Depends how we’re grading popularity. Walky definitely has more friends. Billifer works harder to seem “popular” and make the “right” alliances to develop social capital.
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that with a campus as populous as IU, popularity, at least in the sense that Jennifer means it, isn’t actually possible. The closest one could get would be how some student athletes achieve celebrity status, but celebrity isn’t really popularity, but rather acclaim. Popularity, as Jennifer means it, is based on having a majority of a population directly acquainted with you and willing to be swayed by you, either due to social authority or because they have a generally positive opinion of you. Simply put, it isn’t feasible to be acquainted with enough people to constitute a majority of the population of the campus of a large university like IU. Jennifer is still in the mindset of her high school, where she was popular. She’s essentially a small fish that had been the biggest fish in her small pond and is now in the ocean yet still thinks she’s a big fish.
Juanoku
Tl;dr she’s regressed to head cheerleader mentality like at the start and had a huge character regression.
That’s what’s been shown for this entire arc, not exactly mind blowing
Proxiehunter
In order to regress to head cheerleader mentality she would have to have progressed beyond it at some point.
TerribleTransit
What? There’s no majority requirement on popularity. You can still be a “popular” person even if most people in a given population have never even heard of you. Even if you do arbitrarily assign a 50% quorum for popularity, why is it based on the population of the entire campus instead of her peer group, her residence hall, her city, the entire world?
Popularity is an extremely arbitrary and subjective metric, and you can’t just do math to see if someone is popular or not. Granted, at this point I’m not sure I’d considerJennifer popular with any group larger than “herself”, but it’s not something you can say definitively
Jerach
I feel like the point being made here is that popularity in *her* mind involves having most people know who she is and care, rather than that actually being a meaningful metric.
Walky may be friends with everyone on his dorm floor, but the 5 or so girls who share a hallway with Jennifer “look up” to her. Nobody understands popularity like Jennifer. (Sadly, for her.)
Jennifer revels in the fact that she’s the “favorite daughter” while at the same time using it to get sympathy points.
Leorale
I don’t think it’s evil like that. She’s aware that her parents are very emotionally distant from her, she’s aware that Walky and she have a sibling-like relationship. She’s aware that Sal’s parents treat her better than they treat Sal, and she knows that’s messed up but she also was hungry for the parental attention. She’s not usually “using” these facts to manipulate people’s feelings, that’s just where she’s coming from, it’s what her quasi-family situation is.
Bryy
Being a narcissist does not automatically make you evil.
i mean i’m sure the school will cheap out on it but maybe 200 years from now there’ll be doors that are impossible to lockpick from the outside without like hacking into it/some kinda tech (unless some are made on purpose to be ‘easily unlockable’ for ppl’s safety
I’m reminded of a couple of SF RPGs in which such locks tend to be less trouble than conventional ones, because (in those settings) hacking’s such a generally useful skill that you’ll always know SOMEONE who can do it, while mechanical lockpicking is much less common.
Highly unlikely they will ever be common due to the fact that having to battering ram through a door because something ran out of batteries is generally an undesirable feature. I have no doubt someone has already made one you can buy, but a physical override is such a basic safety and security feature that I doubt it will ever go away entirely. And it CERTAINLY won’t go away in any scenario where the resident isn’t also the owner.
When I stayed in Hong Kong, my hotel had computerized locks. The doorknob was also the lock. It was cube shaped and had a touch-screen. Before we went in, he went to an app on his phone and programmed the lock. So every guest gets a new number. You touched it to activate it, then entered the number, then turned it when it beeped at you to open the door. It was fascinating. But it looked easy to hack if you had that particular app.
At this point, I think Walky has more people that like him than like Jennifer, and that’s saying something considering nearly everyone finds him annoying and his ex recently chewed him out.
Do you think that being popular has anything to do with people liking you?
clif
Yes?
Ophidiophile
You’re popular if you believe you are popular. People you are not popular with are clearly delusional.
Leorale
I think for later generations than mine, “popular” means a preppy aesthetic plus a set of personality traits, rather than literally a person who is liked by lots of other people. They’re more of a clique, who kinda just like themselves/each other.
Leorale
Not sure which definition Jennifer is ascribing to herself. Does she think that lots of people like her?
Clearly the Walkertons must have quasi-adopted Danny behind the scenes. They don’t care if it makes his relationship with Sal quasi-incestuous, they’re locking down getting the whitest goodest boy as a member of the family even if the relationship falls apart someday.
Or maybe she could have snuck out the window, but realized that if Jennifer could get in she could mess up her room, so it was better that she just deal with this now.
Except that she wouldn’t overthink things in that way and instead just realize: “Oh, fine, I’ll do this because putting it off is more effort.” (As you said)
Becky also gets secondhand guilt around her since she reminds Becky of her mom.
But yeah very few people are actually fond of her at this point? Other than her taking Joyce to the doctor I’m not even sure she’s doing anything protaognist-y for a while even.
Sirksome
I think it’s even more complicated than that. The cast is usually divided into groups and some are more social than others so it’s hard to gauge for some rare pairs. Like for instance does Ethan like Jennifer? I assume maybe no because he’s banging Asher, but who really knows? What is Dina’s opinion on Jennifer? While we’re asking what does Malaya think of Becky and what are Lucy’s opinions on Joe?
Frankly I think it has less to do with the main group not liking Jennifer and more to do with her purposefully excluding herself from them. Sort of the opposite of what Lucy has done. Also partially Raidah seizing an opportunity to isolate Jen from them during a moment of vulnerability .
Thag Simmons
Jen’s very much on the periphery of the social circle
I’m not sure a lot of people really *liked* the popular people at my high school. It seemed more like political influence than anything else. And here in college Jennifer is continuing to cultivate political influence.
is she though? aside from being respected by Lucy, Joyce and Becky on adult subjects I don’t think she’s accumulated much influence, she definitely isn’t very influential in her new group since Radiah feels comfortable ordering her to be with Asher.
BadRoad
I didn’t say she was GOOD at cultivating it; she’s just putting in a modicum of effort.
Archieve
True, though she tries I don’t think Jennifer’s efforts have gotten her anywhere close to being popular/influential. alot of people on her old social group are definitely beating her in that regard.
Darn it, now I’ve got that song from Wicked stuck in my head again. I’ve not even seenWicked!
Mark
Oh, no, it has songs? There’ll be no escape, after the deluge of wall-to-wall Christmas music drains away.
BarerMender
Having read the book, I’m wondering how the movie can have songs. It wasn’t that kind of story.
thejeff
What kind of stories can’t have songs?
Plenty of musicals go to really dark places.
Mark
I read it too, and I also wonder.
Taffy
What the fuck are you guys talking about? It’s been a musical stage play for decades.
BarerMender
I haven’t seen a stage play in decades. I mean, the story is so central to, and so focused on one character I don’t see who she’ll sing with. Or who’ll sing about her.
113 thoughts on “Quasi”
Sirksome
Is Walky popular? Jennifer may technically be right by comparison.
Bogeywoman
Depends how we’re grading popularity. Walky definitely has more friends. Billifer works harder to seem “popular” and make the “right” alliances to develop social capital.
Psychie
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that with a campus as populous as IU, popularity, at least in the sense that Jennifer means it, isn’t actually possible. The closest one could get would be how some student athletes achieve celebrity status, but celebrity isn’t really popularity, but rather acclaim. Popularity, as Jennifer means it, is based on having a majority of a population directly acquainted with you and willing to be swayed by you, either due to social authority or because they have a generally positive opinion of you. Simply put, it isn’t feasible to be acquainted with enough people to constitute a majority of the population of the campus of a large university like IU. Jennifer is still in the mindset of her high school, where she was popular. She’s essentially a small fish that had been the biggest fish in her small pond and is now in the ocean yet still thinks she’s a big fish.
Juanoku
Tl;dr she’s regressed to head cheerleader mentality like at the start and had a huge character regression.
That’s what’s been shown for this entire arc, not exactly mind blowing
Proxiehunter
In order to regress to head cheerleader mentality she would have to have progressed beyond it at some point.
TerribleTransit
What? There’s no majority requirement on popularity. You can still be a “popular” person even if most people in a given population have never even heard of you. Even if you do arbitrarily assign a 50% quorum for popularity, why is it based on the population of the entire campus instead of her peer group, her residence hall, her city, the entire world?
Popularity is an extremely arbitrary and subjective metric, and you can’t just do math to see if someone is popular or not. Granted, at this point I’m not sure I’d considerJennifer popular with any group larger than “herself”, but it’s not something you can say definitively
Jerach
I feel like the point being made here is that popularity in *her* mind involves having most people know who she is and care, rather than that actually being a meaningful metric.
Amelie Wikström
Walky may be friends with everyone on his dorm floor, but the 5 or so girls who share a hallway with Jennifer “look up” to her. Nobody understands popularity like Jennifer. (Sadly, for her.)
Davus
Actually, she’s right by default, because she’s Sal’s only quasi-sibling. Walky is an actual sibling.
Opus the Poet
Is Billifer referring to “found family” in that “quasi-sibling” statement?
APW
I think she’s referring to the fact that Sal’s parents treat her like the favourite daughter.
Bryy
Jennifer revels in the fact that she’s the “favorite daughter” while at the same time using it to get sympathy points.
Leorale
I don’t think it’s evil like that. She’s aware that her parents are very emotionally distant from her, she’s aware that Walky and she have a sibling-like relationship. She’s aware that Sal’s parents treat her better than they treat Sal, and she knows that’s messed up but she also was hungry for the parental attention. She’s not usually “using” these facts to manipulate people’s feelings, that’s just where she’s coming from, it’s what her quasi-family situation is.
Bryy
Being a narcissist does not automatically make you evil.
shadowcell
picking locks is the ultimate expression of trust
anon
i mean i’m sure the school will cheap out on it but maybe 200 years from now there’ll be doors that are impossible to lockpick from the outside without like hacking into it/some kinda tech (unless some are made on purpose to be ‘easily unlockable’ for ppl’s safety
Bruno
Hopefully we’ll have outgrown that notion by 200 days from now.
deliverything
I’m reminded of a couple of SF RPGs in which such locks tend to be less trouble than conventional ones, because (in those settings) hacking’s such a generally useful skill that you’ll always know SOMEONE who can do it, while mechanical lockpicking is much less common.
tim Rowledge
You just need someone with some serious-putty
Mark
Noisy, messy. Rather not.
TerribleTransit
Highly unlikely they will ever be common due to the fact that having to battering ram through a door because something ran out of batteries is generally an undesirable feature. I have no doubt someone has already made one you can buy, but a physical override is such a basic safety and security feature that I doubt it will ever go away entirely. And it CERTAINLY won’t go away in any scenario where the resident isn’t also the owner.
Max
When I stayed in Hong Kong, my hotel had computerized locks. The doorknob was also the lock. It was cube shaped and had a touch-screen. Before we went in, he went to an app on his phone and programmed the lock. So every guest gets a new number. You touched it to activate it, then entered the number, then turned it when it beeped at you to open the door. It was fascinating. But it looked easy to hack if you had that particular app.
Hoboturtle
Not like there are other quasi siblings. Unless some are hiding away somewhere.
Aquila
Well, there’s Marcie, from Sal’s own perspective, at least.
Juanoku
Holy shit i forgot she existed
Where the hell has she been
Amelie Wikström
Sitting on Malaya’s face a lot judging by bonus strips.
Miri
Good for them!
Bogeywoman
Billifer dressing like one of Robin hood’s merry men…
John Campbell
I’m not seeing any bycocket.
Rose by Any other Name
… so many ideas for replies, all extremely dirty.
clif
Mmmm.
Michael Steamweed
Resisting such filthy replies.
But it’s hard.
So hard.
Cattleprod
Popular compared to Walky, or is there another quasi-sibling who is unpolular?
cbwroses
At this point, I think Walky has more people that like him than like Jennifer, and that’s saying something considering nearly everyone finds him annoying and his ex recently chewed him out.
brionl
Do you think that being popular has anything to do with people liking you?
clif
Yes?
Ophidiophile
You’re popular if you believe you are popular. People you are not popular with are clearly delusional.
Leorale
I think for later generations than mine, “popular” means a preppy aesthetic plus a set of personality traits, rather than literally a person who is liked by lots of other people. They’re more of a clique, who kinda just like themselves/each other.
Leorale
Not sure which definition Jennifer is ascribing to herself. Does she think that lots of people like her?
Joy
She literally is popular in her wing. She’s literally actually unironically popular and not being delusional.
Also… A lot of named characters have a vague sense of distain for David. He doesn’t seem to be liked in his wing.
Cass
Clearly the Walkertons must have quasi-adopted Danny behind the scenes. They don’t care if it makes his relationship with Sal quasi-incestuous, they’re locking down getting the
whitestgoodest boy as a member of the family even if the relationship falls apart someday.Needfuldoer
We don’t know much about Marcie’s social circle outside of Sal and Malaya…
Nono
Sal would have just escaped out the window but she could not be bothered today.
Davus
Or maybe she could have snuck out the window, but realized that if Jennifer could get in she could mess up her room, so it was better that she just deal with this now.
Except that she wouldn’t overthink things in that way and instead just realize: “Oh, fine, I’ll do this because putting it off is more effort.” (As you said)
Archieve
Occasionally Jennifer does have helpful things to offer when she knocks…even if it is unlikely to be the case right now.
Ophidiophile
Opportunities for humor are always welcome. Since Jennifer moved to a different dorm, I’m sure Sal has a lot saved up just for her.
Michael Steamweed
“Good, instead of Malaya-annoyance, now ah can git some Jennifer-annoyance as a change of pace.”
NGPZ
Sarcasm… must… recharrrrrge… @-@
anon
lol i wonder if she ‘used’ it all on malaya (heh) tho i’d expect her to have a reserve of sarcasm specifically for billifer
Suet
Sal has other quasi-siblings?
Nice roller derby stickers
Rose by Any other Name
I suppose Amber might qualify as a blood sister.
darkoneko
I’m an endless well of sarcasm — Ruth, probably
Jeremiah
A lost relative of the endless barrel of exposition.
AeromechanicalAce
Man, Jennifer is REALLY deep in denial. Pretty sure no one in the cast actually likes her at this point.
DailyBrad
Joyce likes her. They surprisingly rarely have a cross word for one another. Becky also tends to get along with her well enough.
Of course, both benefit from not having to deal with her bullshit turbo often.
Nono
Becky also gets secondhand guilt around her since she reminds Becky of her mom.
But yeah very few people are actually fond of her at this point? Other than her taking Joyce to the doctor I’m not even sure she’s doing anything protaognist-y for a while even.
Sirksome
I think it’s even more complicated than that. The cast is usually divided into groups and some are more social than others so it’s hard to gauge for some rare pairs. Like for instance does Ethan like Jennifer? I assume maybe no because he’s banging Asher, but who really knows? What is Dina’s opinion on Jennifer? While we’re asking what does Malaya think of Becky and what are Lucy’s opinions on Joe?
Frankly I think it has less to do with the main group not liking Jennifer and more to do with her purposefully excluding herself from them. Sort of the opposite of what Lucy has done. Also partially Raidah seizing an opportunity to isolate Jen from them during a moment of vulnerability .
Thag Simmons
Jen’s very much on the periphery of the social circle
anon
i assume she’s ‘counting’ her popularity from high school (tho as we’ve seen from alice might also not be accurate either lol)
BadRoad
I’m not sure a lot of people really *liked* the popular people at my high school. It seemed more like political influence than anything else. And here in college Jennifer is continuing to cultivate political influence.
Archieve
is she though? aside from being respected by Lucy, Joyce and Becky on adult subjects I don’t think she’s accumulated much influence, she definitely isn’t very influential in her new group since Radiah feels comfortable ordering her to be with Asher.
BadRoad
I didn’t say she was GOOD at cultivating it; she’s just putting in a modicum of effort.
Archieve
True, though she tries I don’t think Jennifer’s efforts have gotten her anywhere close to being popular/influential. alot of people on her old social group are definitely beating her in that regard.
Needfuldoer
She probably thinks liking someone for political influence is the same as genuinely liking them as a friend.
Daibhid C
Darn it, now I’ve got that song from Wicked stuck in my head again. I’ve not even seen Wicked!
Mark
Oh, no, it has songs? There’ll be no escape, after the deluge of wall-to-wall Christmas music drains away.
BarerMender
Having read the book, I’m wondering how the movie can have songs. It wasn’t that kind of story.
thejeff
What kind of stories can’t have songs?
Plenty of musicals go to really dark places.
Mark
I read it too, and I also wonder.
Taffy
What the fuck are you guys talking about? It’s been a musical stage play for decades.
BarerMender
I haven’t seen a stage play in decades. I mean, the story is so central to, and so focused on one character I don’t see who she’ll sing with. Or who’ll sing about her.