Going full commando, in public? I feel like that would have probably worked to get her fired better than her liason with a resident did. At the moment, I feel like we’re past that point. Besides, Ruth was the one who initiated the date, so why would she act out for it?
..aside from Willis indulging slipshine subscriber fetishes, of course.
I just remember being a baby queer doing internet searches for something like “gay movies” and then watching it on Vimeo or something. And being like, “Hey, it’s Zuko!”
Now that I think about it, it…it might’ve been the first R-rated movie I ever saw.
Bi invisibility is a real thing and it can seriously warp your views of yourself and the people around you if you’re bi.
I grew up hearing that bi boys are actually gay and that bi girls are just making out with other girls to get the attention of boys. So I knew for sure that I wasn’t bi. And even though I was attracted to other girls, I was also attracted to boys. So I knew for sure that I wasn’t a lesbian, because my gay friends told me that being gay is not a choice; for me, it sorta would have been.
Meanwhile, the Christian kids at my school and the religious media I was exposed to said that being gay is a choice. And I believed that they really believed that; they sure said it with a lot of conviction. So I came to what seemed to me a pretty logical conclusion: being straight must be a choice.
I spent years thinking that “attracted to men and women, choosing to only be with members of the opposite sex” was what “straight” really meant.
Then there’s “man crush” or “girl crush.” Those are things, right? Sure, I like girls, but I’m just having a man crush.
It didn’t really click for me until I passed someone kind of androgynous but hot on the street and spent 5 minutes trying to decide whether it was a boy or a girl before I realized it really didn’t matter to me.
I have to wonder how much of Christianity’s issues with sexuality stem from straight, gay, and bi Christians all assuming that everyone else thinks exactly the same way that they do and sending mixed messages to each other.
Thanks for sharing, that is a very interesting angle – all people as a rule starting out as bi, but needing to decide which (one!) gender they will stick with (i know this is what many people actually think of bisexuality, but it’s interesting to see this as the definition of straight).
It’s always the difficulty of deducting from what you feel inside + what people tell you is the norm (probably from what they feel inside, which happens to fit what lots of people feel?)
Sometimes we just can’t know, because we only get what happens inside ourselves and what we hear of as the norm… and then it’s such a relief if we hear someone tell their experience that resonates with ours… these “me too!“ moments.
Y’know, I would have thought this was utterly silly except for the fact that I am literally wrestling with the same damn internal contradiction right now, funnily enough.
And of course all of my favorite webcomics are in the midst of “let’s see if Character will recognize their own attraction to other women” arcs right now, the universe is devious.
Haha, yup. And I totally have a ‘screw you universe, I do what I want’ aspect as well, but it’s currently on timeout trying to figure out how that works when the thing the universe is trying to get me to do is…what I want, lol!
Becky is one of those people who likes to make clever nicknames for her new friends; she undoubtedly thinks of it as a way of indicating her friendship, but in reality it’s a form of aggressive intimacy.
Since she’s only done variations on people’s actual names, and not personal references or pet names, I’m not sure “intimacy” is the right word for it. “Familiarity” might be more accurate.
As for the “forced” part, I think it depends on how you view nicknames. The level of familiarity where a person would be okay with nicknames is not the same for everyone, much like being on a first name basis. Dotty and Jakes haven’t objected, and it seems clear from Becky’s response in panel 5 that she’s actively watching for signs that she’s overstepped.
Seeing as Becky doesn’t have nicknames for Joyce or Dina – the two people she’s closest to – I think it’s probably part of her “fun, happy Becky” mask. She might even be doing it as an unconscious way of testing the waters to see where she stands with that person
I got Bruceski because I complained about people misreading my name as Bruce and a classmate decided to start calling me Brewski in common “ironic nickname” fashion. a bit of tweaking to something I was happy with and it’s been my internet handle for 20 years.
oh wait is it a really weird nickname for Billie?
at first I assumed it was something along the lines of “I dub thee ‘B’isexual” but that made no sense
I am from America and I think the best sports thing is eccentric tennis coach Masato Sanjoin (although I hear the Sportland Sports are number one in points), and while I enjoy various fast food I haven’t had the money or reason to really buy any of it in well over a year, so.
I have never understood buffalo wings. I have seen many buffalo in person, and I have never seen any wings. And if they did have wings, they would have to be huge, not those tiny things they serve in restaurants. One wing could feed an entire family.
Well, they take one buffalo wing, then 100 rats, and puree them all into a fine liquid. Then they inject heavily processed chicken with that juice. What you’re mostly eating is chicken. Well, and rat. Chicken and rat.
Probably a good thing buffalo can’t fly, can you imagine being underneath one when it let a load go? And I thought being pooped on by Canada Geese was bad.
Hm. Lots of different theories in this thread. I thought it was a result of “Billie Billingsworth” being a name resulting in the initials B.B. In other words, two B’s. Double B’s. B-dubs.
My theory falls apart a bit when you consider that “Billie” is itself a nickname, based on her last name, which would make “B-dubs” basically double-dipping on her surname, but whatevs. Nicknames don’t have to make complete logical sense.
*takes a moment afterward, while appreciating the glockenspiel and electric dulcimer, to let eyeballs stop bouncing around from trying to follow the musical B*
*GASP* ARE YOU SAYING THEY AREN’T? MY WHOLE WORLD JUST IMPLODED (no seriously my hometown has an inordinate number of bi peeps ((me included))so for sometimes it feels like “huh i guess everybody is bi that’s cool)
I wonder how a real conversation relating to the topic with Becky would go. Like, I think for people who have the “everyone’s at least a little bi” mindset, it’s one thing to say that straight people are just in denial or whatever because of social pressure. But what about gay people? Wouldn’t it be insensitive to tell Becky that she’s actually at least a little bi? Like, girl seems pretty damn sure she’s gay. So then what does that mean? Everyone’s either bi or gay?
That’s how I’ve seen the “everyone’s bi” idea start to unravel for some people, anyway.
I’m pretty sure it’d be insensitive to question a straight person’s sexuality too, unless you are of the opinion that straight people’s feelings don’t matter because they are oppressors or whatever.
But sometimes it’s fun and useful to discuss insensitive topics too, so whatever. Discuss away with Becky.
Meh. Being straight is so much the socially constructed default that it leads non-straight people to question themselves, sometimes to the point of suicide.
I’d say that is reason enough to chip away at that social construction. And if that means sometimes some who actualy is of the default persuasion may get offended? That’s a better price to pay than continuing with the current structure, which, as remarked above, is already hurting people.
I mostly agree with you even as someone whose straight. Though I’d hope you don’t go around bullying people who are insecure about their sexuality. That would be pretty mean.
Queer people HAVE to question their sexuality at some point because it deviates from a social norm.
Straight cis people often do not have to question themselves – and i personally expect them to do so anyway.
As soon as a straight cis person proves by the way they talk about theirs and other peoples’ sexual orientation that they HAVE done reflection on this, that is the point when i can say “congratulations that you’ve figured out this part of your identity (and not just follow a norm because it’s a norm)“ – and won’t treat their sexual identity in any way different from mine.
Queer / lesbian / gay / bi doesn’t mean people have got it figured out automatically, though, and can also fall into queer norms of how a lesbian etc is supposed to feel and act.
Sexual orientation is never just that easy, and then throw in the mix that you can be romantically attracted by a whole different setup than sexually…
so congrats to whoever figures it out for themselves!
In a normal distribution curve, most people would be bisexual. The curve is skewed because of cultural pressure. Telling individual people (who are neither good friends nor show any signs of being attracted to someone of a gender they’d normally not be attracted to because of their stated sexual preference) is a dick move (or a deliberate provocation), because statistics doesn’t allow you to infer individual behavior from it and it’s not your *** business anyway.
That said, how do you feel about the last few comics over at Questionable Content?
Re QC, I don’t know if you were asking everyone or just Yumi, but I’ll chime in…
Mostly I’m hoping that the obvious affection Faye and Bubbles have for each other becomes more surfaced in a way that brings them closer together, and lets Bubbles be more free / less bottled up.
Evie is clearly being a busybody, and was pretty insensitive to Bubbles, and that’s not a good combination. If she gets Faye realizing things about her actual feelings for Bubbles, and if she (Evie) doesn’t talk to Bubbles again, things could work out well.
Narrative arc implies that Faye and Bubbles will in fact get closer, but whether that will be more familial, more romantic-but-not-sexual, or more romantic-and-sexual, I can’t predict… and I’d be happy to see any of those outcomes.
ReRe QC: I’d just be happy to see Faye accept support from Any-Fu*****-One of her choice, and be happy but mostly feel secure. I don’t think her relationship with Martin had her healed enough to trust that he wouldn’t abandon her. And I think with Bubbles, she’s healed enough to start a relationship with deep trust in her partner. I surely hope so.
Seems to me, there are two people viewing Fayes relationship with Bubbles as a romantic one. And are pushing Faye to see it the same way. While her sister might claim a close enough relationship to meddle that way, her lover definitely has no such claim, Faye never heard of her before today.
“In a normal distribution curve”, perhaps, but there’s little reason to predict that the distribution of sexualities fitting a normal curve.
I do assume that social pressures skew the curve, but that doesn’t mean it’s skewed that far.
Why shouldn’t it?
Our cousins, the apes, have sex any which way, more or less all the time.
Why should we -minus the culture and all those hangups about identity – be that different?
Patriarchy invented the idea that sex (for women at least) should basically be about bearing children for a certain man.
Yes, I was thinking about bonobos. There is no physical reason for monogamy or having sex only to procreate. Those ideas are cultural. And without them, there is no reason at all why sexual preference should not follow a normal distribution between the extremes (total heterosexuality or total homosexuality).
Your comment about patriarchy is spot-on. But, as you say, there is no apriori reason why sexual preferences should follow a normal distribution (rather than a linear one for example).
As far as I know the bonobos’ sexual practice is unusual among other apes, and more generally among mammals (I’ve read an article citing a study estimating between 5% an 20% the occurrence of homosexual acts among birds, depending on the species). You can’t deduce from bonobos that us humans should “naturally” be mostly bisexual (though we might).
Gender stereotypes are such that it is very unlikely for it not to repress the occurrences of homosexual and bisexual orientations. The fact that “there is no physical reason for monogamy or having sex only to procreate” is unrelated to sexual orientations.
Unless solid evidence is presented I think it is more likely that humans are “naturally” more often “straight” than “homosexual”.
PS – I know birds aren’t mammals. However I didn’t find an estimate of the proportion of homosexual acts among mammals. (Homosexuality exist among the vast majority of animal species, but that doesn’t say anything about its frequency among a given species).
QC is pretty cute. I was more interested in the Hannelore story line though. It’s hard for me to find Faye endearing, but I like Bubbles a bunch. Faye’s love interests are always great characters. Which honestly leads me to be a bit of a cynic about her relationship with Bubbles, but maybe this one is the real deal. Also I really miss Dora. She’s barely in the comic anymore.
Do we now? That’s nice. I’ve been hoping I’d eventually have the opportunity to move away from all of the eye-rolling and shaking my head in perplexion. 😛
Oh there’s still a lot of that for us, but it’s good to laugh at the “everyone must be attracted to someone” thoughts once in a while, especially if it’s “everyone’s a little bi” on top of that
Well, strictly speaking, Billie claims, as she’s done before, that everyone gets interested in girls. Doesn’t imply everyone is bi. It’s quite possible and even likely that in Billie’s world, there are lesbians and straight girls, who sometimes like other girls. (And probably gay and straight guys, but the straight guys don’t sometimes like other guys. She hasn’t actually commented on that, but it fits the stereotype pattern, I think.)
If I recall, she doesn’t believe in bisexuality. She just likes girls too.
Fair point. It’d be interesting seeing her explore the idea with a gay guy, then, to at least get a better idea of what she means when she says “everyone thinks about girls.”
She did say to Joyce early on about homosexuality: “I think, like everyone thinks about it or tries it out eventually. We get curious. It’s basically inevitable.”
She’d just mentioned Grace and Mandy and is obviously thinking about herself, but Joyce’s question was about homosexuality in general, so that does seem to counter my thought about her attitude towards guys.
At first I was like, “just accept the bisexuality, Billie”, but then I remembered that I identified as “bi-curious” in college (because I didn’t want to take on yet another identity at the moment). I was more sure afterwards that I really wasn’t a four-year-queer. It’s not so unreasonable to take one’s time.
Take one’s time…. Yeah, “some” of us *May* have taken 45 years to figure it out. Read: in denial for 45 years… Er, … Maybe (a few) more.
Finally, I figured it out, am settled in. Enjoying the truth.
It seems like she’s definitely okay with Ruth, but hasn’t fully processed it in context yet – the context that would mean she’s queer. It can be easier (at least at first) to parse an exception, or assume that you are the rule and not the exception. If she thought everyone’s had bi-leaning thoughts, but knows consciously that most people don’t have same-gender partners, going on a date is part of a long wakeup call.
I think she’s just not comfortable being labelled as anything but straight (assuming that queer=anything but strictly straight). It seems like the idea of her having a girlfriend and her identity as a straight woman are able to coexist just fine in her head because she rationalizes it as she does here, but if a third party makes the assumption that she is not straight, it hits her right in her identity. I think she’s just fine with being into girls, but identity is important to everyone including Billie, and people are going to assume that she is queer if she is romantically with a woman–what worries me is that she will struggle with either of her available options: (1) accepting a new identity or (2) being confident enough in how she chooses to define herself that other people’s assumptions don’t hit her so hard.
Of course she’s straight. She’s a popular cheerleader! All the boys like her. (At parties, when everyone’s drunk.)
It’s not like Ruth is her first exception either. She apparently with Alice for a chunk of high school. While still being straight. She just likes girls sometimes.
If I thought it were okay to link to tvtropes without the robomoderators appearing in giant-suit form to squash the link (hey, eveery Willis strip needs a LITTLE Transformers in the backround, right?), I would link thereto, specifically to their If It’s You, It’s Okay page.
–Dave, but I have no wish for flying http:ical fragments to-day
Except she’s not. She’s got two known exceptions and makes no claim that those two are special. She’s just attracted to girls, but somehow that doesn’t make her queer.
Status is important to Billie. With her parents I imagine it’s the only way she felt good about herself in highschool. Admitting she’s queer could jeopardize that (In her mind at least) I would personally find it hilarious if she comes out because it seems to the norm in Forest quad, but it’s more of a question of what’s more important to her. Billie could easily sabotage this whole thing with Ruth if too many people comment on their relationship while they’re out tonight.
Ooh Billie, love that lipstick! Also, this is where I feel like I can especially relate since when I was first realizing my orientation, I had something of an ‘everybody is probably bi’ sort of phase. Of course, with age I realize that not everybody is like that or like me. For me personally, gender doesn’t factor into it too much*. But I recognize now that not everybody is like that. Not everybody will think of girls ‘eventually’. Also, Becky admitting that Billie is a role model is cute, even if it makes Billie understandably uncomfortable. This is probably where Billie will realize that whether she views herself as different or not…society at large will see her as different for dating Ruth. I hope her parents won’t be huge jerks about it if they ever meet Ruth…
I assume her parents will be huge jerks, but hopefully not because she’s dating Ruth.
I remember when I was thirteen and first coming out as queer, one of my friends who was a couple years older than me was like, “Well, everyone likes girls sort of. Like, I like kissing girls as like a joke, but I’m straight.”
She and the woman she’s now engaged to plan to have their brides’ parties be dressed in rainbow colors.
(Of course, you can kiss people or whatever and still identify however you do. But man was my friend gay.)
Aaw, I’m glad for your friend and her wife! Hope they have a nice wedding~ and I know what you mean. My best friend was a year younger than me so when I eventually came out as bi to him, he was pretty iffy about it. He didn’t understand it completely, but he was very sweet and supportive about my first girlfriend. Once he was in college, he came back home for the summer once and told me about his boyfriend! It didn’t work out but they dated for a few years and he was very happy. I still remember him coming over to my house with a shirt that had a pink triangle and the word ‘pride’ on it and gave him some Becky-style props for it since we live in po-dunk Florida.
“You know what that means?”
“Pffft…what kind of bi do you take me for?”
Huh, interesting. Here in the German queer community, the pink triangle mostly signifies respect and remembrance to wlw who died in concentration camps, because that was the identifier they had to wear.
By extension, it is also a lesbian symbol.
It’s a gay rights symbol here, also because (though not necessarily known by all) of the connection with the Holocaust. Though I had always heard that in the Holocaust, it was assigned to mlm.
That’s how I have always understood it, too. wlw were either not specifically marked or assigned the ‘antisocial’ black triangle. (I’ve read conflicting information on that.)
Yes. There wasn’t an individual marker for gay women. Mostly, i suppose, because even the Nazis rather didn’t spell out lesbians existed and therefore put them in a group without a common identifier.
Mostly because there wasn’t a consistent way lesbians were dealt with. Some were given the black triangle, others were ignored or sent to brainwashing facilities.
Aaw…I never knew that it was used like that in Germany! That’s very sweet, and I’m glad to know that now. For my community, it’s the same as Yumi. Even though it was originally used as an identifier in the Holocaust, it’s been reclaimed to be a symbol for gay rights.
They never appeared. They’re so busy with their own lives that it’s become the norm for them to substitute money for love, and Billie was de facto raised by the Walkertons. But they’re still legally her parents, even though Mom Walkerton considers her as a daughter.
As I recall Billie’s dad is always working, and her mom is typically getting laid/being the stereotypical trophy wife. Don’t think they ever had any characterization beyond that. If they ever even found out about Billie I imagine they wouldn’t personally care, but demand she either stop seeing Ruth or keep it a secret for status reasons. They barely seem to know they even have a daughter though, so discovering their daughter is queer is unlikely.
I’m not too sure about the “please keep it hush hush or stop it” part. Having a child being gay and showing how supportive they are of their kid is very hype among some circles of rich people.
But yeah, if they ever learn about it, their first thought will be “what’s the public reaction that’ll give me the more popularity points ?”
So I feel like this basically gives away where I went to school, but my university has been in the news lately. Like, a lot. I didn’t really realize how much until I started seeing Facebook friends not just from my state but from around the country posting about it.
And just, fuck so many people there; I’ve enjoyed watching them burn.
Yumi is saying there have been lots of news posts about her alma mater lately, and they’re just venting about how much some people there really suck ass, I think?
Yeah, I have a tendency to start talking like I’m in the middle of a conversation, but I was just venting.
Some of the stuff is like, of course it’s big news, but some parts like the university president resigning (in disgrace) have me like “fuck YEAH she did” and also finding it startling when my friends from Washington are posting articles about it.
Ah, now that’s the issue. Billie’s been with women, but she’s never been with women outside of the bedroom, sounds like. Interesting, and as a fellow bi, I feel her on that.
Well she had some kind of a relationship with Alice in high school – enough that Alice thought she was in love.
My suspicion is that her actual relationships have been with women, she’s just in denial about what that means. Those with boys have been more casual drunken party sex, since that’s the context she talks about guys in.
My understanding of her relationship with Alice is that it was something along the lines of the Tegan and Sara song ‘Boyfriend’ with them messing around together while being friends/not in a relationship publicly and Alice had feelings for Billie who didn’t necessarily see it as as a serious thing.
And so, our heroes traveled through the deep wood, where twilight had laid over the land. Billie was elected to stay behind, to protect the old man and their wounded companion. At night the wood was full of small blue lights, that seemed to rise from the ponds yet flee when one approached them. Soon Joyce, Walky and Danny came across the swamp and stone wall which Cyrus had told them off.
Danny: Looks like this is the place.
Joyce: Indeed, now all I need to do is retrieve the herb.
Walky: Joyce, forgive me.
Suddenly Walky slams the hilt of his rapier over Joyce’s head, knocking her unconscious and lays her body against a tree.
Danny: Walky, what the hell!?
Walky: Shhh, you know as well as I do that Joyce can’t go in there.
Danny: What do you mean?
Walky: What does Joyce fear most?
Danny: Probably Rya….oh shit.
Walky: Indeed, I’ll go, my greatest fear is a poor math grade.
Danny: Okay, but be careful, I’ll make sure you didn’t give Joyce a concussion
And so Walky placed his rapier away and climbed over the stone wall landing in the grass on wet ground on the other side, immediately his senses were assaulted and his eyes diluted. Images flashed through his head and as he rubbed his eyes he saw a figure in front of him. For some strange reason he couldn’t tell if this figure was off his sister or Billie. It wasn’t that the figure changed or that it was an augmentation of them both, but more that the figure seemed to exist in both forms, as if a nameless dream. Walky reached out his hand, attempting to clench the figure, yet it always seemed to move farther away from him. Until at last a pit opened under them both and they plunged into a chasm surrounded by a cold flame. Walky once again attempted to grasp the figure, finally succeeding and peered into Sal/Billie’s eyes awash with hatred. The eye showed visions of his childhood, of his mother admonishing his sister and cherishing him and then of Billie, hanging form a porch blood awash, wine as her blood.
Walky released his grip on the figure and grasped his head. He wanted to scream but he remembered there was something here he was meant to do, something to find. So he kept going, climbing up a hill that seemed to turn from dirt to glass as he felt himself drop and submerge is a liquid fire, he felt himself lifted and face to face with a massive Billie, who opened her mouth and allowed the drink to fall into her mouth, and Walky fell along with it.
On the other side of the well Danny and Joyce wondered what Walky was facing, although angry, Joyce had come to accept Walky’s decision but seemed unsure at his instance that his fears were light.
Back with Walky, he at least stood in a black expanse facing his mother, and a little girl who he remembered from his childhood. Slowly he approached the figures and kneeled to the little girl, ignoring the mother that glared down at them both, and clasped her hands between his. The girl gave a slight smile and the illusion disappeared, revealing a small creature with large eyes. This creature said nothing but held aloft the sacred herb, placing it in Walky’s hands. Walky wanted to ask questions, but the creature disappeared the moment he blinked at last Walky exited the swamp.
Jennifer Billingsworth: head cheerleader, alpha b-, incredibly popular. Not a geek, or a nerd, or a loser, or queer. She’s top of the social food chain, a winner. She’s not weird. She’s not…
thats a good look Billie. As opposed to awkwardly backpedaling from references to her sexuality, which definitely won’t be a good look when it comes up during her date.
Though some people will still realize it at an older age, and can sometimes feel out of place because of that. I realized I was queer at thirteen, but when I was around a group of people where most were like, “I always knew” or “I’d say I realized around ten,” I still felt like, damn…I should have known sooner.
I’m not saying it’s a thing that /should/ be compared or viewed as “better” for happening at a certain time, but just something that people do compare and may have feelings about.
She has however been shown to have been in a previous relationship with a girl too though, so it isn’t just ‘one’ and she has expressed both to Joyce and Becky that it happens sometimes, so this isn’t the only time or likely even the second time.
Yes, but right now she clearly feels the need to fit into the rigidly-defined “heterosexual” box, because she clearly views being outside of that box as an explicitly bad thing, which is harmful to her, and potentially to others as well
And since Ruth is the second girl she’s gotten involved with, and she’s tried to throw herself at Sal once when she was drunk, it’s just a bit late for the “just this one girl” bus.
She doesn’t have to think of herself as bi, but she clearly needs to accept that she isn’t straight, and that there’s nothing wrong with that.
I don’t think the box she’s trying to fit herself into is labeled “straight”; it’s labeled “normal”. She knows she’s not heterosexual, she’s just not comfortable putting a label on her sexuality right now. I respect that.
I don’t quite get how she could recognize (and accept) that she isn’t straight, but still be so reluctant to label herself accordingly to the point where she’s denying that those labels accurately describe her.
Admittedly, being cis/het I don’t have any experience that would help me relate to that, but it feels like she doesn’t want to label her sexuality as queer or bisexual or anything else, because she still views those things as “different”, aka “not normal”
I’m not (and wouldn’t) blame her for this in any case (I haven’t the right even if I were so inclined). I just think she’d be happier if she’d examine that discomfort and work on overcoming it. So far she just seems to be avoiding it
Well… the word she’s disputing is “queer” it’s literally “not normal.”
she seems to have hung out with a crowd where all her female friends DID mess around with another girl at one point or another. She really truly believes that her case is the standard case. If you called her bisexual her dispute wouldn’t be “no I’m not” it’d be “I don’t feel like that really needs a label?”
I mean, wlw affection and experimentation is and has been considered as “less serious” and “real” compared to other orientations. There’s countless stories out there about girls experimenting as teens and none of it really “counts” as gay. And Billie, more than likely, has been raised in that same kind of environment, where queer relationships between girls haven’t been treated as seriously as any other relationship, enough so that she’s able to go “Oh no, I’m not really /queer/” and then reframing it that EVERYONE likes girls and experiments to detract from her own liking of girls, all to make herself seem ‘normal’.
And from another POV, even if you’re aware that you might be queer or start thinking about it, its a lot to go from questioning to accepting it. Even more so, to be open about it. Its a big change, and you never know how people are going to react to it. Like Joyce denying that Billie ever hooked up with girls because “she’s a good person” and bending backwards to find it in the Bible that Becky would Not go to Hell. And then there’s Mary, who is very open about her bigotry and harassed Ruth to the point of suicide. Its definitely very scary, and to cling to the label of “normal” and reframe it as “everyone does this” is all just a way to make it less scary.
Billie would absolutely be more comfortable if she examined herself and worked on overcoming her discomfort about being queer, no doubt about it.
The summer I was realizing I was queer was the summer that Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” was a number one hit, and let me tell you, that song is just…terrible background noise to come to realizations about yourself to. And I have a very twisted fondness towards it at the same time.
And anyway, I’m just thinking about how Billie, at this point, probably heard the lyrics like, “You’re my experimental game / Just human nature” from age ten on, so if things go poorly with her and Ruth, I’m gonna blame Katy Perry.
Well, I haven’t heard that one as much, but I did appreciate that my teenage searches for AMVs with Katy Perry’s song lead me to that one as well. It’s pretty nice, from what I remember.
From what I recall, Sobule’s came first, and then when Perry hit it big(ger) with the same title and a similar sentiment, there was a fair amount of salt from some quarters.
Oh, hers was way sooner; I came out the year after I was born. But I don’t really remember the music I listened to back in those days, so I had never heard of her song until the Katy Perry one.
I second this twisted fondness, but for different reasons.
I mean, it talks about what I ethically regard as cheating. “I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it”. It talks about objectifying a fellow human for experimentation. “Just wanna try you on, I’m curious for you, caught my attention.”
And yet… it talks about experimentation, letting go of your safe haven, and feeling confident about it, in a “I will deal with the consequences later” way. It has an allure to me, because it is quite the opposite of how I do things.
Also, nostalgia. It connects me with a time of my life I really did things like going out and partying with friends.
I am okay with having this guilty pleasure. Now excuse me while I go listen to it.
I listened to the song on repeat for a week, nonstop. I was just so happy to hear a mainstream song about ladies liking ladies, and thought I’d get me some cherry chapstick to lure in the bicurious babes, that it didn’t occur to me how problematic it was in every way. (Cheating, objectification, delegitimizing bisexuality as a “real” sexuality…)
Yeah, at the time I was like, “Hey, a song about kissing girls, I might be able to get behind that…” But at the same time, there would be periods where I’d be like, “I don’t really want to think about this thing right now” and then suddenly the radio would be going I KISSED A GIRL AND I LIKED IT
And I was just like, this, this is not helpful to me at this moment.
I actually really liked that song for a long time!
… because I misheard the lyrics.
I thought she was singing “I hope my good friend didn’t mind it”. I thought the song was about kissing a close friend and hoping they would take it well. To this day, I have mixed feelings about the song because of this mistake, because I liked it for some time before realizing my mistake.
There’s “not liking labels” and then there’s “levels of denial that would give flat Earthers a hernia”. And if there’s one thing we know about Billie, it’s that she isn’t flat I mean what?
Admiration, devotion and an honest belief that she is cool – Becky is just that tag-along lesbian Billie has wanted to admire her throughout the entire comic – so it’s funny how annoying she find her.
And Becky… I think she downplayed what Billie ment for her a bit. She could also mention who gave her free haircut money, who gave her a room to sleep in, who prevented Ruth from committing suicide and who stood up to noted homophobe Mary. Billie showed Becky that this was a place where she could actually be herself.
I also love how Dina and Becky is shaping up to be that couple you run into everywhere. Their constant handholding is just adorable
Though I think the significance wasn’t the same for them. For Becky it was lights in a storm, for Billie it was trivial gestures she may have forgotten about.
Yup, Billie has been a lifesaver for Becky, an example and a provider of crucial aid at crucial times.
And I wonder if part of Billie’s pulling back is how much Becky’s admiration focuses and centers her queerness in a way that also highlights its rarity as something that is celebrated at least in the corner of Indiana they all grew up in.
Like Becky is intensely out and very much likes to center her queerness and her admiration does the same whereas Billie wants to more center queerness as something that happened to her, something incidental that is super typical with everyone you guys and not a big deal.
And Becky makes it hard to hold that, because she’s a stark reminder of what often happens to queer girls of any stripe.
I think that when things get less life-and-deathy for Billie, she will start thinking about her identity. I get the vibe the she doesn’t feel that comfortable with the alpha-bongo brand any longer (I suspect that’s what the adoration of Lucy & co. will come down to), but then what is she?
Brash and forward and LESBIAN Becky who has it all figured out, and credit HER with it, and who totally has embraced an identity Billie is not comfortable with either, highlights that question for Billie. If being an alpha bongo is to be like she was in high school, and being queer is being like Becky… what is she?
aww *jedi hugs* my brain gets like that sometimes too.
for the record, your comments are pretty damn awesome. and they don’t have to all be awesome, we’ll still like you anyways 🙂 I mean, like, I still like spencer and he’s kiiind of had a bad track record lately 😉
You’re always your own worst critic (general you here). It sucks a lot. Don’t worry, I think the majority of us love to see your comments. I certainly do. I understand though that sometimes it’s hard not to rip apart your own comments. Take your time when you need it, but we’re here and it’s nice to see you back.
B- Dubs isn’t wrong. 9/ 10 choosy People choose LadyDentists who choose Gif when they aren’t chewzing LadyDentists who chew gum. Like Everyone eventually.
So, anyone wanna take bets on how Billie reacts to that last panel? Becky has pretty much shoved her face into her internal contradiction. “You are not queer. You have a girlfriend. Who you are going to have sex with tonight. Uh-huh.”
its very awkward when you’re not fully out yet and still trying to figure out your identity, but other people slap labels on you anyways?? i know becky means well but billie clearly still needs to sort out her own feelings about her identity. and as long as she’s still uncomfortable about being bi, it’s not gonna. feel great as other people continue to decide her identity and openly call her queer/outing her when she has not fully come out herself. internalized homophobia’s not great, and it’s gonna be an uphill battle to come to terms with her bisexuality and feel comfortable saying that she likes girls
i say with the experience of someone who took a long time to even question that they might in fact be kinda queer, but had other people decide their sexuality for them and give them different labels based on what they thought was right long before that initial questioning
On the other hand it’s kind of silly to expect others to treat you as straight when you’re open about dating another girl. She’s not being outed in any meaningful sense.
And if Alice is any indication, she’s been doing this for a couple years at least.
Well, like other people have said, shes not expexting other people to treat her as straight? She wants other people to treat her as “normal” which to her means liking girls sometimes, and everyone does that, right?
Also I was thinking about when the confrontation with Alice happened, Wally told Joyce -> Joyce told Becky -> Becky went up to Billie and called her a lezbo. Even if you could have inferred from the interaction with Alice what their relationship was, that’s still not anyone’s business to tell someone else? Especially if its an absolute stranger. I realized Joyce might not have known better, but even so, since Billie had not yet outright said “I like girls” that’s.. not a good thing for her to tell other people, even if theyre also queer. Again, she’s not fully out.
I guess. What does it take to be fully out? As far as I know, she’s never treated it as a secret (treated her relationship with Ruth as one for other reasons).
Other than her thing of not accepting she’s queer – because everyone tries it out eventually, she’s been very blase about it. Note that was long before the scene with Alice or Becky showing back up.
I suppose Billie was even worse in that strip, outing Mandy and Grace to Joyce?
I mean, I’m all for not outing people who are actually in the closet, but there’s got to be some indication they’re actually trying to keep it a secret – other than just not shouting it at every occasion like Becky. 🙂
I mean, I consider balking and denying at any indication that you might in fact be queer as being not completely out, but hey, that’s just me. And the thing about that strip is- Billie never outright says “I like girls.” Whenever she’s ever asked about her feelings towards sexuality, she immediately shifts it to “everyone does it/everyone feels like this” all to decenter her specific attraction to girls. Even though Billie is open about dating another girl now, she’s clearly still uncomfortable with being known as “queer” and will do anything to deflect it and make it seem like it’s something everyone else does too, so she doesn’t stand out for it.
Yeah? Billie kinda outed Grace and Mandy? I think it’s different tho. Everyone has different levels of comfort about how open they are about their sexuality. Grace and Mandy seem to be fairly open about it, and we can assume that they’re okay with people knowing about them because everyone else on the floor seems to know except for Joyce, who is blatantly oblivious.
And personally, I think there’s a difference between Billie telling Joyce, who is an acquaintance of Grace and Mandy, that they’re dating and Joyce telling Becky, a complete stranger of Billie’s, that Billie did hanky-panky with girls in high school. And this was before Becky came out. It is extremely fortunate that Becky is also queer and super supportive of Billie, because if she had been another Mary??? That would have been an extremely shitty thing for Joyce to have done.
But I’m aware that I am biased and speaking from my own experience and comfort as a queer nb person who is very uncomfortable with the idea of my friends just telling other people my identity, without me knowing. That is not information they can just give out. That is information that I should have the ability to control. And before she was open about dating another girl, two of Billie’s straight friends each told someone else without Billie’s permission or knowledge that she fucked girls in high school. If you don’t see something grossly inappropriate about that, there’s nothing more to talk about.
But this is different from what my original post was about. My original point was that while Billie is still uncomfortable with her identity, it’s gonna be awkward as hell for people to continue to call her queer, an identity she has not yet claimed, and in fact, loudly refuses.
Though to be fair to Walky, we don’t know that Billie’s relationship with Alice wasn’t completely open in high school, that it wasn’t common knowledge to basically everyone she knew. If so, is that really something that Walky has a responsibility to keep secret by default? I mean, if she’d asked him to, that would be one thing, but without that?
I’m a straight guy, so I may just be speaking from privilege here, but I just don’t see any sign that Billie has a problem with people knowing she’s been with girls or that she’s done anything to avoid people knowing – other than not going around announcing it like Becky.
Our difference may be more in difference may be more in different readings of Billie’s backstory than anything else.
As for the identity, it is going to be uncomfortable for her, but it’s also going to be pretty hard not to have anyone call her queer or bi or lesbian or something else that she doesn’t claim, while she’s openly dating a girl.
If Billie is okay with it? Sure. But in general, no, Walky shouldn’t be going around telling people Billie’s relationship history. Same reason Amber doesn’t go walking around telling people Ethan’s gay. There’s a lot of things that could go wrong if the wrong person finds out about that- case in fucking point: Mary harassing Ruth to the point of suicide.
And there is a huge difference between Billie implying/telling Joyce that she’s been with other women and Walky telling Joyce that Billie’s been with other women. Billie chose to tell Joyce that she’s been with other women. Walky made that choice for her.
Ethan was never really publicly out, I believe. Only admitted it to himself after prom and dealt with it over the summer. Quite possibly a very different situation.
And Mary didn’t harass Billie for liking girls, any more than she harasses Grace and Mandy or Sierra for liking girls. No leverage. No one cared. She harassed Ruth for the illicit relationship.
Mind you, I’m sure she would have loved to go after any of the “perverts” on the floor, but she needed dirt on them, not just that they were queer.
I just can’t see it here. If there was any indication that Billie cared or that Billie was hiding it, I’d be on board, but I can’t see any.
Everyone in her *highschool* might have known, but that’s only a small fraction of the people at their *university*. Given the risks (eg. Toedad) it’s just safer to err on the side of not telling.
Yes, but everyone in their high school knowing implies that Billie was open and out and that, barring Billie telling him otherwise, Walky has no reason to think that’s changed. If you’re out and you want to go back in the closet in a new setting, you really kind of need to let people know that or they will casually mention something.
or maybe someone *outed* her in highschool. I don’t remember the actual details for Billie – maybe walky did have reason to think she didn’t care? – but in the general case, other people knowing doesn’t imply that it happened in a good way. (afaik. I’ve not got much experience with this stuff myself, generally I don’t talk about people’s relationship history in the first place)
Okay, also yes. Billie is still super struggling with this.
But god fucking dammit Willis.
Christ almighty.
Before the patreon whackiness went down and my access to the “earlies” was over, this arch was one of the most emotional experiences I had from your Comic.
That’s saying a lot. It includes all the dad arc’s (Like toe and blaine), Ruth coming back, becky coming out (and Joyce’s thing), and those are just some of the one’s I can think of off the top of my head.
I have been invested for years.
But that kiss between her and Ruth almost made me break down in tears of Joy. I was couldn’t explain how it radiated in my heart, as cheesy as that sounds. It made Ruth’s come back all the more sweet. Her survival.
Even if they have a long way to go, you better believe I was tearing up at seeing Billie in that first panel.
She still needs to grow. But she’s grown a lot. Considering how much time this has been condensed into.
I’m so happy for her. It’s profound.
Please let there date be good. I just. This arch has been helping me through a lot of stress and I just want Billie to love herself, and her date. <3
Poor Billie is clearly still coming to terms with being bisexual and I’m not surprised because it likely wasn’t a revelation about herself that she was ever expecting.
Becky? Bless you for trying to help, but I’m not sure that you’re actually helping right now! 😉
Ever? Maybe back in high school, but she was banging Alice back then, long enough to count as a relationship.
She’s been open about liking girls any time it’s come up.
It’s not that liking girls is any kind of revelation to her, it’s that she’s somehow stuck on that leaving her as straight. As normal. So she likes girls. Everyone does. It’s normal.
It’s all tied into her identity as the cheerleader, the popular girl. Normal, but better. Nothing weird like being queer about her.
Ah so that’s her problem. She still considers herself the “normal one” and not the “weirdo”. Like a jock suddenly realizing that their love for say… Star Wars makes him a nerd.
Her behaviour has been really confusing me…
here is kitty’s finnish word of the day but not really?
perhe kundi (family guy)
actually they used to show family guy and it was still called family guy. i was a child so i didnt see it then. my coworker showed me the 24/7 livestream we watched for a while i just… what the fuck?
I think that people are people and should act and behave as they wish and everyone else be damned. Why care about what others think of you? They do not define you, you do — or, for that matter, you don’t.
Except… none of that is true.
We are defined by the society we live in, by the rules and standards that are ingrained in us from babyhood.
Humans are Social creatures, we got this far in the history by cooperating and keeping the society together. That’s where social pressure comes from. We are Wired to get along with others and obey the rules because if we don’t the society collapses and everyone dies… or at least that’s how it was in the days of hunter-foraging. And when we started to build proper large civilizations reputation and opinion became even more important because opinions of other people could make or break your life.
Sadly, I think you may be right. We all know that Ruth doesn’t really “do” dates, so she’s going to be incredibly awkward and stilted, so the potential for something to go wrong is pretty high. She’s doing it for Billie’s sake, which I think is sweet, but if it’s something that she really has to grit her teeth to do, then it only reinforces my feeling that at the end of the day, she and Billie are not very suited for each other. You can love someone, yet still be totally wrong for them as a long-term partner. As wiser people have said, sometimes love just isn’t enough. :/
Omg can we change to their hair styles please? It pains me that none of these girls even like, straighten their hair or slide in cute clips or do up a side braid or something for special occasions. I mean, the teacher’s hair was so nice when she did hers, and the girls have so much time on their hands, why not? Even the least fussiest girls I know will part their hair different some days. You change their clothes every so often, please do their hair next time (´▽｀*)
“That’s a real swerve” is a pretty solid line. I can hear it being said, and it works especially since it’s just a little different way of saying it to my experience.
Panel 1: I love how when she’s just being herself and not getting self-conscious, she’s just so happy and glowing. This has been a dream of hers for awhile even if she told herself it would never happen due to Ruth’s illness and she is absolutely head over heels for the girl she loves.
And the chance to dress up, go out on the town with the person she loves. It’s something that she’s likely been missing for awhile so when she’s not thinking about it, she’s filled with that giddy excitement of many alloromantics going out on a big date.
Panel 2: And there’s the self-consciousness and the shift in stance that drains some of her confidence. Saying it out loud, putting it front and center? It hits those insecurities and allows room to doubt.
And of course this is harder than standing in front of an entire hall and declaring love. Being in a crisis has a way of focusing you and a lot of internal stuff has a habit of being shelved when you’re just going day to day trying to survive.
It’s the dead calm afterwards where all of it stirs up and the intense emotions of it tend to overwhelm including your own self-doubt.
Now, all that said, I love Becky and Dina here. Holding hands, giving congratulations, just casually together and in love. It’s beautiful.
Panel 3: This moment!
It’s so earnest and loving. Becky really saying out loud how important Billie was for her. After all, Billie was literally the first person she met who was out about being interested in girls and who didn’t seem to fear the bigoted world around her.
Additionally, Billie has done so much for Becky. Giving her a room when she needed it, stopping a potential suicide, having a dramatic coming out before the whole floor, giving her haircut money, etc…
Billie was the space she needed to catch her breath and to her, a queer mentor, someone who showed her a space and a world where she could be herself, loudly and confidently without fear of being destroyed for it. That it was no big deal.
Something I love in panel 1 is that this is not Billie putting up a show like I imagined her doing in high school. “Look, everyone, who has a HOT DATE? It’s the alpha bongo, that’s who.”
This is Billie dressing up for herself and for Ruth. That’s something else altogether. It’s adorable (and it makes me sad we didn’t get to see a dress-up-montage with a squeeing Lucy)
Panel 4: But that’s just the catch and here we see Billie’s real biggest fear. She craves desperately to be “normal” and it makes sense why. She went to a series of expensive schools with awful people and watched as the rules bent around and supported a certain type of person against another type of person.
Being the neutral, the “normal”, the default by privilege was a shield of protection. It was the model of love shown directly by the parents she most spent time with and she saw and participated in the abuse of those who were marginalized and marked as “weird” or “odd”.
And that’s the system she grew up in. One where the “normal” aggressively harmed and harassed the “not normal” and that’s her central internal conflict and I’m willing to bet the origin of some of her drinking problem.
She wants to be the prototypical “normal” success story as modeled for teens in television and movies. The popular head cheerleader with a troupe of friends who look up to her for being popular and with nothing more really going on with her.
But she has elements that marginalize her. She’s mixed race and we know she’s had to internalize and shrug off a lot of casual racism in her quest to fulfill that idea of “normal” and safety she sought as well as having to turn a blind eye to racist discrimination against Sal and her friend Marcie.
And what’s most pressing on her? The fact that she’s queer. She’s loved women. Intensely, passionately, with all of her bi heart, but that worries her.
She lives in Indiana and has grown up in the 2010s, so she’s grown up seeing the intense way queer folks have been treated in society and some major milestones in queer rights and so it’s hard to pretend that those desires don’t marginalize her, so she’s coped by placing herself outside of queer proper and into an area of “everyone’s a little bi, right?” instead.
And I mean, the number of bi people in society is way higher than most people are willing to admit and that desire to hold on to a straight privilege that never was is not an uncommon experience for some bi folks, but it’s also a fiction.
And you see in her eyes here, faced with Becky and her admiration, that she knows it’s a fiction. That she has a marginalization due to her queer attractions and that has dramatically affected her life and the full weight of that is really hitting home as she moves from secret lover no one knows about to actually doing “normal” date stuff out in the open where everyone can see.
And that terrifies her, because she knows what happens to the marginalized and fears it. It also slams home her bad choices with Alice, reminding her of how her fear of being open and honest likely lead to her car crash and her taking Alice for granted and treating her poorly.
Panel 5: And it shakes Becky a bit to realize her queer hero is struggling with the full weight of coming out and accepting her queer identity, because it’s always sad when heroes turn out more messy than they seemed to start with and do disappointing things from an outside perspective (cough cough Chelsea Manning).
Panel 6: And so her last statement… it’s a little nasty, highlighting the cognitive dissonance that Billie is holding on to. That as much as Billie resists fully owning that queer label, she is queer.
And frankly, it’s not completely a negative thing for that to be highlighted. Billie’s struggles with “normalcy” have not served her mental health well. She’s needed external validation to have any internal sense of value, rarely opens up about her own struggles, and her own fears are clearly weighing enough on her to fuel an intense depression and a major drinking problem.
When she can resolve this terror at being unique and thus at risk, she’ll likely feel less haunted and like a fraud all the time and be able to enjoy people’s praise for the things she’s done and the good she’s done rather than the stereotype she wants to believe she represents.
Yup. Even when Becky’s mask snaps back , there is a lot of things going on behind it. I think you are right that she would like Billie to form a lot more of her identity around being queer (just like Becky). Her “is bisexuality even a thing” comment comes to mind.
I hope these two find some other common ground, because Bille’s annoyance with Becky’s adoration will only grow.
Also your comments on Panel 5 and 6 finally made sense of something bothering me. Becky might be trying to prod Billie into admitting it for her own good, but she is going about it kind of … badly.
Dammit Becky Billie already has a nick name, why do you persist in trying to label people so much
Sorry I know how much posters here love Becky (she who can do no wrong) but nicknames are a real bug-bear of mine and she just keeps doing it…why is it so difficult just to call someone what everyone else already calls them
I’m surprised no ones had a go out her about this but then most of the characters are generally polite and don’t seem the type to want to bring it up
Like having a go at someone simply because they want to bestow a nick name would be considered rude even though bestowing nick names is a quite a personal thing and denotes a certain level of intimacy
Frankly… I’m a bit weirded out by the logic I see here. It’s like you’d require permission for everything, even looking at someone… If a nickname is not insulting then no one really cares.
I mean, I wouldn’t say that no one really cares? It depends on the person. It can come off as really over familiar, and in some cases*, disrespectful to give someone a nickname.
*Disrespectful in the cases where someone has a name that is different from standard Anglicized names and someone else gives them a nickname because they don’t want to bother trying to pronounce the name/think that “Zoe” is a better name than “Uzoamaka”
Heh after hearing to some pronunciations in anime dubs I would be actually fine with nicknames. My ears Bleed from the atrocities that are committed on the Japanese language… Same for English pronounced in original voice versions. Does it really cost that much to get someone who can actually Speak the tongue fluently…
Weirdly, Billie is reminding me a lot of my struggles in accepting my transness.
All girls hate dresses right? NOBODY likes heels. Doesn’t everyone resent makeup? Surely everyone hates their boobs. Don’t all girls wish they were guys sometimes?
I mean ok I read all these blogs by trans people but I am not trans! I am just… tomboyish. That’s it.
I wonder sometimes but doesn’t everyone? Ok I like to wear guy clothes sometimes but only cuz they are more comfortable. And maybe I get excited when peopl mistake me for a guybut I am just… trying it out. Playing. Gender nonconforming. I am totally cis and real trans folk have it so much worse.
tomboyish. yes, I’d describe myself that way. huh.
but I don’t like being mistaken for a guy, so.. yeah, I still feel like a woman. 🙂 but there’s only a few things about me that are feminine besides my body.
I’m glad I live in a time and place where I don’t have to fit into those boxes 🙂
To be clear, I am not saying that you can’t be a tomboy. More that tomboy was the excuse I used so I didn’t have to think about the source of my deep and pervasive discomfort with almost everything in my life.
… Also for a long while I bought into terfy nonsense because my first feminist role models were terfs and so I thought if I hated being a woman ot wasn’t being trans it was the patriarchy. :/
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“jes’ sayin’ cuz they’re at least *D*-dubs, not B-dubs…”
I
I literally have an ad for Buffalo Wild Wings showing on the page. It makes sense and yet I find it fucking hilarious.
Dude, I just came here to comment about Buffalo Wild Wings. Thanks for beating me to it! I’m not crazy.
All I am getting is a plumber ad, not sure of the significance of that.
Well, “plumbing” is slang for the reproductive system, so I suppose we could work off that. But I prefer using it as a stepping-stone to get to this, instead:
http://78.media.tumblr.com/5f170fbeaef2295dba553d67909f4f63/tumblr_ng4m34rKmv1r7769mo1_500.png
Billie DOES clean up well.
Indeed she does. Now I’m wondering what Ruth will look like for their date.
No mere Leafs jersey tonight. No, tonight she’s got the full regalia, complete with pads and goalie mask.
I choked on some spit reading this. It seems SO Ruth, but I put odds on her at least saving it for the honeymoon.
Of course, she’s saving it for the honeymoon. What else to wear to 🍁 Garden?
Commando?
Going full commando, in public? I feel like that would have probably worked to get her fired better than her liason with a resident did. At the moment, I feel like we’re past that point. Besides, Ruth was the one who initiated the date, so why would she act out for it?
..aside from Willis indulging slipshine subscriber fetishes, of course.
Does she? I’ve never seen her with a mop and a bucket…
I, too, remember donning my nicest Uggs to go on a date with a girl.
I always feel bad for Becky’s eye, having to force its way through hair and everything.
Hello Becky tell me what’s my lesson,
“Look right through me, look right through me-e-e.”
Is that Tears for Fears or Jules?
Sarah Hickman.
Ugh, just for once I’d like to find a cover that doesn’t sound like the Jules version.
She’s like Mad EYE Moody. The eye sees all.
becks if you care that much about billie’s ladybangin’ you could just buy a Slipshine subscription
Becky is currently in a low-income situation and can’t afford a Slipshine sub.
She may have access to Galasso’s range of offerings, but his subs are no replacement!
Okay, I’m glad I have another chance to say this:
Billie: “But I’m a Cheerleader…”
Nice reference.
**slowclap**
One of my favorite movies ever. And the reason I started watching Orange is the New Black.
I just remember being a baby queer doing internet searches for something like “gay movies” and then watching it on Vimeo or something. And being like, “Hey, it’s Zuko!”
Now that I think about it, it…it might’ve been the first R-rated movie I ever saw.
So not for Capt Janeway? For shame!
WHAT?
“I thought everyone had those thoughts.”
LOL Good one!
Billie’s aversion to being “”different” is going to be a big hurdle for her… I hope she and Ruth can work through it.
I’m just dreading her saying something like “We’re just friends! I’m not gay!” at dinner…..
I can’t see it. She’s never been particularly shy about relationships with girls, just about making the jump from that to being queer herself.
She’s a straight girl who’s in a relationship with another girl. Nothing strange about that. Everyone likes girls, right?
Right?
Bi invisibility is a real thing and it can seriously warp your views of yourself and the people around you if you’re bi.
I grew up hearing that bi boys are actually gay and that bi girls are just making out with other girls to get the attention of boys. So I knew for sure that I wasn’t bi. And even though I was attracted to other girls, I was also attracted to boys. So I knew for sure that I wasn’t a lesbian, because my gay friends told me that being gay is not a choice; for me, it sorta would have been.
Meanwhile, the Christian kids at my school and the religious media I was exposed to said that being gay is a choice. And I believed that they really believed that; they sure said it with a lot of conviction. So I came to what seemed to me a pretty logical conclusion: being straight must be a choice.
I spent years thinking that “attracted to men and women, choosing to only be with members of the opposite sex” was what “straight” really meant.
Then there’s “man crush” or “girl crush.” Those are things, right? Sure, I like girls, but I’m just having a man crush.
It didn’t really click for me until I passed someone kind of androgynous but hot on the street and spent 5 minutes trying to decide whether it was a boy or a girl before I realized it really didn’t matter to me.
I have to wonder how much of Christianity’s issues with sexuality stem from straight, gay, and bi Christians all assuming that everyone else thinks exactly the same way that they do and sending mixed messages to each other.
Add some ace Christians to that mix, and your theory becomes even more plausible.
Thanks for sharing, that is a very interesting angle – all people as a rule starting out as bi, but needing to decide which (one!) gender they will stick with (i know this is what many people actually think of bisexuality, but it’s interesting to see this as the definition of straight).
It’s always the difficulty of deducting from what you feel inside + what people tell you is the norm (probably from what they feel inside, which happens to fit what lots of people feel?)
Sometimes we just can’t know, because we only get what happens inside ourselves and what we hear of as the norm… and then it’s such a relief if we hear someone tell their experience that resonates with ours… these “me too!“ moments.
Well, she is in college after all.
Y’know, I would have thought this was utterly silly except for the fact that I am literally wrestling with the same damn internal contradiction right now, funnily enough.
And of course all of my favorite webcomics are in the midst of “let’s see if Character will recognize their own attraction to other women” arcs right now, the universe is devious.
It can be frustrating when the universe seems really being trying to beat you over the head with something. :/
When it happens to me, I try to embrace it, but part of me also gravitates towards the “screw you, universe, I do what I want” response as well.
Soooo you read Questionable Content too, huh?
Haha, yup. And I totally have a ‘screw you universe, I do what I want’ aspect as well, but it’s currently on timeout trying to figure out how that works when the thing the universe is trying to get me to do is…what I want, lol!
Ohhhh right, this has shades of ‘Billie wants to fit in and be cool’ lingering.
With a side of “Billie doesn’t understand that bisexuality is a thing”.
B-dubs?? I do not understand
Buffalo Wild Wings.
(No, but really, just taking the first letter of Billie’s name and adding something to it. Possibly to reference Buffalo Wild Wings.)
is that how people get nicknames in the USA? or is this a Becky thing
I did have a friend named Bianca who some of us called B-Money.
So.
(It was written as B$, though.)
Becky is one of those people who likes to make clever nicknames for her new friends; she undoubtedly thinks of it as a way of indicating her friendship, but in reality it’s a form of aggressive intimacy.
Since she’s only done variations on people’s actual names, and not personal references or pet names, I’m not sure “intimacy” is the right word for it. “Familiarity” might be more accurate.
As for the “forced” part, I think it depends on how you view nicknames. The level of familiarity where a person would be okay with nicknames is not the same for everyone, much like being on a first name basis. Dotty and Jakes haven’t objected, and it seems clear from Becky’s response in panel 5 that she’s actively watching for signs that she’s overstepped.
Seeing as Becky doesn’t have nicknames for Joyce or Dina – the two people she’s closest to – I think it’s probably part of her “fun, happy Becky” mask. She might even be doing it as an unconscious way of testing the waters to see where she stands with that person
Two of my friends are nicknamed gimpy (bad knee) and sasquatch (hair). They nicknamed me Kidney Bean (because I lost a kidney).
I got Bruceski because I complained about people misreading my name as Bruce and a classmate decided to start calling me Brewski in common “ironic nickname” fashion. a bit of tweaking to something I was happy with and it’s been my internet handle for 20 years.
I thought the ‘dubs’ part was in reference to the double-l in Billie’s name…
oh wait is it a really weird nickname for Billie?
at first I assumed it was something along the lines of “I dub thee ‘B’isexual” but that made no sense
I would guess Billingsworth.
BillingsWorth but also Buffalo Wild Wings (a restaurant chain).
Why would anyone makes nicknames referencing a fast food chain?
Because ‘Merica, that’s why. We identify ourselves by our favorite fast food brands and sports teams.
I am from America and I think the best sports thing is eccentric tennis coach Masato Sanjoin (although I hear the Sportland Sports are number one in points), and while I enjoy various fast food I haven’t had the money or reason to really buy any of it in well over a year, so.
I have never understood buffalo wings. I have seen many buffalo in person, and I have never seen any wings. And if they did have wings, they would have to be huge, not those tiny things they serve in restaurants. One wing could feed an entire family.
Well, they take one buffalo wing, then 100 rats, and puree them all into a fine liquid. Then they inject heavily processed chicken with that juice. What you’re mostly eating is chicken. Well, and rat. Chicken and rat.
Probably a good thing buffalo can’t fly, can you imagine being underneath one when it let a load go? And I thought being pooped on by Canada Geese was bad.
Hm. Lots of different theories in this thread. I thought it was a result of “Billie Billingsworth” being a name resulting in the initials B.B. In other words, two B’s. Double B’s. B-dubs.
My theory falls apart a bit when you consider that “Billie” is itself a nickname, based on her last name, which would make “B-dubs” basically double-dipping on her surname, but whatevs. Nicknames don’t have to make complete logical sense.
*plays “Flight ’76”, better known as the Disco version of Flight of the Bumblebee, on the hacked Muzak*
*takes a moment afterward, while appreciating the glockenspiel and electric dulcimer, to let eyeballs stop bouncing around from trying to follow the musical B*
–Dave, you might say I couldn’t C sharp
Keep it up and you’ll B flat.
hope that date goes well!
So it sounds like Billie thinks everyone is bi or something.
*GASP* ARE YOU SAYING THEY AREN’T? MY WHOLE WORLD JUST IMPLODED (no seriously my hometown has an inordinate number of bi peeps ((me included))so for sometimes it feels like “huh i guess everybody is bi that’s cool)
This isn’t even the first time she’s said that: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/inevitable/
I wonder how a real conversation relating to the topic with Becky would go. Like, I think for people who have the “everyone’s at least a little bi” mindset, it’s one thing to say that straight people are just in denial or whatever because of social pressure. But what about gay people? Wouldn’t it be insensitive to tell Becky that she’s actually at least a little bi? Like, girl seems pretty damn sure she’s gay. So then what does that mean? Everyone’s either bi or gay?
That’s how I’ve seen the “everyone’s bi” idea start to unravel for some people, anyway.
I’m pretty sure it’d be insensitive to question a straight person’s sexuality too, unless you are of the opinion that straight people’s feelings don’t matter because they are oppressors or whatever.
But sometimes it’s fun and useful to discuss insensitive topics too, so whatever. Discuss away with Becky.
It is wrong to assume that straight people are wrong about their own identities. My entire comment was about poking holes in that mindset.
Meh. Being straight is so much the socially constructed default that it leads non-straight people to question themselves, sometimes to the point of suicide.
I’d say that is reason enough to chip away at that social construction. And if that means sometimes some who actualy is of the default persuasion may get offended? That’s a better price to pay than continuing with the current structure, which, as remarked above, is already hurting people.
I mostly agree with you even as someone whose straight. Though I’d hope you don’t go around bullying people who are insecure about their sexuality. That would be pretty mean.
I am straight myself. And I prefer not to bully people at all.
Queer people HAVE to question their sexuality at some point because it deviates from a social norm.
Straight cis people often do not have to question themselves – and i personally expect them to do so anyway.
As soon as a straight cis person proves by the way they talk about theirs and other peoples’ sexual orientation that they HAVE done reflection on this, that is the point when i can say “congratulations that you’ve figured out this part of your identity (and not just follow a norm because it’s a norm)“ – and won’t treat their sexual identity in any way different from mine.
Queer / lesbian / gay / bi doesn’t mean people have got it figured out automatically, though, and can also fall into queer norms of how a lesbian etc is supposed to feel and act.
Sexual orientation is never just that easy, and then throw in the mix that you can be romantically attracted by a whole different setup than sexually…
so congrats to whoever figures it out for themselves!
In a normal distribution curve, most people would be bisexual. The curve is skewed because of cultural pressure. Telling individual people (who are neither good friends nor show any signs of being attracted to someone of a gender they’d normally not be attracted to because of their stated sexual preference) is a dick move (or a deliberate provocation), because statistics doesn’t allow you to infer individual behavior from it and it’s not your *** business anyway.
That said, how do you feel about the last few comics over at Questionable Content?
Re QC, I don’t know if you were asking everyone or just Yumi, but I’ll chime in…
Mostly I’m hoping that the obvious affection Faye and Bubbles have for each other becomes more surfaced in a way that brings them closer together, and lets Bubbles be more free / less bottled up.
Evie is clearly being a busybody, and was pretty insensitive to Bubbles, and that’s not a good combination. If she gets Faye realizing things about her actual feelings for Bubbles, and if she (Evie) doesn’t talk to Bubbles again, things could work out well.
Narrative arc implies that Faye and Bubbles will in fact get closer, but whether that will be more familial, more romantic-but-not-sexual, or more romantic-and-sexual, I can’t predict… and I’d be happy to see any of those outcomes.
ReRe QC: I’d just be happy to see Faye accept support from Any-Fu*****-One of her choice, and be happy but mostly feel secure. I don’t think her relationship with Martin had her healed enough to trust that he wouldn’t abandon her. And I think with Bubbles, she’s healed enough to start a relationship with deep trust in her partner. I surely hope so.
Seems to me, there are two people viewing Fayes relationship with Bubbles as a romantic one. And are pushing Faye to see it the same way. While her sister might claim a close enough relationship to meddle that way, her lover definitely has no such claim, Faye never heard of her before today.
“In a normal distribution curve”, perhaps, but there’s little reason to predict that the distribution of sexualities fitting a normal curve.
I do assume that social pressures skew the curve, but that doesn’t mean it’s skewed that far.
Why shouldn’t it?
Our cousins, the apes, have sex any which way, more or less all the time.
Why should we -minus the culture and all those hangups about identity – be that different?
Patriarchy invented the idea that sex (for women at least) should basically be about bearing children for a certain man.
I’m not sure what you mean. Chimps, bonobos and gorillas all have different sexual patterns. Sounds like you’re thinking of bonobos.
Yes, I was thinking about bonobos. There is no physical reason for monogamy or having sex only to procreate. Those ideas are cultural. And without them, there is no reason at all why sexual preference should not follow a normal distribution between the extremes (total heterosexuality or total homosexuality).
Your comment about patriarchy is spot-on. But, as you say, there is no apriori reason why sexual preferences should follow a normal distribution (rather than a linear one for example).
As far as I know the bonobos’ sexual practice is unusual among other apes, and more generally among mammals (I’ve read an article citing a study estimating between 5% an 20% the occurrence of homosexual acts among birds, depending on the species). You can’t deduce from bonobos that us humans should “naturally” be mostly bisexual (though we might).
Gender stereotypes are such that it is very unlikely for it not to repress the occurrences of homosexual and bisexual orientations. The fact that “there is no physical reason for monogamy or having sex only to procreate” is unrelated to sexual orientations.
Unless solid evidence is presented I think it is more likely that humans are “naturally” more often “straight” than “homosexual”.
PS – I know birds aren’t mammals. However I didn’t find an estimate of the proportion of homosexual acts among mammals. (Homosexuality exist among the vast majority of animal species, but that doesn’t say anything about its frequency among a given species).
QC is pretty cute. I was more interested in the Hannelore story line though. It’s hard for me to find Faye endearing, but I like Bubbles a bunch. Faye’s love interests are always great characters. Which honestly leads me to be a bit of a cynic about her relationship with Bubbles, but maybe this one is the real deal. Also I really miss Dora. She’s barely in the comic anymore.
Meanwhile, asexuals quietly snicker
Do we now? That’s nice. I’ve been hoping I’d eventually have the opportunity to move away from all of the eye-rolling and shaking my head in perplexion. 😛
Oh there’s still a lot of that for us, but it’s good to laugh at the “everyone must be attracted to someone” thoughts once in a while, especially if it’s “everyone’s a little bi” on top of that
Well, strictly speaking, Billie claims, as she’s done before, that everyone gets interested in girls. Doesn’t imply everyone is bi. It’s quite possible and even likely that in Billie’s world, there are lesbians and straight girls, who sometimes like other girls. (And probably gay and straight guys, but the straight guys don’t sometimes like other guys. She hasn’t actually commented on that, but it fits the stereotype pattern, I think.)
If I recall, she doesn’t believe in bisexuality. She just likes girls too.
Fair point. It’d be interesting seeing her explore the idea with a gay guy, then, to at least get a better idea of what she means when she says “everyone thinks about girls.”
She did say to Joyce early on about homosexuality: “I think, like everyone thinks about it or tries it out eventually. We get curious. It’s basically inevitable.”
She’d just mentioned Grace and Mandy and is obviously thinking about herself, but Joyce’s question was about homosexuality in general, so that does seem to counter my thought about her attitude towards guys.
From what I have read, everybody is bi, just some are more bi than others.
I like panel five Becky too much. XD
wait panel six, whoops
ehhhh Becky is good in this whole scene. *shrugs*
I’m all about the last-panel Becky. Way to call it like she sees it!
She definitely came up with that sentence to emphasize that Billie can say what she wants, but…
At first I was like, “just accept the bisexuality, Billie”, but then I remembered that I identified as “bi-curious” in college (because I didn’t want to take on yet another identity at the moment). I was more sure afterwards that I really wasn’t a four-year-queer. It’s not so unreasonable to take one’s time.
my approach is “fuck it, identity is fluid, who cares if it changes all the time” 😀
to each their own!
I can dig that! ^.^
“Are you straight?” “I am today.”
I’m tired enough I thought you typed
“Fuck it (literally), identify its fluid (to see which gender or nb you hooked up with).”
At least I understood the important part about it’s each to their own preferences.
Take one’s time…. Yeah, “some” of us *May* have taken 45 years to figure it out. Read: in denial for 45 years… Er, … Maybe (a few) more.
Finally, I figured it out, am settled in. Enjoying the truth.
Everyone does things at their own pace.
De Nile, not just a river in Egypt
Class act that Becky is.
i think mostof what worries me about billie is that she seems to not be okay with being into girls (I’m probably wrong but still)
It seems like she’s definitely okay with Ruth, but hasn’t fully processed it in context yet – the context that would mean she’s queer. It can be easier (at least at first) to parse an exception, or assume that you are the rule and not the exception. If she thought everyone’s had bi-leaning thoughts, but knows consciously that most people don’t have same-gender partners, going on a date is part of a long wakeup call.
I think she’s just not comfortable being labelled as anything but straight (assuming that queer=anything but strictly straight). It seems like the idea of her having a girlfriend and her identity as a straight woman are able to coexist just fine in her head because she rationalizes it as she does here, but if a third party makes the assumption that she is not straight, it hits her right in her identity. I think she’s just fine with being into girls, but identity is important to everyone including Billie, and people are going to assume that she is queer if she is romantically with a woman–what worries me is that she will struggle with either of her available options: (1) accepting a new identity or (2) being confident enough in how she chooses to define herself that other people’s assumptions don’t hit her so hard.
Yeah…She seems to be OK with ‘being into girls’, but not with ‘being the kind of girl who’s into girls on an ongoing basis’.
Of course she’s straight. She’s a popular cheerleader! All the boys like her. (At parties, when everyone’s drunk.)
It’s not like Ruth is her first exception either. She apparently with Alice for a chunk of high school. While still being straight. She just likes girls sometimes.
If I thought it were okay to link to tvtropes without the robomoderators appearing in giant-suit form to squash the link (hey, eveery Willis strip needs a LITTLE Transformers in the backround, right?), I would link thereto, specifically to their If It’s You, It’s Okay page.
–Dave, but I have no wish for flying http:ical fragments to-day
Except she’s not. She’s got two known exceptions and makes no claim that those two are special. She’s just attracted to girls, but somehow that doesn’t make her queer.
Maybe she’s afraid Ruth will end up hating her like that last one. Either that or still not used to this.
She’s still got one foot in the Nile.
Status is important to Billie. With her parents I imagine it’s the only way she felt good about herself in highschool. Admitting she’s queer could jeopardize that (In her mind at least) I would personally find it hilarious if she comes out because it seems to the norm in Forest quad, but it’s more of a question of what’s more important to her. Billie could easily sabotage this whole thing with Ruth if too many people comment on their relationship while they’re out tonight.
From what I *hear*, not everyone is bi. But I have no experience with not being bi, so obviously, it’s the norm. Could be mass conspiracy.
I… Unh, I …really like what you said, .. And I wish to join your club. (Hands over stack of internetz cash), … Will this cover my dues for the year?
Ooh Billie, love that lipstick! Also, this is where I feel like I can especially relate since when I was first realizing my orientation, I had something of an ‘everybody is probably bi’ sort of phase. Of course, with age I realize that not everybody is like that or like me. For me personally, gender doesn’t factor into it too much*. But I recognize now that not everybody is like that. Not everybody will think of girls ‘eventually’. Also, Becky admitting that Billie is a role model is cute, even if it makes Billie understandably uncomfortable. This is probably where Billie will realize that whether she views herself as different or not…society at large will see her as different for dating Ruth. I hope her parents won’t be huge jerks about it if they ever meet Ruth…
I assume her parents will be huge jerks, but hopefully not because she’s dating Ruth.
I remember when I was thirteen and first coming out as queer, one of my friends who was a couple years older than me was like, “Well, everyone likes girls sort of. Like, I like kissing girls as like a joke, but I’m straight.”
She and the woman she’s now engaged to plan to have their brides’ parties be dressed in rainbow colors.
(Of course, you can kiss people or whatever and still identify however you do. But man was my friend gay.)
Aaw, I’m glad for your friend and her wife! Hope they have a nice wedding~ and I know what you mean. My best friend was a year younger than me so when I eventually came out as bi to him, he was pretty iffy about it. He didn’t understand it completely, but he was very sweet and supportive about my first girlfriend. Once he was in college, he came back home for the summer once and told me about his boyfriend! It didn’t work out but they dated for a few years and he was very happy. I still remember him coming over to my house with a shirt that had a pink triangle and the word ‘pride’ on it and gave him some Becky-style props for it since we live in po-dunk Florida.
“You know what that means?”
“Pffft…what kind of bi do you take me for?”
Huh, interesting. Here in the German queer community, the pink triangle mostly signifies respect and remembrance to wlw who died in concentration camps, because that was the identifier they had to wear.
By extension, it is also a lesbian symbol.
What does it signify in your community?
It’s a gay rights symbol here, also because (though not necessarily known by all) of the connection with the Holocaust. Though I had always heard that in the Holocaust, it was assigned to mlm.
That’s how I have always understood it, too. wlw were either not specifically marked or assigned the ‘antisocial’ black triangle. (I’ve read conflicting information on that.)
Yes. There wasn’t an individual marker for gay women. Mostly, i suppose, because even the Nazis rather didn’t spell out lesbians existed and therefore put them in a group without a common identifier.
I haven’t ever heard of the black triangle. Thanx for info.
Mostly because there wasn’t a consistent way lesbians were dealt with. Some were given the black triangle, others were ignored or sent to brainwashing facilities.
Aaw…I never knew that it was used like that in Germany! That’s very sweet, and I’m glad to know that now. For my community, it’s the same as Yumi. Even though it was originally used as an identifier in the Holocaust, it’s been reclaimed to be a symbol for gay rights.
It’s that, plus about gay men who died in the aids crisis.
I think her parents won’t care, because they don’t care about Billie, period.
That’s terribly sad and also probably true.
They don’t care about her personally, but they may still want her to be normal and respectable, because anything else reflects badly on them.
Who ARE her parents, anyway? I thought she was raised by the Walkertons?
They never appeared. They’re so busy with their own lives that it’s become the norm for them to substitute money for love, and Billie was de facto raised by the Walkertons. But they’re still legally her parents, even though Mom Walkerton considers her as a daughter.
At least they have one daughter they like.
As I recall Billie’s dad is always working, and her mom is typically getting laid/being the stereotypical trophy wife. Don’t think they ever had any characterization beyond that. If they ever even found out about Billie I imagine they wouldn’t personally care, but demand she either stop seeing Ruth or keep it a secret for status reasons. They barely seem to know they even have a daughter though, so discovering their daughter is queer is unlikely.
I’m not too sure about the “please keep it hush hush or stop it” part. Having a child being gay and showing how supportive they are of their kid is very hype among some circles of rich people.
But yeah, if they ever learn about it, their first thought will be “what’s the public reaction that’ll give me the more popularity points ?”
So I feel like this basically gives away where I went to school, but my university has been in the news lately. Like, a lot. I didn’t really realize how much until I started seeing Facebook friends not just from my state but from around the country posting about it.
And just, fuck so many people there; I’ve enjoyed watching them burn.
??? The comment sounds like a reply to I’m lost to what.
Yumi is saying there have been lots of news posts about her alma mater lately, and they’re just venting about how much some people there really suck ass, I think?
oh look i misgendered one time and got it right another time………AHHHHHH
Ironically, I think I misgendered Stevonnie recently when commenting on
hertheir awesome facial hair.SORRY YUMI, I still have trouble with pronouns and trans stuff even as a nonbinary person myself.
I’m kinda surprised that people pay enough attention to me here to know my pronouns at all, so don’t worry about it and thanks.
American alma mater, I should say. in the US news.
Yeah, I have a tendency to start talking like I’m in the middle of a conversation, but I was just venting.
Some of the stuff is like, of course it’s big news, but some parts like the university president resigning (in disgrace) have me like “fuck YEAH she did” and also finding it startling when my friends from Washington are posting articles about it.
Also, fuck YEAH that judge.
I think I know exactly what you’re talking about.
(Not as much the stuff with your alma mater, but this is getting international coverage as well)
Ah, now that’s the issue. Billie’s been with women, but she’s never been with women outside of the bedroom, sounds like. Interesting, and as a fellow bi, I feel her on that.
Well she had some kind of a relationship with Alice in high school – enough that Alice thought she was in love.
My suspicion is that her actual relationships have been with women, she’s just in denial about what that means. Those with boys have been more casual drunken party sex, since that’s the context she talks about guys in.
My understanding of her relationship with Alice is that it was something along the lines of the Tegan and Sara song ‘Boyfriend’ with them messing around together while being friends/not in a relationship publicly and Alice had feelings for Billie who didn’t necessarily see it as as a serious thing.
Dungeons and Dumbing Part 7
And so, our heroes traveled through the deep wood, where twilight had laid over the land. Billie was elected to stay behind, to protect the old man and their wounded companion. At night the wood was full of small blue lights, that seemed to rise from the ponds yet flee when one approached them. Soon Joyce, Walky and Danny came across the swamp and stone wall which Cyrus had told them off.
Danny: Looks like this is the place.
Joyce: Indeed, now all I need to do is retrieve the herb.
Walky: Joyce, forgive me.
Suddenly Walky slams the hilt of his rapier over Joyce’s head, knocking her unconscious and lays her body against a tree.
Danny: Walky, what the hell!?
Walky: Shhh, you know as well as I do that Joyce can’t go in there.
Danny: What do you mean?
Walky: What does Joyce fear most?
Danny: Probably Rya….oh shit.
Walky: Indeed, I’ll go, my greatest fear is a poor math grade.
Danny: Okay, but be careful, I’ll make sure you didn’t give Joyce a concussion
And so Walky placed his rapier away and climbed over the stone wall landing in the grass on wet ground on the other side, immediately his senses were assaulted and his eyes diluted. Images flashed through his head and as he rubbed his eyes he saw a figure in front of him. For some strange reason he couldn’t tell if this figure was off his sister or Billie. It wasn’t that the figure changed or that it was an augmentation of them both, but more that the figure seemed to exist in both forms, as if a nameless dream. Walky reached out his hand, attempting to clench the figure, yet it always seemed to move farther away from him. Until at last a pit opened under them both and they plunged into a chasm surrounded by a cold flame. Walky once again attempted to grasp the figure, finally succeeding and peered into Sal/Billie’s eyes awash with hatred. The eye showed visions of his childhood, of his mother admonishing his sister and cherishing him and then of Billie, hanging form a porch blood awash, wine as her blood.
Walky released his grip on the figure and grasped his head. He wanted to scream but he remembered there was something here he was meant to do, something to find. So he kept going, climbing up a hill that seemed to turn from dirt to glass as he felt himself drop and submerge is a liquid fire, he felt himself lifted and face to face with a massive Billie, who opened her mouth and allowed the drink to fall into her mouth, and Walky fell along with it.
On the other side of the well Danny and Joyce wondered what Walky was facing, although angry, Joyce had come to accept Walky’s decision but seemed unsure at his instance that his fears were light.
Back with Walky, he at least stood in a black expanse facing his mother, and a little girl who he remembered from his childhood. Slowly he approached the figures and kneeled to the little girl, ignoring the mother that glared down at them both, and clasped her hands between his. The girl gave a slight smile and the illusion disappeared, revealing a small creature with large eyes. This creature said nothing but held aloft the sacred herb, placing it in Walky’s hands. Walky wanted to ask questions, but the creature disappeared the moment he blinked at last Walky exited the swamp.
Jennifer Billingsworth: head cheerleader, alpha b-, incredibly popular. Not a geek, or a nerd, or a loser, or queer. She’s top of the social food chain, a winner. She’s not weird. She’s not…
…I’m sensing a pattern.
thats a good look Billie. As opposed to awkwardly backpedaling from references to her sexuality, which definitely won’t be a good look when it comes up during her date.
Billie really does not seem to want to be going down that thought-train.
Bye-visibilty
Yeah…it took me until sixteen to realize straight girls don’t really fantasize about dating/kissing/marrying other women.
ppl’re realizing stuff about themselves younger and younger these days…. thank goodness. i would’ve been so lonely.
Though some people will still realize it at an older age, and can sometimes feel out of place because of that. I realized I was queer at thirteen, but when I was around a group of people where most were like, “I always knew” or “I’d say I realized around ten,” I still felt like, damn…I should have known sooner.
But if identity is fluid and does change, why should being first to realise a certain identity be a thing to compare?
I’m not saying it’s a thing that /should/ be compared or viewed as “better” for happening at a certain time, but just something that people do compare and may have feelings about.
She clearly doesn’t identify as lesbian, but is clearly in love with a girl.
That’s fine. You don’t need to fit into somebody else’s rigidly defined box. You can be attracted only to guys plus this one girl. It’s allowed.
She has however been shown to have been in a previous relationship with a girl too though, so it isn’t just ‘one’ and she has expressed both to Joyce and Becky that it happens sometimes, so this isn’t the only time or likely even the second time.
Yes, but right now she clearly feels the need to fit into the rigidly-defined “heterosexual” box, because she clearly views being outside of that box as an explicitly bad thing, which is harmful to her, and potentially to others as well
And since Ruth is the second girl she’s gotten involved with, and she’s tried to throw herself at Sal once when she was drunk, it’s just a bit late for the “just this one girl” bus.
She doesn’t have to think of herself as bi, but she clearly needs to accept that she isn’t straight, and that there’s nothing wrong with that.
I don’t think the box she’s trying to fit herself into is labeled “straight”; it’s labeled “normal”. She knows she’s not heterosexual, she’s just not comfortable putting a label on her sexuality right now. I respect that.
I don’t quite get how she could recognize (and accept) that she isn’t straight, but still be so reluctant to label herself accordingly to the point where she’s denying that those labels accurately describe her.
Admittedly, being cis/het I don’t have any experience that would help me relate to that, but it feels like she doesn’t want to label her sexuality as queer or bisexual or anything else, because she still views those things as “different”, aka “not normal”
I’m not (and wouldn’t) blame her for this in any case (I haven’t the right even if I were so inclined). I just think she’d be happier if she’d examine that discomfort and work on overcoming it. So far she just seems to be avoiding it
Well… the word she’s disputing is “queer” it’s literally “not normal.”
she seems to have hung out with a crowd where all her female friends DID mess around with another girl at one point or another. She really truly believes that her case is the standard case. If you called her bisexual her dispute wouldn’t be “no I’m not” it’d be “I don’t feel like that really needs a label?”
I mean, wlw affection and experimentation is and has been considered as “less serious” and “real” compared to other orientations. There’s countless stories out there about girls experimenting as teens and none of it really “counts” as gay. And Billie, more than likely, has been raised in that same kind of environment, where queer relationships between girls haven’t been treated as seriously as any other relationship, enough so that she’s able to go “Oh no, I’m not really /queer/” and then reframing it that EVERYONE likes girls and experiments to detract from her own liking of girls, all to make herself seem ‘normal’.
And from another POV, even if you’re aware that you might be queer or start thinking about it, its a lot to go from questioning to accepting it. Even more so, to be open about it. Its a big change, and you never know how people are going to react to it. Like Joyce denying that Billie ever hooked up with girls because “she’s a good person” and bending backwards to find it in the Bible that Becky would Not go to Hell. And then there’s Mary, who is very open about her bigotry and harassed Ruth to the point of suicide. Its definitely very scary, and to cling to the label of “normal” and reframe it as “everyone does this” is all just a way to make it less scary.
Billie would absolutely be more comfortable if she examined herself and worked on overcoming her discomfort about being queer, no doubt about it.
Two girls. There was Alice in high school.
She also tried to kiss Sal. And the way she talks makes it pretty clear she thinks everyone’s somewhat attracted to both genders—indicating *she* is.
Billie is bi, or some other shade of queer. She’s just having trouble with seeing herself that way.
Desperately trying to not make a comment about Billie trying to fit into Ruth’s box.
The summer I was realizing I was queer was the summer that Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” was a number one hit, and let me tell you, that song is just…terrible background noise to come to realizations about yourself to. And I have a very twisted fondness towards it at the same time.
And anyway, I’m just thinking about how Billie, at this point, probably heard the lyrics like, “You’re my experimental game / Just human nature” from age ten on, so if things go poorly with her and Ruth, I’m gonna blame Katy Perry.
Jill Sobule has a different song of the same name. Is it better background noise for this realization?
(Cishet guy here, so only going on what my ear tells me about the two sets of lyrics.)
Well, I haven’t heard that one as much, but I did appreciate that my teenage searches for AMVs with Katy Perry’s song lead me to that one as well. It’s pretty nice, from what I remember.
From what I recall, Sobule’s came first, and then when Perry hit it big(ger) with the same title and a similar sentiment, there was a fair amount of salt from some quarters.
You’re correct on the timing. Sobule had hers three or five years earlier.
Oh, hers was way sooner; I came out the year after I was born. But I don’t really remember the music I listened to back in those days, so I had never heard of her song until the Katy Perry one.
Ivri Lider’s cover of Katy Perry’s song is awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skAMmX-D41Q
It’s almost worth the song existing, so that this could be done to it…
I second this twisted fondness, but for different reasons.
I mean, it talks about what I ethically regard as cheating. “I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it”. It talks about objectifying a fellow human for experimentation. “Just wanna try you on, I’m curious for you, caught my attention.”
And yet… it talks about experimentation, letting go of your safe haven, and feeling confident about it, in a “I will deal with the consequences later” way. It has an allure to me, because it is quite the opposite of how I do things.
Also, nostalgia. It connects me with a time of my life I really did things like going out and partying with friends.
I am okay with having this guilty pleasure. Now excuse me while I go listen to it.
Hm, interesting. I meant to reply to Yumi; when I started typing, the post between their post and mine did not exist.
Your reply is to Yumi, unless you meant her second post in this thread.
*lines up replies with edge of the screen* Huh. So it is. It looked to me like I was replying to ValdVin.
Yeah, avatars without hard left edges can be confusing that way. I usually run my mouse along the left end of the usernames if I’m unsure.
I listened to the song on repeat for a week, nonstop. I was just so happy to hear a mainstream song about ladies liking ladies, and thought I’d get me some cherry chapstick to lure in the bicurious babes, that it didn’t occur to me how problematic it was in every way. (Cheating, objectification, delegitimizing bisexuality as a “real” sexuality…)
Yeah, at the time I was like, “Hey, a song about kissing girls, I might be able to get behind that…” But at the same time, there would be periods where I’d be like, “I don’t really want to think about this thing right now” and then suddenly the radio would be going I KISSED A GIRL AND I LIKED IT
And I was just like, this, this is not helpful to me at this moment.
I actually really liked that song for a long time!
… because I misheard the lyrics.
I thought she was singing “I hope my good friend didn’t mind it”. I thought the song was about kissing a close friend and hoping they would take it well. To this day, I have mixed feelings about the song because of this mistake, because I liked it for some time before realizing my mistake.
Billie doesn’t like labels.
Her class notes are a mess.
There’s “not liking labels” and then there’s “levels of denial that would give flat Earthers a hernia”. And if there’s one thing we know about Billie, it’s that she isn’t flat I mean what?
Admiration, devotion and an honest belief that she is cool – Becky is just that tag-along lesbian Billie has wanted to admire her throughout the entire comic – so it’s funny how annoying she find her.
And Becky… I think she downplayed what Billie ment for her a bit. She could also mention who gave her free haircut money, who gave her a room to sleep in, who prevented Ruth from committing suicide and who stood up to noted homophobe Mary. Billie showed Becky that this was a place where she could actually be herself.
I also love how Dina and Becky is shaping up to be that couple you run into everywhere. Their constant handholding is just adorable
Nice summation, counsel. I’m voting your client’s way.
In her own way Billie still has that “problem solver” side to her personality.
Huh, good points on Billie and Becky.
Though I think the significance wasn’t the same for them. For Becky it was lights in a storm, for Billie it was trivial gestures she may have forgotten about.
(Trivial at least as far as money and the room went.)
Oh, absolutely. For Billie is what just another day of an aaaaalpha bongo… even an alpha bongo working at, like, 5 % of her REAL output.
For Becky it was… yeah, lights in a storm. The difference between a safe port and drowning.
I really love using bongo for that word. I’m gonna start using that. It’s so perfect for casual conversation
Yup, Billie has been a lifesaver for Becky, an example and a provider of crucial aid at crucial times.
And I wonder if part of Billie’s pulling back is how much Becky’s admiration focuses and centers her queerness in a way that also highlights its rarity as something that is celebrated at least in the corner of Indiana they all grew up in.
Like Becky is intensely out and very much likes to center her queerness and her admiration does the same whereas Billie wants to more center queerness as something that happened to her, something incidental that is super typical with everyone you guys and not a big deal.
And Becky makes it hard to hold that, because she’s a stark reminder of what often happens to queer girls of any stripe.
Cerberus! <3 *hugs if allowed* Welcome back!
*more hugs if allowed*
I think that when things get less life-and-deathy for Billie, she will start thinking about her identity. I get the vibe the she doesn’t feel that comfortable with the alpha-bongo brand any longer (I suspect that’s what the adoration of Lucy & co. will come down to), but then what is she?
Brash and forward and LESBIAN Becky who has it all figured out, and credit HER with it, and who totally has embraced an identity Billie is not comfortable with either, highlights that question for Billie. If being an alpha bongo is to be like she was in high school, and being queer is being like Becky… what is she?
yaay, Cerberus exists! 🙂 🙂
Thanks. I had to take a break for awhile because I was starting to be super critical of my comments and I needed to refresh my love for doing them. 🙂
Definitely take time when you need it, but it’s good to have you around.
aww *jedi hugs* my brain gets like that sometimes too.
for the record, your comments are pretty damn awesome. and they don’t have to all be awesome, we’ll still like you anyways 🙂 I mean, like, I still like spencer and he’s kiiind of had a bad track record lately 😉
Seconded. For me, your comments are always the highlight of the comment section.
You’re always your own worst critic (general you here). It sucks a lot. Don’t worry, I think the majority of us love to see your comments. I certainly do. I understand though that sometimes it’s hard not to rip apart your own comments. Take your time when you need it, but we’re here and it’s nice to see you back.
!!!
YAY you are ok!
I was a bit worried.Glad you are back.
B- Dubs isn’t wrong. 9/ 10 choosy People choose LadyDentists who choose Gif when they aren’t chewzing LadyDentists who chew gum. Like Everyone eventually.
This isn’t funny. >:(
Hmm.
Meant as Anti humor at my inability to complete a punchline
I bet if I knew the secret to coding the strike through lines…
Then I could cross out 90% and say “new Twitter” / old Twitter, it might be worth a chuckle.
Do u no de wae to make anti humor
( Feelza hot wind on ma shouda
here Da toking o da dj
Can Unner Stan jus Wat dae he say )
Fall, Ow! Da Cheddah Brick Radeo ?
What’s happening?
So, anyone wanna take bets on how Billie reacts to that last panel? Becky has pretty much shoved her face into her internal contradiction. “You are not queer. You have a girlfriend. Who you are going to have sex with tonight. Uh-huh.”
“Right. Of course. Like everyone does sometimes. Doesn’t mean I’m queer.”
aw geez, billie 🙁
its very awkward when you’re not fully out yet and still trying to figure out your identity, but other people slap labels on you anyways?? i know becky means well but billie clearly still needs to sort out her own feelings about her identity. and as long as she’s still uncomfortable about being bi, it’s not gonna. feel great as other people continue to decide her identity and openly call her queer/outing her when she has not fully come out herself. internalized homophobia’s not great, and it’s gonna be an uphill battle to come to terms with her bisexuality and feel comfortable saying that she likes girls
i say with the experience of someone who took a long time to even question that they might in fact be kinda queer, but had other people decide their sexuality for them and give them different labels based on what they thought was right long before that initial questioning
On the other hand it’s kind of silly to expect others to treat you as straight when you’re open about dating another girl. She’s not being outed in any meaningful sense.
And if Alice is any indication, she’s been doing this for a couple years at least.
Well, like other people have said, shes not expexting other people to treat her as straight? She wants other people to treat her as “normal” which to her means liking girls sometimes, and everyone does that, right?
Also I was thinking about when the confrontation with Alice happened, Wally told Joyce -> Joyce told Becky -> Becky went up to Billie and called her a lezbo. Even if you could have inferred from the interaction with Alice what their relationship was, that’s still not anyone’s business to tell someone else? Especially if its an absolute stranger. I realized Joyce might not have known better, but even so, since Billie had not yet outright said “I like girls” that’s.. not a good thing for her to tell other people, even if theyre also queer. Again, she’s not fully out.
I guess. What does it take to be fully out? As far as I know, she’s never treated it as a secret (treated her relationship with Ruth as one for other reasons).
Other than her thing of not accepting she’s queer – because everyone tries it out eventually, she’s been very blase about it. Note that was long before the scene with Alice or Becky showing back up.
I suppose Billie was even worse in that strip, outing Mandy and Grace to Joyce?
I mean, I’m all for not outing people who are actually in the closet, but there’s got to be some indication they’re actually trying to keep it a secret – other than just not shouting it at every occasion like Becky. 🙂
Damn it. Broke the link. Try this
I mean, I consider balking and denying at any indication that you might in fact be queer as being not completely out, but hey, that’s just me. And the thing about that strip is- Billie never outright says “I like girls.” Whenever she’s ever asked about her feelings towards sexuality, she immediately shifts it to “everyone does it/everyone feels like this” all to decenter her specific attraction to girls. Even though Billie is open about dating another girl now, she’s clearly still uncomfortable with being known as “queer” and will do anything to deflect it and make it seem like it’s something everyone else does too, so she doesn’t stand out for it.
Yeah? Billie kinda outed Grace and Mandy? I think it’s different tho. Everyone has different levels of comfort about how open they are about their sexuality. Grace and Mandy seem to be fairly open about it, and we can assume that they’re okay with people knowing about them because everyone else on the floor seems to know except for Joyce, who is blatantly oblivious.
And personally, I think there’s a difference between Billie telling Joyce, who is an acquaintance of Grace and Mandy, that they’re dating and Joyce telling Becky, a complete stranger of Billie’s, that Billie did hanky-panky with girls in high school. And this was before Becky came out. It is extremely fortunate that Becky is also queer and super supportive of Billie, because if she had been another Mary??? That would have been an extremely shitty thing for Joyce to have done.
But I’m aware that I am biased and speaking from my own experience and comfort as a queer nb person who is very uncomfortable with the idea of my friends just telling other people my identity, without me knowing. That is not information they can just give out. That is information that I should have the ability to control. And before she was open about dating another girl, two of Billie’s straight friends each told someone else without Billie’s permission or knowledge that she fucked girls in high school. If you don’t see something grossly inappropriate about that, there’s nothing more to talk about.
But this is different from what my original post was about. My original point was that while Billie is still uncomfortable with her identity, it’s gonna be awkward as hell for people to continue to call her queer, an identity she has not yet claimed, and in fact, loudly refuses.
Though to be fair to Walky, we don’t know that Billie’s relationship with Alice wasn’t completely open in high school, that it wasn’t common knowledge to basically everyone she knew. If so, is that really something that Walky has a responsibility to keep secret by default? I mean, if she’d asked him to, that would be one thing, but without that?
I’m a straight guy, so I may just be speaking from privilege here, but I just don’t see any sign that Billie has a problem with people knowing she’s been with girls or that she’s done anything to avoid people knowing – other than not going around announcing it like Becky.
Our difference may be more in difference may be more in different readings of Billie’s backstory than anything else.
As for the identity, it is going to be uncomfortable for her, but it’s also going to be pretty hard not to have anyone call her queer or bi or lesbian or something else that she doesn’t claim, while she’s openly dating a girl.
If Billie is okay with it? Sure. But in general, no, Walky shouldn’t be going around telling people Billie’s relationship history. Same reason Amber doesn’t go walking around telling people Ethan’s gay. There’s a lot of things that could go wrong if the wrong person finds out about that- case in fucking point: Mary harassing Ruth to the point of suicide.
And there is a huge difference between Billie implying/telling Joyce that she’s been with other women and Walky telling Joyce that Billie’s been with other women. Billie chose to tell Joyce that she’s been with other women. Walky made that choice for her.
Ethan was never really publicly out, I believe. Only admitted it to himself after prom and dealt with it over the summer. Quite possibly a very different situation.
And Mary didn’t harass Billie for liking girls, any more than she harasses Grace and Mandy or Sierra for liking girls. No leverage. No one cared. She harassed Ruth for the illicit relationship.
Mind you, I’m sure she would have loved to go after any of the “perverts” on the floor, but she needed dirt on them, not just that they were queer.
I just can’t see it here. If there was any indication that Billie cared or that Billie was hiding it, I’d be on board, but I can’t see any.
Everyone in her *highschool* might have known, but that’s only a small fraction of the people at their *university*. Given the risks (eg. Toedad) it’s just safer to err on the side of not telling.
Yes, but everyone in their high school knowing implies that Billie was open and out and that, barring Billie telling him otherwise, Walky has no reason to think that’s changed. If you’re out and you want to go back in the closet in a new setting, you really kind of need to let people know that or they will casually mention something.
or maybe someone *outed* her in highschool. I don’t remember the actual details for Billie – maybe walky did have reason to think she didn’t care? – but in the general case, other people knowing doesn’t imply that it happened in a good way. (afaik. I’ve not got much experience with this stuff myself, generally I don’t talk about people’s relationship history in the first place)
Okay, yes Becky doesn’t get it.
Okay, also yes. Billie is still super struggling with this.
But god fucking dammit Willis.
Christ almighty.
Before the patreon whackiness went down and my access to the “earlies” was over, this arch was one of the most emotional experiences I had from your Comic.
That’s saying a lot. It includes all the dad arc’s (Like toe and blaine), Ruth coming back, becky coming out (and Joyce’s thing), and those are just some of the one’s I can think of off the top of my head.
I have been invested for years.
But that kiss between her and Ruth almost made me break down in tears of Joy. I was couldn’t explain how it radiated in my heart, as cheesy as that sounds. It made Ruth’s come back all the more sweet. Her survival.
Even if they have a long way to go, you better believe I was tearing up at seeing Billie in that first panel.
She still needs to grow. But she’s grown a lot. Considering how much time this has been condensed into.
I’m so happy for her. It’s profound.
Please let there date be good. I just. This arch has been helping me through a lot of stress and I just want Billie to love herself, and her date. <3
I worked with a guy with initials W.W. and I called him Double Dubs whenever I thought I could get away with it.
I knew a girl who’s initials were U.W. and I called her triple U.
Technically, a W is really a double v, not a double u.
Poor Billie is clearly still coming to terms with being bisexual and I’m not surprised because it likely wasn’t a revelation about herself that she was ever expecting.
Becky? Bless you for trying to help, but I’m not sure that you’re actually helping right now! 😉
Ever? Maybe back in high school, but she was banging Alice back then, long enough to count as a relationship.
She’s been open about liking girls any time it’s come up.
It’s not that liking girls is any kind of revelation to her, it’s that she’s somehow stuck on that leaving her as straight. As normal. So she likes girls. Everyone does. It’s normal.
It’s all tied into her identity as the cheerleader, the popular girl. Normal, but better. Nothing weird like being queer about her.
Ah so that’s her problem. She still considers herself the “normal one” and not the “weirdo”. Like a jock suddenly realizing that their love for say… Star Wars makes him a nerd.
Her behaviour has been really confusing me…
Yup, she’s terrified of not being “normal”, because she’s seen how those who are not “normal” are treated by society including by her.
Sucks when the boot is on the other foot, huh Billy?
here is kitty’s finnish word of the day but not really?
perhe kundi (family guy)
actually they used to show family guy and it was still called family guy. i was a child so i didnt see it then. my coworker showed me the 24/7 livestream we watched for a while i just… what the fuck?
have a nice day!
nice!
“Right back at you, Becky”
Anybody know the In universe Date?
According to the DoA timeline, it’s October 11th.
Wrong link – try this one instead.
Oh, Billie ….
(smh)
I think that people are people and should act and behave as they wish and everyone else be damned. Why care about what others think of you? They do not define you, you do — or, for that matter, you don’t.
Except… none of that is true.
We are defined by the society we live in, by the rules and standards that are ingrained in us from babyhood.
Humans are Social creatures, we got this far in the history by cooperating and keeping the society together. That’s where social pressure comes from. We are Wired to get along with others and obey the rules because if we don’t the society collapses and everyone dies… or at least that’s how it was in the days of hunter-foraging. And when we started to build proper large civilizations reputation and opinion became even more important because opinions of other people could make or break your life.
Sad as it is we cannot escape from our nature.
Sorry if it sounded weird, I’m both sleep deprived and high on caffeine… I make weird decisions when I’m like that.
I have a foreboding sense of imminent disaster on this date which I dearly hope is wrong
Sadly, I think you may be right. We all know that Ruth doesn’t really “do” dates, so she’s going to be incredibly awkward and stilted, so the potential for something to go wrong is pretty high. She’s doing it for Billie’s sake, which I think is sweet, but if it’s something that she really has to grit her teeth to do, then it only reinforces my feeling that at the end of the day, she and Billie are not very suited for each other. You can love someone, yet still be totally wrong for them as a long-term partner. As wiser people have said, sometimes love just isn’t enough. :/
Becky speaks with so much slang that I am honestly having trouble understanding her.
Same. Well, having english as 3rd language doesn’t help.
You may want to try a lighter lipstick tho
guess they should call her
head queerleader
OMG
Now she can cheer for Herself!
Becky knows all too well that not everyone thinks bout girls eventually
HAVE FUN FINGERBANGIN YOUR GIRLFRIEND!
Billie is totally going to have a breakdown at some point
nice to see that Becky found her shirt from the first strip
Omg can we change to their hair styles please? It pains me that none of these girls even like, straighten their hair or slide in cute clips or do up a side braid or something for special occasions. I mean, the teacher’s hair was so nice when she did hers, and the girls have so much time on their hands, why not? Even the least fussiest girls I know will part their hair different some days. You change their clothes every so often, please do their hair next time (´▽｀*)
I think Billie might be drama-sexual, and now that there isn’t any drama because there is no longer any need for secrecy….
“That’s a real swerve” is a pretty solid line. I can hear it being said, and it works especially since it’s just a little different way of saying it to my experience.
In the context of this comic?
“No, Becky, you are wrong! That is a real swerve!“
Unless the person/object/robot/animal in question never stops talking and doesn’t run a bar, its not a swerve!
I love how Billie is “Oh come on, everyone likes girls, right?”
Comic Reactions:
So many queer feelings!
Panel 1: I love how when she’s just being herself and not getting self-conscious, she’s just so happy and glowing. This has been a dream of hers for awhile even if she told herself it would never happen due to Ruth’s illness and she is absolutely head over heels for the girl she loves.
And the chance to dress up, go out on the town with the person she loves. It’s something that she’s likely been missing for awhile so when she’s not thinking about it, she’s filled with that giddy excitement of many alloromantics going out on a big date.
Panel 2: And there’s the self-consciousness and the shift in stance that drains some of her confidence. Saying it out loud, putting it front and center? It hits those insecurities and allows room to doubt.
And of course this is harder than standing in front of an entire hall and declaring love. Being in a crisis has a way of focusing you and a lot of internal stuff has a habit of being shelved when you’re just going day to day trying to survive.
It’s the dead calm afterwards where all of it stirs up and the intense emotions of it tend to overwhelm including your own self-doubt.
Now, all that said, I love Becky and Dina here. Holding hands, giving congratulations, just casually together and in love. It’s beautiful.
Panel 3: This moment!
It’s so earnest and loving. Becky really saying out loud how important Billie was for her. After all, Billie was literally the first person she met who was out about being interested in girls and who didn’t seem to fear the bigoted world around her.
Additionally, Billie has done so much for Becky. Giving her a room when she needed it, stopping a potential suicide, having a dramatic coming out before the whole floor, giving her haircut money, etc…
Billie was the space she needed to catch her breath and to her, a queer mentor, someone who showed her a space and a world where she could be herself, loudly and confidently without fear of being destroyed for it. That it was no big deal.
Something I love in panel 1 is that this is not Billie putting up a show like I imagined her doing in high school. “Look, everyone, who has a HOT DATE? It’s the alpha bongo, that’s who.”
This is Billie dressing up for herself and for Ruth. That’s something else altogether. It’s adorable (and it makes me sad we didn’t get to see a dress-up-montage with a squeeing Lucy)
Exactly. It’s not performative in the slight. It’s just genuine excitement.
Panel 4: But that’s just the catch and here we see Billie’s real biggest fear. She craves desperately to be “normal” and it makes sense why. She went to a series of expensive schools with awful people and watched as the rules bent around and supported a certain type of person against another type of person.
Being the neutral, the “normal”, the default by privilege was a shield of protection. It was the model of love shown directly by the parents she most spent time with and she saw and participated in the abuse of those who were marginalized and marked as “weird” or “odd”.
And that’s the system she grew up in. One where the “normal” aggressively harmed and harassed the “not normal” and that’s her central internal conflict and I’m willing to bet the origin of some of her drinking problem.
She wants to be the prototypical “normal” success story as modeled for teens in television and movies. The popular head cheerleader with a troupe of friends who look up to her for being popular and with nothing more really going on with her.
But she has elements that marginalize her. She’s mixed race and we know she’s had to internalize and shrug off a lot of casual racism in her quest to fulfill that idea of “normal” and safety she sought as well as having to turn a blind eye to racist discrimination against Sal and her friend Marcie.
And what’s most pressing on her? The fact that she’s queer. She’s loved women. Intensely, passionately, with all of her bi heart, but that worries her.
She lives in Indiana and has grown up in the 2010s, so she’s grown up seeing the intense way queer folks have been treated in society and some major milestones in queer rights and so it’s hard to pretend that those desires don’t marginalize her, so she’s coped by placing herself outside of queer proper and into an area of “everyone’s a little bi, right?” instead.
And I mean, the number of bi people in society is way higher than most people are willing to admit and that desire to hold on to a straight privilege that never was is not an uncommon experience for some bi folks, but it’s also a fiction.
And you see in her eyes here, faced with Becky and her admiration, that she knows it’s a fiction. That she has a marginalization due to her queer attractions and that has dramatically affected her life and the full weight of that is really hitting home as she moves from secret lover no one knows about to actually doing “normal” date stuff out in the open where everyone can see.
And that terrifies her, because she knows what happens to the marginalized and fears it. It also slams home her bad choices with Alice, reminding her of how her fear of being open and honest likely lead to her car crash and her taking Alice for granted and treating her poorly.
Panel 5: And it shakes Becky a bit to realize her queer hero is struggling with the full weight of coming out and accepting her queer identity, because it’s always sad when heroes turn out more messy than they seemed to start with and do disappointing things from an outside perspective (cough cough Chelsea Manning).
Panel 6: And so her last statement… it’s a little nasty, highlighting the cognitive dissonance that Billie is holding on to. That as much as Billie resists fully owning that queer label, she is queer.
And frankly, it’s not completely a negative thing for that to be highlighted. Billie’s struggles with “normalcy” have not served her mental health well. She’s needed external validation to have any internal sense of value, rarely opens up about her own struggles, and her own fears are clearly weighing enough on her to fuel an intense depression and a major drinking problem.
When she can resolve this terror at being unique and thus at risk, she’ll likely feel less haunted and like a fraud all the time and be able to enjoy people’s praise for the things she’s done and the good she’s done rather than the stereotype she wants to believe she represents.
AAAAAHH, I’m so happy to see you comment again.
Seconded!
Thirded. ^_^
Yup. Even when Becky’s mask snaps back , there is a lot of things going on behind it. I think you are right that she would like Billie to form a lot more of her identity around being queer (just like Becky). Her “is bisexuality even a thing” comment comes to mind.
I hope these two find some other common ground, because Bille’s annoyance with Becky’s adoration will only grow.
WE MISSED YOU CERBERUS <3
Also your comments on Panel 5 and 6 finally made sense of something bothering me. Becky might be trying to prod Billie into admitting it for her own good, but she is going about it kind of … badly.
Well, duh. She’s Becky. She may be awesome, but subtle she is not.
She’s baaaack! 8D
Welcome back, Cerberus! I hope you’re feeling much better, and, if so, that the trend continues!
So good that she is getting some positive reinforcement as a queer person. In contrast to the marginalization she grew up with.
First draft of the last panel (and don’t ask me how I managed to find this, it was an ordeal beyond mortal recognition):
“Welp, have fun letting all the lady syrup gush freely tonight!”
Sounds about right.
Every single possible lady syrup, of course.
Mss. Butterwerst
Dammit Becky Billie already has a nick name, why do you persist in trying to label people so much
Sorry I know how much posters here love Becky (she who can do no wrong) but nicknames are a real bug-bear of mine and she just keeps doing it…why is it so difficult just to call someone what everyone else already calls them
It strengthens a bond? it makes the relationship a bit more intimate? Friends have nicknames for each other, it’s just something friends do.
That’s true, but there is such a thing as nickname consent. Becky is not practicing it.
She is like a lesbian Joyce, the concepts of friendship consent and personal space are utterly alien to her…
I feel like you should end all your comments (and especially this one) with the following:
“….And that will be her downfall!”
Only if she’ll be falling on Dina’s bed.
Well she even says in panel 5 that she thought it’d be b-dubs she takes exception to so its not like she isn’t aware of just handing out nick names
As for friends maybe but she also does it to people like Jacob who she barely knows
Welp, that’s just her nature.
I’m surprised no ones had a go out her about this but then most of the characters are generally polite and don’t seem the type to want to bring it up
Like having a go at someone simply because they want to bestow a nick name would be considered rude even though bestowing nick names is a quite a personal thing and denotes a certain level of intimacy
Frankly… I’m a bit weirded out by the logic I see here. It’s like you’d require permission for everything, even looking at someone… If a nickname is not insulting then no one really cares.
I mean, I wouldn’t say that no one really cares? It depends on the person. It can come off as really over familiar, and in some cases*, disrespectful to give someone a nickname.
*Disrespectful in the cases where someone has a name that is different from standard Anglicized names and someone else gives them a nickname because they don’t want to bother trying to pronounce the name/think that “Zoe” is a better name than “Uzoamaka”
I guess so, everyone reacts differently.
Heh after hearing to some pronunciations in anime dubs I would be actually fine with nicknames. My ears Bleed from the atrocities that are committed on the Japanese language… Same for English pronounced in original voice versions. Does it really cost that much to get someone who can actually Speak the tongue fluently…
Fluent isn’t even necessary – just listen to the original audio for a few minutes and it’s obvious the main character’s name is not “naROOOto” :p
Weirdly, Billie is reminding me a lot of my struggles in accepting my transness.
All girls hate dresses right? NOBODY likes heels. Doesn’t everyone resent makeup? Surely everyone hates their boobs. Don’t all girls wish they were guys sometimes?
I mean ok I read all these blogs by trans people but I am not trans! I am just… tomboyish. That’s it.
I wonder sometimes but doesn’t everyone? Ok I like to wear guy clothes sometimes but only cuz they are more comfortable. And maybe I get excited when peopl mistake me for a guybut I am just… trying it out. Playing. Gender nonconforming. I am totally cis and real trans folk have it so much worse.
And so on.
…
tomboyish. yes, I’d describe myself that way. huh.
but I don’t like being mistaken for a guy, so.. yeah, I still feel like a woman. 🙂 but there’s only a few things about me that are feminine besides my body.
I’m glad I live in a time and place where I don’t have to fit into those boxes 🙂
To be clear, I am not saying that you can’t be a tomboy. More that tomboy was the excuse I used so I didn’t have to think about the source of my deep and pervasive discomfort with almost everything in my life.
… Also for a long while I bought into terfy nonsense because my first feminist role models were terfs and so I thought if I hated being a woman ot wasn’t being trans it was the patriarchy. :/
Yeah, I understood, it just got me thinking 🙂
Yup, did the same thing from the other direction.
random thought of the day: it’s a shame there’s no such thing as a lefty piano.
That yellow dress is very becoming with the navy. Also it looks like she is dressed in the closest thing possible to her HS cheerleader outfit.
It am I imagining that?
I am sure the army and air force like it too.
This feels kinda like bi-erasure