You swap the whole lock mechanism out. It’s more complex for houses or apartments, in a residence hall I’d assume they have a stash of spare door handles down in maintenance they can swap out on request.
Actually most of the time a locksmith will only change out the tumblers, and cut a key to the new ‘code’. Especially on a commercial lock like they’d be using in the dorm.
I had to have my locks changed while I was a dorm student – the key they gave me didn’t work, and ResLife couldn’t figure out where the correct key was. Maintenance came by and just took the whole doorknob off and put a new one on, then gave me the new key, just like with a regular door.
I had to change my front door lock once too – funny thing, I just left the house and remembered I’d left my wallet behind, when I tried to unlock the door the lock just broke. So I spent half an hour waiting for my neighbour to get home so I could ask to use their phone to call a locksmith. They had to jimmy the door open from the outside with a long hook through the letterbox and then change out the tumblr mechanism.
Another time the betting shop I worked at had a lock break; one of the punters didn’t want to leave at 9:30pm closing time and tried to stop me locking the door…and caused me to break the darn key off in the lock! I was there until past 11pm waiting for a locksmith to come and put a new lock on the door before I could walk home. 🙁
More seriously, you’d basically unscrew the whole mechanism from both sides of the door and replace it with a new and different mechanism that opens for a new and different key.
Uh, that sounds more complicated than it usually is. If the door is open and you have the key, you usually can just exchange the locking cylinder, at least when we are talking about an apartment door without additional measures. That’s one large screw from the side of the door (only accessible with door open), and then you turn the key “just right” and pull out the cylinder. New cylinder gets done in the same way — finished.
In large institutions they have a special “core key” it is longer than a regular key, you can use it to remove the core (the part of the mechanism that interacts with the key) all this from the front of the door with it shut and locked. Then you just put in a new core using the core key
Oh god, picture Joyce wielding a literal jackhammer.
And then refer to it in such a way that you think she’s talking about Ethan’s metaphorical jackhammer.
“I love when it digs the hole, yeah, that’s it! Oh, man, it’s going right into that narrow hole and I’m feeling the seismic tremors! O-o-o-o-o-h-h-h, it’s bumping me up and down– I feel a little dizzy… Wow, I think I’m doing pretty good for my first time!”
o.O “J-Joyce…?”
Also, kind of a bummer to have to start a Monday on. I’m assuming this is deliberate and that Willis is being an evil bastard, cause he IS an evil bastard.
Commenting on Hikink Ensue, I’d like to say it’s really worth checking out Hijinks Ensue. Recently the comic has started focusing on raising a child as a geek which is a really interesting topic to explore (I’ll probably never have kids myself but it’s still interesting) plus Willis’s appearances are great.
It’s unrealistic though, I haven’t seen one where the phrase “Damn you Willis!” is uttered. We know from our experiences that should happen at least every third appearance. ;^)
Only thing missing is Ruth making the breakup official by finding someone else and getting them to move in with he, or she might call up some of her friends to talk mess about Billie, pray to God neither one of those things happen.
I know that, I’m referring to the fact that Ruth has been overdramatic since the fire alarm, and I’m wondering why Billie is acting like this is new for her.
I have this horrible feeling that, given DOA’s slow time progression, Billie and Ruth will be doing this dance for the comics entire run. As someone who’s firmly of the opinion they make a horrible couple this is incredibly unappealing to me. I want them to break up for good, I could tolerate them getting together for real but the back and forth is maddening in all the wrong ways.
I’ve also found it weird that Ruth gets treated with sympathy and ‘shipping despite her physical and emotional abuse of Billie while Blaine gets to be a monster with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Why does Ruth get to be a person while Blaine is nothing but a monster? And no I’m not asking for sympathy for Blaine (though I would welcome a look into his mind and whatever issues he has that make him act as he does).
Freudian excuse. Ruth has an explanation for her behavior. Its viability doesn’t matter, the fact that she has one, in the minds of many, make her more sympathetic.
Blaine on the other hand, has no explanation for his behavior. And in the end, the unknown is one of our biggest fears, so we naturally come to the conclusion that he has no reason for his behavior.
Also, boobs. Let’s face it, those sweater kittens are instant sympathy.
She didn’t get any sympathy initially, she was probably about as reviled as Blaine is now. I suppose the major differences are, as mentioned, that we’ve seen -why- she acted the way she acted with Billie, and we’ve seen her be nice as well, and acknowledge her wrong-doing. (something Blaine has yet to do. We haven’t seen the slightest hint of remorse from him over anything he’s said or done.) And while I’ll gladly acknowledge emotional abuse, -every- time Ruth got physical with Billie, Billie started it. Seriously, go check. Ruth never threw a first punch, or a first shove, or a first grab.
I recall Ruth tripping Billie once because she was bored. Of course, I suppose that doesn’t actually constitute physical abuse, even though it was a really mean thing to do.
No, Billie started it the first time, was the one to escalate a confrontation into a fight, and then throw the first punch when Ruth called her bluff, but Ruth’s been the aggressor on more than one occasion since. The incident Kelly mentions where Ruth tripped Billie when she was rushing to the elevator was totally unprovoked. This one was as well, and I think was worse. Billie grabbed Ruth before The Kiss (I guess that’s The First Kiss now), but Ruth was the one who escalated it from handling to actual violence. Of course, Billie is hardly innocent of escalation, either.
But, yeah, I cut Ruth a lot more slack than I do Blaine, because, fucked up as Billie and Ruth’s relationship is, it’s mutual, and it is what it is at least in part because Billie decided that’s what it would be. And she may be regretting that decision now, but I think that’s partly just because she lost.
(I think the main reason Ruth comes off as “the abuser” is just because she’s more effective than Billie. I think Ruth has actual martial arts training, while Billie just relies on brute force and ignorance. And it’s a soft form, like judo… note that Ruth has never actually hit Billie, or even attempted to (the reverse is not true); everything she’s done has been using Billie’s own force against her. Same when she confronted Blaine.)
note that Ruth has never actually hit Billie, or even attempted to (the reverse is not true); everything she’s done has been using Billie’s own force against her.
One could argue that it includes hitting on Billie…
Fair enough, I forgot about that one. I -will- say that my experience is that most people consider having their shirt yanked on by someone that’s getting confrontational -is- violence, be it mild, and from that perspective Ruth didn’t escalate anything in that encounter. Still, we’re 3-2 on Billie initiating physicality in their fights. That’s still leaving Ruth far way off from Blaine.
I definitely agree that Billie is mostly seen as less effective->helpless->the victim because Ruth is just clearly a better fighter.
I wouldn’t give Ruth sole blame for the confrontation that ended in their first kiss, but she started it, by verbally sniping at Billie when she was clearly already distressed, and I’d say she shares blame for its escalation. Billie escalated it from verbal to physical by grabbing Ruth’s shirt, but she pretty quickly went from angry to desperately begging for clarification, and then Ruth escalated it further, by responding with unnecessarily excessive force. (There are moves specifically designed for breaking someone’s grip on your shirt. Given the skills she’s shown us, I figure Ruth probably knows them. She really didn’t need to slam Billie into a wall.) And then… yeah, I’m not even sure how to classify Ruth then turning it from a fight to a makeout session, given that Billie’s apparently also decided that she’d rather make out with Ruth than fight her.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject… looking back at their first fight the other day, I noticed that, after Billie’s threats of violence, but before the throw, Ruth actually moved so that the couch was behind her, rather than the doorway that she’d just come in. I’m not sure if that was a deliberate action on Ruth’s part to make sure she threw Billie into something softer than the floor or the wall, but it may well have been. She pretty clearly knew what was about to happen way before Billie did.
“I have this horrible feeling that, given DOA’s slow time progression, Billie and Ruth will be doing this dance for the comics entire run.”
Well, it’s hard to deny that they’re currently DoA’s go-to source for drama, especially now that the Amber-Blaine plot seems to have wrapped – and there’s at least one or two more bombs that could be potentially detonated.
“Why does Ruth get to be a person while Blaine is nothing but a monster?”
Couple of things:
1. Blaine picks on people he knows are weaker than him. Meanwhile, Ruth couch-flipped somebody who physically threatened her, then actually tried to take a swing at her.
2. As other people have pointed out, Ruth has a pretty valid reason for being an angry sociopath with depression issues.
3. Despite this, when she isn’t busy threatening people, Ruth does actually have a caring side. We’ve seen her be concerned about her brother’s safety, commit petty larceny just to pull Billie out of a guilt trip, and go toe-to-toe with a grown man a good head tall than her to protect one of her charges.
4. Ruth stopped terrorizing Billie a year ago (or a week in strip time). Since then, they’ve had a pretty good (if snippy) friendship going, and seemed to genuinely care about each other right up until this latest development.
Good point, but I get the sense that their romantic feelings towards one another didn’t really have a lot of overlap until, uh, about one minute before their relationship exploded again.
Ruth might have been carrying a torch for Billie after that first kiss, but seemed resigned to the fact that Billie wasn’t going to reciprocate and they were just going to end up as friends. For her part, Billie didn’t really seem to be taking Ruth seriously as a romantic prospect until the day of the whole uniform fiasco, and even then it probably didn’t really crystallize until the moment they kissed again.
I dunno, we skipped Thursday and Friday, but Billie spent all day Saturday, and, before running out guiltily, seemed to be planning to spend all day Sunday, hanging around Ruth in a top that shows off a lot of cleavage. (And now they’re on the outs again, the girls are covered up with a sweatshirt…) If you read between the lines of her conversations with Walky, it seems like, while they’re talking about his problems, she’s also talking about hers, and she definitely seems to be mulling over the idea of Ruth as not just friend but girlfriend, and whether she can handle that change.
It took the gift of the uniform to tip Billie over the line to initiating it herself, but I suspect if Ruth had tried again earlier, Billie wouldn’t have pushed her away again. (Hell, it took Billie a second to decide to push her away the first time.)
All good points, especially the outfits. The only other time Billie wore anything that low-cut was when she was at the party (and when she almost seduced Danny).
Changing the locking cylinder of a dorm door is a matter of minutes, and Ruth did it before (or she would not have had a spare key to hand out) for a stock cylinder (which would not listen to the master key, so let’s hope they don’t have central cleaning etc). She probably just changed it back again.
(stupid rassinfrassin….) See my post down below. Anyway, the post was really just supposed to be a one-off gripe about bureaucracy, not an attempt to start an argument. :p
Sometimes I wish for “I have read and understood all of the above” checkmark boxes for replies in forum threads, but realistically it would be just as effective as it is in relation to usage conditions or license texts.
Let’s not forget: Billie was a high school bully who’s continuously flouted the campus no-drinking rule (using a fake ID, no less), physically threatened her RA in their very first encounter, subsequently punched Ruth hard enough to cause a nosebleed, stole Ruth’s booze, (badly) attempted to blackmail her, tried to use Ruth’s family problems against her, flat-out lied to her face about quitting drinking, and then got defensive when she was called on it. She was also pretty shitty to Walky for a good stretch of time for no other reason than the fact that he wasn’t high up enough on the social ladder for her liking.
Where I work, replacing a lock on a door is not the kind of thing the higher ups appreciate DIY initiative on. You’d have to file a work order and hassle maintenance until they came by to replace it for you, and if you did it yourself, you’d probably get chewed out for tampering with school property without permission.
1. Maintenance is too damn busy to care [who’d tell them, anyway?].
2. With security as poor as it is [even our conservative-ass school viewed it as risky to allow the adjoining room carte blanche entry through the bathroom], they NEED weekly lock-changing?
Far-fetched* possibility 3: Whoever’s triggering Ruth’s drunk-sprees has THAT kind of influence over her… =|
*or maybe not, given this is WILLIS we’re dealing with
4. Ruth did it herself, and doesn’t really give a shit if Maintenance gets their panties in a wad about it.
Given the cavalier disregard Ruth’s shown for the rules about, say, breaking and entering, assault and battery, alcohol consumption, petty larceny, vandalism, etc., and that she’s claimed lock skills, it doesn’t seem all that unlikely.
I’m inclined to agree with John. It is sometimes better to go ahead with something and later beg forgiveness (or plead ignorance) than to ask permission in the first place.
Willis has already gone on record as saying that nobody will die, if only because the decompressed narrative means that he’d have to write characters mourning for years on end.
It’s late and no one will get the refernce, but…
I tried the key; she changed the locks
And that is when I saw the note on the mail box.
It said “So long turkey. my attorney will be in touch.”
Loading ...
Looks bad!
;A; RUTH
Billie changed HER locks, too LOLOLOL =p
But Joyce was the KEY for that situation.
I think we should look at the HOLE situation.
Joyce thinks she’s aDOORable
I think tumbler agrees.
Tumbler agrees. BELIEVE ME, it agrees.
Sal just doesn’t give a SHIRT
I give it a crack but my sense but my sense of humors a bit wooden…
Knobs to that.
Well, the whole punchline hinges on the set-up…
Right, it’s all about how it’s framed.
And you’ve gotta remember to be careful that nobody can take A FENCE at your remarks…
“A fence”? Are we still talking about the door to Ruth’s dorm room?
yes, anon. Somehow, we are.
What? It was the best I could do with what I had at my disposal.
My puns are terrible and usually only tangentially-related to the topic at hand, at best. Don’t worry, you’ll become used to them in time. 😛
#forthesakrofbeingpunny
The drama builds.
The Drama Rises.
The Drama Knight Returns
The Drama Knight Strikes Again.
Drama Beyond
Drama Fall.
Beware the Drama
Drama Inc.
The Wrath of Drama
Drama: The Brave and The Bold
The New Drama/Superman Adventures
Drama vs. Superman
Drama and Greg
Superman/Drama: Public Enemies
Drama 2: Electric Boogaloo
Drama Forever!
The Cheese-o-drama
Monty Python: Quest for the Holy Drama
Drama & Sobbin
All Star Drama and Sobbin
Starring Crazy Steve as Drama and Dick Grayson, Age 12 as Sobbin.
And so it must be, for so it is written!
On the doorway to paradise, that those who falter and those who fall, must pay the price!
Lord, let me find him
That I may see him
Safe behind baaaaaaaaaaaaars
Drama ; starring Neil Patrick Harris and Tony Jaa
RUTH THIS IS WHAT THE KEY WAS FOR
I mean, not this exact situation but still
Having her hair like that sort of makes her look like Lucy from Peanuts for some reason.
Huh. HUH. HUH.
You’re right. She already has the Lucy attitude, too.
Good grief.
Billie: “She changed her locks already? That blockhead! I can’t stand it…”
Dammit, guys, I have homework to do…
http://imgur.com/OFOjmfh
There. I hope you’re happy!
+1000
WE ARE ETERNALLY GRATEFUL!
Almost every fictional lucy I know has those eyes two
Is two not the normal number of eyes for humans?
Willis did acknowledge, back when Schultz passed, that Billlie and Danny owe a lot to Lucy and Charlie Brown.
Oh dear. Oh dear.
I don’t even know how changing your locks works.
I had my locks changed once. They were still locks afterwards. I was vaguely disappointed.
“I poured spot remover in my dog. Now he’s gone.”
You know, saying “in my dog” instead of “on my dog” transforms that from a funny pun to a horrible sad tale of animal poisoning.
Could be worse. At least you read “pouring into my dog” as “pouring it into his mouth”.
Well, it’s not like you would poison your dog rectally.
Depends on the poison, I guess.
You swap the whole lock mechanism out. It’s more complex for houses or apartments, in a residence hall I’d assume they have a stash of spare door handles down in maintenance they can swap out on request.
Actually most of the time a locksmith will only change out the tumblers, and cut a key to the new ‘code’. Especially on a commercial lock like they’d be using in the dorm.
I had to have my locks changed while I was a dorm student – the key they gave me didn’t work, and ResLife couldn’t figure out where the correct key was. Maintenance came by and just took the whole doorknob off and put a new one on, then gave me the new key, just like with a regular door.
I had to change my front door lock once too – funny thing, I just left the house and remembered I’d left my wallet behind, when I tried to unlock the door the lock just broke. So I spent half an hour waiting for my neighbour to get home so I could ask to use their phone to call a locksmith. They had to jimmy the door open from the outside with a long hook through the letterbox and then change out the tumblr mechanism.
Another time the betting shop I worked at had a lock break; one of the punters didn’t want to leave at 9:30pm closing time and tried to stop me locking the door…and caused me to break the darn key off in the lock! I was there until past 11pm waiting for a locksmith to come and put a new lock on the door before I could walk home. 🙁
I hate locks that break, for any reason… :/
Wow, you have terrible lock. I mean, luck.
Oh dear Lordy, that was a terrible pun; good job!
Someone should lock you in a canal and then throw away the quay!
That was simply a-door-able.
Easy. Get a hair cut.
More seriously, you’d basically unscrew the whole mechanism from both sides of the door and replace it with a new and different mechanism that opens for a new and different key.
Uh, that sounds more complicated than it usually is. If the door is open and you have the key, you usually can just exchange the locking cylinder, at least when we are talking about an apartment door without additional measures. That’s one large screw from the side of the door (only accessible with door open), and then you turn the key “just right” and pull out the cylinder. New cylinder gets done in the same way — finished.
In large institutions they have a special “core key” it is longer than a regular key, you can use it to remove the core (the part of the mechanism that interacts with the key) all this from the front of the door with it shut and locked. Then you just put in a new core using the core key
AAAAAAAANNNNNNDDDD I am no incredibly worried.
Seriously, like, maybe put Ruth on suicide watch.
I’m not joking.
Yes, Billie looks… kinda older this way.
Maybe Joyce dressing her today would help?
Thanks for the comic.
Gets the point across don’t it.
I can’t believe this, I just can’t believe it. Is Sal smiling in the first panel?
I’m not seeing it, unless the cigarette conveys emotions or attitudes. Like what Sinatra did with hats.
You no longer have the key… to her heart.
or her chasity belt.
That’s what a Jackhammer is for.
CALL A LOCKSMITH!
+1 for the Princess Bride reference
Oops — I meant “Men in Tights”
That’s what MY jackhammer is for…
Joyce, calm yourself
Oh god, picture Joyce wielding a literal jackhammer.
And then refer to it in such a way that you think she’s talking about Ethan’s metaphorical jackhammer.
“I love when it digs the hole, yeah, that’s it! Oh, man, it’s going right into that narrow hole and I’m feeling the seismic tremors! O-o-o-o-o-h-h-h, it’s bumping me up and down– I feel a little dizzy… Wow, I think I’m doing pretty good for my first time!”
o.O “J-Joyce…?”
The jackhammer is not my fists…
I can’t tell if those are bags under her eyes or tears. Or both.
I think they’re actually shadows from her glasses, but there’s no way to be sure.
*waits for Willis to comment on this and prove me wrong*
they seem like bags. We’ve never seen shadows under her eyes for her glasses before and it was stated that she didn’t get a good nights sleep.
I support this theory ^
You can only dere for so long…
Before the tsun rises.
Does the tsun sets in the west?
Is that Tsun-dere I can hear in the background?
I don’t know, is it the sound of angry sobs that keep saying “I don’t love you”?
If so then we aren’t hearing the same thing.
Dere wolf, dere castle.
Join us next episode, same Tsun time, same Dere channel.
Jeez… you dun f**ked up, Billie.
Yup, she dun goofed.
Surprisingly it seems that Billie-ing something up has greater repercussions than Dan-ing it up.
At least Danny has good intentions whenever he Dans something up
Yeah…Billie does look odd with her hair down.
I feel like it makes her look more Asian. Nothing bad about that of course.
Nah, it makes her look older than she is. And I don’t mind her looking more Asian.
Oh. I thought you said “Aslan”.
Nothing bad about that either.
Well,
This can’t be good.
Takes on to know one!
…Wait, she didn’t quite set that up right.
much over
so drama
2 overeact
Alcohol = drama
u booze u lose
Wow
damn, I was hoping for the amazigirl arc to come first…
Also, kind of a bummer to have to start a Monday on. I’m assuming this is deliberate and that Willis is being an evil bastard, cause he IS an evil bastard.
Dude, this is so how a Monday would start. Mondays are assholes.
I hate Mondays.
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
I wanna show the whole day down.
Agreed. Mamas and the papas called it long ago, can’t trust that day.
So is having one (covered)boob hanging out a fashion now?
Plas…does fashion ever made sense?
No, but it sure makes the Fashion Industry lots of dollars.
Also also, Billie you’ve known about her over the top drama since you met her. And look who’s freaking talking anyway.
Commenting on Hikink Ensue, I’d like to say it’s really worth checking out Hijinks Ensue. Recently the comic has started focusing on raising a child as a geek which is a really interesting topic to explore (I’ll probably never have kids myself but it’s still interesting) plus Willis’s appearances are great.
It’s unrealistic though, I haven’t seen one where the phrase “Damn you Willis!” is uttered. We know from our experiences that should happen at least every third appearance. ;^)
Billie was hoping to find booze in Ruth’s room.
U booze u looze
You drink you sink
You ale you sail?
You liquor, […].
Wait, this is non-consensual homonymity.
Damn, their relationship already on the rocks and they only had enough time to share one kiss.
Yeah, talk about express relationship.
Only thing missing is Ruth making the breakup official by finding someone else and getting them to move in with he, or she might call up some of her friends to talk mess about Billie, pray to God neither one of those things happen.
That’d be a bit of a challenge – as far as we know, Ruth has no friends to speak of.
oh my god
on the rocks
ON THE ROCKS
LIKE BOOZE
You mean you didn’t realize this earlier? What have you been doing while hanging out with her?
They haven’t hung out since the fight, the fight they had the previous night.
I know that, I’m referring to the fact that Ruth has been overdramatic since the fire alarm, and I’m wondering why Billie is acting like this is new for her.
Maybe it’s a new low on the overdramatic scale – or a new high?
Wait, I’ll have to check my graph.
Come on, Billie, weren’t you paying attention to those lockpicking lessons Ruth said she was going to give you?
actually billie, no it isnt. Id say its a pretty rational thing to not want someone who lied to you and manipulated you to have access to your room.
I have this horrible feeling that, given DOA’s slow time progression, Billie and Ruth will be doing this dance for the comics entire run. As someone who’s firmly of the opinion they make a horrible couple this is incredibly unappealing to me. I want them to break up for good, I could tolerate them getting together for real but the back and forth is maddening in all the wrong ways.
I’ve also found it weird that Ruth gets treated with sympathy and ‘shipping despite her physical and emotional abuse of Billie while Blaine gets to be a monster with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Why does Ruth get to be a person while Blaine is nothing but a monster? And no I’m not asking for sympathy for Blaine (though I would welcome a look into his mind and whatever issues he has that make him act as he does).
Sorry to be so negative tonight.
Freudian excuse. Ruth has an explanation for her behavior. Its viability doesn’t matter, the fact that she has one, in the minds of many, make her more sympathetic.
Blaine on the other hand, has no explanation for his behavior. And in the end, the unknown is one of our biggest fears, so we naturally come to the conclusion that he has no reason for his behavior.
Also, boobs. Let’s face it, those sweater kittens are instant sympathy.
Don’t worry. DoA has slow time progression. Ruth hasn’t.
She didn’t get any sympathy initially, she was probably about as reviled as Blaine is now. I suppose the major differences are, as mentioned, that we’ve seen -why- she acted the way she acted with Billie, and we’ve seen her be nice as well, and acknowledge her wrong-doing. (something Blaine has yet to do. We haven’t seen the slightest hint of remorse from him over anything he’s said or done.) And while I’ll gladly acknowledge emotional abuse, -every- time Ruth got physical with Billie, Billie started it. Seriously, go check. Ruth never threw a first punch, or a first shove, or a first grab.
I recall Ruth tripping Billie once because she was bored. Of course, I suppose that doesn’t actually constitute physical abuse, even though it was a really mean thing to do.
No, Billie started it the first time, was the one to escalate a confrontation into a fight, and then throw the first punch when Ruth called her bluff, but Ruth’s been the aggressor on more than one occasion since. The incident Kelly mentions where Ruth tripped Billie when she was rushing to the elevator was totally unprovoked. This one was as well, and I think was worse. Billie grabbed Ruth before The Kiss (I guess that’s The First Kiss now), but Ruth was the one who escalated it from handling to actual violence. Of course, Billie is hardly innocent of escalation, either.
But, yeah, I cut Ruth a lot more slack than I do Blaine, because, fucked up as Billie and Ruth’s relationship is, it’s mutual, and it is what it is at least in part because Billie decided that’s what it would be. And she may be regretting that decision now, but I think that’s partly just because she lost.
(I think the main reason Ruth comes off as “the abuser” is just because she’s more effective than Billie. I think Ruth has actual martial arts training, while Billie just relies on brute force and ignorance. And it’s a soft form, like judo… note that Ruth has never actually hit Billie, or even attempted to (the reverse is not true); everything she’s done has been using Billie’s own force against her. Same when she confronted Blaine.)
One could argue that it includes hitting on Billie…
Fair enough, I forgot about that one. I -will- say that my experience is that most people consider having their shirt yanked on by someone that’s getting confrontational -is- violence, be it mild, and from that perspective Ruth didn’t escalate anything in that encounter. Still, we’re 3-2 on Billie initiating physicality in their fights. That’s still leaving Ruth far way off from Blaine.
I definitely agree that Billie is mostly seen as less effective->helpless->the victim because Ruth is just clearly a better fighter.
Well, there’s violence, and there’s violence.
I wouldn’t give Ruth sole blame for the confrontation that ended in their first kiss, but she started it, by verbally sniping at Billie when she was clearly already distressed, and I’d say she shares blame for its escalation. Billie escalated it from verbal to physical by grabbing Ruth’s shirt, but she pretty quickly went from angry to desperately begging for clarification, and then Ruth escalated it further, by responding with unnecessarily excessive force. (There are moves specifically designed for breaking someone’s grip on your shirt. Given the skills she’s shown us, I figure Ruth probably knows them. She really didn’t need to slam Billie into a wall.) And then… yeah, I’m not even sure how to classify Ruth then turning it from a fight to a makeout session, given that Billie’s apparently also decided that she’d rather make out with Ruth than fight her.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject… looking back at their first fight the other day, I noticed that, after Billie’s threats of violence, but before the throw, Ruth actually moved so that the couch was behind her, rather than the doorway that she’d just come in. I’m not sure if that was a deliberate action on Ruth’s part to make sure she threw Billie into something softer than the floor or the wall, but it may well have been. She pretty clearly knew what was about to happen way before Billie did.
“I have this horrible feeling that, given DOA’s slow time progression, Billie and Ruth will be doing this dance for the comics entire run.”
Well, it’s hard to deny that they’re currently DoA’s go-to source for drama, especially now that the Amber-Blaine plot seems to have wrapped – and there’s at least one or two more bombs that could be potentially detonated.
“Why does Ruth get to be a person while Blaine is nothing but a monster?”
Couple of things:
1. Blaine picks on people he knows are weaker than him. Meanwhile, Ruth couch-flipped somebody who physically threatened her, then actually tried to take a swing at her.
2. As other people have pointed out, Ruth has a pretty valid reason for being an angry sociopath with depression issues.
3. Despite this, when she isn’t busy threatening people, Ruth does actually have a caring side. We’ve seen her be concerned about her brother’s safety, commit petty larceny just to pull Billie out of a guilt trip, and go toe-to-toe with a grown man a good head tall than her to protect one of her charges.
4. Ruth stopped terrorizing Billie a year ago (or a week in strip time). Since then, they’ve had a pretty good (if snippy) friendship going, and seemed to genuinely care about each other right up until this latest development.
“Friendship” is not a strong enough word, methinks… They were friends too, but they were also lovers. Right now, though, who knows what they are…
(It’s true [I think] they were only at first base, but not everything is about sex.)
Good point, but I get the sense that their romantic feelings towards one another didn’t really have a lot of overlap until, uh, about one minute before their relationship exploded again.
Ruth might have been carrying a torch for Billie after that first kiss, but seemed resigned to the fact that Billie wasn’t going to reciprocate and they were just going to end up as friends. For her part, Billie didn’t really seem to be taking Ruth seriously as a romantic prospect until the day of the whole uniform fiasco, and even then it probably didn’t really crystallize until the moment they kissed again.
I dunno, we skipped Thursday and Friday, but Billie spent all day Saturday, and, before running out guiltily, seemed to be planning to spend all day Sunday, hanging around Ruth in a top that shows off a lot of cleavage. (And now they’re on the outs again, the girls are covered up with a sweatshirt…) If you read between the lines of her conversations with Walky, it seems like, while they’re talking about his problems, she’s also talking about hers, and she definitely seems to be mulling over the idea of Ruth as not just friend but girlfriend, and whether she can handle that change.
It took the gift of the uniform to tip Billie over the line to initiating it herself, but I suspect if Ruth had tried again earlier, Billie wouldn’t have pushed her away again. (Hell, it took Billie a second to decide to push her away the first time.)
All good points, especially the outfits. The only other time Billie wore anything that low-cut was when she was at the party (and when she almost seduced Danny).
Blaine tried (probably tries, but we can hope) to control Amber’s life. Ruth just wants attention from Billie.
Clearly, Danny is behind this somehow.
So how does he..
Maybe he’s secretly a supervillain?
Danny Wilcox..is actually Dan Phantom.
I am skeptical as to Ruth’s ability to get maintenance to respond that quickly to a work order changing her lock.
Changing the locking cylinder of a dorm door is a matter of minutes, and Ruth did it before (or she would not have had a spare key to hand out) for a stock cylinder (which would not listen to the master key, so let’s hope they don’t have central cleaning etc). She probably just changed it back again.
You clearly have never put in a work order at a University.
Maybe a DIY thing
(stupid rassinfrassin….) See my post down below. Anyway, the post was really just supposed to be a one-off gripe about bureaucracy, not an attempt to start an argument. :p
Sometimes I wish for “I have read and understood all of the above” checkmark boxes for replies in forum threads, but realistically it would be just as effective as it is in relation to usage conditions or license texts.
I understood you fine, thanks.
She had another lock ready in advance.
No Billie, you’re a lying, narcissistic, alcoholic douchebag.
And she’s still better than Ruth.
Hardly. They’re both kind of awful.
Let’s not forget: Billie was a high school bully who’s continuously flouted the campus no-drinking rule (using a fake ID, no less), physically threatened her RA in their very first encounter, subsequently punched Ruth hard enough to cause a nosebleed, stole Ruth’s booze, (badly) attempted to blackmail her, tried to use Ruth’s family problems against her, flat-out lied to her face about quitting drinking, and then got defensive when she was called on it. She was also pretty shitty to Walky for a good stretch of time for no other reason than the fact that he wasn’t high up enough on the social ladder for her liking.
Where I work, replacing a lock on a door is not the kind of thing the higher ups appreciate DIY initiative on. You’d have to file a work order and hassle maintenance until they came by to replace it for you, and if you did it yourself, you’d probably get chewed out for tampering with school property without permission.
And that’s annoying. I started a reply, but it posted as a new comment. -_-
Two possibilities:
1. Maintenance is too damn busy to care [who’d tell them, anyway?].
2. With security as poor as it is [even our conservative-ass school viewed it as risky to allow the adjoining room carte blanche entry through the bathroom], they NEED weekly lock-changing?
Far-fetched* possibility 3: Whoever’s triggering Ruth’s drunk-sprees has THAT kind of influence over her… =|
*or maybe not, given this is WILLIS we’re dealing with
4. Ruth did it herself, and doesn’t really give a shit if Maintenance gets their panties in a wad about it.
Given the cavalier disregard Ruth’s shown for the rules about, say, breaking and entering, assault and battery, alcohol consumption, petty larceny, vandalism, etc., and that she’s claimed lock skills, it doesn’t seem all that unlikely.
> [even our conservative-ass school viewed it as risky to allow the adjoining room carte blanche entry through the bathroom]
Security-wise, isn’t it basically equivalent to one big room with four roommates?
I’m inclined to agree with John. It is sometimes better to go ahead with something and later beg forgiveness (or plead ignorance) than to ask permission in the first place.
Billie want’s the Ruth.. the whole Ruth.. and nothing but the Ruth! Well she CAN’T HANDLE the Ruth!!
Haha, I get it. “YOU WANT THE RUTH?! YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE RUTH!”
That ship has sunk.
Sadly.
But I believe in Willis.
I know he can fix this someday.
That ship will fly.
Flying ship, I’m calling it.
I’m afraid the ship has hit the fans.
I have a horrible feeling that Ruth is going to cop it in this timeline too :(.
Willis has already gone on record as saying that nobody will die, if only because the decompressed narrative means that he’d have to write characters mourning for years on end.
That doesn’t preclude Ruth finding herself trapped in a pocket dimension for all of eternity, so you never know, really.
Not only that, Ruth’s appeared alive and at least superficially well in preview panels from, I think, later this day.
It’s late and no one will get the refernce, but…
I tried the key; she changed the locks
And that is when I saw the note on the mail box.
It said “So long turkey. my attorney will be in touch.”
When you’re hot, you’re hot.
Maybe she should put the key completely into the lock?
It’s a Yale. If the key doesn’t fit, it won’t go in.