Akane has only one way to get back home: collect the 42 keys to parallel worlds. Eri and Ben are just trying to get through the summer before university. When a magical key turns up in an old spare set, all three are forced to change their plans and fast.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
No End
Erli, Kromi
A queer romance about people attempting to build lives in a cold, post-apocalyptic world ravaged by hordes of undead.
Hemlock
Josceline Fenton
A witch accidentally marries a monster, and now she and her familiar has to navigate life around her monstrous husband and her even more terrifying in-laws.
Shaderunners
Alex Assan, Lin Darrow
A ragtag band of bootleggers open a speakeasy for bottled colour in the greyscale city of Ironwell.
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
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It’s all well and good for Billie to play reasonable now with “does someone [ahem] suggesting you’re bad at something irk you?” when it was in fact she herself that rolled up and directly accused Dorothy of not sorting out Joyce’s problem (which is going a little further than “you’re not good at something” into “you’re causing direct harm through lack of action” territory). Which more or less resulted in the present situation. Good ol’ Billie. So charismatic.
She chipped in to paying Ross’s bail, essentially enabling the Asshole Dads in their kidnapping (and Blaine’s subsequent threats of murder against Joyce).
While she might not have been directly involved, her cult bullshit literally endangered her daughter’s life and last we saw her she felt no remorse or introspection about that, so it’s not surprising that the kids have cut through the bullshit and drawn the more direct throughline.
Yup. Carol’s first instinct after hearing that her daughter had been kidnapped and two people had been killed was to TRY TO RE-KIDNAP JOYCE. She was even ANGRY that Joyce got away.
It’s less she TRIED to kill her and more Facilitated a situation that could very well lead to her murder. Less hitting her with a car and more leaping out of the car doing 90 with Joyce strapped in the back seat.
Huh, I expected Billie/Jennifer to be a dick about it, I was not expecting this. However I’m happy that at least they’re at least done yelling.
Dorothy is the only kind of person that I could imagine handwriting an apology note, or an apology note of any kind. However it is a very Dorothy thing to do. Am I wrong?
To be fair, I find Dotty plenty relatable here. That’s a form of charisma, right?
(Or it’s just me being the same kind of idiot as her. Probably that.)
I feel for Dorothy so much. Billie is just as condescending as ever and richly deserves an extremely thorough, rudely accurately clapback. Dorothy is just going to keep stuffing it all down forever.
Honestly that’s one of my biggest worries. There are neverany Dorothy storylines that focus on her and her mental health, and I feel like it’s a real problem that isn’t being addressed. I know that there have been Dorothy storylines before, but they’re always about her relationship with someone else, whether it be Walky, Dorothy, Amber, or someone else, and it’s always more focused on the other person.
Basically, I just want Dorothy to look at herself, and if she’s not gonna, for someone to do it for her.
Even the arc about her overwork just seemed to gradually dissipate when she and Walky broke up. There was never any attempt to address any underlying issues.
It is hinted at a lot, though – her lack of hygiene/eating when stressed, hiding letters from Yale, going to a therapist, people pleasing to the extreme. She’s a neurotic labrador.
True, but there’s never even been any set up for a more in-depth story; heck, even though she’s one of the main characters, she hasn’t gotten a chapter title named after her, which is something even Faz managed to do.
lol i know sarah is the ‘big sister’ but i wouldn’t really consider becky (assuming that’s one of the ppl she’s referring to) as the other ‘mom’ figure
I found myself wondering who the moms were myself. Dotty, Sarah, and ???? While Joyce may refer to Sarah as big sis (literally, I mean), she’s been a bit of a mother hen as far as she goes.
Jennifer flipping nailed it. College is about finding freedom to make dumb mistakes, and Joyce has kind of been put in a weird place where her mistakes and imperfections are used as a reason to deny her respect and agency. You know, “we have to save Joyce from herself”.
That was fair when she was still in a homophobic death cult. But now she’s… not. Now she’s just a mostly typical messed-up college kid trying to work herself out, and respecting and trusting her to eventually take care of herself without nonstop mommying is the right step.
I mean, it’s not the only situation where a lot of young people are thrown together, without parental supervision and only nominal oversight by other adults, and have to figure out (often entirely on their own/with only their peers) how to be functional adults themselves… just one of the most common, in our society.
The trick is to learn to fake being an adult just enough to kick actual adulting down the road until never. Note – This is incompatible with having a kid and some marriages.
“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves”
I assume Dotty, Sarah and Becky are her campus moms (assuming Jennifer is not referring to herself as an absent mom in which case she would take the place of Becky). I don’t have a clue who her four at-home moms are aside from her real mom.
Forget about “Booster is secretly Mike”, this is “Jennifer is secretly Booster”. Or endowed (… nope) with similar insight – exclusively directed outward, of course.
Haha of course directly only at others from her smug tower of illusory maturity. The smugness of “Jennifer” is infuriating.
Remember she told Raidah and those social climbers her name was Billie several times! She corrected Raidah about misnaming her, now she’s completely under their frenemie spell.
lol i’d love to receive an apology note , i might not keep it, or might be annoyed depending on who it’s from but it’d be amusing to like frame it and take a pic and send it to someone occasionally each time if we were still on friendly terms
Sort of depends on the nature of the apology. I probably wouldn’t taunt them with it if I thought it was heart-felt, but if it was just purely passive-aggressive, it could be amusing.
it would be a power move, tho kinda a red flag if someone like, had some preprinted out some apology notes and left a ‘blank space’ for the reasoning and filled it out each time lol
God, it feels good to have someone in-universe finally put into words what the comments section has been saying for months. Give your girl some space, Dotty. And like a twenty hour nap because she looks constantly tired when she’s not constantly angry at the world.
Is this Dorothy’s cue to be like, “fine I’m staying here for Joyce and she hates me now. I’m just going to lock myself up in the library, block Joyce from my phone, and move to my dream school?”
Dear GOD, I hope so. Imagine sacrificing Yale- notwithstanding the likelihood or unlikelihood of that actually leading Dorothy to the presidency- for Joyce.
If not for panel 3, I’d think Jennifer was being pretty big here, but nope, she’s more than happy to go low. Which, whatever, someone curses you out, even if you frankly kinda had it coming to a degree, you’re perfectly entitled to throw some jabs their way.
I do wonder, though. Like, I do think this is bigger than Joyce, and bigger than just the charisma bullshit. Dorothy never got like this with the Roz debacle, so it’s not like she can’t handle people talking shit about her.
I think she’s been stuffing down her frustrations with her traumatized friends and she sees Billie as a hypocritical social climber with a skin like a rhino. I still think she’s going not going to be able to take it anymore sometime, this exchange can’t have been very satisfying.
I don’t see panel 3 as a problem – she’s (rightfully) pointing out that if Dorothy actually is concerned about Joyce (rather than Dorothy’s “mom” relationship to Joyce), she doesn’t really have grounds to be upset.
She didn’t sugarcoat it, but I feel like that’s the actual issue at the heart of this. Walky also said that implying Dorothy can’t do something makes her angry. I think that has a lot to do with why Dorothy has been so aggressive about getting Joyce to go to the pharmacy right away, even though several commenters pointed out that might not be the best thing for Joyce right now.
That… directly contradicts what got Dorothy involved in the first place. If Jennifer had just taken Joyce to the doctor without shaming her other friends, maybe Dorothy wouldn’t have felt the need to get involved.
She is in no way obligated to parent Joyce. She helped her when she noticed something no one else did about Joyce’s physical pains, and pointed her in the right direction to get it resolved. Is Joyce a grown adult or not?
I don’t think Dorothy should be parenting Joyce. I don’t even think they should be close friends (from long experience). BUT Jennifer started this whole thing by saying Dorothy and Sarah should be parenting Joyce better and shamed them for not parenting her enough and now Jennifer’s saying Dorothy shouldn’t and is acting like she never said anything to Dorothy and Sarah in the first place.
I love Jennifer’s character development and how she’s coming at the problem from an angle that as Billie she probably wouldn’t have, but good gravy do I wish it was for reasons other than “I was adopted by Team Asshole”.
Strangely enough this makes me ship them a little more. Not even in a “I want them as a couple” way. I just sorta wanna see them make out. Platonically.
fair point.
she needs time to get the sh&* out and go through the stages of change.
gotta remember, in about 1 year worth of time she went from a catholic girl with a loving (mostly. her brothers are cool) family, to an athiest that doesn’t want much to do with her family (save a brother or 2, and maybe her dad. maybe), with glasses, a dead friend, and possibly (in the overdiagnosed sense) autism of some sort.
she lost her faith
she lost her family
she lost a friend
she lost her appearance (“forced” to change it with glasses)
she basically lost her identity.
she doesn’t need to be mommed, and fussed over, she needs to find a tree and beat it for a few hours with a metal bat.
this conversation would be entirely fine if Jennifer hadn’t just guilted them for not fixing joyce’s problems for her like a day or two ago
pretty much very time jen says something i want to like it ends up being so hypocritical that it just makes me angry again
It’s a lot easier to see someone else’s flaws and point them out than to actually reflect on your own. Especially since realising and acknowledging your own flaws means that you have to work on them personally.
Billie/Jennifer has probably matured more than anyone else in the cast since the beginning of the strip, which is reasonably fast considering comic time. She’s definitely still a flawed person but she’s actively trying to change herself, with varying success.
Dorothy was arguably the most grounded and mature character from the beginning of the strip, but hasn’t really changed all that much in comparison. She’ got an image of herself that she strifes for but she definitely does not want to change herself, Sarah suggests that she may be on the spectrum and she angrily rejects the possibility. She has a strong sense of identity, but it comparatively gives her a degree of inflexibility.
It’s interesting that both Dorothy and Billifer have a strong desire to be helpful, Billies ‘head cheerleader, problem solver’ and Dorothy’s compulsive need to be a responsible, dependable figure in people’s lives.
There’s an interesting contrast between these two.
Change and maturation are not the same thing. If you’ve changed yourself from “People need to care that I used to be a cheerleader” into the sort of person who hangs out with freaking Radiah and the Maturer Than Thou Gang, you’re not actually more mature, you’ve just slightly shifted how your bullshit manifests itself.
Matured… just the day before this conversation Jennifer beat up her ex trying to get Ruth to hit her in response. Her maturation is just a facade that’s constantly about to explode and will likely collapse at the worst moment possible.
If Jennifer had just helped Joyce out, I would have zero problem with this exchange. But Jennifer was an absolute bongo to Dorothy et all. Made it clear she thought they were all neglecting the situation with Joyce and did plenty of moral grandstanding of her own. After Jennifer has evidentially been pretty absent since Halloween.
Dorothy backs off to let Joyce deal with things on her own after all the business with glasses and Liz, gets crapped on by Jennifer. She steps up to help Joyce through the aftermath, gets crapped on by Joyce (and a majority of the commenters). She just cannot win.
(I know, you don’t have to pick up birth control right away, but sometimes you have to compress things a little for Storytelling. This is obviously the major plot of the moment and if we wanted a realistic few in-comic days it would be six months before we came back to this, and the dramatic flow of these revelations/confrontations would be lost.)
Dorothy realized how much work she was doing to try to help Joyce and how out of line Jennifers remarks were, and saw an opportunity to tell her off without disrupting Joyce getting much-needed health care. Which yeah fair cop, the frustration she’s venting is tied to more then just Jennifer being rude to her.
But she has just been getting slammed on for a while now and I really wish someone in the cast actually liked her. Not just using her for her mad powers of extreme patience and adulting to toss her away when they’re not needed, or because hur hur pretty girl likes Monkey Master. No-one in the cast ever seems to give an active iota of a crap about Dorothy and how she’s doing. Even right after the kidnapping she had to be the one to keep everything together to give cops details, help navigate the situation with Joyces dad. Even when she was clearly not doing well at Halloween the only thing that came out of it was Sarah dunking on her.
And I feel like the best thing possible for Dorothy would be to realize she has to look out for herself, take the opportunity of Yale and get out. Which makes me sad, given how poor Dorothy fared in prior universes, that I’d losing my other favorite character.
Please don’t get me wrong passing commentators. Joyce is well within her rights to want space and alone time and want people to back off. But she also can’t expect Dorothy to read her mind. For the vast majority of our screentime together, Joyce has been incredibly clingy and needy, and the hot/cold whiplash has been basically signature to the relationship. If Joyce wants to change that, cool, but that takes time and communication. Of which there’s been little of either, because they’re all well intentioned but dumb young adults.
All this analysis of Joyce seems like it is coming out of nowhere to me. Both on the part of Billie (when/why has she been observing enough to care?) and just in general. It seems to me that Joyce is kind of the opposite of what Bi-oh, I mean *Jennifer* is saying. She seems pretty needy generally and like she wants people to care about and be cared by. To me her response in this arc seemed really different.
Speaking as someone who is really needy generally and wants people to care about and be cared by, yes. And sometimes … you don’t. Just sometimes, you think “Actually, I need a bit of space here, and if it turns out I’ve done the wrong thing. it was my wrong thing.”
Of course, you also think “and anyway the people who care for me will be there to pick up the pieces afterwards, right?” so it’s complicated.
“Carol tried to kill Joyce” is a massive, massive oversimplification, but “Carol used their family’s money to bail a man out of jail who had recently pointed a loaded gun at her daughter’s face, and who was later complicit in Joyce and several of her friends being assaulted and kidnapped in a horrific sequence of events that left three people dead, including one of her Joyce’s classmates” is literal truth (if still a bit of a simplification, because plot).
Carol couldn’t have enabled Ross to do anything just by herself, but she was a conscious, willful, and as far as we know, unapologetic participant in something that could easily have killed Joyce two or three times over—and this was *after* Ross pointed a gun at Joyce’s face! Carol and her congregation knew Ross was violent. They just thought it was okay that he was violent, because he was violent for the *right reasons*, and putting Joyce’s life in danger for the purposes of Saving Becky McIntyre’s Soul From Gay Hell was acceptable, just like kidnapping Becky to send her to straight camp (or worse) was acceptable.
You know for some reason mentioning Carol just reminds me of the story the came out this past week about the one guy went from loving family man to Q n None nutcase after going down the alt-right pipeline before shooting his youngest daughter, his wife, and his Dog and then getting himself killed via cop.
Not so much, I’m listening to a podcast about the QANON phenomenon, and how it’s mostly harmless mental masturbation. Non-violent as a result. But every once in a while they impinge on someone susceptible to violent imagery and responding with actual violence.
That’s a pretty bad take on it. It’s not at all harmless, even if most people who get into don’t actually commit acts of violence.
It’s still a pipeline into a crazy conspiracy theory worldview. It leads deep into bigotry and support of the worst kinds of fascist movements. Not everyone in it becomes violent themselves, but some predictably do. Stochastic terrorism.
Even those who don’t become sympathetic to those who do and often support them politically and financially.
It’s like claiming that Nazi ideology is mostly harmless because most who get into to it don’t become actual brownshirts themselves.
Look. Dorothy’s not some sort of bard or sorcerer, or even a cleric, paladin, or rogue. That means she dumped charisma. THAT’S how charisma works.
(Politician is clearly a Profession, meaning it’s wisdom-based, which is why all the most successful politicians have higher wisdom than charisma scores.)
I had a hard time understanding Joyce’s behavior even after reading many of the comments, but Jennifer made it clear to me in only two panels. Well done, Willis!
Hard to believe this calm and reasonable person is the same that just the day before attacked her ex full of hate and desperation. I really start to think Jennifer and Billie are not just two names but two different personalities. Also, Dorothy is amazing here in understanding how she’s wrong at being angry with Jennifer, Joyce and herself. She really needs a break.
No, you just don’t vibe with her brand of Charisma. Like how Billie was “charismatic” but Jennifer is a void of charisma despite being the same person.
I do think Dorothy has plenty of charisma. Mom friends absolutely DO have charisma but it is a caring comforting kind. Not Alpha Bongo/Cult Leader Charisma which is all Jennifer cares about of course because the idea of people being charming in different ways is impossible obviously.
Personally I don’t really see it. Aurelia is all about being supportive and chill, whereas Dorothy is about attacking the problem head-on whether that’s wanted or not.
They said the TYPE of charisma was the same, not that Aurelia and Dorothy are actually the exact same right now. Aurelia has a big advantage of being significantly older to have mellowed out and learned when to take action and when to back off.
While Dorothy is still young enough that she lets someone like Jennifer criticise her into making a different choice.
But the core type of charisma they have is the same of ‘I care about you and will be there for you when you need it and I will be patient and loving when you go through a hard time’.
I feel rather vindicated by Billie’s words here, because yeah, Dorothy needs to back off in a major way. and I’m seriously not saying that as a Dorothy hater (never been), I keep saying it because it’s healthier for Joyce and Dorothy
I wonder how much of Joyce’s tendency to get pissy with people trying to mother her now is because of how it reminds her of Carol, subconsciously?
Like a biiig part of my dig my heels in reflexive no to pressure is because my parents both liked to give lipservice to “it’s your choice” and then “guide” (read: pressure incessantly) you to “the right choice” (their choice). Even if it’s not my parents and it’s over something that doesn’t matter, a perception of a false choice or pressure tactics gets my nope reflex on.
I wonder if Joyce had similar with people appointing themselves authorities over her?
The 25 Years of Characters continue above the comic! I see a Jacob and a Malaya that were not there last week. Could this mean that soon we’ll see that one we all wait for? 25 YEARS of MARY BRADFORD!
It irks me, but Billifer’s right about this one thing.
I relate to Dorothy heavily, in both good and bad ways. On the good side, I’m conscientious and work to make good choices in my life. On the bad side, I put too much pressure on myself to be perfect, even when the game’s rigged by neurotypical people. As for friends, I had to learn that it doesn’t matter if I know the “right” thing they “should” do in a situation, I can’t make that choice for other people. They’re adults who can reap their own rewards or consequences for their choices. I can offer help, but I have to let them have agency in their own lives. Who knows – maybe they’re right in the end and I’m wrong. Gotta wait and see!
And I relate to Joyce a lot too, as a fellow ex-brainwashed. Really, really hard to kick that programming overnight.
I’ve been on the other side of it, when I was going through a hard time certain people felt they were obligated to “handle” it and then claimed that doing so was too tiring for them. But I never asked them to handle me, they just appointed themselves to that role. I would have been happier working through my own stuff.
Potentially stupid question but since this is a lot of folks’ reason for really disliking Jennifer I have to ask – is Jennifer actively aware of *why* the main crew doesn’t really like Radiah? Like, can someone cite a panel or something? *We* know Radiah sucks but unless I can see a panel that shows otherwise, idk if Jennifer is aware of the shit she pulled on Sarah. In which case, maybe we can all back off Jennifer for simply shifting friend groups in college – an incredibly common thing we all did whether we wanna admit it or not.
I don’t think the backstory with Sarah is why most commenters dislike Raidah. The main cast all has their own flaws, but a lot of panel time is spent humanizing them and we tend to be more forgiving. Whereas Raidah only shows up occasionally, is often portrayed as shallow, and doesn’t get a chance to redeem herself. Very little has been shown from Jennifer’s perspective post-timeskip and I think people have a tendency to just assume the worst.
Yeah the backstory isn’t great and I’m on Sarah’s side, but it’s more Raidah being mean* and calculating that I’m worried about. Talking down to Dina, introducing Billie based on her dad’s company/wealth, literally commenting on taking friends away from Sarah and Joyce in doing so, it’s all shitty.
*she doesn’t have to like them, Joyce especially did some shit, but trying to steal friends and telling Sarah to choke, and insulting Joyce before she did anything (sarcastically to her face, snidely to Jacob, and insulting her (calling her something like a ‘nobody backwoods freshman’ iirc) to her friends… she’s not nice.
Raidah strikes me as someone who doesn’t develop grudges without provocation/justification, but probably holds them and pursues them beyond what the justification really merits. (Even if she was right about Dana being worse off out of college, which remains an unanswered question—was it necessary to seek Sarah out to bully her a year later, or to very, very deliberately try to sabotage Sarah’s friendships to keep Sarah socially isolated? Big thumbs down to anyone whose answer to that was “well, of course!”)
Also, Raidah’s pretty classist, which comes across *powerfully* in her early interactions with Joyce. Her judgement of Joyce for being religiously ignorant and bigoted (merited) is tricky to sort out from her contempt of Joyce’s stated plan of being a teacher and Joyce’s descriptions of her family’s decidedly non-holding-positions-of power-wealth-or-influence professions (writer, dentist, homemaker, she’s not sure what Jordan does~). I think to Raidah it’s all part of the same package—she thought Joyce was a backwater hick whose personal ambitions and family couldn’t match Raidah’s or Jacob’s, so Joyce could never be a threat to her. Except that Joyce WAS a threat to Raidah’s relationship with Jacob, oops, because even ignorant backwater hicks can possess desirable personal qualities that aren’t ‘professional drive’ or ‘political connections’, and it turned out that Jacob put some stock in those after all.
Jennifer was there for the original storytime when we got the Sarah/Raidah/Dana backstory. And later at the party when she came in with Jacob. I’d say she knows about as much anyone – though not as much as we do.
That said, I don’t think most commenters actually blame her for shifting friend groups as much as recognize it as the pending disaster that it is. And don’t take her new “Me and my new friends are so mature new” attitude as a real thing
And with this, I’m finally caught up on DoA!! I don’t even know what to say, this comic is just so darn good. I’m curious to see how it’ll feel seeing things happen in posting time instead of blowing through the archive.
And shush, Jennifer, Dorothy totally knows how charisma works! You’re just… not cool enough to get it! Yeah, that.
Feel like Head Bongo is being a bit of a bongo here. Charisma IS figuring out the algorithm to be likeable. It’s just some people don’t have to think about said algorithm.
Ehhhh. Naturally charismatic people don’t think about being charismatic; they’re just operating on drive and instinct. There’s a limit to how well you can replicate that on purpose if you *don’t* have that drive or those instincts. If you’re clunky at it, people can tell you’re trying, and they’re more likely to dislike you for it. If you’re *really* good at faking it based on observation—saying the right things to make people like you, in a calculated way, even when you don’t believe what you’re saying—you *might* be more successful at it, but euurgh, what a terrible way that is to live.
a plague has hit our house
both children singing billie eilish's "what was i made for" but entirely in "meows"
we can't get them to stop
it's been weeks
please send help
The plantation burning reminds me of when the residential school burnt down in Shubenacadie.
I was very young. Not understanding why we were all there watching a scary looking building burning. Cars lined up all over both sides of the road. It seemed like the entire rez population (1)
Someone is citing the MA constitutional provision explicitly allowing the state to impede federal marshals enforcing the fugitive slave act, DAMN the average citizen is radicalized
you’re laughing. the largest antebellum plantation house burned down & there are brides who will not get to spiritually absorb the poisoned spectral energy of the land for their big day, & you’re laughing.
Me if I ever see Tony Hawk: Hey you’re Tony Hawk the famous skateboarder. That’s right I recognise you. Won’t be able to get any content out of this will you, you piece of shit
How to read all 28 issues of my Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane run on Marvel Unlimited:
1: The first four issues were published as the miniseries "Mary Jane."
www.marvel.com/comics/serie...
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
Dana Simpson 
Loading ...
But the apology note will not be done in calligraphy, nor delivered in an embossed envelope.
That’s the Dorothy equivalent of being slapped with a glove.
“it will include a painstakingly hand-rendered golfclap.gif”
but they were all of them, deceived
for another mom was made…
One mom to rule them all,
And in the darkness bind them,
In the land of Morder
where the shadows fib.
*Momdor
where the Hussies hiss.
Now if only Booster could perform a psychic ray attack on Dorothy.
Even a broken Billie is right twice a semester.
It’s all well and good for Billie to play reasonable now with “does someone [ahem] suggesting you’re bad at something irk you?” when it was in fact she herself that rolled up and directly accused Dorothy of not sorting out Joyce’s problem (which is going a little further than “you’re not good at something” into “you’re causing direct harm through lack of action” territory). Which more or less resulted in the present situation. Good ol’ Billie. So charismatic.
“BUT I WONT USE MY CALIGRAPHY PEN!”
“And I won’t bother to rewrite it if I smudge the ink!”
But she will rewrite it instead of crossing a word out. She can’t help it, she’s no monster.
*biting back the urge to quote Jimmy Buffett for “talk like a pirate day”*
YARRRRRRRR
but for me, it was Tuesday.
Meh, no one in this comic knows how anything works. It’s a feature not a bug.
Carol tried to kill Joyce???
Is this a specific reference to something (like her setting Ross free), or did we miss something
Yeah, she helped secure the release of someone who was an active threat to the school, and then he actively threatened the school again.
Pretty sure it’s the Ross thing.
She chipped in to paying Ross’s bail, essentially enabling the Asshole Dads in their kidnapping (and Blaine’s subsequent threats of murder against Joyce).
While she might not have been directly involved, her cult bullshit literally endangered her daughter’s life and last we saw her she felt no remorse or introspection about that, so it’s not surprising that the kids have cut through the bullshit and drawn the more direct throughline.
Yup. Carol’s first instinct after hearing that her daughter had been kidnapped and two people had been killed was to TRY TO RE-KIDNAP JOYCE. She was even ANGRY that Joyce got away.
It’s definitely referencing the Ross thing.
It’s less she TRIED to kill her and more Facilitated a situation that could very well lead to her murder. Less hitting her with a car and more leaping out of the car doing 90 with Joyce strapped in the back seat.
As Avatar Kiyoshi once said, “Personally I don’t really see the difference.”
I read later as latte. (I read this on my phone so tiny print)
I now will only accept lattes for apologies.
You and me both, Johan!
I always enlarge the strip, or turn the screen…
But, I would absolutely accept a apology latte!
An apology latte with the note written with latte art
Look, Dorothy’s leaning in on her appeal to the grandma demographic.
She’s gonna nail it.
Huh, I expected Billie/Jennifer to be a dick about it, I was not expecting this. However I’m happy that at least they’re at least done yelling.
Dorothy is the only kind of person that I could imagine handwriting an apology note, or an apology note of any kind. However it is a very Dorothy thing to do. Am I wrong?
Did Dorothy force Walky to write thank-you notes to his parents when they were dating?
I don’t remember that but it would be in character for her to do so.
Yep
They are being a dick about it but it’s something Dorothy needs to hear
To be fair, I find Dotty plenty relatable here. That’s a form of charisma, right?
(Or it’s just me being the same kind of idiot as her. Probably that.)
I feel for Dorothy so much. Billie is just as condescending as ever and richly deserves an extremely thorough, rudely accurately clapback. Dorothy is just going to keep stuffing it all down forever.
I’m afraid I don’t see the condescension. Jennifer seemed perfectly reasonable to me.
Honestly that’s one of my biggest worries. There are neverany Dorothy storylines that focus on her and her mental health, and I feel like it’s a real problem that isn’t being addressed. I know that there have been Dorothy storylines before, but they’re always about her relationship with someone else, whether it be Walky, Dorothy, Amber, or someone else, and it’s always more focused on the other person.
Basically, I just want Dorothy to look at herself, and if she’s not gonna, for someone to do it for her.
Even the arc about her overwork just seemed to gradually dissipate when she and Walky broke up. There was never any attempt to address any underlying issues.
It is hinted at a lot, though – her lack of hygiene/eating when stressed, hiding letters from Yale, going to a therapist, people pleasing to the extreme. She’s a neurotic labrador.
True, but there’s never even been any set up for a more in-depth story; heck, even though she’s one of the main characters, she hasn’t gotten a chapter title named after her, which is something even Faz managed to do.
Mom and Mom and Mom and Mom are fighting again
Joyce has four mommies. Heather only has two.
lol i know sarah is the ‘big sister’ but i wouldn’t really consider becky (assuming that’s one of the ppl she’s referring to) as the other ‘mom’ figure
I found myself wondering who the moms were myself. Dotty, Sarah, and ???? While Joyce may refer to Sarah as big sis (literally, I mean), she’s been a bit of a mother hen as far as she goes.
Ruth, as RA is also a mother figure.
“Gee Joyce, how come your daddy lets you have FOUR mommies?”
My Mother, My Mother, and Me! MMMMAM, hot new campus podcast.
Pronounced “MOOOOOOOOOOM!” (with an exasperated tone).
Jennifer flipping nailed it. College is about finding freedom to make dumb mistakes, and Joyce has kind of been put in a weird place where her mistakes and imperfections are used as a reason to deny her respect and agency. You know, “we have to save Joyce from herself”.
That was fair when she was still in a homophobic death cult. But now she’s… not. Now she’s just a mostly typical messed-up college kid trying to work herself out, and respecting and trusting her to eventually take care of herself without nonstop mommying is the right step.
>freedom to make dumb mistakes
Not learn from others’ mistakes?
Some mistakes last a looooong time.
All knowledge is better learned second hand, but some must be first hand.
Really? I thought college was about getting degrees that you can hopefully use to pierce the filters and get an application through at a decent job.
Huh. Maybe I was better off not affording it after all. I made enough mistakes, I didn’t need the freedom for more.
I mean, it’s not the only situation where a lot of young people are thrown together, without parental supervision and only nominal oversight by other adults, and have to figure out (often entirely on their own/with only their peers) how to be functional adults themselves… just one of the most common, in our society.
As long as they don’t just get into something that kicks the “learning how to adult” down the road by a decade or so.
The trick is to learn to fake being an adult just enough to kick actual adulting down the road until never. Note – This is incompatible with having a kid and some marriages.
So long as your not dragging a kid into it or forcing others to adult for you.
The real trick is to realize that the adults are faking it too. Even the ones with marriages and kids.
what’s the old will rogers quote?
“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves”
Who are the Seven Moms?
Joyce Brown and the Seven moms with Sarah as Grumpy . . .
I assume Dotty, Sarah and Becky are her campus moms (assuming Jennifer is not referring to herself as an absent mom in which case she would take the place of Becky). I don’t have a clue who her four at-home moms are aside from her real mom.
There aren’t 7, there are 4 – Carol plus the 3 school pseudo-Moms.
Thanks for explaining. This took me a while.
I also completely misunderstood that.
Same, I legit thought Jennifer was saying Joyce had 4 moms plus the 3 fellow student “moms”.
Is that a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves reference?
No, it’s either a Jesus and the seven disciples reference or a Blackbeard and the seven seas one. It’s hard to tell which.
Forget about “Booster is secretly Mike”, this is “Jennifer is secretly Booster”. Or endowed (… nope) with similar insight – exclusively directed outward, of course.
Haha of course directly only at others from her smug tower of illusory maturity. The smugness of “Jennifer” is infuriating.
Remember she told Raidah and those social climbers her name was Billie several times! She corrected Raidah about misnaming her, now she’s completely under their frenemie spell.
lol i’d love to receive an apology note , i might not keep it, or might be annoyed depending on who it’s from but it’d be amusing to like frame it and take a pic and send it to someone occasionally each time if we were still on friendly terms
Sort of depends on the nature of the apology. I probably wouldn’t taunt them with it if I thought it was heart-felt, but if it was just purely passive-aggressive, it could be amusing.
it would be a power move, tho kinda a red flag if someone like, had some preprinted out some apology notes and left a ‘blank space’ for the reasoning and filled it out each time lol
Maybe I should make apology notes. I haven’t done anything yet but next time I do I will write them a note and mail it to them.
In a pinch, you could always apologize for not having done anything.
Yet.
God, it feels good to have someone in-universe finally put into words what the comments section has been saying for months. Give your girl some space, Dotty. And like a twenty hour nap because she looks constantly tired when she’s not constantly angry at the world.
Is this Dorothy’s cue to be like, “fine I’m staying here for Joyce and she hates me now. I’m just going to lock myself up in the library, block Joyce from my phone, and move to my dream school?”
Dear GOD, I hope so. Imagine sacrificing Yale- notwithstanding the likelihood or unlikelihood of that actually leading Dorothy to the presidency- for Joyce.
If not for panel 3, I’d think Jennifer was being pretty big here, but nope, she’s more than happy to go low. Which, whatever, someone curses you out, even if you frankly kinda had it coming to a degree, you’re perfectly entitled to throw some jabs their way.
I do wonder, though. Like, I do think this is bigger than Joyce, and bigger than just the charisma bullshit. Dorothy never got like this with the Roz debacle, so it’s not like she can’t handle people talking shit about her.
She’s always pretty big.
I think she’s been stuffing down her frustrations with her traumatized friends and she sees Billie as a hypocritical social climber with a skin like a rhino. I still think she’s going not going to be able to take it anymore sometime, this exchange can’t have been very satisfying.
I don’t see panel 3 as a problem – she’s (rightfully) pointing out that if Dorothy actually is concerned about Joyce (rather than Dorothy’s “mom” relationship to Joyce), she doesn’t really have grounds to be upset.
Panel 3 is Willis making a direct reference to Sarah telling Dorothy she’s not good with people. That’s why panel 4.
She didn’t sugarcoat it, but I feel like that’s the actual issue at the heart of this. Walky also said that implying Dorothy can’t do something makes her angry. I think that has a lot to do with why Dorothy has been so aggressive about getting Joyce to go to the pharmacy right away, even though several commenters pointed out that might not be the best thing for Joyce right now.
You can’t be mad at Jennifer when she’s making the sensible argument possible.
A stopped clock is right two times a day.
And mind you DOA time IS slower relative to IRL.
Yes you can.
If anything, that just makes it easier.
That… directly contradicts what got Dorothy involved in the first place. If Jennifer had just taken Joyce to the doctor without shaming her other friends, maybe Dorothy wouldn’t have felt the need to get involved.
She is in no way obligated to parent Joyce. She helped her when she noticed something no one else did about Joyce’s physical pains, and pointed her in the right direction to get it resolved. Is Joyce a grown adult or not?
I don’t think Dorothy should be parenting Joyce. I don’t even think they should be close friends (from long experience). BUT Jennifer started this whole thing by saying Dorothy and Sarah should be parenting Joyce better and shamed them for not parenting her enough and now Jennifer’s saying Dorothy shouldn’t and is acting like she never said anything to Dorothy and Sarah in the first place.
I can when a) Jennifer literally said “why aren’t any of you fixing this”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/hurghl/
And b) Dorothy and Becky already called it that Jennifer would swoop in, solve one problem, and then everyone else would have to do the work
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/kablooey/
In short, screw you Jennifer, shes a massive hypocrite
I love Jennifer’s character development and how she’s coming at the problem from an angle that as Billie she probably wouldn’t have, but good gravy do I wish it was for reasons other than “I was adopted by Team Asshole”.
If you love something, set it free.
It’ll know where to find you when it’s trying to work up the nerve to get her subscriptions refilled.
By then Dorothy should have Joyce completely blocked to avoid the emotional yo-yo. and be out of town. She’s been thoroughly rejected.
Not that thorough, considering Joyce immediately turned around and asked for help.
Do you just ghost friends when they express autonomy?
Yeah I’ve seen this suggested in other comments and was baffled. Are we supposed to be rooting for Dorothy and Joyce to have codependency issues now?
*prescriptions
Strangely enough this makes me ship them a little more. Not even in a “I want them as a couple” way. I just sorta wanna see them make out. Platonically.
Maybe it’s cuz both of their lips are drawn somewhat kissable here. Specifically Dorothy.
I’m reminded of Joe trying to wish the girls into making out, but I don’t remember where that strip is or how old it is.
That’s every strip Joe is in, it’s just not always drawn.
This one, maybe? It seems like something early Joe would do in Leslie’s class.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/compete/
And this one:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/continue/
“Solve the next conflict by tongue wrestling for dominance” ;P
So who are the moms?
Carol, bio, tried to kill her
Dorothy, bff and mommest
Sarah, “big sister”
and… Becky or Jennifer?
Becky, def.
Which makes Leslie her gran and Robin her aunt (she was going for “Cool Older SisterTM”, right?)
From what Jennifer said earlier, Becky and Dorothy and her. They were supposed to take care of Joyce since she wasn’t around as much.
That “somebody somewhere” in panel 3 would have been moi, had I not realize Jennifer would make that point anyway
What she lacks in charisma, she makes up for it in style.
That “somebody” is Sarah and that “somewhere” is this strip:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/sunlight/
It’s not like you know how charisma works, Jennifer.
For maximum drama, have Ruth deliver the apology note!
fair point.
she needs time to get the sh&* out and go through the stages of change.
gotta remember, in about 1 year worth of time she went from a catholic girl with a loving (mostly. her brothers are cool) family, to an athiest that doesn’t want much to do with her family (save a brother or 2, and maybe her dad. maybe), with glasses, a dead friend, and possibly (in the overdiagnosed sense) autism of some sort.
she lost her faith
she lost her family
she lost a friend
she lost her appearance (“forced” to change it with glasses)
she basically lost her identity.
she doesn’t need to be mommed, and fussed over, she needs to find a tree and beat it for a few hours with a metal bat.
ALL of this, right here.
Except for one thing — Joyce’s family’s faith isn’t Catholic, it’s Protestant.
and it was actually only several months, so it’s even more sudden and jarring, even
this conversation would be entirely fine if Jennifer hadn’t just guilted them for not fixing joyce’s problems for her like a day or two ago
pretty much very time jen says something i want to like it ends up being so hypocritical that it just makes me angry again
It’s a lot easier to see someone else’s flaws and point them out than to actually reflect on your own. Especially since realising and acknowledging your own flaws means that you have to work on them personally.
Billie/Jennifer has probably matured more than anyone else in the cast since the beginning of the strip, which is reasonably fast considering comic time. She’s definitely still a flawed person but she’s actively trying to change herself, with varying success.
Dorothy was arguably the most grounded and mature character from the beginning of the strip, but hasn’t really changed all that much in comparison. She’ got an image of herself that she strifes for but she definitely does not want to change herself, Sarah suggests that she may be on the spectrum and she angrily rejects the possibility. She has a strong sense of identity, but it comparatively gives her a degree of inflexibility.
It’s interesting that both Dorothy and Billifer have a strong desire to be helpful, Billies ‘head cheerleader, problem solver’ and Dorothy’s compulsive need to be a responsible, dependable figure in people’s lives.
There’s an interesting contrast between these two.
Change and maturation are not the same thing. If you’ve changed yourself from “People need to care that I used to be a cheerleader” into the sort of person who hangs out with freaking Radiah and the Maturer Than Thou Gang, you’re not actually more mature, you’ve just slightly shifted how your bullshit manifests itself.
Matured… just the day before this conversation Jennifer beat up her ex trying to get Ruth to hit her in response. Her maturation is just a facade that’s constantly about to explode and will likely collapse at the worst moment possible.
Exactly.
That. That’s roughly where I am.
If Jennifer had just helped Joyce out, I would have zero problem with this exchange. But Jennifer was an absolute bongo to Dorothy et all. Made it clear she thought they were all neglecting the situation with Joyce and did plenty of moral grandstanding of her own. After Jennifer has evidentially been pretty absent since Halloween.
Dorothy backs off to let Joyce deal with things on her own after all the business with glasses and Liz, gets crapped on by Jennifer. She steps up to help Joyce through the aftermath, gets crapped on by Joyce (and a majority of the commenters). She just cannot win.
(I know, you don’t have to pick up birth control right away, but sometimes you have to compress things a little for Storytelling. This is obviously the major plot of the moment and if we wanted a realistic few in-comic days it would be six months before we came back to this, and the dramatic flow of these revelations/confrontations would be lost.)
Dorothy realized how much work she was doing to try to help Joyce and how out of line Jennifers remarks were, and saw an opportunity to tell her off without disrupting Joyce getting much-needed health care. Which yeah fair cop, the frustration she’s venting is tied to more then just Jennifer being rude to her.
But she has just been getting slammed on for a while now and I really wish someone in the cast actually liked her. Not just using her for her mad powers of extreme patience and adulting to toss her away when they’re not needed, or because hur hur pretty girl likes Monkey Master. No-one in the cast ever seems to give an active iota of a crap about Dorothy and how she’s doing. Even right after the kidnapping she had to be the one to keep everything together to give cops details, help navigate the situation with Joyces dad. Even when she was clearly not doing well at Halloween the only thing that came out of it was Sarah dunking on her.
And I feel like the best thing possible for Dorothy would be to realize she has to look out for herself, take the opportunity of Yale and get out. Which makes me sad, given how poor Dorothy fared in prior universes, that I’d losing my other favorite character.
Please don’t get me wrong passing commentators. Joyce is well within her rights to want space and alone time and want people to back off. But she also can’t expect Dorothy to read her mind. For the vast majority of our screentime together, Joyce has been incredibly clingy and needy, and the hot/cold whiplash has been basically signature to the relationship. If Joyce wants to change that, cool, but that takes time and communication. Of which there’s been little of either, because they’re all well intentioned but dumb young adults.
You are the only person in the last few days of comics who has made points reflecting my thoughts, so I’m glad to have read your comment.
All this analysis of Joyce seems like it is coming out of nowhere to me. Both on the part of Billie (when/why has she been observing enough to care?) and just in general. It seems to me that Joyce is kind of the opposite of what Bi-oh, I mean *Jennifer* is saying. She seems pretty needy generally and like she wants people to care about and be cared by. To me her response in this arc seemed really different.
Speaking as someone who is really needy generally and wants people to care about and be cared by, yes. And sometimes … you don’t. Just sometimes, you think “Actually, I need a bit of space here, and if it turns out I’ve done the wrong thing. it was my wrong thing.”
Of course, you also think “and anyway the people who care for me will be there to pick up the pieces afterwards, right?” so it’s complicated.
Wait. Which mom tried to kill Joyce and when?
her bio mom. “My church tried to kill me” basically
We need to see Carol again. Too much of her comeuppance happened off-panel.
We never even got to see Ruth kick her ass.
Sarah. Tried to give her a heart attack with the Dildo Event
Ross put her life in danger repeatedly and Carol made excuses for it. So it’s an exaggeration but I understand what she means.
“Carol tried to kill Joyce” is a massive, massive oversimplification, but “Carol used their family’s money to bail a man out of jail who had recently pointed a loaded gun at her daughter’s face, and who was later complicit in Joyce and several of her friends being assaulted and kidnapped in a horrific sequence of events that left three people dead, including one of her Joyce’s classmates” is literal truth (if still a bit of a simplification, because plot).
Carol couldn’t have enabled Ross to do anything just by herself, but she was a conscious, willful, and as far as we know, unapologetic participant in something that could easily have killed Joyce two or three times over—and this was *after* Ross pointed a gun at Joyce’s face! Carol and her congregation knew Ross was violent. They just thought it was okay that he was violent, because he was violent for the *right reasons*, and putting Joyce’s life in danger for the purposes of Saving Becky McIntyre’s Soul From Gay Hell was acceptable, just like kidnapping Becky to send her to straight camp (or worse) was acceptable.
You know for some reason mentioning Carol just reminds me of the story the came out this past week about the one guy went from loving family man to Q n None nutcase after going down the alt-right pipeline before shooting his youngest daughter, his wife, and his Dog and then getting himself killed via cop.
So, a normal weekend for that sort?
Not so much, I’m listening to a podcast about the QANON phenomenon, and how it’s mostly harmless mental masturbation. Non-violent as a result. But every once in a while they impinge on someone susceptible to violent imagery and responding with actual violence.
That’s a pretty bad take on it. It’s not at all harmless, even if most people who get into don’t actually commit acts of violence.
It’s still a pipeline into a crazy conspiracy theory worldview. It leads deep into bigotry and support of the worst kinds of fascist movements. Not everyone in it becomes violent themselves, but some predictably do. Stochastic terrorism.
Even those who don’t become sympathetic to those who do and often support them politically and financially.
It’s like claiming that Nazi ideology is mostly harmless because most who get into to it don’t become actual brownshirts themselves.
I guess Becky is air mom, Dorothy is earth mom, and Sarah is water mom.
Everything changed when the Carol Nation attacked.
Does this mean that Joyce is Zuko, Jocelyn Hiro and that brother of theirs who claims to have a wife (that no one has ever seen) is Asula?
We’ll only be able to confirm that if Jordan infiltrates Yale and takes down Dorothy using her own hand-written apology notes.
Look. Dorothy’s not some sort of bard or sorcerer, or even a cleric, paladin, or rogue. That means she dumped charisma. THAT’S how charisma works.
(Politician is clearly a Profession, meaning it’s wisdom-based, which is why all the most successful politicians have higher wisdom than charisma scores.)
omg
that hover-text should not be so funny.
rofl!!!
I had a hard time understanding Joyce’s behavior even after reading many of the comments, but Jennifer made it clear to me in only two panels. Well done, Willis!
Hard to believe this calm and reasonable person is the same that just the day before attacked her ex full of hate and desperation. I really start to think Jennifer and Billie are not just two names but two different personalities. Also, Dorothy is amazing here in understanding how she’s wrong at being angry with Jennifer, Joyce and herself. She really needs a break.
I feel like “Jennifer” and “Billie” are kind of like “Heisenberg” and “Walter White”, or “Saul Goodman” and “Jimmy McGill.”
Sometimes certain people or situations are just gonna make you go beserk.
Classic Dorothy “i’m not autistic” keener
No, you just don’t vibe with her brand of Charisma. Like how Billie was “charismatic” but Jennifer is a void of charisma despite being the same person.
I do think Dorothy has plenty of charisma. Mom friends absolutely DO have charisma but it is a caring comforting kind. Not Alpha Bongo/Cult Leader Charisma which is all Jennifer cares about of course because the idea of people being charming in different ways is impossible obviously.
Dorothy has the same brand of charisma as Aurelia Augustus in QC, she just needs to grow into her Mom aura.
Personally I don’t really see it. Aurelia is all about being supportive and chill, whereas Dorothy is about attacking the problem head-on whether that’s wanted or not.
They said the TYPE of charisma was the same, not that Aurelia and Dorothy are actually the exact same right now. Aurelia has a big advantage of being significantly older to have mellowed out and learned when to take action and when to back off.
While Dorothy is still young enough that she lets someone like Jennifer criticise her into making a different choice.
But the core type of charisma they have is the same of ‘I care about you and will be there for you when you need it and I will be patient and loving when you go through a hard time’.
which is kind of a huge flaw for someone wanting to become a politician
Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the Mommest of them all?
So, what’s the next Big Argument we should have that’s ended amicably withing the actual comic?
i propose how quickly Joyce and Joe can start smushing faces before it’s too soon and doomed to crash and burn
According to the comments section, every relationship is inherently doomed to crash and/or burn.
In that case, I think they should start smushing faces immediately, no time to lose!
I feel rather vindicated by Billie’s words here, because yeah, Dorothy needs to back off in a major way. and I’m seriously not saying that as a Dorothy hater (never been), I keep saying it because it’s healthier for Joyce and Dorothy
I wonder how much of Joyce’s tendency to get pissy with people trying to mother her now is because of how it reminds her of Carol, subconsciously?
Like a biiig part of my dig my heels in reflexive no to pressure is because my parents both liked to give lipservice to “it’s your choice” and then “guide” (read: pressure incessantly) you to “the right choice” (their choice). Even if it’s not my parents and it’s over something that doesn’t matter, a perception of a false choice or pressure tactics gets my nope reflex on.
I wonder if Joyce had similar with people appointing themselves authorities over her?
“You can be whatever you want to be! No, not like that!”
YES YOU GET IT
Also it’s cousins, “You can decorate your room as you like! No, not like that.”
“You can spend your money as you like! No, not like that.”
“You can do whatever hobbies you like! No not like that.”
And
“Spend your spare time how you like! No, not like that.”
Thank you very much ischemgeek, this was very much needed. I know all too much about this kind of abuse from experience, it’s just awful.
The 25 Years of Characters continue above the comic! I see a Jacob and a Malaya that were not there last week. Could this mean that soon we’ll see that one we all wait for? 25 YEARS of MARY BRADFORD!
There’s a Mary one, too! There are loads of headers.
Thanks for the info! Although now I feel like I need to keep refreshing the page so I can see Mary, for completeness’ sake if naught else.
It irks me, but Billifer’s right about this one thing.
I relate to Dorothy heavily, in both good and bad ways. On the good side, I’m conscientious and work to make good choices in my life. On the bad side, I put too much pressure on myself to be perfect, even when the game’s rigged by neurotypical people. As for friends, I had to learn that it doesn’t matter if I know the “right” thing they “should” do in a situation, I can’t make that choice for other people. They’re adults who can reap their own rewards or consequences for their choices. I can offer help, but I have to let them have agency in their own lives. Who knows – maybe they’re right in the end and I’m wrong. Gotta wait and see!
And I relate to Joyce a lot too, as a fellow ex-brainwashed. Really, really hard to kick that programming overnight.
I’ve been on the other side of it, when I was going through a hard time certain people felt they were obligated to “handle” it and then claimed that doing so was too tiring for them. But I never asked them to handle me, they just appointed themselves to that role. I would have been happier working through my own stuff.
Billie may on some level know that her hotness is entirely undeserved. Maybe that’s what she considers her “charisma”.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by “undeserved hotness”, please? It’s not a concept I understand.
I don’t think people *deserve* hotness, I don’t think that’s how that works…
Damn Jennifer laying on the truth in this one.
dorothy is at least two moms
Potentially stupid question but since this is a lot of folks’ reason for really disliking Jennifer I have to ask – is Jennifer actively aware of *why* the main crew doesn’t really like Radiah? Like, can someone cite a panel or something? *We* know Radiah sucks but unless I can see a panel that shows otherwise, idk if Jennifer is aware of the shit she pulled on Sarah. In which case, maybe we can all back off Jennifer for simply shifting friend groups in college – an incredibly common thing we all did whether we wanna admit it or not.
I don’t think the backstory with Sarah is why most commenters dislike Raidah. The main cast all has their own flaws, but a lot of panel time is spent humanizing them and we tend to be more forgiving. Whereas Raidah only shows up occasionally, is often portrayed as shallow, and doesn’t get a chance to redeem herself. Very little has been shown from Jennifer’s perspective post-timeskip and I think people have a tendency to just assume the worst.
Yeah the backstory isn’t great and I’m on Sarah’s side, but it’s more Raidah being mean* and calculating that I’m worried about. Talking down to Dina, introducing Billie based on her dad’s company/wealth, literally commenting on taking friends away from Sarah and Joyce in doing so, it’s all shitty.
*she doesn’t have to like them, Joyce especially did some shit, but trying to steal friends and telling Sarah to choke, and insulting Joyce before she did anything (sarcastically to her face, snidely to Jacob, and insulting her (calling her something like a ‘nobody backwoods freshman’ iirc) to her friends… she’s not nice.
that said lots of the ‘calculating’ is directed AT *Jennifer, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Jennnifer isn’t particularly aware of this
Raidah strikes me as someone who doesn’t develop grudges without provocation/justification, but probably holds them and pursues them beyond what the justification really merits. (Even if she was right about Dana being worse off out of college, which remains an unanswered question—was it necessary to seek Sarah out to bully her a year later, or to very, very deliberately try to sabotage Sarah’s friendships to keep Sarah socially isolated? Big thumbs down to anyone whose answer to that was “well, of course!”)
Also, Raidah’s pretty classist, which comes across *powerfully* in her early interactions with Joyce. Her judgement of Joyce for being religiously ignorant and bigoted (merited) is tricky to sort out from her contempt of Joyce’s stated plan of being a teacher and Joyce’s descriptions of her family’s decidedly non-holding-positions-of power-wealth-or-influence professions (writer, dentist, homemaker, she’s not sure what Jordan does~). I think to Raidah it’s all part of the same package—she thought Joyce was a backwater hick whose personal ambitions and family couldn’t match Raidah’s or Jacob’s, so Joyce could never be a threat to her. Except that Joyce WAS a threat to Raidah’s relationship with Jacob, oops, because even ignorant backwater hicks can possess desirable personal qualities that aren’t ‘professional drive’ or ‘political connections’, and it turned out that Jacob put some stock in those after all.
It’s kind of creepy that Raidah didn’t even consider that Jacob might not agree with her.
And yes classist was what I meant but forgot to say
Jennifer was there for the original storytime when we got the Sarah/Raidah/Dana backstory. And later at the party when she came in with Jacob. I’d say she knows about as much anyone – though not as much as we do.
That said, I don’t think most commenters actually blame her for shifting friend groups as much as recognize it as the pending disaster that it is. And don’t take her new “Me and my new friends are so mature new” attitude as a real thing
I bet that whole arc is going to pivot around a Jennifer heel turn.
It seems like Raidah’s some kind of mean girl Sheev Palpatine, bent on ‘taking her away’ from Joyce by pandering to her need to “be normal”.
It will be a slow burn, but maybe she’ll face turn again by the other side.
And with this, I’m finally caught up on DoA!! I don’t even know what to say, this comic is just so darn good. I’m curious to see how it’ll feel seeing things happen in posting time instead of blowing through the archive.
And shush, Jennifer, Dorothy totally knows how charisma works! You’re just… not cool enough to get it! Yeah, that.
Feel like Head Bongo is being a bit of a bongo here. Charisma IS figuring out the algorithm to be likeable. It’s just some people don’t have to think about said algorithm.
Ehhhh. Naturally charismatic people don’t think about being charismatic; they’re just operating on drive and instinct. There’s a limit to how well you can replicate that on purpose if you *don’t* have that drive or those instincts. If you’re clunky at it, people can tell you’re trying, and they’re more likely to dislike you for it. If you’re *really* good at faking it based on observation—saying the right things to make people like you, in a calculated way, even when you don’t believe what you’re saying—you *might* be more successful at it, but euurgh, what a terrible way that is to live.
“You will later receive a hand-written apology-note” is a heck of a way to get the last word
Dorothy’s utter lack of charisma is practically her very MOST hillary-clinton-like quality…