Walky can be her Xander. Ruth fills the “nerdy redhead who is into chicks” role of Willow. I don’t think she’s ever met Jason, but he’d make a perfect Giles.
I’ve hear Drop Bears are deadly afraid of towels, so that’s a good defense to have with you when you’re out and about stopping dingoes from eating your babies.
Well, it’s not the first strip Willis drew in 2014 (since he hasn’t drawn it yet, probably, I mean, it’s 20 minutes past midnight, so he PROBABLY hasn’t drawn it yet… I assume), but it’s the first strip he’s POSTED in 2014.
Westermarck Effect. Billie and Walky grew up around each other, so they’re likely immune to having any sexual attraction to each other.
I mean, sure, the Westermarck Effect generally comes into play during the first few years of life, but Billie and Walky have known each other so long, and from such a young age that it should also more-or-less be in effect. Probably.
Wasn’t that a finding of a study into Israeli kibbutz where boys and girls, even from different familys become even less likely to sleep with each other than brothers and sisters would in the outside world?
Yeah, the best study was of the cloistered families that were the result of Communist policies where children of many families were all raised in close proximity to each other during their first few years of life. I think in a grou of fifty, despite knowing eachother all their lives, I think only two ended up marrying each other. The other participants claiming that they had little to no sexual attraction to their peers.
This is also supported by the fact that brothers and sisters that were separated at birth and first meet each other as adults later in life tend to be attracted to each other because of genetic sexual attraction.
“Genetic sexual attraction” is a pseudoscientific theory based almost entirely on anecdotal “evidence”. Those few documented cases where long-lost relatives hook up almost always involve one or both of the siblings/cousins/whatever in question deliberately seeking the others out and then later developing an infatuation with them. This can be most parsimoniously explained by that pre-existing emotional investment not being inhibited by the Westermarck effect, it doesn’t require there to be any other mechanism involved.
Oooooh, cool. I like this, it brings in some whole new reasons for the Sal/Walky drama. Is it fair that Walky is basically an idiot savant when it comes to some things while Sal struggles through the tides?
I wonder if he’s naturally good at some other stuff like sports or music and just doesn’t realize it?
This strip makes me want to ship Billie and Walky again. But I still want to be able to ship Billie and Ruth, and my awesome lesbian three-way ship, Billie/Joyce/Dorothy. Is it possible that Billie is secretly a triplet?
This last panel is basically my summarized-relation with my best friend.
And we’ve been reading this strip togetjer first thing after New Year. Also I hate him.
Go Billie. No /s here. She really is giving decent advice and did so that Walky ‘heard’ her.
Would not want to see Walky Billie ship because as said upstream many times: they know each other too well for too long, no spark there.
As Incubus said, they are a realistic portrait of childhood friends.
Happy New Years. Was an hour ago my time. Surprizing that this looks ledgibible, but not so sure about the spelling.
Oh, and in non-Billie/Walky-shipping-related commentary: If my own experience as a slacker genius is any guide, Walky’s in for a rude awakening sometime in the next two-three semesters when he starts hitting stuff that actually challenges him and has no idea how to study.
It’s hard to say for sure because there was a timeskip leading into Family Weekend, but I don’t think he has been spending time studying with Dorothy, except for that one night he stayed over. (And even then, I’m not sure it was “studying” so much as “staring aimlessly at a book while Dorothy studied”.) Dorothy’s just been locking herself away to obsessively study alone, leaving Walky (and Joyce) at loose ends. And, left to his own devices, that probably means “watching D&MM and harassing Joyce and Billie”, not “studying”.
Reminds me of another pair of fictional twins where the brother was brilliant and the sister not so much. The mother made a quote that stuck with me when I first read it.
“She didn’t know how smart she was until she had other children to compare herself to.”
It would really stick in Linda’s craw if the future Dr. Walkerton had breasts instead of a penis. Sal is far from stupid, and she has a better people sense than Walky.
Billie used common sense. It’s super effective! Walky is stunned and attempts to flee allowing Billie to use sass.
(Now if only she can use this to see why she shouldn’t flaunt her money and move past high school)
And here billie says exactly what I feel. Racism is a possible answer, but there is no way to know for sure what is going on until more information is given. Yay!
It was a tricky panel. Billie doesn’t think it’s her place as a relative outsider to come right out and tell Walky in the affirmative, so the first panel is what she’d say, but meanwhile the “we don’t know” response makes happy all the folks who were trying their damnedest to keep the issue of race completely off the table of possibilities. Ultimately I went with what I thought Billie would say, while knowing there’d be a small flood of folks suddenly showing up to exclaim “I KNEW IT, SEE????”
(Yeah, a lot of these folks will say, oh, no, I’m just waiting for more information — but seemingly only facetiously, as more pro-racial bias information tends to makes them mad rather than clarify their understanding.)
I really wish I didn’t have to come out and give Word of God. I’d prefer it just be understood within the context of itself, but those who were against the idea of it being a race issue were mighty and numerous and kind of en masse browbeating those who saw and recognized the signs, and that’s not really something I wanted to see sustained for months or years as the story played out.
You know, you could always try showing instead of telling.
I’m honestly flabbergasted at how you thought anyone would interpret things otherwise.
Sal is a self-destructive, bad person who does things which wouldn’t be excusable even if her accusations of racism are true and she is at the exact point where pretty much any human being would be looking to blame outside factors instead of take responsibility for their bad actions.
We don’t know much about her parents, but at this point, from what we know within the story, it seems somewhat more likely that the parents preference in child, if it exists, would be based on one child being an irresponsible prat and the other doing well in school and not getting into trouble.
Now if you wanted to establish that the race angle was infact the case, then you could always have done that, the amount of ways that it could have been established are frankly limitless. But you didn’t choose to do that, instead expecting the reader to rely 100% on the word of Sal, which I don’t understand how you expect anyone to trust at this point in the story.
I respect your right to have your story be your story, and thus what ever you say goes, if you say it’s racism then it is racism. But that doesn’t mean I won’t call it crap writing.
Listen, dude, I agonized over all of those early indicators of what was going on — like the first one, where Walky reveals to us that he and Sal don’t identify as the same ethnicity, roughly a year ago. I was worried that it would be too obvious, but still I plunged on through, leaving specific breadcrumbs.
And then they mostly went unnoticed. And I was taken a little aback. Totally surprised. But the important word there is “mostly.” Some people saw exactly what was going on, as clear as signal flares. These were the people who either had experience with this stuff or understood that that kind of thing existed.
But that’s the thing. That’s how this whole debacle got so ridiculously meta. You see, PEOPLE DON’T NOTICE THESE THINGS. That’s the point. There are real signs of racism around us constantly, but they fly completely under our radar. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It just means someone hasn’t pointed them out to us yet. And for that, sometimes we need someone like Sal to shout it at us. We were being shown that there were things going on, but we just didn’t realize what they were or what their significance was.
And so I learned a lot during this storyline from that. For some reason I thought dropping super-obvious hints (well, obvious to anyone who deals with that stuff) would have brought us all along with the storyline’s purpose from the beginning forward. No, most of us, just like in real life, just as I would have not so long ago, ignore it. And then we act SO OUTRAGED when it’s pointed out to us. How DARE you bring that up so suddenly, without any warning!
IT WAS ALWAYS THERE.
And so I laugh at you, because I am at the end of my rope. I know for a fact that people saw this stuff coming from a mile away, and a few have heavily documented it for the folks among us who aren’t as familiar with the tropes. They have told me that there was a great feeling of catharsis for them when Sal finally spelled it out for Walky. And so I am pretty damn confident that I did show before I told. You’re going to have to erase those people from existence before I concede on that point.
What happened is that it was all just too fucking realistic. No one’s going to WANT to see race until it’s yelled at them. So, yes, please, go on. Tell me more. Either you don’t read the posts surrounding yours or you are just a troll.
Anyway, if you actually are from Denmark like your posting address suggests, you got some friggin’ gall shouting down all of the people who actually live in the environment specific to this webcomic’s setting while attempting to take me to task for writing about something I don’t directly experience.
to be honest with a phrase like “I’m generically beige” I took it as Sal identifies as black and Walky doesn’t give a damn about stuff like that because using the phrase generic and a color that isn’t a color racially denies him a racial identity. Considering his personality is to dismiss things that he doesn’t care about and not think about them I believed race was just something Walky never cared or thought about
It’s still Walky distancing the two of them racially. If Walky, who is a bit oblivious to race relations, feels that way, do his parents make that distinction too?
Listen, there is no way for Walky to have ‘not thought about’ his race. That’s a privilege he doesn’t have. His choice to identify as generically beige has to be looked at in context— that Walky chooses this vague identifier, that he places himself in contrast to his sister, that he grew up in a household with a white mother and black father. These things are important- Walky being a kind of casual dude does not mean he is unaffected by his surroundings/upbringing/race. These things have a huge impact on people, and Willis would not be the writer he is if he ignored that.
Goldenhand’s third and fourth paragraphs are not that unreasonable. Racism is certainly a possible motivator for their (Sal and Walky’s) parents favoritism, but there are other equally-likely possible motivators. I would certainly not accuse their parents of racism purely from the context of the story. I don’t know why you expect us to automatically agree with Sal. She would certainly have her own biases that would color her perception of reality.
I disagree with Goldenhand when he says that it’s terrible writing. If the favoritism is racially motivated then I think it should be subtle, and we should never really be convinced that it is racism (at least from what’s happened in the story).
Also, it’s pretty low to suggest that someone from Denmark couldn’t possibly understand the context of the story.
Someone from Denmark could definitely understand! But this is a dude who spent his first several posts telling another person THEY couldn’t possibly understand because of their removed context. It’s annoyingly hypocritical from someone who only posts to be amazingly self-righteous, is all.
Also, if Sal is a bad person, your standards for people are a little high OR you’ve been deliberately misreading her character to enable your preconceptions. Sure she fucked up as 13-year-old, but since then she’s grown into an independent, capable young women who’s had to look after herself for the past 5 years because her parents abandoned her – the same parents who baby her twin brother. She learns sign language to communicate with her best friend. She has an active social life – so presumably has better social skills than Walky. She worked hard enough – presumably over the summer after graduating from Catholic boarding school, before starting college – to afford her own vehicle and pay her own way. She hasn’t lived at home since she JUST became a teenager – I suspect she struck out right after high school (worked enough to support herself and buy that motorcycle). She tried to help Joyce, a perfect stranger, after that whole incident. She’s confident enough in herself to protect both herself and Billie from Ruth despite major parental neglect and/or abuse.
She has literally not done anything wrong since starting college except being short with her insensitive, hurtful, distanced twin brother. I mean, you can count banging Jason as “wrong,” but it was consensual and didn’t hurt anyone.
Meanwhile, Walky is a willfully ignorant, emotionally abusive and sexist asshole. Who’s the bad person here?
With you, more or less, up until your comments about her fucking Jason. Fucking your teacher for grades is wrong, consensual or not. Any nobody has been hurt by it yet, but at any point, it could lose Jason his job. Not that Jason is any less guilty. If he can’t keep it in his pants with his students, then he deserves to lose his job.
While it’s wrong, I can’t necessarily blame her. It seems like a last-ditch effort after not being able to understand a subject no matter how hard you try– it might be a subject not even related to her major so it’d really blow to be stuck taking it another semester.
Oh yeah, I forgot she thought it was for grades. It seems ambiguous as to whether she thought he was making the offer, though. And in her defence she did try very hard to study first. He’s just a crappy teacher.
Okay first of all saying ‘consensually or not’ is pretty fucking flippant. If it was nonconsensual it would be, you know , rape. Which is a million times more horrible and wrong. The implication I’m getting from that statement is that it’s somewhat irrelevant, which it isn’t. Second- Jason is the teacher, and therefore more responsible for what went down. The power imbalance is in his favor, and it’s his job to help her, not fool around with her. They aren’t equally at fault because Sal is not employed by the school and held to a professional standard.
That’s something that i find worrying. When a character says something often readers assume it’s the complete truth instead of understanding that it’s just the characters subjective interpretation of something. And yet, when a character says something they don’t like they suddenly do insist on the characters subjectivity! All this leading to a necessity of word of god.
I’ve been wanting to tell you on Tumblr, but i might just as well here. Thank you so much for this storyline. It’s something i wasn’t really aware of and it made me reinterpret some conversations i’ve had with a friend who is mixed race. I had actually never consciously thought about how being mixed race could be for her. Some comments i’ve heard about her hair seriously disturb me now.
Where I work, I’m kind of the minority (well, I AM the minority as I’m the only one out of 25 employees). I’m Hispanic so I’m not mixed, but I do the whole straighten my hair out thing because it makes me feel better about my hair and whole outlook. One day I went into work when I was not scheduled, and had just washed my hair, so it was in its really frizzy out of control phase. As soon as I walked in, my co-worker made a comment about how I need to control it and it makes me look like a wild person (she was mostly joking, because she always says something bad to anyone about anything when they walk in on their day off). It bothered me a little, and I felt like the way Sal kept feeling when people brought up the fact that her hair wasn’t straight.
that’s because there comes a point where two characters contradict each other it can’t be complete truth.
For me until I’m confronted with that I prefer to assume that the characters speaking are stating the way things are. I prefer the omnipotent narrator style of storytelling
I took Billie’s response as, it may not seem like racism to you, but you don’t know because you are not in said person’s shoes. Basically, talk to the person who’s feelings are hurt and you’d be able to understand the issue better.
It’s not necessarily easy being the gifted kid either, and being resented from the time of your earliest memories just for being who you are. Of course Sal’s had it hard, but from Walky’s perspective, she’s been sniping at him and tearing him down all his life, and I can’t really blame him for eventually just shutting down to her.
PRIVILEGE? OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS FEMINIST BULLSHIT. WHAT ABOUT ALL OF THE PRIVILEGES THAT SAL HAS THAT WALKY DOESN’T HAVE. HAS ANYONE EVER LET WALKY ROB A CONVENIENCE STORE? HUH? CAN WALKY WATERSKI WITHOUT A BOAT? HUH?!?!
It’s called barefooting, Bill, and let me tell you it hurts like hell.
Also @dreamshade PATRIARCHY? KYRIARCHY? TRANSETHNIC OTHERKIN? I’m so glad I’ve been around feminists outside of the internet, they’re actually reasonable IRL. The internet is the world’s biggest open mic night, and it doesn’t discriminate by age, rationality or knowledge.
Most men look terrible with beards. Very few can pull one off. But the ones that can look positively amazing and make it seem like a good idea for everyone.
Great pep talk guys. But no seriously Billie is really starting to get my attention now…especially after the whole thing with Ruth, which I can’t wait to see play out seeing as Billie is still drinking…
I’m confused as to what kind of privilege Walky has that is being discussed here. Is he doing better in classes because of being [more] white? Because of being male?
Walky does well in classes because he is academically gifted. Sal struggles with school. It is neither Walky’s sex nor color that make him better at school; it’s just a gift. What Billie is saying is that Walky could be more considerate in how we treats his gift.
Consider a rich teenager always talking about how easy it is to get money from his parents to put gas in his car or go out with friends. Now, consider that he always talks about this around an acquaintance whose family lives paycheck to paycheck and only goes out to eat on a rare occasion. It is not the rich teen’s fault for having rich parents, but it is rude to talk about how easy your life is around others who are struggling in that department.
I don’t know that it’s even rude to talk about it, but Walky does have a tendency to assume that things are as easy for others as they are for himself.
It’s frustrating to listen to somebody talk as if you’re a moron because of all the time you spend studying, and bringing it full circle, it’s upsetting for your brother to barge into your room just to ridicule you for trying to impress your parents.
Not quite rude, but definitely inconsiderate and possibly unfeeling.
I think the best word for this would be thoughtless. Like a woman with german measles putting on concealer so she can meet her idol, who just happens to be in her first trimester.
I sometimes wish people weren’t so fast to rush to shipping when two people flirt once or have a bonding moment. Rushing to find romantic/sexual implications in friendly interactions just makes me think of how all this “friendzone” nonsense happens.
I dunno why but I think Billie is the one who need Walky’s help. I like this pairing. But I think they will have a rocky path ahead if they are together. But the goal looks good though. Walky and Dotty is the “Easy mode” while Billie and Walky is the “Hard mode.”
Hm. I had the uncomfortable feeling the Walkertons were going to be cast as bad guys in absentia, but I’m glad Billie gave them the benefit of the doubt.
As for the comic itself, Is it odd that I like Billie better when she’s not interacting with Ruth?
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“GOD IT’S LIKE YOUR MY SISTER OR SOMETHING”
…
“EXCEPT YOU NEVER HELD UP ANYTHING”
With your penis?
For a nickel?
FAAACE!
*sigh* Femur.
Chick Tracts!
http://bit.ly/1a1U8fQ
That last panel is straight from a romantic comedy poster.
no, no, they both could never be in a romantic comedy. hollywood wouldn’t have it.
They’re both not white.
I know you too well. To like you anymore.
There’s a nightmare where my dream girl was
my Prince Charming is a bore
And I know you too well and I don’t like you anymore
That just happened…
Head cheerleader. Problem solver.
That can be her superhero tagline.
Maybe she will be the next Slayer with a tagline like that.
Billy the Nerd Slayer
I would totally watch Billie the Vampire Slayer.
Walky can be her Xander. Ruth fills the “nerdy redhead who is into chicks” role of Willow. I don’t think she’s ever met Jason, but he’d make a perfect Giles.
Is Dina her Tara?
NO.
Walky is the anti-Oz.
AH WANNA WATCH THEEEYES!!
Who would be her Angel? I WANT SOMEONE TO BE HER ANGEL. O_O
eh, how about Dan?
I think Amazi-Girl would be Angel.
YES.
Billie is no Kim Possible.
She thinks she’s all that, but she’s not.
…You’re alright in my book.
But is Walky Ron Stoppable?
Creating the naco(?) sounds like something Walky would have invented.
But he doesn’t have naked Mole rat side kick, and that means the whole billi/walky ship has a chance of happening.
Hey heres an idea maybe the next poll can be about what shippings people love the most.
Maybe not but Walky’s “Naked Mole Rat” has been known to make an appearance.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/dont-button/
Is that what they’re calling that thing nowadays?
Real shippings or crazy shippings that will never happen. If the latter than I’m pretty sure Joyce/Dorothy would win that poll.
Actually come to think of it… Kim had twin brothers… Billie has the Walkerton twins… Kim and Bonnie were frenemies, and so are Ruth and Billie…
It all makes sense now. Danny is Dr. Drakken, and Dorothy is She-go.
Going by the colour scheme, I would have suggested that Dina be Shego.
Except Shego and Drakken were a thing.
Dunna nunna nunna nunna dunna nunna nunna nunna
Billie.
“But being better than her is all I have, she’s cooler in every other aspect.”
“She even eats 50 McNuggets cooler than I do!”
That’s easy enough to do, you just avoid getting sauce all over your shirt.
Sure, try to make it sound easy.
That’s why I carry a towel with me whenever I go out.
Ah, a fellow interstellar hitchhiker.
*That’s* why you carry a towel? I always thought your were a interstellar hitchhiker.
That’s not the only reason, you’d be surprised how often having a medium sized towel comes in handy.
I’ve hear Drop Bears are deadly afraid of towels, so that’s a good defense to have with you when you’re out and about stopping dingoes from eating your babies.
Only if the towel features a big scary face and you wear it on your head, this also deters swooping magpies.
I feel like Walky, sometimes.
It’s like he has a second sister to play referee. ^_^
Did anybody else realize this strip is the first strip of 2014?
Yes, which is why I’m using it as a gauge to see who ELSE didn’t have NYE plans =p
Here.
It’s already 01-Jan-2014 3:37pm Adelaide time here.
Yeah, it isn’t hard to check the strip when it updates mid-afternoon
That’s one of the privileges of being an Aussie.
Considering everything in your country is out to kill you, you need every advantage you can get!
Hence the reason why we have world-class healthcare.
Zing!
Feh I do have New Year’s Eve plans. Thanks to the miracle of the iPhone I can snark on DOA and be out doing things at the same time.
Present
It is. And I’m reading it in 2013.
I CAN SEE THE FUTURE!
And The Future has Billie!
And she is in a metal suit!
Oh hi Dina!
Damn straight. Can’t you se my outfit!
I think the first strip of 2014 comes the end of March.
Well, it’s not the first strip Willis drew in 2014 (since he hasn’t drawn it yet, probably, I mean, it’s 20 minutes past midnight, so he PROBABLY hasn’t drawn it yet… I assume), but it’s the first strip he’s POSTED in 2014.
I believe it’s three WEEKS not three MONTHS.
check the buffer watch again!
April. Shit man you are a productive one.
Crikey, are you building up an even wider buffer for a reason or you just a drawing maniac?
I have problems.
Nothing Legos and Transforms toys can’t fix.
Is there anything Legos and Transformers can’t fix?
Your problems are our fix — I mean, solution! 😀
Happy New Year, Willis! Happy New Year, DoA fandom!
Sorry for being an enabler Willis.
Billie, you’re great. Never change.
But if she never changes, we’ll never see her in her cheerleader outfit again.
Yay the ball dropped hooray everybody hug okay stop hugging me I have to check Dumbing of Age.
No comic, shut up. We’ve established that Billie and Ruth are the otp here. Stop trying to convince me that Billie/Walky should be a thing!
Westermarck Effect. Billie and Walky grew up around each other, so they’re likely immune to having any sexual attraction to each other.
I mean, sure, the Westermarck Effect generally comes into play during the first few years of life, but Billie and Walky have known each other so long, and from such a young age that it should also more-or-less be in effect. Probably.
Wasn’t that a finding of a study into Israeli kibbutz where boys and girls, even from different familys become even less likely to sleep with each other than brothers and sisters would in the outside world?
Yeah, the best study was of the cloistered families that were the result of Communist policies where children of many families were all raised in close proximity to each other during their first few years of life. I think in a grou of fifty, despite knowing eachother all their lives, I think only two ended up marrying each other. The other participants claiming that they had little to no sexual attraction to their peers.
This is also supported by the fact that brothers and sisters that were separated at birth and first meet each other as adults later in life tend to be attracted to each other because of genetic sexual attraction.
“Genetic sexual attraction” is a pseudoscientific theory based almost entirely on anecdotal “evidence”. Those few documented cases where long-lost relatives hook up almost always involve one or both of the siblings/cousins/whatever in question deliberately seeking the others out and then later developing an infatuation with them. This can be most parsimoniously explained by that pre-existing emotional investment not being inhibited by the Westermarck effect, it doesn’t require there to be any other mechanism involved.
That may be, but your screen name does not exactly inspire confidence in your science proclamations 😛
He doesn’t know much about climate science, but he does know his biology.
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind…
Well, Billie would probably like that if said acquaintance were Walky.
Happy New Year, everyone!
A song so good you don’t even notice that you can’t understand half of it.
Well, it’s Robbie Burns. Of course that’s the case!
Oooooh, cool. I like this, it brings in some whole new reasons for the Sal/Walky drama. Is it fair that Walky is basically an idiot savant when it comes to some things while Sal struggles through the tides?
I wonder if he’s naturally good at some other stuff like sports or music and just doesn’t realize it?
… He’s probably not naturally good at sports.
I would think computer graphics or computer programming. Wouldn’t it be interesting if he shows up in one of Amber’s computer classes?
Or better yet, Dorothy’s ex-boyfriend’s computer classes?
Merry New Year! Ha Ha Ha
Happy NEW YEARS eve willis (even though I think you might hate my guts)
COMMENCE HALF-HEARTED HATEFUCKS!
Apathy fucks?
Honey Badger unfucks?
Mild dislikefucks.
Badly concealed perverse sexual lust fucks.
Well I mean, if it’s gotten to that point, it must be REALLY badly concealed
MEHFUCKS
Any reason’s a good reason.
Give a don’t-give-a-fuck fuck!
That last panel made me laugh
This strip makes me want to ship Billie and Walky again. But I still want to be able to ship Billie and Ruth, and my awesome lesbian three-way ship, Billie/Joyce/Dorothy. Is it possible that Billie is secretly a triplet?
I ship Billie/Walky/Ruth. Sure the latter two had only one interaction, but that’s enough for any shipper worth their salt.
Woo! Privilege comic! (not sarcastic, genuinely appreciate calling attention to privilege.)
Walky x Billie will never be a thing. Willis has wrote them off to be a REALISTIC portrayal of childhood friends.
This last panel is basically my summarized-relation with my best friend.
And we’ve been reading this strip togetjer first thing after New Year. Also I hate him.
Also Happy new yeat DOA readers !
Go Billie. No /s here. She really is giving decent advice and did so that Walky ‘heard’ her.
Would not want to see Walky Billie ship because as said upstream many times: they know each other too well for too long, no spark there.
As Incubus said, they are a realistic portrait of childhood friends.
Happy New Years. Was an hour ago my time. Surprizing that this looks ledgibible, but not so sure about the spelling.
HAPPY NEW YEARS ALL.
Oh, and in non-Billie/Walky-shipping-related commentary: If my own experience as a slacker genius is any guide, Walky’s in for a rude awakening sometime in the next two-three semesters when he starts hitting stuff that actually challenges him and has no idea how to study.
They don’t give me a list of terms on the exam? Then how am I supposed to know what to look up on Wikipedia?!?
Walky’s already studying, it comes with spending time with Dorothy. He’s just incredibly bored while doing it.
It’s hard to say for sure because there was a timeskip leading into Family Weekend, but I don’t think he has been spending time studying with Dorothy, except for that one night he stayed over. (And even then, I’m not sure it was “studying” so much as “staring aimlessly at a book while Dorothy studied”.) Dorothy’s just been locking herself away to obsessively study alone, leaving Walky (and Joyce) at loose ends. And, left to his own devices, that probably means “watching D&MM and harassing Joyce and Billie”, not “studying”.
That’s right, Walky, talk to Sal about her math tutor. That’ll calm her right down.
Flirting? My ship is confused….
Sh.
Friendship.
Happy New Year! I love Billie’s advice to Walky here.
Reminds me of another pair of fictional twins where the brother was brilliant and the sister not so much. The mother made a quote that stuck with me when I first read it.
“She didn’t know how smart she was until she had other children to compare herself to.”
It would really stick in Linda’s craw if the future Dr. Walkerton had breasts instead of a penis. Sal is far from stupid, and she has a better people sense than Walky.
Billie used common sense. It’s super effective! Walky is stunned and attempts to flee allowing Billie to use sass.
(Now if only she can use this to see why she shouldn’t flaunt her money and move past high school)
And here billie says exactly what I feel. Racism is a possible answer, but there is no way to know for sure what is going on until more information is given. Yay!
like, the author having repeatedly confirmed that yes it’s racism? How is that not enough?
Layn, I am assuming master is talking in the context of the comic and the characters, not what we already know from word of god.
It was a tricky panel. Billie doesn’t think it’s her place as a relative outsider to come right out and tell Walky in the affirmative, so the first panel is what she’d say, but meanwhile the “we don’t know” response makes happy all the folks who were trying their damnedest to keep the issue of race completely off the table of possibilities. Ultimately I went with what I thought Billie would say, while knowing there’d be a small flood of folks suddenly showing up to exclaim “I KNEW IT, SEE????”
(Yeah, a lot of these folks will say, oh, no, I’m just waiting for more information — but seemingly only facetiously, as more pro-racial bias information tends to makes them mad rather than clarify their understanding.)
I really wish I didn’t have to come out and give Word of God. I’d prefer it just be understood within the context of itself, but those who were against the idea of it being a race issue were mighty and numerous and kind of en masse browbeating those who saw and recognized the signs, and that’s not really something I wanted to see sustained for months or years as the story played out.
You know, you could always try showing instead of telling.
I’m honestly flabbergasted at how you thought anyone would interpret things otherwise.
Sal is a self-destructive, bad person who does things which wouldn’t be excusable even if her accusations of racism are true and she is at the exact point where pretty much any human being would be looking to blame outside factors instead of take responsibility for their bad actions.
We don’t know much about her parents, but at this point, from what we know within the story, it seems somewhat more likely that the parents preference in child, if it exists, would be based on one child being an irresponsible prat and the other doing well in school and not getting into trouble.
Now if you wanted to establish that the race angle was infact the case, then you could always have done that, the amount of ways that it could have been established are frankly limitless. But you didn’t choose to do that, instead expecting the reader to rely 100% on the word of Sal, which I don’t understand how you expect anyone to trust at this point in the story.
I respect your right to have your story be your story, and thus what ever you say goes, if you say it’s racism then it is racism. But that doesn’t mean I won’t call it crap writing.
hahahahaha
“try showing instead of telling”
hahahahaha
Listen, dude, I agonized over all of those early indicators of what was going on — like the first one, where Walky reveals to us that he and Sal don’t identify as the same ethnicity, roughly a year ago. I was worried that it would be too obvious, but still I plunged on through, leaving specific breadcrumbs.
And then they mostly went unnoticed. And I was taken a little aback. Totally surprised. But the important word there is “mostly.” Some people saw exactly what was going on, as clear as signal flares. These were the people who either had experience with this stuff or understood that that kind of thing existed.
But that’s the thing. That’s how this whole debacle got so ridiculously meta. You see, PEOPLE DON’T NOTICE THESE THINGS. That’s the point. There are real signs of racism around us constantly, but they fly completely under our radar. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It just means someone hasn’t pointed them out to us yet. And for that, sometimes we need someone like Sal to shout it at us. We were being shown that there were things going on, but we just didn’t realize what they were or what their significance was.
And so I learned a lot during this storyline from that. For some reason I thought dropping super-obvious hints (well, obvious to anyone who deals with that stuff) would have brought us all along with the storyline’s purpose from the beginning forward. No, most of us, just like in real life, just as I would have not so long ago, ignore it. And then we act SO OUTRAGED when it’s pointed out to us. How DARE you bring that up so suddenly, without any warning!
IT WAS ALWAYS THERE.
And so I laugh at you, because I am at the end of my rope. I know for a fact that people saw this stuff coming from a mile away, and a few have heavily documented it for the folks among us who aren’t as familiar with the tropes. They have told me that there was a great feeling of catharsis for them when Sal finally spelled it out for Walky. And so I am pretty damn confident that I did show before I told. You’re going to have to erase those people from existence before I concede on that point.
What happened is that it was all just too fucking realistic. No one’s going to WANT to see race until it’s yelled at them. So, yes, please, go on. Tell me more. Either you don’t read the posts surrounding yours or you are just a troll.
Anyway, if you actually are from Denmark like your posting address suggests, you got some friggin’ gall shouting down all of the people who actually live in the environment specific to this webcomic’s setting while attempting to take me to task for writing about something I don’t directly experience.
That’s all I got to say about that.
to be honest with a phrase like “I’m generically beige” I took it as Sal identifies as black and Walky doesn’t give a damn about stuff like that because using the phrase generic and a color that isn’t a color racially denies him a racial identity. Considering his personality is to dismiss things that he doesn’t care about and not think about them I believed race was just something Walky never cared or thought about
It’s still Walky distancing the two of them racially. If Walky, who is a bit oblivious to race relations, feels that way, do his parents make that distinction too?
Listen, there is no way for Walky to have ‘not thought about’ his race. That’s a privilege he doesn’t have. His choice to identify as generically beige has to be looked at in context— that Walky chooses this vague identifier, that he places himself in contrast to his sister, that he grew up in a household with a white mother and black father. These things are important- Walky being a kind of casual dude does not mean he is unaffected by his surroundings/upbringing/race. These things have a huge impact on people, and Willis would not be the writer he is if he ignored that.
Goldenhand’s third and fourth paragraphs are not that unreasonable. Racism is certainly a possible motivator for their (Sal and Walky’s) parents favoritism, but there are other equally-likely possible motivators. I would certainly not accuse their parents of racism purely from the context of the story. I don’t know why you expect us to automatically agree with Sal. She would certainly have her own biases that would color her perception of reality.
I disagree with Goldenhand when he says that it’s terrible writing. If the favoritism is racially motivated then I think it should be subtle, and we should never really be convinced that it is racism (at least from what’s happened in the story).
Also, it’s pretty low to suggest that someone from Denmark couldn’t possibly understand the context of the story.
Someone from Denmark could definitely understand! But this is a dude who spent his first several posts telling another person THEY couldn’t possibly understand because of their removed context. It’s annoyingly hypocritical from someone who only posts to be amazingly self-righteous, is all.
Also, if Sal is a bad person, your standards for people are a little high OR you’ve been deliberately misreading her character to enable your preconceptions. Sure she fucked up as 13-year-old, but since then she’s grown into an independent, capable young women who’s had to look after herself for the past 5 years because her parents abandoned her – the same parents who baby her twin brother. She learns sign language to communicate with her best friend. She has an active social life – so presumably has better social skills than Walky. She worked hard enough – presumably over the summer after graduating from Catholic boarding school, before starting college – to afford her own vehicle and pay her own way. She hasn’t lived at home since she JUST became a teenager – I suspect she struck out right after high school (worked enough to support herself and buy that motorcycle). She tried to help Joyce, a perfect stranger, after that whole incident. She’s confident enough in herself to protect both herself and Billie from Ruth despite major parental neglect and/or abuse.
She has literally not done anything wrong since starting college except being short with her insensitive, hurtful, distanced twin brother. I mean, you can count banging Jason as “wrong,” but it was consensual and didn’t hurt anyone.
Meanwhile, Walky is a willfully ignorant, emotionally abusive and sexist asshole. Who’s the bad person here?
With you, more or less, up until your comments about her fucking Jason. Fucking your teacher for grades is wrong, consensual or not. Any nobody has been hurt by it yet, but at any point, it could lose Jason his job. Not that Jason is any less guilty. If he can’t keep it in his pants with his students, then he deserves to lose his job.
While it’s wrong, I can’t necessarily blame her. It seems like a last-ditch effort after not being able to understand a subject no matter how hard you try– it might be a subject not even related to her major so it’d really blow to be stuck taking it another semester.
Oh yeah, I forgot she thought it was for grades. It seems ambiguous as to whether she thought he was making the offer, though. And in her defence she did try very hard to study first. He’s just a crappy teacher.
Okay first of all saying ‘consensually or not’ is pretty fucking flippant. If it was nonconsensual it would be, you know , rape. Which is a million times more horrible and wrong. The implication I’m getting from that statement is that it’s somewhat irrelevant, which it isn’t. Second- Jason is the teacher, and therefore more responsible for what went down. The power imbalance is in his favor, and it’s his job to help her, not fool around with her. They aren’t equally at fault because Sal is not employed by the school and held to a professional standard.
You knew that would happen when you wrote this several months ago?
Willis has had years of experience with stupidity and awfulness.
That’s something that i find worrying. When a character says something often readers assume it’s the complete truth instead of understanding that it’s just the characters subjective interpretation of something. And yet, when a character says something they don’t like they suddenly do insist on the characters subjectivity! All this leading to a necessity of word of god.
I’ve been wanting to tell you on Tumblr, but i might just as well here. Thank you so much for this storyline. It’s something i wasn’t really aware of and it made me reinterpret some conversations i’ve had with a friend who is mixed race. I had actually never consciously thought about how being mixed race could be for her. Some comments i’ve heard about her hair seriously disturb me now.
Where I work, I’m kind of the minority (well, I AM the minority as I’m the only one out of 25 employees). I’m Hispanic so I’m not mixed, but I do the whole straighten my hair out thing because it makes me feel better about my hair and whole outlook. One day I went into work when I was not scheduled, and had just washed my hair, so it was in its really frizzy out of control phase. As soon as I walked in, my co-worker made a comment about how I need to control it and it makes me look like a wild person (she was mostly joking, because she always says something bad to anyone about anything when they walk in on their day off). It bothered me a little, and I felt like the way Sal kept feeling when people brought up the fact that her hair wasn’t straight.
that’s because there comes a point where two characters contradict each other it can’t be complete truth.
For me until I’m confronted with that I prefer to assume that the characters speaking are stating the way things are. I prefer the omnipotent narrator style of storytelling
I took Billie’s response as, it may not seem like racism to you, but you don’t know because you are not in said person’s shoes. Basically, talk to the person who’s feelings are hurt and you’d be able to understand the issue better.
Ooof, yeah, being the sibling of the gifted kid sucks. Even if parents -do- treat you both equally you feel like you’re missing out.
It’s not necessarily easy being the gifted kid either, and being resented from the time of your earliest memories just for being who you are. Of course Sal’s had it hard, but from Walky’s perspective, she’s been sniping at him and tearing him down all his life, and I can’t really blame him for eventually just shutting down to her.
Funny that I get the Jason gravatar for that comment.
“new year’s resolution: checking privilege”
PRIVILEGE? OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS FEMINIST BULLSHIT. WHAT ABOUT ALL OF THE PRIVILEGES THAT SAL HAS THAT WALKY DOESN’T HAVE. HAS ANYONE EVER LET WALKY ROB A CONVENIENCE STORE? HUH? CAN WALKY WATERSKI WITHOUT A BOAT? HUH?!?!
Looked like Sal was also doing it without skis, too.
It’s called barefooting, Bill, and let me tell you it hurts like hell.
Also @dreamshade PATRIARCHY? KYRIARCHY? TRANSETHNIC OTHERKIN? I’m so glad I’ve been around feminists outside of the internet, they’re actually reasonable IRL. The internet is the world’s biggest open mic night, and it doesn’t discriminate by age, rationality or knowledge.
THEY ARE CLEARLY DISCRIMINATING AGAINST WALKY BECAUSE HIS OTHERKIN IS A TRANSFORMER
Billie doesn’t have to like you to care. That’s pretty advanced stuff.
She keeps impressing.
Walky is so tsundere.
I-Its not like he WANTS to go to her for advice or anything. Baka!
And yet you still want to have angry sex with him, Billie.
Once Walky grows his hair, gets a motorcycle, picks up a southern accent, and gets breast implants.
I feel like Billy would be one of the few men who don’t look better with a beard.
And I feel like Billie would look pretty awesome with a beard. Walky, however…
Billie could probably pull off the Santa look.
Most men look terrible with beards. Very few can pull one off. But the ones that can look positively amazing and make it seem like a good idea for everyone.
Isn’t there a biological reason for women possibly finding beards attractive? Like, some fertility thing?
Great pep talk guys. But no seriously Billie is really starting to get my attention now…especially after the whole thing with Ruth, which I can’t wait to see play out seeing as Billie is still drinking…
I’m confused as to what kind of privilege Walky has that is being discussed here. Is he doing better in classes because of being [more] white? Because of being male?
Walky does well in classes because he is academically gifted. Sal struggles with school. It is neither Walky’s sex nor color that make him better at school; it’s just a gift. What Billie is saying is that Walky could be more considerate in how we treats his gift.
Consider a rich teenager always talking about how easy it is to get money from his parents to put gas in his car or go out with friends. Now, consider that he always talks about this around an acquaintance whose family lives paycheck to paycheck and only goes out to eat on a rare occasion. It is not the rich teen’s fault for having rich parents, but it is rude to talk about how easy your life is around others who are struggling in that department.
I don’t know that it’s even rude to talk about it, but Walky does have a tendency to assume that things are as easy for others as they are for himself.
It’s frustrating to listen to somebody talk as if you’re a moron because of all the time you spend studying, and bringing it full circle, it’s upsetting for your brother to barge into your room just to ridicule you for trying to impress your parents.
Not quite rude, but definitely inconsiderate and possibly unfeeling.
I think the best word for this would be thoughtless. Like a woman with german measles putting on concealer so she can meet her idol, who just happens to be in her first trimester.
great page
I sometimes wish people weren’t so fast to rush to shipping when two people flirt once or have a bonding moment. Rushing to find romantic/sexual implications in friendly interactions just makes me think of how all this “friendzone” nonsense happens.
I dunno why but I think Billie is the one who need Walky’s help. I like this pairing. But I think they will have a rocky path ahead if they are together. But the goal looks good though. Walky and Dotty is the “Easy mode” while Billie and Walky is the “Hard mode.”
This comment confuses me
Hm. I had the uncomfortable feeling the Walkertons were going to be cast as bad guys in absentia, but I’m glad Billie gave them the benefit of the doubt.
As for the comic itself, Is it odd that I like Billie better when she’s not interacting with Ruth?