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“wow, you guys are the worst at giving up on me”
“Congratulations, you have been crowned the world-wide champion of Giving Up on Jennifer Billingsworth. Now you can retire from the game.”
Not that it makes much difference in the larger scheme of things. The heat death of the universe is currently scheduled for April 18, 2026.
So we’ve got a few millennia to figure out a fix, that’s fine
wondered where you got that from – than read the alt-text.
btw: an entire year of buffered strips – wow!!
Everyone else is taking this as hyperbole.
Me, I see this as a “soggies may rule” scenario.
Either that, or April 18 2026 is the day that Joyce gives Jennifer the ol’ double deuce.
Isn’t that Alice?
It’s actually Jennifer’s parents.
You read it here first people:
The heat death of the universe is 2016 April 28 !
You know, that really explains a lot.
I got lost by the double negatives
Joyce will give up on Billie when the universe grows cold.
Ruth will keep going after that.
Ruth is telling Billie to give up on Bille when Ruth does.
The double negatives were fine, I got lost by the chiasmus.
… No, Firefox spell-check, I did not mean “masochism”
Well, it’s a strip about Ruth and Jennifer, so Firefox’s mistake was understandable.
That’s sweet, if slightly sad too. There’s probably a word for that, but I have a migraine so I’m going to bed.
Good night everyone
Bittersweet?
That works; thank you.
Billie-sweet?
*ding* Point awarded!
Yes!
Or melancholic?
Like Napoleon Dynamite, yeah.
Melancholic captures the grade of sad, but not really the sweet. In my arbitrary but always correct opinion, bittersweet is much better.
I knew it complete, when I wore a younger man’s clothes.
I still feel like I have a hard time sympathizing with Jennifer here.
That’s okay. You can sympathize with Ruth instead.
I don’t think you’re meant to, yet.
She’s THIS || CLOSE to an epiphany.
That’s ok. I have a lot of confidence in her ability to stare it down and not grow. Good for her if she learns, but I’m not holding my breath.
I sympathized with panel 2 Jen going “hey wait, Joyce is a way better person than I am”. It’s a step forward! Now let’s see her go apologize. Even if all she manages at this stage is an implicit apology
Yes, showing even a little bit of self-awareness is a good sign.
I enjoyed this one a lot
Me too.
The Jennifer story has been really solid lately and kind of a highlight for me. It’s nice to see her character start Doing stuff again. Her relationship with Joyce is developing! Her relationship with Ruth is developing! It’s very nice.
Yeah it’s really incredibly sweet.
So we ever reach the comic buffer, we should just assume it was the heat death of the Dumbing-verse. Got it.
“There goes my favorite webcomic,” he thought, as the universe began to fold in on itself
I mean, it kind of canonically is the end of this universe when the buffer runs out.
And yes, I literally LOL’d at the hover text.
Shit, heat death of the universe is coming up sooner than I realized.
Of course there’s the sliding time scale to consider. If it’s always sometime next year, we have nothing to worry about.
Plus, Willis might keep adding to his buffer. Why stop now?
As I argue below, the alt text says “when my buffer ends,” not “when it will end.”
Ruth is an immortal vampire confirmed.
I always assumed it would be werewolves or ghouls that munch on femurs, not vampires.
She uses the femurs to garnish her Bloody Mary (cocktail, although she may not object to the alternative and God dammit now I am picturing the Dumbiverse in the style of the Hellsing animé and you know what Ruth would actually pull off that Alucard smile perfectly)
I’d watch it
When exactly did she burn Joyce? Where’s the scar?
Joe will find out tonight
She burned Joyce on her chances. I think those are located somewhere between the femers and the wenis.
“BELIEVE IN THE ME THAT BELIEVES IN YOU!”
Beat me to it
So Jennifer wants to be friends with Alice by constantly hiding her real self? Seems healthy.
For what it’s worth, she said “regular” and not “real”. Different implications there.
Welcome to the background radiation of Jennifer for the last 15 years of the comic.
“Give up on yourself when I do” is one hard line, and a hard line to follow.
And she’ll be one who gave ten billion chances when you’re at her door DA DA DATA
“Since Our Friendship Is Not One-Sided, I Will Dedicate the Next Portion of Today’s Discussion Towards You and Your Feelings”
how did things break down for Jennifer on a strip named the
Took me a while to figure out what “The” meant.
And yet you’re not going expound for the rest of us so that we can nit-pick your explanation.
Well, I’m not allowed to, now. The NDA, you see. Since the title is changed now.
I heard those lyrics too
Just as a reminder, Ruth broke up with Billie! AHHHHHHHHH
If you ask Ruth she’d say breaking up with Jennifer wasn’t giving up on her, it was setting her free. Ruth is also a huge hypocrite. These things aren’t necessarily related.
Ruth would probably say that she was giving up on Ruth there.
I’m not sure this is a good answer to what you say, but Ruth breaking up with Billie was not Ruth giving up on her.
Giving up on their relationship, arguably, but had Ruth given up on Billie, she would act like Alice and Dorothy. She would avoid, ignore or shut off Jennifer.
But instead, I’m pretty sure she always listens to what Jennifer has to say and answer how she feel (or sometime in a comically mean way).
Only, since she indeed was the one to break up, she only reaches out when Billie is already there.
So apparently Joyce is going to give up on Billie on April 18th, 2026?
Buffer’s still getting bigger.
But the prophecy was that the heat death of the universe would be when the buffer ends. Not, you will notice, when the buffer *will* end.
In the future the buffer could be extended past the heat death of the universe, and in fact doing so would undoubtedly contribute to that heat death.
Just in case, I’m saving a screenshot of this comment
It won’t do much good after the forthcoming heat death.
oh ffffff. good one.
I like Ruth and Jennifer as friends. I think they will always love each other. I also hope with my entire being that they never get back together because Ruth cannot be healthy with Jennifer and I really hope Ruth continues to heal. I hope Jennifer starts to heal too.
To be fair, Both of them have grown and are trying to be better. Maybe one day they’ll be ready to support each other for real instead of the half-hearted slow mutual descent they were on previously.
Jennifer clearly wants to be better. She just needs help to believe she actually can. She needs some actual wins to build her self esteem and give her a push in that direction.
Ruth needs to stop believing her own toxicity pulls down everyone near to her. I honestly think her relationship with…… Bartending TA (his name is escaping me) is only holding up at all because she found him in such a bad state that she thinks she can’t bring him down further. I don’t feel they have much actual chemistry, and once he’s back on a successful career path Ruth will likely start pushing him away, too.
Blonde bartending TA is Jason.
Fred Jason.
I don’t think we’ve been given many, if any, indications that Ruth has begun healing?
Jennifer is the only one who’s claimed to be doing any better. Ruth hasn’t even claimed to have stopped drinking.
Ruth hasn’t stopped drinking. But she’s in therapy and on meds and experiencing normal human emotions instead of suicidally depressed. That all seems pretty good as progress.
Yeah, she’s not literally trying to drink herself to death anymore. That’s not nothin’, folks.
Progress compared with what, though? Certainly not progress from before she broke up with Jennifer on Halloween, since all of this was true then, too.
She hasn’t stopped drinking, but she may have reigned it back to less astonishingly unhealthy levels. Not everyone goes by AA’s standards. Especially considering AA’s rate of failure.
I’m not saying Ruth needs to be 100% sober to be healing, folks.
I’m saying Ruth has never claimed to be doing better, even once, by any metric.
And that’s true! “Quit drinking” is just one example of a metric.
Joyce confirmed more determined than the Ea, who give up the moment they learn about the concept of the heat death of the universe. Pathetic fucking ghosts. “WAAAH, boo hoo, it’s gonna get really fucking cold and stop being warm forever at some point in the incomprehensibly faraway future, a blooblooblo” like gimme a fuckin break. Meteion gave them too good of an ending.
Ah, a fellow xiv connoisseur.
Fuckin’ lazy ass pathetic Ea losers ain’t willing to DO something about it.
Can’t even muster up the damn willpower to throw the universe’s greatest rager. Like, you fucking losers figured out how to become eternally incorporeal, effectively immortal so long as you recharge your energy once in a while, and you’re just gonna give up on life? I’m glad they went extinct, fucking embarrassments to the concept of sentience.
…waitaminnit, the Ea? Aren’t they the ones who summoned a Great Old One? I mean, isn’t it *right there* (misspelled, sure, but it’s there) in the popular chant?
WoL just wasn’t invited, and… I can see why they gave up if they actually got that particular Old One to join the party.
Really, Hermes is the bad guy in the entire scenario. Dude was a shitty fucking scientist and his busted-ass faulty experimental freak of nature creation was in dire need of some QA testing. Impatient prick literally doomed his society because he couldn’t wait a couple fucking weeks to send an anxiety-riddled autistic birdgirl into space.
This is reminding me of an earlier strip where I think Ruth said something like “until the end of everything” about Billie, but I’m not having any luck finding the specific scene. Anyone happen to remember when that was or have a link?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/playmates/ it took me a bit in the archives but viola!
Darkness falls on Finale Station. The last black hole of any appreciable size has finally evaporated past the point where any meaningful energy can be extracted, and one by one the systems start to go into hibernation, from which they will never wake. People say their last goodbyes and leave little monuments of their existence, purely for personal comfort, since there will never be any eyes to see them before they finally evaporate into the empty sky too. Joyce tells Jennifer “actually you kind of suck”, and Jennifer says “I know, that’s what I’ve been saying all along!” Then all falls still forever.
That was beautiful
And yet even after, Ruth still beleives in Jennifer.
As she drifts on, forever alone, in a universe where nothing ever happens again.
Jennifer says “I know, that’s what I’ve been saying all along!”
Ruth puts her hand to Jennifer’s shoulder, the last fraction of a joule of heat passing from her palm, but lost before it can even warm Jennifer’s shirt let alone her skin or heart. Even so, the message lingers on into eternity: she got the last word in for spite.
I did not expect today to read a cross between DoA and THGttG. That was good!
credit to Jennifer for being really really honest and actually self-aware here.
So DYW’s buffer is now around 10**100 years?
Not yet, but Willis is working on it. All he has to do is produce and upload 2 completed episodes every day.
“Extending the curve of Willis’s last year’s production out indefinitely …”
“Multivac, how can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?”
JOYCE MUST DISS JENNIFER.
Well, first you find some teenage girls and grant their wishes in exchange for them becoming magical girls who fight witches . . .
Noooooooooooooooo
Oh, you person of culture! That’s one of my favorites!
As long as this doesn’t turn into a rekindling of their romantic relationship, this is great. I very much want for Ruth to continue to be supportive of Jennifer without ever getting back together with her. Because romantically they are a toxic cesspit, but this is pretty solid.
Unrelated to this heartbreakwarming strip in any way:
I dreamed that Joyce and Joe were starting a popcorn stand on campus. Like a coffee cart with a big movie theater popcorn maker. I think they were discussing which seasonings to offer, knowing Joyce wouldn’t be trying any of them. So there’s a business idea for someone that hates clean classrooms and auditoriums!
And then Undertaker came along and threw Maven through it?
Damn you, Willis, I didn’t have any tears allotted for tonight. Why you gotta bring them out
last two panels have a nice tempo to them- the last one literally re grounds it in the space, and the panel frame lends itself to a sense of closing- emotional conclusion and certainty. dont know if willis thinks abt it like that but i like it a lot.
i will never escape the damage art school has done to me
i like that you think about it like that
There’s always a possibility that one of the other theories of how the universe ends is correct. Would DoA still be going after a Big Crunch and maybe another Big Bang after that? Probably not, but who knows.
I rather am partial to the yo-yo theory, that it rotates cyclically through forming universes, collapsing them, forming them, collapsing them….
Especially because that’s essentially what a number of old religions believed, for example, Norse Ragnarok; that the world (the universe) would end in fire, and be reborn anew.
PLEASE WILLIA DEAR WILLIS GOD OF DOA
PLEASE TELL ME YOU’RE GETTIJG THEM BACK TOGETHER BUT HEALTHIER.
WILLIA YES!
Willis, probably: “I can make them worse.”
(*begin Pawn Stars meme): “Best I can do is make them worse.”
Honestly, betting against.
We’ve done “Jennifer has a bad encounter with Alice and kindles her destructive romance with Ruth” before, I think part of the point of this arc is showing that they have changed. Even if that means they maybe don’t start kissing again this time
Yeah I agree. At this moment them getting back together feels like a regression. I don’t really trust Ruth in a romance with Jennifer right now. She needs to kind of prove herself capable of not self sabotaging again. And Jennifer can’t just go back to Ruth when she’s struggling to define herself in the first place. Ruth is a good friend and support but this just doesn’t feel like the time. They’ve done the depressed make out before. If they do ever give this another chance it needs to be more solid.
Now it can be the not depressed makeout but the recovery makeout!
Listen to Ruth, Jennifer.
Listen to Ruth. She will dump Jason for you. And everyone will be happy.
What about Jason?
Everyone of any importance will be happy.
Jason is happiest when he has something to kvetch about.
I’m conflicted on this one…
On the one hand, I have personally taught students (8th graders) about the theories for the end of the universe, including the heat death theory…
On the other hand, that is some pretty esoteric knowledge to have and feel comfortable throwing into a conversation, and I don’t quite feel like Billie would have it (but on the other, other hand, she is also a nerd who very probably knows her way around Wikipedia and TVtropes, since she’s comfortable on Wikipedia…. So maybe she does know about theories for the end of the universe!)
That second “Wikipedia” was meant to be “Wookiepedia”…
Ahhh, yesss, Wikipedia, Wookieepedia, and TV Tropes. The three great sinkholes of time.
Also Memory Alpha (for ST).
The concept of the heat death of the universe isn’t that esoteric IME. Not common but certainly slipped into the Vernacular.
I was tempted to say earlier, “Jennifer’s nerdy side is showing again.”
*cries* I really need these two to be happy. Even if they’re just friends in the end. (But they are one of my favorite couples)
Ooh, good strip.
‘Cause I still believe in miracles, I swear I’ve seen a few
And the time will surely come when you can see my point of view
I believe in second chances
And that’s why I believe in you
Anyone else feel like those are big words coming from someone who broke up with her? :/
Anyone else remember that Ruth’s refusal to give up on Jennifer was literally why she broke up with her, because the relationship was self-destructive and Jennifer knew that and didn’t care? You can disagree on whether that was a valid reason, but it was her reason.
Source?
My understanding of what Ruth told Dorothy about why she was going to break up (back on Halloween) was that they were fine and happy but she remembered being okay with dying and letting Jennifer die with her and that was unacceptable.
Nothing about Jennifer knowing that and not caring. That was more Alice’s line after the crash.
This alt-text was written more or less a year ago.
I’m not sure that’s true. I couldn’t point you at anything, but something gave me the impression that the alt-texts were written closer to the actual publication.
Joyce wont give up on her, because that means giving up ever curling up in there and feeling safe and warm forever.
HOW DID THESE 2 BREAK UP, THEY’RE SO STUPID
Jen is too relatable, I had an online friend of several years return unexpectedly this year after telling me to stay out of her life, and I just fell into the same mindset of wanting to be friends with someone who doesn’t want me. I was really excited but anxious, until it turned out she didn’t recognize me. Everything just imploded after that. It’s unfortunate that our dynamic is so toxic… :/
At least one of you recognizes it, and knows what to do about it.
yeah, well, more her than me. but i’m trying to forget, and stop clinging to something that died long ago. i just wanted to start over… but if that’s not an option, i just can’t be around her. hope is insidious.
If it was strictly an online relationship and she didn’t recognize you, I would say that was an opportunity to start over from scratch. On the Internet no-one knows you’re a mouse.
Hope does spring eternal. (usually)
It’s actually kind of sweet that Jennifer letting her guard down keeps feeling so embarrassing and humiliating and then people in her life go, “well, I’m still here, and I’m not leaving. So it might not be so bad.”
I’d give her lots more credit if it wasn’t performative.
Everything humans do is performative. We’re dancing monkeys.
Performative in what way? This dialogue reads as fully genuine to me.
They don’t know.
Everything Jennifer has ever done informs me that she gets off on SAYING she wants to be better. The shit she said to Joyce both in this arc and out of it don’t speak to me as someone who, in their private moments, goes “oh, that was bad, actually”.
but that’s what she’s doing right now…? are you reading the comic
like did you also think she was being performative when she stammered at Dorothy & yelled about having “a life-upheavaling epiphany”?
Performatively expressing upset at the state of her life while she takes a shower alone.
Billie, in a blank white room with no doors or windows, no cameras or even omniscient deities observing: “Damn, I really make a mess of my own life.”
Bryy: “She’s faking it for views.”
Oh it’s absolutely performed, but she’s a messed up kid with emotionally distant parents and bad impulse control and a deep well of insecurity. She’s still figuring out who she is and it’s going to take many, many, many, MANY times before Jennifer internalizes that no one minds if she’s a Star Wars nerd.
The fact that she’s freaking out shows that she’s brushing up against an epiphany and is very uncomfortable with that fact.
And sure you could say “That she has yet to embrace that is very damning” but I’d point out that if every character in the comic immediately corrected their toxic behavior and became their best self then the comic would be over and we wouldn’t get to read anymore.
This is the “why doesn’t Batman use his wealth to fix Gotham?” problem. The answer is, because if he did, there’s no more Batman stories.
And also, Batman does use his wealth. Gotham is just such an abysmal hellhole that it doesn’t magically fix things. And also he’s a fucking lunatic who runs around in a bat costume, so why the fuck people are expecting him to do the perfect whiteroom rational thing is beyond me.
Some people in the comments keep saying they don’t these two back together and I disagree, I think there’s strong potential for those two to have a good, strong, (relatively) wholesome relationship now that they’re both working on themselves and are further along in their self improvement journey.
I don’t know if we’re there yet
I agree, but a certain segment of the readership have proclaimed this relationship Doomed and Toxic Forever, and I doubt there’s any convincing them, since you can’t even really get them to remember the breakup correctly; lots of them will get who broke up with whom wrong, or otherwise assert something wild like “Ruth broke up with Jennifer because she was tired of her toxicity”.
Which is like. No. That’s your fanfic. It’s categorically not what happened, no matter how much you might want it to be.
Honestly, just adding one word there would make it accurate.
Ruth broke up with Jennifer because she was tired of her own toxicity.
(More or less accurate, anyway.)
Heh, that would be better, I guess, but textually Ruth broke up with Jennifer because she wanted to save Jennifer from what she saw as her own inevitable return to rock bottom.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/happiest-2/
(cw: discussion of self-harm, etc)
Her own well-being was, as far as I can tell, never part of the equation at all.
A lot of people seem to think that if you’re not perfectly healthy mentally and emotionally, you don’t deserve to have relationships and if you try, they’re just toxic and doomed.
There is certainly a proportion of Rachels ’round these parts, for all that a lot of the folks espousing the idea also seem to hate Rachel for saying it.
I think so, too.
Even the first time round, I’d argue that they did each other more good than harm by far.
It’s easy to look at the relationship and decide it was “doomed and toxic” because of how messed up both people in it were, but they were that messed up on their own. The relationship seemed to help both of them get to a better place.
To be fair, they got together pretty early in the comic, so we didn’t get a lot of chance to see their flaws before Billie x Ruth became an item.
Being VERY fair, the timeskip doesn’t help. We saw them being pretty happy together at the end of Book 10, but Jennifer was still saying stuff like, “I’m garbage and she’s my fire,” which is easy to read as Still Pretty Toxic.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/slickest/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/idyllic/
Our flashback to Halloween shows Jennifer actively saying she thought they were past the need for that sort of dramatics and could be more honestly, openly affectionate with each other (though obviously “Nerd. Gay nerd,” type teasing was still happening), and Jennifer had just asked Ruth to meet her parents. Which we know would have been a HUGE step for her on multiple levels: there’s no indication at all that she’s out to them, for one thing.
But. Alas.
*sigh*
*somberly* Raise the flag and patch up the holes, me hearty crew, the ship still sails for me apparently.
I’m right there with you.
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, the ship rises again
It IS impressive that you could die and we’d still have an entire year of comics left to go.
I can’t see them as a couple because of what happened in the past. But as best friend, well… that could really work. Now I sincerely hope Ruth can help Jennifer to become fried again with Alice.
Depressed, but not clinically so.
I only just realized the buffer reached a year
Ruth is never gonna give you up
Ruth is never gonna let you down
Ruth is…. Ruth is… Ruthless is totally gonna…. go around and hurt you (if you don’t behave)
Gotta say, I was not expecting a Ruthroll this day.
As the tumblr kids say I’m screaming crying throwing up
is that what they sayin for reals? heh
There’s a quote from BoJack Horseman, where Todd goes:
“You can’t just say you want to be better. You have to BE better.”
I don’t know why I’m thinking of it right now.
Heh, the kind Ex’s that end up being really good friends. Sorry, brain fried…meds taken, no coffee yet. Did I miss something.
And here we have two people who clearly have not changed at all since the start of this school year. That’s how it works, right? two other assholes declare that they’re written off and that they cannot be redeemed so no matter how much they claw and fight for it they’re just fucked. It’s not like the entire 15-year history of this comic argues against that idea.
Ironically, the ones writing them off are the ones whose opinions immediately stopped mattering in that moment. Sure, Billie wants to go back to being friends with Alice, but really the second Alice said “You’ll never change”, that was a free pass to never give a single solitary fuck what Alice thinks of her for the rest of time (no matter how hot Alice is). Rachel writing off Ruth (and then harassing her at every opportunity) is the same blank check, and Ruth mostly seems to respond to her with “Okay, I was thinking that anyway, so you didn’t add much to this”. It’s an interesting contrast to me, personally.
But yeah, if somebody gives up on you, they no longer get to have any say in your life. Especially if you change in a way they allegedly wanted and they reject it, whether they’re saying you’re faking it or not doing it to their standards or it’s too little too late, because then they’re just being willfully unpleasable, so fuck ’em.
Alice wrote Jennifer off for her own safety. I don’t think it’s “willfully unpleasant” to not believe an alcoholic who nearly got you killed and didn’t think it was a big deal when they claim to have changed.
She doesn’t owe Jennifer anything more.
Nor I guess, does Jennifer need to give a single solitary fuck what Alice thinks. But that falls into this weird way of thinking of human relationships in terms of obligations that I don’t really get.
I do agree that the interesting contrast here is both Ruth and Jennifer’s reactions, but that draws more I think on the strength of Jennifer’s past relationship to Alice compared to Ruth and Rachel. But it also ties to both of them really thinking deep down that the criticism is right.
I was honestly thinking more of Rachel with the “unpleasant” stuff. She makes me want to carve arcane patterns into my ass from annoyance. Alice can do whatever she wants, preferably to me.
Awwwwwwww my heart <3 I love Ruth so incredibly dearly
D: who detoxified my yuri (no but i love this, this is so romantic)
this is what Ruth gets for actually showing up to her therapy
Detox yuri!
Ruth, you gotta extend the same grace to yourself that you do to others. Easier said than done, but also essential.
SEE?! they’re great for each other.
Don’t give up on the me who won’t give up on you.
Is that a lyric? It should be a lyric.
It’s modification of a quote from gurren lagann, which was translated in English as “Believe in the me that believes in you!” , said to a younger boy by the older youth he deeply admired
We’ve come a long way since slamming each other around during hall meetings, huh?
(Sidenote, I’m just now noticing that the next storyline title is currently “The Only Exception.” As a Paramore fan, this has me both excited and scared for what’s gonna happen…)
Well, good news is you’ll both be dead well before the heat death of the universe so it won’t matter.
Hmmm? Hyperbole? Never heard of it. Some kind of food?
hot take nobody will see but i don’t think ruth made a bad choice in dumping billie, even though she handled it badly (which was probably as best she could). the thing about undoing a toxic relationship is it requires both partners’ full cooperation. it’s a lot of fucking work. and confronting yourself like that will probably make you hate yourself a bit. so. if you don’t trust *yourself* let alone your partner fully not to slip back into those self-destructive tendencies….