sure does not bode well. That Jennifer’s willing to compare her dad to a mob boss suggests she doesn’t exactly think HIGHLY of him as a whole. (I still think that’s a flawed comparison and that Jennifer is almost certainly not operating off the critical information that Asher Is Not As Out as I think he’d like to be, but I think there’s a pretty reasonable chance Jennifer DOES know Gramps is a mobster rather than “he owns a lot of businesses in town” or whatever euphemism I’m sure they’ve given Raidah.)
Yeah, Jennifer’s seemed aware and uncomfortable with the whole “white-passing surrogate daughter (Linda) wanted”, good point. She’s also like. Desperate for parental affection, I think, so I can see why she DID it, but that doesn’t mean she LIKES any of her parents or has many remaining illusions about them.
She knows Linda sucks, but she also knows Linda loves her (for her money and white-passing status but you know what, Jennifer will take it) and will shower her with praise while letting her maintain her independence and never really pushing back on Real Billie Hours.
She clearly doesn’t believe this about Papa Billingsworth, and is pretty sure he’d crack the proverbial whip; whether that’s simply him ceasing to be a wallet and trying (probably badly) to be a dad or something much darker remains to be seen, because Papa Billingsworth is our Sauron—despite knowing of his power we never see his ass.
(I have a raft of wild theories on what exactly his deal is. None of them are good, or nice.)
It occurs to me that now that Walky is in Linda’s bad graces Jennifer might find Linda attempting to cut into more of her “Billie hours” to feel like a sucessful parent. Aside from the strain on Jennifer to keep looking put together if Radiah notices she might just stop pretending to want to be friends with Walky and go back to love bombing Jennifer more. Wonder how long Jennifer can deal with all the fake people in her life pretending to like her? Last panel implies she’s reaching her limit.
Hrm. So recently, Willis has been making posts on Twitter to the effect that they can’t post any preview panels from the upcoming storyline they’re currently working on because there’s spoilers basically everywhere. Could we finally see the Billings-‘rents soon?
lol well, i imagine jennifers been fairly polite and never given any inkling that she’d dislike linda and charles, but i’m sure it’s also to find things to talk about to compare sal with if they bother to say goodbye lol
Pretty funny they struck out on feeling like good parents with Sal first then Walky, and now they are trying their luck with the neighbor’s child. What are they going to do if they piss Jennifer off too?
She said lunch but yeah, be interesting if they went to the same place again as her group and stayed calm this time versus walky’s ‘trolling’ of that burger XD
What do we bet Walky shows up to belatedly stand up for Lucy and loudly blame them for breaking them up? Perhaps Walky and Linda could make yet another huge scene in the same restaurant.
The fact that everyone knows *exactly* what Linda is actually doing and are trying to rebuke her in soft and hard ways and she literally does not understand or think they have any kind of point to their annoyance and anger is so painfully real.
apparently her dad is making money (means as yet unspecified)
–Dave, it can’t possibly be that they’re dead and Billie helped hide the bodies, as there would have been SO MANY flashbacks during a particular earlier storyline. or two.
I think aside from sending Jennifer cookies this is the only time Linda has actively sought Jennifer out, only other time they were in the same room in comic is when Jennifer came to them to convince them not to try to get amber expelled. Figures even though Jennifer’s the golden child she’s still third choice in some regards. Sal and Walky are no longer white passing enough so now they remember their “other daugther”
Jennifer all “Man, I love going through my villain arc because I have so much power and status, but why do I have to hang out with all these assholes?!”
Charles translation: thanks for appeasing my wife so we don’t have to dwell on the fact that both our bio kids hate us now! With how awful Linda is I think it’s worth remembering that this guy can watch his wife verbally abuse both his kids one day then play proud father to the neighbour’s kid the next day.
Is she trying to get Billie to think her parents suck so she’d instead let Linda be her mom? Just so she can get the feeling of being the parent of a white (-ish) successful kid?
One one hand, yes they actually acknowledge jennifers existence, on the other hand parenting is one of those things were you have a bare minimum bar to meet before you can call yourself good and the Walkersons don’t meet that bar either for Jennifer. Jennifer is just kept around as the optional child because Linda can spend the good times with her and doesn’t have to be informed about all the little hiccups alobg the way like drunk driving and suicide pacs etc.
This is all true but like, at least the Walkerton are there and they kind of give a fuck.
The Billingsworths are not there and do not give a fuck. Jennifer isn’t being conditioned to think her birth parents suck by shitty parents Linda and Chuck, she KNOWS her birth parents think of her as a problem to be solved with money, and hence prefers shitty parents Linda and Charles. Even if they are quite shitty, as empirical evidence has proven.
It’s debatable if they do give a fuck or not. Linda doesnt seem to know any of her children outside of how she wants to be viewed. Sal and Walky each tried in their own way yesterday to get their parents to know them a bit better (Walky admitting why he failed and Sal trying to have a one on one lunch with her parents as herself) both failed because Linda doesn’t want to know them as people and Charles gives no real indication either. I personally doubt Jennifer’s any different in that regard and if so I feel she’d almost be better off hiring actual actors to pretend to be living parents. Atleast actors might not rub their toxic traits off on their pretend kids. I just really do not think the manipulative way Linda is trying to claim Jennifer as a daughter to replace her own bio kids is a better long term alternative to absent parents, it’s like Linda is stringing Jennifer along emotionally and conditioning her to think transactional relationships are all she can expect which is just messing up her chances to have people in her life who sincerely care because she keeps thinking she belongs with people like Radiah.
What’s supposed to happen in the next couple hours? Will Charles grow a spine and actually stand up for his kids? Will Linda gain enough self awareness to realise that her racism and status-seeking has severely harmed her kids? My fear is that Linda’s expecting an apology from ‘David’ at least. And if that is the case, from the bottom of my heart; Fuck You Linda.
is it really worth it for billie to keep interacting with this awful couple off or is it just that she might be stuck without any support in getting to and from college if she pisses linda off
It’s been a decade, near enough, and I still don’t quite grasp how Linda Walkerton and her husband managed to find enough attraction to do the deeds needed to make offspring, much less to spend actual time together long enough to even half-ass raise them without a nasty divorce.
Linda isn’t a Klansman type of racist, she’s a Get Out type of racist. She probably says she’d have voted Obama for a third term in the same breath that she says she’d support BLM if they weren’t so violent, and disruptive, and discriminatory, don’t they know you have to respect our hardworking police officers?
And Charles? He’s probably from a well-off family that never struggled or never talked about it, at any rate; he’s the kind of guy who votes Republicans into office. Linda’s racism isn’t the kind that he thinks matters.
Also, Linda did a crime for him, I bet, and it made him her forever simp.
I have to wonder – while the fact that Lucy’s Black is certainly a part of it – otherwise she would have objected more strongly to Amber and Dorothy – has it always been Linda’s scheme to set her “quadroon” son up with the rich Chinese girl down the street?
@Raen: Jeez I know you’re saying it “as” Linda, but. Jeez.
Anyway, yes she’s rich, but more important probably is that she’s “the reasonably white-passing daughter” Linda always wanted, according to Jennifer herself. I doubt Linda even considers Jennifer Asian. Probably in her mind it’s more like Jennifer is ~a little bit acceptably exotic~.
Not by a lot though. Poking at the “your parents don’t care” thing is just cruel, even your pretending to wrap it in praise of how “put together” she is.
Depends on whose perspective we’re coming from, since their hometowns are all over the state.
The Billingsworths and Walkertons are from Evansville, which is well south of Bloomington on the Kentucky state line. (Oddly they are not from the town of Walkerton, ID.)
Becky and Joyce are from La Porte, which is up near Lake Michigan.
Danny, Dorothy, and Joe are from Mishawaka, about 45 minutes west of La Porte.
Amber is from Indianapolis.
(All these facts were hastily pulled from the wiki, so hopefully they’re accurate because I didn’t double check them all.)
Oh good explanation! People also could be referring to elevation like we do in Colorado or even sailing against the prevailing winds, like “downeast Maine.”
Honestly a litte disappointed that Linda didn’t refer to her as Billie, in contrast to Sally and David. Would have been a neat trick to misname all three of her kids at this moment and still be maximally racist about it lol
Indeed, and being willing to look past that thing for her white-passing daughter, even after the point where said daughter stops using the nickname? Dismissive of everyone’s feelings, while being inconsistent in the most racist way – feels very much like how Linda’s been acting the rest of this arc.
Yeah, but I think it being based off her last name (pretty sure Billie was made up at the same time Walky was,) AND how generally formal Linda is about the full first names, I don’t think she would have used it ever, either. She’s racist and emotionally abusive, but she’s CONSISTENT about it.
Like, there’s nothing enjoyable about this dickass. Even her damn hair is a dull, lifeless color. She’s the kind of parent whose funeral people cry at because of what she could have been but consistently refused to be, not because she’s worth missing.
Is it just me or are the Walkerton’s just a complete caricature of bad parent? I know it’s a comic so everyone is going to be an overstated type but the Walkertron’s are just like literally everything you think of when you think of bad parent and projectionist parent.
No, StClair had it right. What CardinalFan appears to be saying is that they know “everything” in this comic is exaggerated, because apparently that’s just a storytelling rule for comics, but Linda and Charles are extra cartoonish and exaggerated. Hence, StClair’s comment.
CardinalFan’s assumption that these two parents are super duper exaggerated does kind of imply that they think people like this don’t really exist.
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If you were them, you’d be FUCKING LOADED
what is she even basing that “incredible, put-together” part on, the fact they’ve spent two minutes together?
They’ve known each other since she was a kid at least.
but I mean “today” after not seeing her for a while
Well, she iiiiiis white.
-ish. Passably.
and she’s pretty good at presenting / passing as “put together”, at least in short bursts.
Also her family is wealthy and influential which certainly doesn’t hurt how Linda evaluates people.
Biracial. But white-passing.
Some racist white people consider East Asian to be the “master race”. Because they’re “smarter”. Source: live in the south.
Huh, all this time I thought she was at least half-Asian. Shows what I know.
Pretty sure she is, yeah. But white-passing.
Chinese on her mom’s side, British on her dad’s.
She actually confirms her mom is Chinese in an early strip, can’t remember which one…
And used her Chinese middle name Yunru on her fake ID.
Sauce?
I do not blame you for forgetting. It was almost 9 years ago.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/bigred/
Dang! Billy, er, Jennifer, is 30 years old now! She sure doesn’t look it! 😀
Her blessing, her curse.
This strip right here! Which was a bongo to find, since Jennifer’s the only named character in it– the one real weakness of an otherwise easy-to-search archive.
Said strip also has her give a specific (albeit fake) birth date of October 19, 1993, which is just going to get more and more hilarious as the timescale slides on. Alt-text says that October 19 may not be her actual birthday either.
2015: Jennifer uses a fake ID that claims she’s 21, and is offended when the clerk implies she looks it.
2023: A few months ago, Jennifer used a fake ID that claims she’s 29, and was offended when the clerk implied she looks it.
2030: Last year, Jennifer used a fake ID that claims she’s 35 and…
In the walkyverse iirc she’s fully white but enough people thought she was asian that willis made her half-asian for the dumbingverse
Way back when, Jennifer uses a fake ID, and it has her real name, “Yunru”. She tells the liquor store guy that it’s Chinese, as is her mom, and her dad is English.
(This is in the Dumbiverse, as Adam already mentioned.)
She mentions there that her middle name is Chinese, but doesn’t say anything about her dad being English. Is that somewhere else?
ValdVin is confusing it for the time she shows her fake ID to Jason, where it also comes up.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/backpacked/
(final panel: “My dad’s an English immigrant. Your powers have no effect on me.”)
Also even earlier, Jennifer just straight-up tells Joyce “Dad’s from England, mom’s Chinese”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/mixed/
Half Chinese in dumbiverse.
wonder if we’ll get to meet them. or linda sucking up to them or whatever lol
Hard Up Climber-Lady need to squeeze all her fat-cat connections for all they’re worth (MUCH less than she expected) and that includes her surrogate daughter’s parents, ’cause that karen-assed lawsuit against the broke fringe church and the ex-family of the dead gangster cost her more than expected?
I don’t think so, but I don’t read as much of the social climber thing in her as others do. Not sure how this would really tie into that. She knows Jennifer’s parents are basically absent.
Of course that make wrapping this supposed praise of Jennifer with mentions of her parent worse, she knows it’s a sore spot.
You don’t think… we’ll actually get to see Jennifer’s parents this arc? 😨
We’ll actually get to see their cardboard cut-out stand-ins.
Or maybe their stunt doubles!
I think Charles and Linda are their stunt doubles.
Maybe? Or maybe they shall remain like Maris Crane in Frasier or (until the last episode) the Cook in Enterprise – often discussed, yet never seen.
We didn’t really see Chef in the last episode of Enterprise. We saw Will Riker deciding that the best thing to do in the middle of the Pegasus crisis was to cosplay as him, because Will Riker makes very poor decisions.
Maybe he was replaying Chef’s holonovel of the Pegasus crisis, and it puts the viewer in his shoes with some Wonder Years style voiceover commentary.
I don’t think we’re ever going to see them. Their value to the story is in their absence — so showing up would likely devalue/confuse that role.
i wouldn’t mind seeing carlas parents. XD; tho idk how jen would react given that they’re seemingly not around, either aloof or desperate for their attention
tho i imagine at this point i imagine she’d want ‘distance’ like she said (or, maximum drama of them showing up on campus and running into ruth first XD)
Maybe Nina will visit.
Linda trying to argue that she’s not the worst parent because she’s a supportive parent to someone else’s kid.
There it is. And also still displaying the Refuses To Let Something Go Or Take a Cue even to the ‘good kid’ (who is not actually her kid).
She told herself
“Well, if my children do not appreciate my sacrifice, I will place my appreciation on other people’s children.”
Linda. A mom who needs to get Angry Drunk in order to hang out with her child.
Maybe Linda should dare Jennifer and Charles can date Asher.
There, Jennifer gets to be snooty and Asher gets to date Walky-but-older.
Lol of course
They deserve each other
We knew Linda was kinda racist and an overbearing mother, now we can add “cannot read a room” and “lack of tact” to the list of traits
Nah, Linda doesn’t care. She wants to make it painstakingly clear to herself that Billie is her true daughter.
Yep whoever the child is it’s always about how they make Linda look and Linda wants to look like the caring mother in a safely white passing biracial family, the minute the cast in her mind looks too dark she searches for a replacement.
This. Also because she’s a Billingsworth….For which Fair Lady Linda took a back-to-back pregnancy for…..Linda did act as Jennifer’s surrogate mother, correct?
Definitely. Linda wishes she had a title like ‘Lady’ shes a wannabe social elite who can’t get into their social circles so instead takes in an emotionally neglected child of said elite instead.
Not surrogate in that sense. Just someone who was around when Jennifer’s parents weren’t. They met when the kids were first getting a bus to school.
Denial is the first stage of grief.. apparently quickly followed by anger.
Then hate, then suffering, then the dark side.
Amazing comment. This really brightened my day. Thank you.
Holy shit, Linda. (Also, I’m very curious about the extent to which she doesn’t know Billie’s issues. Did she hear about the drunk driving thing and excuse it? Did that information never reach her?)
Walky mentioned it at the very beggining of the comic, and it’s well known enough that it’s mentioned in her file, so I’m thinking that Linda’s excusing it as a “youthful indiscretion.”
That’s what it’s called when a rich person does it, yes.
“Affluenza.”
Oh my god, I forgot about affluenza.
Linda continues her path of not understanding the people around her, or at least she doesn’t understand “her”* children.
What would it take for Linda to learn to be kind?
I’d ask what it would take to make her a good person, but I think we should go for reasonable wishes.
*I know Billie/Jennifer isn’t actually Linda’s kid, but she sure acts that way sometimes.
given how she once called herself their ‘white passing daughter’ i can imagine a younger jen maybe going to their house often when she was lonely/basically spent more time with the walkertons versus her own house
That makes sense; it would also explain why she is touchy about the parent visit thing.
Which makes Linda pushing on her parents visiting here worse.
She knows.
Linda knows, so she could be fishing for Jen to fall over herself adulating her for the positive attention. It’s a narcissist’s passive-aggressive power move.
She said before parents weekend that she sometimes calls the Walkertons ‘mom’ and ‘dad’. Sal remarked that at least they have one daughter they like.
Disclaimer: I’m not qualified to offer a real diagnosis. But in basic psychology terms Linda has a lot of signs of anti-social or narcissistic disorders, meaning she looks at other people as means to access resources for her own benefit; financial security, social standing, political influence, whatever they’ve got. It’s possible she wants these things for her kids and this unofficial ward of hers out of a genuine wish for their wellbeing, limited to these terms she understands, or just because she wants for them to reflect well on her, but it would be a mistake to take her approach to her relationships with her kids as any indication for her approach to human relationships in general anyway.
In so far as it’s possible for her to learn kindness, learn to value other people’s lives beyond their usefulness to her, it depends on having motivation to do so. Which is not very likely to happen with the very financially secure high status life she has. A long, long period of being without human contact while also needing to rely on other people’s kindness to survive on a day to day basis might help.
Jesus, Linda let her take the wad of cash her dad gives her as his emotionally constipated way of saying ‘I love you’. It’s bad enough you’ll ditch your own recently disabled kid in another state when she disappoints you without turning up to the rich family friend with adoption papers.
Fuuuuuck offff.
I wonder if Asher passes the boyfriend test – he’s from a rich, probably influential family.
His family’s SO INVOLVED in local businesses, of COURSE she approves! Probably for the same reasons Raidah does.
I’m super expecting Linda to approve of Asher doing the same shit Walky does.
And ex-employee of his grandad kidnapping her son notwithstanding….
She’s happily spending time with someone who set her daughter up to rob a convenience store. I want to believe Linda doesn’t know, but I doubt it
I think there’s a pretty good chance Linda’s in the dark there. Walky didn’t initially know as I recall, and Linda doesn’t strike me as all that aware. (Also, because the irony of Linda objecting to Sal hanging out with Marcie while calling Asher a “nice young boy/man” is just SUCH low-hanging fruit for us all.)
Walky looked it up pretty easily. It’s really a question of whether or not Linda “Charles, google whether or not we can sue a church” Walkerton has bothered looking it up.
Sal actually looked it up, but all she looked up was whether Asher was on campus.
When Walky goes to look for Asher, he already knew Asher was involved with the robberies.
I would not be shocked if Linda never knew of Asher’s involvement, and maybe didn’t even know Asher and Sal were once friends, since by the time she associated with him, she was already probably trying to keep her mom out of her business.
i’m not sure if she knows asher specifically, if not just knowing his ‘family’ or whatever but i can imagine “well, sal still made her own decisions, regardless of influence” /saw marcy as a ‘bad influence’ on her even tho she didn’t do anything esp bad as a kid before then
how the heck would Linda know Asher called the cops if SAL didn’t know until recently?
I don’t think anyone suggested she did — just whether she knew he was involved in the robberies at all.
Honestly, if she did know that, she’d probably take the view that Asher and Sal both made mistakes, but one of them did the responsible thing afterwards. And no, that doesn’t make sense.
I think sal did know, or she figured it out eventually b/c “boarding school/juvie gives you a l ot of time to think”/it’s not like she would’ve name dropped any of her other ‘friends’ besides marcie
She does say she figured it out “long ago” when she first talks to Asher again.
I keep expecting Linda to present a TWIST and it keeps not happening
It’s because she keeps acting like theres something she’s expecting/came for. Here she says “they” aka herself might stay a few more hours depending,which leads to the question what is Linda expecting in the next few hours?
Information on whether she got the job.
For the sake of Sal and Walkys sanity I sincerely hope not.
She twists the knife, does that count?
Ooh, ya beat me to it.
Oof, the deflecting. Either their constant absence IS a sore spot for Jennifer or she doesn’t enjoy spending time with them when they deign to be around. Realistically I can see it being a bit of both. The money was always used as a substitute for affection, and what little we’ve heard of the Senior Billingsworths sure does not bode well. That Jennifer’s willing to compare her dad to a mob boss suggests she doesn’t exactly think HIGHLY of him as a whole. (I still think that’s a flawed comparison and that Jennifer is almost certainly not operating off the critical information that Asher Is Not As Out as I think he’d like to be, but I think there’s a pretty reasonable chance Jennifer DOES know Gramps is a mobster rather than “he owns a lot of businesses in town” or whatever euphemism I’m sure they’ve given Raidah.)
She probably just doesn’t also like what Linda is doing right now in general. She knows why Linda thinks so highly of her.
Yeah, Jennifer’s seemed aware and uncomfortable with the whole “white-passing surrogate daughter (Linda) wanted”, good point. She’s also like. Desperate for parental affection, I think, so I can see why she DID it, but that doesn’t mean she LIKES any of her parents or has many remaining illusions about them.
Yeah its the only option for any kind of approval she’s got sadly.
Yup. Billie has shown to be both utterly disgusted by it but also craves it.
The strained smile in the last panel says “This does bother me but I’m trying to put a good face on it”.
She knows Linda sucks, but she also knows Linda loves her (for her money and white-passing status but you know what, Jennifer will take it) and will shower her with praise while letting her maintain her independence and never really pushing back on Real Billie Hours.
She clearly doesn’t believe this about Papa Billingsworth, and is pretty sure he’d crack the proverbial whip; whether that’s simply him ceasing to be a wallet and trying (probably badly) to be a dad or something much darker remains to be seen, because Papa Billingsworth is our Sauron—despite knowing of his power we never see his ass.
(I have a raft of wild theories on what exactly his deal is. None of them are good, or nice.)
It occurs to me that now that Walky is in Linda’s bad graces Jennifer might find Linda attempting to cut into more of her “Billie hours” to feel like a sucessful parent. Aside from the strain on Jennifer to keep looking put together if Radiah notices she might just stop pretending to want to be friends with Walky and go back to love bombing Jennifer more. Wonder how long Jennifer can deal with all the fake people in her life pretending to like her? Last panel implies she’s reaching her limit.
Jennifer needs someone to follow her around and tell her when people are being fake
y.I read the last panel more as her not wanting to think about how uninvolved her biological parents have been in her life.
It’s probably both. It is a sore spot, but because it is and because they ignore her so much, it’s also bad when she does see them.
Hrm. So recently, Willis has been making posts on Twitter to the effect that they can’t post any preview panels from the upcoming storyline they’re currently working on because there’s spoilers basically everywhere. Could we finally see the Billings-‘rents soon?
That or it’s Guns, either or
So…. big arc in, what, six weeks?
Hm. It’s too early for Amber to become involved with Asher, the one who arranged to have her father killed. That pairing has to be endgame.
I think she’d be more upset about the kidnapping part than the Blaine part. He had Asher over a barrel, after all.
More like 6 months.
Yeah, sounds more like it.
So six days.
couldn’t stand Walky anymore so she went bother her step daughter eh ?
lol well, i imagine jennifers been fairly polite and never given any inkling that she’d dislike linda and charles, but i’m sure it’s also to find things to talk about to compare sal with if they bother to say goodbye lol
Pretty funny they struck out on feeling like good parents with Sal first then Walky, and now they are trying their luck with the neighbor’s child. What are they going to do if they piss Jennifer off too?
Jennifer was a head cheerleader who played the mean girl in high school, but was still friends with Walky.
Linda basically turned her into Replacement Sal, with White Passing Kung Fu Grip!
wait we’re getting a Billie/Linda breakfast?
Holy shit. We eatin’.
She said lunch but yeah, be interesting if they went to the same place again as her group and stayed calm this time versus walky’s ‘trolling’ of that burger XD
10000% chance of that happening.
Linda’s being VERY PERSISTENT in implying that she is Billie’s parent.
Woohoo, now everybody’s happy pretending things are wonderful and trying not to see the cracks, perfect lunch combo for all involved
I guess garbage attracts garbage?
What do we bet Walky shows up to belatedly stand up for Lucy and loudly blame them for breaking them up? Perhaps Walky and Linda could make yet another huge scene in the same restaurant.
My gosh look at the four of them walking the same way with the same arm around the girl. L Who is mirroring whom?
This is gross on so many levels.
The fact that everyone knows *exactly* what Linda is actually doing and are trying to rebuke her in soft and hard ways and she literally does not understand or think they have any kind of point to their annoyance and anger is so painfully real.
Wow, what a moving scene.
I’m just wondering, what kind of events have to happen for Linda’s neurons to finally work?
Is Linda congenitally unable to accept a hint?
When it goes against her own agenda? Always.
Linda?!? BACK!! Back, vile beast!! But bring some gingersnaps tho, please.
Plus who the heck even knows what Billie’s mom is doing, let alone her dad!!
apparently her dad is making money (means as yet unspecified)
–Dave, it can’t possibly be that they’re dead and Billie helped hide the bodies, as there would have been SO MANY flashbacks during a particular earlier storyline. or two.
Imagine calling Jennifer put-together.
Jennifer’s mind is literally held together by a piece of duct tape and two pieces of string at any one moment.
I think aside from sending Jennifer cookies this is the only time Linda has actively sought Jennifer out, only other time they were in the same room in comic is when Jennifer came to them to convince them not to try to get amber expelled. Figures even though Jennifer’s the golden child she’s still third choice in some regards. Sal and Walky are no longer white passing enough so now they remember their “other daugther”
Jennifer all “Man, I love going through my villain arc because I have so much power and status, but why do I have to hang out with all these assholes?!”
Oh, gross
Charles translation: thanks for appeasing my wife so we don’t have to dwell on the fact that both our bio kids hate us now! With how awful Linda is I think it’s worth remembering that this guy can watch his wife verbally abuse both his kids one day then play proud father to the neighbour’s kid the next day.
Charles is absolutely a huge jerkoff asshole and I hope people stop waiting for his redemption arc. It ain’t happening. He’s not Hank.
Ehhhhhhh. Hank was pretty awful for his first few appearances. Like, he was worse in some ways than Charles has been.
I don’t think we’ve seen nearly enough of Charles yet to actually write him off.
Is she trying to get Billie to think her parents suck so she’d instead let Linda be her mom? Just so she can get the feeling of being the parent of a white (-ish) successful kid?
Yep, Linda needs a new prop kid now that her two bio ones have failed at being white passing enough for her.
Counterpoint: the Billingsworths do, in fact, suck
Yeah, there’s a pretty decent argument that the Walkerton’s really are the better parents, terrifying as that is.
One one hand, yes they actually acknowledge jennifers existence, on the other hand parenting is one of those things were you have a bare minimum bar to meet before you can call yourself good and the Walkersons don’t meet that bar either for Jennifer. Jennifer is just kept around as the optional child because Linda can spend the good times with her and doesn’t have to be informed about all the little hiccups alobg the way like drunk driving and suicide pacs etc.
This is all true but like, at least the Walkerton are there and they kind of give a fuck.
The Billingsworths are not there and do not give a fuck. Jennifer isn’t being conditioned to think her birth parents suck by shitty parents Linda and Chuck, she KNOWS her birth parents think of her as a problem to be solved with money, and hence prefers shitty parents Linda and Charles. Even if they are quite shitty, as empirical evidence has proven.
It’s debatable if they do give a fuck or not. Linda doesnt seem to know any of her children outside of how she wants to be viewed. Sal and Walky each tried in their own way yesterday to get their parents to know them a bit better (Walky admitting why he failed and Sal trying to have a one on one lunch with her parents as herself) both failed because Linda doesn’t want to know them as people and Charles gives no real indication either. I personally doubt Jennifer’s any different in that regard and if so I feel she’d almost be better off hiring actual actors to pretend to be living parents. Atleast actors might not rub their toxic traits off on their pretend kids. I just really do not think the manipulative way Linda is trying to claim Jennifer as a daughter to replace her own bio kids is a better long term alternative to absent parents, it’s like Linda is stringing Jennifer along emotionally and conditioning her to think transactional relationships are all she can expect which is just messing up her chances to have people in her life who sincerely care because she keeps thinking she belongs with people like Radiah.
“incredible put-together woman”
………..uh-huh. sure.
Godfuckingdammit she’s still here?
What’s supposed to happen in the next couple hours? Will Charles grow a spine and actually stand up for his kids? Will Linda gain enough self awareness to realise that her racism and status-seeking has severely harmed her kids? My fear is that Linda’s expecting an apology from ‘David’ at least. And if that is the case, from the bottom of my heart; Fuck You Linda.
is it really worth it for billie to keep interacting with this awful couple off or is it just that she might be stuck without any support in getting to and from college if she pisses linda off
She seems good at acting as a wall between her and the kids she abuses so that’s good. She also knows generally how to talk Linda down
I mean that’s true yeah but if I was her I’d be keeping the optional encounters to a minimum
Remember when people were REALLY upset with Jennifer a couple months ago for saying she’s Linda’s favorite child?
Anyway how are y’all doing?
Accidentally flagged my own post… That’s embarrassing.
Anyway when I said a couple months, I meant half a year.
My bad.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/magicalgoldenchild/
Billie absolutely enjoys her status as favorite.
I mean that’s okay, you can be wrong about things
It’s been a decade, near enough, and I still don’t quite grasp how Linda Walkerton and her husband managed to find enough attraction to do the deeds needed to make offspring, much less to spend actual time together long enough to even half-ass raise them without a nasty divorce.
Linda isn’t a Klansman type of racist, she’s a Get Out type of racist. She probably says she’d have voted Obama for a third term in the same breath that she says she’d support BLM if they weren’t so violent, and disruptive, and discriminatory, don’t they know you have to respect our hardworking police officers?
And Charles? He’s probably from a well-off family that never struggled or never talked about it, at any rate; he’s the kind of guy who votes Republicans into office. Linda’s racism isn’t the kind that he thinks matters.
Also, Linda did a crime for him, I bet, and it made him her forever simp.
He’s also half white and I’m guessing that half had the stronger influence growing up
I have to wonder – while the fact that Lucy’s Black is certainly a part of it – otherwise she would have objected more strongly to Amber and Dorothy – has it always been Linda’s scheme to set her “quadroon” son up with the rich Chinese girl down the street?
Racists in the US tend to frame Asians as “the good immigrants” for prejudiced and/or bigoted reasons I’d rather not enumerate.
@Raen: Jeez I know you’re saying it “as” Linda, but. Jeez.
Anyway, yes she’s rich, but more important probably is that she’s “the reasonably white-passing daughter” Linda always wanted, according to Jennifer herself. I doubt Linda even considers Jennifer Asian. Probably in her mind it’s more like Jennifer is ~a little bit acceptably exotic~.
Aww, Linda gets to spend quality time with her favorite daughter.
We’ve never actually SEEN how Billie and the Walkertons interact, have we?
Even this little glimpse is more pleasant than any of the interactions we saw her have with Sal, sans-Danny.
Not by a lot though. Poking at the “your parents don’t care” thing is just cruel, even your pretending to wrap it in praise of how “put together” she is.
It was passably OK to mention it once but geez Linda, have some social graces.
Is IU ‘up here’ or ‘down here’? Confused.
Depends on whose perspective we’re coming from, since their hometowns are all over the state.
The Billingsworths and Walkertons are from Evansville, which is well south of Bloomington on the Kentucky state line. (Oddly they are not from the town of Walkerton, ID.)
Becky and Joyce are from La Porte, which is up near Lake Michigan.
Danny, Dorothy, and Joe are from Mishawaka, about 45 minutes west of La Porte.
Amber is from Indianapolis.
(All these facts were hastily pulled from the wiki, so hopefully they’re accurate because I didn’t double check them all.)
*East of La Porte.
Oh good explanation! People also could be referring to elevation like we do in Colorado or even sailing against the prevailing winds, like “downeast Maine.”
It’s all from the books iirc, so they’re right.
Honestly a litte disappointed that Linda didn’t refer to her as Billie, in contrast to Sally and David. Would have been a neat trick to misname all three of her kids at this moment and still be maximally racist about it lol
Honestly I wouldn’t expect Linda to have ever called her anything but Jennifer. She seems to have a thing about nicknames.
Indeed, and being willing to look past that thing for her white-passing daughter, even after the point where said daughter stops using the nickname? Dismissive of everyone’s feelings, while being inconsistent in the most racist way – feels very much like how Linda’s been acting the rest of this arc.
Yeah, but I think it being based off her last name (pretty sure Billie was made up at the same time Walky was,) AND how generally formal Linda is about the full first names, I don’t think she would have used it ever, either. She’s racist and emotionally abusive, but she’s CONSISTENT about it.
do charles and linda not know who asher is?? i find that surprising. and if they do know, i find it EXTRA suprising
Billie’s father has more important things to do like building that nice farm upstate for all the homeless people he sent them to.
They’ve never been heard from again because they’re so happy there.
Like, there’s nothing enjoyable about this dickass. Even her damn hair is a dull, lifeless color. She’s the kind of parent whose funeral people cry at because of what she could have been but consistently refused to be, not because she’s worth missing.
Is it just me or are the Walkerton’s just a complete caricature of bad parent? I know it’s a comic so everyone is going to be an overstated type but the Walkertron’s are just like literally everything you think of when you think of bad parent and projectionist parent.
Nah, they’re just racists.
Sadly, I feel they’re just as realistic as the Browns.
Are you saying you don’t believe such people actually exist?
Oh, you sweet summer child.
I think they’re saying the opposite.
No, StClair had it right. What CardinalFan appears to be saying is that they know “everything” in this comic is exaggerated, because apparently that’s just a storytelling rule for comics, but Linda and Charles are extra cartoonish and exaggerated. Hence, StClair’s comment.
CardinalFan’s assumption that these two parents are super duper exaggerated does kind of imply that they think people like this don’t really exist.
No. They most certainly exist. Which is sad.