I’m going to go against the consensus (what a shock) and say no. If it’s universally changed to Billie, that means it isn’t Jennifer in the post-January strips. I feel like it should stay Jennifer until she wants to be Billie again, if ever.
Reading the flashback with it saying Jennifer isn’t terribly confusing. We know who she is.
Dunedon
I’d say only if you can do it for the flashback (and beyond historically) … she’s Jennifer now. Would be interesting from the point of view where she saw her self as Jennifer instead of Billie (like Amber and Amazi-Girl), but other than that … not much help to the readers.
David M Willis
Yeah, don’t worry, if I thought it’d been appropriate, I’d have done it, but I haven’t, so she’s still Jennifer.
That’s not what you use to mow wheat. You use a tool called a cradle. It has the blade of a scythe (a real scythe, with a much longer blade), and attached to the blade are long, light, curved rods to catch the wheat as it is cut. Every few strokes the reaper ties the wheat in a bundle (sheaf) and lays it on the ground to be brought in later.
honestly I don’t think that’s the case. I read Ruth’s face as concern over Billie’s cavalier suggestion of killing her. It speaks to a desire to die and Ruth seems to be trying to not want to die
I think whether the tag is changed should depend on whether the whole story is in flashback-blue. If we burst into full color, then it seems appropriate — it’s a story about Billie. But if we stay in flashblue, then it’s a story about Jennifer’s past.
FTR, when I first heard that Blue Oyster Cult song, I thought that the character telling the story was testifying to a court trying to prove that his girlfriend had committed suicide to frame him for her murder.
Yeah, the weird thing is that YouTube popped that song on just out of the blue on the automatic jukebox, right before I opened up the “dumbing of age” tab.
YouTube scares me. It can read my mind and predict the future. 8-|
So there’s our confirmation on the timeline for Mike’s death, or at least a severe narrowing of potential speculation down to “pre-Halloween.” The last story pre-timeskip was early October, right? So that’s about a couple of weeks.
This timeline only works if you believe Mike is really dead and not in witness protection or secretly Booster is disguise which everyone widely accepts to be the truth.
Though we know in our hearts that Mike is force of nature and as such can never be truly destroyed. One day, when we least expect it, he will show up and continue being Mike with no explanation.
Casi
Whenever you see a nickel, always remember that it was probably given to mike to do your mom
Also I know Billie’s heart is in the right place but no one is caring about Ross and Blaine. Mike maybe but his spirit would probably enjoy the reaper.
I have a customer loyalty card for Charon’s ferry, only 6 more trips to get a spa day at the Elysian Fields resort, and I don’t know how I’m paying for it but apparently I have 4 times so far.
Like, she’s not blind to how awful of a person he was, but Becky was clearly genuinely saddened by his death despite that. She probably knew rationally that ToeDad would never accept her for who she is, but losing the final shred of hope was clearly very painful for her.
Accidentally hit flag when I meant to hit reply, please disregard that! (Why is there no unflag option.)
But yes I agree. She WANTED to leave things on the double bird-flipping and fuck you from the hospital. She was under no illusions about his awfulness. But the last thing she says to him, ultimately, is ‘tell Mom I’ll be a while’ – while Becky doesn’t believe in Hell to begin with so there’s no judgment implied, it’s still a lot more conciliatory. I think it’s a lot like Joyce’s emotions when she and AG realized what had probably gone down after the kids escaped the basement – they didn’t WANT Ross to have that power over them, but he was still Becky’s dad and a major figure in Joyce’s life, so there WERE complex but positive emotions there and they were harder to put aside now that he was dead. There was a dad Becky wished she had, and he would have been a lot like Ross but more flexible, and that makes it hurt more because it COULD have been achievable someday.
I don’t think any of Blaine’s kids had any real illusions about him changing (MAYBE Faz, maybe, but he seems pretty resigned to it all,) so for them the dad they might imagine as what society says they ‘should’ have had is just a totally different person. But I could still see there being some complicated grief that he wasn’t just a total dumpster fire of a person, he managed to get a body count and traumatize like half Amber and AG’s friends in the process, and he will never really see justice for any of his crimes because Amber at least suspected ‘yeah that was a dirty cop’ and Faz knew Blaine well enough that if he knows the mob stooge thing, he probably figured it out too. (It is a genuine question how much Faz and for that matter Yuri know about the mob thing. But given Stacy knows it doesn’t seem to be a closely-kept secret.) Like, yeah their dad was the worst but was all THIS really necessary? Couldn’t they have gotten a regularly shitty dad, who DIDN’T kill two people?
Nice to see ya cranking out these mega-paragraphs Regs! Always a pleasure! ?
BTW, I have a question about that. You said you suspected you were an autism-ADHD combo one time? Would you say that in your case, your mega-paragraph powers are from Autism-style stripes, ADHD-style stripes, a little of both or also from some other unnamed ND category?
Don’t have to answer if you don’t wanna, just a point of interest that was bouncing in my head for a quite a while now.
Regalli
I tend to think of it as primarily autism-based. I’m really detail-focused and had a LOT of training in college on analysis (both literary and legal research and analysis sort of classes,) to apply that skill. When I sort out the more ADHD-based stripes it’s more things like my losing track of time once I’m in hyperfocus or caffeine doing nothing to keep me awake in mornings or the need to keep doing something even when I’m trying to passively watch something. (Real inconvenient when I need to rest my damn arms due to the tendonitis that never ends. Joint hypermobility you are a bongo.)
The hyperfocus is also why I haven’t commented, I set a ‘go to bed’ site blocker on my phone before midnight and have to manually override it so I can try and shift to wake up earlier.
But it’s also, at the end of the day, me trying to sort out things into categories that don’t really exist because I like sorting things even when I recognize it’s arbitrary. My whole brain is as it is, and just because some traits are associated more with autism or more with ADHD doesn’t mean there’s not a LOT of overlap. I can’t actually separate most of them out, it’s just helpful to think of myself as both if my usual executive dysfunction hacks aren’t working. (It’s just that ADHD isn’t the only neurodivergence cluster that overlaps with autism enough that you can’t neatly separate out the traits. Schizophrenia, dyspraxia, learning and intellectual disabilities, having low empathy… we defy neatness. Not everyone has everything but correlations exist.)
Re: arbitrary, overlap, defying neatness, totally with you on that! I definitely don’t think of myself as belonging to one category. I see myself as flowing through the neurodivergent worlds like a wildcard, my neurodivergence is fluid a lot like my gender.
My neurodivergent stripes are like tiles on a rubiks cube that shuffles around at random times in a way I have no say over. Depending on which ones “come to the front”, it’s like getting random teams of pokemon or decks of yugioh cards to play with, each with their own advantages and drawbacks, representing the neurodivergences I can be. I can be more autistic one day, more ADHD the next, more of both the next, and some days be neurodivergences that don’t even have names yet!
I want to embrace these labels so I can connect on others here who have similar experiences, and also want to use them in a flexible way that reflects this way I am. I’m neurofluid, and right now I’m a sleepy autistic ADHD girl.
I’d believe that if they didn’t have a strip together talking about how they didn’t care about essentially this exact thing. People treating them with unnecessary care out of social expectation for grief they didn’t feel for their fathers. They both knew their dads were assholes and even if they were mourning didn’t need or want the soft treatment.
Yumi
Which strip are you thinking of for that? That’s not quite my interpretation of any of the ones that I’m seeing.
Also, this is different than what you said in your original comment and what I responded to, so…
Sirksome
It’s like 3 strips or more right around the time news of Blaine getting cop killed but maybe I misinterpreted your comment in the first place. I at least took the strips as them agreeing that people trying to make sympathetic gestures for them was white noise cause they’re gonna just grieve in their own way.
My main point being not that Amber and Becky don’t care about their dads but that they wouldn’t want be people acting differently because of it. I didn’t articulate that well with my first comment mostly for the sake of brevity. Maybe I;lol do better next time getting my thought out.
I think this one? Amber hasn’t seemed terribly sad about her dad, the kidnapping and Mike’s death are probably what’s weighing on her mind
Yumi
I do agree that there’s a good possibility that this costume wouldn’t trigger Becky and Amber over the deaths of their fathers and that, if it did, it could be forgiven. Just the idea of “no one is caring about” them may not be true.
Needfuldoer
They probably wouldn’t be, but they could be. It’s not worth taking that chance.
Yumi
Exactly.
Regalli
That strip was more ‘You’re totally allowed not to feel sad, but feelings are messy and can change because this situation sucks. They might not, but if they do, you’re allowed to feel sad while also feeling relieved and angry at him for sucking so much, let them be messy.’ (And honestly given the timing, I think it was as much Becky talking from the experience of her mom’s death. She didn’t have time to really process Ross, and while she loved Bonnie I could see there being some bitterness that Bonnie attempted suicide and Becky found her unconscious and she died in the hospital, probably over a long enough time the initial shock had worn off. Not a pleasant experience.)
And regardless I think EVERYONE’S reaction to Mike, Becky and Amber especially, WOULD make it a bit more raw than usual, especially since he died in the last week and a half. Since Mike’s death is wrapped up in Blaine and Ross and the kidnapping trauma, I can see it bringing out the more complicated parts of Becky and Amber’s feelings about their terrible kidnapping dads who killed him. (Technically I think Ross was only an accomplice. Also technically, Mike threw himself off to take Blaine down. They still went up that fire escape trying to kill two kids.)
175 thoughts on “Reaper”
The Wellerman
*plays “Don’t Fear The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult on hacked muzak*
thakoru
…That song fits a little bit too well for these two.
Rose by Any Other Name
Much as I love the original, I prefer the cover by Ninja Sex Party.
Bleuryder
I see you’re a person with great taste in music.
Opus the Poet
Thanks I just discovered a new band I didn’t know about before.
Rose by Any Other Name
If you enjoy NSP, you may also want to check out Shadow Academy – the same singer, but serious original music (as opposed to NSP’s covers and comedy).
Ana Chronistic
funny that I just finished reading The Fault in Our Stars and I feel like they would’ve thought Ruth’s costume was fine, idk
monk going out to mow wheat, it’s cool
Ana Chronistic
alt-text: you just love giving yourself extra work or something, Willis
The Wellerman
Eh, probably wouldn’t take that much effort. At least with the right wordpress tools.
David M Willis
nah i just edit the tag category and it automatically changes across the website
The Wellerman
Up to you Willis!
ktbear
And by up to you they mean yes. 😛
Clif
I’m going to go against the consensus (what a shock) and say no. If it’s universally changed to Billie, that means it isn’t Jennifer in the post-January strips. I feel like it should stay Jennifer until she wants to be Billie again, if ever.
Reading the flashback with it saying Jennifer isn’t terribly confusing. We know who she is.
Dunedon
I’d say only if you can do it for the flashback (and beyond historically) … she’s Jennifer now. Would be interesting from the point of view where she saw her self as Jennifer instead of Billie (like Amber and Amazi-Girl), but other than that … not much help to the readers.
David M Willis
Yeah, don’t worry, if I thought it’d been appropriate, I’d have done it, but I haven’t, so she’s still Jennifer.
True Survivor
I don’t know about Amber or Becky, but Mike would definitely have approved.
BarerMender
That’s not what you use to mow wheat. You use a tool called a cradle. It has the blade of a scythe (a real scythe, with a much longer blade), and attached to the blade are long, light, curved rods to catch the wheat as it is cut. Every few strokes the reaper ties the wheat in a bundle (sheaf) and lays it on the ground to be brought in later.
BarerMender
My mistake, parallel to the blade.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wheat+cradle&t=newext&iax=images&ia=images&iai=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-GL67UN5FHZw%2FTeWBev3b6XI%2FAAAAAAAADFs%2FUF1SKJdSONc%2Fs1600%2Fblog531%252B018.JPG
Doctor_Who
What do you mean, Billie, I think this is the first time we’ve seen Ruth OUT of costume.
Sirksome
Ditch the scythe and shave her head and she can go as a monk.
Taffy
Hmm, a bald Ruth.. Reminded of MT from Infinity Train, vibes-wise.
Thag Simmons
Grab a toy lightsaber and you’ve got a passable Jedi
The Wellerman
She could go as a clown with the right makeup. That would be even MORE terrifying! ?
Masumi
YIKES
True Survivor
Ruth just might take you up on that, Billie.
Also: Yes, Willis, yes you should change the tag back. That is a great idea.
Laura
Billie: “We’re each allowed one vice.”
Ruth: “That still leaves murder and you.”
(paraphased, too lazy to look it up)
FlamestAndLight
honestly I don’t think that’s the case. I read Ruth’s face as concern over Billie’s cavalier suggestion of killing her. It speaks to a desire to die and Ruth seems to be trying to not want to die
Nathan
I think whether the tag is changed should depend on whether the whole story is in flashback-blue. If we burst into full color, then it seems appropriate — it’s a story about Billie. But if we stay in flashblue, then it’s a story about Jennifer’s past.
Stephen Bierce
FTR, when I first heard that Blue Oyster Cult song, I thought that the character telling the story was testifying to a court trying to prove that his girlfriend had committed suicide to frame him for her murder.
Laura
Yeah, the weird thing is that YouTube popped that song on just out of the blue on the automatic jukebox, right before I opened up the “dumbing of age” tab.
YouTube scares me. It can read my mind and predict the future. 8-|
The Wellerman
Either that or it can just read my mind at the present time.
Welp, I’m an alien parasite, and I say, two can play it that game, YouTube!!!!
The Wellerman
BTW to be clear I will only use my powers of mindreading to help people. Not like those bourgeois corporate bloats.
Cheshrin
So there’s our confirmation on the timeline for Mike’s death, or at least a severe narrowing of potential speculation down to “pre-Halloween.” The last story pre-timeskip was early October, right? So that’s about a couple of weeks.
Laura
Think it was while all those cops were still in the hospital?
BBCC
When book 10 ended it was roughly October 21st. A little over a week from Halloween, so that gives ten days.
Sirksome
This timeline only works if you believe Mike is really dead and not in witness protection or secretly Booster is disguise which everyone widely accepts to be the truth.
Clif
Jennifer is Mike. We know this to be true.
Thag Simmons
Yeah, Booster’s a classic red herring.
Casi
That’s what makes Booster such a great candidate for being Mike in disguise. Since they are obviously a red herring, nobody would expect the truth.
JA
Gods they really need to put the Flag link in a different location because I keep hitting it recently.
But back to what I wanted to say….speaking of, when did we last see Booster?
Needfuldoer
A little bit of Mike will live on forever in our hearts and moms.
Clif
Snf. That is so beautiful.
Though we know in our hearts that Mike is force of nature and as such can never be truly destroyed. One day, when we least expect it, he will show up and continue being Mike with no explanation.
Casi
Whenever you see a nickel, always remember that it was probably given to mike to do your mom
Sirksome
Also I know Billie’s heart is in the right place but no one is caring about Ross and Blaine. Mike maybe but his spirit would probably enjoy the reaper.
Doctor_Who
Mike is in bed with Death’s mom (according to DC comics, that’s either Time or Night, not sure which) as we speak
Proxiehunter
Death’s mom had nickles?
a/snow/mous/e
Time is money!
Clif
Woodpeckers are cool.
Dara
actually as in in real life lolled
GeekyWarrior
How else would she cross the river styx?
Clif
On credit?
Opus the Poet
I have a customer loyalty card for Charon’s ferry, only 6 more trips to get a spa day at the Elysian Fields resort, and I don’t know how I’m paying for it but apparently I have 4 times so far.
OBBWG
The River Styx does not take American Express.
Owlmirror
If you mean the parents of the Endless, their father is Time (Father Time), and their mother is Night (Mother Night).
Romanticide
She is Night, and she certainly won’t give Mike back
RassilonTDavros
Becky does care that Ross is dead, though.
Like, she’s not blind to how awful of a person he was, but Becky was clearly genuinely saddened by his death despite that. She probably knew rationally that ToeDad would never accept her for who she is, but losing the final shred of hope was clearly very painful for her.
You’re absolutely right about Blaine though.
Regalli
Accidentally hit flag when I meant to hit reply, please disregard that! (Why is there no unflag option.)
But yes I agree. She WANTED to leave things on the double bird-flipping and fuck you from the hospital. She was under no illusions about his awfulness. But the last thing she says to him, ultimately, is ‘tell Mom I’ll be a while’ – while Becky doesn’t believe in Hell to begin with so there’s no judgment implied, it’s still a lot more conciliatory. I think it’s a lot like Joyce’s emotions when she and AG realized what had probably gone down after the kids escaped the basement – they didn’t WANT Ross to have that power over them, but he was still Becky’s dad and a major figure in Joyce’s life, so there WERE complex but positive emotions there and they were harder to put aside now that he was dead. There was a dad Becky wished she had, and he would have been a lot like Ross but more flexible, and that makes it hurt more because it COULD have been achievable someday.
I don’t think any of Blaine’s kids had any real illusions about him changing (MAYBE Faz, maybe, but he seems pretty resigned to it all,) so for them the dad they might imagine as what society says they ‘should’ have had is just a totally different person. But I could still see there being some complicated grief that he wasn’t just a total dumpster fire of a person, he managed to get a body count and traumatize like half Amber and AG’s friends in the process, and he will never really see justice for any of his crimes because Amber at least suspected ‘yeah that was a dirty cop’ and Faz knew Blaine well enough that if he knows the mob stooge thing, he probably figured it out too. (It is a genuine question how much Faz and for that matter Yuri know about the mob thing. But given Stacy knows it doesn’t seem to be a closely-kept secret.) Like, yeah their dad was the worst but was all THIS really necessary? Couldn’t they have gotten a regularly shitty dad, who DIDN’T kill two people?
The Wellerman
Nice to see ya cranking out these mega-paragraphs Regs! Always a pleasure! ?
BTW, I have a question about that. You said you suspected you were an autism-ADHD combo one time? Would you say that in your case, your mega-paragraph powers are from Autism-style stripes, ADHD-style stripes, a little of both or also from some other unnamed ND category?
Don’t have to answer if you don’t wanna, just a point of interest that was bouncing in my head for a quite a while now.
Regalli
I tend to think of it as primarily autism-based. I’m really detail-focused and had a LOT of training in college on analysis (both literary and legal research and analysis sort of classes,) to apply that skill. When I sort out the more ADHD-based stripes it’s more things like my losing track of time once I’m in hyperfocus or caffeine doing nothing to keep me awake in mornings or the need to keep doing something even when I’m trying to passively watch something. (Real inconvenient when I need to rest my damn arms due to the tendonitis that never ends. Joint hypermobility you are a bongo.)
The hyperfocus is also why I haven’t commented, I set a ‘go to bed’ site blocker on my phone before midnight and have to manually override it so I can try and shift to wake up earlier.
But it’s also, at the end of the day, me trying to sort out things into categories that don’t really exist because I like sorting things even when I recognize it’s arbitrary. My whole brain is as it is, and just because some traits are associated more with autism or more with ADHD doesn’t mean there’s not a LOT of overlap. I can’t actually separate most of them out, it’s just helpful to think of myself as both if my usual executive dysfunction hacks aren’t working. (It’s just that ADHD isn’t the only neurodivergence cluster that overlaps with autism enough that you can’t neatly separate out the traits. Schizophrenia, dyspraxia, learning and intellectual disabilities, having low empathy… we defy neatness. Not everyone has everything but correlations exist.)
The Wellerman
Thanks for sharing Regalli!
Re: arbitrary, overlap, defying neatness, totally with you on that! I definitely don’t think of myself as belonging to one category. I see myself as flowing through the neurodivergent worlds like a wildcard, my neurodivergence is fluid a lot like my gender.
My neurodivergent stripes are like tiles on a rubiks cube that shuffles around at random times in a way I have no say over. Depending on which ones “come to the front”, it’s like getting random teams of pokemon or decks of yugioh cards to play with, each with their own advantages and drawbacks, representing the neurodivergences I can be. I can be more autistic one day, more ADHD the next, more of both the next, and some days be neurodivergences that don’t even have names yet!
I want to embrace these labels so I can connect on others here who have similar experiences, and also want to use them in a flexible way that reflects this way I am. I’m neurofluid, and right now I’m a sleepy autistic ADHD girl.
Needfuldoer
Becky will put on her Wacky Becky mask so she doesn’t have to show how badly she’s hurting.
Yumi
Ross and Blaine sucked– a lot– but that doesn’t mean Becky and Amber aren’t still grieving. Grief is messy and frustrating.
Thag Simmons
Well, Becky is grieving, at least. I think Amber’s probably feeling bad for other reasons.
Sirksome
I’d believe that if they didn’t have a strip together talking about how they didn’t care about essentially this exact thing. People treating them with unnecessary care out of social expectation for grief they didn’t feel for their fathers. They both knew their dads were assholes and even if they were mourning didn’t need or want the soft treatment.
Yumi
Which strip are you thinking of for that? That’s not quite my interpretation of any of the ones that I’m seeing.
Also, this is different than what you said in your original comment and what I responded to, so…
Sirksome
It’s like 3 strips or more right around the time news of Blaine getting cop killed but maybe I misinterpreted your comment in the first place. I at least took the strips as them agreeing that people trying to make sympathetic gestures for them was white noise cause they’re gonna just grieve in their own way.
My main point being not that Amber and Becky don’t care about their dads but that they wouldn’t want be people acting differently because of it. I didn’t articulate that well with my first comment mostly for the sake of brevity. Maybe I;lol do better next time getting my thought out.
Needfuldoer
Found it! This one and the two that follow:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/04-is-a-song-forever/rentacop/
Thag Simmons
I think this one? Amber hasn’t seemed terribly sad about her dad, the kidnapping and Mike’s death are probably what’s weighing on her mind
Yumi
I do agree that there’s a good possibility that this costume wouldn’t trigger Becky and Amber over the deaths of their fathers and that, if it did, it could be forgiven. Just the idea of “no one is caring about” them may not be true.
Needfuldoer
They probably wouldn’t be, but they could be. It’s not worth taking that chance.
Yumi
Exactly.
Regalli
That strip was more ‘You’re totally allowed not to feel sad, but feelings are messy and can change because this situation sucks. They might not, but if they do, you’re allowed to feel sad while also feeling relieved and angry at him for sucking so much, let them be messy.’ (And honestly given the timing, I think it was as much Becky talking from the experience of her mom’s death. She didn’t have time to really process Ross, and while she loved Bonnie I could see there being some bitterness that Bonnie attempted suicide and Becky found her unconscious and she died in the hospital, probably over a long enough time the initial shock had worn off. Not a pleasant experience.)
And regardless I think EVERYONE’S reaction to Mike, Becky and Amber especially, WOULD make it a bit more raw than usual, especially since he died in the last week and a half. Since Mike’s death is wrapped up in Blaine and Ross and the kidnapping trauma, I can see it bringing out the more complicated parts of Becky and Amber’s feelings about their terrible kidnapping dads who killed him. (Technically I think Ross was only an accomplice. Also technically, Mike threw himself off to take Blaine down. They still went up that fire escape trying to kill two kids.)