trash panzer @panzertron.bsky.social ⋅ 6h
Meredith Rose @mrose.ink ⋅ 21h
Alex Wayne @aawayne.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
David F Walker a.k.a. BadAzz MoFo @davidfwalker.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Arren @arrenm.bsky.social ⋅ 3m
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Nothings Monstered @nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Shaenon K. Garrity @shaenon.bsky.social ⋅ 13d
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Jennifer I don’t know if this is the sort of character witness you want to have.
1. No, it’s definitely not the sort of character witness Billifer wants.
2. Thag, how did you get to first comment?? :O
Sometimes Ana takes a day off, and it looks like NGPZ wasn’t gunning for it today either.
Yeah, not the first time I’ve been first, just rare
Wow.
She really is desperate for this, isn’t she?
Well clearly Raidah’s not one of them.
Raidah doesn’t have friends. She has networking contacts.
nods. Raidah amasses assets.
She deludes herself into thinking she does, at least.
I think she sees them as less “networking contacts” and more like “pawns”.
I don’t think Raidah understands what friendship is. She want’s to sabotage a relationship she has no stake in just because she thinks it makes someone she dislikes too powerful. This is the kind of person who ruins lives.
Well she is studying to be a lawyer.
If you really want to turn sociopathy into your career, you shouldn’t study to become a lawyer. You should study to become a CEO.
CEO of a law firm specializing in equities/holdings take-overs.
That’s the easiest job in the world. All you have to do is hire a bunch of people who were doing something unrelated to your thing, work them to the bone, beat the fuck out of them, and then fire them all once their project is done, regardless of how much money they just made you. Randy Pitchford, Android Wilson, Bobby Kotick, they’re just three stellar examples of how to make bank being worthless.
On paper anyway. Just as Sarah’s self-sabotaging tendencies make it unlikely she’ll be able to do anything with her degree should she even get it, Raidah’s too busy majoring in Chasing Rich Peoples’ Families for Delusions of Social Climbing to even minor in Law…
Sarah hasn’t shown a single instance of being self-sabotaging when it comes to her schoolwork. She is diligent and dedicated to that part of her life and I don’t see why she wouldn’t behave that way about her work once she has a degree, I think she’ll do fine. The social actions of a surly and defensive teenager aren’t good metrics of what they’ll be like years later with more at stake.
She only cares about influence… Not happiness.
Except this shows she’s not got anything of value to offer for influence.
Because if she won’t do favors for her allies, then they don’t have to do favors for her.
Raidah has misunderstood how building a network of allies works.
She’s very much a teenager. This is a very young attitude, mostly… ‘I am the boss, so you do what I say, no further discussion’.
Relationships being a two way street is frequently a realization that comes later, and sometimes it never comes at all.
Yeah, it may be shocking to her if Asher says to fuck off because he was only friends with Raidah because of JENNIFER.
It’s something 47 still doesn’t know.
The protagonist of Hitman does not deserve this roundabout slander.
The protagonist of Claymore doesn’t either.
I suggest using the moniker Krasnov, it’s a lot less ambiguous.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, there are **so many** leeches hoping to make gains by proximity that 47 has a functionally endless supply of sycophants.
Also, the “why would you want to reconnect with a (random, non-influential) high school friend?” is the most teenager-pilled, “we’re GROWN UPS now so we CAN’T do kid stuff ever or *unspecified bad consequences!*” bullcrap.
“High school? That’s kid stuff!” -A college sophomore
“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” — C. S. Lewis
Amazing how NPD can thrive even amongst School Wallflower #68432105, huh?
Raidah’s giving some real What Have You Done For Me Lately here.
… “character witness”, wat bruh?
that kinda shit may give ya an edge in our broke ass system, but not with an actual fuckin person
like tryin to use Chuck E Cheese tokens at a Dave N Busters (-_-)
If anything it would probably creep Alice out more that Jennifer is sending people to convince her to re-engage.
I think the problem is Jennifer is perhaps looking at this much like a job interview, a decision Alice will make based on logic and not heart. She thinks Alice liked being her friend, and is only avoiding Jennifer because Alice was scared of her alcoholism and more selfish and erratic tendencies. Therefore, Jennifer thinks, I just need to get Raidah to verify that she no longer have these draw back and she’ll be back in business. Jennifer may not get that Alice isn’t simply avoiding her out of pure cost/business analysis, but because Alice loved her and trusted her and then nearly watched Billie die through face full of bloody glass. Alice was hurt more than physically in that crash, she is likely suffering from feelings of betrayal and maybe a bit of trauma.
Also, Jennifer’s actions could have easily killed Alice. This always gets overlooked, but even though Alice didn’t get physically harmed permanently, she could have lost her life that might and it’s pure luck she didn’t. I would be shocked if Alice ever wanted to be around her again.
I also walked away technically unscathed when a man suffering a psychotic break attempted to break into my apartment to kill my husband and I. And I wish him all the help he needs, but I also want him to not be anywhere within 350 ft of me per the restraining order.
Jennifer just wants to be free from the worst night of her life and reinvent herself so she’s not “Billie the Alcoholic Fuck Up.” Which has been haunting her every step of the way.
THAT’S why she became Jennifer and ditched everyone else.
She rebooted her personality and tried to run away from her fuckups instead of admitting to and atoning for them.
A little accountability would probably go a lot further with Alice than anything Raidah would have to say.
And, not surprisingly, Alice wants to be free of those memories too. By not seeing Billie ever again.
Turning to someone who coldly commits to attempting to escape that fact she’ll never be “Raidah Whom Has Never Made a Mistake or Bad Call in Her Life” at any cost, personal or to others, in order to do so, I can add.
Also from Alice’s description the thing that really got to her was how Billie handled the aftermath of the crash. Alice was traumatized and Billie seemed to just brush it off
I’m glad you’re ok Suzi.
Me too.
And Alice said flat out that it wasn’t even the crash itself; she ghosted because Jennifer acted like the crash was NO BIG DEAL. Had Jennifer actually reacted, actually been scared and started to try and do better, Alice would have stayed.
This is just more of the same: Jennifer acting like something is no big deal when it is, actually, the entire deal.
It’s actually the reason for why she’s Jennifer.
Jennifer doesn’t want to be defined by the DUI for the rest of her life but it destroyed her relationship with Alice, her cheerleading squad membership, her prospects, and her self-respect.
Yeah, but… “The crash fucked me up immensely and I only acted like it was no big deal because I was completely numb to the whole situation afterwards, and I’m deeply sorry for what happened,” is a phrase that would probably??? Help?
I think Jennifer needs someone to spell it all out for her, like how you don’t casually drop being in a suicide pac with a smile in a conversation.
Or maybe explain that “my life spiralled out of control after that car crash. I thought I was poison that destroyed everything I touched. I ended up in a lesbian love suicide pact with another alcoholic and we embraced the fact that we couldn’t hurt each other more than we were already hurting… We hit rock bottom together. And since then, I have been working hard at digging upwards and trying to make something meaningful of my life that I actually recognise as me… I really am sorry about that crash. I know I hurt you afterwards but I really didn’t know how to react and deal with the fact I could have killed us both. Not reacting and trying to make it not be a big deal by pretending it wasn’t one was, with hindsight, fucking stupid.”
If you put in all of those words, with an actual apology and taking accountability, and putting into words what you did wrong… It comes across as less deranged and more like you may have learnt something than whatever it was that she actually ended up doing…
the problem is…
an apology/confession (both, actually) like that reads like a modern-day Young Adult novel character; it does not read at all like a real, living, breathing human being actually talks, nor like the typical amount of self-awareness that people have.
Basically- apologies are in order, yes- but they’re literally never going to be therapy-speech like this.
It sounds like a handwritten letter and not a spoken conversation to me. Also Jennifer has been to therapy and sometimes uses therapy speak, so, eh. I think it’s out of character because Jennifer isn’t that self pitying.
Well, it’s missing context.
Alice: Uuugh, okay, let’s do this. You almost killed both of us and you just tossed it off. Tell me why I should ever feel safe with you again.
Jennifer: [insert speech from above.]
Alice: [interjections during speech]
“Go deeper”
The crash was not actually the inciting incident that started things spiraling for Jennifer. She was a self-destructive alcoholic long before then. It was the crash, and Jennifer’s lack of apparent reaction to it, that led to Alice realizing it, but what she realized was that Jennifer had been dragging her down for years.
Yes, this
“A bit of trauma”? Car wrecks are the #1 cause of PTSD in the US. Speaking from personal experience, even if you don’t get killed, the trauma of being in a wreck is about the worse thing a civilian can experience in the Divided States of America.
I was surprised it’d be the #1 cause, considering the other things the USA does and have, but thinking more on how the culture emphasises cars everywhere, road safety barely exists, and 99% of vehicles are maximally damaging to anyone not inside them… I can see that.
Sorry, Jennifer. Raidah doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you, only about the money your father has.
That’s not true. Raidah cares about the utterly petty micromanagement she can perform upon any member of her ingroup. Satisfying the Worthington equation is a bonus and a crumple zone.
Again, Raidah isn’t willing to do you a tiny favor despite all the sucking up you’ve done.
So she’s not worthwhile to hang with.
Raidah is going to fail massively in lawyering AND politics. She can’t do basic quid pro quo.
When people are popular it’s usually because a large number of people decide that they like that person. Raidah is going to have that if she loses sight of how to be nice?
(That being said, I’m surprised the comments section as a whole is siding against Raidah, considering how much they criticized Jennifer for the whole thing with Asher? Like, I am too, but I was defending Jennifer at the time…) (Once again I’d like to remind everyone that Jennifer had a concussion during the breakup.) (She’s also handling it really well and seems happy for him and Ethan, so, good for her.) (She got therapy. :3 )
“If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”
Whatever negative opinions people may have of Jennifer, Raidah is far more widely disliked so if the two are in conflict, she’s going to come worse off. Doesn’t necessarily speak for support for Jennifer mind – your phrase “siding againsnt Raidah” is probably accurate.
Actually yeah that makes sense. Thanks for explaining it.
Satan literally killed only 10 people in the Bible, far less than Hitler.
But even he didn’t break God’s biblical record of over 22 million
in the the words of Rachel we can multitask and acknowledge more then one persons faults. Jennifers treatment of Asher was terrible towards Asher and Radiah trying to force Jennifer to get back with Asher is terrible towards both Asher and Jennifer.
These are completely different.
Raidah is vindictive uses people
wants to destroy other people’s happiness for no good end.
She wants Jennifer with him to control him. If she was real friend she would directly to to him.about Ethan.
Jennifer was clueless self destructive and expected her bf to come running back for her self worth. She was holding him back.
Raidah is just being a monster telling Jennifer they will shun her without her bf. Expecting her to break up Tony’s relationship. And she points out she doesn’t value old friendships not new ones. Jennifers self destructive streak seems to have come from imitating Raidah.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/stockmarket/
Here’s the breakup. I think that Jennifer was trying to communicate that the walkerton parents are essentially her parents moreso than her birth parents. If Asher didn’t decide to interpret it that way, they probably wouldn’t have broken up. I don’t blame him for that, but I want to remind everyone who reads this that how you interpret what someone says to you is your choice. Jennifer could have taken what Asher said as a prompt to apologize for recent behavior.
The reason why the concussion is relevant to the scene is that a concussion can cause unclear communication, as well as irritability and impaired judgment. If she didn’t have a recent concussion, the conversation might have gone differently.
I honestly don’t really want them together anyway, so whatever.
While I do say that how someone interprets what someone else says is a choice, I don’t think it’s a choice whether or not you personally find a statement made about you to be hurtful. I think Jennifer just has too much self respect to allow herself to be spoken to that way, and I think that’s a good thing.
Didn’t Willis say, a couple days ago when you (or someone else?) brought this up, that there was no concussion?
Oh, yeah, someone else pointed it out to me. I didn’t see Willis’s response until earlier today. I’m going to stop insisting that there was a concussion, don’t worry.
I think you might be mixing up the car crash with the break up if you are meaning a literal concussion. And also almost all the commenters already disliked Raidah this strip just cements what we already knew about her.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/beautiful/
This strip. Happened just before the breakup.
Jennifer started it and it could be considered arguably cheating with the way she acted, but like… Doesn’t make a concussion not a concussion, you know?
Honestly I’d say unless the author confirms that Jennifer got a concussion here, then definitively saying she had a concussion that affected the breakup is more of a headcanon/fanfiction than actual text on the comic. But, I mean, if that’s how you prefer to interpret it and it does something for you, that’s cool. Just consider that that might not be the interpretation we’re meant to take away from that strip.
Just wanna add onto this before I go to sleep but obviously if the comic was taking place in real life than being thrown to the floor would indeed cause a concussion. However, injuries in this comic aren’t always true to life. Consider the fact that Walky was hurled out of Jennifer’s room, and then later Jennifer hurled out in a similar way. Both were thrown in a way that, in real life, would probably broke a bone but clearly they didn’t.
While the situation in that comic is a bit different due to it not being played for laughs, I just wouldn’t definitively say that she absolutely had a concussion unless she displayed other symptoms and commented on them.
IIRC the author denied yesterday that Jennifer’s head hit the floor, pointing to the impact marks solely at her shoulders.
Let me add two things:
1. I can confirm from personal experience that one can unexpectedly fall on one’s shoulders and not hit one’s head.
2. Jennifer’s a (former) athelete, and likely has trained on how to fall safely.
Also – you can, in fact, hit your HEAD and not have a concussion. Not every time you bonk your head causes one. It most certainly CAN, but that does not mean ‘always, forever and ever, totally does’.
Wait why did Jennifer have a concussion when she broke up with Asher? I don’t remember anything about that.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/beautiful/
Found the strip! This is from way back in 2022. It’s like, last week in universe.
A few days ago, when you brought up the concussion thing, Willis stated that she didn’t hit her head in the strip you’re referencing: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/functional-2/?replytocom=1856105#comment-1855983
If you still want to headcanon that she had a concussion from it, cool, you do you; just keep in mind that it’s reasonable and probably common for others to not share your interpretation.
I… Okay. Are we supposed to believe that she was just faking being better and that the behaviors that she showed after that experience is just her personality …? It’s in line with how she’s usually characterized, I just… I dunno. It feels boring and less dramatic that way.
I don’t know if Jennifer is based on a real life person or not, but her character archetype and related tropes are misogynistic in origin, and I want those expectations to be subverted? I didn’t see the statement by Willis before you linked it to me.
…at the same time, I think it’s more in character for her to have tucked her head forward to avoid the concussion, considering her cheerleader training and the number of scraps she’s been in. It actually makes more sense. I’m probably going to stop making that head canon, but… I dunno, it’s going to take me a little while to re evaluate stuff if stop it with that interpretation??
I guess it could still be genuine progress followed by regress, just not due to being in an altered state?
Just to add to this I feel like giving someone a concussion is serious enough that I would expect it to be addressed. Ruth giving Jen a concussion then them both just walking away and never bringing that up seems strange.
@Joy: I can give you my reading of her, at least– I think her “progress” was compartmentalization, done without actual self-reflection or ongoing outside support. So while compartmentalization can be helpful, hers wasn’t actually sustainable and didn’t allow for other aspects to be addressed, trying to just push them down instead.
In the first semester, I feel she experienced a lot of actual growth; the changes since the timeskip, I’ve shared in the common reading of not really trusting. She has continued working on her sobriety, like she started pre-timeskip, and that has been good for her at least. But many of her interactions and reflection became more superficial. She was often playing a role and struggled to adapt to changes in it.
Honestly, it was a while in before I realized anyone in the comments actually thought she was doing better, so I might not have reflected on that possibility as much as I could have. In general, I know there are people who have thought about Jennifer’s arc way more than me, and this is just my basic impression of her.
“I guess it could still be genuine progress followed by regress”
progress typically isn’t like a status bar filling up to 100 or a switch. To use Joyce’s word, it’s uneven. It takes practice and some parts may be easier than others, and those may change given a circumstance.
I think for myself, trying to excuse Jennifer’s backtracking as being just because of a concussion would be more of a detriment to her character. It’s more satisfying and makes more sense for her character that this is just how Jennifer is. A good change for herself is being 2 months sober and she should be very proud of that. Other changes in her life, however, are more superficial.
New group of friends? As we see in this strip, they don’t care about her.
New boyfriend in Asher? Jennifer didn’t seem to be in love with him and seemed like she was moreso dating him to blend in, seem straight, and because she thinks she’s supposed to. He’s a handsome man that she knew from high school. That’s honestly kinda it. As we saw the situation play out with Asher, he seemed to want an actual relationship with her while Jennifer’s walls are way up.
This concussion thing is a headcanon. If she really had one it would have been acknowledged in literally any way. Dizzy lines around her head, mention of headache or pain, confusion, anyone else in her life noticing something was wrong and taking her to the hospital. A concussion is serious thing, it can’t just happen in subtext.
I have the kind of pain tolerance where I’ve fractured my skull in the morning and didn’t figure it out until the evening. That’s the perspective that I’m coming from. I assumed she would’ve just kept trucking without noticing if no one pointed out that she seemed off?
It actually reminds me of discussions I’ve had with friends about the webcomic all night laundry. I hadn’t even noticed that Bina was supposed to be extra durable. I thought of Kendra as fragile, but didn’t pay much mind to Bina’s constitution, I just didn’t think to notice that when reading the webcomic. I legit didn’t realize until a friend pointed it out to me that it was even unusual (you would know what I mean if you read the webcomic! I don’t want to spoil it).
So… Yeah. I’m pretty sure you’re right about how that usually works.
…gosh, that’s not even getting into the time I was drugged as part of a kidnapping attempt while being stalked by a cult. The ability to keep trucking is pretty lifesaving sometimes.
She was never making real progress that is the point, it was all just an front to hide from her own faults.
Raidah’s worldview is through a distorted classist lens. Distorted in a way that keeps unaware of her paste eater-level of social shortcomings…Especially for a Black Muslim living in Indiana
Oh, gosh, I thought she was Indian.
Most Black Muslim girls that I know on a personal basis wear the hijab whereas most Indian Muslim girls that I know on a personal basis don’t, so that’s where I was coming from. Also her straight hair. I basically just guessed there, though.
I don’t think we know exactly where her family originates. Indian or Pakistani is certainly a possibility.
She’s South Asian, yes.
I really want this to be the start of Jennifer getting a clue… but this is Jennifer we’re talking about…
I continue to be surprised at just how much Jennifer still seems to think of Radiah as a caring friend. Also wonder if this is how she was treating Dana whenever she didn’t act happy infront of her.
Jennifer wanted to be treated as someone who wasn’t Billie the Alcoholic.
Raidah did that.
Unfortunately, Raidah seems to have forgotten you have to fertilize your alliances. If you won’t do this for Jennifer then why is Jennifer doing anything for you?
She’s shitting all over her aliences, isn’t that fertalizer?
Ooh, excellent point!
If that’s the case, Dana would have added incentive to not let Raidah see her problems, which would be an added strain to Dana’s mental health.
Also explains why Radiah never checked in to verify Sarahs claims that Dana was spiraling, as long as Dana was acting normal in front of her who cared if Sarah the non elite was suffering and possibly forced to drop out?
Raidah has been supportive to her and nice to her face, this entire time, and only talks shit behind her back. This might literally be the first time ever that Raidah was personally mean to Jennifer.
Radiah was supportive to her face when Jennifer was dating Asher and acting well put together, the minute she started showing showing cracks in that facade she started ordering Jennifet around with no room for argument.
Yes, this isn’t the first time Raidah has bossed Jennifer around; she implied heavily that if she didn’t get back together with Asher, she wouldn’t be useful to the friend group. It just hasn’t clicked yet for Jennifer how transactional Raidah is (though it might be starting to click at the end of this strip).
Actually, transactional isn’t the right word, because it implies Raidah is giving something back besides being in the “in” group. Perhaps she thinks that’s enough because “by being in the group, you are also benefiting from my networking”
thats exactly what Radiah seems to think, that her connections are so important that’s all she needs to bring to the table. Still not sure what high value network she thinks she’s offering though as it doesn’t seem to help anyone, not even herself.
My thought is that Jennifer looks at Radiah and sees a “problem solving bongo” – the ‘adult’ version of her valued highschool persona. She assumes that Radiah will help her the way she would have helped her friends, but Radiah isn’t about that.
Being like old times is a pile of trauma for the both of you. Alice happens to acknowledge this.
Also: Jesus Hoobastank Christ, Raidah. Taking no quarter.
Giving. Giving no quarter. Taking no prisoners.
Wow Raidah, way to poison your own well.
don’t say coupling.
Coupling?
Hey, you said it first.
Ooof
Raidah feels like the girl from Napoleon Dynamite that doesn’t clap for his dancing and then she realizes that he is actually popular.
Raidah doesn’t get it because Alice doesn’t have a rich parent.
tbf, she has no way of knowing that from what Jennifer said, unless she had previously told Raidah that none of her friends growing up had any money or influence
Raidah doesn’t get that you don’t get favors if you don’t give them.
She’s not even doing corruption or negotiating right.
She’s worse at being a lawyer than Dorothy would be at being a politician.
Nah. Raidah doesn’t understand why you’d have friends from high school.
Raidah has a social group with whom she networks, rather than friends.
Which is kinda sad, especially for a ~20 year old immersed in a social environment, but also a direct result of her being a Type A controlling dictator who doesn’t see the point of friendship.
Also, by “networks” she mainly means “discusses how terrible Sarah is” from what we’ve seen.
You forgot “and a bigoted, classist snob with no sense of responsibility”
I don’t think she is bigoted, she was condescending towards Dina but was genuinely appalled at one of her cronies using the R word.
Jennifer getting genuinely better arc activate??? Please?
Definitely seems like Jennifer is starting to wonder if Raidah is worth all the effort of being “friends” with her
That expression in the last panel seems to say that.
+1
Guess Sarah and Tony weren’t enough to distract Radiah from Jennifer still not being with Asher.
Oh yeah, I forgot that Raidah is personally insulted that Jennifer and Asher broke up.
I really don’t know what Asher brought to the table. This isn’t even a not trusting him thing. Did Raidah want sketchy ties to regional organized crime? Does his family have legitimate business or social connections? Are they rich? I only know they’re mob. I guess Raidah knows something I don’t but on paper Jennifer alone still seems more valuable in human social capital.
Does Raidah want to be a mob lawyer?
it sounds like she wants to be well-connected with influential people, and at no point has she displayed moral decency. okay yeah, she criticized the office of president and the role a national leader takes in that nation’s military operations, but that’s just talk.
in fact, it’s the same kind of talk that Patrick Bateman was making in American Psycho; sounds good in conversation with esteemed company over dinner at a fancy restaurant, but doesn’t require any actual praxis
I’ll say in her defense that while Bateman’s just parroting stuff that sounds smart to him, she probably sincerely believes that president stuff. We know she’s Muslim, if she hasn’t been on the pointy end of American policy personally she’d definitely know family or community members who have.
If her family is well off, she might not have seen family members on that pointy end.
And why do we think Raidah cares about community at all?
Even if she doesn’t care about anyone else at all, prejudice against people you know for traits they share with you is not something that gets ignored
Money doesn’t really save you from bigotry. If her mom is hijabi she’s definitely faced harassment. She and her dad most likely faced it in the streets, kids were probably calling her a terrorist at school. Unless they’re recent immigrants her family would have lived through and raidah would have been born into the “all muslims and Arab/South Asian/suspiciously brown people are secretly terror cells” bush administration. It might have impacted her parents careers. The public and widely accepted islamaphobia didn’t die down until the chuds got more distracted by trans people and immigrants. So I don’t doubt that she genuinely resents the us presidency. Maybe part of raidahs intense social climbing is at least a subconsciously an effort to protect herself from bigotry but that’s basically a headcanon.
I don’t like raidah, never have never will, she is all the most annoying people I went to college with and acts like 70% of my faculty. But any visibly Arab Muslim person who grew up in the states probably has a good amount of resentment and mistrust of the executive branch.
And if they are recent immigrants, then they’d also get shit for that.
A large majority certainly, but it’s far from unknown for individuals from marginalized groups, but with access to wealth and influence, to align with others with wealth and power rather than their own communities.
It’s also not at all clear to me that even most Arab Muslims focus that resentment and mistrust on “the executive branch”, rather than on the US more generally or otherwise on specific Presidents.
You’re most likely right about Raidah’s experiences and probably even about the reasons for her comments about the Presidency, but it’s by no means guaranteed.
Also I think if Raidah didn’t on some level believe what she said, she probably would have chosen a different angle of attack.
re: “any visibly Arab Muslim person who grew up in the states probably has a good amount of resentment and mistrust of the executive branch.”
I mean that’s literally the rest of the entire world looking at the whole of the USA for the past 20 years, we’re the Florida of the world in just about every sense of the phrase (0-0)
I suspect she was just thinking of what would hurt Dorothy the most, rather than speaking from deeply held belief. (I’m not sure she has deeply held beliefs, other than ‘Sarah is evil,’ and ‘networking is important and I must win at it.’)
It has been my personal head canon that they even know each other specifically because Raidah’s dad is Asher’s grandfather’s mob lawyer.
If that was the case she wouldn’t need Jennifer to connect her to Asher, she’d already have those ties.
She knew Asher first.
When she brought Jennifer to her group, Asher was already there.
Besides, just because your parents work together doesn’t mean you’re friends.
By first, I mean she knew Asher before she knew Jennifer.
We know Jennifer knew Asher first (unless my head canon turns out to be somewhat correct).
It’s not entirely clear how those connections worked. Asher wasn’t there when Raidah first brought Jennifer into the group. OTOH, he makes a comment elsewhere about being glad Jennifer fits so well into our group, which sounds like he was there first.
You’re right.
He was in the strip with flashback, but not in the flashback itself.
I was confused.
The mob nominally has fingers in many legit businesses, unions, and political houses. Hell, they ran Illinois and New York’s entire political system for decades, and probably still have trenches in both.
Want to be a lawyer? Want to make sure you can get a lenient judge? Want a cushy union contract or a foot in the door of the local government? The mob’s your in. It would be harder for Rai because of all the racism, but its never a bad idea to have friends in dark places.
Until friends in dark places start thinking you’re a liability, and not always for rational reasons. Or any reasons.
Racism may be less of an issue if you’re dealing with the Korean mob. You’ll never really be “family”, but neither would a white lawyer.
Mob family probably has respectable business as a front.
Well what else is she supposed to do? focus on getting her own well connected relationship??
Also just, no way boning Tony makes Sarah that influential. That’s insane. Raidah, how do you think the world works? Maybe she gets to talk to Dean Tony Sr. eventually but I don’t think even that gives you much practical power.
Dean + Star Football player I guess, but like, are those contacts even useful for Raidah?
Someone needs to sit down and tell Raidah that she is, quite literally, the only person on campus that thinks this way
Some of her pawns might, too.
Right? I doubt very much the Dean is going to pull strings for his sons most recent hook up and I get the impression Tony ask that of his father in any case.
wouldn’t ask that*
We know he pulled strings for his ex-wife’s least favourite kid, at least.
Tony Jr probably the bigger hurdle here, honestly.
technically Walky was the second favorite at the time after Jennifer and that was more about the Dean appeasing his own ex who he still feels obligated to in some way.
Least favorite kid being Sal and pulled strings being allowing her to have a motorcycle on campus as a freshman.
Sal finding that out is why she no longer has her bike here.
As Sal pointed out that wasn’t for her own benefit that was so Linda could have something to hang over her head later. and I doubt the Dean is aware of the family hierarchy.
We never did find out what brought Sal and Walky’s parents onto campus. I expect that shoe to drop someday.
I was just clarifying that Thag was most likely talking about Sal, who all 3 acknowledge is the least favorite, and what the dean did.
Not Walky and whatever you were alluding to.
I don’t know if it’s appeasement? It seems to have been a fairly amicable divorce
maybe appeasement is the wrong word but he’s doing it for the mother not the kids themselves.
It’s one thing to get along. It’s another to make exceptions to university policy.
Do we know he pulled strings? I think that was insinuated at Raidah’s brunch, but I don’t remember there being anything to actually back that up.
Yeah, she talked to Danny about it.
Oh right! I was thinking of pulling strings to get her enrolled.
After all, this is just Indiana University, not Yale or Harvard or another ivy league institution (where Raidah would be if she was actually well-connected and/or mattered in the way she seems to want to).
Can give her decent connections, sure, but “influential”? Seems wild.
Raidah also has missed she’s probably just massively blown her Billingsworth connection.
And Jennifer’s dad while a POS is actually powerful.
Not Carla powerful (which Raidah has made no effort to recruit) but certainly more than the Dean.
She’s going full mask off, I think. Like, ‘prove yourself to the friend group’, or ‘we talk shir about you all the time and no one likes you’.
Now that’s an interesting point. Has Raidah not recruited Carla because she finds the latter too annoying to even mask around for? Or did she try previously and Carla smelled the bs and noped out? Carla strikes me as being at least aware of when someone’s approaching her for the clout?
We don’t actually know why Raidah started dating Jacob, but it’s at least plausible that it was because Jacob is the brother to a lawyer (Harrison) who worked/works for Ruttech (and plausibly successfully argued a case for the Ruttech family’s child).
wasn’t it pretty much confirmed that was the case? I think she introduced Jacob as a future lawyer from a family with a sucessful history referencing Jacob’s brother fighting Carla’s case in court.
Got to admit, I’d love to see Carla and Raidah interact.
Might lead to Carla becoming Sarah’s best friend, just to piss of Raidah.
Sarah is definitely close to the personality type Carla gravitates towards.
Who wants to take bets on whether or not this conversation is enough to make Jennifer finally realize that Raidah doesn’t actually like her?
what an insane conversation between two people.
The super insane thing is that they both are trying to do the things they want for not only selfish reasons, but completely batshit-in-context reasons.
I atleast have some sympathy for Jennifer here who woke up depressed and is clinging to things(the jacket) and people from a time she associates with happiness.
I don’t think Jennifer’s really being selfish. It’s not going to happen and she doesn’t really understand why, but wanting to reconnect with a former best friend isn’t inherently selfish.
When absurd meets absurd.
Never thought I’d find myself agreeing with Raidah (specifically the last panel. Everything else she said this strip is horrible)
Jennifer does. And her name is Joyce. and Walky too I guess. And Alice might recollect Jennifer was hanging out with them months ago, and stood up for them. But Jennifer should let Alice go, and Joyce (or Walky I guess) could help her understand, and comfort her.
Well, you certainly can’t manage THIS one, Jennifer. But y’know, maybe friendships shouldn’t HAVE managers.
GDI ONE DAY I’LL REMEMBER.
One day you’ll succeed.
Then they’ll get shuffled again.
Like watching someone confidently striding their foot right onto a rake.
Well, maybe self-consciously attempting to act confident.
And she’s in the ol’ navy and gold, go dragons!
And she *wasn’t* wearing that jacket when she was talking to Alice. She went and put it on afterwards.
Omg that is THE high-school leather jacket she wore the day Alice told her off last semester, why would you put that on if you want to convince Alice your different now Jennifer??
I get it’s a comfort thing to her but still, worst wardrobe choice.
She’s gonna sit on those laurels till the last leaf falls off.
Jennifer possibly realizing she’s talking to somebody who’s even worse at understanding interpersonal connections than she is.
I’m not sure what Raidah thinks the benefits of personal connections are now.
Because if she’s not going to help Jennifer then why should Jennifer help her?
Radiah thinks allowing Jennifer to be in her “friend” group (were Carl is the only consistent other member apparently) is the highest of privileges, so to her its pretty audacious that Jennifer would ask anything of her.
“I don’t understand why she should be.” I mean, you know nothing about her? Other than that your (former) supposed friend cares a lot about her, which should theoretically be enough for you to at least pretend to give a shit?
“Why would you care about connections that don’t involve networking??”
In Raidah’s mind, Jennifer has done nothing but drop the ball since Raidah allowed her to bang Asher.
She can land any number of rich parent’ed, sexually repressed trash fires, Jennifer was helpful because she kept Asher happy, licked her boots, and didn’t ask for anything but a head pat every now and again.
Why would she put effort into a slow horse?
Jennifer’s dad sent all of the homeless people to a farm upstate.
He’s apparently a big deal.
I’m sure they’re happy there with Snoop the Dog.
That line perfectly illustrates how completely hollow Raidah is. There’s no value in an existence like hers.
Raidah was expecting Jennifer to explain why she’d be a useful contact. I think she was genuinely confused that Jennifer wasn’t saying anything about her friend having a rich family or political connections.
do you?
DO YOU?
HMMMMM?
I’d say that last panel was a burn, but it wasn’t much of a burn compared to the last panel from two days ago.
Key difference is that Daisy was out of the blast radius on her burn and Raidah wasn’t. She honestly might have burned herself worse.
That was three days ago.
On the one hand, Raidah is right.
On the other hand, never trust Raidah as a character witness.
Heartbreaking: Raidah is infact correct in this instance when talking to Jennifer. Raidah being correct hurts.
Wow, Raidah actually did something good for once
You mean, show Jennifer what a narcissist and control freak she, Raidah, is?
This just dawned on me and I do find it exceedingly interesting that Raidah as a person so obsessed with farming social credit and connections to the rich and influential has seemingly done absolutely nothing to befriend Carla. Y’know the billionaire heiress! Her family probably has the capital and influence to buy a president. Why has Raidah never pursued Carla in any way?
Possibly because they’ve never been in a strip together so may not know each other.
Probably because she knows there’s no way she can control Carla.
Carla’s with the tough no nonsense crowd (Sal, Malaya, Marcy and Rachel to a lesser extent) I doubt she would put up with Radiahs superficial snobbery. Also as a genuine elite she probably knows to look out for Radiahs type.
Relatable. Pushy social climber types are outright abusive if you’re influential, and… Like… I’m not as influential as someone like Carla and I know that. Also: “You’re popular (because you’re nice) so I’m going to attach myself to you and try to convince you to stop being nice and start being mean to the same people I’m mean to. I don’t care if it makes both of us miserable and you stop being popular in the process.”
Raidah reminds me of like 5 different high school friends I had and all of them turned out bigoted against asexual people, people with personality disorders, and/or Jewish people, often all three at once. I cut them off one at a time, and it was usually really painful for me. They had a lot of positive qualities outside of that particular problem!
…combine all that with how much I see (a younger version of) myself in Jennifer, and it’s like… Too real.
It’s painful to keep people who you used to be very close with at a distance because they have decided that they’ll be cruel to other people (including others you care about).
Perhaps she tried to last year and it didn’t go well for her. I don’t think she could fake tolerating Carla enough, and I don’t think Carla would be particularly interested in being her friend either… I would like to see an interaction between them.
Given how she treated Dinah, I wouldn’t be surprised if Raidah did a transphobia within a few minutes of meeting Carla.
I was thinking the same.
Maybe, though she was either non-bigoted or socially aware enough to use Harrison’s victory in Carla’s legal case as a weapon against Joyce.
Raidah probably doesn’t see herself as transphobic, just like in her interaction with Dina, she didn’t see herself as ableist and rebuked Char’s use of the r-slur. So she might be transphobic, but I don’t think it’d come out in a vehement or blatant way in most instances.
Probably tried and failed last year.
Because she has problems with trans people. Or because she tried and Carla spent five minutes laughing at her.
Most likely the second option.
Blargh, accidentally reported you. Meant to reply.
Not sure if it would only have been 5 minutes… But also plausibly both, though pretty sure Jacob wouldn’t have dated her if she’d been openly transphobic…
I think Carla would have allowed her to start up with the initial flattery, then when she tried to segue into “join us… Join us…” Carla would have told her “I liked the bit where you were saying how awesome I am, but you’re boring me now. Back to saying nice things about me time!” Until Raidah snapped and told her what she really thought. Then laughed herself silly before telling Raidah “thought so, I can smell the phony coming off you at 50 paces. If you can back it up to there now please? Don’t wanna have to report any hate crimes on campus…”
Carla will have hurt Raihda‘s self-esteem just by existing.
But because Carla is influential, Raidah just avoids her. She only kicks down.
As I mentioned above, Raidah may have started dating Jacob because of his brother’s connection to Ruttech.
I think that’s plausible if a bit convoluted. Get in with a billionaire family by dating the brother of one of their lawyers? That seems a bit like a longshot.
So does connecting with some guy whose mom used to be marry to the college dean. Raidah seem to prefer doing things in a roundabout way rather that be straightforward.
I suspect that while Raidah is perfectly happy to say supportive things about trans rights, (which would most likely be the majority position on a college campus), she would rather eat glass than actually hang out with a trans person.
It’s weird but this is what has finally turned me against Raidah. She has a lot of nasty qualities but Sarah deliberately broke up her relationship with Jacob, Sarah may have genuinely sent Dana someplace unsafe, and she’s a nasty gossip.
But if her whole thing is NETWORKING then that’s a two way street. That you build friendships or alliances so you can help each other.
If you won’t help Jennifer with this why should she help you with shit?
Dump her ass, Jennifer. She’s useless as an ally and worse as a friend. Raidah can’t be counted on so she should get nothing in return.
Raidah’s problem with Sarah was never that she sent Dana somewhere unsafe.
She never questioned Dana’s safety with her dad.
She never questioned Dana’s safety period.
THAT’S why she had a problem with Sarah, because she felt Dana was just fine or soon would be and that Sarah got her pulled out of college instead of being a patient friend for Dana.
Sarah, on the other hand, claimed Dana was hiding how bad it was from Raidah and them, and that her drug use was threatening Sarah’s scholarship in more ways than one.
And to add to that. Raidah is ONLY “friends” with people who are useful to her. That means Sarah took away one of her tools. I wouldn’t be surprised if Raidah knew just how bad Dana’s situation was and just did not give a damn because Dana was of more use to her here
If Radiah had more ability to reflect she might have realized from the Dana incident that friendships require some personal care but it can’t be anything she’s done so its obviously all the evil uppity Sarah’s fault.
Raidah don’t see any reason to network if it isn’t with someone who is either rich or with potential influence or connection.
I dont buy the “Dana was sent somewhere unsafe”
I think if she was Raidah would have flat out told Sarah instead of being vague about it, if only because it would hurt Sarah more
Exactly, if Radiah heard that Dana was in a terrible place she wouldn’t hesitate to have her ‘I told you so’ moment.
Looking through the raidahxsarah chapters, I saw one strip where Sarah said Dana was in a better place after what Sarah did, and Raidah replied “Not according to Dana.”
But that’s no indication of the place being physically unsafe, especially since Dana was able to be in contact with Raidah.
Considering Dana was doing drugs because she was “an emotional wreck”, I believe because her mom died, I think they were disagreeing on whether or not Dana was better emotionally.
And yeah, if my memory isn’t wrong and her mom did die, being home with all those memories of her mother and away from her friends (and presumably drugs) might not be that easy for Dana, hence why she would tell Raidah she wasn’t better.
We also don’t know when Raidah last heard from Dana. The full quote there was: “Not according to Dana, last I checked.” And that was at the start of last semester.
Dana could easily just have been upset at being cut off from her coping mechanism – drugs.
Also seems to me that if there was anything more solid, Raidah would have brought it up when telling the story again at the lunch with Walky and Lucy.
Raidah also only brought it up like once. If Dana was continuously telling her that, you’d think Raidah would use that information more often because even if a very biased perspective, it would be a very powerful social weapon for destroying Sarah’s reputation if she had actual knowledge or examples of Dana getting worse rather than better.
But realistically what likely happened is that Raidah was only in contact with her for the short term, and Dana wasn’t immediately magically all better so was being a bongo about things being changed on her as people in a bad place sometimes are.
Also you are correct that Dana’s mother died. That was why her weed usage was spiraling out of control from casual to necessary to get through each day.
Well, only if Sarah wishes to and can influence Tony in ways that are relevant AND Tony wishes to and can influence the Dean in ways that are relevant. There is a lot of room in there for no influence of any relevance to others to occur!
Radiahs projecting so hard she can’t concieve of a reality where Sarah wouldn’t take advantage and just be like spending time with Tony.
Raidah and Jacob were also “waiting” (and given Jacob and Lucy are not, that probably came from Raidah’s side, beyond the on-panel bit where she reminded him of that). The degree to which this is driven by him being a “fine beefsteak of a man… Well, maybe a filet mignon given his height, but still: YUM” as Booster so eloquently put it (paraphrasing somewhat) may not have occurred to Raidah. Whaddaya mean, she liked him for him, before learning who his dad was?!
I don’t recall anything explicit about Raidah and Jacob “waiting”. The only on-panel bit I remember was “do you want to go fool around”, which Raidah rejected, but which seemed far too casual to be a first time thing.
It could also be that Jacob thought he wanted to wait, and wasn’t actually tempted with Raidah like he was someone he actually had chemistry with. But I imagine it’s some of both.
I still don’t see any evidence for this waiting, though I could certainly have forgotten something.
Jacob has said he didn’t want casual sex, but that’s not the same thing.
For someone who wants to network so bad, Raidah is really bad at it.
She sees the immediate benefit of an individual but not the their humanity, her thoughts are “why should worry about Jennifer wanting an old friend around?” not grasping that humans need emotional fulfillment on more then a resume surface level.
Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point
Now we can cut to the Bulmeria protests where Jocelyn is being hauled off for deportation despite being American.
No, that could never happen in reality.
I hope that simple “Do you?” from Raidah becomes Jennifer’s equivalent to Dorothy’s “I’m wary of anybody who’s decided they want a job that essentially requires them to become a war criminal.”
Maybe this could become a recurring thing? I.e. Raidah (accidentally?) “improving” people with a single pointed, cutting remark, then walking away. Granted, that would require Raidah being in the comic more, which is not something I’m sure I would want.
In that same vein, though, I do kind of want Raidah and Booster to cross paths at some point now. Maybe also Raidah and Mary. (Then again, maybe it would be Booster who ended up taking Raidah down a peg or three, in that scenario, which would be an acceptable alternative outcome.)
Raidah is a petty, social climbing, young jerk. But in today’s strip, the one you mentioned, plus a couple others she has been shown to be pretty astute.
I really like her as a character in the story. She’s ambitious like Dorothy, cares about social status like Jennifer/Billie, is religious like Becky (and formally Joyce), studies law like Sarah, but seems to have her life together more than any of them. But as this strip also shows she is capable as being as dumb as any of them.
She’s also not been shown to be capable of true kindness or friendship.
While Jennifer is a hot mess, and frequently petty, selfish, etc, she does also care about people. She bought Joyce boots, and tried to help her adjust to college life (just… College life as a spoilt party girl understood it to be…). When Joyce has wanted her advice, she’s always been there to give it. When she and Ruth had to stay away from each other, she still sent Carla to check up on her because she was worried sick about her. When the Walkertons senior collectively wanted to get Amber expelled, she was happy to exert her influence as “favourite child” to persuade them otherwise, despite having barely interacted with Amber, because the twins asked her to. She’s frequently blunt and rude, she bluffs, she thinks she knows a lot more than she does, and she doesn’t have much of a filter. She’d be exhausting to be around for any length of time… But she defines herself as somebody who helps others. That’s who she wants to be… She’s not, fundamentally, a cruel, cold person. Readers having a soft spot for her as a character (while acknowledging that she’s a hot mess) shouldn’t be a complete shock.
Raidah… Other than her being an intelligent woman who knows what she wants and is almost single-mindedly focussed on getting it, there isn’t much to like about her. When the exception to her focus on becoming a rich, successful lawyer is her hatred of Sarah and wish for her to be socially isolated..? *cough* She makes nice to people to their faces, if she thinks it’s worth her while to suck up to them; but, as shown recently with her interactions with Jennifer, she sees other people as tools to be used to gain and wield more power.
Dorothy is ambitious but sweet with it. She knows how smart she is and wants to use those smarts to make the world better for everyone. Sarah is the sort of person who’ll turn up to a party she doesn’t want to go to, wielding a baseball bat, because she has a bad feeling. Then doesn’t hesitate to WHACK the guy.standing over her roommate who at that point she’d known for what, a week? After said roomie has already stabbed him in a face with a bottle. (Joyce is badass.) She struggles *so hard* to let people in, but she is caring and passionate and (Granny Weatherwax-like) kind without being nice. She hasn’t yet learnt to wield her kindness like a good Samaritan stitching back up a would-be mugger in the back streets with a blunt needle and no anaesthetic – but she’s got a few decades to go
Raidah… I mean, I know she’s less well-fleshed out? But she reminds me of a young Mrs Walkerton: the ruthlessness, the conviction that she knows what’s right for herself/her group, the ability to turn “friendly” on and off because it’s a social mask and not a character trait… I think they’re both pretty likely narcissists. Plausibly sociopaths. Definitely manipulative, cruel, bitter, cold people, whose good favours are entirely conditional.
the more i see from raidah the more i dislike her. at this rate it won’t be long before my sheer disdain for her catches up to my disdain for mary (and i *extremely* dislike mary)
Raidah, who Jennifer respects, telling her “you’re not actually as good at this as you think you are” is very, very needed.
yeah as terrible as Radiah is acting she’s not wrong even if she’s calling Jennifer out for all the wrong reasons.
Lotta folks understandably focusing on what this strip says about Raidah and Jennifer in relation to each other, but honestly that first panel is the most telling; Raidah’s immediate thought about this new relationship is focused SOLELY on the idea that Sarah now has Powerful Influence on Campus, as if THAT’S the thing Sarah wants out of her Romance with Tony. It’s maybe the single most cutting manifestation I’ve yet seen of the wholly mercenary way Raidah conceives of relationships between people.
I wonder what her parents are like. Did they raise her wrong, or is she just Like This™, that’s that I wanna know.
IIRC aren’t both of her parents lawyers or something?
For $1000, I’ll bother checking the archive for that information
No, no, Jennifer, you need Lucy. She’s a hopeless romantic but she’s also surprisingly astute, and she’ll tell you why this might not be possible in a way that leaves you a good path forward.
God, I just wanna stuff her full of hot, throbbing sawdust.
Which her?
Raidah gets the sawdust. I’d rather put different things in Billie, like curry sauce and PS4 controllers.
Honestly this is probably for the best. Radiah would be the OPPOSITE of a character witness.
though I dont think there should be a character witness sent if ever one were needed Joyce would be the best option, she can personally atest that even when aloof Jennifer still cares and shows up for support when it counts and she’s a good example that everything Jennifer touches doesn’t have to get ruined.
Oooohhhhhh, SNAP. (Do the youths still say that these days? Probably not but oh well)
Given Jennifer’s difficult morning, I wonder if this is the final straw before.. something big happens. Maybe going back to Ruth? Maybe breaking her sobriety? Maybe we finally get to see a therapy session and we see a breakdown there?
I hope although unlikely that Jennifer starts openly hanging out with her old friends not just on the pretense of problem solving So when Radiah confronts her she goes “your the one who pointed out I can’t keep friendships and these ones are longer then my thing with Asher anyway”
Here I thought “Oh, Snap!” was something that you only said in web comics.
does Radiah not understand what friendship is?
She’s too busy laying the groundwork for her meteoric rise. No time for such childish notions.
Oh Jennifer. Maybe you’ll realise that friends should care about you.
She hasn’t had a lot of experience with that.
That’s the thing, she does! She just threw it all away chasing popularity and alcohol.
You don’t and you can’t, ”Jennifer”.
Let us hope this is what helps Jennifer open her eyes to see that hanging out with Raidah isn’t good for her.
No, she doesn’t.
Never doubt Raidahs ability to be terrible
I remember there used to be some balancing out of her worst traits but now she seems to just be an evil vizier now
At this point the only reason Raidah isn’t the actual worst is because she’s not a bigot or an abuser
Yeah, Mary still wins on that level.
Ah, the person who uses statuses as boxes to tick to get people asking for help from the person who uses people as boxes to tick to get status. Perfect.
Raidah. What a friend! But honestly, Jennifer’s request is really weird and sound desperate.
With friends like these who needs enemies?
(Jennifer is already her own worst enemy she does not need more)
Honestly being your own worst enemy applies to much of the cast.
And many in real life as well.
I love Raidah cause unless you’re a white guy named idk ‘Doug Cheston’ at an Ivy League where your parents have paid for some of the buildings, I don’t think anything she’ s ever said transfers to any influence on campus.
Maybe once it’s time for internships or graduation, you hang around some well to-do friends who’s folks can hook you up, but aside from that literally no one else in the strip has ever treated her differently for her alleged influence!
Someone needs to tell Raidah that it’s not networking if you burn every single bridge you make.
“I don’t understand why she should be.”
And that is the problem with Raidah in a single sentence.
She thinks that because she only wants status connections that everyone else should be fine with it too. Not getting that if your going to insist on your connections cutting off contact with old friends then your going to be expected to be the new friend.
Hm. This strip is making me realize I still had some last shred of an idea of Raidah as a person with. At the very least. ACT like a. Kind of decent human being.
Seriously has she decided Jennifers not worth the effort anymore, or does she think she can tell someone more or less to their face ‘I’m only friends with you because your family has money.’ and they just… keep hanging out with you? How badly does she think Jennifers on the hook.
An accurate amount.
Jennifer’s one and only healthy-ish relationship all story long has been with Walky.
Sure, on the one hand a lot of her shit is self-made, but on the other hand, it’s still sad to see her try to grab an olive branch and better herself as a person only for it to be “your only uses are dating a mafia heir and hurting a girl I dislike”… can’t wait to see how “self-improvement by breaking from the past” fares vs… well… self-improvement by breaking from the past. Raidah vs Alice.
This is true. I think she could also potentially have an easy-reach healthy relationship with Sal, if she put a little effort in. Sal is crusty on the outside but she’s really a pretty straightforward, decent person.
I think Joyce is a better candidate then Sal besides Walky, she’s someone Jennifer doesn’t have an angry/ bully relationship like with Walky and Joyce does benefit from having her as a friend. I think before Jennifer and Sal become real friends Jennifer has to start seeing her for who she is and not what she wants her to be (a superhero)
I’m honestly kind of bored of Jennifer. I get for her this whole character arc has been like less than a year so that’s fast and not much time to grow in the big picture, but for me, well, she feels like a broken record. No wonder people avoid/leave her.
I am LOVING this Sarah and New Guy Tony development though. Tony’s my new favorite.
HELL YEAH TONY GRAVATAR
I’m enjoying the way Jennifer just dismisses Raidah’s ridiculous crisis and plunges onward.
Raidah is a sociopath
Let’s not start pathologising now, she is just an asshole.
Much as I despise Raidah, she’s got a point. Jennifer had friends and relationships, but she’s destroyed most (maybe all?) of them with her own shitty behavior.
Also, I’m kinda glad that Jennifer doesn’t seem to actually care that much about Sarah dating Tony.
Oh, wow, Raidah is fully evil, ok.
I enjoy the way Raidah keeps getting more fucked up in the background of other stories; it’s like she’s having an off-screen character arc that’s making her more power-hungry and less empathetic.
Maybe she’d be more tolerable if someone got her addicted to something, aside from the smell of her own colon. Gatcha games, maybe.
Come on, not even Raidah deserve that.
If Jennifer is an alcoholic and a reporter and she wants friends she should start with a plant and work her way up from there.
Seriously, I’ve been told it’s part of the recovery porocess.
thays a good idea. I actually think Radiah could seriously benefit from caring for a plant as though it was a friend too since she struggles with the continual act of checking in on ones well being. if a social network is akin to a garden Radiah would be the beginner who plants everything, waits for them to blossom without doing proper maintenance work, then wonders why nothing grew properly and died off.
Still not getting this relationship from Jennifer’s perspective although now that someone has said it I’m totally thinking of this as a Megatron Starscream thing at least.
Isn’t starscream whole thing that he is constantly scheming to betray Megatron to gain power? I am not a big transformer fan. It seems more that Jennifer desperation to fell she in a popular group and general bad judgment and intuition make her blond to how blatantly Raidah doesn’t care about her.
I think the person who suggested it was of the persuasion that Jennifer sees herself as below Raidah on the social totem pole and wants to overcome her as self validating or something like that which would, arguably, be Starscream. I don’t personally view Jennifer that way, but the type of banter they got going on at least fits. Overall though, I know people love hating Jennifer but I feel like ‘she could eventually clean up into a decent person if she finally did some uncomfortable introspection’ where as Raidah feels ‘evil as a core part of their approach to the world’. If anything is to be understood from past flashbacks, I feel like Jennifer’s desire to be a ‘heroic cool kid’ is a sign of that core ‘could be a good person if they quit all of their bullshit’. Then again depending on the series Starscream has a similar character background so who knows. Over all, ‘angry self centered tsundere decepticon’ sure, why not I guess.
for reals i LOVE Starscream
he a funny voice and is such a comically treacherous twit XD
Hey, remember Chan and Char?
Raidah actually saying out loud “I don’t understand why she should be” is wild. We already knew she saw no value in human connection other than what they can do for you but I at least thought she *understood* that other people actually care about each other. To actually just point-blank admit that she *doesn’t* understand that… wow
I forgot this comment section uses HTML, whoops. Pretend those are italicized
She’s a sociopath
“I know I don’t…”
Yeah, like she’d say that even in a million years. Also, she overestimates how far connections go on current association alone. Has she seen proof Tony wields tremendous clout for a student despite the fact neither she nor Jennifer can remember his name, which isn’t “Dean’s Son” or “Football” by the way?
She’s laser focused on the concept that hight status equals power and what she can do with that power. It doesn’t occur to her that there’s probably not that much real power to be had among a bunch of students regardless of their parents or that even if there was students like Tony or Sarah wouldn’t take advantage of that power if they could.
Jennifer is basically Spider-Man.
No, hear me out.
She made a stupid mistake one night that may or may not have been brought about by drinking something someone slipped her. Just like Peter Parker and letting the burglar go. As such, Peter is now forever defined by that choice and never will ever be able to live it down.
Jennifer CANT live as car crash girl.
It’s killing her.
She’d rather be dead than car crash girl.
But Billie will always be car crash girl.
Also her boss really wants her to bring her pictures of Spider-Man.
I think a lot of it is that she always feels compelled to downplay it. Like, Alice thinks she does not give a shit about what happened and that it’s no big deal, but if Jennifer/Billie can accept that shit is heavy and not act like she’s got it all under control, that probably would help a lot.
In general, I mean. Whether or not Alice would give her the time of day ever again is tougher.
Jennifer is an alcoholic. The crash was part of a long pattern, not an isolated unique incident. She was making bad decisions fueled by booze long before prom night.
There’s also no reason at all to think anyone slipped her anything. She was hitting her own flask on the way out the door.
Chaos is a ladder and Billie is finding out what’s it like to slide to the bottom
I’m finding it hard to be sympathetic to either character here, their only saving grace is the fact that they’re like 18 and 19
well
actually
I also am pretty sympathetic to wanting to be friends again
but that is a terrible way to go about it
Pretty sure you are not mean to fell sympathetic towards Raidah.
raidah continuing to be the worst at all times
I appreciate this helpful indicator that Raidah isn’t just someone whose personality clashes with Sarah’s, she’s not just someone fully invested in the social maneuvering required to succeed in a law career; she is, in fact, an actual monster.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Yo, it’s been years of DOA, but I didn’t think we’d get so much petty tedium in less than a week. Thanks Raidah. Make it about influence and power that literally none of you have. I mean, it’s not even Ivy League. There’s no secret societies to join other than bad fraternities.
Yeah I am further convinced she never gave an actual shit about Dana
Yep, yep, yep!
I would not be surprised if Raidah causes a huge blowup by admitting out loud that the reason she’s mad at Sarah is because she lost an influential contact, not a friend.
This is also making me question whether Raidah didn’t know about Dana’s depression. Did she honestly think things weren’t that bad or did she just not care?
I think this is the most open Raidah has been about her sociopathy. The idea of valuing a human being for herself and not her utility is just beyond Raidah’s mental horizons.