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Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
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Dumbing of Age
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The way she was speaking, they’d both been well aware that Billie had to move out and calm things down in general. Ruth wouldn’t stress that again; it’d be redundant and there’s frankly no reason to remind anyone that, yes, she’s moving out.
Ruth essentially said here what needed to be clearly stated: things need to end because they’re inhibiting bigger things, we can’t keep acting like this is possible without sacrificing someone else’s or our safety. (It’s either that or have a relationship made entirely of hidden activity under a college campus for at most four years. Even between rooms, they would either get uncovered or it would put too much strain on their relationship. It’d be like doing long distance, only instead of long distance, it’d be in the same building and with enormous consequences.)
This is why Ruth is emotionally detaching herself from Billie and becoming cold: she can’t follow through with laying as low as she needs if she lets Billie keep emotionally distracting her.
If I’m mostly right, and they come apart, Ruth might find herself cascading into a depressive episode again, and might not make it out with the same luck she did before. D: PLEASE, RUTH, DON’T THINK THIS THROUGH.
To add, when she said ‘quipping at each other like it’s not happening’, I’m almost certain that almost always refers to the ending of a relationship of some sort. Changing rooms? Not really a big deal whether you ignore or pay attention to it; not certain why she’d insist on being distant and stoic about it on both parties.
But losing someone? Ruth is already doing damage control, because she lost her parents, who aside from Howie, are the only family she had, and she had to deal with that adjustment before too. In her mind, she knows she has to lose Billie, who has give her the closest thing to love in a long, long time. She knows dealing with her feelings about this right now or being exposed to Billie’s emotions will only make it harder for both of them.
If she wanted to end her relationship she would of said ‘This relationship is over’ instead she said “this arrangement”, I am taking that as living arrangements.
Also basing this off 6 comics ago where she said she does not want her to go that she NEEDS her.
But I don’t think either of them have referred to their relationship as… well, a “relationship”. Ruth called it a “suicide pact” before – that sounds more like an “arrangement” than a “relationship” to me.
The issue with that is, as I already stated, it was already clear to both of them that the living situation had to change. There wasn’t any reason for Ruth to repeat it as an excuse for Billie to stop acting familiar to her.
I know it’s a small point, but “at most four years” translates to “almost certainly two semesters/three quarters. That at least sounds possible to do even if it isn’t, and it’s the maximum in universe run of the comic, at least by DYW’s stated intentions.
It’s possible, but it’s not at all ideal. In the timeline, these two have hardly been together for very many days and their relationship is already under enough threat and strain to start fraying the threads.
… I think you mean “depth and emotion.” Ennui is another word for boredom, which is generally not the emotion that a blackmail-induced breakup inspires.
Next night: Billie stands outside Ruth’s window holding a stereo over her head. Unfortunately, she got some wires crossed while looking for a Canadian song Ruth would appreciate online, and so the stereo is playing this.
You magnificent bastard. Also, I am now picturing Ruth drawn as a South Park Canadian while everyone else remains drawn normally, and no one can quite put their finger on why Ruth seems different…
We’re following the daily lives of a dozen different characters, who are broken up into groups that don’t constantly interact, and we only see about 20 seconds of comic time play out per real time day. Some events that serially play for us may be happening simultaneously from the characters’ perspective. For all we know Billie and Ruth’s fight started while Joyce was packing for her weekend at home.
Relationships seem to develop quickly, but they are college students… Overall the pace isn’t that unbelievable.
The karmic consequences being that the one legitimately bad person in the caste at least realizes how much she’s been fucking up her job, and two people in an abusive relationship that’s obviously terrible for both of them are breaking up…
… wait, are we saying that the good father thing is the bad end of the karma scale?
The “one legitimately bad person in the cast”? I’m curious who you’re limiting the cast to, to make that claim.
Ruth certainly has problems and shouldn’t be in her job, no denying that.
I don’t however think that the relationship is abusive or terrible for either of them. It’s just not enough to fix their actual problems. Ruth’s behavior before the relationship actually started was abusive, no argument there, but it has changed since.
Abusive/terrible, maybe. Codependent, definitely. For better or for worse Ruth is stopping the cycle and actually giving them a chance at something healthier. Even if spite/common enemy is what gets them there.
After all the buildup, with people scrambling to keep Becky hidden from Ruth, I’m really happy Ruth took one look at the situation (while freaking out because of Mary) and decide to support her.
As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, Billie could just request a dorm transfer and problem solved. I’m sure Sal could be convinced to play along with a claim that they’re completely incompatible roommates if she knew it meant sticking one in Mary’s craw, she’s got to loathe her.
Everyone’s point that out and the reason it hasn’t happened is because it would solve one of their problems Billie probably has it in her head that putting more distance between her and Ruth could make things worse because she can’t keep an eye on her all the time.
Tbf, I don’t think there’s anything specifically stopping her being placed in a new room and immediately turning around and moving in with Ruth again, as long as on paper she lives on another floor. This would also have the side effect of removing Ruth’s official authority over her.
Real life, Billie would just move into a new dorm and then that’s one less thing Mary has over Ruth.
But this is a webcomic, and her moving would mean even less time of her being seen and would take some drama away.
Same way we’ll never see Becky moving in with Joyce’s parents until she can officially enroll in college. In real life it would be the smart, sensible thing to do, but then Becky wouldn’t get any screen time. Even though Becky is supposed to get a happy ending.
This. Plus, schools tend to be very snippy about requests to change dorms and tend to drag out the process because it’s a pain in the ass for them. So, while Billie can in fact switch floors which would solve the problem, that could also take months, which in our time would be years or even decades.
Interesting to consider what the job consequences would be if they in the case where they were all sane competent people and Ruth & Billie went to the relevant authorities, said they were starting a relationship and Billie would like to transfer to make it legit. Would Ruth still get fired if they were found to have done anything while waiting weeks or months for the move to actually happen? Or would the intent be sufficient?
But this is Dumbing of Age, so it’s basically irrelevant.
Also: the blackmail only just happened a few minutes ago. Ruth is too busy panicking and berating herself to think of it and Billie hasn’t had the time to stop and think of alternative solutions yet.
Although Ruth did express that this was for safety’s sake, I feel like Billie wasn’t wrong about her pushing her away. Ruth can’t be emotionally attached to her if she wants to do her job without letting her affect her judgment, which she feels she has already allowed and thus harmed people outside of their arrangement.
If they could have kids, they would have the reddest hair.
But seriously, I can’t picture a relationship between those two that doesn’t end in a body count. It’s seriously more likely to kill someone than Ruth and Billie’s relationship, and that one is pretty much a literal suicide pact.
I give Ruth 30 seconds of putting up with Becky’s 300 megawatt grin and overall genki-factor combined with a sprinkling of “Jesus sure is rad” before she snaps.
Plus side, maybe Billie and Dina would hook up. I don’t see them as a functional couple either, but at least it would be funny.
Wha? Is this one of those things where you pick the most unlikely ship and push it for fun?
I mean, Becky is pretty much eternally chipper. There’s no way that fits with a depressed person. Becky would be nothing but incredibly annoying to Ruth in her current state.
I mean, have you ever had a really bad night of sleep, been really groggy and whiny, and then dealt with someone who is a total morning person? Imagine that, but 10x worse.
But yes, I do think this is for the best. It’d also be cool to explore other potential relationships for both before they dramatically get back together after Ruth is fired for so many reasons.
Carla hasn’t shown any penchant for rule-breaking other than the skating in the halls thing, and has demonstrated an extremely low tolerance for fools.
Becky is an annoying moron whose friends are all people Carla doesn’t seem to particularly like.
I don’t think this is as clever an idea as you think it is, the best possible outcome is that only one of them has been strangled to death by the end of the first day.
Not to mention it isn’t “Carla has a giant double room all to herself”. It’s “Carla has a single room”. So there’s no second bed, and the size is probably smaller. And since she would not be sharing a bed with Carla in the way that Billie is doing with Ruth, that space would get smaller still.
Also, the school would be even more likely to react negatively to that because the single room for her is intentional as a means of “hey, look, transphobes, she’s not actually sharing a room with the cis women, so it’s all good” and that arrangement would blow that bit of “benevolent” transphobia.
Partly that I suppose, but also partly for her sake, I’d hope. So she’s not sharing a room with a transphobe and to decrease the chance of her inadvertently outing herself to a roommate.
I…what would that accomplish? Neither Mary or Carla could get into their own room, but they also wouldn’t know who the key actually belonged to. It’d just mean a mildly annoying trip to the building office for each of them and possibly some kind of lost deposit, probably at different times.
Oh dear. This all happened because Mary essentially blackmailed Ruth into silence. Now consider this from Billie’s point of view. “Take care” of Mary and everything can return to normal. This will end badly for at least one of them.
Well, no, it happened because Ruth is an unsuitable RA who has bullied people and is carrying on an illicit relationship.
If none of the above were the case, Ruth could have frog-marched Mary down to the Housing board, reported her for hate speech and creating a hostile environment, and depending on the bylaws of IU, gotten her on-campus room privileges revoked or even had her expelled. No, Mary’s bigotry was not okay, but I really dislike how people are retconning Ruth as some saint.
The thing about Mary is she makes the likeable assholes (Ruth, Carla, Mike for some readers) seem like good people by comparison. They’re not all that great, they’re just written more sympathetically.
Actually, that’s one of the problems with Mary’s story arc. She really doesn’t. People hate Mary and with good reason for being a homophobic trasphobic asshole. They don’t suddenly like Carla or Ruth any more, though, which is not usually how these things go.
It bugs me a bit as well. For the longest time we were shown that Ruth was mean to people in her dorm because she knew she could get away with it, she physically handled anyone who tried to stand up to her, fat shammed Billie for the longest time, and generally ran the dorm like a angry prison warden.
But then we get told that all of that was fine because she never actually took any femurs, like all that bullying and stuff is supposed to just go away.
I don’t think any of it was fine, or not its supposed to go away because she’s decided it’s time to do her job.
I think Ruth was and is totally unsocialized -not sure what word I’m looking for, but she does not know how to react with people on a civilized level.
Willis is doing his usual thing here by giving us some character development: Becky was a complete maniac and disliked by many with her behavior when she first arrived. Until we learned why she acted like that. Make her more human.
I think the same is going on with Ruth. She is showing that she cares about the people on her hall, she just handled them the only way she knew how: bully the hell out of them and scare them into following the rules. As long as no one bothered her, she figured all was good.
And she’s a drunk. And depressed. Neither of which make for good judgment.
It looks like she is at last doing the right things: turn in Mary, hide Becky, and remove Billie from her room. Billie can move into Mary’s (soon to be vacated) room hopefully.
Ruths not being a Saint, she is just finally doing her job. People like me, that like Ruth and hold out some hope for her, are hoping she gets a break by facing her problems.
And no, nothing happened because Ruth is an unsuitable RA, it happened because Mary is a bongo, and Carla was really immature.
But yeah, even though Ruth unwittingly gave Mary material, this is happening because of Mary. She is not doing this to remove a shit RA,she’s using it so she can control people and do shitty things without getting in trouble.
I think Carla would be someone I’d find utterly insufferable in real life. She’s not a violent person, though, nor does she deserve to be intimidated or threatened or subject to hate speech. Mary? Mary is evil.
This. Ruth is a bully and an abuser at times. But Mary is way better at being a bully and pulling power trips. Ruth and Carla weren’t targeted because they did something wrong she wants to correct, they’re targeted because in her eyes they are something wrong and she wants them to know that makes them less than her and she’s got their numbers.
Which makes sense. A lot of Ruth’s abusiveness and bullying stems from her mess of internal issues. She’s not invested in it rather it just naturally comes out in toxic ways. Whereas Mary is rather intentional about it because her bullying stems more from her commitment to societal hierarchies and “what is right” in society.
Yes, Carla was immature. And Ruth is an ineffective RA. Both of those, however, pale besides Mary’s disproportionate and hate-fueled retribution. That Mary was handed ammunition does not negate the fact she was looking for it with the intent to use it.
Ruth has the power. Mary was creating an unsafe environment for Carla, who has every right to be there. She was spouting hate speech. None of this is OK, and Ruth is deputized to stop that kind of crap and turn in the miscreants. Instead, she insinuated that Mary could be gang-raped and murdered and hopefully both situations would be extra messy, and ran away, leaving Carla in the lurch.
I loathe Ruth, but I understand others like her, but you have to call a spade a spade. Mary told Ruth what she could do – take her down to Housing and report her. That is what an RA who really cares about her students should have done. And Mary would have had no move. She would have gotten kicked off campus at best and possibly asked to leave the school at worst.
I will mitigate my stance if and only if Ruth truly is preparing to take Mary to be disciplined and weeded out of an environment where she can hurt and terrorize more people. But I’m not hand-patting a person who has used physical intimidation and has wished bodily harm on people.
Well, it really does look like Ruth is working on eliminating the blackmail material Mary has on her, which will likely lead to calling her bluff, one way or another. Being Ruth, that’s probably more likely to be a direct confrontation with Mary than reporting her, but still…
It still sucks that Carla didn’t get the immediate support she needed, but I don’t think Ruth’s abandoning her completely.
That’s what she’s doing! She’s setting things up so she can fix the issue with Mary. She flat out said this, which is why Billie is going along with it.
No, she couldn’t just go tell on Mary at the time. That was the whole point. Mary was going to completely discredit her and get her fired.
Even if they believed Ruth about Mary, she’s not remotely getting kicked out for language. She’s gonna get written up. Maybe a fine, maybe just a reprimand. This is a first offense, and colleges don’t tend to kick paying customers out for those.
And Ruth did not in any way say anything about Mary being gang raped or anything. She gave Carla permission to fight her while Ruth looked the other way.
Yes, Ruth is violent. If you still hate her for that, that’s fine. But you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s going on–to the point that my first line was going to be “What comic are you reading?”
Don’t let your hate for Ruth blind you to the narrative direction of the comic.
I don’t think she was leaving Carla to handle Mary, if only because that would be amazingly shitty of Ruth to do on top of the victim blaming she pulled afterwards.
Perhaps it is what she is doing NOW. It was not what she was doing THEN. She left Carla to fend for herself and basically abdicated her responsibility to protect her. Notice how betrayed and angry Carla (rightfully) felt at Ruth’s actions. Because Ruth couldn’t be a passable RA, now Carla gets thrown under the bus?
But we’ll see. If she is going to cut Mary’s legs out from under her, figuratively speaking, then huzzah. Growth.
Also, I disagree that Mary would just get “written up.” She engaged in hate speech and further endangered Carla’s safety. I’m sure there are quite a few people on the IU campus who are not OK with trans issues, and by misgendering Carla, Mary could have set her up to be abused by some of these people. Mary at the least would likely have been reassigned to another dorm, but I don’t think it is out of the way to think she could have been kicked off campus unless there is a provision that all IU freshmen who are not commuting from home must live on campus.
You’re right about what she did to Carla, no denying it. I still think it’s better for her to retrench, minimize the consequences to herself and then take on Mary than for her to just roll over. And we’ve seen when this sequence started, that it’s still Carla she’s thinking of.
Ruth’s certainly in denial about how she’s been doing her job. Her relationship with Billie is putting others at risk. But she hasn’t completely abdicated her responsibility. She’s trying to change things so she can act – without sacrificing herself.
As for consequences, I hope you’re right, but I’m afraid you’re optimistic. And it would really suck for Ruth to throw herself under the bus for Carla and for it not to even work.
It really depends. I went to SFState, and in the floor below me there were two (cis, male) roommates; one was gay and one was het. The gay guy reported that the het guy said some anti-gay slurs to him. All that happened was the het guy got moved to a different room, on the same floor of the same dorm, but on the other side. And that’s SFState (granted, 8 years ago), where they are really accepting and what not. Maybe he got some actual punishment, but this is all I saw. I mean, socially the rest of the dorm didn’t talk to the guy for the rest of the year, but he seemed to suffer no major consequences for his actions imo. So no, colleges are not great about punishing people for these kinds of things imo.
The main issue is that, while Mary is a douche sandwich and has spouted some total bullshit about other things, every accusation she leveled at Ruth is absolutely 100% correct and she’s practically mother Teresa for not already turning Ruth in ages ago.
It’s hard to even call it blackmail when she’s _right_. I mean, it’s surprising that she’s right, but broken clocks and all. The fact that Ruth is only considering doing her actual job to protect her own ass, not because she feels any obligation to do her job in itself, just kinda highlights where the root of the problem is.
If the blackmail was intended to make Ruth sympathetic by comparison it’s not working, basically. Most of us are just kinda rooting for both of them to go down in flames now.
Of course it’s blackmail. That the accusations have a factual basis (describing Becky as a “perverted vagrant” is only true if you are willing to cut Mary’s world view a LOT of slack) does not make it RIGHT to use them as blackmail material, it only makes it EFFECTIVE.
If Mary wanted to stop Ruth from abusing her position she would use the knowledge of her transgressions to turn her in, not use it to attack other residents in peace. But Mary doesn’t want a good or fair RA. She likes the tyranny just fine, she just want to be on top of the heap.
Mary is not right because she opposes Ruth, any more than Ruth is right because she opposes Mary.
Heh, let’s be a bit careful with the “most of us”. This forum can be pretty divisive at times.
Personally I am very sympathetic to Ruth. I think she is horrible at her job and it hurts a lot of people (and abuse of power is my largest pet peeve in this comic), I am terrified for her sake because of the alcoholism and depression and I feel so bad for her because the situation has exploded in her face in the worst way.
Pretty much all blackmail works because it’s right. If you find out someone’s cheating on their spouse and blackmail them for it, you’re right. If you find out someone’s a closeted homosexual and make them pay you keep it hushed up, you’re blackmailing them. If you make up random shit about someone and try to extort money or favors, that might still be blackmail, but it’s not going to work very well.
And frankly, Mary’s only sort of right. Her perspective is so skewed that she’s focusing on the wrong things. If she presented her case to the authorities in the same terms she threatened Ruth with, she’d lose an awful lot of credibility. The relationship with Billie is the only real threat and that’s due to the authority relationship, not “defiling the cheerleader”. That there’s an unauthorized long-term guest in the dorm is an issue that Ruth should deal with, now that she’s been made aware of it, but whether or not she’s a “perverted vagrant” is irrelevant.
Now if Mary wasn’t a nasty bigot and was concerned about Ruth abusing her authority over Billie for sex and about her assault and battery of various residents of the hall, she’d be right. If she knew about the alcoholism, she’d have an even stronger case. But that’s not her take on it.
Nor is someone “practically Mother Teresa” for not turning someone in, not out of any concern for them, but in order to extort favors from them. That’s just a horribly wrong interpretation of what’s going on here.
As Bagge said, I’m very sympathetic to Ruth and for similar reasons.
Pretty much, having accurate information is what allows a person to blackmail someone else, unless the threat is more a smear that would ruin the other person’s life (like if an employer was homophobic and would fire someone for even the rumor of them being gay).
Though, I would disagree on one point. I feel the “practically Mother Teresa” comparison is particularly apt… in that real-life Mother Teresa was actually pretty awful and a big fan of hurting people and extorting favors, all while pretending to be very pious and holy: http://guardianlv.com/2013/10/mother-teresa-was-no-saint-says-study/
I don’t really think they’re broken up here, actually. Ruth just a few pages ago said how much she does really need Billie.
As much as I want Ruth to fuck off for being an abusive bint and Billie to seriously reevaluate their relationship, ultimately it’s Billie that makes Ruth get up in the morning. Breaking up now just means Ruth loses another anchor in her rapidly dwindling list of reasons why she hasn’t killed herself yet.
Ruth’s need for both plausible deniability and open transparency seem to be at odds with each other. You can’t just say “We need to keep becky under wraps. do whatever it takes.” and then “Shits about to hit the fan. Assume everyone is about to find out about what we have been up to and we should probably clear the air.” Either take responsibility or don’t. You can’t have it both ways.
Ruth never suggested that they “clear the air” about her and Billie. The plan regarding her and Billie’s relationship was “end it, destroy all the evidence, and pretend it never happened.”
I m not sure that Ruth cares about that. If anything, I think that there is a part of her that resents Billie for forcing her to be alive and do anything but lie on her bed, willing herself to death. Ruth is in a serious deep ‘down’ right now and may need professional treatment
I think Ruth has always been violently divided into two minds about that. Half of her clearly cares about the hall and her job, about having Billie in her life as a stabilizing influence, about doing right by people and pushing through the dark haze that threatens to continually pull her under.
And the other half doesn’t. The other half wants to just give up and die already, alienate and push away the people keeping her connected to the world, hide in her bed and not do her job until she has no excuse to keep herself running and can slip away in peace.
And frustratingly for Billie, she wildly oscillates between this mode sometimes even in the same conversation as she internally struggles with those two conflicting desires. And even more frustratingly, the anxiety of Mary’s blackmail and the self-loathing of having missed important things in her hall is leading Ruth to now turn to one aspect of her clinging to life at the expense of the other.
I don’t think Carla would be a good RA*. What qualifications does she have, other than being a sophomore?
To be a good RA you have to pay attention to people, talk with them, and find decent and reasonable solutions to minor problems. Carla doesn’t seem the sort to be good at those either.
*Though I’d love to see Mary’s face when she finds out. Is that what this preview panel is about?
She’s a sophomore, she’s mature, she’d just do the job, she seems willing to at least recognize that people who aren’t Raidah are allowed to have views contrary to hers, she probably wouldn’t physically abuse any of her charges, and it cuts out the room and board costs of her tuition.
You have to be a sophomore, which only Ruth, Carla, Sarah and maybe Rachel are.
Besides, she’s not good with people, but nowhere near as much as she thinks. The worst thing an RA has to do is manage the occasional meeting and tell some students to knock their shit off at best and at worst problem solve for them, and Sarah’s really good at problem solving her way through bad shit.
Plus, it gives her some money and a free room. It lines up perfectly. I don’t think Ruth’s going to be the RA forever, and I think Sarah would make a great replacement.
Well, she’s gonna be a lawyer someday. She needs some practice in listening to people she doesn’t like complain about problems she doesn’t care about and ask her to solve them as quickly and efficiently as possible.
And if she does do a good job then having some tangible proof that her actions are having a positive impact, where she doesn’t spend months getting harassed because she tried to help her drug addicted roommate or have her love for Joyce get brushed aside because she can’t be assed to show it enough, might end up doing her some good.
I take it you’ve never had any job, ever? It’s not “RAs”, sexual harassment law applies to pretty much everyone.
Admittedly because they’re employees of a state educational institution in this case sexual harassment is probably more serious, since it’s often bumped up to an actual criminal matter instead of a civil one depending on the state when it’s an employee doing it to a student.
Is there any reason why Ruth can’t just quit being R.A? What is she getting out of it other than the option of bullying and harassing people? Carla would do a much-much better job and not hurt people. Also, again, Ruth needs professional help. Not just for her own sake of mind but maybe so someone can point out she’s not actually made anyone’s life better on her floor. No one felt safe on it, not Carla not anyone.
I sympathize with Ruth’s situation, I do, but I think her position is something which should be changed not preserved.
Yes; without the income she’ll be dependent on her grandfather who it has been strongly implied is emotionally abusive and dominating of her. I strongly suspect that, as lightly as she treats it, having the job and the consequential independence is one of the few things keeping her alive.
It’s not been explicitly stated, but I assume she would have to leave the college, since she’d no longer have an income nor get the free or reduced room and board that comes with being an RA. She’d effectively be homeless and unemployed.
I mean, yes, in an ideal world, she shouldn’t be an RA in her condition. But there’s not really a realistic way she can quit and not wind up in far, far worse conditions.
And she absolutely knows that Carla doesn’t feel safe. That’s kinda the whole point of why she’s doing what she’s doing now.
That seems to making a lot of assumptions about Ruth’s living situation. Yes, being an RA is great for her but she can’t do the job. She does a terrible job at the job and she’s basically getting paid for doing a horrible job.
So rather than using her authority and the many, many resources an RA is given by their institution specifically for this kind of thing to try to help, she’s going with “plausible deniability”.
Because using any of those resources or authority would likely out everything she’s been doing (or not doing) and get her fired, and her backstory makes it seem likely that that would cost her her home/independence/education.
I’m not saying it’s the RIGHT thing to do, but it’s at least logical.
Why exactly would the RA have resources to help Becky? She’s not living in the dorm; she’s not even a student at that university. I can’t see why Ruth would have even been taught about what to do in that situation, since its not something that would come up regularly.
i can’t tell if this is a healthy move for Ruth, or the most unhealthy thing possible. we know Billie has been helping Ruth on mornings when she’s low-functioning. and Ruth’s been there for Billie similarly. but they also are kinda co-dependently self-destructive. so…
Probably doesn’t help that they’re going about this detangling in the worst way. It’s not a conversation about caring and value and we need to be less intertwined in each other’s lives to this unhealthy and dangerous degree. It’s Ruth putting Billie down and pushing her away and thus more likely to trigger her self-hatred and Ruth doing the pushing away mostly out of her usual flavor of self-destruction which only reinforces her negative habits.
So, yeah, them separating or them physically separating could be healthy, but the way this is being done is guaranteed to make it way less healthy in the short-term and probably very prone to imploding on itself as they both start getting strong desires for the co-dependence again and start increasing more self-destructive ways of re-entangling themselves.
I read it a little differently. Can you really see Ruth or Billie having that functional conversation? It would be so ooc for both of them. Neither has that level of awareness yet. Ruth throws out casual insults like she exhales. But just a few strips ago she’s admitting to Billie for the first time, “I’m not trying to get rid of you. I don’t want you to go. I need you. I do.” She’s acknowledging she CARES about someone (!) but that there are other things even more important, outside the bubble she and Billie have created. That is fucking progress to me.
Ruth has something to care about again–and it’s not just Billie who she was never really trying to protect anyway. She has the motivation to keep existing, to clean up her room, to throw out her alcohol and stop the extremely unhealthy dynamic she and Billie are in right now. This is her wake-up call. It doesn’t matter if the motivation is spite. It’s breaking her depressive cycle. It’s not an ideal motivation but with depression this severe, it really doesn’t matter what pulls you out. All that matters is that it does. She and Billie actually have a chance now.
This is what depression does: you think SO little of yourself, it becomes noble to alienate loved ones. You NEED to save them from you, and if it takes being a jerk…unfortunate, but necessary. And it’s not necessary to have suicide in mind, you might just be trying to eliminate collateral damage for the next, inevitable time you screw up. If no one cares, no one will be disappointed or hurt.
There she is, Misanthrope America
There she is, your denial
The dream of a million girls who are more than pretty can be broken
in Indiana City
For she may turn out to be the Queen of hostility
There she is, Misanthrope America
There she is, your greatest fear
With so many beatings she took the dorm by storm
With her all-threatening face and form
And there she is
Walking on skulls, she is
Bloodiest of the bloody, she is
There she is – Misanthrope America
And that’s the story of how Mary got a homeless teenager back on the streets just so she wouldn’t have to… Why did Mary do that again? Oh, right, so she wouldn’t have to apologize for escalating a dispute when she could have just talked to the RA who was right there.
Of all the panels you picked from that comic, you picked the one where Billie has woken up, checked that Ruth is alive, and gone back to sleep. It’s the most horrifying panel of the entire strip! D:
(But we are shippers in kind! Billie/Ruth avatars are the best! )
One will take almost any abuse if the alternative is their loved one ceasing to exist. It’s heartbreaking. One person can’t want to live for both people.
Yep. Yep. The circumstances weren’t exact, but I know what it’s like thinking that you need to be there for an abusive loved one, or else whatever happens is your fault.
I’m living depression for reals. (I’ve avoided dragging hot curvy girls down into a self-destructive spiral of alcoholism with me, though.)
But sometimes as a depressed lesbian it’s nice to see a woman/woman relationship with at least one depressed person in it. Sure, their relationship has some really bad elements to it, but if I didn’t have those elements, I don’t think I care for it. The happiness and ease would make it seem unreal to me.
I just spent the last few days shotgunning all of Dumbing of Age, and…wow. This…this has been quite a ride. And now I’ve reached the end. (Well, the present, technically, but you know what I mean.)
I won’t bore you with my life story, but let’s just say that I’ve grappled with the same issues of faith that Joyce has gone through, the same social awkwardness that Dina endearingly experiences, and the same cycle of rage and self-loathing that Amber keeps getting trapped in. So seeing their stories unfold was like looking back at my own life, and I just wanted to reach out and say to the characters “No, no, no! That’s not going to fix it! It’s just going to make it worse! Don’t do that!” as they made the same mistakes I did growing up. It really helps that every character in this comic feels like a real, three-dimensional human being, with character flaws and insecurities and likes and dislikes and all that cool stuff that fictional characters don’t really get all that much. Everyone, even Mike and Joe, exhibits depth that no one could have ever seen on the surface…which, as I’ve come to learn, is exactly the case in the real world.
I’m about to graduate at the end of February with a degree in mechanical engineering, working with my Asperger’s Syndrome and working through my anxiety. Reading this comic has made me realize how far I’ve come as an individual, and how much I’ve grown from the person I was when I started. And that brings me some comfort, even as the characters in this webcomic go through the same toils I went through – because I know that if it got better for me, then it should get better for them. Eventually.
Thank you, Mr. Willis, for almost six years of characters that I consumed in about four days. I hope you can do this for many more, for as long as you want to.
PS: Dina is totally my favorite character. Rawr!
PPS: My favorite non-Dina moment was when Joyce punched the lights out of Becky’s dad. Never have I experienced a more visceral “Yeah! That’s what you get!” in any medium ever, save for shooting Handsome Jack in the face in Borderlands 2.
PPPS: I know we’ve only seen him for a little bit, but I think Mr. Brown (Joyce’s dad) might become a close second in terms of favoritism.
PPPPPS: I should probably stop leaving PS messages.
If that post there doesn’t make Willis feel just a little bit proud of what he’s achieved, I don’t know if anything will.
Granted, he might well be so overwhelmed that now he thinks that he can only ever allow himself to make only the perfectest of perfect comics. And then he realizes he’s not capable of doing that. So he freezes up and goes into a catatonic state; never making another comic in his life. He’s not even making a real ending to DoA, we’ll just reach the end of the buffer in two months.
So now you basically just doomed this comic to end abruptly, Joey245. Nice going!
Or, feel free to do it at people that we think would be a better idea if they actually retired…. Do you think you can fake a sincere letter to Rob Liefeld?
I’ve noticed that whenever Ruth gets really depressed, she starts speaking in ambiguous language and double meanings. I guess it’s a defence mechanism; say something ambiguous, and if things really are bad she doesn’t have to admit it to herself, and if things aren’t bad, well, people are just reading too much into what she’s saying and should stop bothering her.
Since overanalyzing insufficient data is our whole raison d’être, here; How long ago were Ruth and Howard’s parents killed?
Ruth says Howard was “much younger” then. I am speculating 10 years. That makes Howard 7 and Ruth 10 when they came to live with their grandfather. How much of a difference would that make in “this is how all parents are” versus “this parent sucks, unlike my old one”?
And the obvious speculation that Ruth gets her management style (intimidation, neglect, and threats of violence) from her grandfather.
It’s a scary thought but it’s entirely possible Ruth’s grandfather is a perfectly nice person but Ruth is generating all of her rage and bile purely from depression.
I mean if I’m being honest that would actually be really interesting as a deliberate swerving of our expectations, but I don’t think it’ll be the case, if only because it seems like it’d be a twist for a twist’s sake.
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honeymoon’s over =(
wow, good thing I didn’t go with the “Miss America” comment I was gonna go with, alt-text
I was gonna do a “Miss America” comment, too!
The alt-text knows how to beat us to the punch.
I always get the “here I come Mr. Fairy Universe” from fairly odd parents stuck in my head when I see Miss America / Miss Universe references.
I always think of “Biggest Douche in the Universe” courtesy of South Park….
A curious development.
It inspires in me great…something.
I ‘unno.
It fills you with determination?
BagFaceMan! Stay De-temmied!
honestly with the history of these two and promises I doubt there’ll be even a couple of panels before drunken wubba lubba dub dub.
I’m not so sure. Ruth seems a LOT more determined to actually keep this particular promise than usual.
nooo ruth don’t leave the relationship! stay alive please
I think she is just kicking her out of the room not the relationship.
I hope so. I interpretted “arrangement” to mean relationship, but I hope I’m wrong.
The way she was speaking, they’d both been well aware that Billie had to move out and calm things down in general. Ruth wouldn’t stress that again; it’d be redundant and there’s frankly no reason to remind anyone that, yes, she’s moving out.
Ruth essentially said here what needed to be clearly stated: things need to end because they’re inhibiting bigger things, we can’t keep acting like this is possible without sacrificing someone else’s or our safety. (It’s either that or have a relationship made entirely of hidden activity under a college campus for at most four years. Even between rooms, they would either get uncovered or it would put too much strain on their relationship. It’d be like doing long distance, only instead of long distance, it’d be in the same building and with enormous consequences.)
This is why Ruth is emotionally detaching herself from Billie and becoming cold: she can’t follow through with laying as low as she needs if she lets Billie keep emotionally distracting her.
If I’m mostly right, and they come apart, Ruth might find herself cascading into a depressive episode again, and might not make it out with the same luck she did before. D: PLEASE, RUTH, DON’T THINK THIS THROUGH.
To add, when she said ‘quipping at each other like it’s not happening’, I’m almost certain that almost always refers to the ending of a relationship of some sort. Changing rooms? Not really a big deal whether you ignore or pay attention to it; not certain why she’d insist on being distant and stoic about it on both parties.
But losing someone? Ruth is already doing damage control, because she lost her parents, who aside from Howie, are the only family she had, and she had to deal with that adjustment before too. In her mind, she knows she has to lose Billie, who has give her the closest thing to love in a long, long time. She knows dealing with her feelings about this right now or being exposed to Billie’s emotions will only make it harder for both of them.
If she wanted to end her relationship she would of said ‘This relationship is over’ instead she said “this arrangement”, I am taking that as living arrangements.
Also basing this off 6 comics ago where she said she does not want her to go that she NEEDS her.
But I don’t think either of them have referred to their relationship as… well, a “relationship”. Ruth called it a “suicide pact” before – that sounds more like an “arrangement” than a “relationship” to me.
The issue with that is, as I already stated, it was already clear to both of them that the living situation had to change. There wasn’t any reason for Ruth to repeat it as an excuse for Billie to stop acting familiar to her.
I know it’s a small point, but “at most four years” translates to “almost certainly two semesters/three quarters. That at least sounds possible to do even if it isn’t, and it’s the maximum in universe run of the comic, at least by DYW’s stated intentions.
It’s possible, but it’s not at all ideal. In the timeline, these two have hardly been together for very many days and their relationship is already under enough threat and strain to start fraying the threads.
It’s either that or have a relationship made entirely of hidden activity under a college campus for at most four years.
Now I picture Billie venturing into the steam tunnels for an illicit tryst with a Gollum-like Ruth.
“Precious femurses”
the sorrowful sound of a ship beginning to sink
We can still save this ship! There’s still time!
*begins frantically plugging up holes with any debris lying around*
Sunk by Iceberg Mary.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v373/cliodhnaglen/tumblr_mdxdlnreii1rlhnibo1_400_zpsp0x0flmm.gif
IT’S NOT HAPPENING
http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g427/acw_world/Gifs/PiratesOfTheCaribbean03_zpsebd8251f.gif
Careful Billie, wishing for people to go back to their “old ways” isn’t always the best
We still have the ponytail. We still have hope.
Ponytail is Life
Ponytail is Love.
LoveTail is Pony.
that look of billies at the end hurts emotionally speaking.
As opposed to physical harm, which is always a possibility when interacting with Ruth and Billie.
Or either one of them, really. Though it’s probably likelier with Ruth.
She’ll take your emotional femurs.
If looks could kill, I’d be sobbing.
oh wait
Aww sad Billie is sad
Billie’s gotta lotta snark, this could take a while.
This is a heavy moment, full of depth and ennui!
… I think you mean “depth and emotion.” Ennui is another word for boredom, which is generally not the emotion that a blackmail-induced breakup inspires.
It’s not just boredom. It’s a listlessness, a dissatisfaction with things staying the same.
I mean, you’re still right that it’s the wrong word, but I don’t want anyone thinking that being bored in class is ennui.
There it is… Miss Universe…
There it is… looking weird…
– Zapp Brannigan.
If Billie is clever she’ll be able to pursue Ruth in some other less obvious way.
Next night: Billie stands outside Ruth’s window holding a stereo over her head. Unfortunately, she got some wires crossed while looking for a Canadian song Ruth would appreciate online, and so the stereo is playing this.
You magnificent bastard. Also, I am now picturing Ruth drawn as a South Park Canadian while everyone else remains drawn normally, and no one can quite put their finger on why Ruth seems different…
I
What
Why does this exist
The answer to both questions is “South Park”.
South Park: Making fun of every aspects of our societies since 1997.
Somehow…somehow, deep down…I knew what that link was going to be. And I clicked it anyway. ^^; Oh, South Park, never change. XDD
I expected Justin Bieber.
All Billie needs to do is apply to move to a different floor. She can complain that Mary is creating a hostile living environment, that should do it.
Wait, is…is this actually happening? Are they breaking up?
Nah Billie just can not live in the room anymore.
Y’know, it’s kind of unclear. Also, they got together in The Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit… so according to this http://walkypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Dumbing_of_Age_Timeline they’ve been together for barely over a week.
Wait? We’re barely a month in? You have got to be joking, wiki.
The sexy lesbian suicide pact was Wednesday of Week Four. Today is Friday of Week Five.
I keep a more detailed timeline of events than the wiki has, which is linked under my name (except when that links to the F-bomb count instead).
Niiiiiiiiiiice.
I like your style – giving female names to all of your network’s servers has a certain panache to it.
PS: 415 MB civax is adorable! ^_^
So Ruth is just trying to duck out for getting Billie a 10-day Anniversary present?
It’s just been a month
This is getting to Marvel levels of bullshit.
We’re following the daily lives of a dozen different characters, who are broken up into groups that don’t constantly interact, and we only see about 20 seconds of comic time play out per real time day. Some events that serially play for us may be happening simultaneously from the characters’ perspective. For all we know Billie and Ruth’s fight started while Joyce was packing for her weekend at home.
Relationships seem to develop quickly, but they are college students… Overall the pace isn’t that unbelievable.
Specifically, ‘they‘ aren’t doing anything. Ruth is insisting that Billie end it.
And the other shoe drops. I knew Joyce’s dad being not-horrible would carry some sort of Karmic consequences.
in this universe, karma is when bad things happen to good people.
and on the other end of the spectrum…mary
The karmic consequences being that the one legitimately bad person in the caste at least realizes how much she’s been fucking up her job, and two people in an abusive relationship that’s obviously terrible for both of them are breaking up…
… wait, are we saying that the good father thing is the bad end of the karma scale?
The “one legitimately bad person in the cast”? I’m curious who you’re limiting the cast to, to make that claim.
Ruth certainly has problems and shouldn’t be in her job, no denying that.
I don’t however think that the relationship is abusive or terrible for either of them. It’s just not enough to fix their actual problems. Ruth’s behavior before the relationship actually started was abusive, no argument there, but it has changed since.
Abusive/terrible, maybe. Codependent, definitely. For better or for worse Ruth is stopping the cycle and actually giving them a chance at something healthier. Even if spite/common enemy is what gets them there.
Needs more snark
:/
Seconded.
I was gonna say something like “there’s Classic Ruth” but then remembered Classic Ruth hasn’t had a lot to say for the past 15 years.
bad_time_simulator.mov
misanthrope canada
Thank you! Don’t need another Canadian taking our American jobs. Like she’s Ted Cruz or something.
This is going to get worse before it gets better. But at least she’s not summarily running Becky out of town.
You know what comic this is; it’ll get worse and then more worse.
We knew what we signed up for. >.<
After all the buildup, with people scrambling to keep Becky hidden from Ruth, I’m really happy Ruth took one look at the situation (while freaking out because of Mary) and decide to support her.
She’s got a big heart… and someday, she’s going to hunt it down and remove its femurs for making her care about life and the people in it.
Ehh, why should this be permanent?
Because RAs aren’t allowed to date students in their dorms and now someone knows and is blackmailing them because of it.
As someone pointed out a few weeks ago, Billie could just request a dorm transfer and problem solved. I’m sure Sal could be convinced to play along with a claim that they’re completely incompatible roommates if she knew it meant sticking one in Mary’s craw, she’s got to loathe her.
Everyone’s point that out and the reason it hasn’t happened is because
it would solve one of their problemsBillie probably has it in her head that putting more distance between her and Ruth could make things worse because she can’t keep an eye on her all the time.Tbf, I don’t think there’s anything specifically stopping her being placed in a new room and immediately turning around and moving in with Ruth again, as long as on paper she lives on another floor. This would also have the side effect of removing Ruth’s official authority over her.
Real life, Billie would just move into a new dorm and then that’s one less thing Mary has over Ruth.
But this is a webcomic, and her moving would mean even less time of her being seen and would take some drama away.
Same way we’ll never see Becky moving in with Joyce’s parents until she can officially enroll in college. In real life it would be the smart, sensible thing to do, but then Becky wouldn’t get any screen time. Even though Becky is supposed to get a happy ending.
I would hold off calling it the sensible thing to do until we see how Carol reacts to a real live lesbian.
Wait, lesbians are real?
Well how else do you explain all the dead Unicorns?
Well, I blamed Joe.
This. Plus, schools tend to be very snippy about requests to change dorms and tend to drag out the process because it’s a pain in the ass for them. So, while Billie can in fact switch floors which would solve the problem, that could also take months, which in our time would be years or even decades.
Interesting to consider what the job consequences would be if they in the case where they were all sane competent people and Ruth & Billie went to the relevant authorities, said they were starting a relationship and Billie would like to transfer to make it legit. Would Ruth still get fired if they were found to have done anything while waiting weeks or months for the move to actually happen? Or would the intent be sufficient?
But this is Dumbing of Age, so it’s basically irrelevant.
Also: the blackmail only just happened a few minutes ago. Ruth is too busy panicking and berating herself to think of it and Billie hasn’t had the time to stop and think of alternative solutions yet.
I never lived in a dorm so I have to ask: is it actually that easy to change rooms? Don’t you at least need to find someone willing to swap first?
Depends on the housing situation at your university and why you’re doing it. How far into the semester you are can also play a factor.
Although Ruth did express that this was for safety’s sake, I feel like Billie wasn’t wrong about her pushing her away. Ruth can’t be emotionally attached to her if she wants to do her job without letting her affect her judgment, which she feels she has already allowed and thus harmed people outside of their arrangement.
… :((((
Lesbian pact shutdown :,-(
Ruth’s internal monologue in panel 3: “Fucking Christ, there has been a lot going on around here that I didn’t know about.”
”Billie is such a good distraction, I’ll give her that.”
This, of course, sets up BECKY and Ruth to date. Becky, who I point out is NOT a student and perfect for her!
Dina might have a few choice things to say about that. Becky would probably have several.
Ruth, not being a toe, might not hold up quite so well to a raptor attack.
If they could have kids, they would have the reddest hair.
But seriously, I can’t picture a relationship between those two that doesn’t end in a body count. It’s seriously more likely to kill someone than Ruth and Billie’s relationship, and that one is pretty much a literal suicide pact.
I give Ruth 30 seconds of putting up with Becky’s 300 megawatt grin and overall genki-factor combined with a sprinkling of “Jesus sure is rad” before she snaps.
Plus side, maybe Billie and Dina would hook up. I don’t see them as a functional couple either, but at least it would be funny.
They can form the Red-Headed League.
Ruthless – The Leader
Becky – The Lancer
Carla – The Big One
Mandy – The Smart One
Howard-The chick
mandy dyed her hair blue though. shes out of the squad
Does that mean Howard becomes the smart one?
no
Some questions are easy to answer.
Wait…fuck, we forgot about Penny!
Penny is their secret ally within the Establishment.
why is willis so PC look at all these redheads everywhere
it strains credibility
My people are over-represented and I’m SO okay with that
So when will you sing us The Song Of Your People?
You don’t want to hear me sing.
Unless you’re a masochist.
If someone replaces her she can come back when the dye goes away as the 6th ranger
i dont think billie and dina would ever happen either, but now youve got me imagining it.
its cute.
Wha? Is this one of those things where you pick the most unlikely ship and push it for fun?
I mean, Becky is pretty much eternally chipper. There’s no way that fits with a depressed person. Becky would be nothing but incredibly annoying to Ruth in her current state.
I mean, have you ever had a really bad night of sleep, been really groggy and whiny, and then dealt with someone who is a total morning person? Imagine that, but 10x worse.
If this is setting up Becky moving in with Carla I can’t wait to see them interacting with each other.
Ooh, that would be insane. You have me hoping.
First day there, Becky puts up a Razor Scooter poster on the wall
Carla: “We can’t be friends.”
“Maybe we can salvage this. The Ultra Car cartoon; greatest thing or greatest thing?”
“Actually my dad never let me watch that because he told me it would corrupt me into Satan’s wiles.”
News at 10
“Dumb white girl found dead this afternoon…
*butthole dad.
Well, no one’s dead.
(The Walkyverse set a really low bar for success of this relationship.)
Mr. Willis, you need to go and Bert Parks yourself in a corner for an hour after letting out that awful pun!!!!
Re: alt text. Miss Canada technically, eh?
I see what you did there.
The only place I can think of to move Becky to is Carla’s room.
But yes, I do think this is for the best. It’d also be cool to explore other potential relationships for both before they dramatically get back together after Ruth is fired for so many reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM-DNBEVDN4
Now c’mon Ruth.
You can’t just break the sexy lesbian suicide pact. That’s cheating.
Hmm, looks like Becky needs a new place to stay.
I’ve got it! Carla has a room by herself, Becky needs a place to stay, bing bang boom problems solved!
claps hands
Now if ya’ll need me I’ll be off in space curing cancer!
breaks window, then walks out front door
Carla hasn’t shown any penchant for rule-breaking other than the skating in the halls thing, and has demonstrated an extremely low tolerance for fools.
Becky is an annoying moron whose friends are all people Carla doesn’t seem to particularly like.
I don’t think this is as clever an idea as you think it is, the best possible outcome is that only one of them has been strangled to death by the end of the first day.
Not to mention it isn’t “Carla has a giant double room all to herself”. It’s “Carla has a single room”. So there’s no second bed, and the size is probably smaller. And since she would not be sharing a bed with Carla in the way that Billie is doing with Ruth, that space would get smaller still.
Also, the school would be even more likely to react negatively to that because the single room for her is intentional as a means of “hey, look, transphobes, she’s not actually sharing a room with the cis women, so it’s all good” and that arrangement would blow that bit of “benevolent” transphobia.
Partly that I suppose, but also partly for her sake, I’d hope. So she’s not sharing a room with a transphobe and to decrease the chance of her inadvertently outing herself to a roommate.
This is a Job for …Amazi-Girl
Nah, they need someone who can beat Mary at her own game, Mike could work.
I’m pretty sure Mike would just punch her in the face.
He’s taken that as a form of payment instead of actual money before.
Wouldn’t he be more of an asshole if he didn’t punch her? I’m worried that Mike would do something like switch Mary and Carla’s room keys
Wouldn’t that mean one of them would have to sleep in the others room?
…
…
…
sweating intensifies
I…what would that accomplish? Neither Mary or Carla could get into their own room, but they also wouldn’t know who the key actually belonged to. It’d just mean a mildly annoying trip to the building office for each of them and possibly some kind of lost deposit, probably at different times.
Fine! So I’m bad at evil
Don’t take it too hard, it’s just that we’re grading against Mike here.
i’m trying to figure out how face punches combine with “for a nickel” and I’m not sure I want to go there.
Oh dear. This all happened because Mary essentially blackmailed Ruth into silence. Now consider this from Billie’s point of view. “Take care” of Mary and everything can return to normal. This will end badly for at least one of them.
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent bigot?”
Well, no, it happened because Ruth is an unsuitable RA who has bullied people and is carrying on an illicit relationship.
If none of the above were the case, Ruth could have frog-marched Mary down to the Housing board, reported her for hate speech and creating a hostile environment, and depending on the bylaws of IU, gotten her on-campus room privileges revoked or even had her expelled. No, Mary’s bigotry was not okay, but I really dislike how people are retconning Ruth as some saint.
The thing about Mary is she makes the likeable assholes (Ruth, Carla, Mike for some readers) seem like good people by comparison. They’re not all that great, they’re just written more sympathetically.
Actually, that’s one of the problems with Mary’s story arc. She really doesn’t. People hate Mary and with good reason for being a homophobic trasphobic asshole. They don’t suddenly like Carla or Ruth any more, though, which is not usually how these things go.
It bugs me a bit as well. For the longest time we were shown that Ruth was mean to people in her dorm because she knew she could get away with it, she physically handled anyone who tried to stand up to her, fat shammed Billie for the longest time, and generally ran the dorm like a angry prison warden.
But then we get told that all of that was fine because she never actually took any femurs, like all that bullying and stuff is supposed to just go away.
I don’t think any of it was fine, or not its supposed to go away because she’s decided it’s time to do her job.
I think Ruth was and is totally unsocialized -not sure what word I’m looking for, but she does not know how to react with people on a civilized level.
Willis is doing his usual thing here by giving us some character development: Becky was a complete maniac and disliked by many with her behavior when she first arrived. Until we learned why she acted like that. Make her more human.
I think the same is going on with Ruth. She is showing that she cares about the people on her hall, she just handled them the only way she knew how: bully the hell out of them and scare them into following the rules. As long as no one bothered her, she figured all was good.
And she’s a drunk. And depressed. Neither of which make for good judgment.
It looks like she is at last doing the right things: turn in Mary, hide Becky, and remove Billie from her room. Billie can move into Mary’s (soon to be vacated) room hopefully.
Ruths not being a Saint, she is just finally doing her job. People like me, that like Ruth and hold out some hope for her, are hoping she gets a break by facing her problems.
And no, nothing happened because Ruth is an unsuitable RA, it happened because Mary is a bongo, and Carla was really immature.
Carla was immature?
But yeah, even though Ruth unwittingly gave Mary material, this is happening because of Mary. She is not doing this to remove a shit RA,she’s using it so she can control people and do shitty things without getting in trouble.
I think Carla would be someone I’d find utterly insufferable in real life. She’s not a violent person, though, nor does she deserve to be intimidated or threatened or subject to hate speech. Mary? Mary is evil.
This. Ruth is a bully and an abuser at times. But Mary is way better at being a bully and pulling power trips. Ruth and Carla weren’t targeted because they did something wrong she wants to correct, they’re targeted because in her eyes they are something wrong and she wants them to know that makes them less than her and she’s got their numbers.
Which makes sense. A lot of Ruth’s abusiveness and bullying stems from her mess of internal issues. She’s not invested in it rather it just naturally comes out in toxic ways. Whereas Mary is rather intentional about it because her bullying stems more from her commitment to societal hierarchies and “what is right” in society.
Yes, Carla was immature. And Ruth is an ineffective RA. Both of those, however, pale besides Mary’s disproportionate and hate-fueled retribution. That Mary was handed ammunition does not negate the fact she was looking for it with the intent to use it.
It just clicked that you probably meant the skates, not her reaction to Mary or Ruth.
Sorry, but no.
Ruth has the power. Mary was creating an unsafe environment for Carla, who has every right to be there. She was spouting hate speech. None of this is OK, and Ruth is deputized to stop that kind of crap and turn in the miscreants. Instead, she insinuated that Mary could be gang-raped and murdered and hopefully both situations would be extra messy, and ran away, leaving Carla in the lurch.
I loathe Ruth, but I understand others like her, but you have to call a spade a spade. Mary told Ruth what she could do – take her down to Housing and report her. That is what an RA who really cares about her students should have done. And Mary would have had no move. She would have gotten kicked off campus at best and possibly asked to leave the school at worst.
I will mitigate my stance if and only if Ruth truly is preparing to take Mary to be disciplined and weeded out of an environment where she can hurt and terrorize more people. But I’m not hand-patting a person who has used physical intimidation and has wished bodily harm on people.
Sometimes I call a spade a shovel.
Sometimes I call a spade a club. Then people ask me if I’m sure I;ve played this card game before.
Well, it really does look like Ruth is working on eliminating the blackmail material Mary has on her, which will likely lead to calling her bluff, one way or another. Being Ruth, that’s probably more likely to be a direct confrontation with Mary than reporting her, but still…
It still sucks that Carla didn’t get the immediate support she needed, but I don’t think Ruth’s abandoning her completely.
That’s what she’s doing! She’s setting things up so she can fix the issue with Mary. She flat out said this, which is why Billie is going along with it.
No, she couldn’t just go tell on Mary at the time. That was the whole point. Mary was going to completely discredit her and get her fired.
Even if they believed Ruth about Mary, she’s not remotely getting kicked out for language. She’s gonna get written up. Maybe a fine, maybe just a reprimand. This is a first offense, and colleges don’t tend to kick paying customers out for those.
And Ruth did not in any way say anything about Mary being gang raped or anything. She gave Carla permission to fight her while Ruth looked the other way.
Yes, Ruth is violent. If you still hate her for that, that’s fine. But you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s going on–to the point that my first line was going to be “What comic are you reading?”
Don’t let your hate for Ruth blind you to the narrative direction of the comic.
I don’t think she was leaving Carla to handle Mary, if only because that would be amazingly shitty of Ruth to do on top of the victim blaming she pulled afterwards.
Perhaps it is what she is doing NOW. It was not what she was doing THEN. She left Carla to fend for herself and basically abdicated her responsibility to protect her. Notice how betrayed and angry Carla (rightfully) felt at Ruth’s actions. Because Ruth couldn’t be a passable RA, now Carla gets thrown under the bus?
But we’ll see. If she is going to cut Mary’s legs out from under her, figuratively speaking, then huzzah. Growth.
Also, I disagree that Mary would just get “written up.” She engaged in hate speech and further endangered Carla’s safety. I’m sure there are quite a few people on the IU campus who are not OK with trans issues, and by misgendering Carla, Mary could have set her up to be abused by some of these people. Mary at the least would likely have been reassigned to another dorm, but I don’t think it is out of the way to think she could have been kicked off campus unless there is a provision that all IU freshmen who are not commuting from home must live on campus.
You’re right about what she did to Carla, no denying it. I still think it’s better for her to retrench, minimize the consequences to herself and then take on Mary than for her to just roll over. And we’ve seen when this sequence started, that it’s still Carla she’s thinking of.
Ruth’s certainly in denial about how she’s been doing her job. Her relationship with Billie is putting others at risk. But she hasn’t completely abdicated her responsibility. She’s trying to change things so she can act – without sacrificing herself.
As for consequences, I hope you’re right, but I’m afraid you’re optimistic. And it would really suck for Ruth to throw herself under the bus for Carla and for it not to even work.
It really depends. I went to SFState, and in the floor below me there were two (cis, male) roommates; one was gay and one was het. The gay guy reported that the het guy said some anti-gay slurs to him. All that happened was the het guy got moved to a different room, on the same floor of the same dorm, but on the other side. And that’s SFState (granted, 8 years ago), where they are really accepting and what not. Maybe he got some actual punishment, but this is all I saw. I mean, socially the rest of the dorm didn’t talk to the guy for the rest of the year, but he seemed to suffer no major consequences for his actions imo. So no, colleges are not great about punishing people for these kinds of things imo.
Yes, this is a situation that SHOULD be solved by an RA, not a bully (by Billie’s own admission). Sometimes delegation is not the answer.
The main issue is that, while Mary is a douche sandwich and has spouted some total bullshit about other things, every accusation she leveled at Ruth is absolutely 100% correct and she’s practically mother Teresa for not already turning Ruth in ages ago.
It’s hard to even call it blackmail when she’s _right_. I mean, it’s surprising that she’s right, but broken clocks and all. The fact that Ruth is only considering doing her actual job to protect her own ass, not because she feels any obligation to do her job in itself, just kinda highlights where the root of the problem is.
If the blackmail was intended to make Ruth sympathetic by comparison it’s not working, basically. Most of us are just kinda rooting for both of them to go down in flames now.
Of course it’s blackmail. That the accusations have a factual basis (describing Becky as a “perverted vagrant” is only true if you are willing to cut Mary’s world view a LOT of slack) does not make it RIGHT to use them as blackmail material, it only makes it EFFECTIVE.
If Mary wanted to stop Ruth from abusing her position she would use the knowledge of her transgressions to turn her in, not use it to attack other residents in peace. But Mary doesn’t want a good or fair RA. She likes the tyranny just fine, she just want to be on top of the heap.
Mary is not right because she opposes Ruth, any more than Ruth is right because she opposes Mary.
Heh, let’s be a bit careful with the “most of us”. This forum can be pretty divisive at times.
Personally I am very sympathetic to Ruth. I think she is horrible at her job and it hurts a lot of people (and abuse of power is my largest pet peeve in this comic), I am terrified for her sake because of the alcoholism and depression and I feel so bad for her because the situation has exploded in her face in the worst way.
Pretty much all blackmail works because it’s right. If you find out someone’s cheating on their spouse and blackmail them for it, you’re right. If you find out someone’s a closeted homosexual and make them pay you keep it hushed up, you’re blackmailing them. If you make up random shit about someone and try to extort money or favors, that might still be blackmail, but it’s not going to work very well.
And frankly, Mary’s only sort of right. Her perspective is so skewed that she’s focusing on the wrong things. If she presented her case to the authorities in the same terms she threatened Ruth with, she’d lose an awful lot of credibility. The relationship with Billie is the only real threat and that’s due to the authority relationship, not “defiling the cheerleader”. That there’s an unauthorized long-term guest in the dorm is an issue that Ruth should deal with, now that she’s been made aware of it, but whether or not she’s a “perverted vagrant” is irrelevant.
Now if Mary wasn’t a nasty bigot and was concerned about Ruth abusing her authority over Billie for sex and about her assault and battery of various residents of the hall, she’d be right. If she knew about the alcoholism, she’d have an even stronger case. But that’s not her take on it.
Nor is someone “practically Mother Teresa” for not turning someone in, not out of any concern for them, but in order to extort favors from them. That’s just a horribly wrong interpretation of what’s going on here.
As Bagge said, I’m very sympathetic to Ruth and for similar reasons.
Pretty much, having accurate information is what allows a person to blackmail someone else, unless the threat is more a smear that would ruin the other person’s life (like if an employer was homophobic and would fire someone for even the rumor of them being gay).
Though, I would disagree on one point. I feel the “practically Mother Teresa” comparison is particularly apt… in that real-life Mother Teresa was actually pretty awful and a big fan of hurting people and extorting favors, all while pretending to be very pious and holy:
http://guardianlv.com/2013/10/mother-teresa-was-no-saint-says-study/
Ruth is BAAAACK…. to trying to push away Billie. Sorry, Ruth, didn’t work last three times.
Depression. So loud. Must. Alienate. Loved ones.
If no one else cares, no one will be hurt when…
i know theyre probably not gonna stay broken up
but i really want them to stay broken up
I don’t really think they’re broken up here, actually. Ruth just a few pages ago said how much she does really need Billie.
As much as I want Ruth
to fuck off for being an abusive bintand Billie to seriously reevaluate their relationship, ultimately it’s Billie that makes Ruth get up in the morning. Breaking up now just means Ruth loses another anchor in her rapidly dwindling list of reasons why she hasn’t killed herself yet.Ruth’s need for both plausible deniability and open transparency seem to be at odds with each other. You can’t just say “We need to keep becky under wraps. do whatever it takes.” and then “Shits about to hit the fan. Assume everyone is about to find out about what we have been up to and we should probably clear the air.” Either take responsibility or don’t. You can’t have it both ways.
Ruth never suggested that they “clear the air” about her and Billie. The plan regarding her and Billie’s relationship was “end it, destroy all the evidence, and pretend it never happened.”
Y’know, Ruth really ought to take into consideration here that Billie is the one making sure she gets up, gets dressed, gets briefed on what she needs to know to do her job (and not on the things that would violate her plausible deniability), and actually does her job.
I m not sure that Ruth cares about that. If anything, I think that there is a part of her that resents Billie for forcing her to be alive and do anything but lie on her bed, willing herself to death. Ruth is in a serious deep ‘down’ right now and may need professional treatment
I think Ruth has always been violently divided into two minds about that. Half of her clearly cares about the hall and her job, about having Billie in her life as a stabilizing influence, about doing right by people and pushing through the dark haze that threatens to continually pull her under.
And the other half doesn’t. The other half wants to just give up and die already, alienate and push away the people keeping her connected to the world, hide in her bed and not do her job until she has no excuse to keep herself running and can slip away in peace.
And frustratingly for Billie, she wildly oscillates between this mode sometimes even in the same conversation as she internally struggles with those two conflicting desires. And even more frustratingly, the anxiety of Mary’s blackmail and the self-loathing of having missed important things in her hall is leading Ruth to now turn to one aspect of her clinging to life at the expense of the other.
I’m entirely of the mind Ruth SHOULDN’T HAVE THE JOB. Can’t we get her replaced with Carla?
I don’t think Carla would be a good RA*. What qualifications does she have, other than being a sophomore?
To be a good RA you have to pay attention to people, talk with them, and find decent and reasonable solutions to minor problems. Carla doesn’t seem the sort to be good at those either.
*Though I’d love to see Mary’s face when she finds out. Is that what this preview panel is about?
What about Sarah?
She’s a sophomore, she’s mature, she’d just do the job, she seems willing to at least recognize that people who aren’t Raidah are allowed to have views contrary to hers, she probably wouldn’t physically abuse any of her charges, and it cuts out the room and board costs of her tuition.
Sarah could work. She’d hate it, but do a good job despite herself.
Plus she has that bat for “Blaine II: The Sickening”.
Sarah’s probably too misanthropic to do it.
Dorothy maybe.
You have to be a sophomore, which only Ruth, Carla, Sarah and maybe Rachel are.
Besides, she’s not good with people, but nowhere near as much as she thinks. The worst thing an RA has to do is manage the occasional meeting and tell some students to knock their shit off at best and at worst problem solve for them, and Sarah’s really good at problem solving her way through bad shit.
Plus, it gives her some money and a free room. It lines up perfectly. I don’t think Ruth’s going to be the RA forever, and I think Sarah would make a great replacement.
Sarah would probably have a similar open-door policy to Ruth’s.
She could probably do the job, but she’d hate it and it might just break her. Or she’d come out of it much better adjusted. One of the two.
Well, she’s gonna be a lawyer someday. She needs some practice in listening to people she doesn’t like complain about problems she doesn’t care about and ask her to solve them as quickly and efficiently as possible.
And if she does do a good job then having some tangible proof that her actions are having a positive impact, where she doesn’t spend months getting harassed because she tried to help her drug addicted roommate or have her love for Joyce get brushed aside because she can’t be assed to show it enough, might end up doing her some good.
She wdnt agree to do it. Cuts into her time for studying. Plus, she doesnt like talking to ppl and ppl wd come to RA with their problems.
find decent and reasonable solutions to minor problems.
Well at least Ruth has attempted that sometimes:
“Have you tried passive-aggressive notes?”
*Sees the booth unattended*
*Plays Journey’s ‘Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)‘ on the hacked Muzak*
Are RA’s not supposed to date people under their care or something? I live off-campus from my school so im clueless as to why this is an issue.
The rules vary but, yes, because RAs can pressure you in ways big and small and that’s a big no-no.
I take it you’ve never had any job, ever? It’s not “RAs”, sexual harassment law applies to pretty much everyone.
Admittedly because they’re employees of a state educational institution in this case sexual harassment is probably more serious, since it’s often bumped up to an actual criminal matter instead of a civil one depending on the state when it’s an employee doing it to a student.
Is there any reason why Ruth can’t just quit being R.A? What is she getting out of it other than the option of bullying and harassing people? Carla would do a much-much better job and not hurt people. Also, again, Ruth needs professional help. Not just for her own sake of mind but maybe so someone can point out she’s not actually made anyone’s life better on her floor. No one felt safe on it, not Carla not anyone.
I sympathize with Ruth’s situation, I do, but I think her position is something which should be changed not preserved.
Yes; without the income she’ll be dependent on her grandfather who it has been strongly implied is emotionally abusive and dominating of her. I strongly suspect that, as lightly as she treats it, having the job and the consequential independence is one of the few things keeping her alive.
It’s not been explicitly stated, but I assume she would have to leave the college, since she’d no longer have an income nor get the free or reduced room and board that comes with being an RA. She’d effectively be homeless and unemployed.
I mean, yes, in an ideal world, she shouldn’t be an RA in her condition. But there’s not really a realistic way she can quit and not wind up in far, far worse conditions.
And she absolutely knows that Carla doesn’t feel safe. That’s kinda the whole point of why she’s doing what she’s doing now.
And she’s basically destroyed her position – even if survives Mary, the instant management takes notice of what’s gone on under her watch, she’s over.
That seems to making a lot of assumptions about Ruth’s living situation. Yes, being an RA is great for her but she can’t do the job. She does a terrible job at the job and she’s basically getting paid for doing a horrible job.
So rather than using her authority and the many, many resources an RA is given by their institution specifically for this kind of thing to try to help, she’s going with “plausible deniability”.
Lovely.
Because using any of those resources or authority would likely out everything she’s been doing (or not doing) and get her fired, and her backstory makes it seem likely that that would cost her her home/independence/education.
I’m not saying it’s the RIGHT thing to do, but it’s at least logical.
(I assume you’re talking about Becky.)
Why exactly would the RA have resources to help Becky? She’s not living in the dorm; she’s not even a student at that university. I can’t see why Ruth would have even been taught about what to do in that situation, since its not something that would come up regularly.
Ahhh, there’s the old self-destructive Ruth we all know and love.
i can’t tell if this is a healthy move for Ruth, or the most unhealthy thing possible. we know Billie has been helping Ruth on mornings when she’s low-functioning. and Ruth’s been there for Billie similarly. but they also are kinda co-dependently self-destructive. so…
Probably doesn’t help that they’re going about this detangling in the worst way. It’s not a conversation about caring and value and we need to be less intertwined in each other’s lives to this unhealthy and dangerous degree. It’s Ruth putting Billie down and pushing her away and thus more likely to trigger her self-hatred and Ruth doing the pushing away mostly out of her usual flavor of self-destruction which only reinforces her negative habits.
So, yeah, them separating or them physically separating could be healthy, but the way this is being done is guaranteed to make it way less healthy in the short-term and probably very prone to imploding on itself as they both start getting strong desires for the co-dependence again and start increasing more self-destructive ways of re-entangling themselves.
I read it a little differently. Can you really see Ruth or Billie having that functional conversation? It would be so ooc for both of them. Neither has that level of awareness yet. Ruth throws out casual insults like she exhales. But just a few strips ago she’s admitting to Billie for the first time, “I’m not trying to get rid of you. I don’t want you to go. I need you. I do.” She’s acknowledging she CARES about someone (!) but that there are other things even more important, outside the bubble she and Billie have created. That is fucking progress to me.
Ruth has something to care about again–and it’s not just Billie who she was never really trying to protect anyway. She has the motivation to keep existing, to clean up her room, to throw out her alcohol and stop the extremely unhealthy dynamic she and Billie are in right now. This is her wake-up call. It doesn’t matter if the motivation is spite. It’s breaking her depressive cycle. It’s not an ideal motivation but with depression this severe, it really doesn’t matter what pulls you out. All that matters is that it does. She and Billie actually have a chance now.
This is what depression does: you think SO little of yourself, it becomes noble to alienate loved ones. You NEED to save them from you, and if it takes being a jerk…unfortunate, but necessary. And it’s not necessary to have suicide in mind, you might just be trying to eliminate collateral damage for the next, inevitable time you screw up. If no one cares, no one will be disappointed or hurt.
Wow, eight panels in this one.
There she is, Misanthrope America
There she is, your denial
The dream of a million girls who are more than pretty can be broken
in Indiana City
For she may turn out to be the Queen of hostility
There she is, Misanthrope America
There she is, your greatest fear
With so many beatings she took the dorm by storm
With her all-threatening face and form
And there she is
Walking on skulls, she is
Bloodiest of the bloody, she is
There she is – Misanthrope America
And that’s the story of how Mary got a homeless teenager back on the streets just so she wouldn’t have to… Why did Mary do that again? Oh, right, so she wouldn’t have to apologize for escalating a dispute when she could have just talked to the RA who was right there.
Folks, I think Mary might be a bad person.
……I’m not changing my gravatar no matter what you do, motherfucker.
Damn straight!!!
…well, you know what I mean.
Damn bisexuals!
wait no
Of all the panels you picked from that comic, you picked the one where Billie has woken up, checked that Ruth is alive, and gone back to sleep. It’s the most horrifying panel of the entire strip! D:
(But we are shippers in kind! Billie/Ruth avatars are the best!
)
FINALLY. Seriously you guys try living this for reals and you’ll see why some of us have huge difficulty romanticizing it in fiction.
Yeah, I’m with you on that.
One will take almost any abuse if the alternative is their loved one ceasing to exist. It’s heartbreaking. One person can’t want to live for both people.
Yep. Yep. The circumstances weren’t exact, but I know what it’s like thinking that you need to be there for an abusive loved one, or else whatever happens is your fault.
Sympathy via light physical contact.
I’m living depression for reals. (I’ve avoided dragging hot curvy girls down into a self-destructive spiral of alcoholism with me, though.)
But sometimes as a depressed lesbian it’s nice to see a woman/woman relationship with at least one depressed person in it. Sure, their relationship has some really bad elements to it, but if I didn’t have those elements, I don’t think I care for it. The happiness and ease would make it seem unreal to me.
Depression is horrible, is sucks the life out of everything. 8~~-({
Its hardly my fault that these two surround their most endearing shows of affection with physical manifestations of their terrible life choices.
Damn you Willis etc
Admittedly out of context it is a very tender little scene. <3
…Ho. Ly. Crap.
I just spent the last few days shotgunning all of Dumbing of Age, and…wow. This…this has been quite a ride. And now I’ve reached the end. (Well, the present, technically, but you know what I mean.)
I won’t bore you with my life story, but let’s just say that I’ve grappled with the same issues of faith that Joyce has gone through, the same social awkwardness that Dina endearingly experiences, and the same cycle of rage and self-loathing that Amber keeps getting trapped in. So seeing their stories unfold was like looking back at my own life, and I just wanted to reach out and say to the characters “No, no, no! That’s not going to fix it! It’s just going to make it worse! Don’t do that!” as they made the same mistakes I did growing up. It really helps that every character in this comic feels like a real, three-dimensional human being, with character flaws and insecurities and likes and dislikes and all that cool stuff that fictional characters don’t really get all that much. Everyone, even Mike and Joe, exhibits depth that no one could have ever seen on the surface…which, as I’ve come to learn, is exactly the case in the real world.
I’m about to graduate at the end of February with a degree in mechanical engineering, working with my Asperger’s Syndrome and working through my anxiety. Reading this comic has made me realize how far I’ve come as an individual, and how much I’ve grown from the person I was when I started. And that brings me some comfort, even as the characters in this webcomic go through the same toils I went through – because I know that if it got better for me, then it should get better for them. Eventually.
Thank you, Mr. Willis, for almost six years of characters that I consumed in about four days. I hope you can do this for many more, for as long as you want to.
PS: Dina is totally my favorite character. Rawr!
PPS: My favorite non-Dina moment was when Joyce punched the lights out of Becky’s dad. Never have I experienced a more visceral “Yeah! That’s what you get!” in any medium ever, save for shooting Handsome Jack in the face in Borderlands 2.
PPPS: I know we’ve only seen him for a little bit, but I think Mr. Brown (Joyce’s dad) might become a close second in terms of favoritism.
PPPPPS: I should probably stop leaving PS messages.
Welcome to the show.
If that post there doesn’t make Willis feel just a little bit proud of what he’s achieved, I don’t know if anything will.
Granted, he might well be so overwhelmed that now he thinks that he can only ever allow himself to make only the perfectest of perfect comics. And then he realizes he’s not capable of doing that. So he freezes up and goes into a catatonic state; never making another comic in his life. He’s not even making a real ending to DoA, we’ll just reach the end of the buffer in two months.
So now you basically just doomed this comic to end abruptly, Joey245. Nice going!
Well darn it. Sorry!
It’s OK, just don’t do it again.
Or, feel free to do it at people that we think would be a better idea if they actually retired…. Do you think you can fake a sincere letter to Rob Liefeld?
I’ve noticed that whenever Ruth gets really depressed, she starts speaking in ambiguous language and double meanings. I guess it’s a defence mechanism; say something ambiguous, and if things really are bad she doesn’t have to admit it to herself, and if things aren’t bad, well, people are just reading too much into what she’s saying and should stop bothering her.
That’s a very good observation. I think you are 100% spot on with the defense mechanism.
Since overanalyzing insufficient data is our whole raison d’être, here; How long ago were Ruth and Howard’s parents killed?
Ruth says Howard was “much younger” then. I am speculating 10 years. That makes Howard 7 and Ruth 10 when they came to live with their grandfather. How much of a difference would that make in “this is how all parents are” versus “this parent sucks, unlike my old one”?
And the obvious speculation that Ruth gets her management style (intimidation, neglect, and threats of violence) from her grandfather.
She was 16, Howard was 12.
I must have missed something because I always wondered who “Sir” was when Ruth was on the phone with him. Thanks for the needed context!
It’s a scary thought but it’s entirely possible Ruth’s grandfather is a perfectly nice person but Ruth is generating all of her rage and bile purely from depression.
Proooooobably not. I think we can trust that Ruth is on point with this one.
I mean if I’m being honest that would actually be really interesting as a deliberate swerving of our expectations, but I don’t think it’ll be the case, if only because it seems like it’d be a twist for a twist’s sake.
I’ve known people who’ve done that. It’s not super farfetched
Finally caught up at exactly the wrong moment.
I love Redheads and I love realistic serious women. Ruth is one of my fave characters.