303

Seriously dating
Posted on February 15, 2025 by David M Willis

303 thoughts on “Seriously dating”

  1. mindbleach

    That went better than it might’ve.

    1. mindbleach

      Alice instinctively says “I do not recognize the bodies in the water.”

      1. Jeremiah

        How could you forget them. They were your friends. They been down there so long. Go to them. Go to them.

        1. Casi

          Still can’t believe the Frizz took them on that field trip

        2. Tomixcomics

          me over here not knowing what you’re tlaking about like WTF

        3. Decidedly Orthogonal

          It’s The Magic Schoolbus baby!

          And Ms Billingsworth, as Wayne Campbell would say, “Get the net! Alice ✌️lost✌️ you 8 months ago.”

        4. Kazuma Taichi

          okay, but like, which episode?

        5. Casi

          Look i might lose my clearance for this, but here you go. Warning this is a keter class cognitohazard. And remember, you do not recognize the bodies in the water.

        6. Jeremiah

          Agents has been to your location for termination.

        7. Benjamin Geiger

          2316 is scary, but 2317 is genuinely terrifying. And not because of the supernatural phenomenon involved. No, the terrifying part is the response.

    2. Carl Muckenhoupt

      It’s going a lot better than their last encounter, sure. Alice managed to extract herself without overt hostility this time.

      1. Needfuldoer

        This time she’s just baffled by the info dump.

        1. Thehorsecouncil

          Obligatory acknowledgment of accidentally pressing report button

  2. ZombieKyrik

    Oof, that’s all I can say.

    1. Adept

      She’s very stable

      1. Laura

        Yup. I been very stable too.

        Stable, stable, stable.

        “A very stable genius!” as they say…

        1. Laura

          /sarcasm

        2. elebenty

          pls take this comment in lieu of an upvote

        3. Laura

          Aww! Thanks!

      2. Needfuldoer

        That’s right off the stable floor.

    2. Archieve

      I kept thinking, lead with the good points!

  3. Thag Simmons

    Jennifer you’re giving Daisy a run for her money.

    1. Rose by Any other Name

      I’m glad someone else besides me is currently reading Jen/Bil as putting out disaster lesbian vibes around Alice.

  4. Nono

    My ‘very stable’ shirt answers all the questions about whether or not I’m stable.

    1. PASchaefer

      I’d buy that shirt.

      Heck, maybe I’ll make that shirt.

      1. GholaHalleck

        make the font jittery as all get out and I’ll buy it.

        1. Mark

          Shatter.

        2. Casi

          with intentionally bad kerning

        3. PedanticJerkass

          Like Zalgo font or something.

  5. Charles Phipps

    RUN AFTER HER!

    DONT LET HER ESCAPE!

  6. Dante

    Too late, babe. I’m so sorry

    Her need to make an entire narrative out of her recovery meant leaving the “doing better btw” for the last and I can’t even judge her for it, god knows I’ve fumbled in that same way.

    1. thejeff

      Well, it all sort of flowed reasonably from “why are you in Forrest”, since that brought up Ruth and why she had to move.

  7. Erica

    Alice is so hot

    1. jeffepp

      Yes. Very much yes.

      1. clif

        Can’t see it.

        1. Mark

          Perhaps because I’m standing in the way, gawking.

    2. Nymph

      She really REALLY is

    3. zee

      Yeah. The soft goth look is working for her

  8. Tawnee

    Jennifer is so stable, she doesn’t have two wolves inside her, she has two horses.

    1. Jamie

      Inside you, there are two trains. The one you don’t feed is going off the rails.

      1. Freemage

        Pssh… Billifer’s two trains share the same track, and are headed in opposite directions, head-on.

        1. Michael Steamweed

          Billifer’s answer to the trolley problem is to let the hostages go and set two trolleys going into a head-on collision.

  9. Jeremiah

    “You can tell how stable I am by how loud I am yelling it!”

    1. Michael Steamweed

      A guaranteed sign!

  10. Alongcameaspider

    And Alice continued to live a fulfilling life away from the drama of the main cast, the end

  11. Shitbird

    Yeah, she’s never forgiving you

    1. GholaHalleck

      Do you think Billie realizes she:

      A. heavily implied that Alice had an abortion to their entire senior class.
      B. Accused Alice’s current boyfriend of SA’ing her, and he then telling the entire class Alice forgave him, and had taken him back.
      C. Took off with Alice in a drunken whirlwind escape that led to
      D. Extensive medical and emotional trauma from the escape ending via the power of Lorax.

      Then there’s the whole possibility of Alice and Billie getting together, and then Billie balked because of her inability to handle her bisexuality..

      Or did Alice wash her hands of the whole thing while Billie was recovering in the hospital because of the above happening, and she’s not sexually aroused by self destructive egoists?

      Either way… How did Jennifer think this was going to go?

      1. GholaHalleck

        Also, I am in no way saying having an abortion is an inherently shameful thing, it’s just an incredibly personal thing that I doubt she wanted screamed at her entire class during Prom.

        1. Charles Phipps

          Willis confirmed no one heard the abortion thing.

        2. mindbleach

          A lot of not-inherently-shameful things are not treated as such in high school.

        3. zee

          A lot of non inherently shameful things you just wouldn’t want made public. Especially medical things. Glad she didn’t say it into the mic tho

      2. Thag Simmons

        Alice seems to have liked the prom incident, for what it’s worth

        So it’s really just C, D and E that are the problem.

        1. Jallorn

          Assuming that was an accurate flashback and not Jennifer’s skewed recollection of the events.

        2. Michael Steamweed

          This right here. Alice’s recall is probably different.

        3. thejeff

          It’s strongly implied in their first meeting it wasn’t until after the crash (and especially after Jennifer tried to blow it off as no big deal) that Alice rethought the relationship.

          I don’t see any reason to think that recollection wasn’t accurate. Alice might think differently about it now, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t impressed at the time.

      3. Mark

        Between the instantaneiety of the meeting and a rush of emotion, I don’t think she’s had time to think at all. She’s just responding. System 1 is filling the void with whatever bric-a-brac lies handy while System 2 is spinning up.

      4. Suzi

        None of the rest of that matters.

        Jennifer got drunk and drove them BOTH into a tree. She almost killed Alice. It’s pure luck she didn’t. Alice can forgive but she will never forget that, and it’s fully in her right to just avoid Jennifer, no matter how sober or stable she becomes.

      5. Pylgrim

        We know that Alice was on Billie’s side up until the crash, including the crash. It must have been what happened after. Perhaps when she tested positive after the crash and she figured that the whole thing was the result of being drunk, rather than being brave?

  12. RassilonTDavros

    “No, don’t run away so soon! I haven’t even reached the center of the earth yet!”

    1. Jeremiah

      She will need a bigger shovel.

  13. Dara

    Wow.

    Some real “oof, poor Jennifer” right there.

    I mean she’s still a nightmare drama tornado, but, you know. xD

    1. Sillygoose

      Additional reporting by Billiger, drama tornado, head cheerleader, problem solver, stable genius

  14. Sirksome

    It’s good that Alice doesn’t know Asher and thus has no capacity to trust him.

    1. Adam Black

      Yeah i kind of think its the other way around.

      ( To know ashers past is to know the real him )

      hes charming, disarming and a loose stair

  15. Shakes

    Alice has put high school in a box and buried it.

    1. Masha

      Good for her considering Jennifer almost had her buried

  16. pjeseb

    “And this is why I shouldn’t get my hopes up,” I say, sobbing into my pillow.

    Seriously though, I know Billifer makes it hard to root for her but I keep hoping that something will break through that force field of arrogance and denial that she has built around herself.

    1. Jeremiah

      The longer it is keep up the more cathartic it will be when it finally breaks.

    2. Thag Simmons

      Well, we haven’t seen the last of Alice, so maybe next time?

      1. Sirksome

        Yeah in ten years. Gotta build a new streak.

        1. Thag Simmons

          It’s gonna be like two months at most.

    3. Archieve

      On this case I think while there’s definitely denial, the rest might be a genuine inability to read room. Alice was polite and didn’t immediately run away and Jennifer took as an invitation to share everything.

  17. Dave Van Domelen

    Oog. Getting a vibe of “Alice is back with her high school boyfriend/rapist and doesn’t want Billie to know it” here.

    1. Jeremiah

      I think it is like “Wow I made the right choice getting away from this” and trying to make this interaction as short and undramatic as possible.

      1. Buli-Buli

        Agreed.

        I mean their last conversation ended with Alice telling Jennifer she (thought she) was in love with Jennifer… up until Jennifer drunkenly drove the two of them straight into a tree and then carried on like the crash never happened.

        (And, given what we know of Jennifer’s historical relationship with her own sexuality, she was probably also unintentionally leading Alice on if not outright gaslighting her).

        This conversation opened with Jennifer first being unsure about her own name.
        (Not great evidence for sobriety and/or legitimate activity)
        And then Billie immediately and cheerfully told her she was a member of a “successful” “alcohol-fueled suicide pact death cult”.

        I myself would immediately want to get away from anyone who told me that.

        Alice — when she has time to process this — is going to seriously wonder if the car crash was intentional.

        1. Jerach

          I hadn’t even thought about that angle with the car crash. Even if not directly “intentional” I could see her reading it as “fucking hell when Billie likes somebody she just goes out of her way to hurt them and herself.”

        2. Joy

          Jennifer initially resisted it! It wasn’t until she felt needed that she decided to go for it. …wanting to feel needed is a big thing for Jennifer. Its something she has in common with Dorothy, it just presents differently.

          Also wow Ruth is abusive. It still boggles my mind that I actively rooted for them to be together until about 2 years after they officially broke up. #maturity

        3. Joy

          I don’t think you’re using the term gaslighting correctly.

        4. thejeff

          From what we know about Jennifer’s historical relationship with her own sexuality and from the hints about their relationship, I say any leading on she was doing was indeed unintentional. Jennifer considered herself straight and doesn’t seem to have ever been on a date with a woman, but also freely admits to being attracted to women, “like everyone is”. Walky seems to know of a sexual relationship between her and Alice.

          Most likely this was all open to Alice. Obviously, she would have known about the sex, but she would also have known they weren’t dating and that Jennifer thought of herself as straight and was probably having pretty regular sex with boys, if we take her comments about her taste in parties at all seriously.

          I don’t think Jennifer “led Alice on” in the sense of pretending anything was going to change. If anything, Alice’s own crush led her on.

    2. Thag Simmons

      I really really hope not, but not impossible. Certainly the thing that would twist the knife the most for Jennifer.

      I’m inclined to think she’s just struggling to find the words. Last time she and Jennifer spoke Alice was sobbing as she left, this is an open wound for her too

    3. Rose by Any other Name

      Oh. Oh no. I really hope that isn’t the case.

    4. RassilonTDavros

      Oh God. I really really really hope you’re wrong, but… it’s distressingly plausible. Fuck.

    5. Sam

      Yeah, I’m not. I’m getting the vibe here that Alice is weirded out by Jennifer acting like things are cool between them and is oversharing like they are Besties still.

      When their last interaction was basically ‘hey, yeah, I was cutting you off on purpose, you’re a drama hurricane who crashed us both into a tree and brushed it off as nothing’.

      I too would be freaked out if someone was acting like this when the last time I talked to them, I basically told them how much of a mess they are and how little I want to do with that.

      1. Archieve

        That’s how it looks to me too, for Alice her ex best friend is still doing horrible things (acting like almost getting herself killed is no big deal) while trying to reattach herself to her. From Alices pov it looks like Jennifer is either delusional or a complete wreck.

      2. Adam Black

        I think the answer to this , is that they have interacted since
        and there was a mid backstory ( since the drama hurricanes) that has been deliberately hidden from us

        It wouldnt surprise me if Alice was drunk then.

        and she KNOWS who asher is, and is just passively aggressive lying/ pretending / expecting Billie to understand thats her way to gain social dominance, Giving hints.

        Just like she knew Walkys name and deliberately said the wrong one.

        Of COURSE she knows who Asher is, what Billie said confirms it, shes just being politely antisocial. and when you break that shell alice falls apart.

        1. Jeremiah

          I don’t I ever understand trolls like you, like, just saying obviously dumb or wrong thing to make people mad? How do you get satisfaction from that?

        2. Nymph

          I honestly didn’t even read it as trolling, just “That Adam Black person is paranoid as hell and needs to learn how to read a room” but I’m willing to bet you’re right and it was a bad attempt.

        3. zee

          At this point i just read their comments and think “are you okay? Who hurt you? Did the ex wife take the kids?”

        4. Joy

          It feels like overthinking for sure.

          It didn’t make sense not to live for fun, your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb. ? #heynow #getpaid

        5. Thag Simmons

          And she killed Sparky too!

        6. Taffy

          Not Sparky! 🙁

    6. Sirksome

      I’m sorry but I have to question this. Where is this vibe coming from? I kinda feel like if Alice isn’t willing to reconnect with Jennifer the girl she loved it’s even less likely she’d get back together with Chester the creep. I guess it is technically plausible but it seems like a long shot.

      1. Thag Simmons

        Probably because it’s the most knife twisting outcome for Jen and Alice is thinly characterized enough that you could make it make sense and she’s a minor enough character that things going truly horribly wrong for her is not out of the question.

        I really hope not, and I frankly don’t think it’s likely, but I could see it.

      2. Radiance

        Yeah, I honestly have no idea how you’d get that from this interaction.

        Alice is kind of dissociating throughout this conversation, but that’s more than explained by Jennifer cheerfully dropping the phrase “alcohol-fueled suicide pact cult”.

      3. Laserbeaks Fury

        I think because of how flat her affect is? I dunno, seems like a break that big would have more emotion in some direction, has it even been a year since the crash?

        I thought maybe there was more stuff between Jennifer and Alice in the interim we haven’t seen, but they both pretty much said they hadn’t seen each other since the accident.

        1. Jeremiah

          She already has that big breakdown the last time they talked after the accident (where Billie acted like nothing happened like here), right now she is now just want this I interaction to end.

        2. Thag Simmons

          Alice was able to maintain her composure for a while back during their last encounter too, but she clearly still had a lot of feelings

        3. Archieve

          That’s why Alice is leaving right away this time instead of waiting until she has a breakdown from being near the drama hurricane.

        4. Mark

          It’s been seconds. I think they are both a bit off-balance. Jennifer’s amygdala is purring “friend!” while Alice’s hypothalamus is screaming “flight!”

        5. Joy

          I think you mixed up the brain parts just now

    7. Bryy

      No.

      Jennifer crashed into a tree with her in the car, then acted like it didn’t happen, and then blamed her for not wanting to talk.

      That’s…. really it.

    8. Chrissy

      I think Alice is intentionally gray rocking her to avoid getting sucked down this drama drain.

      “Gray rocking” means making yourself intentionally boring to a narcissist or really dramatic person by giving short, non-informative answers.

      1. Wilde

        this is the answer right here, at least as far as I can see so far. Billy didn’t take the hint the first time, them Alice lost her cool as she tried to get this trauma conductor away from her train. Billy shows up behaving as if that never happened, and Alice realizes gray rock is the only strategy, since explicitly telling her to fork off didn’t work.

        1. Joy

          It worked at the time! It’s just, y’know, been months, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Jennifer worked through that interaction emotionally in therapy and sort of forgot about it since then. (Shaming is a really ineffective way to cause long term changes in behavior.)

    9. zee

      Idk how you got there. Last time Alice saw Billie she told her off for being a drama hurricane for everything she put her through. No shit she wants to get out of there fast

    10. PedanticJerkass

      I get the impression that even if Alice did get back together with the creepo, she wouldn’t give a flying damn either way if Jennifer knew about it or not.

  18. Sirksome

    Look. I’m just gonna say one day Jennifer will prove to you all that she’s not a drama hurricane and a much better person than any of ya’ll give her credit for!……One day…..Eventually.

    1. Jeremiah

      I am sure she will, but that day it’s not today.

      1. Michael Steamweed

        *Jennifer draws steel and charges uruk-hai army

    2. Mark

      I could see her becoming that. I’ve begun to notice that a lot of the characters are growing up before our eyes. At vastly different rates, which is typical of their age.

    3. HueSatLight

      I know there’s the drunk driving and car crash, but this interaction isn’t much different than someone running into “the one that got away” and feeling flustered, and then trying to show they’re not who they were before. Not necessarily even to get together with them, but so they’ll think of them in a better light. And for Alice’s part, someone who’s moved on, and JB is just “someone she used to know”.
      The crash was less than a year ago, so there’s drama from that. But I don’t think her trying to be a better person, and wanting that to be recognized, constitutes a hurricane.

      But I’m not who you were talking about, so [shrug].

  19. Taffy

    Oh, that’s why Billie’s Color™ is yellow.

    1. jeffepp

      That or early onset liver failure.

      1. Joy

        As someone with the same skin tone as Jennifer, that kind of comment usually pisses me off.

    2. RassilonTDavros

      …What am I missing here? I don’t quite get it.

      1. Ray Radlein

        “One of like three other Asian kids at the school”

        1. Taffy

          Absolutely the fuck not.

        2. Chrissy

          Then perhaps clarify, because that’s how I took it as well.

        3. Nymph

          Taffy clarified 4 and a half hours before you commented, it’s not other people’s fault for not anticipating a racist take on an innocuous comment. What else do you want?

        4. Chrissy

          It is incumbent on everyone to make sure they’re not saying stuff that comes across as racist even if they don’t mean it that way. That’s what I want.

          “She makes my face shrivel like I bit a lemon” vs “racism”, which is more common? Racism. Taffy’s explanation is so unrelated it seems like something a racist would say to pretend they weren’t being racist. I am extending them the benefit of the doubt, but this is the world we live in.

          What else do I want? A different world. We aren’t there yet and we are headed in the wrong direction.

        5. Taffy

          Hehe. In”cum”bent.

        6. Nymph

          Oh, I strongly disagree that it’s everyone’s job to constantly police their own language to stop the thoughts of other people. It’s your own job to police your own thoughts to whatever degree you would like.

          I absolutely am not responsible for your racist thoughts and neither is Taffy or anyone else. That’s a wild take.

        7. Joy

          @nymph it came across as a skin tone comment. I didn’t even read it as a racism thing I literally just thought that it was, “Oh right she’s asian.”

        8. Nymph

          Yellow isn’t a skin tone unless you’re jaundiced.

          Lotta people out here trying to make their personal need to unpack knee-jerk racism into other people’s problems.

        9. thejeff

          Yellow isn’t actually a skin tone, but it was a common racist descriptor applied to east Asians.
          And frankly, I was completely mystified as well as to where that came from, so it’s not a big surprise some people leapt to an ugly conclusion.

        10. Nymph

          Dude fuck OFF with this.

      2. Taffy

        Watching her is sometimes like biting into a lemon without removing the rind. My face shrivels inward.

      3. Joy

        Jennifer is half Chinese on her mom’s side, that’s been an established part of her character pretty much this whole time?

        1. Taffy

          Unrelated.

        2. Joy

          …I’m assuming you’re not talking about her skin tone then…?

          Yellow looks cute on her, I don’t think it’s that deep.

    3. Bogeywoman

      Like with the hairtie and stuff? I thought it was cos yellow and navy were the school colours.
      “GO DRAGONS!”

      1. Joy

        Her mom is Chinese?

      2. Joy

        Apparently I misinterpreted the original comment. I think she just wears yellow because she looks nice when she wears yellow. It plays well with her skin and hair colors.

    4. Joy

      ….just say “signature color” instead of color with the TM symbol if you want it to be clear next time.

      1. Taffy

        You’re not my father.

        1. Joy

          Fair enough. Be confusing as you want.

  20. JessWitt

    Man, this is really sad.

  21. DailyBrad

    God, I feel for both of them here.

  22. Pocky

    Y’know, the second hand embarrassment I got from her doing her best to be Jennifer is way worse than her failing to connect to an old friend.

    This is just, genuine and sad lol

    1. Bryy

      She absolutely failed the very first time Alice was introduced.

    2. Archieve

      the problem is she was building up to being Jennifer from Billie for an audience (Alice) that tuned out after the first awful bombshell.

  23. IniquitousKing

    Well I’m sure that took care of any lingering attraction Alice might have had towards Jennifer. Well played.

    1. Adam Black

      Doubt it.

  24. Charles Phipps

    Jennifer: “Don’t you understand? I killed Billie! It’s like Yellowjacket and Hank Pym! Kylo Ren and Ben! That masked guy in the midquels! You know, the sucky ones! Old Man Luke’s dad!”

    1. Karla Jean

      It’s like Yellowjacket and Hank Pym! Or Giant-Man and Hank Pym! Or Goliath and Hank Pym! Or Wasp and Hank Pym!…

  25. Tan

    Good on Jennifer for acknowledging there WAS a relationship with Asher, even if it’s after the fact at this point

    1. Sirksome

      Bad on Jennifer for acknowledging that! The best part of that relationship was when she said it never existed and pulled off a master stroke in gaslighting. It was what Asher deserved.

      1. Jeremiah

        The “I don’t trust ashed” bit it’s funny but I think that is a kind of fucked thing to say.

        1. Thag Simmons

          Honestly there’s still non-zero odds that Asher turns out alright in the end, which would make this bit become very funny in hindsight.

        2. Sirksome

          Maybe. I do think Asher really cared about Jennifer and he really seems like a nice guy, but he’s also the guy currently giving AG weird eye contact. I don’t think it’s a coincidence he was there during the Incelerator incident.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/02-the-one-where-jocelyne-returns/situationended/

          I’ll happily accept that he’s just a young dude who was put in a bad situation where he couldn’t make the right choice. But he still needs to take responsibility for it. Ethan was one of the kidnap victims. Him boning Ethan is even worse than being with Jennifer. Yet he hasn’t said a thing. He’s doing this right now and we’re just okay with it.

          If he gets away with all this and just becomes a nice guy I’ll……accept that reality with grace and find something else to meme about.

        3. Mark

          Perhaps from Asher’s POV there wasn’t a Right Choice, just an array of bad choices.

          I think he’s very unsure about Amber. Is she a threat? I can’t recall if he’s aware of his indirect connection with her. If he does, his attitude may be compounded of wariness, compassion, and perhaps a bit of respect.

          It gives me to think. They might be good for each other, or very bad for each other. Think, think, think….

      2. Adam Black

        He does deserve it, it cosmic justice sense.
        Its just weird, he was such a good boyfriend to her in the microscale

        when he wasnt gettign all her friends Kidnapped.

    2. Archieve

      Seems like shes only acknowledging Asher to let Alice know she’s single. Its sad because I think that last dream sequence is Jennifer fully processing the old love confession and trying to pursue an option that’s no longer there.

  26. NGPZ

    … three other Asian kids?

    Was Dina one of them or did she even go to the same high school?

    1. Thag Simmons

      Zero indication that Jen or the Walkertons knew Dina before College, and if she’d gone to the same school as them they’d definitely know her by reputation if nothing else.

      1. Michael Steamweed

        Well…this is Dina we’re talking about, yeah? Able to be socially invisible? Get around without being noticed? If that high school was large enough, she might very well have attended there without the rest of them ever noticing her.

        1. BBCC

          She didn’t. She’s not from the same city as them.

        2. mindbleach

          But then she wouldn’t be counted.

    2. Taffy

      Billie, Alice, Asher, Shaun, Dustin, and Michelle, as I recall.

    3. Ed Callahan

      There hasn’t been any evidence any of the cast knew Dina before going to IU. I don’t think it’s been established what part of Indiana she’s from or even whether she’s out-of-state.

      1. BBCC

        Dina is from Merrillville and Jennifer, Walky, Sal, Marcie, and Asher are from Evansville.

        1. Mark

          So, almost as far apart as you can get and be in Indiana.

          La Porte isn’t terribly far from Merrillville but would be a different school system.

  27. Reltzik

    PR Tip: Anyone who feels a desperate need to explain that they’re “very stable” to a skeptical audience has already lost the PR game.

    1. Tan

      Like charisma.

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/seething/

    2. Jeff K!

      If only that were true, given a certain self-titled “very stable genius”…

      1. Reltzik

        That audience wasn’t sufficiently skeptical.

    3. Archieve

      that’s what I was thinking last strip, even if Jennifer had this very moving ‘you were right’ second half of the speech planned it doesn’t work if Alice has stopped listening.

  28. Maddie B

    Very stable genius Jennifer.

  29. Bryy

    Alice is the most stable cast member thus farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

    1. Archieve

      Shes also improved in her tactical retreat!

  30. Ninjazaku

    Jennifer, you can’t just brute force your way into being someone’s friend again, good lord

  31. Fireprincesslily

    Does anyone else feel like the comments section is like too harsh on Jennifer and her actions? Like this always happens. I’m not saying Jennifer isn’t flawed or shouldn’t be critiqued. That’d be crazy.

    But like there’s a person talking about the bad things she did to Alice at prom, even tho Alice was shown to be smiling, enjoying Jennifer’s antics, and confessing feelings to a passed out concussed Jennifer.

    I dunno it’s just weird?

    It’s like the time she declared she was the Walkerton’s favorite child to Lucy, and the comments went off about how narcissistic she was for saying something like that… Even though Walky and Sal have both used their parents’ fondness for Jennifer to try and smooth over situations previously.

    I dunno, yeah she currently sucks right now and often makes bad choices due to her inability to learn from her mistakes. But I dunno she deserves everything the comments give her.

    1. Bogeywoman

      Oh, definitely. Imo it’s partly the medium, like if she has a bad five minutes we see her at her worst for six weeks. She’s done some shitty things, but she’s also a dumb kid trying to cope with a radically changing social environment.

      The prom fiasco was her trying to do the /right/ thing and standing up to a bad person for her friend.

      I offer no defence for drink-driving, but she’s at least trying to be better than that. She’s not quite there, cos she’s a hot mess that needs therapy and introspection and probably a bit more frontal lobe.

      1. Mark

        I will point out that Alice had opportunity to see that Billie had been drinking and got in the car with her anyway. That decision is on her, however much the rest is not.

        1. thejeff

          I think Alice sees that whole period of her life as a series of bad decisions, driven mostly by her infatuation with Billie. Something she only realized after the crash (and Billie’s reaction afterwards) brought it home to her.

        2. BBCC

          Yeah, Alice seemed pretty clear her feelings for Jennifer are why she “let (her) drag Alice down with her” for a long time.

        3. thejeff

          IIRC there was a patreon strip where her thought bubble was basically “this is a bad ideaBillie is so hot”

    2. Jeremiah

      I am pretty sure the thing she did at Prom was get drunk and almost killed them in a car crash

      1. thejeff

        Yeah, that we can all agree on, but there’s someone up aways talking about how revealing the abortion and the rape was horrible and that’s why Alice hates her.
        It was kind of a recurring theme throughout the flashback as well.

        1. Nymph

          Yep. Even AFTER Willis confirmed that Jennifer didn’t say that into the microphone and was just talking to Alice’s boyfriend at the time, people still hit the “announcing to the whole school” line so hard.

        2. Joy

          Oh that recontextualizes it omg

      2. FireprincessLily

        The Drunk Driving is indefensible. But you are reducing everything about that night into that action.

        You’re leaving out Billie punching Alice’s skeezy ex-boyfriend, standing up for her, and whisking Alice out of the situation. If you look at the panels where Billie is taking Alice by the hand and absconding with her, there’s nothing but admiration there.

        And yes it turned out badly because Billie makes bad decisions, but she did do more than just get drunk and drive.

        1. Jeremiah

          It does kind of overshadow them both for Alice and the readers.

    3. Joy

      I agree completely. I feel like people are biased against her for reasons that go beyond her character. She’s a nepo baby who drunk drove and got her best friend concussed that way. How do you hate someone so hard that it’s still not justified by that? (Taylor Swift has a song for that.)

      I’m biased in her favor since she’s literally the only character in the story with the same skin tone as me. I also relate to the whole “lots of acquaintances who like you but few real friends,” thing she has going on. (I’ve been more authentic and have more friends and less popularity lately, at least? Lmao.) (I like being popular but admit that it’s overrated sometimes.) I also relate to the alpha bongo thing, being liked by someone else’s parents more than yours, experiencing racism while being white passing… Shit, basically everything besides the alcoholism. (I self harmed instead, not better.)

      Between her being over-hated and relating to her, I just want to defend her.

      1. Joy

        ….usually when there’s bongo in my comments, I literally just type out bongo to begin with. I forgot about the censor thing this time.

  32. Elsewise

    A couple of days ago someone made an offhand comment about Asher and Alice being siblings. This scene would be extremely funny if they were right.

    1. staszu13

      It isn’t but I do see a resemblance – the noses are similar

    2. Adam Black

      Alice def knows who Asher is ,

      shes just playing coy for social dominance.

      1. Taffy

        No.

      2. Thag Simmons

        I think she’d probably be less definitive if she actually did know who Jen was talking about. “Not really” vs “No”

    3. Jeff K!

      Yeah, I’m feeling very crappy about making that speculation after the DIRECT call-out of potentially racist assumptions today.

      1. Adam Black

        I dont get this.

        Weve seen Alice make obvious lies to not socially engage with Billy.
        Including pretending not to know Wallys Name, after it was corrected.

        Theres no room at the table. (‘Asians at this school, nope never noticed?’)

        Then admitting she intended Billy to ‘get the hint’

        and Walkys said Billy did the same thing as a cheerleader.

        1. Joy

          I agree. Alice feels neurotypical coded to me.

        2. Joy

          ….like. Jennifer was toxic to Alice and endangered her and got her injured. …it’s also possible that Alice brought out some of Jennifer’s worse qualities during their time together, like encouraging her to be a bully. I feel like David implied that. I think it’s a consistent character arc, for Jennifer? People keep bringing out the worst in her while actively praising her, whether it’s the walkerton parents, maybe Alice, definitely Ruth, currently Raidah… I don’t know if any of what I’m saying is true but it makes sense to me if it is. We’ll see what Willis planned.

      2. Yumi

        I don’t know that that’s really fair… the spec seemed more based on similar character design of an aspect that’s unusual to this comic. And visually are what you’d base a lot on in thos comic, and many relatives we seen do look similar to each other. Then add in that they’re from the same area and share a racial background, and it seems like fair speculation.

    4. Michael Steamweed

      Was me! Yeah, I thought maybe siblings, half-sibs, or cousins. Possibly a familial relationship that Alice doesn’t want to acknowledge?

    5. Yumi

      I didn’t know people were thinking they might be siblings; that seems it would be very weird to me, to have not come up in the interactions we’ve seen… I was thinking “they could be related” to mean, like, cousins or something.

    6. thejeff

      I read this strip and immediately thought “Well, that’ll put an end to the ‘Asher and Alice are related’ theory”, but maybe not, since people claiming she’s just lying about not knowing him.

      1. Nymph

        By “people” you mean “Adam Black” and that’s really just one person who has a weird paranoia.

  33. DashWallkick

    Jennifer continues to understand the outline of healthy behaviors — therapy, routine, sobriety — but not actually fathom that people have to believe it.

    1. Archieve

      this seems to be a callback to earlier indications that she actually isn’t very good at reading most people. I can see how that would make it very hard for her to communicate to people since topics like alcoholism and therapy still carry some stigma and don’t always have a clear social script to follow.

      1. Joy

        Autism coding

        1. Taffy

          All suspects are autistic until proven Billie, in a court of lol.

        2. Mark

          🙂

  34. Charles Phipps

    To echo other comments, Alice is the hottest of the female cast now.

    1. Taffy

      She’s definitely on the top three. Ruth and Dina still have her outmatched, but she’s had limited screentime so that may change.

    2. clif

      Yeah, I’m not really understanding this. Superficially, she is skinny as a rail, not well endowed, has an unattractive nose, currently wearing a black top with grey lipstick like some kind of goth. Personality-wise she’s got nothing. No, she’s not ugly, but hot? What the heck?

      1. Michael Steamweed

        We each have our own visual prefs. Me, I’m an Amber fan.
        (rowr!)

      2. Nymph

        So a few things:

        1. Attractiveness is subjective.
        2. Not everyone agrees about the attractiveness of any given person.
        3. Sometimes people find someone attractive who you do not find attractive.

        Hope that helps!!

      3. zee

        Damn bro you can’t just go around saying sting ethnic features like alices nose are unattractive

        Anyway alice is hot as fuck, because of that strong nose and the baby goth look, and her awesome hair. Like I do like more meat on my fictional character but no everyone needs to be built like Hahari Hanazono to be considered attractive damn

      4. Jeremiah

        Those are some very weird things to say.

      5. Joy

        We’ve only seen her character as it revolves around Jennifer and her life doesn’t really revolve around Jennifer so we don’t see much of it. Also she has a great nose and that was kind of racist.

        Also people like goths and not everyone cares about big boobs.

        1. Joy

          (I actively prefer small to medium busts when it comes to attractiveness.) (I do prefer gynecomastia in a guy over a flat chest tbh though.) #bisexual

    3. Astariel

      She’s definitely hot, but she doesn’t top Joyce or Carla in my book.

  35. MickeeC

    WELP-that was heartbreaking. Kinda knew it beforehand, but Jennifer/Billie has been fronting…A LOT, and I feel there’s still an emotional break down coming for us.

    1. Adam Black

      Ok but Alice is fronting 100 x more.

      1. Regina phalange

        How so? We don’t even know Alice’s college life at all—just that she is uncomfortable around “Billie.” That doesn’t seem like a front; she may have loved her once, but she crashed them both into a tree, and it’s okay to distance notwithstanding feelings after that.

        1. Jeremiah

          Ignore them I think they are just being a troll

        2. Adam Black

          I mean it

        3. Jeremiah

          Uh huh.

        4. Taffy

          I think Adam Black is usually sincere with his comments, it’s just that his interpretations of the comic are frequently incoherent and completely detached from the story as it’s written.

        5. Adam Black

          I wasnt making a moral statement, about distancing, but an observational one

          One youve confirmed. Shes fronting.

          Weve seen that she ( alice) was a snob, who practiced social shunning send messages she was too much of a coward to say.

          She has poor sense of boundaries, bottles up her feelings then explodes as a drama hurricane. ( sounds familar) . Weve seen her be unable to healthily assert boundaries with anyone, without being toxic. So she does Cold and Hot. ( which is why Billy was probably attracted to her .

          That and being a mess and Billy needed to fix up )

          and the last time Billy saw her, her drama hurricane pushed Billy into the most toxic relationship she ever had, going after her abuser in a alcoholic suicide pact.

          When we last saw Alice act disengaged when pressed she attacked Billy when she was feeling low, and tried to get her friends to shun her too.

          So no, I dont buy this.

          Sure Billy crashed into a tree. and Alice wasnt that phased with it.
          So that means EVERYONE should shun Billy forever?

          Alice has her own toxicity, and codependance, and weve never seen her friendship help Billy.

          If Billy was self reflective she would stay away from Alice.
          “Jennifer” and alice are a lot alike.

          ( and for what its worth, I’m certain Alice knows Asher, and has her own reasons for lying,
          I suspect her rapist Boyfriend tried to roofie her at prom, and Jen drink it unknowingly. There is so much foreshadowing here

          Remember when Billy made a huge deal that alcohol “wasnt to blame” for Joyces assault. )

        6. Taffy

          See what I mean? He starts at a randomly-chosen conclusion and works backward from there, no matter how the story has to be twisted to reach that conclusion.

        7. Jeremiah

          That seems like a troll to me. A very dedicated one but still.

        8. Taffy

          That’d be unfortunate, because the best trolling comes from detachment. Writing unhinged LSD-fueled manifestos on the morality of a fictional character, just to get people to call you an idiot, that’s way too much effort for a little giggle. It also borders on involving strangers in your humiliation kink without their knowledge, which is probably not the look most people wanna put out there. Nah, I figure the guy’s just odd and says odd shit.

        9. clif

          Wait! I thought I was the one who was odd and says odd shit. Though I must admit, I’ve never tried writing unhinged LSD-fueled manifestos.

          Do you think I should branch out.?

        10. TerribleTransit

          No, no. His conclusions seem well-researched and well-reasoned. I’m just not sure why he’s talking about this “Billy” character in the comments of THIS comic instead of a site related to whatever media Billy comes from.

        11. Taffy

          These orphaned Adventure Time fanfic analyses just ain’t it.

        12. Nymph

          Seek help.

        13. Thag Simmons

          I don’t know I feel like someone nearly killing you is a justifiable reason to think they’re dangerous and warn people to stay clear

        14. Wilde

          I’ve heard your sort of argument before, that somehow the victim of an unstable, emotionally immature, and boundary-crossing person is actually the toxic one because they can’t hold their temper and be the nice one forever when goaded or “””pressed””” (as you said). I’ve only heard it made by a Presser type who doesn’t like when someone else is being the better person, and they want to prove that the other person is as messy and fucked up as they are. If the Presser can push and break the Pressee, and the Pressee shows a fraction of the volatility of the Presser, then the Presser goes “Aha! You’re not perfect, you’re a miserable person just like me, and all your niceness is FAKE” cause god forbid the Presser be forced to grow some compassion or accountability, or ever experience putting others needs before their own.

          But that’s not a moral statement or anything, just observational.

        15. Sirksome

          I can understand some of your conclusions. I do think in many way Alice has put all the responsibility for their past on Jennifer and purposefully framed it as Jennifer having a negative impact in her life when the flashback has revealed that is not an unbiased perspective.

          Jennifer helped Alice get an abortion, likely saved her from a future toxic or abusive relationship with a creep who at least is implied to have sexually assaulted and impregnated her. Alice was in love with Jennifer and more than willing to follow her hand in hand.

          So framing Jennifer as a “drama hurricane” is an unfair take and as Walky accurately and humorously remarked that was likely sexually transmitted to Alice.

          I don’t think Alice is fronting or plotting Jen’s downfall in anyway way. I think time has just passed. 3-6 months likely since they first ran into each other at IU. Time heals all wounds and Alice is probably not as emotionally raw as their first encounter. Jen used to be her whole world. Now she’s just a girl Alice knew in high school.

          Alice has every right to distance herself from Jen since that relationship did put her life in danger but I think both ladies are still mid jouney in coming to terms with it. And I really hope she truly doesn’t remember Asher. I don’t remember plenty of people from high school. That’s common.

        16. Jeremiah

          Weird. Those are some weird things to say.

        17. Sirksome

          Is it? I thought I was being pretty fair there in trying to give Adam Black some benefit in their takeaways even if I don’t agree with them.

        18. Jeremiah

          I think giving them any benefit of doubt is very strange considering they had been pretty consistent in having terrible, unsupported takes either because they are trolling or have some unrelated hangup, they do the same thing with Lucy. And besides that just the first part of your comment seem kind of victim Blamey to me.

        19. Sirksome

          @Jeremiah I try to give every comment some benefit. But I didn’t realize Adam Black was trolling. Upon reading some of their other takes I’m more wary now.

          I’m also not victim blaming Alice, but I also don’t think Alice was a victim of just knowing Jennifer and being in love with her. Jennifer caused a crash that risked both their lives and Alice fairly distanced herself, but framing their entire history as her being dragged down isn’t true. The flashback showed their past was more complicated. Jennifer both helped and hurt Alice.

        20. BBCC

          I don’t think it’s so much that Alice doesn’t realize she followed Jennifer willingly. I think that’s her problem. “I let you drag me down with you” and now she needs to get some distance from that.

        21. Sirksome

          Your response made me realized I worded my comment a bit poorly. I’m not meaning to imply Alice is literally in part responsible just by choosing to follow Jennifer that night. I meant she chose to love Jennifer so clearly their relationship wasn’t as bad as she stated. “I let you drag me down with you.” Kind of implies just knowing Jennifer hurt Alice. It reminds me a lot of how Walky felt when he first dated Dorothy. Like just being with a person can drag someone beneath where they should be.

        22. Jeremiah

          Jennifer can have made some parts of Alice life good while still dragging her down, in fact all the stuff she did for her is what make her ignore the red flags for so long.

        23. thejeff

          Having chosen to love someone (to the extent you choose that) doesn’t mean things weren’t bad. People get in bad relationships and get hurt by people they love all the time. “I let you drag me down with you” isn’t a bad description of how that works. It even shows partial responsibility: “I let you”.
          Jennifer does have her good side, which definitely showed in being protective of Alice after the fact, but she also has her self-destructive side which seems to have manifested at the time in heavy drinking and drunken sex at parties – and Alice followed along because of her infatuation. It’s even very likely, imo, that it was at one of those parties that she wouldn’t have gone to without Billie that she got raped.

        24. Joy

          I think you’re right about one thing: Alice was a bully in high school, and it shows. The way she handled Jennifer back then was a continuation of that mentality.

  36. bwooom

    “Hello Jennifer this is your lawer speaking. I am advising you today to please keep posting this shit”

  37. Crytter

    I believe the term in the common vernacular is, “Cringe”?

    1. Taffy

      For the past decade or so, yes. It’s not new anymore, and it hasn’t been for a long time.

      1. PedanticJerkass

        “Cringe” is cringe.

    2. Michael Steamweed

      Don’t listen to Taffy, bruh. You keep using the (very) new term “cringe”. FR it’s lit, fam!

      1. Mark

        Groovy!

      2. Plain Marie

        Cringe is in current use. Source: my teen.

  38. IntangibleMatter

    As someone who is very stable, I can confirm that you always tell people when you’re stable.

  39. darkoneko

    ah, yes. very stable

  40. Amelie Wikström

    “How should I try and reconnect with this girl I love who shut me out because of, she told me, my drinking problem and my drama addiction that made me both dangerous and unpleasant to be around? Should I tell her I quit drinking? No no, she must know about my sexy forbidden near-death relationship that blew up so bad the school had to take action to separate us.”

    In hindsight, I don’t think the last strip was Jennifer being too flustered to think straight. She just thinks about drama before everything else. Anything to make people think she is what she considers cool.

    1. thejeff

      I think it reads more as flustered than calculated attempt to use drama to reach out.
      Remember that she didn’t bring Ruth up out of the blue, but to explain why she’d moved to Forest. Everything else just flowed from there.

      1. Amelie Wikström

        Yeah, that was probably unfair. Though I didn’t mean to suggest it was anything calculated, just her first impulse is for drama.

        1. Joy

          I thought it was funny to imagine someone acting that way by being calculated. Like a death note character.

  41. Christron5000

    God, just leave people alone forever sometimes holy crap…

  42. morhek

    “It’s like she doesn’t even want to be part of a toxic yuri or something.”

    1. Effie

      I’m reading this half-asleep and I guess my eyes aren’t quite focused because now I really want to know about this Toxic Yurt I’m just hearing about for the first time

    2. StClair

      Weird, right?

  43. ValdVin

    I legit did not know Jennifer had been to therapy. I know Ruth had, but this slipped by me.

    1. Amelie Wikström

      She “has been,” implying she stopped. The way I picture it, she went to a couple of sessions, went “I know exactly what answers they want to hear, I’m winning at therapy. I always knew I was too smart for it.”

      1. Mark

        That’s the imperfective. Past perfect would imply (well, no, it would state positively) that the activity had ended.

        I am not disputing your take on her attitude.

      2. thejeff

        Maybe. I’d guess, though I could be wrong, she started going as part of her attempt to get sober and stay with Ruth and stopped after that blew up. Possibly longer (or she went back), since it was implied she fell off the wagon for a time in there and she may have gone back to help recover from that. Once she was sober, which she seems to have been since the timeskip, she may have thought she’d achieved her goal.

        If I wanted to be conspiratorial about it, I’d guess that Raidah pushed her to stop going.

      3. Joy

        …what’s with all the conspiracies? She probably took a 6 or 8 week CBT course. Some therapeutic relationships are intentionally temporary and within a fixed period of time.

        1. Amelie Wikström

          I mean, what evidence do we see that she has done any therapy, especially cognitive therapy?

  44. Alan in DC

    No HURK?
    I am disappoint…

  45. Ldritch

    Like a DnD character that thinks she has high Charisma but really, really doesn’t.

    1. SilentSooYun

      Good one!
      Like, Wisdom was her dump stat so she doesn’t recognise her own limitations?
      And her Passive Perception is garbage

      1. Joy

        Rolling with disadvantage and getting a natural 1 on one of the dice rolls. I think she has a charisma bonus! …wisdom is kind of her dump stat, though.

  46. AC

    That went super well, no notes

  47. Charles Phipps

    Billie’s problem is she’d be a believable cast member of Yellowjackets and think it was a story to share to new friends.

    “And then we ate Heather.”

    1. MK15

      Underrated comment! She totally would

  48. Hof1991

    IU is a big school but Alice had to see Billie around since they live in the same building. tldr; Alice doesn’t want to interact with Billie or Jennifer. That ship has sunk.

    1. Yumi

      It’s possible she’s seen her and not interacted (and that would be in-character for her), but Forest Quad seems like a big dorm; it seems perfectly reasonable to me to think that she might not have seen Jennifer in a few months of both living there.

    2. thejeff

      Wouldn’t that work both ways? Jennifer would have had to have seen Alice around since they live in the same building? If she hadn’t, why would Alice have?

      1. Plain Marie

        Alice walks the other way to avoid interaction.

    3. Thag Simmons

      That Ship has settled low and is currently in the process of crumbling into scale

  49. goggleman64

    I haven’t related much to Jennifer, so I really appreciate how this chapter shows us so many sides of her ~ the loneliness she feels after brushing off an invite, the excitement she shows searching for her big byline, her clumsy enthusiasm when meeting an old, dear friend. I can see her as lonely and desperate, not just boastful and self-destructive, and it helps me see how the different sides feed into each-other.

  50. Suet

    Something will boil over from this. Something will boil over.

    New Movie Title: Five Asian Students in a High School in Evansville

  51. Yeet

    it would be hard for jennifer to fuck this up more
    just say “it’s jennifer now because I’m trying to be less like I was” and walk away

    1. StClair

      and yet, aside from that attempted rebranding, she hasn’t changed at all.

      1. thejeff

        She’s sober. That’s huge.

        Along with that, she’s not doing the wild casual party sex that’s heavily implied for her high school days.

        She’s certainly still got issues, but “hasn’t changed at all” just isn’t true.

        1. Bruno

          Plus she’s a way bigger jerk now.

  52. Looney

    cue carla rolling in out of nowhere announcing that she’s carla.

  53. Stephen Nedland

    There is an awful lot of, “try hard”, going on with Billie/Jennifer right now.This is more than just two people exchanging a few words, and then moving on, not for Billie/Jennifer. She wants to reconnect with Alice, to show that she is not the same toxic, self-destructive person, Alice knew in High School; how true that is, is up for debate, b ut that is the message Billie/Jennifer is trying to convey. Alice on the other hand, just had a massive exposition dump, slammed in her face; not how she wanted her day to go. She’s politely walking away, just to get some room to breath.

  54. Rabisch

    This was pretty sad to see. Probably Jennifer still loves her.

    1. MK15

      Ohh. Okay I was trying to understand the stream-of-consciousness infodumping from J/B, since it isn’t her usual vibe. She’s nervous in front of an old crush?

      1. Rabisch

        Also the flashback/nightmare.

  55. BBCC

    Yeah, she looks like she’s really enthusiastic about being Jennifer right now.

  56. nothri

    Huh. I always wondered what rolling a critical failure on a socializing check in an RPG looked like. The more you know.

    1. Jeremiah

      Very Disco Elysium of her.

      1. PedanticJerkass

        So where does this fall on the scale from “I want to have fuck with you” to “Say one of these fascist or communist things or fuck off” to “Dance, you yellow monkey fucker!” in terms of abject failure?

        It’s not quite up to “Kim, I need your gun” level of failure, at least. Not yet, anyway.

        1. Jeremiah

          I think it is in between the I want to have fuck with youa and the other things. Thought she already reached that ladder in her interaction with Tony..

  57. Poyo

    ???????????? the second-hand embarrassment ahhhhhh

    1. Jeremiah

      It’s the Billingsworth special.

    2. Schpoonman

      This would have been a more devastating Valentine’s Day comic.

  58. AnonGrouch

    This is suicidal ideation. There are a lot of things that would happen plotwise if it happened, it’d generally fit DA’s narrative style, so I won’t be surprised if it happens but even if it doesn’t…. Yeah, that last panel, definitely was a ‘cry for help’.

  59. Zamperla

    Ough. You kind of get the sense everything came out of her mouth except what she wanted to say. All at once. In an unstoppable stream.

  60. Lingo

    Hmm, Jennifer’s only been sober for 2 months? So since about Thanksgiving then? Hmmm. Or maybe she had her last drink right after Halloween, which would have been not-quite-3 months ago. Hmm.

    1. thejeff

      We know she stopped drinking before the timeskip, so this means she did fall off the wagon at some point in there. Probably after the breakup, but then she did manage to get herself sober again.

  61. Da Boy

    Wait, Asher is Asian? I always thought he was of Italian descent. The eagle nose and all that?

    1. Plain Marie

      Despite all the “Asian mob” story, I keep thinking of Asher as Iranian, having known many fine Iranians with dramatic noses.

      1. Da Boy

        Geographically speaking Iran is in Asia so it would still fit XD

  62. thumb

    Continuing from my comment yesterday (historians are keeping track), calculations completed by the second panel today.
    Well done, Alice. And godspeed. You might yet make it out of drama gravity range (unlikely).

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