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Now now, the characters in a comic like Smarting of Age would never make a poor life decisio-huh has the title always been Dumbing? I swear it was Smarting back home in the Berenstein universe.
What I really like about this comic is how everything made sense to people at the time. Billie’s negligently tiny coping toolbox has basically Use Alcohol and Stupid Cheerleader Drama-Do a Power Walk in it. Ruth reasoned “sip a few drinks, allowed to have love from Billie again, agonizing pain decreases”.
Certain mood stabilizers have Stevens-Johnson syndrome as a potential side effect for like 0.1~0.2% of patients. Usually triggered by sudden dosage changes which is why they ramp you up slow for those meds. Basically it starts as a really bad rash and quickly progresses to full-on necrosis of the entire dermal sheath. You know those anatomy diagrams in your doctor’s office with the dude stripped down to exposed muscle? It’s as if your body decided everything external to that was actually a badly-matched transplant and began rejecting it. Decent chance you’ll survive if you immediately get to the ER, but you can’t take anything that has this as a side effect (I’m on two meds like this) without getting absolutely AVALANCHED with “no seriously you will die in the most horrible fuckin’ way” warnings from everybody, every label, and every instruction packet.
Alcohol can suppress the effects of mood stabilizers, but that’s a psychiatric effect – it shouldn’t actually alter the fundamental chemistry of your body with regard to diffusion of the chemicals involved. It’s sharp spikes or dropoffs in that chemistry that usually begin the process and it’s damn near impossible to get a script for anything like this without being read the riot act on not dicking around with your dosage.
If Ruth suddenly stopped taking her meds or decided to take more (she’s been behaving pretty manic of late) then she’s potentially at risk.
SJS/TEN is not noted as an interaction of lamotrigine with other drugs, or with alcohol. If it were anyone would be insanely reckless to prescribe it to a patient with Ruth’s history.
I would like to point out (1) that Willis never said that Ruth is on lamotrigine or tregretol, and (2) that not every rash, not every skin reaction, is SJS/TEN.
Well, but he told her IF she showed up again he’d assume that she was either being truthful or incredibly brazenly stupid. While we know which option it is, he doesn’t.
Ruth, come on, you don’t compromise your health or your life.
Fun fact – they’re not called black and tans in Ireland (for reasons of a violently oppressive historical paramilitary force having the same nickname). Most people just ask for pale ale and stout layered. If they have a name, it’s usually called a half and half.
For similar reasons, the Irish Car Bomb is not called that either. I….really hope I don’t need to explain why that name would be considered offensive. But yeah, apparently you either order Guinness, Bailey’s and Irish whiskey together or, more rarely, places sell them under the names ‘Irish slammer’ or (much MORE rarely) ‘Irish bomb shot’.
“Black and Tan” should be offensive! And “Half and Half”! In both cases you’re watering down good stout with beer! Give me a pint of stout or a pint of beer, but don’t give me some wishy washy compromise!
they totally can, but Jason’s been a bartender for like a few days at this point, so I’m glad if Billie’s making that choice that much easier to make for Jason.
Resto’s I worked we were required to refuse drinks to people who were too, too. Had to do with legal responsibility if someone we served subsequently caused an accident while DWI/DUI on booze we provided.
Jason should do the smart thing here and refuse to serve either one of them. I’m really hoping that is what is coming, I’m also hoping this whole thing is going to trigger an epiphany for Billie. But as people remind me this isn’t called Smarting of Age.
i’ve been waiting for jason to join the fray since ruth showed up.
i’m kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop and this storyline to end up in as bad of a place emotionally as the car chase. billie better start acting with integrity real soon, or she’ll have some regrets.
He hadn’t been humbled yet. Not that I think he’s the picture of humility now, but we’ve seen he at least realizes he blew that gig, and I imagine he really doesn’t want to screw this up, too, and end up having to go back home, given how much he detests his dad.
Oh jeez that’s sudden and honestly I’m not entirely surprised. Ruth is going to drink herself into some kind of atoxia if she’s not stopped. Well I bet “string bean” will find about half a word before Billie has a screaming fit, perhaps.
I’m sorry, I know this is deathly serious and really not something to laugh at, but I keep thinking that Jason’s going to have to try bartenderly advice for the first time in his life and I just smile whenever I imagine that trainwreck.
I had to look up what a black and tan was, and incidentally learned it’s another drink that’s offensive to the Irish along with of course an Irish Car Bomb.
Yeah, if a restaurant in Ireland is serving a drink Americans would call a black and tan, the name over there (if any) is likely to be ‘half and half’.
Well the name predates the offensive use by about 40 years, referring to the coats of types of dogs (That reference to the drink is from around 1881) but did end up becoming offensive due to the association with the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force, or “Black and Tans” in the 1920s. So its a mixed bag on whether or not the drink name itself is truly offensive, but It is definitely not polite to ask for one in Ireland.
Yeah, shifting cultural forces and experience. There’s countries where all sorts of things are considered offensive that are innocuous here and vice versa.
Okay this is getting worse. For the love of Willis, will one of you idiots call an ambulance for her!? If she’s already got a rash from the allergic reaction she’s at major risk of anaphylactic shock! So stop being a bongo Billie and save Ruth! Same goes for you Jason, minus the bongo add the stringy!
Wow Billie, it’s almost like ghosting your ‘depressed and recovering from being suicidal’ girlfriend after a fight about alcoholism and drinking is a bad idea or something, huh.
“Billie I don’t want to drink.”
“REEEEEEEEEEEEEE FUCK YOU”
*later*
“okay I’ll drink”
“YOU CAN’T DO THAT YOU WERE DOING SO WELL!!!”. Mixed messages for sure.
I think the subtext was more like:
“Billie I don’t want to drink.”
“I can’t stop drinking so I’m going to push you away so I don’t take you down with me”
*later*
“Okay I’ll drink because I want you back”
“SHIT THAT BACKFIRED”
You right, you right. I just like that this shows how self-defeating and stupid that line of thinking is, because pushing people away ‘for their own good’ does NOBODY any good. Ruth certainly wasn’t happy to be pushed away from her girlfriend. Billie wasn’t happy doing it. Hopefully this shows Billie that that behavior isn’t the way to go.
Yeah, I didn’t get the subtext until Billie talked about trying to push Ruth away. I feel better about Billie now that I know she wasn’t actively trying to sabotage Ruth, even if that was a really stupid thing to do and this potential outcome should have been obvious.
I think even Billie is going to feel really guilty once she processes that “Relationships are about compromise” means “Billie wanted me to drink a lot, I didn’t want to drink anything and stood up for myself to that effect but was punished for it by Billie by being cold shouldered by her, so we split the difference and I only drank some OK a lot.”
Ruth is already at two strikes for her job. Inappropriate Relationship for RA with Student was one, and Hospitalized for Mental Health and Needs to Focus on Self was two. Her residence manager went out on a limb and wagered she was still a net positive for students. If Ruth gets Hospitalized Again and Alcoholism Treatment Failure (which comes with a free Underage Drinking), that’s like strikes three, four, and five for her RA job. Her boss and the school literally can’t take the risk Ruth can’t protect the students under her care and something bad happens and they get sued.
That means Ruth loses her RA job and the student work money it brings in and probably goes on Disciplinary Probation. She also super disappoints her, uh, grandpa or whoever that disciplinary guy was who was covering for her while being permanently disappointed in her.
Ruth is a grown up who can and should make her own decisions, but Billie was being a crappy and mean immature kid about it and made things super hard. Maybe that was the best she could do at the time but there is a world of hurt in the works if things don’t go really, really well at damage control starting right now. (Depending on just how bad this allergic reaction is or is not.)
I don’t think she’s going to get fired given that her grandpa is basically leveraging it behind her back and behind her wishes. She could probably harvest the organs of half the hall and still be trapped in that role.
I think he had enough leverage to make it stick for strikes One and Two, but then only with the recommendation of Ruth’s residence manager boss. If this allergic reaction blows up at all and results in a medical incident, guaranteed her manager (an actual caring, responsible adult in this world) pulls that recommendation, not least of which for Ruth’s own good. Ruth doesn’t have anything left to help others right now.
Ruth’s grandpa has pull, but it’s doubtfully infinite. The other student’s families have pull too (example, Carla’s mega millionaire parents) and the school has a reputation to manage that is gonna be worth more than any one family. One or two strikes and the recommendation that this was still salvageable, workable. More strikes layered on? It might take influence just to keep Ruth there in a probationary status.
It’s not about a number of strikes, but rather about the perceived implications of the event. If the resident manager gets convinced this was “just a side effect of the antidepressants” and is carefully kept from the information that Ruth had alcohol, she’s likely to support Ruth even more. This is likely the angle “Sir” is going to go for. I’m more afraid of what he’s going to do to Ruth and Howard, as he’s now _very disappointed_ in Ruth. In reality you can convince people that a situation is salvageable as long as you give them a gradual decline as opposed to a sudden huge fall and points of hope in between. That’s how gambling machines are often prgrammed to make you keep hoping to gain money even though you keep losing more and more. We’ve already survived a hard fall, a “simple hospital visit for some nasty side effects of the meds” is nothing compared to the earlier revelations and you could even say “she’s likely to have a fall back in her progress ’cause we need to find new meds for her”, explaining her mood the coming time and thereby gaining trust…
On the other hand, said resident manager is Chloe, who has given exactly zero indication of a) being good at her job, b) trying to do her job or c) not fucking up if she is forced to do her job.
I think you’re being far too kind to Chloe. Bear in mind, she’s not some poor front-line manager learning the ropes. She is an alleged professional in a professional position.
And yeah, it’s hard to imagine that she would be allowed to keep her job if her bosses were actually paying attention.
My observation over the years is that incompetent managers actually prefer hiring incompetent subordinates. That way there’s always someone to blame things on, and the subordinates will never present a threat to the manager’s job.
Sort of. Though she’s not that far up.
She is a front line manager – she manages the student RAs. There’s no sign she’s much above that.
It was also clear during that sequence that, although she did think it was good Ruth was able to stay on, that Clint went over her head and the decision was made at a higher level. It was stated earlier, before there was any sign Clint was getting involved, that she wouldn’t be deciding what would happen to Ruth.
I’m not going to argue Chloe’s good at her job, but she doesn’t seem to have actual hiring and firing authority, so it’s hard to blame her for hiring incompetent subordinates. Now, if she had been on top of things, she could have caught on to the problems with Ruth sooner and a bad report from her likely could have changed things, so some of it’s on her.
“Poor Billie” seems a bit much. As if she were some hapless passenger on this ship, rather than someone who kept walking through the engine room with open containers of jet fuel and a pocket full of hand grenades.
Ruth forced Billie into a relationship by bullying and gaslighting her.
Now she’s going to do it again.
The fact Ruth is a victim of her own bullying doesn’t make her in the right. Billie is, unfortunately, suicidal and broken herself but Ruth is not the good guy in this.
Yes, Ruth started out bullying Billie. That pretty much ended after that first kiss. I don’t think I’d describe any of it as gaslighting, certainly nothing later than that.
They’re both messed up and both have screwed up in the relationship, but I wouldn’t pin either of them as the bad one.
And I don’t see Ruth as bullying or gaslighting here either. Or even trying to manipulate Billie. She’s hurting herself in hopes of getting her back (And she’s also using that as an excuse to drink again.) I don’t see this as “I’m going to threaten to kill myself to make you come back to me”, but “I’m going back to killing myself so we can be together.”
Which is incredibly fucked up of course, but in a very different way.
Sometimes I think I’m awful smart, but some other times the dumb comes out. When Ruth was looking for the stringbean, I thought she had lost touch with reality. Then I thought it was some kind of whiskey. It took the floating text to set me straight. And I’m a country boy. I heard people called “string bean” a lot.
I think this is more a case of being boggled by a legal drinking age of 21. In many countries, it’s several years lower (and thus, some argue, much less of a big deal because it’s not forbidden fruit).
Neither of these people have been very smart. I mean seriously Billy “I was dying for you.” by pushing away a depressed alcoholic just going on anti-depressants, how could that possibly go wrong.
Welcome to sharing the plight with the rest of us!
(I caught up about the time Becky showed up at IU again — a little before that — and it was indeed a bit of an adjustment to only read one strip a day from then on.)
“was i?”
thaaat kinda hit home with me right there.
I’ve been dealing with depression for the last 9 years, i used to sleep all day and night (maybe in a sleep/quasi-sleep state 20 hours a day) waiting for death because i was (and am) depressed. the doctors tried to keep me awake because it wasn’t good to sleep that long. but what did that leave me with? now im awake through this bullshit. now i get to suffer awake instead of sleepling through the depression.
look at Ruth(e?), they took away her alcohol and put her on antidepressants (they tried those with me. gave me nightmares, made it so i couldn’t eat for a week, made me angrier than ever before, and made me want to die), but you have to deal with the CAUSE of the depression. you take away the coping mechanism and you just leave a void, and the depressed person will want to fill that void, usually by going back to what they were doing before (her alcohol, my sleep).
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 19h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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“I mean don’t worry, I’ve ALWAYS been rash”
One wonders if this is going to be Ruth’s outbreak role.
I think she’ll be flush with success.
Yes, hive often thought so.
This…was such…a bad idea
Now now, the characters in a comic like Smarting of Age would never make a poor life decisio-huh has the title always been Dumbing? I swear it was Smarting back home in the Berenstein universe.
Before long the characters sure will be smarting, I tell you what.
What I really like about this comic is how everything made sense to people at the time. Billie’s negligently tiny coping toolbox has basically Use Alcohol and Stupid Cheerleader Drama-Do a Power Walk in it. Ruth reasoned “sip a few drinks, allowed to have love from Billie again, agonizing pain decreases”.
Dear god this escalated quickly, and I know it’s been like 5 days but holy poops this friggin’ bad
Alright, please, let this be the wake-up call for Billie to get help for herself as well.
That would require self-reflection. Billie, at this point, has none.
Billie is far too concerned about Ruth to be concerned about herself.
More like a ‘okay, I have to stop drinking. Otherwise, she won’t stop either.’
It’s kind of a terrible way to go about it, but sobriety is kind of results-oriented.
Self-reflection is the reason they and many Alcoholic’s drink. They reflect
Upon themselves and hate what they see.
Is she allergic to the mix of alcohol and meds or has she been ordering drinks she know’s have things she’s allergic to?
The former, I would imagine.
Certain mood stabilizers have Stevens-Johnson syndrome as a potential side effect for like 0.1~0.2% of patients. Usually triggered by sudden dosage changes which is why they ramp you up slow for those meds. Basically it starts as a really bad rash and quickly progresses to full-on necrosis of the entire dermal sheath. You know those anatomy diagrams in your doctor’s office with the dude stripped down to exposed muscle? It’s as if your body decided everything external to that was actually a badly-matched transplant and began rejecting it. Decent chance you’ll survive if you immediately get to the ER, but you can’t take anything that has this as a side effect (I’m on two meds like this) without getting absolutely AVALANCHED with “no seriously you will die in the most horrible fuckin’ way” warnings from everybody, every label, and every instruction packet.
Obviously do not Google Image Search this.
Is this reaction caused by the med itself or is mixing w alcohol required — or, sufficient?
Alcohol can suppress the effects of mood stabilizers, but that’s a psychiatric effect – it shouldn’t actually alter the fundamental chemistry of your body with regard to diffusion of the chemicals involved. It’s sharp spikes or dropoffs in that chemistry that usually begin the process and it’s damn near impossible to get a script for anything like this without being read the riot act on not dicking around with your dosage.
If Ruth suddenly stopped taking her meds or decided to take more (she’s been behaving pretty manic of late) then she’s potentially at risk.
Do enjoy learning some of this, ironically friend in my gaming group was pulling a very similar stunt to this just today.
Long and short I’m gathering though is the rash just took this from cutting her off now so she can come down, to red blaring warning lights flashing.
What meds cause this, ’cause I am on antidepressa nts too and this is the first I am hearing of it
That’s more a question for a doctor than a bunch of webcomic enthusiasts.
SJS/TEN is not noted as an interaction of lamotrigine with other drugs, or with alcohol. If it were anyone would be insanely reckless to prescribe it to a patient with Ruth’s history.
I would like to point out (1) that Willis never said that Ruth is on lamotrigine or tregretol, and (2) that not every rash, not every skin reaction, is SJS/TEN.
Lamotrigine would honestly be a baffling first choice of meds.
I already google image searched it
In order to aid Ruth, Billie is nigh close to getting herself not served. That’s not what I expected to have happened once I saw her in this bar.
Considering how firmly Jason refused her the last time she came I wonder if getting served was actually her plan.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/brazenly/
Well, but he told her IF she showed up again he’d assume that she was either being truthful or incredibly brazenly stupid. While we know which option it is, he doesn’t.
today’s specials:
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Galasso hired Woodstock from Peanuts because he heard birds went cheep.
Flock this, I’m not getting involved.
…oh shit.
Ruth, come on, you don’t compromise your health or your life.
Fun fact – they’re not called black and tans in Ireland (for reasons of a violently oppressive historical paramilitary force having the same nickname). Most people just ask for pale ale and stout layered. If they have a name, it’s usually called a half and half.
They did TERRIBLE THINGS to the Aran Islands!
For similar reasons, the Irish Car Bomb is not called that either. I….really hope I don’t need to explain why that name would be considered offensive. But yeah, apparently you either order Guinness, Bailey’s and Irish whiskey together or, more rarely, places sell them under the names ‘Irish slammer’ or (much MORE rarely) ‘Irish bomb shot’.
I have lived my whole life in suburban southern New England, which probably is why I’ve never heard of a drink called the Irish Car Bomb.
It seems to be more of a North American thing. Mostly around St. Patrick’s Day.
I saw them in the students union in Aberdeen. I’d gone with a guy from Derry, who was as pleased as you’d expect.
Same, and same. Knowing Southie, though, that’s not too surprising.
I never hear police buses referred to as “paddy wagons”, either.
I encountered ICB at a resto in the American Great Lakes Region: I was shocked and appalled.
“Black and Tan” should be offensive! And “Half and Half”! In both cases you’re watering down good stout with beer! Give me a pint of stout or a pint of beer, but don’t give me some wishy washy compromise!
Amen, brother.
Even if she wasn’t underage and on meds, Bartenders can decline sevice if they think they have had too much to drink already
they totally can, but Jason’s been a bartender for like a few days at this point, so I’m glad if Billie’s making that choice that much easier to make for Jason.
Resto’s I worked we were required to refuse drinks to people who were too, too. Had to do with legal responsibility if someone we served subsequently caused an accident while DWI/DUI on booze we provided.
That’s dram shop liability. Not every state has it but Indiana does. (The question is, is Jason aware that’s a thing with his zero bartender training.
The even bigger question is, is Galasso. Pamela’s clearly the brains of this undertaking.)
Ruth, you are as stringy as Jason is.
Ruth could break Jason in half.
Yes but Jason is a man
Jason should do the smart thing here and refuse to serve either one of them. I’m really hoping that is what is coming, I’m also hoping this whole thing is going to trigger an epiphany for Billie. But as people remind me this isn’t called Smarting of Age.
i’ve been waiting for jason to join the fray since ruth showed up.
i’m kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop and this storyline to end up in as bad of a place emotionally as the car chase. billie better start acting with integrity real soon, or she’ll have some regrets.
You know, I wonder if Jason’s just winging it, or if he has the self respect to actually try to learn some mixology now that he’s got the job.
Granted, I imagine most of the costumers aren’t exactly asking for complicated cocktails, but all the same.
Why bother? He didn’t even so much as google tutoring tips when he got the TA job and that job supposedly mattered to him.
He hadn’t been humbled yet. Not that I think he’s the picture of humility now, but we’ve seen he at least realizes he blew that gig, and I imagine he really doesn’t want to screw this up, too, and end up having to go back home, given how much he detests his dad.
I guess, potentially.
The first thing we saw him do when he got the job was use his phone to figure out how to make a margarita.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/works/
that’s a start, anyway.
Welp. That escalated quickly
Appropriate Claire is (sadly) appropriate.
I’m aiming to have a Claireface for every occasion.
Well, Claire is the woman of a thousand moods. Go for it!
(And my favorite mood may be her saying “Come on, I’m hilarious!” after a pun.)
Every time Claire puns, she makes this face.
Incorrect.
really hoping that, in the off-season, there’s a trade, claire’s mom for dina. both deserve to be starters.
I know, right?
Mrs. Augustus doesn’t even have a canonical first name IIRC. (And most all other parents in QC do.)
Oh jeez that’s sudden and honestly I’m not entirely surprised. Ruth is going to drink herself into some kind of atoxia if she’s not stopped. Well I bet “string bean” will find about half a word before Billie has a screaming fit, perhaps.
I’m sorry, I know this is deathly serious and really not something to laugh at, but I keep thinking that Jason’s going to have to try bartenderly advice for the first time in his life and I just smile whenever I imagine that trainwreck.
Yeah, it’ll be a whole barrel of laughs when her throat starts closing up.
I had to look up what a black and tan was, and incidentally learned it’s another drink that’s offensive to the Irish along with of course an Irish Car Bomb.
Yeah, if a restaurant in Ireland is serving a drink Americans would call a black and tan, the name over there (if any) is likely to be ‘half and half’.
Well the name predates the offensive use by about 40 years, referring to the coats of types of dogs (That reference to the drink is from around 1881) but did end up becoming offensive due to the association with the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force, or “Black and Tans” in the 1920s. So its a mixed bag on whether or not the drink name itself is truly offensive, but It is definitely not polite to ask for one in Ireland.
Yeah, shifting cultural forces and experience. There’s countries where all sorts of things are considered offensive that are innocuous here and vice versa.
Okay this is getting worse. For the love of Willis, will one of you idiots call an ambulance for her!? If she’s already got a rash from the allergic reaction she’s at major risk of anaphylactic shock! So stop being a bongo Billie and save Ruth! Same goes for you Jason, minus the bongo add the stringy!
Naw, she’s fine. Just a quick EpiPen and she’s good for another drink or three at least.
(Note: This is a joke and not intended to be taken seriously. Do not follow this intentionally bad advice.)
no no no nononONONONONONO RUTH NO
So next scene has Ruth in the ER with doctors monitoring her closely to ensure her body hasn’t become allergic to her own freaking skin, right?
Right?
They both wanna die and, if things keep going the way they’re going now, my bet is they both will.
They’ll both end up being DoA characters for real.
Oh shit, that acronym does work both ways…
Wow Billie, it’s almost like ghosting your ‘depressed and recovering from being suicidal’ girlfriend after a fight about alcoholism and drinking is a bad idea or something, huh.
“Billie I don’t want to drink.”
“REEEEEEEEEEEEEE FUCK YOU”
*later*
“okay I’ll drink”
“YOU CAN’T DO THAT YOU WERE DOING SO WELL!!!”. Mixed messages for sure.
Ikr, it’s hilariously and very depressingly inconsistent
I think the subtext was more like:
“Billie I don’t want to drink.”
“I can’t stop drinking so I’m going to push you away so I don’t take you down with me”
*later*
“Okay I’ll drink because I want you back”
“SHIT THAT BACKFIRED”
You right, you right. I just like that this shows how self-defeating and stupid that line of thinking is, because pushing people away ‘for their own good’ does NOBODY any good. Ruth certainly wasn’t happy to be pushed away from her girlfriend. Billie wasn’t happy doing it. Hopefully this shows Billie that that behavior isn’t the way to go.
With a strong sideline of “I really want to drink. Here’s an excuse.”
Yeah, I didn’t get the subtext until Billie talked about trying to push Ruth away. I feel better about Billie now that I know she wasn’t actively trying to sabotage Ruth, even if that was a really stupid thing to do and this potential outcome should have been obvious.
I think even Billie is going to feel really guilty once she processes that “Relationships are about compromise” means “Billie wanted me to drink a lot, I didn’t want to drink anything and stood up for myself to that effect but was punished for it by Billie by being cold shouldered by her, so we split the difference and I only drank some OK a lot.”
Ruth is already at two strikes for her job. Inappropriate Relationship for RA with Student was one, and Hospitalized for Mental Health and Needs to Focus on Self was two. Her residence manager went out on a limb and wagered she was still a net positive for students. If Ruth gets Hospitalized Again and Alcoholism Treatment Failure (which comes with a free Underage Drinking), that’s like strikes three, four, and five for her RA job. Her boss and the school literally can’t take the risk Ruth can’t protect the students under her care and something bad happens and they get sued.
That means Ruth loses her RA job and the student work money it brings in and probably goes on Disciplinary Probation. She also super disappoints her, uh, grandpa or whoever that disciplinary guy was who was covering for her while being permanently disappointed in her.
Ruth is a grown up who can and should make her own decisions, but Billie was being a crappy and mean immature kid about it and made things super hard. Maybe that was the best she could do at the time but there is a world of hurt in the works if things don’t go really, really well at damage control starting right now. (Depending on just how bad this allergic reaction is or is not.)
I don’t think she’s going to get fired given that her grandpa is basically leveraging it behind her back and behind her wishes. She could probably harvest the organs of half the hall and still be trapped in that role.
I think he had enough leverage to make it stick for strikes One and Two, but then only with the recommendation of Ruth’s residence manager boss. If this allergic reaction blows up at all and results in a medical incident, guaranteed her manager (an actual caring, responsible adult in this world) pulls that recommendation, not least of which for Ruth’s own good. Ruth doesn’t have anything left to help others right now.
Ruth’s grandpa has pull, but it’s doubtfully infinite. The other student’s families have pull too (example, Carla’s mega millionaire parents) and the school has a reputation to manage that is gonna be worth more than any one family. One or two strikes and the recommendation that this was still salvageable, workable. More strikes layered on? It might take influence just to keep Ruth there in a probationary status.
It’s not about a number of strikes, but rather about the perceived implications of the event. If the resident manager gets convinced this was “just a side effect of the antidepressants” and is carefully kept from the information that Ruth had alcohol, she’s likely to support Ruth even more. This is likely the angle “Sir” is going to go for. I’m more afraid of what he’s going to do to Ruth and Howard, as he’s now _very disappointed_ in Ruth. In reality you can convince people that a situation is salvageable as long as you give them a gradual decline as opposed to a sudden huge fall and points of hope in between. That’s how gambling machines are often prgrammed to make you keep hoping to gain money even though you keep losing more and more. We’ve already survived a hard fall, a “simple hospital visit for some nasty side effects of the meds” is nothing compared to the earlier revelations and you could even say “she’s likely to have a fall back in her progress ’cause we need to find new meds for her”, explaining her mood the coming time and thereby gaining trust…
On the other hand, said resident manager is Chloe, who has given exactly zero indication of a) being good at her job, b) trying to do her job or c) not fucking up if she is forced to do her job.
And her higher ups seem to be just as bad.
I think you’re being far too kind to Chloe. Bear in mind, she’s not some poor front-line manager learning the ropes. She is an alleged professional in a professional position.
And yeah, it’s hard to imagine that she would be allowed to keep her job if her bosses were actually paying attention.
My observation over the years is that incompetent managers actually prefer hiring incompetent subordinates. That way there’s always someone to blame things on, and the subordinates will never present a threat to the manager’s job.
Sort of. Though she’s not that far up.
She is a front line manager – she manages the student RAs. There’s no sign she’s much above that.
It was also clear during that sequence that, although she did think it was good Ruth was able to stay on, that Clint went over her head and the decision was made at a higher level. It was stated earlier, before there was any sign Clint was getting involved, that she wouldn’t be deciding what would happen to Ruth.
I’m not going to argue Chloe’s good at her job, but she doesn’t seem to have actual hiring and firing authority, so it’s hard to blame her for hiring incompetent subordinates. Now, if she had been on top of things, she could have caught on to the problems with Ruth sooner and a bad report from her likely could have changed things, so some of it’s on her.
I’m pretty sure there are some urban legdens about Ruth circulating on campus that claims she does just that.
“Oh, remember Jane? Ever heard from her after first year? No? Exactly“
Oh Ruth, when they say not to mix those types of antidepressants and alcohol, they REALLY mean it.
NO RUTH THAT FREELOADIN RASH IS NEW
Poor Billie is just so scared
“Poor Billie” seems a bit much. As if she were some hapless passenger on this ship, rather than someone who kept walking through the engine room with open containers of jet fuel and a pocket full of hand grenades.
I would be scared too, if I walked through the engine room with open containers of jet fuel and a pocket full of hand grenades.
Billie tried to get out of a controlling blackmail based relationship.
In the worst possible way.
Then again, I’ve always been #TeamBillie in this rather than #TeamRuth.
What? Wait. When?
That makes no sense for the characters as they are now.
Ruth forced Billie into a relationship by bullying and gaslighting her.
Now she’s going to do it again.
The fact Ruth is a victim of her own bullying doesn’t make her in the right. Billie is, unfortunately, suicidal and broken herself but Ruth is not the good guy in this.
No one is pitching for #TeamBillie.
We’re apparently reading different comics.
Yes, Ruth started out bullying Billie. That pretty much ended after that first kiss. I don’t think I’d describe any of it as gaslighting, certainly nothing later than that.
They’re both messed up and both have screwed up in the relationship, but I wouldn’t pin either of them as the bad one.
And I don’t see Ruth as bullying or gaslighting here either. Or even trying to manipulate Billie. She’s hurting herself in hopes of getting her back (And she’s also using that as an excuse to drink again.) I don’t see this as “I’m going to threaten to kill myself to make you come back to me”, but “I’m going back to killing myself so we can be together.”
Which is incredibly fucked up of course, but in a very different way.
I have a good friend who is going to get called a pissy red dandelion *so* often from here on out.
I swear I’m gonna use up all my Damn You Willises in less than a week the way this keeps going.
I’ll sell you some more, half price.
Better stock up while the rates are cheap.
jasons more of a stalk of wheat
Sooo, not with a rush at a truck…
but with a rash rash? :X
Is this what it meant when it said that “truck impaction” may be a possible symptom of Integrivact usage?
Sometimes I think I’m awful smart, but some other times the dumb comes out. When Ruth was looking for the stringbean, I thought she had lost touch with reality. Then I thought it was some kind of whiskey. It took the floating text to set me straight. And I’m a country boy. I heard people called “string bean” a lot.
Billie? Take Ruth and take her in a hospital ASAP!
Ruth, the only kind of “well” you do is “black well of hopelessness.”
Also she’s already drunk, so Jason can refuse to serve her.
Those drunk bubbles sure do make identifying drunks convenient.
I swear to God I will never get used to 20 being referred to as underaged
Same.
get back to me when you’re fifty. you might need an ouija board.
I think this is more a case of being boggled by a legal drinking age of 21. In many countries, it’s several years lower (and thus, some argue, much less of a big deal because it’s not forbidden fruit).
Neither of these people have been very smart. I mean seriously Billy “I was dying for you.” by pushing away a depressed alcoholic just going on anti-depressants, how could that possibly go wrong.
Found this comic a couple of weeks ago, and just finished the complete archive. It’s going to be hard dropping down to just one strip a day.
Welcome to sharing the plight with the rest of us!
(I caught up about the time Becky showed up at IU again — a little before that — and it was indeed a bit of an adjustment to only read one strip a day from then on.)
“was i?”
thaaat kinda hit home with me right there.
I’ve been dealing with depression for the last 9 years, i used to sleep all day and night (maybe in a sleep/quasi-sleep state 20 hours a day) waiting for death because i was (and am) depressed. the doctors tried to keep me awake because it wasn’t good to sleep that long. but what did that leave me with? now im awake through this bullshit. now i get to suffer awake instead of sleepling through the depression.
look at Ruth(e?), they took away her alcohol and put her on antidepressants (they tried those with me. gave me nightmares, made it so i couldn’t eat for a week, made me angrier than ever before, and made me want to die), but you have to deal with the CAUSE of the depression. you take away the coping mechanism and you just leave a void, and the depressed person will want to fill that void, usually by going back to what they were doing before (her alcohol, my sleep).