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and… there… we… go
wait, that’s not Star Wars
Explosion in 3…2…
*waits. waits some more. pushes the button again.
Stay on target…
Loosen up!
The obligatory “I’ve gotta real bad feeling about this”
the possibility of successfully navigating an emotional asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1
After all this Leslie hype I’m starting to wonder if the prof here has changed too.
Since Leslie seemingly confirmed that she’d be teaching this class in the last storyline, kinda doubt it
Unless something’s changed since yesterday (DoA time, not our time), she’s still teaching it.
Yeah. “Unless”.
If Rondeau from Sinfonie de Fanfares starts playing, we’ll know she isn’t.
The IU board was made aware of Robin DeSanto’s naming as Greatest Teacher in a poll widely regarded as fair and definitive* (*according to to a source from the PoliSci department) and immediately asked her to teach all the classes.
“I have a bad feeling about this.” There ya go.
That is a line that is appropriate in all situations.
Not to worry, we are still flying half a ship!
That… that is perfect. Thank you.
And the grav makes it better!
Thank you, thank you. 😀
And yeah, Malaya is normally just an okay grav, as far as I’m concerned, but today they’re GOLD
Extremely lucky for these circumstances.
“I love you”
“I know”
C’mon, that’s uncharitable.
She’s also a huge fan of BTTF and BSG.
I knew it!
There was no way in hell Willis was going to write Ruth/Jennifer interactions out of the comic completely, and I had my suspicions that we’d be getting them in class together somehow. I thought that them sharing the very first class Ruth was mentioned to be in seemed a little too obvious… but sometimes things are obvious for a reason!
Plus Becky, who’s had a fair bit of interaction with Jennifer (feels so weird not to call her Billie) and put her on a pedestal as a LBGTQ role model, PLUS Jennifer has some strange notions about women and bisexuality and so she really needs this class … all the signs were there, really.
“Feels so weird not to call her Billie”
Same here, but I have a guess as to why she started going by her first name, and keeping that guess in mind helps make it easier. Granted, it also probably helps that I only discovered this strip a few months ago, went through it in a month or so, and didn’t spend a full ten years calling her Billie before the switch— let alone twenty-two.
My theory is that it’s part of her current personality reboot attempt. See also her move to Forest Quad.
And college in general. And what we know of her in high school.
Well…how many classes has Willis yet shown Ruth in? Or even talked about? There hasn’t been a reason before now. I’m not saying Willis is a perfect machine who never does anything without reason, but not everything has to have misdirection, we don’t always have to be thrown off the scent of figuring out something significant may be about to happen. And considering how slowly time moves in this comic, I expect any class Ruth is shown to be in would have to serve some kind of purpose.
We’ve seen Ruth in class once. Semiotics, or some damned thing. She’s an English major.
English?? But isn’t she Canadian?
(Pls don’t assault me with criticisms, it was a joke)
It’s perfect. She already knows how to write the words that Americans took the ‘u’ out of.
pls like any regional spelling of english is more sensible than any other.
…Jamaican, maybe.
I believe this this the only other one.
How long in IRL time until Ruth would have a second class scene though?
oh dear, this might be rough
“Hey, why does this Fourth Wall have all these fine, hairline cracks in it?!”
They just don’t make fourth walls like they used to.
The Fourth Wall is cracking because it wasn’t built to support the weight of a spaceship being parked Atop it.
Leslie’s so looking forward to a drama-free class this semester, since Roz is gone.
Out of the frying pan…
Depends if Leslie teaches more than one class. Roz is a gender studies major after all.
Is it possible that Roz would have to repeat the class?
What’s better than star wars references? Randomly appearing ex girlfriends!
It’s just the one ex-girlfriend actually.
Unless it turns out Alice is also in this class.
Or Rachel Jackson, who is, in my head canon, an ex-girlfriend.
That would explain a lot about their interactions, honestly. We know that Ruth didn’t remember her freshman year (going by my own experiences, it’s probably less “lost her memories” and more “her brain never formed the memories”) and genuinely seemed to have no idea what she did to Rachel that was so awful.
I’m betting Rachel told her what happened at some point. If Ruth learned that she had been an abusive girlfriend in the past, she might have been so scared of becoming one again— especially since she knows what it’s like to be abused— that she broke things off with Jennifer. We never saw how the sentence “I DIDN’T ‘LOSE’ BILLIE—” ended; I’m betting the second half was something like “I let her go.”
and now she’s dating a guy who killed a man to cover up his own involvement in a mass kidnapping. not exactly an upgrade
Eeeeehhhhh I’m against it. Rachel can have a personal reason to hate Ruth, but it should inform her hatred rather than be the cause of it. Making it personal kind of overshadows the fact that Ruth was a horrible abusive asshole and got away with it.
I think Ruth said Billie was her first girlfriend at some point, but I don’t remember when/where.
eeeyep, Jennifer hasn’t taken this class.
Oy vey.
It adds up.
This’ll be interesting. Jennifer Billingsworth, who has had romantic entanglements with men and women but claims bisexuality isn’t real, is going to learn about the Kinsey Scale while her ex is in the room.
Hmm, I guess Gender Studies is a reasonable course for a journalism major to take.
Yeah, I didn’t think about it, but after seeing her walk in, it’d be kind of weird if she didn’t take this class, wouldn’t it?
It also counts as an English credit. Makes sense for Billie and Ruth (English major) to take.
wOw. That is a SMALL university, to have people who have a history with each other to randomly cross paths like that.
Dramatic license i guess.
Eh, shared friends recommending the class, I can see it.
It’s not that far off from reality. I ran into certain people repeatedly as classmates, even in classes I took for General Education credits.
I somehow managed to have one class with my freshman roommate every semester just by luck. We didn’t even try to coordinate anything.
I grew up in New York City. In a college in Vermont I was attending, I found someone I had gone to high school with, rooming with someone I had gone to school with when I was… 11, I think. The schools I went to in New York were nowhere near each other. These coincidences can happen.
Eh, not that unrealistic. I went to a big state u, and in addition to seeing the same people in my major classes, I sometimes had random general requirement classes with people I knew, both from my major and even from high school.
I once learned that someone I hadn’t seen since elementary school went to my college… by hearing that she’d been killed by her boyfriend. It was both incredibly horrifying because here was a childhood friend dying and incredibly weird because it was someone I hadn’t seen in years and now barely knew. My mind didn’t know how to process it. There were a lot of things my mind wasn’t processing properly at the time.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes real life really is that… random.
Oh no!
My reaction exactly!
[Stephen Colbert wearing 3D glasses and eating popcorn dot gif]
Constant Dramatic Blindsidin’ Bombshells. There’s your volume title.
…You know what? I think you’re right on the money there.
“General Kenobi.”
Jennifer Kenobi and… I was going to try for another pun, but you could probably still call Ruth “Grievous.”
“Ruth” is a fairly sith-y-sounding name to begin with
I would totally fear “Darth Ruthless”.
Sniped my about to make this comment.
You are a bold one.
Jen-eral Kenobillie. You are a bold one.
She even has two names
“Jennifer, do you know Billie?”
“Well of course I know her. She’s me.”
Genderal Kenobi!
Gonna start telling “only 2 sexes lol” people that only a Sith deals in absolutes
Ooh, mind if I borrow that one?
Feel free!
Ummm…can I NOT say there are only two sexes and still be a Sith please?
Only a sith deals in absolute, but that doesn’t mean a sith only deals in absolute…. Well, I hope not
Can I read one of those fics was Julia Grey fucks?
“Those don’t… those don’t exist. … Okay fine, here.”
*reads*
Okay, but why are they rubbing massage wands against their tummies?
It would be interesting to compare them to Amber’s early fics.
Ohhhhh YES.
I want popcorn but all I have are Doritos.
Aw beans, I was … kind of hoping we’d focus a bit longer on Becky and Ruth bouncing off each-other. They’re both such vibrant, assertive characters and we haven’t had much of a chance to see what they’re like around each-other; I was lookin’ forward to more lines like “Hey, don’t *not* kill Joe on my account”.
Well, maybe Billie will stonewall Ruth like she has everyone else and I’ll get my wish :Tc
I think our options here are either ‘complete awkward silence’ or ‘violent altercation’
I vote “violent altercation.”
Guys, No!
They get off to that too much! They won’t be able to contain themselves!
Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design!
There’s always the chance that Jennifer HIDES IMMEDIATELY to avoid drama.
We know that yesterday (in comic time) Leslie was at a class that apparently is the same one she is now… (Which sounds weird, I’ve never seen a professor teaching the same class on consecutive days). I REALLY hope that Jennifer tries to give up this class and goes for the other. But this is DoA v:
I have a bad feeling about this.
*plays “You Dropped The Bomb On Me” on the hacked Muzak*
It would be more of a blindside if Ethan were also in this class. A blindside for us. I think some peeps actually predicted Jennifer would be in this class.
I don’t think I made any comments predicting it, but I definitely had a hunch she’d be in this class. Mostly because having her in a class with Ruth seemed the most obvious way to ensure they continued interacting in some form now that they were not only broken up but also in different buildings.
This is a little earlier than I expected, though.
What would really blindside *everybody* would be if *Mike* was in this class.
A decaying corpse in the corner of the room would really blindside everybody, yeah.
Not exactly what I meant, but also not wrong.
Stars Wars references, you say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9rTddkgep8
A surprise, to be sure, but is it a welcome one?
grav mood
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
Happy beeps, c’mon
Oh flip. Next thing you know, Asher is attending the class too.
This is getting out of hand! Now there are… shit, lost count.
Mostly because I don’t know what I’m counting. Jennifer love interests? I’ll go with that, because now there are two of them!
Jennifer’s only had Ruth and Asher as far as actual love interests.
You could make an argument for Alice as well, though in that case Jennifer was the love interest who didn’t realize how strong her fuck interest’s interest was.
Alice showing up would definitely be a twist.
Or, just to twist the knife, Jennifer swaps sections to the Monday class only to find Alice is in that one.
And Alice.
how many love interests?! Too many to count. “Two” you say, and I say tsh now you’re making up fake words for “a whole honkin bunch”.
And Walky in that one Yotomoe fan art.
I sense a disturbance in the farce.
“I still love you, Billie.”
“I know.”
“Drink or drink not. There is no try.”
“Love leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to fucking.”
“The belonging you seek is not behind you….ah shit, it is.”
“I am your father, in a queer reconstrual of oedipal narratives”
Yep, Jennifer sure acts dramatic and is a bombshell (smoking hot). Math checks out.
(I’m trying to make funny puns. Am I doing this right?)
*Offers high-five*
But this is gender studies, not a math class. 😉
XKCD has taught us: Going back far enough, everything is just applied math.
“And blindsiding? I guess she is standing close enough that she is blocking my peripheral vision somewhat”
DAMN it, Willis.
Hahahahahaaaaa I knew it
oooooh good timing Becky
Look at that sparkle in her eyes. Becky has become a drama llama
*sighs*
Fuck.
OOF INCOMING
BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES, LADS
DrrrAAAAAAmmmmaaaa!!!
And drama tag pulls.
Begun, this ship war has.
This is not gonna go the way you think, Becky.
It’s time for the Cheddar to end.
A few people were predicting that Rose would be in this class, come to think of it.
Hooo boy, here we go…
“Well have you noticed the shields are still up?!?”
“I sense something, a presence I’ve not felt since…”
And Becky didn’t even get to take out her bucket of popcorn yet.
And Becky further demonstrates her genre savvy.
I bet we find out why Ruth and Jennifer split up via an escalating argument that Leslie is powerless to restrain.
I actually do hope the twist is Billie is just trying to avoid drama in her life. It’d be an interesting rebuttal to the fact that they previously were all about their lesbian suicide pact while now she just wants to live a happy safe life.
It would add an interesting layer of ambiguity to it (until Billie found out her current LI was a mobster).
May Leslie can talk about stepping away from toxic relationships. Power dynamics. Handling new feelings. Co-dependency.
As the first lesson of a Gender Studies 101? that would be super weird.
Here’s hoping!
Dunno about Ruth. But us readers will really enjoy this class.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Jennifer. We meet again, at last. When you left me I was but the medicated lesbian mess, now I am the mistress.”
“Only a mistress of evil, Ruth.”
-Billie, I find your lack of faith disturbing
-In fact, I’m Jennifer
-And I am… your father!
-Do you even know what a Star Wars reference is?
-Nope, I’m currently blindsided
i dig the idea that Ruth is so dramatically blindsided that all she can think to do is throw random Star Wars lines, because that’s the last thing that got mentioned before the bombshell hit and so her brain sort of stayed frozen on that thought
“I am Ruth… Ruth Skywalker”
So, apparently all strips that had previously been tagged “billie” have been retroactively tagged “jennifer”. I’m sure most here are already aware of this, but it came as a bit of a shock to me…
STALINISM
Do you mean STAGINISM?
I mean, it makes sense to keep the tags consistent for all of a character’s appearances, and since she clearly doesn’t want to be called “Billie” anymore it’d be kind of weird for the tags to go on doing that.
The loud ass “OH.” I just said
Hoo boy. And right on cue.
Somehow it took me several hours to realize that Becky is unaware of Jennifer’s presence and she’s talking about last term’s bombshells.
Ladies and gentlemen, here we go
If these two don’t get back together i will not be responsible for the acts i may commit
… okay, so Leslie’s teaching job is now officially identical to that of a poorly-paid tabloid talk show host.
I’m sure Jerry Springer is paid plenty.
Uh-oh Spaghetti-O’s.
Hey, come to think of it, how does Becky know about Star Wars? Correct me if I’m wrong, but that would have been verboten in Becky’s family. That means that she would have learned of it after leaving home, either from Leslie or Dina. Becky hasn’t kept anything to herself since she left home, so she would have run to Joyce instantly to tell her about this amazing thing she discovered.
If Becky was going to sit Joyce down and make her watch 18 hours of Star Wars (23 if she includes Solo and Rogue One), that would happen in the dorm, so there’s no way that Walky, Ethan, Dina, and a significant portion of the cast wouldn’t crowd in for the show.
What I’m saying is that considering how slowly time moves in Dumbing of Age, where’s the month-long story arc where the cast watches the Star Wars saga?
Note: I presume that whoever introduced Becky to Star Wars showed her the films in Machete Order. You can’t let them know about Jar-Jar Binks until they’re hooked.