I think that that was a reference to the anime “The Devil is a Part Timer” as the main character is a demon that got stuck in our world and got a job at a fast food joint called McRonalds.
No, it’s a Chick-Fil-A reference. They’re owned by a fairly religious family, and some of their political donations have been in the news. They also make it a point to be closed on Sunday, which I suppose is nice if you work there.
I also love how Walky has an entire stack of them. They deep fry their chicken in peanut oil, and it’s friggin addictive.
Oh it’s grand to have a girl who’s so fat that
You don’t know where you’re at
You have to take a piece of chalk in your hand
And hug a bit and make a mark to see where you began
I think it’s more that she’s clinging to Walky a bit like a security blanket, leaning on him like an emotional crutch. She needs his support right now and she knows it, so she’d rather he didn’t leave just yet.
She IS growing, in that she’s come to regard Walky as someone worth giving a damn about, and even someone who can be depended on– that your real friends are more important than a nebulous concept of popularity. But I think her current decision for inclusiveness is fueled more by growing pains (“I don’t want to be alone”) than the growth itself.
We’re watching Billie’s ‘best’ friend from high school ditch the poor girl in slow motion, one agonizing panel at a time. Just how much more ‘growth’ can she take?
Pretty Much, the brain panics and spams electricity everywhere, your mind tries to compensate by giving you a view of what you expect to happen, that’s why Christians always see like, jesus and bright lights and heaven and shit, and why muslims see allah and why atheists tend not to have such visions.
It’s actually a large burst of dopamine that causes the hallucinations, and rather than seeing what you expect to happen, there appear (from scattered testimonials at least) to be common themes that run through the hallucinations people experience. My bet would be most of the meaning present in them is “read” into them after the fact.
“Good lord! According to the spectrolyzer, Spragel’s secret ingredient was… water! Ordinary water! … Yes, ordinary water, laced with nothing more than a few spoonfuls of LSD.”
Not only that, she kept it secret from Billie that they were going to the same college. I mean, that has GOT to take effort. College is pretty much all anyone talks about during senior year and the following summer–I should know, I’m living it.
She got kicked out of the IU cheersquad. The IU cheersquad is the Crimson Squad, and when Billie tells Ruth about her DUI, she says something to the effect of “After [my DUI] the Crimson Squad was like “Thanks but no thanks,” wholesome image and all that.”
About, oh, ten years ago (which was more than fifteen years after I graduated, and almost as many since I moved far, far out of town), I was visiting my folks when someone called, asking for me. They were shocked (and I think slightly hurt) when I didn’t recognize their voice. Turns out it was this girl I had been good friends with in Grade 8, that I hadn’t talked to since, wanting to invite me to come to her wedding. As I recall, she may have been wanting me to be one of her Maids of Honour or something.
I chatted politely for a bit, said I’d moved something on the order of 1,200 km away, and let her know there was no way I’d be able to make it back for that, sorry, but congratulations, good chatting with [you], and hung up, slightly bemused that she’d called me at all (must have heard I was back in town; it was a very small place) and slightly sad that “one of her closest friends” was someone she hadn’t talked to in what, more than twenty years? Who she hadn’t even talked to for the next four years after that one summer, when we were still in the same school. No particular falling out, we just grew apart over the summer, as happens sometimes.
So, man, I so feel for poor Alice here. “What’s that? I’m your best friend? What, still? Uh, sure, okay… I’m gonna go stand over here now, bye…”
Also, there is someone else across the table from Alice, and the two of them were probably having a perfectly wonderful conversation before Billie barged in.
“Oh, and seriously, there was this one girl back in high school who was sooo clingy, it was creepy. Especially when she was drunk, and she was drunk a lot. And she was only getting worse – both with the clinging, and the drinking. Seriously, she got trashed and wrecked her car a little after graduation. I’m so glad I got out of that town. …Hm, my soda’s empty. Let me grab a refill and I’ll be right – Billie!”
“I said drink this wine, it is my blood.”
“You said WHAT??”
“I… said drink this wine, it is my blood?”
“That’s vampirism! You got vampirism on day one of my new religion!”
“Oh… sorry.”
“Drink from me, and live forever…” Didn’t they use that on the Interview With a Vampire poster? Might have been the poster for the Image comic adaptation back when, now that I think about it…
Nope, I was right; it’s the tagline from the movie:
Didn’t Lestat actually end up drinking the literal blood of Jesus in one of the latter books ? Can’t remember if it was actual time-travel or some sort of weird vision…
Yeah, it’s clearly obvious that she’s trying to shoo her off. Maybe after she got kicked from the team, the cheer squad went to shit. Either that, or they think she’s the same ol’ drunken, arrogant Billie and they kinda don’t wanna associate themselves with her.
The cheer squad didn’t exist after Billie’s DUI – that was after graduation. I gather she’d been accepted to the college squad, and that got revoked. Either that or she thought she was going to get in and just…didn’t.
I do that all the time. My memory is like a sieve. I will look at my watch for the time, then forget what time it was 2 seconds later and have to look again. I forget the names of people I’ve known for years, people who are important to me, who I consider friends. Judging people as “arrogant” when they forget names is like judging gay people because you don’t approve of their “lifestyle choice”.
But the thing is that Alice was corrected by Joyce merely seconds before getting it wrong again. And judging by how Billie used to be, if Alice was her best friend, then I’m pretty sure it was done in a haughty/mean-spirited way. Like, “you’re not important/popular enough for me to remember the name of”. She’s just deceptively nicer about it.
My reading of this, maybe, is Alice is so shocked at Billie’s sudden, unwanted appearance that all of her mental energies are focused on trying to politely but quickly get rid of her, and she honestly has no brain power left over for processing new people’s names.
“Divert all power to shields.”
Judging from Walky’s reaction, he’s 2 seconds away from “yeah, I’m going over there”, giving Alice (who has already finished her lunch) the opportunity to scram with a ” don’t want to keep you from your friends” (or “new friends” if she’s as bongoy as people claim) causing Billie to resume her slide towards the pit and maybe even blame Walky for it…
IMO, being deadpan is an important part of sarcasm. If you’re being too obvious (like, say, by using a [/sarcasm] tag or a smiley), it’s tantamount to ending a joke with: “Get it?”
Joyce does kind of treat the whole suite like it were her room. None of this going three weeks without knowing who lives on the other side of the bathroom for her!
Besides, it would be a very different comic if Joyce and Billie were Suiteies!
Yeah; she acknowledges people who she used to avoid association with as friends, are nicer to them than before, and (hopefully) she’s cutting down on all the drinking. I didn’t say she’s completely reformed (she’s wearing her high school colors in a display of wanting to relive the old days when she was more popular), and she’s trying to get into contact with former squadmates who obviously don’t want her around, but still; baby steps!
Unfortunately, many of her old friends are pretty much the way she used to be. That’s why they were friends, after all. What we see as “reformed”might well come across to them as debasing herself.
She just had a fight with Walky over religious differences and the possibility of being a lesbian and yet when introduced to someone new helps Walky out by saying his real name when she could have just as easily said nothing
It’s not like Walky wouldn’t have corrected her. It feels more like she’s organically using this as a segue so that she can introduce herself. And even if she did just wanna introduce Walky, I won’t say this redeems her.
That raises an interesting point. Joyce is an extrovert who loves making new friends (something I definitely relate to; I’m one of the Lost Light’s biggest extroverts). However, Joyce’s parents acted as gatekeepers for whom she was allowed to be friends with until now. Joyce wants to be friends with everyone, while still expecting everyone to conform to her parents’ rigid standards. She basically has no way to read people, whether someone with hostile intent like Ryan, or a “mean girl” like Alice.
Walky no doubt has bad memories of Alice as a “Queen Bee”, and is expecting nothing good to come of this. Too bad Billie is caught between her old life and new one, dragging Walky and Joyce along for the ride.
Wally does seem to have an adverse reaction to seeing Alice (which could be for any number of reasons, admittedly), and the only other characterization we’ve been given of Billie’s cheerleading friends is from Walky, who described them as “that posse of cheerleaders who used to stuff me into lockers” or something to that effect.
Personally I think there’s something refreshingly liberated about cheerleaders stuffing people into lockers themselves rather than waiting for some male jock to do it for them.
So does Walky not like Alice because she’s actually maybe not so nice, or just because Billie ‘upgraded’ from Walky to Alice and he associates her with not being friends anymore?
Billie is like a drowning person, grabbing on to anyone she can in a desperate struggle to keep her head above water. Or else she’s just really happy and outgoing all the sudden. Probably the former.
I believe this comment gives us the false confidence that Billie has finally reached that moment of development that we all crave. However, it looks like that this will quickly blow up in her face, and Billie will just as quickly regress.
Ah Billie. You were kicked off cheer squad for drunken driving, you haven’t seen Alice since HS, you didn’t even know she was attending the same college, and she is doing everything- but be outright rude- trying to make you see how uncomfortable she is around you.
The only good thing here, is that you aren’t kicking Joyce and Walky to the curb. A very good thing, as you are going to need them.
The ‘other’ girl at table?
Well, it is Alice’s friend, and Alice knows Billie. So it is up to Alice to introduce her to Billie and she pretty obviously doesn’t want to do that. The ‘other’ girl has probably picked up on that, and is keeping her mouth shut, because what else can she do?
*My* high school? Yeah, I don’t think Billie is really on her best friends list anymore or else she probably would have included her by saying *our* high school.
Billy is more likely to be bisexual than a lesbian – she was willing to have sex with Danny for a compliment, and her current love interest is Ruth. So she swings both ways from our knowledge.
And Chick-fil-a doesn’t support those groups anymore.
One of Willis’ pet peeves is when commenters mistakenly identify Billie as a lesbian. She is bisexual, willing to throw herself at Danny or Ruth as the circumstances may arise.
Okay, guys and gals, help a bro/sis out? I’m still a little Dina-esque (despite many years of trying to learn better) about understanding social interactions, and I want to make sure I’m reading the situation right here.
Alice doesn’t want Billie around, but she never brought herself to break off the relationship before college officially…she just went to the same college as Billie and kind of hoped they’d never bump into each other, but alas. She also deliberately forgets Walky’s name, because the two of them didn’t get along in high school. (Walky says, “Oh. It’s Alice.” with an expression that says she’s one of the last people he wanted to see.) Alice is trying to get rid of the lot of them by the end of the strip, but only Walky is picking up on the hints, and it might just be his own dislike of Alice at work.
Billie isn’t getting the hint, but maybe deliberately? She kind of looks afraid or something in all the panels, even though she’s saying words like Alice is a great friend and she wants Alice to meet Walky and Joyce. Maybe she’s inviting Walky and Joyce to Alice’s table as some kind of emotional support in case Alice gets more forceful with trying to make her leave? I’ve always taken, “Well, it was nice seeing you, but…” as a hint that I need to make myself scarce ASAP, so I’m having a hard time sorting this one out.
Walky still seems confused about Billie’s behavior in the last panel. It’s like he’s still getting the sense that something’s very wrong with Billie, but he just doesn’t have the experience to sort it out, so he’s throwing out cracks about the chicken with the hopes someone will speak up with what’s wrong? Unless he honestly thinks there ARE hallucinogens in the breading…I’ve eaten caf food at college that made me wonder sometimes. .__.;
I think you’ve got it all down, but with Walky in the last panel I think that’s just Walky being Walky. He doesn’t seem to particularly like Alice so instead of looking politely interested like Joyce, he’s more distracted by his chicken hahaa.
Alice & Billie: The last page it seemed rather awkward for Alice to meet Billie again, but she honestly doesn’t say a word to Billie in this page – I’m thinking because it’s more like ‘I can at least tolerate her for a while, I might not run into her again after this so it won’t matter’.
I’m not sure where you are getting that Billie looks scared though, she doesn’t look scared to me.
Alice, Walky & Joyce: Walky seems to dislike Alice for some reason but it appears she barely remembers him – likely why she remembers him as ‘Wally’. However though she seems willing to tolerate Billie for a while, she outright ignores what Joyce says to her on purpose so that she can dismiss the two by saying ‘it was interesting seeing you again Wally but there aren’t enough chairs for you two as well’ – so she doesn’t have to meet or socialise with them.
Walky in the last panel: Walky is confused because instead of dismissing Walky and Joyce and telling them to go away as she normally would when she has someone better to hang out with, Billie is telling them to bring over another table and chairs to hang out with them. He is making a sarcastic comment – he knows they don’t actually contain hallucinogens, but it indicates that he is finding Billie’s current behaviour baffling to the point that it seems like something he would only normally hallucinate.
I don’t think he’s wondering about himself hallucinating Billie’s behaviour. He’s implying that Billie’s the one hallucinating if she thinks Alice is happy to see her.
Oh, I thought Walky was shocked Billie wanted him to sit with her and Alice, since right before he thought he had to make himself scarce while Alice and Billie are together.
Billie telling Walky and Joyce to pull up a table TO sit with her instead of ignoring them as worthless when there is someone better?
…Have I been eating hallucinogens that make webcomics appear to have characters say insane things that are the exact opposite of their normal behaviour?
I know right! Show’s that Billie has grown as a character, so I’m reeeally hoping she makes the right decision over the next few pages, depending on how Alice behaves. Agh I’m too emotionally invested in these fictional characters oh my goodness
I think Walky says it all here with the “OH. It’s Alice.” right at the beginning, and then telling Joyce they should go sit somewhere else. Alice reeeeallly isn’t looking like a great person.
Also Billie you’re not her best friend c’mon, don’t make this even more awkward arhgh.
Or maybe Billie dislikes the fact that Alice and the group effectively dumped her and is intentionally inflicting Joyce and Walky on her to get revenge. After all her better mood came from watching Joyce and Walky committing mayhem on each other.
I was in college and your characters where my friends
then I spent one half of my dream with my “friends” (Walky, Joe, Mike) convincing me that I had to stop being a nice guy and be kind of a jerk to attract the ladies
then the other half I was actively trying to get girls by being a jerk until Dorothy needed help she passed out or something or another, I took her to her room, then she explained I was wrong to be acting like a jerk and just had to be my self, she hugged me… I left feeling much better about my self
I am 28 years old, married with 3 kids… why am I dreaming of college again??
Not that again. I look forward to colleague, but I sure hope that it won’t be the best years of my life. You have your life ahead! Why would time spent in school be best, and not time spent changing the world with what you’ve learned in school?
Billie is a Fallen Woman (In the DUI, no longer a cheer leader, can’t handle her fun sense.) I think Alice is protecting her popular, responsible, girl cred… politely… for the moment.
Could also be going the other way though. Maybe Billie is including Joyce and Walky because she’s had the epiphany that they are better friends than Alice ever was and we are going to get backstory about the DUI or other things where Alice was an awful person and Billie is going to start going in the right direction now. (Yes, I’m being idiotically optimistic)
Let’s see… *Pats down the chair she’s sitting in* *Puts extra padding at the back* *Gets popcorn* *Buckles seatbelt* Yep, I’m as braced as possible for this incoming complete and utter trainwreck.
It’s Walky!
Nice to see how Joyce has warmed up to Walky. Seems like only yesterday she was saying she thought he was Native American because of his nickname. I thought from his pigment he looked like an India-Indian myself.
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Yeah, BEST Friends
Mmm, Hallucinogenic Chicken Nuggets. . .
Sounds like something you’d find at McRonald’s. Or a meth lab.
or at los pollos hermanos.
I’m guessing that was a Chick Fil A reference
I think that that was a reference to the anime “The Devil is a Part Timer” as the main character is a demon that got stuck in our world and got a job at a fast food joint called McRonalds.
No, it’s a Chick-Fil-A reference. They’re owned by a fairly religious family, and some of their political donations have been in the news. They also make it a point to be closed on Sunday, which I suppose is nice if you work there.
I also love how Walky has an entire stack of them. They deep fry their chicken in peanut oil, and it’s friggin addictive.
What does “something you’d find at McRonald’s. Or a meth lab.” have to do with religion?
Billie, are you…
Growing?
Hopefully not! She’s already pretty large!
That’s a strange comment coming from you… =2
I’m all about Big Billies. But I don’t want the gal to have to buy new clothes.
So much Billie to love though.
Oh it’s grand to have a girl who’s so fat that
You don’t know where you’re at
You have to take a piece of chalk in your hand
And hug a bit and make a mark to see where you began
Why? She’s loaded, she can handle it.
Also, she really just needs a few mumus that resemble cheerleader uniforms, anyway =p
I think it’s more that she’s clinging to Walky a bit like a security blanket, leaning on him like an emotional crutch. She needs his support right now and she knows it, so she’d rather he didn’t leave just yet.
She IS growing, in that she’s come to regard Walky as someone worth giving a damn about, and even someone who can be depended on– that your real friends are more important than a nebulous concept of popularity. But I think her current decision for inclusiveness is fueled more by growing pains (“I don’t want to be alone”) than the growth itself.
We’re watching Billie’s ‘best’ friend from high school ditch the poor girl in slow motion, one agonizing panel at a time. Just how much more ‘growth’ can she take?
All of it. Growths need to sprout all over her body before she can truly change… into an ent.
once she grows where it counts
I’ve found that using peanut oil instead makes a tastier version
A tastier version of Jesus? CRIKEY!
LSD Jesus.
Cheesus: the snack that dies…for you!
Yeah, but isn’t there a growing cohort of humans allergic to peanuts? You’re better off using LSD.
Dying is like hallucinating! Look at all these near-death testimonies!
Pretty Much, the brain panics and spams electricity everywhere, your mind tries to compensate by giving you a view of what you expect to happen, that’s why Christians always see like, jesus and bright lights and heaven and shit, and why muslims see allah and why atheists tend not to have such visions.
It’s actually a large burst of dopamine that causes the hallucinations, and rather than seeing what you expect to happen, there appear (from scattered testimonials at least) to be common themes that run through the hallucinations people experience. My bet would be most of the meaning present in them is “read” into them after the fact.
NOTHING IS TASTIER THAN HALLUCINOGENS.
I don’t want to eat NOTHING, that’s boring!
“Good lord! According to the spectrolyzer, Spragel’s secret ingredient was… water! Ordinary water! … Yes, ordinary water, laced with nothing more than a few spoonfuls of LSD.”
So she’s not as popular as she thought?
SOMEHOW DANNY DID THIS.
Getting turned down for sex by Danny must leave some sort of mark on your aura that others can sense. It’s -10 popularity points.
Your charisma will drain until it -1 per day untill it hits 0, at which point you become astrocized and attacked on sight
But something without a charisma score is an object! So you’re saying eventually you just morph into like an armchair or something?
That would be pretty cool, if horrifying to experience. 😛
So does that make Danny the anti-Fuckface then?
http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2117&comments=yes#disqus_thread
“Wally”? Not Wall-E?
Wall E Weasel?
BEST friend?? Oh no… This will extra not end well.
Yeah, that’s a pretty awkward thing to call someone you’ve had NO contact with since high school.
Not only that, she kept it secret from Billie that they were going to the same college. I mean, that has GOT to take effort. College is pretty much all anyone talks about during senior year and the following summer–I should know, I’m living it.
She might have been suspended from school, or wasn’t in the same class as Alice during that time.
I suppose. Just seems kinda strange, is all.
I think the DUI happened after the end of the school year
I think the DUI had to be during the school year, since Billie wouldn’t have been able to get kicked off the cheer squad after the school year ended
I’m not sure if she got kick out of the Dragons Cheer squad or of a place on the IU cheersquad
She got kicked out of the IU cheersquad. The IU cheersquad is the Crimson Squad, and when Billie tells Ruth about her DUI, she says something to the effect of “After [my DUI] the Crimson Squad was like “Thanks but no thanks,” wholesome image and all that.”
There are still phones. And those social network things the whippersnappers keep talking about.
Plus like Facebook and Twitter and whatnot.
About, oh, ten years ago (which was more than fifteen years after I graduated, and almost as many since I moved far, far out of town), I was visiting my folks when someone called, asking for me. They were shocked (and I think slightly hurt) when I didn’t recognize their voice. Turns out it was this girl I had been good friends with in Grade 8, that I hadn’t talked to since, wanting to invite me to come to her wedding. As I recall, she may have been wanting me to be one of her Maids of Honour or something.
I chatted politely for a bit, said I’d moved something on the order of 1,200 km away, and let her know there was no way I’d be able to make it back for that, sorry, but congratulations, good chatting with [you], and hung up, slightly bemused that she’d called me at all (must have heard I was back in town; it was a very small place) and slightly sad that “one of her closest friends” was someone she hadn’t talked to in what, more than twenty years? Who she hadn’t even talked to for the next four years after that one summer, when we were still in the same school. No particular falling out, we just grew apart over the summer, as happens sometimes.
So, man, I so feel for poor Alice here. “What’s that? I’m your best friend? What, still? Uh, sure, okay… I’m gonna go stand over here now, bye…”
Poor Alice recognized Billie instantly. And she wants her and Wally to leave the table where she just finished her meal.
Also, there is someone else across the table from Alice, and the two of them were probably having a perfectly wonderful conversation before Billie barged in.
“Oh, and seriously, there was this one girl back in high school who was sooo clingy, it was creepy. Especially when she was drunk, and she was drunk a lot. And she was only getting worse – both with the clinging, and the drinking. Seriously, she got trashed and wrecked her car a little after graduation. I’m so glad I got out of that town. …Hm, my soda’s empty. Let me grab a refill and I’ll be right – Billie!”
That’s sort of how I read Alice’s reactions here too, heh. Billie is not going to be happy with the way this pans out, methinks.
Friendship has no expiration date!
God, now I sound like a Facebook post.
It has. Friendship expires if it isn’t cared for.
There’s a difference between having an expiration date and expiring. Friendship just isn’t labelled =p
Friendship is Magic!
Yikes! But at the same type, Alice and Billie were best friends ad of only a few months ago. I think fall break hasn’t even happened yet.
Their Salvation leads to my Salivation.
*Haha* When I first read the alt-text I somehow read “They’re baked with saliva” – and I thought: “Dear Mr. Willis, what are you up to here?” 😀
IT’S WALLY!
Where’s Wally? 😛
At Wally World, of course!
Or maybe “Wally’s World”!
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9456395/
NASCAR! Excellent! Wally’s World!
I believe its Walkerton.
Joyce and Wally
I thought Jesus only came in wafer form…
I recall that he can also be wine as well.
That’s just his blood.
The real reason Billie believes in God.
Chick-fil-a?
“I said drink this wine, it is my blood.”
“You said WHAT??”
“I… said drink this wine, it is my blood?”
“That’s vampirism! You got vampirism on day one of my new religion!”
“Oh… sorry.”
Jesus rose from the dead, so it was already pretty vampirey. Start worrying when He wants the blood back….
“Drink from me, and live forever…” Didn’t they use that on the Interview With a Vampire poster? Might have been the poster for the Image comic adaptation back when, now that I think about it…
Nope, I was right; it’s the tagline from the movie:
http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID21828/images/Interview_with_the_Vampire.JPG
So, yeah, extremely vampirey…
Didn’t Lestat actually end up drinking the literal blood of Jesus in one of the latter books ? Can’t remember if it was actual time-travel or some sort of weird vision…
Billie may have been head cheerleader, but she’s clearly not head hint taker.
Also, is whoever Alice is sitting with ever going to pipe up, or do they just sit there silently and stare?
…It’s Dina in a blonde wig, isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s clearly obvious that she’s trying to shoo her off. Maybe after she got kicked from the team, the cheer squad went to shit. Either that, or they think she’s the same ol’ drunken, arrogant Billie and they kinda don’t wanna associate themselves with her.
I foresee heartbreak in the next few strips.
The cheer squad didn’t exist after Billie’s DUI – that was after graduation. I gather she’d been accepted to the college squad, and that got revoked. Either that or she thought she was going to get in and just…didn’t.
Correction – the Dragons squad existed, Billie just wouldn’t have been a part of it even without the DUI.
New girl is being wilfully obtuse, if not offensive.
I’d go with being an arrogant bongo (pet peeve is people who, on being told someones name, still gets it wrong)
I do that all the time. My memory is like a sieve. I will look at my watch for the time, then forget what time it was 2 seconds later and have to look again. I forget the names of people I’ve known for years, people who are important to me, who I consider friends. Judging people as “arrogant” when they forget names is like judging gay people because you don’t approve of their “lifestyle choice”.
But the thing is that Alice was corrected by Joyce merely seconds before getting it wrong again. And judging by how Billie used to be, if Alice was her best friend, then I’m pretty sure it was done in a haughty/mean-spirited way. Like, “you’re not important/popular enough for me to remember the name of”. She’s just deceptively nicer about it.
Yeah, some of us it takes 4 or 5 tries to get a name right, just ask my wife Bob…
Also, odd choice of words. “It was INTERESTING seeing you again”, not “It was NICE seeing you again”. Take the hint, Billie.
Perhaps Alice’s brain is preoccupied with the extreme discomfort of the situation.
Idk… I read this as Alice purposely getting Walky’s name wrong… I don’t think she’s just forgetful
I think she just wasn’t paying attention because her mind is fully occupied with get me the hell out of here!
My reading of this, maybe, is Alice is so shocked at Billie’s sudden, unwanted appearance that all of her mental energies are focused on trying to politely but quickly get rid of her, and she honestly has no brain power left over for processing new people’s names.
“Divert all power to shields.”
Walky did manage to impress Dorothy’s parents, but how will he fair with Alice?
I’m pretty sure they’ve all failed already.
Judging from Walky’s reaction, he’s 2 seconds away from “yeah, I’m going over there”, giving Alice (who has already finished her lunch) the opportunity to scram with a ” don’t want to keep you from your friends” (or “new friends” if she’s as bongoy as people claim) causing Billie to resume her slide towards the pit and maybe even blame Walky for it…
Oh my, the bongo filter even applied retroactively?
Alice seems like a lovely person. I foresee only positive things coming from this conversation.
…you got to be more clear on your sarcasm when typing out what your saying I almost thought you serous.
I picked up on the sarcasm immediately. O_o
IMO, being deadpan is an important part of sarcasm. If you’re being too obvious (like, say, by using a [/sarcasm] tag or a smiley), it’s tantamount to ending a joke with: “Get it?”
Ha! Good one. Of course I get it.
How could anyone just let this perfectly good ‘that’s what she said’ go to waste?
The only way Vex could have conveyed the sarcasm even more clearly would have been a “SARCASM!” neon sign the size of Jupiter.
How do you toggle Jupiter size in HTML?
>marvin< Brain the size of a planet >/marvin<
That way.
I do like how Billie is trying to include Walky and Joyce, instead of pushing them away, saying, “I found my REAL friend, get lost losers.”
that still pretty weird for Billy
She wants to give off popularity vibes. I mean, Alice brought a friend. Billie has two, so she wins.
At least I think Alice brought a friend. He/she hasn’t done anything yet, and may be a dummy Alice takes everywhere so she can use the carpool lane.
Maybe it’s a Justin Case dummy, for women who want to feel secure when driving at night (it was a real thing).
Baby steps, Billie.
Ah, I guess we judged Billie a little to soon yesterday when we thought we was going to go back to the old way she was.
It’s a trap!
Second panel Joyce dropping the wrong title.
Well, it wouldn’t exactly be polite to call him “Dumbing of Age”…
or Shortpacked!?
“It’s Walky! Joyce and Walky! Billie and I are Roomies!”
“…with Sal and Sarah respectively, not with each other.”
Joyce does kind of treat the whole suite like it were her room. None of this going three weeks without knowing who lives on the other side of the bathroom for her!
Besides, it would be a very different comic if Joyce and Billie were Suiteies!
Well, slightly different, anyway.
Diesel suities?
Maybe her old friends can see how much she’s reformed now and forgive her for being a drunken menace!
REFORMED !?
Yeah; she acknowledges people who she used to avoid association with as friends, are nicer to them than before, and (hopefully) she’s cutting down on all the drinking. I didn’t say she’s completely reformed (she’s wearing her high school colors in a display of wanting to relive the old days when she was more popular), and she’s trying to get into contact with former squadmates who obviously don’t want her around, but still; baby steps!
Unfortunately, many of her old friends are pretty much the way she used to be. That’s why they were friends, after all. What we see as “reformed”might well come across to them as debasing herself.
and after wanting to smack Joyce upside her head the last couple of episodes she redeems herself in panel two
No offence, but she literally just introduced herself and Walky. Nothing particurally difficult or anything.
She just had a fight with Walky over religious differences and the possibility of being a lesbian and yet when introduced to someone new helps Walky out by saying his real name when she could have just as easily said nothing
It’s not like Walky wouldn’t have corrected her. It feels more like she’s organically using this as a segue so that she can introduce herself. And even if she did just wanna introduce Walky, I won’t say this redeems her.
I’d say it’s more an example or Joyce being her usually perky self. She loves making new friends!
That raises an interesting point. Joyce is an extrovert who loves making new friends (something I definitely relate to; I’m one of the Lost Light’s biggest extroverts). However, Joyce’s parents acted as gatekeepers for whom she was allowed to be friends with until now. Joyce wants to be friends with everyone, while still expecting everyone to conform to her parents’ rigid standards. She basically has no way to read people, whether someone with hostile intent like Ryan, or a “mean girl” like Alice.
Walky no doubt has bad memories of Alice as a “Queen Bee”, and is expecting nothing good to come of this. Too bad Billie is caught between her old life and new one, dragging Walky and Joyce along for the ride.
I don’t think we really have any evidence that Alice is a “mean girl” or a “queen bee”.
Wally does seem to have an adverse reaction to seeing Alice (which could be for any number of reasons, admittedly), and the only other characterization we’ve been given of Billie’s cheerleading friends is from Walky, who described them as “that posse of cheerleaders who used to stuff me into lockers” or something to that effect.
Personally I think there’s something refreshingly liberated about cheerleaders stuffing people into lockers themselves rather than waiting for some male jock to do it for them.
When a group of cheerleaders join together as one, there is nothing that can stop them from stuffing a scrawny high school student into his locker!
So does Walky not like Alice because she’s actually maybe not so nice, or just because Billie ‘upgraded’ from Walky to Alice and he associates her with not being friends anymore?
Alice isn’t nice, or lost a friend to DUI and knows about Billie, or both.
She got corrected about Walkys name and still got it wrong so she ignored Joyce and disrespected Walky so I’m guessing shes an arrogant bongo
That’s funny coming from a Billie grav
Wait why does my drugs look like…….Oh Shit!
They got the orders wrong! :O
EAT MOR PSILOCYBIN
Billie is like a drowning person, grabbing on to anyone she can in a desperate struggle to keep her head above water. Or else she’s just really happy and outgoing all the sudden. Probably the former.
I believe this comment gives us the false confidence that Billie has finally reached that moment of development that we all crave. However, it looks like that this will quickly blow up in her face, and Billie will just as quickly regress.
Ah Billie. You were kicked off cheer squad for drunken driving, you haven’t seen Alice since HS, you didn’t even know she was attending the same college, and she is doing everything- but be outright rude- trying to make you see how uncomfortable she is around you.
The only good thing here, is that you aren’t kicking Joyce and Walky to the curb. A very good thing, as you are going to need them.
The ‘other’ girl at table?
Well, it is Alice’s friend, and Alice knows Billie. So it is up to Alice to introduce her to Billie and she pretty obviously doesn’t want to do that. The ‘other’ girl has probably picked up on that, and is keeping her mouth shut, because what else can she do?
It’s Walky! Joyce and Walky! (God I’m so sorry and predictable.)
Glad to know I’m not the only guy who caught that.
Wow, I did not see that coming.
*My* high school? Yeah, I don’t think Billie is really on her best friends list anymore or else she probably would have included her by saying *our* high school.
Three strikes, I’m guessing Alice is making herself scarce soon.
I’m sensing some highschoolesque drama approaching.
Good thing Sarah isn’t around.
Oh shit, what if she were? Would she intervene or would she sit back and enjoy? Especially if Joyce were there.
She would judge Alice as a bad infuence and warn Joyce
Walky/Alice. Let’s make it a thing.
Walice/Alicky seconded.
A licky licky.
….Why would lesbian willingly go to Chick-fil-a when deppresed. If someone tried to drag me there when I was deppresed, I’d probably clock em.
1 – Billie is not, as far as we know, a lesbian.
2 – The Chick-fil-a boycott was successful. They don’t support those groups any more.
1 – She’s at least bi-curious.
2 – Really? Yay! 😀
Billy is more likely to be bisexual than a lesbian – she was willing to have sex with Danny for a compliment, and her current love interest is Ruth. So she swings both ways from our knowledge.
And Chick-fil-a doesn’t support those groups anymore.
Billy has been confirmed as being bisexual by Willis himself, if I’m not mistaken.
One of Willis’ pet peeves is when commenters mistakenly identify Billie as a lesbian. She is bisexual, willing to throw herself at Danny or Ruth as the circumstances may arise.
Don’t you know? People’s sexuality are defined by their current sex life, which is why all single people are asexual. 😛
To be fair, I haven’t read the entire archives so I didn’t know.
Yes. And I doubt Billie is even aware of Chick-fil-a’s anti-gay stance. It doesn’t seem like the kind of news she would pay attention to.
What tipped you off, the big picture Willis posted of her for Bisexual Awareness Day, or the fact that she’s into both dudes and ladies? 😛
Has Willis previously posted panel 1 on tumblr? Looks familiar. Unless it’s just a character layout/arrangement he uses regularly.
It does feature Joyce boiled down to her essence.
Oh honey. A best friend tells you where they’re going to school.
Huh. Well, Billie seems to be moving SIDEWAYS (emotionally speaking), rather than my assessment of backsliding yesterday.
So… good on her?
Okay, guys and gals, help a bro/sis out? I’m still a little Dina-esque (despite many years of trying to learn better) about understanding social interactions, and I want to make sure I’m reading the situation right here.
Alice doesn’t want Billie around, but she never brought herself to break off the relationship before college officially…she just went to the same college as Billie and kind of hoped they’d never bump into each other, but alas. She also deliberately forgets Walky’s name, because the two of them didn’t get along in high school. (Walky says, “Oh. It’s Alice.” with an expression that says she’s one of the last people he wanted to see.) Alice is trying to get rid of the lot of them by the end of the strip, but only Walky is picking up on the hints, and it might just be his own dislike of Alice at work.
Billie isn’t getting the hint, but maybe deliberately? She kind of looks afraid or something in all the panels, even though she’s saying words like Alice is a great friend and she wants Alice to meet Walky and Joyce. Maybe she’s inviting Walky and Joyce to Alice’s table as some kind of emotional support in case Alice gets more forceful with trying to make her leave? I’ve always taken, “Well, it was nice seeing you, but…” as a hint that I need to make myself scarce ASAP, so I’m having a hard time sorting this one out.
Walky still seems confused about Billie’s behavior in the last panel. It’s like he’s still getting the sense that something’s very wrong with Billie, but he just doesn’t have the experience to sort it out, so he’s throwing out cracks about the chicken with the hopes someone will speak up with what’s wrong? Unless he honestly thinks there ARE hallucinogens in the breading…I’ve eaten caf food at college that made me wonder sometimes. .__.;
I think you’ve got it all down, but with Walky in the last panel I think that’s just Walky being Walky. He doesn’t seem to particularly like Alice so instead of looking politely interested like Joyce, he’s more distracted by his chicken hahaa.
Alice & Billie: The last page it seemed rather awkward for Alice to meet Billie again, but she honestly doesn’t say a word to Billie in this page – I’m thinking because it’s more like ‘I can at least tolerate her for a while, I might not run into her again after this so it won’t matter’.
I’m not sure where you are getting that Billie looks scared though, she doesn’t look scared to me.
Alice, Walky & Joyce: Walky seems to dislike Alice for some reason but it appears she barely remembers him – likely why she remembers him as ‘Wally’. However though she seems willing to tolerate Billie for a while, she outright ignores what Joyce says to her on purpose so that she can dismiss the two by saying ‘it was interesting seeing you again Wally but there aren’t enough chairs for you two as well’ – so she doesn’t have to meet or socialise with them.
Walky in the last panel: Walky is confused because instead of dismissing Walky and Joyce and telling them to go away as she normally would when she has someone better to hang out with, Billie is telling them to bring over another table and chairs to hang out with them. He is making a sarcastic comment – he knows they don’t actually contain hallucinogens, but it indicates that he is finding Billie’s current behaviour baffling to the point that it seems like something he would only normally hallucinate.
I don’t think he’s wondering about himself hallucinating Billie’s behaviour. He’s implying that Billie’s the one hallucinating if she thinks Alice is happy to see her.
Or it could be both.
Oh, I thought Walky was shocked Billie wanted him to sit with her and Alice, since right before he thought he had to make himself scarce while Alice and Billie are together.
That could be, too. This is Walky, after all.
Billie telling Walky and Joyce to pull up a table TO sit with her instead of ignoring them as worthless when there is someone better?
…Have I been eating hallucinogens that make webcomics appear to have characters say insane things that are the exact opposite of their normal behaviour?
I know right! Show’s that Billie has grown as a character, so I’m reeeally hoping she makes the right decision over the next few pages, depending on how Alice behaves. Agh I’m too emotionally invested in these fictional characters oh my goodness
I think Walky says it all here with the “OH. It’s Alice.” right at the beginning, and then telling Joyce they should go sit somewhere else. Alice reeeeallly isn’t looking like a great person.
Also Billie you’re not her best friend c’mon, don’t make this even more awkward arhgh.
Wll, if my assessment of the social hierarchy over there is correct, there isn’t much congruence between cheerleaders and people like Walky.
*Snicker* the phrase “It’s Walky” was used.
Or maybe Billie dislikes the fact that Alice and the group effectively dumped her and is intentionally inflicting Joyce and Walky on her to get revenge. After all her better mood came from watching Joyce and Walky committing mayhem on each other.
I wish, but this is Billie, not Sarah…
salvation? or salIvation? hahahaha!!!!
i’ve never eaten at chick fil a
god dammit that just looks like a doulble L instead of an l then an i
It’s Walky. I see what you did there, Willis.
I don’t really get the Chick-Fil-A stuff…but I’m Canadian so I only know about what I’ve heard on the news regarding their anti-gay stances.
They used to give money to anti-lgbt groups, but so many purple boycotted them that they stopped giving money to those groups
They’re also known for a line bovine superhero comics encouraging kids to “Eat Mor Chikin”. Linkara had a field day with them:
http://atopthefourthwall.com/speed-steer-5/
until they didn’t actually stop giving anti-gay money
I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I suspect it’s going to be cringe-inducing.
I dreamt about this commic
I was in college and your characters where my friends
then I spent one half of my dream with my “friends” (Walky, Joe, Mike) convincing me that I had to stop being a nice guy and be kind of a jerk to attract the ladies
then the other half I was actively trying to get girls by being a jerk until Dorothy needed help she passed out or something or another, I took her to her room, then she explained I was wrong to be acting like a jerk and just had to be my self, she hugged me… I left feeling much better about my self
I am 28 years old, married with 3 kids… why am I dreaming of college again??
Best years of your life?
Not that again. I look forward to colleague, but I sure hope that it won’t be the best years of my life. You have your life ahead! Why would time spent in school be best, and not time spent changing the world with what you’ve learned in school?
Autocorrect strikes again?
Maybe the same way spending money is fun until you get the credit card bill?
[to quote a friend, “I have credit card! I’m rich for a month!”]
Because college you have a favorable imbalance of opportunities and responsibility.
Billie is a Fallen Woman (In the DUI, no longer a cheer leader, can’t handle her fun sense.) I think Alice is protecting her popular, responsible, girl cred… politely… for the moment.
To steal from Cinemasins, “It’s Walky” and roll credits… oh wait.
Oh no. I’ve seen this before.
Joyce: “Actually, Jesus is mildly hallucinogenic.”
Could also be going the other way though. Maybe Billie is including Joyce and Walky because she’s had the epiphany that they are better friends than Alice ever was and we are going to get backstory about the DUI or other things where Alice was an awful person and Billie is going to start going in the right direction now. (Yes, I’m being idiotically optimistic)
uhh, you know who writes this comic, don’t you
😉
Joyce’s face in that last panel looks remarkably Faz-ish….
Faz has never looked that adorable.
Let’s see… *Pats down the chair she’s sitting in* *Puts extra padding at the back* *Gets popcorn* *Buckles seatbelt* Yep, I’m as braced as possible for this incoming complete and utter trainwreck.
It’s Walky!
Nice to see how Joyce has warmed up to Walky. Seems like only yesterday she was saying she thought he was Native American because of his nickname. I thought from his pigment he looked like an India-Indian myself.
Did no one else notice the Secret Reference to Willis’ Previous Comic in this? It’s Subtle, But that’s Willis for you…