God, I work at a library and the amount of garbage “screenshots” I get from ancient camera phones is… infuriating. (And then they expect me to somehow improve the quality. With what, my magic wand? Geez.)
Even better is when someone loses their cellphone so they call their carrier to trace it Like the carrier can pinpoint the location – immediately, in real time, and within a three-foot radius – of each and every one of the 70 million plus phones in their network.
You have my sympathy Bill, and at I guess, I’d assume you worked for a telco?
But to be fair, most of the equipment and computational capacity is there, so doing locates for one or all of the millions of phones on a network is not the issue. The problem is not scale, but the age and/or security policies of devices of each person on the network, and their urban/rural location. I keep my location sharing disabled (mostly), but in a sufficiently dense cell network, there’s a *lot* of data to be able to triangulate me anyways. And then a lot of users’ phones just share their location anyways. As well, people are taught by t.v. that carriers *can* do this, and our governments are cheaping out on our educations, so what do you expect except that people will believe what they see. Which can be helped if you just zoom in and enhance like they do on those same shows.
Given how many *B*illions of dollars phone services make, the carriers could offer a little more customer service. This is the obligation of the executives, and is not a targetted gripe at phone company _workers_ who are regular decent folks.
–Sent from my smartphone
Even assuming they could – how would they even tell you? Even with a precise fix, they’re going to be able to give you coordinates, not tell you it’s behind the seat cushion.
Cake decorator. Number of people who can’t figure out how to email a .jpeg and send a screenshot instead, and then expect us to improve image quality before printing on their cake. Bonus points for leaving a cursor over a child’s face.
Also: no, I cannot crop a rectangle so it fully covers a circle and not lose any of the image.
I wrote an app for my company that allows people to enter their expense reports on either their computers or their phones. To include a receipt, one need only take a picture of it, it’ll be auto-resized so that it can be quickly uploaded without being a huge image file. That means that if you take a client out for lunch or something, you don’t even need to hang onto the receipt, just take a pic and toss it!
But now, get this, I need to add pdf support in addition to images because this one guy doesn’t know how to use his phone or mobile apps, so he takes the receipts home, scans them on his PC, and wants to upload them as pdf files because that’s what his scanner is configured to make and he doesn’t know how to change anything!
No matter how much ease of access and user-friendliness you add to a process, some dumb motherfucker is gonna insist on finding a way to make it as difficult an annoying as possible.
That’s less about phones, and more about the general trend of humanity.
…. actually, wait, smart phones help people access 24 hour streams from shady “news” sources and bubble up with like-minded folks. Okay, yeah, they may be playing a part in it.
I find this thread to be slightly disturbing. I haven’t this much of disdain for tech-illiteracy since… since I worked helpdesk and one of my supervisor insisted that all customers would lie…
It’s like it’s OK to be unable to know the proper spelling of a word but not how to type it. Both are bullshit imo (not a humble opinion). People have to choose from a bunch of competencies they are able to acquire. They can’t and won’t get them all. What they choose, care to, or are able to acquire is their way to proceed with the unability to choose goals – if they would be responsible to have their own goals, they wouldn’t even need an app if they think it should be done on paper. I would add to look Ilich or Gorz for some read on this, but this is also everyone’s choice to care or not.
Sure, not everyone can be good with everything, but when it’s the same people trying to do the same thing and they somehow can’t remotely comprehend it anymore purely because the object they’re interacting with isn’t the same shape as the one they used twenty years ago, even though it uses identical steps to accomplish it and the user interface hasn’t changed in any meaningful way, there’s a level of willful stupidity there that I can’t blame anyone for being upset with.
not everyone can and not everyone should.
Why would they learn this new trick while the old was functionning well?
In the name of progress, but what is progress if not the adaptation of production tools in order to extract more relative value from the working process (in other word: increase production), hence exploit more?
What the fuck are you talking about? If some old dipshit can’t figure out how to do the exact same thing they’ve been doing for decades just because the rectangle they have to use is a little bit smaller, it has nothing to do with fucking worker exploitation. It’s actually 100% fine to make fun of people who can’t figure out that the thing that does what they want still does the thing if you make the casing a little shinier.
Except that (and knowing full well I’ve mocked support calls too), the devices *don’t* do it the same way, and they do keep moving the menus around (lookin at you windows), and they keep changing where settings are when they make the button shinier, and a lot of the time you *can’t* do it the same way you’ve always done it, and finally, as people age, their brains do continue to change and for a lot of people it really is very hard to keep up with the perpetual change.
You have my sympathies D.T., but an attitude of ageism about old dipshits also isn’t going to help things along, or help you be more patient with them, and one day we are both going to be old dipshits too. (I may be already, or maybe just a run if the mill dipshit. It depends on who’s carbon dating me)
Maybe I’m overreacting and going a little far in regards to the age thing, sure. A lifetime of being asked how to fix some problem I can’t see and is only being described orally by someone who hates adjectives, all because I’m “good with computers” (meaning I can type in a word processor and right-click) has made me a little oversensitive to this sort of thing.
Ugh… re-reading myself was way-more finger waggy you lil’rascal than I meant it to be, but thank you for your receptivity. Your frustration is absolutely valid. I’ve handled 2.5 hour password reset support calls (remote client, encrypted hard-drive). We got there, but their password is now yuiop, and after my manger reviewed the call, their manager was talked to, and they’re not allowed to call support anymore without seeing their manager first.
I would agree with you and suck it up if my customer base was retired grandma’s and their cat photos or w/e. *MY* “customer” base is our high-paid tech bros who have somehow never learned what the “Print Screen” key does! 😩
As I said DT, I worked HD, and I spent hours helping people like the one who just had slipped the device into the sink with washing water and dirty dishes – because they were drunk and not caring and my point is: why should they care?
What you can’t accept: them talking to you like shit or urging things to work when they’re not.
What they don’t have to accept: caring about things moving or changing or whatev that they don’t asked.
I can understand how frustating it is, you are at the receiving end of all complaints and in charge to solve things.
My take about technological changes supposed to affect efficiency what is what relative value is about is in fact not mine, but the one of Bihr reflecting theories of both Gramsci and Makhaiavski.
While I love that poster… It was the Boomers generation that convinced the (s/car/whatever) companies that the manuals needed warnings instead of help (and that this would create profit). X’ers grew up with the changing standard (and perpetuated it), and Millenials grew up never having a chance to *not* be warned that “It’s coffee, it’s hot”. And where does the blame reside? The arrow points back in time. The Millenials were raised by X’ers, and X’ers by Boomers, and Boomers by traumatized wartime survivors whose only help was to cope via alcohol. While we’re playing this game, it was the greatest generation that actually was more likely to adjust the valves on their car, which was why the manuals included it in the first place. All of these folks were being perpetually short-changed by executives looking to pad their bottom line, and that became easier as time went on as an ever smaller percentage of the population weren’t drunk trained killers unwilling to put up with bullshit.
This seems a good time to remind people that This be, the Verse:
They fuck you up, your mom and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.
Also: why does everyone need trigger warnings today instead of being responsible for how they react to their emotions? Because for a generation now we have been continuously bombarded with “the following program contains mature subject matter. viewer discretion is advised.” And I know y’all read it in your heads in ‘the voice’.
We need trigger warnings for stuff because we have some increased understanding that trauma of all sorts heal over time, if you don’t keep re-traumatizing all the time.
It’s like how when you hit your thumb on something, it starts sticking out like a proverbial sore thumb? All trauma is like that. Mental trauma tames longer to heal.
As an example of mental trauma taking longer to heal, 40 years ago, I lived in my family’s junk room, but I was still required to keep my room neat. But my parents also maintained the rule that I wasn’t allowed to mess with my brothers’ things. Which were in my room. So my room was messy.
I’m getting better, but I still have issues from this. Part of that still having issues was from being triggered back in the day when other people put stuff in my spaces without talking with me about it. It’s not their fault, that’s a stupid trigger. But it’s mine and I have to deal with it until I can really manage this stuff.
To be clear, most people’s trigger issues are way worse than that. *My* main trigger issues are way worse than that. That’s just the stuff I am OK with talking about. I’m sure you have issues that you don’t want to talk about either, which is a lot of why you complain about needing to have trigger warnings: you don’t want to admit to your own issues, and seeing those warnings reminds you that you have some. Also probably seeing this comment. Sorry about that, it just felt necessary to say.
Trigger warnings don’t mean you’re not responsible for how you react to your emotions. Getting a trigger warning does not mean you’ll never get triggered. It means you get to choose whether you’re in a good head space to consume potentially triggering content or not. That is quite literally taking responsibility for how you’ll react to your emotions, but you need the information up front to do it well.
Also, triggers are not just emotions. They can be debilitating, full body shut downs that last hours, sometimes days. It doesn’t matter how “responsible” you are with them. You don’t control when they happen and being caught off guard by one usually makes it worse. Adding a trigger warning is really no different from adding an allergen warning.
I feel your pain. I sent an unprotected Word document to someone with track changes enabled, for them to make changes on, and what came back was a PDF of an image of the document with handwritten changes on it.
My husband’s family decided to email everyone a questionnaire, just a simple one-page thing, “Who’s your mum/dad/grandparents; did you marry/who; kids; job; etc etc” so we could all fill it out, send them back, and then everyone’s answers would be collected and organized into a family tree that would then be put into a calendar with everyone’s birthday and what on there. Pretty cool idea!
They emailed it out.
Someone had very nicely typed it out. Then they took a photo of the printout, at a weird angle, and emailed it as a jpeg.
It was upside down.
I did not bother filling it out and sending it back. Jesus Christ.
I’m active on a bird identification site. I can’t tell you how many times we’re asked to identify a bird from a photo take with a phone of the back of a camera. Hello? Is there a reason you’re not posting the actual photo from the camera itself? The one with better resolution so we can zoom in on the smaller identifying markings?
Sounds like they’re taking the picture of the bird with the real camera, then previewing the picture on the camera’s LCD screen, taking a picture of their picture on the screen, and sending that to Charles and company.
Could be worse; they could Xerox scan-to-email the back of their phone, or send the camera’s digital photo embedded in a Word 97 document.
I’d respond with an identification of the camera, and say if they want a bird identified, send the picture of the bird not a picture of a camera.
Of course, I can feel their pain, too, as I used to have a camera that was pre-USB, and for a time I could not send any pictures from that camera because of that. But my situation was much easier to resolve; I just chucked the camera into an Earth day electronics recycling bin, because even though it wasn’t that old of a camera at the time (USB2 had not yet come out), it was a shit camera.
Though, a lot of phones these days have multiple ways to pull the files, so it’s not to deal with a lost proprietary cord. If, and I stress if, you’re technically savvy enough to do it, and have as much access to your camera’s documentation as needed, and your OS is compatible with the camera’s output format. I think it was only 2019 when I last had to deal with a device that produced its files in a proprietary format, and the proprietary reader of that format only ran on obsolete OSes that were not available to the person with the file to be read. I don’t work in that part of IT, so I should never need to deal with this sort of problem unless I’m the user and I wasn’t.
… I thought Gen X started turning 50 a couple years ago, and was going to keep working on turning 50 for a while, because we’re talking about a whole generation and we’re not all the same age.
Or are you just talking about me and making this personal? For the record, I’ve never personally drank battery acid, engine fuel (with the exception of about 3 oz of Everclear, which could have been used as engine fuel), or engine valve cleaner (used or fresh). I’m not so sure about vicariously, that could’ve all just been a nightmare.
The oldest genX started turning 50 in 2015. The youngest (the so called ‘Xennials’ because we’re technically part of the GenX cohort (officially 1965-1980), but have more in common with the Millennials) are in our early-mid 40s.
I bombed an app during internal testing (my job at the time) when I tested if the file upload field would accept a 4 GB upload. It did. The database did not. The result was not pretty. The answer, yell at me for stress testing the app *during testing*, not put restrictions on submitted file sizes, *not* put a warning for users to limit file sizes, not change the db to accept large files, and then they deployed the app to production. (because the users won’t upload large files). Result was… I needed popcorn to watch the carnage, but I left the job soon after anyways.
Could we stop with the boomer stuff? I’m a boomer, and I worked for a company in which several people had to travel for company business. Most of them were Gen X or older millennials. They were supposed to use Expensify to submit their expenses. Most did, but the ones who didn’t or who had trouble using it were mostly Gen X. My boss, also a boomer 4 years older than me, had no problems with any of the new technology we adapted. The owner of the company was even older, and he loved new technology.
To be fair on the kinkos thing, not everything called “Fed Ex” allows for printing and all that niceness. And searching for a store near me often gets one “Fed Ex” confused with the other and yes it pisses me right off.
That would be kinda delightful if Jennifer took Sal to task on it just like that. Sal is usually right, and Jennifer usually isn’t, it would be fun to switch that up.
Okay, let’s maybe slow down a second there. Sal hates “Sally” because she’s trying to get away from her abusive parents’ expectations of her to tone herself down, straighten her hair, and behave in a way white people are comfortable with.
Jennifer hates “Billie” because she’s trying to get away from a brief period in her life where she was beginning to feel okay seeing herself as queer and non-popular-girl.
Like, should Sal respect the name anyways? Probably. But comparing the two like that feels yucky.
Actually, Sal’s parents like her hair in its natural wavy state. It was Sal who straightened it. Willis hasn’t addressed why this semester Sal went more natural.
It’s not clear why she hates “Billie”. It’s not like that brief period was the only time she used it. Didn’t she use it in high school? Walky knew her by it in the first strips. Not in the earliest flashbacks though.
If anything, it might be her drinking/partying period (most of high school and the first semester) she’s trying to get away from.
She hasn’t even stated (that I recall) that she *hates* “Billie” (which /was/ from the earliest strips I thought). “Jennifer” has thus far, been an unexplained change. But using a name change to get away from when you did bad things isn’t the path of acceptance and growth (not that there is one true way), but it *is* the path of denial and distancing and not being responsible for your actions.
*I* didn’t do those things. That was “Billie”.
It’s not clear that this is why the change, but it’s also not clear that it isn’t. I’m cautious of Ms. Billingsworth’s change because I know these people, and have been hurt by them. They are real, and they are jerks.
Maybe. We don’t know enough of Jennifer’s change yet to know why she did it. Or even what kind of change she’s trying (or pretending) to make.
And if there’s no one true way, no symbolic change necessarily means you’re on the wrong path either. Not sufficient in itself of course.
True. I’ve known people who went through name changes with roughly this much fanfare because they got a new significant other who was so inconsiderate as to not respect their name, but the subject of the name change was so infatuated with them they put up with them. At least for a bit.
Usually, it’s been of this form, where the crush would insist on using their given name or a villainy generally associated with that given name, rather than a nickname of the subject’s choosing. It never lasted longer than the relationship.
Sal’s reasons to not be called ‘Sally’ may well be better than Jennifer’s attempts to be done with ‘Billie’.
Both are old childhood nicknames. ‘Sally’ never fit Sal to begin with, and it’s fraught with her jerkass racist parents, so A+ to Sal for forging her own identity.
‘Billie’ was a time and self-image that Jennifer is attempting to leave behind (plus she’s taking big steps, like getting therapy, to help her do that). It wasn’t just dating Ruth — she was Billie in highschool when she was shoving Walky into lockers, when she almost killed her friend driving drunk, and was generally the Drama Hurricane that she presumably doesn’t want to be anymore. Jennifer is probably still a drama hurricane, but she’s allowed to hope, and to pick a name that reminds her that she’s trying to make better choices.
Will it fail, will Jennifer sometimes fall into her old patterns? Probably. But Sal should still call people what they’ve asked to be called. She doesn’t need their whole story to determine whether they’ve earned it or not. She can just call them their names.
This would get down voted to oblivion if it could be, but Sal has a point. If someone has a need to be known by a particular name because of identity issue etc., absolutely it’s worth respecting. If someone is just rebranding cuz they can, it’s not worth people being militant about (especially over respect, which is earned, not freely given in unlimited amounts and it lives on a two-way street with trust). If someone is trying to duck away from the inconvenience of their past reputation, well… the Inglorious Basterds had some creative ideas about that.
Now, obviously Ms. Billingsworth has *A* reason for doing this, but she has yet to provide that reason. She is not required to. Lacking an explanation however, leaves us just with what we do know. I am getting a distinct sense of this being driven less by afformentioned identity issues, and more about avoiding association with her past self, without any proof she’s actually a different/growing person. Also, people seem to be forgetting that criminals *also* change names a lot, for the purpose of hurting people. While the benefit of the doubt would be a kindness, this behaviour has been used by others too many times in my own life to give a character in a comic a lot of slack. Along with her D.U.I., continued drinking problems, repressing her identity (sexual or otherwise), her ignoring (healthy) former associations, and now her current associations, well, things aren’t a healthy stage for a jumping off point for rebranding.
A consideration here is that she is a child, and we seal juvie records for good reason. Undercover cops also change their names, for obvious good reasons. So I wait cautiously to learn more about this situation before welcoming Ms. Billingsworth as Jennifer with open arms. The real irony of course being that Jennifer is her legal name.
Meh. I’m not sure people really have to earn the right to ditch a nickname they don’t like anymore. Or need to publicly psychoanalyze themselves to justify it to everyone.
Hmm… one can behave respectfully (courtesy) while having zero respect for someone. But my experience has been that to actually “have respect” for someone, you need a chance to see them behave in a manner worthy of thinking or feeling that respect. Prior to said moments, we just treat each other with respect (courtesy) under the assumption that when the time comes, we’ll see each other behave in a fashion deserving of the courtesy we’ve shown or been shown thus far. Thus, I’ll generally treat people with respect as a default case, but I don’t feel respect for people until I see them challenged in some way.
Maybe it’s just that my baseline respect for people in general is high enough that I’m not aware of it when I normally interact, so I only take note of it when I see someone justify said respect or lose it. But for my respect for someone to go up, it has to be earned, and I expect I have to earn it from others and (try to, mostly) behave accordingly. Maybe if more people thought they needed to earn respect, instead of just being given it, they too would behave better to earn it.
Thank you for helping me consider myself on this. I’ll think further on it.
I think the idea of having to earn respect can do a lot of harm, depending on how one defines respect. Maybe not the way you view it, I don’t know. But for me, there’s a base level of respect that should be extended to all people, and I think that’s what some other people mean when they talk about respect too.
There’s a post I’ve seen on Tumblr about how some people use respect to me “treat as a human being” and some use it to mean “treat as an authority figure,” and then people will say things like, “If you don’t respect me, I won’t respect you” and mean, “If you don’t treat me as an authority figure, I won’t treat you as a human being” and they think they’re being fair when they’re not.
For me, when I’m in a position of authority, it’s critically important to me that I’m treating those I have authority over with respect, even if they get rude (and I often work with middle schoolers, so it happens).
Now, there may also be a difference between treating someone with respect and having respect for them, but your previous comment seemed more aligned with the “treating with” aspect.
I agree with you. I think the words you might be looking for are dignity and reverence.
Being treated with dignity is not something you should have to earn, if someone makes you feel like you have to audition for dignity they are proberly not good people to have in your life if you can avoid it.
On the other hand reverence is something you have to earn.
I feel like you’re overthinking it. I had a classmate who, in 10th grade, informed the teacher at roll call that he was now going by Dan instead off Danny. Nothing to do with running from the last or rebranding in the sense mentioned in the comic so much as 1. it’s shorter, and 2. it sounds more like a grown-up name than a child’s name.
Remember also the reason she was called “Billie” in the original Walkyverse was that Walky didn’t like her as a girl but as Billie he could call her a “boy’s” name. Could be Jennifer just wants to reclaim her femininity as much as anything.
Just like we all died a little when they stopped airing terrible horror movie marathons in Saturdays. I have very fond memories of watching creature features that aspire to B-movie status while recovering from hangovers.
Hell, half our stupid grammar rules are just made up class status markers that never matched how people spoke anyway. Some of them made up because Latin is the prefect language and English should obey its rules, despite not working at all the same way.
“Changing language” shouldn’t excuse phonetic diarrhea. “Their”, “they’re”, and “there” are different words with different meanings, dammit! I even see people mixing up something as simple as affirmative and negative!
“The sky is green.”
“No, the sky is blue.”
“That’s what I said, the sky ain’t green. Pay attention.”
The homophones are probably just people who process language more orally than visually. They sound the same and if you’re just quickly typing out what you’re thinking it’s easy to type the wrong spelling of the sound you’re thinking.
I do it all the time. I usually catch it even before I finish, but not always.
Most of our language processing brain is built for speech. Writing and spelling is just a late patch.
I recall seeing places in Indiana referred to as Pubs that ranged from being intended hang out places with no alcohol to places that served alcohol but did not serve food or other attractions, which would mean they should strictly be called a ‘bar’ (since they had a bar, bar tenders, and seats, rather than aisles of booze and cashiers.)
I think they may understand that pubs are places where booze is served and people hang out, but may not get any nuances beyond that, including any need to combine both elements.
Outside of Indiana, I’ve seen less of that sort of abuse, but I’ve also spent a lot less time around people who want to hang out at the pub, and I’ve been much less inclined to go along with people into those dens of noise. It’s not that I’m too old. I just realized, if someone thinks the music is too old and you don’t, you’re the one who’s too old, not them. You’re just not necessarily old enough to realize it.
They cut away!? I was actually invested in the interpersonal discourse of the derby team and how that would effect their play!! Malaya and Sal! Can they work as a team!? Did they win or lose!? I’m so angry about this!!!!
There’s always friction between Sal and Malaya. That doesn’t tell me anything, and it looked like the Green Monkeys had taken the advantage! Did Slamber come through!? I guess we’ll never know now. But yeah I guess the Asher and Jennifer thing was maybe the important part. Bleh.
She may no longer be a super-hero but Slamber’s code demands she can’t lose, so there was no narrative tension there. And there is the Asher effect. He ruins everything.
I was all sad that there had been no more strips of this match at first, but these two explanations make it perfect. I’m introducing the “Asher Effect” concept to my brother, who’s an avid DoA reader but doesn’t come to the comments section :’3
Having to take a silly history of Fedex class when I started working at Fedex Office finally comes in handy!
The name was changed to Fedex-Kinkos seventeen years ago, then fully shifted to Fedex Office thirteen years ago, though you still see some old locations here and there that never changed their signs.
What I hate is that the overwhelming success of FedEx’s branding has made it synonymous with ‘courier’ in the public mind and now if someone offers to FedEx something I need to go back and tear into them for making me chase down Purolator for losing my package and needing 15 pieces of proof that I live in the location that they *didn’t* deliver the package to on the day I was home *all day* *for them* when they claim they tried me 5 times in between the frames of my 30 fps security footage that show no-one ever coming to my door. 《breathes》 《breathes》 No, hate isn’t too strong a word for Purolater.
Everyone needs to remember: “Purolator. Getting you your package, later.”
Searching for Purolator on duckduckgo.com only showed ads for pureoil.com on the first page of results. Based on your anecdote, I get the sense those “Nothing gets by us” ads are more relevant than the ones on Google that suggested they might let stuff get by them, perchance even on time?
I recognize that Fed Ex might be the new Kleenex, but I’d still yell at a company who tried to “fed ex” something to me with an unreputable, untrustworthy shipper.
I WORKED at a Kinko’s! No fond memories at all. (Except, I finally did find out who “Roy G. Biv” was!)
Explanation. I had a Radio Shack Color Computer and a STACK of “Rainbow” magazines. One of their regular contributions was to see what kind of a program you could make with ONE line of copy. Someone did one in honor of “Roy G. Biv.” and the editor ended it with; “Who IS he anyway?”
By any chance did they have a Fiery ColorLaser Controller when you were there? I wrote some of the software for those things, and I know they were in a lot of Kinko’s but never got to ask an employee about them.
Doesn’t sound familiar. This was over 20 years ago.
After the Kinko’s gig, I was watching “Beakman’s World,” where he mentioned “Roy G. Biv,” and Lester, the guy in the rat-suit, says; “Who’s HE? The guy who created color?” So Beakman came out as “Roy G. Biv,” a hippie in a rainbow colored outfit and rainbow wig!
Tags are still going with “Jennifer,” so still using that. Curious about how close Sal is to the truth, though. Assessing this accurately would require knowledge of what the truth is, of course.
I’m betting pretty close in that Jennifer is rebranding, though I’d also bet she’s far off in how important it is to Jennifer. ‘Billie’ has a LOT of baggage that ‘Jennifer’ doesn’t, sort of thing.
I think the “baggage” is that it ties her to family members she’s trying to distance herself from. Honestly, it’s awkward. Her struggle has the paint job of a trans story – “I’m trying to change my name, I’m trying to distance myself from ‘family’ I no longer feel close to” – but at the same time, it’s *not* that. Her name-change is an unhealthy coping strategy and her discomfort around Walky, Ruth, Joyce, and the rest is really more around being afraid of her own queer identity and being expected to grow up.
Like, Billie is going through the motions of a queer coming-out… to avoid coming out as queer.
So I dunno. I’m kind of with Sal on this particular case, but I think Sal’s probably in the wrong to trust her gut more than Jennifer, if that makes sense. Sal is right, but she shouldn’t trust her rightness so much.
For what it’s worth, I’m trans. Not trying to discount any trans voices that disagree with mine. I just think that this situation is messier than a blanket rule really allows for.
There’s a difference between “I don’t respect your new nickname because I think your old nickname was fine” and “I don’t respect your new nickname because I know you well enough to recognize it as a part of the same pattern of extended self-harm I have seen you spiral into over and over again”. It’s a messy difference, so we’re all gonna disagree on it, but it’s a difference that matters.
Your contribution to this discussion is appreciated. And to be probably needlessly something, I’m not sure what, but for all that I’ve said of being cautious of Ms. Billingsworth’s changes (name and all): I’ll happily address you by whatever name and pronoun you prefer to be addressed by Imogen.
Wish I could know if I’m just trying to be clear that I’m not anti-trans or if I’m virtue signalling or just sincerely being friendly or … This is messy business, being a primate.
I just wanna point out that there are like 3 different Sarah gravs in this thread and i didn’t realize they were different people until I reached the end
Maybe. I don’t think we know enough yet of what Jennifer is doing now (or over the time skip) to really judge.
It’s also just a nickname. Ditching childhood nicknames in college (or when you’re out of high school in general) isn’t uncommon, even without any reference to queer coming-out.
I do not think so, though it’d be fun. I took it more as her just being respectful and/or a nod to superheroine ethics of keeping up with whatever name/gimmick a hero or villain is currently running.
I think it’s more that Amazi-Girl is intensely uncomfortable being called by Amber, because it’s the wrong name. That is a kind of dysphoria, even though it seems to be non-gender-related here.
there’s a sort of dysphoria that comes with DID, both from having a name and appearance that’s not the body’s if you aren’t a body-identifying alter (host or otherwise)
Trans-ness hasn’t been loud enough for long enough for the backlash to have really crystallized in fundie culture yet. If Joyce had been born 30 years later, she would have been deadnaming people on instinct.
To them, it’s still a hip new trend, not yet a deep state agenda. The threshold for gay recognition was the 70s, remember. Trans recognition only really got traction in the popular mind a decade ago.
I don’t follow – born 30 years later? Some 12 years from now?
If it got traction 10 years ago – she was 8. There was a reference at one point to them going to protest same-sex marriage. With the sliding timescale, that’s probably bathroom bills now.
Freak out thirty times and then go into an existential crisis about how much more of a lie everything she thought was true in her childhood has now become? Also yes.
Alternatively: having done the above already, and grown, maybe Joyce is developing the experience and skills to be able to handle such in a more mature fashion.
I’ve said for awhile that she’ll accept Jocelyne, but that there’s likely to be a whole bunch of awkwardness in the process.
Unless it’s a dramatic moment in front of Carol and the predictable response ensues, in which case she’ll go directly into “I will fight for her” mode and never look back.
She’s said a few times – bonus points because she once said it in front of Jocelyne (when she was asking John when she’d get to meet his wife since she didn’t get to go to the wedding).
I think there are many other people it could happen in front of and have her “I will fight for her” response kick in, no looking back. But in front of Carol, it’s certainty the response.
I have fond memories of Kinko’s. I didn’t have reason to go very often, but it was always a nice, quiet place of people being occasionally busy. Very library-like. I’m a little sorry that its time has basically passed.
Sal sayin’ what I been thinkin’… It does not help that Billie wants to be “Jennifer,” the most formal version. Like, not Jen or (best version:) Jenny? No, I am Lady Jenniffer, lord of all fancypants creation, and you may not refer to Me by the name i’ve gome by forever because la-di-goddamn-fa-la-la-la-la, di-dah
And I think Sal’s totally nailed it, a fussy lil snotball like Her Royal Majesty Lady Jenniffer is basically capitalizing on the trend of accepting all sexual/gender identities at face value for the sake of politeness to create her own little boutique brand identity…Jennifer the Journalist (and unwitting mob girlfriend too, apparently – wait, does that make her a gun moll?! Tangent.) I don’t know why it irritates me so… maybe the attendant pack of joyless scolds wagging their fingers that we’re all obligated to call absolutely everyone whatever the fuck they demand like that’s somehow the same thing as respecting transgendered identities. Yeah, I’m pretty firmly in Camp Sal here, I don’t even care if she’s supposed to be some kinda didactic foil we’re supposed to Smurf the moral at
Ain’t like it’s hard to call someone what they want to be called, sort of just a basic decency. It’s a choice to deny them that, and one that a lot of people are pretty sensitive too
I don’t know about basic decency, but it’s basic politeness to call someone by the name they want to use. If you want to be a rude asshole, it’s a free country, but don’t be surprised when there are consequences.
Being rude to cartoon characters is kind of a middle ground. Jennifer will never know if we snidely refer to her by her middle name, but these particular characters do have a continued existence in our minds, so don’t be surprised when others are offended on their behalf.
Ya wanna try proofreading this one? Maybe read the room a little for that second draft? There’s nothing wrong with people wanting to be called something other than the name they’ve been assigned by others, and there’s nothing wrong with other people doing what that first set of people wants.
So somebody told a doctor to write a name on some paper and some kids decided to shorten that name a few years later. That doesn’t obligate the person assigned the name to use either version of that name for any period of time, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with picking a new name for yourself or expecting people to go along with it.
Maybe I’m biased because I know two people who’ve had their names legally changed, have met multiple people who’d love to but just haven’t gotten around to it yet, and personally belong to that second group there, though. Like, what, did anyone think “Taffy” was my legally-assigned birth name? Pretty sure Fart Captor and Doctor Who are aliases, too. It’s just such a weird thing to have a problem with and then voice in an online space where maybe like half a dozen people are using their government names.
Of all the self-entitled things to get uppity about.
Accepting sexuality and gender identity isn’t a “trend for the sake of politeness” it’s actually called not being an unbearable person.
Also, shocking that I have to say this but, you literally don’t get to decide what name other people use. If you attempt to, you’re the jerk. Including, but not limited to, whining in a two-post long manifesto about PC culture because a fictional character changed the part of her name she wanted to use rather than the part you wanted her to use. Hilariously while still calling HER the fussy little snotball.
The only person who equated it to trans issues is Sal (and now you, I guess!) No one else was making that leap.
… what? This has literally nothing to do with sexuality or gender identity. She just changed what part of her name she went by (her full name is and was Jennifer Billingsworth; Billie was a play on her last name). But even if she did change it entirely, it would still have nothing to do with sexuality or gender identity.
And I’m really not sure why you think “Jennifer” is such an uppity name. At work, I go by Jennifer because it feels more professional and I like it, not because I think I’m better than my coworkers. Seriously, I think you need to take a step back.
Jennifer is her freaking given name! She’s not pretending to be trans. I get than Sal is a better person then Jennifer, but Sal is wrong here. You call people what they want to be called. Sal herself prefers Sal to her given name Sally, so she should understand.
While the aggressiveness above may not be warranted for Ms. Billingsworth, for anyone who’s had to deal with a name change by someone who was a total ass-hat about it, it can go on for long enough that yeah, it builds a chip. I’ve done a name change (feminist marriage stuff. We divorced later. Oh well.) but I didn’t need to be a dick to people who used my old name, even with the new one literally velcroed to my chest. Ironically, I don’t see the people who are hurt when their old name is used be mean about it. I’ve only seen people who used a name change as a way of manipulating people and their surroundings be jerks when people got it wrong. These jerks will even stoop to bandwagon-ing on the trans-rights issues to attack people who make an innocent blunder look like the gestapo. i.e. “Why won’t you use my real name? Do you like dead-naming transgendered people _too_?” So if someone else has been gas-lit by a scammer, yeah, I get the chip.
I don’t know how much you reveal that the only reason you want people to call her “Billie” is because you treat it as a sign of contempt, and the only reason you don’t want her to called Jennifer is because you treat Jennifer as a respectable name.
I don’t think you even realize that “respecting transgender identities” is not about showing you have the right politics, but just a subset of RESPECTING HUMAN BEINGS IN GENERAL.
And you’ve very hugely demonstrated that you don’t want her called Jennifer because you don’t want to show her the basic respect of acknowledging that she has the right to decide she no longer wants to be called “Billie”.
This is vile. You’ve somehow decided that YOU get to decide how people are to present themselves. Oh, it’d be fine if she was “Jenny” but HOW DARE SHE want to be “Jennifer”. So very snooty.
The ethical rule is actually quite bloody simple: Call people want they, in good faith, want to be called.
I love that said joyless scolds appeared in significant number to call me vile, with a chip on my shoulder, etc., over making fun of an uptight cartoon character, as well as conduct a mini-inquisition over the phrasing of “respecting transgendered identities out of politeness,” which is, (a) a comparison Sal made herself, so it’s not like that came out of nowhere, and (b) uncontroversial to anyone who doesn’t demand fealty. Ugh, you people just make life worse for everyone around you. Get over yourselves. Mellow out. Accept that people who disagree with your little ideas have a right to exist. People can call each other anything they want! But most people are agreeable enough to call you what you ask them to…just don’t ask them for anything too silly and it’ll be fine. The judgement of what’s beyond the pale varies from person to person; avoid people if you can’t stand how they refer to you. Simple enough. I still think Billie’s being silly and that Sal nails it as “rebranding,” but it’s not really that I have a problem with, it’s all you uptight ideologues acting like it’s a mortal sin for anyone to call her by the name they’ve known her by. Give me a break. And, again, cartoon character.
But Barf, you criticized the name “Jennifer” and implied it was uppity, whereas “Jen” or “Jenny” wouldn’t be. I personally was set off by that, though I can’t speak for anyone else. My reason was that there are a lot of Jennifers who go by the full name and aren’t uppity. IT’s a very common name, and for about 20 years was in the top 20 or so names given to AFAB children. I couldn’t figure out why you seemed to think “Jennifer” was such an uppity name. Also Jennifer never said she didn’t want to be called Jen or Jenny, although maybe she will in the future, who knows. And Jennifer herself is probably silly or uppity, but her name isn’t (though personally I prefer the name Billie for her.)
To be fair: I absolutely do avoid people like you. Rude ragemonsters are not people I find interesting or worth my time outside of occasional internet interactions like this.
If respecting people’s personal choices about themselves is “joyless” to you then I think that says a lot about you. If you find “joy” in being cruel about something as simple as a name, then you’re probably a struggling to find joy in a lot of your life. I don’t think it was anyone here’s job to pretend like what you said wasn’t needlessly aggro and likely stemming from other issues. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I remember, before I got out of small-town Oklahoma, when I used to be like this.
What someone else does with their life doesn’t affect you (unless it’s like, your partner, and even then only just barely). If you don’t like it, you’re free to remove them from your life, or just continue to be like this until they remove you, but no one owns another person or can tell them what to do.
And seriously, you’re gonna drop this comment on a strip with a name-dropped trans character?
My problem with her going from Billie to Jennifer is that it came from the timeskip, so from OUR omniscient reader POV it feels like it came out of nowhere, never mind that it also included what was apparently a complete alienation of her old friend circle, which she only (again, apparently) recently rejoined. It also, personally, stiank of her same old track record of using any change to try to re establish her old “Alpha bongo cheerleader” persona.
At the end of the day, Billie was the character we knew and loved. We don’t know Jennifer enough yet to know if we’ll like her.
I do, however, understand that at a certain age, some people tend to abandon the identities they had as teenagers/early adults, including nicknames and abreviations. Jimmy becomes James, Angie becomes Angela. One of my sister’s high school boyfriends used to go by DF (a holdover from an online nickname) despite his name being Nicolas.
On the other hand, other people decide to own their nicknames as their identity. “Alexander is the name on my driver’s ID. I am Alex.”. My own sister has basically abandoned her birth name for her childhood Nickname, despite it not being a name at all. The only context where she uses her birth name is formal occasions. The nickname being ridiculous is my fault, I did name her that when I was 2 and a half years old.
Yeah, I’ll call her Jennifer but it still kinda bugs me that this change in what she wants to be called happened in the timeskip and feels really out of nowhere and like she’s trying to abandon her old friends to me.
It barely even happened during the timeskip. We see other characters finding out about it when they first see her again after coming back to school, so we’re sort of in the same boat as the rest of the cast.
They know more about the breakup and maybe about her distancing herself than we do of course.
Yeah, new relationship and distancing yourself from long time friends is a huge warning sign.
I mean, some less contact is natural, since you’ll want to spending lots of time with the new crush, but going completely dark and pushing them away is different.
Still, we don’t know enough of the timeskip to properly judge.
I’m not saying there’s a problem? Barf Ninjason is accusing Jennifer of insisting on the most formal variation on her name, which I don’t think is supported by any actual text in the comic. I didn’t archive binge, so I’m not certain, but I’m pretty sure Barf is literally making a baseless accusation and building their entire case on it.
And it also, y’know, touches a nerve because I don’t like it when people use diminutive versions of my name to address me, either. So they’re attacking me, too, with their little rant.
Oh hey Waggy =) (can i call you Waggy?) sure i did! i always check for replies the next day.
i mean, i don’t know the game (cos like again… i don’t play games) but you sound like you really dig that character!!! of course he’s a scientist, i would’ve been flabbergasted any other way. i did go and peruse their page on the fandom wiki and thus have learned…. THINGS
Maybe it does, but my old nickname-suffix litteraly was -dog, and it was possibly the nicest time in my life. Besides, doggies are cute and fluffy and I want to hug them and squeeze them and love them to bits!
I mean i guess it does sound like a dog name now that you mention it.
Wags?
i just need to give everyone nicknames, it’s a compulsion. i’m only formally asking for permission this time because, *gestures at discussion around names and consent raging all around*
i mean, i would just keep inventing new ones every time, trying to keep it as silly as possible, but mine’s not a great name for generating nicknames i feel, at least in english. it does sound better in french. although it’s also the name of one famous comic book dog (so hey! i’m familiar with that whole dog name situation it turns out) so that sort of filters out the imaginative from those who go straight to the obvious jokes.
Lua Milu? i mean, it is pretty. But it feels kind of ungrounded? unfounded? you know? like, why not, but also… why. what does the moon have to do with me, especially that you know of? so, eh, maybe we’re not on nicknaming terms yet is my conclusion here ^^
are you Brazilian/Portuguese/ other lusophone country then?
This is an important detail actually. This whole discussion has thus far not included the acknowledgement that, while names can be chosen, they can also be earned or bequeathed. The application of a name is a two-way social contract, that can be either a kindness or hurtful.
Anecdotes: In my first go-round at college I was this shy, scrawny little nerdy kid, who was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of the nicest and coolest person in our program. He gave me a nick-name that felt good, was awesome, and everyone just adopted it. It helped me feel welcomed and included and surprisingly, respected, despite my age and lack of experience. (this was a program with an average age of 35 and I was fresh out of highschool). After graduation, I moved on to professional work and the name disappeared. Until I became friends with a coworker, and in sharing college stories he found out about my nickname. He resurrected it, and truncated it to the suffix, but again used it with affection. It didn’t catch on in the work place like in school, but that was ok. It was neat that a new friend liked it and liked me enough to want to use it again. Later I earned other titles and nick-names in different jobs, some as ranks, some as modifications to my name, but all were bequeathed to me.
this specifically is why I refuse to let people call me Jenny. I was in elementary school when Forrest Gump came out and I want you to picture a room full of kids going “Jen-nay” over and over again. Jen or Jennifer is interchangeable, and Nifer is rare and entertaining, but I will end you if you call me Jenny.
Jennifer was one of the most common names for girl babies to be named for about 15 or 20 years. A lot of them go by Jennifer; some go by either Jen or Jenny, or they’re okay with either the full name or shortened name. Have we actually seen Jennifer get mad if someone called her Jen?
Imo it’s just a childhood nickname. I don’t see a reason to get mad about it either way. I’m with sal here, i really don’t see the importance of not calling her Billie, but at the same time it’s dumb to get mad over “Jennifer”
I think Sal’s take is tinted with cynicism. “Oh she’s just trying to reboot her personality again. That never sticks. Her past always catches back up to her eventually.”
Oh it is cynical yeah but I kinda agree with it. She has a tendency to do this. Try to reassert her toxic Alpha Birch Cheerleader persona whenever she can. I’m just glad this time she seems to have dropped the toxic part (if trying to set up Daisy and Ruth was actually earnest)
My banner ads for this site are from the Reno/Tahoe tourism board and show people in taverns drinking whiskey and beer. How’s that for product placement?
Yeah, and it’s also no coincidence that airings of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in syndication happen much more frequently around Easter and Christmas.
Yeah, I get that Jennifer is family to Sal, even if less so than she is to Walky which is thankful given she drunkenly hit on Sal that one time, but still, get with the program and use the name she wants you to use.
Fuck this name shit.
I have a problem forever getting people to call me by my middle name, there are too many who don’t, won’t, argue with me about what my legal name is, make forms with only space for a middle initial, list AKAs on my credit report from when I wrote my middle name first, use the diminutive instead of the actual name…
I’m over the faceless corporations and assholes, but if you know me personally and can’t use the name I tell you, then don’t talk to me at all.
Damn, I hear that. Sorta getting to that point, myself. It was unbelievably affirming to have my name tag say “Taffy” and then have people actually say the name on the tag.
That would not disqualify Carla from also having dysphoria (though if she does, it isn’t particularly obvious, so like Sal, I’d be unsure and after a transition, it may be very minimal/non-existent the vast majority of the time), but Malaya was questioning last we knew which might be based on dysphoria, yes.
Malaya may have dysphoria (not all nb/trans people do) – But I don’t think she’d let Sal know. Seconding Raen, and also adding that since she’s met Carla post-transition, Sal could truly not know if transitioning eased whatever dysphoria Carla might have had in the past. Beyond Carla’s I AM AWESOME, WATCH ME GO personality, it’s not a question you ask unless you’re like, INCREDIBLY close to a person.
And I’m not that familiar with DID but it’s more or less like— You know how all of us have different personas, right? That way the WanderingLynx who swears, takes drugs, and stays until 3:00 reading webcomics doesn’t come out in front of their abuelita? Dissociative Identity Disorder is going through trauma so intense a person’s mind splits – But not like in the movies. I’ve heard from DID folk in the comments sections that Willis’ depiction is good even though the “age cut” for the onset is like, 9-10 years old at most and Amber’s off by like three years. Hence, they “share the same meat vehicle”, as said in Amber’s words.
Body Dysphoria can take many shapes, one of them being the feeling that your body doesn’t belong to you – Which tracks with the “dissociative” part of “DID” (as opposed to “feeling like reality is unreal” feel that’s “de-realization”).
OH man. Re: Malaya & Gender: I can’t remember anything more concrete than Malaya gesturing to her curves going all “sometimes I don’t know if I’m female but I don’t feel like arguing with all these” (roughly paraphrased); and that post-skip she wears a binder sometimes, which may signal being dysphoric. I mostly don’t experience gender dysphoria(*) but I’m butch so sometimes I throw one on, sometimes not, depending on what presentation I’m going for that day? Meanwhile a lot of transmasc/trans men peeps feel intense discomfort without one even when they’re by their own and in their own homes. Gender theory is truly an ever-changing doctrine, and very new; and The Non-Binary Liminal Area is full of trans people in all of the colors of the rainbow so.
As for her atheism, you’ve got me there. I can’t remember anything about her being an atheist.
All we got to go on, vis a vis atheism, is a disdain for Mary, a strong enthusiasm for profanity, and a complete lack of conversation about religion. I’d say there’s a good money on it, but there’s only circumstantial evidence.
Sal’s just using Carla as an example of a trans person, i.e. someone who NEEDS to have their new name respected for very important reasons. She’s saying there’s no dysphoria involved in Billies name change, therefore it doesn’t demand the same level of respect
It’s weird phrasing though. My first reading of the line was (You or Carla) with dysphoria. When I think it might be intended more like You (Or Carla with her dysphoria.)
BTW, did Amazi-Girl already know that Carla’s trans? Does Sal know that she did? Is Carla being outed here?
Also I might be talking out my ass but wasn’t Carla’s transition super public? Like with her tech giant celebrity parents? I remember something about it being mentioned, like her being in magazines or something. So everyone just kinda knows
She has, but that may have been quite a while back. We don’t know when she transitioned, but it sounds like it was fairly early.
Not a lot of preteens reading Newsweek or remembering it years later.
It’s possible that everybody knows, but there’s little evidence of it. Sal hangs out with her and figured it out. Malaya knows, along the same lines as Sal. We can assume Marcie does, though I don’t recall it being explicit. Ruth knows because she’s the RA. Mary knows because she’s a snoop. Billie found out from Ruth – and if I remember correctly didn’t know beforehand.
I’m probably forgetting someone, but I don’t think most of the other characters have shown any signs.
Also, Carla’s been in the news before. There was her cover on Newsweek and she was in a legal case with Jacob’s brother (probably the one involved in striking down anti-trans laws). She’s the kid of a zillionaire, that stuff makes news.
My personal view is much closer to AG’s on this, even if Jennifer probably wouldn’t be hurt or have her mental state screwed with by being called the wrong name like AG or Carla. It’s nice to see Sal and AG getting along though.
I kind of saw it as legally changing her name…even though her real first name was Jennifer to begin with. Also is the Amber at day and Amazi at night thing is started to feel like a werewolf thing, which kind of makes the phrase “Moonlighting” more significant.
Feels a bit iffy not to use Jennifer’s name she is telling people to use due to how often trans people and even cis people that change names experience that and how annoying it is but at the same time, Sal’s probably not wrong that she is rebranding and this probably isn’t the first time she’s done this so there is a *little* room for skepticism that it is just enabling a delusional thought that changing your name gives you a whole new identity, but it would still be better if she just went along with it even if skeptical that this is actually a meaningful change or that she won’t turn around and go right back to using Billie again if this ‘new’ image collapses in on her.
Yeah, my read on this is that Sal’s aware of That Phase In High School Where Jennifer Was Too Cool For Walky and/or just how much of the first couple weeks of college were her attempting to reassert the Alpha Bongo Head Cheerleader persona after the DUI derailed it. Still a dick move on her part, but given Jennifer’s already done that rebranding on… three prior occasions we know of? (High school, starting college, Forest Quad) I can very much see the skepticism. (And Sal may have spent adolescence in Tennessee and thus doesn’t QUITE have the surrogate siblinghood Walky has, but she’s still known her as ‘Billie’ for most of their lives.)
That said, I’d expect Sal to have a bit more respect for a name of choice given I’m pretty sure Linda still calls her ‘Sally’.
Maybe Charles, but I don’t think he’s actually used either of their names in any form. He hasn’t said a lot. The only thing I noticed on a quick skim is that he called them “cowgirl” and “cowboy”. In a flashback and on parent’s weekend, respectively. Hadn’t noticed that before.
are Amber and Sal still not good?
cos AG and Sal were sort of weird friends pretty quickly, and that developed, but I forget when or if Amber got past the stabbing.
They were starting to work with it, including signing up for roller derby together, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the assorted traumas of the kidnapping aftermath set Amber back with Sal as well as everyone else. (They were talking pretty politely in the immediate aftermath, but Mike’s death clearly did a number on her ability to human.)
I say they’re getting along pretty well, the only person who was holding anything against one of the two of them for the past after their last confrontation was Amber due to her being hard on herself.
It ok, fam. It took me ages to get Booster back after I lost them when more were added to the rota :’) You’ve got this. At least you have a great one to fall back on as you keep your search.
The way Amber and Amazi-Girl have talked about sharing bodies could be catalogued as some kind of dysphoria, right? And Carla is trans (pretty openly too); so all I noticed here was Sal doing a read on Jennifer and why it’s still hard to call her that way.
She’s known her as “Billie” her whole life, yeah, but it’s not about the name change. She suspects the reasons because The Person Formerly Known As Billie has a pattern with wanting to be liked (but as a superior, not as a peer) and ditching former personas in some grandiose gesture to accomplish so. I’m pretty sure that whatever happened in the time-skip, including bonding with Walky over winter break, brought her up to date with three of these attempts, and that was before she was revealed to be dating Asher, and telling Walky THIS TIME she had for realsies changed for the best.
Plural people can experience dysphoria, yeah; it’s usually not that clearcut with people who, like Amber and AG, both seem to visualize themselves/identify themselves with the body, but “please don’t call me by my headmate’s name” is valid dysphoria. It’s a fairly general term.
Yeah, while gender dysphoria is the most well-known use of the word at present, it can be used generally for any sort of strong ‘unease or dissatisfaction’ with life – it’s also considered a symptom of depression and anxiety, in its more general form. And there are forms of body dysphoria that aren’t gendered – people who become physically disabled as adults, for instance.
Sal’s clearly using it to refer to gender/identity-based dysphoria rather than the abstract variety, but ~psychological term infodump!~
AG and Sal? God yeah. Sal gives off straight vibes like nobody’s business, oddly enough, but a shipper’s heart still wishes >>;;; Is there anywhere one can go for DoA fic? Tumblr had none, and it’s been a while but I don’t remember much on the AO3 tag.
I do a lot of re-reading tbh, and off the top of my head Amazi-Girl and Sal were crime-fighting together for long enough to do banter and have a recurring joke of “not your sidekick” before Amber was alerted (heh) and freaked out in red panels. They’ve also since then made up, which Sal initiated and required opening up emotionally, joined roller derby together, and they’ve been around each other enough Sal gets Amber and Amazi-Girl weren’t the same person for real.
This is all a ton for people who aren’t prone to be vulnerable in front of others so. There you go :3
Nah, I just referring how Jane and Morgan only reached Husbando and Waifu level only after they had intimacy in Nerf Now. However, now that I think about it, intimacy and Waifu/Hudbando status do not necessarily exist on the same one-dimensional axis, do they?
Jennifer is trying to draw a line under her past (something that she really, really doesn’t like) and move on. Escaping her past and moving on is really something that Sal doesn’t feel is something that is possible or even morally desirable for herself.
Meanwhile, I love AG and Sal’s friendship. Isn’t it strange that Mazie makes friends easier than Amber does and really seems to be more stable (if infinitely more silly)?
It is a complicated situation when it comes to a nickname. Like I doubt my family would stop calling me by my nickname even if I asked because it holds sentimentality to them. But people I haven’t known that long would have a much easier time adjusting.
It took me DECADES to get most of my family to drop my childhood nickname, despite trying to shed it since I was 10.
(And…I actually prefer a name other than my legal name, which is what I finally managed to get them to switch to, but since even that was like pulling hen’s teeth, trying to get them to use a made up gender neutral name is not high on my priority list…)
I do kind of get where Sal’s coming from here, Jennifer’s name change came from a messy place and her past that she really doesn’t want to acknowledge right now it seems. Its not coming from a healthy place, at least that’s my read on it.
However, I used to be called by my last name a lot wayyy back at school and when I had had enough I really had to struggle to get people to just… call me by my first name, which is all Jennifer is really asking.
You are. I legit think Ruth has the right of it, though – That you still carry with you both the good and the bad things you used to do before changing names. Rachel’s spiel about redemption being a story is bullshit! You can indeed become a better person! But it’s fucking hard, and you truly need to want it. Ultimately, this slow, painstaking change is the work you gotta put in every day if you ever want to “be someone else”.
Changing the way you want to be addressed as might be a part of it but if all you’ve done is cosmetic changes, then it’s not even a corporate rebranding. It’s just a repaint job so people who don’t know better buy what you’re selling.
At the end of the day we are just building on top of what we already have. the lower levels might eventually get covered up by dirt or go underwater but they are still there.
Yeah, but if it’s underground or underwater, at least there’s no point in resurfacing it, as long as what you’ve built on top is an improvement. There’s a lot of people who won’t care what you’ve built and will bring in drills and scuba gear to unearth every single mistake you’ve ever made, even when both of you would be better off just not interacting at all.
I think that what Sal is saying is that Jennifer is still acting like Billie. She’s not really changed in terms of her behaviour, she’s just presenting herself in a slightly different way.
As I said in my comment above, I’m wondering if Sal’s perceptions are being influenced by her fear that she cannot change and improve herself.
That… seems very likely, actually. The negative traits and behaviors we’re the quickest to spot on others are sometimes what we hate about ourselves – Sal’s rage being both what she had in common with Amber/Amazi-Girl and what upset her the most about them was a whole arc.
It probably doesn’t help that she’s rooming with Malaya, who’s very dedicated to loudly labeling her a phony to her face (and who’s another example of a character doing the same thing).
You’re allowed to rebrand yourself. People are allowed to suspect your motives or not go along with the ignoring the problems you’re rebranding to ignore.
There are many valid reasons to not accept a rebranding, especially if the purpose is to disguise a pattern of behaviour that is hurtful to others. There is a good reason you need to provide/consent to a background check when you apply for a name change. Example (sadly not as absurd as it should be): If a new national socialist party forms and decides to call themselves the “Happy Lovey Fun-time Hour Gang” that says they’re inspired by the good ideas of certain specific historical politicians, I’m going to call them Nazis, and I’m going to do it loudly so that other people know who these folks are.
If a person with a history of hurtful behaviour comes out with a sudden identity change including a new name, I’m going to be justifiably cautious about that, and their motivations. Ms. Billingsworth drove under the influence, somewhat undermined Ruth’s attempts at not drinking, and persisted in lying about her own habits. There are problems here that can’t be ignored.
Or as someone (I’ll attribute if I can find the source) said about abusive people who have mental health issues. Just because someone may have a particular personality disorder is neither an excuse, nor does it mean they aren’t being a jerk.
This is a nickname, not an identity change in any legal sense. She’s not in any sense pretending not to be the same person. Everyone who knows her knows that “Jennifer” and “Billie” are the same person. Her DUI doesn’t disappear from her record because she’d rather be called her legal name than a childhood nickname.
Nor should anyone forget anything she’s done to hurt them because she changed her name. Or anything good she’s done either for that matter.
Jennifer still has problems. None of them go away with the old nickname. People don’t have to treat her as a completely new person with none of the old baggage and she’s not asking them to. She just doesn’t want to use the old nickname anymore. Accepting that is a pretty low bar and doesn’t require anyone to do anything else.
Those are all correct facts (excepting that bar does require something of me), but where we differ is on how much slack we’re willing to give someone when we don’t know their motivations. Your views and experience leave you predisposed to be more generous than mine, and thats ok. It’s also ok for me not to trust Ms. Billingsworth’s motives and behaviour, and for me to not be ready to accept that this isn’t just a smoke screen.
Also, when she walks along straight up ignoring people saying her name, she is pretending something, and it’s not having patience in letting others adjust to her change. What some of us are saying, is that there are indicators that there’s more going on here than just a name change, and those are often connected with people engaging in deceptive or duplicitous behaviour, and when that *is* the case, none of it should be accepted, even the name change. So we’re cautious and suspicious, because maybe she’s trying to be a better person and maybe she’s being her same old self, and most of her adjacent behaviour resembles the latter, not the former.
I kind of get what you mean. I know one person who was super abusive both on a personal level and on a group level (guy started a freaking cult). Lied like he breaths. He was also a trans man though and came out during the middle of his shit so while most people do use his new name, I know one person who believes he’s very much using it as yet another new id, and they can be super transphobic about it (like ignoring all his new IDs are still male). It’s….not great.
That’s a little bit of a stretch, isn’t it? I always get a little uncomfortable with how quick people are to outright condemn someone as an awful person over every single individual not-great behavior or action. It feels too absolute, like if you say or do one thing out of line, you’re tainted forever and can’t get out of the “Bad Person” box no matter what, because you’re already in there so why think about you ever again.
Maybe I should have said “Sal is *being* an awful person?” I don’t think awful people are condemned to being awful for forever, but in the moment / in this case she’s being awful imo. She does overall tick me off in a lot of ways so I recognize that I’m definitely biased
Sal’s point is that it’s all still Billie. It’s not even a name change really, Jennifer has been her name all along. She is just trying to distance herself from the awful decisions she made in the past by leaving them with “Billie” and becoming the Proper Lady Jennifer. But that’s all still her and she can crash back into old habits at any moment.
I’ve had a few friends drop nicknames after therapy or because they felt like the nickname was immature… Anyone can go back into old habits, but I don’t see what that has to do with not respecting what Jennifer wants to go by
My point is that… Sal simply doesn’t buy it. She knew Billie since they were kids, she knows what she is like and apparently can see through Jennifer/Billie trying to change herself but she doesn’t buy it.
I don’t think Sal’s a horrible person and I do think there’s good reason to suspect this change isn’t from a healthy place, but I agree this is a dick move.
That’s totally fair for Sal to think that, but considering Jennifer is now in therapy and I’ve had friends who dropped old nicknames post-therapy or simply because they though it was immature, I don’t think that has to be the case, and I think those are valid reasons. Even I had a childhood nickname for a while, and I went back to my full name because I felt it reflected me more as a person. Granted, when I went back to my full name I was still a minor, so it’s different, but imo if a kid can make that choice, an adult should be able to as well
I think they’re valid reasons and that Jennifer’s name choice should be respected but yeah, I definitely understand some folks thinking this isn’t a choice being made for healthy reasons.
Yeah, my take on it that those are separate questions. It’s perfectly valid to question whether any of this is healthy for Jennifer, but that’s not a good reason to not accept her name, nor is challenging her on the name a good approach to helping her see that she’s not being healthy here.
Others seem to be taking the approach that if they don’t approve of the reasons she’s changing her name, they shouldn’t use it. Which is weird to me.
Thirded on this one. I suspect Jennifer’s doing the same stunt she’s pulled before, and I wouldn’t be at all shocked if she ultimately recognizes ‘Jennifer’ was an attempt at distancing herself from all her past mistakes while keeping at least one disastrous thought pattern (the rebranding attempts)… but that doesn’t mean she’ll necessarily ditch her first name again later. Could be she does genuinely prefer it. (Though I do have some questions about going to the longest, most formal, and unambiguously feminine variant of her name from the more androgynous ‘Billie’ while going back to denial about being bisexual. Still, that’s a side thing and there’s plenty of bisexual Jennifers in existence as well. Just, hm.)
I’m willing to bet that Sal would still call Jennifer by her first name when speaking in public, she seems self-aware and polite enough not to cross that line without provocation.
Honestly I can see Sal saying “hey Billie” and getting into an argument over it, or say “hey Jennifer” in a very sarcastic way, but I hope she’s nice about it. The way this is framed it seemed to me like Sal doesn’t want to respect what Jennifer wants to be called
As someone who stays up ridiculously late at night, “midnight for me is like the middle of the afternoon for most people” is definitely relatable to me.
I started to take a daily pill at 11pm because I will consistently be awake at that time. My mum wanted me to take it at like 9am when I first got it like, that is not a time I am awake every day so no and my sleep schedule has been pretty consistently nocturnal lately.
I support Billie reinventing herself and think she might actually just be happier as a person who isn’t self-hating as well as surrounded by toxic people. The idea that her friends didn’t support her in this would be an interesting twist as a lot of them wrote her off as a screw up.
A lot of people seem to only be truly happy if they’re an ambiguously-dangerous relationship and avoiding people who care about them for dubious reasons.
When I think of people who are clearly able to identify harmful relationships and properly enunciate to one or both halves of that relationship where they’ve erred and how they should break up for both their sakes, I think of motherfucking teenagers.
Also none of her friends her off as a screw up. She laser focused her interactions on Ruth but whenever she was around Joyce and Walky they were constantly supportive of her. Where did you even get this reading?
I don’t think Sal is looking for a reason to not refer to Jennifer as her preferred name so much as emphasizing to AG (and the audience) that Jennifer’s rebranding is still demonstrably Billie.
Like if Jennifer said to her “no stop calling me Billie, you have to call me Jennifer” then I think she would, but I don’t think the conversation is about her literal name but what that name change represents.
Yeah, we haven’t actually seen it yet but I feel like Sal would still call her “Jennifer” if speaking to her face. She is calling her “Billie” now to emphasize that she feels that she is using her first name and dropping her nickname as a defense mechanism.
Sal can read Jennifer like an open book. Maybe she’s right, dunno. Sure she’s not happy about that couple… Nice to see Amazi girl and Sal being such good friends.
SAL ISN’T OLD ENOUGH TO DRINK LEGALLY BUT SHE REMEMBERS THE KINKO’S BRAND NAME WHICH WAS PHASED OUT OVER A DECADE AGO WHEN SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
BOY I SURE HOPE SOMEONE GETS FIRED FOR THAT BLUNDER
Come on Sal, it’s just that you don’t approve of her new brand. Which, even if it may be a poorly thought out effort to redesign her personality for marketability that’s unlikely to last two weeks, is not something you get to control.
Are you having a stroke, or is speech-to-text failing you?
I don’t think anyone would put two and two together. She’s not wearing the rest of the costume, and her hair’s different enough now. (It almost looks like early-Shortpacked!-Amber’s in this strip.) Domino masks are a common enough trope too.
I think if anyone called her on it, she could get away with lying that she saw a picture of Amazi-Girl and copied the mask design because she thought it looked cool.
I do think Sal should use Jennifer rather than Billie.
But I think this is a private coversation with a friend where she’s voicing some concerns, frustrations and difficulties she’s having with this new situation. AG is listening to her and giving her friend her take on it. Basically roll with the name change even if you think its just a cynical paint job. Hopefully this will help her at least use the current name
Sometimes we need to hear a friend go point but still doesnt make it right to do what your doing.
Now we’re getting into Williamifer territory. Welcome. Have a glass of Mtn Dew. (and I don’t mean no paper cup, we have glasses chillin in the freezer.) Galasso’s minions are prepping bbq.
I mean yeah, sure, Sal’s probably right in that Jennifer is just going by Jennifer to rebrand, and that is different from a trans person or a system.
On the other hand, you still gotta respect that when someone tells you they want to go by a different name. Cuz if you don’t respect the Billie to Jennifers, it sorta implies you don’t respect the trans people in your life, yknow?
Suck it up and use Jennifer. She’ll either go back to Billie, or she’ll continue her crusade to erase her previous self and you probably won’t see much of her anyway.
I remember the change from “Mountain Dew” to “Mtn Dew”. This seems about like that. It’s essentially the same, as far as anyone can tell, but now the container has extra curves and the logo pisses me off.
PepsiCo should bring back the 70s/80s logos, like they did for the first round of Throwback sodas. The old “Mountain Dew” logo from that era is better than the hillbilly design and the “RRRGH SO HARDCORE GAMING ENERGY FUEL” stuff they’ve been leaning into.
Even Burger King is rolling back the clock to an old logo. 80s/90s nostalgia is still in! Strike while the iron’s hot!
I’m a big Sal fan, but rebranding might not be the worst thing for this particular FedEx/Kinko’s. Having a first name is not a radical statement, and if anyone should know that, it’s a twin.
Is the rebranded “Jennifer” we’ve seen so far that different from the Billie we met a decade ago when this comic started? Back then she was concerned about labels, telling Walky that he isn’t good enough to run in her social circle, and using denial as her way of coping with anything discomforting or self-destructive.
She’s currently switched to new labels, she’s telling Walky he isn’t her friend, and she’s using denial to cope with her discomfort about her own sexuality, if nothing else. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I think people need to realize there is a middle ground to the rename business: Yes you should respect what someone wants to be called or how they want to present themselves in any manner, but if you think someone’s drastic changes is because of unhealthy reasons, you may challenge it.
For example: you should not comment of someone’s weight, but if a friend suddenly gains/loses 50 pounds in 2 weeks maybe bring that up.
Sal’s known Jennifer since they were little kids, she was there to witness Jennifer’s attempted personality reboots. Even if she wasn’t around to witness “alpha bongo head cheerleader Billie”, Walky may have told her about it as it happened.
Know someone long enough, and you get a feel for their behavioral patterns.
Walky definitely didn’t tell Sal about it in real time – he didn’t speak to Sal from her being sent away to when they met up at university. He may have told her about it since then though.
Honest question from someone with a purely cis experience: why does Sal say “PROBABLY Carla”? She already knows that Carla is trans. Do not all trans people experience gender dysphoria? Is this about a different topic I’m not understanding? Wikipedia is not helping me on this one…
Also, interesting that Sal acknowledges Carla but doesn’t realize Malaya’s got some similar stuff going on as well, even if on a smaller scale.
Not all trans people experience dysphoria! Some do experience gender euphoria when they start presenting as themselves, though. The best example I can give is that I’m nonbinary, and (though this isnt a universal nonbinary experience, mind:) I don’t really want to change or alter any part of my body, nor does me having specific secondary sexual characteristics cause me any distress. However, it makes me incredibly happy when people acknowledge me being nonbinary, not lump me in with my assigned sex at bird, and use the correct pronouns for me.
Sal may be implying Carla is like me, doesn’t experience body dysphoria but does experience gender euphoria at being seen as the woman she is. Or Sal just means she doesn’t know Carla’s specific situation in regards to her feelings on her gender. I’m not sure, the panel is pretty ambiguously worded?
I actually think it has more to do with the fact that Sal doesn’t know if Carla ever had another name to leave behind. I mean, probably, but she doesn’t know if she did or what it was, and likely isn’t going to ask, so it’s just an assumption.
I just want to add to what Smooti wrote; maybe as a genderqueer person I’m biased, but I’m not sure I would call a non-binary identity discovery a “smaller scale” than a binary one! I get the impression Malaya does not experience gender euphoria unlike Carla seems to, and Carla seems like the kind of person that was happy with her body both pre- and post- physical transition. She has described relating to Ultra-car’s ability to “change forms,” but that doesn’t mean she was dysphoric or unhappy with her body before. Although, we haven’t seen much of this topic wrt to Malaya, so their experience could even be a “bigger scale” one than Carla (if “scale” = how much dysphoria affects them). They could totally be either euphoric or dysphoric or neither, I’m not sure
Not all trans people have gender dysphoria. You can feel comfortable with your body even if you feel it doesn’t accurately represent your true gender. In particular if you have a good support base and people in your life that are willing to respect your gender preference, regardless of your body type.
Carla seems pretty heavily invested in her own greatness. It’s hard to imagine her having body issues or insecurities, although she may have been quite different when she was younger.
Except if Carla’s investment with her own greatness is mostly performative cover, like her being an asshole is. In which, body issues or insecurities are quite likely part of what’s being covered.
While trans people don’t necessarily feel dysphoria as others say, it seems weird to bring it up here and dismiss it with “probably” at the same time. For Carla the name change is tied to her being trans, not to her having dysphoria. For Amber/Amazi-Girl, I don’t think dysphoria is really the right term and I don’t think Sal means to say she’s got dysphoria anyway.
So why mention dysphoria at all?
Not using the new name can trigger dysphoria though is what Sal means. Deadnaming Carla purposefully *could* cause gender dysphoria and would be harmful af and pretty cruel.
Calling AG by the name Amber purposefully could cause dysphoria, though not in a gender-related sense, it could still cause strong unease within themselves, especially as dissociation can make it hard for them to always feel real or grounded and invalidation would make this worse.
She’s saying that Jennifer is not like them where it will have a large mental toll and it is for the absolute best to go with it, but she thinks Jennifer has just thrown out ‘Billie’ as the old sign and plastered on a new Jennifer one, but fundamentally there is no difference and she’s pretending it has made everything better and that the past is gone, no longer important, never to be acknowledged again. That calling her ‘Jennifer’ or ‘Billie’ would make no real difference other that her getting annoyed at worst. Which probably isn’t wrong. But it is still distasteful to not use it, even if she is right that the contents haven’t actually changed all that much.
Basically Sal is perfectly okay with being an asshole to Jennifer, because being an asshole to Jennifer in this instance doesn’t make her a bigot. Sal’s not being an asshole to a whole group of oppressed people, she’s just being an asshole to a single person.
There’s a surprising number of people who think it’s okay to be an asshole to individual people, as long as you’re not a bigot.
I think Sal doesn’t think Jennifer will be seriously hurt or distressed or have her mental state fucked with by using ‘Billie’ instead of Jennifer, as Carla or AG would. She should still use Jennifer, but I think that’s the long and short of it.
Sal seems like the type to go out of her way only if it will help someone avoid anxiety or other mental issues. She wouldn’t modify her behavior because someone prefers one name over the other.
I think Sal has circumstances where she considers name changes inviolate – dysphoria being one of them, as with Carla being trans. AG’s dissociation is another one.
I started going by a different name when I was recovering from depression. It helped me feel like I was getting a fresh start and getting away from some of the baggage that contributed to the depression. I know it looks like she magically got better because of the time skip but Jennifer probably had her own struggles. In my book she’s entitled to rebrand if that helps her.
My only hope for this “rebranding” is that Jennifer/Billy (whatever) does not merely revive the past. There is one thing worse than a broken wheel, and that’s reinventing a broken wheel.
YKNOW WHAT HEY NO. Sal brought up Billie and ASHER because asher is a loaded item in Ag and amber and Sal’s shared past. Sal’s got Some kind of feeling about him showing up in her life again and is seeking to engage with Ag on it.
And that reach is stymied by ‘I think your childhood friends must recent reskin comes with a new tm.
I’d be extra rankled by that too. Duck off about fucking’ Jennifer ‘the mob guy who ducked us over is coming to our derbies why. Why is he EXISTING NEAR ME AGAIN.
if sal knew asher and Billie back then, did billie and asher know each other? I mean both have wealthy powerful parents (or grandparents?)
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it’s also being fucking polite, SALLY
I can’t believe how many of our fucking co-workers don’t know how to go to a
Kinko’sFedEx Office to print thingsor take a goddamned SCREENSHOT *foams at the mouth at 3MB “screenshot” taken from a camera phone*
God, I work at a library and the amount of garbage “screenshots” I get from ancient camera phones is… infuriating. (And then they expect me to somehow improve the quality. With what, my magic wand? Geez.)
“But you always see them ‘boosting’ the image on ‘NCIS!’ “
Even better is when someone loses their cellphone so they call their carrier to trace it Like the carrier can pinpoint the location – immediately, in real time, and within a three-foot radius – of each and every one of the 70 million plus phones in their network.
You have my sympathy Bill, and at I guess, I’d assume you worked for a telco?
But to be fair, most of the equipment and computational capacity is there, so doing locates for one or all of the millions of phones on a network is not the issue. The problem is not scale, but the age and/or security policies of devices of each person on the network, and their urban/rural location. I keep my location sharing disabled (mostly), but in a sufficiently dense cell network, there’s a *lot* of data to be able to triangulate me anyways. And then a lot of users’ phones just share their location anyways. As well, people are taught by t.v. that carriers *can* do this, and our governments are cheaping out on our educations, so what do you expect except that people will believe what they see. Which can be helped if you just zoom in and enhance like they do on those same shows.
Given how many *B*illions of dollars phone services make, the carriers could offer a little more customer service. This is the obligation of the executives, and is not a targetted gripe at phone company _workers_ who are regular decent folks.
–Sent from my smartphone
Even assuming they could – how would they even tell you? Even with a precise fix, they’re going to be able to give you coordinates, not tell you it’s behind the seat cushion.
Well if they send you a google maps link, you can use the maps app to guide you to the location of your lost phone! I mean, how else would they do it?
And should they tell you, voice on the phone calling up to ask someone’s location, who might be hiding from you with good reason.
Well I’m already in the house, so why not? xp
I’m hiding behind the couch while they’re using their phone to look for it.
Obviously you need to prove who you are by either calling from your phone or entering the code they just sent to your phone. 🙂
YES with your magic wand. Oh wait, were you being sarcastic?
PSA: “Enhance” isn’t code for a big mallet with the phrase “enhanced tech support” written on it.
Cake decorator. Number of people who can’t figure out how to email a .jpeg and send a screenshot instead, and then expect us to improve image quality before printing on their cake. Bonus points for leaving a cursor over a child’s face.
Also: no, I cannot crop a rectangle so it fully covers a circle and not lose any of the image.
I wrote an app for my company that allows people to enter their expense reports on either their computers or their phones. To include a receipt, one need only take a picture of it, it’ll be auto-resized so that it can be quickly uploaded without being a huge image file. That means that if you take a client out for lunch or something, you don’t even need to hang onto the receipt, just take a pic and toss it!
But now, get this, I need to add pdf support in addition to images because this one guy doesn’t know how to use his phone or mobile apps, so he takes the receipts home, scans them on his PC, and wants to upload them as pdf files because that’s what his scanner is configured to make and he doesn’t know how to change anything!
ARGH! Stupid tech illiterate boomers!
PFt, just get a pdf2jpg converter! …mostly kidding.
No matter how much ease of access and user-friendliness you add to a process, some dumb motherfucker is gonna insist on finding a way to make it as difficult an annoying as possible.
True, true. The smarter the phones get, the dumber the users seem to become.
That’s less about phones, and more about the general trend of humanity.
…. actually, wait, smart phones help people access 24 hour streams from shady “news” sources and bubble up with like-minded folks. Okay, yeah, they may be playing a part in it.
I find this thread to be slightly disturbing. I haven’t this much of disdain for tech-illiteracy since… since I worked helpdesk and one of my supervisor insisted that all customers would lie…
It’s like it’s OK to be unable to know the proper spelling of a word but not how to type it. Both are bullshit imo (not a humble opinion). People have to choose from a bunch of competencies they are able to acquire. They can’t and won’t get them all. What they choose, care to, or are able to acquire is their way to proceed with the unability to choose goals – if they would be responsible to have their own goals, they wouldn’t even need an app if they think it should be done on paper. I would add to look Ilich or Gorz for some read on this, but this is also everyone’s choice to care or not.
Sure, not everyone can be good with everything, but when it’s the same people trying to do the same thing and they somehow can’t remotely comprehend it anymore purely because the object they’re interacting with isn’t the same shape as the one they used twenty years ago, even though it uses identical steps to accomplish it and the user interface hasn’t changed in any meaningful way, there’s a level of willful stupidity there that I can’t blame anyone for being upset with.
not everyone can and not everyone should.
Why would they learn this new trick while the old was functionning well?
In the name of progress, but what is progress if not the adaptation of production tools in order to extract more relative value from the working process (in other word: increase production), hence exploit more?
What the fuck are you talking about? If some old dipshit can’t figure out how to do the exact same thing they’ve been doing for decades just because the rectangle they have to use is a little bit smaller, it has nothing to do with fucking worker exploitation. It’s actually 100% fine to make fun of people who can’t figure out that the thing that does what they want still does the thing if you make the casing a little shinier.
Except that (and knowing full well I’ve mocked support calls too), the devices *don’t* do it the same way, and they do keep moving the menus around (lookin at you windows), and they keep changing where settings are when they make the button shinier, and a lot of the time you *can’t* do it the same way you’ve always done it, and finally, as people age, their brains do continue to change and for a lot of people it really is very hard to keep up with the perpetual change.
You have my sympathies D.T., but an attitude of ageism about old dipshits also isn’t going to help things along, or help you be more patient with them, and one day we are both going to be old dipshits too. (I may be already, or maybe just a run if the mill dipshit. It depends on who’s carbon dating me)
Maybe I’m overreacting and going a little far in regards to the age thing, sure. A lifetime of being asked how to fix some problem I can’t see and is only being described orally by someone who hates adjectives, all because I’m “good with computers” (meaning I can type in a word processor and right-click) has made me a little oversensitive to this sort of thing.
Ugh… re-reading myself was way-more finger waggy you lil’rascal than I meant it to be, but thank you for your receptivity. Your frustration is absolutely valid. I’ve handled 2.5 hour password reset support calls (remote client, encrypted hard-drive). We got there, but their password is now yuiop, and after my manger reviewed the call, their manager was talked to, and they’re not allowed to call support anymore without seeing their manager first.
I would agree with you and suck it up if my customer base was retired grandma’s and their cat photos or w/e. *MY* “customer” base is our high-paid tech bros who have somehow never learned what the “Print Screen” key does! 😩
GRANDMAS
This dang phone and its apostrophes in fucking EVERYTHING 😑 (also its inability to let me see the whole textarea at once)
As I said DT, I worked HD, and I spent hours helping people like the one who just had slipped the device into the sink with washing water and dirty dishes – because they were drunk and not caring and my point is: why should they care?
What you can’t accept: them talking to you like shit or urging things to work when they’re not.
What they don’t have to accept: caring about things moving or changing or whatev that they don’t asked.
I can understand how frustating it is, you are at the receiving end of all complaints and in charge to solve things.
My take about technological changes supposed to affect efficiency what is what relative value is about is in fact not mine, but the one of Bihr reflecting theories of both Gramsci and Makhaiavski.
To be fair Ana, I too would suck it up if my support base was my retired grandmas’ and her cats’ photos’ too (rest boths hers soul)
https://imgur.com/a/qjdu5eZ
While I love that poster… It was the Boomers generation that convinced the (s/car/whatever) companies that the manuals needed warnings instead of help (and that this would create profit). X’ers grew up with the changing standard (and perpetuated it), and Millenials grew up never having a chance to *not* be warned that “It’s coffee, it’s hot”. And where does the blame reside? The arrow points back in time. The Millenials were raised by X’ers, and X’ers by Boomers, and Boomers by traumatized wartime survivors whose only help was to cope via alcohol. While we’re playing this game, it was the greatest generation that actually was more likely to adjust the valves on their car, which was why the manuals included it in the first place. All of these folks were being perpetually short-changed by executives looking to pad their bottom line, and that became easier as time went on as an ever smaller percentage of the population weren’t drunk trained killers unwilling to put up with bullshit.
This seems a good time to remind people that This be, the Verse:
They fuck you up, your mom and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.
Also: why does everyone need trigger warnings today instead of being responsible for how they react to their emotions? Because for a generation now we have been continuously bombarded with “the following program contains mature subject matter. viewer discretion is advised.” And I know y’all read it in your heads in ‘the voice’.
Or because some people always needed trigger warnings, but we just used to ignore them and blame them when they reacted badly.
Much like how we’re now “overly sensitive” to casual racial and gender slurs.
We need trigger warnings for stuff because we have some increased understanding that trauma of all sorts heal over time, if you don’t keep re-traumatizing all the time.
It’s like how when you hit your thumb on something, it starts sticking out like a proverbial sore thumb? All trauma is like that. Mental trauma tames longer to heal.
As an example of mental trauma taking longer to heal, 40 years ago, I lived in my family’s junk room, but I was still required to keep my room neat. But my parents also maintained the rule that I wasn’t allowed to mess with my brothers’ things. Which were in my room. So my room was messy.
I’m getting better, but I still have issues from this. Part of that still having issues was from being triggered back in the day when other people put stuff in my spaces without talking with me about it. It’s not their fault, that’s a stupid trigger. But it’s mine and I have to deal with it until I can really manage this stuff.
To be clear, most people’s trigger issues are way worse than that. *My* main trigger issues are way worse than that. That’s just the stuff I am OK with talking about. I’m sure you have issues that you don’t want to talk about either, which is a lot of why you complain about needing to have trigger warnings: you don’t want to admit to your own issues, and seeing those warnings reminds you that you have some. Also probably seeing this comment. Sorry about that, it just felt necessary to say.
Trigger warnings don’t mean you’re not responsible for how you react to your emotions. Getting a trigger warning does not mean you’ll never get triggered. It means you get to choose whether you’re in a good head space to consume potentially triggering content or not. That is quite literally taking responsibility for how you’ll react to your emotions, but you need the information up front to do it well.
Also, triggers are not just emotions. They can be debilitating, full body shut downs that last hours, sometimes days. It doesn’t matter how “responsible” you are with them. You don’t control when they happen and being caught off guard by one usually makes it worse. Adding a trigger warning is really no different from adding an allergen warning.
In some cases it’s enough to brace yourself for the content rather than being caught by surprise.
I feel your pain. I sent an unprotected Word document to someone with track changes enabled, for them to make changes on, and what came back was a PDF of an image of the document with handwritten changes on it.
That’s just scary.
I’ve seen that as official company policy. 🙂
It was a few years back though.
My husband’s family decided to email everyone a questionnaire, just a simple one-page thing, “Who’s your mum/dad/grandparents; did you marry/who; kids; job; etc etc” so we could all fill it out, send them back, and then everyone’s answers would be collected and organized into a family tree that would then be put into a calendar with everyone’s birthday and what on there. Pretty cool idea!
They emailed it out.
Someone had very nicely typed it out. Then they took a photo of the printout, at a weird angle, and emailed it as a jpeg.
It was upside down.
I did not bother filling it out and sending it back. Jesus Christ.
I wish this was limited to Boomers.
I’m active on a bird identification site. I can’t tell you how many times we’re asked to identify a bird from a photo take with a phone of the back of a camera. Hello? Is there a reason you’re not posting the actual photo from the camera itself? The one with better resolution so we can zoom in on the smaller identifying markings?
Wait, they’re sending in photos of cameras and asking you what sort of bird the camera is?
Sounds like they’re taking the picture of the bird with the real camera, then previewing the picture on the camera’s LCD screen, taking a picture of their picture on the screen, and sending that to Charles and company.
Could be worse; they could Xerox scan-to-email the back of their phone, or send the camera’s digital photo embedded in a Word 97 document.
Because they don’t know any other way to get pictures from their real camera to their phone.
I’d respond with an identification of the camera, and say if they want a bird identified, send the picture of the bird not a picture of a camera.
Of course, I can feel their pain, too, as I used to have a camera that was pre-USB, and for a time I could not send any pictures from that camera because of that. But my situation was much easier to resolve; I just chucked the camera into an Earth day electronics recycling bin, because even though it wasn’t that old of a camera at the time (USB2 had not yet come out), it was a shit camera.
Though, a lot of phones these days have multiple ways to pull the files, so it’s not to deal with a lost proprietary cord. If, and I stress if, you’re technically savvy enough to do it, and have as much access to your camera’s documentation as needed, and your OS is compatible with the camera’s output format. I think it was only 2019 when I last had to deal with a device that produced its files in a proprietary format, and the proprietary reader of that format only ran on obsolete OSes that were not available to the person with the file to be read. I don’t work in that part of IT, so I should never need to deal with this sort of problem unless I’m the user and I wasn’t.
Go easy on the Boomers, Doc.
While you weren’t looking, GenX turns 50 this year.
… I thought Gen X started turning 50 a couple years ago, and was going to keep working on turning 50 for a while, because we’re talking about a whole generation and we’re not all the same age.
Or are you just talking about me and making this personal? For the record, I’ve never personally drank battery acid, engine fuel (with the exception of about 3 oz of Everclear, which could have been used as engine fuel), or engine valve cleaner (used or fresh). I’m not so sure about vicariously, that could’ve all just been a nightmare.
The oldest genX started turning 50 in 2015. The youngest (the so called ‘Xennials’ because we’re technically part of the GenX cohort (officially 1965-1980), but have more in common with the Millennials) are in our early-mid 40s.
Started to ask if it wouldn’t be easier just to teach him to use his phone, like I’ve never worked customer service or something.
I bombed an app during internal testing (my job at the time) when I tested if the file upload field would accept a 4 GB upload. It did. The database did not. The result was not pretty. The answer, yell at me for stress testing the app *during testing*, not put restrictions on submitted file sizes, *not* put a warning for users to limit file sizes, not change the db to accept large files, and then they deployed the app to production. (because the users won’t upload large files). Result was… I needed popcorn to watch the carnage, but I left the job soon after anyways.
I think you should’ve invoiced them for the popcorn. To be fair, there’s a lot of popcorn I should’ve invoiced over the years.
Could we stop with the boomer stuff? I’m a boomer, and I worked for a company in which several people had to travel for company business. Most of them were Gen X or older millennials. They were supposed to use Expensify to submit their expenses. Most did, but the ones who didn’t or who had trouble using it were mostly Gen X. My boss, also a boomer 4 years older than me, had no problems with any of the new technology we adapted. The owner of the company was even older, and he loved new technology.
To be fair on the kinkos thing, not everything called “Fed Ex” allows for printing and all that niceness. And searching for a store near me often gets one “Fed Ex” confused with the other and yes it pisses me right off.
Wait until you find out FedEx Ground (and Home) and FedEx Express act more like two separate companies than divisions of one company.
And then sent to you as a .heic file.
seriously, you’d think she of all people would get that
That would be kinda delightful if Jennifer took Sal to task on it just like that. Sal is usually right, and Jennifer usually isn’t, it would be fun to switch that up.
Okay, let’s maybe slow down a second there. Sal hates “Sally” because she’s trying to get away from her abusive parents’ expectations of her to tone herself down, straighten her hair, and behave in a way white people are comfortable with.
Jennifer hates “Billie” because she’s trying to get away from a brief period in her life where she was beginning to feel okay seeing herself as queer and non-popular-girl.
Like, should Sal respect the name anyways? Probably. But comparing the two like that feels yucky.
Have an upvote-equivalent :3
Actually, Sal’s parents like her hair in its natural wavy state. It was Sal who straightened it. Willis hasn’t addressed why this semester Sal went more natural.
Other way around. Her dad thinks it’s so pretty when it’s nice and straight, and her mom doesn’t acknowledge her.
The subtext is that Sal straightens her hair to make her parents appreciate her.
That it was Asher’s grav getting this wrong is rather appropriate.
It’s not clear why she hates “Billie”. It’s not like that brief period was the only time she used it. Didn’t she use it in high school? Walky knew her by it in the first strips. Not in the earliest flashbacks though.
If anything, it might be her drinking/partying period (most of high school and the first semester) she’s trying to get away from.
She hasn’t even stated (that I recall) that she *hates* “Billie” (which /was/ from the earliest strips I thought). “Jennifer” has thus far, been an unexplained change. But using a name change to get away from when you did bad things isn’t the path of acceptance and growth (not that there is one true way), but it *is* the path of denial and distancing and not being responsible for your actions.
*I* didn’t do those things. That was “Billie”.
It’s not clear that this is why the change, but it’s also not clear that it isn’t. I’m cautious of Ms. Billingsworth’s change because I know these people, and have been hurt by them. They are real, and they are jerks.
Maybe. We don’t know enough of Jennifer’s change yet to know why she did it. Or even what kind of change she’s trying (or pretending) to make.
And if there’s no one true way, no symbolic change necessarily means you’re on the wrong path either. Not sufficient in itself of course.
True. I’ve known people who went through name changes with roughly this much fanfare because they got a new significant other who was so inconsiderate as to not respect their name, but the subject of the name change was so infatuated with them they put up with them. At least for a bit.
Usually, it’s been of this form, where the crush would insist on using their given name or a villainy generally associated with that given name, rather than a nickname of the subject’s choosing. It never lasted longer than the relationship.
Sal’s reasons to not be called ‘Sally’ may well be better than Jennifer’s attempts to be done with ‘Billie’.
Both are old childhood nicknames. ‘Sally’ never fit Sal to begin with, and it’s fraught with her jerkass racist parents, so A+ to Sal for forging her own identity.
‘Billie’ was a time and self-image that Jennifer is attempting to leave behind (plus she’s taking big steps, like getting therapy, to help her do that). It wasn’t just dating Ruth — she was Billie in highschool when she was shoving Walky into lockers, when she almost killed her friend driving drunk, and was generally the Drama Hurricane that she presumably doesn’t want to be anymore. Jennifer is probably still a drama hurricane, but she’s allowed to hope, and to pick a name that reminds her that she’s trying to make better choices.
Will it fail, will Jennifer sometimes fall into her old patterns? Probably. But Sal should still call people what they’ve asked to be called. She doesn’t need their whole story to determine whether they’ve earned it or not. She can just call them their names.
This was literally my first thought.
This would get down voted to oblivion if it could be, but Sal has a point. If someone has a need to be known by a particular name because of identity issue etc., absolutely it’s worth respecting. If someone is just rebranding cuz they can, it’s not worth people being militant about (especially over respect, which is earned, not freely given in unlimited amounts and it lives on a two-way street with trust). If someone is trying to duck away from the inconvenience of their past reputation, well… the Inglorious Basterds had some creative ideas about that.
Now, obviously Ms. Billingsworth has *A* reason for doing this, but she has yet to provide that reason. She is not required to. Lacking an explanation however, leaves us just with what we do know. I am getting a distinct sense of this being driven less by afformentioned identity issues, and more about avoiding association with her past self, without any proof she’s actually a different/growing person. Also, people seem to be forgetting that criminals *also* change names a lot, for the purpose of hurting people. While the benefit of the doubt would be a kindness, this behaviour has been used by others too many times in my own life to give a character in a comic a lot of slack. Along with her D.U.I., continued drinking problems, repressing her identity (sexual or otherwise), her ignoring (healthy) former associations, and now her current associations, well, things aren’t a healthy stage for a jumping off point for rebranding.
A consideration here is that she is a child, and we seal juvie records for good reason. Undercover cops also change their names, for obvious good reasons. So I wait cautiously to learn more about this situation before welcoming Ms. Billingsworth as Jennifer with open arms. The real irony of course being that Jennifer is her legal name.
Meh. I’m not sure people really have to earn the right to ditch a nickname they don’t like anymore. Or need to publicly psychoanalyze themselves to justify it to everyone.
There are different types of respect, and they certainly don’t all have to be “earned.”
Hmm… one can behave respectfully (courtesy) while having zero respect for someone. But my experience has been that to actually “have respect” for someone, you need a chance to see them behave in a manner worthy of thinking or feeling that respect. Prior to said moments, we just treat each other with respect (courtesy) under the assumption that when the time comes, we’ll see each other behave in a fashion deserving of the courtesy we’ve shown or been shown thus far. Thus, I’ll generally treat people with respect as a default case, but I don’t feel respect for people until I see them challenged in some way.
Maybe it’s just that my baseline respect for people in general is high enough that I’m not aware of it when I normally interact, so I only take note of it when I see someone justify said respect or lose it. But for my respect for someone to go up, it has to be earned, and I expect I have to earn it from others and (try to, mostly) behave accordingly. Maybe if more people thought they needed to earn respect, instead of just being given it, they too would behave better to earn it.
Thank you for helping me consider myself on this. I’ll think further on it.
I think the idea of having to earn respect can do a lot of harm, depending on how one defines respect. Maybe not the way you view it, I don’t know. But for me, there’s a base level of respect that should be extended to all people, and I think that’s what some other people mean when they talk about respect too.
There’s a post I’ve seen on Tumblr about how some people use respect to me “treat as a human being” and some use it to mean “treat as an authority figure,” and then people will say things like, “If you don’t respect me, I won’t respect you” and mean, “If you don’t treat me as an authority figure, I won’t treat you as a human being” and they think they’re being fair when they’re not.
For me, when I’m in a position of authority, it’s critically important to me that I’m treating those I have authority over with respect, even if they get rude (and I often work with middle schoolers, so it happens).
Now, there may also be a difference between treating someone with respect and having respect for them, but your previous comment seemed more aligned with the “treating with” aspect.
I agree with you. I think the words you might be looking for are dignity and reverence.
Being treated with dignity is not something you should have to earn, if someone makes you feel like you have to audition for dignity they are proberly not good people to have in your life if you can avoid it.
On the other hand reverence is something you have to earn.
I feel like you’re overthinking it. I had a classmate who, in 10th grade, informed the teacher at roll call that he was now going by Dan instead off Danny. Nothing to do with running from the last or rebranding in the sense mentioned in the comic so much as 1. it’s shorter, and 2. it sounds more like a grown-up name than a child’s name.
Remember also the reason she was called “Billie” in the original Walkyverse was that Walky didn’t like her as a girl but as Billie he could call her a “boy’s” name. Could be Jennifer just wants to reclaim her femininity as much as anything.
Last = past
Past is a word, PHONE
Despite her code requiring her to do so, Amber still dies a little inside any time she has to call the SciFi Channel “SyFy”.
As do I.
Don’t we all?
Actually, no. Since I never took them seriously as ‘science fiction’ any way.
Or, considering the sliding timeline, would the change have been too early in her life to really notice or care?
Amber still loves Beast Wars in this universe, and it came out around seven years before she was born. At least she was alive for the SyFy change.
Just like we all died a little when they stopped airing terrible horror movie marathons in Saturdays. I have very fond memories of watching creature features that aspire to B-movie status while recovering from hangovers.
Or when they stopped doing all-day marathons of old sci-fi/horror shows on weekdays.
I sometimes refer to it as “Siffy”.
Skiffy. Rhymes with Jiffy.
I like to pretend that it’s the same name, just written in some English-based phonetic alphabet that we’ll all be using in three hundred years.
Sometimes that works. Sometimes.
Look up Mark Twain’s spelling reforms sometime.
“English is a living language that means it’s okay when it changes!”
– Someone who types with their forehead (and probably writes “walla”), excusing their illiteracy
Nonetheless, they’re right.
Hell, half our stupid grammar rules are just made up class status markers that never matched how people spoke anyway. Some of them made up because Latin is the prefect language and English should obey its rules, despite not working at all the same way.
“Changing language” shouldn’t excuse phonetic diarrhea. “Their”, “they’re”, and “there” are different words with different meanings, dammit! I even see people mixing up something as simple as affirmative and negative!
“The sky is green.”
“No, the sky is blue.”
“That’s what I said, the sky ain’t green. Pay attention.”
Fuck!
As for “pretentious-sounding” language, I blame the Saxons and the Normans.
The homophones are probably just people who process language more orally than visually. They sound the same and if you’re just quickly typing out what you’re thinking it’s easy to type the wrong spelling of the sound you’re thinking.
I do it all the time. I usually catch it even before I finish, but not always.
Most of our language processing brain is built for speech. Writing and spelling is just a late patch.
Is Sal drinking a beer? I wouldn’t have expected that from her.
Why? She smokes, and we’ve seen her do it before
including the debut appearance of Carla and first speaking appearance of Malaya https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/my-share/
I totally forgot about that.
Nah that’s pretty standard. She enjoys a good drink, usually in a parking lot of a major branch store if it can be arranged.
If she enjoyed a GOOD drink. she wouldn’t be drinking beer. :p
We’ve seen Sal drink beer multiple times, including at a pub.
It completely slipped my mind.
Pub. Americans aren’t completely in touch with that term. In my college town was a place called Gino’s Public Pub. It was a pizza joint.
*looks around Portland*
…. oh, you mean the rest of the country.
That made me die inside. (well not really, the tachycardiogram’s been flat for years, but the defribrilator capacitors lost some charge.)
I recall seeing places in Indiana referred to as Pubs that ranged from being intended hang out places with no alcohol to places that served alcohol but did not serve food or other attractions, which would mean they should strictly be called a ‘bar’ (since they had a bar, bar tenders, and seats, rather than aisles of booze and cashiers.)
I think they may understand that pubs are places where booze is served and people hang out, but may not get any nuances beyond that, including any need to combine both elements.
Outside of Indiana, I’ve seen less of that sort of abuse, but I’ve also spent a lot less time around people who want to hang out at the pub, and I’ve been much less inclined to go along with people into those dens of noise. It’s not that I’m too old. I just realized, if someone thinks the music is too old and you don’t, you’re the one who’s too old, not them. You’re just not necessarily old enough to realize it.
Oh no, Amber’s going to have to carry her back to the dorm isn’t she.
We first saw her drinking <a href= "https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/beer-weiser/"here, I wanna say? (I went with the easiest strip to find I could think of, it’s Carla’s first appearance)
Let’s try that link again.
They cut away!? I was actually invested in the interpersonal discourse of the derby team and how that would effect their play!! Malaya and Sal! Can they work as a team!? Did they win or lose!? I’m so angry about this!!!!
They probably won? We saw what we needed too, there’s friction with Sal & Malaya, and Sal’s got hang-ups about Jen and Asher
There’s always friction between Sal and Malaya. That doesn’t tell me anything, and it looked like the Green Monkeys had taken the advantage! Did Slamber come through!? I guess we’ll never know now. But yeah I guess the Asher and Jennifer thing was maybe the important part. Bleh.
Perhaps it’d be better to call it a reminder that there’s friction between Sal and Malaya
Yep, they did. It was such a shock, too. Too bad Willis didn’t do something yesterday to telegraph the sudden pivot.
Arr-Arr.
She may no longer be a super-hero but Slamber’s code demands she can’t lose, so there was no narrative tension there. And there is the Asher effect. He ruins everything.
I was all sad that there had been no more strips of this match at first, but these two explanations make it perfect. I’m introducing the “Asher Effect” concept to my brother, who’s an avid DoA reader but doesn’t come to the comments section :’3
I’m hoping they won, but even after reading a little about roller derby I’m still not 100% sure if I know how it works.
This mean we’re not going to see any more of the other team either?
2010? I thought Kinko’s was branded earlier than that.
Whatever the case, I sure hope neither of them go postal!
But Willis draws such good action scenes.
That is true…
Having to take a silly history of Fedex class when I started working at Fedex Office finally comes in handy!
The name was changed to Fedex-Kinkos seventeen years ago, then fully shifted to Fedex Office thirteen years ago, though you still see some old locations here and there that never changed their signs.
What I hate is that the overwhelming success of FedEx’s branding has made it synonymous with ‘courier’ in the public mind and now if someone offers to FedEx something I need to go back and tear into them for making me chase down Purolator for losing my package and needing 15 pieces of proof that I live in the location that they *didn’t* deliver the package to on the day I was home *all day* *for them* when they claim they tried me 5 times in between the frames of my 30 fps security footage that show no-one ever coming to my door. 《breathes》 《breathes》 No, hate isn’t too strong a word for Purolater.
Everyone needs to remember: “Purolator. Getting you your package, later.”
I couldn’t get my ‘Murican head around why you were mad about an oil filter company losing your FedEx box until I looked it up…
Having done a lot of shipping over the years, I’d trust FedEx over USPS, but UPS (Unionized Parcel Smashers) is a distant third.
Searching for Purolator on duckduckgo.com only showed ads for pureoil.com on the first page of results. Based on your anecdote, I get the sense those “Nothing gets by us” ads are more relevant than the ones on Google that suggested they might let stuff get by them, perchance even on time?
I recognize that Fed Ex might be the new Kleenex, but I’d still yell at a company who tried to “fed ex” something to me with an unreputable, untrustworthy shipper.
Kinko’s goes back to 1970.
hey, I have fond memories of Kinko’s from when I was seven! That place had lots of brightly colored buttons my dad let me press!
I WORKED at a Kinko’s! No fond memories at all. (Except, I finally did find out who “Roy G. Biv” was!)
Explanation. I had a Radio Shack Color Computer and a STACK of “Rainbow” magazines. One of their regular contributions was to see what kind of a program you could make with ONE line of copy. Someone did one in honor of “Roy G. Biv.” and the editor ended it with; “Who IS he anyway?”
By any chance did they have a Fiery ColorLaser Controller when you were there? I wrote some of the software for those things, and I know they were in a lot of Kinko’s but never got to ask an employee about them.
I am weirdly on the edge of my seat for this reveal.
Oooh! If I had a Fiery Laser Controller, I could… I could…
RULETHEWORLD! BWAHAHAHA!
Doesn’t sound familiar. This was over 20 years ago.
After the Kinko’s gig, I was watching “Beakman’s World,” where he mentioned “Roy G. Biv,” and Lester, the guy in the rat-suit, says; “Who’s HE? The guy who created color?” So Beakman came out as “Roy G. Biv,” a hippie in a rainbow colored outfit and rainbow wig!
Tags are still going with “Jennifer,” so still using that. Curious about how close Sal is to the truth, though. Assessing this accurately would require knowledge of what the truth is, of course.
Oh, I’m 100% sure that Sal’s read of Jennifer’s psychology is correct. She’s just wrong not to roll with it.
I’m betting pretty close in that Jennifer is rebranding, though I’d also bet she’s far off in how important it is to Jennifer. ‘Billie’ has a LOT of baggage that ‘Jennifer’ doesn’t, sort of thing.
I think the “baggage” is that it ties her to family members she’s trying to distance herself from. Honestly, it’s awkward. Her struggle has the paint job of a trans story – “I’m trying to change my name, I’m trying to distance myself from ‘family’ I no longer feel close to” – but at the same time, it’s *not* that. Her name-change is an unhealthy coping strategy and her discomfort around Walky, Ruth, Joyce, and the rest is really more around being afraid of her own queer identity and being expected to grow up.
Like, Billie is going through the motions of a queer coming-out… to avoid coming out as queer.
So I dunno. I’m kind of with Sal on this particular case, but I think Sal’s probably in the wrong to trust her gut more than Jennifer, if that makes sense. Sal is right, but she shouldn’t trust her rightness so much.
For what it’s worth, I’m trans. Not trying to discount any trans voices that disagree with mine. I just think that this situation is messier than a blanket rule really allows for.
There’s a difference between “I don’t respect your new nickname because I think your old nickname was fine” and “I don’t respect your new nickname because I know you well enough to recognize it as a part of the same pattern of extended self-harm I have seen you spiral into over and over again”. It’s a messy difference, so we’re all gonna disagree on it, but it’s a difference that matters.
Your contribution to this discussion is appreciated. And to be probably needlessly something, I’m not sure what, but for all that I’ve said of being cautious of Ms. Billingsworth’s changes (name and all): I’ll happily address you by whatever name and pronoun you prefer to be addressed by Imogen.
Wish I could know if I’m just trying to be clear that I’m not anti-trans or if I’m virtue signalling or just sincerely being friendly or … This is messy business, being a primate.
I just wanna point out that there are like 3 different Sarah gravs in this thread and i didn’t realize they were different people until I reached the end
We are SarahGrav. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Thanks for your perspective on this, Imogen. Not being trans, I hadn’t thought of this from a trans perspective.
Maybe. I don’t think we know enough yet of what Jennifer is doing now (or over the time skip) to really judge.
It’s also just a nickname. Ditching childhood nicknames in college (or when you’re out of high school in general) isn’t uncommon, even without any reference to queer coming-out.
I’m not entirely sure that this is a question for which an objectively true answer is possible.
Well, Sal’s attitude towards Jennifer’s name change should make for a lively debate today.
And I’m all out of popcorn for this one
*throws Indiana-grown popcorn corn into homemade Telsa Coil chamber*
Oooo! Video or it didn’t happen.
Still looking for a sufficient supply….
Meanwhile, what toppings should I add?
*plays “Crush” by El Huervo on Voxola PR-76*
I’ve missed Amazi-Girl 💖
…am I misreading, or are we getting a nb/trans Amber? /hopeful
Or AG, rather, I missed the tells and the tag
I don’t think so
Nah, unlikely, at least so far. Her issues are more DID than anything.
I do not think so, though it’d be fun. I took it more as her just being respectful and/or a nod to superheroine ethics of keeping up with whatever name/gimmick a hero or villain is currently running.
Nah, her superhero code cares about rebranding because secret identities are a sacrosanct part of superheroing, not because of anti-deadnaming. It’s one of those overlap moments, like when Magneto asks the teenager, “What’s your real name?” or Neo defying Smith at the train station.
I think it’s more that Amazi-Girl is intensely uncomfortable being called by Amber, because it’s the wrong name. That is a kind of dysphoria, even though it seems to be non-gender-related here.
So yeah, she’s a transformer, transitioning between Amber and Amazigirl. Nonbinary, not so much.
I think they both identify as cis women, but misidentification is their hot button.
different axis of identity than gender but same idea.
there’s a sort of dysphoria that comes with DID, both from having a name and appearance that’s not the body’s if you aren’t a body-identifying alter (host or otherwise)
Even freakin’ JOYCE adheres to them’ renamings, and it’s JOYCE we’re talking about here.
Trans-ness hasn’t been loud enough for long enough for the backlash to have really crystallized in fundie culture yet. If Joyce had been born 30 years later, she would have been deadnaming people on instinct.
To them, it’s still a hip new trend, not yet a deep state agenda. The threshold for gay recognition was the 70s, remember. Trans recognition only really got traction in the popular mind a decade ago.
Joyce also isn’t aware that she knows any Trans people. Jocelyne is closeted, Carla assumes everyone already knows
She’s met Booster. That counts, right?
And she immediately accepted their pronouns, and even mentioned their pronouns when introducing them.
There’d be no fun die-type reason for Joyce to not accept Jennifer deciding to go by her given name rather than a nickname though.
“Fundie-type”, not “fun die type”!
Aww….. why not!?
I think so? This is not a topic I am well versed in
I think you’re kinda right…. except it’s also a deepstate agenda. I’ve been hearing exactly that from that crowd.
I don’t follow – born 30 years later? Some 12 years from now?
If it got traction 10 years ago – she was 8. There was a reference at one point to them going to protest same-sex marriage. With the sliding timescale, that’s probably bathroom bills now.
Honestly, the fact that Joyce believes in calling people what they want to be called gives me a lot of hope that she’ll accept Jocelyne whenever she comes out.
Accept? Yes.
Freak out thirty times and then go into an existential crisis about how much more of a lie everything she thought was true in her childhood has now become? Also yes.
Alternatively: having done the above already, and grown, maybe Joyce is developing the experience and skills to be able to handle such in a more mature fashion.
I’ve said for awhile that she’ll accept Jocelyne, but that there’s likely to be a whole bunch of awkwardness in the process.
Unless it’s a dramatic moment in front of Carol and the predictable response ensues, in which case she’ll go directly into “I will fight for her” mode and never look back.
She said once that she always wanted a sister, didn’t she?
She’s said a few times – bonus points because she once said it in front of Jocelyne (when she was asking John when she’d get to meet his wife since she didn’t get to go to the wedding).
I think there are many other people it could happen in front of and have her “I will fight for her” response kick in, no looking back. But in front of Carol, it’s certainty the response.
Are there any movies that prominently feature Kinko’s for when the sliding timescale ages her out of remembering it?
Dunno about movies, but the deal was in ’04 and the name-change was done by ’09.
I have fond memories of Kinko’s. I didn’t have reason to go very often, but it was always a nice, quiet place of people being occasionally busy. Very library-like. I’m a little sorry that its time has basically passed.
Sal sayin’ what I been thinkin’… It does not help that Billie wants to be “Jennifer,” the most formal version. Like, not Jen or (best version:) Jenny? No, I am Lady Jenniffer, lord of all fancypants creation, and you may not refer to Me by the name i’ve gome by forever because la-di-goddamn-fa-la-la-la-la, di-dah
And I think Sal’s totally nailed it, a fussy lil snotball like Her Royal Majesty Lady Jenniffer is basically capitalizing on the trend of accepting all sexual/gender identities at face value for the sake of politeness to create her own little boutique brand identity…Jennifer the Journalist (and unwitting mob girlfriend too, apparently – wait, does that make her a gun moll?! Tangent.) I don’t know why it irritates me so… maybe the attendant pack of joyless scolds wagging their fingers that we’re all obligated to call absolutely everyone whatever the fuck they demand like that’s somehow the same thing as respecting transgendered identities. Yeah, I’m pretty firmly in Camp Sal here, I don’t even care if she’s supposed to be some kinda didactic foil we’re supposed to Smurf the moral at
Wow, who put that chip on your shoulder?
Ain’t like it’s hard to call someone what they want to be called, sort of just a basic decency. It’s a choice to deny them that, and one that a lot of people are pretty sensitive too
I don’t know about basic decency, but it’s basic politeness to call someone by the name they want to use. If you want to be a rude asshole, it’s a free country, but don’t be surprised when there are consequences.
Being rude to cartoon characters is kind of a middle ground. Jennifer will never know if we snidely refer to her by her middle name, but these particular characters do have a continued existence in our minds, so don’t be surprised when others are offended on their behalf.
Ya wanna try proofreading this one? Maybe read the room a little for that second draft? There’s nothing wrong with people wanting to be called something other than the name they’ve been assigned by others, and there’s nothing wrong with other people doing what that first set of people wants.
So somebody told a doctor to write a name on some paper and some kids decided to shorten that name a few years later. That doesn’t obligate the person assigned the name to use either version of that name for any period of time, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with picking a new name for yourself or expecting people to go along with it.
Maybe I’m biased because I know two people who’ve had their names legally changed, have met multiple people who’d love to but just haven’t gotten around to it yet, and personally belong to that second group there, though. Like, what, did anyone think “Taffy” was my legally-assigned birth name? Pretty sure Fart Captor and Doctor Who are aliases, too. It’s just such a weird thing to have a problem with and then voice in an online space where maybe like half a dozen people are using their government names.
Of all the self-entitled things to get uppity about.
Accepting sexuality and gender identity isn’t a “trend for the sake of politeness” it’s actually called not being an unbearable person.
Also, shocking that I have to say this but, you literally don’t get to decide what name other people use. If you attempt to, you’re the jerk. Including, but not limited to, whining in a two-post long manifesto about PC culture because a fictional character changed the part of her name she wanted to use rather than the part you wanted her to use. Hilariously while still calling HER the fussy little snotball.
The only person who equated it to trans issues is Sal (and now you, I guess!) No one else was making that leap.
… what? This has literally nothing to do with sexuality or gender identity. She just changed what part of her name she went by (her full name is and was Jennifer Billingsworth; Billie was a play on her last name). But even if she did change it entirely, it would still have nothing to do with sexuality or gender identity.
And I’m really not sure why you think “Jennifer” is such an uppity name. At work, I go by Jennifer because it feels more professional and I like it, not because I think I’m better than my coworkers. Seriously, I think you need to take a step back.
Jennifer is her freaking given name! She’s not pretending to be trans. I get than Sal is a better person then Jennifer, but Sal is wrong here. You call people what they want to be called. Sal herself prefers Sal to her given name Sally, so she should understand.
Oh, I had my name legally changed about 30 years ago. I suppose that makes me a fussy snotball or whatever! 😺
if someone changed my name to Norah, it would certainly make -me- a fussy snotball. But I suspect the circumstances are different.
If someone had changed MY name to NORAD, the only discussion of what to do about Mitch McConnel would be where to bury what’s left.
Oh. NoraH, not NORAD. Nevermind.
While the aggressiveness above may not be warranted for Ms. Billingsworth, for anyone who’s had to deal with a name change by someone who was a total ass-hat about it, it can go on for long enough that yeah, it builds a chip. I’ve done a name change (feminist marriage stuff. We divorced later. Oh well.) but I didn’t need to be a dick to people who used my old name, even with the new one literally velcroed to my chest. Ironically, I don’t see the people who are hurt when their old name is used be mean about it. I’ve only seen people who used a name change as a way of manipulating people and their surroundings be jerks when people got it wrong. These jerks will even stoop to bandwagon-ing on the trans-rights issues to attack people who make an innocent blunder look like the gestapo. i.e. “Why won’t you use my real name? Do you like dead-naming transgendered people _too_?” So if someone else has been gas-lit by a scammer, yeah, I get the chip.
Holy shit.
I don’t know how much you reveal that the only reason you want people to call her “Billie” is because you treat it as a sign of contempt, and the only reason you don’t want her to called Jennifer is because you treat Jennifer as a respectable name.
I don’t think you even realize that “respecting transgender identities” is not about showing you have the right politics, but just a subset of RESPECTING HUMAN BEINGS IN GENERAL.
And you’ve very hugely demonstrated that you don’t want her called Jennifer because you don’t want to show her the basic respect of acknowledging that she has the right to decide she no longer wants to be called “Billie”.
This is vile. You’ve somehow decided that YOU get to decide how people are to present themselves. Oh, it’d be fine if she was “Jenny” but HOW DARE SHE want to be “Jennifer”. So very snooty.
The ethical rule is actually quite bloody simple: Call people want they, in good faith, want to be called.
I love that said joyless scolds appeared in significant number to call me vile, with a chip on my shoulder, etc., over making fun of an uptight cartoon character, as well as conduct a mini-inquisition over the phrasing of “respecting transgendered identities out of politeness,” which is, (a) a comparison Sal made herself, so it’s not like that came out of nowhere, and (b) uncontroversial to anyone who doesn’t demand fealty. Ugh, you people just make life worse for everyone around you. Get over yourselves. Mellow out. Accept that people who disagree with your little ideas have a right to exist. People can call each other anything they want! But most people are agreeable enough to call you what you ask them to…just don’t ask them for anything too silly and it’ll be fine. The judgement of what’s beyond the pale varies from person to person; avoid people if you can’t stand how they refer to you. Simple enough. I still think Billie’s being silly and that Sal nails it as “rebranding,” but it’s not really that I have a problem with, it’s all you uptight ideologues acting like it’s a mortal sin for anyone to call her by the name they’ve known her by. Give me a break. And, again, cartoon character.
But Barf, you criticized the name “Jennifer” and implied it was uppity, whereas “Jen” or “Jenny” wouldn’t be. I personally was set off by that, though I can’t speak for anyone else. My reason was that there are a lot of Jennifers who go by the full name and aren’t uppity. IT’s a very common name, and for about 20 years was in the top 20 or so names given to AFAB children. I couldn’t figure out why you seemed to think “Jennifer” was such an uppity name. Also Jennifer never said she didn’t want to be called Jen or Jenny, although maybe she will in the future, who knows. And Jennifer herself is probably silly or uppity, but her name isn’t (though personally I prefer the name Billie for her.)
To be fair: I absolutely do avoid people like you. Rude ragemonsters are not people I find interesting or worth my time outside of occasional internet interactions like this.
If respecting people’s personal choices about themselves is “joyless” to you then I think that says a lot about you. If you find “joy” in being cruel about something as simple as a name, then you’re probably a struggling to find joy in a lot of your life. I don’t think it was anyone here’s job to pretend like what you said wasn’t needlessly aggro and likely stemming from other issues. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I remember, before I got out of small-town Oklahoma, when I used to be like this.
What someone else does with their life doesn’t affect you (unless it’s like, your partner, and even then only just barely). If you don’t like it, you’re free to remove them from your life, or just continue to be like this until they remove you, but no one owns another person or can tell them what to do.
And seriously, you’re gonna drop this comment on a strip with a name-dropped trans character?
My problem with her going from Billie to Jennifer is that it came from the timeskip, so from OUR omniscient reader POV it feels like it came out of nowhere, never mind that it also included what was apparently a complete alienation of her old friend circle, which she only (again, apparently) recently rejoined. It also, personally, stiank of her same old track record of using any change to try to re establish her old “Alpha bongo cheerleader” persona.
At the end of the day, Billie was the character we knew and loved. We don’t know Jennifer enough yet to know if we’ll like her.
I do, however, understand that at a certain age, some people tend to abandon the identities they had as teenagers/early adults, including nicknames and abreviations. Jimmy becomes James, Angie becomes Angela. One of my sister’s high school boyfriends used to go by DF (a holdover from an online nickname) despite his name being Nicolas.
On the other hand, other people decide to own their nicknames as their identity. “Alexander is the name on my driver’s ID. I am Alex.”. My own sister has basically abandoned her birth name for her childhood Nickname, despite it not being a name at all. The only context where she uses her birth name is formal occasions. The nickname being ridiculous is my fault, I did name her that when I was 2 and a half years old.
Yeah, I’ll call her Jennifer but it still kinda bugs me that this change in what she wants to be called happened in the timeskip and feels really out of nowhere and like she’s trying to abandon her old friends to me.
It barely even happened during the timeskip. We see other characters finding out about it when they first see her again after coming back to school, so we’re sort of in the same boat as the rest of the cast.
They know more about the breakup and maybe about her distancing herself than we do of course.
It sounds like she went dark and fell off their radar sometime over the skip, too.
Because that’s not cause for concern just in itself. Nope.
Yeah, new relationship and distancing yourself from long time friends is a huge warning sign.
I mean, some less contact is natural, since you’ll want to spending lots of time with the new crush, but going completely dark and pushing them away is different.
Still, we don’t know enough of the timeskip to properly judge.
I’m not aware of Jennifer saying that Jen or Jenny are off-bounds, though?
Long as she’s not asking people to shorten it in the other direction, I don’t see a problem.
I’m not saying there’s a problem? Barf Ninjason is accusing Jennifer of insisting on the most formal variation on her name, which I don’t think is supported by any actual text in the comic. I didn’t archive binge, so I’m not certain, but I’m pretty sure Barf is literally making a baseless accusation and building their entire case on it.
And it also, y’know, touches a nerve because I don’t like it when people use diminutive versions of my name to address me, either. So they’re attacking me, too, with their little rant.
No, I got what you meant. I should have clarified more and possibly also worded my reply differently.
I was making a (crude) joke about Jennifer shortening her name but not using the front half, that’s all.
lol what’s up with Niffer? sounds cute enough to me
Hey Milu! Did you get the reference last strip?
Oh hey Waggy =) (can i call you Waggy?) sure i did! i always check for replies the next day.
i mean, i don’t know the game (cos like again… i don’t play games) but you sound like you really dig that character!!! of course he’s a scientist, i would’ve been flabbergasted any other way. i did go and peruse their page on the fandom wiki and thus have learned…. THINGS
Why thank you!
And by the way, don’t you think Waggy sounds a little bit like a dog or something?
Maybe it does, but my old nickname-suffix litteraly was -dog, and it was possibly the nicest time in my life. Besides, doggies are cute and fluffy and I want to hug them and squeeze them and love them to bits!
Isn’t an online alias technically a nickname already?
I mean i guess it does sound like a dog name now that you mention it.
Wags?
i just need to give everyone nicknames, it’s a compulsion. i’m only formally asking for permission this time because, *gestures at discussion around names and consent raging all around*
(of course i’m just being daft and hyperbolic as usual, if you don’t want a nickname i won’t nickname you)
Not that I don’t want a nickname, but I just can’t think of any good ones that are derived from Wagstaff.
Given that Wagstaff is technically already a nickname, I’ll refrain for now.
By the way, how would you nickname yourself?
ooh turning the tables are we?!
i mean, i would just keep inventing new ones every time, trying to keep it as silly as possible, but mine’s not a great name for generating nicknames i feel, at least in english. it does sound better in french. although it’s also the name of one famous comic book dog (so hey! i’m familiar with that whole dog name situation it turns out) so that sort of filters out the imaginative from those who go straight to the obvious jokes.
if you insist, you may call me a cab, though
How about Lua Milu? I think it sounds great (Lua means “moon”), but what do you think?
What do you mean “sounds better in French”? Are you French or something?
Yeah, i’m french.
Lua Milu? i mean, it is pretty. But it feels kind of ungrounded? unfounded? you know? like, why not, but also… why. what does the moon have to do with me, especially that you know of? so, eh, maybe we’re not on nicknaming terms yet is my conclusion here ^^
are you Brazilian/Portuguese/ other lusophone country then?
This is an important detail actually. This whole discussion has thus far not included the acknowledgement that, while names can be chosen, they can also be earned or bequeathed. The application of a name is a two-way social contract, that can be either a kindness or hurtful.
Anecdotes: In my first go-round at college I was this shy, scrawny little nerdy kid, who was lucky enough to be taken under the wing of the nicest and coolest person in our program. He gave me a nick-name that felt good, was awesome, and everyone just adopted it. It helped me feel welcomed and included and surprisingly, respected, despite my age and lack of experience. (this was a program with an average age of 35 and I was fresh out of highschool). After graduation, I moved on to professional work and the name disappeared. Until I became friends with a coworker, and in sharing college stories he found out about my nickname. He resurrected it, and truncated it to the suffix, but again used it with affection. It didn’t catch on in the work place like in school, but that was ok. It was neat that a new friend liked it and liked me enough to want to use it again. Later I earned other titles and nick-names in different jobs, some as ranks, some as modifications to my name, but all were bequeathed to me.
Using ‘Jenny’ as the form of ‘Jennifer’ is only best if you pronounce ‘Jenny’ using a Forrest Gump accent. Jen-ai
this specifically is why I refuse to let people call me Jenny. I was in elementary school when Forrest Gump came out and I want you to picture a room full of kids going “Jen-nay” over and over again. Jen or Jennifer is interchangeable, and Nifer is rare and entertaining, but I will end you if you call me Jenny.
Jennifer was one of the most common names for girl babies to be named for about 15 or 20 years. A lot of them go by Jennifer; some go by either Jen or Jenny, or they’re okay with either the full name or shortened name. Have we actually seen Jennifer get mad if someone called her Jen?
No, but in fairness, we haven’t seen her get mad at being called Pompoms either.
Imo it’s just a childhood nickname. I don’t see a reason to get mad about it either way. I’m with sal here, i really don’t see the importance of not calling her Billie, but at the same time it’s dumb to get mad over “Jennifer”
I think Sal’s take is tinted with cynicism. “Oh she’s just trying to reboot her personality again. That never sticks. Her past always catches back up to her eventually.”
I mean, she’s right with that
Oh it is cynical yeah but I kinda agree with it. She has a tendency to do this. Try to reassert her toxic Alpha Birch Cheerleader persona whenever she can. I’m just glad this time she seems to have dropped the toxic part (if trying to set up Daisy and Ruth was actually earnest)
Alpha birch XD
https://falseknees.com/216.html
it tracks
My banner ads for this site are from the Reno/Tahoe tourism board and show people in taverns drinking whiskey and beer. How’s that for product placement?
Yeah, and it’s also no coincidence that airings of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in syndication happen much more frequently around Easter and Christmas.
We are Ad Twins.
Yeah, I get that Jennifer is family to Sal, even if less so than she is to Walky which is thankful given she drunkenly hit on Sal that one time, but still, get with the program and use the name she wants you to use.
Fuck this name shit.
I have a problem forever getting people to call me by my middle name, there are too many who don’t, won’t, argue with me about what my legal name is, make forms with only space for a middle initial, list AKAs on my credit report from when I wrote my middle name first, use the diminutive instead of the actual name…
I’m over the faceless corporations and assholes, but if you know me personally and can’t use the name I tell you, then don’t talk to me at all.
Damn, I hear that. Sorta getting to that point, myself. It was unbelievably affirming to have my name tag say “Taffy” and then have people actually say the name on the tag.
Preach! It costs nothing to be respectful.
I get you but i feel like there’s a big difference between that and old friends just using a nickname
Wait, Carla isn’t out to Sal? I could have sworn they had a whole conversation about that.
Unless I’m misreading things, and Sal is just trying not to make assumptions about Carla’s dysphoria (or lack thereof).
My read is Sal doesn’t know if Carla has dysphoria.
“Yeah Ah know, they wouldn’t care”
I guess maybe she could have assumed but isn’t 100% certain? I think it’s more likely the probably is her saying Jen isn’t trans
I can see that, but Sal already knows that Carla is trans, so it sounded to me that it’s more about the dysphoria, since she brings it up.
I think the “probably” was her saying that Jen probably isn’t trans
Pretty sure she knows about Carla
She does follow it up with a very firm “she ain’t trans or nothin.”
Good point
That left me scratching my head as well. Anyway, isn’t Malaya supposed to be the one with dysphoria?
That would not disqualify Carla from also having dysphoria (though if she does, it isn’t particularly obvious, so like Sal, I’d be unsure and after a transition, it may be very minimal/non-existent the vast majority of the time), but Malaya was questioning last we knew which might be based on dysphoria, yes.
Malaya may have dysphoria (not all nb/trans people do) – But I don’t think she’d let Sal know. Seconding Raen, and also adding that since she’s met Carla post-transition, Sal could truly not know if transitioning eased whatever dysphoria Carla might have had in the past. Beyond Carla’s I AM AWESOME, WATCH ME GO personality, it’s not a question you ask unless you’re like, INCREDIBLY close to a person.
What kind of dysphoria?
And pertaining to something someone said a few strips ago, how do we know she’s an atheist?
Who’s an atheist?
And I’m not that familiar with DID but it’s more or less like— You know how all of us have different personas, right? That way the WanderingLynx who swears, takes drugs, and stays until 3:00 reading webcomics doesn’t come out in front of their abuelita? Dissociative Identity Disorder is going through trauma so intense a person’s mind splits – But not like in the movies. I’ve heard from DID folk in the comments sections that Willis’ depiction is good even though the “age cut” for the onset is like, 9-10 years old at most and Amber’s off by like three years. Hence, they “share the same meat vehicle”, as said in Amber’s words.
Body Dysphoria can take many shapes, one of them being the feeling that your body doesn’t belong to you – Which tracks with the “dissociative” part of “DID” (as opposed to “feeling like reality is unreal” feel that’s “de-realization”).
I meant Malaya; what’s her particular dysphoria, and how do we know she’s an atheist?
OH man. Re: Malaya & Gender: I can’t remember anything more concrete than Malaya gesturing to her curves going all “sometimes I don’t know if I’m female but I don’t feel like arguing with all these” (roughly paraphrased); and that post-skip she wears a binder sometimes, which may signal being dysphoric. I mostly don’t experience gender dysphoria(*) but I’m butch so sometimes I throw one on, sometimes not, depending on what presentation I’m going for that day? Meanwhile a lot of transmasc/trans men peeps feel intense discomfort without one even when they’re by their own and in their own homes. Gender theory is truly an ever-changing doctrine, and very new; and The Non-Binary Liminal Area is full of trans people in all of the colors of the rainbow so.
As for her atheism, you’ve got me there. I can’t remember anything about her being an atheist.
I believe Malaya has mentioned she’s not a woman, though we don’t know what Malaya’s gender actually is. That would make her trans.
IDK about atheism.
All we got to go on, vis a vis atheism, is a disdain for Mary, a strong enthusiasm for profanity, and a complete lack of conversation about religion. I’d say there’s a good money on it, but there’s only circumstantial evidence.
I do believe Jennifer/Billy (whatever), says she believes in God but still hates Mary, so that’s one less piece of evidence.
Profanity and lack of conversation about it don’t really clarify anything either.
Whoever made the comment a strip a go may have been going on a whim. For all we know, Malaya’s an agnostic or maltheist.
Atheist? What are you talking about?
Uh, don’t know if this helps, but AFAIK Joyce is the only one in the strip who identifies as Atheist.
I read that as her knowing Carla is trans, but not being able to imagine her vulnerable.
Sal’s just using Carla as an example of a trans person, i.e. someone who NEEDS to have their new name respected for very important reasons. She’s saying there’s no dysphoria involved in Billies name change, therefore it doesn’t demand the same level of respect
It’s weird phrasing though. My first reading of the line was (You or Carla) with dysphoria. When I think it might be intended more like You (Or Carla with her dysphoria.)
BTW, did Amazi-Girl already know that Carla’s trans? Does Sal know that she did? Is Carla being outed here?
My read has always been that everyone in the girls wing of the floor knows but joyce
Also I might be talking out my ass but wasn’t Carla’s transition super public? Like with her tech giant celebrity parents? I remember something about it being mentioned, like her being in magazines or something. So everyone just kinda knows
She has, but that may have been quite a while back. We don’t know when she transitioned, but it sounds like it was fairly early.
Not a lot of preteens reading Newsweek or remembering it years later.
It’s possible that everybody knows, but there’s little evidence of it. Sal hangs out with her and figured it out. Malaya knows, along the same lines as Sal. We can assume Marcie does, though I don’t recall it being explicit. Ruth knows because she’s the RA. Mary knows because she’s a snoop. Billie found out from Ruth – and if I remember correctly didn’t know beforehand.
I’m probably forgetting someone, but I don’t think most of the other characters have shown any signs.
Also, Carla’s been in the news before. There was her cover on Newsweek and she was in a legal case with Jacob’s brother (probably the one involved in striking down anti-trans laws). She’s the kid of a zillionaire, that stuff makes news.
My personal view is much closer to AG’s on this, even if Jennifer probably wouldn’t be hurt or have her mental state screwed with by being called the wrong name like AG or Carla. It’s nice to see Sal and AG getting along though.
I kind of saw it as legally changing her name…even though her real first name was Jennifer to begin with. Also is the Amber at day and Amazi at night thing is started to feel like a werewolf thing, which kind of makes the phrase “Moonlighting” more significant.
No Sal. Someone tells you they’re called something else, you call them by that name. You don’t get to decide what name changes or valid. Be better.
ALL superheroes respect renaming or they’d never address their foes as “Crazy Quilt” or “Rubberband Man.”
They’re still Datsun’s, dammit!
Given the absolute crap they put Mr. Nissan through to preserve his domain, they don’t deserve either name.
WE DO NOT RECOGNIZE THE MUNICIPALITY OF FEDEX OFFICE
LONG LIVE KINKO’S
Feels a bit iffy not to use Jennifer’s name she is telling people to use due to how often trans people and even cis people that change names experience that and how annoying it is but at the same time, Sal’s probably not wrong that she is rebranding and this probably isn’t the first time she’s done this so there is a *little* room for skepticism that it is just enabling a delusional thought that changing your name gives you a whole new identity, but it would still be better if she just went along with it even if skeptical that this is actually a meaningful change or that she won’t turn around and go right back to using Billie again if this ‘new’ image collapses in on her.
Yeah, my read on this is that Sal’s aware of That Phase In High School Where Jennifer Was Too Cool For Walky and/or just how much of the first couple weeks of college were her attempting to reassert the Alpha Bongo Head Cheerleader persona after the DUI derailed it. Still a dick move on her part, but given Jennifer’s already done that rebranding on… three prior occasions we know of? (High school, starting college, Forest Quad) I can very much see the skepticism. (And Sal may have spent adolescence in Tennessee and thus doesn’t QUITE have the surrogate siblinghood Walky has, but she’s still known her as ‘Billie’ for most of their lives.)
That said, I’d expect Sal to have a bit more respect for a name of choice given I’m pretty sure Linda still calls her ‘Sally’.
Linda’s the only one who consistently calls her children by their given names.
She also uses “Jennifer”.
Maybe Charles, but I don’t think he’s actually used either of their names in any form. He hasn’t said a lot. The only thing I noticed on a quick skim is that he called them “cowgirl” and “cowboy”. In a flashback and on parent’s weekend, respectively. Hadn’t noticed that before.
So her children and surrogate daughter.
Huh. Wonder if using Jennifer’s given name makes Sal think of Linda and cringe or something.
are Amber and Sal still not good?
cos AG and Sal were sort of weird friends pretty quickly, and that developed, but I forget when or if Amber got past the stabbing.
They were starting to work with it, including signing up for roller derby together, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the assorted traumas of the kidnapping aftermath set Amber back with Sal as well as everyone else. (They were talking pretty politely in the immediate aftermath, but Mike’s death clearly did a number on her ability to human.)
I say they’re getting along pretty well, the only person who was holding anything against one of the two of them for the past after their last confrontation was Amber due to her being hard on herself.
avatar roulette be kind to meeeee
take 2
And a one and a two and a…
dang
Honestly tho. This whole thread and finishing with Fuckface made me laugh at almost 2 am so, kudos? :’D
Well I’m always happy to have caused laughter even if it was the accidental result of me failing at avatar roulette 😛
It ok, fam. It took me ages to get Booster back after I lost them when more were added to the rota :’) You’ve got this. At least you have a great one to fall back on as you keep your search.
Asking people to not shorten your name isn’t that big a deal, Sal.
The way Amber and Amazi-Girl have talked about sharing bodies could be catalogued as some kind of dysphoria, right? And Carla is trans (pretty openly too); so all I noticed here was Sal doing a read on Jennifer and why it’s still hard to call her that way.
She’s known her as “Billie” her whole life, yeah, but it’s not about the name change. She suspects the reasons because The Person Formerly Known As Billie has a pattern with wanting to be liked (but as a superior, not as a peer) and ditching former personas in some grandiose gesture to accomplish so. I’m pretty sure that whatever happened in the time-skip, including bonding with Walky over winter break, brought her up to date with three of these attempts, and that was before she was revealed to be dating Asher, and telling Walky THIS TIME she had for realsies changed for the best.
Plural people can experience dysphoria, yeah; it’s usually not that clearcut with people who, like Amber and AG, both seem to visualize themselves/identify themselves with the body, but “please don’t call me by my headmate’s name” is valid dysphoria. It’s a fairly general term.
Yeah, while gender dysphoria is the most well-known use of the word at present, it can be used generally for any sort of strong ‘unease or dissatisfaction’ with life – it’s also considered a symptom of depression and anxiety, in its more general form. And there are forms of body dysphoria that aren’t gendered – people who become physically disabled as adults, for instance.
Sal’s clearly using it to refer to gender/identity-based dysphoria rather than the abstract variety, but ~psychological term infodump!~
Kinkos vs Fed Ex. Sal speaks TRUTH. Listen well.
Sniff! Aww, they’re Waifu and Husbando, just like on nerfnow.com . Of course, I’ve said for a while they make a good couple.
AG and Sal? God yeah. Sal gives off straight vibes like nobody’s business, oddly enough, but a shipper’s heart still wishes >>;;; Is there anywhere one can go for DoA fic? Tumblr had none, and it’s been a while but I don’t remember much on the AO3 tag.
Kind of a stretch… have they at least experienced intimacy with each other?
I do a lot of re-reading tbh, and off the top of my head Amazi-Girl and Sal were crime-fighting together for long enough to do banter and have a recurring joke of “not your sidekick” before Amber was alerted (heh) and freaked out in red panels. They’ve also since then made up, which Sal initiated and required opening up emotionally, joined roller derby together, and they’ve been around each other enough Sal gets Amber and Amazi-Girl weren’t the same person for real.
This is all a ton for people who aren’t prone to be vulnerable in front of others so. There you go :3
Nah, I just referring how Jane and Morgan only reached Husbando and Waifu level only after they had intimacy in Nerf Now. However, now that I think about it, intimacy and Waifu/Hudbando status do not necessarily exist on the same one-dimensional axis, do they?
Jennifer is trying to draw a line under her past (something that she really, really doesn’t like) and move on. Escaping her past and moving on is really something that Sal doesn’t feel is something that is possible or even morally desirable for herself.
Meanwhile, I love AG and Sal’s friendship. Isn’t it strange that Mazie makes friends easier than Amber does and really seems to be more stable (if infinitely more silly)?
Maybe because Amazigirl was created to be cool/
It is a complicated situation when it comes to a nickname. Like I doubt my family would stop calling me by my nickname even if I asked because it holds sentimentality to them. But people I haven’t known that long would have a much easier time adjusting.
It took me DECADES to get most of my family to drop my childhood nickname, despite trying to shed it since I was 10.
(And…I actually prefer a name other than my legal name, which is what I finally managed to get them to switch to, but since even that was like pulling hen’s teeth, trying to get them to use a made up gender neutral name is not high on my priority list…)
I do kind of get where Sal’s coming from here, Jennifer’s name change came from a messy place and her past that she really doesn’t want to acknowledge right now it seems. Its not coming from a healthy place, at least that’s my read on it.
However, I used to be called by my last name a lot wayyy back at school and when I had had enough I really had to struggle to get people to just… call me by my first name, which is all Jennifer is really asking.
You are allowed to rebrand yourself.
You are. I legit think Ruth has the right of it, though – That you still carry with you both the good and the bad things you used to do before changing names. Rachel’s spiel about redemption being a story is bullshit! You can indeed become a better person! But it’s fucking hard, and you truly need to want it. Ultimately, this slow, painstaking change is the work you gotta put in every day if you ever want to “be someone else”.
Changing the way you want to be addressed as might be a part of it but if all you’ve done is cosmetic changes, then it’s not even a corporate rebranding. It’s just a repaint job so people who don’t know better buy what you’re selling.
At the end of the day we are just building on top of what we already have. the lower levels might eventually get covered up by dirt or go underwater but they are still there.
Yeah, but if it’s underground or underwater, at least there’s no point in resurfacing it, as long as what you’ve built on top is an improvement. There’s a lot of people who won’t care what you’ve built and will bring in drills and scuba gear to unearth every single mistake you’ve ever made, even when both of you would be better off just not interacting at all.
I really like how this analogy has been developing.
Like how Blackwater (aka Xe Services, aka Academi) hasn’t actually changed their business practices, let alone their business – just their alias.
I think that what Sal is saying is that Jennifer is still acting like Billie. She’s not really changed in terms of her behaviour, she’s just presenting herself in a slightly different way.
As I said in my comment above, I’m wondering if Sal’s perceptions are being influenced by her fear that she cannot change and improve herself.
That… seems very likely, actually. The negative traits and behaviors we’re the quickest to spot on others are sometimes what we hate about ourselves – Sal’s rage being both what she had in common with Amber/Amazi-Girl and what upset her the most about them was a whole arc.
It probably doesn’t help that she’s rooming with Malaya, who’s very dedicated to loudly labeling her a phony to her face (and who’s another example of a character doing the same thing).
you are but blackwater doesn’t stop being a murderous gang of thugs-for-hire just because they rebrand as “academi”
they have to stop being mercenaries first
oops, I should have read further down.
You’re allowed to rebrand yourself. People are allowed to suspect your motives or not go along with the ignoring the problems you’re rebranding to ignore.
But they really should accept the new name.
There are many valid reasons to not accept a rebranding, especially if the purpose is to disguise a pattern of behaviour that is hurtful to others. There is a good reason you need to provide/consent to a background check when you apply for a name change. Example (sadly not as absurd as it should be): If a new national socialist party forms and decides to call themselves the “Happy Lovey Fun-time Hour Gang” that says they’re inspired by the good ideas of certain specific historical politicians, I’m going to call them Nazis, and I’m going to do it loudly so that other people know who these folks are.
If a person with a history of hurtful behaviour comes out with a sudden identity change including a new name, I’m going to be justifiably cautious about that, and their motivations. Ms. Billingsworth drove under the influence, somewhat undermined Ruth’s attempts at not drinking, and persisted in lying about her own habits. There are problems here that can’t be ignored.
Or as someone (I’ll attribute if I can find the source) said about abusive people who have mental health issues. Just because someone may have a particular personality disorder is neither an excuse, nor does it mean they aren’t being a jerk.
This is a nickname, not an identity change in any legal sense. She’s not in any sense pretending not to be the same person. Everyone who knows her knows that “Jennifer” and “Billie” are the same person. Her DUI doesn’t disappear from her record because she’d rather be called her legal name than a childhood nickname.
Nor should anyone forget anything she’s done to hurt them because she changed her name. Or anything good she’s done either for that matter.
Jennifer still has problems. None of them go away with the old nickname. People don’t have to treat her as a completely new person with none of the old baggage and she’s not asking them to. She just doesn’t want to use the old nickname anymore. Accepting that is a pretty low bar and doesn’t require anyone to do anything else.
Those are all correct facts (excepting that bar does require something of me), but where we differ is on how much slack we’re willing to give someone when we don’t know their motivations. Your views and experience leave you predisposed to be more generous than mine, and thats ok. It’s also ok for me not to trust Ms. Billingsworth’s motives and behaviour, and for me to not be ready to accept that this isn’t just a smoke screen.
Also, when she walks along straight up ignoring people saying her name, she is pretending something, and it’s not having patience in letting others adjust to her change. What some of us are saying, is that there are indicators that there’s more going on here than just a name change, and those are often connected with people engaging in deceptive or duplicitous behaviour, and when that *is* the case, none of it should be accepted, even the name change. So we’re cautious and suspicious, because maybe she’s trying to be a better person and maybe she’s being her same old self, and most of her adjacent behaviour resembles the latter, not the former.
I kind of get what you mean. I know one person who was super abusive both on a personal level and on a group level (guy started a freaking cult). Lied like he breaths. He was also a trans man though and came out during the middle of his shit so while most people do use his new name, I know one person who believes he’s very much using it as yet another new id, and they can be super transphobic about it (like ignoring all his new IDs are still male). It’s….not great.
Source: Dr. Ramani Durvasula studies this and is an authority on personality disorders.
Sal is such an awful person. I can’t believe the amount of people here who are invalidating a name change. Names are deeply personal
That’s a little bit of a stretch, isn’t it? I always get a little uncomfortable with how quick people are to outright condemn someone as an awful person over every single individual not-great behavior or action. It feels too absolute, like if you say or do one thing out of line, you’re tainted forever and can’t get out of the “Bad Person” box no matter what, because you’re already in there so why think about you ever again.
Maybe I should have said “Sal is *being* an awful person?” I don’t think awful people are condemned to being awful for forever, but in the moment / in this case she’s being awful imo. She does overall tick me off in a lot of ways so I recognize that I’m definitely biased
Sal’s point is that it’s all still Billie. It’s not even a name change really, Jennifer has been her name all along. She is just trying to distance herself from the awful decisions she made in the past by leaving them with “Billie” and becoming the Proper Lady Jennifer. But that’s all still her and she can crash back into old habits at any moment.
I’ve had a few friends drop nicknames after therapy or because they felt like the nickname was immature… Anyone can go back into old habits, but I don’t see what that has to do with not respecting what Jennifer wants to go by
My point is that… Sal simply doesn’t buy it. She knew Billie since they were kids, she knows what she is like and apparently can see through Jennifer/Billie trying to change herself but she doesn’t buy it.
I don’t think Sal’s a horrible person and I do think there’s good reason to suspect this change isn’t from a healthy place, but I agree this is a dick move.
That’s totally fair for Sal to think that, but considering Jennifer is now in therapy and I’ve had friends who dropped old nicknames post-therapy or simply because they though it was immature, I don’t think that has to be the case, and I think those are valid reasons. Even I had a childhood nickname for a while, and I went back to my full name because I felt it reflected me more as a person. Granted, when I went back to my full name I was still a minor, so it’s different, but imo if a kid can make that choice, an adult should be able to as well
I think they’re valid reasons and that Jennifer’s name choice should be respected but yeah, I definitely understand some folks thinking this isn’t a choice being made for healthy reasons.
Yeah, my take on it that those are separate questions. It’s perfectly valid to question whether any of this is healthy for Jennifer, but that’s not a good reason to not accept her name, nor is challenging her on the name a good approach to helping her see that she’s not being healthy here.
Others seem to be taking the approach that if they don’t approve of the reasons she’s changing her name, they shouldn’t use it. Which is weird to me.
Thirded on this one. I suspect Jennifer’s doing the same stunt she’s pulled before, and I wouldn’t be at all shocked if she ultimately recognizes ‘Jennifer’ was an attempt at distancing herself from all her past mistakes while keeping at least one disastrous thought pattern (the rebranding attempts)… but that doesn’t mean she’ll necessarily ditch her first name again later. Could be she does genuinely prefer it. (Though I do have some questions about going to the longest, most formal, and unambiguously feminine variant of her name from the more androgynous ‘Billie’ while going back to denial about being bisexual. Still, that’s a side thing and there’s plenty of bisexual Jennifers in existence as well. Just, hm.)
And either way, no excuse for Sal to ignore her choice.
I’m willing to bet that Sal would still call Jennifer by her first name when speaking in public, she seems self-aware and polite enough not to cross that line without provocation.
Honestly I can see Sal saying “hey Billie” and getting into an argument over it, or say “hey Jennifer” in a very sarcastic way, but I hope she’s nice about it. The way this is framed it seemed to me like Sal doesn’t want to respect what Jennifer wants to be called
An aside but, I like your username a lot hehe
I was honestly expecting this.
Support middle name equality.
Call her Yunru.
That opens up some fun variations, probably. Like, Asher could call her “Yun-eybun” and get promptly throat-punched for being made of pure cheese.
Now that Amazigirl is no longer a superhero, does that mean she can date Danny again?
Or did that happen at Halloween and that’s what made Walky and Amber awkward. Or more awkward.
As someone who stays up ridiculously late at night, “midnight for me is like the middle of the afternoon for most people” is definitely relatable to me.
I started to take a daily pill at 11pm because I will consistently be awake at that time. My mum wanted me to take it at like 9am when I first got it like, that is not a time I am awake every day so no and my sleep schedule has been pretty consistently nocturnal lately.
I support Billie reinventing herself and think she might actually just be happier as a person who isn’t self-hating as well as surrounded by toxic people. The idea that her friends didn’t support her in this would be an interesting twist as a lot of them wrote her off as a screw up.
Jennifer broke off from the entire established cast and started dating a guy who ordered a murder.
I don’t think the resolution is “damn this totally worked out for the best.”
A lot of people seem to only be truly happy if they’re an ambiguously-dangerous relationship and avoiding people who care about them for dubious reasons.
I remind you her so-called friends have never actually tried to help Billie and RUth was a horribly toxic relationship.
So clearly they’re in the right.
When I think of people who are clearly able to identify harmful relationships and properly enunciate to one or both halves of that relationship where they’ve erred and how they should break up for both their sakes, I think of motherfucking teenagers.
Did Asher know his involvement in everything, or was it Blaine being like “if you don’t pull the fire alarm I’ll send the mafia after you”?
Blaine told Asher he would reveal Asher stole his grandfather’s money to pay for tuition. Thaaaat would most likely result in Asher being dead.
Also none of her friends her off as a screw up. She laser focused her interactions on Ruth but whenever she was around Joyce and Walky they were constantly supportive of her. Where did you even get this reading?
Sometimes you just gotta say, “It’s C.T. Phipps” and shrug.
Wow, I’ve become a meme. 🙂
Mind you, I probably deserve it for my insistent belief Walky and Jason are gonna hook up.
I don’t think Sal is looking for a reason to not refer to Jennifer as her preferred name so much as emphasizing to AG (and the audience) that Jennifer’s rebranding is still demonstrably Billie.
Like if Jennifer said to her “no stop calling me Billie, you have to call me Jennifer” then I think she would, but I don’t think the conversation is about her literal name but what that name change represents.
Yeah, we haven’t actually seen it yet but I feel like Sal would still call her “Jennifer” if speaking to her face. She is calling her “Billie” now to emphasize that she feels that she is using her first name and dropping her nickname as a defense mechanism.
Sal can read Jennifer like an open book. Maybe she’s right, dunno. Sure she’s not happy about that couple… Nice to see Amazi girl and Sal being such good friends.
UH SIR
SAL ISN’T OLD ENOUGH TO DRINK LEGALLY BUT SHE REMEMBERS THE KINKO’S BRAND NAME WHICH WAS PHASED OUT OVER A DECADE AGO WHEN SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
BOY I SURE HOPE SOMEONE GETS FIRED FOR THAT BLUNDER
You’re supposed to yell “Damn You Willis!” at the end. I think. Maybe DyW can confirm or deny? Or the chorus?
cough alt-text cough
Tis better to be thought a fool, than to speak and remove my foot from my mouth.
Maybe she learned about the change from a webcomic.
Come on Sal, it’s just that you don’t approve of her new brand. Which, even if it may be a poorly thought out effort to redesign her personality for marketability that’s unlikely to last two weeks, is not something you get to control.
wonder if people would risk recognise her with he leave the mask painting on. She seems to be using the glossy her on Amber now
Are you having a stroke, or is speech-to-text failing you?
I don’t think anyone would put two and two together. She’s not wearing the rest of the costume, and her hair’s different enough now. (It almost looks like early-Shortpacked!-Amber’s in this strip.) Domino masks are a common enough trope too.
I think if anyone called her on it, she could get away with lying that she saw a picture of Amazi-Girl and copied the mask design because she thought it looked cool.
I do think Sal should use Jennifer rather than Billie.
But I think this is a private coversation with a friend where she’s voicing some concerns, frustrations and difficulties she’s having with this new situation. AG is listening to her and giving her friend her take on it. Basically roll with the name change even if you think its just a cynical paint job. Hopefully this will help her at least use the current name
Sometimes we need to hear a friend go point but still doesnt make it right to do what your doing.
And this is why I really like that someone came up with “Billifer”. It allows us to call her both ways at once.
Mm-hmm.. Same reason I’m also using Ms. Billingsworth during this time. I am filled with trepidation over this.
There’s also “JenBill”.
Now we’re getting into Williamifer territory. Welcome. Have a glass of Mtn Dew. (and I don’t mean no paper cup, we have glasses chillin in the freezer.) Galasso’s minions are prepping bbq.
That’s exactly how my parents refer to my trans aunt behind her back.
I mean yeah, sure, Sal’s probably right in that Jennifer is just going by Jennifer to rebrand, and that is different from a trans person or a system.
On the other hand, you still gotta respect that when someone tells you they want to go by a different name. Cuz if you don’t respect the Billie to Jennifers, it sorta implies you don’t respect the trans people in your life, yknow?
Suck it up and use Jennifer. She’ll either go back to Billie, or she’ll continue her crusade to erase her previous self and you probably won’t see much of her anyway.
I remember the change from “Mountain Dew” to “Mtn Dew”. This seems about like that. It’s essentially the same, as far as anyone can tell, but now the container has extra curves and the logo pisses me off.
are you saying Jennifer has extra curves?
If she does, I haven’t noticed. She’s always been pretty curvy (thanks, Willis), so I’m not sure she needs a buff to that stat.
PepsiCo should bring back the 70s/80s logos, like they did for the first round of Throwback sodas. The old “Mountain Dew” logo from that era is better than the hillbilly design and the “RRRGH SO HARDCORE GAMING ENERGY FUEL” stuff they’ve been leaning into.
Even Burger King is rolling back the clock to an old logo. 80s/90s nostalgia is still in! Strike while the iron’s hot!
Yes!!! Yes!!! Nostalgia!!!
Fight the oversimplification of logos!!! FIGHT IT!!!
I’m a big Sal fan, but rebranding might not be the worst thing for this particular FedEx/Kinko’s. Having a first name is not a radical statement, and if anyone should know that, it’s a twin.
Is the rebranded “Jennifer” we’ve seen so far that different from the Billie we met a decade ago when this comic started? Back then she was concerned about labels, telling Walky that he isn’t good enough to run in her social circle, and using denial as her way of coping with anything discomforting or self-destructive.
She’s currently switched to new labels, she’s telling Walky he isn’t her friend, and she’s using denial to cope with her discomfort about her own sexuality, if nothing else. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I think people need to realize there is a middle ground to the rename business: Yes you should respect what someone wants to be called or how they want to present themselves in any manner, but if you think someone’s drastic changes is because of unhealthy reasons, you may challenge it.
For example: you should not comment of someone’s weight, but if a friend suddenly gains/loses 50 pounds in 2 weeks maybe bring that up.
Sal’s known Jennifer since they were little kids, she was there to witness Jennifer’s attempted personality reboots. Even if she wasn’t around to witness “alpha bongo head cheerleader Billie”, Walky may have told her about it as it happened.
Know someone long enough, and you get a feel for their behavioral patterns.
Walky definitely didn’t tell Sal about it in real time – he didn’t speak to Sal from her being sent away to when they met up at university. He may have told her about it since then though.
This strip feels like it was written during The Great Envelope Drought of Book 9’s Kickstarter.
Honest question from someone with a purely cis experience: why does Sal say “PROBABLY Carla”? She already knows that Carla is trans. Do not all trans people experience gender dysphoria? Is this about a different topic I’m not understanding? Wikipedia is not helping me on this one…
Also, interesting that Sal acknowledges Carla but doesn’t realize Malaya’s got some similar stuff going on as well, even if on a smaller scale.
Not all trans people experience dysphoria! Some do experience gender euphoria when they start presenting as themselves, though. The best example I can give is that I’m nonbinary, and (though this isnt a universal nonbinary experience, mind:) I don’t really want to change or alter any part of my body, nor does me having specific secondary sexual characteristics cause me any distress. However, it makes me incredibly happy when people acknowledge me being nonbinary, not lump me in with my assigned sex at bird, and use the correct pronouns for me.
Sal may be implying Carla is like me, doesn’t experience body dysphoria but does experience gender euphoria at being seen as the woman she is. Or Sal just means she doesn’t know Carla’s specific situation in regards to her feelings on her gender. I’m not sure, the panel is pretty ambiguously worded?
* assigned sex at birth, not bird. would be pretty cool if i was a bird, but alas.
I hereby assign you the yellow-breast warbler.
thank you, it’s very cute, i appreciate that
I actually think it has more to do with the fact that Sal doesn’t know if Carla ever had another name to leave behind. I mean, probably, but she doesn’t know if she did or what it was, and likely isn’t going to ask, so it’s just an assumption.
I just want to add to what Smooti wrote; maybe as a genderqueer person I’m biased, but I’m not sure I would call a non-binary identity discovery a “smaller scale” than a binary one! I get the impression Malaya does not experience gender euphoria unlike Carla seems to, and Carla seems like the kind of person that was happy with her body both pre- and post- physical transition. She has described relating to Ultra-car’s ability to “change forms,” but that doesn’t mean she was dysphoric or unhappy with her body before. Although, we haven’t seen much of this topic wrt to Malaya, so their experience could even be a “bigger scale” one than Carla (if “scale” = how much dysphoria affects them). They could totally be either euphoric or dysphoric or neither, I’m not sure
Not all trans people have gender dysphoria. You can feel comfortable with your body even if you feel it doesn’t accurately represent your true gender. In particular if you have a good support base and people in your life that are willing to respect your gender preference, regardless of your body type.
Carla seems pretty heavily invested in her own greatness. It’s hard to imagine her having body issues or insecurities, although she may have been quite different when she was younger.
Except if Carla’s investment with her own greatness is mostly performative cover, like her being an asshole is. In which, body issues or insecurities are quite likely part of what’s being covered.
While trans people don’t necessarily feel dysphoria as others say, it seems weird to bring it up here and dismiss it with “probably” at the same time. For Carla the name change is tied to her being trans, not to her having dysphoria. For Amber/Amazi-Girl, I don’t think dysphoria is really the right term and I don’t think Sal means to say she’s got dysphoria anyway.
So why mention dysphoria at all?
Not using the new name can trigger dysphoria though is what Sal means. Deadnaming Carla purposefully *could* cause gender dysphoria and would be harmful af and pretty cruel.
Calling AG by the name Amber purposefully could cause dysphoria, though not in a gender-related sense, it could still cause strong unease within themselves, especially as dissociation can make it hard for them to always feel real or grounded and invalidation would make this worse.
She’s saying that Jennifer is not like them where it will have a large mental toll and it is for the absolute best to go with it, but she thinks Jennifer has just thrown out ‘Billie’ as the old sign and plastered on a new Jennifer one, but fundamentally there is no difference and she’s pretending it has made everything better and that the past is gone, no longer important, never to be acknowledged again. That calling her ‘Jennifer’ or ‘Billie’ would make no real difference other that her getting annoyed at worst. Which probably isn’t wrong. But it is still distasteful to not use it, even if she is right that the contents haven’t actually changed all that much.
Basically Sal is perfectly okay with being an asshole to Jennifer, because being an asshole to Jennifer in this instance doesn’t make her a bigot. Sal’s not being an asshole to a whole group of oppressed people, she’s just being an asshole to a single person.
There’s a surprising number of people who think it’s okay to be an asshole to individual people, as long as you’re not a bigot.
I think Sal doesn’t think Jennifer will be seriously hurt or distressed or have her mental state fucked with by using ‘Billie’ instead of Jennifer, as Carla or AG would. She should still use Jennifer, but I think that’s the long and short of it.
And in some cases, it is okay. Especially when they’ve been assholes to you. Or are being so in general.
That’s one reason we need insults that don’t have connotations that spill over onto groups. That aren’t racial or gendered or ablist, etc.
Sal seems like the type to go out of her way only if it will help someone avoid anxiety or other mental issues. She wouldn’t modify her behavior because someone prefers one name over the other.
I think Sal has circumstances where she considers name changes inviolate – dysphoria being one of them, as with Carla being trans. AG’s dissociation is another one.
I started going by a different name when I was recovering from depression. It helped me feel like I was getting a fresh start and getting away from some of the baggage that contributed to the depression. I know it looks like she magically got better because of the time skip but Jennifer probably had her own struggles. In my book she’s entitled to rebrand if that helps her.
My only hope for this “rebranding” is that Jennifer/Billy (whatever) does not merely revive the past. There is one thing worse than a broken wheel, and that’s reinventing a broken wheel.
I feel you. I worry she’s regressing to her high school self.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
Do you think her apparent lack of alcoholism after the time skip will at all slow her regression?
Sal, even if it’s not dysphoria related, It’s still a dick move to explicitly refuse to call somebody by the name they want to go by.
YKNOW WHAT HEY NO. Sal brought up Billie and ASHER because asher is a loaded item in Ag and amber and Sal’s shared past. Sal’s got Some kind of feeling about him showing up in her life again and is seeking to engage with Ag on it.
And that reach is stymied by ‘I think your childhood friends must recent reskin comes with a new tm.
I’d be extra rankled by that too. Duck off about fucking’ Jennifer ‘the mob guy who ducked us over is coming to our derbies why. Why is he EXISTING NEAR ME AGAIN.
if sal knew asher and Billie back then, did billie and asher know each other? I mean both have wealthy powerful parents (or grandparents?)
this comic needs more superheroes. I want amazi girl to come back better than ever!
*None of that is your problem, Sal.*
Now ask yourself…What is this really about, and should you really be looking back?
She ain’t have to do Jennifer like that hahaha