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Oh man, I so called it yesterday.
Compliments to Willis for yesterday’s comic – I knew from Billie’s face that, when she looked at Chester, she was looking at someone she knew committed sexual assault. I know that face.
Ah, is that what the “drive Alice across state lines” was referring to? I suspected that might be what it meant, but I wasn’t sure since I’m not from the US.
She had to take Alice to the nearest abortion clinic, which presumably was in anther state. Even in states where it’s still legal, a lot of effort has been put in by anti-abortion politicians and activists to close clinics.
Even back when the medical procedures were legal in all US states, states had varying requirements for parental consent or informing them. Alice may not have wanted her parents to know. Going across state lines: abortion procedures are now illegal in Indiana, but still legal in neighboring states Illinois and Michigan.
Different states have different laws concerning abortions, so at times, it becomes necessary to drive to a different state to get a necessary medical procedure that can, at times, take several days, requiring expensive hotel stays.
Also, this comic right here is why I still have a Billie gravitar. While I’ve never been much of a drinker, the rest of this *waves at comic* is all too familiar. I’ve lived this – except without the satisfying punch.
Yep, jumping straight to murder is totally you being the good person here, taking the high ground and all. No trials, no concerns about justice or rehabilitation or debts to society being paid. Judge, jury, and executioner in one godlike person is really the efficient system, after all.
How do you want to kill him? Clearly you’ve thought it out.
I recommend for you own good that you dispense with any notion that Due Process in the United States is some gold standard for morality itself or some machine which will eventually give everyone what they deserve as a matter of course.
History proves this to be nothing more than wishful thinking.
“the ends justifies the means” is certainly a shitty moral philosophy,
but at the same time, we shouldn’t overcorrect to the point to which thinking about the ends at *all* becomes treated as inherently immoral in practice, as is unfortunately the case today with government officials who claim to represent the interests of women and vulnerable minorities
given the situation of rapists seldom seeing actual jail time in a red state like Indiana, as ugly as vigilante justice is, it is often unfortunately the most realistic way of preventing them from doing further harm
cuz lets face it — if the goal is to see the most ethical outcome, and all your most realistic options for doing so are terrible, the most moral thing to do is pick whichever will mitigate the damage
Someone saying “death’s too good for him” in the comment section, about a character in a comic, is not worth excoriating that someone. If Ana had said that about a real person, I’d get where you were coming from. But we don’t need to go so far as to police each other’s expression of hate toward fictional characters in some attempt to make a moral point of our own.
This isn’t ‘The Punisher’ or ‘Invincible.’ Human life kind of matters in this slice-of-life comic and the characters you love have already been traumatized by death of even bad people. Use that brain, friend. Hating a comic character to the point that you want to kill him after 3 strips isn’t healthy.
Yes. I want to see this now.
Even if she was drunk, likely drinking was a reaction to this moment, and/or upcoming fallout with Alice, clearly – but how intentional it was to go that route is VERY painfully interesting.
I love that she stuck with that advice despite everything.
Jennifer’s best moment in college might honestly still be the times she comes through in trying to look after her “squad”.
But I can see why Alice ended their friendship / relationship after that. Even before the car crash.
Not great to announce your friend’s unlawful (in Indiana) abortion to the whole graduating class, on microphone, without said friend’s advance permission. Nor their r***.
I wouldn’t be cool with that AT ALL, if I were Alice.
We see Alice distraught over a passed-out Billie in the flashback — maybe Alice told Billie off and that’s why Billie got so drunk?
That’s not a passed out Billie, that is a car crashed Billie. Alice was in the car with her.
I definitely think it’s likely that Creatrix is right and Billie was roofied by this asshole or his friends and wasn’t drunk at all, she just leaned into the drunk thing for some reason we’ll probably find out.
I think what I think, we’ll find out as the story goes on, but it would make a lot of depressing sense and I like the idea. Also not sure why Billie would leave immediately, but again I guess we’ll find out!
When we heard of Billie describe herself as “Head Cheerleader, Problem Solver,” I think that’s what she used to be. This Billie drinks, sure, but she looks out for people. She’s not yet descended into alcoholism. This isn’t self-destructive; it’s self-affirming.
I also agree there’s a high chance of the crash happened because of revenge. There’s a zero percent chance that Chester and the people who voted him Prom King are going to be, “Oh, snap, she called out my SA, I guess she got me good!”
Roofie is possible. Drunk, but not planning on driving until she suddenly realizes she has to get *away* is possible. Buzzed, but trying to flee persuers is possible.
The fact that Alice is in the car with Billie, and not with Chester, alone says volumes.
Also. With this context, the entire Billie – Alice conversation in fall semester hits WAY differently. Alice’s weird reaction, then sudden angry reaction. How she didn’t talk to Billie at all all summer. Either she was being fed some BS, or chose to believe a version of the truth that had Billie as the villain, because she couldn’t accept Chester as the villain.
I don’t see this as that different. There are definite indications she was already a self-destructive alcoholic and even in first semester she’s still got the looking out for her people thing going on.
I think she’s got more self-loathing and awareness now and that’s probably linked to DUI
Considering that she just ended the strip with “cover your drinks” I’d be very surprised that she was roofied, revenge or otherwise.
UNLESS she was roofied by someone she trusted.
Since Alice was eventually okay with it, so Chester the Molester claims, and she may in fact be very upset that her sexual assault and abortion was outed to the entire school, if she convinced herself (or was convinced by someone else) to roofie Jennifer, I would find it more believable (and more messed up).
That’s what I’m expecting. Billie did drink a lot of alcohol. They do leave the party and drive away. They do talk a lot, intensely, and argue. Alice remains defending her rapist (“boyfriend”) maybe due to denial or fear of social stigma? They do crash into the tree.
Alternate theory: Chester takes revenge on Billie by roofie-ing her but somehow convinces Alice to give Billie the drink feigning good intentions, so Alice doesn’t know it’s roofied, and Billie doesn’t know it’s from Chester, so she doesn’t suspect anything about the drink. Billie hits the tree, destroying both her life and her relationship with Alice. Billie wonders if she could have been roofied but given her speech here is too ashamed to ever admit that she had allowed that to happen, so Alice is allowed to continue believing that Billie was the problem.
If Alice had known she was roofied, I don’t think she would have gotten into the car with her.
Her being drunk might not have stopped that because, unfortunately, drinking and driving isn’t that uncommon. Often it does not end in car crashes. It’s possible Alice has been driven by an intoxicated Billie before and been fine. She might have been more drunk than Alice thought tonight, or she messed up while driving in a way she just hadn’t before.
I do think it could have been that Billie was drinking AND was drugged, so when she crashed, all Alice knew was that she had been drinking. I assume paramedics came, and Billie would have been tested for other substances, so Billie might end up knowing but not telling anyone.
It’s possible, but even Billie seems to think she was drunk. She could still be hiding it for some unknown reason, but she’s talked about it a few times and it’s always been about her drinking.
Yeah, I do think it’s most likely she was only drunk. I was thinking she also might not have realized that she was roofied, but then I thought about the tests that they run. There are different “unless…” that could be added, but I think drunk is the most likely option.
Yeah, I’m not sure I buy her being roofied for that, if only because “Jennifer has a drinking problem” is such a significant part of her storyline and the car crash has always been Exhibit A or close to it. Giving her some degree of retroactive absolution just doesn’t ring true for me. I know it wouldn’t make her not-an-alcoholic but still
We won’t know for sure until we know but it’s possible that she had been drinking at the party, had stopped drinking at a point where she should have been sober enough to drive but everyone including herself blames the drinking for the crash because they aren’t aware of someone having roofied a non-alcoholic drink she had prior to leaving.
It is also possible for her to have had a drinking problem even back then but still not have the drinking problem be responsible for the crash.
See, the thing is if she had been roofied, I don’t think she’d be well enough to get away from the crash before authorities arrived or coherent enough to say she had solely been drinking… it’s likely paramedics and a hospital visit would have been involved (and likely were), and that would include other substance testing.
Also, having something significant in her backstory be something she, the other characters we’ve met, and the audience are all unaware of doesn’t seem great narratively from my perspective.
If she was someone who already drank at parties, it might be easier to lean into the whole “drunk” idea. Especially if she can’t prove her drink was spiked. Especially if the person she got the drink from was Alice like The Blueprint System suggested.
Unless the driver and everyone involve are able to walk away from the car crash and agree to cover it up until everything is out of their system.
The fact that there is a DUI on her student file undermines that theory in this specific case though, but she might not have ended up in a hospital.
Yeah Chester deserves to be shamed and socked in the gut, but this is so disrespectful to Alice. Billie just violated her all over again by airing this without consent. Right impulse, terribly wrong action. No wonder Alice doesn’t want anything to do with her. This is heinous.
Billie never really dated though, she just mostly had quickies behind the bleachers, or something like that she said to Ruth on their actual first date.
Prom is usually at the end of the school year.
If this was senior prom, there wouldn’t be much dating before the crash if any (some readers are saying the crash happened on prom night, but I don’t remember and haven’t checked).
Of course, if this was junior prom, then that leaves plenty of time.
Slight aside: I think Walky only stated they were sleeping together, not actually dating, and I don’t THINK they ever referred to each other as anything but friends (not exes), so any sex they had could have happened before, during, or after the relationship with Chester.
Checking this page, the moment of assumed intimacy comes before the car crash. And given what I remember of the timeline, and what pop culture has taught me about American Prom, Alice wouldn’t have had much of a chance to date her afterward. I can only assume this, and the coming crash on the same night, are the final straw for her. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if THIS, rather than the crash, is what costs her the cheer squad and makes her the outcast she claimed to be, and the crash was just the excuse people used. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/billie/
I’m pretty sure any relationship they had was likely secret and behind Chester’s back. Classic teenage toxic homoerotic female friendship that queer girls go through before they realize they’re queer.
Roe v Wade was struck down in 2022, it’s now 2025, Billie and Alice would have graduated in 2024 with the sliding timescale, given that this is the second semester of their freshman year. Abortion was banned (with very few exceptions) in Indiana in 2023.
So, sadly, probably illegal at this point in the sliding timescale.
And even more sadly (though you know this) definitely illegal in the real world. Somehow.
There is no “last year in-universe” in DOA. It’s on a sliding time scale. Every strip happens in the present day.
That’s why Danny starts playing Mario Kart on his DS with Amazi-Girl, then borrows his 3DS to Sal, then plays Switch with Joe in his apartment. Every strip, present day. So this flashback is present day, minus eight months.
That’s, like, exactly what they meant. This WAS last year in-universe. Because of the the sliding timescale, something last year in-universe would be considered to have happened, currently, in 2024.
Neighboring states of Illinois or Michigan probably had less restrictive laws regarding abortion medical procedures and parental approval / notification.
If she were under 18 (not too unlikely for a high school student) she might have needed parental consent. I don’t remember the details. Even if she didn’t, Billie may have just wanted to get as far away as possible to avoid any possible notice.
I was gonna unload on her for this, too, but… on a careful read I gotta say it looks like she kept the private details to when she was talking directly to the cowering rapist (an attitude that looks good on him tbh), with the mic well away from the conversation, and limited the on-mic details to “fucking creep/cover your drinks”.
There’s some big bloody assumptions there about whether anyone else is in earshot which nrrrrrrrrggggggghhhh DO NOT OUT SOMEBODY ELSE’S TRAUMA, damn right. But I kinda think she didn’t.
Partially agree. She didn’t out the trauma deliberately, but she let loose further details perhaps just a little too close to the microphone, and she also punched her best friend’s boyfriend in the stomach on stage before yelling “cover your drinks!” – so even if the details did stay under the radar, it’s inferrable. Given that Jennifer/Billie is almost certainly autistic – called out in comic canon, briefly – it’s quite possible she didn’t pick up on why Alice would be so upset with either portion of this, and couldn’t work out why bad sentiment would come of an attempt to Enforce Justice. It also speaks to Alice ghosting her over the summer going relatively unnoticed.
I have very little support for this reading, but it seems to me Billie is addressing prevalent rumors that the entire room already knows something about, but wants to set the record straight
Her drinking habit definitely predates prom night, however things went down following this scene. It’s likely she already had alcoholic tendencies before this.
That said, we can also infer that her drinking habit’s severity – beyond otherwise normal teenage decision-making – is likely attributable to unconscious attention-seeking/cry-for-help behavior in reaction to Billie’s home life (we know she has a…difficult…relationship with her mother, who has been shown to be emotionally unavailable and neglectful, treating Billie more like a fashion accessory than child).
I could see this being the proximate cause of why she drank that night, if this is the night of the crash though. She seems to relapse when stressed in the comic present day so it wouldn’t be surprising if stress was a trigger then, too.
‘Trust, but verify’ is the quote being passed around, but we should remember to apply it to Jennifer too.
Alice seems to be the more clear headed one in all of this, and while i say it’s very likely she could just be deluding herself (just smile and ignore the rape), she wasn’t wrong to refer to Jennifer as a ‘drama machine’. It’s not entirely out of the question that Jennifer here has just decided that Chester must have roofied Alice.
Let’s at least wait a strip or two before casting judgements in all directions.
My concern was more than Jennifer had completely misread the situation and jumped to a completely erroneous conclusion without even checking with Alice and, being a drama machine, had taken this action.
The next day strip confirms that Alice agrees with Jennifer’s version of events, so we’re good. We may proceed with the lynching!
As Chester isn’t a real person, I’m happy to cast blame in his direction. He’s a rapist and I heard he killed JFK and steals kittens for a living. See how it hurts no one?
Also, just narratively, I don’t like it. It takes responsibility away from her. The DUI has always been an important part of her backstory and absolving her of responsibility for the crash would really weaken that.
From how Billie has talked about it, it doesn’t seem like she thinks she was roofied. If she somehow didn’t know, that might be possible, but narratively, something both she and the audience don’t know happened doesn’t track for me.
Times when Billie’s anger can be a positive trait, and why, for all her messiness, I still think Billie is a better person than Jennifer.
That being said maybe don’t announce to the whole school a traumatic thing Alice went through without her permission, coulda left her name out of that.
Again, I think it’s important to remember that Jennifer and Billie are no two separate people with different personalities. They are the same person who is in denial about it.
Jennifer was a pupil of Kit Fisto’s fandom until she turned to evil. She became Billie and the good person she was, was destroyed. But Jennifer was her true name, she’d only forgotten it.
She has stopped drinking. That’s work and that’s important. (And it happened while she was still calling herself Billie, but she’s kept it up, which is great.)
Otherwise though, I don’t really see much difference. She’s not far from her early first semester approach, cutting off the nerdy Walky, playing social status games. She even tried to befriend Raidah early on.
Yeah but sadly she thinks just stopping drinking and getting popular “friends” is enough to prove she is better now so she doesn’t have to work on herself any more.
I don’t think the Jennifer thing is about social climbing, that is wholly on the being part of Raidah group but also not think is that a sincere attempt at “atonement” but to convince herself that she has matured and indeed become better without actually reflecting on her flaws and actively refusing to acknowledge them. While getting sober is great for her, it also show us that the alcoholism was only one part of her issues, and she doesn’t that, she thinks just getting sober and separating herself from everything she “was” that means she is better now and that is just not how it works.
She also has unresolved issues of her own. Ruth and Walky are NOT what’s wrong with that woman, she’s got a heap of trauma, parental abandonment issues, etc.
Walky especially just, doesn’t have anything tod o with this, he never did anything wrong to her, not even indirectly like with Sal and their parents favoritism, he was just annoying to her sometimes and she was a kind of an asshole to him sometimes (some pushing into lockers involved).
Not the worst possible way. We could have had a panel by panel illustration of the mike falling and hitting and underneath it a panel by panel, black and white with the colors reversed, of Mike falling and hitting, complete with parallel “OW!”s.
So Chester the Molester? The funny thing is that it is so in keeping for Billie/Jennifer to hit someone for irrational reasons that I and probably a lot of other people didn’t think for a second that she’d a reasonable explanation this time, but Chester saying that “Alice was OK with it eventually” pretty much seals it as him really being a creep.
Not to disagree but I think it’s an important clarification that Ryan and Chester are creeps and predators. Paul is just an incel loser. Kinda the exact opposite of Ryan and Chester. Paul has a small chance of reforming one day and hopefully writing off his college years as an all too common cringe era lots of young men go through. Ryan and Chester should be jailed and probably shot in the dick.
Between “okay with it eventaully” and “psa ladies: cover your drinks” I think the abortion she had to drive Alice across state lines for isn’t the biggest issue here.
2. Has to ask her best friend to drive her across state lines to fix the mess
3. Takes Chester back/continue dating him, for whatever reason (appearances? Popularity? Teenagers? Who knows.)
4. Has her best friend/confidante/potential lover punch him in front of a crowd, also then revealing her secret (even if she didn’t shout it in public, word definitely spreads especially once people connect the dots: Chester gets punched, Billie yells the girls to check their drinks, Chester was dating Alice.)
Has sex with Billie at some time anywhere from before point 1 to now
5. Car crash???
6. Avoids talking to Billie over the summer, enrolls in IU
It seems she’s somewhat easily overwhelmed by strong personalities, which she implies to Jennifer when they meet up again and Jennifer isn’t even aware she’s angry.
Jennifer at the time was pretty oblivious in general, trying to brute-force her previous social status on a new, more adult social setting. She has been repeatedly hinted to be undiagnosed and unaware autistic while trying to handle Joyce’s autism and endo? diagnoses – which could go a way to explaining her confusion and total lack of awareness of the reason for Alice’s anger and how her absence of contact was supposed to communicate it.
OK, I’m gonna out my ignorance here, but …
what’s the support for Billie/Jennifer being on the spectrum?
I don’t quite get why that’s suspected.
I mean, there was one mention of the possibility, but I’m not sure where it came from. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/slipshod/
(I’m really not great at reading people or divining subtext, though, so there may have been something I missed.)
3. Abusers are great at getting back with their victims, it’s kinda one of their things.
4. I’d honestly be inclined (as the gossipy public) to think he roofied Billie with this information, actually.
I agree though, Alice had one hell of a rough time there. Sadly not a totally uncommon experience (with obvious allowances made for dramatic vortexing in a story).
I think even if the public suspects Billie was the one who got Chestered, Alice, who had close connections to both (was dating one, best friends with the other), would get a ton of questions about it. Would not have been an easy summer for her either way.
Yeah, without hearing the “drove Alice across state lines” part, there’s little reason to connect the PSA to her. More likely either Billie or someone else she knew about, rather than his girlfriend. You’d think more naturally of him roofieing a 3rd party than the person he’s already dating.
Alice has had that crush on Jennifer for awhile, so it’s quite possible sexual stuff happened multiple times before now. Or it could just be one time after the prom, real soon now.
I had the impression it was ongoing, but it could have been one late dramatic event.
If anyone is looking into this comment because it got reported, that was me, it was an accident, and I don’t see an “un-report” option. My apologies to IntangibleMatter.
Because her core self-conception is that she is a problem solver.
How she solves the problem (and I want to stress here it’s not driving her for the abortion that I’m referring to, but the punch/mic drop) is what is questionable at times.
To clarify, I don’t think Jennifer announced the abortion bit due to the fact she wasn’t talking to the Mike but people probably heard it in the front row.
But now I’m confused why Alice is surprised by this. Of course Billie hates him. Of course she wouldn’t touch him except to hit him.
Have they not talked about this since Alice forgave him? Has Billie actually been pretending to be OK with him to keep the friendship or did Alice just assume Billie would forgive him because Alice did? I’m trying to figure out why this is a “What the fuck?” and not a “Damn it, I knew it!”.
Well based on the whole Raidah thing I could see the second paragraph being true. The fact she insisted on being called Billie when her winning prom queen was announced makes me think that this is her finally having had enough.
And I think it was the “unused” comment from Alice, combined with Chester’s peacocking, that did it.
Also, I can’t decide whether to read that PSA as indicating what Chester did to Alice, or whether she thought to give an unrelated PSA because she had the momentary opportunity and was feeling cynical enough to make it this particular piece of advice. Normally I’d think the former, but Alice still dating him makes me question that.
“Kicking her to the curb” you mean staying away from her after she almost killed them both by driving drunk. I think it’s perfectly understandable to do that in that case, in fact specially is understandable when someone who did someone like that for you put you in danger. It’s a broken trust.
– Abusers are great at getting their victims to come back. It’s part of how they manage their bullshit in the first place. That’s not the victim’s fault. This includes people who stay with or date their rapist.
– Billie almost killed Alice in a car crash that happened (we assume and so does Alice) due to drinking. It’s totally fair to not want to be friends with someone dangerous to your health even if they did you a solid.
– I don’t think the PSA was unrelated, given everything else Billie has said about roofies being attached to “taking down abusive boyfriends and sneaking my friends to have abortions” as a little triad, but I can’t prove it because we just don’t know yet. I’mma go ahead and err on the side of it being specifically about Chester being a rapist.
Yup. I’ve been spending the past 4 months trying to de-brainwash-ify myself and finally come to terms with just straight-up cutting off contact with someone. It is HARD. TO. DO.
It’s like detoxing every single day. Again and again and again.
*Facepalm*
I mean it makes sense, she did all this without permission (even if people didn’t hear her say Alice’s name they’d have heard Chester as he was shouting, plus people would definitely put 2 and 2 together from context clues) then, probably not even a few hours later is going to almost get her killed
As for Alice getting back with him that’s completely irrelevant, it can take several times for someone to finally leave an abuser for good (I’ve heard up to 7 on average but I’m not sure if that’s the exact statistic)
To continue echoing what other people have said, two things can be right at once. Alice’s ex-boyfriend Chester can be a creep and Jennifer can drunkenly crash the car with Alice in it and both of these things can be bad. If anything, I think it caused Alice to take a long introspective look, realize the two people she’d had feelings for were both very much NOT good for her, and decided to use college as a clean break to try again and not fall into the same mistakes this time.
I think the second part of that formulation is her core self-conception regardless of whether she’s calling herself Billie or Jennifer. Where she falls short at times is that she cares, and because she cares she sometimes doesn’t think things through in attempting to solve the problem.
huh, I was reading the “[Alice] was eventually fine with it” as Chester saying she got over getting pregnant and having an abortion, but it’s interesting to see other comments point out it could be that Alice sadly started or continued a relationship with her rapist/abuser. If that turns out to be right, oof, poor Alice.
If my first interpretation is correct though (that Alice and Chester’s relationship was consensual, but he was a bad boyfriend who did not support her during the abortion and in fact probably disappeared for the event); I can very much see why Alice reacted the way she did after seeing her alleged best friend going to the same university as her.
Billie could very well be turning Alice’s life into a steaming pile of shit by announcing it to the world that she had an abortion. Depends on how conservative Alice’s parents are and how the rest of the students react to this news.
I think people are interpreting it the way they are due to the last panel
I suppose it’s theoretically possible that’s an unrelated psa (though if it is it’s incredibly reckless to throw it on the end of all this) but that feels very unlikely given everything else
It can easily be all of these things. Chester could’ve initiated the relationship via roofie and SA that Alice eventually accepted as consensual if she was even aware during any of it. It’s high school and she ended up dating a football player. This happens all the time. Chester could’ve initiated also have gotten her pregnant during the initial SA or anytime in their following relationship and then been absentee or even pressured her to get the abortion. We don’t really have to assume it is one or the other and we don’t have enough details anyway.
I can see Alice being conditioned into believing Chester was never in the wrong for any of it or choosing to tolerate her assault because of his status at school or getting an abortion so as not to ruin his college aspirations. It can all be bad.
The sad thing is that if the unwanted pregnancy & subsequent abortion happened to Jennifer, she could announce it to the World and her parents would barely react to it.
I absolutely love the the curtain in the background. In panel 4 especially, the sparkles look so much like boozles (is that the right word?) that it’s unclear whether Billie is doing this sober or not.
Which, given that the DUI probably happened later tonight (she wouldn’t have become queen if it was earlier), may or may not suggest that some earlier commenters are right about how that DUI happened.
I also want to say that Alice’s eyes in that first panel are not “I am shocked and appalled” eyes. I think on some level Alice is glad to see this, at least at this moment. But social opprobrium either causes her to suppress that or she makes a conscious choice to.
I’m kind of crushed by Alice’s ”drama hurricane” moment now. But also, like, sure Chester deserved this and more but don’t do it without the victim’s consent yo
This strip has really re-contextualized everything hasn’t it? I think it’s important to ask ourselves at this point how Jennifer developed a drinking problem in the first place? We don’t know. Alice claims Jennifer thought “It was fine.” When they crashed. Does the Jen we’ve seen really seem like someone who thinks nearly dying is no big deal? We also really don’t know much about Alice except that she claimed the friend we now know helped her get an abortion and confronted and outed her rapist was “dragging her down for years.” Can we trust Alice perspective on Jennifer? I don’t know anymore.
This all fits with what we know of Jennifer in high school: “I’m an ALPHA bongo. I scope parties for roofies. I sneak friends into abortion clinics. I take down abusive boyfriends.”
But we also know Alice was in love with her and they had some kind of sexual relationship, but that was kind of one sided since Jennifer thought of herself as straight, but attracted to girls sometimes and that date she went on with Ruth was the first she’d really had with another girl. And we know Jennifer’s expectations for a party – drunk sex with boys. This is all how she developed that “wealth of knowledge about horrific things”.
Putting it all together in terms of “dragging her down”, Alice’s crush on Jennifer is what led her to those parties, probably including the one where Chester roofied her.
That’s all possible too. It’s clear Alice was hurt by Jennifer by the car crash at minimum, so whatever choices she made in cutting Jennifer out of her life are totally valid. What’s unclear is everything else. Alice is responsible for her own choices and Chester is likely a creep who preyed on her. Putting all of that on Jennifer isn’t fair either. It’s funny that Jennifer’s high school life was basically a early 2000’s CW teen drama. “Billie’s Creek”.
I wouldn’t put it all on Jennifer, but if crushing on Jennifer led Alice to make a bunch of bad decisions to follow her, it makes sense that she’d feel Jennifer was dragging her down and want to cut ties to keep from repeating it.
Also, the behavior we’re seeing from Jennifer here is loving but extremely impulsive. If “loving but extremely impulsive” also characterized Jennifer’s friendship towards Alice leading up to this point, I can see why a shock like the car crash would inspire her to recontextualize the whole thing as a roller coaster she just wants to get off.
To answer your question: Yes thinking almost dying in car crash due to her drinking is very in character for everything we know about Jennifer, because she didn’t want to introspect about if what she did was really wrong, she thought she could just go back to being friends with Alice like nothing happened after she stopped talking to her all summer.
True, but IMO the jury’s still out as to how similar this flashback head-cheerleader-mic-drop albeit-about-to-car-crash Billie is to first-year-college lesbian-suicide-pact Billie. My impression is, a lot of what Billie was struggling with by the time she and Ruth got together was the loss of that former head-cheerleader status, and moving on from high school. She lost the context in which she was a big fish in a small pond, and has to deal with the trappings of her old life – “Go Golden Dragons!” – becoming irrelevant. Plus, she lost Alice’s affection, and may not have even really known that until the chance meeting with Alice at college. Since these were such large parts of her identity, and all of these losses seem to have been at least somewhat unexpected to her, and several of them are directly blamed on her by other people, it’s not totally surprising to me that she would fall temporarily into semi-nihilism (and what might have been significantly-worsening alcoholism) when she had to deal with those losses in relatively quick succession.
One thing that makes a huge difference to this strip’s implications (as discussed at length in this comment section) is if anyone other than Chester heard Billie’s line talking about driving Alice over state lines. Per Word of Willis, this exchange on bluesky would suggest that was between her and Chester only: https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3lhddwnkyfk2k
“Willis pls!!! Did Billie just out Alice’s circumstances to the entire prom??”
DYW: “She isn’t speaking into the mic then.”
Wait, so Billie holds the mike in her left hand, punches Chester with her right (and then takes off her tiara with it), yells to the crowd with the mike in her right hand, then switches the mike back to her left hand again?
It’s possible they meant “Please use your perceptive powers for good, and not for trolling people in the future”. If they had said “for good and not for evil” I wouldn’t necessarily assume that they thought noticing things about art was evil.
(I’m not exactly sure how would use excellent perceptiveness for trolling, but maybe something like manipulation, social engineering, etc.?)
But, you may also be correct. In which case: yeah, that’s probably overextending the concept of trolling.
Looking more closely at the Don’t Stop Billie-ving flashback comic, I think she’s wearing the same scrunchie here as in the car crash. I wonder how Alice would go from “she just beat up my boyfriend while simultaneously airing my trauma on stage” to getting in a car with a drunk Billie driving.
In the comic uploaded yesterday, she punches him in the chest. Nobody’s nads are in their chest, and there’s no such thing as a “solar plexus”, so I figure she kicked him in the groin between strips.
The solar plexus or Celiac plexus is indeed real, and if you are hit
really hard there you may very well crumble to the ground and struggle
to breathe. I know this from first hand experience.
I understand Billi’s reasons, but what she did is too theatrical and dramatic. I think she sees herself as the protagonist of a movie, but her life is not a movie. I’m not surprised that it ended bad.
He deserves that and even worse, but Alice not. It’s true that Billie didn’t say Alice’s name on the microphone. But those who were close enough will have heard it, will tell the others and we don’t know if she wants it to be known.
The women in this comic are abnormally strong, though. Don’t forget, Joyce punched Ross off the ground and he landed a couple meters away. Billie herself threw Walky out of her room, with plenty of air, and that’s after months of no cheerleading. Here in this flashback, her physical training is still fresh, so I have to estimate she could singlehandedly tip at least a Mini Cooper. Chester should probably check for damaged organs.
1. Sorry, Walky. No sash for you. You have failed at barter.
2. “Eventually”?! Shame there’s no kneeing up Chester’s ‘nads.
3. “Cover your drinks”!? Shame there’s no _removing_ Chester’s ‘nads.
I’m guessing he slipped her a roofie on a date, date-raped her, and she ended up pregnant. Billie had to drive her to get an abortion. But Alice stayed with him (probably blamed herself) so she was “okay with it”.
“Why was Alice in love with Billie” is now a question that’s been answered. Anyone would be in love with someone who fought for you this hard. Shame her alcoholism and refusal to look weak had to sabotage it.
Given the drunken car-crash happened right after Prom, I’m wondering if – as others have said already – she was either roofied in revenge, or maybe broke down and self-destructed after Alice’s reaction hit her too hard? Or, slightly less sad but no less dramatic third option, got with Alice as a result of making up over this, both got drunk together, then crashed the car racing off home?
does it solve it structurally? no
is the structural way of solving it succeeding? also no
is it even trying to succeed? looks pretty iffy, unfortunately
we shouldn’t punch everyone we suspect may have potentially been involved with violence, sure
if someone who actually does that shit and gets punched about it I’m kind of okay with it given the circumstances that surround these things
Better if they get punched first and don’t get to do the thing, but most people don’t have amazi-girl following them to a party
Aside from the other reasons your comment is shitty, you do understand that the real life commenters are talking about fictional characters, right? And that a lot of people read fiction for emotional effect, and seeing a rapist in a get punched in a story is cathartic for a lot of people?
Lotta sex offenders do benefit from counseling, at least. I think the hugs gotta be on their own time, though, ’cause they’re not likely to come through a treatment program.
Billie was »fine« standing in Chester’s vicinity, but sharing the stage with him is apparently a bridge too far. She could have slugged him »right there« when they were both still in the crowd. Something does not compute.
So we have to assume that Alice ventured new information that provoked this reaction in Billie. The fact that they were still dating perhaps.
Although it seems the word »unused« is what triggered this reaction in Billie. Still, the dude was standing around and only »now« did she turn violent.
To add onto this, it’s also not just that she’s standing next to him on stage, but that she’s expected to dance with him. Dancing is intimate, it requires close contact, and I wouldn’t want to put my hands on, nor have him put his hands on me, to share a dance if I knew he had SAed my best friend. As someone who’s been in similar situations, sometimes it is easier to just exist in the same space as a creep but having to touch them or them touching you (even if it’s a hug) is what tips it over.
I’m annoyed with Jennifer for sharing all of this about Alice, who probably wanted it to stay private, but I also think that she’s awesome for doing this.
Have read that, and I still don’t think she does enough to conceal that portion of her words. Maybe only those near the stage can hear? It’ll still spread across the school population. And her actions and the words *that *are* mic’d up tell enough of the story for school gossip to fill in the blanks somehow. I think she’s well-intentioned and didn’t out Alice deliberately which means a fair bit in characterisation terms. But it’s possible for Alice to be furious anyway, either for herself or misplaced on Chester’s behalf. IIRC the real reason she dropped contact was still the car crash, however.
Announcing your best friend’s boyfriend is a fucking creep and advising others to cover their drinks is probably enough to get people talking about Alice, but… it also protects other girls he might prey on and shows that people will act and speak out against those who commit sexual assault.
For the abortion part, I definitely agree it would be shitty to announce that– not only is it Alice’s private business, it could be dangerous for her if people know– but based on Willis’ comment on blusky and having been in groups of teenagers before, it does make sense that people wouldn’t hear that part.
(Sometimes voices carry without a microphone; Billie wasn’t trying to announce it, though, or she would have used the mic. And unless the room went silent, it’s reasonable that what they said wouldn’t be able to be made out by the audience– and while there was probably some shock, I doubt the teenagers all responded with silence.)
Hough. On one hand: Absolutely fucking fuck this guy. Ruining his shitty glory is incredible. On the other…. I think if I had my out of state abortion revealed mid-party without my permission I’d uh. feel a few ways.
Bottom line: come to think of it along with everything else going on with her, Billie makes a lot of sense as someone who had to spend her teen to young adult years looking after other teen girls who were being preyed on.
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“eventually”
Death’s too good for him
Absolutely.
Oh man, I so called it yesterday.
Compliments to Willis for yesterday’s comic – I knew from Billie’s face that, when she looked at Chester, she was looking at someone she knew committed sexual assault. I know that face.
I am fully of the mind that he did commit SA.
But did it say that he did or just imply he got her pregnant?
Oh, right, the last line.
Ugh.
Nevermind.
Technically the last line is him in pain from getting a mic dropped on his head.
The strip is at the top of the page, you can see what it says.
Yeah, I wasn’t putting 2 and 2 together.
Maybe not sexual assault, but definitely got her pregnant and pressured her into getting an abortion.
Never mind, I’d somehow skipped the “cover your drinks” part. Definitely SA.
Ah, is that what the “drive Alice across state lines” was referring to? I suspected that might be what it meant, but I wasn’t sure since I’m not from the US.
She had to take Alice to the nearest abortion clinic, which presumably was in anther state. Even in states where it’s still legal, a lot of effort has been put in by anti-abortion politicians and activists to close clinics.
Or the comic takes place in a future after abortion gets banned in Indiana.
That future is now. And it was even now a year or so ago when this flashback takes place.
Even back when the medical procedures were legal in all US states, states had varying requirements for parental consent or informing them. Alice may not have wanted her parents to know. Going across state lines: abortion procedures are now illegal in Indiana, but still legal in neighboring states Illinois and Michigan.
Different states have different laws concerning abortions, so at times, it becomes necessary to drive to a different state to get a necessary medical procedure that can, at times, take several days, requiring expensive hotel stays.
Also, this comic right here is why I still have a Billie gravitar. While I’ve never been much of a drinker, the rest of this *waves at comic* is all too familiar. I’ve lived this – except without the satisfying punch.
Oh. Also no sash. I was not Prom Queen – not even in the running.
Yep, jumping straight to murder is totally you being the good person here, taking the high ground and all. No trials, no concerns about justice or rehabilitation or debts to society being paid. Judge, jury, and executioner in one godlike person is really the efficient system, after all.
How do you want to kill him? Clearly you’ve thought it out.
Slowly, with rusty implements so i can savor his screams.
^
“To the pain.”
This is a very strange hill to die on, my dude.
Oh you sweet summer child.
I recommend for you own good that you dispense with any notion that Due Process in the United States is some gold standard for morality itself or some machine which will eventually give everyone what they deserve as a matter of course.
History proves this to be nothing more than wishful thinking.
That’s true, but bad as it is, vigilante or mob justice is worse.
Of course, this is fiction and there’s nothing wrong with wanting some retributive justice with your fiction.
“the ends justifies the means” is certainly a shitty moral philosophy,
but at the same time, we shouldn’t overcorrect to the point to which thinking about the ends at *all* becomes treated as inherently immoral in practice, as is unfortunately the case today with government officials who claim to represent the interests of women and vulnerable minorities
given the situation of rapists seldom seeing actual jail time in a red state like Indiana, as ugly as vigilante justice is, it is often unfortunately the most realistic way of preventing them from doing further harm
cuz lets face it — if the goal is to see the most ethical outcome, and all your most realistic options for doing so are terrible, the most moral thing to do is pick whichever will mitigate the damage
Someone saying “death’s too good for him” in the comment section, about a character in a comic, is not worth excoriating that someone. If Ana had said that about a real person, I’d get where you were coming from. But we don’t need to go so far as to police each other’s expression of hate toward fictional characters in some attempt to make a moral point of our own.
This isn’t ‘The Punisher’ or ‘Invincible.’ Human life kind of matters in this slice-of-life comic and the characters you love have already been traumatized by death of even bad people. Use that brain, friend. Hating a comic character to the point that you want to kill him after 3 strips isn’t healthy.
Jennifer, why did you STOP???
WHOOP. HIS. ASS!!! D:<
*plays “Boondocks Remix” by Metaphor The Great on dance floor speakers*
And IRON MIKE makes his last stand.
Well done, alt text.
oh good, I’m not the only one that got the alt-text… damn you Willis. ~<3
It wasn’t until I read your comment that I realized. Willis this was cold lol.
I know it’s been five years, but for some of us it’s only been three months, and for others it’s been -8 months. Way too soon.
I am now 100% on board with her kicking his ass
These last 3 pannels have been a rollercoaster
FUCK YOU CHESTER
Appropriate gravatar is appropriate
Telling the Truth?
This won’t end well.
I never trusted Chester!
I trusted him up until Saturday! He has betrayed us all!
Oh shoot I just realised
What if Jennifer wasn’t drunk at prom and that led to the car crash
What if Jennifer was revenge-roofiex
Oh.
Is everything we’ve seen of Jennifer, of Billie all a plea for getting back to this moment where she felt at her most powerful, her strongest?
That’s such a painful and reasonable response, and would be SO human. I want this to be the case, it would be such great storytelling.
Yes. I want to see this now.
Even if she was drunk, likely drinking was a reaction to this moment, and/or upcoming fallout with Alice, clearly – but how intentional it was to go that route is VERY painfully interesting.
Hrm, gone from Sal to Asher. Not a great look.
When she had an offer for THREE McNuggets for Chester’s sash, she had never felt such power, and that’s when she knew what she had to do.
Three McNuggets, right?! That’ll go to anybody’s head.
Just look at what they’ve done to Walky over the years.
As we know, the human limit is 412 McNuggets, but that guy never got a chance to exercise his might. Walky’s power limits are inconceivable!
Oh. Ooooh no. Oh, shit
“Trust, but verify.”
Her words right before going to the party in the first week where Joyce got roofied.
She reiterates her drink-covering advice, too.
I love that she stuck with that advice despite everything.
Jennifer’s best moment in college might honestly still be the times she comes through in trying to look after her “squad”.
She needs some looking after too, though. And a bit less automatic assumption of the automatic moral high ground.
I think you’re right.
Oh, snap
…
But I can see why Alice ended their friendship / relationship after that. Even before the car crash.
Not great to announce your friend’s unlawful (in Indiana) abortion to the whole graduating class, on microphone, without said friend’s advance permission. Nor their r***.
I wouldn’t be cool with that AT ALL, if I were Alice.
We see Alice distraught over a passed-out Billie in the flashback — maybe Alice told Billie off and that’s why Billie got so drunk?
Gaaah…
That’s not a passed out Billie, that is a car crashed Billie. Alice was in the car with her.
I definitely think it’s likely that Creatrix is right and Billie was roofied by this asshole or his friends and wasn’t drunk at all, she just leaned into the drunk thing for some reason we’ll probably find out.
I dunno, I think Jennifer is leaving immediately. That wouldn’t give time for a roofie in response to the punch.
I think what I think, we’ll find out as the story goes on, but it would make a lot of depressing sense and I like the idea. Also not sure why Billie would leave immediately, but again I guess we’ll find out!
I think she’d want to get Alice away from Chester and any follow up questions but that’s just my thought.
We definitely will find out the truth of Jennifer’s DUI tonight, though.
When we heard of Billie describe herself as “Head Cheerleader, Problem Solver,” I think that’s what she used to be. This Billie drinks, sure, but she looks out for people. She’s not yet descended into alcoholism. This isn’t self-destructive; it’s self-affirming.
I also agree there’s a high chance of the crash happened because of revenge. There’s a zero percent chance that Chester and the people who voted him Prom King are going to be, “Oh, snap, she called out my SA, I guess she got me good!”
Roofie is possible. Drunk, but not planning on driving until she suddenly realizes she has to get *away* is possible. Buzzed, but trying to flee persuers is possible.
The fact that Alice is in the car with Billie, and not with Chester, alone says volumes.
Also. With this context, the entire Billie – Alice conversation in fall semester hits WAY differently. Alice’s weird reaction, then sudden angry reaction. How she didn’t talk to Billie at all all summer. Either she was being fed some BS, or chose to believe a version of the truth that had Billie as the villain, because she couldn’t accept Chester as the villain.
Not being able to wrap one’s head around one’s abuser as the villain…
Yup. Been there.
“wrap one’s head around” = comprehend.
Sorry. Poor choice of metaphor.
I don’t see this as that different. There are definite indications she was already a self-destructive alcoholic and even in first semester she’s still got the looking out for her people thing going on.
I think she’s got more self-loathing and awareness now and that’s probably linked to DUI
Considering that she just ended the strip with “cover your drinks” I’d be very surprised that she was roofied, revenge or otherwise.
UNLESS she was roofied by someone she trusted.
Since Alice was eventually okay with it, so Chester the Molester claims, and she may in fact be very upset that her sexual assault and abortion was outed to the entire school, if she convinced herself (or was convinced by someone else) to roofie Jennifer, I would find it more believable (and more messed up).
Alice seems to genuinely believe Billie just got drunk from their more recent encounter: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/dramahurricane/
Ten years ago IRL. I can feel my youth escaping my body.
Omg I was still a teen back then
It could be that Alice had a fight with her due to the revelation, she drank because she was upset, and that lead to the crash.
That’s what I’m expecting. Billie did drink a lot of alcohol. They do leave the party and drive away. They do talk a lot, intensely, and argue. Alice remains defending her rapist (“boyfriend”) maybe due to denial or fear of social stigma? They do crash into the tree.
Alternate theory: Chester takes revenge on Billie by roofie-ing her but somehow convinces Alice to give Billie the drink feigning good intentions, so Alice doesn’t know it’s roofied, and Billie doesn’t know it’s from Chester, so she doesn’t suspect anything about the drink. Billie hits the tree, destroying both her life and her relationship with Alice. Billie wonders if she could have been roofied but given her speech here is too ashamed to ever admit that she had allowed that to happen, so Alice is allowed to continue believing that Billie was the problem.
If Alice had known she was roofied, I don’t think she would have gotten into the car with her.
Her being drunk might not have stopped that because, unfortunately, drinking and driving isn’t that uncommon. Often it does not end in car crashes. It’s possible Alice has been driven by an intoxicated Billie before and been fine. She might have been more drunk than Alice thought tonight, or she messed up while driving in a way she just hadn’t before.
I do think it could have been that Billie was drinking AND was drugged, so when she crashed, all Alice knew was that she had been drinking. I assume paramedics came, and Billie would have been tested for other substances, so Billie might end up knowing but not telling anyone.
It’s possible, but even Billie seems to think she was drunk. She could still be hiding it for some unknown reason, but she’s talked about it a few times and it’s always been about her drinking.
Yeah, I do think it’s most likely she was only drunk. I was thinking she also might not have realized that she was roofied, but then I thought about the tests that they run. There are different “unless…” that could be added, but I think drunk is the most likely option.
Yeah, I’m not sure I buy her being roofied for that, if only because “Jennifer has a drinking problem” is such a significant part of her storyline and the car crash has always been Exhibit A or close to it. Giving her some degree of retroactive absolution just doesn’t ring true for me. I know it wouldn’t make her not-an-alcoholic but still
We won’t know for sure until we know but it’s possible that she had been drinking at the party, had stopped drinking at a point where she should have been sober enough to drive but everyone including herself blames the drinking for the crash because they aren’t aware of someone having roofied a non-alcoholic drink she had prior to leaving.
It is also possible for her to have had a drinking problem even back then but still not have the drinking problem be responsible for the crash.
See, the thing is if she had been roofied, I don’t think she’d be well enough to get away from the crash before authorities arrived or coherent enough to say she had solely been drinking… it’s likely paramedics and a hospital visit would have been involved (and likely were), and that would include other substance testing.
Also, having something significant in her backstory be something she, the other characters we’ve met, and the audience are all unaware of doesn’t seem great narratively from my perspective.
Yeah, she’s face-down in a steering wheel air bag, not a pillow.
If she was someone who already drank at parties, it might be easier to lean into the whole “drunk” idea. Especially if she can’t prove her drink was spiked. Especially if the person she got the drink from was Alice like The Blueprint System suggested.
Apparently drunk driver in a car crash would have been checked out at the hospital, right? They’d know if it was just booze or something else.
Yes.
The epileptic trees are overlooking this.
Unless the driver and everyone involve are able to walk away from the car crash and agree to cover it up until everything is out of their system.
The fact that there is a DUI on her student file undermines that theory in this specific case though, but she might not have ended up in a hospital.
Yeah Chester deserves to be shamed and socked in the gut, but this is so disrespectful to Alice. Billie just violated her all over again by airing this without consent. Right impulse, terribly wrong action. No wonder Alice doesn’t want anything to do with her. This is heinous.
They apparently date after this event and Jennifer almost kills her.
Billie never really dated though, she just mostly had quickies behind the bleachers, or something like that she said to Ruth on their actual first date.
Prom is usually at the end of the school year.
If this was senior prom, there wouldn’t be much dating before the crash if any (some readers are saying the crash happened on prom night, but I don’t remember and haven’t checked).
Of course, if this was junior prom, then that leaves plenty of time.
Slight aside: I think Walky only stated they were sleeping together, not actually dating, and I don’t THINK they ever referred to each other as anything but friends (not exes), so any sex they had could have happened before, during, or after the relationship with Chester.
The car crash was on prom night:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/taughthimself/
If it’s junior prom, that’s usually said, and here it’s just referred to as prom during the announcement of queen/king. And almost everywhere that has prom queens/kings, you have to be a senior to qualify.
Yeah, Charles says “last year” but that strip takes place in January, post-time-skip.
Checking this page, the moment of assumed intimacy comes before the car crash. And given what I remember of the timeline, and what pop culture has taught me about American Prom, Alice wouldn’t have had much of a chance to date her afterward. I can only assume this, and the coming crash on the same night, are the final straw for her. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if THIS, rather than the crash, is what costs her the cheer squad and makes her the outcast she claimed to be, and the crash was just the excuse people used.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/billie/
I’m pretty sure any relationship they had was likely secret and behind Chester’s back. Classic teenage toxic homoerotic female friendship that queer girls go through before they realize they’re queer.
Unlawful in Indeana? Even with the sliding time scale I’m relitively sure that when she graduated Roe v. Wade was still in effect.
Roe v Wade was struck down in 2022, it’s now 2025, Billie and Alice would have graduated in 2024 with the sliding timescale, given that this is the second semester of their freshman year. Abortion was banned (with very few exceptions) in Indiana in 2023.
So, sadly, probably illegal at this point in the sliding timescale.
And even more sadly (though you know this) definitely illegal in the real world. Somehow.
Could have sworn it was struck down mid/late 2024 but I’ve never been good with the passage of time.
This would be last year in-universe, though. Wouldn’t it?
So 2023-2024.
There is no “last year in-universe” in DOA. It’s on a sliding time scale. Every strip happens in the present day.
That’s why Danny starts playing Mario Kart on his DS with Amazi-Girl, then borrows his 3DS to Sal, then plays Switch with Joe in his apartment. Every strip, present day. So this flashback is present day, minus eight months.
That’s, like, exactly what they meant. This WAS last year in-universe. Because of the the sliding timescale, something last year in-universe would be considered to have happened, currently, in 2024.
This is a flashback from a year ago in-comic, though, so if it’s Jan 2025 now, this happened prom 2024.
Perhaps Indiana had a parent-notification requirement for minors seeking abortions at the time?
Even before Roe fell, abortion opponents had managed to make abortion much more difficult in many states.
Neighboring states of Illinois or Michigan probably had less restrictive laws regarding abortion medical procedures and parental approval / notification.
If she were under 18 (not too unlikely for a high school student) she might have needed parental consent. I don’t remember the details. Even if she didn’t, Billie may have just wanted to get as far away as possible to avoid any possible notice.
I was gonna unload on her for this, too, but… on a careful read I gotta say it looks like she kept the private details to when she was talking directly to the cowering rapist (an attitude that looks good on him tbh), with the mic well away from the conversation, and limited the on-mic details to “fucking creep/cover your drinks”.
There’s some big bloody assumptions there about whether anyone else is in earshot which nrrrrrrrrggggggghhhh DO NOT OUT SOMEBODY ELSE’S TRAUMA, damn right. But I kinda think she didn’t.
Partially agree. She didn’t out the trauma deliberately, but she let loose further details perhaps just a little too close to the microphone, and she also punched her best friend’s boyfriend in the stomach on stage before yelling “cover your drinks!” – so even if the details did stay under the radar, it’s inferrable. Given that Jennifer/Billie is almost certainly autistic – called out in comic canon, briefly – it’s quite possible she didn’t pick up on why Alice would be so upset with either portion of this, and couldn’t work out why bad sentiment would come of an attempt to Enforce Justice. It also speaks to Alice ghosting her over the summer going relatively unnoticed.
I don’t think she said the Alice part out loud. The microphone looks far away enough to MAYBE not pick up on that part.
I’m not 100% sure though.
I have very little support for this reading, but it seems to me Billie is addressing prevalent rumors that the entire room already knows something about, but wants to set the record straight
I was just thinking this.
Oh no…
Oh. Oh fuck.
(Also you’re my favourite magician, hi)
No, she has/have alcohol problem. Dont make it, it was some bad guy problem the whole time
People develop alcohol problems for a variety of reasons, and it’s not uncommon for it to be trauma related.
Her drinking habit definitely predates prom night, however things went down following this scene. It’s likely she already had alcoholic tendencies before this.
That said, we can also infer that her drinking habit’s severity – beyond otherwise normal teenage decision-making – is likely attributable to unconscious attention-seeking/cry-for-help behavior in reaction to Billie’s home life (we know she has a…difficult…relationship with her mother, who has been shown to be emotionally unavailable and neglectful, treating Billie more like a fashion accessory than child).
Not to mention sending her to walk to the bus stop and wait by herself on her first day of kindergarten…
I could see this being the proximate cause of why she drank that night, if this is the night of the crash though. She seems to relapse when stressed in the comic present day so it wouldn’t be surprising if stress was a trigger then, too.
I sadly predict this is just a rehash in a dream of what she would like to have done now, after everything she’s lived since then.
Well, THAT would be one hell of a plot twist. Willis must be cackling like a maniac right now.
Feel free to say “Damn you, Willis!” from now on.
‘Trust, but verify’ is the quote being passed around, but we should remember to apply it to Jennifer too.
Alice seems to be the more clear headed one in all of this, and while i say it’s very likely she could just be deluding herself (just smile and ignore the rape), she wasn’t wrong to refer to Jennifer as a ‘drama machine’. It’s not entirely out of the question that Jennifer here has just decided that Chester must have roofied Alice.
Let’s at least wait a strip or two before casting judgements in all directions.
(and then set him on fire once confirmed…)
“Alice was okay with it eventually” doesn’t suggest consent.
My concern was more than Jennifer had completely misread the situation and jumped to a completely erroneous conclusion without even checking with Alice and, being a drama machine, had taken this action.
The next day strip confirms that Alice agrees with Jennifer’s version of events, so we’re good. We may proceed with the lynching!
As Chester isn’t a real person, I’m happy to cast blame in his direction. He’s a rapist and I heard he killed JFK and steals kittens for a living. See how it hurts no one?
_Kicks_ kittens for a living. He doesn’t steal them; he gaslights his gfs into that.
omg you’re so right!
Chester 360 no-scoped JFK and blamed it on Oswald.
Wouldn’t the timing have to have been just right (wrong?) for revenge roofying to lead to the car crash? Those tend to hit fast and completely, right?
Also would have been picked up when she was treated afterwards.
Also, just narratively, I don’t like it. It takes responsibility away from her. The DUI has always been an important part of her backstory and absolving her of responsibility for the crash would really weaken that.
From how Billie has talked about it, it doesn’t seem like she thinks she was roofied. If she somehow didn’t know, that might be possible, but narratively, something both she and the audience don’t know happened doesn’t track for me.
Rare Billie W
Fuck that asshole in his stupid fucking face. Billie out indeed.
also holy shit that alt text
_holy shit that alt text_
argh
I just now made the connection.
OH. Ooooooh.
Boy that joke sure fell flat.
So did that Mike.
Thank you! I am glad someone caught it!
(unlike with the previous mike drop)
Unlike what your mom caught.
For a nickel.
/jk
On one hand, great for calling him out.
On the other hand, doing it without Alice’s approval, giving her unwanted attention and giving yourself more glory? Hmmm.
High school seniors are well known for their complete mastery of social situations. Come on man.
You’re still allowed to call it out even if you know it’s a flawed character.
Yeah. Glory is what women get for calling out assholes like this.
Anyway she’s not saying the Alice part into the mic.
To be entirely fair she didn’t out Alice. She just called Chester a creep. Chester is the one who revealed it was Alice.
No, it was Billie who mentioned having to drive Alice over state lines. Not exactly a hard thing to guess why she did so.
She’s not saying that part into the mic.
She whispered that part to him.
I don’t think that’s a whisper. Even if her mic wasn’t up, I can’t imagine the people near the front wouldn’t have heard her at least.
It might even have been meant as a whisper, but on stage? In the middle of emotional turmoil? Yeah, sometimes stuff comes out too loud.
100% in character for Billie, if you ask me
I shouldn’t be glad Billie ignored this because toxic relationship are the hardest to break, because codependency and shit. But yes, I’m fucking glad.
Times when Billie’s anger can be a positive trait, and why, for all her messiness, I still think Billie is a better person than Jennifer.
That being said maybe don’t announce to the whole school a traumatic thing Alice went through without her permission, coulda left her name out of that.
Good intentions, sloppy execution, the Billingsworth mantra.
Given the way prequels work, I’m 100% certain the car crash is this nice.
So Alice goes from “my girlfriend and I heroically defeat a sexual predator” to “Thelma and Louise.”
Also just from what we know of the crash it basically has to be tonight.
The mic isn’t at her mouth for that part, I think she’s just saying that so Chester can hear and then shouting out the rest.
Again, I think it’s important to remember that Jennifer and Billie are no two separate people with different personalities. They are the same person who is in denial about it.
Jennifer was a pupil of Kit Fisto’s fandom until she turned to evil. She became Billie and the good person she was, was destroyed. But Jennifer was her true name, she’d only forgotten it.
What if… Sal is Jennifer??
Impossible! Mike is Jennifer.
No, but I’d argue that the whole “Jennifer” thing is a persona she’s putting on instead of actually doing the work of changing and growing.
She has stopped drinking. That’s work and that’s important. (And it happened while she was still calling herself Billie, but she’s kept it up, which is great.)
Otherwise though, I don’t really see much difference. She’s not far from her early first semester approach, cutting off the nerdy Walky, playing social status games. She even tried to befriend Raidah early on.
Yeah but sadly she thinks just stopping drinking and getting popular “friends” is enough to prove she is better now so she doesn’t have to work on herself any more.
Called it. Fuck you, Chester.
That hover text deserves a “damn you Willis”
lmfaooo
Okay, okay there were some good elements to Billie.
There, I said it.
I’ll make a note in the log.
You haven’t been saying she didn’t as far as I remember. The opposite actually.
Okay I just remembered that people do treat Jennifer and Billie as different people, which I don’t and this is about that, which confused me.
I think our disagreement is:
You take Jennifer as an insincere attempt at social climbing without real self reflection.
I take Jennifer as a sincere attempt to atone for her alcoholism.
This plot seems to be making it possible that Jennifer hates her past self for something that may have not been her fault (her DUI).
I don’t think the Jennifer thing is about social climbing, that is wholly on the being part of Raidah group but also not think is that a sincere attempt at “atonement” but to convince herself that she has matured and indeed become better without actually reflecting on her flaws and actively refusing to acknowledge them. While getting sober is great for her, it also show us that the alcoholism was only one part of her issues, and she doesn’t that, she thinks just getting sober and separating herself from everything she “was” that means she is better now and that is just not how it works.
Yes, she has so many unresolved issues with Ruth and Walky both that until she confronts them, she’ll never be a true jedi knight.
She also has unresolved issues of her own. Ruth and Walky are NOT what’s wrong with that woman, she’s got a heap of trauma, parental abandonment issues, etc.
Walky especially just, doesn’t have anything tod o with this, he never did anything wrong to her, not even indirectly like with Sal and their parents favoritism, he was just annoying to her sometimes and she was a kind of an asshole to him sometimes (some pushing into lockers involved).
And she turns to Walky when she’s farthest down. He’s her annoying nerd of a brother, but he’s still her brother.
Social climbing is definitely Raidah using Jennifer and not the other way around.
Yeah obviously, but I am talking about what Jennifer think she is doing.
Fuck yeah, Billie.
Now that’s a mic drop.
the alt text agrees, in the worst possible way
Not the worst possible way. We could have had a panel by panel illustration of the mike falling and hitting and underneath it a panel by panel, black and white with the colors reversed, of Mike falling and hitting, complete with parallel “OW!”s.
So Chester the Molester? The funny thing is that it is so in keeping for Billie/Jennifer to hit someone for irrational reasons that I and probably a lot of other people didn’t think for a second that she’d a reasonable explanation this time, but Chester saying that “Alice was OK with it eventually” pretty much seals it as him really being a creep.
Ryan, Chester, and Paul should be exceptions to the no killing rule of Willis.
Perhaps stalked by Mike’s burning skull ghost that rides a Segway.
Not to disagree but I think it’s an important clarification that Ryan and Chester are creeps and predators. Paul is just an incel loser. Kinda the exact opposite of Ryan and Chester. Paul has a small chance of reforming one day and hopefully writing off his college years as an all too common cringe era lots of young men go through. Ryan and Chester should be jailed and probably shot in the dick.
The thing that separates most incels from predators is opportunity.
HIT HIM AGAIN. BEAT THAT BOY LIKE A RENTED MULE.
Shit. Right. Search for Sal continues.
HIT HIM AGAIN!
Someone should start doling out piñata sticks to all the girls in the room.
or some baseball bats, just saying
Any long, thin striking implement will do! Step right up, ladies, step right up for a rousing round of Whack-a-Rapist!
Limbs are worth 10 points each strike
Organs 15 points
Head 30
Gonads 50
**full on Juliet Landau impression* “Do it again! Do it again!”
But… please don’t beat mules, folks. Rented or otherwise.
You could beat him like an egg, though…
BUENOS!!!!
Batimos sus dos huevos!!!
Honestly, I’m not even sure that’s a real expression. It may in fact just be something Ray from Archer says.
I heard it growing up. That and it’s follicle based counterpart about redheaded stepchildren
Never stopped Billie-ving.
I see, alright kick him on the way out and carry on.
I hadn’t realized that given the sliding timeline, the cast would’ve been in high school when Roe fell. I feel super sad thinking about it
Mine is a bitter, bitter laugh.
Rolling gravatar again. I’m not cool enough for Asher
HELL YEAH
Oomph.
She’s also probably underaged and her parents may have been forbidden it.
You know, the Fast Times in Ridgemont High story.
Yeah, just fucking crushing how far backwards everything is falling.
“Eventually”
Abortion much?
Dude what a weird fucking comment.
It does match the nightmarish mugshot of what I assume to be some stand-up comedian or other.
Points for authenticity I guess!
Between “okay with it eventaully” and “psa ladies: cover your drinks” I think the abortion she had to drive Alice across state lines for isn’t the biggest issue here.
The former is questionable and might just be he didn’t support her in getting an abortion.
The latter, not so much.
So Alice’s timeline:
1. Gets Chestered
2. Has to ask her best friend to drive her across state lines to fix the mess
3. Takes Chester back/continue dating him, for whatever reason (appearances? Popularity? Teenagers? Who knows.)
4. Has her best friend/confidante/potential lover punch him in front of a crowd, also then revealing her secret (even if she didn’t shout it in public, word definitely spreads especially once people connect the dots: Chester gets punched, Billie yells the girls to check their drinks, Chester was dating Alice.)
Has sex with Billie at some time anywhere from before point 1 to now
5. Car crash???
6. Avoids talking to Billie over the summer, enrolls in IU
7. Sees Billie attending the SAME SCHOOL.
Girl had a real rough… last year of high school.
It seems she’s somewhat easily overwhelmed by strong personalities, which she implies to Jennifer when they meet up again and Jennifer isn’t even aware she’s angry.
Jennifer at the time was pretty oblivious in general, trying to brute-force her previous social status on a new, more adult social setting. She has been repeatedly hinted to be undiagnosed and unaware autistic while trying to handle Joyce’s autism and endo? diagnoses – which could go a way to explaining her confusion and total lack of awareness of the reason for Alice’s anger and how her absence of contact was supposed to communicate it.
OK, I’m gonna out my ignorance here, but …
what’s the support for Billie/Jennifer being on the spectrum?
I don’t quite get why that’s suspected.
I mean, there was one mention of the possibility, but I’m not sure where it came from.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/slipshod/
(I’m really not great at reading people or divining subtext, though, so there may have been something I missed.)
3. Abusers are great at getting back with their victims, it’s kinda one of their things.
4. I’d honestly be inclined (as the gossipy public) to think he roofied Billie with this information, actually.
I agree though, Alice had one hell of a rough time there. Sadly not a totally uncommon experience (with obvious allowances made for dramatic vortexing in a story).
I think even if the public suspects Billie was the one who got Chestered, Alice, who had close connections to both (was dating one, best friends with the other), would get a ton of questions about it. Would not have been an easy summer for her either way.
No, absolutely, she had a shitty year.
Yeah, but if this leads to her breaking up with Chester, it’s definitely a better year than the alternative.
Yeah, without hearing the “drove Alice across state lines” part, there’s little reason to connect the PSA to her. More likely either Billie or someone else she knew about, rather than his girlfriend. You’d think more naturally of him roofieing a 3rd party than the person he’s already dating.
The crash was the night of prom, so 3 and 4 occur on the same night.
Shit. I mean 4 and 5.
Yep. Which makes me think the Alice sexual flash-panel came from either later on drunk after prom or else predates most of the list.
Alice has had that crush on Jennifer for awhile, so it’s quite possible sexual stuff happened multiple times before now. Or it could just be one time after the prom, real soon now.
I had the impression it was ongoing, but it could have been one late dramatic event.
Great job kicking this dude’s ass, Billie!
Terrible move telling a room full of people about what happened to Alice without consulting her, Billie!
BILLIE JUSTIFIED OUR QUEEN NEVER DOES ANYTHING WRONG!!!
At least until however long it takes her to get to the car.
If anyone is looking into this comment because it got reported, that was me, it was an accident, and I don’t see an “un-report” option. My apologies to IntangibleMatter.
You’re fine, there’s a minimum threshold of reports before it gets flagged for DYW to look at
It’s okay, I reported your comment for balance. And for the high.
OOO SHIT! BILLIE HAD AN ABORTION!
DRAMA BOMB!
Oh no wait, it was Alice I see? Golly. Where’s this going.
Yeah, more like Alice was raped and then Billie helped her access an abortion.
Because her core self-conception is that she is a problem solver.
How she solves the problem (and I want to stress here it’s not driving her for the abortion that I’m referring to, but the punch/mic drop) is what is questionable at times.
“Alice was okay with it eventually!”
Aight so do this a few more times for me, would ya’ Billie?
Maybe Chester will be okay with it eventually. Keep it up until he is.
S-tier comment. Well done.
Weird, it looks like he still has skin.
Rapists are allowed to keep their skin these days. It’s political correctness gone mad.
if there is anything Jennifer knew when getting Alice an abortion,
is that is our moral obligation to break the rules when following them does not lead to justice
Weaponized mic-drop. Good thinking.
hey Billie maybe don’t shout that Alice had a abortion in front of the whole school? just a thought
To clarify, I don’t think Jennifer announced the abortion bit due to the fact she wasn’t talking to the Mike but people probably heard it in the front row.
No but the rape could be inferred by her comments
YIKES!
But now I’m confused why Alice is surprised by this. Of course Billie hates him. Of course she wouldn’t touch him except to hit him.
Have they not talked about this since Alice forgave him? Has Billie actually been pretending to be OK with him to keep the friendship or did Alice just assume Billie would forgive him because Alice did? I’m trying to figure out why this is a “What the fuck?” and not a “Damn it, I knew it!”.
Anyway, good for Billie.
Well based on the whole Raidah thing I could see the second paragraph being true. The fact she insisted on being called Billie when her winning prom queen was announced makes me think that this is her finally having had enough.
And I think it was the “unused” comment from Alice, combined with Chester’s peacocking, that did it.
Yeah, the “unused” thing…BLUGH!
Huh.
Except Alice decided to have him as a boyfriend, even after all of that…
…
… and Alice kicked Billie to the curb even after Billie drove her to a clinic.
…
Feeling conflicted about so many things here…
Also, I can’t decide whether to read that PSA as indicating what Chester did to Alice, or whether she thought to give an unrelated PSA because she had the momentary opportunity and was feeling cynical enough to make it this particular piece of advice. Normally I’d think the former, but Alice still dating him makes me question that.
“Alice was okay with it eventually” seems to me to tie to both the PSA and that he’s her boyfriend – eventually.
“Kicking her to the curb” you mean staying away from her after she almost killed them both by driving drunk. I think it’s perfectly understandable to do that in that case, in fact specially is understandable when someone who did someone like that for you put you in danger. It’s a broken trust.
Not sure what you’re conflicted about:
– Abusers are great at getting their victims to come back. It’s part of how they manage their bullshit in the first place. That’s not the victim’s fault. This includes people who stay with or date their rapist.
– Billie almost killed Alice in a car crash that happened (we assume and so does Alice) due to drinking. It’s totally fair to not want to be friends with someone dangerous to your health even if they did you a solid.
– I don’t think the PSA was unrelated, given everything else Billie has said about roofies being attached to “taking down abusive boyfriends and sneaking my friends to have abortions” as a little triad, but I can’t prove it because we just don’t know yet. I’mma go ahead and err on the side of it being specifically about Chester being a rapist.
Yup. I’ve been spending the past 4 months trying to de-brainwash-ify myself and finally come to terms with just straight-up cutting off contact with someone. It is HARD. TO. DO.
It’s like detoxing every single day. Again and again and again.
*Facepalm*
I mean it makes sense, she did all this without permission (even if people didn’t hear her say Alice’s name they’d have heard Chester as he was shouting, plus people would definitely put 2 and 2 together from context clues) then, probably not even a few hours later is going to almost get her killed
As for Alice getting back with him that’s completely irrelevant, it can take several times for someone to finally leave an abuser for good (I’ve heard up to 7 on average but I’m not sure if that’s the exact statistic)
To continue echoing what other people have said, two things can be right at once. Alice’s ex-boyfriend Chester can be a creep and Jennifer can drunkenly crash the car with Alice in it and both of these things can be bad. If anything, I think it caused Alice to take a long introspective look, realize the two people she’d had feelings for were both very much NOT good for her, and decided to use college as a clean break to try again and not fall into the same mistakes this time.
*takes notes* Dropping a mic on a dick is now on my bucket list.
I hear there’s places you can pay to do that. Overseas somewhere. Bulmeria I think
Also, this kinda puts a spin on the whole “Head Cheerleader, Problem Solver” thing.
I think she mentioned this was one of the things she did way early in the strip (though she didn’t say for whom).
I think the second part of that formulation is her core self-conception regardless of whether she’s calling herself Billie or Jennifer. Where she falls short at times is that she cares, and because she cares she sometimes doesn’t think things through in attempting to solve the problem.
Wow, I was expecting this to be a callback to one of Billie’s Alpha B markers, not all three.
Sweet holy fuck with that alt text
EVENTUALLY?
The fuck kind of logic…
Right, the kind that wants to justify doing whatever the hell you want to do and not feel bad about it.
I love that hesitation before commiting to renounce her title
Ver Jennifer. Even in this circumstance it’s hard for her 
(And that alt.text? Perfectly executed
)
(like mike was)
wow, ouch!
Attagirl, you show them that you’re not just a so-called “Drama Hurricane”
“Aw, man”? Tough noogies, Walky. More nugs for you, tho
huh, I was reading the “[Alice] was eventually fine with it” as Chester saying she got over getting pregnant and having an abortion, but it’s interesting to see other comments point out it could be that Alice sadly started or continued a relationship with her rapist/abuser. If that turns out to be right, oof, poor Alice.
If my first interpretation is correct though (that Alice and Chester’s relationship was consensual, but he was a bad boyfriend who did not support her during the abortion and in fact probably disappeared for the event); I can very much see why Alice reacted the way she did after seeing her alleged best friend going to the same university as her.
Billie could very well be turning Alice’s life into a steaming pile of shit by announcing it to the world that she had an abortion. Depends on how conservative Alice’s parents are and how the rest of the students react to this news.
I think people are interpreting it the way they are due to the last panel
I suppose it’s theoretically possible that’s an unrelated psa (though if it is it’s incredibly reckless to throw it on the end of all this) but that feels very unlikely given everything else
It can easily be all of these things. Chester could’ve initiated the relationship via roofie and SA that Alice eventually accepted as consensual if she was even aware during any of it. It’s high school and she ended up dating a football player. This happens all the time. Chester could’ve initiated also have gotten her pregnant during the initial SA or anytime in their following relationship and then been absentee or even pressured her to get the abortion. We don’t really have to assume it is one or the other and we don’t have enough details anyway.
I can see Alice being conditioned into believing Chester was never in the wrong for any of it or choosing to tolerate her assault because of his status at school or getting an abortion so as not to ruin his college aspirations. It can all be bad.
The sad thing is that if the unwanted pregnancy & subsequent abortion happened to Jennifer, she could announce it to the World and her parents would barely react to it.
I absolutely love the the curtain in the background. In panel 4 especially, the sparkles look so much like boozles (is that the right word?) that it’s unclear whether Billie is doing this sober or not.
Which, given that the DUI probably happened later tonight (she wouldn’t have become queen if it was earlier), may or may not suggest that some earlier commenters are right about how that DUI happened.
I’ve never seen a more based Billie, methinks.
ah, classic r*ape culture logic guys use.
makes my skin crawl every time I hear about someone getting their partner to agree to it after “coercing them”.
I also want to say that Alice’s eyes in that first panel are not “I am shocked and appalled” eyes. I think on some level Alice is glad to see this, at least at this moment. But social opprobrium either causes her to suppress that or she makes a conscious choice to.
Eventually? Yeah, Chester deserved everything he got and more.
Oooooooh
The plot thickens!
ALT TEXT 2020 Mike Drop! Damn You Willis!
Good Job!
Checking the tab and Alice is actually the girl we see there. I initially thought she was a 3rd (or 4th) party who Chester had an affair with.
Well, that answers all questions.
Ooooh I knew it.
I’m kind of crushed by Alice’s ”drama hurricane” moment now. But also, like, sure Chester deserved this and more but don’t do it without the victim’s consent yo
Dang that was cool
Ohh, is that why she knew to warn people about covering drinks early on?
That and she’s a woman.
Yeah it’s mostly that she’s a woman who exists in this misogynistic hellscape.
This strip has really re-contextualized everything hasn’t it? I think it’s important to ask ourselves at this point how Jennifer developed a drinking problem in the first place? We don’t know. Alice claims Jennifer thought “It was fine.” When they crashed. Does the Jen we’ve seen really seem like someone who thinks nearly dying is no big deal? We also really don’t know much about Alice except that she claimed the friend we now know helped her get an abortion and confronted and outed her rapist was “dragging her down for years.” Can we trust Alice perspective on Jennifer? I don’t know anymore.
This all fits with what we know of Jennifer in high school: “I’m an ALPHA bongo. I scope parties for roofies. I sneak friends into abortion clinics. I take down abusive boyfriends.”
But we also know Alice was in love with her and they had some kind of sexual relationship, but that was kind of one sided since Jennifer thought of herself as straight, but attracted to girls sometimes and that date she went on with Ruth was the first she’d really had with another girl. And we know Jennifer’s expectations for a party – drunk sex with boys. This is all how she developed that “wealth of knowledge about horrific things”.
Putting it all together in terms of “dragging her down”, Alice’s crush on Jennifer is what led her to those parties, probably including the one where Chester roofied her.
That’s all possible too. It’s clear Alice was hurt by Jennifer by the car crash at minimum, so whatever choices she made in cutting Jennifer out of her life are totally valid. What’s unclear is everything else. Alice is responsible for her own choices and Chester is likely a creep who preyed on her. Putting all of that on Jennifer isn’t fair either. It’s funny that Jennifer’s high school life was basically a early 2000’s CW teen drama. “Billie’s Creek”.
I wouldn’t put it all on Jennifer, but if crushing on Jennifer led Alice to make a bunch of bad decisions to follow her, it makes sense that she’d feel Jennifer was dragging her down and want to cut ties to keep from repeating it.
Also, the behavior we’re seeing from Jennifer here is loving but extremely impulsive. If “loving but extremely impulsive” also characterized Jennifer’s friendship towards Alice leading up to this point, I can see why a shock like the car crash would inspire her to recontextualize the whole thing as a roller coaster she just wants to get off.
To answer your question: Yes thinking almost dying in car crash due to her drinking is very in character for everything we know about Jennifer, because she didn’t want to introspect about if what she did was really wrong, she thought she could just go back to being friends with Alice like nothing happened after she stopped talking to her all summer.
*thinking is fine
I mean, on the “would she really think almost dying was fine” point… She was pretty committed to the lesbian suicide pact thing with Ruth
True, but IMO the jury’s still out as to how similar this flashback head-cheerleader-mic-drop albeit-about-to-car-crash Billie is to first-year-college lesbian-suicide-pact Billie. My impression is, a lot of what Billie was struggling with by the time she and Ruth got together was the loss of that former head-cheerleader status, and moving on from high school. She lost the context in which she was a big fish in a small pond, and has to deal with the trappings of her old life – “Go Golden Dragons!” – becoming irrelevant. Plus, she lost Alice’s affection, and may not have even really known that until the chance meeting with Alice at college. Since these were such large parts of her identity, and all of these losses seem to have been at least somewhat unexpected to her, and several of them are directly blamed on her by other people, it’s not totally surprising to me that she would fall temporarily into semi-nihilism (and what might have been significantly-worsening alcoholism) when she had to deal with those losses in relatively quick succession.
One thing that makes a huge difference to this strip’s implications (as discussed at length in this comment section) is if anyone other than Chester heard Billie’s line talking about driving Alice over state lines. Per Word of Willis, this exchange on bluesky would suggest that was between her and Chester only: https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3lhddwnkyfk2k
“Willis pls!!! Did Billie just out Alice’s circumstances to the entire prom??”
DYW: “She isn’t speaking into the mic then.”
Wait, so Billie holds the mike in her left hand, punches Chester with her right (and then takes off her tiara with it), yells to the crowd with the mike in her right hand, then switches the mike back to her left hand again?
You need to be a detective hunting pedos or something because those details do NOT matter in a fictional comic.
Use your powers for good and not trolling please
You call that trolling? Is the bar so low that “noticing things about the art” counts now?
It’s possible they meant “Please use your perceptive powers for good, and not for trolling people in the future”. If they had said “for good and not for evil” I wouldn’t necessarily assume that they thought noticing things about art was evil.
(I’m not exactly sure how would use excellent perceptiveness for trolling, but maybe something like manipulation, social engineering, etc.?)
But, you may also be correct. In which case: yeah, that’s probably overextending the concept of trolling.
Looking more closely at the Don’t Stop Billie-ving flashback comic, I think she’s wearing the same scrunchie here as in the car crash. I wonder how Alice would go from “she just beat up my boyfriend while simultaneously airing my trauma on stage” to getting in a car with a drunk Billie driving.
Ah I just saw Willis’s Bluesky comment above. Still, publicly punching him and completing with a mic drop on him (hah), I wonder what’s coming next.
Also I misunderstood how gravatars worked, I must be missing a step. Need to look this up more when I’m at my laptop rather than my phone.
did she hit in the solar plexus or nads?
In the comic uploaded yesterday, she punches him in the chest. Nobody’s nads are in their chest, and there’s no such thing as a “solar plexus”, so I figure she kicked him in the groin between strips.
Just stepping in to say the solar plexus is another name for the celiac plexus and is infact an actual thing situated roughly at the base of the ribs
Wanted to double check and guess about where she punched him?
No, it’s made-up anatomy invented to make fight scenes look more legitimate in books.
The solar plexus or Celiac plexus is indeed real, and if you are hit
really hard there you may very well crumble to the ground and struggle
to breathe. I know this from first hand experience.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538129/
First paragraph of “Structure and Function” mentions it in an actual academic source from as recently as late 2023
Needed a content warning there. I think I will be skipping this storyline.
I hear ya.
the tags say “jennifer” but the comic says “billie”
Almost like there never was any real difference.
Also this particular flashback takes place in the past, back before Billie started telling people to call her Jennifer. Linear time strikes again.
I understand Billi’s reasons, but what she did is too theatrical and dramatic. I think she sees herself as the protagonist of a movie, but her life is not a movie. I’m not surprised that it ended bad.
It’s truly tragic that this behavior leads to her dying tonight.
Yeah, the problem here is definitely Billie. She’s the one who karma should push into a lifethreatening car accident for punching a rapist.
And you’re right, her life is not a movie. It’s a comic book.
He deserves that and even worse, but Alice not. It’s true that Billie didn’t say Alice’s name on the microphone. But those who were close enough will have heard it, will tell the others and we don’t know if she wants it to be known.
Chester is also a weakling. A gut punch shouldn’t floor a man his size.
I mean. He wasn’t expecting it, so he likely wouldn’t have had his abs tensed. So she just punched his liver
This too. A sucker punch is considered dirty fighting for a reason.
The women in this comic are abnormally strong, though. Don’t forget, Joyce punched Ross off the ground and he landed a couple meters away. Billie herself threw Walky out of her room, with plenty of air, and that’s after months of no cheerleading. Here in this flashback, her physical training is still fresh, so I have to estimate she could singlehandedly tip at least a Mini Cooper. Chester should probably check for damaged organs.
It’s likely she hit a nerve cluster – also known as the solar or coeliac plexus.
Yeah, that’s a pretty good spot to knock the wind out of someone.
1. Sorry, Walky. No sash for you. You have failed at barter.
2. “Eventually”?! Shame there’s no kneeing up Chester’s ‘nads.
3. “Cover your drinks”!? Shame there’s no _removing_ Chester’s ‘nads.
The kick in the nuts definitely happened off-panel. See the man cringe in the second panel. So that’s taken care of.
I regret that we did not see it on-camera.
Also, re: alt-text: *groan
That’s terrible. Dishonor on you, Mr. Willis; dishonor on your cow!
OOF, to that alt-text. Poor Mike…
I saw this a million miles away. The comment section yesterday was hating Billy… let’s watch her become the popular girl again.
Love from a fellow c$nt alpha b!tch
So happy to have a smiling Billy icon. Apropos
Mike would be proud of that mouseover text.
getting a girl pregnant, okay, that’s a bit of a scandal, but we all make mistakes…HOW he got her pregnant, now THAT’S an issue
“Creep”, “cover your drinks” and “she was okay with it EVENTUALLY” paint a very unpretty picture of that likelihood to me.
Yes. Rape is, indeed, the issue.
Called it, he’s a fucking creep. I wonder if the date rape drug warning was related.
(apologies for bad language, this subject gets to me)
Time to play avatar-roulette
I’m guessing he slipped her a roofie on a date, date-raped her, and she ended up pregnant. Billie had to drive her to get an abortion. But Alice stayed with him (probably blamed herself) so she was “okay with it”.
Similar, but I’m guessing it was at a party she only went to because Billie wanted her to.
Just for maximum pain.
Nope, sorry Danny.
I can live with the ginger menace, but would prefer not to.
one more try
Respect, Jennifer. Guy seems like a creep (“Alice was okay with it eventually”
) and deserves to be called out on it.
And maybe an extra kick to the nuts while you are there.
“Why was Alice in love with Billie” is now a question that’s been answered. Anyone would be in love with someone who fought for you this hard. Shame her alcoholism and refusal to look weak had to sabotage it.
Given the drunken car-crash happened right after Prom, I’m wondering if – as others have said already – she was either roofied in revenge, or maybe broke down and self-destructed after Alice’s reaction hit her too hard? Or, slightly less sad but no less dramatic third option, got with Alice as a result of making up over this, both got drunk together, then crashed the car racing off home?
I’m not sure there’s gotta be a reason Billie is drunk, she fucking loves drinking.
Ah, the self-righteous internet (speaking to the comments, presumably not written by fictional characters, gravitars aside).
Dude’s a creep and a violent pervert, so you know the best way to solve it? More violence. That’s the ticket!
Yes, actually. Sorry you can’t handle beating up and killing rapists, weakling.
does it solve it structurally? no
is the structural way of solving it succeeding? also no
is it even trying to succeed? looks pretty iffy, unfortunately
we shouldn’t punch everyone we suspect may have potentially been involved with violence, sure
if someone who actually does that shit and gets punched about it I’m kind of okay with it given the circumstances that surround these things
Better if they get punched first and don’t get to do the thing, but most people don’t have amazi-girl following them to a party
Unironically I agree. I’m against the death penalty, though.
Good thing we are not trying to solve violence right now. Just hurting an asshole.
Aside from the other reasons your comment is shitty, you do understand that the real life commenters are talking about fictional characters, right? And that a lot of people read fiction for emotional effect, and seeing a rapist in a get punched in a story is cathartic for a lot of people?
Their username is a Donkey Kong Country reference, they’re beyond reach.
When the justice system fails, what else is to be expected but for justice to be taken into the hands of the people?
You want him to get warm hugs and some counseling?
Might help, actually…
Lotta sex offenders do benefit from counseling, at least. I think the hugs gotta be on their own time, though, ’cause they’re not likely to come through a treatment program.
Billie punching some sportsball player just after Sarah hooks up with Tony is fun.
Beat up the bad ones, fuck the good ones. Those are the rules.
Billie was »fine« standing in Chester’s vicinity, but sharing the stage with him is apparently a bridge too far. She could have slugged him »right there« when they were both still in the crowd. Something does not compute.
So we have to assume that Alice ventured new information that provoked this reaction in Billie. The fact that they were still dating perhaps.
Although it seems the word »unused« is what triggered this reaction in Billie. Still, the dude was standing around and only »now« did she turn violent.
It’s more that this was the last straw for her? To quote Star Trek: “do not mistake composure for ease.”
To add onto this, it’s also not just that she’s standing next to him on stage, but that she’s expected to dance with him. Dancing is intimate, it requires close contact, and I wouldn’t want to put my hands on, nor have him put his hands on me, to share a dance if I knew he had SAed my best friend. As someone who’s been in similar situations, sometimes it is easier to just exist in the same space as a creep but having to touch them or them touching you (even if it’s a hug) is what tips it over.
Yup. Yup, yup, yup, yup, yup…
*Facepalm, shaking my dang head…*
I’m annoyed with Jennifer for sharing all of this about Alice, who probably wanted it to stay private, but I also think that she’s awesome for doing this.
She isn’t speaking to the mic when she gets specific.
Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the crowd can’t hear it. I’ve been in plenty auditoriums where the mic was practically superfluous.
Willis over at blusky confirms that isn’t the case here.
Have read that, and I still don’t think she does enough to conceal that portion of her words. Maybe only those near the stage can hear? It’ll still spread across the school population. And her actions and the words *that *are* mic’d up tell enough of the story for school gossip to fill in the blanks somehow. I think she’s well-intentioned and didn’t out Alice deliberately which means a fair bit in characterisation terms. But it’s possible for Alice to be furious anyway, either for herself or misplaced on Chester’s behalf. IIRC the real reason she dropped contact was still the car crash, however.
Announcing your best friend’s boyfriend is a fucking creep and advising others to cover their drinks is probably enough to get people talking about Alice, but… it also protects other girls he might prey on and shows that people will act and speak out against those who commit sexual assault.
For the abortion part, I definitely agree it would be shitty to announce that– not only is it Alice’s private business, it could be dangerous for her if people know– but based on Willis’ comment on blusky and having been in groups of teenagers before, it does make sense that people wouldn’t hear that part.
(Sometimes voices carry without a microphone; Billie wasn’t trying to announce it, though, or she would have used the mic. And unless the room went silent, it’s reasonable that what they said wouldn’t be able to be made out by the audience– and while there was probably some shock, I doubt the teenagers all responded with silence.)
As approximately 50 people have already pointed out, she didn’t say that part into the microphone.
Heh. I really should have refreshed instead of commenting.
I was confusing Chester with Tony and thinking poor Sarah was falling for a shitty dude
until recently I thought Tony, Beef, and Ron(?) were all the same person
It’s good that the strip took a 5-year break after that last mic drop.
That last one really killed.
Booooooo
Talk about a MAN(N) Act!
Booooo
Fuck, meant to reply to a different comment
Hough. On one hand: Absolutely fucking fuck this guy. Ruining his shitty glory is incredible. On the other…. I think if I had my out of state abortion revealed mid-party without my permission I’d uh. feel a few ways.
Bottom line: come to think of it along with everything else going on with her, Billie makes a lot of sense as someone who had to spend her teen to young adult years looking after other teen girls who were being preyed on.
Ah i see now the mics pointed away and she just says that to chester. Taken back! Classy (genuinely)
“Billie makes a lot of sense as someone who had to spend her teen to young adult years looking after other teen girls who were being preyed on.”
This.
Makes me so sad.
Jennifer’s speech is very General Hux.
“Today will be the LAST DAY OF THE REPUBLIC! OPEN FIRE!”
Wait… what’s this feeling…am I… am I.. respecting Billie??