156

Better’ve
Posted on February 25, 2021 by David M Willis
The first Patreon bonus strip for February is live, and it's about... Spaceforce Captain Julia Gray! All patrons can go check out the bonus strip at the Dumbing of Age Patreon. And remember, you can always read tomorrow's strip today if you pledge up!

156 thoughts on “Better’ve”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    and… there… we… go

    wait, that’s not Star Wars

    1. Steamweed

      Explosion in 3…2…

      *waits. waits some more. pushes the button again.

      1. Wizard

        Stay on target…

        1. King Daniel

          Loosen up!

        2. Paul Grant

          The obligatory “I’ve gotta real bad feeling about this”

        3. Noirceuil

          the possibility of successfully navigating an emotional asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1

    2. foamy

      After all this Leslie hype I’m starting to wonder if the prof here has changed too.

      1. Thag Simmons

        Since Leslie seemingly confirmed that she’d be teaching this class in the last storyline, kinda doubt it

      2. RassilonTDavros

        Unless something’s changed since yesterday (DoA time, not our time), she’s still teaching it.

        1. Agemegos

          Yeah. “Unless”.

      3. Needfuldoer

        If Rondeau from Sinfonie de Fanfares starts playing, we’ll know she isn’t.

        1. milu

          The IU board was made aware of Robin DeSanto’s naming as Greatest Teacher in a poll widely regarded as fair and definitive* (*according to to a source from the PoliSci department) and immediately asked her to teach all the classes.

    3. AbacusWizard

      “I have a bad feeling about this.” There ya go.

      1. Rheinman

        That is a line that is appropriate in all situations.

    4. Varangian

      Not to worry, we are still flying half a ship!

      1. Ascension

        That… that is perfect. Thank you.

        1. Ascension

          And the grav makes it better!

        2. Varangian

          Thank you, thank you. 😀

          And yeah, Malaya is normally just an okay grav, as far as I’m concerned, but today they’re GOLD

        3. Regalli

          Extremely lucky for these circumstances.

    5. Ray Radlein

      “I love you”

      “I know”

    6. Deanatay

      C’mon, that’s uncharitable.

      She’s also a huge fan of BTTF and BSG.

  2. RassilonTDavros

    I knew it!

    1. RassilonTDavros

      There was no way in hell Willis was going to write Ruth/Jennifer interactions out of the comic completely, and I had my suspicions that we’d be getting them in class together somehow. I thought that them sharing the very first class Ruth was mentioned to be in seemed a little too obvious… but sometimes things are obvious for a reason!

      1. Lingo

        Plus Becky, who’s had a fair bit of interaction with Jennifer (feels so weird not to call her Billie) and put her on a pedestal as a LBGTQ role model, PLUS Jennifer has some strange notions about women and bisexuality and so she really needs this class … all the signs were there, really.

        1. RassilonTDavros

          “Feels so weird not to call her Billie”

          Same here, but I have a guess as to why she started going by her first name, and keeping that guess in mind helps make it easier. Granted, it also probably helps that I only discovered this strip a few months ago, went through it in a month or so, and didn’t spend a full ten years calling her Billie before the switch— let alone twenty-two.

        2. Needfuldoer

          My theory is that it’s part of her current personality reboot attempt. See also her move to Forest Quad.

        3. Regalli

          And college in general. And what we know of her in high school.

      2. Devin

        Well…how many classes has Willis yet shown Ruth in? Or even talked about? There hasn’t been a reason before now. I’m not saying Willis is a perfect machine who never does anything without reason, but not everything has to have misdirection, we don’t always have to be thrown off the scent of figuring out something significant may be about to happen. And considering how slowly time moves in this comic, I expect any class Ruth is shown to be in would have to serve some kind of purpose.

        1. BarerMender

          We’ve seen Ruth in class once. Semiotics, or some damned thing. She’s an English major.

        2. Deanatay

          English?? But isn’t she Canadian?

          (Pls don’t assault me with criticisms, it was a joke)

        3. Spencer

          It’s perfect. She already knows how to write the words that Americans took the ‘u’ out of.

        4. milu

          pls like any regional spelling of english is more sensible than any other.

          …Jamaican, maybe.

        5. RassilonTDavros

          I believe this this the only other one.

      3. RowenMorland

        How long in IRL time until Ruth would have a second class scene though?

  3. Thag Simmons

    oh dear, this might be rough

  4. Octopus Ink

    “Hey, why does this Fourth Wall have all these fine, hairline cracks in it?!”

    1. Bicycle Bill

      They just don’t make fourth walls like they used to.

      1. RassilonTDavros

        The Fourth Wall is cracking because it wasn’t built to support the weight of a spaceship being parked Atop it.

  5. Doctor_Who

    Leslie’s so looking forward to a drama-free class this semester, since Roz is gone.

    Out of the frying pan…

    1. BBCC

      Depends if Leslie teaches more than one class. Roz is a gender studies major after all.

    2. RowenMorland

      Is it possible that Roz would have to repeat the class?

  6. Proto_Eevee

    What’s better than star wars references? Randomly appearing ex girlfriends!

    1. Thag Simmons

      It’s just the one ex-girlfriend actually.

      Unless it turns out Alice is also in this class.

      1. BarerMender

        Or Rachel Jackson, who is, in my head canon, an ex-girlfriend.

        1. RassilonTDavros

          That would explain a lot about their interactions, honestly. We know that Ruth didn’t remember her freshman year (going by my own experiences, it’s probably less “lost her memories” and more “her brain never formed the memories”) and genuinely seemed to have no idea what she did to Rachel that was so awful.

          I’m betting Rachel told her what happened at some point. If Ruth learned that she had been an abusive girlfriend in the past, she might have been so scared of becoming one again— especially since she knows what it’s like to be abused— that she broke things off with Jennifer. We never saw how the sentence “I DIDN’T ‘LOSE’ BILLIE—” ended; I’m betting the second half was something like “I let her go.”

          and now she’s dating a guy who killed a man to cover up his own involvement in a mass kidnapping. not exactly an upgrade

        2. Spencer

          Eeeeehhhhh I’m against it. Rachel can have a personal reason to hate Ruth, but it should inform her hatred rather than be the cause of it. Making it personal kind of overshadows the fact that Ruth was a horrible abusive asshole and got away with it.

        3. Fuzzy

          I think Ruth said Billie was her first girlfriend at some point, but I don’t remember when/where.

  7. Suet

    eeeyep, Jennifer hasn’t taken this class.

    Oy vey.

    1. Zippotricks McEdgelord

      It adds up.

      This’ll be interesting. Jennifer Billingsworth, who has had romantic entanglements with men and women but claims bisexuality isn’t real, is going to learn about the Kinsey Scale while her ex is in the room.

  8. Nono

    Hmm, I guess Gender Studies is a reasonable course for a journalism major to take.

    1. Sporky

      Yeah, I didn’t think about it, but after seeing her walk in, it’d be kind of weird if she didn’t take this class, wouldn’t it?

    2. BBCC

      It also counts as an English credit. Makes sense for Billie and Ruth (English major) to take.

  9. jmsr7

    wOw. That is a SMALL university, to have people who have a history with each other to randomly cross paths like that.

    Dramatic license i guess.

    1. Thag Simmons

      Eh, shared friends recommending the class, I can see it.

    2. Kernanator

      It’s not that far off from reality. I ran into certain people repeatedly as classmates, even in classes I took for General Education credits.

    3. Keulen

      I somehow managed to have one class with my freshman roommate every semester just by luck. We didn’t even try to coordinate anything.

    4. Alaric

      I grew up in New York City. In a college in Vermont I was attending, I found someone I had gone to high school with, rooming with someone I had gone to school with when I was… 11, I think. The schools I went to in New York were nowhere near each other. These coincidences can happen.

    5. Victor

      Eh, not that unrealistic. I went to a big state u, and in addition to seeing the same people in my major classes, I sometimes had random general requirement classes with people I knew, both from my major and even from high school.

    6. RassilonTDavros

      I once learned that someone I hadn’t seen since elementary school went to my college… by hearing that she’d been killed by her boyfriend. It was both incredibly horrifying because here was a childhood friend dying and incredibly weird because it was someone I hadn’t seen in years and now barely knew. My mind didn’t know how to process it. There were a lot of things my mind wasn’t processing properly at the time.

      I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes real life really is that… random.

  10. Bagge

    Oh no!

    1. Katerly

      My reaction exactly!

    2. Needfuldoer

      [Stephen Colbert wearing 3D glasses and eating popcorn dot gif]

  11. Dave Van Domelen

    Constant Dramatic Blindsidin’ Bombshells. There’s your volume title.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      …You know what? I think you’re right on the money there.

  12. lightsabermario

    “General Kenobi.”

    1. Amias

      Jennifer Kenobi and… I was going to try for another pun, but you could probably still call Ruth “Grievous.”

      1. milu

        “Ruth” is a fairly sith-y-sounding name to begin with

        1. Deanatay

          I would totally fear “Darth Ruthless”.

    2. King Daniel

      Sniped my about to make this comment.

      You are a bold one.

    3. RacingTurtle

      Jen-eral Kenobillie. You are a bold one.

      1. RacingTurtle

        She even has two names

        1. RacingTurtle

          “Jennifer, do you know Billie?”
          “Well of course I know her. She’s me.”

    4. 3oranges

      Genderal Kenobi!

      1. RacingTurtle

        Gonna start telling “only 2 sexes lol” people that only a Sith deals in absolutes

        1. RassilonTDavros

          Ooh, mind if I borrow that one?

        2. RacingTurtle

          Feel free!

        3. ktbear

          Ummm…can I NOT say there are only two sexes and still be a Sith please?

        4. Giguioto

          Only a sith deals in absolute, but that doesn’t mean a sith only deals in absolute…. Well, I hope not

  13. Johan

    Can I read one of those fics was Julia Grey fucks?

    1. StClair

      “Those don’t… those don’t exist. … Okay fine, here.”

      1. Deanatay

        *reads*

        Okay, but why are they rubbing massage wands against their tummies?

    2. Rabid Rabbit

      It would be interesting to compare them to Amber’s early fics.

  14. BBCC

    Ohhhhh YES.

    I want popcorn but all I have are Doritos.

  15. goggleman64

    Aw beans, I was … kind of hoping we’d focus a bit longer on Becky and Ruth bouncing off each-other. They’re both such vibrant, assertive characters and we haven’t had much of a chance to see what they’re like around each-other; I was lookin’ forward to more lines like “Hey, don’t *not* kill Joe on my account”.

    Well, maybe Billie will stonewall Ruth like she has everyone else and I’ll get my wish :Tc

    1. Thag Simmons

      I think our options here are either ‘complete awkward silence’ or ‘violent altercation’

      1. RassilonTDavros

        I vote “violent altercation.”

        1. Council

          Guys, No!

          They get off to that too much! They won’t be able to contain themselves!

        2. RassilonTDavros

          Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design!

    2. Khyrin

      There’s always the chance that Jennifer HIDES IMMEDIATELY to avoid drama.

    3. Giguioto

      We know that yesterday (in comic time) Leslie was at a class that apparently is the same one she is now… (Which sounds weird, I’ve never seen a professor teaching the same class on consecutive days). I REALLY hope that Jennifer tries to give up this class and goes for the other. But this is DoA v:

  16. Proxiehunter

    I have a bad feeling about this.

  17. Stephen Bierce

    *plays “You Dropped The Bomb On Me” on the hacked Muzak*

  18. Sirksome

    It would be more of a blindside if Ethan were also in this class. A blindside for us. I think some peeps actually predicted Jennifer would be in this class.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      I don’t think I made any comments predicting it, but I definitely had a hunch she’d be in this class. Mostly because having her in a class with Ruth seemed the most obvious way to ensure they continued interacting in some form now that they were not only broken up but also in different buildings.

      This is a little earlier than I expected, though.

    2. AbacusWizard

      What would really blindside *everybody* would be if *Mike* was in this class.

      1. King Daniel

        A decaying corpse in the corner of the room would really blindside everybody, yeah.

        1. AbacusWizard

          Not exactly what I meant, but also not wrong.

  19. tim gueguen

    Stars Wars references, you say?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9rTddkgep8

  20. King Daniel

    A surprise, to be sure, but is it a welcome one?

    1. King Daniel

      grav mood

  21. He Who Abides

    I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

    1. King Daniel

      Happy beeps, c’mon

  22. JessWitt

    Oh flip. Next thing you know, Asher is attending the class too.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      This is getting out of hand! Now there are… shit, lost count.

      Mostly because I don’t know what I’m counting. Jennifer love interests? I’ll go with that, because now there are two of them!

      1. Nono

        Jennifer’s only had Ruth and Asher as far as actual love interests.

        1. Rabid Rabbit

          You could make an argument for Alice as well, though in that case Jennifer was the love interest who didn’t realize how strong her fuck interest’s interest was.

        2. thejeff

          Alice showing up would definitely be a twist.

          Or, just to twist the knife, Jennifer swaps sections to the Monday class only to find Alice is in that one.

        3. BarerMender

          And Alice.

      2. milu

        how many love interests?! Too many to count. “Two” you say, and I say tsh now you’re making up fake words for “a whole honkin bunch”.

      3. Spencer

        And Walky in that one Yotomoe fan art.

  23. drs

    I sense a disturbance in the farce.

    “I still love you, Billie.”
    “I know.”

    “Drink or drink not. There is no try.”

    “Love leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to fucking.”

    1. Lanie

      “The belonging you seek is not behind you….ah shit, it is.”

      1. milu

        “I am your father, in a queer reconstrual of oedipal narratives”

  24. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

    Yep, Jennifer sure acts dramatic and is a bombshell (smoking hot). Math checks out.

    (I’m trying to make funny puns. Am I doing this right?)

    1. Nayann Martinelli

      *Offers high-five*

    2. bhtooefr

      But this is gender studies, not a math class. ?

      1. Council

        XKCD has taught us: Going back far enough, everything is just applied math.

    3. milu

      “And blindsiding? I guess she is standing close enough that she is blocking my peripheral vision somewhat”

  25. misanthropope

    DAMN it, Willis.

  26. Lingo

    Hahahahahaaaaa I knew it

  27. AbacusWizard

    oooooh good timing Becky

  28. RacingTurtle

    Look at that sparkle in her eyes. Becky has become a drama llama

  29. Josh Spicer

    *sighs*

    Fuck.

  30. Varangian

    OOF INCOMING

    BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES, LADS

  31. brionl

    DrrrAAAAAAmmmmaaaa!!!

  32. NinjaNick

    And drama tag pulls.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Begun, this ship war has.

  33. Nayann Martinelli

    This is not gonna go the way you think, Becky.

    1. King Daniel

      It’s time for the Cheddar to end.

      1. RassilonTDavros

        A few people were predicting that Rose would be in this class, come to think of it.

  34. 0kami

    Hooo boy, here we go…

  35. Doom Shepherd

    “Well have you noticed the shields are still up?!?”

  36. Keulen

    “I sense something, a presence I’ve not felt since…”

  37. Eldritchy

    And Becky didn’t even get to take out her bucket of popcorn yet.

  38. Needfuldoer

    And Becky further demonstrates her genre savvy.

    I bet we find out why Ruth and Jennifer split up via an escalating argument that Leslie is powerless to restrain.

  39. C.T Phipps

    I actually do hope the twist is Billie is just trying to avoid drama in her life. It’d be an interesting rebuttal to the fact that they previously were all about their lesbian suicide pact while now she just wants to live a happy safe life.

    It would add an interesting layer of ambiguity to it (until Billie found out her current LI was a mobster).

  40. hof1991

    May Leslie can talk about stepping away from toxic relationships. Power dynamics. Handling new feelings. Co-dependency.

    1. milu

      As the first lesson of a Gender Studies 101? that would be super weird.

    2. RassilonTDavros

      Here’s hoping!

  41. Rabisch

    Dunno about Ruth. But us readers will really enjoy this class.

  42. Varangian

    “I’ve been waiting for you, Jennifer. We meet again, at last. When you left me I was but the medicated lesbian mess, now I am the mistress.”
    “Only a mistress of evil, Ruth.”

  43. Sombrero

    -Billie, I find your lack of faith disturbing
    -In fact, I’m Jennifer
    -And I am… your father!
    -Do you even know what a Star Wars reference is?
    -Nope, I’m currently blindsided

    1. milu

      i dig the idea that Ruth is so dramatically blindsided that all she can think to do is throw random Star Wars lines, because that’s the last thing that got mentioned before the bombshell hit and so her brain sort of stayed frozen on that thought

      1. Sombrero

        “I am Ruth… Ruth Skywalker”

  44. Jim

    So, apparently all strips that had previously been tagged “billie” have been retroactively tagged “jennifer”. I’m sure most here are already aware of this, but it came as a bit of a shock to me…

    1. milu

      STALINISM

      1. Sombrero

        Do you mean STAGINISM?

    2. RassilonTDavros

      I mean, it makes sense to keep the tags consistent for all of a character’s appearances, and since she clearly doesn’t want to be called “Billie” anymore it’d be kind of weird for the tags to go on doing that.

  45. Joya

    The loud ass “OH.” I just said

  46. AbelUndercity

    Hoo boy. And right on cue.

  47. Sombrero

    Somehow it took me several hours to realize that Becky is unaware of Jennifer’s presence and she’s talking about last term’s bombshells.

  48. Juanoku

    Ladies and gentlemen, here we go

    If these two don’t get back together i will not be responsible for the acts i may commit

  49. Reltzik

    … okay, so Leslie’s teaching job is now officially identical to that of a poorly-paid tabloid talk show host.

    1. Needfuldoer

      I’m sure Jerry Springer is paid plenty.

  50. Nevermaker

    Uh-oh Spaghetti-O’s.

  51. Byron Orpheus

    Hey, come to think of it, how does Becky know about Star Wars? Correct me if I’m wrong, but that would have been verboten in Becky’s family. That means that she would have learned of it after leaving home, either from Leslie or Dina. Becky hasn’t kept anything to herself since she left home, so she would have run to Joyce instantly to tell her about this amazing thing she discovered.

    If Becky was going to sit Joyce down and make her watch 18 hours of Star Wars (23 if she includes Solo and Rogue One), that would happen in the dorm, so there’s no way that Walky, Ethan, Dina, and a significant portion of the cast wouldn’t crowd in for the show.

    What I’m saying is that considering how slowly time moves in Dumbing of Age, where’s the month-long story arc where the cast watches the Star Wars saga?

    Note: I presume that whoever introduced Becky to Star Wars showed her the films in Machete Order. You can’t let them know about Jar-Jar Binks until they’re hooked.

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