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NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! 🤯
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
Patrick Willems @patrickhwillems.bsky.social ⋅ 1m
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️𝓝𝓪𝓷𝓲 
So, Booster = homing missiles with hair trigger, Jennifer = Stormtrooper
At least Jennifer would appreciate being a Star Wars reference.
But would pretend to not know what a storm trooper is. Otherwise she might accidentally name drop Kit Fisto.
Do you think she was a “ship a Jedi with a Clone Trooper” person or was she writing Jedi/Jedi stuff.
Kit Fisto self insert. Just not sure if the self insert was a Jedi, a clone trooper, or a civilian.
I had assumed self-insert, there’s not really any obvious characters to ship him with in-canon unless you want to do enemies to lovers with the evil Sharkman. I kind of feel like she’d have gone for a Jedi? I don’t think she’d have been the biggest fan of the Clones honestly.
Fisto x Aayla is a ship I’ve seen a lot. I’m not against it
I think it was a thing in Legends?
There absolutely is an obvious character to ship him with, and it is Aayla Secura. They were as close to a thing as it was possible for Jedi to be in old canon.
Ok this is something that has been bothering me for a long time. The jedi aren’t allowed romantic entanglement and yet two of the most handsome Jedi (one of which keeps finding excuses to take his shirt off) are named Kit Fisto and Mace Windu. Come on!
I mean is there a Dysa Loan or Ace Nonpoon to balance them out or were all those jedi kicked out when Mace and Fisto framed them when they got caught sneaking girls into the temple.
My understanding was that Jedi are allowed to fuck but not to get attached.
But even if it’s not allowed, it probably still gets broken. Institutionally enforced Vows of Celibacy get broken, all the time.
According to George Lucas, Jedi are not required to be celibate, no. The problem is attachment (which, because most of us aren’t Methodist-Buddhists like he is in the States, he defines not as ‘liking this person and/or thing’ but ‘being so unwilling to let this person and/or thing go that we’re willing to massacre CHILDREN to keep them from dying and/or because we’re angry they died’).
Which, ah, *glances at Anakin ‘two genocides under his belt before he’s even 25’ Skywalker* ….yeah.
So, they are required to be celibate ( = unmarried) – but not chaste.
According to google Celibacy is refraining from marriage AND sexual relations. Meanwhile Chastity allows for sexual relations within marriage. Neither seem applicable if marriage is off the table but sex isn’t.
He did a pretty bad job of portraying that in the sequels.
Or maybe the Jedi were just real bad at teaching Anakin how to regulate his Emotions.
He never did a great job of showing it in the movies, but there were many examples in canon and legends of Jedi that viewed that teaching to wildly different degrees. Ki Adi Mundi for example had wives and children and had 0 emotional attachment to any of them and expected that of others. Others like Plo Koon and Qui Gon felt that caring for others was extremely important but to not forget the duty of a jedi.
But that was the whole point with Anakin. The Jedi Council initially said he was too old to begin training, and too emotional. And then Qui-Gon basically said, screw you, I’m training him anyway. And then he proved to be too emotional to be a Jedi and turned to the darkside, thus proving the initial assessment.
So, what I’m hearing is that Ki Adi Mundi is a parent fit for Dumbing of Age. Wait, is Ki Adi Mundi Señor Billingsworth? Is that why Jennifer is into Star Wars?
Nah, Ki-Adi Mundi cared very much about his wives and children and was heartbroken when he died. He just didn’t go out and commit genocide because he was angry about it. The latter is attachment in Star Wars terms. It’s not a synonym for love, like, care about, etc.
That was the problem with Anakin. He wasn’t willing to let anybody go. He felt he should be able to have it all. And when he lost one of “his” people, he massacred an entire village down to the last child. And when he was afraid he’d lose someone else, he….committed another genocide. He knew better (“I’m not the Jedi I should be”) but he wanted it all.
I have only read this second-hand, but I thought Kit Fisto had a thing with Aayla Secura.
He did in the Legends continuity, before Disney bought it. They decided to end it because they felt their service to the Jedi Order was more important to them than having a romantic relationship.
Unlike Jennifer i never knew what Wookieepedia was before reading it here.
My secret shame? I am very low on the distribution curve of proper nerd knowledge for a Willis reader.
I wonder if Jennifer plays SWTOR. Or if Billie played it.
With the sliding timeline, the game came out when they were under 10 years old.
And as the years pass, knowing who kit fisto is becomes nerdier and nerdier because the last time he was relevant to a casual Star Wars fan was in…
2014. 9 years ago.
No, because video games are for nerds and she’s not a nerd.
/s
Not in public; only nerds understand nerd things.
I like to think that storm troopers are so inaccurate because the force is messing with them to shield the heroes. Also apparently according to Captain Rex Storm Trooper helmets provide truly terrible vision.
In a New Hope at least the Imperial forces have orders to bring their targets in alive, and the only fights we see where they’re cleared to go for the kill are massacres. They perform pretty decently in ESB from what I remember too. It’s really only ROTJ that’s an utter embarrassment for them
In actuality, even in RotJ they weren’t as bad as the reputation. The Storm Trooper accuracy trope is hot garbage- based on shots fired vs shots hit on-screen, the storm troopers were crack shots compared to normal real-life soldiers.
If you’ve played the old star wars FPS games with Kyle Katarn on them, the stormtrooper rifle has the worst shoot spread I’ve seen in any game. It is a fucking cone of fire, not a single shot goes where you want.
Mando season 1 shows their sidearms as being pretty hot garbage too.
Real-life soldiers were only expected to hit a man-sized target one in 20 shots. Because suppressive fire in the general direction of the enemy to keep them from being able to take aim at you is a thing.
The booster knows where they are at all times. They knows this because they know where they aren’t. By subtracting where they are from where they aren’t, or where they aren’t from where they are (whichever’s greater) they obtain a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive Booster from positions where they are to where they aren’t. And arriving to a position where they aren’t where they now are.
Consequently, the position where they are is now the position where they weren’t. And it follows that the position where they were, is now the position they aren’t.
To quote another military source, a training manual: “If we don’t know what we’re doing, the enemy sure the Hell won’t.
Thank you for clearing that up.
Ruth, that was a better take down than during orientation!
That’s what I was thinking. Good to see them flirting again.
Zing.
Oh, I am Leslie now, interesting. Haven’t decided if I’ll try and get another gravatar or not.
Why not?
They were always pretty thin on the ground for her but man, Jennifer just can’t get a win these days, huh.
Helping Joyce left her with an imbalance; she has to take a few Ls before she’s back to equilibrium.
Felt like a sweet compliment for a couple seconds there, huh Jennifer?
She doesn’t get to have nice things. That’s why her romantic partners have included an abusive RA and a mobster.
And Alice.
Though I get the feeling Alice put more weight into it than Billie did, at the time certainly. I kinda wish sometimes Alice would pop up again.
I can’t think of a single time when Jennifer’s had an intuitive understanding of another person. Hell, I don’t think she has an intuitive understanding of the person she is, presumably, having intimate relations with.
She couldn’t figure out Amber was Amazi-Girl after she was told this information straight up.
I’m not sure Jennifer has an intuitive understanding of Jennifer.
Jennifer is probably the person Jennifer has the least intuitive understanding of.
There’s a very real chance they’ve never even met.
She certainly has a very strong intuitive understanding of who she wants that person to be. So strong it seems like she doesn’t want to bother looking at the signs that might confirm or contradict that intuition.
Conviction isn’t the same as understanding.
Well in Jennifer’s defense knowing yourself is frequently the most difficult thing. Unless you take the time to really assess things properly you are perpetually hidden in your own blind spot.
A relevant strip: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/02-this-is-the-way-that-we-love/sitch/
What are you talking about?
Jennifer knew Sal was Amazi-girl right away.
And she helped Walky get with Dorothy.
She was spot on with how well Ruth and Daisy are hitting it off.
And she’s been guiding Raidah to be more assertive and to start focusing on social networking.
Jennifer can only navigate those social situations so easily due to her instinctive understanding of human nature and her Sherlockian (if that’s not a word, it is now) powers of reading people.
I’ve heard “Holmsian” and “Sherlock Holmsian” so “Sherlockian” must be the final contraction. It could not be more cromulent.
She did solid B+ work in Don’t Stop Billie-ving. https://www.dumbingofage.com/justthat/
6 months of knowing these people and she only got a B+.
She aced that strip. Bungled it a little later in the day.
I think she has a completely average level of social awareness, but because she’s generally surrounded by – well, the rest of the cast, she has misinterpreted this as her being some kind of social savant.
If you’ve lived your entire life on a flat plain, a good-sized hill is a mountain.
*Malaya walks down the hallway, stops in her tracks, backs up, and leans back into the door*
“FAKEY!”
I’m frankly disappointed we haven’t had a good Malaya/Ms. Billingsworth confrontation.
The one time I can think of her having an understanding is when she called out Dorothy for acting like Joyce’s mom but other than that yeah, not very “intuitive”
maybe she’s also just stuck in the past and thought of more times where she’s ‘helped’ others in high school and such even tho within her own ‘cheerleader’ clique i don’t think anyone’s problems would be that ‘deep/in need of understanding’ other than the ‘sneak into the abortion center’ exacple
After how much of an asshole Jennifer has been, this is a very satisfying burn to see.
Ruth, put the gun down.
Well, see, she heard that Billie’s Got a Gun, and she doesn’t know if Jennifer held onto it, so Ruth needs one just in case.
You never know when you need to Kill Bill. (Does that make sense I have never seen that movie?)
The Kill Bill movies are great (there’s 2).
I’d recommend you watch them.
Oh, and in that instance, they definitely knew when they needed to kill Bill.
Well, mostly knew when.
I thought it was Janie who had the gun.
You’re both wrong, it was Elmo.
Someone gave Elon Musk a gun?
[Unfunny joke about that concept], so Id probably remember if it was him. Pretty sure the little red fucker on all the lip gloss was the culprit.
Elon printed his own gun, but its in an electric car currently somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars.
Of course he would. Dude thinks he’s Jimmy Neutron.
Only if she’s the Homecoming Queen.
That must have been before she went to an art school in France.
Jen’s just an open book today
Only today?
I see Ruth is channeling the comments section today.
…I will never not ship these two.
Is it toxic as hell? Yes.
Are the characters interlinked in a way where I’m never going to see them as truly separate from each other? Also yes.
Can’t say I understand why, they’re toxic as hell together.
Yes, and it’s really entertaining.
Well, back when dinosaurs used 56K modems to roam the earth and people weren’t getting as many death threats for what fictional characters they liked to read/write about having fictional relationships together shipping two characters had nothing to do with how healthy their relationship was or if it would ever be cannon. It just meant you thought their relationship was interesting enough to drive a story.
And that includes relationships that are interesting in the same way as a train wreck you can’t turn away from. And since they’re fictional and no one’s getting hurt by them being in a relationship there’s nothing wrong with that. Ruth and Jennifer could be a whole godsdamned soap opera on their own.
Huh. Not sure I’ve ever seen ‘I ship it’ used to mean ‘They’d be terrible together, and that’d make good art.’ Maybe I’m just too nice with my blorbos.
I think in a weird way that’s why some people liked it. They stuck together even though the relationship was on some level killing them. They had the tragic beauty of star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet or Bonnie and Clyde. Its not sane or healthy or should be emulated, but it pulls at a certain aspect of the human soul.
I think we are drawn to the idea best phrased by Alain Badiou “Love is above all a construct that lasts. Real love triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space, and the world.”
Also, yes their endless petty jiving is just an entertaining.
So you do understand why.
Curse you for beating me to this response!
Bloody brilliant! 🤌
I’ll die on that hill. Billie/Ruth. Walky/Amber. uh…
Naw I think those are the only ships I ship that aren’t currently happening or progressing.
Danny/Ethan?
I’ll be honest. I just sorta… Never liked Ethan all that much. Like since Shortpacked!
Yeah, Ethan gets a lot less compelling when his geek rants/takedowns are all offscreen. Ethan’s personality was showcased by how he reacted to difficult customers, and when that’s not shown, the “transformers geek” part is just a side note. We see way more of Amber’s geekiness than Ethan’s, so he pretty much came off as “the gay guy who’s pretending to be straight”; at least until he started boinking other guys (but only in the background), whereupon he became the “somewhat sexually promiscuous gay guy”. And now he’s the “emo guy”, so…
Ethan was basically made to he the everyman main character in Shortpacked which makes him feel kinda bland when he’s not the perspective character. He’s just sorta…around.
I would happily trade Ethan for Mike.
I don’t think Ethan ever recovered from Mike’s death, was there something going on with those 2 in the background when we weren’t paying attention to them?
Meh, I’m glad he’s gone.
I’m sure Ruth is about to turn this conversation into some kind of bad decision soon but in the meantime I’m just going to sit here and appreciate how goddamn accurate her assessment is on both counts.
Agree, She does have a little social wisdom but no more than average and with how off her reads on people can be she often cant use it effectively unless it’s a specific situation.
… Is… that what Jennifer thinks she’s good at? For real? Genuine?
My god she’s more lost than I thought. And I thought she was pretty far up shit creek
she’s just got great intuition, you see
Jennifer does not have much self-awareness.
Well, as Yotomoe pointed out, they never met.
Some people are amazingly good at wishful thinking, and Jennifer’s one of them.
Head cheerleader, problem solver.
What’s somehow even more ridiculous is who she’s comparing herself to. Booster isn’t even a friend of a friend to her at this point. Even if she was intuitive did she think she was unrivaled on the whole campus?
You’ve never met a narcissist have you?
Yup.
In the past twenty-four hours, her responses to being incapable of dealing with objective reality have been:
a) Assault someone.
b) Give her boyfriend an ultimatum to start doing something unhealthy.
c) Say out loud that only she is able to do something.
She’s suffering a mental breakdown and she doesn’t even know it.
Well Jennifer has been slow to figure out Amazi-Girl’s identity.
It’s definitely Carla. It’s SO obvious now. She’s the only one with the technology and funds to develop the Amazi-rangs and the Amazimobile.
Ruth has the social wisdom, but chooses to not use it.
Eh, I’d say that it’s generally more somewhere between ‘lacks the spoons to use it’ and ‘chooses to use it, but for evil’.
Never thought I’d meet an open Dave. How’d replacing the island go?
No Jennifer, making erroneous assumptions about other people that are off by a mile is currently your thing.
And by currently you mean, since the start of the comic, right?
Definitely.
I may not think they should keep dating but I would like for them to fuck. And then date again.
Honestly I’d prefer that to the current situation because Ruth grounds her more. If anything it felt like their whole story so far is Ruth slowly learning to be a human being again and Jennifer just becoming ever worse.
I mean I didnt even like Asher, now I kind feel bad for him, for fucks sake
Holy smokes, no, I want Jennifer as far away from Ruth as possible for her wellbeing because I genuinely think that Ruth would eventually kill her.
Booster has a way cutting through layers of bullshit to get to the point that may come off as being socially incompetent.
But honestly most of the conversations he’s had with other have seemingly actually helped them or at least made them actually address an issue they were avoiding.
they
and from what i can tell they might’ve blurted out some stuff but not actively malicious/hostile. or trying to help as a ‘psych’ major. but after a while of observing ppl, esp as a teen you don’t rly care about filtering yourself. esp in a college situation where you can be more ‘sassy’ towards a classmate/on campus without another adult necessarily scolding you.
Honest question. Did we really need more of Jennifer and Ruth interacting. Ever?
It’s the same petty sniping every time and in repetition it gains nothing for the story except to pad out the strip count.
Need? It’s hard to say as I don’t know where the author wants to take this story. However, I think the two sniping at each other is pretty funny, but I can see how it would quickly get exhausting if they don’t tickle your funny bone (everybody has different tastes I guess).
Well, it went nowhere the last couple times, and generally if we’re spending time on a scene it should be either meaningful or funny or else it should be omitted. Similar to how we don’t spend time observing characters eat breakfast each day because it just doesn’t matter to the story being told.
Funny is subjective, as you say, and certainly I’m not that into this style of humor and can’t fault it not being to my taste.
But on meaningfulness, scenes of these two have consistently failed to have any actual payoff. Just shouting match, a storm off, and reset after a scene transition. It may as well be narrative background noise.
You mean like Amber and Sal both getting invited to Joyce’s party had no payoff?
Appreciating this story to the fullest extent requires the ability to time-bind.
This plot thread is about Jennifer digging her heels in (or digging herself a hole). I’m sure it’s going to tie into the greater story arc, or at least Leslie’s lesson for the day.
Indeed, post-breakup scenes between these two have failed to have any payoff…
Yet.
Time will tell how this ends up playing out, but in the mean time I’m content to be amused by them.
I feel like Willis has earned some patience. If you disagree, then fine, but he has certainly demonstrated that he writes a good story.
Right now, the question is really where Ruth is going and why she’s in this class. We know Jennifer’s deal: she aggressively asserts that things should go her way and then can’t handle it when they don’t. The fact that they’re both in this class is an example. So what’s Ruth’s deal? Why did Willis put her in this class?
I think the answer is that it’s going to make her move on from Jennifer. But we’ll see.
well unless they change seats, given that they’re taking the same class, unless something changes they’re probably not going to stop interacting anytime soon without them focusing on their other existing relationships tho they do have an overlap of friends/acquaintances
I mean. I do.
I’ve gotta be honest. If you’re tired of the two of them together, I think this strip may just not be for you.
Nah there’s probably nowhere else this interaction could go that would be fun and interesting.
But a lot of life is neither fun nor interesting so there is that
As long as Ruth keeps dumping on Jennifer. She deserves it.
Eh, it’s a slice of life comic. Not everything needs to have a pay-off, some interactions can just be interactions.
Alt text was a hoot today
Was it a slow hoot or a fast hoot?
Newwwwwwww FACE TIME!
what the hey, i thought the old one was just cached and not catching up, why is it still joyce?
i mean, it’s a good joyce face but still
That was a slick maneuver on Ruth’s part; let her think it is a compliment for a few seconds then tear it down and end with a sick burn.
She was too much of an outcast to be a bully in highschool so she’s making up for lost time I guess.
La la la, today is a great day, another giant frown for my Jennifer Giant Frown collection!
I have enough Jennifer magnets, but I’d get another if it had a Giant Frown. You taking notes, Willis? The more Lucy-Van-Pelt, the better!
That’s who she’s reminding me of! Thank you.
Since the start. And Walky is her Snoopy.
oh my god
it never clicked until you said it, that’s exactly it
mwahaha my followers grow
My favorite part about this is Ruth demonstrating she’s capable of kindness and thoughtfulness RIGHT before pro ice doing an Ides of March on Billiefer’s ego. Also the huge angry-cat frown it produces.
It seldom ends well for them, but I love these two’s interactions.
Jennifer would copyright personalities if she could
Booster could read what people are.
Jennifer could read what’s wrong with people. Just not her own.
Aaayyy, gottem!
Have I ever mentioned why Ruth is my favorite? This is why.
For a few seconds Jennie even forgot she was supposed to be at odds with Ruth
*Ruthless*
ABSOLUTELY Ruthless!
Jennifer probably COULD have a good understanding of people and read them well if she shed the high school preconceptions about being at the top of the food chain or that there is a food chain through which everything must be interpreted.
Two grade-A grimaced in one week!
Ruth needs to resist the urge to be a jerk constantly
Ruth needs to resist the urge to be a jerk sometimes.
I’m not sure whether “your ex is mad at someone for being good at a thing she thinks, without a whole lot of justification, is her thing” is one of those times. It might be, I dunno.
…Ruth needs to not be a jerk *all the time*
Also Jennifer was making a joke out of her own frustration, like, she’s one of the funniest characters in the cast and I wish people would appreciate her jokes more.
The “boyfriend trouble?” line was a little flippant, but “your intuitive understanding of people is frequently wrong, you didn’t even correctly figure Booster out before getting mad at them, and also you yourself are super easy to read when you try not to be” is probably some of several things Jennifer needs to hear if she’s going to snap out of this phase of shutting out people who know and care about her in favor of forcing herself to fit in with the Raidah’s little clique of users.
Jennifer deserves it.
Daaaaang. Could just has well supplex her into a sofa again
How long until Billie’s/Jennifer’s world comes crashing down around her? Because at the moment, I see no one who will help her pick up the pieces.
Could be soon if her current insecurities get the better of her and she goes back to self-sabatoge mode. She’s freaking out right now over being outshined by an aquintance of a friend nowhere near her current social group.
Ruth spitting facts lmaoooooo
When can I get a new gravatar I don’t feel well represented by this guy
Change the way your email address is capitalized, or click the “Get a Gravatar” link to set a custom one.
https://walkypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Grav_Roulette
You won’t get stuck back in the moderation queue, because that filter isn’t case sensitive. (Only the Gravatar algorithm is.)
Don’t make a bunch of test posts to see who you get though, that’s kind of obnoxious. Just change it every time you post until you get a character you like.
Or disguise your wheel sins as helpful advice or flippant jokes. that works, too.
Huh. There must be a Charlie gravatar now, suddenly I’ve got Jason.
Time to play roulette again until it lands back on Daisy or Ruth…
Yes there’s a Charlie gravatar now. If you right-click and open a default Gravatar in a new window, then change “av[character].png” to “avcharlie.png” at the end of the URL, you’ll see it.
Score one for Ruth.
Aw, Booster exited the scene (I seriously love them), and we didn’t get to know more about Charlie. I’m so intrigued!
Ruth and Jennifer snark, tho. Still beautiful and toxic, and beutifully toxic. Last (?) time they’d seen each other was with Jennifer doing a violence, right?
slow burn to sick burn
Welp, time to gravatar hunt once again.
Fuck yeah, got Sal without any struggle.
I fucking hate college students.
Ruth wins. Flawless Victory.
fitting my icon changes from “Billie” to Ruth on this page hahaha
Woo, sick burn.
Alright, time to find a new gravatar
Nope.
Nah
Definitely not.
Eh, I’d have preferred something a bit weirder like my old Blowjob Cat, but I can live with Walky.
Ruth: still verbally abusive after they broke up!
It’s not funny. I find it disturbing.
insert “apply water to burned area” meme here