…Huh, maybe Jennifer had a “Fred Flintstone gets hit with a bowling ball” incident, and if she gets hit again she’ll go back to being Billie and get her shit (somewhat) together.
…I know a couple of characters who would gladly volunteer to test this hypothesis.
Billie had her details, but let’s be honest, there was more tolerance with her.
Archieve
Too much time in the Radiah echo chamber I suspect, she’s operating under the assumption that everyone looks a Sarah the same way her new social group does.
Bryy
Even when Jennifer was still going as Billie, she would say shit like “Dinah’s not a real person”.
It took me until this strip to realize she was being literal.
This is a word that needs enter the English language.
clif
Start using it and it will. Just like schadenfreude did.
better time
isnt “punchable Face” already a word in the language that is used for “Backpfeifengesicht”? i am german so i knew the latter one, but i could have sworn slapable or Punchable Face is something that is also commonly used in english.
PedanticJerkass
There are a fair few German words that need to be introduced into English, like the aforementioned schadenfreude. I’ve also been using Weltschmerz an awful lot, since around 2016 or so (and I expect to continue using it an awful lot more over the next four years, at least).
Concussions don’t cause CTE. Repeated sub-cuncussive blows cause CTE. It’s not the big, frame rattling impacts that cause the damage. It’s the small, casual impacts that happen every down.
Yes, the big concussions surely don’t do more of what the small concussions do…
That’s like saying if you put a lot of salt into your food at once, it won’t be as salty as if you salt it a dozen times just a tiny bit. Either way, your food is getting salty and your brain is getting trauma.
Yeah. The problem with it is you can’t diagnose it until after death and the brain can be removed and examined. I love football, not as much as hockey, but I do love it…there’s a lot more that could be done to help with CTE. There is a helmet they use in practice. It looks ridiculous but it really helps with both the body shaking blows and the mini every down blows to cushion the impact. No idea why they don’t use it in every day play. You’d think looks wouldn’t be as important as not causing life altering injury but here we are.
MadScientist520
Right now some players use the Guardian Cap in real games. Achane on the Dolphins is one off the top of my head.
Hard to make it mandatory though. Helmets types are very personal to a player. Personally wish more would use tje Guardian though.
CardinalFan
I hear ya completely. It is difficult to make it mandatory…but hockey pulled it off with visors. It would take a lot of doing and some negotiations with the players union but I bet football could pull it off too. I know they are highly paid professional athletes but I really hate reading about these debilitating things they have to deal with later in life. If they can, I hope the league requires them but like you said it would take some doing. Particularly to QB’s and Kickers. They are really touchy about their helmets.
I mean I’m just going by Jennifer’s history, the slipshines alone suggest she experiences many more micro-concussions than even your average college football player
being raised by bourgeois bloats is also a contributor which cannot be overstated, especially not in Jennifer’s case
thejeff
I’d say in Jennifer’s case, being neglected by those parents to the point where she turned to the Walkertons for substitute parents probably had more effect than them being bourgeois bloats.
That’s definitely there, but most of her interpersonal stuff is based at least as much in desperately seeking external affirmation of her worth as any kind of inflated ego. She needs to be valued as a cheerleader, because she’s got nothing else.
Even in that scene, she’d basically just oblivious. Reeking of privilege, but it’s the privilege of not having to think about what it means, not of knowing and approving.
I mean that’s literally the biggest part of what privilege IS — it’s the privilege to NOT have to think about your social standing, of your ignorance of the condition of others (willful or otherwise) being of no consequence to your own, because the society in which you are part was built to confer disproportionate power upon you, and this order being treated as a universal human default.
Even without the cheerleader part specifically, she does what she does because she seeks to maintain the position of Alpha Bongo among people she will always perceive as having some form or another of Pecking Order.
In her schema, it’s not that she’s got nothing else — but that having to be at the top of some kind of social pyramid and putting people into their “proper places” below has literally always been her Everything.
thejeff
I mean yeah, that’s a good part of privilege.
But Jennifer explicitly doesn’t have the privilege to not think about her social standing. Her whole thing is that she’s emotionally neglected to the point of abuse by her parents. She seeks popularity, not as Raidah does as a means of gaining control over others, but of getting the approval she doesn’t get from her family.
Some of the form of her behavior is shaped by her parents being rich, but the real damage is done by the neglect not the money.
the irony is that her parent’s neglectful tendencies are likely a result of their motivations putting wealth and status and appearance front and center, i.e. “they might show up to meet [my boyfriend] if he personally crashed the stock market”
Paul is named after Saint Paul – traditionally admired for his negative views towards women and sex. Surely this is no coincidence.
(In fairness I should add that a more nuanced reading of Paul is possible & seems to have become generally accepted.)
Caninse
Ehhhh, that’s very debatable at best. And yes, this is me defending my namesake a bit, but both the 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians verses that people tend to cite are suspect of not being written by Paul. 1 Timothy is considered by most scholars as having been written after Paul’s death, and the 1 Corinthians verse may potentially be an addition by a later author, which has historically happened a lot. There are pretty strong contradictions to the whole “silent women” thing in Romans and throughout 1 Corinthians when referring to Phoebe, Junia, Chloe, and Priscilla, so I’d be hesitant at best to frame Saint Paul as having a negative view towards women.
Thomas
Debatable, yes. Nonetheless it had a huge influence on Christian views towards women and sex. While the historical St. Paul is probably salvageable, the damage is already done & still continues.
Charles Phipps
I dunno, Paul managed to take Peter Parker’s wife from him.
He may be the single most effective Spider-Man villain ever.
Lathari
“Carl! That kills people!”
Corey C.
See, from where I come from, every time I heard the name “Carl” I think of Winslow, the most “Lawful Good” character in 90s television. I didn’t even know “Llamas With Hats” existed until almost a decade after I graduated college.
Jennifer offered to take her shirt off for an interview in her gibberish.
I think Tony has no shortage of freshmen women looking to hook up.
eh, whatever
No, she offered to take his shirt off.
“So, Shirt, let’s take off your football” = “So, Football, let’s take off your shirt”
Charles Phipps
I’m not sure the implications are that different.
anon
I meant towards the ‘incelerator’/paul guy, he def doesn’t deserve it but i guess 50/50 on him getting laid either chilling him out or making him even worse
Billifer is a bit overhormoned around Tony, so she ain’t smooth atm.
I think she’d be much smoother with Paul; no overhormoning there. Yeah, she might try to seduce Paul into whatever nonsense. And he’d probably fall for it, long as she used the right words.
(still might try it, if she finds him)
Gigafreak
While the hormones are very much part of it, she has multiple identities clashing for control at the moment and that definitely isn’t helping. You can kinda see it in that the presence of a sports jock briefly caused her to introduce herself with the name she used as Head Cheerleader, yesterday. Her highschool alpha mentality is blending with her college in-crowd mentality and it’s making her an amazingly horrible mess because they aren’t fully compatible. Good to watch with popcorn, though.
There’s gotta be some level of irony in that someone with this kind of identity issue is pursuing someone else with much greater identity issues (Amber/Amazi-Girl) and the latter has adapted to it much more effectively with years of experience. It’s like one of those shitty mobile game ads from like six years ago: “NOOB VS PRO”
I think if Daisy had anything resembling a viable replacement on the bench she’d already have done it
Archieve
Daisy wanted to give the amazi girl stories to Dorothy but Jennifer insisted, assuming Dorothy is still writing for the paper she would probably be daisy’s replacement pick.
Thag Simmons
Dorothy did get the Amazi-Girl beat for a bit, but IIRC she stopped writing for the paper when her grades started to slip
Holly
I’d completely forgotten that. Activist-journalist would be a great new path for Dorothy if she wants it, especially if she attends and covers the protest.
Thag Simmons
It’s something Dorothy is actually pretty good at too
Archieve
Maybe this arch is setting up Dorothy getting back into journalism.
Michael Steamweed
Can’t be many Journalism majors nowadays at that campus. Or any.
Mark
The Media School lists 56 graduate students alone, so: how many is “many”?
Hoboturtle
Think you forgot Daisy’s priorities. Jennifer did indirectly get her “nudes of Ruth”
322 thoughts on “Interrupted”
NGPZ
First of all Jennifer, you’ve literally experienced more concussions just last semester than Tony has in his entire life.
Second of all…
Just, fuck all the way off ???
Doctor_Who
…Huh, maybe Jennifer had a “Fred Flintstone gets hit with a bowling ball” incident, and if she gets hit again she’ll go back to being Billie and get her shit (somewhat) together.
…I know a couple of characters who would gladly volunteer to test this hypothesis.
Coatl
Billie had her details, but let’s be honest, there was more tolerance with her.
Archieve
Too much time in the Radiah echo chamber I suspect, she’s operating under the assumption that everyone looks a Sarah the same way her new social group does.
Bryy
Even when Jennifer was still going as Billie, she would say shit like “Dinah’s not a real person”.
It took me until this strip to realize she was being literal.
NGPZ
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/lessreal/
this the one you talkin about?
Bryy
I *swear* there’s a strip where Jennifer says Dina doesn’t matter, but this is close.
Confused Cat
Are you thinking of this (Joyce, not Jennifer) maybe?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/03-trial-and-sarah/notweirdatall/
Bryy
I could have sworn it was word balloon chaos of Jennifer up close.
Katy
There was one where becky is hitting on dina and someone says something about her being “like 12” ?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/safe-2/
Found it?
MAC089
Oh God, her smile in that strip is a backpfeifengesicht if ever I saw one. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Backpfeifengesicht
OBBWG
This is a word that needs enter the English language.
clif
Start using it and it will. Just like schadenfreude did.
better time
isnt “punchable Face” already a word in the language that is used for “Backpfeifengesicht”? i am german so i knew the latter one, but i could have sworn slapable or Punchable Face is something that is also commonly used in english.
PedanticJerkass
There are a fair few German words that need to be introduced into English, like the aforementioned schadenfreude. I’ve also been using Weltschmerz an awful lot, since around 2016 or so (and I expect to continue using it an awful lot more over the next four years, at least).
irisclara
I read that as “get her shirt together” and it made perfect sense.
Tan
The first point is almost certainly untrue given how american football works, but nonetheless, the second point stands.
Dana W
CTE its an epic problem.
Anonymouse
Concussions don’t cause CTE. Repeated sub-cuncussive blows cause CTE. It’s not the big, frame rattling impacts that cause the damage. It’s the small, casual impacts that happen every down.
Jammy
Yes, the big concussions surely don’t do more of what the small concussions do…
That’s like saying if you put a lot of salt into your food at once, it won’t be as salty as if you salt it a dozen times just a tiny bit. Either way, your food is getting salty and your brain is getting trauma.
Shade
Oh that’s what CTE is.
Michael Steamweed
Yeah, took me a minute. In my former profession, CTE means Career and Technical Education. I was a bit confused.
(probably all the cte…)
CardinalFan
Yeah. The problem with it is you can’t diagnose it until after death and the brain can be removed and examined. I love football, not as much as hockey, but I do love it…there’s a lot more that could be done to help with CTE. There is a helmet they use in practice. It looks ridiculous but it really helps with both the body shaking blows and the mini every down blows to cushion the impact. No idea why they don’t use it in every day play. You’d think looks wouldn’t be as important as not causing life altering injury but here we are.
MadScientist520
Right now some players use the Guardian Cap in real games. Achane on the Dolphins is one off the top of my head.
Hard to make it mandatory though. Helmets types are very personal to a player. Personally wish more would use tje Guardian though.
CardinalFan
I hear ya completely. It is difficult to make it mandatory…but hockey pulled it off with visors. It would take a lot of doing and some negotiations with the players union but I bet football could pull it off too. I know they are highly paid professional athletes but I really hate reading about these debilitating things they have to deal with later in life. If they can, I hope the league requires them but like you said it would take some doing. Particularly to QB’s and Kickers. They are really touchy about their helmets.
Darknesse
That’s unlikely to be true. In football players experience pretty regular microconcussions, sometimes hundreds a season.
It’s still being studied, but it’s a likely contributer to CTE.
NGPZ
I mean I’m just going by Jennifer’s history, the slipshines alone suggest she experiences many more micro-concussions than even your average college football player
say what you want, them bongo likes it ROUGH ?
NGPZ
also I can’t believe I JUST noticed your avatar is Black Dynamite! SMASH! ^^
Adept
Is Billie getting (even) worse? Is that even possible? She has always been really nasty.
Does this happen IRL, when you have looks and nice boobs, and never have to become a decent person?
NGPZ
being raised by bourgeois bloats is also a contributor which cannot be overstated, especially not in Jennifer’s case
thejeff
I’d say in Jennifer’s case, being neglected by those parents to the point where she turned to the Walkertons for substitute parents probably had more effect than them being bourgeois bloats.
NGPZ
ain’t gonna deny that, but like her blatant classism and strong dismissiveness to those she sees as beneath her had to come from *somewhere*
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/nina/
thejeff
That’s definitely there, but most of her interpersonal stuff is based at least as much in desperately seeking external affirmation of her worth as any kind of inflated ego. She needs to be valued as a cheerleader, because she’s got nothing else.
Even in that scene, she’d basically just oblivious. Reeking of privilege, but it’s the privilege of not having to think about what it means, not of knowing and approving.
NGPZ
I mean that’s literally the biggest part of what privilege IS — it’s the privilege to NOT have to think about your social standing, of your ignorance of the condition of others (willful or otherwise) being of no consequence to your own, because the society in which you are part was built to confer disproportionate power upon you, and this order being treated as a universal human default.
Even without the cheerleader part specifically, she does what she does because she seeks to maintain the position of Alpha Bongo among people she will always perceive as having some form or another of Pecking Order.
In her schema, it’s not that she’s got nothing else — but that having to be at the top of some kind of social pyramid and putting people into their “proper places” below has literally always been her Everything.
thejeff
I mean yeah, that’s a good part of privilege.
But Jennifer explicitly doesn’t have the privilege to not think about her social standing. Her whole thing is that she’s emotionally neglected to the point of abuse by her parents. She seeks popularity, not as Raidah does as a means of gaining control over others, but of getting the approval she doesn’t get from her family.
Some of the form of her behavior is shaped by her parents being rich, but the real damage is done by the neglect not the money.
NGPZ
the irony is that her parent’s neglectful tendencies are likely a result of their motivations putting wealth and status and appearance front and center, i.e. “they might show up to meet [my boyfriend] if he personally crashed the stock market”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/stockmarket/
all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy, profaned…
butts
paul is a villain, alright
just not a super one
Lumino
I dunno, I think he has the PRESENTATION.
Did you see the font change when he introduced himself?
Qube
“paul” isn’t a very good name for an evil guy
now if his name was Carl…
Thomas
Paul is named after Saint Paul – traditionally admired for his negative views towards women and sex. Surely this is no coincidence.
(In fairness I should add that a more nuanced reading of Paul is possible & seems to have become generally accepted.)
Caninse
Ehhhh, that’s very debatable at best. And yes, this is me defending my namesake a bit, but both the 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians verses that people tend to cite are suspect of not being written by Paul. 1 Timothy is considered by most scholars as having been written after Paul’s death, and the 1 Corinthians verse may potentially be an addition by a later author, which has historically happened a lot. There are pretty strong contradictions to the whole “silent women” thing in Romans and throughout 1 Corinthians when referring to Phoebe, Junia, Chloe, and Priscilla, so I’d be hesitant at best to frame Saint Paul as having a negative view towards women.
Thomas
Debatable, yes. Nonetheless it had a huge influence on Christian views towards women and sex. While the historical St. Paul is probably salvageable, the damage is already done & still continues.
Charles Phipps
I dunno, Paul managed to take Peter Parker’s wife from him.
He may be the single most effective Spider-Man villain ever.
Lathari
“Carl! That kills people!”
Corey C.
See, from where I come from, every time I heard the name “Carl” I think of Winslow, the most “Lawful Good” character in 90s television. I didn’t even know “Llamas With Hats” existed until almost a decade after I graduated college.
Michael Steamweed
Paul may have some basic presentations skills, but he is certainly nowhere near the likes of…
OTHAR TRYGGVASSEN!
(Gentleman Adventurer!)
zee
Nah his presentation is about on par with Titan’s. Not nearly the amount of effort or swag megamind put in
anon
Imagine if Billiefer /had/ been there and offered to fuck him for an interview idk if his brain would short circuit
Charles Phipps
Jennifer offered to take her shirt off for an interview in her gibberish.
I think Tony has no shortage of freshmen women looking to hook up.
eh, whatever
No, she offered to take his shirt off.
“So, Shirt, let’s take off your football” = “So, Football, let’s take off your shirt”
Charles Phipps
I’m not sure the implications are that different.
anon
I meant towards the ‘incelerator’/paul guy, he def doesn’t deserve it but i guess 50/50 on him getting laid either chilling him out or making him even worse
Michael Steamweed
Billifer is a bit overhormoned around Tony, so she ain’t smooth atm.
I think she’d be much smoother with Paul; no overhormoning there. Yeah, she might try to seduce Paul into whatever nonsense. And he’d probably fall for it, long as she used the right words.
(still might try it, if she finds him)
Gigafreak
While the hormones are very much part of it, she has multiple identities clashing for control at the moment and that definitely isn’t helping. You can kinda see it in that the presence of a sports jock briefly caused her to introduce herself with the name she used as Head Cheerleader, yesterday. Her highschool alpha mentality is blending with her college in-crowd mentality and it’s making her an amazingly horrible mess because they aren’t fully compatible. Good to watch with popcorn, though.
There’s gotta be some level of irony in that someone with this kind of identity issue is pursuing someone else with much greater identity issues (Amber/Amazi-Girl) and the latter has adapted to it much more effectively with years of experience. It’s like one of those shitty mobile game ads from like six years ago: “NOOB VS PRO”
Animedingo
KING
GoblinBagsSumo
Absolutely. I love nothing more than seeing Jennifer being taken down a peg.
Adept
Sadly it seems impossible to make her realise it really happened. She’ll just brush it off as ”your loss, loser”, and move on having learned nothing.
BBCC
Dude, Daisy’s gonna kill you for losing two prime witnesses.
Archieve
Not necessarily kill but the chances of Jennifer no longer being trusted to get the amazi girl pic is now very high.
Thag Simmons
I think if Daisy had anything resembling a viable replacement on the bench she’d already have done it
Archieve
Daisy wanted to give the amazi girl stories to Dorothy but Jennifer insisted, assuming Dorothy is still writing for the paper she would probably be daisy’s replacement pick.
Thag Simmons
Dorothy did get the Amazi-Girl beat for a bit, but IIRC she stopped writing for the paper when her grades started to slip
Holly
I’d completely forgotten that. Activist-journalist would be a great new path for Dorothy if she wants it, especially if she attends and covers the protest.
Thag Simmons
It’s something Dorothy is actually pretty good at too
Archieve
Maybe this arch is setting up Dorothy getting back into journalism.
Michael Steamweed
Can’t be many Journalism majors nowadays at that campus. Or any.
Mark
The Media School lists 56 graduate students alone, so: how many is “many”?
Hoboturtle
Think you forgot Daisy’s priorities. Jennifer did indirectly get her “nudes of Ruth”
Nono
I will agree with Jennifer at least in that Tony should take his shirt off.
Jeremiah
That doesn’t make any sense, did you mean taking his football off? That is clearly the more coherent sentence.
Needfuldoer
No, his football needs to take its shirt off. That thing’s really messing up the aerodynamics.
JD
it’s our god-given right to see tony’s boobs.