It does seem more hopeful than I thought this would go. I thought being forced back into this situation might do a lot to erase the progress Ruth has made in a manner regrettable for everyone. I still am.
Does anyone remember what Ruth did to Rachel? From this strip, it sounds to me like she’s referencing something personal and serious, although maybe it’s meant to suggest Rachel is an actions person?
But I like blackjack. It’s the best chance to actually win money from the house. And it’s quicker than poker and IMO less addicting than everything else…wow, I’m probably one of like twenty people who would say “Hold the hookers, I just want the blackjack” aren’t I?
Damn you overnight job! You put money in my bank account, and bacon into my facehole, but you don’t let me be the first to make a Futurama reference on an internet webcomic.
Man, Rachel’s got a real hate-lady-boner for their relationship. Perhaps if Billie and Ruth weren’t so standoffish, they could clear up some of these misconceptions…
… Rachel, you have no idea how you nailed the matter… I still wanna chuck Mary out a window, though. into a sinkhole. after she gets punched by Billie.
No, she’s assuming that she’s caught in an abuse cycle, rationalizing away the abuse as out of character moments from the “real” Ruth, who is a loving person. She’s uh… not completely right or wrong here.
My thoughts exactly. The use of the word “keeping” for Billie continuing to date Ruth is kinda…skeevy. Like, are the two of them healthy? Not always, they each have issues. But they’re both consenting adults who are aware of their flaws. Ruth isn’t “keeping” Billie because she’s not a trophy to be won.
From the outside, that’s what it looks like though. One minute Ruth is throwing Billie around and calling her out her name, then the next Billie is obsessively devoted to Ruth and defending her every chance she gets while increasingly isolating herself from everyone. I couldn’t deny that there’s a fucked up element to the start of their relationshio, even objectively speaking.
She’s casting blame on Ruth here, not Billie. Billie choosing to stay with Ruth doesn’t erase Ruth’s violent, shitty, and very recent past behavior.
That said, I’m glad it looks like Ruth is genuinely ready to begin the difficult, uphill work of curbing her own abusive behaviors and becoming a better person.
Rachel is assuming that Ruth is a person who until recently was in a position of authority over Billie and has physically assaulted her while being emotionally (and sometimes physically) abusive to every person on the floor including Billie. There’s a big reason there’s rules against TAs, RAs, professors, bosses, etc having romantic/sexual relationships with people they’re in positions of power over. We can sympathize with Ruth because we’ve seen things from her point of view. But she is an overtly abusive person who manipulates and assaults the people she has authority over AND she’s entered into a romantic and sexual relationship with one of those people… a person she started out both physically assaulting and also literally tormenting by stealing and destroying bit by bit an object she was deeply emotionally invested in… then sexually assaulted her. That is NOT healthy behavior and pointing it out is NOT a bad thing to do. Every abusive person has a reason/justification for why they’re abusive. I’m not saying Ruth’s evil. But her actions ARE, in fact, abusive and frankly if I lived on her floor I’d have filed complaints against her and requested a room transfer. Realistically, the only reason her current crop of residents haven’t done so is because they’re mostly freshmen who don’t know how messed up the situation is, and Carla doesn’t care bc Carla.
Dismissing that all as “sure sure deny Billie’s agency lol awesome” is a REALLY shallow reading of things and it’s frankly dangerous and normalizes a lot of real world predatory behavior wrt people in positions of power manipulating people with less power/people who rely on them. It’s a REALLY common romance/sexual tension trope, I can see why it’s being used here, but can we NOT pretend their relationship started out on healthy mutually-consenting ground and that Ruth does NOT have a history of physically and emotionally abusing people she has control over?
I mean seriously if my RA had slapped me I would have filed assault charges. Mary’s a shitbag but she’s also a shitbag who was physically assaulted in her home by someone who’s got power over her.
The general situation of Ruth. As someone who suffers from severe depression I have a surprisingly hard time commiserating with people who continue to heap abuse on other depressed people. This is regardless of fiction or real life. My capacity to give a fuck for people who abuse depressed individuals is basically nil.
As a side note, I sort of wish Ruth got fired so that she could have a chance to try and deal with things with Billie as support. Leaving her in this situation and to deal with the aftermath without a proper explanation from the campus is just fucking irresponsible and almost beggars belief.
While Ruth’s grandfather wants Billie out of the picture, I don’t think the dorm necessarily feels the room transfer for Billie is about separating Billie from Ruth. It’s about giving Billie a place to go away from Ruth’s control if she wants it. Dorms generally don’t have rules about daytime or evening guests of the same gender. Dorms generally don’t have a rule that say residents can’t ever have overnight guests. There are, of course, limits, but those limits are far less restrictive for people who have single rooms, like Ruth. Also, those limits are enforced by the RA, so…
Now, they haven’t pointed this out – possibly some because the grandfather who pushed for this deal is against that happening, and partially because it only gives Billie that place to go if she actually moves her stuff, which she wouldn’t do if she was explicitly told she can continue shacking up with Ruth.
Helpful, and been though seemingly every possible shitty thing that can happen to a person–and made it through to be a generally helpful and uplifting person besides.
At least all this is getting out in the open. If Ruth was willing to have a few more open discussions like this the situation might not have gotten as bad as it has.
Reminder, it was four years ago today that the “Hetalia” strip appeared on Shortpacked! If you can’t apply fisticuffs to fascists, who CAN you apply them to?
Mary you can’t retcon life to make you look good, you noob. Not like she has any other way to keep her egotism and feigned/false innocence and self-righteousness going.
We have no idea what c-word she was going to say, though.
There was an obvious conclusion, one Ruth obviously made herself (although she obviously decided to slap Mary before, so that’s still not why she did it), but the fact that we don’t actually know means Mary might be telling the truth.
France doesn’t have a great history with monarchs. If someone found themselves as their queen, they might want to lay low – not try any self-promotion or involvement in government, just kick back, maybe read some comics or catch a few farts.
Of course if you asked them, they’d probably say “no, I am not”.
She says things that are untrue because her perception of reality is… skewed, but she doesn’t say things that she thinks aren’t true that I recall.
(Also there are plenty of other words she could have been saying there that would fit. Obviously it wasn’t nice, but there’s more than one not-nice word or phrase.)
Mary says the things that benefit her most in the moment.
to her it does not always seem like a lie, but she would not hesitate to lie if it benefited her. and for that moment it would be her truth, more or less, because the lie needs to become your truth in order for you to deliver it like truth.
but really explicit, complicated lies are difficult to hold up for very long, because the truth of who and what you are gets through. so when Mary was trying to manipulate people while Ruth had her meltdown, she was instantly seen through because her smugness of nature was just. very present.
Mary would never say the c-word as part of her general persona, because she’s not a girl who says the c-word. but Ruth doesn’t count, because she’s a lesbian, and Mary can call her a c-word if she wants because she’s a sinner. and why wouldn’t a lesbian lie about her? she’s a lesbian, after all. she’s got more problems than those kinds of delusions.
like. this is someone who looks at Ruth and sees “victim”. sees prey. sees the possibility to destroy and goes for it because she can. so like yeah her perception of reality is mega skewed but that doesn’t make any of the things she says any more true, if that makes sense
Well, considering the old laws of inheritance you could be a claimant to the now vacant throne of France depending on your ancestors so…maybe you are? You don’t happen to have any ancestors from the 1700s by the name Louis do you? But, yeah, there weren’t a whole lot of options of what Mary was going to say that start with c.
Ruth doesn’t actually specify which ‘C’-word, either.
And even if Mary was going to say “cow” or “college student” or something, she’s still definitely lying. She’s on the F-bomb scoreboard, and said “goddamn” twice in the same strip she earned her spot on there. I’m not sure if anyone besides Carla witnessed it, though.
Ah, true (I had forgotten about her past cursing)! Still, keep in mind that there aren’t that many C-words out there that would be used as an effective invective, and I’m pretty sure Mary was attempting to say the worst one in the way that she addresses Ruth intensely angrily. Too, if she’s like her walkyverse incarnation, she still swears when she wants and also has hypocritical relations with other people (looking at you, Eric). Because she’s not a self-righteous lying twit, no. 😛
#TeamRachel. As a former RA, Ruth’s continued keeping of this job is a deeply annoying part of the storyline. But people do get and keep jobs they don’t deserve all the time, so I guess I can’t say it’s completely unrealistic.
For being dissaproving of a relationship she only has the most casual understanding of? And lets say she was totally right about Ruth/Billy. What has she actually done about it other than sneer and act superior? Has she reported Ruth to her superior? To the college’s Dean of Students? Or tried talking to Billy to see if she needs help? Or even pull a Sarah and just contact Billy’s parents?
Rachel hasn’t done anything despite how terrible she thinks the “abusive” Ruth is. Hell, skip the the bad girlfriend bits. Has she done anything to try and get Ruth replaced as her RA?
I would argue that Rachel is making a purely objective assessment of the situation. Ruth has abused not only Billie, but has been an officious, cruel, mean-spirited tyrant towards the young women under her power. Now, is there a reason for Ruth’s cruelty? Sure. She isn’t cruel ex-nihilo. She has an abusive tyrannical grandfather who she is terrified of. But that does not make Ruth any less of a horrible, abusive person who takes out her self-hatred against other people under her care.
And even if Rachel points this out to Ruth and acts superior with no deep knowledge of Ruth and Billie’s deeply unhealthy relationship of depressive emotionally and psychologically abusive co-dependence…so what? Does that make Rachel’s words any less true?
The college housing management is openly corrupt in this story. Complaining to them will likely get the complainer moved out of the hall, rather than the unqualified person losing her job. Ruth should have never had the job and should have immediately lost it the first day when she physically assaulted people to get them to the first meeting. Seriously, that’s it. From any competent, non-corrupt, non-soap opera real world RA job.
She could quit? I mean, of course, Rachel doesn’t all those reasons, but it’s fair that she does not actually care why the abusive RA is not fired and is not in a position to quit. Ruth deserves to get people caring for her, and backing her, and all those things. But the people who were victimized by her, and with the violence she ruled, that’s everyone, are not the ones who have the obligation to do it to her. If they didn’t suffer much, or can get over it, more power to them. But just because Ruth has suffered worse abuse than she has been dealing out doesn’t make the abuse she has dealt any less real.
What I admire in Ruth is that she is currently owning what she did. No excuses, no reasons. She crossed lines, and the first thing is to apologize. And when someone is skeptical of that, which is a normal thing, she accepts it. The very fact that she CAN accept that ‘saying sorry doesn’t make things right’ is probably a hopeful sign for Rachel. The passing of time without any relapse in those habits might make her reconsider her not unfounded judgement of Ruth.
Rachel’s right that Ruth should have been kicked out of the job. Ruth agrees with this. She got forced back into it by her abuser. She can’t do anything about that without pushing the confrontation she’s not yet capable of.
No, no, Rachel, you misunderstand, it was a mutually toxic, self-destructive relationship between two people with suffering from severe depression and a lack of a healthy outlet for their anger and distress!
… Wait, no, that doesn’t make it sound any better.
Disclaimer: I really like Ruth and Billie’s relationship plz don’t hurt me
and while what she’s actually mad at is ruth still being in charge and, possibly, ever having been in charge at all…which is understandable…
and i guess part of the thing about having a secret relationship is that nobody knows about it. no one can see you when you’re cute together, literally nobody knows what you see in each other. and i mean there is a level of which that is nobody’s business but also it doesn’t mean people don’t want to know.
honestly i would imagine that ruth has left rachel unsettled for a very long time and she is reacting out of that
i would also wonder if rachel put in her name for RA
I just remembered… Billie and Ruth were also *faking* arguments and violence to cover up the relationship. That’s gotta have made for a really misleading picture, so I guess Rachel’s assumptions make a little more sense now.
Still tragic, though. And Doopyboop’s point below still stands.
I gotta admit, for all of Rachel’s apparent worry and scorn for Billie’s sake, I didn’t see her raise a hand to help Billie or even talk to her after being slammed into a couch. Joyce was the only one to check up on her, as the only responses we got were some gossip and even a remark about ‘tweeting’. And the only ones before to express any discomfort or concern about Billie and Ruth are Walky and Daisy(namely, when Billie told her about being pressed against a wall and kissed). It’s kinda telling when you wanna go on a crusade for somebody without talking to them or even offering to help them. I’m not so much a fan of that behavior. Rachel has reasons to find the relationship appalling but at no point during the bullying did Rachel intervene and even here, she’s not trying to help what she assumes is an abuse victim. She’s just taking pot shots at the abuser.
Pro-tip, if you think someone is an abuser, don’t berate them about being it like this because guess who’s gonna endure the frustration…? Try to berate them AFTER the abuse victim is out of their range and life or else they’ll just be hurt.
i think the bigger concern here for rachel is about ruth’s bullying, because that’s the behavior she’s seen and knows. there is a level of which, sometimes, when you’ve only seen one kind of behavior from somebody it is difficult to imagine them behaving in any other way. but, yeah, abuse is a pretty heavy accusation to throw at someone without any weight behind it, and a pretty dangerous one too.
I wouldn’t call these accusations that Rachel makes of Ruth “pot shots.” She is confronting Ruth head-on with the facts as she sees them. And unfortunately for Ruth, Rachel’s assessment is spot-on. Ruth, is an extraordinarily abusive person who, if she did these things in real life, wouldn’t merely lose her job as an R.A., but could find herself expelled and facing criminal charges.
Most of us here feel a great deal of sympathy for Ruth because we are getting a full look at her life and her horrible situation…something we generally do not have a chance to get of other people who engage in abusive behavior. We see that she is not abusive out of sadism, but rather she trying to take control over other people out of her own powerlessness.
But for the person who is being abused, bullied, belittled or terrorized, it does not make it any better that their abuser also suffers abuse. It certainly does not justify the abuse, even if it makes it more understandable.
For me, it’s not even that I feel great sympathy for Ruth. It’s that Rachel made no move to help Billie, who she apparently thinks is an abuse victim, and yet she’s willing to use Billie as a weapon to accuse Ruth of being an abuser. Which is pretty fucked up since Billie is right there, she’s ignoring Billie’s own choices in this matter or Billie’s own feelings, and doesn’t REALLY care about Billie in the first place. Billie is just a convenient reason to say Ruth is an abuser. Which…yeah, Ruth did abuse Billie, very publicly. It’s not wrong that she thinks Ruth is an abuser, she’s wrong to A) blatantly call her out like this and B) not really give a shit about Billie. If Ruth were a real abuser, as in really beat the shit out of Billie and kept her in the relationship by threatening to hurt her, this would put Billie in one hell of a place, as other comments have explained in better words than I.
It’s probably worth remembering that Rachel is a sophomore – if she was in this wing last year as well, she’s seen an extra year of mean, alcoholic, bullying Ruth.
Rachel’s got a point, but she’s only seen one side of the issue. She doesn’t know about Ruth’s asshole grandpa forcing her to stay on as RA, or that Billie and Ruth are both ok with their relationship even though it started out very unhealthy.
Abusers are often victims themselves. The fact that we know that, and sympathize with her is part of the problem. It’s also sometimes a reason that people stay with abusers… because they sympathize with them, and “really know them”.
No, Rachel doesn’t have that emotional info we do… but that doesn’t mean that we should ever excuse Ruth’s behavior, even with that information. The cycle has to stop somewhere… and Rachel is still right on calling her out on it. To TELL her about the abuse that Ruth gets, would only serve to make her feel bad. But it still never changes the fact that Ruth was also abusive.
Heck, I’ve got absolutely *terrible* stories about my relatives on both sides of my heritage (my maternal grandfather was captured by the Germans and sent to one of the camps and was also an alcoholic and a MAJOR abuser; supposedly my maternal great-grandmother committed suicide by shooting herself in the head; my maternal grandmother was clinically depressed and HATED my mother; my paternal grandfather may have been an alcoholic at some point but then became a fundamentalist Christian; I have a cousin who told my middle sister that she was scared that my sister was “going to hell” because we were apparently heathens in the eyes of my father’s family; and I’ve got an aunt on my mom’s side whom I used to love dearly but who cut us off completely when my mom earned her doctorate.
I too worry about my genetic heritage. I DO have problems with drinking, depression, and anger. But I REFUSE to let my genetic heritage define me.
On another note, my mom is a doctor of psychology and a licensed forensic psychogist. She has told me that there is not necessarily a connexion between being abused and being an abuser. I cannot say enough wonderful things about her. She is the best person I have ever known. She experienced horrendous abuse from her family, but she never ever EVER abused me or my sisters. Again, I can’t speak well enough of her. I think she is a great example of how people can break the “cycle of abuse.”
honestly the cycle of abuse thing is more or less bs
like. ok. they estimate that a third of children who have been abused grow up to be abusers. which is – not a good level, by any means, but that means that a whole two thirds of children who have been abused grow up to not be abusers. and that is not compared with the rates of children who were not abused who grow up to be abusers at all, because most of the research i was able to find focuses on the victims rather than the perpetrators. i am going to make a solid guess that this is because the victims are the people who think that there is a problem, and the perpetrators have little reason to care.
does this mean that living with abuse does not give you really bad coping mechanisms and ideas with which to process the world?? of course not. but it also doesn’t mean that you ever stopped being capable of making your own choices. usually. i would assume that kids forced to participate would have their own particular issues and traumas.
but like having been victimized does not force you to re-enact your victimization on others in order to…i dont even know what. it takes a very specific kind of person to abuse purposefully and malignantly, is what i’m getting at. and if you are not that person then you do not need to worry about being that person. just normal person stuff like “oh, that thing i do is screwed up, i should stop”. and honestly being able to even get that far is very far away from somebody who would abuse.
like – if you are able to recognize the behavior as bad and feel guilty about it, that is a very good sign of not being an abusive person.
There are also some experts who suggest that abusers try to play up a past history of abuse to excuse their behavior, garner sympathy, and allow them to present a “remorseful” front while continuing their behavior with greater stealth. Most abuse victims are very opposed to engaging in abuse themselves because they know how bad it is to be subjected to it.
exactly!! it’s literally like living through abuse makes you understand how horrible it is to endure it, zomg.
most eye-opening thing for me was reading a book about a guy who runs an abuser program and learning that the person who was his main focus were the abused parties. because most of the time, the abusive people did not learn anything from being told that abuse was wrong!! they already came at it from a position of entitlement, and engaged in abuse because it got them the entitlements they felt they deserved. there really wasn’t much they could do for them except tell them that what they were doing was wrong and they needed to stop.
I don’t think its bs.. it’s describing the cyclical nature of it like the commenter above. It’s not meant to tell people that they absolutely will abuse someone else, but if you are raised in that environment you literally don’t know of any other way to be unless you expose yourself to healthy behaviours, go to therapy, etc. If your parents taught you, like Gramps has taught Ruth, that violence is the way to express any feelings lest you be seen as “weak”- well that’s what you’re going to do. But many children are lucky enough to have a natural disposition of not being a pent up volcano.
You are right in that everyone has a choice. But the cyclical nature of abuse is just telling us that the idea that we are not influenced by our upbringing at all in any way, that is bs. So to be prepared to unlearn unhealthy behaviours and replace them with healthy ones.
Ruth was abused. But she also abused others. We need to get rid of the idea that those two things can’t be true at once, and the idea that being abused gives you a free pass on being shitty to others.
It’s BS. It’s never been anything but BS and shitheads like you perpetuating it that fucking makes it live.
I’m not a fucking time bomb waiting to go off. I should be able to express anger without self flagellating in guilt over it and it’s people like you that make me fucking terrified of that while self satisfyingly jerking yourself over it.
Seriously let me make something as fucking crystal clear as possible for you.
You are not helping. You are not being moderate. You are not being understanding. You are perpetuating the same cycle of fear and self loathing that abuse victims suffer through every fucking day out of some misguided pretense at realism.
Abuse victims need to know that they have a choice, but they don’t need to helpfully reminded over and over that their anger is a fucking poison and that there’s always that fucking chance they’ll flip out and become the person who hurt them.
That’s interesting coming from someone whose avatar is a character who is repeatedly abused by the character he loves and goes on to gain untra-violent super strength at the thought of losing his abuser. Face it; Cyclonus is basically Ruth.
Amusingly, I have made that very observation, though for different reasons.
Anyway Cyclonus is a toy robot in a comic book about toy robots in space having adventures so I judge him by different standards than a grounded college drama starring fleshy human folks.
Like lest we forget that this is a comic where fucking Megatron is the heroic captain of the Lost Light. I think Ultra Magnus and Rung are the only characters who haven’t done something really fucked up by this point so Cyclonus kicking Tailgate that one time before his character development kicked in is kinda small potatoes, because, you know, nonhuman toy robots.
I like Blackarachnia even though she took part in the attempted genocide of the protohumans and thought she earned her redemptive story arc. Because she’s a toy robot.
Also this is the third day in a row where I’ve somehow ended up talking about Transformers here so I guess this is my life now.
Wait a minute. It’s not bullshit. It’s a helpful tool to help people recognize the pattern. It’s a pretty universal pattern. We’ll agree to disagree, I suppose. I am no way getting off on telling people they are awful, that’s too far for you to have gone.
Yeah, when i said “pent up volcano”, what I meant was ready to explode at the slightest provocation- like my abuser was to me (I was raised in that environment, by the way). She would blow up over the slightest things. Just like Ruth has been doing the entire freaking comic strip, up until she finally exhausted her energy. Just like many children have the same anger problems. Here’s a disclosure: I was very angry as a child. Angry, and sad, and resentful. I had trouble regulating my emotions.
And it is true that a lot of children, myself included, grow up with deep resentment and anger stemming from our upbringing – that is a fact, read actual decades of hundreds of papers of literature about it. That’s not me being a shithead, or jerking myself off or making shit up- kindly fuck off with the name calling.
Guess what- I have a lot of fear of becoming an abuser too. I have a lot of self loathing and what have you from the upbringing I had. But you know what? I had to learn what love is, I had to recognize behaviors that were shitty that I was doing to other people. I’m still shitty to people sometimes. I’m still working on it. Being shitty to someone is not the end of the world, but it does mean improving on your behavior. Is it unfair? Yes it’s unfair – it’s not our fault our parents or whomever made us adopt certain behaviors to survive. Not everyone is there yet, and it’s a process that takes decades, and that’s fine.
The anger is there. It is an emotion that we’ll always feel like sadness or happiness or whatever. It is not poisonous unless you let it become that, but it is totally and completely dishonest to claim that letting it out in ways like Ruth has has no effect on their (our) lives whatsoever. It’s about *recognizing* what’s going on. *Predicting* what may come next, especially as it applies to abusers themselves.
I don’t understand you keep making the leap from: “a lot abusers were abused themselves” to “you are saying that since i have been abused, therefore I am horrible”. That’s not true. That’s like saying since most people who get a certain cancer fall within an age bracket, absolutely everyone who reaches that age will get cancer. That’s false way of thinking.
Let’s put it this way: children learn from their parents. that will never not be true. Those tools they use are their “initial” tools they use, up until they become adults. After that, they learn and experience different things, and they have the choice to improve themselves – or they just don’t, and stick to the old ways whatever the old ways are. This is be further influenced by mental illness, outside influences, etc. That’s basically what the cyclical nature of abuse (especially in families) is saying.
Recognizing that you have been harmed and that you picked up some shitty behaviour is not the same as “lol cycle of abuse.”
Yes I have anger issues stemming from my mother’s abuse. My grandparents were saints so it didn’t come from them so I sure as fuck wasn’t abused by someone who had undergone that. Now I’m stuck cleaning up all this shattered glass and I don’t need assholes like you helpfully reminding me to always fear and loathe myself because, uh oh, I will become an abuser otherwise.
And make no mistake, that is what you are fucking doing. You are not providing helpful checks. You are continuing the same miasma of fear we have to suffer through everyday. Because you, and the people like you, aren’t concerned with us getting help. You want us put in our place.
So, here’s an idea, when trying to talk about how abuse victims can have anger issues, try not to phrase it in a way that shames abuse victims in to hating themselves. Let them know that they were wronged, and that it’s okay that they’re hurt. That they have the power not to fall into that same pit.
Don’t open with a fucking speech about how you’re doomed to become an abuser, that your abuser was abused, and that’s just how it is. Do you know how badly that fucks us up? To be reminded constantly, fucking constantly, that we can fall into those same traps?
In summary: It’s bullshit and go fuck yourself for perpetuating that culture of fear.
Where am I enveloping people in a “miasma of fear”? When did I tell you to loathe yourself – you brought up your own fear and loathing.
And I love how you just glossed over my experiences like I’m not speaking from experience. It’s not an “us vs. them” situation. Even in your own words I would be part of “we”. We all experienced abuse in whatever form. There are many days when I feel like I’m holding on by a thread. Not only you – don’t try to invalidate my experiences like that.
That last paragraph is the exact opposite of what I was saying. I’m not going to repeat myself, so just look it up yourself. This kind of absolute thinking glosses over the nuances of the experiences of many kids. But do you know what I think the cycle means? It means saying to that child: “I know what this is, I understand it, here’s how I can help you break free.” But you decide how you want to interpret it yourself.
And no I will not go fuck myself, thank you kindly for the offer.
If your parents taught you, like Gramps has taught Ruth, that violence is the way to express any feelings lest you be seen as “weak”- well that’s what you’re going to do.
That’s not being specific. I asked you where I supposedly told you that everyone is doomed to become their abuser, always, all the time, without exception. And that they should become self hating, self loathing people consumed by fear.
And you didn’t answer that question.
Is Ruth not an abuser to the people on her floor? Slamming people into walls and slapping them is not simply “shitty behavior”. And besides you’re falling for the thing I said before – it’s not absolute, but in cases like Ruth’s, she became an abuser towards someone else.
Telling abuse survivors that they can become their abusers is perpetuating. Using buzzwords like “the cycle of abuse” is perpetuating. Emphasizing how abuse survivors are responsible for every slight misstep, that every mistake they make is a reminder of how broken they are, is perpetuating.
If you care at all, like even the slightest, then you’d think the first thing you’d want to do is emphasize at length that what matters is that there is a choice. That we were hurt, and that we deserve to feel better about ourselves. To start that off with a diatribe about how, oh no, the cycle of abuse is totes real and you just have to learn to stop being shit is not fucking helping. What the fuck do you think calling it a “cycle” even means if not to imply that it’s not something you’re inherently going to continue, that you have to put effort into not being shit, and that every fucking failure is on you.
Seriously, maybe abuse survivors would be better off if we didn’t start the healing process off with a big fucking speech about how they’re doomed to be shit until they tie up their bootstraps. Maybe instead of drilling that fucking fear into my skull why don’t we fucking help them. Maybe we should let them know that they’re the victims and that they were hurt and that it’s not their fucking fault. Not make sure they know how fucking shitty and broken they are, but don’t worry, you just have to try really hard to fix that. How fucking alienating and destructive do you think it is to be told that there’s even the slightest chance I could continue what was done to me.
That is what I seen over and over from you and on this forum from other posters and it’s fucking sick and I’ve had enough. I’m not downplaying your experiences but I’m sure as fuck not going to let you shit on mine. I’m not going to fucking let anyone make me feel broken ever again.
Like, you’re obviously taking that one quote out of the context which it was in. Like the cycle of abuse being a whole psychological/sociological concept that has been studied for decades, *that has a context*.
And I’m am tired of being made to feel like I’m responsible for someone’s troubles, like my abuser did to me. You’re accusing me of something I’m not doing. I’m not downplaying your experiences. And something is only a buzzword when people use it who don’t understand it. I know what I’m talking about.
And where did I say they shouldn’t get help? I didn’t say they should “just stop”. I said improve yourself- that can mean a number of things, like therapy or a support system, *whatever they need*. And I can’t do that work for them, nor can someone else do that work for me.
I did not say you were doomed to become your abuser, and that you deserve to stay feeling the way you do for forever. No, no, no.
Again and agin we have this argument and you accuse me of being this horrific person who wants to destroy you and abuse victims everywhere. Which is ironic considering you’re the once accusing me of making survivors feel like shit about they way they cope.
Stop demonizing me for a second and look it up and try to understand. Or don’t.
So, I’m disengaging from this. Let’s disagree. It became personal and there was no reason for you to make it that way.
*facepalm* neither of you are entirely right or wrong here.
Mav, that part Spencer quoted can be taken the way he took it. I know you didn’t *intend* it that way, but remember that people don’t always see things the way you want them to. I’ve seen enough people here reacting this way to the phrase “cycle of abuse”, so it’s not helpful to insist your definition of the phrase is Right and theirs is unreasonable. Apparently other people have abused that phrase too much to use it lightly, and that sucks, but, that’s how language works.
Spencer… Maybe later think about the black & white thinking you fell into here. You said some things that needed to be said, but you unintentionally exaggerated other things. You equated “the slightest chance” to bring doomed to a 100% chance of being just as horrible as your abuser and… Well, you don’t deserve that. You deserve to be able to calmly consider whether you did a bad thing without triggering that awful internalized endless abusive rant. My own NVoice loves to do that to me and it’s not fair, and I’m starting to break free of that, and I wish I could save a magic wand and set you free too. *Hugs*
At Helpful: fine, not everyone reacts to things the way I do. That’s the point I was trying to make though: How one interprets something and what that thing actually is can be different. Language can’t work if a word has several completely different definitions. The concept I was talking about is not without it’s problems, you are correct, but people using it to deliberately make people feel bad is just that. A misuse of it. It doesn’t and shouldn’t automatically undo all the parts that make sense; that is the black and white thinking.
And I’m sorry for pushing really hard here. I definitely got caught up in the argument, and I dislike insults, no matter who they come from. But I am realizing this second that I most like did trigger Spencer, and I am sorry about that.
Okay, okay, I swear I’m done on this particular thread.
Also, noting that being abused and being an abuser isn’t mutually exclusive isn’t saying that abuse survivors grow up to be their abusers. I think it’s better to say that abuse survivors have mental and emotional wounds from what they’ve been through, and that untreated wounds have the potential to fester in ways that can but won’t always hurt other people. It’s not ‘you’re broken’, but ‘you’re hurt, and you should see a doctor’.
Hyperfocusing on the narratives where abuse survivors grow up to commit abusive acts is absolutely harmful, but not letting those narratives exist at all can also hurt survivors, since that also includes the subset of narratives where someone struggles with abusive behaviors and gets help and works on overcoming that.
I do agree with you, Spencer, that the way the ‘cycle of abuse’ is portrayed tends to be inaccurate and extremely harmful. But
Spencer: to be clear, your feelings are real and they matter. Actually I’m kinda impressed with how well you put them into words. You didn’t have the most optimal possible communication, but it wasn’t bad. 🙂
And I suppose it’s not the end of the world if I fail to communicate how it could have been better, either. 😉
…man, that song is still helping me process things. 🙂 I think my brain leveled up today. I was having lots of Feelings about stuff I did suboptimally today/yesterday, and I took some time to sit with those feelings, and I managed to sort of… *feel* them in the right way, that gave them the acknowledgement they needed, to let go and let my mind be at peace again. My body feels better too, not having as much stress bottled up. 🙂
i think that this particular concept of the cycle of abuse can be very harmful to survivors for two main reasons: the idea of becoming their abuser is so abhorrent it can prevent them from living their full lives (like raising kids, etc), and the idea that you can be just as bad as your abuser is something easily used by an abuser to keep them in abuse.
which is unfortunate!! because you don’t need a reason to leave a situation other than because you want to.
i’m not here to dogpile on anybody who learns bad behaviors and conceptions of the world from their abuse. like. you do what you have to in order to survive. i’m not here to excuse it, either – part of having agency means owning your choices, the good and the bad. i’m just very against the idea that having been abused means that you are fated to repeat your abuse.
like. having been stolen from doesn’t mean that you necessarily go on to steal, wtf
To your first paragraph, a question: would you say that a person with a lot of unhealthy coping patterns, without any intervention at all, has all the tools they need to become a parent? Say, someone who drinks heavily, or can’t keep a job, etc? I’m obviously not claiming abuse victims are alcoholics or anything like that, it’s just an example of what that concept is referring to.
I don’t think the stealing example is a good one – see the example of cancer statistics above.
Again, like I have said before, the cycle of abuse simply existing is not an absolute. It’s NOT ABSOLUTE. It’s *fear* of becoming abusive/not being a good person/making mistakes that makes people *think* that it is.
No parent is perfect; that is, no person comes at parenthood with all their shit figured out and all the healthy coping mechanisms. A person with a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms is someone who needs to do a lot of hard emotional work, granted. The point I’m making is: unhealthy coping mechanism is not the same thing as abusive. It may be the same thing as toxic, but someone who is toxic is not necessarily abusive. Abuse is about control and fear; an unhealthy coping mechanism is just about getting through the day.
Someone who drinks heavily or can’t hold a job needs to figure out how to stop/how to hold a job, agreed, but those are not coping mechanisms. I mean, the drinking might be, but it’s also a legitimate problem all on its own (and one that does not necessarily have abuse as a precursor!). We have support groups for these conditions.
I really think that the stealing metaphor works well! Because on a level, abuse of a child is the theft of their childhood. You lose so much because of abuse – the person you could have been, the opportunities you missed, the bullshit you had to put up with. Abuse is nothing but destruction. The construction, too, is valid – the state of a subject being acted upon does not necessarily translate into repetition of the action by the subject. People can learn what not to do from abuse as well as what to do, is what I’m saying.
Contrariwise, the cancer metaphor doesn’t work for me, because cancer isn’t sentient. It has no way to stop what it’s doing on its own. There’s nothing evil about it, it’s just the consequence of living in a world with diseases we haven’t learned how to fix. It’s just trying to live the same as anything else, and unfortunately its life means its host’s death. Abuse can’t be passed down the same way that cancer can, because it’s a series of behaviors, not a biological structure. Intergenerational and vicarious trauma are definitely things, but trauma is not the same thing as abuse.
I think…fear of becoming an abuser is a very valid one for someone who’s been abused. but I honestly don’t see how this particular concept of cycle of abuse benefits anyone. Like, okay, so what should it do? We should already be working our hardest to stop kids from being abused and nip that in the bud – not on the basis that those kids might grow up to be abusers, but because abuse is wrong and no one should have to go through it. Okay, maybe it might help us understand abusers better, but at that point it’s more important to stop them than understand them.
Effectively, an abuser is someone who takes the rules and twists them to their advantage. If they don’t get anything from the abuse they inflict, they won’t abuse. It’s that simple.
like: okay: to go with what you were saying before: you said that you struggled with anger and with regulating your emotions. When you realized that those were problems, what did you do? Did you try to stop? Were you horrified by the thought of hurting people? When you realized that the things you were doing were shitty, did you try to change? Because someone who is willing to do all of those things is better fit to be a parent than a lot of parents already out there.
I see your points, for sure. I will say that cyclical concept is not without its flaws, and I agree with you that toxic is different from abuse. I find it interesting to think that different people would draw that line in different places.
A coping mechanism is something that gets you through the day, nor matter how dysfunctional it is though. Drinking or hitting people to cope with negative emotions would be coping mechanisms.
Now that you explained the stealing, I think I understand it much better and have felt that way about my childhood myself. I think, my abuser’s childhood was stolen from her and she sought to steal mine from me though (and she said so many times – that I didn’t deserve to have a nice life because she didn’t). Maybe like that, like robbing Peter to pay Paul? Only the abuser is Paul. But then Peter chooses to ask for a loan or pick up extra hours instead of robbing someone else. Or Peter, having had many moments where someone has stolen from him, decides to steal from John because it’s easier than coping with his issues in a healthier way.
I agree with you- for sure the fear is valid. But what happens when the fear is paralyzing? When it prevents you from becoming better because you’re afraid to move in any direction? You wouldn’t be in a place to hear about improvement then, unless the level of fear is not as intense.
Yes, I was horrified. There are mistakes that i made that I still think about and feel like crap about. I realized many of my actions because I was lucky enough to have people who pointed them out to me, and who were understanding enough to remain friends with me. But they key is to recognize the problem. If I can’t admit that my problems are deeper than I realize, then I’m putting a bandaid rather than sewing up the wound.
I guess what I’m trying to say is we are where we are, and to get better we have to meet ourselves where we’re at. Sometimes we’re in a better place and sometimes we’re at rock bottom. But in the cyclical sense, it meeting where we’re at might mean accepting that we have anger problems, and then remembering that dad used snap at us (or hit us) for no reason. Or say your old boss screamed at you for every little mistake, so you hid small issues from him, but now at the new job, doing that gets you into trouble. Being a part of the cycle means being a victim too; it’s a common misconception that to be a part of the cycle one *must* also be an abuser, which is why I was emphasizing earlier that is has a context.
Then we realize we learned the behavior from dad, and then working on our anger issues- whatever that might mean, therapy, etc. Not being in the best place doesn’t mean we’re terrible people. It’s okay to need help. That’s something I’m still learning. In the past, I would have dug my heels in due to shame and ended up in more trouble than I had if I had had it about my wits to realize where I was in my life.
mmmmm drinking could be a coping mechanism, because it affects how you personally see the world; but hitting someone is…not really a coping mechanism?? it’s externalizing your emotions to the point of harming someone else. like whatever pleasure a person gets from that seems really…unlikely to help them. it’s destructive. so i would like to place that action on the Not a Coping Mechanism for $100 please
I mean. going back to the comic, you could maybe claim that Amazi-girl is a coping mechanism and the vigilante work is a coping mechanism, but it’s more like…an outlet for those violent urges in an ostensibly pro-social way? It would have to reduce stress in order to be a coping mechanism, and lbr I cannot see how punching someone reduces someone’s stress. Punching a punching bag, sure; going to a boxing match and punching your opponent, sure; but going home and terrorizing people? … maybe. ok so this is an attack mechanism, which is technically a form of coping. But like of the two that would qualify, displacement and acting out: but acting out is..actually not coping, whereas displacement is just shifting the target of the emotion. which is also not coping. http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/coping/coping.htm
re: the stealing childhood thing, like. an abuser stealing another kid’s childhood is never going to give them back their own, not really. at some point you just gotta live the life you’ve been given to live, you know? you can’t get what you lost back but you can live what you have now. and you can make out of what you have something that is worthwhile, possibly.
ahhh you misunderstand me: just because the fear of becoming an abuser is a valid one doesn’t mean i mean that it’s, like, realistic. it’s valid because you know firsthand how awful it is to suffer from an abuser; it’s not realistic because you know firsthand how awful it is to suffer from an abuser. if that makes sense!
and yes – i don’t mean to say that you can’t pick up bad habits and reactions from abusive relationships! like, i do not mean to say that people leave these relationships perfectly fine, because that would be a) untrue and b) wildly unfounded. like. a lot of the evidence of an abusive relationship is in the mind and emotions of the victim.
and mostly here i was talking about a model of the cycle of abuse that says that abusers must always have abuse in their background, and that abuse victims must always be wary of becoming abusers. when neither are necessarily the case! and this myth being propagated is harmful.
Well, my mother also directly tries to make out that I’m the one that hurts her. She does it to my father, too.
My sister does it as well, but… she always wanted to be my mother when she grew up, but lacks the capability. She’s such an inept liar who’s so openly and proudly a bully that she never makes me second-guess myself.
Actually, she can be helpful. Her claims that I am the bad guy fully reaffirm that I absolutely am not.
If you ever start wanting to do abusive things, talk to someone instead. That’s like 90% of the solution. 🙂 And it’s why Ruth’s not what Rachel thinks of her – the hospital put her into therapy, so she’s talking to people and learning new coping skills so she doesn’t feel desperate enough to turn to abuse. (and she’s not the sort of person to choose abusive behaviour if she can see any other option)
Rachel…is not entirely wrong. (Although her objectification of Billie is NOT OKAY, obviously!)
Ruth is trying to do the right thing here. But it’s not as easy as just apologizing. I know I tend to TMI all over the comments section here, but I am clinically depressed, have a problem with my temper, and have a drinking problem (for which I’m getting help!). As a result, I’ve done a lot of stupid sh!te and hurt a lot of people about whom I care. I’ve done the best I can to make amends. However, in some cases it has taken literal years for people to accept my apologies and feel okay with me. That’s perfectly fine – it’s NOT about me and anyone I’ve hurt more than has the right to continue to feel hurt and has no responsibility to accept my apologies.
IMHO, Ruth is on the right track, but it will probably take a while.
Can I just say I kind of love Billie here? Her insistence on punching people who upset Ruth is kind of dear (despite the fact that it’s not really a good idea). When my partner got unjustly let go from one of his previous jobs (I think I mentioned this in a previous post), he LITERALLY had to hold me back from smashing the store window with a brick. (Remember that temper I mentioned?) But I read Billie’s aggression as her loving attempt to protect and defend Ruth. 🙂
Thank you! 🙂 I’m trying to do the best I can. I have a lot of stuff going on in my life right now and I often find myself in a position where it is on me to “fix” things. But I’m trying really hard to be a better person and to right some of the wrongs I’ve done in my life. So I *do* identify with Ruth to an extent. 🙂
Same here – a couple of strips back, I posted about being sexually assaulted on a family vacation. Aside from telling my partner, my post was the FIRST time I ever spoke about it. I really appreciate the community here and how supportive everyone is. 🙂
Like a two months ago I told everyone here about my crippling fear of my own anger responses about two weeks before I told my therapist. It’s (mostly) a safe place here (though we do occasionally get a “that guy”).
Hmmm. I will note however that Ruth only said she’d never “strike” Mary again. This does not exclude actual disciplinary channels for when Mary inevitably steps over the line. Which will probably take the form of the good old “three violations of college dorm policy and you get kicked out of the dorms”. And Mary will be surprised when it happens in…say two days comic time, that she is informed of her first violation of dorm policy, because she believes she has Carte Blanche in this instant. Also, wow. Rachel doesn’t know it, but she just went for Ruth’s throat with that comment about abusers, because Ruth hates the idea of being like “Sir Grampus” and hates the part of her that does lash out. Rachel doesn’t know these things and doesn’t know Ruth is an abuse victim. And while her criticism of Ruth as an RA is understandable, she’s doing it the day Ruth got out of the hospital. So it feels even rougher. Rachel’s not entirely in the wrong with her words, but she’s also nowhere near the right.
Billie, that’s the girlfriend you want, but not the girlfriend you need.
Also, Rachel sounds like she came right out of this comments section a while back. I mean, not that she’s totally off base, but she’s also not 100% on–I suppose because we’re omniscient and she’s not.
Even though Rachel’s perspective on the situation makes the things she’s saying understandable, she’s still being really goddamn inappropriate with the comment about Billie. Even if you’re certain someone’s in an abusive relationship you don’t start by calling that out to both of them, in front of both of them jesus h christ that’s just going to give the abuser ammunition and likely make the victim more convinced that their abuser is themself a victim
. . . also nice tact in light of the recent hospitalization. :i
Thanks! I found it. It was off-panel slap. Maybe that’s why I didn’t remember it. The question is, why didn’t Mary report Ruth slapping her? Because that is the kind of thing Mary would love to do?
Because Mary didn’t want Ruth to be replaced with a new RA – that would mean that Mary would have to start from zero, as far as gathering blackmail material and getting leverage over the RA goes.
That’s also why Mary tried to cover up Ruth and Billie’s outing – she lost leverage over Ruth.
Well I guess if Ruth is going to change her ways for the better, in comes Rachel to be an obstacle in this story. Not a criticism, just an observation.
That’s taking your apology a little too far there, Ruth. I mean, you should still reserve the right to punch her when necessary. Just make sure you are fully cognizant of all the reasons you’re doing it so you know for sure it’s not part of the abuse cycle.
Eh, Ruth should never punch Mary just because Mary makes her mad and deliberately eggs her on. It’d only be okay in self-defense or the defense of someone else, and defending from verbal attacks doesn’t count.
It’s not even a matter of Mary not deserving it at this point, however you want to go about defining how people ‘deserve’ things. It’s a matter of Mary being the kind of person who WOULD twist that into her favor. I really believe that Mary provokes people on purpose so they’ll lash out at her violently or otherwise, which just reinforces her world belief that they’re bad people and she’s the persecuted perfect saint, who would never use VIOLENCE on other people. I can’t actually say whether or not Mary would resort to physical violence beyond setting down a glue trap for Carla, which accomplished the same thing as a punch to the face with the plus side of ruining Carla’s skates, but was set up in such a way that Carla had to literally skate into it, thus providing Mary internal wiggle room for it being okay. But she strikes me as the type of person who doesn’t see what they’re willing to do as violent, but defines harmless acts by others as violence against her personally, such as daring to be LGBT while living in the same wing as Mary.
Mary seems to me to be a Mike Pence or a Milo type.
Someone who means harm and violence, but never wants to be seen directly delivering said harm and violence. Keeping her actions bloodless, punching down, and with enough deniability to let herself off the hook for the intended effect of her actions. And maybe at times she’ll be violent, but always in ways she can deny she intended to be violent. After all that glue was just an escalation of a prank war, not a genuine attempt to hurt Carla and break her stuff. No, never. What an unforeseen consequence.
Mary is a classic social bully. I have experience with a lot of social bullies.
They don’t yell abuse at you across the hallway. That’s more the ballpark of a physical bully who knows they can’t get away with punching you just then.
Social bullies engineer situations to tear apart your social support in the area and make everyone else hate and/or ridicule you. Like Mary right now – not sure if Mary engineered Rachel to be there, but since she is there, Mary knew exactly the social posture to take to put Ruth into a lose-lose situation. Lose moral high ground on pushing back against Mary for her attempted reign of terror, or lose her sought-after redemption in the eyes of her strongest critic.
Cuz, I know Ruth. In Ruth’s headspace right now, she will not have Done Redemption right until she earns Rachel’s forgiveness. And damn the consequences of what she has to do to get it. Ruth’s a perfectionist that way – all the successes in the world don’t matter if she has one failure to focus on. Mary knows Ruth as well, it seems, and I fully expect a lot of sneaky Mary bullshit in view of Rachel so that Ruth can’t react appropriately.
I agree with all of this and I think that’s the piece that Ruth will have to learn. That she can let go of her perfectionism and that she doesn’t need to debase herself to win over Rachel (who is unlikely to ever like her or forgive her). Nor does she have to be the perfect RA who meets a superhuman standard to be good enough.
Oh, I agree with you. That was the part of being fully self aware and cognizant of why she is punching someone I was aiming for. I do believe in the power of punching, say, Nazis, or punching in self defense, as you mentioned. Which is why I’m sad that Ruth made such a broad statement — there are times where she may need to stand up for herself and defend herself physically and to promise to never ever lay hands on someone who basically led her to a suicidal place is something I’m not comfortable with.
I’m pretty sure the C word is Viola. I also believe that the drums might not be overtly racist its because they don’t know what race is or that their band determines affiliation based on race but have the some structure for it whereas strings for the most part aren’t really band instruments.
True C-word story. We were at a fast food jint (Culvers) with my son and his family. My d-i-l said something was crap and my grandson started chanting “Mommy said the C word” over and over quite loudly. That his parents asked him to stop just meant he wanted to say it more.
Is there a real way to tell the difference between the first honeymoon phase and genuinely trying to turn over a new leaf. I mean we know that Ruth at this point doesn’t want the job if she can not be better at it, and that Ruth is not trying to control of Billie okay right now she is trying to control Billie but she’s not trying to control the way Billie’s life in general. But does Rachel have any way to know that?
Its true if she was really concerned about Billie accusing Ruth of abuse like that is not the way to go. However, finding out if its abuse would be a little more complicated than just talking to Billie though. Billie could lie because she is lying to herself, or because she’s afraid that Rachel could confront Ruth and make things worse for Billie.
Rachel would need to study what to ask, and how to ask it, and what to look out for.
But also to answer your original question, maybe not. And if you are the target of someone you suspect might be honeymooning phase you or with whom the thought of being amicable with them makes you sick and violently angry, well… it’s usually a better practice to just make as many final cuts away from them as you can than to try and go on the offensive on calling them out and risk getting sucked back in by them.
in the context of abuse, it’s the thing where the abuser does something really screwed up! you say it is screwed up, or it is acknowledged that it is screwed up. the abuser does something really nice for you so that you have no idea what to think of them and their behavior when they’re capable of both ends of the spectrum. you stick around. rinse and repeat.
It’s when the Joker pushes you through a window, and you’re mad at him and totally going to break up with him for real this time, but he somehow sneaks a rose into your cell at Arkham attached to a loving note, and so everything’s cool again.
Goddamn, that’s a lot of responses. With Willis himself giving an example I can immediately understand, as well as multiple links to helpful pages, even. This community makes learning a blast.
Rachel’s particular animus sort of feels out of left field here. I went through the Rachel archives to see if there’s anything in particular Ruth has done to Rachel that she would need to apologize for, but couldn’t find anything. I suppose here she is just acting as a representative of all the students who have lived under Ruth’s “authoritarian rule” for however long Ruth’s been an RA. But I hope we get some sort of backstory explaining why Rachel is so outspoken about this.
Rachel is established to be a returning student (read:not a freshman), so as Nono mentioned above, it’s possible she may have been more personally on the receiving end of some of Ruth’s mistreatment last year.
I hope I didn’t misread the question you were posing. On reread it seems like I may have which makes my response pointless, repetitious, and possibly demeaning; and I apologise if this was the case.
I forgot the c-word incident til now. That in mind, Ruth is the only one of these two acting in good faith, and I don’t know if I’d be as big as her right now.
When kids act like kids, grownups often make them apologize, and the phrase “Say out like you mean it” gets used. Time for Mary to apologize for the c- word thing like she means it.
Mary has upped her unlikeability with those five words. I hardly knew that was possible.
Yup, Ruth is acting in good faith and Mary is bad faith exploiting that like hell.
Which is politically relevant at the moment given the massive amount of nazi fucks whose entire political arguments surround trying to exploit other people’s good faith with bad faith horse shit.
The best way of describing this strip is “Perspective”
At the moment, Rachel is valid in her protest over Ruth being able to keep her job, as that was a serious lapse in judgement on Chloe and more importantly, the entire campus’ decision making. I don’t care how much money Ruth’s gramps offered the campus or how many connections he has, Ruth has assaulted numerous residents here. Each one is it’s own case of Assault and can be charged leading to an arrest. If word of this were to get out, the campus would undoubtedly lose applicants due to allowing their students to get assaulted, losing them money in the long run from tuition and financial aid. In that sense, keeping Ruth, the abuser, on campus was a massive lapse in judgement. Then there is the fact that in Rachel’s eyes, Billie is an abuse victim that is in a relationship with her abuser. Not helping matters is that when they were hiding the relationship, they engaged in “Fake Fights” which would give the impression that is actually was a physically abusive relationship. What I can’t sympathize with is how she phrased her relationship with Billie: “And yet you get to keep her.” For one thing, that is entirely ignoring the notion that Billie has any say in the relationship, and while Rachel is justified in assuming its a form of Stockholm/abuse victim still loves the abuser, the fact she says this while Billlie is in the room, knowing she is in it, makes Rachel sound like she too is considering Billie a possession. I also must second something said by Doopyboop. I’ve checked the archive of Rachel’s appearences, and she did not aide Billie when Ruth threw her. As a matter of fact, her behavior seems a tad inconsistent across the archive. First, she seems like an ordinary minor character. Then, when Carla is giving Ruth breakfast, she is poking fun at Carla. Then, when Mary is blackmailing Ruthless and won’t let them check, Rachel is with Agatha considering getting the RA. I may be a bit cynical in saying this, but if she hates Ruth so much, why would she care if Ruth was suicidal, then go back to hating her when she is okay? If she hated her, wouldn’t she be indifferent at best? Why would she tease Carla about liking Ruth rather than pity her or call her an idiot? I know Carla is a self admitted ass-whole, but if Rachel really sees Ruth as this tyrannical abuser that has roped Billie into a toxic relationship, why would she tease Carla for wanting to engage in that kind of relationship? Back on topic, it seems a tad strange that she doesn’t help Billie when the incident happens yet calls Ruth out on “possessing” Billie weeks after the fact, when Billie has seemingly forgiven her. Hell, for that matter, while Rachel has merit in assuming Billie is suffering a form of Stockholm of something, to outright assume it with only circumstantial evidence seems a bit dumb. Yes, she is about 19-20 and thus has a right to be dumb in instances, but to do this assumption in front of the person the assumption is about seems more like something Walky would do, I.E., something done without thinking.
Now, on the other side, Billie is justifiably angry at what Rachel is saying, but that’s because she knows THE REAL RUTH. Yes, Ruth can be a bit of a bongo at times, and yes, by definition, she is an abuser. However, Billie is aware of where this stems from, both Alcoholism, Depression, Emotional Abuse at the hands of her douche Gramps, etc., and is able to see past what Ruth tries to show. On the other hand though, only Billie, and to a much lesser extent, Carla, actually know this. Everyone else though sees Ruth as the Tyrannical R.A. While Ruth was suicidal and depressed, she did assault multiple people. Look, I like Ruth, she’s even been one of my faves for awhile now. But, to be objective, she has committed multiple accounts of assault, theft, and one count of sexual assault. Even if some victims were bongoes like Mary, they were still actual problems that were done. Realistically, it will take a lot of atonement from Ruth before she is liked. Whereas some like Joyce, Agatha, and maybe Dorothy, Sierra, Dina, and Amber will be easier, others like Sarah and Rachel will be near impossible.
In shorter terms, each one is right to an extant based on their perspective. Billie looking past the surface of Ruth, but Rachel can only see the surface.
I’m not on Rachel’s side about her tone or arena but considering she doesn’t know all of the behind the scenes horror that is Sir that we know, her reaction is kind of understandable. Yes, Billie is her own person and has her own perspective on her and Ruth’s relationship, but from the outside, Billie supporting Ruth doesn’t disprove that Ruth bullied Billie into it. And, frankly, the details of Ruth and Billie’s past relationship does not improve their ground very much, even if they are great characters and are trying to do better and are ultimately good for each other. Yes, Ruth doesn’t want the job, but Rachel probably doesn’t know how badly she doesn’t want it, and just sees that Ruth has retained the power that has been harmful before. From Rachel’s perspective, though she’s damn harsh and misinformed about it, Ruth has made the floor hell and engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a vulnerable charge of hers, and now…gets to keep all of that with few repercussions. That’s what SHE sees, even if we know better.
As an omniscient reader, I hate what Rachel is doing and want to hug Ruth. Not so much Billie- I get Billie’s protective streak, it’s cute and reassuring for Ruth, but Billie can’t attack anyone who doesn’t like Ruth for the type of RA she was. I also…don’t really like Billie’s phrasing here, personally. Anyway, sentimentally, I side with Ruth. Looking at what Rachel has to go from, I get why she doesn’t take this gesture as a game changer. Rachel is wrong in many ways, and definitely wrong in her approach, but unfortunately, she’s not entirely wrong about Ruth’s actions or (potential) pattern of behavior, and that’s gonna have to be dealt with over the course of the story arc.
idk like Ideally we would be in a place where we do not force people to share these kinds of personal details. and i think a good way to do that is to just be specific about the things that bother you personally, that you yourself have noticed and that you yourself have issues with. basically just stay in your lane, haha
so like i feel like the etiquette is: it’s not appropriate for Rachel to call Ruth and Billie’s relationship an abusive one, because she’s not really on ground zero there. but it would be appropriate for her to ask about specific things that worry her – like, the fact that Ruth slept with her charge. or if she’s heard weird noises coming from Ruth’s room although possibly those are things…better left unheard. or if she’s seen any particular dynamic that worries her. but then again it’s really…not ok to call an abuser abusive because the person they lash out on is their victim. so the right person to talk to and offer support to is Billie.
focus on the things that you want to change and the things that you want to do, i guess. but that doesn’t leave much room for emotions. :/
This is why it is important to be in a good headspace and take the time to be in that good headspace before trying to do this sort of apology for bad actions. Because well, some people are going to take advantage of that shit for their own ends.
Whether it be using your admission of wrongdoing to establish a sense of power over you or justify ripping you apart in a way they wouldn’t if you didn’t admit fault. There are toxic people who see that vulnerability as a target and exploit it and your desire to do right by others in horrific fashion. (This would be a portion of why Carla doesn’t like to show vulnerability and sucks at apologies when she feels she fucked up).
And that’s before factoring in the people you’ve wronged who are simply not going to accept one’s apology or even refuse to meet with you (which is their right, no one owes you their forgiveness if you’ve hurt them, hell no one owes you their regard period).
And that’s not the end of the world. If you’re prepared and in a good space to say your apologies and accept what may come and can resist assholes trying to shunt it onto a dark shitty path, it can be super valuable and important to make your apologies for wrongs. It can bring comfort to those you’ve hurt. And it can feel good to own and recognize those fuckups so you don’t make them again.
But when you’re not in a good headspace? When you’re freshly out of the hospital, your anti-depressants haven’t kicked in, and you’ve just been run raw by your abusive grandfather pulling out every stop he can to hurt you?
This shit can be so bad and we’re seeing it here to a large degree.
Like, I fully understand why it feels important to her to do this now. That if she is going to be trapped in this hellish job, she wants to do it showing her direct intention and make a genuine effort to own the things that reminded her too much of “sir” grampus.
But this? Now? This was not a great idea and I worry the emotional fallout from this will be deeply intense on top of an already brutal day for her.
i’ve been working around customer service for a few months now and, let me tell you, that job is nowhere near easy, but like a few things i’ve picked up on:
1) never let your polite facade break
2) vent in private. vent hard. and then go out and smile again, and be unbreakable
3) most of what you have to do to stand your ground is say what you know, ask questions when you need help, and don’t be afraid to call your manager over to back you up because that is literally what they are there for.
4) be very clear about the message you are putting across so there is no confusion, and be ready to have to repeat yourself and re-explain things in a polite way.
5) get. your shit. together. because if you do not have your shit together you cannot get anybody else’s shit together. be kind to yourself, de-stress, take breaks, take care of yourself, and get yr shit together.
6) what you project is what gets reflected back to you
and all of those things are super useful when working with people like Mary because you have got to be legit bulletproof in order to not let them get to you. you have to not let them pull you off into tangents. you have to smile and take it and stand your ground, wow.
and these are things that are profoundly difficult for someone with Ruth’s background and history of trauma. not impossible, but difficult
This is really useful. I will try to remember this when I go back to work. I’ve been there for a few weeks, and there have already been moments of customers being shitty to me. It’s too unhealthy for it to get to me every time.
I swear to all the deities this country does not pay the people in retail and customer service enough.
Anyone who pretends that is an easy/unskilled job is fucking lying, because I’m pretty sure *I* couldn’t do it, and I’ve just finished *grad school*. I’m pretty sure I’d kill someone on, like, week two.
Panel 1: This is fucked and something I was worried about yesterday, but is also a thing she was more or less trapped into doing if she didn’t want to undermine her sincerity of her public attempt to own her misdeeds.
And it is extra fucked, because of that exploiting the other person’s high road as a vulnerability to gain power thing I was talking about yesterday. Like, in full context, Mary trapped Ruth into publicly apologizing for a shitty shitty action, yes. But one that deeply pales in scale to Mary trying to murder her in a bloodless callous way by stripping away all of her support network and driving her brutally into a hole.
And it resets the power imbalance in favor of Mary again, because she knows she can manipulate the social circumstances to gain an advantage over Ruth and make her do things she doesn’t want, which means we can expect Mary to keep hammering this point and trying to exploit that desire of Ruth’s to own her actions and turn over a new leaf to try and force her particular Maryian agenda.
And worse yet, she’s done it in a way that has defanged her main check at the moment, because she’s demonstrated to herself that Ruth will physically stop Billie from carrying out her threat against her and so that is no longer a limiting factor she needs to worry about.
And that petty little bit of gaslighting at the end, after making the person she nearly killed give her an apology, by denying her actions for that extra little bit of unearned high ground is basically a cherry on a shit sundae here.
Mary basically put herself right back on top, so right now, it’s only waiting to see who she goes after first (my bet is either Billie, Carla, Joyce, or maybe Sierra/Grace/Mandy).
This concern, this fear of what Mary might do… I’m not sure if I can find the words for what I’m feeling. It hurts a little, out of empathy for your pain. You seem to be very familiar with this pattern. :/
But at the same time, part of my brain is trying to suggest there’s another interpretation. Like, I don’t know this stuff well enough to have a clear idea of what’s probable, but… I find myself not expecting Mary to get leverage out of this. When Mary tries, Ruth *might* cave, but Ruth… doesn’t seem like she has quite the right type of self-sabotage for that. She might be more like… like, yes, she’s sorry about the hitting, but no, she’s not going to do whatever Mary thinks the apology requires, she’s going to do what’s best for the other students because she doesn’t *care* what Mary does to her any more, and Mary can’t hurt Howard. it’s hard to blackmail someone too depressed to have feelings.
Of all those options you listed, Carla seems by far and away the most likely. I can’t see any serious reason for Mary to target Joyce over anyone else on the floor that she has more reason to hate. Sierra/Grace/Mandy would offend her with their sexual openness, but I also have a hard time seeing any of those three actually giving a shit about what Mary has to say. Prodding Billie is risky because, even if Ruth is holding Billie back now, she won’t be there to hold her back 100% of the time and Billie is impulsive enough that she could still wind up decking her pretty easily. As such, Carla becomes the most obvious target, especially if she feels this ‘new leaf’ Ruth will lack the strength to defend her, something which Ruth already struggled with before.
Another, even worse possible case though, is that I could see Mary targeting Becky. She’s very outspoken and very gay, both things that Mary would take offense to, and her current homeless status would also leave her as being probably the most vulnerable and easiest target on the floor. Even going to stay with Leslie might not potentially save her from Mary if Mary does target her too, because if Mary were to find out that an impressional young lesbian teen was now staying at the home of a teacher who is also a lesbian? And how gays are so sinful and sexual 100% of the time (sarcasm obviously), why it would just be scandalous if that got out.
Lucky for Mary, Becky will be off-campus now. Otherwise she couldn’t resist going after Becky, and let’s face it, there’s some serious punching available for anyone who hurts Becky.
Mary going after Becky should be a fun ride… for us. I give it a 50/50 chance of Joyce (who still has one good hand) or Dina (who willingly tackled a shotgun-wielding dude that is like 5 times her size) turning her into minced meat within the hour.
Off topic — it was not a shotgun. It was a particularly deft bit of Willis artistry that sadly went over many heads. You don’t bring a single shot rifle to a murder spree.
Let me state this first. It is absolutely fair of Rachel to have no truck with Ruth’s attempt at redemption. To not trust it. To see it as honeymoon phase shenanigans and to not even remotely give it the time of day or in any way stop resenting what Ruth did.
And that’s the thing about redemption arcs that never gets covered. Not everyone owes you their forgiveness and even the most earnest attempt to improve is not going to win over everyone you harmed and it might even be the case that the majority of the people you hurt will never forgive you or want anything to do with you.
Certainly I don’t see myself ever being able to let my dad back in my life even if he seemed genuinely apologetic for what he did. It just wouldn’t feel safe and I have no issue with Rachel stating that firm boundary here.
Additionally, let me say that some of the shit she lists here is dead on.
Ruth and Billie’s origins were deeply fucked up and is a definite black spot on the relationship that is unlikely to ever fully go away. Abusers do use honeymoon phases to take advantage of their targets’ desires to be fair and forgiving and reinsert themselves into folks lives in a toxic way. And from Rachel’s perspective, she reported Ruth and had good reason to believe she was done and now she’s back with apparently a blank check and that’s got to be infuriating for Rachel, like her report was just vomited upon and thrown out.
That all said, wow is this fucked up.
Like, first of all, if you really believe that someone is in an abusive relationship with someone else, you don’t fucking call it out like this in front of both the person and their abuser in front of you.
Because a) if you’re right, then you’ve placed the survivor at greater risk of violence and ensured they’ll be locked down more in the future, thus making it harder for them to make their escape. b)You’re very likely to trigger a bout of defensiveness from the survivor by referring to them in such a dehumanizing way as if they are a thing and insulting whatever feelings they have that are tying them to their abuser and doing so in a deeply disempowering way. You are also likely to make them want to cling harder to their abuser to “prove you wrong”. C) You make their abuser look more sympathetic thus making it easier for the abuser to honeymoon phase their survivor and deepen any gaslighting they might be doing about the untrustworthiness and hostility of others to their “love”.
And it’s even more fucked up here because it’s just so utterly dehumanizing and disrespectful to Billie. Like, fuck, she literally treats her as directly equivalent to an inhuman source of employment, with no agency, while insulting her love for Ruth, which has already been shown directly to be important to Billie given their earlier moment in the hall in front of everyone.
Second of all, context.
Ruth is fresh out of the hospital for a suicide attempt. And Rachel knows that because she’s the one who called in Chloe that led to Ruth being taken directly there. Additionally, it’s clear to anyone who has eyes that something is deeply off about this whole thing and Ruth is not at all happy about having this job again or feeling like it was in any way her choice.
Like, I loathe certain people who have harmed me or people I care about. I will never forgive them in a million years no matter what they do and a petty part of me has very angry violent thoughts towards them or smiles when they are removed from a position to hurt people and I have been open about previously cheering the deaths of certain individuals who have spent careers harming others.
But I can’t imagine going out of my way like this to attend a public meeting just for the sake of tearing down said asshole at their most vulnerable moment, especially so soon after a suicide attempt. Blocking their number, ghosting them, screaming at my computer whenever I see an email from them? Hell, yes. But not doing this. There’s a time and a place and this is not that time or place. Especially as she knows what she’s doing is a bit fucked up because she checked herself when she was doing it before when she noticed that Howard was with Ruth.
Third, there’s a matter of cowardice and chosen target. Like, on one hand, Ruth created a climate of fear that made the consequences of standing up deeply dangerous, so I understand Rachel not wanting to stand up before.
But that said, she did nothing before. Nothing to warn the freshman about the shitty RA and her reign of terror or share tips for surviving it or offer support. She did nothing to directly challenge Ruth when there was risk to herself in doing so.
And that’s fair, but it’s somewhat douchey to then turn around all high-ground I’m the defender of the defenseless against your reign of terror when the person is disempowered and vulnerable. And that’s something that’s going to resonate in a not so great way for me because of my recent experiences.
Like, a lot of you know about my shitty now former head of school, fighting him and taking a lot of consequences for doing so. And at the end, two of us fought the hardest to protect the kid and try and report the head of school and we both got heavily fucked over for it, including physical and mental health wise.
So once he was safely gone and no longer in a position to hurt folks, there were a lot of folks playing “well, who could say for certain” or otherwise heavily lying low who were then all “aren’t we all glad he’s gone, we did well to stop him” and honestly, a part of me is annoyed by that. Because these folks chose safety over what is right and I don’t blame them for that. But it’s bullshit that they act like they were in the trenches fighting when they didn’t do shit to stop him when there were consequences for doing so.
And so Rachel’s moral authority here rings incredibly hollow because she’s only pulling this shit out now when Ruth is still one foot in the mental hospital.
Four, Mary.
Rachel knows what Mary did. And just watched smug Mary performing an actual abuser move, exploiting vulnerability for power and demanding an apology while not owning the violence of what she did. And Mary is standing right next to Ruth, but Rachel does not do her much vaunted “multi-tasking” and rip into her, only Ruth, the person who might as well have “there’s a red flag on this situation” tattooed on her face right now and has literally been in a trauma pose this entire time.
And those four things makes this absolutely fair action into something really really fucked and legitimately dangerous.
Brilliant analysis as always, Cerberus. Amber’s expression in Panel 2 stands out to me as well – I wonder if hearing Rachel call Ruth an abuser is triggering Amber’s own fear of becoming an abuser and possibly making her think about herself and Ruth as parallels.
Definitely. It smacks a lot of “victims of abusers are doomed to become abusers” and we know that Amber is absolutely terrified of the possibility that that statement is true.
Rachel’s statements are having some dark-ass unintended collateral damage here.
I’ve gone through the Insight Personality Typing recently, which divides peoples’ personalities into four categories, labeled with the colors blue, gold, green, and orange.
I tested strongly as a green. Greens are thinkers and analyzers, questioners and arguers and dissenters. Our interests are in abstract ideas, models, and facts. We tend not to notice people as much. We don’t easily read their emotions. The idea that people might be hurt by our criticisms doesn’t occur readily or automatically to us, since we’re focusing more on the ideas in the abstract than the people proffering them or categorized by them. We can train ourselves to be aware of that, but even then it’s not the first thing we think about and unless we’re trying to catch ourselves we can forget.
Rachel is doing this. Her entire focus is dissecting Ruth’s (supposed) new leaf in an abstract, skeptical manner. She’s not focusing on relationship or people-support (like a blue). She’s not acting impulsively in the moment (an orange) or following a rule-based structural rubric with clear objectives (a gold). Everything about her screams green, and that suggests that she has the weaknesses of a green: a lack of immediate awareness of the impacts of her criticisms and skepticism.
Also, regarding Mary? She can hate them both. (Too lazy to link.)
Rachel is missing the rule of thumb that I have, which is, while the “stopped clock” principle does apply to otherwise-terrible people, any time I find myself agreeing with a known terrible person on something is a good clue I should re-examine my belief on the thing with a skeptical mindset. Could be the stopped clock principle is at play, buuut it could also be socially-engrained bias at play in my head.
Panel 4: Eyes dulled, glassy. Yeah, this is getting worse and worse. Like, again, it’s fair for Rachel to call her out or refuse this whole thing and be deeply frustrated or even resent Ruth and want to hurt her like she hurt her making her live in fear of her tyranny.
But time and place. Especially as she’s done it publicly and is exploiting the same thing Mary just did. That Ruth in desire to show she has turned over a new leaf is more likely to just sit and absorb this sort of abusive bullshit, because to argue against it or defend herself would be to “demonstrate that she isn’t really serious about owning her shit” and that’s not at all fair or cool.
And by doing it in public, she’s also limited Ruth’s ability to take care of her mental health and just walk away and say, yeah, okay, you don’t like me and will never forgive me, that’s absolutely fair. I accept that. And the general silence of anyone to intervene just makes it hit all the harder.
And it’s why this sort of action when Ruth chose to do it is so dangerous. Because she definitely doesn’t have the headspace to not internalize it in deeply self-destructive ways.
Panel 5: And again, the danger of the public space. Once again, Ruth is motivated to restrain and block Billie from her actions to show her growth and desire to do right.
And well, just as Rachel has a right to feel aggrieved and angry towards Ruth, so to does Billie to Rachel.
Like, fuck, Rachel just went out of her way to attack and call her girlfriend an abuser right after Billie just dealt with supporting Ruth with her deeply abusive “sir” grampus. Which is not something Rachel knows, but sure as fuck is something Billie knows. So she knows how awful this is to Ruth in that way.
And she just treated her and her love like a thing and a piece of Stockholm as if she was a pretty bauble Ruth won one day and is now keeping on a shelf and not a human being with agency and reasons for viewing her relationship with Ruth in the way she has.
All while treating her as a third person meaningless thing to her face, speaking of her in the third person as if she wasn’t there and had an ability to speak for herself.
Like, Billie would be fully justified in going off on Rachel (maybe not punching her, but certainly going off on how much Rachel doesn’t understand what she’s talking about here), but Ruth is under social pressure by the circumstance to deny Billie her anger here to continue absorbing this shitty garbage in the name of showing her willingness to grow. And that sucks.
And I guess, here’s the thing. Redemption is a rare and special thing and not everyone is going to accept it or think well of it or ever trust it. But that does not mean the person seeking said redemption should accept being mistreated in turn without question to prove their redemption is earnest.
It is absolutely okay for things to just end with “I’ve turned over a new leaf.” “Fuck you, fuck off” (both walk away).
And that’s the other piece of redemption. Owning previous faults is not an invitation to weather abuse casually in the name of owning said faults. And I worry that things are going to go even more explicitly in that direction given Rachel’s arc of behavior so far.
Rachel is still just 19-20 years old so she’ll still make mistakes however in this instance she has every right to feel how shes feeling and every right to say whats shes saying
We watch from afar and have information that Rachel doesn’t so we have an idea of what might happen but Rachel doesn’t, she can only go on past prior history
Rachel has seen Ruth be violent, shes seen Billie been violent and now Billie and Ruth are together so its more than reasonable for Rachel to be worried because now who can stand up to Ruth and Billie? No one on the floor (except maybe Carla) can physically, going to higher authorities doesn’t work so its no surprise Rachel is worried
The thing about punching people you think deserve it (and Billie is nicely representing the whole punch a nazi thing) is its a very slippery slope Billie punches Mary and everyones like yay (and fair enough) but in that last panel she wants to punch Rachel which illustrates Rachels point
Things aren’t going to get better and they might just be getting worse, also second panel Rachel is sounding like she may have more then a little experience in this area
Mm, but that’s not actually the point she is arguing here. She’s not saying Billie is violent. She’s saying Ruth is violent and an abuser. Which is very fair, but by basically dehumanizing Billie here and acting as if she’s an object who is “too dumb to realize she’s in an abusive relationship”, she’s also being a giant douche and Billie is absolutely in her right to be like “oh fuck this noise”.
Especially as Billie has the full context that Rachel does not.
It is a massively abusive relationship though and what was Billies response? Threaten violence so in Rachels mind not much has changed and it may have gotten worse in that theres now two violent aggressive people to deal with and she also knows that she won’t get any help from Chloe
I agree…it’s important to remember that to everyone else Billie has also been a huge asshole. Like, I would still try to reach out to her (like Joyce and others have) but not everyone there is as mature as they are.
In a lot of related stories the outsiders will tell you how frustrating it was seeing the abused person come back again and again and act not unlike Billie here when confronted about it. In fact, the general advice when two people are adults is to simply let the abused person leave on their own instead of forcing them. There are obvious issues with that, and it’s contradictory to the urgency of the issues, but often everything else doesn’t seem to work. Unless there’s a way to wisk the victim away without any risk whatsoever, which isn’t the case in a majority of cases.
“Owning previous faults is not an invitation to weather abuse casually in the name of owning said faults”
my brain is having so many thoughts about this, but they’re not attached to the part that does words right now. and my earlier comment is stuck in moderation because links anyways. but what the hell, I’ll try and throw some words out anyways.
I think I understand better where your fears are coming from now. Ruth has shown a pattern of taking on abuse for Reasons. Most of it with “sir”, but she also took mary’s blackmail before. If she continues that pattern here… yeah… ouch. 🙁
I hope it doesn’t go that way, though. I hope that’s one of the areas she’s planning to make changes in… not with “sir” yet, but, maybe with Mary, who doesn’t have a way to threaten Howard.
And… is she actually processing what people are saying here, or did she just kinda assume it’d be horrible and get her defenses back up? Sometimes hurtful things stick in your mind forever, sometimes you succeed at not-hearing them and only have to deal with the consequences of doing that to yourself.
Except Rachel doesn’t view Ruth as a depressed human. She sees her as a hypocritical abusive bully.
She doesn’t view this event as a “Please forgive me, I’m trying to change.” thing, but rather a “I got caught. So now I have to do this song and dance. I’ll probably be more careful from now on.” thing.
I’m not saying she’s not coming on strong.
But from her perspective she sees someone who weaseled out of EVERY consequence of her actions.
And she wants everyone to see that.
She’s doing the speech not only to warn Ruth that she’s being watched, and her misdeeds are remembered, but to warn the others that her change of heart shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Personally, I think Ruth has done some fucked up shit.
And she definitely is in a pressure situation she doesn’t want.
She has a girlfriend she did bully, publicly, but she never really… paid for it. She got to let out her frustrations with her darker side, but then after her bender and she was found, she never really got any comeuppance for bullying Billie.
That all being said, she does seem to be in at least a more stable situation with her, though that’s an extremely iffy position for both of them.
I was in an emotionally abusive relationship a few years back with someone who would threaten suicide any time I so much as thought of leaving. They were not actually suicidal, they would just pretend to be to create added leverage against their chosen victims.
Rachel’s actions lately are too angry for this to be purely abstract to her – it makes me wonder whether she’s experienced that sort of abusive relationship herself and is viewing Ruth’s suicide ward stay as a massive power ploy against Billie.
Also, I agree with you about Rachel. There are lines that you cross in life that you can’t exactly just come back from. For Rachel, Ruth has crossed that line several times. She will just never trust her again, and she has every right not to. I don’t think Ruth or Billie understand that yet.
“Actually, I still have this job because that’s how my abuser keeps control of me. I don’t get a say in it.
And I still have a girlfriend because… I don’t know. I certainly don’t deserve her.”
Sad part is… to get rid of Ruth as an RA I think this is what Rachel has to do. She has to put pressure on Chloe to let her know just how bad this decision was, and that means putting pressure on Ruth. That means not letting lapses and fuckups slip and that means being coming on strong in meetings like this.
It will be absolutely horrible for Ruth, and that’s the horrible situation Chloe has dropped her in.
yeaaaah but this is not coming on strong, this is just being there to kick Ruth while she’s down and kickable.
ideally, coming on strong would be badgering Ruth about her mental health, or bugging her repeatedly about events and information, or asking her wtf is up with Mary. it’d be, like, asking her what her plans are and for solid details and not letting her wiggle out of answering questions. coming on strong would be…effective
idk calling her previous behavior bullying is pretty spot-on and clear, precise and effective.
i have no clue whether or not she has any kind of solution brewing tho
You are right. This is not Rachel taking a measured action to send a message to Chloe, this is her going for the throat while Ruth is down. Similar but not identical.
if you are going to send a message it is better to send the message directly rather than to mess around elsewhere and hope that the person hears about it eventually maybe
mostly i meant in the context of messages actually being delivered, haha.
speaking to Chloe directly about her concerns about Ruth is a valid route, if they have that kind of relationship; speaking to Ruth directly about those concerns is also a valid route
but i honestly don’t know if getting those concerns heard will be enough for Rachel
Is everyone forgetting that Ruth is criminally violent, that she should have been fired and possibly in jail weeks before she was hospitalized? Are the people she’s abused and threatened supposed to wait until she’s got her bearings and is back to her old self to confront her? From Rachel’s perspective the only safe time for them to bring all this up is when Ruth feels weak.
I personally think she should have been hospitalized earlier, but if one of the girls wanted to press charges, that would have happened, yes.
I honestly have no idea what Ruth was expecting. Not a clue. It almost seems self destructive, and it’s obviously way too early for her to be doing the redemption thing.. kinda like when an abuser apologizes immediately to get it out of way instead of allowing the victim room and time to process things (even if thats not what she’s doing, that’s hiw it seems, especially to Rache).
Yeah, as someone who has been abused, the whole “well nobody should be mad at her, look at what she’s gone through” thing, while I try to understand it, rings almost irritating and hollow at times. It’s not a healthy message to send. She doesn’t get to just say “I’m sorry” and be done with it. She has to actually make amends.
This is like watching someone being told what they did last night when they passed out drunk. Realizing it was much worse than they could have imagined. Up until she left the hospital, she was operating under the cloud of anger and depression. It is what allows her to function. It also blinded her to the severity of her actions and their affects on people.
She’s not yet in a state to handle this, nor has she given the others time to process or taken time to show she’s serious. She should have that time. So should they.
But she wasn’t given it. She has to step back up and keep being RA and she rightly thinks that needs some comment on her part.
You are correct – thanks for reminding me of that. I forgot that she was supposed to immediately start working for a minute. What the hell was the school thinking?
Maybe she should have prefaced with “I’m here because I have to be?” Or just explained the whole thing. I get taking responsibility, but she has pertinent information that would be useful to share.
I’m kind of torn about Rachel… and not about whether she is right or wrong. At first I thought she had some personal experiences with abusers but she seems a bit too… calm and clinical about it. Like she studied the subject and knows about it but more from the distance than from personal experience.
You can be calm and clinical about things you have personal experience it just varies from person to person. Hell, some people are perfectly comfortable joking about horribly traumatic experiences they’ve endured.
For a really, really long time I buried all my emotions as low as possible and was one of those rationality/skeptic bros. For reasons that basically amount to any time I showed any emotion other than robo-happiness, I would get hurt for it. So, robot-mode go.
And now adult me gets called cold, standoffish, clinical, etc. Because I am bad at warm-fuzzies, bad at emoting, and bad at receiving emotion from others. Which would be considered acceptable if my outward appearance matched my brain-gender, but it doesn’t, so I get flack for it all the damn time.
Yes. I am known for having a “dark sense of humor” when what I really mean is “I’ve been dead once, it’s very liberating”. Only in my case it’s three times.
But it seems that Rachel assumed that Billie would always protect Ruth because she was abused and never even tried to talk to her about it.
You talk to people, you talk to people’s support network, see if the red flag is in the air or just echoes out of your own memory.
Here, it sounds like :
“You’re terrible at your job, boss. Also, I don’t like the way you treat your wife. Not that I care about your wife enough to build an escape plan from you with her, but her existence gives me this nice argument that you’re terrible at everything in your life and I’ll bravely take advantage of it.”
Or that Rachel heard about abuse in a pamphlet.
Which is not a bad way to learn about abuse, if it means you never learnt it at home.
That said, as always : Rachel’s 19, I’m 26, I’ve seen more stuff, and I’ll stop yelling at a fictional character for not being nice to another now.
Like, yeah, she’s young and full of a lot of semi-justified anger and frustration, but yeah, this is like a how to manual on what not to do when you suspect someone is being abused.
Oh I’m so sorry Cerberus ! I think I’m overreacting over your reply, but I want to make clear that I don’t criticize you or any person doing deep analysis with my “stop yelling at a fictional character” !
Of course fiction is a good support to discuss real life stuff, it’s just that brains don’t become magically equipped to deal with every aspect of every situation. To confess, when I was 19 I couldn’t have identified abuse if it was not “hitting hard when that’s uncalled for”.
When I was 21 and my father broke his own unhealthy bound with me, I had to be explained everything. “His constant calling my mother names in front of me ? What, that is abuse ? But what about freedom of speech ?” “His very intimate confessions he made to make me help him through emotional labor since I was eight when he had perfectly good girlfriends his age if he needed a woman’s support ? Shit, that was abuse too ?” “The fact that he wanted me to suppress any behavior or taste coined “feminine” ? How is that abusive, aren’t women unprivileged, wasn’t he just trying to make me belong with the humans that win ?”
Life’s just… complicated, you know what I mean ? If Rachel was real, I would trust her to grow out of this bad interventioning she’s doing. But of course as a fictional character she can be an excellent support to explain how things could be done smoother.
Yup I just reread my reply and I’ve definetly overreacted.
You know what’s twisting my mind with that storyline ? It’s that Rachel makes me want to make the argument that abuse is more complicated than what she describes and how she intervenes, when I struggle with my own therapist to accept that I had no control over the events in my childhood and that in fact, my abuse was as simple as that.
Oh, I’m sorry about that. I meant my reply more as an agreement.
And yeah, she’s not that perfect girl nor should be expected to be great at handling abusive stuff at 19. Bob knows I was shit at it at 19. And the dramatic public confrontation with the abuser is a semi-common movie trope, so it’d be easy for her to think this is the best way of handling that.
Also, massive *hugs* offered for what you dealt with and I know exactly what you mean. It took me so damn long to recognize my dad as abusive as well and for me to recognize certain actions of my ex as abuse. Hell, it wasn’t until being in the comment threads here asking if certain things were abuse that it really sunk in.
We as beings can have a lot of difficulty applying the abuse framework to things we’re trapped inside of.
Ruth, verbally and physically abusive. (Mostly verbal, threats of violence)
Billie, verbally and physically abusive. (Mostly physical)
Amber/Amazi, vigilante justice.
Mary, Blackmail and verbal abuse. (Mostly anti-LGBT)
Sal, Threats and assault.
Shara, Verbal “abuse” and assault. (Ryan had it coming but still, and the verbal bit is about relentless sarcasm.)
Near as I can tell, most of the girls have done something wrong. (Legally speaking)
It took me way too long to figure out who “Shara” was – I need more sleep in my life. For the record, as beating Ryan up was done in the defence of self and/or others (Joyce) who were in imminent danger, that’s not illegal.
Wow, Rachel is actually worse than Mary. No, I am not being facetious but you are throwing shade at a person JUST BACK FROM SUICIDE WATCH. Whatever issues or grievances you have with her CAN WAIT until she’s in a more stable state or can be let go as Elsa would say.
Rachel is right. Ruth has been abusive to everyone on the floor. She doesn’t deserve any of their trust because she is a distinctly unsafe person to be around in their eyes, and that’s on Ruth. Billie and Ruth’s relationship started in violence and was primarily a toxic thing, just mutually. But no ome on the floor in their right mind would be supporting it after everything they have been shown.
Ruth does not deserve a second chance from them. She doesn’t deserve their understanding after all she’s done. But I hope she can earn it.
None of which remotely should be voiced to a suicidal clinically depressed person and Rachel is a Piece of String (self censoring) to do that. I mean, Jesus Christ, who DOES that?
Rachel, to me, is not talking like someone on a righteous quest to right a wrong. She is talking like someone who is, herself, an aggrieved party – and whose aggrievedness is very personal and very painful. So… what did Ruth do to her? I don’t recall Ruth doing anything to her. I recall Ruth doing things to others – primarily Billie and Joyce – but not to Rachel.
If Ruth hasn’t done anything to Rachel, what does that mean? Does Rachel have a personal experience that makes Ruth’s behavior extra unpleasant for her? Or am I misreading a general desire to do what’s right as something more personal?
I get this a bit too – Rachel really, really hates Ruth. I just don’t think we don’t know enough about Rachel – or the way Ruth earned her hatred – to be able to judge it properly.
I’d love to know though.
And I think I do recall – from other Willis universes – that Rachel is not big on forgiving easily.
Its interesting that Ruth is very aware of this – I think I’m right that Rachel is one of the 1st people Ruth sought out on the floor for this meeting. Earning Rachel’s forgiveness seems high on her agenda.
That’s the thing about anger and forgiveness. You don’t have to forgive someone. There’s a reason why it’s a wonderful thing when you do it (though some may argue with that) and it’s to someone who needs it/can grow from it. However, there’s nothing courageous or noble about attacking someone who is mentally ill. Ruth did some pretty horrible shit but she ALMOST DIED and was hospitalized for depression.
What, exactly, does Rachel get out of this other than being a predator? Being Mary, essentially? Hate if you will. Forgive her not. But you’re not stabbing the Mountain, you’re stabbing Sansa.
honestly the more i look at where Rachel is, the more i deeply suspect that she wanted to be RA. it can be really deeply disappointing to lose out on a job you wanted, and even more so when someone you feel is incompetent keeps the position. (and somehow Ruth is one of Chloe’s best RAs, wtf.) especially if you think of that person as a bully.
it’s really weird to me because my experience with RAs was a lot more…sweetness and light and cute decoration and monthly movie watchings and going shopping and getting together for school events. and having open hours for conversations. so much of this drama was kind of unnecessary! but y’know different personalities float different boats i guess
i would imagine that Ruth’s behavior made her generally unpleasant, though.
Didn’t Rachel say she didn’t want the position though? I seem to remember that back when Roz and Dotty were butting heads Dotty said that Rachel told her she didn’t want the position.
Frankly the issue is that this is a problem that can only be solved through action. And no, I don’t mean punching. Rachel is absolutely right, Ruth just saying she’s changed and things are going to be different doesn’t, can’t and shouldn’t inspire any confidence that they actually are, but Ruth can actually show it instead.
Pretty much, the only solution to this situation is Ruth Proving that she changed. If she does that all the reasonable people will ease up and accept that she is not a terrible person anymore.
To which Rachel can keep her mouth shut about. Why? Because again, someone almost just died. Yeah, you can kick her while she’s down. That doesn’t make you respectable or courageous, that just makes you Toeroommate.
Have some class and yes, I think it’s the bare minimum a classy person can do not to get up in the face of someone a day back from hospitalization.
I mean, I hate Orson Scott Card for his homophobia but if he almost died of depression or was hospitalized, I’d HOLD OFF ON MY HATE for a bit. I was bullied and beaten in high school regularly but I held my tongue when one of those bullies lost a family member.
If you think attacking someone with depression while they’re down is heroic then I don’t know what to tell you. It’s evil, awful, and the person who does it not a victim but a victimizer.
Sorry, i didn’t mean to get riled up over a fictional character but I’ve had a number of clinically depressed close friends and they’re very easy to target as they internalize the attacks.
The key question is, how much does Rachel know about Ruth’s situation? Does she know she has depression? Or why? Does she know that this wasn’t for example a hospitalization because she got drunk off her ass?
Rachel is not cowardly, she would be if she was kicking Ruth knowing she lost her RA position. But Ruth retained it. She kept everything she Should have lost from Rachel’s point of view.
And Rachel IS right. If I got 1 dollar for every “Abuser apologizes for abuse and then does again” story I heard I’d be riding around in a pimped-out Mercedes Benz. As far as Rachel is considered this is typical, stereotypical abuser behaviour.
The only way Ruth can prove her wrong is by keeping the good behaviour.
I guess I’m not sure how insulting Ruth by saying she’s still an awful person really contributes to defending yourself unless Rachel is trying to drive her back to suicide.
It is entirely unfair to expect an abuse victim to show care for the emotional health of their abuser. As in ‘less than a complete stranger’. Rachel is entirely fair in being concerned way more about the safety and health of herself and those around her, and not caring much at all about Ruth.
And of course, yeah, of course Rachel doesn’t have the full picture. But we never have the full picture. We don’t have the full picture of Sir, and I feel pretty justified in saying he’s an abusive asshole who shouldn’t be in a position of power over everyone, and if he should have some deep seeded suffering somewhere, I wouldn’t expect Ruth or Howard to care even the tiniest bit about it while attempting to get his influence out of their lives.
Rachel is just angry, that’s it. A cruel bully like Ruth, who Rachel thought would finally get punished, gets off scots free. How many times did you feel furious about obvious injustice?
If you think people being abused should hold off on defending themselves until their abuser is feeling better is a good thing, then I don’t know what to tell you. Oh, no, wait, I do. You must really like seeing people being abused, because here’s the clincher: the abused people are already below the abuser in power level, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be abused in the first place. And if it what allows them to not be abused anymore is pouncing on their abuser’s moment of weakness, I’m totally going to be cheering from the stands.
Well, those aren’t the two and only two options. It’s not a choice between tearing down a mentally ill abuser or allowing them to continue their reign of terror.
Like, there’s a lot of ways to push back that isn’t just accepting the abuser’s frame that they’ve been through hard shit and they’ve really learned from it.
Disbelieve, disconnect, let others know that you’ve seen this shit before and not to trust it, be intensely cold and shut it down if the abuser tries to approach you, continue speaking out to the abuser’s employer about their abusive actions, give support to their victims, meet and offer a confidante to the folks you’re feeling have been abused, run, just run from that toxic mess, etc…
Like, Rachel shouldn’t be expected to forgive Ruth or view her anything else than a violent awful abusive thug, but she doesn’t have to minimize the humanity of the person she is seeing as a victim to do so or go on the attack when they are in trauma response mode (because they’re not going to hear a word of it and now you look like the bully).
Which is sort of what was so dangerous about this whole thing to begin with. This is the wrong time for Ruth to be trying this public ownership of fault. It’s really way too early for all parties. Rachel needs time to scream at Chloe first and Ruth needs to get a headspace going where she can listen to feelings like Rachel’s without internalizing it and where she isn’t ceding major ground to Mary.
I’m not referring to Rachel’s specific case – but I HAVE seen this “oh, don’t push back when they’re in a bad place” thing go down, and fuck did it go down. Like, you’d need heavy machinery to reach those levels of down. Which is why if, say, Clint got terrible news that he had incurable cancer and went into a depression spiral, I’d still be okay with Ruth taking his cane and beating him to death with it (use gloves, Ruth – fingerprints are bad).
I would being beaten to death doesn’t just happen and is not exactly a form of suicide, and it sounds like Clint is going to die before he gets over it in this scenario. The investigation would more likely put more stress on them then letting the cancer play out.
I have been the victim of bullies like Ruth and my high school and junior high years were constant periods of psychological torment. I was beaten up, insulted, harassed, and treated as a plaything with plenty of parallels with Ruth. None of my attackers ever apologized nor would I have forgiven them at that time (I have matured) but if the idea is that I should kick them when they’re down–no, not a chance. I’m not going to become a monster to get some petty revenge.
The world does not divide neatly into victims and abusers. People can be both in different circumstances. Nor is depression an automatic free pass.
Ruth is a suicidally depressed abuse victim. Ruth is a violent abusive bully.
Rachel is one of those abused by Ruth.
If an abuser with power over you has weaknesses, even depression, and you can use that to curtail the abuse or free yourself from it, that doesn’t make you the villain.
I can’t blame Rachel here, even as I ache with sympathy for Ruth, knowing how much it’s tearing her apart.
This might not be the best thing Rachel could do, but then the comic is called Dumbing of Age. None of these people are making great life choices.
This comment is everything. We need to let go of this thinking of GOOD/BAD, everything.
Rachel is being cold, but in that position you have to be to protect yourself. She is in no way obligated to forgive Ruth or be her friend, just like Ruth is not obligated to give Clint a chance, even though the levels of abuse are different.
Like, it’s possible for several things to be true at once! People are complex like that, and ignoring that completely neutralizes the nuances of these situations.
See, personally I like panel 3 less and less the more I read it.
Mainly because of the first word bubble in it. I mean, beyond it yeah being very dehumanizing feeling for her to be saying it right in front of Billie, there’s also some implied expectation on Rachel’s end that Ruth “shouldn’t have been allowed to keep Billie” even with it being something where the conflict of interest issues aren’t going to be a thing in the near future.
And I dunno, somehow the phrasing of it just seems highly distasteful to me for various reasons. One being of course that she doesn’t seem to care what Billie wants in regards to that situation, with another being that it seeming like she’s mainly just trying to tear Ruth down now that Ruth isn’t threatening people with assault than actually trying to solve any problems.
So no, no cathartic feels on my end from that one for me at least. But hey, I guess at least Ruth warned us two comics ago that everyone was there just to feast on her corpse. Not sure why any of us actually hoped for anything else so far.
Personally, I’d like more info on the Rachel-Ruth dynamic. We haven’t seen anything in the comic, but both of them are tenants from the previous year already (and the only info we have from then is about the “Sarah roommate” thing). Is Rachel just a victim of Ruth’s general climate of fear, or was she specifically targeted at some point? I need more data points! Give me DATA, Willis!
I don’t have anything to add to lots of insightful comments about the rest of the characters, but; Amber’s expression though. She’s watching this go down. She’s watching. We can guess at her thoughts. But that’s about it.
Amber is probably both not thrilled about the lady who violently kicked her parallelepiped of solitude apart an hour ago and hopeful about the possibility of an abuser kicking their abusive habits to the curb because she sees herself as a potential abuser on the brink of losing the “potential” part of it.
I’m still wondering what happened after that kick. Was there an apology, or did they just go directly to the meeting? The in-meeting apology was weirdly vague, so I’d be very concerned if she didn’t apologise for the chair kick already.
This is why I love DoA. The story is nuanced, there’s depth to most characters that make you want them to succeed despite their failures, or root against them despite being on the “moral” side. I can’t imagine the amount of time spent planning, fleshing out and writing these stories together.
I mean, here, I do feel bad for Ruth, but can’t fault Rachel for saying what she did.
Rachel, Ruth is not an abuser, she is a victim. They can look similar (one reason DARVO can be so effective), but ultimately come from very different psychological places.
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“may I propose a win-win situation?” *points Billie toward Mar-a-Lago*
(I’d say D.C. but it’d be more convenient to let her dispose of her new punching bag in a certain sinkhole that opened up there)
I so wish I had a like button for you right now…
Point her at DC, and she’ll never stop punching! Just too many dirt bags there to EVER stop punching!
I don’t know that Billie has the political discernment not to punch Maxine Waters as she’s walking down the rows of Congress.
If she registered as a Republican, she could punch anyone she wanted, and actually win office!
Not just punch, but full on body slam. She’d have a blast.
Doubt it. She’s a woman.
billie, you cant punch everything
she can try!!
There’s also kicking! She’s a cheerleader, remember!
and then cartwheels for success!!
But she can stab everything.
“I don’t sleep. I stay up all night stabbing things and making PowerPoint presentations about each thing that I stab.”
Cornelius Snarlington, business deer.
http://amultiverse.com/comic/2015/01/09/welfare-state/
Billie takes the concept of a ‘punchline’ very literally.
I like Ruth actually trying to handle her problems like an RA. This week might be the most I’ve ever liked her
It does seem more hopeful than I thought this would go. I thought being forced back into this situation might do a lot to erase the progress Ruth has made in a manner regrettable for everyone. I still am.
Does anyone remember what Ruth did to Rachel? From this strip, it sounds to me like she’s referencing something personal and serious, although maybe it’s meant to suggest Rachel is an actions person?
A new girlfriend who likes blackjack and hookers!
Hookers as in left hooks and right hooks.
And when punching isn’t enough, she uses a blackjack!
Forget the blackjack! 😉
But I like blackjack. It’s the best chance to actually win money from the house. And it’s quicker than poker and IMO less addicting than everything else…wow, I’m probably one of like twenty people who would say “Hold the hookers, I just want the blackjack” aren’t I?
In fact, forget the new girlfriend and the blackjack! Ah, screw the whole thing.
Blackjack and Hookers are the nicknames of Billie’s fists.
….Ok that’s actually kinda rad.
*sighs*
I knew I wouldn’t have been the first one.
Damn you overnight job! You put money in my bank account, and bacon into my facehole, but you don’t let me be the first to make a Futurama reference on an internet webcomic.
Sounds like it’s time to resign.
Man, Rachel’s got a real hate-lady-boner for their relationship. Perhaps if Billie and Ruth weren’t so standoffish, they could clear up some of these misconceptions…
… Rachel, you have no idea how you nailed the matter… I still wanna chuck Mary out a window, though. into a sinkhole. after she gets punched by Billie.
……I keep re-reading this comment, a shit-eating grin on my face, because of the possible implications of the word “nailed” in this sentence.
yay for English occasionally being unclear.
Punch all the girlfriends, Billie
Rachel is assuming that Billie has no agency. That’s awesome!
No, she’s assuming that she’s caught in an abuse cycle, rationalizing away the abuse as out of character moments from the “real” Ruth, who is a loving person. She’s uh… not completely right or wrong here.
She’s actually doing both.
My thoughts exactly. The use of the word “keeping” for Billie continuing to date Ruth is kinda…skeevy. Like, are the two of them healthy? Not always, they each have issues. But they’re both consenting adults who are aware of their flaws. Ruth isn’t “keeping” Billie because she’s not a trophy to be won.
From the outside, that’s what it looks like though. One minute Ruth is throwing Billie around and calling her out her name, then the next Billie is obsessively devoted to Ruth and defending her every chance she gets while increasingly isolating herself from everyone. I couldn’t deny that there’s a fucked up element to the start of their relationshio, even objectively speaking.
She’s casting blame on Ruth here, not Billie. Billie choosing to stay with Ruth doesn’t erase Ruth’s violent, shitty, and very recent past behavior.
That said, I’m glad it looks like Ruth is genuinely ready to begin the difficult, uphill work of curbing her own abusive behaviors and becoming a better person.
Rachel is assuming that Ruth is a person who until recently was in a position of authority over Billie and has physically assaulted her while being emotionally (and sometimes physically) abusive to every person on the floor including Billie. There’s a big reason there’s rules against TAs, RAs, professors, bosses, etc having romantic/sexual relationships with people they’re in positions of power over. We can sympathize with Ruth because we’ve seen things from her point of view. But she is an overtly abusive person who manipulates and assaults the people she has authority over AND she’s entered into a romantic and sexual relationship with one of those people… a person she started out both physically assaulting and also literally tormenting by stealing and destroying bit by bit an object she was deeply emotionally invested in… then sexually assaulted her. That is NOT healthy behavior and pointing it out is NOT a bad thing to do. Every abusive person has a reason/justification for why they’re abusive. I’m not saying Ruth’s evil. But her actions ARE, in fact, abusive and frankly if I lived on her floor I’d have filed complaints against her and requested a room transfer. Realistically, the only reason her current crop of residents haven’t done so is because they’re mostly freshmen who don’t know how messed up the situation is, and Carla doesn’t care bc Carla.
Dismissing that all as “sure sure deny Billie’s agency lol awesome” is a REALLY shallow reading of things and it’s frankly dangerous and normalizes a lot of real world predatory behavior wrt people in positions of power manipulating people with less power/people who rely on them. It’s a REALLY common romance/sexual tension trope, I can see why it’s being used here, but can we NOT pretend their relationship started out on healthy mutually-consenting ground and that Ruth does NOT have a history of physically and emotionally abusing people she has control over?
I mean seriously if my RA had slapped me I would have filed assault charges. Mary’s a shitbag but she’s also a shitbag who was physically assaulted in her home by someone who’s got power over her.
and that Billie is a teenager prone to making bad decisions.
Punching is Billie’s answer to everything. Which is why she has trouble on her exams.
I bet she wishes she majored in the history of punching instead of journalism or whatever her major is.
Does anyone else feel that tide of rage that you don’t have to proper capacity to explain right now?
about this or in general?
The general situation of Ruth. As someone who suffers from severe depression I have a surprisingly hard time commiserating with people who continue to heap abuse on other depressed people. This is regardless of fiction or real life. My capacity to give a fuck for people who abuse depressed individuals is basically nil.
As a side note, I sort of wish Ruth got fired so that she could have a chance to try and deal with things with Billie as support. Leaving her in this situation and to deal with the aftermath without a proper explanation from the campus is just fucking irresponsible and almost beggars belief.
While Ruth’s grandfather wants Billie out of the picture, I don’t think the dorm necessarily feels the room transfer for Billie is about separating Billie from Ruth. It’s about giving Billie a place to go away from Ruth’s control if she wants it. Dorms generally don’t have rules about daytime or evening guests of the same gender. Dorms generally don’t have a rule that say residents can’t ever have overnight guests. There are, of course, limits, but those limits are far less restrictive for people who have single rooms, like Ruth. Also, those limits are enforced by the RA, so…
Now, they haven’t pointed this out – possibly some because the grandfather who pushed for this deal is against that happening, and partially because it only gives Billie that place to go if she actually moves her stuff, which she wouldn’t do if she was explicitly told she can continue shacking up with Ruth.
I feel it whenever I listen to FOX News.
Had it for weeks. If I had more than one body myself would be beating the crap out of me all the time.
not rage, but yes. lots of feelings, few words. Luckily there’s Cerberus to make words for like 75% of them 🙂
Helpful, isn’t she?
Helpful, and been though seemingly every possible shitty thing that can happen to a person–and made it through to be a generally helpful and uplifting person besides.
Feeling of impending doom? One of the signs of a heart attack in women.
https://myheartsisters.org/2010/02/12/12-symptoms/
Er… What? He said rage, not doom, and feelings of doom are also a normal symptom of anxiety.
man this whole thing just makes me sad.
At least all this is getting out in the open. If Ruth was willing to have a few more open discussions like this the situation might not have gotten as bad as it has.
Reminder, it was four years ago today that the “Hetalia” strip appeared on Shortpacked! If you can’t apply fisticuffs to fascists, who CAN you apply them to?
Mary you can’t retcon life to make you look good, you noob. Not like she has any other way to keep her egotism and feigned/false innocence and self-righteousness going.
She actually didn’t swear in that strip. Kinda makes me wonder if she’s ever sworn. And the real mystery is what was she going to call Ruth?!
She didn’t swear only because she was suddenly cut off at the letter “C”
We have no idea what c-word she was going to say, though.
There was an obvious conclusion, one Ruth obviously made herself (although she obviously decided to slap Mary before, so that’s still not why she did it), but the fact that we don’t actually know means Mary might be telling the truth.
Just like how there’s a distinct possibility that I am the queen of France
……..<__>….are you? o_O
France doesn’t have a great history with monarchs. If someone found themselves as their queen, they might want to lay low – not try any self-promotion or involvement in government, just kick back, maybe read some comics or catch a few farts.
Of course if you asked them, they’d probably say “no, I am not”.
Mary doesn’t usually outright lie, does she?
She says things that are untrue because her perception of reality is… skewed, but she doesn’t say things that she thinks aren’t true that I recall.
(Also there are plenty of other words she could have been saying there that would fit. Obviously it wasn’t nice, but there’s more than one not-nice word or phrase.)
Mary says the things that benefit her most in the moment.
to her it does not always seem like a lie, but she would not hesitate to lie if it benefited her. and for that moment it would be her truth, more or less, because the lie needs to become your truth in order for you to deliver it like truth.
but really explicit, complicated lies are difficult to hold up for very long, because the truth of who and what you are gets through. so when Mary was trying to manipulate people while Ruth had her meltdown, she was instantly seen through because her smugness of nature was just. very present.
Mary would never say the c-word as part of her general persona, because she’s not a girl who says the c-word. but Ruth doesn’t count, because she’s a lesbian, and Mary can call her a c-word if she wants because she’s a sinner. and why wouldn’t a lesbian lie about her? she’s a lesbian, after all. she’s got more problems than those kinds of delusions.
like. this is someone who looks at Ruth and sees “victim”. sees prey. sees the possibility to destroy and goes for it because she can. so like yeah her perception of reality is mega skewed but that doesn’t make any of the things she says any more true, if that makes sense
I said that she says things that are not true because her perception =/= reality.
Well, considering the old laws of inheritance you could be a claimant to the now vacant throne of France depending on your ancestors so…maybe you are? You don’t happen to have any ancestors from the 1700s by the name Louis do you? But, yeah, there weren’t a whole lot of options of what Mary was going to say that start with c.
…….now I want to move to France, take up cross-dressing, and be naed the Drag Queen of France.
Maybe, but is your spoon too big?
Ruth doesn’t actually specify which ‘C’-word, either.
And even if Mary was going to say “cow” or “college student” or something, she’s still definitely lying. She’s on the F-bomb scoreboard, and said “goddamn” twice in the same strip she earned her spot on there. I’m not sure if anyone besides Carla witnessed it, though.
Ah, true (I had forgotten about her past cursing)! Still, keep in mind that there aren’t that many C-words out there that would be used as an effective invective, and I’m pretty sure Mary was attempting to say the worst one in the way that she addresses Ruth intensely angrily. Too, if she’s like her walkyverse incarnation, she still swears when she wants and also has hypocritical relations with other people (looking at you, Eric). Because she’s not a self-righteous lying twit, no. 😛
#TeamRachel. As a former RA, Ruth’s continued keeping of this job is a deeply annoying part of the storyline. But people do get and keep jobs they don’t deserve all the time, so I guess I can’t say it’s completely unrealistic.
TeamRachel? Really? WHY?
For being dissaproving of a relationship she only has the most casual understanding of? And lets say she was totally right about Ruth/Billy. What has she actually done about it other than sneer and act superior? Has she reported Ruth to her superior? To the college’s Dean of Students? Or tried talking to Billy to see if she needs help? Or even pull a Sarah and just contact Billy’s parents?
Rachel hasn’t done anything despite how terrible she thinks the “abusive” Ruth is. Hell, skip the the bad girlfriend bits. Has she done anything to try and get Ruth replaced as her RA?
I would argue that Rachel is making a purely objective assessment of the situation. Ruth has abused not only Billie, but has been an officious, cruel, mean-spirited tyrant towards the young women under her power. Now, is there a reason for Ruth’s cruelty? Sure. She isn’t cruel ex-nihilo. She has an abusive tyrannical grandfather who she is terrified of. But that does not make Ruth any less of a horrible, abusive person who takes out her self-hatred against other people under her care.
And even if Rachel points this out to Ruth and acts superior with no deep knowledge of Ruth and Billie’s deeply unhealthy relationship of depressive emotionally and psychologically abusive co-dependence…so what? Does that make Rachel’s words any less true?
The college housing management is openly corrupt in this story. Complaining to them will likely get the complainer moved out of the hall, rather than the unqualified person losing her job. Ruth should have never had the job and should have immediately lost it the first day when she physically assaulted people to get them to the first meeting. Seriously, that’s it. From any competent, non-corrupt, non-soap opera real world RA job.
#TeamJumpingToConclusions
but, y’know, it sure is ruth’s fault that she hasn’t been fired
She could quit? I mean, of course, Rachel doesn’t all those reasons, but it’s fair that she does not actually care why the abusive RA is not fired and is not in a position to quit. Ruth deserves to get people caring for her, and backing her, and all those things. But the people who were victimized by her, and with the violence she ruled, that’s everyone, are not the ones who have the obligation to do it to her. If they didn’t suffer much, or can get over it, more power to them. But just because Ruth has suffered worse abuse than she has been dealing out doesn’t make the abuse she has dealt any less real.
What I admire in Ruth is that she is currently owning what she did. No excuses, no reasons. She crossed lines, and the first thing is to apologize. And when someone is skeptical of that, which is a normal thing, she accepts it. The very fact that she CAN accept that ‘saying sorry doesn’t make things right’ is probably a hopeful sign for Rachel. The passing of time without any relapse in those habits might make her reconsider her not unfounded judgement of Ruth.
She could quit, but that would force an open confrontation with Clint. She’d not ready for that. She’s not capable of that. Yet.
“She could quit” is like saying the abused wife could leave. It’s technically true, but so not helpful.
I’m on #TeamRachel and #TeamRuth.
Rachel’s right that Ruth should have been kicked out of the job. Ruth agrees with this. She got forced back into it by her abuser. She can’t do anything about that without pushing the confrontation she’s not yet capable of.
No, no, Rachel, you misunderstand, it was a mutually toxic, self-destructive relationship between two people with suffering from severe depression and a lack of a healthy outlet for their anger and distress!
… Wait, no, that doesn’t make it sound any better.
Disclaimer: I really like Ruth and Billie’s relationship plz don’t hurt meAs much as I love a good cathartic, evil-da-character-gets-punched scene- it’s nice to see some mature, non-violent resolution to conflicts here.
I’m sure Ruth is being sincere when she says she won’t hit Mary again, which is a positive thing, probably.
I’m still glad Billie is making no such promises. Mary can go to hell.
Well, she’s certainly paving her own way.
Nice and flat. two solid lanes, plenty of shoulder.
what annoys me about what rachel is saying is that she doesn’t seem to have talked to billie at all about her relationship
i.e. she is making a buttload of assumptions
but at least she has good intentions i guess
Yeah, she’s getting mad about shit that – while definitely messed up – Billie herself is obviously no longer mad about.
yeah
and while what she’s actually mad at is ruth still being in charge and, possibly, ever having been in charge at all…which is understandable…
and i guess part of the thing about having a secret relationship is that nobody knows about it. no one can see you when you’re cute together, literally nobody knows what you see in each other. and i mean there is a level of which that is nobody’s business but also it doesn’t mean people don’t want to know.
honestly i would imagine that ruth has left rachel unsettled for a very long time and she is reacting out of that
i would also wonder if rachel put in her name for RA
I just remembered… Billie and Ruth were also *faking* arguments and violence to cover up the relationship. That’s gotta have made for a really misleading picture, so I guess Rachel’s assumptions make a little more sense now.
Still tragic, though. And Doopyboop’s point below still stands.
oof. yikes. but yes
no one really has reason to trust Ruth, and no one has reason to fear her anymore either
I feel like Billie and Joyce can find some good common ground on their desire to punch everyone who harms or upsets their loved ones in the face.
Sir gets tag teamed by Billie and Joyce? 🙂
I gotta admit, for all of Rachel’s apparent worry and scorn for Billie’s sake, I didn’t see her raise a hand to help Billie or even talk to her after being slammed into a couch. Joyce was the only one to check up on her, as the only responses we got were some gossip and even a remark about ‘tweeting’. And the only ones before to express any discomfort or concern about Billie and Ruth are Walky and Daisy(namely, when Billie told her about being pressed against a wall and kissed). It’s kinda telling when you wanna go on a crusade for somebody without talking to them or even offering to help them. I’m not so much a fan of that behavior. Rachel has reasons to find the relationship appalling but at no point during the bullying did Rachel intervene and even here, she’s not trying to help what she assumes is an abuse victim. She’s just taking pot shots at the abuser.
Pro-tip, if you think someone is an abuser, don’t berate them about being it like this because guess who’s gonna endure the frustration…? Try to berate them AFTER the abuse victim is out of their range and life or else they’ll just be hurt.
ye.
i think the bigger concern here for rachel is about ruth’s bullying, because that’s the behavior she’s seen and knows. there is a level of which, sometimes, when you’ve only seen one kind of behavior from somebody it is difficult to imagine them behaving in any other way. but, yeah, abuse is a pretty heavy accusation to throw at someone without any weight behind it, and a pretty dangerous one too.
I wouldn’t call these accusations that Rachel makes of Ruth “pot shots.” She is confronting Ruth head-on with the facts as she sees them. And unfortunately for Ruth, Rachel’s assessment is spot-on. Ruth, is an extraordinarily abusive person who, if she did these things in real life, wouldn’t merely lose her job as an R.A., but could find herself expelled and facing criminal charges.
Most of us here feel a great deal of sympathy for Ruth because we are getting a full look at her life and her horrible situation…something we generally do not have a chance to get of other people who engage in abusive behavior. We see that she is not abusive out of sadism, but rather she trying to take control over other people out of her own powerlessness.
But for the person who is being abused, bullied, belittled or terrorized, it does not make it any better that their abuser also suffers abuse. It certainly does not justify the abuse, even if it makes it more understandable.
For me, it’s not even that I feel great sympathy for Ruth. It’s that Rachel made no move to help Billie, who she apparently thinks is an abuse victim, and yet she’s willing to use Billie as a weapon to accuse Ruth of being an abuser. Which is pretty fucked up since Billie is right there, she’s ignoring Billie’s own choices in this matter or Billie’s own feelings, and doesn’t REALLY care about Billie in the first place. Billie is just a convenient reason to say Ruth is an abuser. Which…yeah, Ruth did abuse Billie, very publicly. It’s not wrong that she thinks Ruth is an abuser, she’s wrong to A) blatantly call her out like this and B) not really give a shit about Billie. If Ruth were a real abuser, as in really beat the shit out of Billie and kept her in the relationship by threatening to hurt her, this would put Billie in one hell of a place, as other comments have explained in better words than I.
It’s probably worth remembering that Rachel is a sophomore – if she was in this wing last year as well, she’s seen an extra year of mean, alcoholic, bullying Ruth.
You don’t shake that experience off easily.
Rachel’s got a point, but she’s only seen one side of the issue. She doesn’t know about Ruth’s asshole grandpa forcing her to stay on as RA, or that Billie and Ruth are both ok with their relationship even though it started out very unhealthy.
Abusers are often victims themselves. The fact that we know that, and sympathize with her is part of the problem. It’s also sometimes a reason that people stay with abusers… because they sympathize with them, and “really know them”.
No, Rachel doesn’t have that emotional info we do… but that doesn’t mean that we should ever excuse Ruth’s behavior, even with that information. The cycle has to stop somewhere… and Rachel is still right on calling her out on it. To TELL her about the abuse that Ruth gets, would only serve to make her feel bad. But it still never changes the fact that Ruth was also abusive.
I’ve gotten very afraid of this whole “cycle of abuse” thing since hearing some stories about my grandparents.
Heck, I’ve got absolutely *terrible* stories about my relatives on both sides of my heritage (my maternal grandfather was captured by the Germans and sent to one of the camps and was also an alcoholic and a MAJOR abuser; supposedly my maternal great-grandmother committed suicide by shooting herself in the head; my maternal grandmother was clinically depressed and HATED my mother; my paternal grandfather may have been an alcoholic at some point but then became a fundamentalist Christian; I have a cousin who told my middle sister that she was scared that my sister was “going to hell” because we were apparently heathens in the eyes of my father’s family; and I’ve got an aunt on my mom’s side whom I used to love dearly but who cut us off completely when my mom earned her doctorate.
I too worry about my genetic heritage. I DO have problems with drinking, depression, and anger. But I REFUSE to let my genetic heritage define me.
On another note, my mom is a doctor of psychology and a licensed forensic psychogist. She has told me that there is not necessarily a connexion between being abused and being an abuser. I cannot say enough wonderful things about her. She is the best person I have ever known. She experienced horrendous abuse from her family, but she never ever EVER abused me or my sisters. Again, I can’t speak well enough of her. I think she is a great example of how people can break the “cycle of abuse.”
honestly the cycle of abuse thing is more or less bs
like. ok. they estimate that a third of children who have been abused grow up to be abusers. which is – not a good level, by any means, but that means that a whole two thirds of children who have been abused grow up to not be abusers. and that is not compared with the rates of children who were not abused who grow up to be abusers at all, because most of the research i was able to find focuses on the victims rather than the perpetrators. i am going to make a solid guess that this is because the victims are the people who think that there is a problem, and the perpetrators have little reason to care.
does this mean that living with abuse does not give you really bad coping mechanisms and ideas with which to process the world?? of course not. but it also doesn’t mean that you ever stopped being capable of making your own choices. usually. i would assume that kids forced to participate would have their own particular issues and traumas.
but like having been victimized does not force you to re-enact your victimization on others in order to…i dont even know what. it takes a very specific kind of person to abuse purposefully and malignantly, is what i’m getting at. and if you are not that person then you do not need to worry about being that person. just normal person stuff like “oh, that thing i do is screwed up, i should stop”. and honestly being able to even get that far is very far away from somebody who would abuse.
like – if you are able to recognize the behavior as bad and feel guilty about it, that is a very good sign of not being an abusive person.
There are also some experts who suggest that abusers try to play up a past history of abuse to excuse their behavior, garner sympathy, and allow them to present a “remorseful” front while continuing their behavior with greater stealth. Most abuse victims are very opposed to engaging in abuse themselves because they know how bad it is to be subjected to it.
exactly!! it’s literally like living through abuse makes you understand how horrible it is to endure it, zomg.
most eye-opening thing for me was reading a book about a guy who runs an abuser program and learning that the person who was his main focus were the abused parties. because most of the time, the abusive people did not learn anything from being told that abuse was wrong!! they already came at it from a position of entitlement, and engaged in abuse because it got them the entitlements they felt they deserved. there really wasn’t much they could do for them except tell them that what they were doing was wrong and they needed to stop.
I don’t think its bs.. it’s describing the cyclical nature of it like the commenter above. It’s not meant to tell people that they absolutely will abuse someone else, but if you are raised in that environment you literally don’t know of any other way to be unless you expose yourself to healthy behaviours, go to therapy, etc. If your parents taught you, like Gramps has taught Ruth, that violence is the way to express any feelings lest you be seen as “weak”- well that’s what you’re going to do. But many children are lucky enough to have a natural disposition of not being a pent up volcano.
You are right in that everyone has a choice. But the cyclical nature of abuse is just telling us that the idea that we are not influenced by our upbringing at all in any way, that is bs. So to be prepared to unlearn unhealthy behaviours and replace them with healthy ones.
Ruth was abused. But she also abused others. We need to get rid of the idea that those two things can’t be true at once, and the idea that being abused gives you a free pass on being shitty to others.
It’s BS. It’s never been anything but BS and shitheads like you perpetuating it that fucking makes it live.
I’m not a fucking time bomb waiting to go off. I should be able to express anger without self flagellating in guilt over it and it’s people like you that make me fucking terrified of that while self satisfyingly jerking yourself over it.
Seriously let me make something as fucking crystal clear as possible for you.
You are not helping. You are not being moderate. You are not being understanding. You are perpetuating the same cycle of fear and self loathing that abuse victims suffer through every fucking day out of some misguided pretense at realism.
Abuse victims need to know that they have a choice, but they don’t need to helpfully reminded over and over that their anger is a fucking poison and that there’s always that fucking chance they’ll flip out and become the person who hurt them.
That’s interesting coming from someone whose avatar is a character who is repeatedly abused by the character he loves and goes on to gain untra-violent super strength at the thought of losing his abuser. Face it; Cyclonus is basically Ruth.
Amusingly, I have made that very observation, though for different reasons.
Anyway Cyclonus is a toy robot in a comic book about toy robots in space having adventures so I judge him by different standards than a grounded college drama starring fleshy human folks.
Like lest we forget that this is a comic where fucking Megatron is the heroic captain of the Lost Light. I think Ultra Magnus and Rung are the only characters who haven’t done something really fucked up by this point so Cyclonus kicking Tailgate that one time before his character development kicked in is kinda small potatoes, because, you know, nonhuman toy robots.
I like Blackarachnia even though she took part in the attempted genocide of the protohumans and thought she earned her redemptive story arc. Because she’s a toy robot.
Also this is the third day in a row where I’ve somehow ended up talking about Transformers here so I guess this is my life now.
Wait a minute. It’s not bullshit. It’s a helpful tool to help people recognize the pattern. It’s a pretty universal pattern. We’ll agree to disagree, I suppose. I am no way getting off on telling people they are awful, that’s too far for you to have gone.
Yeah, when i said “pent up volcano”, what I meant was ready to explode at the slightest provocation- like my abuser was to me (I was raised in that environment, by the way). She would blow up over the slightest things. Just like Ruth has been doing the entire freaking comic strip, up until she finally exhausted her energy. Just like many children have the same anger problems. Here’s a disclosure: I was very angry as a child. Angry, and sad, and resentful. I had trouble regulating my emotions.
And it is true that a lot of children, myself included, grow up with deep resentment and anger stemming from our upbringing – that is a fact, read actual decades of hundreds of papers of literature about it. That’s not me being a shithead, or jerking myself off or making shit up- kindly fuck off with the name calling.
Guess what- I have a lot of fear of becoming an abuser too. I have a lot of self loathing and what have you from the upbringing I had. But you know what? I had to learn what love is, I had to recognize behaviors that were shitty that I was doing to other people. I’m still shitty to people sometimes. I’m still working on it. Being shitty to someone is not the end of the world, but it does mean improving on your behavior. Is it unfair? Yes it’s unfair – it’s not our fault our parents or whomever made us adopt certain behaviors to survive. Not everyone is there yet, and it’s a process that takes decades, and that’s fine.
The anger is there. It is an emotion that we’ll always feel like sadness or happiness or whatever. It is not poisonous unless you let it become that, but it is totally and completely dishonest to claim that letting it out in ways like Ruth has has no effect on their (our) lives whatsoever. It’s about *recognizing* what’s going on. *Predicting* what may come next, especially as it applies to abusers themselves.
I don’t understand you keep making the leap from: “a lot abusers were abused themselves” to “you are saying that since i have been abused, therefore I am horrible”. That’s not true. That’s like saying since most people who get a certain cancer fall within an age bracket, absolutely everyone who reaches that age will get cancer. That’s false way of thinking.
Let’s put it this way: children learn from their parents. that will never not be true. Those tools they use are their “initial” tools they use, up until they become adults. After that, they learn and experience different things, and they have the choice to improve themselves – or they just don’t, and stick to the old ways whatever the old ways are. This is be further influenced by mental illness, outside influences, etc. That’s basically what the cyclical nature of abuse (especially in families) is saying.
Recognizing that you have been harmed and that you picked up some shitty behaviour is not the same as “lol cycle of abuse.”
Yes I have anger issues stemming from my mother’s abuse. My grandparents were saints so it didn’t come from them so I sure as fuck wasn’t abused by someone who had undergone that. Now I’m stuck cleaning up all this shattered glass and I don’t need assholes like you helpfully reminding me to always fear and loathe myself because, uh oh, I will become an abuser otherwise.
And make no mistake, that is what you are fucking doing. You are not providing helpful checks. You are continuing the same miasma of fear we have to suffer through everyday. Because you, and the people like you, aren’t concerned with us getting help. You want us put in our place.
So, here’s an idea, when trying to talk about how abuse victims can have anger issues, try not to phrase it in a way that shames abuse victims in to hating themselves. Let them know that they were wronged, and that it’s okay that they’re hurt. That they have the power not to fall into that same pit.
Don’t open with a fucking speech about how you’re doomed to become an abuser, that your abuser was abused, and that’s just how it is. Do you know how badly that fucks us up? To be reminded constantly, fucking constantly, that we can fall into those same traps?
In summary: It’s bullshit and go fuck yourself for perpetuating that culture of fear.
Genuine question: where did I say any of that?
Where am I enveloping people in a “miasma of fear”? When did I tell you to loathe yourself – you brought up your own fear and loathing.
And I love how you just glossed over my experiences like I’m not speaking from experience. It’s not an “us vs. them” situation. Even in your own words I would be part of “we”. We all experienced abuse in whatever form. There are many days when I feel like I’m holding on by a thread. Not only you – don’t try to invalidate my experiences like that.
That last paragraph is the exact opposite of what I was saying. I’m not going to repeat myself, so just look it up yourself. This kind of absolute thinking glosses over the nuances of the experiences of many kids. But do you know what I think the cycle means? It means saying to that child: “I know what this is, I understand it, here’s how I can help you break free.” But you decide how you want to interpret it yourself.
And no I will not go fuck myself, thank you kindly for the offer.
If your parents taught you, like Gramps has taught Ruth, that violence is the way to express any feelings lest you be seen as “weak”- well that’s what you’re going to do.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s not being specific. I asked you where I supposedly told you that everyone is doomed to become their abuser, always, all the time, without exception. And that they should become self hating, self loathing people consumed by fear.
And you didn’t answer that question.
Is Ruth not an abuser to the people on her floor? Slamming people into walls and slapping them is not simply “shitty behavior”. And besides you’re falling for the thing I said before – it’s not absolute, but in cases like Ruth’s, she became an abuser towards someone else.
Telling abuse survivors that they can become their abusers is perpetuating. Using buzzwords like “the cycle of abuse” is perpetuating. Emphasizing how abuse survivors are responsible for every slight misstep, that every mistake they make is a reminder of how broken they are, is perpetuating.
If you care at all, like even the slightest, then you’d think the first thing you’d want to do is emphasize at length that what matters is that there is a choice. That we were hurt, and that we deserve to feel better about ourselves. To start that off with a diatribe about how, oh no, the cycle of abuse is totes real and you just have to learn to stop being shit is not fucking helping. What the fuck do you think calling it a “cycle” even means if not to imply that it’s not something you’re inherently going to continue, that you have to put effort into not being shit, and that every fucking failure is on you.
Seriously, maybe abuse survivors would be better off if we didn’t start the healing process off with a big fucking speech about how they’re doomed to be shit until they tie up their bootstraps. Maybe instead of drilling that fucking fear into my skull why don’t we fucking help them. Maybe we should let them know that they’re the victims and that they were hurt and that it’s not their fucking fault. Not make sure they know how fucking shitty and broken they are, but don’t worry, you just have to try really hard to fix that. How fucking alienating and destructive do you think it is to be told that there’s even the slightest chance I could continue what was done to me.
That is what I seen over and over from you and on this forum from other posters and it’s fucking sick and I’ve had enough. I’m not downplaying your experiences but I’m sure as fuck not going to let you shit on mine. I’m not going to fucking let anyone make me feel broken ever again.
Like, you’re obviously taking that one quote out of the context which it was in. Like the cycle of abuse being a whole psychological/sociological concept that has been studied for decades, *that has a context*.
And I’m am tired of being made to feel like I’m responsible for someone’s troubles, like my abuser did to me. You’re accusing me of something I’m not doing. I’m not downplaying your experiences. And something is only a buzzword when people use it who don’t understand it. I know what I’m talking about.
And where did I say they shouldn’t get help? I didn’t say they should “just stop”. I said improve yourself- that can mean a number of things, like therapy or a support system, *whatever they need*. And I can’t do that work for them, nor can someone else do that work for me.
I did not say you were doomed to become your abuser, and that you deserve to stay feeling the way you do for forever. No, no, no.
Again and agin we have this argument and you accuse me of being this horrific person who wants to destroy you and abuse victims everywhere. Which is ironic considering you’re the once accusing me of making survivors feel like shit about they way they cope.
Stop demonizing me for a second and look it up and try to understand. Or don’t.
So, I’m disengaging from this. Let’s disagree. It became personal and there was no reason for you to make it that way.
*facepalm* neither of you are entirely right or wrong here.
Mav, that part Spencer quoted can be taken the way he took it. I know you didn’t *intend* it that way, but remember that people don’t always see things the way you want them to. I’ve seen enough people here reacting this way to the phrase “cycle of abuse”, so it’s not helpful to insist your definition of the phrase is Right and theirs is unreasonable. Apparently other people have abused that phrase too much to use it lightly, and that sucks, but, that’s how language works.
Spencer… Maybe later think about the black & white thinking you fell into here. You said some things that needed to be said, but you unintentionally exaggerated other things. You equated “the slightest chance” to bring doomed to a 100% chance of being just as horrible as your abuser and… Well, you don’t deserve that. You deserve to be able to calmly consider whether you did a bad thing without triggering that awful internalized endless abusive rant. My own NVoice loves to do that to me and it’s not fair, and I’m starting to break free of that, and I wish I could save a magic wand and set you free too. *Hugs*
At Helpful: fine, not everyone reacts to things the way I do. That’s the point I was trying to make though: How one interprets something and what that thing actually is can be different. Language can’t work if a word has several completely different definitions. The concept I was talking about is not without it’s problems, you are correct, but people using it to deliberately make people feel bad is just that. A misuse of it. It doesn’t and shouldn’t automatically undo all the parts that make sense; that is the black and white thinking.
And I’m sorry for pushing really hard here. I definitely got caught up in the argument, and I dislike insults, no matter who they come from. But I am realizing this second that I most like did trigger Spencer, and I am sorry about that.
Okay, okay, I swear I’m done on this particular thread.
🙂 you got the important part of what I was trying to say, so yeah, let’s quit while we’re ahead. 😉
Also, noting that being abused and being an abuser isn’t mutually exclusive isn’t saying that abuse survivors grow up to be their abusers. I think it’s better to say that abuse survivors have mental and emotional wounds from what they’ve been through, and that untreated wounds have the potential to fester in ways that can but won’t always hurt other people. It’s not ‘you’re broken’, but ‘you’re hurt, and you should see a doctor’.
Hyperfocusing on the narratives where abuse survivors grow up to commit abusive acts is absolutely harmful, but not letting those narratives exist at all can also hurt survivors, since that also includes the subset of narratives where someone struggles with abusive behaviors and gets help and works on overcoming that.
I do agree with you, Spencer, that the way the ‘cycle of abuse’ is portrayed tends to be inaccurate and extremely harmful. But
Spencer: to be clear, your feelings are real and they matter. Actually I’m kinda impressed with how well you put them into words. You didn’t have the most optimal possible communication, but it wasn’t bad. 🙂
And I suppose it’s not the end of the world if I fail to communicate how it could have been better, either. 😉
Relevant Steven Universe song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rds7V5Sxu-4
…man, that song is still helping me process things. 🙂 I think my brain leveled up today. I was having lots of Feelings about stuff I did suboptimally today/yesterday, and I took some time to sit with those feelings, and I managed to sort of… *feel* them in the right way, that gave them the acknowledgement they needed, to let go and let my mind be at peace again. My body feels better too, not having as much stress bottled up. 🙂
i think that this particular concept of the cycle of abuse can be very harmful to survivors for two main reasons: the idea of becoming their abuser is so abhorrent it can prevent them from living their full lives (like raising kids, etc), and the idea that you can be just as bad as your abuser is something easily used by an abuser to keep them in abuse.
which is unfortunate!! because you don’t need a reason to leave a situation other than because you want to.
i’m not here to dogpile on anybody who learns bad behaviors and conceptions of the world from their abuse. like. you do what you have to in order to survive. i’m not here to excuse it, either – part of having agency means owning your choices, the good and the bad. i’m just very against the idea that having been abused means that you are fated to repeat your abuse.
like. having been stolen from doesn’t mean that you necessarily go on to steal, wtf
To your first paragraph, a question: would you say that a person with a lot of unhealthy coping patterns, without any intervention at all, has all the tools they need to become a parent? Say, someone who drinks heavily, or can’t keep a job, etc? I’m obviously not claiming abuse victims are alcoholics or anything like that, it’s just an example of what that concept is referring to.
I don’t think the stealing example is a good one – see the example of cancer statistics above.
Again, like I have said before, the cycle of abuse simply existing is not an absolute. It’s NOT ABSOLUTE. It’s *fear* of becoming abusive/not being a good person/making mistakes that makes people *think* that it is.
No parent is perfect; that is, no person comes at parenthood with all their shit figured out and all the healthy coping mechanisms. A person with a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms is someone who needs to do a lot of hard emotional work, granted. The point I’m making is: unhealthy coping mechanism is not the same thing as abusive. It may be the same thing as toxic, but someone who is toxic is not necessarily abusive. Abuse is about control and fear; an unhealthy coping mechanism is just about getting through the day.
Someone who drinks heavily or can’t hold a job needs to figure out how to stop/how to hold a job, agreed, but those are not coping mechanisms. I mean, the drinking might be, but it’s also a legitimate problem all on its own (and one that does not necessarily have abuse as a precursor!). We have support groups for these conditions.
I really think that the stealing metaphor works well! Because on a level, abuse of a child is the theft of their childhood. You lose so much because of abuse – the person you could have been, the opportunities you missed, the bullshit you had to put up with. Abuse is nothing but destruction. The construction, too, is valid – the state of a subject being acted upon does not necessarily translate into repetition of the action by the subject. People can learn what not to do from abuse as well as what to do, is what I’m saying.
Contrariwise, the cancer metaphor doesn’t work for me, because cancer isn’t sentient. It has no way to stop what it’s doing on its own. There’s nothing evil about it, it’s just the consequence of living in a world with diseases we haven’t learned how to fix. It’s just trying to live the same as anything else, and unfortunately its life means its host’s death. Abuse can’t be passed down the same way that cancer can, because it’s a series of behaviors, not a biological structure. Intergenerational and vicarious trauma are definitely things, but trauma is not the same thing as abuse.
I think…fear of becoming an abuser is a very valid one for someone who’s been abused. but I honestly don’t see how this particular concept of cycle of abuse benefits anyone. Like, okay, so what should it do? We should already be working our hardest to stop kids from being abused and nip that in the bud – not on the basis that those kids might grow up to be abusers, but because abuse is wrong and no one should have to go through it. Okay, maybe it might help us understand abusers better, but at that point it’s more important to stop them than understand them.
Effectively, an abuser is someone who takes the rules and twists them to their advantage. If they don’t get anything from the abuse they inflict, they won’t abuse. It’s that simple.
like: okay: to go with what you were saying before: you said that you struggled with anger and with regulating your emotions. When you realized that those were problems, what did you do? Did you try to stop? Were you horrified by the thought of hurting people? When you realized that the things you were doing were shitty, did you try to change? Because someone who is willing to do all of those things is better fit to be a parent than a lot of parents already out there.
I see your points, for sure. I will say that cyclical concept is not without its flaws, and I agree with you that toxic is different from abuse. I find it interesting to think that different people would draw that line in different places.
A coping mechanism is something that gets you through the day, nor matter how dysfunctional it is though. Drinking or hitting people to cope with negative emotions would be coping mechanisms.
Now that you explained the stealing, I think I understand it much better and have felt that way about my childhood myself. I think, my abuser’s childhood was stolen from her and she sought to steal mine from me though (and she said so many times – that I didn’t deserve to have a nice life because she didn’t). Maybe like that, like robbing Peter to pay Paul? Only the abuser is Paul. But then Peter chooses to ask for a loan or pick up extra hours instead of robbing someone else. Or Peter, having had many moments where someone has stolen from him, decides to steal from John because it’s easier than coping with his issues in a healthier way.
I agree with you- for sure the fear is valid. But what happens when the fear is paralyzing? When it prevents you from becoming better because you’re afraid to move in any direction? You wouldn’t be in a place to hear about improvement then, unless the level of fear is not as intense.
Yes, I was horrified. There are mistakes that i made that I still think about and feel like crap about. I realized many of my actions because I was lucky enough to have people who pointed them out to me, and who were understanding enough to remain friends with me. But they key is to recognize the problem. If I can’t admit that my problems are deeper than I realize, then I’m putting a bandaid rather than sewing up the wound.
I guess what I’m trying to say is we are where we are, and to get better we have to meet ourselves where we’re at. Sometimes we’re in a better place and sometimes we’re at rock bottom. But in the cyclical sense, it meeting where we’re at might mean accepting that we have anger problems, and then remembering that dad used snap at us (or hit us) for no reason. Or say your old boss screamed at you for every little mistake, so you hid small issues from him, but now at the new job, doing that gets you into trouble. Being a part of the cycle means being a victim too; it’s a common misconception that to be a part of the cycle one *must* also be an abuser, which is why I was emphasizing earlier that is has a context.
Then we realize we learned the behavior from dad, and then working on our anger issues- whatever that might mean, therapy, etc. Not being in the best place doesn’t mean we’re terrible people. It’s okay to need help. That’s something I’m still learning. In the past, I would have dug my heels in due to shame and ended up in more trouble than I had if I had had it about my wits to realize where I was in my life.
mmmmm drinking could be a coping mechanism, because it affects how you personally see the world; but hitting someone is…not really a coping mechanism?? it’s externalizing your emotions to the point of harming someone else. like whatever pleasure a person gets from that seems really…unlikely to help them. it’s destructive. so i would like to place that action on the Not a Coping Mechanism for $100 please
I mean. going back to the comic, you could maybe claim that Amazi-girl is a coping mechanism and the vigilante work is a coping mechanism, but it’s more like…an outlet for those violent urges in an ostensibly pro-social way? It would have to reduce stress in order to be a coping mechanism, and lbr I cannot see how punching someone reduces someone’s stress. Punching a punching bag, sure; going to a boxing match and punching your opponent, sure; but going home and terrorizing people? … maybe. ok so this is an attack mechanism, which is technically a form of coping. But like of the two that would qualify, displacement and acting out: but acting out is..actually not coping, whereas displacement is just shifting the target of the emotion. which is also not coping.
http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/coping/coping.htm
re: the stealing childhood thing, like. an abuser stealing another kid’s childhood is never going to give them back their own, not really. at some point you just gotta live the life you’ve been given to live, you know? you can’t get what you lost back but you can live what you have now. and you can make out of what you have something that is worthwhile, possibly.
ahhh you misunderstand me: just because the fear of becoming an abuser is a valid one doesn’t mean i mean that it’s, like, realistic. it’s valid because you know firsthand how awful it is to suffer from an abuser; it’s not realistic because you know firsthand how awful it is to suffer from an abuser. if that makes sense!
and yes – i don’t mean to say that you can’t pick up bad habits and reactions from abusive relationships! like, i do not mean to say that people leave these relationships perfectly fine, because that would be a) untrue and b) wildly unfounded. like. a lot of the evidence of an abusive relationship is in the mind and emotions of the victim.
and mostly here i was talking about a model of the cycle of abuse that says that abusers must always have abuse in their background, and that abuse victims must always be wary of becoming abusers. when neither are necessarily the case! and this myth being propagated is harmful.
Kin of curious if you have kids and ever heard your own voice as a tape recording of something your parents said.
Well, my mother also directly tries to make out that I’m the one that hurts her. She does it to my father, too.
My sister does it as well, but… she always wanted to be my mother when she grew up, but lacks the capability. She’s such an inept liar who’s so openly and proudly a bully that she never makes me second-guess myself.
Actually, she can be helpful. Her claims that I am the bad guy fully reaffirm that I absolutely am not.
If you ever start wanting to do abusive things, talk to someone instead. That’s like 90% of the solution. 🙂 And it’s why Ruth’s not what Rachel thinks of her – the hospital put her into therapy, so she’s talking to people and learning new coping skills so she doesn’t feel desperate enough to turn to abuse. (and she’s not the sort of person to choose abusive behaviour if she can see any other option)
Rachel…is not entirely wrong. (Although her objectification of Billie is NOT OKAY, obviously!)
Ruth is trying to do the right thing here. But it’s not as easy as just apologizing. I know I tend to TMI all over the comments section here, but I am clinically depressed, have a problem with my temper, and have a drinking problem (for which I’m getting help!). As a result, I’ve done a lot of stupid sh!te and hurt a lot of people about whom I care. I’ve done the best I can to make amends. However, in some cases it has taken literal years for people to accept my apologies and feel okay with me. That’s perfectly fine – it’s NOT about me and anyone I’ve hurt more than has the right to continue to feel hurt and has no responsibility to accept my apologies.
IMHO, Ruth is on the right track, but it will probably take a while.
Can I just say I kind of love Billie here? Her insistence on punching people who upset Ruth is kind of dear (despite the fact that it’s not really a good idea). When my partner got unjustly let go from one of his previous jobs (I think I mentioned this in a previous post), he LITERALLY had to hold me back from smashing the store window with a brick. (Remember that temper I mentioned?) But I read Billie’s aggression as her loving attempt to protect and defend Ruth. 🙂
Hey, don’t worry about TMI, and good on you for seeking help and being self aware enough to seek it.
Thank you! 🙂 I’m trying to do the best I can. I have a lot of stuff going on in my life right now and I often find myself in a position where it is on me to “fix” things. But I’m trying really hard to be a better person and to right some of the wrongs I’ve done in my life. So I *do* identify with Ruth to an extent. 🙂
There are things I’ve told this comment section that I have said in literally no other place or time.
Same here – a couple of strips back, I posted about being sexually assaulted on a family vacation. Aside from telling my partner, my post was the FIRST time I ever spoke about it. I really appreciate the community here and how supportive everyone is. 🙂
Like a two months ago I told everyone here about my crippling fear of my own anger responses about two weeks before I told my therapist. It’s (mostly) a safe place here (though we do occasionally get a “that guy”).
*is strongly tempted to change name to “That Guy” now*
*Appropriate non-contact gesture of support* Jaime and Rukduk.
Thank you.
Hmmm. I will note however that Ruth only said she’d never “strike” Mary again. This does not exclude actual disciplinary channels for when Mary inevitably steps over the line. Which will probably take the form of the good old “three violations of college dorm policy and you get kicked out of the dorms”. And Mary will be surprised when it happens in…say two days comic time, that she is informed of her first violation of dorm policy, because she believes she has Carte Blanche in this instant. Also, wow. Rachel doesn’t know it, but she just went for Ruth’s throat with that comment about abusers, because Ruth hates the idea of being like “Sir Grampus” and hates the part of her that does lash out. Rachel doesn’t know these things and doesn’t know Ruth is an abuse victim. And while her criticism of Ruth as an RA is understandable, she’s doing it the day Ruth got out of the hospital. So it feels even rougher. Rachel’s not entirely in the wrong with her words, but she’s also nowhere near the right.
Billie, that’s the girlfriend you want, but not the girlfriend you need.
Also, Rachel sounds like she came right out of this comments section a while back. I mean, not that she’s totally off base, but she’s also not 100% on–I suppose because we’re omniscient and she’s not.
Really slacking there Rachel, you really should get to work developing that omniscience donchaknow?
Was Voltaire correct about knowing all = forgiving all?
Hhmm. A good question. Reminds me of something from one of my old professors “Both Locke and Hobbs are right, and both Locke and Hobbs are wrong.”
if you want punching, get lesson sheet and punch some holes
Even though Rachel’s perspective on the situation makes the things she’s saying understandable, she’s still being really goddamn inappropriate with the comment about Billie. Even if you’re certain someone’s in an abusive relationship you don’t start by calling that out to both of them, in front of both of them jesus h christ that’s just going to give the abuser ammunition and likely make the victim more convinced that their abuser is themself a victim
. . . also nice tact in light of the recent hospitalization. :i
While Rachel is wrong about Billie and Ruth’s relationship those are some valid concerns.
Ok, now that’s a line that shouldn’t have been crossed.
When did Ruth hit Mary? I don’t remember this.
Whiteboard Ding Dong Bandit storyline.
Thanks! I found it. It was off-panel slap. Maybe that’s why I didn’t remember it. The question is, why didn’t Mary report Ruth slapping her? Because that is the kind of thing Mary would love to do?
Glad I was helpful^^
Because Mary didn’t want Ruth to be replaced with a new RA – that would mean that Mary would have to start from zero, as far as gathering blackmail material and getting leverage over the RA goes.
That’s also why Mary tried to cover up Ruth and Billie’s outing – she lost leverage over Ruth.
Back in the Ding-Dong bandit storyline, where Ruth slapped a sharpie drawn dick onto Mary’s face. It was a while ago.
It was glorious.
Oh c’mon F.C! I had this one!
Witness and be amazed at this pride obliterating b*tch slap!
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/male-anatomy/
Well I guess if Ruth is going to change her ways for the better, in comes Rachel to be an obstacle in this story. Not a criticism, just an observation.
That’s taking your apology a little too far there, Ruth. I mean, you should still reserve the right to punch her when necessary. Just make sure you are fully cognizant of all the reasons you’re doing it so you know for sure it’s not part of the abuse cycle.
Eh, Ruth should never punch Mary just because Mary makes her mad and deliberately eggs her on. It’d only be okay in self-defense or the defense of someone else, and defending from verbal attacks doesn’t count.
It’s not even a matter of Mary not deserving it at this point, however you want to go about defining how people ‘deserve’ things. It’s a matter of Mary being the kind of person who WOULD twist that into her favor. I really believe that Mary provokes people on purpose so they’ll lash out at her violently or otherwise, which just reinforces her world belief that they’re bad people and she’s the persecuted perfect saint, who would never use VIOLENCE on other people. I can’t actually say whether or not Mary would resort to physical violence beyond setting down a glue trap for Carla, which accomplished the same thing as a punch to the face with the plus side of ruining Carla’s skates, but was set up in such a way that Carla had to literally skate into it, thus providing Mary internal wiggle room for it being okay. But she strikes me as the type of person who doesn’t see what they’re willing to do as violent, but defines harmless acts by others as violence against her personally, such as daring to be LGBT while living in the same wing as Mary.
Mary seems to me to be a Mike Pence or a Milo type.
Someone who means harm and violence, but never wants to be seen directly delivering said harm and violence. Keeping her actions bloodless, punching down, and with enough deniability to let herself off the hook for the intended effect of her actions. And maybe at times she’ll be violent, but always in ways she can deny she intended to be violent. After all that glue was just an escalation of a prank war, not a genuine attempt to hurt Carla and break her stuff. No, never. What an unforeseen consequence.
Mary is a classic social bully. I have experience with a lot of social bullies.
They don’t yell abuse at you across the hallway. That’s more the ballpark of a physical bully who knows they can’t get away with punching you just then.
Social bullies engineer situations to tear apart your social support in the area and make everyone else hate and/or ridicule you. Like Mary right now – not sure if Mary engineered Rachel to be there, but since she is there, Mary knew exactly the social posture to take to put Ruth into a lose-lose situation. Lose moral high ground on pushing back against Mary for her attempted reign of terror, or lose her sought-after redemption in the eyes of her strongest critic.
Cuz, I know Ruth. In Ruth’s headspace right now, she will not have Done Redemption right until she earns Rachel’s forgiveness. And damn the consequences of what she has to do to get it. Ruth’s a perfectionist that way – all the successes in the world don’t matter if she has one failure to focus on. Mary knows Ruth as well, it seems, and I fully expect a lot of sneaky Mary bullshit in view of Rachel so that Ruth can’t react appropriately.
I agree with all of this and I think that’s the piece that Ruth will have to learn. That she can let go of her perfectionism and that she doesn’t need to debase herself to win over Rachel (who is unlikely to ever like her or forgive her). Nor does she have to be the perfect RA who meets a superhuman standard to be good enough.
Oh, I agree with you. That was the part of being fully self aware and cognizant of why she is punching someone I was aiming for. I do believe in the power of punching, say, Nazis, or punching in self defense, as you mentioned. Which is why I’m sad that Ruth made such a broad statement — there are times where she may need to stand up for herself and defend herself physically and to promise to never ever lay hands on someone who basically led her to a suicidal place is something I’m not comfortable with.
Aw, come on Willis get to the…. PUNCH line (buh dum tsch)
Not the C-word! I hate when people call me a croupier.
I’m pretty sure the C word is Viola. I also believe that the drums might not be overtly racist its because they don’t know what race is or that their band determines affiliation based on race but have the some structure for it whereas strings for the most part aren’t really band instruments.
i hate it when people call me a crepe. 🙁
True C-word story. We were at a fast food jint (Culvers) with my son and his family. My d-i-l said something was crap and my grandson started chanting “Mommy said the C word” over and over quite loudly. That his parents asked him to stop just meant he wanted to say it more.
Is there a real way to tell the difference between the first honeymoon phase and genuinely trying to turn over a new leaf. I mean we know that Ruth at this point doesn’t want the job if she can not be better at it, and that Ruth is not trying to control of Billie okay right now she is trying to control Billie but she’s not trying to control the way Billie’s life in general. But does Rachel have any way to know that?
She does have a way. She could try talking to Billie, which she obviously hasn’t done.
Its true if she was really concerned about Billie accusing Ruth of abuse like that is not the way to go. However, finding out if its abuse would be a little more complicated than just talking to Billie though. Billie could lie because she is lying to herself, or because she’s afraid that Rachel could confront Ruth and make things worse for Billie.
Rachel would need to study what to ask, and how to ask it, and what to look out for.
What Fart Captor said.
But also to answer your original question, maybe not. And if you are the target of someone you suspect might be honeymooning phase you or with whom the thought of being amicable with them makes you sick and violently angry, well… it’s usually a better practice to just make as many final cuts away from them as you can than to try and go on the offensive on calling them out and risk getting sucked back in by them.
What is this “honeymoon” thing? I’ve only ever known that word to be used in reference to a newly-wed couple.
in the context of abuse, it’s the thing where the abuser does something really screwed up! you say it is screwed up, or it is acknowledged that it is screwed up. the abuser does something really nice for you so that you have no idea what to think of them and their behavior when they’re capable of both ends of the spectrum. you stick around. rinse and repeat.
It’s when the Joker pushes you through a window, and you’re mad at him and totally going to break up with him for real this time, but he somehow sneaks a rose into your cell at Arkham attached to a loving note, and so everything’s cool again.
:c
This is why I love DC Bombshells and Harley and Ivy’s relationship there, because Harley/Joker plots constantly break my damn heart.
exACTLY
As much as I like Harley’s inclusion in the DC universe…
Yeah, anytime she’s sticking with the Joker it’s absolutely horrible.
Bombshells is pretty great overall though.
Bombshells is the best!!! Harley and Ivy are great together and their relationship is so beautiful!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_abuse#3:_Reconciliation.2Fhoneymoon
Also possibly relevant, Love Bombing. https://datingasociopath.com/sociopath-character-traits/cunning-and-manipulative/i-love-you/seducing-and-love-bombing/
Goddamn, that’s a lot of responses. With Willis himself giving an example I can immediately understand, as well as multiple links to helpful pages, even. This community makes learning a blast.
Rachel’s particular animus sort of feels out of left field here. I went through the Rachel archives to see if there’s anything in particular Ruth has done to Rachel that she would need to apologize for, but couldn’t find anything. I suppose here she is just acting as a representative of all the students who have lived under Ruth’s “authoritarian rule” for however long Ruth’s been an RA. But I hope we get some sort of backstory explaining why Rachel is so outspoken about this.
Rachel is established to be a returning student (read:not a freshman), so as Nono mentioned above, it’s possible she may have been more personally on the receiving end of some of Ruth’s mistreatment last year.
I hope I didn’t misread the question you were posing. On reread it seems like I may have which makes my response pointless, repetitious, and possibly demeaning; and I apologise if this was the case.
Naw, we cool.
I need something more specific from Willis than “Ruth has been Rachel’s RA for a while” though.
The scoreboard says you are mistaken, Mary.
Oh yeah, there’s two swears right there.
Some pretty strong ones, at that.
Damn, has it really been a whole year since Carla’s Spectacular Revenge? I feel like it should be commemorated as a holiday.
“Me? Oh, I never swear.”
I forgot the c-word incident til now. That in mind, Ruth is the only one of these two acting in good faith, and I don’t know if I’d be as big as her right now.
When kids act like kids, grownups often make them apologize, and the phrase “Say out like you mean it” gets used. Time for Mary to apologize for the c- word thing like she means it.
Mary has upped her unlikeability with those five words. I hardly knew that was possible.
Yup, Ruth is acting in good faith and Mary is bad faith exploiting that like hell.
Which is politically relevant at the moment given the massive amount of nazi fucks whose entire political arguments surround trying to exploit other people’s good faith with bad faith horse shit.
The best way of describing this strip is “Perspective”
At the moment, Rachel is valid in her protest over Ruth being able to keep her job, as that was a serious lapse in judgement on Chloe and more importantly, the entire campus’ decision making. I don’t care how much money Ruth’s gramps offered the campus or how many connections he has, Ruth has assaulted numerous residents here. Each one is it’s own case of Assault and can be charged leading to an arrest. If word of this were to get out, the campus would undoubtedly lose applicants due to allowing their students to get assaulted, losing them money in the long run from tuition and financial aid. In that sense, keeping Ruth, the abuser, on campus was a massive lapse in judgement. Then there is the fact that in Rachel’s eyes, Billie is an abuse victim that is in a relationship with her abuser. Not helping matters is that when they were hiding the relationship, they engaged in “Fake Fights” which would give the impression that is actually was a physically abusive relationship. What I can’t sympathize with is how she phrased her relationship with Billie: “And yet you get to keep her.” For one thing, that is entirely ignoring the notion that Billie has any say in the relationship, and while Rachel is justified in assuming its a form of Stockholm/abuse victim still loves the abuser, the fact she says this while Billlie is in the room, knowing she is in it, makes Rachel sound like she too is considering Billie a possession. I also must second something said by Doopyboop. I’ve checked the archive of Rachel’s appearences, and she did not aide Billie when Ruth threw her. As a matter of fact, her behavior seems a tad inconsistent across the archive. First, she seems like an ordinary minor character. Then, when Carla is giving Ruth breakfast, she is poking fun at Carla. Then, when Mary is blackmailing Ruthless and won’t let them check, Rachel is with Agatha considering getting the RA. I may be a bit cynical in saying this, but if she hates Ruth so much, why would she care if Ruth was suicidal, then go back to hating her when she is okay? If she hated her, wouldn’t she be indifferent at best? Why would she tease Carla about liking Ruth rather than pity her or call her an idiot? I know Carla is a self admitted ass-whole, but if Rachel really sees Ruth as this tyrannical abuser that has roped Billie into a toxic relationship, why would she tease Carla for wanting to engage in that kind of relationship? Back on topic, it seems a tad strange that she doesn’t help Billie when the incident happens yet calls Ruth out on “possessing” Billie weeks after the fact, when Billie has seemingly forgiven her. Hell, for that matter, while Rachel has merit in assuming Billie is suffering a form of Stockholm of something, to outright assume it with only circumstantial evidence seems a bit dumb. Yes, she is about 19-20 and thus has a right to be dumb in instances, but to do this assumption in front of the person the assumption is about seems more like something Walky would do, I.E., something done without thinking.
Now, on the other side, Billie is justifiably angry at what Rachel is saying, but that’s because she knows THE REAL RUTH. Yes, Ruth can be a bit of a bongo at times, and yes, by definition, she is an abuser. However, Billie is aware of where this stems from, both Alcoholism, Depression, Emotional Abuse at the hands of her douche Gramps, etc., and is able to see past what Ruth tries to show. On the other hand though, only Billie, and to a much lesser extent, Carla, actually know this. Everyone else though sees Ruth as the Tyrannical R.A. While Ruth was suicidal and depressed, she did assault multiple people. Look, I like Ruth, she’s even been one of my faves for awhile now. But, to be objective, she has committed multiple accounts of assault, theft, and one count of sexual assault. Even if some victims were bongoes like Mary, they were still actual problems that were done. Realistically, it will take a lot of atonement from Ruth before she is liked. Whereas some like Joyce, Agatha, and maybe Dorothy, Sierra, Dina, and Amber will be easier, others like Sarah and Rachel will be near impossible.
In shorter terms, each one is right to an extant based on their perspective. Billie looking past the surface of Ruth, but Rachel can only see the surface.
I’m not on Rachel’s side about her tone or arena but considering she doesn’t know all of the behind the scenes horror that is Sir that we know, her reaction is kind of understandable. Yes, Billie is her own person and has her own perspective on her and Ruth’s relationship, but from the outside, Billie supporting Ruth doesn’t disprove that Ruth bullied Billie into it. And, frankly, the details of Ruth and Billie’s past relationship does not improve their ground very much, even if they are great characters and are trying to do better and are ultimately good for each other. Yes, Ruth doesn’t want the job, but Rachel probably doesn’t know how badly she doesn’t want it, and just sees that Ruth has retained the power that has been harmful before. From Rachel’s perspective, though she’s damn harsh and misinformed about it, Ruth has made the floor hell and engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a vulnerable charge of hers, and now…gets to keep all of that with few repercussions. That’s what SHE sees, even if we know better.
As an omniscient reader, I hate what Rachel is doing and want to hug Ruth. Not so much Billie- I get Billie’s protective streak, it’s cute and reassuring for Ruth, but Billie can’t attack anyone who doesn’t like Ruth for the type of RA she was. I also…don’t really like Billie’s phrasing here, personally. Anyway, sentimentally, I side with Ruth. Looking at what Rachel has to go from, I get why she doesn’t take this gesture as a game changer. Rachel is wrong in many ways, and definitely wrong in her approach, but unfortunately, she’s not entirely wrong about Ruth’s actions or (potential) pattern of behavior, and that’s gonna have to be dealt with over the course of the story arc.
yeah.
idk like Ideally we would be in a place where we do not force people to share these kinds of personal details. and i think a good way to do that is to just be specific about the things that bother you personally, that you yourself have noticed and that you yourself have issues with. basically just stay in your lane, haha
so like i feel like the etiquette is: it’s not appropriate for Rachel to call Ruth and Billie’s relationship an abusive one, because she’s not really on ground zero there. but it would be appropriate for her to ask about specific things that worry her – like, the fact that Ruth slept with her charge. or if she’s heard weird noises coming from Ruth’s room although possibly those are things…better left unheard. or if she’s seen any particular dynamic that worries her. but then again it’s really…not ok to call an abuser abusive because the person they lash out on is their victim. so the right person to talk to and offer support to is Billie.
focus on the things that you want to change and the things that you want to do, i guess. but that doesn’t leave much room for emotions. :/
Comic Reactions:
This is why it is important to be in a good headspace and take the time to be in that good headspace before trying to do this sort of apology for bad actions. Because well, some people are going to take advantage of that shit for their own ends.
Whether it be using your admission of wrongdoing to establish a sense of power over you or justify ripping you apart in a way they wouldn’t if you didn’t admit fault. There are toxic people who see that vulnerability as a target and exploit it and your desire to do right by others in horrific fashion. (This would be a portion of why Carla doesn’t like to show vulnerability and sucks at apologies when she feels she fucked up).
And that’s before factoring in the people you’ve wronged who are simply not going to accept one’s apology or even refuse to meet with you (which is their right, no one owes you their forgiveness if you’ve hurt them, hell no one owes you their regard period).
And that’s not the end of the world. If you’re prepared and in a good space to say your apologies and accept what may come and can resist assholes trying to shunt it onto a dark shitty path, it can be super valuable and important to make your apologies for wrongs. It can bring comfort to those you’ve hurt. And it can feel good to own and recognize those fuckups so you don’t make them again.
But when you’re not in a good headspace? When you’re freshly out of the hospital, your anti-depressants haven’t kicked in, and you’ve just been run raw by your abusive grandfather pulling out every stop he can to hurt you?
This shit can be so bad and we’re seeing it here to a large degree.
Like, I fully understand why it feels important to her to do this now. That if she is going to be trapped in this hellish job, she wants to do it showing her direct intention and make a genuine effort to own the things that reminded her too much of “sir” grampus.
But this? Now? This was not a great idea and I worry the emotional fallout from this will be deeply intense on top of an already brutal day for her.
i’ve been working around customer service for a few months now and, let me tell you, that job is nowhere near easy, but like a few things i’ve picked up on:
1) never let your polite facade break
2) vent in private. vent hard. and then go out and smile again, and be unbreakable
3) most of what you have to do to stand your ground is say what you know, ask questions when you need help, and don’t be afraid to call your manager over to back you up because that is literally what they are there for.
4) be very clear about the message you are putting across so there is no confusion, and be ready to have to repeat yourself and re-explain things in a polite way.
5) get. your shit. together. because if you do not have your shit together you cannot get anybody else’s shit together. be kind to yourself, de-stress, take breaks, take care of yourself, and get yr shit together.
6) what you project is what gets reflected back to you
and all of those things are super useful when working with people like Mary because you have got to be legit bulletproof in order to not let them get to you. you have to not let them pull you off into tangents. you have to smile and take it and stand your ground, wow.
and these are things that are profoundly difficult for someone with Ruth’s background and history of trauma. not impossible, but difficult
but goddamn is all of this easier when you only have to deal with somebody for like fifteen minutes
until they come back!!
This is really useful. I will try to remember this when I go back to work. I’ve been there for a few weeks, and there have already been moments of customers being shitty to me. It’s too unhealthy for it to get to me every time.
I swear to all the deities this country does not pay the people in retail and customer service enough.
Anyone who pretends that is an easy/unskilled job is fucking lying, because I’m pretty sure *I* couldn’t do it, and I’ve just finished *grad school*. I’m pretty sure I’d kill someone on, like, week two.
Panel 1: This is fucked and something I was worried about yesterday, but is also a thing she was more or less trapped into doing if she didn’t want to undermine her sincerity of her public attempt to own her misdeeds.
And it is extra fucked, because of that exploiting the other person’s high road as a vulnerability to gain power thing I was talking about yesterday. Like, in full context, Mary trapped Ruth into publicly apologizing for a shitty shitty action, yes. But one that deeply pales in scale to Mary trying to murder her in a bloodless callous way by stripping away all of her support network and driving her brutally into a hole.
And it resets the power imbalance in favor of Mary again, because she knows she can manipulate the social circumstances to gain an advantage over Ruth and make her do things she doesn’t want, which means we can expect Mary to keep hammering this point and trying to exploit that desire of Ruth’s to own her actions and turn over a new leaf to try and force her particular Maryian agenda.
And worse yet, she’s done it in a way that has defanged her main check at the moment, because she’s demonstrated to herself that Ruth will physically stop Billie from carrying out her threat against her and so that is no longer a limiting factor she needs to worry about.
And that petty little bit of gaslighting at the end, after making the person she nearly killed give her an apology, by denying her actions for that extra little bit of unearned high ground is basically a cherry on a shit sundae here.
Mary basically put herself right back on top, so right now, it’s only waiting to see who she goes after first (my bet is either Billie, Carla, Joyce, or maybe Sierra/Grace/Mandy).
This concern, this fear of what Mary might do… I’m not sure if I can find the words for what I’m feeling. It hurts a little, out of empathy for your pain. You seem to be very familiar with this pattern. :/
But at the same time, part of my brain is trying to suggest there’s another interpretation. Like, I don’t know this stuff well enough to have a clear idea of what’s probable, but… I find myself not expecting Mary to get leverage out of this. When Mary tries, Ruth *might* cave, but Ruth… doesn’t seem like she has quite the right type of self-sabotage for that. She might be more like… like, yes, she’s sorry about the hitting, but no, she’s not going to do whatever Mary thinks the apology requires, she’s going to do what’s best for the other students because she doesn’t *care* what Mary does to her any more, and Mary can’t hurt Howard. it’s hard to blackmail someone too depressed to have feelings.
ohhh. like the end of http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.ca/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html
(and since that doesn’t have a link to part two, and I’m sure someone will want it,: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.ca/2013/05/depression-part-two.html )
Of all those options you listed, Carla seems by far and away the most likely. I can’t see any serious reason for Mary to target Joyce over anyone else on the floor that she has more reason to hate. Sierra/Grace/Mandy would offend her with their sexual openness, but I also have a hard time seeing any of those three actually giving a shit about what Mary has to say. Prodding Billie is risky because, even if Ruth is holding Billie back now, she won’t be there to hold her back 100% of the time and Billie is impulsive enough that she could still wind up decking her pretty easily. As such, Carla becomes the most obvious target, especially if she feels this ‘new leaf’ Ruth will lack the strength to defend her, something which Ruth already struggled with before.
Another, even worse possible case though, is that I could see Mary targeting Becky. She’s very outspoken and very gay, both things that Mary would take offense to, and her current homeless status would also leave her as being probably the most vulnerable and easiest target on the floor. Even going to stay with Leslie might not potentially save her from Mary if Mary does target her too, because if Mary were to find out that an impressional young lesbian teen was now staying at the home of a teacher who is also a lesbian? And how gays are so sinful and sexual 100% of the time (sarcasm obviously), why it would just be scandalous if that got out.
Given Carla’s sweet revenge, I’m not sure Mary will be eager to take her on again. Ruth defending her is no longer what Mary’s worried about.
Becky may be more vulnerable.
Lucky for Mary, Becky will be off-campus now. Otherwise she couldn’t resist going after Becky, and let’s face it, there’s some serious punching available for anyone who hurts Becky.
Oh, I hadn’t even considered that, but that’s definitely a shout.
Mary going after Becky should be a fun ride… for us. I give it a 50/50 chance of Joyce (who still has one good hand) or Dina (who willingly tackled a shotgun-wielding dude that is like 5 times her size) turning her into minced meat within the hour.
my odds for that are on becky kicking her ass
and then becky and carla teaming up into a “kick mary’s ass” squad
Off topic — it was not a shotgun. It was a particularly deft bit of Willis artistry that sadly went over many heads. You don’t bring a single shot rifle to a murder spree.
Panels 2-3:
Let me state this first. It is absolutely fair of Rachel to have no truck with Ruth’s attempt at redemption. To not trust it. To see it as honeymoon phase shenanigans and to not even remotely give it the time of day or in any way stop resenting what Ruth did.
And that’s the thing about redemption arcs that never gets covered. Not everyone owes you their forgiveness and even the most earnest attempt to improve is not going to win over everyone you harmed and it might even be the case that the majority of the people you hurt will never forgive you or want anything to do with you.
Certainly I don’t see myself ever being able to let my dad back in my life even if he seemed genuinely apologetic for what he did. It just wouldn’t feel safe and I have no issue with Rachel stating that firm boundary here.
Additionally, let me say that some of the shit she lists here is dead on.
Ruth and Billie’s origins were deeply fucked up and is a definite black spot on the relationship that is unlikely to ever fully go away. Abusers do use honeymoon phases to take advantage of their targets’ desires to be fair and forgiving and reinsert themselves into folks lives in a toxic way. And from Rachel’s perspective, she reported Ruth and had good reason to believe she was done and now she’s back with apparently a blank check and that’s got to be infuriating for Rachel, like her report was just vomited upon and thrown out.
That all said, wow is this fucked up.
Like, first of all, if you really believe that someone is in an abusive relationship with someone else, you don’t fucking call it out like this in front of both the person and their abuser in front of you.
Because a) if you’re right, then you’ve placed the survivor at greater risk of violence and ensured they’ll be locked down more in the future, thus making it harder for them to make their escape. b)You’re very likely to trigger a bout of defensiveness from the survivor by referring to them in such a dehumanizing way as if they are a thing and insulting whatever feelings they have that are tying them to their abuser and doing so in a deeply disempowering way. You are also likely to make them want to cling harder to their abuser to “prove you wrong”. C) You make their abuser look more sympathetic thus making it easier for the abuser to honeymoon phase their survivor and deepen any gaslighting they might be doing about the untrustworthiness and hostility of others to their “love”.
And it’s even more fucked up here because it’s just so utterly dehumanizing and disrespectful to Billie. Like, fuck, she literally treats her as directly equivalent to an inhuman source of employment, with no agency, while insulting her love for Ruth, which has already been shown directly to be important to Billie given their earlier moment in the hall in front of everyone.
Second of all, context.
Ruth is fresh out of the hospital for a suicide attempt. And Rachel knows that because she’s the one who called in Chloe that led to Ruth being taken directly there. Additionally, it’s clear to anyone who has eyes that something is deeply off about this whole thing and Ruth is not at all happy about having this job again or feeling like it was in any way her choice.
Like, I loathe certain people who have harmed me or people I care about. I will never forgive them in a million years no matter what they do and a petty part of me has very angry violent thoughts towards them or smiles when they are removed from a position to hurt people and I have been open about previously cheering the deaths of certain individuals who have spent careers harming others.
But I can’t imagine going out of my way like this to attend a public meeting just for the sake of tearing down said asshole at their most vulnerable moment, especially so soon after a suicide attempt. Blocking their number, ghosting them, screaming at my computer whenever I see an email from them? Hell, yes. But not doing this. There’s a time and a place and this is not that time or place. Especially as she knows what she’s doing is a bit fucked up because she checked herself when she was doing it before when she noticed that Howard was with Ruth.
Third, there’s a matter of cowardice and chosen target. Like, on one hand, Ruth created a climate of fear that made the consequences of standing up deeply dangerous, so I understand Rachel not wanting to stand up before.
But that said, she did nothing before. Nothing to warn the freshman about the shitty RA and her reign of terror or share tips for surviving it or offer support. She did nothing to directly challenge Ruth when there was risk to herself in doing so.
And that’s fair, but it’s somewhat douchey to then turn around all high-ground I’m the defender of the defenseless against your reign of terror when the person is disempowered and vulnerable. And that’s something that’s going to resonate in a not so great way for me because of my recent experiences.
Like, a lot of you know about my shitty now former head of school, fighting him and taking a lot of consequences for doing so. And at the end, two of us fought the hardest to protect the kid and try and report the head of school and we both got heavily fucked over for it, including physical and mental health wise.
So once he was safely gone and no longer in a position to hurt folks, there were a lot of folks playing “well, who could say for certain” or otherwise heavily lying low who were then all “aren’t we all glad he’s gone, we did well to stop him” and honestly, a part of me is annoyed by that. Because these folks chose safety over what is right and I don’t blame them for that. But it’s bullshit that they act like they were in the trenches fighting when they didn’t do shit to stop him when there were consequences for doing so.
And so Rachel’s moral authority here rings incredibly hollow because she’s only pulling this shit out now when Ruth is still one foot in the mental hospital.
Four, Mary.
Rachel knows what Mary did. And just watched smug Mary performing an actual abuser move, exploiting vulnerability for power and demanding an apology while not owning the violence of what she did. And Mary is standing right next to Ruth, but Rachel does not do her much vaunted “multi-tasking” and rip into her, only Ruth, the person who might as well have “there’s a red flag on this situation” tattooed on her face right now and has literally been in a trauma pose this entire time.
And those four things makes this absolutely fair action into something really really fucked and legitimately dangerous.
Brilliant analysis as always, Cerberus. Amber’s expression in Panel 2 stands out to me as well – I wonder if hearing Rachel call Ruth an abuser is triggering Amber’s own fear of becoming an abuser and possibly making her think about herself and Ruth as parallels.
Definitely. It smacks a lot of “victims of abusers are doomed to become abusers” and we know that Amber is absolutely terrified of the possibility that that statement is true.
Rachel’s statements are having some dark-ass unintended collateral damage here.
I’ve gone through the Insight Personality Typing recently, which divides peoples’ personalities into four categories, labeled with the colors blue, gold, green, and orange.
I tested strongly as a green. Greens are thinkers and analyzers, questioners and arguers and dissenters. Our interests are in abstract ideas, models, and facts. We tend not to notice people as much. We don’t easily read their emotions. The idea that people might be hurt by our criticisms doesn’t occur readily or automatically to us, since we’re focusing more on the ideas in the abstract than the people proffering them or categorized by them. We can train ourselves to be aware of that, but even then it’s not the first thing we think about and unless we’re trying to catch ourselves we can forget.
Rachel is doing this. Her entire focus is dissecting Ruth’s (supposed) new leaf in an abstract, skeptical manner. She’s not focusing on relationship or people-support (like a blue). She’s not acting impulsively in the moment (an orange) or following a rule-based structural rubric with clear objectives (a gold). Everything about her screams green, and that suggests that she has the weaknesses of a green: a lack of immediate awareness of the impacts of her criticisms and skepticism.
Also, regarding Mary? She can hate them both. (Too lazy to link.)
This sounds like an interesting test – is this freely available in teh intrewebz? I can’t seem to find it.
And I believe the correct iteration is “We can multitask.”
https://lonerwolf.com/true-colors-personality-test/
last time i took it i was a blue-green, minor gold.
Thanks.
I got major green (80%), followed by blue and gold (64% and 56%), and very minor orange (32%).
-high five- what up cerebral kids!!!!
*high fives back* Who likes orange anyway? I can get my vitamin C from lemon juice just fine!
96% Green
60% Each for every other color
Well, I mean at least the rest are balanced right? Even if I’m not sure how the math works out on those percentages.
Rachel is missing the rule of thumb that I have, which is, while the “stopped clock” principle does apply to otherwise-terrible people, any time I find myself agreeing with a known terrible person on something is a good clue I should re-examine my belief on the thing with a skeptical mindset. Could be the stopped clock principle is at play, buuut it could also be socially-engrained bias at play in my head.
that’s a good rule of thumb
I like Rachel.
I do feel sympathy for Ruth, but from what she knows, which… is a fair amount, she’s standing up pretty well for what she thinks.
Panel 4: Eyes dulled, glassy. Yeah, this is getting worse and worse. Like, again, it’s fair for Rachel to call her out or refuse this whole thing and be deeply frustrated or even resent Ruth and want to hurt her like she hurt her making her live in fear of her tyranny.
But time and place. Especially as she’s done it publicly and is exploiting the same thing Mary just did. That Ruth in desire to show she has turned over a new leaf is more likely to just sit and absorb this sort of abusive bullshit, because to argue against it or defend herself would be to “demonstrate that she isn’t really serious about owning her shit” and that’s not at all fair or cool.
And by doing it in public, she’s also limited Ruth’s ability to take care of her mental health and just walk away and say, yeah, okay, you don’t like me and will never forgive me, that’s absolutely fair. I accept that. And the general silence of anyone to intervene just makes it hit all the harder.
And it’s why this sort of action when Ruth chose to do it is so dangerous. Because she definitely doesn’t have the headspace to not internalize it in deeply self-destructive ways.
Panel 5: And again, the danger of the public space. Once again, Ruth is motivated to restrain and block Billie from her actions to show her growth and desire to do right.
And well, just as Rachel has a right to feel aggrieved and angry towards Ruth, so to does Billie to Rachel.
Like, fuck, Rachel just went out of her way to attack and call her girlfriend an abuser right after Billie just dealt with supporting Ruth with her deeply abusive “sir” grampus. Which is not something Rachel knows, but sure as fuck is something Billie knows. So she knows how awful this is to Ruth in that way.
And she just treated her and her love like a thing and a piece of Stockholm as if she was a pretty bauble Ruth won one day and is now keeping on a shelf and not a human being with agency and reasons for viewing her relationship with Ruth in the way she has.
All while treating her as a third person meaningless thing to her face, speaking of her in the third person as if she wasn’t there and had an ability to speak for herself.
Like, Billie would be fully justified in going off on Rachel (maybe not punching her, but certainly going off on how much Rachel doesn’t understand what she’s talking about here), but Ruth is under social pressure by the circumstance to deny Billie her anger here to continue absorbing this shitty garbage in the name of showing her willingness to grow. And that sucks.
And I guess, here’s the thing. Redemption is a rare and special thing and not everyone is going to accept it or think well of it or ever trust it. But that does not mean the person seeking said redemption should accept being mistreated in turn without question to prove their redemption is earnest.
It is absolutely okay for things to just end with “I’ve turned over a new leaf.” “Fuck you, fuck off” (both walk away).
And that’s the other piece of redemption. Owning previous faults is not an invitation to weather abuse casually in the name of owning said faults. And I worry that things are going to go even more explicitly in that direction given Rachel’s arc of behavior so far.
i. yeah. pretty much all of this
rachel is dealing with her frustrations and her anger by expecting the subject of her anger to be able to handle all of them
and that’s not cool
Rachel is still just 19-20 years old so she’ll still make mistakes however in this instance she has every right to feel how shes feeling and every right to say whats shes saying
We watch from afar and have information that Rachel doesn’t so we have an idea of what might happen but Rachel doesn’t, she can only go on past prior history
Rachel has seen Ruth be violent, shes seen Billie been violent and now Billie and Ruth are together so its more than reasonable for Rachel to be worried because now who can stand up to Ruth and Billie? No one on the floor (except maybe Carla) can physically, going to higher authorities doesn’t work so its no surprise Rachel is worried
Look at this last panel and tell me that isn’t Billies posture and fist clenching isn’t challenging anyone to say anything: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/hair-3/
The thing about punching people you think deserve it (and Billie is nicely representing the whole punch a nazi thing) is its a very slippery slope Billie punches Mary and everyones like yay (and fair enough) but in that last panel she wants to punch Rachel which illustrates Rachels point
Things aren’t going to get better and they might just be getting worse, also second panel Rachel is sounding like she may have more then a little experience in this area
Mm, but that’s not actually the point she is arguing here. She’s not saying Billie is violent. She’s saying Ruth is violent and an abuser. Which is very fair, but by basically dehumanizing Billie here and acting as if she’s an object who is “too dumb to realize she’s in an abusive relationship”, she’s also being a giant douche and Billie is absolutely in her right to be like “oh fuck this noise”.
Especially as Billie has the full context that Rachel does not.
It is a massively abusive relationship though and what was Billies response? Threaten violence so in Rachels mind not much has changed and it may have gotten worse in that theres now two violent aggressive people to deal with and she also knows that she won’t get any help from Chloe
A sad situation all round
I agree…it’s important to remember that to everyone else Billie has also been a huge asshole. Like, I would still try to reach out to her (like Joyce and others have) but not everyone there is as mature as they are.
In a lot of related stories the outsiders will tell you how frustrating it was seeing the abused person come back again and again and act not unlike Billie here when confronted about it. In fact, the general advice when two people are adults is to simply let the abused person leave on their own instead of forcing them. There are obvious issues with that, and it’s contradictory to the urgency of the issues, but often everything else doesn’t seem to work. Unless there’s a way to wisk the victim away without any risk whatsoever, which isn’t the case in a majority of cases.
“Owning previous faults is not an invitation to weather abuse casually in the name of owning said faults”
my brain is having so many thoughts about this, but they’re not attached to the part that does words right now. and my earlier comment is stuck in moderation because links anyways. but what the hell, I’ll try and throw some words out anyways.
I think I understand better where your fears are coming from now. Ruth has shown a pattern of taking on abuse for Reasons. Most of it with “sir”, but she also took mary’s blackmail before. If she continues that pattern here… yeah… ouch. 🙁
I hope it doesn’t go that way, though. I hope that’s one of the areas she’s planning to make changes in… not with “sir” yet, but, maybe with Mary, who doesn’t have a way to threaten Howard.
And… is she actually processing what people are saying here, or did she just kinda assume it’d be horrible and get her defenses back up? Sometimes hurtful things stick in your mind forever, sometimes you succeed at not-hearing them and only have to deal with the consequences of doing that to yourself.
Except Rachel doesn’t view Ruth as a depressed human. She sees her as a hypocritical abusive bully.
She doesn’t view this event as a “Please forgive me, I’m trying to change.” thing, but rather a “I got caught. So now I have to do this song and dance. I’ll probably be more careful from now on.” thing.
I’m not saying she’s not coming on strong.
But from her perspective she sees someone who weaseled out of EVERY consequence of her actions.
And she wants everyone to see that.
She’s doing the speech not only to warn Ruth that she’s being watched, and her misdeeds are remembered, but to warn the others that her change of heart shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Personally, I think Ruth has done some fucked up shit.
And she definitely is in a pressure situation she doesn’t want.
She has a girlfriend she did bully, publicly, but she never really… paid for it. She got to let out her frustrations with her darker side, but then after her bender and she was found, she never really got any comeuppance for bullying Billie.
That all being said, she does seem to be in at least a more stable situation with her, though that’s an extremely iffy position for both of them.
I wonder if you might be on to something there.
I was in an emotionally abusive relationship a few years back with someone who would threaten suicide any time I so much as thought of leaving. They were not actually suicidal, they would just pretend to be to create added leverage against their chosen victims.
Rachel’s actions lately are too angry for this to be purely abstract to her – it makes me wonder whether she’s experienced that sort of abusive relationship herself and is viewing Ruth’s suicide ward stay as a massive power ploy against Billie.
First, I’m sorry you went through that.
Also, I agree with you about Rachel. There are lines that you cross in life that you can’t exactly just come back from. For Rachel, Ruth has crossed that line several times. She will just never trust her again, and she has every right not to. I don’t think Ruth or Billie understand that yet.
(most honest, if not ‘best’ answer, IMO:)
“Actually, I still have this job because that’s how my abuser keeps control of me. I don’t get a say in it.
And I still have a girlfriend because… I don’t know. I certainly don’t deserve her.”
Punch Ryan. Everybody wins.
Sad part is… to get rid of Ruth as an RA I think this is what Rachel has to do. She has to put pressure on Chloe to let her know just how bad this decision was, and that means putting pressure on Ruth. That means not letting lapses and fuckups slip and that means being coming on strong in meetings like this.
It will be absolutely horrible for Ruth, and that’s the horrible situation Chloe has dropped her in.
yeaaaah but this is not coming on strong, this is just being there to kick Ruth while she’s down and kickable.
ideally, coming on strong would be badgering Ruth about her mental health, or bugging her repeatedly about events and information, or asking her wtf is up with Mary. it’d be, like, asking her what her plans are and for solid details and not letting her wiggle out of answering questions. coming on strong would be…effective
idk calling her previous behavior bullying is pretty spot-on and clear, precise and effective.
i have no clue whether or not she has any kind of solution brewing tho
You are right. This is not Rachel taking a measured action to send a message to Chloe, this is her going for the throat while Ruth is down. Similar but not identical.
yuup
if you are going to send a message it is better to send the message directly rather than to mess around elsewhere and hope that the person hears about it eventually maybe
Well… not really in this case. Ruth IS the proper channel, and not accepting her as RA IS the proper message.
But I agree that Rachel is doing more than that.
mostly i meant in the context of messages actually being delivered, haha.
speaking to Chloe directly about her concerns about Ruth is a valid route, if they have that kind of relationship; speaking to Ruth directly about those concerns is also a valid route
but i honestly don’t know if getting those concerns heard will be enough for Rachel
Is everyone forgetting that Ruth is criminally violent, that she should have been fired and possibly in jail weeks before she was hospitalized? Are the people she’s abused and threatened supposed to wait until she’s got her bearings and is back to her old self to confront her? From Rachel’s perspective the only safe time for them to bring all this up is when Ruth feels weak.
I personally think she should have been hospitalized earlier, but if one of the girls wanted to press charges, that would have happened, yes.
I honestly have no idea what Ruth was expecting. Not a clue. It almost seems self destructive, and it’s obviously way too early for her to be doing the redemption thing.. kinda like when an abuser apologizes immediately to get it out of way instead of allowing the victim room and time to process things (even if thats not what she’s doing, that’s hiw it seems, especially to Rache).
Yeah, as someone who has been abused, the whole “well nobody should be mad at her, look at what she’s gone through” thing, while I try to understand it, rings almost irritating and hollow at times. It’s not a healthy message to send. She doesn’t get to just say “I’m sorry” and be done with it. She has to actually make amends.
This is like watching someone being told what they did last night when they passed out drunk. Realizing it was much worse than they could have imagined. Up until she left the hospital, she was operating under the cloud of anger and depression. It is what allows her to function. It also blinded her to the severity of her actions and their affects on people.
No, but that’s the bind she’s in.
She’s not yet in a state to handle this, nor has she given the others time to process or taken time to show she’s serious. She should have that time. So should they.
But she wasn’t given it. She has to step back up and keep being RA and she rightly thinks that needs some comment on her part.
You are correct – thanks for reminding me of that. I forgot that she was supposed to immediately start working for a minute. What the hell was the school thinking?
Maybe she should have prefaced with “I’m here because I have to be?” Or just explained the whole thing. I get taking responsibility, but she has pertinent information that would be useful to share.
We’re not sure what the school was thinking. Clint pulled strings, we’re not sure how.
I dunno about the school, but 100 to 1 odds that Chloe was thinking “hey, a way out of me doing my job, yay.”
In the middle of everything… I DO enjoy how Ruth and Billie take every opportunity to call each other girlfriends in public.
Your heart’s in the right place, Billie, but your fists, unfortunately, are not.
The proper place for her fists of course being Mary’s face.
And Clint’s when the time finally comes.
I’m kind of torn about Rachel… and not about whether she is right or wrong. At first I thought she had some personal experiences with abusers but she seems a bit too… calm and clinical about it. Like she studied the subject and knows about it but more from the distance than from personal experience.
You can be calm and clinical about things you have personal experience it just varies from person to person. Hell, some people are perfectly comfortable joking about horribly traumatic experiences they’ve endured.
Fauxclinical can be a coping strategy as well.
For a really, really long time I buried all my emotions as low as possible and was one of those rationality/skeptic bros. For reasons that basically amount to any time I showed any emotion other than robo-happiness, I would get hurt for it. So, robot-mode go.
And now adult me gets called cold, standoffish, clinical, etc. Because I am bad at warm-fuzzies, bad at emoting, and bad at receiving emotion from others. Which would be considered acceptable if my outward appearance matched my brain-gender, but it doesn’t, so I get flack for it all the damn time.
Yes. I am known for having a “dark sense of humor” when what I really mean is “I’ve been dead once, it’s very liberating”. Only in my case it’s three times.
Concern about abusers is a good concern to have.
But it seems that Rachel assumed that Billie would always protect Ruth because she was abused and never even tried to talk to her about it.
You talk to people, you talk to people’s support network, see if the red flag is in the air or just echoes out of your own memory.
Here, it sounds like :
“You’re terrible at your job, boss. Also, I don’t like the way you treat your wife. Not that I care about your wife enough to build an escape plan from you with her, but her existence gives me this nice argument that you’re terrible at everything in your life and I’ll bravely take advantage of it.”
Or that Rachel heard about abuse in a pamphlet.
Which is not a bad way to learn about abuse, if it means you never learnt it at home.
That said, as always : Rachel’s 19, I’m 26, I’ve seen more stuff, and I’ll stop yelling at a fictional character for not being nice to another now.
Mm hmm.
Like, yeah, she’s young and full of a lot of semi-justified anger and frustration, but yeah, this is like a how to manual on what not to do when you suspect someone is being abused.
Oh I’m so sorry Cerberus ! I think I’m overreacting over your reply, but I want to make clear that I don’t criticize you or any person doing deep analysis with my “stop yelling at a fictional character” !
Of course fiction is a good support to discuss real life stuff, it’s just that brains don’t become magically equipped to deal with every aspect of every situation. To confess, when I was 19 I couldn’t have identified abuse if it was not “hitting hard when that’s uncalled for”.
When I was 21 and my father broke his own unhealthy bound with me, I had to be explained everything.
“His constant calling my mother names in front of me ? What, that is abuse ? But what about freedom of speech ?”
“His very intimate confessions he made to make me help him through emotional labor since I was eight when he had perfectly good girlfriends his age if he needed a woman’s support ? Shit, that was abuse too ?”
“The fact that he wanted me to suppress any behavior or taste coined “feminine” ? How is that abusive, aren’t women unprivileged, wasn’t he just trying to make me belong with the humans that win ?”
Life’s just… complicated, you know what I mean ? If Rachel was real, I would trust her to grow out of this bad interventioning she’s doing. But of course as a fictional character she can be an excellent support to explain how things could be done smoother.
Yup I just reread my reply and I’ve definetly overreacted.
You know what’s twisting my mind with that storyline ? It’s that Rachel makes me want to make the argument that abuse is more complicated than what she describes and how she intervenes, when I struggle with my own therapist to accept that I had no control over the events in my childhood and that in fact, my abuse was as simple as that.
Oh, I’m sorry about that. I meant my reply more as an agreement.
And yeah, she’s not that perfect girl nor should be expected to be great at handling abusive stuff at 19. Bob knows I was shit at it at 19. And the dramatic public confrontation with the abuser is a semi-common movie trope, so it’d be easy for her to think this is the best way of handling that.
Also, massive *hugs* offered for what you dealt with and I know exactly what you mean. It took me so damn long to recognize my dad as abusive as well and for me to recognize certain actions of my ex as abuse. Hell, it wasn’t until being in the comment threads here asking if certain things were abuse that it really sunk in.
We as beings can have a lot of difficulty applying the abuse framework to things we’re trapped inside of.
Ruth, verbally and physically abusive. (Mostly verbal, threats of violence)
Billie, verbally and physically abusive. (Mostly physical)
Amber/Amazi, vigilante justice.
Mary, Blackmail and verbal abuse. (Mostly anti-LGBT)
Sal, Threats and assault.
Shara, Verbal “abuse” and assault. (Ryan had it coming but still, and the verbal bit is about relentless sarcasm.)
Near as I can tell, most of the girls have done something wrong. (Legally speaking)
It took me way too long to figure out who “Shara” was – I need more sleep in my life. For the record, as beating Ryan up was done in the defence of self and/or others (Joyce) who were in imminent danger, that’s not illegal.
Wow, Rachel is actually worse than Mary. No, I am not being facetious but you are throwing shade at a person JUST BACK FROM SUICIDE WATCH. Whatever issues or grievances you have with her CAN WAIT until she’s in a more stable state or can be let go as Elsa would say.
I mean Mary’s doing that too….
Just get to the punching already!
Rachel is right. Ruth has been abusive to everyone on the floor. She doesn’t deserve any of their trust because she is a distinctly unsafe person to be around in their eyes, and that’s on Ruth. Billie and Ruth’s relationship started in violence and was primarily a toxic thing, just mutually. But no ome on the floor in their right mind would be supporting it after everything they have been shown.
Ruth does not deserve a second chance from them. She doesn’t deserve their understanding after all she’s done. But I hope she can earn it.
None of which remotely should be voiced to a suicidal clinically depressed person and Rachel is a Piece of String (self censoring) to do that. I mean, Jesus Christ, who DOES that?
WITH BLACKJACK AND HOOKERS!
I am confused.
Rachel, to me, is not talking like someone on a righteous quest to right a wrong. She is talking like someone who is, herself, an aggrieved party – and whose aggrievedness is very personal and very painful. So… what did Ruth do to her? I don’t recall Ruth doing anything to her. I recall Ruth doing things to others – primarily Billie and Joyce – but not to Rachel.
If Ruth hasn’t done anything to Rachel, what does that mean? Does Rachel have a personal experience that makes Ruth’s behavior extra unpleasant for her? Or am I misreading a general desire to do what’s right as something more personal?
Maybe she’s just Roz writ-large. “This is my cause and I’m passionate about it.”
This problem can only be solved by more Rachel, which is beginning to strike me as a likely solution to every problem ever.
Or maybe she is just someone who dislikes injustice and Ruth is a huge, roaring example of it?
I get this a bit too – Rachel really, really hates Ruth. I just don’t think we don’t know enough about Rachel – or the way Ruth earned her hatred – to be able to judge it properly.
I’d love to know though.
And I think I do recall – from other Willis universes – that Rachel is not big on forgiving easily.
Its interesting that Ruth is very aware of this – I think I’m right that Rachel is one of the 1st people Ruth sought out on the floor for this meeting. Earning Rachel’s forgiveness seems high on her agenda.
That’s the thing about anger and forgiveness. You don’t have to forgive someone. There’s a reason why it’s a wonderful thing when you do it (though some may argue with that) and it’s to someone who needs it/can grow from it. However, there’s nothing courageous or noble about attacking someone who is mentally ill. Ruth did some pretty horrible shit but she ALMOST DIED and was hospitalized for depression.
What, exactly, does Rachel get out of this other than being a predator? Being Mary, essentially? Hate if you will. Forgive her not. But you’re not stabbing the Mountain, you’re stabbing Sansa.
“GAME OF THRONES!”
honestly the more i look at where Rachel is, the more i deeply suspect that she wanted to be RA. it can be really deeply disappointing to lose out on a job you wanted, and even more so when someone you feel is incompetent keeps the position. (and somehow Ruth is one of Chloe’s best RAs, wtf.) especially if you think of that person as a bully.
it’s really weird to me because my experience with RAs was a lot more…sweetness and light and cute decoration and monthly movie watchings and going shopping and getting together for school events. and having open hours for conversations. so much of this drama was kind of unnecessary! but y’know different personalities float different boats i guess
i would imagine that Ruth’s behavior made her generally unpleasant, though.
Didn’t Rachel say she didn’t want the position though? I seem to remember that back when Roz and Dotty were butting heads Dotty said that Rachel told her she didn’t want the position.
-scrutinizes text- hmmmmm
I’M GOING TO HAVE TO LOOK AT THIS
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/longshot/
frick
well there goes that super understandable and plausible theory based on reading rachel for like five seconds
unless rachel was lying to dorothy or changed her mind later, but i doubt it b/c character continuity
[gets a mental image of Rachel in a dark room with either Gendo Pose or Xanatos pose]
Also I can’t stop laughing at the mental image of Sarah hissing at Dotty like some feral animal XD
Frankly the issue is that this is a problem that can only be solved through action. And no, I don’t mean punching. Rachel is absolutely right, Ruth just saying she’s changed and things are going to be different doesn’t, can’t and shouldn’t inspire any confidence that they actually are, but Ruth can actually show it instead.
Pretty much, the only solution to this situation is Ruth Proving that she changed. If she does that all the reasonable people will ease up and accept that she is not a terrible person anymore.
To which Rachel can keep her mouth shut about. Why? Because again, someone almost just died. Yeah, you can kick her while she’s down. That doesn’t make you respectable or courageous, that just makes you Toeroommate.
Have some class and yes, I think it’s the bare minimum a classy person can do not to get up in the face of someone a day back from hospitalization.
I mean, I hate Orson Scott Card for his homophobia but if he almost died of depression or was hospitalized, I’d HOLD OFF ON MY HATE for a bit. I was bullied and beaten in high school regularly but I held my tongue when one of those bullies lost a family member.
No, of course not. The honorable thing to do is to wait until they’re recovered and not vulnerable and can properly abuse you again.
If you think attacking someone with depression while they’re down is heroic then I don’t know what to tell you. It’s evil, awful, and the person who does it not a victim but a victimizer.
Sorry, i didn’t mean to get riled up over a fictional character but I’ve had a number of clinically depressed close friends and they’re very easy to target as they internalize the attacks.
The key question is, how much does Rachel know about Ruth’s situation? Does she know she has depression? Or why? Does she know that this wasn’t for example a hospitalization because she got drunk off her ass?
Rachel is not cowardly, she would be if she was kicking Ruth knowing she lost her RA position. But Ruth retained it. She kept everything she Should have lost from Rachel’s point of view.
And Rachel IS right. If I got 1 dollar for every “Abuser apologizes for abuse and then does again” story I heard I’d be riding around in a pimped-out Mercedes Benz. As far as Rachel is considered this is typical, stereotypical abuser behaviour.
The only way Ruth can prove her wrong is by keeping the good behaviour.
I guess I’m not sure how insulting Ruth by saying she’s still an awful person really contributes to defending yourself unless Rachel is trying to drive her back to suicide.
It is entirely unfair to expect an abuse victim to show care for the emotional health of their abuser. As in ‘less than a complete stranger’. Rachel is entirely fair in being concerned way more about the safety and health of herself and those around her, and not caring much at all about Ruth.
And of course, yeah, of course Rachel doesn’t have the full picture. But we never have the full picture. We don’t have the full picture of Sir, and I feel pretty justified in saying he’s an abusive asshole who shouldn’t be in a position of power over everyone, and if he should have some deep seeded suffering somewhere, I wouldn’t expect Ruth or Howard to care even the tiniest bit about it while attempting to get his influence out of their lives.
Rachel is just angry, that’s it. A cruel bully like Ruth, who Rachel thought would finally get punished, gets off scots free. How many times did you feel furious about obvious injustice?
If you think people being abused should hold off on defending themselves until their abuser is feeling better is a good thing, then I don’t know what to tell you. Oh, no, wait, I do. You must really like seeing people being abused, because here’s the clincher: the abused people are already below the abuser in power level, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be abused in the first place. And if it what allows them to not be abused anymore is pouncing on their abuser’s moment of weakness, I’m totally going to be cheering from the stands.
Well, those aren’t the two and only two options. It’s not a choice between tearing down a mentally ill abuser or allowing them to continue their reign of terror.
Like, there’s a lot of ways to push back that isn’t just accepting the abuser’s frame that they’ve been through hard shit and they’ve really learned from it.
Disbelieve, disconnect, let others know that you’ve seen this shit before and not to trust it, be intensely cold and shut it down if the abuser tries to approach you, continue speaking out to the abuser’s employer about their abusive actions, give support to their victims, meet and offer a confidante to the folks you’re feeling have been abused, run, just run from that toxic mess, etc…
Like, Rachel shouldn’t be expected to forgive Ruth or view her anything else than a violent awful abusive thug, but she doesn’t have to minimize the humanity of the person she is seeing as a victim to do so or go on the attack when they are in trauma response mode (because they’re not going to hear a word of it and now you look like the bully).
Which is sort of what was so dangerous about this whole thing to begin with. This is the wrong time for Ruth to be trying this public ownership of fault. It’s really way too early for all parties. Rachel needs time to scream at Chloe first and Ruth needs to get a headspace going where she can listen to feelings like Rachel’s without internalizing it and where she isn’t ceding major ground to Mary.
I’m not referring to Rachel’s specific case – but I HAVE seen this “oh, don’t push back when they’re in a bad place” thing go down, and fuck did it go down. Like, you’d need heavy machinery to reach those levels of down. Which is why if, say, Clint got terrible news that he had incurable cancer and went into a depression spiral, I’d still be okay with Ruth taking his cane and beating him to death with it (use gloves, Ruth – fingerprints are bad).
I would being beaten to death doesn’t just happen and is not exactly a form of suicide, and it sounds like Clint is going to die before he gets over it in this scenario. The investigation would more likely put more stress on them then letting the cancer play out.
I have been the victim of bullies like Ruth and my high school and junior high years were constant periods of psychological torment. I was beaten up, insulted, harassed, and treated as a plaything with plenty of parallels with Ruth. None of my attackers ever apologized nor would I have forgiven them at that time (I have matured) but if the idea is that I should kick them when they’re down–no, not a chance. I’m not going to become a monster to get some petty revenge.
One beating by an attacker hospitalized me too.
Maybe it’s not “petty revenge”, but keeping them from getting back into a position to get back to bullying?
The world does not divide neatly into victims and abusers. People can be both in different circumstances. Nor is depression an automatic free pass.
Ruth is a suicidally depressed abuse victim. Ruth is a violent abusive bully.
Rachel is one of those abused by Ruth.
If an abuser with power over you has weaknesses, even depression, and you can use that to curtail the abuse or free yourself from it, that doesn’t make you the villain.
I can’t blame Rachel here, even as I ache with sympathy for Ruth, knowing how much it’s tearing her apart.
This might not be the best thing Rachel could do, but then the comic is called Dumbing of Age. None of these people are making great life choices.
This comment is everything. We need to let go of this thinking of GOOD/BAD, everything.
Rachel is being cold, but in that position you have to be to protect yourself. She is in no way obligated to forgive Ruth or be her friend, just like Ruth is not obligated to give Clint a chance, even though the levels of abuse are different.
Like, it’s possible for several things to be true at once! People are complex like that, and ignoring that completely neutralizes the nuances of these situations.
DO NOT LIMIT BILLIE’S PUNCHES
Panels 2 and 3 are some of the most cathartic and satisfying panels to exist in this comic’s history.
See, personally I like panel 3 less and less the more I read it.
Mainly because of the first word bubble in it. I mean, beyond it yeah being very dehumanizing feeling for her to be saying it right in front of Billie, there’s also some implied expectation on Rachel’s end that Ruth “shouldn’t have been allowed to keep Billie” even with it being something where the conflict of interest issues aren’t going to be a thing in the near future.
And I dunno, somehow the phrasing of it just seems highly distasteful to me for various reasons. One being of course that she doesn’t seem to care what Billie wants in regards to that situation, with another being that it seeming like she’s mainly just trying to tear Ruth down now that Ruth isn’t threatening people with assault than actually trying to solve any problems.
So no, no cathartic feels on my end from that one for me at least. But hey, I guess at least Ruth warned us two comics ago that everyone was there just to feast on her corpse. Not sure why any of us actually hoped for anything else so far.
Personally, I’d like more info on the Rachel-Ruth dynamic. We haven’t seen anything in the comic, but both of them are tenants from the previous year already (and the only info we have from then is about the “Sarah roommate” thing). Is Rachel just a victim of Ruth’s general climate of fear, or was she specifically targeted at some point? I need more data points! Give me DATA, Willis!
I don’t have anything to add to lots of insightful comments about the rest of the characters, but; Amber’s expression though. She’s watching this go down. She’s watching. We can guess at her thoughts. But that’s about it.
Amber is probably both not thrilled about the lady who violently kicked her parallelepiped of solitude apart an hour ago and hopeful about the possibility of an abuser kicking their abusive habits to the curb because she sees herself as a potential abuser on the brink of losing the “potential” part of it.
I’m still wondering what happened after that kick. Was there an apology, or did they just go directly to the meeting? The in-meeting apology was weirdly vague, so I’d be very concerned if she didn’t apologise for the chair kick already.
She might be having those thoughts, and many others. It could taker her a while to sort it out.
Harsh. True, yes. But also harsh.
This is why I love DoA. The story is nuanced, there’s depth to most characters that make you want them to succeed despite their failures, or root against them despite being on the “moral” side. I can’t imagine the amount of time spent planning, fleshing out and writing these stories together.
I mean, here, I do feel bad for Ruth, but can’t fault Rachel for saying what she did.
It’s like the alt-text is asking me to use one of my overly long gags, but that can’t be the case, can it?
Rachel, Ruth is not an abuser, she is a victim. They can look similar (one reason DARVO can be so effective), but ultimately come from very different psychological places.