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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social ⋅ 19d
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(he/him)
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New game! BOLTED 
“I SAID NO SUCH NICETIES”
Did these two just have a moment? It feels like they did.
Sarah remembers that sweater pretty well
Her expression in the first panel…
The third, too.
Meanwhile, Billie has possibly completely forgot?
How did the sweater end up with Billie, anyway? I thought the last time we saw it was when Becky went digging through Joyce’s closet for something to wear on her second day at IU? (The smoldering ruins of her own closet were back at Anderson.)
I assume Becky stashed it there so Joyce wouldn’t come across it in her closet
She hasn’t forgotten that night but she might have forgotten what Joyce was wearing. She was pretty well lit.
I’m about to crash and I’ve come to the end of looking things up. Can someone remind me about the sweater?
As best I’ve been able to figure out: Becky borrowed Sal’s jacket when Sal was hung over. That night, at the Joyce party, Sal needed the jacket back and Becky replaced it with a sweater from Joyce’s closet.
But I don’t remember why Sarah would remember that sweater.
Never mind, the “bloodstains” reference clued me in. Sharper eyes and memories than mine picked up on the fact that it’s the sweater Joyce was wearing when Gashface McEviscerated got his signature look.
No kidding, that’s a sharp pickup and some fast hands from Sarah in Panel 1 & 3. Good job, Sarah.
Good job for almost being nice, too. Almost.
Sarah enjoys the occasional sparring session. But don’t tell anyone.
“Enjoy is too strong a word. I just like sharpening my phones.”
You
Hey, nice cameo from the Joyce’s Velma Sweater.
So this is where the replacement enters, yes?
No, the door is where the replacement enters.
…. unless it’s the window. If it’s the window Sal might have competition.
Or, per you avatar, if the replacement is behind the door, Dina might have some competition.
I forget. What does Sarah have against Billie again?
Billies a toxic individual and probably reminds her of her days with her old room mate and so didn’t want Billie to do that to Joyce (or herself)
She thinks Billie’s a shallow party girl … just here to get drunk and get laid, I think.
Sooo… up until a few (days?) ago, a completely accurate assessment?
Drunken bad influence on Joyce. (jealousy over Joyce choosing to go shopping with Billie – hence dress, etc)
She’s an alcoholic party-goer who not only represents the person that almost cost Sarah her scholarship, but also another potential source of chaos in influencing Joyce.
Basically, Sarah likes her peace and quiet with no drama, and Billlie is… a drama hurricane.
All I remember is that the first time they met one-to-one, this happened. Speculation at the time was that Sarah smelled the alcohol on Billie’s breath.
I don’t want to trigger the two-link automatic moderation, but the next strip in the series has Sarah saying to Billie: “I would love to blow off the whole weekend getting wasted. That sounds like super fun.” Sarah also made a reference to keggers.
The implication is that Sarah was already aware of Billie’s reputation as an alcoholic and, given what we know of Sarah’s last roommate, Dana, no surprise Sarah didn’t want to have anything to do with Billie at the time.
What is this “Dumbing of Ae” comic that you have linked to?
I would have sworn that I cut and pasted that URL, which is what I always do — but apparently not this time. (This is where it should have gone, of course.)
In Scots, “ae” means “one,” as in Burns’s Ae fond kiss. I am trying to figure out how to make “Dumbing of Ae” into a clever reference, and failing.
I’m thankful for that typo, because it reminded me I haven’t set my DNS servers to something other than my ISP’s default (I hate that search redirect page) on my new computer.
Whoa, a little shocking to see how much the artwork evolved since then. Also first post since the last gravitar shuffle…
Well apart from the fact Billie made it easily known early on that she was a party girl that liked to get wasted, and her ‘I’m better than you’ air about her from being a cheerleader in high school both of which would be repulsive to someone like Sarah, there is the fact that Sarah has only seen Billie being an absolutely ATROCIOUS friend to Joyce.
Billie expressed to Sarah in a way that was definitely condescending to Joyce as a person that she was going clothes shopping with Joyce to make her more like herself.
When Joyce invited Billie to Roz’s party, she vanished to get smashed leaving Joyce who had never been to a party and had been the one to invite her, completely alone, and Sarah had to swoop in to protect her. Billie did help figure out if Joyce was okay, but when Sarah suggested calling the police – keeping in mind that Sarah only shared what happened with Dana due to Joyce’s prodding when at the mall previously – Billie proceeded to accuse Sarah of trying to get rid of Joyce just like Dana.
You know, Sarah, the person who didn’t want to go to the party but still did to make sure Joyce was okay because she actually cared about her. Totally just wanted rid of her I’m sure.
Then there is the way that Billie generally treated Joyce and Walky both like they were beneath her, disrespected Joyce’s wishes by giving almost everyone at her ‘safe party’ alcohol, threw the Dana thing in Sarah’s face a second time, and not long after, a third time while throwing shade at Carla too for doing similar.
So generally over all, most of what Sarah has seen out of Billie has been her being a bongo, being condescending and generally just not being a very good friend. If that was pretty much all you saw out of someone, you would probably hate them too, especially if it was someone you cared a lot about that they were frequently condescending to.
One more tiny thing might be that Billie is a “princess” with rich parents which makes her even more similar to Dana.
Also, let’s not forget that Billie is human. That’s a category with only a 2% chance of likeability for Sarah, so why risk it?
Now’s probably as good a time as any to get rid of that sweater. Hopefully the blood can be washed out.
And then have the blood needed to prove Ryan was her attempted rapist?
I have a feeling Joyce might not want that yellow sweater back.
Sarah’s expression in the third panel is excellent (and very telling).
I don’t remember who called it first, but her replacement is totally going to be Malaya, isn’t it?
If our hearts are pure and Willis is generous it will be.
…as Sal’s new roomie! o.m.goodness!
Our hearts are pervy and WE WANTS IT.
I can’t see any pervy end to that scenario unless Marcie turns out to be a master or persuasion.
Patience. Soon we will take the precious. Take the precious for ourselves. The preeeccciooouuussss….
I’m hoping it’ll be one of the new characters Willis made recently, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Malaya.
Hey! What if Marcie has somehow managed to matriculate mid-semester and winds up being Billie’s replacement and Sal’s new roommate and…uh…nivver mind.
I called it, though I don’t think I was the first.
Sal and Malaya sharing a room would….
… okay, I was going to call it awful/awesome, just as I had before, but now that I think about it they’d actually make workable roommates. In that they would decline to ever interact with each other at all and thereby not strangle each other unto death.
If Becky applies for school, it could be her as well!
F-friends?
BLASPHEMER!
Nonono, this is Sarah talking here.
DEFAMATION!
what time of day is that both Billie and Sarah are up before Joyce and Sarah had to turn on the lights?? 5am??
Honestly, I’d have guessed around 8 or 9. Most churches I know of have a first mass around 10 or 10:30am.
Billie hasn’t been to bed yet.
Well, what month is it in comic? At least somewhere in October, so the sunrise time is going to be somewhere around 7:45-8:00. Depending on the angle of their windows, the early morning light might not be quite enough.
I hate ads with sound.
Anyway, I’d guess at it being 8am with the service starting at 9am, but that is largely made up.
You’re right. ‘Today’ is Sunday, October 10. Sunrise was at 7:49 AM.
(DoA’s following 2010’s calendar for its days of the week on the sliding timeline.)
We last saw Billie pushing on a suitcase while everyone else was going to bed. She’s been up all night.
As for the in-strip time, Yumi called it. From the Walkypedia DoA timeline, it’s October 10 in-universe. According to sunrisesunset.com — not a Fiddler on the Roof fansite but an invaluable resource for the calculation of sunrises and sunsets and associated phenomena — on Oct. 10, 2017, twilight as most of us know it occurs at 7:25am and sunrise occurs at 7:51.
And Willis has a suspicious knowledge of exactly how the early morning light looks in bedrooms in the women’s wing. I’m just sayin’.
Why is Billie being forced to move on a Sunday? As one who has spent three-quarters of my adult life working in bureaucracies, I’m confident that no one whose signature needs to be on the form wants to be working on a Sunday.
These times are for Bloomington, Indiana, of course. But surely all of you intuited that.
*my jukebox is stuck on Steely Dan due to current events*
Are you reelin’ in the years?
Not gonna lie. That and “Rikki don’t lose that number” are the only ones I can come up with off the top of my head. But I have enormous lacunae in my pop music education.
Nothin’ but blues and Elvis, and somebody else’s favorite song…
“You’re done already? I’ll unpack and repack *everything* for you, like normal people do.”
By fandom logic this interaction means that the two of them will be sharing a bed this time next year comic time.
Come to think of it that’s DoA logic, isn’t it? Billie might have a thing for questionable relationships.
Sarah quickly went to red alert to hide The Sweater.
Billie got the Hot&Cold treatment that is known as Joyce&Sarah
Billie is getting one last “morning hug” from Joyce, who is quite the athletic hugger. Joyce realy came to play this Sunday, and she’s leaving it all on the field.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/halfbath/
Looking for this strip I found many “wakey wakeys” from Joyce to Billie, and I don’t know if Billie will miss them
I’m sure she will miss them and be annoyed with herself because of it.
Yeah, she’ll miss the hugs. But if Joyce goes any harder Billie might end up with a collapsed lung!
Look at that panel. An “oof!” that only gets topped by literal fighting.
The enthusiasm of that hug makes me very happy :3
Billie and Sarah in the last two panels mirror my own mood this morning.
Every day from now on, Joyce will wear a red hood and take a basket of cookies to Billie in the Forest Quad.
No, not that red hood.
Also, DMW: why is Dorothy missing from the “cast picture” on Twitter?
it’s not a cast picture
It’s a death list (or so I assume).
Weeeell, it kinda IS a cast picture.
Just not for this comic.
I like to think it’s an advertisement for a Dumbing of Age spin off where Joyce, Danny, Joe, Sarah, Howard, Billie, Sal and Blonde Chick (who is that again?) find a way to the Walkyverse.
Eventually there will be a duel between Carla and Ultra Car
Oh, that sounds fun! I think if they ever met, Ultra Car and Carla would probably argue over which of them stole the other’s style. The duel would be fought with increasingly elaborate Looney Tunes gags.
Nobody would win. They’d just keep coming up with perfectly identical contraptions no matter how hard they try to innovate.
Blonde Chick is Out Alex.
AND THEN THEY ALL sat down and had a nice talk.
But what about Kevin?
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the comic over the past couple days, and it’s kind of making me want to go to church? Which doesn’t seem like the message of the comic? I might suddenly be reading a different comic than everyone else?
Maybe you wanted to go get some human interaction, and the comic brought up a standard way of doing so?
Unless you’re a healthy and well-adjusted person who gets adequate amounts of socialization, in which case the internet could use some advice, please?
Hahaha, “well-adjusted.” “Socialization.”
I have two friends.
Anyway, I do think there’s truth to the first part of what you said. Also, I doubt Joyce would consider what I may go to to be “church,” since it’d be a Universal Unitarian church.
Given that it doesn’t have Christian rock music OR Bibles? Probably not.
….
Joyce: “So… Unitarian-Universalist… if I remember what I was taught about heresies right, that means you believe God isn’t a trinity and Hell isn’t real?”
UU: “Well, ‘believe’ is such a strong word…”
(This is a nonsense-scenario, of course. Joyce would not have been given an accurate representation of all the heresies out there.)
I mean. It all depends on your definition of heretic. If we want to be technical, everybody’s been a heretic since the Council of Chalcedon.
Yeah, I remember in high school when a group of kids who were at least more mainstream Christian than Joyce were talking, and one girl I knew started insulting UUs. I was like, “Hey, my mom’s Unitarian, so can you not?”
To which she replied, “Sorry, but…” And then continued on.
Maybe you will meet a nice person that you can set up with another nice person!
Also, Joyce will convince everyone else to show up as well somehow. Except for Becky, who will be dropping by as soon as humanly possible once Joyce texts her your new quad. Because you automatically went to one of the top slots in her friends list when you let her stay in your room, she looks up to you and Ruth in a way, and she’ll be super concerned for your well being if she doesn’t.
…
You can never escape them now Billie. They’re going to be your best of friends. Your best of friends forever and ever and ever.
…This feels scarier with the Mary gravatar which I refuse to change out of fear of getting Peter. *shudder of disgust*
Haaaaaaa, oh Sarah and Billie.
i dunno why but i keep reading their cheek blush as, like, actual blushing, instead of just highlighting on their cheekbones
all i know is that it makes all these scenes like ten times more adorable like joyce!! morning cuddle threesome wakeup and all the blushing!! sarah here! blushing as she kind of almost says something nice to billie!!
it’s great.
First panel, Sarah blushing as she’s checking out Billie’s Billies
“Srsly, my bat is within arm’s length, so TAKE. IT. BACK.”
Joyce: “Hug her quickly, Billie! Get within her reach so she can’t bean you with the bat! HUG HER AND NEVER LET GO!”
Billie: “…. I think I’ll just take it back, since I wasn’t really happy putting it out there in the first place.”
Sarah: “Yeah, we’re both less unhappy with that option.”
Isn’t that sweater in the back of Billie’s closet because it has, um, memories?
“Joyce, I was digging through my stuff, and I couldn’t help but notice that when I touched this thing I was transported to a churning nightmare zone made entirely of melted clocks and shredded flesh. I just want to remind you that cursed artifacts go in the appropriately labelled recycling bin, not the trash. They have a bad habit of escaping.”
That.
Note Sarah’s expression in panel 3.
Does anybody know what happened to Plasma Mongoose? Haven’t seen her/him post in a while
Huh, yeah.
PM has a tumbler account linked from the DoA comments… last post back in April…. and the post before that was in December…. okay, that doesn’t tell us much…
…. and that exhausts my wellfare-check skills. I feel that this is something I should learn how to do properly just as a good-citizen thing, maybe after learning where the creepy-cyberstalker line is so I don’t cross it. And possibly after learning first aid.
They seem to use the same username across the internet. Most recent activity I saw from them was a discus comment from three days ago, so whatever’s up, they’re probably fine. Replied to their comment about this, so maybe they’ll see it.
I found a few posts by them in the spam folder, just in case that’s what happened. (all of the “gravatar roulette” stuff recently kind of sent up a lot of false flags and so I figured it was worth a look.) There’s two from them from yesterday which got spamfoldered for some unknown reason and they’re unspammed now and hopefully that’s solved.
Ah, good, I was getting worried. I was used to him/her being a regular here, hadn’t seen her/him in a while.
That’s our Joyce – Sweet and nice to the last with everyone.
Yeah, I can see why Billie doesn’t want a fuss made about this; she probably feels bad enough about what’s being imposed on her from outside by frankly either openly hostile or just bureaucratically indifferent forces. The last thing she needs is a well-meaning crowd of friends mourning over her departure with her.
That or she figures she’s practically going to live with Ruth anyway, so what difference does it make?
Dear Gods, at this rate Billie will get into a polyamory relationship with Ruth AND Sarah.
Also, almost a nice thing, Sarah makes Progress!
Tonight, Grav Roulette, you have giv- *SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!*
Dina is awesome. AWESOME. She’s smart, she’s focused, she’s a dedicated student, a very loyal friend and lover, extremely perceptive and analytical, logical, surprisingly astute even if she doesn’t really understand everything, she has an instinctive understanding for pretty much every aspect of consent that exists…
….
I AM NOT WORTHY! I AM NOT WORTHY!
….
Come back tomorrow, when Grav Roulette again refuses to give me the undisciplined, unfocused, irresponsible, lackadaisical goofball who truly represents me.
*high five*
Billie’s shirt is such a quinticential David Willis creation. I know it’s ridiculous to say “the REAL Billie wouldnt wear that” but pairing a brown shirt with a bright melon orange shirt like that? No. A cheerleader would know better. Unless she put them on without thinking and this is supposed to be a deep reflection of her inner turmoil.
It’s moving day. She put them on thinking “this way I don’t have to find a way to squeeze one more shirt into my bags”.
Maybe it’s a screen color thing? The shirt underneath doesn’t look bright melon orange on my screen — it looks cream-colored.
I think it’s a monitor thing – to me it’s yellow.
Yeah, I see it as yellow as well. I do agree that it’s not a great look, now that I’ve been made to think about it.
That shirt just looks light yellow to me
Quintessential
Hey, as birthday strips go, this one’s not so bad! We get to see Joyce being amazing and caring as always, Billie trying to make her departure as undramatic as possible, some underlying tension, and Sarah being Sarah
Billie: “OK, I don’t wanna see a big production about it or -”
Joyce: TACKLEHUG!
“Bryan?” Some day Chat Roulette will turn up someone I recognize and the shock will kill me. Kill me, I say.
Where have I seen that last-panel-Billie-face before?
Oh yes, here we go!
The similarity is uncanny!
Okay, so how close are we to mid-terms? Anybody?
So here’s an interesting part to it. The rape sweater is in Billie’s room not Joyce’s closet which suggests Becky tried to remove it from the closet so Joyce wouldn’t stumble on it blindly anymore. That’s genuinely heartwarming.
Awwww. Nice detail and very Becky!
“‘Production, you say?'”
*joyce immediately starts creating a three-act play*