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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Alex Maw @xjmaw.bsky.social ⋅ 6m
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Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!
…I mean, WONK WONK NERD
Billie: “Give me your lunch money!”
Lucy: “I have a meal plan, like you.”
Billie: “Give me…one of your ramen noodle packs!”
Lucy: “Sure, help yourself! In fact, didn’t we go halfsies on these?”
Billie: “I don’t care, it’s the principle of the thing!”
It’s hard to be a bully if your victim is psychologically unable to realise that they’re being victimised… and if your heart really isn’t in it.
“Wait! You chose friendship… over social dominance?”
Billie BSOD
Really? The bullies of my acquaintance would have regarded that as easy pickings.
Translating from the original Billie-ese, this is the equivalent of a hug.
I-It’s not like I like you or anything, baka!
+1 Funny
And very, very true.
Pretty much, yeah. If you look closely in panel 6, you can see that Billie’s crying a little.
Walky could offer himself as a translator. He’s basically the next best thing to a native speaker of the tongue.
Ew! A decent person! Kill it with fire!!
Did they honestly actually HATE Billie until Lucy talked them into treating her like a person?
So she wasn’t the person they built her up to be, but it wasn’t like she kicked puppies and vandalized their rooms.
I am really starting to dislike these people?
I don’t think they hated her, exactly, but were probably weirded out about last time. They are shallow, sure, but they don’t seem to be outright malicious.
What? No, probably not. They were disappointed and/or weirded out that Billie wasn’t who they’d thought she was. Then Lucy convinced them they could just start over and get to know her for real. That’s all pretty reasonable, why are you eager to hate them?
I don’t think they actually hated Billie, no, I think that was her catastrophizing, and Lucy just convinced them not to make things weird after what happened the last time they saw her.
New word!
So is catastrophizing a form of apostrophizing?
It’s when a feline does something really, really bad.
And get their butt glued to a plaque?
Catastrophizing is basically when you project a minor inconvenience/small thing going wrong leading to a catastrophe or expect the worst possible outcome to be the true one even if it is unlikely, rare or would require a very long unfortunate series of events to all occur in a very precise order.
For instance: Your tire is flat so you’ve got to change it -> You will be late. -> You will be fired. -> You will not find a new job. -> You will run out of money. -> You will starve to death. This would be a catastrophizing chain of thought as is common with anxiety where tire is flat leads to starving to death, skipping over the fact there are 5 other steps in the chain and that outside events could interrupt any or all of them.
In this case Billie went from: I said/did embarrassing things in front of them -> They found this awkward and weird. -> They will only see and remember my bad traits. -> My bad traits will make them see me as a bad person because I see me this way. -> They hate me now.
It is a type of thinking where you are only looking at A and Z really, everything else in the middle doesn’t matter. But by doing so you can’t see the distortions or where the chain could be broken or where you have assumed X event will occur but is not a foreseeable or guaranteed occurrence. Like the second part of the train of thought is true, but doesn’t make the third, fourth or fifth parts true or guaranteed.
Not at all. Billingsworth believes they should, because she still sees herself as toxic. Since she no longer is in the closet, and most of her skeletons are out as well, I’m guessing Billie has some work ahead of her, and their acceptance of her, will (challenge/encourage/force/enable) her to accept herself as worthy of their friendship. I think she will rise to this challenge in ways that Walky won’t meet his challenges. Because she was a queen-bee in high school, … and Walky was literally just some guy.
Not to mention, the point at which they stopped idolizing her was when she talked about having gotten into an accident while drunk driving, which absolutely IS what she lost her high school friends for. Billie came in pretending to be something she wasn’t and just said basically to everyone BOOM I lied I’m a complete screwup, I’m neither cool nor a good person at all and I’m NOT this amazing person who seduced their RA because I CAN it wasn’t like that at all.
Basically, she tore down all the fakeness that they loved and showed the real Billie. That Lucy was able to “talk to them and have them give her a second chance” really means something. No one’s going to give you a “second chance” to be a lie. Rather, they give you a chance and accept you for who you are.
I am with you!
It seems like it takes very little for them to change their opinion. They will properly change it again.
They were eager to enthrone Sal, remember.
Really hating her makes no sense, but on the other hand idolizing her as they did makes no sense either, so it’s hard to say.
I think they’re just a very either-or, zero-sum crowd that is very, very suggestible.
I think they’re Willis’s commentary on, oh, I dunno, society.
Awww, Billy is making friends!
Wait… Other than Ruth, is Lucy Billy’s best friend?
Lucy? Walky? Joyce?
Billie: *drinks*
Yes…drinks have definitely been her best friend until recently.
It’s Walky, though she’s lamented before that Joyce is maybe her best friend in college, I guess since Walky is family more than a friend, exactly.
No, Joyce is her best friend. As she lamented previously (as Walky is family). But Lucy could be about to steal that position.
“You’re being far too reasonable and decent. I hate that I can’t hate you for this.”
The power of Bogus is real!!
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!!
A heart needs a Second Chance…
Niiiiicccce!
Lucy is awesome.
Agreed!
I support Billie as absolute ruler of this Hall.
AAAAAAAAAAALPHA SWEEEEEEEETIE!
Give her a noogie!
I don’t get the physicality of this. Do women give each other noogies? 4 years of an over-crowded high school never saw a woman get a noogie. Never even heard of it. Nobody touched anybody else very much that I remember unless they were a romantic couple.
Second chance for WHAT?? These weirdoes decided that Billie was their god for no reason whatsoever, they’re acting completely abnormal but somehow BILLIE is in the wrong and needed their forgiveness and second chancE??
A second chance… to be friends. Because the last time Billie interacted with them, she went out of the way to sabotage her friendships with them by airing her dark secrets to them and made things really weird and awkward all around when they were willing to accept she was a normal person just fine.
Yeah, the dirty-secret-airing wasn’t even the thing that made them go ‘okay, maybe Billie’s not a role model’ (though they were visibly weirded out by it as they left the meeting, the exchange went ‘you can take me down from your goddamn ivory tower.’ ‘Um… sure, Billie,’) it was the subsequent Ruth and Billie having a goddamn wrestling match in the hall and Billie subsequently throwing up.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/02-to-remind-you-of-my-love/grease/
(For those of you still trying to figure out the timeline, this was the day Mike fell, while Amber had AG screaming through her subconscious that something had happened and Hallucination Mike first manifested. Ruth’s ‘haven’t suplexed anyone in like two days’ along with various other context has placed today as the day after the kidnapping. So,
Day 1: Birthday party, Mike notices Ross and Blaine.
Day 2: Chase continues (just after midnight,) Mike falls, Amber wakes up with Bad Feeling, day continues as normal, Ruth and Billie’s dorm meeting.
Day 3: Kidnapping occurs from, oh, 4 AM to 9 AM or so?
Day 4: This.)
Gonna guess that kidnapping day was primarily Awkwardness Central (which makes a bit more sense of Billie and Ruth’s ‘huh I thought you were ostracized’,) but that Billie also spent a fair bit of that day back at Read or otherwise distracted given her relationships to Walky, Joyce, and Sarah.
Billie’s reaction is that of every cynical people when their pessimistic worlview crashes like Launchpad McQuack crashing a plane: in a crashing way where there’s no injuries because Launchpad is an expert at crashing planes.
But not trains, he’s never crashed one of those before.
Well his name isn’t Landpad, now is it?
NICE PEOPLE?
DEAR GOD
C’mon Billie.
Lucy was never queen of the nerds.
… Is THAT why Billie did it? To give Lucy back her social status? And Lucy … wanted to be Billie’s friend because that was really nice of her?
… I think everyone in this room needs a noogie.
I think Billie’s thought process was more 1) The idolizing is both annoying and creepy, and also undeserved; 2) she’s going to establish she’s a goddamn human being who’s also proud of her depressed messy girlfriend; 3) She is ALSO depressed, and therefore trying to sabotage her relationships with the hall; 4) Oh shit I’m just now realizing how badly I fucked up with that DUI that actually WAS bad and Alice had every right to distance herself from me; 5) Kit Fisto fanfiction blog. But all of that said, LUCY likes being loved and appreciated by the Forrest Quad hive mind, so she can have that idolizing once Billie’s torpedoed her own reputation and Lucy will be happy, right?
So like, it wasn’t primarily to help (or well, ‘help’) Lucy, but I think she has considered that as a benefit (again, ‘benefit’) of her doing this.
Panel 4 – How could anyone resit the pure honesty in those eyes?
Billie is still trying to get used to actually having friends rather than cronies. It’s a difficult change for her!
Lucy is too good for this universe.
Oh no, do NOT go with “Only the good die young” … unless that’s what The Willis is trying to do, get us ready for Lucy dying and Mike getting better.
Okay, so Lucy secretly runs an evil cabal dedicated to chaos, evil, and stealing everyone’s left shoe while they’re sleeping.
why not both ?
Lucy! <3
I love Lucy.
“…and Lucy loves me.”
….next line, please
“We’re as happy as two can be.”
“Sometimes we quarrel, and then…”
Cinnamon Roll Showdown, Final Round: Dorothy vs Lucy. Place your bets!
This is so passive aggressive.
Everyones Billies friend now purely on Lucys say so.
and Now Lucy is explaining this to Billy.
Yuck.
and Lucy doesnt show a shred of self awareness that this is form of dominance and control behavior by her.
lucy is The self centering narcissist,if a sweet one .
Notiuce we’ve never ever seen Lucy insulted despite who her old roomate was. We’ve never seen her sad either. or fearful. Either sweet or disturbed shes not at the center of others peoples attention.
The Only person who really sees through her is Joyce
She was disturbed by Joyce, mostly because Joyce is her doppelgänger and was subconsciously flirting with her.
However, that’s the point: Like Joyce, Lucy is a Polyanna. She is always cheerful and trying to make other people cheerful in a way that totally ignores their boundaries. Unlike Joyce, Lucy hasn’t yet had the cathartic experiences to question whether behaving like that is appropriate.
Basically, Lucy needs her own Sal and I’m wondering if Billie is going to fill that role.
While Lucy is rocking a significant amount of naivete, that doesn’t mean she is necessarily being narcisistic or passive-aggressive (paggro). Also, there’s a large potential gap between the others hearing Lucy out and agreeing to give Billie a chance, and them blindly following Lucy’s orders. Even Lucy says she “convinced them” which implies discussion and challenges to the idea rather than rote orders.
And frankly, we simply haven’t seen enough of forest quad to let them develop depth of character. But I’m happy to accept them for who they are, which is even easier since theur baseline is prefering to be decent people.
“Paggro” is, to my knowledge, short for “parent aggro” which is what kids sometimes draw when they’re playing MMOs and need to go afk for a short while. There is also waggro (wife aggro), and kaggro (kid aggro). Husband aggro is very rarely seen for some reason. You can’t draw aggro of your pets, they’re just adorable at you until you let them out or give them food or whatever it was time for them to do.
“lucy is The self centering narcissist,if a sweet one ”
That’s kinda what I’m getting at when I call her alpha sweetie. She engages in the same struggle for dominance as Billie in her alpha bongo mood, but she has other more passive – and yes, passive aggressive – methods. She is sugar where Billie is spice, the result is the same.
(I have no idea if she is a narcisist or not. My analysis is what she DOES, not why she does it)
You know, sometimes you just want to do nice stuff for other people. It’s okay. You can just be nice.
And honestly, being the queen of these shallow people is more bad than good.
Hopefully Billie’s roommates will be less to zero fanatical over her.
Also Lucy’s so sweet.
You g-damn cinnamon roll! How dare!
Have to say, only two comments yesterday mentioned Lucy. Congrats to my fellow prophet.
It had to be her. No other person in the other dorm is as high on the character hierarchy. Rose / Nash / others are nearly NPCs, while Lucy is destined to play a bigger role as Billie’s roommate. After the truly awful adults we have seen (two murders), we need Lucy to restore cosmic balance.
Aaagh, the niceness. IT BUUURNS!
Someone being nice for no other reason than because they’re a nice person who wants everyone to get along is pretty foreign to Billie. The only ulterior motive here is “Lucy wants to get along with her roommate and for the place she lives to be peaceful”. Real dastardly stuff, there.
Would that be a ‘bully’ noogie, or a “C’mere li’l sis, I love ya” type of noogie?
Look, any crash you can walk out of is a good crash. Also, he has never crashed a submarine, but not for lack of trying.
Are we talking about Launchpad McQuack here?
Awwww…what a Billie way to say “I love you”!