[also I will be at MAGFest for the next four days so while it’s likely I will think of y’all at midnight, more likely there will be no Wi-Fi in the arcade where I will be standing in line for a DDR machine while dressed as Lily Shen]
I was going to say the same thing! I’m in the middle of a game right now. Less than 1 day until Avatar project is completed, and I was finally able to acess a new region with a facility to raid. Salvation! (for now, at least. Commander difficulty has been surprising me)
well, you know, this EU thing is not there for nothing, so sooner or later you’ll be forced to understand, by the power of the free non biased market.
(I live in a country so reputated for its strikes that now even germans strike more than us).
Though even in “right to work” states, you can still theoretically be represented by a union and work under union rules. You just don’t have to pay union dues for it if you don’t want to.
The more I think about it the more I want it to be Sydney! I mean it definitely can’t be Roz or Dorothy because they both want the job. Someone also said Mary and that has potential too because having a more actively antagonistic R.A. in general sounds like an idea with merit….Sydney for R.A.!
I was first on board for Meredith for RA, and she still has my support, but I’m just saying for the record that Dinobot for RA would also be an acceptable and worthwhile selection.
I want to say that she’ll be sensible enough not to go off the rails, but she’s with an alcoholic influence and probably (over)eager to prove that she can connect with people.
It’s Dorothy. She’s going to calculate BAC from her body-weight and memorized formulas, set a maximum for herself, set a target at 80% of the maximum, and hold to that.
AlcoholISM is never an ascent. Alcoholism is a deadly disease caused by a severe alcohol addiction and can very easily lead to death by liver failure or alcohol poisoning.
I love this,despite it’s horribleness. Because it points out a fatal flaw in Dorothy…that she wants everyone to like her(and in the future, vote for her) without taking into account how far down the moral rabbit-hole she has to go to achieve the level of approval she wants.
If the title didn’t give it away, this comic is about the ‘young and dumb’ of the (middle class, western) world who think they know better than anyone else despite lacking the actual life experience to back up their unwavering confidence in whatever their beliefs happen to be at the time. Dorothy is about to get a rude awakening about herself and her preconceptions that are long overdue.
In b4 somebody comments that enabling an alcoholic is bad. I mean, it is bad in general, but it’s more important right this moment that Billie can process her grief.
I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure people drink alcohol to forget their grief, not to meaningfully process it. Once you get beyond “buzzed” — and buzzed is not Billie’s goal when she drinks — you’re past the point where the alcohol will actually help and have reached the point where you feel comfortable in the familiar problems rather than the unfamiliar ones. And then you start slurring your words and hitting on things and your new friend realizes she has made a terrible mistake.
You can drink to forget, sure. You can also just drink to take the edge off, which lets you then talk about it.
I’m sure Billie just wants to forget. But I’m hoping that Dorothy will be controlling the booze, and will keep talking about it to prevent her from forgetting.
I’m pretty sure she knows. She saw Billie drinking at the party, and there is a decent chance Walky has slipped something. (And of course, Billie has not exactly been subtle about it).
So yeah, I think this is a peace offering. But it could absolutely end badly.
Well, she knows Billie drinks occasionally and sometimes to excess. That’s not quite the same as “a drinking problem”. I doubt even Walky knows how bad it is, though he does know she drinks a lot.
You’re right, but it’s not the “you’re too perfect” bullshit. It’s the part at the end, where she takes the time out to listen and help, rather than being too busy. Where, rather than just thinking “I’m doing the right thing,” she tries to connect with others emotionally.
It’s not that she’s too perfect. It’s that she can come off as standoffish. She’s so busy trying to help her ambitions that she doesn’t have time to be the caring individual we know she is, from when she rarely does have time.
Making mistakes won’t help.her. Adjusting her priorities and spending more time with people will.
And this is why bartenders should probably get at least some schooling in psychiatry. I speak from experience, it is weird to listen to a girl who just came of drinking age start spilling that she has a bit of an Oedipal Complex for her 40 year old step mom. Most awkward work shift of my life.
It’s not as uncommon as you might think. This is her step-mom, not her mom. She likely was not actually raised by her step mom. She’s probably quite attractive (her other parent clearly thought so) and has been extremely nice and comforting. Probably trying to be more friend than parent, which often works better for step parents of older teens.
Especially if being attracted to women (and acknowledging such) is new to her. That’s not too dissimilar to why young girls (up to age 13 or so) wind up having crushes on their nice teachers and such.
Plus, if it’s a thought she doesn’t want to have, then the very act of trying to make it go away can make it stronger. She’s scared of it, so her brain tries to protect her from it, which, ironically, means the original thought has to stay in her brain.
At least, that’s how I think I would handle this situation. Essentially to let her know there’s nothing wrong with feeling this way. And feelings are not things you have to act on. Just treat it like a message from your subconscious. And, like any crush you don’t act on, it will pass. Especially if and when you find someone you really love in that way.
Panel One: While this is true, Dorothy, there aren’t many people who are privy to that. Also, a lot of what you consider major failures are you picking yourself apart for failures so your opponents can’t use it against you. Which is perfectly valid, don’t get me wrong, pain is relative. But not a lot of people see those as huge failures on your part, even when they do see them.
Panel Two: This is a good point – while pain is relative, pointing out two things are not equal is also valid. Dorothy’s consequences for failure are staying at IU another year and having to wait a little longer to achieve her presidency. The consequences for what Billie perceives as her failure is her girlfriend in the hospital for suicidal ideation, possibly being fired, homeless, and sent back to an unsafe environment.
Panel Three: Dorothy is mad here and yeah, it’s rough being pointed out that the consequences for things that matter so much to you are not equal to the consequences of other things. It can feel invalidating even though it can be true.
Panel Four: But that doesn’t make them untrue, and that’s Dorothy realizing that. Billie’s ‘failures’ right now have bigger consequences and they need to be addressed. Especially if she wants Billie’s support at being RA.
Panel Five: Finally, a genuine reach out regarding Billie’s actual problem from Dorothy that acknowledges what her problem is. This is wonderful for bonding opportunities. ….Look, the main cast being friends is my jam okay?
And no, of course Billie doesn’t want to talk about it. She’s angry, she’s sad, and she’s raw, but most of all she’s exhausted. Being depressed drains you like nothing else. Diving in to the landmine of feelings and the complexity of them is not a thing she wants to do.
Panel Six: On one hand – NO. BAD Dorothy. We do not enable alcoholics. BAD DOROTHY.
On the other – that is a good trick to get people to talk to you. Meet them on their turf. It’s a trick she picked up trying to interview Roz not that long ago. Those two are gonna learn a lot about how to interact with people from each other, even if it’s unwitting. I’m calling it now.
Billie is more willing to do that. Being drunk has been her coping mechanism for a long time, so she’s probably thinking it can’t hurt and she needs to say….something about Ruth.
On the other other hand – that’s an issue for an addiction’s counsellor, so Dorothy don’t get too involved in that. And yeah, this is probably the most effective way. Hopefully it works.
Especially since Billie is a high-functioning alcoholic, I’m cool with it. Joyce can help Billie process her feelings about Ruth’s situation. Joyce is not going to be able to cure Billie’s alcoholism. If Billie’s is still meeting her general obligations and is going to be drinking anyway, it might as well be productive.
…Does Dorothy know about Billie’s alcoholism though?
I also got the idea that panel 2 is calling out Dorothy for calling it a failure when she ends up in exactly the same situation as the rest of the characters. Like, are they ‘failures’, too, for going to Indiana U and not Yale?
That all depends on if they wanted to go to Yale and/or did something that ruined that for themselves. If someone isn’t very bright but they work very hard at school and manage to get into a state school, that’s an accomplishment for them and they have every right to be proud. But if someone was a near guaranteed shoe-in at Yale and they messed it up and ended up at that same state school, it’d be a failure for them.
In reality, of course, no one is a shoe-in for Yale.
Billie doesn’t know what Dorothy is talking about and is thus lashing out from a combination of bitterness and the residual pain of Ruth being temporarily out of reach. FWIW, I think that Dorothy was talking about failing to get Ryan off the streets and also failing to get Walky to tell him what’s bothering him.
You seem to read it as an offer for alcohol. Isn’t she just pointing out what Billies problem is just like Billie just now pointed out that her failures are not on the same line as other people’s failures?
For me this is one of Dorothy’s most awesome moments ever, and one of the aspects of it is how she – even in a moment of anger and hurt pride – sets herself aside and figures out a way to reach Billie.
Yeah, I like Dorothy realizing that the failures she obsesses about are both non-obvious to others and of a different degree to the heavy shit Billie is dealing with. And I think the enabling of alcoholism is necessary in a way.
Billie has no outlets and other coping strategies and is completely cut off from any of her usual means of processing with others.
If Dorothy wants to earn her trust to the point where she can help build her coping strategies outside of alcohol or encourage her to reach out to psychological services about her addiction issues, she’s going to need to show an understanding of the role alcohol currently plays in Billie’s life and how it’s being used as a coping strategy and a lens through which to deal with stuff she can’t handle.
It’s non-ideal, very non-ideal, but it might be the only vector by which to earn Billie’s trust and lend her some emotional support.
I counted the ones where all four letters are legible, which I’d settled on as my policy for truncated or obscured “fuck”s. (There are a couple others earlier in the comic.)
Joyce counted 76 in that panel, but there are only 53 that are even partially visible – some of which are just like a dozen pixels of an ‘F’ – and only 29 of those show four legible letters. Sal got credit for those 29, plus the one in panel two.
If you’re in doubt about whether I counted something, the bars in the upper section have hovertext (which should now work on touchscreens… it does on my Kindle, anyway). Hover (or tap) over a segment of the bar and it’ll pop up the sentence and the date of the strip that segment came from.
Reginald, Duke of Thingley, doesn’t actually have any tagged appearances anymore, but, when I last updated the count, he was still tagged in the one strip, so I added him in. I’ll probably leave it, because why not?
I should probably add a disclaimer that Walky has not, to date, dropped an F-bomb as Reginald, Duke of Thingley.
Might just be me, but I didn’t really see Dorothy’s last line as offering to drink together or anything. Could just be her trying to get some honest heart to heart going. We’ll see tho
It’s debatable whether or not Dorothy knows. Most of what Dorothy knows about Billie seems to be through Walky. They haven’t interacted a lot one-on-one, but instead mostly through mutual friends. I can easily see Dorothy not being completely aware of just how much Billie likes to drink. And yeah I could see this both as an offer to go for drinks and talk or as a confirmation that Billie really wants to be drunk.
I started reading Dumbing of Age in summer of 2014. At the time I didn’t drink at all. Between now and then I went from not drinking, to starting, to drinking often, to partying hard to escape my emotional problems, to hitting my low point as an alcoholic, to quitting drinking and moving past my depressive alcoholism just this last summer/fall.
And in the DOAverse only a few weeks have passed and they’ve barely started to address their alcohol problems. It’s weird for me to think about. Time is moving so much faster for me than it is for these characters.
If drinking is a constant, yeah, talking about it is an improvement. But the drinking is a huge problem and I think it becomes more is it worse if she is sober but not talking or worse if she’s drinking but talking?
Actually I think that drinking and talking is much better in this particular situation, vs. a sober night of continued not-talking. Not that Billie was likely planning to have a sober night, but still, even if she was, she’s gotta begin to address what’s driving her to drink — with everything eating her up inside, why would she want to stop drinking?
She can eventually get more sober (probably in a program to help her detox safely). But she really, really needs to talk to a friend tonight.
Ayep. Hell, maybe Dorothy can moderate Billie’s drinking – if she drinks so much just because there’s not a point when she stops, and not because she is intentionally working towards getting blackout drunk, maybe just having a buddy who’d say “yeah that’s enough for you” and redirect can help.
Making mistakes is not what she needs to do. She’s not “too perfect” in that sense. If you want to call her “too perfect,” it’s more that she tries too hard not to mess up. That doesn’t means she needs to mess up. It means she needs to let her guard down more, so she’ll have time to not seem so standoffish.
The poet Robbie Burns said that the greatest gift that we can receive is to see ourselves as others see us. Dorothy has found that, at least in Billie’s case, the picture isn’t entirely a flattering one.
Meanwhile, Billie has in just one word explained her problems to Dorothy. I wonder just how Dorothy is planning to handle this?
Closing time…
One last call for alcohol
So finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time…
You don’t have to go home…
But you can’t stay here!
I know who I want to take me home!
I know who I want to take me home!
I know who I want to take me home!
If Dorothy had shitty parents she could have felt neglected and done stupid shit for attention as well.
If Dorothy’s lover had been suicidal and alcoholic, Dorothy could have seen the wrong end of a suicide ward as well.
If Billie was the busybody seeking out Dorothy for unhelpful advice and platitudes that were never asked for, than Dorothy could snap at Billie as well. (See my post below for why I think Dorothy is all kinds of awesome, but I also think Billie is 100% RIGHT in that accusation).
Is there a right end of the suicide ward?
Also, yeah, assuming how dedicated someone is to school is the only factor that determines how well they do is overlooking a LOT of other factors.
I figured you meant that somebody on the “right” side is either visiting their suicidal friend, or is the person giving the assistance (a fair number of whom have been on the “wrong” side, too).
I don’t agree that Billy is 100% right. She indeed hit upon a truth, that Dorothy doesn’t know what it’s like to have the level of problems Billie has. But that’s indirect. She’s still framing it as she did before–as if Dorothy is “too perfect.” It still came about as her attempt to make Dorothy go away. It just so happens that she hit the real truth behind what Roz said.
(To do the type of psychological sabotage Roz is doing, you have to find a real issue. But there’s no way what she said was a real attempt to help Dorothy’s relatability problem. She won’t help her opponent. She was, at best, trying to discourage Dorothy. At worst, she was trying to get Dorothy to deliberately make mistakes that Roz could then capitalize on.)
I also do not agree with how you characterize Dorothy’s trying to help. That sort of argument basically results in everyone leaving everyone alone and never helping. People often don’t ask for the help they need. And while a platitude may not be helpful in and of itself, it still shows that you care. Just because you don’t know what to say is not a reason not to try.
If not for said “unwanted advice,” Billie would be drinking alone. Dorothy showed she cared. And, so, when Dorothy offered, Billie took her up on it. She could have easily just said “I can drink by myself.”
But she wants to talk about it with someone. She also just thinks she needs something to help numb the pain to be able to do so.
Because Dorothy tried, she got through. And she also happened to learn a truth about herself, because she didn’t run off in a huff when Billie attacked her.
You can argue she made some mistakes along the way. That’s the other real truth. People who don’t make mistakes never take risks. It’s not that you should intentionally try to make a mistake, but that they will happen.
If you are actually trying to help, you will make mistakes.
Platitudes show you care enough to make a token effort. It’s more than nothing, but it’s not much. Saying something genuine even if you’re just rewording a common platitude, shows you’re more invested in it.
The fact that Dorothy is learning and getting better at this does not negate that fact that her earlier attempts were not amazing. She did better than Joyce, who ended up making Billie angrier, but she’s doing much better right now, because she’s actually investing herself in the conversation.
I don’t say Dorothy is wrong for trying to help Billie (in fact, I think it’s all kind of awesome). I defend Billie snapping at her. It’s a give-and-take situation for both of them.
Thinking about panel 5, does anyone other than Ruth know that Billie is an alcoholic? It doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing that she’d discuss with random Freshmen.
It’s commonly known that she’s a party girl and she drinks a lot. At least when I was in college that wouldn’t have automatically been seen as “alcoholic”.
She’s been pretty good at covering it. She’s functional most of the time. Not found stumbling around or passed out more often than could be explained by “good party”. Sal would probably have a good idea how bad it was, except that she’s not home much.
First of all, she still has Roz barbs about her “perfectness” ringing in her ears, so she feels the need to defend herself. BUT she checks herself. Because Billie is right and she knows it. She has never walked a mile in Becky’s shoes, or Carla’s or Ruth’s… or Billie’s. I noted back with her clipboard sequence that she is a great RA for people like Agatha and Rachel, who need a friendly smile and a check-in. But for people like Billie who need a friggin’ lifeline NOW to not… wrap a car around a tree or something equal dramatic she is less than adequate.
If she is serious in wanting to be the team mom and RA, then she needs to step up her game.
And she does.
Cut to the chase. Ask about Billie. Ask about Ruth. OF COURSE she doesn’t want to talk about it. Dorothy wouldn’t understand. Billie fudging doesn’t have the ENERGY to explain it. Those feelings plain HURT.
But how about adding some alcohol?
Billie does very much want some alcohol
Note what Dorothy offers here
– She will climb down from her perfect presidental tower of being the best and go out and engage in some underage drinking (with all the risk THAT means to her spotless resume and Harvard future).
– She will meet Billie on her terms, on her turf.
– She will invest this pain and humiliation and also time and effort (at a time when she really would like to invest time in her “campaign” against Roz) to place Billie enough in her comfort zone to give her a chance to just get SOMETHING off her chest.
This is BIG. Billie doesn’t particularly like Dorothy, she doesn’t particularly trust her ability to understand her or offer any kind of meaningful emotional help, but she DOES recognize the outstretched hand. And she desperately need an outstretched hand right now.
Billie has not had an outstretched hand like this since…
…yeah.
And why is Dorothy doing it?
First of all, because she sees just how bad Billie is doing. She sees the need for someone to reach out, and she realize that right now she is in the best position.
Second, this is the person she wants to be. The person who CAN reach out to people like Billie and Ruth, and also Becky and Carla and Sal and actually help them rather than just offer platitudes. This is Dorothy trying to become the RA she wants to be.
Dorothy has misread Billie once before, when Walky worried about her and Dorothy thought it was all just some love sickness. She dismissed Walky and his worries and the other shoe dropped on the suicide ward. She feels immenslie guilty about that, and she knows how much Walky cares and worries about Billie (that’s one reason she loves him). This is her making up for that mistake.
And also it comes back to Roz (because annoyed as she is with her, Dorothy is VERY aware of Roz experience and VERY interested in her opinion about herself. That’s why she’s dressed like she is today). This is Dorothy reaching out to Billie as a peer and not as Jane Goodall. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/condition/
Oh, and giving alcohol to a depressed, self destructive alcoholic in the middle of a breakdown is not necessarily a… perfect solution, but that is kinda the point. This is Dorothy making a bad decision to “lower herself” to Billie’s level, so to say. And Billie sees that. THAT more than anything is what gets through.
So yeah, Dorothy is awesome, and this might be the thing she has done all comic that has impressed me most.
And BILLIE is awesome, because it would be SO EASY for her to snap at goody-two-shoe Dorothy and run out and get her own alcohol. But she recognize the outstretched hand as a honest attempt to help her, and she is honest enough with herself to know how desperately she needs it.
So she takes it.
And this won’t magically fix anyone’s problem, but it gives Billie a chance neither thought she had a moment ago.
I…have to disagree. I’m uncertain how aware of Billie’s alcoholism Dorothy is, but if she’s doing this as a way to get on Billie’s “level,” it’s sort of putting her own desires above Billie’s well-being. If it’s not, it’s ignorance of just how bad Billie’s problem is. Billie is destructive and desperately needs to get sober before she makes another horrible mistake. And it’s not going to help Ruth any if she finds out Billie spiraled in her absence or that Dorothy enabled it.
Billie does need help and she hasn’t been receptive to it so far. But this is a horrible way for that help to be offered.
I absolutely see your point. ANYTHING involving alcohol and alcoholics is playing with fire, and whatever Dorothy think she knows it is hardly the full picture. You are also right that this is a lot more about Dorothy than Billie.
This is not a PERFECT way to offer help, but I honestly think it’s a pretty good way. And I’m absolutely sure it is the BEST way Billie has been offered help so far. Compare and contrast Joyce’s unfocused burst of sunlight, Sal’s tap on the shoulder, Carla being defensive, Walky fluttering around her like a freaked out butterfly and Becky trailing after her like a dog. Dorothy is the only one who has said “Fine… I’ll go to the place where you are.”
But it all boils down to exactly how dangerous the next drink will be for Billie – or how dangerous the next night alone would be. Neither of us knows that, and Dorothy sure doesn’t.
Well, if Billie was going to drink herself to sleep anyway, like I assume she’s been doing all along, then talking and drinking can’t hurt. Nor is it likely to send her more down the spiral than she already is.
Unlike Ruth, we’ve never seen any strong indication that Billie has even temporarily stopped drinking.
OTOH, it’s possible to read that last expression and that flat “…yeah” as a clue that she hasn’t been drinking these last few days and is only now realizing how desperate she is for it and how much of a problem she has. Probably not though.
She can’t get sober if the depression kills her before she has time. Wilis said no one dies, but in universe that assurance does not apply.
And this one neither of them might know, but she also can’t get sober if the withdrawal kills her before she has time. If she really hasn’t been sober this whole time, she needs to taper very carefully.
So yeah Dorothy shouldn’t encourage too much drinking, but it would also be harmful for at least two reasons to try to stop her too fast. If she can at least get Billie talking, she can better equip herself with the information she needs in order to be helpful, in addition to building trust, which will make helping much easier later.
Depending what Dorothy’s been taught, she might think cold turkey forever is the only safe solution, in which case it would be reasonable from her position to try to advocate that, but it would still be very harmful to Billie despite her (Dorothy’s) lack of knowledge.
Nope, but they are things Dorothy feels that SHE should be able to deal with. She holds herself to that standard (which may or may not be a good standard to hold oneself to).
Also, this is neatly proves my point from yesterday. This is possibly Doroty’s greatest point of character growth in the comic so far. This is her embracing Roz’ advice of not being Jane Goodall, this is her stepping down from her perfect throne. This is her allowing herself NOT to freak out about her spotless record enough to engage in underage drinking. This is her meeting Billie on her turf.
And it’s completely without fanfare or billboards. No crisis required, no soul searching, no big gestures. Just Dorothy stepping up and being awesome. Dorothy DOES grow as a character as much as her friends, but she is more subtle about it.
Dang it, I have saved the Snarky!Dorothy face forever, waiting for Dorothy to do something suitably awesome before I used it as a gravatar. This is it!
Damn it. No. She’s not accepting Roz’s advice. If she does, Roz wins. Roz was not at all trying to help. Why would she help her opponent? Literally nothing about what Roz did signaled any attempt to help Dorothy. It was an attack.
Roz’s implied solution is to stop being so good. To go out and intentionally make mistakes. If Dorothy does that, she loses. Because Roz will use those mistakes against her.
Just because Roz used a real insecurity doesn’t make her right. Just because she got close to the actual issue doesn’t make her right. That’s how you do this. Dorothy wouldn’t listen at all if she didn’t hear some truth in what Roz said.
Roz is messing with Dorothy’s head. She is, after all, a born politician. It’s only Billie accidentally hitting on the real issue that fixed it. She pointed out that it’s an issue of privilege, not perfection.
Even if you think that Roz isn’t that bad a person, she is definitely not being nice to Dorothy. She is not at all trying to help. It would make no sense for her to do so.
Some of these “learn from Roz” I’ve been reading as learning from *interacting* with her, like things starting to click into place better from earlier. Like the interview at the party. A lot of other stuff happened that night that needed to be dealt with, but the seeds of that lesson, to meet people where they are, to learn where they’re coming from, and not be some sterile lab observer or something, were planted in the interactions with Roz leading up to that interview.
I absolutely agree that *now* Roz is not trying to help Dorothy, that she’s trying to mess with her head and sabotage her. But earlier, leading up to that interview, it is plausible that Roz saw Dorothy as not an opponent, but as a currently somewhat misled potential ally and friend, who could be very useful after a few comparatively small lessons (compared to other politicians of various skill levels Roz tried talking to before who had much bigger hurdles they couldn’t clear).
So although I agree Dorothy should be careful not to let current-Roz mess with her head, “learning from Roz” doesn’t necessarily have to mean the same thing as “falling for her tricks”.
It’s rather insane that someone not being a fuckup is seen as a flaw, to the point that Dorothy needs to argue that yes, she too is a fuckup. If Billie saw Dorothy as someone who never makes mistakes, then she should be admiring Dorothy — but no, she treats that as a *bad* thing.
It’s more complicated than that. The way Dorothy feels the NEED to argue “no, I DO fuck up!” is part of it.
Actually being right all the time would be one thing, but Billie’s complaint is more about how Dorothy responds to criticism. Billie is saying she tends to argue that the basis for the criticism is wrong without acknowledging the actual point being made, even when it’s a valid point.
That’s why Dorothy stops herself from responding in panel 4, even though she clearly wanted to. She realized Billie had a point.
No, it’s not. That’s you adding things that Billie didn’t say. Billie is frustrated that Dorothy actually had good reasons for what she did. She’s frustrated that she didn’t catch Dorothy doing something wrong.
That’s what she wanted. She wants to lash out at everyone right now. We saw her pick at flaws in everyone on the walk to class.
Now, it’s true that Dorothy saw some truth in what Billie said here. But that had nothing to do with the “underlying point” which was that Dorothy should not be trying to be the R.A.
Dorothy was right to defend herself. And it’s only because she did defend herself that she made it far enough to actually get Billie to talk.
When people complain that someone “has to be right all the time”, they are rarely complaining that the person actually IS right all the time. They’re complaining how they insist on arguing every point they don’t like, as if they were the focus of everything. Actually being right only makes that kind of behavior more frustrating, especially when someone is already in a sour mood, like Billie is.
Dorothy does this at times. Not often, or very severely, but she does, and she was doing it earlier in this conversation. THAT is the “underlying point” Billie made that I was referring to, NOT that Dorothy shouldn’t try to be RA.
I wouldn’t say Billie was saying it was a flaw, but the whole argument with Dorothy trying to be RA has been that she’s not approachable. And she’s trying to talk to and relate to Billie, who hasn’t exactly had the easiest time. When people see you as someone who hasn’t had to deal with colossally messing up, they’re not going to want to talk to you about those kinds of things.
It’s not “not being a fuckup”. Most of the people who have this problem with Dorothy aren’t fuckups. They’re all students at IU, for one thing. I probably couldn’t have gotten in there, cursory research says my B average in high school would trump my test scores. But they DO fuck up, because that’s a thing people do. Everyone fucks up sometimes.
Except “Ms. Perfect.” That’s the issue. She already started loosening up at that dorm party though, I’m sure she’ll be fine.
Sorry for getting political but does Dorothy’s dilemma sounds a little like Hillary Clinton’s dilemma. They are both deemed unapproachable and out of touch but they both are qualified while their opponent’s qualification is questionable at best? I know Clinton has some fuck ups with the email server and Benghazi but once you think about they’re not major. The email server was careless but not careless. Benghazi was tragic but that was due to negligence to fortify the embassy by more than just Hillary. Both those have been brought up over and over even though the matter was closed. Anyway back to Dorothy. They both have minor to no flaws compared to their opponent’s but they are still losing. Grade A asshole Roz’s gain popularity due to bringing up or causing scandals. Guess who she sounds like? Sorry just had to bring it up.
Panel 1: Okay, I’m like 99% sure what she’s thinking about here is a failure to get in to Yale in her first application and I’m starting to wonder if Dorothy has already had one burnout but learned the wrong lesson from it.
Like, if she burnt herself out overstudying and bombed some key tests due to exhaustion or hit a big stumbling block in the first part of her senior year. But has decided that the problem was just that she didn’t “just push through it” well enough and so has redoubled her efforts to try and be perfect in everything.
And I think she feels that her shame at her “failure” is written all over her, like a black mark she can’t scrub off, so she doesn’t understand how other people only see the desperate attempts to be perfect in all things.
Panel 2: As BBCC pointed out with this, Dorothy’s and Billie’s ideas of their failures are oceans apart. Dorothy feels she’s failed by not overperforming the students who are here. Billie feels she’s failed by not doing enough to prevent the bullying and near suicide of the woman she loves. And is worried she may have enabled some of the more toxic circumstances for said girlfriend because of Carla’s statements about their relationship being a “death cult”.
That’s an ocean apart.
Panel 3: But it’s still something Dorothy feels angry about initially, because yeah, it sucks to have real sources of pain feel they are being highlighted and called out for how they are signs of privilege. Like, the worst pain someone’s experienced is still the worst pain they’ve experienced and that’s what gets a lot of privileged people to get really testy about being called out on said privilege.
Panel 4: But it shows Dorothy’s character that she realizes quickly that yeah, this is a privilege experience. She has parents who love her. She is straight. She does not struggle with addiction. And she has not had to deal with a relationship crisis or a mental health crisis anywhere on the same level as Billie.
Billie’s sense of failure and hurt is immense compared to her own and its understandable that Billie would refuse to see those forms of failure or hurt as equivalent or equal.
And I like how Dorothy immediately recommits herself for returning to support mode rather than continuing to get sucked into trading barbs with someone in intense distress.
So Dorothy’s parents acted like parents are supposed to, and she’s not discriminated against for sexuality, and she’s not addicted, and that’s a “privilege”?
How did the way things are supposed to be, having your rights respected, being afforded basic human dignity, become the unfair exception, and the shitty things become the supposed norm?
Often, it simply means being absent life-experiences that mean you experience suffering for how you are or a harder existence for who you are. And a lot of things that privileged people have are universal rights everyone should have access to. Not having shitty abusive parents, not being discriminated against, having full access to their human dignity.
What people usually rail about when people talk about privilege isn’t the base state but how people in that base state often fundamentally don’t understand folks without that “default” state.
Folks who’ve never experienced discrimination are going to be unlikely to understand discrimination and are more likely to make those circumstances worse or think they are not happening because they don’t personally understand them. Folks who’ve never had to survive abusive parents or partners don’t understand the hard choices and complicated emotions those circumstances bring about which can lead them to being shitty towards survivors or engaging in victim-blaming if the survivor doesn’t leave right away or returns to an abusive person.
And that’s usually the negative side of privilege. Hell, we see a little of that here. Dorothy thinks that her experiencing what is a relatively minor setback to her dream is at least in the same ballpark as Billie thinking she failed a partner into being hospitalized and a long history of feeling like an inherently toxic person, because to her, that’s the most blistering version of failure she can personally connect to. And that ends up feeling somewhat dismissive to Billie.
But yeah, people struggling for equality, talking about privilege don’t want everyone to suffer like marginalized people suffer. We want to help end the unnecessary suffering of marginalized folks and often times the only way to do that is to cut through the cloud of silence and ignorance about the issues and get people to realize what the daily reality is for people who are less privileged.
Cause only through that can they hope to enter a world where less people have to face as brutal of an upbringing or lives as they had. Like, if I can build a world where no trans kid ever had to be disowned like me, raped like me, discriminated like me? I will fight to the death for that. Until my life experiences sound like an alien and unthinkable travesty in the distant past.
Sometimes I have some luck trying to explain feminist theory to people-who-don’t-like-feminists when I replace the word “privilege” with “advantage” or even “unfair advantage”.
“Not being discriminated against” is NOT an “unfair advantage”.
Being discriminated against for things like color or gender or whatever, is an unfair DISadvantage. A deeply unjust unfair disadvantage that we should be stamping out vigorously.
It’s exactly this notion of “privilege” as “unfair advantage” that makes me dislike the whole thing so much — it turns the world on its head and focuses negative attention on the wrong thing.
I would describe it as “people who aren’t being discriminated against for superficial accidents of ancestry or genetics at least don’t have *that* violation of their inherent rights going on”.
I prefer to focus on the thing that needs fixing, rather that the parts that don’t. If my house were broken into and my stuff stolen, I’d concentrate on making sure the thieves were caught and I got my stuff back. I wouldn’t waste time trying to tell everyone who’s house hadn’t been broken into how advantaged they were.
Well, the main problem is that the people who don’t have their houses being broken into are saying that the people talking about having their houses broken into need to shut up, because their houses aren’t being broken into, so they don’t see this breaking into houses problem and it’s really disrespectful to be talking about how houses are being broken into.
To use your analogy.
And there’s toxic aspects to that privilege, because the voices of dominant groups who don’t experience certain disadvantages are given disproportionate weight in society and since the dominant groups are not used to hearing the voices of those who’ve been shut out of the conversation, the gain of rights for the marginalized often feels to them like they are losing something and thus must reassert an inequality to make things “fair” again.
So, in conversations about the lack of rights that marginalized groups have, voices of those who have never experienced that frequently prevail and are treated as received wisdom, even if their analysis is greatly inaccurate or even dangerous to the marginalized group being discussed. And this occurs frequently simply because the dominant group members are used to being the only ones talking about issues in a public forum, because the marginalized group members have previously been cut out and it’s easy to live a life as a dominant group member with those relative advantages without knowing or listening about the marginalized group member’s experiences of inequality.
And sometimes the problem is that there’s an advantage and it’s necessary to point out that advantage because the dominant group is under the impression that it’s a level field.
For an example, as a trans person, my job prospects are greatly decreased, because of frequent legal and illegal discrimination of folks like me in hiring. However cis people frequently see that as a personal failing of those in my community, because they want to believe that they are competing with trans people on a level playing field and don’t have a reduced and hobbled competition for hiring.
And so discussions of dynamics of privilege, especially in how it plays to inaccurate assumptions of equivalent experiences or disadvantages and silencing dynamics with regards to marginalized communities are very valuable.
The problem with using the word “privilege” is that it refers to something that a person doesn’t have a right to, something above and beyond what is “normal”, something special. It implies an injustice on the part of the person it’s directed against. When the mayor gets pulled over for doing twice the limit and doesn’t get a ticket, that’s “privilege”.
Saying that “you’ve not been discriminated against” is a “privilege” is to many people saying “not being discriminated against isn’t a right, it’s something special and unjust that you shouldn’t benefit from”.
To many people, it feels accusatory and like the world is being turned upside down.
Privilege can also refer to advantages or immunities that people or a person can benefit from – for example, men have the ADVANTAGE of not dealing with sexism. Able bodied people have the ADVANTAGE of not dealing with ableism. Discrimination against others IS a thing people shouldn’t be benefitting from, but they do, whether intentionally or not – for instance, disabled people are discriminated against in hiring, which makes it harder for them to get housing. Since they aren’t getting that housing, able bodied people benefit by getting said housing instead. It is something to keep an eye on and, where appropriate, challenge where you can.
It can, but only because academics have defined it as such without regard to the common meaning.
If you know the word is a problem, don’t use it. I’ve only used it here because I assume people understand what it means.
Other places, I just say what it means. “Since you haven’t been through it, it’s harder for you to understand what they’re going through.” Or “You don’t know what it’s like to have people [insert discrimination here].” Or just “It’s not that easy!”
Privilege isn’t a problem. Not being aware of it is. Hence “check your privilege,” which does not mean “check your privilege at the door.” But “be aware of your own lack of knowledge through lack of experience.”
Panel 1: Hmmmm. You may be right, but I read something completely different into it. I think it’s Roz barb about being “too perfect” that still stings.
Perhaps there is a not so stellar history surrounding friendship in Dorothy’s background (we DO like to compare her to Twilight Sparkle after all). Some of her parents comments hint at this, and we can notice that the two people from her background we have ever heard about are Joe and Danny.
Hooray.
Her clicking with Walky was not only about sculpted caramel, but also about the joy of sharing cartoons. Perhaps there is a hint of jealousy from her about Joyce and Becky after all, only not exactly the kind Becky thinks. Dorothy was AWFULLY happy to have her Joyce back after the weekend. Finally Dorothy has friends. And I think she is worried about loosing them (like she lost friends before?) by being too aloof or too “out of their league” or too perfect.
Anyway, that’s my unsupported theory 🙂
As for her reaction to Billie’s barb… Yes. This. All this. I think panel 3 and 4 are among Dorothy’s highest level of character growth we have seen in the comic so far.
I think you’re very right on that. She doesn’t have many friends. She doesn’t tend to make many. And so the few she gets she tries to hold on to as best as she can as she has a habit of losing them.
And that “losing friends by being seen as being too perfect” thing might be on the nose and might add extra weight to those early scenes with Danny and why she was so bothered by Danny’s way of viewing the relationship.
One thing that makes Dorothy great is that she seems sincerely dedicated to self-improvement- which means that while she may get defensive, she doesn’t stay that way for long. She takes others’ critiques as potentially helpful criticism rather than an attack (again, for the most part).
This is in contrast to many of the characters in DoA who act to spite criticism or try to ignore it as much as possible. Of course, having great parents and a stable home life probably help in this a lot.
When has Roz come out better? She came out better with Leslie, I’ll admit, until she threw it all away with what she’s doing now.
But with Dorothy? She’s won every encounter. Dorothy hasn’t made Roz better at all. She’s, unfortunately, still the same person she was at the beginning of the comic–if not worse.
I still hope she gets better, as she isn’t even close to irredeemable like Mary or John or Carol. I hope that, ultimately, Dorothy does get in some actual punches that Roz can’t just block. I hope that this RA thing gives Roz the kick in the pants she needs.
I’m pretty sure the “outing her sister” thing is going to.
Panel 5: And again, the long shot, with that wide open door and Billie completely engulfed by Dorothy’s shadow in specific. And with Billie refusing with her back turned.
It’s a great metaphor for Dorothy’s attempt to reach out and try and help Billie out into processing things finally which will be the first step out of breaking addiction and codependence habits and having a healthy means of processing the large amount of horrible stuff she’s had the unfortunate reality of encountering so far (she’s mentioned having to defend fellow cheerleaders from abusive parents, had to learn how to suss out roofies and other date rape drugs at parties, and had to sneak friends to abortion clinics likely against the angry will of the kid’s parents and that’s not counting all the stuff she’s had to deal with more personally).
And well, it also cuts into part of the existing tension. Billie has had moments of falling and failing into Dorothy’s shadow. Yeah, she completely fucked up that newspaper opportunity and it was her fault, but she still lost that position to Dorothy and I imagine that stings a little as one more point of failure she’s been beating herself up about.
Panel 6: Enabling.
But the thing about enabling or turning a blind eye to terrible coping strategies is sometimes its the least evil. For folks dealing with a lot, they don’t always have good coping strategies and while you don’t want to go over the line to actively buying the person their self-destructive drug of choice or actively encouraging it, showing an awareness of how that drug is part of how they deal with the world can be crucial to being trusted enough to help them with building new and better coping strategies for everything.
And well, Billie kind of needs to talk to someone about all her feelings. Especially someone who is relatively neutral and a good listener like Dorothy.
I mean, we already know that she’s planning to try and boycott her therapy session or at least start out obstinate in that. She’s absent Ruth and that was mostly a one-sided “I have to help Ruth” style relationship. And she and Walky are both not really fully seeking out each other to more directly support each other.
So Dorothy here is cracking through Billie’s armor more than anyone and it’s possible a good session listening here can build enough trust for Dorothy to encourage Billie to take therapy seriously or seek out additional services for depression and addiction in the future.
Plus, that face for Billie, she’s exhausted using anger to constantly keep herself moving. It’s good for her to let herself cry if she can still access that emotion, even if she only ends up able to access that emotion when shitfaced out of her mind.
Panel 5. That’s a great visual metaphor I didn’t think of. To extend it, it’s also Dorothy holding an open door, and Billie turning her back to it.
Panel 6. Yes. It’s a bad idea – and both of them know it. But it might also be the best possible idea during the circumstances.
And like you note, Billie is just so tired. That …yeah in the last panel is accepting Dorothy’s outstretched hand, but it is also just acknowledging how much she just want that drink and be able to relax for just a single moment.
Poor Billie :-(. I’m glad Dorothy is there for her.
Part of being a good therapist is meeting people where they are. The early parts of therapy are about establishing a rapport. You have to acknowledge coping strategies before helping them with new ones.
Of course, a therapist has ethics issues with enabling drinking in someone. But that’s where being a friend has advantages. A friend can do unethical things with you.
I do actually wonder if meeting an alcoholic when they are still drinking might produce better outcomes. AA is no better than no AA, it seems. So maybe our “can’t touch another drop” idea is wrong, even if, ultimately, you do have to give it up.
The thing about Dorothy’s obsession with perfection is that her dreams in particular require it. Fair or not, if she doesn’t get into the right school, there’s going to a cap on what she’ll ever be allowed to achieve. Everyone else has the next few years to screw around with minimal consequences and slowly settle into what they’re going to be, but she’s already a year late on her life, and is at risk of losing it forever.
She wants to be President. The “right school” helps, mostly because of the connections you make there, but is far from necessary. Even then, it’s far more critical as grad school (Yale Law?) than undergrad.
True, but the point is that it’s easier to get into the right grad school if you are in the right undergrad school.
Though, really, Dorothy’s problems are making sure she doesn’t do things that can be used against her later. That’s why she strives to be perfect.
Trump hasn’t been elected in her universe, so the idea that you can win an election by flaunting your flaws and thus weakening their ability to be used against you hasn’t occurred yet. And, even then, Trump barely won–against a candidate with her own approachability problems and who arguably made a tactical mistake in not going after white working class vote.
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Billie: “…what kind of drink, tho”
Dotty: “I’m partial to green tea.”
Billie: “A-HA! FAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL”
Dotty: “Do I win yet?”
Billie: “fuck no”
[also I will be at MAGFest for the next four days so while it’s likely I will think of y’all at midnight, more likely there will be no Wi-Fi in the arcade where I will be standing in line for a DDR machine while dressed as Lily Shen]
[[JSYK]]
Have fun!
Good, I do actually worry when you don’t get first post for long periods of time //not sarcasm// Have fun!
I’ll be there, too! A splendid time will be had by all! ^_^
Will Mr. K and the Hendersons be in attendance?
Of course! And Henry the Horse will dance the waltz!
omg a Lily Shen costume! that sounds awesome!
I was going to say the same thing! I’m in the middle of a game right now. Less than 1 day until Avatar project is completed, and I was finally able to acess a new region with a facility to raid. Salvation! (for now, at least. Commander difficulty has been surprising me)
Bah, I’m finishing an oldschool XCOM marathon before I play XCOM 2 again.
still looking for the new photo where I remembered to put on my belt but in case you cared: https://twitter.com/jennote/status/817085728031117312
That won’t prevent us from making lame jokes every single time you don’t have first post. Sorry, it’s a union thing.
I don’t have to. I live in a right-to-work state.
A concept I, as a Swede, regard with about the same level of nuanced understanding as Dina understand’s Becky’s old belief system in this strip
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/cobwebs/
well, you know, this EU thing is not there for nothing, so sooner or later you’ll be forced to understand, by the power of the free non biased market.
(I live in a country so reputated for its strikes that now even germans strike more than us).
Though even in “right to work” states, you can still theoretically be represented by a union and work under union rules. You just don’t have to pay union dues for it if you don’t want to.
Got her there…
Maybe Dotty is the best choice for RA. Maybe. I still want to see Unknown Evil’s approach to these situations.
Foooooooools
The more I think about it the more I want it to be Sydney! I mean it definitely can’t be Roz or Dorothy because they both want the job. Someone also said Mary and that has potential too because having a more actively antagonistic R.A. in general sounds like an idea with merit….Sydney for R.A.!
It involves the sucking of brainmeats through a straw.
So basically the same effect as a night of drinking with Billie.
Galasso for RA
More like Sydney Yus for RA!
Galasso has that whole “restaurant” thing going on right now–
Sydney DOES need a new job….
I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking it’s gonna be Sydney
But Amber doesn’t have a boyfriend at the moment, so Meridith probably won’t do anything much.
I’d laugh and laugh if it turned out that while everyone’s expecting Meredith to be the next R.A., she’s actually just here to seduce Danny.
She doesn’t even go here!
*(I… really need to actually watch “mean girls” at some point, haha)
Yes you do! It’s a product of the mid ‘aughts, but like Clueless, it still holds up for later audiences, IMO.
My money’s still on Yog-Sothoth. Best Abomination, Best Unknown Evil and Best RA 2K17.
The best choice would be someone neutral not already living on this floor.
Oh fuck, they’re not gonna bring Sydney now that she was fired from Galasso, would they.
I was first on board for Meredith for RA, and she still has my support, but I’m just saying for the record that Dinobot for RA would also be an acceptable and worthwhile selection.
Unknown Evil would, well, do something evil.
(One of my flaws is that I can’t resist driving a joke into the ground. It makes me laugh how unfunny it becomes.)
A+ Dorothy figured it out
Yup, she’s certainly figured out how to bond with Billie in spirit.
More like *over spirits*! eh?
Now they only need a good spot to whine .. err, wine.
I’ll beer all all week!
Chemically, alcohol by itself is not a solution.
But it’s still worth a shot. 😛
Dorothy: Ok, I’ll go bring some water.
Billie: On second thought..
It’s a slippery slope, Dorothy.
I want to say that she’ll be sensible enough not to go off the rails, but she’s with an alcoholic influence and probably (over)eager to prove that she can connect with people.
It’s Dorothy. She’s going to calculate BAC from her body-weight and memorized formulas, set a maximum for herself, set a target at 80% of the maximum, and hold to that.
That’s one beer.
We know how well that turned out in Sherlock.
Awesomely?
Oh, wait, no. It was alementary.
‘Sister’ Therapy.
The point isn’t to relate to them.
It’s to be able to talk with them in a way they’re comfortable.
The alcohol helps!
I stumble,I fail, I’ve burnt down a few hospitals in my time
-You mean bridges?
Yes, bridges, ahaha, what did I say? what are you even saying right now???
You wanna drink and….just drink
Hell yeah.
Does it make me a bad person if I’m suddenly looking forward to Dorothy’s descent into alcoholism?
No, of course it doesn’t make you a bad person.
Something ELSE made you a bad person. This just shows it. 😀
I mean, hypothetically. Asking for a friend.
Now Mikes descent into alcoholism …
In Mike’s case, it’d be an ascent.
AlcoholISM is never an ascent. Alcoholism is a deadly disease caused by a severe alcohol addiction and can very easily lead to death by liver failure or alcohol poisoning.
In Mike’s case, it improves his personality.
Because death by liver failure or alcohol poisoning would improve Mike’s personality.
yessssssss fucking bond finally
😉
looks more like a platonic bond, so far
Is Dorothy aware that Billie’s an alcoholic?
Probably not. She just knows that Billie pre-gamed and had booze at a party, which isn’t particularly unusual.
She’s seen Billie very wasted at Ron’s party though. Not an indicator of long-running alcoholism, but a possible mental note.
Probably not personally. She might have picked up enough from learning about Ruth’s case and whatever Walky may have told her.
She has probably seen Billie drinking enough to know. She might even have been around when Billie told people about her DUI
* She might suspect. She probably doesn’t know, though
Hopefully she’s totally oblivious to it because if she even suspects and she’s willing to take the risk of offering her alcohol that’s fucked.
I love this,despite it’s horribleness. Because it points out a fatal flaw in Dorothy…that she wants everyone to like her(and in the future, vote for her) without taking into account how far down the moral rabbit-hole she has to go to achieve the level of approval she wants.
If the title didn’t give it away, this comic is about the ‘young and dumb’ of the (middle class, western) world who think they know better than anyone else despite lacking the actual life experience to back up their unwavering confidence in whatever their beliefs happen to be at the time. Dorothy is about to get a rude awakening about herself and her preconceptions that are long overdue.
Yes. The dramatic irony that in trying to show that she has flaws, she shows a flaw she might not even be aware of.
Can’t hold her liquor?
In b4 somebody comments that enabling an alcoholic is bad. I mean, it is bad in general, but it’s more important right this moment that Billie can process her grief.
With alcohal.
“my liver is going, Dave. I can feel it.”
I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure people drink alcohol to forget their grief, not to meaningfully process it. Once you get beyond “buzzed” — and buzzed is not Billie’s goal when she drinks — you’re past the point where the alcohol will actually help and have reached the point where you feel comfortable in the familiar problems rather than the unfamiliar ones. And then you start slurring your words and hitting on things and your new friend realizes she has made a terrible mistake.
Not that I’m speaking from personal experience.
You can drink to forget, sure. You can also just drink to take the edge off, which lets you then talk about it.
I’m sure Billie just wants to forget. But I’m hoping that Dorothy will be controlling the booze, and will keep talking about it to prevent her from forgetting.
*plays ZZ Top’s “Beerdrinkers And Hell-Raisers” on the hacked Muzak *
Please tell me that is followed by “But I can’t because I’m trying to get sober.”!
Ya sure picked a hell of a way to take your first big fail, Dorothy. Just sayin’.
…. well, that’s ONE way to bottle up emotions…
I now simultaneously both hate and love you for that pun. Let’s call it Shroedinger’s affection.
No need to be catty about it.
But how do you know the cattiness is really there?
It’s there in spirit?
Dorothy doesn’t know about Billie’s drinking problem, does she? This could end badly.
Billie hasn’t got a drinking problem. It almost always goes in her mouth!
Reference!
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking…
I’m pretty sure she knows. She saw Billie drinking at the party, and there is a decent chance Walky has slipped something. (And of course, Billie has not exactly been subtle about it).
So yeah, I think this is a peace offering. But it could absolutely end badly.
Well, she knows Billie drinks occasionally and sometimes to excess. That’s not quite the same as “a drinking problem”. I doubt even Walky knows how bad it is, though he does know she drinks a lot.
I’m pretty sure Walky knows about her DUI. He may not know she’s still drinking now, though.
The candidate you’d rather have a beer with…..
Hay here’s a preview of tomorrow’s strip you guize
oh, good, it’s been said and acknowledged. the heart of the problem. yay, hopefully we see some dorothy character growth soon
I dunno man. That your failures don’t go as low as other people’s failures doesn’t mean they don’t hurt, doesn’t mean they don’t tear you up inside.
For example, Billie’s a lot better off than some other characters. Doesn’t mean she isn’t hurting.
You’re right, but it’s not the “you’re too perfect” bullshit. It’s the part at the end, where she takes the time out to listen and help, rather than being too busy. Where, rather than just thinking “I’m doing the right thing,” she tries to connect with others emotionally.
It’s not that she’s too perfect. It’s that she can come off as standoffish. She’s so busy trying to help her ambitions that she doesn’t have time to be the caring individual we know she is, from when she rarely does have time.
Making mistakes won’t help.her. Adjusting her priorities and spending more time with people will.
And this is why bartenders should probably get at least some schooling in psychiatry. I speak from experience, it is weird to listen to a girl who just came of drinking age start spilling that she has a bit of an Oedipal Complex for her 40 year old step mom. Most awkward work shift of my life.
My god that is awkward.
“Um… there, there. I’m sure everything will work itself out…. and I’m sure that will be a good thing…”
Wait, which half of the Œdipal Complex? Kiss or kill?
It’s not as uncommon as you might think. This is her step-mom, not her mom. She likely was not actually raised by her step mom. She’s probably quite attractive (her other parent clearly thought so) and has been extremely nice and comforting. Probably trying to be more friend than parent, which often works better for step parents of older teens.
Especially if being attracted to women (and acknowledging such) is new to her. That’s not too dissimilar to why young girls (up to age 13 or so) wind up having crushes on their nice teachers and such.
Plus, if it’s a thought she doesn’t want to have, then the very act of trying to make it go away can make it stronger. She’s scared of it, so her brain tries to protect her from it, which, ironically, means the original thought has to stay in her brain.
At least, that’s how I think I would handle this situation. Essentially to let her know there’s nothing wrong with feeling this way. And feelings are not things you have to act on. Just treat it like a message from your subconscious. And, like any crush you don’t act on, it will pass. Especially if and when you find someone you really love in that way.
+1
Panel One: While this is true, Dorothy, there aren’t many people who are privy to that. Also, a lot of what you consider major failures are you picking yourself apart for failures so your opponents can’t use it against you. Which is perfectly valid, don’t get me wrong, pain is relative. But not a lot of people see those as huge failures on your part, even when they do see them.
Panel Two: This is a good point – while pain is relative, pointing out two things are not equal is also valid. Dorothy’s consequences for failure are staying at IU another year and having to wait a little longer to achieve her presidency. The consequences for what Billie perceives as her failure is her girlfriend in the hospital for suicidal ideation, possibly being fired, homeless, and sent back to an unsafe environment.
Panel Three: Dorothy is mad here and yeah, it’s rough being pointed out that the consequences for things that matter so much to you are not equal to the consequences of other things. It can feel invalidating even though it can be true.
Panel Four: But that doesn’t make them untrue, and that’s Dorothy realizing that. Billie’s ‘failures’ right now have bigger consequences and they need to be addressed. Especially if she wants Billie’s support at being RA.
Panel Five: Finally, a genuine reach out regarding Billie’s actual problem from Dorothy that acknowledges what her problem is. This is wonderful for bonding opportunities. ….Look, the main cast being friends is my jam okay?
And no, of course Billie doesn’t want to talk about it. She’s angry, she’s sad, and she’s raw, but most of all she’s exhausted. Being depressed drains you like nothing else. Diving in to the landmine of feelings and the complexity of them is not a thing she wants to do.
Panel Six: On one hand – NO. BAD Dorothy. We do not enable alcoholics. BAD DOROTHY.
On the other – that is a good trick to get people to talk to you. Meet them on their turf. It’s a trick she picked up trying to interview Roz not that long ago. Those two are gonna learn a lot about how to interact with people from each other, even if it’s unwitting. I’m calling it now.
Billie is more willing to do that. Being drunk has been her coping mechanism for a long time, so she’s probably thinking it can’t hurt and she needs to say….something about Ruth.
On the other other hand – that’s an issue for an addiction’s counsellor, so Dorothy don’t get too involved in that. And yeah, this is probably the most effective way. Hopefully it works.
Especially since Billie is a high-functioning alcoholic, I’m cool with it. Joyce can help Billie process her feelings about Ruth’s situation. Joyce is not going to be able to cure Billie’s alcoholism. If Billie’s is still meeting her general obligations and is going to be drinking anyway, it might as well be productive.
…Does Dorothy know about Billie’s alcoholism though?
I also got the idea that panel 2 is calling out Dorothy for calling it a failure when she ends up in exactly the same situation as the rest of the characters. Like, are they ‘failures’, too, for going to Indiana U and not Yale?
That all depends on if they wanted to go to Yale and/or did something that ruined that for themselves. If someone isn’t very bright but they work very hard at school and manage to get into a state school, that’s an accomplishment for them and they have every right to be proud. But if someone was a near guaranteed shoe-in at Yale and they messed it up and ended up at that same state school, it’d be a failure for them.
In reality, of course, no one is a shoe-in for Yale.
Billie doesn’t know what Dorothy is talking about and is thus lashing out from a combination of bitterness and the residual pain of Ruth being temporarily out of reach. FWIW, I think that Dorothy was talking about failing to get Ryan off the streets and also failing to get Walky to tell him what’s bothering him.
You seem to read it as an offer for alcohol. Isn’t she just pointing out what Billies problem is just like Billie just now pointed out that her failures are not on the same line as other people’s failures?
I think it can be read either way. Next comic should hopefully clarify how she intended it.
All the things you said.
For me this is one of Dorothy’s most awesome moments ever, and one of the aspects of it is how she – even in a moment of anger and hurt pride – sets herself aside and figures out a way to reach Billie.
Yeah, I like Dorothy realizing that the failures she obsesses about are both non-obvious to others and of a different degree to the heavy shit Billie is dealing with. And I think the enabling of alcoholism is necessary in a way.
Billie has no outlets and other coping strategies and is completely cut off from any of her usual means of processing with others.
If Dorothy wants to earn her trust to the point where she can help build her coping strategies outside of alcohol or encourage her to reach out to psychological services about her addiction issues, she’s going to need to show an understanding of the role alcohol currently plays in Billie’s life and how it’s being used as a coping strategy and a lens through which to deal with stuff she can’t handle.
It’s non-ideal, very non-ideal, but it might be the only vector by which to earn Billie’s trust and lend her some emotional support.
Panels 3 and 4: “Always frustratingly right, aren’t you Billie.”
Part of me is like, yay Dorothy, you’re finally learning how to relate to people.
The rest of me is like, noooo Dorothy, don’t enable that habit.
And then some other small little part of me is like, well, at least Billie’s not drinking alone.
Although DRINK is chief among them, the other magic words are FECK, ARSE, and GIRLS.
Billie has no truck with your weaksauce “feck”s.
Or with weak sauce.
I think you’re gonna need to revise your f-bomb chart. You seem to have missed that one strip where Sal dropped the f-bomb over 70 times.
where do you think he got those 42 for sal from
I counted the ones where all four letters are legible, which I’d settled on as my policy for truncated or obscured “fuck”s. (There are a couple others earlier in the comic.)
Joyce counted 76 in that panel, but there are only 53 that are even partially visible – some of which are just like a dozen pixels of an ‘F’ – and only 29 of those show four legible letters. Sal got credit for those 29, plus the one in panel two.
If you’re in doubt about whether I counted something, the bars in the upper section have hovertext (which should now work on touchscreens… it does on my Kindle, anyway). Hover (or tap) over a segment of the bar and it’ll pop up the sentence and the date of the strip that segment came from.
Counting all 76, she’s up to 89. Just for anyone who’s curious.
I see. I was counting all of them, including the partly obscured ones.
I love the fact that Walky’s appearances include Reginald, Duke of Thingley.
Reginald, Duke of Thingley, doesn’t actually have any tagged appearances anymore, but, when I last updated the count, he was still tagged in the one strip, so I added him in. I’ll probably leave it, because why not?
I should probably add a disclaimer that Walky has not, to date, dropped an F-bomb as Reginald, Duke of Thingley.
Of course you should keep it! It’s a glorious reminder of a great joke.
Reginald, Duke of Thingley, of course have diplomatic immunity for any F-bomb he may chose to deploy in the future.
Or he could demand trail by combat. Choice of weapon: McNuggets
Might just be me, but I didn’t really see Dorothy’s last line as offering to drink together or anything. Could just be her trying to get some honest heart to heart going. We’ll see tho
Although the fact she probably doesn’t know Billie’s an alcoholic, just that she drinks a bunch at parties and stuff might not really fit that.
I’m pretty sure Dorothy knows, I mean, she knows billie goes everywhere with a flask of booze.
It’s debatable whether or not Dorothy knows. Most of what Dorothy knows about Billie seems to be through Walky. They haven’t interacted a lot one-on-one, but instead mostly through mutual friends. I can easily see Dorothy not being completely aware of just how much Billie likes to drink. And yeah I could see this both as an offer to go for drinks and talk or as a confirmation that Billie really wants to be drunk.
I started reading Dumbing of Age in summer of 2014. At the time I didn’t drink at all. Between now and then I went from not drinking, to starting, to drinking often, to partying hard to escape my emotional problems, to hitting my low point as an alcoholic, to quitting drinking and moving past my depressive alcoholism just this last summer/fall.
And in the DOAverse only a few weeks have passed and they’ve barely started to address their alcohol problems. It’s weird for me to think about. Time is moving so much faster for me than it is for these characters.
When I started reading I was the same age as Ruth and now I’m 3 years older whyyy
It’s surreal, isn’t it
Definitely. I’m going back to the strips that were just coming out when I first found and binged this comic and having bittersweet nostalgia feels.
I’m glad to hear you’re doing better and I’m proud of you for moving past those things. I love your icon!
*hugs if wanted*
…that’s quite a heavy paralel. Congratulations! Here is for hoping Billie follows your example.
I started university at the same time as the majority of the cast. I just recently had my final quarter.
Wow, that is emotionally badass. Congratulations & good luck!
Billie isn’t exactly one of the crowd since she tends to rely on Daddy’s money more often than most.
I was going to reply that daddy’s money wouldn’t be able to get her accepted to a university she’s unqualified for, but that’s probably not true.
She’s completely right that Dorothy doesn’t have her problems.
Am I the only one who thinks that Billie drinking while opening up would be an improvement over Billie drinking while not opening up?
If drinking is a constant, yeah, talking about it is an improvement. But the drinking is a huge problem and I think it becomes more is it worse if she is sober but not talking or worse if she’s drinking but talking?
Actually I think that drinking and talking is much better in this particular situation, vs. a sober night of continued not-talking. Not that Billie was likely planning to have a sober night, but still, even if she was, she’s gotta begin to address what’s driving her to drink — with everything eating her up inside, why would she want to stop drinking?
She can eventually get more sober (probably in a program to help her detox safely). But she really, really needs to talk to a friend tonight.
Billie is going to be drinking. It’s what she does.
She’ll be talking to alcohol, so Dorothy might as well sit in.
Ayep. Hell, maybe Dorothy can moderate Billie’s drinking – if she drinks so much just because there’s not a point when she stops, and not because she is intentionally working towards getting blackout drunk, maybe just having a buddy who’d say “yeah that’s enough for you” and redirect can help.
Uh oh, Dorothy. At least get out of campus first.
“I don’t make mistakes, see, I’me making one right now!”
I’m 100% sure that is the intended message.
And is exactly what I said I was concerned about.
Making mistakes is not what she needs to do. She’s not “too perfect” in that sense. If you want to call her “too perfect,” it’s more that she tries too hard not to mess up. That doesn’t means she needs to mess up. It means she needs to let her guard down more, so she’ll have time to not seem so standoffish.
Fortunately, she’s doing that, too.
The poet Robbie Burns said that the greatest gift that we can receive is to see ourselves as others see us. Dorothy has found that, at least in Billie’s case, the picture isn’t entirely a flattering one.
Meanwhile, Billie has in just one word explained her problems to Dorothy. I wonder just how Dorothy is planning to handle this?
“I’m dating Walky.”
“Okay now you’re just stretching it.”
Closing time…
One last call for alcohol
So finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time…
You don’t have to go home…
But you can’t stay here!
I know who I want to take me home!
I know who I want to take me home!
I know who I want to take me home!
Alcohol, alternative to feeling like yourself…
-Barenaked Ladies
If Billie had studied harder in highschool, she, too, could have been rejected from Yale.
But she didn’t, so instead she shits on the girl who tried.
If Dorothy had shitty parents she could have felt neglected and done stupid shit for attention as well.
If Dorothy’s lover had been suicidal and alcoholic, Dorothy could have seen the wrong end of a suicide ward as well.
If Billie was the busybody seeking out Dorothy for unhelpful advice and platitudes that were never asked for, than Dorothy could snap at Billie as well. (See my post below for why I think Dorothy is all kinds of awesome, but I also think Billie is 100% RIGHT in that accusation).
Is there a right end of the suicide ward?
Also, yeah, assuming how dedicated someone is to school is the only factor that determines how well they do is overlooking a LOT of other factors.
I sure hope so, because there is absolutely a wrong end…
I figured you meant that somebody on the “right” side is either visiting their suicidal friend, or is the person giving the assistance (a fair number of whom have been on the “wrong” side, too).
I don’t agree that Billy is 100% right. She indeed hit upon a truth, that Dorothy doesn’t know what it’s like to have the level of problems Billie has. But that’s indirect. She’s still framing it as she did before–as if Dorothy is “too perfect.” It still came about as her attempt to make Dorothy go away. It just so happens that she hit the real truth behind what Roz said.
(To do the type of psychological sabotage Roz is doing, you have to find a real issue. But there’s no way what she said was a real attempt to help Dorothy’s relatability problem. She won’t help her opponent. She was, at best, trying to discourage Dorothy. At worst, she was trying to get Dorothy to deliberately make mistakes that Roz could then capitalize on.)
I also do not agree with how you characterize Dorothy’s trying to help. That sort of argument basically results in everyone leaving everyone alone and never helping. People often don’t ask for the help they need. And while a platitude may not be helpful in and of itself, it still shows that you care. Just because you don’t know what to say is not a reason not to try.
If not for said “unwanted advice,” Billie would be drinking alone. Dorothy showed she cared. And, so, when Dorothy offered, Billie took her up on it. She could have easily just said “I can drink by myself.”
But she wants to talk about it with someone. She also just thinks she needs something to help numb the pain to be able to do so.
Because Dorothy tried, she got through. And she also happened to learn a truth about herself, because she didn’t run off in a huff when Billie attacked her.
You can argue she made some mistakes along the way. That’s the other real truth. People who don’t make mistakes never take risks. It’s not that you should intentionally try to make a mistake, but that they will happen.
If you are actually trying to help, you will make mistakes.
Platitudes show you care enough to make a token effort. It’s more than nothing, but it’s not much. Saying something genuine even if you’re just rewording a common platitude, shows you’re more invested in it.
The fact that Dorothy is learning and getting better at this does not negate that fact that her earlier attempts were not amazing. She did better than Joyce, who ended up making Billie angrier, but she’s doing much better right now, because she’s actually investing herself in the conversation.
I don’t say Dorothy is wrong for trying to help Billie (in fact, I think it’s all kind of awesome). I defend Billie snapping at her. It’s a give-and-take situation for both of them.
Thinking about panel 5, does anyone other than Ruth know that Billie is an alcoholic? It doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing that she’d discuss with random Freshmen.
It’s commonly known that she’s a party girl and she drinks a lot. At least when I was in college that wouldn’t have automatically been seen as “alcoholic”.
She’s been pretty good at covering it. She’s functional most of the time. Not found stumbling around or passed out more often than could be explained by “good party”. Sal would probably have a good idea how bad it was, except that she’s not home much.
Dorothy is AWESOME!
First of all, she still has Roz barbs about her “perfectness” ringing in her ears, so she feels the need to defend herself. BUT she checks herself. Because Billie is right and she knows it. She has never walked a mile in Becky’s shoes, or Carla’s or Ruth’s… or Billie’s. I noted back with her clipboard sequence that she is a great RA for people like Agatha and Rachel, who need a friendly smile and a check-in. But for people like Billie who need a friggin’ lifeline NOW to not… wrap a car around a tree or something equal dramatic she is less than adequate.
If she is serious in wanting to be the team mom and RA, then she needs to step up her game.
And she does.
Cut to the chase. Ask about Billie. Ask about Ruth. OF COURSE she doesn’t want to talk about it. Dorothy wouldn’t understand. Billie fudging doesn’t have the ENERGY to explain it. Those feelings plain HURT.
But how about adding some alcohol?
Billie does very much want some alcohol
Note what Dorothy offers here
– She will climb down from her perfect presidental tower of being the best and go out and engage in some underage drinking (with all the risk THAT means to her spotless resume and Harvard future).
– She will meet Billie on her terms, on her turf.
– She will invest this pain and humiliation and also time and effort (at a time when she really would like to invest time in her “campaign” against Roz) to place Billie enough in her comfort zone to give her a chance to just get SOMETHING off her chest.
This is BIG. Billie doesn’t particularly like Dorothy, she doesn’t particularly trust her ability to understand her or offer any kind of meaningful emotional help, but she DOES recognize the outstretched hand. And she desperately need an outstretched hand right now.
Billie has not had an outstretched hand like this since…
…yeah.
And why is Dorothy doing it?
First of all, because she sees just how bad Billie is doing. She sees the need for someone to reach out, and she realize that right now she is in the best position.
Second, this is the person she wants to be. The person who CAN reach out to people like Billie and Ruth, and also Becky and Carla and Sal and actually help them rather than just offer platitudes. This is Dorothy trying to become the RA she wants to be.
Dorothy has misread Billie once before, when Walky worried about her and Dorothy thought it was all just some love sickness. She dismissed Walky and his worries and the other shoe dropped on the suicide ward. She feels immenslie guilty about that, and she knows how much Walky cares and worries about Billie (that’s one reason she loves him). This is her making up for that mistake.
And also it comes back to Roz (because annoyed as she is with her, Dorothy is VERY aware of Roz experience and VERY interested in her opinion about herself. That’s why she’s dressed like she is today). This is Dorothy reaching out to Billie as a peer and not as Jane Goodall.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/condition/
Oh, and giving alcohol to a depressed, self destructive alcoholic in the middle of a breakdown is not necessarily a… perfect solution, but that is kinda the point. This is Dorothy making a bad decision to “lower herself” to Billie’s level, so to say. And Billie sees that. THAT more than anything is what gets through.
So yeah, Dorothy is awesome, and this might be the thing she has done all comic that has impressed me most.
And BILLIE is awesome, because it would be SO EASY for her to snap at goody-two-shoe Dorothy and run out and get her own alcohol. But she recognize the outstretched hand as a honest attempt to help her, and she is honest enough with herself to know how desperately she needs it.
So she takes it.
And this won’t magically fix anyone’s problem, but it gives Billie a chance neither thought she had a moment ago.
I…have to disagree. I’m uncertain how aware of Billie’s alcoholism Dorothy is, but if she’s doing this as a way to get on Billie’s “level,” it’s sort of putting her own desires above Billie’s well-being. If it’s not, it’s ignorance of just how bad Billie’s problem is. Billie is destructive and desperately needs to get sober before she makes another horrible mistake. And it’s not going to help Ruth any if she finds out Billie spiraled in her absence or that Dorothy enabled it.
Billie does need help and she hasn’t been receptive to it so far. But this is a horrible way for that help to be offered.
I absolutely see your point. ANYTHING involving alcohol and alcoholics is playing with fire, and whatever Dorothy think she knows it is hardly the full picture. You are also right that this is a lot more about Dorothy than Billie.
This is not a PERFECT way to offer help, but I honestly think it’s a pretty good way. And I’m absolutely sure it is the BEST way Billie has been offered help so far. Compare and contrast Joyce’s unfocused burst of sunlight, Sal’s tap on the shoulder, Carla being defensive, Walky fluttering around her like a freaked out butterfly and Becky trailing after her like a dog. Dorothy is the only one who has said “Fine… I’ll go to the place where you are.”
But it all boils down to exactly how dangerous the next drink will be for Billie – or how dangerous the next night alone would be. Neither of us knows that, and Dorothy sure doesn’t.
Well, if Billie was going to drink herself to sleep anyway, like I assume she’s been doing all along, then talking and drinking can’t hurt. Nor is it likely to send her more down the spiral than she already is.
Unlike Ruth, we’ve never seen any strong indication that Billie has even temporarily stopped drinking.
OTOH, it’s possible to read that last expression and that flat “…yeah” as a clue that she hasn’t been drinking these last few days and is only now realizing how desperate she is for it and how much of a problem she has. Probably not though.
Billie does desperately need to get sober. But.
She can’t get sober if the depression kills her before she has time. Wilis said no one dies, but in universe that assurance does not apply.
And this one neither of them might know, but she also can’t get sober if the withdrawal kills her before she has time. If she really hasn’t been sober this whole time, she needs to taper very carefully.
So yeah Dorothy shouldn’t encourage too much drinking, but it would also be harmful for at least two reasons to try to stop her too fast. If she can at least get Billie talking, she can better equip herself with the information she needs in order to be helpful, in addition to building trust, which will make helping much easier later.
Depending what Dorothy’s been taught, she might think cold turkey forever is the only safe solution, in which case it would be reasonable from her position to try to advocate that, but it would still be very harmful to Billie despite her (Dorothy’s) lack of knowledge.
Things like depression or homeless people living in the dorm are not the problems an R.A. should have to deal with.
Nope, but they are things Dorothy feels that SHE should be able to deal with. She holds herself to that standard (which may or may not be a good standard to hold oneself to).
Yeah, sorry, I misread your post. I read it like you expected her to be able to deal with these things.
No worries 🙂
Also, this is neatly proves my point from yesterday. This is possibly Doroty’s greatest point of character growth in the comic so far. This is her embracing Roz’ advice of not being Jane Goodall, this is her stepping down from her perfect throne. This is her allowing herself NOT to freak out about her spotless record enough to engage in underage drinking. This is her meeting Billie on her turf.
And it’s completely without fanfare or billboards. No crisis required, no soul searching, no big gestures. Just Dorothy stepping up and being awesome. Dorothy DOES grow as a character as much as her friends, but she is more subtle about it.
Dang it, I have saved the Snarky!Dorothy face forever, waiting for Dorothy to do something suitably awesome before I used it as a gravatar. This is it!
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/cheating/
Damn it. No. She’s not accepting Roz’s advice. If she does, Roz wins. Roz was not at all trying to help. Why would she help her opponent? Literally nothing about what Roz did signaled any attempt to help Dorothy. It was an attack.
Roz’s implied solution is to stop being so good. To go out and intentionally make mistakes. If Dorothy does that, she loses. Because Roz will use those mistakes against her.
Just because Roz used a real insecurity doesn’t make her right. Just because she got close to the actual issue doesn’t make her right. That’s how you do this. Dorothy wouldn’t listen at all if she didn’t hear some truth in what Roz said.
Roz is messing with Dorothy’s head. She is, after all, a born politician. It’s only Billie accidentally hitting on the real issue that fixed it. She pointed out that it’s an issue of privilege, not perfection.
Even if you think that Roz isn’t that bad a person, she is definitely not being nice to Dorothy. She is not at all trying to help. It would make no sense for her to do so.
Dunno… I thinks Dorothy comes out better from it.
Some of these “learn from Roz” I’ve been reading as learning from *interacting* with her, like things starting to click into place better from earlier. Like the interview at the party. A lot of other stuff happened that night that needed to be dealt with, but the seeds of that lesson, to meet people where they are, to learn where they’re coming from, and not be some sterile lab observer or something, were planted in the interactions with Roz leading up to that interview.
I absolutely agree that *now* Roz is not trying to help Dorothy, that she’s trying to mess with her head and sabotage her. But earlier, leading up to that interview, it is plausible that Roz saw Dorothy as not an opponent, but as a currently somewhat misled potential ally and friend, who could be very useful after a few comparatively small lessons (compared to other politicians of various skill levels Roz tried talking to before who had much bigger hurdles they couldn’t clear).
So although I agree Dorothy should be careful not to let current-Roz mess with her head, “learning from Roz” doesn’t necessarily have to mean the same thing as “falling for her tricks”.
Totally.
It’s rather insane that someone not being a fuckup is seen as a flaw, to the point that Dorothy needs to argue that yes, she too is a fuckup. If Billie saw Dorothy as someone who never makes mistakes, then she should be admiring Dorothy — but no, she treats that as a *bad* thing.
It’s more complicated than that. The way Dorothy feels the NEED to argue “no, I DO fuck up!” is part of it.
Actually being right all the time would be one thing, but Billie’s complaint is more about how Dorothy responds to criticism. Billie is saying she tends to argue that the basis for the criticism is wrong without acknowledging the actual point being made, even when it’s a valid point.
That’s why Dorothy stops herself from responding in panel 4, even though she clearly wanted to. She realized Billie had a point.
No, it’s not. That’s you adding things that Billie didn’t say. Billie is frustrated that Dorothy actually had good reasons for what she did. She’s frustrated that she didn’t catch Dorothy doing something wrong.
That’s what she wanted. She wants to lash out at everyone right now. We saw her pick at flaws in everyone on the walk to class.
Now, it’s true that Dorothy saw some truth in what Billie said here. But that had nothing to do with the “underlying point” which was that Dorothy should not be trying to be the R.A.
Dorothy was right to defend herself. And it’s only because she did defend herself that she made it far enough to actually get Billie to talk.
When people complain that someone “has to be right all the time”, they are rarely complaining that the person actually IS right all the time. They’re complaining how they insist on arguing every point they don’t like, as if they were the focus of everything. Actually being right only makes that kind of behavior more frustrating, especially when someone is already in a sour mood, like Billie is.
Dorothy does this at times. Not often, or very severely, but she does, and she was doing it earlier in this conversation. THAT is the “underlying point” Billie made that I was referring to, NOT that Dorothy shouldn’t try to be RA.
I wouldn’t say Billie was saying it was a flaw, but the whole argument with Dorothy trying to be RA has been that she’s not approachable. And she’s trying to talk to and relate to Billie, who hasn’t exactly had the easiest time. When people see you as someone who hasn’t had to deal with colossally messing up, they’re not going to want to talk to you about those kinds of things.
It is always important to brag about your humility.
I never do that myself. My angelic actions speak for themselves and my humility shines through my humble exterior like a diamond in the rough.
Imagine what I’d say if I wasn’t so humble.
It’s not “not being a fuckup”. Most of the people who have this problem with Dorothy aren’t fuckups. They’re all students at IU, for one thing. I probably couldn’t have gotten in there, cursory research says my B average in high school would trump my test scores. But they DO fuck up, because that’s a thing people do. Everyone fucks up sometimes.
Except “Ms. Perfect.” That’s the issue. She already started loosening up at that dorm party though, I’m sure she’ll be fine.
It’s not that being not-a-fuckup is a flaw, it’s that it’s alien.
Sorry for getting political but does Dorothy’s dilemma sounds a little like Hillary Clinton’s dilemma. They are both deemed unapproachable and out of touch but they both are qualified while their opponent’s qualification is questionable at best? I know Clinton has some fuck ups with the email server and Benghazi but once you think about they’re not major. The email server was careless but not careless. Benghazi was tragic but that was due to negligence to fortify the embassy by more than just Hillary. Both those have been brought up over and over even though the matter was closed. Anyway back to Dorothy. They both have minor to no flaws compared to their opponent’s but they are still losing. Grade A asshole Roz’s gain popularity due to bringing up or causing scandals. Guess who she sounds like? Sorry just had to bring it up.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: Okay, I’m like 99% sure what she’s thinking about here is a failure to get in to Yale in her first application and I’m starting to wonder if Dorothy has already had one burnout but learned the wrong lesson from it.
Like, if she burnt herself out overstudying and bombed some key tests due to exhaustion or hit a big stumbling block in the first part of her senior year. But has decided that the problem was just that she didn’t “just push through it” well enough and so has redoubled her efforts to try and be perfect in everything.
And I think she feels that her shame at her “failure” is written all over her, like a black mark she can’t scrub off, so she doesn’t understand how other people only see the desperate attempts to be perfect in all things.
Panel 2: As BBCC pointed out with this, Dorothy’s and Billie’s ideas of their failures are oceans apart. Dorothy feels she’s failed by not overperforming the students who are here. Billie feels she’s failed by not doing enough to prevent the bullying and near suicide of the woman she loves. And is worried she may have enabled some of the more toxic circumstances for said girlfriend because of Carla’s statements about their relationship being a “death cult”.
That’s an ocean apart.
Panel 3: But it’s still something Dorothy feels angry about initially, because yeah, it sucks to have real sources of pain feel they are being highlighted and called out for how they are signs of privilege. Like, the worst pain someone’s experienced is still the worst pain they’ve experienced and that’s what gets a lot of privileged people to get really testy about being called out on said privilege.
Panel 4: But it shows Dorothy’s character that she realizes quickly that yeah, this is a privilege experience. She has parents who love her. She is straight. She does not struggle with addiction. And she has not had to deal with a relationship crisis or a mental health crisis anywhere on the same level as Billie.
Billie’s sense of failure and hurt is immense compared to her own and its understandable that Billie would refuse to see those forms of failure or hurt as equivalent or equal.
And I like how Dorothy immediately recommits herself for returning to support mode rather than continuing to get sucked into trading barbs with someone in intense distress.
So Dorothy’s parents acted like parents are supposed to, and she’s not discriminated against for sexuality, and she’s not addicted, and that’s a “privilege”?
How did the way things are supposed to be, having your rights respected, being afforded basic human dignity, become the unfair exception, and the shitty things become the supposed norm?
It’s always been this way.
Sadly, yes. And that is the differences between the norm-that-is and the norm-we-are-working-to-achieve.
Yeah. That’s how it works.
Like, privilege isn’t an inherently bad thing.
Often, it simply means being absent life-experiences that mean you experience suffering for how you are or a harder existence for who you are. And a lot of things that privileged people have are universal rights everyone should have access to. Not having shitty abusive parents, not being discriminated against, having full access to their human dignity.
What people usually rail about when people talk about privilege isn’t the base state but how people in that base state often fundamentally don’t understand folks without that “default” state.
Folks who’ve never experienced discrimination are going to be unlikely to understand discrimination and are more likely to make those circumstances worse or think they are not happening because they don’t personally understand them. Folks who’ve never had to survive abusive parents or partners don’t understand the hard choices and complicated emotions those circumstances bring about which can lead them to being shitty towards survivors or engaging in victim-blaming if the survivor doesn’t leave right away or returns to an abusive person.
And that’s usually the negative side of privilege. Hell, we see a little of that here. Dorothy thinks that her experiencing what is a relatively minor setback to her dream is at least in the same ballpark as Billie thinking she failed a partner into being hospitalized and a long history of feeling like an inherently toxic person, because to her, that’s the most blistering version of failure she can personally connect to. And that ends up feeling somewhat dismissive to Billie.
But yeah, people struggling for equality, talking about privilege don’t want everyone to suffer like marginalized people suffer. We want to help end the unnecessary suffering of marginalized folks and often times the only way to do that is to cut through the cloud of silence and ignorance about the issues and get people to realize what the daily reality is for people who are less privileged.
Cause only through that can they hope to enter a world where less people have to face as brutal of an upbringing or lives as they had. Like, if I can build a world where no trans kid ever had to be disowned like me, raped like me, discriminated like me? I will fight to the death for that. Until my life experiences sound like an alien and unthinkable travesty in the distant past.
Sometimes I have some luck trying to explain feminist theory to people-who-don’t-like-feminists when I replace the word “privilege” with “advantage” or even “unfair advantage”.
That’s the problem.
“Not being discriminated against” is NOT an “unfair advantage”.
Being discriminated against for things like color or gender or whatever, is an unfair DISadvantage. A deeply unjust unfair disadvantage that we should be stamping out vigorously.
It’s exactly this notion of “privilege” as “unfair advantage” that makes me dislike the whole thing so much — it turns the world on its head and focuses negative attention on the wrong thing.
Ah, sorry, unfair RELATIVE advantage.
I see your point though. How do you prefer to describe it?
I would describe it as “people who aren’t being discriminated against for superficial accidents of ancestry or genetics at least don’t have *that* violation of their inherent rights going on”.
I prefer to focus on the thing that needs fixing, rather that the parts that don’t. If my house were broken into and my stuff stolen, I’d concentrate on making sure the thieves were caught and I got my stuff back. I wouldn’t waste time trying to tell everyone who’s house hadn’t been broken into how advantaged they were.
Well, the main problem is that the people who don’t have their houses being broken into are saying that the people talking about having their houses broken into need to shut up, because their houses aren’t being broken into, so they don’t see this breaking into houses problem and it’s really disrespectful to be talking about how houses are being broken into.
To use your analogy.
And there’s toxic aspects to that privilege, because the voices of dominant groups who don’t experience certain disadvantages are given disproportionate weight in society and since the dominant groups are not used to hearing the voices of those who’ve been shut out of the conversation, the gain of rights for the marginalized often feels to them like they are losing something and thus must reassert an inequality to make things “fair” again.
So, in conversations about the lack of rights that marginalized groups have, voices of those who have never experienced that frequently prevail and are treated as received wisdom, even if their analysis is greatly inaccurate or even dangerous to the marginalized group being discussed. And this occurs frequently simply because the dominant group members are used to being the only ones talking about issues in a public forum, because the marginalized group members have previously been cut out and it’s easy to live a life as a dominant group member with those relative advantages without knowing or listening about the marginalized group member’s experiences of inequality.
And sometimes the problem is that there’s an advantage and it’s necessary to point out that advantage because the dominant group is under the impression that it’s a level field.
For an example, as a trans person, my job prospects are greatly decreased, because of frequent legal and illegal discrimination of folks like me in hiring. However cis people frequently see that as a personal failing of those in my community, because they want to believe that they are competing with trans people on a level playing field and don’t have a reduced and hobbled competition for hiring.
And so discussions of dynamics of privilege, especially in how it plays to inaccurate assumptions of equivalent experiences or disadvantages and silencing dynamics with regards to marginalized communities are very valuable.
I think people think privilege = moral failing rather than privilege = blind spots. It’s perpetually frustrating.
The problem with using the word “privilege” is that it refers to something that a person doesn’t have a right to, something above and beyond what is “normal”, something special. It implies an injustice on the part of the person it’s directed against. When the mayor gets pulled over for doing twice the limit and doesn’t get a ticket, that’s “privilege”.
Saying that “you’ve not been discriminated against” is a “privilege” is to many people saying “not being discriminated against isn’t a right, it’s something special and unjust that you shouldn’t benefit from”.
To many people, it feels accusatory and like the world is being turned upside down.
Privilege can also refer to advantages or immunities that people or a person can benefit from – for example, men have the ADVANTAGE of not dealing with sexism. Able bodied people have the ADVANTAGE of not dealing with ableism. Discrimination against others IS a thing people shouldn’t be benefitting from, but they do, whether intentionally or not – for instance, disabled people are discriminated against in hiring, which makes it harder for them to get housing. Since they aren’t getting that housing, able bodied people benefit by getting said housing instead. It is something to keep an eye on and, where appropriate, challenge where you can.
It can, but only because academics have defined it as such without regard to the common meaning.
If you know the word is a problem, don’t use it. I’ve only used it here because I assume people understand what it means.
Other places, I just say what it means. “Since you haven’t been through it, it’s harder for you to understand what they’re going through.” Or “You don’t know what it’s like to have people [insert discrimination here].” Or just “It’s not that easy!”
Privilege isn’t a problem. Not being aware of it is. Hence “check your privilege,” which does not mean “check your privilege at the door.” But “be aware of your own lack of knowledge through lack of experience.”
Panel 1: Hmmmm. You may be right, but I read something completely different into it. I think it’s Roz barb about being “too perfect” that still stings.
Perhaps there is a not so stellar history surrounding friendship in Dorothy’s background (we DO like to compare her to Twilight Sparkle after all). Some of her parents comments hint at this, and we can notice that the two people from her background we have ever heard about are Joe and Danny.
Hooray.
Her clicking with Walky was not only about sculpted caramel, but also about the joy of sharing cartoons. Perhaps there is a hint of jealousy from her about Joyce and Becky after all, only not exactly the kind Becky thinks. Dorothy was AWFULLY happy to have her Joyce back after the weekend. Finally Dorothy has friends. And I think she is worried about loosing them (like she lost friends before?) by being too aloof or too “out of their league” or too perfect.
Anyway, that’s my unsupported theory 🙂
As for her reaction to Billie’s barb… Yes. This. All this. I think panel 3 and 4 are among Dorothy’s highest level of character growth we have seen in the comic so far.
And I love her for it.
I think you’re very right on that. She doesn’t have many friends. She doesn’t tend to make many. And so the few she gets she tries to hold on to as best as she can as she has a habit of losing them.
And that “losing friends by being seen as being too perfect” thing might be on the nose and might add extra weight to those early scenes with Danny and why she was so bothered by Danny’s way of viewing the relationship.
One thing that makes Dorothy great is that she seems sincerely dedicated to self-improvement- which means that while she may get defensive, she doesn’t stay that way for long. She takes others’ critiques as potentially helpful criticism rather than an attack (again, for the most part).
This is in contrast to many of the characters in DoA who act to spite criticism or try to ignore it as much as possible. Of course, having great parents and a stable home life probably help in this a lot.
That is one reason I love her interaction with Roz. They challenge each other and come out better for it.
When has Roz come out better? She came out better with Leslie, I’ll admit, until she threw it all away with what she’s doing now.
But with Dorothy? She’s won every encounter. Dorothy hasn’t made Roz better at all. She’s, unfortunately, still the same person she was at the beginning of the comic–if not worse.
I still hope she gets better, as she isn’t even close to irredeemable like Mary or John or Carol. I hope that, ultimately, Dorothy does get in some actual punches that Roz can’t just block. I hope that this RA thing gives Roz the kick in the pants she needs.
I’m pretty sure the “outing her sister” thing is going to.
We have very different opinions about Roz, so I think we will have to wait and see how this “non-election” turns out.
But for one thing, I think Roz got the idea of running for RA and take a direct responsibility for her community from Dorothy.
Dorothy! You’re supposed to defeat awkwardness with maximum ridiculosity, not maximum alcohol. Though said ridiculosity can include alcohol.
Panel 5: And again, the long shot, with that wide open door and Billie completely engulfed by Dorothy’s shadow in specific. And with Billie refusing with her back turned.
It’s a great metaphor for Dorothy’s attempt to reach out and try and help Billie out into processing things finally which will be the first step out of breaking addiction and codependence habits and having a healthy means of processing the large amount of horrible stuff she’s had the unfortunate reality of encountering so far (she’s mentioned having to defend fellow cheerleaders from abusive parents, had to learn how to suss out roofies and other date rape drugs at parties, and had to sneak friends to abortion clinics likely against the angry will of the kid’s parents and that’s not counting all the stuff she’s had to deal with more personally).
And well, it also cuts into part of the existing tension. Billie has had moments of falling and failing into Dorothy’s shadow. Yeah, she completely fucked up that newspaper opportunity and it was her fault, but she still lost that position to Dorothy and I imagine that stings a little as one more point of failure she’s been beating herself up about.
Panel 6: Enabling.
But the thing about enabling or turning a blind eye to terrible coping strategies is sometimes its the least evil. For folks dealing with a lot, they don’t always have good coping strategies and while you don’t want to go over the line to actively buying the person their self-destructive drug of choice or actively encouraging it, showing an awareness of how that drug is part of how they deal with the world can be crucial to being trusted enough to help them with building new and better coping strategies for everything.
And well, Billie kind of needs to talk to someone about all her feelings. Especially someone who is relatively neutral and a good listener like Dorothy.
I mean, we already know that she’s planning to try and boycott her therapy session or at least start out obstinate in that. She’s absent Ruth and that was mostly a one-sided “I have to help Ruth” style relationship. And she and Walky are both not really fully seeking out each other to more directly support each other.
So Dorothy here is cracking through Billie’s armor more than anyone and it’s possible a good session listening here can build enough trust for Dorothy to encourage Billie to take therapy seriously or seek out additional services for depression and addiction in the future.
Plus, that face for Billie, she’s exhausted using anger to constantly keep herself moving. It’s good for her to let herself cry if she can still access that emotion, even if she only ends up able to access that emotion when shitfaced out of her mind.
Panel 5. That’s a great visual metaphor I didn’t think of. To extend it, it’s also Dorothy holding an open door, and Billie turning her back to it.
Panel 6. Yes. It’s a bad idea – and both of them know it. But it might also be the best possible idea during the circumstances.
And like you note, Billie is just so tired. That …yeah in the last panel is accepting Dorothy’s outstretched hand, but it is also just acknowledging how much she just want that drink and be able to relax for just a single moment.
Poor Billie :-(. I’m glad Dorothy is there for her.
Part of being a good therapist is meeting people where they are. The early parts of therapy are about establishing a rapport. You have to acknowledge coping strategies before helping them with new ones.
Of course, a therapist has ethics issues with enabling drinking in someone. But that’s where being a friend has advantages. A friend can do unethical things with you.
I do actually wonder if meeting an alcoholic when they are still drinking might produce better outcomes. AA is no better than no AA, it seems. So maybe our “can’t touch another drop” idea is wrong, even if, ultimately, you do have to give it up.
Ouch. Right in the feels :(((
#Relateable
The thing about Dorothy’s obsession with perfection is that her dreams in particular require it. Fair or not, if she doesn’t get into the right school, there’s going to a cap on what she’ll ever be allowed to achieve. Everyone else has the next few years to screw around with minimal consequences and slowly settle into what they’re going to be, but she’s already a year late on her life, and is at risk of losing it forever.
She wants to be President. The “right school” helps, mostly because of the connections you make there, but is far from necessary. Even then, it’s far more critical as grad school (Yale Law?) than undergrad.
True, but the point is that it’s easier to get into the right grad school if you are in the right undergrad school.
Though, really, Dorothy’s problems are making sure she doesn’t do things that can be used against her later. That’s why she strives to be perfect.
Trump hasn’t been elected in her universe, so the idea that you can win an election by flaunting your flaws and thus weakening their ability to be used against you hasn’t occurred yet. And, even then, Trump barely won–against a candidate with her own approachability problems and who arguably made a tactical mistake in not going after white working class vote.
Panel 2: I actually agree with Billie on something.