counterfactual narratives?? pseudoscience!!! Willis is an absolute quack. i am skeptical any of these “characters” (charlatanese for spirits) have any basis in fact.
Oh believe me, I WISH Joyce and Walky had psychic powers. They could use them to blind Ruth’s grandfather, like that guy from Stephen King’s Firestarter.
Well, yes, but this particular group we’ve seen consists of one known antagonist (Raidah,) the mob heir we’ve all been worried about who’s definitely not as out of the mob as he claims, so even if he’s not on board with the mob stuff he’s definitely still dangerous by proxy (Asher,) someone who’s not inclined to have good feelings towards Sarah (Carl, who was a friend of Dana’s,) and Jennifer. Who’s not as Totally Okay and Normal as she claims, and we know this because she’s done this whole reinvention thing before AND she’s using it to try and shove her bisexuality back in the Neglected Box of Social Nonconformity (which is, of course, in the closet.)
So we’ve got a known antagonist who was planning revenge immediately pre-kidnapping and timeskip, a potential VILLAIN who, even if he’s sincere, is still a narrative timebomb, and a dude who we know nothing about but that he’d likely follow Raidah’s lead if she connects Sal to Joyce and decides to start that revenge here. (Especially if she picks up on Sal’s Jealous of the Hot Boyfriend Vibes.)
Beware of being surrounded by fake people upon the first sign of trouble. That I agree on.
Whether Raidah hooked up with this group with an ulterior motive in mind is a 60-against 40-for kind of thing. She’s an awful, elitist, manipulative neurotic with control issues that make Linda Walkerton look like one of Tommy Chong’s characters. Her priorities seem to be hiding who she really is better and carrying on about how everyone else is in the wrong unlike an upright citizen like herself. People who live in glass houses who throw stones openly tend to end up homeless pretty quick. Carl and Asher may be all that’s left of her crowd that she didn’t cut ties or burn bridges with at the moment.
Asher, well, there’s a proven fair weather friend. Regardless of where he stands on the matter himself, I doubt Blaine is the only member of his grandfather’s mob who knows which button to push to get his cooperation in something quick the rest of his friends are going to suffer for by association because he had no other choice. Raidah and Carl can suck it, buuuut…
Sal and Ms. Billingsworth were never close personally, but she’s been part of their circle long enough for Sal to care about her well-being.
Asher’s one thing. Billie’s just falling for someone who represents the idea of ‘man’ until shit gets real again just like Sal still is…But the rest of the crowd paints a troubling pattern….This isn’t going to end well.
Oh, I don’t think Raidah is interested in Jennifer to get revenge on Joyce. Pretty sure that’s at least mostly coincidence and proximity, and she just happens to be one of Asher’s friends.
I do, however, think she’s 500% willing to CAPITALIZE on Jennifer and Sal being friends of Joyce/one of Joyce’s immediate neighbors.
No offense to Carl, I don’t know shit about him really, but going from Jacob to him is such a downgrade. I guess the plus would be Carl probably puts out. But I’d take cuddling with Jacob over banging Carl any day. Sorry Carl. Maybe you’re cool but I ain’t impressed, not yet.
It doesn’t seem appropriate to rank a character on nothing but superficial/physical attributes. Even *Raidah* seemed to like Jacob at least as much for his potential as a high earning, law-practitioner. Carl is background at the moment. Until such time as we may observe his behaviour, there won’t be much to know of his quality as a person.
Oh it definitely inappropriate. I find it interesting I’m getting called out on this for Carl though when I’ve done the same for Joe, Jacob, Ethan, and most recently Asher, especially since the girls used to get this treatment to an irritating degree and it still happens on occassion.
But I will make a sincere effort to no longer objectify the characters from now on if it upsets you or anyone else. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.
Oh no need to stop. I apparently just felt like commenting on it today. I know I’m very susceptible to doing it as well. Hell, entertainment costumers and make-up artists have careers built upon people judging others based on appearance.[1] Maybe for me it was just because Carl is such a complete unknown that it struck more. That and my own self-consciousness about doing it *despite* knowing that I do it, and still not being able to shake the influence of it.
[1] Yes costumers and make-up do more than just set tone, but it plays heavily in their sandbox.
Well, apart from physical appearances… We know Jacob is an intelligent, thoughtful person. Carl on the other hand was quite oblivious to the problems facing Sarah’ and her then roomate, and seemed to have done nothing to help either. Not much to go on, but still not a good sign.
Independent of any issues regarding Joyce and Jacob, I’m pretty sure Jacob is legitimately better off without Raidah. She was pressuring him to become a lawyer that could live up to “his brother’s” (really her) expectations and build a successful life (for her), without regards for Jacob’s own happiness, insecurities, or desires.
Agreed with both you and Kagimizu. To go a step further, most people would be better off without a mean, judgemental, arrogant source of conflict in their lives.
I don’t think it runs that deep…yet. Raidah just doesn’t come off as that great a person. Putting aside the love triangle bullshit with Joyce and Jacob which I actually think she was a victim in. Raidah kind of just assumed Dina was mentally challenged when first meeting her while her two “friends” openly mocked her. Then she proceeded to talk down to her very condescendingly in order to drag because of their own personal beef. Then her friend called Dina “retarded”. Even though Raidah reprimanded her for that, none of that has ever been addressed!
It’s been months! They’ve been in the same area. She never even tried to apologize for this. Not that I’ve seen. If anyone knows a strip where Raidah has apologized to Dina I’ll gladly be proven wrong. Until then Raidah kind of sucks.
Raidah was definitely the wronged party in the Joyce-Jacob debacle. To her credit, she DID call her friend on the r-slur (‘Oh right, we’re in public.’ ‘Oh right, we’re in the universe.’) At the same time, her willingness to call the friend on the active slur while showing no qualms about calling Dina ‘mentally challenged’ to her face shows that she holds the exact same ableist attitude, she’s just ‘polite’ about it. (As Dina so excellently put it, ‘she was not kind to me, though I imagine she thought she was.’ https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/eavesdrop/ )
Also, while she was doing it in no small part to get a dig in at Joyce, who she correctly called as Into Jacob, the part where she indicates teaching’s a less worthy job than law solely because it pays less (‘and we can’t all live glamorous lives’) doesn’t exactly reflect well on her, either. Plenty of outlets to point out Joyce’s immaturity and perceived unsuitability without going for the classism. (And said classism deeeefinitely underlies some of her other actions, though I don’t feel like doing a breakdown at the moment.)
Raidah’s ableism towards Dina is kinda hard for me to talk about.
‘Cause like, of course it’s wrong, but it’s the kind of wrong that gets routinely indulged to the point where it’s just a passive white noise, and it’s the kind of wrong the rest of the cast indulged in directly in Dina’s face when they found out Becky was hitting on her.
This probably ties back into something I talked about a while back, where depicting problematic thoughts in discourse in otherwise sympathetic characters creates a weird vibe, because we’ve been exposed to deliberate malice for so long in a day and age where it’s easier than ever to know about a work of fiction’s creator that it can become clear whether they are writing a harsh reality or indulging their own worst traits in their work.
The difference to me is that most of the cast knocked it off when Dina called them out on it and apologized. But yeah, ableism is insidious, and it has definitely popped up on occasion since among the sympathetic cast. (Dina and Sarah’s one-on-one interactions sometimes include an element of Sarah calling some particular quirk of Dina’s weird, for instance. People were also surprised towards her birthday to realize she was turning nineteen and thus on the older end of the cast, but as someone who was mistaken for a high school student by random strangers well into my twenties, I’m willing to read that potentially as ‘Dina looks young’ – an established trait, even ignoring her habits and dress – and not necessarily infantilizing her. And it’s notable that it’s been a while since Sarah remarked on one of Dina’s habits. I like to think she’s learning.) Maybe Raidah would apologize when called on it herself. Maybe not. But given it’s an occasion Dina has actively said ‘I did not appreciate this’ and she later called out the same behavior in the main cast, it’s definitely meant to be portrayed negatively in both those instances.
As opposed to, say, characters teasing Joyce about her limited palate, where sometimes she seems okay with it with trusted people but there’s also clearly some insecurity there knowing it’s a ‘childish’ eating habit. That one seems to be in part Willis poking fun at his own limited diet while also acknowledging ‘yeah this is unusual for an adult.’ I’m not gonna psychoanalyze further.
re: Dina and Sarah’s interactions: I wish someone told me “no, stop that, that’s weird” a lot sooner. It would’ve saved me a lot of ostracization and retroactive embarrassment…
Being on guard against insidious infantilization doesn’t mean we have to put away all childish things. We’re the sum of all our experiences — experiences in our childhood, our adolescence and our adulthood. There’s nothing unhealthy about fondly revisiting the games, books, TV and films we enjoyed in our childhood. Growing up isn’t about giving up our past, but expanding on it, being stretched and enriched by experience.
There’s nothing unhealthy about enjoying child-like affection and playfulness in our adult relationships. The problem arises when the relationship operates coercively on that child-like level.
Becoming aware of the subtle slippery elements of that coercion and recognizing the difference between care and confinement are the first steps in breaking free of insidious infantilization.
How all the characters here will do that will be quite the sight to behold…..
The other difference though is that Raidah did it on first contact when Dina was behaving decidedly oddly. Immediately after finding out she wasn’t a little kid, which is apparently a common first impression from both looks and behavior.
The others did so despite much more exposure and despite knowing that Dina was their age and capable of functioning as a fellow student. Raidah’s behavior was worse, but the others had much more reason to know better.
I’ve also been mistaken for my tall littlest sister’s younger sibling. I was even mistaken for a high-schooler outside my own college’s student center.
“Do you want to go here someday?”
“…I’m a Junior…”
“Oh? What high school?”
“…Uh…here…”
*sigh* I just don’t exude emotional sophistication, I guess.
And then there was that time that Jenniferused the r-slur way back in 2010, though at that point it may have just been a product of past Willis not realizing how bad it was.
I don’t think Raidah ever apologized to Dina. I don’t even think she realized how wrong her ableist attitude and actions were. She probably thinks she’s okay because she didn’t use the “r” word and reprimanded her friend for doing so. Maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt it.
Honestly part of me thinks Raidah still believes Dina is mentally challenged. They’ve never interacted after that despite Dina once standing directly behind her.
We definitely haven’t seen Raidah apologize to Dina, but then, the only time we’ve seen them in close proximity after that incident is when Dina was stalking her and Jacob. Likewise, as Regalli says, most people knocked off the condescending to Dina after being called on it — but they had to be called on it, and they were mostly good people. If Dorothy had to have it pointed out to her, why would Raidah, on the basis of one encounter, realize she ought to apologize?
Which is not to say that she doesn’t have issues, including the classism Regalli points to. Though the classism has its own interesting avenues for explorations, since one can see how a brown Muslim woman living in what I understand is a pretty Christian part of the US would come to that. And her condescension to Dina is itself complicated, because after all, don’t we want people to be understanding of those with mental disabilities? If Dina did have the sort of issue Raidah assumed, would we judge her as harshly? (Please bear in mind that I’m deeply ignorant on these issues, so I may be being as appalling as she was. If so, my apologies.)
Which is not to say that the whole incident reflects well on her. And it does (along with other things) sort of call into question to what extent her admiration for Jacob’s brother’s fighting for trans rights is about trans people as opposed to about how admirable the fight is.
Nah. I get what you’re saying but you never condescend to amyone except maybe the very youngest of children (I’m talking like age 5 and under) because they literally don’t understsnd certain concepts. Just because someone is incapable of atriculating thought as fluidly or it takes more time doesn’t mean you don’t treat them with respect, because you never actually know what they’re thinking or truly understand.
There’s slso a significant difference in behavior between the cast being drunk assholes with stupid assumptions of Dina at that party and what Raidah did, which they were indeed called out on almost immediately and apologized and changed.
It’s been months in comic and Raidah hasn’t done shit. Probably having completely forgotten the incident. That makes either ignorant or uncaring. Which is better?
First paragraph: Totally agreed. I do, in fact, read Dina as autistic (which a lot of people would call ‘mentally challenged’, because we don’t understand a lot of social concepts innately) and I would be irritated at POLITEST if someone said that about me to my face. Even if you know someone has an intellectual disability, you shouldn’t treat them as completely incapable and you shouldn’t say insulting things in front of them assuming they can’t hear or understand. You can accommodate someone while treating them like a human being entitled to basic respect.
That entire interaction says, at my most charitable, that Raidah had no idea whatsoever how to talk to disabled people. (Protip: do not crouch down while talking to a disabled person. Just, don’t. Doesn’t matter the variety of disability, if you wouldn’t do it to an able-bodied neurotypical person that age, don’t do it to the disabled person.) Not being my most charitable, I’d assume she doesn’t care to learn.
in italian “gl” as in “famiglia” is sort of a “wet” L. or technically, a voiced palatal lateral approximant (as opposed to the regular L, being alveolar). It’s produced, as best as this non-native italian speaker can tell, by flattening the tongue so that the sides, rather than the tip, touch the palate. It can be approximated as a “y”-type sound with just a bit more friction.
or you can just pronounce it as your regular L and everyone will understand you fine
it’s weird cos i was doing it right, just “reading” it wrong, in sensory terms. i love phonology but i’m so bad at the part where i have to figure out what my mouthparts are doing^^
for those into that sort of thing, you can see what the inside of people’s bodies looks like while pronouncing these sounds here or there. perverts
(i’m jk those are perfectly SFW MRI videos of what the inside of your mouth looks like while pronouncing various sounds, i think it’s fascinating and helpful, and wow, tongues are AMAZING organs. no innuendo intended, although, that too)
also i was wrong the “lateral” is not about how the sides of the tongue touch the palate but how the airflow goes over the sides, it’s always the center of the tongue that gets smooshed up onto the palate, but in “L” it’s the tip against the top teeth, whereas in “gl” the smooshing happens further back
It’s not silent; gl is pronounced like… well… a L with the middle of your tongue against the roof of the mouth. Much like “ly”, but both at the same time, not as a sequence. Same as Portuguese lh, Catalan and very conservative Spanish ll, very conservative Hungarian ly, and Latvian ļ if that helps.
Likewise gn, the same as French gn, Spanish ñ, Portuguese and Vietnamese nh, Catalan and Hungarian ny, Latvian ņ.
lol! well that should unconfuse any of you Hungarians and conservative Spaniards out there ^^
seriously though you have some knowledge of all of these languages? and more i assume? or you’re just into phonologies for the acrobatic fun of hacking your articulators? impressive regardless =)
Ah yes ‘random’. (and this isn’t you specifically Sirksome. Youtuber’s are abusing the word to death, but it’s usage calls to mind the anecdote about Webster where he corrects his wife on who is surprised vs who is astounded.) Surely this is a case where language is evolving, and we’re not even on the leading edge of this one anymore, but it is still jarring to hear ‘random’ when a person means astonished or astounded. It seems to feel most inappropriate when it’s a substitute for ‘surprised’ in a situation which is purely deterministic. i.e. Hanging out in front of a person’s residence guarantees that you will eventually intersect with them unless they die before crossing said threshold again. Frankly it would’ve been more random for Sal to /not/ bump into Asher et al.
I guess I would describe myself as a conservative descriptivist?
Though Jennifer, who uses “random”, doesn’t know Sal’s been hanging out in front of her residence, so it seems random to her. Sal, if Walky’s suspicions were correct, wanted to run into at least one of them, but wanted it to appear random.
i mean, i think saying “youtubers are abusing [word] to death” is prescriptivist in that you are at once acknowledging that a certain usage is common within a certain language community (…youtubers?), yet disqualifying that usage. a prescriptivist would say, maybe: “oh! indeed! well, well.” and then do a google ngram graph, run a twitter search, compare dictionary definitions (and chuckle at them) and maybe poll some undergrads.
for my part i find Sirksome’s (and Rachel Bloom’s) usage completely unsurprising, and/or unastonishing please take your pick ^^
You’re right that part of the heart of my complaint is prescriptivist. Although I find that duality more nuanced as well (like Kinsey or a p.h. scale). There’s two parts to the youtube bit (and maybe it’s a generational fad). One is that they’re changing the meaning (nearly inverting it) but also that word is so heavily overused regardless of meaning, that it is near meaningless. I picked up on it because my kid likes watching videogame ‘tubers and streamers, so in that context I hear it get used a lot, notably when they *aren’t* talking about prng’s. e.g. “I got sniped as soon as I exited the base! That’s so random!” or “I was randomly walking down the street the other day…”, events which are very *not* random.
So descriptively the use is changing, but in applicability it’s just becoming sentence filler, like, “uh, like, dude, etc”.
But this is starting to fire up a different rant about poor literacy so I best just go do something else. 🤪
eh, i’m sure there’s a way of holding a position on a given linguistic issue that’s neither entirely prescriptivist nor entirely descriptivist but that’s not super common in my experience.
but maybe another way to look at it is that prescriptivism is not always bad, it often is because the most common and obnoxious instances use terrible logic (arguments from authority, classism, ageism, linguistic myths) but you seem to be making a case that i can sympathize with, being that the word “random” in its older sense is useful actually, and you argue that we should avoid using it in a different way because that might replace that earlier definition.
to which i say, ok but can you explain how this new, metaphorical sense (coming to mean something like “unexpected, surprising”) is actually replacing the older, scientific definition? or show me contexts where the meaning is ambivalent, so that using the literal meaning is made more difficult and you have to spend lots of extra saliva or pixels to essentially redefine the word?
because that wouldn’t be the first time a word comes to be used literally in some contexts and metaphorically in others.
like the word “literally” for instance. i’m sure your brain is literally blown right now oooh *dabs*
I don’t think the sense is quite the same as “unexpected, surprising”, so much as just references chance or well randomness.
At least as Jennifer’s using it here – a chance meeting, even if it wasn’t really that on Sal’s part. A luck reference, without connotations of being either good or bad luck.
I’d say it often at least connotes unexpectedness, but you’re right, the element of luck is more fundamental.
Demoted actually gave a great example above, “I was randomly walking down the street” which i find really nifty because “randomly” here evidently doesnt apply to the act of walking in the street, but instead foreshadows the unexpected thing that’s about to happen.
Yeah, I think in that context it mostly means that why they were walking down the street or where they were going all really don’t matter. Context is irrelevant, what matters is what happened while they were doing it.
Though I find it even more amusing because “random walk” is actually a thing in mathematics.
I hope that even when Billie returns or Jennifer finds a semblance of inner peace and balance, she keeps the new fashion sense. The bright yellow and royal blues she was drawn in previously were TERRIBLE for her skin tone. She’s drawn with a kind of sallow, ecru skin tone… Made her look jaundiced to wear yellow on top of that. Asians aren’t literally yellow, you know?
Hey! I know it wasn’t intentional, but I want to speak up anyway:
Please don’t talk about Natives in the past-tense unless it involves specific past events. We’re still very much alive and kicking, still as defensive and caretaking of the land as we ever were.
Discussing us in past-tense has a nasty way of reinforcing the unfortunately wide-spread belief that we’re gone. 🙁 Thank you for reading.
I would argue that the “lived”, in this case, is used not as “they are no longer around” and more “they no longer live that way (because of colonialism ruining everything as per usual)”.
Hey sorry about that last comment involving a Simpsons’ reference. By the looks of it I’ve incidentally bumped into your thermostat, and for that I’m sorry.
I choose to believe that she rode by McNutt repeatedly until she couldn’t deal with Walky anymore and has now returned to her own dorm and dismounted from her bike.
You kidding? Walky already knows! He can see these events unfold like an omnicient god from his position atop that snow pile. Nothing is beyond his gaze.
Aw, it might be awkward for Sal but I do like that they both look like they’re happy to run into her.
(I also keep wondering if they knew each other before college too, depending on how well to do his family’s branch of the mafia is their parents might be in the same social circles.)
I’m not sure about knowing each other as kids, but I do hold a headcanon-until-established-otherwise that Jennifer DOES know the same ‘I had a rough past because my family runs the mob, but I broke off from them (whether or not he discloses the ‘stole a shitload of money’ aspect, I don’t know) and now I’ve turned over a new leaf!’ story that he gave Sal. Jennifer, eager to bury her own former self, seems really likely to jump on the ‘we’ve both changed and our pasts will never haunt us again!’ angle, and I do want to believe Asher genuinely wants out of the mob and to believe he’s safe as well.
Of course, there’s no way whatsoever he’d tell her a mob stooge hunted him down, blackmailed him into aiding a kidnapping that ended in murder and a car chase, or that he got back in contact with the dirty cop who ultimately killed said stooge once he made a mess of things, and Asher ended up on the Hit Complete Mailing List. There’s ‘did some shady stuff but I’m reformed’ and there’s ‘I am, at the least, complicit in a very recent murder and an unwilling accessory to like half your friend group’s compound traumas.’
Whatever else Asher lied about, him trying to leave was legit as far as we know. Blaine brought it up (“‘Gramps is still pretty disappointed about that”) so either it’s a serious long con for….reasons that even other mob members don’t know or he was serious.
Whether he’s STILL out is a different question these days, of course. And as you pointed out, he’s got PLENTY he’s not telling Jennifer.
Yeah, my question is all in how much communication he had with his family during the kidnapping, and what his thoughts are about reaching out to, minimum, the local dirty cop when he was in trouble. Does he think he’s still mostly out? Did reaching out include ‘by the way, we know it was you but we’re willing to forgive family’ and he is back in now? How much did they know about where he was before he made contact, and how much did he give away in the process? And critically, how much does he recognize he was playing with fire there?
I don’t understand why Sal would even want to have any contact with Asher. It seemed to me as though the two of them had whatever closure that she felt that she needed to have last semester. Granted, that would change if they had even the remotest reason to suspect Asher had anything to do with Walky getting kidnapped (which he did, if you recall), but they shouldn’t have any reason to think that as far as we know.
Also, I am only slightly surprised to see Raidah in Asher’s orbit.
She should find herself someone she’s established a strong rapport with in a mutual friendship based on accepting the other for who they are and trying to be as good as possible to one another.
I’m not surprised to see her with Raidah though. Raidah is an older student Jennifer wanted to get in good with last semester. Jennifer also seemed to agree with Raidah about the Dana situation.
I see them as an “Axis of Maturity”. As in, “We are mature adults, as opposed to all those immature children over in Read”. They are looking to recruit Sal.
“I’m not surprised” in the way you say “of fucking course Jennifer and Raidah and Asher and the Dana dude makes sense”, not as in…
Look, I was expecting only two out of four at most? But apparently, ex-Billie has gone and found herself a bunch of toxic people with complicated pasts to hang out with – Sorta similar views on accountability likely included. And I got bamboozled by this Damocles’ Sword of Drama getting updated to a Missile.
Ah yes, second only to the Sword of Suspense, the Sword of Drama was employed by Damocles when he needed a more general purpose weapon for court intrigue. The Missile of Drama was invented in the 1940’s when Hitler threw a tantrum because his hero didn’t like him. The V1/V2, the most violent implements of, “I’m not touching you,” ever built.
I.. want to leave it there… but I also want to know if you’re familiar with the Sword of Damocles. The tension might kill me. I’m hanging by a thread here. And what does Clif have to do with this?
I wonder if Walky can see this front his snow hill. Sal has “casually ” meet Asher and his nice group of friends. Now, what is her plan? There’s a plan? Is this just awkward or even potentially dangerous? I kinda hope Sal will say “Hi” then leave. But a drama with Sal would be awesome ro read…..
So in addition to dating Asher who I absolutely don’t trust, Jennifer is now hanging out with Raidah who I dislike for how she’s treated Dina, Sarah, and probably others too. And apparently Carl who I forgot existed since his last appearance was in 2012, and I haven’t seen him enough to form an opinion about him.
YIKES, Asher hangs out with Raidah?? Or, Jennifer started hanging out with Raidah and Asher is now coming along with it. Either scenario bad, but honestly, with Jennifer it’s worse, because she’s seen Raidah at her worst and went with this anyway.
Just bike away, Sal. Bike away while you still can.
‘i’ before ‘e’,
except after ‘c’
or when sounding like ‘a’
as in ‘neighbor’ or ‘weigh’.
so is not it strange,
it is a bit odd,
downright abnormal
that weird is so
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Walky learning to harness Joyce’s psychic abilities
That’s funny. He didn’t even touch Fuckface.
What am I saying??!?! Psychic powers totally pseudoscience!!!!
Fuckface is more like an amplifier for pre-existing powers.
Never underestimate the limitless power of pseudoscience.
That’s tantamount to assuming away the question on whether or not psychic powers exist at all.
If you can recall what happened yesterday, is that not a feat accomplished by your psyche? And if so, is it not a psychic power?
Imagination? Also a psychic power. I’m all about this definition.
counterfactual narratives?? pseudoscience!!! Willis is an absolute quack. i am skeptical any of these “characters” (charlatanese for spirits) have any basis in fact.
Oh believe me, I WISH Joyce and Walky had psychic powers. They could use them to blind Ruth’s grandfather, like that guy from Stephen King’s Firestarter.
A particularly poor psychic ability, given that much of what you “remember” about yesterday is completely invented by you.
Great now I have the DucktTales theme stuck in my head.
well, this’ll be interesting.
Everyone in this hall is a drama bomb waiting to happen.
Excellent.
“hall” is a funny way to spell comic.
Well, yes, but this particular group we’ve seen consists of one known antagonist (Raidah,) the mob heir we’ve all been worried about who’s definitely not as out of the mob as he claims, so even if he’s not on board with the mob stuff he’s definitely still dangerous by proxy (Asher,) someone who’s not inclined to have good feelings towards Sarah (Carl, who was a friend of Dana’s,) and Jennifer. Who’s not as Totally Okay and Normal as she claims, and we know this because she’s done this whole reinvention thing before AND she’s using it to try and shove her bisexuality back in the Neglected Box of Social Nonconformity (which is, of course, in the closet.)
So we’ve got a known antagonist who was planning revenge immediately pre-kidnapping and timeskip, a potential VILLAIN who, even if he’s sincere, is still a narrative timebomb, and a dude who we know nothing about but that he’d likely follow Raidah’s lead if she connects Sal to Joyce and decides to start that revenge here. (Especially if she picks up on Sal’s Jealous of the Hot Boyfriend Vibes.)
excellent summary.
Beware of being surrounded by fake people upon the first sign of trouble. That I agree on.
Whether Raidah hooked up with this group with an ulterior motive in mind is a 60-against 40-for kind of thing. She’s an awful, elitist, manipulative neurotic with control issues that make Linda Walkerton look like one of Tommy Chong’s characters. Her priorities seem to be hiding who she really is better and carrying on about how everyone else is in the wrong unlike an upright citizen like herself. People who live in glass houses who throw stones openly tend to end up homeless pretty quick. Carl and Asher may be all that’s left of her crowd that she didn’t cut ties or burn bridges with at the moment.
Asher, well, there’s a proven fair weather friend. Regardless of where he stands on the matter himself, I doubt Blaine is the only member of his grandfather’s mob who knows which button to push to get his cooperation in something quick the rest of his friends are going to suffer for by association because he had no other choice. Raidah and Carl can suck it, buuuut…
Sal and Ms. Billingsworth were never close personally, but she’s been part of their circle long enough for Sal to care about her well-being.
Asher’s one thing. Billie’s just falling for someone who represents the idea of ‘man’ until shit gets real again just like Sal still is…But the rest of the crowd paints a troubling pattern….This isn’t going to end well.
Oh, I don’t think Raidah is interested in Jennifer to get revenge on Joyce. Pretty sure that’s at least mostly coincidence and proximity, and she just happens to be one of Asher’s friends.
I do, however, think she’s 500% willing to CAPITALIZE on Jennifer and Sal being friends of Joyce/one of Joyce’s immediate neighbors.
… doesn’t “waiting” imply that they aren’t drama bombing in the present?
Oh wow they hang out with Raidah. This won’t get dramatic later at all
I wonder if Raidah knows about Asher’s criminal background and his family’s ties to organized crime.
She’s just getting in touch with a potential future client. Networking!
Waitaminnit… Carl? As in, Dana’s boyfriend Carl?
…are we getting the return of Dana???
Hey we got a timeskip.
Raidah is dating Carl now. At least until Jacob comes to his senses.
No offense to Carl, I don’t know shit about him really, but going from Jacob to him is such a downgrade. I guess the plus would be Carl probably puts out. But I’d take cuddling with Jacob over banging Carl any day. Sorry Carl. Maybe you’re cool but I ain’t impressed, not yet.
It doesn’t seem appropriate to rank a character on nothing but superficial/physical attributes. Even *Raidah* seemed to like Jacob at least as much for his potential as a high earning, law-practitioner. Carl is background at the moment. Until such time as we may observe his behaviour, there won’t be much to know of his quality as a person.
Oh it definitely inappropriate. I find it interesting I’m getting called out on this for Carl though when I’ve done the same for Joe, Jacob, Ethan, and most recently Asher, especially since the girls used to get this treatment to an irritating degree and it still happens on occassion.
But I will make a sincere effort to no longer objectify the characters from now on if it upsets you or anyone else. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.
Oh no need to stop. I apparently just felt like commenting on it today. I know I’m very susceptible to doing it as well. Hell, entertainment costumers and make-up artists have careers built upon people judging others based on appearance.[1] Maybe for me it was just because Carl is such a complete unknown that it struck more. That and my own self-consciousness about doing it *despite* knowing that I do it, and still not being able to shake the influence of it.
[1] Yes costumers and make-up do more than just set tone, but it plays heavily in their sandbox.
Well, apart from physical appearances… We know Jacob is an intelligent, thoughtful person. Carl on the other hand was quite oblivious to the problems facing Sarah’ and her then roomate, and seemed to have done nothing to help either. Not much to go on, but still not a good sign.
yeah but maybe he’s very good at, like, origami. that’s hot right
Independent of any issues regarding Joyce and Jacob, I’m pretty sure Jacob is legitimately better off without Raidah. She was pressuring him to become a lawyer that could live up to “his brother’s” (really her) expectations and build a successful life (for her), without regards for Jacob’s own happiness, insecurities, or desires.
Overall, Raidah is probably not a good person overall, and jacob would be better off without her…
– she seemed to be… Manipulative of jacob
-she was condescending to both Dina and Joyce
– she was dismissive to the problems Sarah was having, when her roomate started to go off the rails
Overall she seems a vit on the arrogant side.
Agreed with both you and Kagimizu. To go a step further, most people would be better off without a mean, judgemental, arrogant source of conflict in their lives.
twitter: awww that hurts my feelings
Go on, take a bow!
“Until” Raidah wants to believe…
Can’t say I ever thought we’d see Carl again.
can’t say i ever thought about Carl at all since August 21, 2012
Definitely didn’t think I’d see him again, since I forgot he even existed.
I only started reading last August or September (binging it all in 15 days) and I have already forgotten about him lol
“I have already forgotten about him,” says Carl’s, uh, #2 Fan. Ouch!
Carl’s #1 fan is his mom. Even she barely remembers he exists, which is… wait a sec, who was I talking about? i’ve forgotten
IT IS YOUR DESTINY
ALL IS PROCEEDING AS MIKE FORSAW.
The siblings know.
You think they don’t?
They dooooooooooooooo.
Oh, it’s Raidah. That’s… lovely.
Raidah being in Asher’s friend group says a lot. And it’s not that great.
He’s mobbed up, she’s a law student, maybe she vying for the position of consili…consquigly…Tom Hagen.
I don’t think it runs that deep…yet. Raidah just doesn’t come off as that great a person. Putting aside the love triangle bullshit with Joyce and Jacob which I actually think she was a victim in. Raidah kind of just assumed Dina was mentally challenged when first meeting her while her two “friends” openly mocked her. Then she proceeded to talk down to her very condescendingly in order to drag because of their own personal beef. Then her friend called Dina “retarded”. Even though Raidah reprimanded her for that, none of that has ever been addressed!
It’s been months! They’ve been in the same area. She never even tried to apologize for this. Not that I’ve seen. If anyone knows a strip where Raidah has apologized to Dina I’ll gladly be proven wrong. Until then Raidah kind of sucks.
Raidah was definitely the wronged party in the Joyce-Jacob debacle. To her credit, she DID call her friend on the r-slur (‘Oh right, we’re in public.’ ‘Oh right, we’re in the universe.’) At the same time, her willingness to call the friend on the active slur while showing no qualms about calling Dina ‘mentally challenged’ to her face shows that she holds the exact same ableist attitude, she’s just ‘polite’ about it. (As Dina so excellently put it, ‘she was not kind to me, though I imagine she thought she was.’ https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/eavesdrop/ )
Also, while she was doing it in no small part to get a dig in at Joyce, who she correctly called as Into Jacob, the part where she indicates teaching’s a less worthy job than law solely because it pays less (‘and we can’t all live glamorous lives’) doesn’t exactly reflect well on her, either. Plenty of outlets to point out Joyce’s immaturity and perceived unsuitability without going for the classism. (And said classism deeeefinitely underlies some of her other actions, though I don’t feel like doing a breakdown at the moment.)
Raidah’s ableism towards Dina is kinda hard for me to talk about.
‘Cause like, of course it’s wrong, but it’s the kind of wrong that gets routinely indulged to the point where it’s just a passive white noise, and it’s the kind of wrong the rest of the cast indulged in directly in Dina’s face when they found out Becky was hitting on her.
This probably ties back into something I talked about a while back, where depicting problematic thoughts in discourse in otherwise sympathetic characters creates a weird vibe, because we’ve been exposed to deliberate malice for so long in a day and age where it’s easier than ever to know about a work of fiction’s creator that it can become clear whether they are writing a harsh reality or indulging their own worst traits in their work.
The difference to me is that most of the cast knocked it off when Dina called them out on it and apologized. But yeah, ableism is insidious, and it has definitely popped up on occasion since among the sympathetic cast. (Dina and Sarah’s one-on-one interactions sometimes include an element of Sarah calling some particular quirk of Dina’s weird, for instance. People were also surprised towards her birthday to realize she was turning nineteen and thus on the older end of the cast, but as someone who was mistaken for a high school student by random strangers well into my twenties, I’m willing to read that potentially as ‘Dina looks young’ – an established trait, even ignoring her habits and dress – and not necessarily infantilizing her. And it’s notable that it’s been a while since Sarah remarked on one of Dina’s habits. I like to think she’s learning.) Maybe Raidah would apologize when called on it herself. Maybe not. But given it’s an occasion Dina has actively said ‘I did not appreciate this’ and she later called out the same behavior in the main cast, it’s definitely meant to be portrayed negatively in both those instances.
As opposed to, say, characters teasing Joyce about her limited palate, where sometimes she seems okay with it with trusted people but there’s also clearly some insecurity there knowing it’s a ‘childish’ eating habit. That one seems to be in part Willis poking fun at his own limited diet while also acknowledging ‘yeah this is unusual for an adult.’ I’m not gonna psychoanalyze further.
Dina definitely reads young. Remember back on Freshman Family Weekend, when Riley was surprised that she wasn’t her peer?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/rapport/
re: Dina and Sarah’s interactions: I wish someone told me “no, stop that, that’s weird” a lot sooner. It would’ve saved me a lot of ostracization and retroactive embarrassment…
I was recently mistaken for an 8th grader by a friend of my mother.
I am 25 years old. This is not the first time either (first time, I was 22 or close enough).
Being on guard against insidious infantilization doesn’t mean we have to put away all childish things. We’re the sum of all our experiences — experiences in our childhood, our adolescence and our adulthood. There’s nothing unhealthy about fondly revisiting the games, books, TV and films we enjoyed in our childhood. Growing up isn’t about giving up our past, but expanding on it, being stretched and enriched by experience.
There’s nothing unhealthy about enjoying child-like affection and playfulness in our adult relationships. The problem arises when the relationship operates coercively on that child-like level.
Becoming aware of the subtle slippery elements of that coercion and recognizing the difference between care and confinement are the first steps in breaking free of insidious infantilization.
How all the characters here will do that will be quite the sight to behold…..
The other difference though is that Raidah did it on first contact when Dina was behaving decidedly oddly. Immediately after finding out she wasn’t a little kid, which is apparently a common first impression from both looks and behavior.
The others did so despite much more exposure and despite knowing that Dina was their age and capable of functioning as a fellow student. Raidah’s behavior was worse, but the others had much more reason to know better.
I’ve also been mistaken for my tall littlest sister’s younger sibling. I was even mistaken for a high-schooler outside my own college’s student center.
“Do you want to go here someday?”
“…I’m a Junior…”
“Oh? What high school?”
“…Uh…here…”
*sigh* I just don’t exude emotional sophistication, I guess.
And then there was that time that Jennifer used the r-slur way back in 2010, though at that point it may have just been a product of past Willis not realizing how bad it was.
I don’t think Raidah ever apologized to Dina. I don’t even think she realized how wrong her ableist attitude and actions were. She probably thinks she’s okay because she didn’t use the “r” word and reprimanded her friend for doing so. Maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt it.
Honestly part of me thinks Raidah still believes Dina is mentally challenged. They’ve never interacted after that despite Dina once standing directly behind her.
We definitely haven’t seen Raidah apologize to Dina, but then, the only time we’ve seen them in close proximity after that incident is when Dina was stalking her and Jacob. Likewise, as Regalli says, most people knocked off the condescending to Dina after being called on it — but they had to be called on it, and they were mostly good people. If Dorothy had to have it pointed out to her, why would Raidah, on the basis of one encounter, realize she ought to apologize?
Which is not to say that she doesn’t have issues, including the classism Regalli points to. Though the classism has its own interesting avenues for explorations, since one can see how a brown Muslim woman living in what I understand is a pretty Christian part of the US would come to that. And her condescension to Dina is itself complicated, because after all, don’t we want people to be understanding of those with mental disabilities? If Dina did have the sort of issue Raidah assumed, would we judge her as harshly? (Please bear in mind that I’m deeply ignorant on these issues, so I may be being as appalling as she was. If so, my apologies.)
Which is not to say that the whole incident reflects well on her. And it does (along with other things) sort of call into question to what extent her admiration for Jacob’s brother’s fighting for trans rights is about trans people as opposed to about how admirable the fight is.
Nah. I get what you’re saying but you never condescend to amyone except maybe the very youngest of children (I’m talking like age 5 and under) because they literally don’t understsnd certain concepts. Just because someone is incapable of atriculating thought as fluidly or it takes more time doesn’t mean you don’t treat them with respect, because you never actually know what they’re thinking or truly understand.
There’s slso a significant difference in behavior between the cast being drunk assholes with stupid assumptions of Dina at that party and what Raidah did, which they were indeed called out on almost immediately and apologized and changed.
It’s been months in comic and Raidah hasn’t done shit. Probably having completely forgotten the incident. That makes either ignorant or uncaring. Which is better?
First paragraph: Totally agreed. I do, in fact, read Dina as autistic (which a lot of people would call ‘mentally challenged’, because we don’t understand a lot of social concepts innately) and I would be irritated at POLITEST if someone said that about me to my face. Even if you know someone has an intellectual disability, you shouldn’t treat them as completely incapable and you shouldn’t say insulting things in front of them assuming they can’t hear or understand. You can accommodate someone while treating them like a human being entitled to basic respect.
That entire interaction says, at my most charitable, that Raidah had no idea whatsoever how to talk to disabled people. (Protip: do not crouch down while talking to a disabled person. Just, don’t. Doesn’t matter the variety of disability, if you wouldn’t do it to an able-bodied neurotypical person that age, don’t do it to the disabled person.) Not being my most charitable, I’d assume she doesn’t care to learn.
She’ll be disappointed because I’m hoping Asher is sticking off the mob.
Then again, like Michael Corleone, he did go back to the family for a murder and I’m not sure that’s a thing you get a freebie on.
Consigliere. I have no clue why there’s a silent G in there, either.
in italian “gl” as in “famiglia” is sort of a “wet” L. or technically, a voiced palatal lateral approximant (as opposed to the regular L, being alveolar). It’s produced, as best as this non-native italian speaker can tell, by flattening the tongue so that the sides, rather than the tip, touch the palate. It can be approximated as a “y”-type sound with just a bit more friction.
or you can just pronounce it as your regular L and everyone will understand you fine
The middle, not the sides; the sides are where the approximation happens.
ah thanks should’ve refreshed before posting my correction to my own comment :facepalm:
it’s weird cos i was doing it right, just “reading” it wrong, in sensory terms. i love phonology but i’m so bad at the part where i have to figure out what my mouthparts are doing^^
for those into that sort of thing, you can see what the inside of people’s bodies looks like while pronouncing these sounds here or there. perverts
(i’m jk those are perfectly SFW MRI videos of what the inside of your mouth looks like while pronouncing various sounds, i think it’s fascinating and helpful, and wow, tongues are AMAZING organs. no innuendo intended, although, that too)
also i was wrong the “lateral” is not about how the sides of the tongue touch the palate but how the airflow goes over the sides, it’s always the center of the tongue that gets smooshed up onto the palate, but in “L” it’s the tip against the top teeth, whereas in “gl” the smooshing happens further back
It’s not silent; gl is pronounced like… well… a L with the middle of your tongue against the roof of the mouth. Much like “ly”, but both at the same time, not as a sequence. Same as Portuguese lh, Catalan and very conservative Spanish ll, very conservative Hungarian ly, and Latvian ļ if that helps.
Likewise gn, the same as French gn, Spanish ñ, Portuguese and Vietnamese nh, Catalan and Hungarian ny, Latvian ņ.
lol! well that should unconfuse any of you Hungarians and conservative Spaniards out there ^^
seriously though you have some knowledge of all of these languages? and more i assume? or you’re just into phonologies for the acrobatic fun of hacking your articulators? impressive regardless =)
She must have slipped past our radar…
Wow that really is random!….But not as random as me not trusting Asher! That is all.
**vague Crazy Ex-Girlfriend reference noises**
SO RANDOM!
the situation’s a lot more nuanced than that.
Ah yes ‘random’. (and this isn’t you specifically Sirksome. Youtuber’s are abusing the word to death, but it’s usage calls to mind the anecdote about Webster where he corrects his wife on who is surprised vs who is astounded.) Surely this is a case where language is evolving, and we’re not even on the leading edge of this one anymore, but it is still jarring to hear ‘random’ when a person means astonished or astounded. It seems to feel most inappropriate when it’s a substitute for ‘surprised’ in a situation which is purely deterministic. i.e. Hanging out in front of a person’s residence guarantees that you will eventually intersect with them unless they die before crossing said threshold again. Frankly it would’ve been more random for Sal to /not/ bump into Asher et al.
I guess I would describe myself as a conservative descriptivist?
Though Jennifer, who uses “random”, doesn’t know Sal’s been hanging out in front of her residence, so it seems random to her. Sal, if Walky’s suspicions were correct, wanted to run into at least one of them, but wanted it to appear random.
i mean, i think saying “youtubers are abusing [word] to death” is prescriptivist in that you are at once acknowledging that a certain usage is common within a certain language community (…youtubers?), yet disqualifying that usage. a prescriptivist would say, maybe: “oh! indeed! well, well.” and then do a google ngram graph, run a twitter search, compare dictionary definitions (and chuckle at them) and maybe poll some undergrads.
for my part i find Sirksome’s (and Rachel Bloom’s) usage completely unsurprising, and/or unastonishing please take your pick ^^
You’re right that part of the heart of my complaint is prescriptivist. Although I find that duality more nuanced as well (like Kinsey or a p.h. scale). There’s two parts to the youtube bit (and maybe it’s a generational fad). One is that they’re changing the meaning (nearly inverting it) but also that word is so heavily overused regardless of meaning, that it is near meaningless. I picked up on it because my kid likes watching videogame ‘tubers and streamers, so in that context I hear it get used a lot, notably when they *aren’t* talking about prng’s. e.g. “I got sniped as soon as I exited the base! That’s so random!” or “I was randomly walking down the street the other day…”, events which are very *not* random.
So descriptively the use is changing, but in applicability it’s just becoming sentence filler, like, “uh, like, dude, etc”.
But this is starting to fire up a different rant about poor literacy so I best just go do something else. 🤪
eh, i’m sure there’s a way of holding a position on a given linguistic issue that’s neither entirely prescriptivist nor entirely descriptivist but that’s not super common in my experience.
but maybe another way to look at it is that prescriptivism is not always bad, it often is because the most common and obnoxious instances use terrible logic (arguments from authority, classism, ageism, linguistic myths) but you seem to be making a case that i can sympathize with, being that the word “random” in its older sense is useful actually, and you argue that we should avoid using it in a different way because that might replace that earlier definition.
to which i say, ok but can you explain how this new, metaphorical sense (coming to mean something like “unexpected, surprising”) is actually replacing the older, scientific definition? or show me contexts where the meaning is ambivalent, so that using the literal meaning is made more difficult and you have to spend lots of extra saliva or pixels to essentially redefine the word?
because that wouldn’t be the first time a word comes to be used literally in some contexts and metaphorically in others.
like the word “literally” for instance. i’m sure your brain is literally blown right now oooh *dabs*
I don’t think the sense is quite the same as “unexpected, surprising”, so much as just references chance or well randomness.
At least as Jennifer’s using it here – a chance meeting, even if it wasn’t really that on Sal’s part. A luck reference, without connotations of being either good or bad luck.
I’d say it often at least connotes unexpectedness, but you’re right, the element of luck is more fundamental.
Demoted actually gave a great example above, “I was randomly walking down the street” which i find really nifty because “randomly” here evidently doesnt apply to the act of walking in the street, but instead foreshadows the unexpected thing that’s about to happen.
Yeah, I think in that context it mostly means that why they were walking down the street or where they were going all really don’t matter. Context is irrelevant, what matters is what happened while they were doing it.
Though I find it even more amusing because “random walk” is actually a thing in mathematics.
I hope that even when Billie returns or Jennifer finds a semblance of inner peace and balance, she keeps the new fashion sense. The bright yellow and royal blues she was drawn in previously were TERRIBLE for her skin tone. She’s drawn with a kind of sallow, ecru skin tone… Made her look jaundiced to wear yellow on top of that. Asians aren’t literally yellow, you know?
Lies! Falsehoods! Fake News! next you’ll be saying that Amerinds aren’t red and Martians aren’t green! Preposterous!
Native Americans lived in harmony with nature and are therefore green. Martians are communists on account of being from the red planet.
Your logic is impeccable.
Take that back. My logic is as peccable as anyone’s.
*logic-pecker lands on Clif’s logic, starts digging for grubs*
im-pecca-ble, adj., from latin “pecco”: to sin, transgress, offend.
pecker, n., also from latin “pecco”, probably
ergo, impeccable = unfuckable
that sounds about right
Hey! I know it wasn’t intentional, but I want to speak up anyway:
Please don’t talk about Natives in the past-tense unless it involves specific past events. We’re still very much alive and kicking, still as defensive and caretaking of the land as we ever were.
Discussing us in past-tense has a nasty way of reinforcing the unfortunately wide-spread belief that we’re gone. 🙁 Thank you for reading.
Note “are” in the present tense.
“lived” is past tense, which was my point.
I would argue that the “lived”, in this case, is used not as “they are no longer around” and more “they no longer live that way (because of colonialism ruining everything as per usual)”.
Thank you for speaking up QuixoticMaunster.
Hey sorry about that last comment involving a Simpsons’ reference. By the looks of it I’ve incidentally bumped into your thermostat, and for that I’m sorry.
@Minu, Really? I thought Jennifer/Billie (whatever) looked rather flamboyant and even attractive with her yellows and her longer hair.
Even if that made her look “jaundiced” as you describe, the flush in her cheeks, when visible enough, would destroy any such impression.
Hey it actually happened. What are the odds that the thing that Sal wanted to happen (unconsciously or otherwise) actually happened?
I choose to believe that she rode by McNutt repeatedly until she couldn’t deal with Walky anymore and has now returned to her own dorm and dismounted from her bike.
This isn’t her dorm, this is McNutt
McNutt McNutt McNutt McNutt
I am torn because I really don’t think Sal has some long lingering crush on Asher.
I think she could be genuinely worried about Jennifer, though.
I dunno about long lingering, but I do think it’s possible there’s a crush these days. That said, I think she’s worried about Jennifer too.
Walky can never learn of this.
Alternatively Walky just texted Jennifer to expect her.
You kidding? Walky already knows! He can see these events unfold like an omnicient god from his position atop that snow pile. Nothing is beyond his gaze.
Nothing this side of Blowjob Cat anyway.
King Walky is the three-eyed dorito
I kinda hope he does, because it’d be funny.
Kind of a fruit basket set of characters here together….
Raidah and Carl were in the same friend group, and the alternative is to introduce some new characters to be Asher’s friends.
There is absolutely nothing more to it than this.
Except for Willis getting to watch us freak out about the return of Carl.
Which character corresponds to which fruit though.
If you look closely you can see Sal’s soul flee her body in panel 3
*plays The J. Geils Band’s “Must of Got Lost” on a P.A. speaker*
Aw, it might be awkward for Sal but I do like that they both look like they’re happy to run into her.
(I also keep wondering if they knew each other before college too, depending on how well to do his family’s branch of the mafia is their parents might be in the same social circles.)
I’m not sure about knowing each other as kids, but I do hold a headcanon-until-established-otherwise that Jennifer DOES know the same ‘I had a rough past because my family runs the mob, but I broke off from them (whether or not he discloses the ‘stole a shitload of money’ aspect, I don’t know) and now I’ve turned over a new leaf!’ story that he gave Sal. Jennifer, eager to bury her own former self, seems really likely to jump on the ‘we’ve both changed and our pasts will never haunt us again!’ angle, and I do want to believe Asher genuinely wants out of the mob and to believe he’s safe as well.
Of course, there’s no way whatsoever he’d tell her a mob stooge hunted him down, blackmailed him into aiding a kidnapping that ended in murder and a car chase, or that he got back in contact with the dirty cop who ultimately killed said stooge once he made a mess of things, and Asher ended up on the Hit Complete Mailing List. There’s ‘did some shady stuff but I’m reformed’ and there’s ‘I am, at the least, complicit in a very recent murder and an unwilling accessory to like half your friend group’s compound traumas.’
Whatever else Asher lied about, him trying to leave was legit as far as we know. Blaine brought it up (“‘Gramps is still pretty disappointed about that”) so either it’s a serious long con for….reasons that even other mob members don’t know or he was serious.
Whether he’s STILL out is a different question these days, of course. And as you pointed out, he’s got PLENTY he’s not telling Jennifer.
Yeah, my question is all in how much communication he had with his family during the kidnapping, and what his thoughts are about reaching out to, minimum, the local dirty cop when he was in trouble. Does he think he’s still mostly out? Did reaching out include ‘by the way, we know it was you but we’re willing to forgive family’ and he is back in now? How much did they know about where he was before he made contact, and how much did he give away in the process? And critically, how much does he recognize he was playing with fire there?
Asher and Jennifer?
Jennifer was practically part of the Walkerton family for awhile and Sal knew Asher, so it’s definitely possible
I don’t understand why Sal would even want to have any contact with Asher. It seemed to me as though the two of them had whatever closure that she felt that she needed to have last semester. Granted, that would change if they had even the remotest reason to suspect Asher had anything to do with Walky getting kidnapped (which he did, if you recall), but they shouldn’t have any reason to think that as far as we know.
Also, I am only slightly surprised to see Raidah in Asher’s orbit.
She’s horny and lonely.
And Asher is hot, albeit in a dangerous way. Might even be a perk in Sal’s eyes.
She should find herself someone she’s established a strong rapport with in a mutual friendship based on accepting the other for who they are and trying to be as good as possible to one another.
Danny. She should find Danny.
A dangerous combo.
Two options:
1. Sal is worried about Jennifer’s safety since she knows Asher is a mob boss.
2. She actually wants to be friends with Asher to put the event behind her.
3. She wants to bang Asher.
4. She wants to bang Raidah.
And yes, I forgot to change the two to a four. I am shamed and must be put in the box.
nah, it’s good. we need to figure out which are ‘real’ options and which are just there as distractions, like the fake answers on an exam.
5. She wants to have words with Jennifer about setting Ruth up with Jason.
6. She was really hoping to run into her and Walky’s stephalfbrother.
7. She’s here to surreptitiously recieve Jennifer’s report and take it back to Amazigirl.
8. She was hoping to run into a hot guy in one of her classes and this *is* all random.
8.
9. Sal’s hoping to enlist Jennifer into the roller girls crew!
10. Barring that, maybe Raidah…. nah.
11: All of the above, meaning that C.T. should have listed it as ONE option rather than two or 4.
Now I’m really hoping for 5. It would be super fun to see Jennifer’s reaction to Ruth ending the night with Jason.
I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!
I’m not surprised to see her with Raidah though. Raidah is an older student Jennifer wanted to get in good with last semester. Jennifer also seemed to agree with Raidah about the Dana situation.
Something like 60% of the student body are wandering around at random hoping to bump into Sal at any given time.
Sal’s time on campus has just been Roadqueen: Eternal Roadtrip to Love.
I mean, Walky grew his hair just enough to look more like Sal, and look at the effect it had.
Oh, sweet merciful Neptune.
Are you confusing Neptune with Minerva?
How /would/ one go about utilizing Minerva to confused Neptune?
Suffering Sappho!
By the seived piss of all-mighty Zay-us!
ugh.. *sieved
My God, Jennifer has assembled a League of Anti-Friends!
The new Axis of Something, as I predicted! (Although with Rachel and Sydney Yus rather than Jennifer and Carl)
I see them as an “Axis of Maturity”. As in, “We are mature adults, as opposed to all those immature children over in Read”. They are looking to recruit Sal.
And thats when she killed them your honor.
I read that as “for honor”.
Too much DS9 recently…
“I’m not surprised” in the way you say “of fucking course Jennifer and Raidah and Asher and the Dana dude makes sense”, not as in…
Look, I was expecting only two out of four at most? But apparently, ex-Billie has gone and found herself a bunch of toxic people with complicated pasts to hang out with – Sorta similar views on accountability likely included. And I got bamboozled by this Damocles’ Sword of Drama getting updated to a Missile.
Ah yes, second only to the Sword of Suspense, the Sword of Drama was employed by Damocles when he needed a more general purpose weapon for court intrigue. The Missile of Drama was invented in the 1940’s when Hitler threw a tantrum because his hero didn’t like him. The V1/V2, the most violent implements of, “I’m not touching you,” ever built.
The Sword of Suspense is, of course, only hung over cliffs.
I.. want to leave it there… but I also want to know if you’re familiar with the Sword of Damocles. The tension might kill me. I’m hanging by a thread here. And what does Clif have to do with this?
that was a thinly veiled threat Clif. you and Deanatay need to have some kind of showdown now, per, the… code of honour of… commenters???
Just coming in to say this was some amazing banter, y’all
Couple of things…
a) Yes, I’m familiar with the Sword of Damocles. +5 Keen Vorpal Greatsword, IIRC.
b) Code of WHAT among commenters???
c) I was making an (apparently too) subtle comment about ‘cliffhangers’, the most common method of building suspense these days.
LOKI. *shakes fist*
Panel 3 is pretty much the definition of”mixed feelings”.
There is nothing quite like getting what you wanted when a significant part of you didn’t want to get it.
I wonder if Walky can see this front his snow hill. Sal has “casually ” meet Asher and his nice group of friends. Now, what is her plan? There’s a plan? Is this just awkward or even potentially dangerous? I kinda hope Sal will say “Hi” then leave. But a drama with Sal would be awesome ro read…..
So instead of Billie and Sal fighting for Danny, are we gonna get Sal and Jennifer fighting for Asher?
So in addition to dating Asher who I absolutely don’t trust, Jennifer is now hanging out with Raidah who I dislike for how she’s treated Dina, Sarah, and probably others too. And apparently Carl who I forgot existed since his last appearance was in 2012, and I haven’t seen him enough to form an opinion about him.
For all her talk about how much she’s changed, she seems to have just reverted to high school mode
Again.
Oh, Raidah is back.
Of course, the majority of readers here won’t be happy with this but, anyway…
Welcome, Carl.
Walky Deegan, seer for hire
YIKES, Asher hangs out with Raidah?? Or, Jennifer started hanging out with Raidah and Asher is now coming along with it. Either scenario bad, but honestly, with Jennifer it’s worse, because she’s seen Raidah at her worst and went with this anyway.
Just bike away, Sal. Bike away while you still can.
WEIRD
‘i’ before ‘e’,
except after ‘c’
or when sounding like ‘a’
as in ‘neighbor’ or ‘weigh’.
so is not it strange,
it is a bit odd,
downright abnormal
that weird is so
Whoa, Raidah and Carl?!? I did not expect to see them with Jennifer and Asher.
I know what we’ve seen of Raidah so far is not flattering but I’d love to see her become a more developed character.
huh, so much for my Carl transition theory
What made you theorize that?
no evidence, just the closeness of name and the fact that we hadn’t seen Carl and I guess the round glasses
Watch it turn out that Sal is crushing on someone we haven’t even met yet, who happens to live in McNutt.
Who turns out to be Lucy’s brother, though none of them yet know the connection.