Calling it now Billie is a bisexual homoromantic female, or maybe pansexual, but definitely loves women. And as long as that leads her to healthy relationships I’m there for her
I don’t know about homoromantic. She was in a relationship with Asher. Yes, it was dysfunctional, but so was her relationship with Ruth. I’m think she’s just bi/pan on all fronts.
… actually, I think Carla had it right. She’s attracted to BAD IDEAS.
Decidedly Orthogonal
And based on my own history of atteaction to bad relationships, Ms. Billingsworth is also a bad idea.
She was so close to learning something and self-awareness. sigh Getting an out here isn’t going to do her any favours, I fear.
Devin
Alice seems to be the big exception based on what we’ve seen. Maybe. We don’t know that much about Alice yet, but so far she seems like the least bad idea of the relationships we’ve seen Jennifer have.
thejeff
I wouldn’t go that far.
From what I can tell from the hints: They were officially just friends, but Alice was at least massively crushing on Jennifer, while Jennifer would have sex with her, but avoided any romantic commitment beyond friends. And brought her along to parties where she was looking for boys to drunkenly fuck and expecting Alice to do the same.
At least with Ruth, despite all the problems, she acknowledged it as a relationship.
Devin
Based on what we actually know so far, I would. Not based on hints. But that’s fine, you don’t have to come along.
thejeff
Based on what we actually know, they were best friends and Alice had a crush on Billie.
We don’t know they had sex or even kissed.
(I actually researched this, because that’s the kind of dork I am, but most free online dictionaries don’t do origins, and the local library is closed, so all I’ve got is that Longman and Cambridge both call it “old fashioned”.
If Google ngrams is to be believed, the first usage of “look a fright” was late 1700s. I’m skeptical, because Google Books search is thoroughly enshittified — despite putting a date range of 1790-1850, I get results from whenever the hell, including the 21st century. I see no “sort by date” possible. Feh.
Archive.org works much better at narrowing down timeframes, although the date in the metadata doesn’t always match what is printed in the book (there’s some that say “1731”, but they’re collections from a magazine that started publishing then and the actual story the words appear in has a date of 1871 ).
The earliest book that I can find that does match — that is, the book itself has 1799 as the publication date on the title page — is:
He Deceives Himself: A Domestic Tale (In Three Volumes). By Marianne Chambers, (1799), Vol 1
In 1799, the long s was still used in printing, so the text is “—I am ſure I look a fright !”
Owlmirror
One possible antedate of the phrase was published in 1814. It’s a review of a book that contains discussion of historical persons and events. According to the review, Anne Oldfield’s last words were “One would not look a fright after one’s death”. Anne Oldfield died in 1730.
However, I am not confident without primary documents.
It would appear that Alexander Pope versified her last words:
Odious! in woollen! ‘twould a saint provoke,
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke;
No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face:
One would not, sure, be frightful when one’s dead,
And—Betty—give this cheek a little red.
Which strikes me as improbable as something she would literally say, but I note that “fright” is in there. FWIW
It means that she hasn’t yet explicitly said to Alice that she’s Jennifer now. Or, alternatively, she hasn’t yet said that she had been going by Jennifer, but she’s good with being Billie again.
Like the fact that Alice has been talking to Ruth and knows that Jennifer sought refuge in Ruth’s room and that “Billie” is loved. But will it occur to her to ask who she is loved by?
But Jennifer doesn’t know Joyce said anything and so she’ll conclude that this was due to her innate charm.
ABunchOTrees
I hope Alice will explain why she started texting, but even if she doesn’t, Jennifer should notice that Ruth helped. NOTHING about this situation screams “Jennifer has pull,” and I think she’s self-aware enough to notice that.
clif
Jennifer. Aware.
Hm.
Yumi
I’d like to think Jennifer will recognize that others helped, but a laugh track plays in my head when I try to think of her as self-aware.
(I do think she’ll recognize that others helped make this possible somewhat, but also if someone went, “This actually worked out because you’re so magnetic,” she’d go, “Yeah, yeah, it was all me!”)
I think she’s happy to be Billie for Alice – Billie was never a bad person to Alice, never a problem until the end. Other people calling her Billie at college reminds her of falling apart, fucking up, alcohol-fueled suicide pact, etc. ‘Billie’ is someone to be escaped most of the time, while ‘Jennifer’ doesn’t have to shoulder all of that.
Alice calling her Billie (and smiling!) probably feels amazing, because ‘Billie’ was a goddamn hero to Alice, truly the alpha bongo problem solver, until she wasn’t anything. From Alice, ‘Billie’ means forgiveness as well as a host of other positive and strong feelings and memories.
I suspect that Jennifer is fine with being Billie for Alice specifically, even if she still prefers the ‘cleaner’ Jennifer from everyone else.
“Billie was never a bad person to Alice, never a problem until the end.”
Eh, maybe? Like, we don’t have enough evidence for that, but we do have implications of evidence.
thejeff
To quote Alice from her first appearance: “You’re poison. A drama hurricane who ruins everything she touches. I let you drag me down with you for years, but I finally saw the real you and got out before it was too late.”
I think Jennifer was a problem for Alice all along, Alice was just too infatuated to see it until the aftermath of the crash was a step too far.
She was also the goddamn hero and the alpha bongo problem solver, which is why Alice thought she loved her.
Yeet
to be fair she can be all of those at once
easiest way to acquire problems to solve is to cause them
I never got one of those. I wanted one, but after they came out with the PS4+ very shortly after I got a PS4, and I didn’t want to get screwed over again. Figured I would save the money and focus on schooling. I don’t regret that decision. Wait, should I?
We say “People are the gender they say they are,” and that’s a good saying that communicates good ideas. Of course, though, no short saying can capture every detail and technicality, and I think the little details are causing the miscommunication.
Strictly speaking, trans people are trans because they “feel and know” that they are. The “who they say they are” matters because it’s generally appropriate to trust people know themselves and are not misinformed or lying.
In other words, the “who you say you are” part isn’t strictly the important part for whether someone is trans; it’s the “who you know and feel that you are”. If someone is trolling badly and says they’re [fake troll gender], that doesn’t make it so, as we know – they’re just lying.
To me, Tenzhi is saying that Billie did not know who she was, said things wrong about that as a result, and this wrong statement did not change her.
– trans person btw
Strain of Thought
Ado can I hire you to explain my views on gender to other people for me?Because you’ve just expressed a bunch of things aligned with what I believe in a much more diplomatic way than I have ever been able to, whereas when I try to say this stuff people accuse me of being a dishonest alt-right troll.
Ado
Yeah I can definitely relate to your incomplete satisfaction with the community here. Aside from this stuff being very hard to express and conceptualize, making some degree of patience and understanding and mercy great, I think the community is overly focused on some surface-level ideas about gender. To some extent I think that’s inevitable and understandable – the community skews young and has a lot of understandable reasons to be defensive – but things can always be better.
Miri
I’m still stuck on “OK. This means enough to people to risk being murdered or disowned. Gender, as a thing that exists outside of both biology and socialisation, is clearly A Thing, and I am definitely not going to argue with this. I will defend people’s rights on this. (Seriously: if on one side you have people screaming about who gets to use what bathroom, and on the other side you have people too terrified to use the bathroom, it’s a bit of a no-brainer which is the “correct” side to take.) But what is it, fundamentally, then? (And does not knowing make me agendered or very comfortably cis-gendered? Like, I’ve given birth to and breastfed three babies. I wouldn’t say *comfortably, what with the pregnancy and breastfeeding Raynaud’s, the cumulative 27 months of morning sickness, having my ribcage stretched out by my first (she was cramped for a while… My first sight of her was 4 stretched out, long limbs… She’s taller than me at 10.5), and the “oof”-inducing movements… Also, being bit (and my middle one scrabbled and twiddled and scratched… ? Silicone teething beads around my neck to divert her fingers were amazing!). But other than getting touched out sometimes, and cracking up a bit after 10 weeks with probably less than 100 hours of cumulative sleep, it was basically physical discomfort…)
314 thoughts on “Napping”
Ana Chronistic
whatever, just don’t call her late for drinks
Opus the Poet
Calling it now Billie is a bisexual homoromantic female, or maybe pansexual, but definitely loves women. And as long as that leads her to healthy relationships I’m there for her
Reltzik
I don’t know about homoromantic. She was in a relationship with Asher. Yes, it was dysfunctional, but so was her relationship with Ruth. I’m think she’s just bi/pan on all fronts.
… actually, I think Carla had it right. She’s attracted to BAD IDEAS.
Decidedly Orthogonal
And based on my own history of atteaction to bad relationships, Ms. Billingsworth is also a bad idea.
She was so close to learning something and self-awareness. sigh Getting an out here isn’t going to do her any favours, I fear.
Devin
Alice seems to be the big exception based on what we’ve seen. Maybe. We don’t know that much about Alice yet, but so far she seems like the least bad idea of the relationships we’ve seen Jennifer have.
thejeff
I wouldn’t go that far.
From what I can tell from the hints: They were officially just friends, but Alice was at least massively crushing on Jennifer, while Jennifer would have sex with her, but avoided any romantic commitment beyond friends. And brought her along to parties where she was looking for boys to drunkenly fuck and expecting Alice to do the same.
At least with Ruth, despite all the problems, she acknowledged it as a relationship.
Devin
Based on what we actually know so far, I would. Not based on hints. But that’s fine, you don’t have to come along.
thejeff
Based on what we actually know, they were best friends and Alice had a crush on Billie.
We don’t know they had sex or even kissed.
Animedingo
A fright? When and where did she learn to talk like a middle ages wench
Thag Simmons
Dated an english major for a bit.
clif
And I’ll have you know looking a fright is the bees knees..
Sirksome
“Sought refuge.” It doesn’t matter how hot they are. Those two are dorks.
Throwatron
I bet they like Stars War.
Thag Simmons
Alice definitely knows about the Kit Fisto thing
Sirksome
Imagine being the kind of loser that would devote themselves to never learning about Kit Fisto?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/pretended/
I bet that person is really sad and lonely and has no friends. Couldn’t be me.
zee
As a Caribbean person I take kit fistos fine ass as an apology for jar jar binks. Not an adequate apology, but one nonetheless
John Campbell
You can Kit Fisto your BFF maybe once and it’s not gay.
eh, whatever
Actually rendered “the war of the stars” in French and “war of the stars” in German.
clif
And the the movie’s stars all got along together. People should have demanded their money back.
AMagicalDuck
Being dorks makes them hotter
Shakes
Her father is English and rich.
Yeet
yeah this
it’d be really funny if he was related to jason actually
Morhek
After too many Clone Wars rewatches, she starts sounding like Obi-Wan.
Furie
Math class, where she earned the burning.
Yarrr
I think it’s a view of the more goofy Billie underneath who she tries to keep suppressed. Seeing Alice jolted it out of her for a moment.
Daibhid C
i’d have said Victorian lady, but yeah.
(I actually researched this, because that’s the kind of dork I am, but most free online dictionaries don’t do origins, and the local library is closed, so all I’ve got is that Longman and Cambridge both call it “old fashioned”.
Owlmirror
If Google ngrams is to be believed, the first usage of “look a fright” was late 1700s. I’m skeptical, because Google Books search is thoroughly enshittified — despite putting a date range of 1790-1850, I get results from whenever the hell, including the 21st century. I see no “sort by date” possible. Feh.
Archive.org works much better at narrowing down timeframes, although the date in the metadata doesn’t always match what is printed in the book (there’s some that say “1731”, but they’re collections from a magazine that started publishing then and the actual story the words appear in has a date of 1871 ).
The earliest book that I can find that does match — that is, the book itself has 1799 as the publication date on the title page — is:
He Deceives Himself: A Domestic Tale (In Three Volumes). By Marianne Chambers, (1799), Vol 1
In 1799, the long s was still used in printing, so the text is “—I am ſure I look a fright !”
Owlmirror
One possible antedate of the phrase was published in 1814. It’s a review of a book that contains discussion of historical persons and events. According to the review, Anne Oldfield’s last words were “One would not look a fright after one’s death”. Anne Oldfield died in 1730.
However, I am not confident without primary documents.
It would appear that Alexander Pope versified her last words:
Odious! in woollen! ‘twould a saint provoke,
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke;
No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face:
One would not, sure, be frightful when one’s dead,
And—Betty—give this cheek a little red.
Which strikes me as improbable as something she would literally say, but I note that “fright” is in there. FWIW
Steamweed
Jason sleeps in that room sometimes. His dialectical Bri’ishness permeates the room. Influencing the words of the unwary.
Stu
She DOES have that hidden nerdy side that she’s not so adept at keeping hidden.
Sirksome
What do the tags say? What do they say?! Still Jennifer! What does it mean?!
Cattleprod
The tags need to suss it out too.
Qlx
Billinifer
Decidedly Orthogonal
-worth
Reltzik
According to Google, “White Wave” or “Fair One”.
Daibhid C
That Ruth can’t see them.
Steamweed
Willis sometimes keep the tags un-updated, and goes in and retroactively fixes them.
PedanticJerkass
It means that she hasn’t yet explicitly said to Alice that she’s Jennifer now. Or, alternatively, she hasn’t yet said that she had been going by Jennifer, but she’s good with being Billie again.
Thag Simmons
Really rooting for this to turn out well, but there’s so many pitfalls that Jennifer could step into here
clif
Like the fact that Alice has been talking to Ruth and knows that Jennifer sought refuge in Ruth’s room and that “Billie” is loved. But will it occur to her to ask who she is loved by?
Decidedly Orthogonal
No. Nor to learn.
Darkoneko
….woah ?
not someone else
Heartwarming as fuck.
Yumi
…Damn, Joyce is good.
Thag Simmons
Joyce does in fact pull
clif
But Jennifer doesn’t know Joyce said anything and so she’ll conclude that this was due to her innate charm.
ABunchOTrees
I hope Alice will explain why she started texting, but even if she doesn’t, Jennifer should notice that Ruth helped. NOTHING about this situation screams “Jennifer has pull,” and I think she’s self-aware enough to notice that.
clif
Jennifer. Aware.
Hm.
Yumi
I’d like to think Jennifer will recognize that others helped, but a laugh track plays in my head when I try to think of her as self-aware.
(I do think she’ll recognize that others helped make this possible somewhat, but also if someone went, “This actually worked out because you’re so magnetic,” she’d go, “Yeah, yeah, it was all me!”)
zee
Joyce pulls so hard she pulls for other people
Deanatay
Aww, Biwwie has fwiends!
Davus
Wait, Alice can be nice. Neat!
Steamweed
So can Billie! Er, Jennifer! Um, Fright-Woman. (her new super identity)
clif
Fright-woman is good.
I’d buy The Adventures of Ruth and Fright-Woman if comic racks in convenience stores were still a thing
clif
And of course if comics were still a quarter and not whatever they’re charging now.
Thank Willis that electrons are still cheap.
Steamweed
Eh, about $8-10 each issue. Can get higher. (For the typical monthly issue format)
Ado
🙂
Pocky
methinks she may be Billie once more.
clif
That’s not what the tags say.
anonymsly
I think she’s happy to be Billie for Alice – Billie was never a bad person to Alice, never a problem until the end. Other people calling her Billie at college reminds her of falling apart, fucking up, alcohol-fueled suicide pact, etc. ‘Billie’ is someone to be escaped most of the time, while ‘Jennifer’ doesn’t have to shoulder all of that.
Alice calling her Billie (and smiling!) probably feels amazing, because ‘Billie’ was a goddamn hero to Alice, truly the alpha bongo problem solver, until she wasn’t anything. From Alice, ‘Billie’ means forgiveness as well as a host of other positive and strong feelings and memories.
I suspect that Jennifer is fine with being Billie for Alice specifically, even if she still prefers the ‘cleaner’ Jennifer from everyone else.
Bryy
“Billie was never a bad person to Alice, never a problem until the end.”
Eh, maybe? Like, we don’t have enough evidence for that, but we do have implications of evidence.
thejeff
To quote Alice from her first appearance: “You’re poison. A drama hurricane who ruins everything she touches. I let you drag me down with you for years, but I finally saw the real you and got out before it was too late.”
I think Jennifer was a problem for Alice all along, Alice was just too infatuated to see it until the aftermath of the crash was a step too far.
She was also the goddamn hero and the alpha bongo problem solver, which is why Alice thought she loved her.
Yeet
to be fair she can be all of those at once
easiest way to acquire problems to solve is to cause them
Deanatay
BillieJ’s P5 expression – goofily happy. Authentic joy. Hoping for more.
True Survivor
I never got one of those. I wanted one, but after they came out with the PS4+ very shortly after I got a PS4, and I didn’t want to get screwed over again. Figured I would save the money and focus on schooling. I don’t regret that decision. Wait, should I?
Tenzhi
She was never *not* Billie. Who you say you are cannot in itself change who you are or have been to others. Embrace the multiplicity of you.
Karla Jean
Many, many trans people would disagree with you.
Ado
I think there’s a miscommunication here.
We say “People are the gender they say they are,” and that’s a good saying that communicates good ideas. Of course, though, no short saying can capture every detail and technicality, and I think the little details are causing the miscommunication.
Strictly speaking, trans people are trans because they “feel and know” that they are. The “who they say they are” matters because it’s generally appropriate to trust people know themselves and are not misinformed or lying.
In other words, the “who you say you are” part isn’t strictly the important part for whether someone is trans; it’s the “who you know and feel that you are”. If someone is trolling badly and says they’re [fake troll gender], that doesn’t make it so, as we know – they’re just lying.
To me, Tenzhi is saying that Billie did not know who she was, said things wrong about that as a result, and this wrong statement did not change her.
– trans person btw
Strain of Thought
Ado can I hire you to explain my views on gender to other people for me?Because you’ve just expressed a bunch of things aligned with what I believe in a much more diplomatic way than I have ever been able to, whereas when I try to say this stuff people accuse me of being a dishonest alt-right troll.
Ado
Yeah I can definitely relate to your incomplete satisfaction with the community here. Aside from this stuff being very hard to express and conceptualize, making some degree of patience and understanding and mercy great, I think the community is overly focused on some surface-level ideas about gender. To some extent I think that’s inevitable and understandable – the community skews young and has a lot of understandable reasons to be defensive – but things can always be better.
Miri
I’m still stuck on “OK. This means enough to people to risk being murdered or disowned. Gender, as a thing that exists outside of both biology and socialisation, is clearly A Thing, and I am definitely not going to argue with this. I will defend people’s rights on this. (Seriously: if on one side you have people screaming about who gets to use what bathroom, and on the other side you have people too terrified to use the bathroom, it’s a bit of a no-brainer which is the “correct” side to take.) But what is it, fundamentally, then? (And does not knowing make me agendered or very comfortably cis-gendered? Like, I’ve given birth to and breastfed three babies. I wouldn’t say *comfortably, what with the pregnancy and breastfeeding Raynaud’s, the cumulative 27 months of morning sickness, having my ribcage stretched out by my first (she was cramped for a while… My first sight of her was 4 stretched out, long limbs… She’s taller than me at 10.5), and the “oof”-inducing movements… Also, being bit (and my middle one scrabbled and twiddled and scratched… ? Silicone teething beads around my neck to divert her fingers were amazing!). But other than getting touched out sometimes, and cracking up a bit after 10 weeks with probably less than 100 hours of cumulative sleep, it was basically physical discomfort…)