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Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Astral Aves
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Ghost Junk Sickness
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Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
Sister Claire
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Kiwi Blitz
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Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
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A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
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Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Real Science Adventures
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Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
El Goonish Shive
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WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
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Go Get a Roomie
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Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
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A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
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Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
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Sam & Fuzzy
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A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
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A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
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Fireweeds Moors
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Tigress Queen
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Knights Errant
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Love Not Found
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[un]Divine
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Monster Pulse
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Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
Lilith's Word
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If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
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Kinda gritty though the marrow does help. Mind you have to get the proportion of actual glutenous flour high enough so you don’t end up with Spackle instead of bread.
I like to think that Dorothy has gotten acceptance letters with full ride scholarships sent unprompted from every elite school in the world except Yale. Dammit, future presidents don’t go to Stanford!
Aside: This suggests Roz is, unfortunately, still rooming with Mary. Poor gal deserves better. (Especially since I think she’d be in a WAY less confrontational headspace if she weren’t constantly dealing with MARY.)
I dunno Roz kinda seems like the type for whom conflict is a hobby. I mean Mary would not be pleasant to live with at all, but Roz has also never shied away from conflict even when they all first moved in. She seems to thrive on it.
She seemed a lot… cheerier, though, that first week. Though maybe that was the magic of condom hat and her generally high charisma stat in more superficial interactions.
The grouchy-ness might be Mary (and the drama with her sister). But some of her confrontational attitudes, like trying to talk over people about their own struggles/out-woke people just kinda seems like college-age “I think I know more than I actually do and am determined to prove it” naïveté/ego.
Which to be clear is not me saying she’s a bad person or an awful character. She’s not my favorite by far, but her behavior is an extreeeeeemly common thing for people of that age.
I actually see some of my college-age self in her which might be *why* she bugs me. XD It’s a phase I don’t look back on proudly. She genuinely seems to want to do good but needs to work on listening more/not assuming she’s an expert on everything (speaking from experience).
Oh, agreed. I think it’s less that being away from Mary would stop it – like you said, it’s college – but I think she might come at it with less… hostility, I suppose is the better word.
Like, we saw Roz in the first week of classes promoting safe sex. That was some actual, non-bullshit activism. But after that we’ve only seen Roz politically involved in the context of sabotaging Robin. I can get Robin telling her explicitly not to canvas for opponent, but given we saw her with the condom hat (which I would describe as ‘productively confrontational,’ really. The condoms and the chant, perfectly normal but the hat is definitely to provoke a response) and refusing to back down on her politics entirely because Robin has a reelection, it seems noteworthy, that she appears to be channeling that energy exclusively through picking fights and subterfuge.
If she’d never done anything remotely activisty, I could buy her being the ‘pick fights and do nothing’ liberal college kid by default, but since she did I think the Mary-and-Robin stuff has made her lean more towards ‘fight!’ than ‘educate, in the smuggest and most eye-catching way possible!’
I was thinking more the exchanges she’s had and comments she’s made in Leslie’s class where she implied she could basically teach the class because she already knew everything about the topic, and when she kept yelling over Leslie at various points.
Some of her irritability at Joyce in that class may be due to having to deal with Mary‘s fundamentalism all the time, but also she gave off kind of performative vibes where, I do think she *tries* to do good, but maybe sometimes gets too wrapped up in being an activist/ally as an “identity” rather than specifically focusing on what produces the most beneficial outcome for the marginalized.
Tl;dr I think she is trying to do the right thing a lot of the time but also likes the “rush”/ego boosting feeling she gets from telling other people they’re wrong or establishing herself as the most progressive/morally superior.
Oh I’m not denying she wants to get away from Mary/that Mary is making her miserable. She obviously is and it’s understandable. I was just questioning whether we can blame Roz’s confrontational attitudes with EVERYONE else on Mary.
Joyce maybe, since I’m sure living with Mary is making fundie stuff an extreme trigger point for irritation right now. But the way she is with everyone else just seems like…the way she is. I don’t think ALL of that can be blamed on Mary.
I mean the awkward silence could be due to the dramatic and very personal (to Ruth) circumstances that resulted in Billie’s move which she is obviously not thrilled about so many people outside of the relationship knowing about, and probably still blames herself for.
She doesn’t seem like the type to want to have a heart-to-heart with Dorothy about her suicidal depression and rule-breaking alcoholism and relationship drama.
Especially since I suspect a few months of therapy have not undone the bulk of Ruth’s trust issues, self esteem issues, and desire to shield herself from vulnerability by seeming in control to those who don’t know her well.
It would explain why Billie’s been elusive if she’s coping with post breakup emotions and her silhouette has her with shorter hair which is a very tropey thing for women to do after one.
I assumed Ruth didn’t count Billie because she still wants Billie to basically live in her room. The surprise and lack of response could be that Ruth doesn’t want to tell Dorothy that Billie is in Ruth’s room all the time — or, conversely, that Billie doesn’t hang out as much as Ruth wishes she would.
Thank you now that song is gonna be stuck in my head the rest of the night. XD
I was *obsessed* with that show/those books as a kid to the point where I still remember the Wishbone Fan Club Hotline where you could call to “talk to wishbone” (1-800-888-WISH! And I’m pretty sure it sadly no longer works)
Sophomore year, my roommate and I put in our roommate agreement that any disputes would be settled with a fire staff duel on the quad in front of the dorm. A poor strategic decision on my part, as I knew he was both significantly more capable at staff fighting and more experienced handling fire in that sort of context than I.
Why though? Billie comes from money so it can’t be tuition and it’s never been established that she struggled academically or had any adverse feelings toward her education. I buy the breakup theory but I also just think this is just be slightly overdramatic about what happened if anything.
She comes from a family that is emotionally distant and has had alcohol problems… It’s not inconceivable that those caused her to drop out either directly (rehab or therapy) or as a secondary cause (low grades).
But it is possible to tank hard enough because of your mental health to take a medical withdrawal/leave of absence, even pretty close to finals. Or to push through but withdraw from the coming semester. (On the one hand, I’d stopped going to class, or really leaving my room, before that entered the discussion. On the other hand, before Billie entered therapy or bisexual suicide pact/caring for Ruth and – I think – lowkey feeling better about herself because she’s not THAT bad, so clearly she’s not depressed, right? we DID actually see her too depressed to go to class and just cuddle her surrogate brother at least once. So uh… there’s precedent, is what I’m saying. I do think she was sincere about going to therapy, but so was I. Sometimes things snowball fast.)
I could believe rehab. But I think the grades thing is a bit of a stretch. Billie’s never been shown to struggle with that even as an alcoholic it’s never been established that she had academic trouble.
There are people you can drink and still make the grades. It depends on how much attendance if required. Not saying it’s a good thing and Billie seems to have fallen out of the drunken overachiever habit, but, …
The last we knew of Billie along those was that she’d committed to stop drinking and start actually going to therapy. I don’t think she’d fail/give up on that completely off screen.
Yeah, I doubt we’d leave off on ‘you sound like you’ve been going to family.’ ‘Yeah.’ and then jump to a total failure, but the elusive line earlier plus this gives me just enough concern to start jumping to conclusions.
I COULD see it being a ‘doing better, but had some manageable but significant enough slipups, rethinking my life’ thing that nonetheless keeps her on cast without it feeling like too much of a cop-out. (Thus, my suggestion about Galasso’s.)
Seconding this – I knew a guy who was basically always some level of drunk and just very, very good at hiding it. He looked like he was just drinking Gatorade in class, but it was mixed 50/50 with vodka. We had a couple 9am classes together over the years and I think he graduated on time. That’s not to say he didn’t struggle, but he got there.
I’ve been assuming Billie is a similar sort of alcoholic. Definitely in need of help, but able to maintain enough functionality to scrape by in spite of that.
I can’t imagine that’s the case. Killing off an established member of the main character roster offscreen without even hinting it is kind of bad writing.
This seems so wrong? Where’s the gluten so the bones can rise? What leavening agent does she use?
Or are we getting into religion now? Besides can’t Ruthless just by the bone meal at the garden center? Or is her thing that it has to be freshly made, organically sourced, human, bones? It’s too much speculation. We just don’t know enough about her feeding habits. Does she even eat the bone-bread? Or is it just used for preforming Rites? So many unanswered questions..
Dang I feel like I’m on a totally different wave length because the first thought I had was ‘Ain’t she across the street? Wait no Omg Billie’s in rehab FINALLY’
Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit shows it wasn’t either of the Rachels (Agatha says ‘there’s a penis on my whiteboard!’, Other Rachel says ‘Ours too’ with Rachel next to her, so I’m inclined to think they’re rooming together,) so I think the only other character we’ve seen besides Bloodrose as a candidate is Meredith. That said, we’ve never seen the two of them together in more than ‘the same groupshot’ and it seems way more likely for Ruth to call the recluse who she basically never saw ‘Agatha’s roommate’ rather than doing the same for Meredith, who’s at least a semi-regular hall presence.
See… not only did we miss Halloween Shenanigans, but so much off-screen stuff that really needs to be explained.
Still don’t know about Amber… with her Dad gone, is his estate still on the hook with paying her tuition? Or was she able to find alternate funding? (Is Joe’s dad kind of rich, is he good with paying for Joe and Amber to go there?)
It’s a running joke that Bloodrose never gets tagged in the DoA-verse. She never appears fully on-screen either, in either the Walkyverse or the DoA-verse.
(If you want to see what Walkyverse!Bloodrose looks like, see the link in an above comment.)
I think her roommate in Season 1 was implied to be Bloodrose, whose Walkyverse counterpart was a goth who only ever appeared half out of frame at most. Admittedly, I’m half-remembering this and half-assuming because Agatha’s room was dark that time she hid Becky from Ruth.
For some reason, I seem to recall Billie moving out/being moved out of Read Hall and into another building (Forest Quad?). Billie and Ruth were also side-by-side in the group panel on the top of Garbage Roof in the final panel of the “Is A Song Forever” chapter (before the four time-skip panels that actually concluded the chapter). And I don’t know why, but I’m still believing Willis’ original pledge about “not killing off a major character”.
So I’m holding on to the theory that Billie is still on campus but in another building, and Ruth’s remark about “losing” her means that she has departed from Ruth’s little fiefdom that is the Read Hall community, not that she has left the university or shuffled off this mortal coil entirely.
If she believed that, she’d have pointed out the obvious to Dorothy. But the obvious thing is that Dorothy is right, Ruth has lost Billie. Ruth doesn’t want to talk about it because it’s an issue, and a personal one.
Picture a molecule, how the atoms have different bonds. Some are bonded to more atoms than others, and not all atoms are bonded with each other. A graph of a polyamorous relationship can look like this, leading to a set of polyamorous people being called a polycule.
The polycule is the relationship, yeah. Sometimes it gets complicated when someone is dating your partner but you aren’t dating them so polycule’s a sort of cover-all.
I can understand, as a writer, that His DYWship would not want to do the Semester EOF goodbyes. That would be too much promising to write or phone, and phone numbers exchanged, and tears (that weren’t ours), and fraught character feels that weren’t related to moving the story forward.
Yo.k., but we gotta know where people went, and where they are now, and who’sbackfirst. No, Ruth’sbackfirst, who’sbacksecond, … and what about that guy that was, I think he was Danny’s roommate?
What is there to fill out on a roommate agreement besides your name, the date and a signature? I think you would be begging for problems if the actual terms of the agreement are up to the roommates.
The whole point of the agreements is to set down some ground rules with each other. For example, Billie and Sal’s required Sal to use the door to come and go instead of the window, because her doing that put Billie on edge.
That’s how it was for me too – or more accurately didn’t make any such agreements, just assumed things and then fought when the assumptions didn’t pan out.
Formal agreements aren’t a bad idea, they just weren’t a thing when I was in school.
You are going to have to be living with someone. If there are things that are important to you and there are differences in expectations, it’s good to hash it out upfront.
Or the fact that she was a firt semester student and so many bad things happened in that school in 1 semester would lead many parents to have their kids change schools. even many students who only had a couple semesters in would left. College should feel safe
None of our main characters are just going to be pulled out and sent to another school by their parents. Might be realistic if it happened, but Willis won’t just dump characters like that.
If the Billingsworths cared, they’d listen to their daughter who would insist that she be permitted to stay with her girlfriend and her friends. Honestly yanking her on performative grounds seems perfectly in line with deadbeat parents.
So I gues Billys parents after ONE semester of hell events , 1 semester, all those chapters, 6 months, talk about compress time.
I gues many students who wherent several semesters in changed schools
I fully expect that, in true Willis fashion, we’ll find out what happened to Billie about four months from now, which will coincidentally also be lunchtime of the same day.
“I found her, idk what you’re talking about”
back to the grind LITERALLY
If yer gonna make bread from bones, being an expert femur extractor will give you a lot of bone to work with.
I wonder what bone bread tastes like?
Kinda gritty though the marrow does help. Mind you have to get the proportion of actual glutenous flour high enough so you don’t end up with Spackle instead of bread.
Agatha’s roommate was Bloodrose, right?
Yeah, it was.
Huh. I sorta never knew that. Am I alone in that lack of knowledge?
If Bloodrose is Rachel’s roommate, then who is Meredith’s roommate? Is there any evidence of Bloodrose being a DOA character?
She shows up here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/sandals/
Poor girl. Had to be sent home after she forgot to check the box for garlic free sauce on her pizza order.
…What, she has a food allergy, I’m not implying, you’re implying.
Agatha’s a little relieved her new roommate had the box of earth replaced with a bed, though.
Alas, dear Bloodrose. We knew her… not at all, frankly.
Everyone is carefully not telling Dorothy that Bloodrose transferred to Yale.
I like to think that Dorothy has gotten acceptance letters with full ride scholarships sent unprompted from every elite school in the world except Yale. Dammit, future presidents don’t go to Stanford!
Herbert Hoover went to Stanford!
*thinks about that a moment*
Okay. Point taken.
Nah, Bloodrose was the one Ruth murdered. Everyone knows it just had to be done.
It’s even in the name. I mean could YOU pass up an opportunity like that?
Still kinda wish we’d got a chance to see what she looked like.
Willis once actually drew Walkyverse!Bloodrose, so we have some idea at least: https://walkypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Bloodrose
Wasn’t it Meredith?
Shh!
*searches tags*
Ah, the girl from 420 Roof. That could explain things.
Agatha’s roommate was never seen, only
complained about
*figured out linking by the second try*
Downstairs, Asma is signing for some weird packages addressed to “Polycule”. Who knew edible underwear could be bought by the gross?
I’ve seen you in this comment section for years and I gotta ask: Which Doctor are you?
The definite article.
Dr. The?
Maybe like this comic they are always relevant and therefore always the latest Doctor.
“Witch doctor?”–“Right.” (Dr. Joel and Ed on Northern Exposure)
I know two doctors named “Hu” and two named “Watt”. Still searching for Drs Hau, Wai, Wear, and Wen.
Scrubs had a surgical Dr. Wen…
“Ware” is a reasonably common surname.
Tucson Medical Center has (or had) a Dr. No.
If they form a softball team, we’re screwed.
Actress Kelly Hu once said she grew up friends with two girls with the surnames of Wen and Watt. They didn’t know any Howe’s or Ware’s though.
If Doctor Watt had a male heir, would they be Doctor Watt’s son?
I assumed that only the gross bought edible underwear.
All underwear is edible with sufficient motivation, and a lot of mastication
Don’t insult Sierra, Mandy, and… oh you meant the unit of measurement. My bad.
Well.
That’s not worrisome at all!
(I mean she did change halls and all but. I worry!)
Why must Willis tease us with these worries? And you know we’re not getting any answers anytime soon.
“Why must Willis tease us with these worries?”
You must be new here. Willis is an emotion vampire, feeding off our Feels.
We feed him by reading his comic, so we have only ourselves to blame really.
I think that discussion Walky and Sal just had would’ve gone differently if Billie was dead.
Dead, no. Potentially dropped out, though, I could see.
(Plot twist: She’s working at Galasso’s. The New Hair Silhouette Dude we’ve all been guessing is either Mike or maybe Ethan is actually Jason.)
Aside: This suggests Roz is, unfortunately, still rooming with Mary. Poor gal deserves better. (Especially since I think she’d be in a WAY less confrontational headspace if she weren’t constantly dealing with MARY.)
I dunno Roz kinda seems like the type for whom conflict is a hobby. I mean Mary would not be pleasant to live with at all, but Roz has also never shied away from conflict even when they all first moved in. She seems to thrive on it.
She seemed a lot… cheerier, though, that first week. Though maybe that was the magic of condom hat and her generally high charisma stat in more superficial interactions.
The grouchy-ness might be Mary (and the drama with her sister). But some of her confrontational attitudes, like trying to talk over people about their own struggles/out-woke people just kinda seems like college-age “I think I know more than I actually do and am determined to prove it” naïveté/ego.
Which to be clear is not me saying she’s a bad person or an awful character. She’s not my favorite by far, but her behavior is an extreeeeeemly common thing for people of that age.
I actually see some of my college-age self in her which might be *why* she bugs me. XD It’s a phase I don’t look back on proudly. She genuinely seems to want to do good but needs to work on listening more/not assuming she’s an expert on everything (speaking from experience).
Oh, agreed. I think it’s less that being away from Mary would stop it – like you said, it’s college – but I think she might come at it with less… hostility, I suppose is the better word.
Like, we saw Roz in the first week of classes promoting safe sex. That was some actual, non-bullshit activism. But after that we’ve only seen Roz politically involved in the context of sabotaging Robin. I can get Robin telling her explicitly not to canvas for opponent, but given we saw her with the condom hat (which I would describe as ‘productively confrontational,’ really. The condoms and the chant, perfectly normal but the hat is definitely to provoke a response) and refusing to back down on her politics entirely because Robin has a reelection, it seems noteworthy, that she appears to be channeling that energy exclusively through picking fights and subterfuge.
If she’d never done anything remotely activisty, I could buy her being the ‘pick fights and do nothing’ liberal college kid by default, but since she did I think the Mary-and-Robin stuff has made her lean more towards ‘fight!’ than ‘educate, in the smuggest and most eye-catching way possible!’
I was thinking more the exchanges she’s had and comments she’s made in Leslie’s class where she implied she could basically teach the class because she already knew everything about the topic, and when she kept yelling over Leslie at various points.
Some of her irritability at Joyce in that class may be due to having to deal with Mary‘s fundamentalism all the time, but also she gave off kind of performative vibes where, I do think she *tries* to do good, but maybe sometimes gets too wrapped up in being an activist/ally as an “identity” rather than specifically focusing on what produces the most beneficial outcome for the marginalized.
Tl;dr I think she is trying to do the right thing a lot of the time but also likes the “rush”/ego boosting feeling she gets from telling other people they’re wrong or establishing herself as the most progressive/morally superior.
P.s. sorry for multi-comments…I flounder without an edit button because I always think of more stuff I want to say after I git “send” XD
Roz is desperate to move out and be in a healthier space. She could have swapped rooms with someone else in the dorm, though it’s… unlikely.
She ought to swap with Peter.
She was applying for Ruth’s job just to get away from Mary.
Oh I’m not denying she wants to get away from Mary/that Mary is making her miserable. She obviously is and it’s understandable. I was just questioning whether we can blame Roz’s confrontational attitudes with EVERYONE else on Mary.
Joyce maybe, since I’m sure living with Mary is making fundie stuff an extreme trigger point for irritation right now. But the way she is with everyone else just seems like…the way she is. I don’t think ALL of that can be blamed on Mary.
It’s not ALL about Mary.
Just some of it.
Thank you for clarifying, for a moment there I thought the poor gal was mary.
I’m just going to go over to twitter and see who yells at him there
She moved across the street, Dorothy, you overdramatic baby.
Is that all it is? Ruth’s response or lack thereof tells me something else is going on.
I mean, Ruth wasn’t really happy about Billie moving, no. Or people pointing out stuff she said was wrong. I’m not too worried just yet.
I mean the awkward silence could be due to the dramatic and very personal (to Ruth) circumstances that resulted in Billie’s move which she is obviously not thrilled about so many people outside of the relationship knowing about, and probably still blames herself for.
She doesn’t seem like the type to want to have a heart-to-heart with Dorothy about her suicidal depression and rule-breaking alcoholism and relationship drama.
Especially since I suspect a few months of therapy have not undone the bulk of Ruth’s trust issues, self esteem issues, and desire to shield herself from vulnerability by seeming in control to those who don’t know her well.
Maybe they broke up over the time skip?
It would explain why Billie’s been elusive if she’s coping with post breakup emotions and her silhouette has her with shorter hair which is a very tropey thing for women to do after one.
Hey, we probably missed a lot of stuff over the time jump.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Leighm-DoAandZombies.jpg
But the time skip was Willis’ fault, not Billie’s!
I assumed Ruth didn’t count Billie because she still wants Billie to basically live in her room. The surprise and lack of response could be that Ruth doesn’t want to tell Dorothy that Billie is in Ruth’s room all the time — or, conversely, that Billie doesn’t hang out as much as Ruth wishes she would.
I’d say she’s sharp to catch Ruth implying that Billie doesn’t count
Sense of foreboding rising, worry for Billie and Ruth’s relationship also rising. What the hell happened during the time skip?
Not the slightest idea.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/billieruth2013.png
Obviously Billie didn’t die so what’s the story Wishbone
I think it’s worth a look.
We’ll probably never know.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/what_are_you_to_me__by_ryuusei924-d67mvv1.jpg
Thank you now that song is gonna be stuck in my head the rest of the night. XD
I was *obsessed* with that show/those books as a kid to the point where I still remember the Wishbone Fan Club Hotline where you could call to “talk to wishbone” (1-800-888-WISH! And I’m pretty sure it sadly no longer works)
Roommate agreement? Chaos abound without some sort of truce.
Sophomore year, my roommate and I put in our roommate agreement that any disputes would be settled with a fire staff duel on the quad in front of the dorm. A poor strategic decision on my part, as I knew he was both significantly more capable at staff fighting and more experienced handling fire in that sort of context than I.
The Iroh avatar (heh) makes this story even better.
Oh no oh no oh no, they broke up oh no. I have to subscribe to Patreon oh no
Fee-fi-fo-forms.
I mean she’s just at forest quad right? Is that really a loss or am I missing something here?
I believe it is implying she dropped out? That was my take on it at least.
Why though? Billie comes from money so it can’t be tuition and it’s never been established that she struggled academically or had any adverse feelings toward her education. I buy the breakup theory but I also just think this is just be slightly overdramatic about what happened if anything.
She comes from a family that is emotionally distant and has had alcohol problems… It’s not inconceivable that those caused her to drop out either directly (rehab or therapy) or as a secondary cause (low grades).
I don’t think academic probation kicks you out after a single term?
Generally, no.
But it is possible to tank hard enough because of your mental health to take a medical withdrawal/leave of absence, even pretty close to finals. Or to push through but withdraw from the coming semester. (On the one hand, I’d stopped going to class, or really leaving my room, before that entered the discussion. On the other hand, before Billie entered therapy or bisexual suicide pact/caring for Ruth and – I think – lowkey feeling better about herself because she’s not THAT bad, so clearly she’s not depressed, right? we DID actually see her too depressed to go to class and just cuddle her surrogate brother at least once. So uh… there’s precedent, is what I’m saying. I do think she was sincere about going to therapy, but so was I. Sometimes things snowball fast.)
I had a housemate get a 0.8 GPA one semester. He was gone the next.
Well, there’s probation and then there’s lost cause.
I could believe rehab. But I think the grades thing is a bit of a stretch. Billie’s never been shown to struggle with that even as an alcoholic it’s never been established that she had academic trouble.
drinking
There are people you can drink and still make the grades. It depends on how much attendance if required. Not saying it’s a good thing and Billie seems to have fallen out of the drunken overachiever habit, but, …
The last we knew of Billie along those was that she’d committed to stop drinking and start actually going to therapy. I don’t think she’d fail/give up on that completely off screen.
Keep that drama in focus where it belongs.
Yeah, I doubt we’d leave off on ‘you sound like you’ve been going to family.’ ‘Yeah.’ and then jump to a total failure, but the elusive line earlier plus this gives me just enough concern to start jumping to conclusions.
I COULD see it being a ‘doing better, but had some manageable but significant enough slipups, rethinking my life’ thing that nonetheless keeps her on cast without it feeling like too much of a cop-out. (Thus, my suggestion about Galasso’s.)
Seconding this – I knew a guy who was basically always some level of drunk and just very, very good at hiding it. He looked like he was just drinking Gatorade in class, but it was mixed 50/50 with vodka. We had a couple 9am classes together over the years and I think he graduated on time. That’s not to say he didn’t struggle, but he got there.
I’ve been assuming Billie is a similar sort of alcoholic. Definitely in need of help, but able to maintain enough functionality to scrape by in spite of that.
I’m just gonna assume it’s not just the move to forest.
We did miss 4 months of college kid drama.
Billie is Robin’s new Chief of Staff.
You can’t “yada yada” the part before grinding the bones! That’s the best part!
Not for Ruth. She may be a witch, but she’s an impatient one.
Or, an ogre? I forget exactly where the “grind your bones to make me bread” line came from.
The giant from “Jack & The Beanstalk”.
Dead???
100% stone cold corpse hours.
I can’t imagine that’s the case. Killing off an established member of the main character roster offscreen without even hinting it is kind of bad writing.
Also I’m pretty sure Walkie wouldn’t refer to a dead person as “elusive”
Does Walky know she’s dead?
underground is a pretty good hiding place
Did Billie fully drop or transfer out? She can’t have….right? She’s such a central character!
Oh my gosh, Billie’s fuckin’ dead.
Pretty sure Ruth is still alive.
… WHAT?!!!!
WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!
It’s ‘yadda’ and I shall accept no suggestion to the contrary.
According to Dory Previn, who used it long before Seinfeld, it’s “yada.”
The song is “Yada Yada La Scala” from 1971. You can hear it on YouTube.
Now that I’m looking at the sillouettes… There does seem to be lots of people missing… Like Ethan.
grinding bones for bread? Wouldn’t it be better to make a broth from them?
Maybe, but it’s traditional.
This seems so wrong? Where’s the gluten so the bones can rise? What leavening agent does she use?
Or are we getting into religion now? Besides can’t Ruthless just by the bone meal at the garden center? Or is her thing that it has to be freshly made, organically sourced, human, bones? It’s too much speculation. We just don’t know enough about her feeding habits. Does she even eat the bone-bread? Or is it just used for preforming Rites? So many unanswered questions..
If people were able to use saw dust as a filler agent in bread they can certainly use bone dust.
It is so hard to get certified organic human bones these days.
But it turns out, organic human bones aren’t really any better for your health snyway, soooo…
Dorothy yesterday: H-hello Ruthless. Please don’t take my femurs
Dorothy Today: HEY RUTH WHAT ABOUT BILLIE?
Though I doubt Dorothy actually knows what happened. I thought Billie ran off with Ruth over the break but maybe not..
To be fair, Becky defused Ruth between those lines.
Guess this confirms Amber isn’t gone from the hall, let alone the school.
I’m more worried about Ethan at this point.
Dang I feel like I’m on a totally different wave length because the first thought I had was ‘Ain’t she across the street? Wait no Omg Billie’s in rehab FINALLY’
Wait we lost Billie??
Also who was Agatha’s roommate? I have no idea who the names Sierra’s moving in with are.
It’s never been said who Agatha’s roommate was. Pretty sure at this point that it was Bloodrose.
Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit shows it wasn’t either of the Rachels (Agatha says ‘there’s a penis on my whiteboard!’, Other Rachel says ‘Ours too’ with Rachel next to her, so I’m inclined to think they’re rooming together,) so I think the only other character we’ve seen besides Bloodrose as a candidate is Meredith. That said, we’ve never seen the two of them together in more than ‘the same groupshot’ and it seems way more likely for Ruth to call the recluse who she basically never saw ‘Agatha’s roommate’ rather than doing the same for Meredith, who’s at least a semi-regular hall presence.
Yes, the Rachels are rooming together. Their door even says “Rachel and Other Rachel”. Not sure who Meredith is rooming with, but it wasn’t Agatha.
Huh… now I’m wondering if the “lost Billie” is just due to the move, or if it has to do with the “Billie being elusive” that Walky was referring to.
See… not only did we miss Halloween Shenanigans, but so much off-screen stuff that really needs to be explained.
Still don’t know about Amber… with her Dad gone, is his estate still on the hook with paying her tuition? Or was she able to find alternate funding? (Is Joe’s dad kind of rich, is he good with paying for Joe and Amber to go there?)
Well she wasn’t ‘lost” so we know she’s returning this semester at least
I’m really happy that Sierra and agatha room together. Two of the nicest, drama-free people on the floor deserve each other.
They can go to church together, and hang out, and generally not have to watch Massive Amounts of Drama unfold except in the hallways! Yay!
How could the Lesbian Suicide Pact relationship just end like that? IT WAS SO HEALTHY AND WHOLESOME!
(Yes, I know, damnable Willis, possible red herrings, etc etc)
Billie’s parents moved her to the Sorbonne.
Or, for delicious irony, the University of Toronto.
Sorbonne or La Santé, one.
This is a surprise… Why? Didn’t she move long before any of that inanity?
Oh dear. Who was Agatha’s roommate..?
Bloodrose.
Bloodrose? Did she have any appearances?
I can’t find her in the tags.
It’s a running joke that Bloodrose never gets tagged in the DoA-verse. She never appears fully on-screen either, in either the Walkyverse or the DoA-verse.
(If you want to see what Walkyverse!Bloodrose looks like, see the link in an above comment.)
She’s the default gravatar that’s just a shoulder and black hair.
Back in the Walkyverse, her abductee superpower must have been camera control, to keep herself out of frame at all times.
Oh dear, that sounds rather ominous. Willis being Willis, I’m expecting this to be kept completely secret until the last possible moment.
For all who say that Billie cannot be dead, because she’s elusive: maybe she did die and is now an elusive ghost haunting the dorms..?
So which is Becky going to find more embarrassing to see that Sierra saw?
• Naked boyfriends in Dorothy’s bed, post pre marital hankipanky?
• Joyce asleep in Dorothy’s bed?
A will be mildly ick for Becky.
B will be infuriating.
B. Turnabout is fair play.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/cheating/
I’m hoping Willis is just trying to make us all worry and Billie and Ruth haven’t broken up or anything.
Too early to say. It’s consistent with the situation as we left it, but it may also be an indication of trouble.
I swear subtlety is a lost art.
Ruth: I’ve killed almost no one.
Dorothy: We also lost Billie…
Ruth: *uncomfortable blank 1000 yd stare*
Ruth: *exits stage left*
And not one person jokingly posits that Ruth killed Billie by 3am…
Here, have an internet, you won it fair and square.
Agatha seems to have mostly wandered out of the screen in her appearances. I can’t find who she was rooming with.
I think her roommate in Season 1 was implied to be Bloodrose, whose Walkyverse counterpart was a goth who only ever appeared half out of frame at most. Admittedly, I’m half-remembering this and half-assuming because Agatha’s room was dark that time she hid Becky from Ruth.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/steplightly/
She was probably the easiest to write out of DoA, given she was barely written into it.
Character search tag bloodrose doesn’t get ma any result….
Didn’t someone make a floor plan?
Bloodrose was deliberately never tagged, so searching for her in the character tags wouldn’t be any help there.
I think she was just at the edge of an overhead crowd shot in the hallway.
Either that or Guns was Agatha’s roommate, but the “NO GUNS EVER” rule contradicts that possibility.
nnnnoooooooooooooooooo!
Whether it’s “yada” or “yadda” depends on whether you’re pronouncing it yah or yeah.
For some reason, I seem to recall Billie moving out/being moved out of Read Hall and into another building (Forest Quad?). Billie and Ruth were also side-by-side in the group panel on the top of Garbage Roof in the final panel of the “Is A Song Forever” chapter (before the four time-skip panels that actually concluded the chapter). And I don’t know why, but I’m still believing Willis’ original pledge about “not killing off a major character”.
So I’m holding on to the theory that Billie is still on campus but in another building, and Ruth’s remark about “losing” her means that she has departed from Ruth’s little fiefdom that is the Read Hall community, not that she has left the university or shuffled off this mortal coil entirely.
And they’ve broken up, otherwise it wouldn’t have been that big a deal for Ruth.
Maybe Ruth didn’t think of it as “losing” Billie because they were still in a relationship even though she moved?
If she believed that, she’d have pointed out the obvious to Dorothy. But the obvious thing is that Dorothy is right, Ruth has lost Billie. Ruth doesn’t want to talk about it because it’s an issue, and a personal one.
Both of them orphans with red hair. Just like Annie.
What is a Polycule?
Are we talking about Polycule Poirot, parrot master detective from Agatha Christies books?
Picture a molecule, how the atoms have different bonds. Some are bonded to more atoms than others, and not all atoms are bonded with each other. A graph of a polyamorous relationship can look like this, leading to a set of polyamorous people being called a polycule.
TIL that apparently the new term for a group of polyamorous folk is a polycule. XD
The polycule is the relationship, yeah. Sometimes it gets complicated when someone is dating your partner but you aren’t dating them so polycule’s a sort of cover-all.
I can understand, as a writer, that His DYWship would not want to do the Semester EOF goodbyes. That would be too much promising to write or phone, and phone numbers exchanged, and tears (that weren’t ours), and fraught character feels that weren’t related to moving the story forward.
Yo.k., but we gotta know where people went, and where they are now, and who’sbackfirst. No, Ruth’sbackfirst, who’sbacksecond, … and what about that guy that was, I think he was Danny’s roommate?
No such person. You’re mom will back me up on this.
. . . oh no
There’s something wrong between Ruth and Billie? GASP! And Dorothy has proven another time that she’s not able like Becky at speak with others.
That’s an interesting comic you’re reading.
Yada Yada Yaga Baba.
Can you feel the flashbacks coming?
I think it’s “yadda” because wouldn’t “yada” get pronounced with a long A like “yay-da” because the second A is so close?
In Japanese, “yada yada” means “No way, Nope!”
In my mind, Ruth is NOPEing out of there.
I thought the roommate was Guns til I read the comments.
So many freckles on the girls today…
What is there to fill out on a roommate agreement besides your name, the date and a signature? I think you would be begging for problems if the actual terms of the agreement are up to the roommates.
The whole point of the agreements is to set down some ground rules with each other. For example, Billie and Sal’s required Sal to use the door to come and go instead of the window, because her doing that put Billie on edge.
At my old school roommates just made those agreements amongst themselves, with no third party involvement
That’s how it was for me too – or more accurately didn’t make any such agreements, just assumed things and then fought when the assumptions didn’t pan out.
Formal agreements aren’t a bad idea, they just weren’t a thing when I was in school.
You are going to have to be living with someone. If there are things that are important to you and there are differences in expectations, it’s good to hash it out upfront.
I think dorothy is just being dorothy and pointing out that billie moved dorms last year too, I don’t think there is any revelation here.
Pretty much how I read it – no grand revelation to be made (unless there IS!), just Dorothy poking a possibly-sore spot for Ruth.
Place your bets time!
WHY HAS BILLIE MOVED AWAY?
Here’s 5 Republic credits on: “Started drinking again.”
Or the fact that she was a firt semester student and so many bad things happened in that school in 1 semester would lead many parents to have their kids change schools. even many students who only had a couple semesters in would left. College should feel safe
None of our main characters are just going to be pulled out and sent to another school by their parents. Might be realistic if it happened, but Willis won’t just dump characters like that.
Besides, that would require the Billingsworths to care.
If the Billingsworths cared, they’d listen to their daughter who would insist that she be permitted to stay with her girlfriend and her friends. Honestly yanking her on performative grounds seems perfectly in line with deadbeat parents.
Unless it were dramatic.
So I gues Billys parents after ONE semester of hell events , 1 semester, all those chapters, 6 months, talk about compress time.
I gues many students who wherent several semesters in changed schools
I’m coming from a Limmy video and Ruth sounds Scottish in my head.
“I don’t want to have emotions about what you just said. Maybe later.”
Legit, Ruth. Legit.
I fully expect that, in true Willis fashion, we’ll find out what happened to Billie about four months from now, which will coincidentally also be lunchtime of the same day.
This is why I hate Time Skips.
Dorothy: “Where do you think we are?”
Ruth:…
So wait this means Mike made it?