Of course she would read that trash. There’s better BL in webtoon than whatever Amber writes, and I am a straight man.
lsdf
She even called it literature in fancy lettering.
Axel
wait have we been able to read any of her writing? I mean I’m not really defending a straight girl’s writing of m/m stuff but assuming we haven’t seen a sample, don’t discount fanfiction writers just because it’s fanfic.
King Daniel
It included a scene where a guy “unfurled” his “massive sirloin”, his partner knowing that it would “soon be well-done”.
Andy
That sounds rather more painful than sexy. Not kinkshaming, but I think I’d rather keep the triple-digit temperatures away from my sensitive bits.
I was willfully unclear on what “coming” meant, 1st semester freshman year. (As in I didn’t know the slang word.)
I’d read The Vagina Monologues, and could tell that coming was a big deal? but I was still mildly confused where all these ladies were going.
Jennifer Billingsworth I believe … Billy for short, at least she used to be called that by her friends.
Sirksome
I know Jennifer’s her first name but how do we in the comments refer to her now. “Billie” as the tags say or “Jennifer” as she wants? I mean I’m gonna say “Jennifer” but the tags at least imply that’s not gonna last or is it just a convenience thing cause she’s been “Billie” for ten years. What do I do?!?!
clif
Discover the joy of pronouns.
clif
It’s a bit of a stretch, but based on her pleased expression in panel 2, I float the theory that Asher is her therapist.
Poskie
Her therapist, or her “therapist”? Cause one’s a gross ethics violation, and the other’s just…. gross.
Demoted Oblivious
‘I’ll take “the rapists” for 500 Alex’.
Needfuldoer
The day ish mine!
ziggy78eog
Naw, she is in legit therapy, she told Ruth as such, back in August, this year. So, even if Asher was an Undergrad in Psychiatry/Psychology, there is no way he would be given patients, for treatment.
aelfwine
She’s a fictional character. You won’t be hurting the feelings of any real person if you call her by a different name. Call her whatever pleases you.
Sirksome
While I’m like 90% sure I wouldn’t get called out for still referring to Jennifer as Billie and I’m sure some people still will I do also know a lot of commenters come from backgrounds where consistently misnaming someone when they’ve expressed a preferred name is triggering. Especially just coming off a chapter where the first thing the new non binary character noted was their last roommates inability to respect their name choice. So it’s good to at least have some clarity on this.
Axel
I can’t upvote you (sirksome) so I’m doing this
RowenMorland
I don’t think we have any other Jennifers in the comic do we? So people will probably know who you mean if you use either.
Jhon
Jennie Bloodrose.
Crimsonstorm
This is half of it! The other half is that… There’s degrees on the morality of “call people what they want”? Like, using an old nickname for someone will *probably* bother them less than dead naming a trans person would. So, like, even though I’d be sus of someone who consistently called Jocelyne “Joshua” in the comments, someone calling Jennifer “Billie” probably is a lot less malicious.
Demoted Oblivious
Exactly. One the one hand, there’s the respecting a persons identity and how they want to be refered to, but also, there’s the history of a name being something that a person *earns*. In Ms. Billingsworth’s case, an aspect of her rebranding herself may be associated with distancing herself from her past behaviour and DUI. However, the people she met at IU and Walky were not part of the scene that she perpetrated her crime in, so why she’s distancing herself from them is less clear.
There may be a cultural element at play here (in our discussion), as in the west we typically value individual identity over family identity, whereas there exists a more traditionally eastern emphasis on family identity (to the point that family names are spoken before personal). Where and how one identity supercedes the other and the responsibilities that interplay between them is worth consideration, as well as the desire of people to distance themselves from their own pasts.
Jennifer being a fictional character and using her preferred name is also is a very safe way to practice being mindful about using people’s preferred names in general. For those who don’t have many out trans friends or fam in their life it can be a very easy mistake to make consistently (using their dead name, even with the best of intentions) so I’d suggest taking that opportunity to normalize thinking that way.
Needfuldoer
See also, Jocelyne. (Yeah, Carla and Booster too, but Jocelyne’s unique in that we know her deadname.)
Z
Jocelyne is also unique in that she isn’t out much so most of the characters who know her are likely to unknowingly dead name her. (Nb I’m not a patreon so I haven’t seen any of her bonus comics this is based on in comic stuff)
EnerPrime
I mean, if it helps I’m like 90% certain she’ll have a story arc where whatever distance has developed between her and Walky and the rest of her friends gets bridged and she started accepting the nickname ‘Billie’ again.
Not the first time Willis has retroactively changed all tags. Example: Jocelyne J. Brown
Bicycle Bill
And for whatever it’s worth, Willis is still maintaining the jocelynejbrown.com website as a reflector to the actual Dumbing of Age page.
He Who Abides
I’m still not a fan of that tag change. DoA was my introduction to these characters (and I had a late start to it, compared to some other commenters), and I would’ve been surprises by Jocelyne’s reveal had it not been spoiled in her first appearance.
I get WHY DYW did it, but I still reserve my right to saltiness.
K^2
That is impressive. I hope that wasn’t done by hand. 0_0
ktbear
I kinda hope it WAS all done by hand. If Willis is gonna do this to me I hope he has to suffer too.
Geneseepaws
Amen! And amen.
Just for the record, I’m appalled. There’s real character growth, and then there’s yanking my chain. To what purpose? To show that she wasn’t Billie all along? To erase her past? To show he made a mistake? To confuse who she is, or confuse where she’s going? Was he naming her Billie to needle someone they know and got called out? This Makes NO sense to me.
And doesn’t have to, it’s their (The Willis’) show.
thejeff
Perhaps it will become clear as we see more of Jennifer? That it’s not all spelled out in the first strip where the change is referenced isn’t a bad thing.
Jhon
Remember he’s had a buffer’s worth of time to prepare for this.
Sirksome
Just gotta say early DoA is crazy to read now. Everyone looks so short. It’s like they all grew at least a foot in height over the semester!
Needfuldoer
It’s the head-to-body proportions gradually shifting from “cartoony” to “more realistic but still cartoon-ish” doing that.
Reltzik
Oh, wow. It’s like someone armed with a spray paint can went back and painted a new name all over the existing one wherever it was.
So, Billie hasn’t regressed…. Billie actually DID get better.
So that means two things…..
1) Ruth actually DID “lose” her (and if Rachel did have anything to do with it, her shoving it in Ruth’s face is uber-evil)
2) Billie isn’t with Asher because he’s a bad boy. It’s cause she actually thinks he’s good. Which is super concerning and not at all an arc later on.
As far as most the cast knows, he turned over a new leaf. None of them know what he did with the mob.
My spicy theory/take is that he called the hit on Blaine after he found out Blaine had lied to him, and that he did it specifically to help the cast members, and to try to make up for the role he played in the first place. The morality is obviously…questionable, but I think his intentions were good. And…Amber and AG thought they were going to have to kill him before it would ever stop, and historical evidence (Ross getting out of prison and showing right back up again, WITH Blaine) wasn’t exactly encouraging.
thejeff
The other reason to kill Blaine of course is that Blaine was blackmailing him. With a good excuse to kill Blaine without giving him a chance to talk to Gramps, there’s no longer a threat of him spilling the bean about Asher stealing from the mob.
Axel
I’m still not totally convinced he called the hit (or at least, knew for sure it would be a murder). Maybe he contacted some goon directly for it, but I kind of assumed he told his gramps some stooge was blackmailing him (reporting Blaine before Blaine reports him also seems like a good way to make it look like Blaine is trying to get himself out of trouble by accusing Asher), maybe with an update on what ended up happening with the blackmail.
He’d know there was a good chance it would end in murder, of course, but they could have just beat the shit outta him and told him to stay away from the boss’ family
thejeff
Unlikely he even hinted at the blackmail, but just reported that Blaine was using family resources in an unauthorized high-profile crime and needed to be shut up before he got questioned by the cops.
I doubt he called the hit directly himself, but it may well have gone through him, since someone reported to him when it was done.
Wait hold up. I thought Billie’s whole deal was that she felt like she was being left behind/couldn’t keep up with Ruth’s recovery and struggles to be better. And now we’re finding out she willingly got therapy? Why the hell did she and Ruth split?
(of course there’s also the possibility of it just having been brought up that staying in a relationship with someone you at one time had a suicide pact with might not be the healthiest thing)
Is Asher a sociopath? He’s done shitty things, but he doesn’t seem to be incapable of empathy or remorse. Actually a pretty consistent character trait of his in the few appearances he’s made has been guilt for previous actions.
The truth is that there’s just not enough information yet. This is why a lot of people are frustrated by the time skip cause we did in fact miss out on pretty significant moments. The breakup probably being the biggest aside from Mike’s death. We don’t even know what Jennifer really means by “therapy” yet. We would like to assume professional help but “therapy” could mean anything without context.
What I do know is that I don’t trust Asher. That is all.
Bryy
What we know about Asher is troubling. He’s at minimum an accomplice to both kidnapping and murder, and at maximum, he’s an accomplice to kidnapping and a murder as well as guilty of first degree murder.
C.T Phipps
But the murder victim is Blaine so that is +200 points to the Good Place.
Bryy
I SENSE CONFLICT.
asmodai
I have to disagree here… though I can understand the argument that ridding the world of evil people may be okay, this murder was done for the wrong reason (the guy was a liability), and the general improvement his dead may bring is only a byproduct.
The result may be the same, but I strongly believe that the motive matters when counting points.
BBCC
Well, Asher’s motive wasn’t him being a liability, it was to keep him from being able to blackmail Asher because seriously, Asher will DIE if it gets out he stole that money from the mob.
265 thoughts on “Sound like”
Ana Chronistic
I’m a little surprised Joyce knows that bodily function in the first place
and still won’t say what it is
“you still say 45 instead of Tr–” THAT’S DIFFERENT it’s like invoking Voldemort
lsdf
There’s no way she didn’t at least learn that when she read Batman v. Superman, Dawn of Buttstuff.
jeffepp
She’s been reading Amber’s fanfics. She knows. Infact, it’s a quote.
abysswatcher1993
Of course she would read that trash. There’s better BL in webtoon than whatever Amber writes, and I am a straight man.
lsdf
She even called it literature in fancy lettering.
Axel
wait have we been able to read any of her writing? I mean I’m not really defending a straight girl’s writing of m/m stuff but assuming we haven’t seen a sample, don’t discount fanfiction writers just because it’s fanfic.
King Daniel
It included a scene where a guy “unfurled” his “massive sirloin”, his partner knowing that it would “soon be well-done”.
Andy
That sounds rather more painful than sexy. Not kinkshaming, but I think I’d rather keep the triple-digit temperatures away from my sensitive bits.
clif
You don’t like your metaphors well done?
Opus the Poet
I have been calling him Agent Orange since shortly after the inaugural. Based on how everything he touches dies, and his bad make-up job.
jy3
Larfleeze is actually competent and has more depth, though.
thumb
Not the original Agent Orange.
Sunny
Oh now I get it! I was wondering what 45 might mean and if triangles were somehow bad.
Ana Chronistic
I have a buddy who summons up new names each time: Dolt 45, Hair Furor, Cheeto Hitler, Orange ShartStain…
Wizard
Commander in Cheeto.
Doctor_Who
So, which was your favorite Willis comic, “It’s Fuckdamn” or “Shitpacked”?
Leorale
I was willfully unclear on what “coming” meant, 1st semester freshman year. (As in I didn’t know the slang word.)
I’d read The Vagina Monologues, and could tell that coming was a big deal? but I was still mildly confused where all these ladies were going.
Leorale
Whoops, wasn’t meant as a reply. Here, have some self-repressed-kid memories!
Doctor_Who
Much obliged, I collect those.
Sirksome
Jennifer? Therapy? I’m confused.
Sirksome
Also she’s still Billie in the tags so now I’m VERY confused!
Dunedon
Jennifer Billingsworth I believe … Billy for short, at least she used to be called that by her friends.
Sirksome
I know Jennifer’s her first name but how do we in the comments refer to her now. “Billie” as the tags say or “Jennifer” as she wants? I mean I’m gonna say “Jennifer” but the tags at least imply that’s not gonna last or is it just a convenience thing cause she’s been “Billie” for ten years. What do I do?!?!
clif
Discover the joy of pronouns.
clif
It’s a bit of a stretch, but based on her pleased expression in panel 2, I float the theory that Asher is her therapist.
Poskie
Her therapist, or her “therapist”? Cause one’s a gross ethics violation, and the other’s just…. gross.
Demoted Oblivious
‘I’ll take “the rapists” for 500 Alex’.
Needfuldoer
The day ish mine!
ziggy78eog
Naw, she is in legit therapy, she told Ruth as such, back in August, this year. So, even if Asher was an Undergrad in Psychiatry/Psychology, there is no way he would be given patients, for treatment.
aelfwine
She’s a fictional character. You won’t be hurting the feelings of any real person if you call her by a different name. Call her whatever pleases you.
Sirksome
While I’m like 90% sure I wouldn’t get called out for still referring to Jennifer as Billie and I’m sure some people still will I do also know a lot of commenters come from backgrounds where consistently misnaming someone when they’ve expressed a preferred name is triggering. Especially just coming off a chapter where the first thing the new non binary character noted was their last roommates inability to respect their name choice. So it’s good to at least have some clarity on this.
Axel
I can’t upvote you (sirksome) so I’m doing this
RowenMorland
I don’t think we have any other Jennifers in the comic do we? So people will probably know who you mean if you use either.
Jhon
Jennie Bloodrose.
Crimsonstorm
This is half of it! The other half is that… There’s degrees on the morality of “call people what they want”? Like, using an old nickname for someone will *probably* bother them less than dead naming a trans person would. So, like, even though I’d be sus of someone who consistently called Jocelyne “Joshua” in the comments, someone calling Jennifer “Billie” probably is a lot less malicious.
Demoted Oblivious
Exactly. One the one hand, there’s the respecting a persons identity and how they want to be refered to, but also, there’s the history of a name being something that a person *earns*. In Ms. Billingsworth’s case, an aspect of her rebranding herself may be associated with distancing herself from her past behaviour and DUI. However, the people she met at IU and Walky were not part of the scene that she perpetrated her crime in, so why she’s distancing herself from them is less clear.
There may be a cultural element at play here (in our discussion), as in the west we typically value individual identity over family identity, whereas there exists a more traditionally eastern emphasis on family identity (to the point that family names are spoken before personal). Where and how one identity supercedes the other and the responsibilities that interplay between them is worth consideration, as well as the desire of people to distance themselves from their own pasts.
A. Gorilla
Jennifer being a fictional character and using her preferred name is also is a very safe way to practice being mindful about using people’s preferred names in general. For those who don’t have many out trans friends or fam in their life it can be a very easy mistake to make consistently (using their dead name, even with the best of intentions) so I’d suggest taking that opportunity to normalize thinking that way.
Needfuldoer
See also, Jocelyne. (Yeah, Carla and Booster too, but Jocelyne’s unique in that we know her deadname.)
Z
Jocelyne is also unique in that she isn’t out much so most of the characters who know her are likely to unknowingly dead name her. (Nb I’m not a patreon so I haven’t seen any of her bonus comics this is based on in comic stuff)
EnerPrime
I mean, if it helps I’m like 90% certain she’ll have a story arc where whatever distance has developed between her and Walky and the rest of her friends gets bridged and she started accepting the nickname ‘Billie’ again.
Jamie
The tags have apparently changed since your comment.
Sirksome
So they have and now I seem like a lunatic for even noting it. Darn.
clif
Wow! They’ve been changed all the way back to the beginning. For ecample, Jen is thrown for a loop back in https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/pun/
Bicycle Bill
Not the first time Willis has retroactively changed all tags. Example: Jocelyne J. Brown
Bicycle Bill
And for whatever it’s worth, Willis is still maintaining the jocelynejbrown.com website as a reflector to the actual Dumbing of Age page.
He Who Abides
I’m still not a fan of that tag change. DoA was my introduction to these characters (and I had a late start to it, compared to some other commenters), and I would’ve been surprises by Jocelyne’s reveal had it not been spoiled in her first appearance.
I get WHY DYW did it, but I still reserve my right to saltiness.
K^2
That is impressive. I hope that wasn’t done by hand. 0_0
ktbear
I kinda hope it WAS all done by hand. If Willis is gonna do this to me I hope he has to suffer too.
Geneseepaws
Amen! And amen.
Just for the record, I’m appalled. There’s real character growth, and then there’s yanking my chain. To what purpose? To show that she wasn’t Billie all along? To erase her past? To show he made a mistake? To confuse who she is, or confuse where she’s going? Was he naming her Billie to needle someone they know and got called out? This Makes NO sense to me.
And doesn’t have to, it’s their (The Willis’) show.
thejeff
Perhaps it will become clear as we see more of Jennifer? That it’s not all spelled out in the first strip where the change is referenced isn’t a bad thing.
Jhon
Remember he’s had a buffer’s worth of time to prepare for this.
Sirksome
Just gotta say early DoA is crazy to read now. Everyone looks so short. It’s like they all grew at least a foot in height over the semester!
Needfuldoer
It’s the head-to-body proportions gradually shifting from “cartoony” to “more realistic but still cartoon-ish” doing that.
Reltzik
Oh, wow. It’s like someone armed with a spray paint can went back and painted a new name all over the existing one wherever it was.
…. yup, the archives have been tagged.
Claire
Not anymore! Tag says Jennifer now 🙁
Claire
omg all Billies are Jennifers now in the entire archive…
Bryy
So, my theory just got thrown for a loop.
So, Billie hasn’t regressed…. Billie actually DID get better.
So that means two things…..
1) Ruth actually DID “lose” her (and if Rachel did have anything to do with it, her shoving it in Ruth’s face is uber-evil)
2) Billie isn’t with Asher because he’s a bad boy. It’s cause she actually thinks he’s good. Which is super concerning and not at all an arc later on.
Axel
The therapy is a good sign, but otherwise I wouldn’t take her saying/thinking she’s better for her actually getting better.
KJ
As far as most the cast knows, he turned over a new leaf. None of them know what he did with the mob.
My spicy theory/take is that he called the hit on Blaine after he found out Blaine had lied to him, and that he did it specifically to help the cast members, and to try to make up for the role he played in the first place. The morality is obviously…questionable, but I think his intentions were good. And…Amber and AG thought they were going to have to kill him before it would ever stop, and historical evidence (Ross getting out of prison and showing right back up again, WITH Blaine) wasn’t exactly encouraging.
thejeff
The other reason to kill Blaine of course is that Blaine was blackmailing him. With a good excuse to kill Blaine without giving him a chance to talk to Gramps, there’s no longer a threat of him spilling the bean about Asher stealing from the mob.
Axel
I’m still not totally convinced he called the hit (or at least, knew for sure it would be a murder). Maybe he contacted some goon directly for it, but I kind of assumed he told his gramps some stooge was blackmailing him (reporting Blaine before Blaine reports him also seems like a good way to make it look like Blaine is trying to get himself out of trouble by accusing Asher), maybe with an update on what ended up happening with the blackmail.
He’d know there was a good chance it would end in murder, of course, but they could have just beat the shit outta him and told him to stay away from the boss’ family
thejeff
Unlikely he even hinted at the blackmail, but just reported that Blaine was using family resources in an unauthorized high-profile crime and needed to be shut up before he got questioned by the cops.
I doubt he called the hit directly himself, but it may well have gone through him, since someone reported to him when it was done.
C.T Phipps
There is a non-0 chance that Billie’s therapist said that Ruth was a toxic influence and to dump her fast.
Because adults are useless.
Needfuldoer
What if she and Ruth just didn’t have anything in common besides alcoholism and depression?
FacelessDeviant
Therapy with Dr Jack Daniels?
Mae
Wait hold up. I thought Billie’s whole deal was that she felt like she was being left behind/couldn’t keep up with Ruth’s recovery and struggles to be better. And now we’re finding out she willingly got therapy? Why the hell did she and Ruth split?
(of course there’s also the possibility of it just having been brought up that staying in a relationship with someone you at one time had a suicide pact with might not be the healthiest thing)
abysswatcher1993
Now I am realizing that maybe things weren’t so black and white in thsi break up.
Still, Billie dating a sociopath like Asher is a bad idea even if she is at a better mental state.
UnfrozenNeanderthal
Is Asher a sociopath? He’s done shitty things, but he doesn’t seem to be incapable of empathy or remorse. Actually a pretty consistent character trait of his in the few appearances he’s made has been guilt for previous actions.
Sirksome
The truth is that there’s just not enough information yet. This is why a lot of people are frustrated by the time skip cause we did in fact miss out on pretty significant moments. The breakup probably being the biggest aside from Mike’s death. We don’t even know what Jennifer really means by “therapy” yet. We would like to assume professional help but “therapy” could mean anything without context.
What I do know is that I don’t trust Asher. That is all.
Bryy
What we know about Asher is troubling. He’s at minimum an accomplice to both kidnapping and murder, and at maximum, he’s an accomplice to kidnapping and a murder as well as guilty of first degree murder.
C.T Phipps
But the murder victim is Blaine so that is +200 points to the Good Place.
Bryy
I SENSE CONFLICT.
asmodai
I have to disagree here… though I can understand the argument that ridding the world of evil people may be okay, this murder was done for the wrong reason (the guy was a liability), and the general improvement his dead may bring is only a byproduct.
The result may be the same, but I strongly believe that the motive matters when counting points.
BBCC
Well, Asher’s motive wasn’t him being a liability, it was to keep him from being able to blackmail Asher because seriously, Asher will DIE if it gets out he stole that money from the mob.