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Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com ⋅ 8h
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SDCC 1229
The awkwardness is palpable. . .
Even more so if you look at the 4th panel and imagine that the thing in Billie’s left hand is a bloody tampon.
I am not convinced you know what a tampon looks like.
I think you’re thinking of a pad.
Anyway, didn’t we see someone sitting across from Alice at the table in yesterday’s strip? Billie is just totally ignoring her. That’s Social Skills 101, Billie!
Kinda looks like Alice was getting up to leave so the other person may have already left.
Anyway, college life destroyed, time to retroactively destroy her high school life.
I am literally palping the awkwardness.
Molesting the awkwardness
Fondling the awkwardness
Should i be calling someone?
A threesome? Kinky!
no
Billie
BILLLLLLIE won’t you lose my number
Cause I’m not anywhere
That you can’t find meeee
This can not end well.
Go Dragons?
Go Dragons. . .
Autobots, Transform and Roll Out!
Mahfaeraak Dovah!!!
Hail Hydra.
COBRA!!!!!!
in high school they had an entire language which consisted of nothing but “Go Dragons!”
The trick was the inflections.
Vin Diesel was their Speech Class teacher.
Ha! (Thanks to a trip to the local multiplex last night, I get that joke…)
Actually, I was thinking of a “Teen Titans GO!” episode that
just recently aired where Cyborg and Beast Boy said nothing
but the word “Waffles” on a constant basis with changes in
the inflection! Drove the rest of the Titans (and the villain)
crazy.
. . . Trying very hard not to say something I shouldn’t. . .
Give in to temptation; you may not get the opportunity again.
I agree, Robert
I. . . I miss the teen titans! D;
If you wont say it, I sure as hell will. TEEN TITANS GO! Is nothing more than the patgetic, casual pandering, rip off, version of its superior older sibling: Teen Titans. In short, it is the latest of many feeble minded ratings grubbing, trying-to-be-“hip” shows that is both a mockery to the characters and an insult to DC. And now i say, let the casuals come for me.
Dude, the best parts of its older sibling were the Titans interacting with each other, not the fighting. TTG! is 100% the Titans interacting with each other. That’s not to say I don’t miss a narrative, of course, but…
You forgot to say how it’s obviously raped your childhood and obliterated the original show from the collective memory of the human race. I can’t take your rant seriously if you leave that part out, otherwise you just sound obnoxiously bitter. Thank goodness that was just an oversight on your part.
Man, didn’t this start out as a joking discussion of inflections?
I’m a casual! Do I get a prize?
Also you are hilarious, because you seem incapable of knowing what you’re watching. For it to be a “patgetic, casual pandering, rip off” of Teen Titans, it would have to be trying to be the same show. It’s not. Obviously. I mean seriously, did you watch the ‘superior older sibling’? Protip: Robin was sliiiiiiightly less neurotic in it. (Everyone else was exactly the same though. Raven was totally whipping out the Pretty Pretty Ponies every time she went off-frame.)
Now I’m imagining you watching the 90’s animated Batman show and somberly shaking your head that their editing department was so lax in putting in the BAM! POW! BIFF!s.
PS: Teen Titans GO! is laugh out loud hilarious. Teen Titans was, well, never trying to be be.
The show was conceived as a way to parody Teen Titans, I believe.
Protoforms, protoforms, there’s no need to overreact! Both shows are quality shows with different demographics, and it’s possible to like both or to like only one and not the other!
By contrast, I defy anyone who actually likes the G1 Transformers cartoon, the G1 Marvel comic, Beast Wars, Transformers Animated, the IDW Transformers comics, the War for/Fall of Cybertron games, or Transformers Prime, to have anything good to say about the Bayformers movies or the Dreamwave Transformers Comics. In fact, Pat Lee actually makes Michael Bay look good, since Michael Bay isn’t infamous for not paying his actors or staff and running off with company money.
As for how I know all this… I blame Brainstorm’s meta-gun. I am clearly still feeling the after-effects all these lunar cycles later!
not sure if serious
I wasn’t going to put it like that. . .
What I was going to say was more along the lines of Teen Titans Go advertised to the original fans, then they ripped my heart out. MY HEART! No more are the five young superheroes united by their superheroes, no longer are these heroes on patrol; their broken, their cores destroyed, their essential qualities and defining characteristics missing! I. . . I loved them as they were before, but I can’t love the new ones, devoid of all maturity and emotional issues of being, well, them.
It feels like they’re trying to make me accept a Dina who is Mike, and love her like she was Dina, and that’s sickening. Dina’s Dina: the social recluse who knows dinosaurs but is curious about people, silent most of the time and hides behind doors, but is not un-ignorable when she speaks; not Mike.
I WANT MY TITANS BACK!
Okay, enough hijacking David’s comments with Teen Titans Go complaints.
Also, the argument in Baseketball that was entirely composed of the word “Dude.”
I love that scene. The weird thing is I could understand them perfectly.
Then again, my own vocabulary is at least 30% “Dude”.
… dude.
Dude?
Dude! DUDE.
Ok, good point.
I am Go Dragons?
We are Go Dragons.
WE ARE WAFFLES
But your Grav is 2D!
Gooooooooooooooooo DRAgons
I heard about ghost dragons, metal dragons, twin dragons, dwarf dragons and faery dragons. But the worst of them are goo dragons, second only to vomit dragons.
Ah, so they were pokemons.
Dragon types, naturally.
We are go dragons!
*Pokémon. The word Pokémon is both singular and plural.
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
This. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lElf7D-An8 [graphic/NSFW]
That would be kind of awesome.
Not as awesome as say a whole civilization built on historical figures and the actions they took like in ‘Darmok’ from ST:TNG, but still pretty awesome.
Find those DRAGONBALLS. Searching For them All!
Check inside the cloaca?
Uncomfortable.
Awkward!
I feel this will be the catalyst of something horrible.
This… will end badly.
I dunno, how bad could “HEY MY LAST TIE TO MY GLORY DAYS OF BEING A CHEERLEADER” go?
wait
“YOU KNOW, BEFORE I GOT KICKED OFF THE TEAM FOR BEING A DRUNK DRIVER, THOSE WERE THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”
Oh shit I forgot about that. Yeah, I can’t IMAGINE why Alice may have “forgotten” to mention to Billie she was also going to UI.
I’m with you, dude.
This is just a cafeteria, Billie is with Walky and Joyce, she will be alright.
She’s with Walky and Joyce. Things can only get more uncomfortable. Alice might remember Walky (“You’re friends with that dork now?”) and Joyce is still not cleared to speak to new people after the last few panels.
It’s certainly starting badly enough.
Wow, Alice might have more teeth than Joyce.
Teeth are directly proportional to awkwardness. Witness Agatha and Joyce: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/mormon/
Ah, yes, I couldn’t remember how I deduced that they were attending Evangelical Community Church, but that was the strip that did it. Native Bloomingtonian for the win.
Next comic: FIFTY TEETH IN ONE MOUTH
Ohhh, poor Billie. Everyone else has moved on. :S
Billie is going to be one of those sad people who just completely peaked in high school, and don’t understand why everyone else has gotten so lame.
She’s the female Al Bundy.
She was beginning to figure that out, and this is another perfect opportunity for backsliding.
I read that as Ted Bundy at first. Thought you were being a bit harsh.
More like that athlete guy from Napoleon Dynamite, Rico. Al Bundy wasn’t doing so bad by comparison, he had a steady job and was married with children.
And Al did have have higher apsirations after high school, but one session of unprotected sex ruined everything. To Al, high school wasn’t the absolute best time of his life, it was the period of his life where he actually still had a bright future ahead of him….They constantly rerun that show over here, and I find myself thinking too much about it sometimes.
I read that as Bud Bundy…
you know, Avatar Korra’s love interest
[so weird]
Alice doesn’t seem very happy to see Billie. I wonder why?
I’m pretty sure the answer is, “Go Dragons.”
Some people treat college as a fresh start, an opportunity to put certain things behind them. Now, think about what Billie was like during high school. Got it, yet? Self-absorbed drama queen with a drinking problem? Good. Now, the fresh start. Do you take those memories with you, or leave them behind?
Of course, Billie is oblivious to this. She’s so desperate for connection right now, the draw of an old ‘friend’ is irresistible.
Given Alice’s eyeline and response to Billie’s “You look great”, I’m predicting cheerleader-level body issues.
Alice [under breath]: “She’s, uh… fat.”
Billie: “Really?”
Its all good, its part of the steep learning curve Billies on
Is it, because it feels like she’s about to take one huge ass step back.
Shes about to learn that Springsteen said best in “GloryDays” but she’ll be better for it…hopefully
But a lot more quickly than the folks in the song.
She’s got those learning Curves all right.
I guess she missed all the hints in High School that it is gauche to continue to wear High School stuff at College–unless you happen to have a cute or unusual school or mascot to show off.
That. . . might just be whose outfit Ruth stole. . .
That I can see that happening, I want that to happen.
I dunno, didn’t Ruth say she managed to find a cheerleader who more closely match Billie’s…proportions?
Alice looks a little too petite to share Billie’s measurements.
My first reading had Alice quietly judging Billie’s new measurements with that glance down in panel 3. I’d really prefer if she is just judging the high-school clothes.
That’s what I took from it too. Alice’s line in panel 3 can also be read as, ‘So, you got super FAT, huh?’
So, that’s the Freshman Fifteen, huh? It’s barely noticeable. :^D
Yeah, Alice is appraising Billie like a slab of metal she’s about to smelt into armor plating.
Not likely, after the “You look great!” “Um…” exchange.
Alice used to be a fatty.
Wow just when we thought she was moving on with her life she relapses.
Dude, all Billie is missing is her high school letter jacket.
Have we seen her with one? Or only the cheerleader uniform Ruth stole and performed elective embroidery on?
Would that qualify as something they could use as part of her punishment?
Wow, that reminds me of the time I saw someone in my college computer lab wearing a letter jacket from my high school.
I went to college two states away, and I still just side-eyed him and walked away without a word. (It was about five years after the dude graduated high school, couldn’t believe he was wearing the thing.)
I would have totally worn my high school letter jacket in college if my parents had let me take it with me. I didn’t have a huge connection to my high school; it was just a really nice jacket. I was so pissed when I spent all that money on it and then found out social convention would only let me wear it for about half a year.
I got mine as a sophomore, so I had plenty of time with it. Otherwise, yeah, I probably would have been mad. Nobody even told me it was no longer kosher in college; I just sort of realized it. But I figured it was OK to wear it to band competitions when I was an assistant director. And if my kids end up going to the same school, I might find an excuse to bust it out and embarrass them.
You think fashion’s a harsh taskmaster on your world? Think about what wealthy Cybertronians, who underwent expensive modifications to their exostructure to conform to the latest fashion standards, only to have those standards change a few solar cycles later. Boy, business was good for me back in the day, but I couldn’t help the slightest bit of sympathy for the latest sucker who’d walk into my metallurgy shop asking for dorsal fins because Blurr had them. Dude, Blurr is cool because he’s Blurr, not because of his fins.
Mine was homemade, fleece. Quite nice, warm, and was tailored for me (my mother made it).
…I wonder where it ended up. I could at least wear it around Civil War season (green and gold, same colors as U of O, where my parents went).
I didn’t want to blather for too long about it, but I was a junior or senior in college and I could tell from the patches the guy had graduated when I was a freshman in h.s., so we are talking about someone 6-7 years out of h.s. I would’ve thought it a bit less weird if it was a younger person, I guess?
Hmm, not aware that was an issue. I wore my high school jacket in University, so did many others, and not just from my high school. I never heard anything about it being considered a social faux pas.
Her high school letter jacket? Sorry, non-US resident here.
Many American high schools have jackets like these for their sports players:http://www.varsityjacketstore.com
Colleges also have letter jackets, but it’s acceptable to wear your college’s jacket at your college. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen someone wearing one before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterman_(sports)#Letter_jacket
I got a dragon but it ain’t going anywhere…..heh, heh.
I got one too,I call him Godzilla king of the monsters because there’s not a nother one bigger or bader.if you know what I mean
We’ve got a dragon of sorts on the Lost Light, Doublecross. Two heads, two competing personalities, and always arguing with himself. But he’s a better tipper than Grotusque. Grotusque is not pleasant to be around when he’s drunk, lemme tell you!
[whispers]And here we see the trapped animal chew its own foot off to escape…
It almost painful to watch this train reck come to a start
Nice avatar who or what is that exactly?
That’s Iceman, right? A super-deformed version of the Iceman from Marvel’s Ultimate X-Men comic, if I’m not mistaken.
I thought it might’ve been from that A-Babies Vs X-babies comic.
Mojo has much to answer for!
“Soooo, how have you been?”
“Go Dragons!”
“…I was going to say, ‘That’s not an answer,’ but now that I think about it, it kind of is.”
This will end badly for alll involved.
Alice seems, uncomfortable.
Well, then she shouldn’t have listened to that Cheshire Cat, should she?
She’s probably thinking, “man I hated this bongo back in high school.”
What was your first clue, panel 1 where she’s practically physically recoiling from the idea of Billie joining them for lunch?
Sometimes Billie shows like incredible social awareness and is very aware and responsive to the needs of the person she’s talking to. Like at times she displays a level of sensitivity and social awareness that exceeds the rest of the main cast. And then she has moments like this, where she’s so clearly missing the obvious cues Alice is giving off. I mean part of the problem here might be that she doesn’t want to see it.
Billie has displayed more of the latter than the former. There was her insistence that Sal was Amazi-Girl, for example, or starting a fight with Ruth at the first floor meeting. The former have come in small drips, usually regarding Ruth, following her discovery of Ruth’s alcoholism.
She was also beautifully sensitive to Sal/Walky.
Billie’s high school prowess is her major blind spot. She’ll see everything social, except what threatens her faltering self-esteem.
I would also argue that her sensitivity to Joyce’s wishes after the rape attempt was another good moment. It’s really important to let people respond to that kind of thing on their own terms and she supported Joyce. And I’d say that the ‘Sal is amazigirl’ thing is more about observational/logical skills than social awareness.
If Billie can put her ego in neutral for a short time, she is capable of astounding acts of empathy. But her ego’s as big as Rodimus’, and as long as she’s focused on herself and her glory days in high school, she won’t be able to mature.
I think that’s the entire problem, to be perfectly honest.
Dragons Go!
Also, Jesus Christ, Alice is attractive.
Yes indeed.
I’m glad to hear this coming from you, Mary.
There’s still hope.
For some reason, I’m reminded of this: http://hrwiki.org/w/images/c/cd/tgs4.png
#Like. #MissingHSR
Billie, your glory days are beyond numbered, they’re negative numbered.
Chick-fil-a is delicious though.
Too bad about their menu lacking any energon options…
isn’t that stuff basically caffeine for Cybertronians?
No, no, no! Energon is the lifeblood of my people, the fuel we need to live! Like chicken fingers for humans.
You’re thinking of energon boosters, which come in a variety of forms. The weakest energon boosters are essentially like caffeine, in that they are stimulants, but the stronger boosters, especially circuit speeders, are like hard drugs for humans. At my bar I only serve forms of engex, a highly refined and distilled form of energon, which acts like alcohol does on humans. No energon boosters allowed, or I have my Legislator bouncer kick the offender out.
You can just see the “please oh please get this person away from me” look on her face.
Wait, so how ‘un-curvy’ was Billie before the summer?
Also, I feel bad for Alice’s out-of-frame friend. The comic frame is a harsh mistress.
Chapter 1 Billie is noticeably thinner than yesterday’s Billie. Granted, part of that is the bulk of the hoodie she’s now wearing, but still. Beer does a pretty good job of accelerating the freshman fifteen…
Billie’s nowhere near overweight, but to someone used to having a cheerleader’s build it probably seems like it.
With every new minor character, I keep on thinking, she wasn’t in the Walkyverse, and then I find out, holy cow, she was.
That is impressive.
Billie came to college thinking it would be “High School part 2”, but is now feeling lost… and now meets a reminder of her good ole times, when she felt like she ruled the world… but that someone obviously wanted to leave it all behind in High School, where it belonged… this is going to be painful for her, again… isn’t it?
PAIN.
Billie, noone liked the Dragons. The dragons didn’t like the dragons. Noone but you wear those colors with pride. Plenty still wear them in shame, though.
Person trying to escape from their high school self confronted with a friend from that former life who was disgraced = awkward
Person who thinks they’ve found a former friend/ally and is about to be dismissed = painful
Billie is going to need Walky and Joyce o prop her up real soon.
Oooooh Billie Billie Billie… You haven’t even -begun- to suffer the social fallout of that Drunk Driving Fuckup, have you?
I personally think that hovertext is blasphemous. Chick-Fil-A is about the only decent chicken sandwich place around here. Whichwich is a terrible rip-off of Chick-Fil-A, and the only other decent fast food chicken around here is Popeyes.
KFC… not even once.
Two words.
Fifty McNuggets.
Note to self: ask Brainstorm to help me whip up a recipe for Energon McNuggets.
Agreed. Best chicken sandwiches there are.
Dammit, Willis! Quit introducing attractive characters for me to like!
owwwww my heart, it hurts already
Are you sure it’s not just indigestion? What have you eaten recently?
Go Dragons. Alice is so cute.
Alt text confirmed what I suspected.
Okay everyone, take my lead and think this really hard at the comic:
“Billie. Stop staring into that light at the end of the tunnel. That’s a train.”
What are you talking about Willis. If you are eating at a chic-fil-a i’d say your lifes looking pretty good at that moment
Billie is about to take another slam dunk to the head.
Alice can’t wait to get away from her, and Billie is either oblivious to that fact or trying desperately to ignore it? Hard to be sure. Maybe both.
One thing this may do, Billie may finally get the hint she is the only one flying the HS cheerleader flag from her former friends. As mentioned earlier in this thread, Billie’s entire idea of social life ties to cheering (and beer). When she can break our of that mold, she mayl find life beyond HS. I like the ‘HS part 2″ quote.
Get ready to catch her when she falls over, Joyce and Walky.
oh boy…. this is gonna hurt a little…
Hey this might finally give Billie the kick she needs to turn her life around.
But she’s already been facing a series of increasingly painful kicks. Billie is already beginning to try to be a better person! Therefore, no more kicking is needed. And yet, the kicks will continue. Because that is how this works.
Awkward. But I know just how Alice feels.
Oh man… Not much has happened yet and I am still filled with worry. Poor Billie.
Must say, though, masterful work on Willis’s part. I’ve never felt this much sympathy for a head cheerleader “queen of high school” type before.
Let’s hope Billie gets the message before she dismisses Walky and Joyce.
Oh God, this might be the most awkward thing ever.
Ummm. Did you get fat…?
As someone who’s still invested in her childhood, this makes me feel for Billie. It’s hard to let go of your old self unless you’re given opportunities to make a new one. Especially in Billie’s case, since so much of her high school life has been invested in alcohol and now she’s using it as a crutch.
escape face.. she is making the escape face, excuse to be anywhere but here right now is what she is wishing for.
Whole lot of ways they are not going to the same college.
BTW, Walky should know Alice too, right? At least to say hi to? Even in college, its just polite to say hi to old acquaintances, even if you don’t hang out with them. Guess it would depend upon how big their high school was.
Billies old friends used to stuff him in lockers, so I think he would rather hang back…
But those were the guys, not the cheerleaders. Still, if Alice does remember Walky, it won’t help Billie’s position any at all.
The cheerleaders might not have been actually stuffing him in lockers, but they probably did the verbal equivalent. Or non-verbal, anyway, since it would have been beneath their dignity to be caught acknowledging his existence.
Alice’s smile is a little strained. At least she’s trying to be nice to Billie (with a definite “Please go away” kind of vibe to it).
You can almost hear Alice think “Gee you’ve gotten fat Billie” when she looks down and gives the fake compliment.
Okay, I know she’s probably being setup to put Billie down, but I love her design!
Willis — amazing job conveying the awkwardness of this moment.
Yay, self-reply.
1) I need to “get a Gravatar”, I’m not sure Dorothy is the most fitting
2) On the subject of Billy: sadly, she’s coming across as one of those people who will look back 20 years from now and tell her kids “school is the best time of your life!” Every time someone told me that while I was in school, the thought that things were going to get worse made me want to jam in knife in my chest.
“If school was the best years of your life, it didn’t work.” – Spike Trotman
I feel like Alice pretty much every time I visit my mom in the town I grew up in. It’s THAT kind of town, y’know. My mom’s only still there because the house is paid for.
Hoo boy….yeah, this ain’t gona help.
What is so awkward here? I’m curious.
Alice doesn’t really want to talk to Billie, either because she’s embarrassed that they went to high school together, because Alice isn’t a cheerleader anymore and isn’t really interested in reliving the “Glory Days”, or some other reason. Whatever the specific reason, Alice is really trying hard to avert her eyes from looking Billie directly in the face, she’s not really into the whole “Golden Dragons” thing anymore, and she’s giving off a vibe of “Why is this person still talking to me?”
Billie, meanwhile, is completely oblivious to Alice trying to shoo Billie off.
It’s kind of like when your childhood friend is still into power rangers and reasonably expects you to be too, when you really couldn’t care less about that anymore.
Except worse. Because Alice might not even *like* the person she used to be. She might be intensely embarrassed by that phase.
“I came to college to GET AWAY FROM high school!”
Just because Chik’Fil’A has questionable politics doesn’t mean that they don’t have unquestionably the best chicken biscuits.
It seems that an awful lot of Billie and Walky’s classmates are going to the same college as them.
With that in mind, I have one request, and one request only: that at least one representative of the goth kids that Billie bullied in high school is there to witness her nadir.
Only Billie, Walky and Alice so far. Even Sal doesn’t count since she spent years at a different school.
I went to a high school that was part of a larger college. Most of us went there, by which I mean pretty much anyone who was going to go to college but had no money or larger aspirations to get us somewhere out of state.
Makes one wonder if Alice might have had a crush on Billie in high school and is trying to forget that time in her life and that she might be Gay.
Or she just realizes that lots of people in college hate that freshman who runs around talking about high school.
Not impossible, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot in the text to base that on.
ouuuuuuch this is painful to read
Hail Hydra!!!
Haha sorry I have to
I’m slightly curious as to whether Billie’s “fall from grace” might not have started before college; if her cheerleader peers found her annoying or overbearing in the last semester of high-school, it could explain why they all dropped contact with her after her drunk driving incident.
And it would be a seriously blow to Billie’s self-esteem (that black-and-blue, battered poor thing) if she learned that her perceived popularity in high-school was a delusion and that nobody really liked her.
So figure from square one that no one likes you and you won’t be disappointed when you find that out later.
And if someone really does like you, you can get that Sally Field 1984 Oscar speech vibe going: “I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!”
That last panel man…that’s the sort of expression I would have if I was talking to someone I had just realized was a serial killer and hoped desperately did not know that I knew.
Dang, was gonna say I thought I found where they went to high school, but it’s orange and blue.
Or, this one in Arkansas with “royal blue” and gold.
Unlike their university, Walky and Billie’s high school is fictional.
Coulda been you accidentally matched a real one!
[or intentionally didn’t match any of them, more likely]
Since you’ve kept everything else as real-to-life as possible — even the background details of the locale when Amazi-Girl gave Blaine his beat-down — why did you decide to put Billie and Walky’s high school into the world of make-believe?
Not trying to start anything, merely curiosity.
…did the hovertext change for anyone else? Something about what god wants back on the air?