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Ozzie and her best friend Kimmy are your average everyday normal art students – except one is an immortal vampire with superpowers and the other possesses a magic talking grimoire. Also they have to save their town from a demonic invasion.
Guilded Age
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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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There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
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A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
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Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
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Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
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After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
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A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
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It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
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A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
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A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
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Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
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she was vaguely flirty in that one in much the way girls can be sometimes, it’s different when she just comes out and says it. as to her saying it before, I honestly don’t remember. if anyone has a link to that page I’d love to see it. ~<3
ok nix that request, there are shockingly few pages tagged with Alice, kinda hate her now tbh, even with us knowing what went down. but yeah, I just forgot the entire conversation, although “I thought I loved you” doesn’t have to be romantic interest, and with how clearly in a state of dislike she was, it isn’t easy to assume from that page that she had those feelings. ~<3
Walky’s comment about Alice made it pretty clear that her and Billie were a thing. He said something along the lines of “Well now we know being a drama hurricane is sexually transmitted”, implying Alice got it from Billie.
That strip remind how fuckin awful Linda is because she talks about she says how Jenny always know she is doing and handwaved her almost killing herself and her friend because she was drunk as just a mistake but she’ll never let go of the mistake that Sal made.
I still don’t really get this argument, even though it’s explicitly made in the comic. The Walkertons have a pretty classic golden child slash scapegoat child dynamic. It’s not like the magic passive racism is mind-controlling Linda to make her decide not to have empathy for her own child and engage in constant petty cruelty. What, do people think if Linda wasn’t racist she’d somehow not be an awful person? It’s the tail wagging the dog. The racism fairy didn’t fly through her bedroom window one night and latch onto her brain to control her actions and make her do bad things. Linda chooses racist attitudes because as a deeply awful person they appeal to her. If racism wasn’t on the menu, she’d pick out some other completely arbitrary standards by which to constantly declare Sally inadequate.
I am not sure what you are arguing against here. Nobody had said that Linda would be a great parents if she wasn’t racist. And just a reminded that the racism is a very important part of the golden child dynamic, she take preference over Walky because he acts and look “less black”.
She can’t – and won’t – discuss it with her kids. No acknowledgement. Which means the kids have to view it through the lens of their entire life spans, contrasting how the mother treats the two kids and how those two kids are different. Clearly there’s a difference. Clearly that difference is based on racism.
“I just hate being found drunk and half-naked by firemen even more.”
“Half-naked” is either a hyperbole – her prom dress is not »that« revealing – or they had sex in the suv. Or maybe they never had sex at all. Alice is still wearing her dress.
Not sure about the US, but in Germany the firefighters very much do arrive after an accident. We are the ones with cutting equipment, to get people out of the vehicle, no matter how warped it is.
Firefighters may arrive after an accident here as well– and jot only for cutting equipment and such, sometimes they’re just the nearest first responders, so they’ll go as well.
In the linked strip, Jennifer starts off talking about her past, but the “half-naked by firemen” part is about the current situation– they’re hiding because the fire alarm (that Jennifer pulled) has stopped, meaning the fire department is likely there now.
In the US, a fire department usually deploys EMTs too, and the FD has the big rescue equipment. Police are equipped and trained for first aid, and hospital EMTs are focused on stabilization and transport. You’ll see vans with FIRE RESCUE lettered all over them arriving at a collision site. A well thought out emergency services plan will have unified dispatching and send whoever seems appropriate.
Typically, in the US also. Most bad traffic accidents are responded to by a police car and a smaller firetruck. Generally, they call the ambulance immediately upon arriving, if the driver and passengers aren’t standing.
Actually, firemen *do* arrive after accidents. At least here in the USA, if you call 911, the fire department shows up, because they often can get there quickest. An ambulance will arrive as quickly as they can, of course, but firemen pulling Jennifer from the car is totally realistic.
Specifically they would arrive in that instance (Finding Ruth in that state and hiding in the closet) because she didn’t call 911 in the instance she pulled the fire alarm. They basically have to come out and clear the building before people can go back in just in case there is a fire.
But Fire rescue is a thing and Paramedics at least where I’ve been in the states can often be attached to or part of the fire department. So in all likelihood they would show up anyway as part of a first response unit depending on situation.
At the very least, Billy publicly outing a star footballer as a date rapist suddenly gives some context to the cheer squad’s “thanks but no thanks.” I knew people who crashed cars in high school, that’s not a social reputation killer unless someone dies. But fucking with the football team? Even if it’s true, that’s when people close ranks. They might have SAID it was because of the car, but people take their sportsball, and anything that threatens it, more seriously than they take date rape and teen pregnancies.
I know people can be awful about sportsball, but it seems more believable to me that a big university has a policy against people with DUIs on teams than that they heard about one incoming student making a scene at prom which apparently resulted in no consequences for either party.
Fwiw, it’s not actually the same drawing. Alice’s nose is different, for example. But yeah, you can bet he has the backstory written out in detail & keeps track of information divulged earlier.
It’s already been heavily suggested that Alice and Billie had a sexual relationship– from the first strips where we met Alice. I think it’s a pretty commonly accepted theory.
Yeah, I was hoping for some conversation about all the stuff going on here, but this sequence seems to have a different purpose. Ah, well, it’s not my story.
There’ve been about (roughly) 5,500 strips so far, if you count all the dailies, the bonuses, the patreons, and slipshines. So, an estimate of 5,745 instances of “don’t do this” means an average of only ~1.05 fuckups and mistakes per individual strip.
Tree law is real thing and apparently pretty complicated. There are lawyers who specialize in it. I doubt they are swimming in cases, so any business must be a real “tree”t.
ohhhh the hard cut after that second to last panel… forever obsessed w how this comic takes advantage of newspaper strip paneling to execute some insane emotionally driven gutpunches.
YEAH !!! getting those extra two panels of context for panel two is so fucking good. adds a whole new layer of dramatic stakes to what we’ve already known was a major piece of Jennifer’s backstory.
also just. SO excited for this story arc, really feels like we’re going to get some really juicy payoff for all the shit that Jennifer’s been up to post time skip.
I agree with both your comments. I can’t wait to see how this turns out.
Also, I have long admired your user name. It sounds like the title to a poem and it is fantastic. It makes want to know what you know, but simultaneously, I don’t want to loose the mystery.
those are some very kind words, thank you so much! the backstory behind my username is admittedly not nearly as poetic nor as meaningfully considered as you might assume, but that’s all i’m going to say as to keep the mystery alive for you
I’d never heard of Static-X and had assumed you meant the cartoon Static Shock.
But Bing AI not only let me know that Static-X is a band, but that they did indeed have a connection to Batman Beyond as their music was on the movie’s soundtrack.
So I learned something new.
Thank you.
I use it all the time and it’s fine.
It does make mistakes, but I imagine all AI does.
Now, if you’re saying what it told me this time was a mistake OR if you have some other reason to suggest not using it (like it grows to become Skynet or it kicks puppies), I’m willing to listen, but if it’s just general hating on Bing, that’s not something that influences me.
I was thinking yesterday about what makes this arc so good and I think its largely because of how effectively DYW can write a character that kinda sucks as a person, get you to hate them, and then beat you senseless with emotionally riveting context/background that humanized them to such an extent my brain forgets they’re not real people
Damn You Willis. The comic’s author. His deadname can be found on his wikipedia page, but now the world knows him as Damn You Willis. Or DYW per initials.
I think you’re mixing up their preferred pronouns (they/them) and their name, David M Willis, which they still sign their blog posts with. DYW is more a term of endearment from the fanbase, stemming from Willis’ ability to deliver emotional gut punches with their writing. Also, cliff-hangers and Mike-drops.
The bit about her wanting to make Billy her wife would also apply
And the part about throwing the letter away after Billy does something self-destructive too, come to think of it. Really if you cut out all the soldier bits (which is admittedly most of the song) it’s surprisingly appropriate to this situation
Oh yeah, Alice threw the letter away big time, so to speak, last we see her (chronologically).
Also, goes a way towards explaining some of her vitriol with how casual Billie was trying to act after what happened here, like even if she might not have remembered the intensity of Alice’s feelings, she absolutely knew they were not platonic ones.
I really feel for Alice here, Billie probably woke up in an ambulance or the hospital and was told what happened after the fact, while Alice was there and awake for the whole ordeal
It feels like this is the night where Alice realized how she felt about Billie, and then immediately after that Billie nearly got them both killed doing something horribly self destructive
Billie’s attitude towards her own bisexuality and her relationship with Alice wouldn’t really have made sense if they were formally dating anyways, this being a messy situationship between two people who didn’t really understand the feelings involved was always the most likely version of events
Not to mention Billie has always spoken about it in terms of “I’m not gay, everyone has this.” It would not surprise me if they had a sort of lipstick lesbian thing going on secretly that “doesn’t count”.
I don’t see that. Alice was already in love with her and probably lived in hope, but I don’t think she thought Billie was actually declaring her love there.
Yeah, I think the punch and standing up for her took existing feelings of admiration and likely more, and magnified them.
That, plus, given what Walky said about drama being sexually transmitted as a joke in Alice’s only appearance in current times, they were already probably fooling around to an extent.
It looks like her head smacked the windshield so hard that she almost went right through it. A human skull usually does not survive that amount of force.
It actually doesn’t take that much force to break through a windshield. Kind of by design. I’d be way more concerned about chest injuries from impacting the front console (assuming there weren’t passenger side airbags, which there very well might have been).
Passenger side air bags have been mandatory for cars and light trucks in the US since the 90s. That’s a 2002 to 2007 Jeep Liberty, it absolutely has a passenger air bag.
I don’t know if the Liberty has this feature, but they can be disabled. Trucks let you disable the airbag manually with the key, because an airbag going off into a rear-facing child seat is bad news. Some cars also disable it automatically if a combination of sensor inputs (usually a pressure sensor and a switch in the seatbelt latch) assumes the seat isn’t occupied. (I guess that’s so airbags don’t go off unnecessarily.)
If Alice was unbuckled and leaning over trying to control the car from the passenger seat, that could have triggered the right combination of inputs to prevent the airbags on her side from deploying.
Cars manufactured during this time period also had mass air bag recalls iirc. Sometimes they’d explode with shrapnel, sometimes they just wouldn’t explode at all. It was one company’s fault I think, I forget what all vehicles were affected.
Fwiw when my husband and I had our accident he broke the windshield with his head and our airbags did not deploy. We were both fine but yeah, surviveable.
They’re where there are sidewalks. This is a low speed crash, probably under 35 mph otherwise the car would be more crumpled. Still, you wouldn’t want to ride a bike into a tree at that speed. Takes surprisingly little to total a car.
But I’m betting Alice had her seatbelt off so she could cuddle next to Billy. Bad decision. Without a belt the airbag is less effective.
I, too, would slam headfirst into my pillow if I ever slammed my car into a tree–- that’s not a pillow? The firemen are on their way? They seem to not have broken any bone in their body…
Roofies, Chester being chosen as Prom King, that tree. Butterfly Effect in motion.
Since she walked away from Jen because she noticed that she was fine with getting drunk and crashing a car into a tree, I have a feeling that college Alice has enough social awareness to avoid Chester.
I feel like it’d be more poignant for Alice to be out and proud with a committed girlfriend tbh. Make Billie feel like she’s been replaced and have to deal with some repressed feelings.
This feels like an homage to “The Graduate” and its final scene.
The one where they run out of the church on the wedding jump on a bus and then it all sorta phases in on them of what they did.
Billie/Jennifer won Prom Queen, punched a rapist out and called him out, then ran off with the girlfriend. And now… all of Billie’s negatives are phasing in. Her drinking and recklessness.
Well….. to be completely fucking fair…. the first thing she said to Alice when she saw her again almost a year later was that she was being “really shitty”.
I don’t think so. At least nobody was killed. Unlike what happened to Ruth’s parents (which I don’t think has been depicted) or Ruth’s self-sacrifice in the Walkyverse.
Seems like a pretty self-explanatory concept, to me. There are lanes, there’s a right one and a wrong one, the tree was driving, the tree wasn’t driving in the right lane, Billie McFucking Dies®. Point A to Point B, that’s all she wrote.
This flashback explains among other things everything leading up to Sarah’s: “Billy I’m going to something nice now. You have a wealth of knowledge about horrible things.”
This happened last year which for now means 2023-2024 so the Billingsworths let their kid ride around in a nearly 20 year old Jeep Liberty? No wonder the tree won.
I wanna marry the art here. The initial framing giving way to darker and darker snapshots of emotion, I got stabbed here by the last pannels. Beautiful way to finish a ź flashforward tbhn– Delicate and cruel, I love it all.
I.hope Alice at least has had some decent times during her enrollment….
Riddle me this: Billie was kicked off the cheer squad following the drunk driving incident. Why is that such a big deal? After all, this happened at prom night, which is at the end of the school year. Which I think means there’s no more school after that, no more exams, no more ball games. She’d have to quit the cheer squad anyway after graduation.
So I guess this boils down to how quickly graduation follows prom night. I have no idea.
Well the simple answer is probably just “writing inconsistency” since this comic has been around for 15 years now. But the narrative reason could be as simple as “a bunch of teenagers wanted to distance themselves from Billie as fast as possible for very obvious reasons.” Alice might have been too in love with her to tell Billie that they were right to do that, which led to her not knowing she went to IU and was avoiding her.
I don’t think based on how Billie said ‘the crimson squad’ here ( https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/crimson-squad/ ) she wasn’t kicked off her high school cheerleading team (which was like… blue and gold?) but that she HAD attempted to become a college chearleader for this university and they told her no due to the DUI.
We have a bingo. The Crimson Squad is indeed Indiana University’s cheerleading squad. They wouldn’t let Jennifer join because of her DUI. Makes sense. Thanks, everyone!
I guess I hadn’t realized that »cheerleader« is not just a high school thing, but still a viable identity in university. Jennifer could have been a contender… instead of a pretender.
I don’t blame you there, whenever I went to a college Homecoming game I didn’t really notice the cheerleaders unless the Mascot was doing his thing, then I was like “oh hey, we have cheerleaders”.
The thing is I never went to college in the USA and probably would not attend games if I could avoid it! Which I’m not sure of since sport is such a huge aspect of college life in America.
Going to sporting events is easily avoidable. No one makes you go, so it just depends on your friend group and how much FOMO you’re going to have if they go without you.
Mostly sports are a huge aspect of college to the people who are into sports and/or who get their scholarships through sports. Outside of that, you’re mostly going to see excitement around big games, fundraising moments, advertisements to buy tickets, and that’s about it.
Also, fun facts – not only are there high school and college level cheerleaders, there are a bunch of professional and competition level cheerleaders as well. It’s actually a career path for those who want it, but as with all athletics careers, it comes with a few downsides that are worth knowing before you go into it.
Others have commented regarding which cheer squad she got kicked off of, but I want to add information regarding the timing of prom.
Prom is generally a month or few before final exams and gradutation. That being said, cheer season would likely be wrapped by then, as cheerleading tends to be involved with fall and (indoor) winter sports, not spring sports
Thank you! I never knew that cheerleading happens typically indoors. Convenient how their season ends early. Sensible girls would want to concentrate on their exams, I guess!
Cheerleading is mostly football and basketball. A fall/winter sport and an indoor sport. There’s no cheerleaders in baseball, tennis, or track and field, all spring sports.
It’s not so much that the season ends early, it’s just… when the season is. It can be different for sideline cheer and competitive cheer as well. Here, competitive cheer is November through February.
Also, yeah, how close prom is to the end of the school year varies, as does when the end of the school year is. Some schools end mid-May; around here, schools end mid-June. But also, in the district I went to, seniors get out a few weeks early.
Depends on when prom night is. At my school, it was mid- to late-April. So all of May still to go in the school year. Plus, if you’re kicked off the squad, you don’t get the mention in the graduation program or get the activity cord (or whatever graduation regalia her school used for extra-curriculars).
And you’re always the person who reacted to said crash with ‘it’s nothing, what’s the big deal, jeez just a little crack-up’.
Remember, Alice didn’t ghost because of the crash, we’ve already been told this by Alice herself. Alice ghosted because Billie treated the crash like it was no big deal and nothing was wrong. ‘You’re so self-destructive, Billie’ she said, with tears in her eyes, because if you treat something that isn’t nothing like it’s nothing, it’s very likely to happen over and over and over again because you make no changes to the behavior that caused it in the first place.
Maybe next time it’s not drunkenly crashing into a tree. Maybe next time it’s drunkenly blowing through a red light and getting T-boned by a semi. Maybe next time it’s swerving just like this, but into a freeway divider at 60mph, then getting crunched from behind be a sober person who couldn’t stop in time. Billie didn’t care. Hell, Billie thought there was no issue!
Alice was and is right: you’re so self-destructive, Billie.
She’s focusing on Alice, though, and Alice didn’t ghost because of the crash itself. She ghosted because Billie’s response (treating the crash like nothing, no big deal) was all the red flag she needed to get herself out of proximity.
Yeah, Billie/Jennifer has a lot of issues, but I think people sometimes think she has different issues entirely. She owns that the crash is her fuckup, like she has never tried to shift the blame from what I recall, the worst she does is avoid talking about it.
Wait a minute, She’s not gonna die here?
But she doesn’t die here.
No, no, no, Billie, get up.
Get up, Billie. Billie, get up.
She can’t die here. She’s not gonna die. She can’t ever die.
Ooooooooooh my God. No wonder this poor daft lass has such a fucking hang up about being into women. You make one dramatic public scene for the love of a girl you can’t quite admit your feelings for and the night immediately descends into you almost dying in a car crash that’s your own damn fault while she finally tells you she loves you. “Being open about her feelings about women” is irrevocably tied in her memories to disaster and self-destruction. That’s enough to give anyone a complex.
Considering its location, the blood on her head (and the possible absence of a seatbelt considering panels 2 and 3), it makes me wonder if the crash caused Alice to bounce and crack her head on the windshield. Not enough for major damage, though i wouldn’t be surprised if she got a mild concussion out of the ordeal.
Alice wasn’t angry about the car wreck per se. She was angry that Billie thought nothing of it and passed it off as no big deal. Alice, as we see, has a bloody head wound, and Billie herself seems to have been unconscious for long enough that Alice thinks she might be dead.
That’s not nothing.
And Alice was correct to realize that Billie treating it as nothing meant that it would probably happen again, and again, and again.
Wrapping your car around a tree so hard it slammed your friend/girlfriend’s head into the window glass is pretty fucking severe? Especially if it happens because you were drinking and then got behind the wheel of a car.
Hey look, it’s Zaph. I thought I didn’t care for Zaph, but Zaph is actually a nice person! I’ll try to remember that. They’re not the void that Carl is.
If they are, neither of them is aware of that fact. (Or it would have been acknowledged in that scene!) They’re both fathered by Blaine in the Walkyverse, though.
Hmm. Jennifer is face down in her pillow, similar to how her face was buried in the airbag. At the beginning of the previous storyline it looks like she woke up in a similar position. I wonder how often she (whether consciously or subconsciously) sleeps face down in the pillow.
Before reading this, I thought maybe Alice and Jennifer got together after prom and the car accident happened later, but I guess not. I wonder if Jennifer even knows how Alice felt about her.
If the flashback panels are supposed to be Jennifer’s memories, she must remember that last declaration. Alice also told her when they met in college.
From that first meeting, we also can assume they’d had sex, which fits with early Jennifer’s notions about “straight, but likes girls like everyone does. Just not an actual acknowledge romantic relationship.
Panel 1: The driver’s side windshield is fine because the airbag prevented Billie from headbutting the windshield. But the passenger’s side windshield is shattered. Alice smacked right into it. She’s bleeding but still conscious.
The passenger’s side windshield is shattered, but then the windshield BEHIND Alice in Panel 2 is shattered. I can’t make those angles work unless Alice was sitting on the dash like a gremlin, so I think that’s the passenger side door. My guess is that Billie lost control of the car and drove over something or onto the sidewalk, knocking Alice into the side windshield and possibly breaking whatever tube that is at the bottom of the car. THEN she hit the tree, knocking Alice into the front windshield and deploying her own airbag.
Because the first jolt drove them to the right, where Alice had a barrier but Billie didn’t, and the final crash deployed Billie’s airbag but not Alice’s, and drunk people are known to survive car crashes more easily because they go limp, I think that Billie, despite being unconscious here, might actually be less injured than Alice is. Which makes her “it was no big deal” assertion even worse.
I think in panel 2, the angel works LESS for it being the passenger side window. I think Alice had turned in her seat (and possibly not fully sitting now) as she panics about Billie.
So Billie went from one of her highest highs to the lowest low. I’m reminded of that dril tweet where he’s like “So long, suckers!”, revs up a motorcycle, and when the smoke clears he’s lying dead on the pavement.
Anyone would have nightmares sleeping like that! I’m sorry the flashback ended without showing Billie telling to the frightened Alice that their accident was nothing. Or did it never happen and Alice broke up with her for some other motivation?
Soooo, with more of Jennifer’s story coming through, what do we all think she’s trying to avoid (wrt: her obsessive focus on other people’s problems, torching all her significant relationships, alcohol abuse)? My guess would be something to do with her queerness or her parents, but I’m curious what everyone else thinks.
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
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 ⋅ 1d
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
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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Oh
Indeed
Yeah.
Wasn’t expecting the “I love you” from Alice.
Makes my theory brain work overtime.
I… hate being right. ~<3
To be fair, she did say ”I though I loved you” while distancing for Billie and thought that the wording was a bit weird.
I saw nothing, it’s too dark. Thanks for your comment or I would never know.
Was it not obvious from yesterday’s comic?
she was vaguely flirty in that one in much the way girls can be sometimes, it’s different when she just comes out and says it. as to her saying it before, I honestly don’t remember. if anyone has a link to that page I’d love to see it. ~<3
ok nix that request, there are shockingly few pages tagged with Alice, kinda hate her now tbh, even with us knowing what went down. but yeah, I just forgot the entire conversation, although “I thought I loved you” doesn’t have to be romantic interest, and with how clearly in a state of dislike she was, it isn’t easy to assume from that page that she had those feelings. ~<3
Walky’s comment about Alice made it pretty clear that her and Billie were a thing. He said something along the lines of “Well now we know being a drama hurricane is sexually transmitted”, implying Alice got it from Billie.
You are referring to the page where it’s directly stated, right?
Funny how with fictional same-gender couples stating it outright is often not enough and still gets “It think it was more of a sisterly love.”
ChrissyBillie wake up. I don’t like this, Billie wake up!SMASH CUT TO – um, well, a smash-up. Meta-awkward.
“Flash-back”? You mean “smash-back” amirite?
Huh, she hit a tree. Don’t know if we knew how it went down before, I always assumed there were other people involved.
Charles made mention of it awhile back. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/taughthimself/
That strip remind how fuckin awful Linda is because she talks about she says how Jenny always know she is doing and handwaved her almost killing herself and her friend because she was drunk as just a mistake but she’ll never let go of the mistake that Sal made.
Yes. Linda’s secret ingredient here is racism
It’s a secret?
It’s pretty subtle, yeah. Sal and Walky are beginning to suspect.
I still don’t really get this argument, even though it’s explicitly made in the comic. The Walkertons have a pretty classic golden child slash scapegoat child dynamic. It’s not like the magic passive racism is mind-controlling Linda to make her decide not to have empathy for her own child and engage in constant petty cruelty. What, do people think if Linda wasn’t racist she’d somehow not be an awful person? It’s the tail wagging the dog. The racism fairy didn’t fly through her bedroom window one night and latch onto her brain to control her actions and make her do bad things. Linda chooses racist attitudes because as a deeply awful person they appeal to her. If racism wasn’t on the menu, she’d pick out some other completely arbitrary standards by which to constantly declare Sally inadequate.
I am not sure what you are arguing against here. Nobody had said that Linda would be a great parents if she wasn’t racist. And just a reminded that the racism is a very important part of the golden child dynamic, she take preference over Walky because he acts and look “less black”.
She can’t – and won’t – discuss it with her kids. No acknowledgement. Which means the kids have to view it through the lens of their entire life spans, contrasting how the mother treats the two kids and how those two kids are different. Clearly there’s a difference. Clearly that difference is based on racism.
Yeah.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeah.
Regardless of how she treats Sal, saying that about….. a fucking car crash….. is super fucking shitty.
besides the racism Linda also loves Billie for her elite rich parents, it’s an epically toxic combo.
Oh yeah, I forgot that scene.
Yeah we been know that for a while.
I’m sure we knew, although I don’t recall when we learned that
She mentioned the tree waaay back when she first opened up to Ruth.
“I just hate being found drunk and half-naked by firemen even more.”
“Half-naked” is either a hyperbole – her prom dress is not »that« revealing – or they had sex in the suv. Or maybe they never had sex at all. Alice is still wearing her dress.
She’s talking about the what’s happening during that conversation
Right. “Half-naked” refers to Ruth’s situation. Firemen don’t arrive after an accident. An ambulance is more likely.
Not sure about the US, but in Germany the firefighters very much do arrive after an accident. We are the ones with cutting equipment, to get people out of the vehicle, no matter how warped it is.
I take it Jennifer refers to both situations at once then. An ambiguous reading of her statement is much more interesting.
Firefighters may arrive after an accident here as well– and jot only for cutting equipment and such, sometimes they’re just the nearest first responders, so they’ll go as well.
In the linked strip, Jennifer starts off talking about her past, but the “half-naked by firemen” part is about the current situation– they’re hiding because the fire alarm (that Jennifer pulled) has stopped, meaning the fire department is likely there now.
In the US, a fire department usually deploys EMTs too, and the FD has the big rescue equipment. Police are equipped and trained for first aid, and hospital EMTs are focused on stabilization and transport. You’ll see vans with FIRE RESCUE lettered all over them arriving at a collision site. A well thought out emergency services plan will have unified dispatching and send whoever seems appropriate.
Typically, in the US also. Most bad traffic accidents are responded to by a police car and a smaller firetruck. Generally, they call the ambulance immediately upon arriving, if the driver and passengers aren’t standing.
Definitely so in Canada (I deal with accident reports for a living; “police, firetrucks, and ambulances attended the scene” is basically a hotkey).
Actually, firemen *do* arrive after accidents. At least here in the USA, if you call 911, the fire department shows up, because they often can get there quickest. An ambulance will arrive as quickly as they can, of course, but firemen pulling Jennifer from the car is totally realistic.
Specifically they would arrive in that instance (Finding Ruth in that state and hiding in the closet) because she didn’t call 911 in the instance she pulled the fire alarm. They basically have to come out and clear the building before people can go back in just in case there is a fire.
But Fire rescue is a thing and Paramedics at least where I’ve been in the states can often be attached to or part of the fire department. So in all likelihood they would show up anyway as part of a first response unit depending on situation.
At the very least, Billy publicly outing a star footballer as a date rapist suddenly gives some context to the cheer squad’s “thanks but no thanks.” I knew people who crashed cars in high school, that’s not a social reputation killer unless someone dies. But fucking with the football team? Even if it’s true, that’s when people close ranks. They might have SAID it was because of the car, but people take their sportsball, and anything that threatens it, more seriously than they take date rape and teen pregnancies.
Depends on the state. Indiana? Definitely: that’s “Hoosier” cult territory. My state (Texas) is very similarly cultish.
I know people can be awful about sportsball, but it seems more believable to me that a big university has a policy against people with DUIs on teams than that they heard about one incoming student making a scene at prom which apparently resulted in no consequences for either party.
Yeah, you might protect an existing star, but still not want a fresh recruit with an obvious image problem.
I’m pretty sure we’ve seen the tree strike from the rear view, but I couldn’t tell you which strip it was.
There was a flashback strip a while back that had a brief slice of this scene in it.
http://dumbingofage.com/billie
This page is from 2022! I know Willis makes these pages in advance but holy shit does he really prepare his scenes in advance o_o
Fwiw, it’s not actually the same drawing. Alice’s nose is different, for example. But yeah, you can bet he has the backstory written out in detail & keeps track of information divulged earlier.
The buffer alone is a year or so ahead. And, yeah, the meta-arc is years ahead. His outline of meta-arcs has probably been nigh-complete since 2010.
Panel 8: Is that Alice doing kissy face prep with Billie? Might explain something.
It’s already been heavily suggested that Alice and Billie had a sexual relationship– from the first strips where we met Alice. I think it’s a pretty commonly accepted theory.
What we’ve all been waiting for!
Well, it was kind of abrupt. I was expecting another couple of strips and additional revelations, followed by the wreck and waking up next to Ruth.
Yeah, I was hoping for some conversation about all the stuff going on here, but this sequence seems to have a different purpose. Ah, well, it’s not my story.
Sucks being lucky sometimes.
Damn, they put the poor girl in the casket upside-down.
God tier comment
First Mike dies and now Jennifer suffocates on her pillow.
Can this be coincidence?
“He died at the console, of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried, face down, nine edge first.”
Prevents vampirism.
And so that’s all anyone remembered from that night. Of course.
Dumbing Of Age: DON’T DO THIS (Part 5,745)
…huh, are you sure? That count seems kinda low…
There’ve been about (roughly) 5,500 strips so far, if you count all the dailies, the bonuses, the patreons, and slipshines. So, an estimate of 5,745 instances of “don’t do this” means an average of only ~1.05 fuckups and mistakes per individual strip.
You don’t know what you have until you lose it.
Can anyone read the speech bubble in panel 4? It’s too dark for me.
“Please Wake Up, I Love You”
next book title
CAN’T WAKE UP
WAKE ME UP INSIDE
SAVE ME
LET YOUR WARM HANDS BREAK RIGHT THROUGH
“Please wake up, I love you.”
“Please wake up. I love you”
Says:
“Please wake up, I love you”
“Please wake up I love you”
What they all said
Which, if it wasn’t clear, is “Please wake up, I love you.”
Mucho grassy-ass to all you seen-yors and seen-yor-eat-ahs!
“Muahaha! All according to my evil plan!”
Post-orgasm Joyce-face is a delightful talking head for that line.
Note the green background and subtle reddening of the iris.
“Dear Mario, please come to the castle. I’ve baked a cake for you. Yours truly, Princess Toadstool, Peach”
“Rosebud”
HEY NO SPOILERS!
“Only Link can defeat Ganon.”
Only Worf can defeat Gowron.
“up up, down down, left right left right B A Start”
Guaranteed bean-flick orgasm every time!
you have gained 30 DOPAMINEWe missed the enforcement of Tree Law that comes right after this moment in the flashback.
I think the tree decisively won this bout of tree vs automobile, looks like it stood it’s ground pretty well
Tree law is real thing and apparently pretty complicated. There are lawyers who specialize in it. I doubt they are swimming in cases, so any business must be a real “tree”t.
It’s true, a lot of tree lawyers end up having to branch out.
Some just can’t handle it and have to leaf.
Poor saps.
No of course not, it’s the one who specialize in ocean law that are swimming in cases.
This should be handled in a guest strip by Randy Milholland.
aaaaand there it is
and it was all going so well :(
ohhhh the hard cut after that second to last panel… forever obsessed w how this comic takes advantage of newspaper strip paneling to execute some insane emotionally driven gutpunches.
Second time it’s done it with this exact flashback too
YEAH !!! getting those extra two panels of context for panel two is so fucking good. adds a whole new layer of dramatic stakes to what we’ve already known was a major piece of Jennifer’s backstory.
also just. SO excited for this story arc, really feels like we’re going to get some really juicy payoff for all the shit that Jennifer’s been up to post time skip.
I agree with both your comments. I can’t wait to see how this turns out.
Also, I have long admired your user name. It sounds like the title to a poem and it is fantastic. It makes want to know what you know, but simultaneously, I don’t want to loose the mystery.
those are some very kind words, thank you so much! the backstory behind my username is admittedly not nearly as poetic nor as meaningfully considered as you might assume, but that’s all i’m going to say as to keep the mystery alive for you
It recalls Maya Angelou’s _I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings_.
Also my own I Know Why I Forget Where I Put Things
Willis has been at this a long time, and I do love that you can see how that experience has really helped them hone their craft.
Seems like someone didn’t act with integrity, and has several regrets.
Also apparently Static-X had a Batman Beyond tie-in, which must be the only thing on Earth that could possibly make Static-X feel more dated.
I’d never heard of Static-X and had assumed you meant the cartoon Static Shock.
But Bing AI not only let me know that Static-X is a band, but that they did indeed have a connection to Batman Beyond as their music was on the movie’s soundtrack.
So I learned something new.
Thank you.
Please don’t use Bing AI
I use it all the time and it’s fine.
It does make mistakes, but I imagine all AI does.
Now, if you’re saying what it told me this time was a mistake OR if you have some other reason to suggest not using it (like it grows to become Skynet or it kicks puppies), I’m willing to listen, but if it’s just general hating on Bing, that’s not something that influences me.
Well, you did just say it’s completely useless. And that’s the best thing about it.
I think this is very effective storytelling
Yeah, legitimately one of my favorite strips in a while.
Oh, 100000%. Suddenly, Billie’s entire persona this entire comic makes sense.
I’m dead sure she was an asshole before this, but this one moment reconceptualizes her entire character this entire comic.
Still an asshole (moreso as Jennifer than as Billie). But understandably so.
I was thinking yesterday about what makes this arc so good and I think its largely because of how effectively DYW can write a character that kinda sucks as a person, get you to hate them, and then beat you senseless with emotionally riveting context/background that humanized them to such an extent my brain forgets they’re not real people
Agreed. I’m still waiting for them to do something absolutely masterful with Mary regarding this.
Less likely. Jennifer’s always been a main character, deeply flawed but with a lot of positive traits as well. Mary hasn’t.
That’s all the more reason i await. If they can actually pull it off it’ll be a true masterstroke.
Mary is a bad person and a bad guy.
What is DYW? Did you mean DUI?
Damn You Willis. The comic’s author. His deadname can be found on his wikipedia page, but now the world knows him as Damn You Willis. Or DYW per initials.
I think you’re mixing up their preferred pronouns (they/them) and their name, David M Willis, which they still sign their blog posts with. DYW is more a term of endearment from the fanbase, stemming from Willis’ ability to deliver emotional gut punches with their writing. Also, cliff-hangers and Mike-drops.
But I’m not fully up to date either.
I wrote with much tongue-in-cheek.
Bluesky header says he/they.
Of course, Damn You Willis. I’m not good with acronyms.
Billie, don’t be a hero, don’t be a fool with your life
being a hero: good thing
drunk driving: not so good thing
This comment is complemented by the last panel.
The bit about her wanting to make Billy her wife would also apply
And the part about throwing the letter away after Billy does something self-destructive too, come to think of it. Really if you cut out all the soldier bits (which is admittedly most of the song) it’s surprisingly appropriate to this situation
Oh yeah, Alice threw the letter away big time, so to speak, last we see her (chronologically).
Also, goes a way towards explaining some of her vitriol with how casual Billie was trying to act after what happened here, like even if she might not have remembered the intensity of Alice’s feelings, she absolutely knew they were not platonic ones.
I really feel for Alice here, Billie probably woke up in an ambulance or the hospital and was told what happened after the fact, while Alice was there and awake for the whole ordeal
It feels like this is the night where Alice realized how she felt about Billie, and then immediately after that Billie nearly got them both killed doing something horribly self destructive
Yeah, it turned out they didn’t date but may have hooked up before.
Billie’s attitude towards her own bisexuality and her relationship with Alice wouldn’t really have made sense if they were formally dating anyways, this being a messy situationship between two people who didn’t really understand the feelings involved was always the most likely version of events
Not to mention Billie has always spoken about it in terms of “I’m not gay, everyone has this.” It would not surprise me if they had a sort of lipstick lesbian thing going on secretly that “doesn’t count”.
In between the drunken sex with boys at parties.
Which also takes on a darker shade with the revelation about Chester.
I think Alice thought Billie punching Chester was a declaration of love which Billie didn’t fully realize until their last confrontation at college.
Exactly what I’d think in her place honestly
I don’t see that. Alice was already in love with her and probably lived in hope, but I don’t think she thought Billie was actually declaring her love there.
Yeah, I think the punch and standing up for her took existing feelings of admiration and likely more, and magnified them.
That, plus, given what Walky said about drama being sexually transmitted as a joke in Alice’s only appearance in current times, they were already probably fooling around to an extent.
”This doesn’t count because I’m not gay” sounds exactly like Billie.
So this was the alpha test for her lesbian suicide pact?
Task failed successfully.
Holy crap, was there no air bag on the passenger side? How did Alice SURVIVE that?
Alice was very lucky, that kind of impact is too strong.
It looks like her head smacked the windshield so hard that she almost went right through it. A human skull usually does not survive that amount of force.
It actually doesn’t take that much force to break through a windshield. Kind of by design. I’d be way more concerned about chest injuries from impacting the front console (assuming there weren’t passenger side airbags, which there very well might have been).
Passenger side air bags have been mandatory for cars and light trucks in the US since the 90s. That’s a 2002 to 2007 Jeep Liberty, it absolutely has a passenger air bag.
That’s why you buckle up, kids.
Even though that’s true, it sure doesn’t look like one deployed on Alice’s side. :/
I don’t know if the Liberty has this feature, but they can be disabled. Trucks let you disable the airbag manually with the key, because an airbag going off into a rear-facing child seat is bad news. Some cars also disable it automatically if a combination of sensor inputs (usually a pressure sensor and a switch in the seatbelt latch) assumes the seat isn’t occupied. (I guess that’s so airbags don’t go off unnecessarily.)
If Alice was unbuckled and leaning over trying to control the car from the passenger seat, that could have triggered the right combination of inputs to prevent the airbags on her side from deploying.
Cars manufactured during this time period also had mass air bag recalls iirc. Sometimes they’d explode with shrapnel, sometimes they just wouldn’t explode at all. It was one company’s fault I think, I forget what all vehicles were affected.
Fwiw when my husband and I had our accident he broke the windshield with his head and our airbags did not deploy. We were both fine but yeah, surviveable.
IIRC airbags deflate almost instantly after doing their job so as not to smother. The mystery is why Billie still has an inflated one.
But something did ding the passenger-side windshield. ???
They’re where there are sidewalks. This is a low speed crash, probably under 35 mph otherwise the car would be more crumpled. Still, you wouldn’t want to ride a bike into a tree at that speed. Takes surprisingly little to total a car.
But I’m betting Alice had her seatbelt off so she could cuddle next to Billy. Bad decision. Without a belt the airbag is less effective.
TIL many things about airbags; thanks all for correcting my assumptions!
I’d be self destructive too if I was reliving this moment every night.
Fuckin oath. PTSD owned my ass for a decade after I was in a crash. And it was only a year ago for Billie
She’s doing worse than usual too because of her altercation with Ruth. She’s been acting like a concussion patient since then.
I, too, would slam headfirst into my pillow if I ever slammed my car into a tree–- that’s not a pillow? The firemen are on their way? They seem to not have broken any bone in their body…
Roofies, Chester being chosen as Prom King, that tree. Butterfly Effect in motion.
I am willing to place 5 bucks that Alice got back together with Chester after this.
Why?
Because Willis is THE DEVIL.
I don’t think he’d go there with it, like I don’t think that’s really doable after the prom blowup.
Given the way the DOA world works, Chester being called a creep probably barely affected him. He’s also very probably going to the same college.
As for Alice? Well, she turned against Billie because of tonight and already forgave him once.
What do you mean the way the DoA world works? Guys getting away with being creeps happens all the time I. Real life.
Yes and I prefer fiction where it doesn’t happen.
Since she walked away from Jen because she noticed that she was fine with getting drunk and crashing a car into a tree, I have a feeling that college Alice has enough social awareness to avoid Chester.
I could see it, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Although of course I very much do not want it to be true, which might bias things for me
I feel like it’d be more poignant for Alice to be out and proud with a committed girlfriend tbh. Make Billie feel like she’s been replaced and have to deal with some repressed feelings.
I still think she’s dating that girl she didn’t introduce Billie to when we first saw her.
This feels like an homage to “The Graduate” and its final scene.
The one where they run out of the church on the wedding jump on a bus and then it all sorta phases in on them of what they did.
Billie/Jennifer won Prom Queen, punched a rapist out and called him out, then ran off with the girlfriend. And now… all of Billie’s negatives are phasing in. Her drinking and recklessness.
I think it was on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER that Ted never realized the ending was ambiguous.
I’ve been trying to remember what movie that ending scene was for.
….
… at least the panels aren’t red?
I feel very calm reading this
I think we now understand why Billie hates being Billie so much.
First she ruined Alice’s life.
She tried to deny it.
Then she tried to “help” Ruth but just did her worse until Ruth dumped her.
This is her third attempt to become someone other than the drunk who almost killed her new girlfriend.
Well….. to be completely fucking fair…. the first thing she said to Alice when she saw her again almost a year later was that she was being “really shitty”.
Eugh, I reread that strip the other day when I clicked on Alice. I’d forgotten how bad it was. Billie was SUCH an asshole to her.
so the whole comic is Billie’s coma dream
got it
This is the second worst drunk driving incident in a Willis comic I’ve ever seen.
It may only be the second worst driving incident, but it’s still the most regrettable.
I don’t think so. At least nobody was killed. Unlike what happened to Ruth’s parents (which I don’t think has been depicted) or Ruth’s self-sacrifice in the Walkyverse.
(Yes, I got the »Get Smart« reference, thank you.)
I’m only just now getting that Willis flipped the script with the drunk driving incident.
You mean the tree was driving in the wrong lane? Please elaborate.
Seems like a pretty self-explanatory concept, to me. There are lanes, there’s a right one and a wrong one, the tree was driving, the tree wasn’t driving in the right lane, Billie McFucking Dies®. Point A to Point B, that’s all she wrote.
Wake up Billie!!
This flashback explains among other things everything leading up to Sarah’s: “Billy I’m going to something nice now. You have a wealth of knowledge about horrible things.”
Is that a Ford Bronco Raptor? Hot damn the Billingsworths have money!
It’s a 2002 to 2007 Jeep Liberty.
This happened last year which for now means 2023-2024 so the Billingsworths let their kid ride around in a nearly 20 year old Jeep Liberty? No wonder the tree won.
I expected it to be mumsy and daddy’s hand-me-down “upper middle class status projector”, something like a Lexus RX or Land Rover Discovery.
I wanna marry the art here. The initial framing giving way to darker and darker snapshots of emotion, I got stabbed here by the last pannels. Beautiful way to finish a ź flashforward tbhn– Delicate and cruel, I love it all.
I.hope Alice at least has had some decent times during her enrollment….
*flashback.
But yeah, I really need to know more about Alice tbh. And the last panel! What a gutpunch dhdhfhs
Doesn’t look like anyone has mentioned this reference yet…
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/alpha-bongo/
How the in ducking heck did you remember one sentence from a twelve year old strip? That is incredibly impressive.
A lot of us vaguely recalled it. We just didn’t have the dedication to go looking for it. Thank you, Big Steve.
And it’s even a title strip!
Riddle me this: Billie was kicked off the cheer squad following the drunk driving incident. Why is that such a big deal? After all, this happened at prom night, which is at the end of the school year. Which I think means there’s no more school after that, no more exams, no more ball games. She’d have to quit the cheer squad anyway after graduation.
So I guess this boils down to how quickly graduation follows prom night. I have no idea.
Well the simple answer is probably just “writing inconsistency” since this comic has been around for 15 years now. But the narrative reason could be as simple as “a bunch of teenagers wanted to distance themselves from Billie as fast as possible for very obvious reasons.” Alice might have been too in love with her to tell Billie that they were right to do that, which led to her not knowing she went to IU and was avoiding her.
I think this sabotaged her attempt to get on the university cheer squad, not her high school squad
I don’t think based on how Billie said ‘the crimson squad’ here ( https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/crimson-squad/ ) she wasn’t kicked off her high school cheerleading team (which was like… blue and gold?) but that she HAD attempted to become a college chearleader for this university and they told her no due to the DUI.
*I think, not I don’t think
Yeah, I think Billie is implying she had a spot on the University cheerleading squad rescinded after getting her DUI.
We have a bingo. The Crimson Squad is indeed Indiana University’s cheerleading squad. They wouldn’t let Jennifer join because of her DUI. Makes sense. Thanks, everyone!
I guess I hadn’t realized that »cheerleader« is not just a high school thing, but still a viable identity in university. Jennifer could have been a contender… instead of a pretender.
Maybe she could be a bartender!
I don’t blame you there, whenever I went to a college Homecoming game I didn’t really notice the cheerleaders unless the Mascot was doing his thing, then I was like “oh hey, we have cheerleaders”.
The thing is I never went to college in the USA and probably would not attend games if I could avoid it! Which I’m not sure of since sport is such a huge aspect of college life in America.
Going to sporting events is easily avoidable. No one makes you go, so it just depends on your friend group and how much FOMO you’re going to have if they go without you.
Mostly sports are a huge aspect of college to the people who are into sports and/or who get their scholarships through sports. Outside of that, you’re mostly going to see excitement around big games, fundraising moments, advertisements to buy tickets, and that’s about it.
Also, fun facts – not only are there high school and college level cheerleaders, there are a bunch of professional and competition level cheerleaders as well. It’s actually a career path for those who want it, but as with all athletics careers, it comes with a few downsides that are worth knowing before you go into it.
oh shit, I missed that! Good find.
Others have commented regarding which cheer squad she got kicked off of, but I want to add information regarding the timing of prom.
Prom is generally a month or few before final exams and gradutation. That being said, cheer season would likely be wrapped by then, as cheerleading tends to be involved with fall and (indoor) winter sports, not spring sports
Thank you!
I never knew that cheerleading happens typically indoors. Convenient how their season ends early. Sensible girls would want to concentrate on their exams, I guess!
Cheerleading is mostly football and basketball. A fall/winter sport and an indoor sport. There’s no cheerleaders in baseball, tennis, or track and field, all spring sports.
It’s not so much that the season ends early, it’s just… when the season is. It can be different for sideline cheer and competitive cheer as well. Here, competitive cheer is November through February.
Also, yeah, how close prom is to the end of the school year varies, as does when the end of the school year is. Some schools end mid-May; around here, schools end mid-June. But also, in the district I went to, seniors get out a few weeks early.
Depends on when prom night is. At my school, it was mid- to late-April. So all of May still to go in the school year. Plus, if you’re kicked off the squad, you don’t get the mention in the graduation program or get the activity cord (or whatever graduation regalia her school used for extra-curriculars).
Mine was a week before graduation (June 9th and 16th), but I gather that’s unusual.
Billie is in her “handling it like a champ” era.
Interesting to realize we basically got the full Alice story years ago
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/alpha-bongo/
Before we even met Alice even
Along with the book title!
thT tree had it coming!
Tree law is complicated.
Tree law is incredibly serious, Linda!
“Deadly” serious!
Mr. Billingsworth almost had her sent to where he sent all the homeless people in Indiana.
“A farm update, right?”
“Yes, Jennifer.”
And then you lost her.
And you’re always the person that did those things for her. Who risked things to speak the truth.
And you’re always the person who crashed the car.
And you’re always the person who reacted to said crash with ‘it’s nothing, what’s the big deal, jeez just a little crack-up’.
Remember, Alice didn’t ghost because of the crash, we’ve already been told this by Alice herself. Alice ghosted because Billie treated the crash like it was no big deal and nothing was wrong. ‘You’re so self-destructive, Billie’ she said, with tears in her eyes, because if you treat something that isn’t nothing like it’s nothing, it’s very likely to happen over and over and over again because you make no changes to the behavior that caused it in the first place.
Maybe next time it’s not drunkenly crashing into a tree. Maybe next time it’s drunkenly blowing through a red light and getting T-boned by a semi. Maybe next time it’s swerving just like this, but into a freeway divider at 60mph, then getting crunched from behind be a sober person who couldn’t stop in time. Billie didn’t care. Hell, Billie thought there was no issue!
Alice was and is right: you’re so self-destructive, Billie.
Possibly with an element of “this could happen again. I can’t have you taken from me, so I have to lose you by choice.”
I hope that Jennifer can one day realize that the crash happened because of her, not in spite of her.
Oh, she knows that. It’s still messing her up.
She’s focusing on Alice, though, and Alice didn’t ghost because of the crash itself. She ghosted because Billie’s response (treating the crash like nothing, no big deal) was all the red flag she needed to get herself out of proximity.
Yeah, Billie/Jennifer has a lot of issues, but I think people sometimes think she has different issues entirely. She owns that the crash is her fuckup, like she has never tried to shift the blame from what I recall, the worst she does is avoid talking about it.
This is more of what I was talking about.
Alice got a skull with the structural integrity of Fort Knox
Damn, Alice hit her head quite hard on the windshield. :O
Jennifer (Billie) had airbag. <.<
Wait a minute, She’s not gonna die here?
But she doesn’t die here.
No, no, no, Billie, get up.
Get up, Billie. Billie, get up.
She can’t die here. She’s not gonna die. She can’t ever die.
Billie?
Billie?
Ooooooooooh my God. No wonder this poor daft lass has such a fucking hang up about being into women. You make one dramatic public scene for the love of a girl you can’t quite admit your feelings for and the night immediately descends into you almost dying in a car crash that’s your own damn fault while she finally tells you she loves you. “Being open about her feelings about women” is irrevocably tied in her memories to disaster and self-destruction. That’s enough to give anyone a complex.
What’s going on with the windshield in the first panel?I can’t quite make out the image. Is it two people?
It’s cracked on the right side I guess?
cracked and splattered with maybe Alice’s blood
grody to the max stuff
Considering its location, the blood on her head (and the possible absence of a seatbelt considering panels 2 and 3), it makes me wonder if the crash caused Alice to bounce and crack her head on the windshield. Not enough for major damage, though i wouldn’t be surprised if she got a mild concussion out of the ordeal.
Possibly a skull fracture, but not depressed.
I think this is it. I couldn’t make out the image that well. Thank you all for the help.
No, it’s a windshield.
…so it all went down in a single night? Holy crap, Willis.
…be more worried about yourself. Her airbag triggered, yours didn’t and there’s a head shaped mark on the glass on your side
….
look, it’s not like a huuuge impact. I thought it was a severe one, since Alice was so angry with Jennifer
Alice wasn’t angry about the car wreck per se. She was angry that Billie thought nothing of it and passed it off as no big deal. Alice, as we see, has a bloody head wound, and Billie herself seems to have been unconscious for long enough that Alice thinks she might be dead.
That’s not nothing.
And Alice was correct to realize that Billie treating it as nothing meant that it would probably happen again, and again, and again.
Wrapping your car around a tree so hard it slammed your friend/girlfriend’s head into the window glass is pretty fucking severe? Especially if it happens because you were drinking and then got behind the wheel of a car.
Alice’s upset seems absolutely valid to me, tbh.
Does anyone remember in which strip Joyce talked about how she drew a naked picture and then ate it? My tag-fu fails me.
It was when Joyce met the Forest squad.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/earlier/
Hey look, it’s Zaph. I thought I didn’t care for Zaph, but Zaph is actually a nice person! I’ll try to remember that. They’re not the void that Carl is.
Zaph and Faz look related.
If they are, neither of them is aware of that fact. (Or it would have been acknowledged in that scene!) They’re both fathered by Blaine in the Walkyverse, though.
Ahhh. I’m much less familiar with the Walkyverse lore. Okay, I’m expecting now they’re sibs, knowing or not.
I don’t think anyone has different parents in this world since that would mean they’d be different people.
You’re forgetting Carla.
Awesome, thanks!
Hmm. Jennifer is face down in her pillow, similar to how her face was buried in the airbag. At the beginning of the previous storyline it looks like she woke up in a similar position. I wonder how often she (whether consciously or subconsciously) sleeps face down in the pillow.
(I hope this Gravatar thing works)
Whoo, success! But I’m going to spin the wheel.
YES. This is acceptable.
Before reading this, I thought maybe Alice and Jennifer got together after prom and the car accident happened later, but I guess not. I wonder if Jennifer even knows how Alice felt about her.
If the flashback panels are supposed to be Jennifer’s memories, she must remember that last declaration. Alice also told her when they met in college.
From that first meeting, we also can assume they’d had sex, which fits with early Jennifer’s notions about “straight, but likes girls like everyone does. Just not an actual acknowledge romantic relationship.
I’m wondering if Jennifer remembered Alice saying it, but after she came to, Alice denied it.
Billie waking up with her face jammed into something soft and squishy. Her natural habitat, apparently.
Panel 1: The driver’s side windshield is fine because the airbag prevented Billie from headbutting the windshield. But the passenger’s side windshield is shattered. Alice smacked right into it. She’s bleeding but still conscious.
The passenger’s side windshield is shattered, but then the windshield BEHIND Alice in Panel 2 is shattered. I can’t make those angles work unless Alice was sitting on the dash like a gremlin, so I think that’s the passenger side door. My guess is that Billie lost control of the car and drove over something or onto the sidewalk, knocking Alice into the side windshield and possibly breaking whatever tube that is at the bottom of the car. THEN she hit the tree, knocking Alice into the front windshield and deploying her own airbag.
Because the first jolt drove them to the right, where Alice had a barrier but Billie didn’t, and the final crash deployed Billie’s airbag but not Alice’s, and drunk people are known to survive car crashes more easily because they go limp, I think that Billie, despite being unconscious here, might actually be less injured than Alice is. Which makes her “it was no big deal” assertion even worse.
I think in panel 2, the angel works LESS for it being the passenger side window. I think Alice had turned in her seat (and possibly not fully sitting now) as she panics about Billie.
Go to therapy, Jennifer.
She literally does go to therapy, doesn’t she?
There is a difference between going to therapy, and actually working on it.
Well she went, back before the timeskip. I don’t think she’s still going and it’s not clear how long she went.
Firefighters come because of the danger of fire after a crash and to clean up any oil or gas.
Around here it’s Drink Wisconsinably. https://www.drinkwisconsinbly.com/
So Billie went from one of her highest highs to the lowest low. I’m reminded of that dril tweet where he’s like “So long, suckers!”, revs up a motorcycle, and when the smoke clears he’s lying dead on the pavement.
Anyone would have nightmares sleeping like that! I’m sorry the flashback ended without showing Billie telling to the frightened Alice that their accident was nothing. Or did it never happen and Alice broke up with her for some other motivation?
…. What?
Problem Solved!
Soooo, with more of Jennifer’s story coming through, what do we all think she’s trying to avoid (wrt: her obsessive focus on other people’s problems, torching all her significant relationships, alcohol abuse)? My guess would be something to do with her queerness or her parents, but I’m curious what everyone else thinks.
Just leaving this link here in case anyone wanted to see the last time we saw Alice – basically the first time as well
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/dramahurricane/
There was one blink and you’ll miss it appearance more recently
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/billie/
Oh, Jesus. Poor Alice.