It does seem more hopeful than I thought this would go. I thought being forced back into this situation might do a lot to erase the progress Ruth has made in a manner regrettable for everyone. I still am.
Does anyone remember what Ruth did to Rachel? From this strip, it sounds to me like she’s referencing something personal and serious, although maybe it’s meant to suggest Rachel is an actions person?
But I like blackjack. It’s the best chance to actually win money from the house. And it’s quicker than poker and IMO less addicting than everything else…wow, I’m probably one of like twenty people who would say “Hold the hookers, I just want the blackjack” aren’t I?
Damn you overnight job! You put money in my bank account, and bacon into my facehole, but you don’t let me be the first to make a Futurama reference on an internet webcomic.
Man, Rachel’s got a real hate-lady-boner for their relationship. Perhaps if Billie and Ruth weren’t so standoffish, they could clear up some of these misconceptions…
… Rachel, you have no idea how you nailed the matter… I still wanna chuck Mary out a window, though. into a sinkhole. after she gets punched by Billie.
No, she’s assuming that she’s caught in an abuse cycle, rationalizing away the abuse as out of character moments from the “real” Ruth, who is a loving person. She’s uh… not completely right or wrong here.
My thoughts exactly. The use of the word “keeping” for Billie continuing to date Ruth is kinda…skeevy. Like, are the two of them healthy? Not always, they each have issues. But they’re both consenting adults who are aware of their flaws. Ruth isn’t “keeping” Billie because she’s not a trophy to be won.
From the outside, that’s what it looks like though. One minute Ruth is throwing Billie around and calling her out her name, then the next Billie is obsessively devoted to Ruth and defending her every chance she gets while increasingly isolating herself from everyone. I couldn’t deny that there’s a fucked up element to the start of their relationshio, even objectively speaking.
She’s casting blame on Ruth here, not Billie. Billie choosing to stay with Ruth doesn’t erase Ruth’s violent, shitty, and very recent past behavior.
That said, I’m glad it looks like Ruth is genuinely ready to begin the difficult, uphill work of curbing her own abusive behaviors and becoming a better person.
Rachel is assuming that Ruth is a person who until recently was in a position of authority over Billie and has physically assaulted her while being emotionally (and sometimes physically) abusive to every person on the floor including Billie. There’s a big reason there’s rules against TAs, RAs, professors, bosses, etc having romantic/sexual relationships with people they’re in positions of power over. We can sympathize with Ruth because we’ve seen things from her point of view. But she is an overtly abusive person who manipulates and assaults the people she has authority over AND she’s entered into a romantic and sexual relationship with one of those people… a person she started out both physically assaulting and also literally tormenting by stealing and destroying bit by bit an object she was deeply emotionally invested in… then sexually assaulted her. That is NOT healthy behavior and pointing it out is NOT a bad thing to do. Every abusive person has a reason/justification for why they’re abusive. I’m not saying Ruth’s evil. But her actions ARE, in fact, abusive and frankly if I lived on her floor I’d have filed complaints against her and requested a room transfer. Realistically, the only reason her current crop of residents haven’t done so is because they’re mostly freshmen who don’t know how messed up the situation is, and Carla doesn’t care bc Carla.
Dismissing that all as “sure sure deny Billie’s agency lol awesome” is a REALLY shallow reading of things and it’s frankly dangerous and normalizes a lot of real world predatory behavior wrt people in positions of power manipulating people with less power/people who rely on them. It’s a REALLY common romance/sexual tension trope, I can see why it’s being used here, but can we NOT pretend their relationship started out on healthy mutually-consenting ground and that Ruth does NOT have a history of physically and emotionally abusing people she has control over?
I mean seriously if my RA had slapped me I would have filed assault charges. Mary’s a shitbag but she’s also a shitbag who was physically assaulted in her home by someone who’s got power over her.
The general situation of Ruth. As someone who suffers from severe depression I have a surprisingly hard time commiserating with people who continue to heap abuse on other depressed people. This is regardless of fiction or real life. My capacity to give a fuck for people who abuse depressed individuals is basically nil.
As a side note, I sort of wish Ruth got fired so that she could have a chance to try and deal with things with Billie as support. Leaving her in this situation and to deal with the aftermath without a proper explanation from the campus is just fucking irresponsible and almost beggars belief.
Tgape
While Ruth’s grandfather wants Billie out of the picture, I don’t think the dorm necessarily feels the room transfer for Billie is about separating Billie from Ruth. It’s about giving Billie a place to go away from Ruth’s control if she wants it. Dorms generally don’t have rules about daytime or evening guests of the same gender. Dorms generally don’t have a rule that say residents can’t ever have overnight guests. There are, of course, limits, but those limits are far less restrictive for people who have single rooms, like Ruth. Also, those limits are enforced by the RA, so…
Now, they haven’t pointed this out – possibly some because the grandfather who pushed for this deal is against that happening, and partially because it only gives Billie that place to go if she actually moves her stuff, which she wouldn’t do if she was explicitly told she can continue shacking up with Ruth.
Helpful, and been though seemingly every possible shitty thing that can happen to a person–and made it through to be a generally helpful and uplifting person besides.
At least all this is getting out in the open. If Ruth was willing to have a few more open discussions like this the situation might not have gotten as bad as it has.
Reminder, it was four years ago today that the “Hetalia” strip appeared on Shortpacked! If you can’t apply fisticuffs to fascists, who CAN you apply them to?
Mary you can’t retcon life to make you look good, you noob. Not like she has any other way to keep her egotism and feigned/false innocence and self-righteousness going.
We have no idea what c-word she was going to say, though.
There was an obvious conclusion, one Ruth obviously made herself (although she obviously decided to slap Mary before, so that’s still not why she did it), but the fact that we don’t actually know means Mary might be telling the truth.
Just like how there’s a distinct possibility that I am the queen of France
Kris
……..<__>….are you? o_O
3oranges
France doesn’t have a great history with monarchs. If someone found themselves as their queen, they might want to lay low – not try any self-promotion or involvement in government, just kick back, maybe read some comics or catch a few farts.
Of course if you asked them, they’d probably say “no, I am not”.
Pat
Mary doesn’t usually outright lie, does she?
She says things that are untrue because her perception of reality is… skewed, but she doesn’t say things that she thinks aren’t true that I recall.
(Also there are plenty of other words she could have been saying there that would fit. Obviously it wasn’t nice, but there’s more than one not-nice word or phrase.)
zoelogical
Mary says the things that benefit her most in the moment.
to her it does not always seem like a lie, but she would not hesitate to lie if it benefited her. and for that moment it would be her truth, more or less, because the lie needs to become your truth in order for you to deliver it like truth.
but really explicit, complicated lies are difficult to hold up for very long, because the truth of who and what you are gets through. so when Mary was trying to manipulate people while Ruth had her meltdown, she was instantly seen through because her smugness of nature was just. very present.
Mary would never say the c-word as part of her general persona, because she’s not a girl who says the c-word. but Ruth doesn’t count, because she’s a lesbian, and Mary can call her a c-word if she wants because she’s a sinner. and why wouldn’t a lesbian lie about her? she’s a lesbian, after all. she’s got more problems than those kinds of delusions.
like. this is someone who looks at Ruth and sees “victim”. sees prey. sees the possibility to destroy and goes for it because she can. so like yeah her perception of reality is mega skewed but that doesn’t make any of the things she says any more true, if that makes sense
Pat
I said that she says things that are not true because her perception =/= reality.
Well, considering the old laws of inheritance you could be a claimant to the now vacant throne of France depending on your ancestors so…maybe you are? You don’t happen to have any ancestors from the 1700s by the name Louis do you? But, yeah, there weren’t a whole lot of options of what Mary was going to say that start with c.
Ruth doesn’t actually specify which ‘C’-word, either.
And even if Mary was going to say “cow” or “college student” or something, she’s still definitely lying. She’s on the F-bomb scoreboard, and said “goddamn” twice in the same strip she earned her spot on there. I’m not sure if anyone besides Carla witnessed it, though.
Passchendaele
Ah, true (I had forgotten about her past cursing)! Still, keep in mind that there aren’t that many C-words out there that would be used as an effective invective, and I’m pretty sure Mary was attempting to say the worst one in the way that she addresses Ruth intensely angrily. Too, if she’s like her walkyverse incarnation, she still swears when she wants and also has hypocritical relations with other people (looking at you, Eric). Because she’s not a self-righteous lying twit, no. 😛
305 thoughts on “C-word”
Ana Chronistic
“may I propose a win-win situation?” *points Billie toward Mar-a-Lago*
(I’d say D.C. but it’d be more convenient to let her dispose of her new punching bag in a certain sinkhole that opened up there)
Laurel Raven
I so wish I had a like button for you right now…
JasonAW3
Point her at DC, and she’ll never stop punching! Just too many dirt bags there to EVER stop punching!
Pablo360
I don’t know that Billie has the political discernment not to punch Maxine Waters as she’s walking down the rows of Congress.
Kamino Neko
If she registered as a Republican, she could punch anyone she wanted, and actually win office!
Paradox
Not just punch, but full on body slam. She’d have a blast.
Schpoonman
Doubt it. She’s a woman.
Danni
billie, you cant punch everything
zoelogical
she can try!!
Cholma
There’s also kicking! She’s a cheerleader, remember!
zoelogical
and then cartwheels for success!!
MatthewTheLucky
But she can stab everything.
Zach
“I don’t sleep. I stay up all night stabbing things and making PowerPoint presentations about each thing that I stab.”
Cornelius Snarlington, business deer.
http://amultiverse.com/comic/2015/01/09/welfare-state/
HeySo
Billie takes the concept of a ‘punchline’ very literally.
AnvilPro
I like Ruth actually trying to handle her problems like an RA. This week might be the most I’ve ever liked her
El Chupacabre
It does seem more hopeful than I thought this would go. I thought being forced back into this situation might do a lot to erase the progress Ruth has made in a manner regrettable for everyone. I still am.
Does anyone remember what Ruth did to Rachel? From this strip, it sounds to me like she’s referencing something personal and serious, although maybe it’s meant to suggest Rachel is an actions person?
Kris
A new girlfriend who likes blackjack and hookers!
Nono
Hookers as in left hooks and right hooks.
Doctor_Who
And when punching isn’t enough, she uses a blackjack!
Jaime
Forget the blackjack! 😉
Rukduk
But I like blackjack. It’s the best chance to actually win money from the house. And it’s quicker than poker and IMO less addicting than everything else…wow, I’m probably one of like twenty people who would say “Hold the hookers, I just want the blackjack” aren’t I?
Keulan
In fact, forget the new girlfriend and the blackjack! Ah, screw the whole thing.
Tomas
Blackjack and Hookers are the nicknames of Billie’s fists.
Rukduk
….Ok that’s actually kinda rad.
Spaz
*sighs*
I knew I wouldn’t have been the first one.
Damn you overnight job! You put money in my bank account, and bacon into my facehole, but you don’t let me be the first to make a Futurama reference on an internet webcomic.
Valerie
Sounds like it’s time to resign.
Mr. Mendo
Man, Rachel’s got a real hate-lady-boner for their relationship. Perhaps if Billie and Ruth weren’t so standoffish, they could clear up some of these misconceptions…
AutobotDen
… Rachel, you have no idea how you nailed the matter… I still wanna chuck Mary out a window, though. into a sinkhole. after she gets punched by Billie.
Spaz
……I keep re-reading this comment, a shit-eating grin on my face, because of the possible implications of the word “nailed” in this sentence.
yay for English occasionally being unclear.
Opus the Poet
Punch all the girlfriends, Billie
Thor
Rachel is assuming that Billie has no agency. That’s awesome!
shoeboxjeddy
No, she’s assuming that she’s caught in an abuse cycle, rationalizing away the abuse as out of character moments from the “real” Ruth, who is a loving person. She’s uh… not completely right or wrong here.
showler
She’s actually doing both.
Doopyboop
My thoughts exactly. The use of the word “keeping” for Billie continuing to date Ruth is kinda…skeevy. Like, are the two of them healthy? Not always, they each have issues. But they’re both consenting adults who are aware of their flaws. Ruth isn’t “keeping” Billie because she’s not a trophy to be won.
Mav
From the outside, that’s what it looks like though. One minute Ruth is throwing Billie around and calling her out her name, then the next Billie is obsessively devoted to Ruth and defending her every chance she gets while increasingly isolating herself from everyone. I couldn’t deny that there’s a fucked up element to the start of their relationshio, even objectively speaking.
Wendy
She’s casting blame on Ruth here, not Billie. Billie choosing to stay with Ruth doesn’t erase Ruth’s violent, shitty, and very recent past behavior.
That said, I’m glad it looks like Ruth is genuinely ready to begin the difficult, uphill work of curbing her own abusive behaviors and becoming a better person.
Brigid Keely
Rachel is assuming that Ruth is a person who until recently was in a position of authority over Billie and has physically assaulted her while being emotionally (and sometimes physically) abusive to every person on the floor including Billie. There’s a big reason there’s rules against TAs, RAs, professors, bosses, etc having romantic/sexual relationships with people they’re in positions of power over. We can sympathize with Ruth because we’ve seen things from her point of view. But she is an overtly abusive person who manipulates and assaults the people she has authority over AND she’s entered into a romantic and sexual relationship with one of those people… a person she started out both physically assaulting and also literally tormenting by stealing and destroying bit by bit an object she was deeply emotionally invested in… then sexually assaulted her. That is NOT healthy behavior and pointing it out is NOT a bad thing to do. Every abusive person has a reason/justification for why they’re abusive. I’m not saying Ruth’s evil. But her actions ARE, in fact, abusive and frankly if I lived on her floor I’d have filed complaints against her and requested a room transfer. Realistically, the only reason her current crop of residents haven’t done so is because they’re mostly freshmen who don’t know how messed up the situation is, and Carla doesn’t care bc Carla.
Dismissing that all as “sure sure deny Billie’s agency lol awesome” is a REALLY shallow reading of things and it’s frankly dangerous and normalizes a lot of real world predatory behavior wrt people in positions of power manipulating people with less power/people who rely on them. It’s a REALLY common romance/sexual tension trope, I can see why it’s being used here, but can we NOT pretend their relationship started out on healthy mutually-consenting ground and that Ruth does NOT have a history of physically and emotionally abusing people she has control over?
Brigid Keely
I mean seriously if my RA had slapped me I would have filed assault charges. Mary’s a shitbag but she’s also a shitbag who was physically assaulted in her home by someone who’s got power over her.
hof1991
and that Billie is a teenager prone to making bad decisions.
Kernanator
Punching is Billie’s answer to everything. Which is why she has trouble on her exams.
Kris
I bet she wishes she majored in the history of punching instead of journalism or whatever her major is.
The Mad Academic
Does anyone else feel that tide of rage that you don’t have to proper capacity to explain right now?
Pigeon Pollyx
about this or in general?
The Mad Academic
The general situation of Ruth. As someone who suffers from severe depression I have a surprisingly hard time commiserating with people who continue to heap abuse on other depressed people. This is regardless of fiction or real life. My capacity to give a fuck for people who abuse depressed individuals is basically nil.
As a side note, I sort of wish Ruth got fired so that she could have a chance to try and deal with things with Billie as support. Leaving her in this situation and to deal with the aftermath without a proper explanation from the campus is just fucking irresponsible and almost beggars belief.
Tgape
While Ruth’s grandfather wants Billie out of the picture, I don’t think the dorm necessarily feels the room transfer for Billie is about separating Billie from Ruth. It’s about giving Billie a place to go away from Ruth’s control if she wants it. Dorms generally don’t have rules about daytime or evening guests of the same gender. Dorms generally don’t have a rule that say residents can’t ever have overnight guests. There are, of course, limits, but those limits are far less restrictive for people who have single rooms, like Ruth. Also, those limits are enforced by the RA, so…
Now, they haven’t pointed this out – possibly some because the grandfather who pushed for this deal is against that happening, and partially because it only gives Billie that place to go if she actually moves her stuff, which she wouldn’t do if she was explicitly told she can continue shacking up with Ruth.
Deanatay
I feel it whenever I listen to FOX News.
Stephen Bierce
Had it for weeks. If I had more than one body myself would be beating the crap out of me all the time.
Halpful
not rage, but yes. lots of feelings, few words. Luckily there’s Cerberus to make words for like 75% of them 🙂
Arian
Helpful, isn’t she?
Spaz
Helpful, and been though seemingly every possible shitty thing that can happen to a person–and made it through to be a generally helpful and uplifting person besides.
hof1991
Feeling of impending doom? One of the signs of a heart attack in women.
https://myheartsisters.org/2010/02/12/12-symptoms/
Halpful
Er… What? He said rage, not doom, and feelings of doom are also a normal symptom of anxiety.
Pigeon Pollyx
man this whole thing just makes me sad.
Kris
At least all this is getting out in the open. If Ruth was willing to have a few more open discussions like this the situation might not have gotten as bad as it has.
Stephen Bierce
Reminder, it was four years ago today that the “Hetalia” strip appeared on Shortpacked! If you can’t apply fisticuffs to fascists, who CAN you apply them to?
Passchendaele
Mary you can’t retcon life to make you look good, you noob. Not like she has any other way to keep her egotism and feigned/false innocence and self-righteousness going.
Kris
She actually didn’t swear in that strip. Kinda makes me wonder if she’s ever sworn. And the real mystery is what was she going to call Ruth?!
Fart Captor
She didn’t swear only because she was suddenly cut off at the letter “C”
Pat
We have no idea what c-word she was going to say, though.
There was an obvious conclusion, one Ruth obviously made herself (although she obviously decided to slap Mary before, so that’s still not why she did it), but the fact that we don’t actually know means Mary might be telling the truth.
Fart Captor
Just like how there’s a distinct possibility that I am the queen of France
Kris
……..<__>….are you? o_O
3oranges
France doesn’t have a great history with monarchs. If someone found themselves as their queen, they might want to lay low – not try any self-promotion or involvement in government, just kick back, maybe read some comics or catch a few farts.
Of course if you asked them, they’d probably say “no, I am not”.
Pat
Mary doesn’t usually outright lie, does she?
She says things that are untrue because her perception of reality is… skewed, but she doesn’t say things that she thinks aren’t true that I recall.
(Also there are plenty of other words she could have been saying there that would fit. Obviously it wasn’t nice, but there’s more than one not-nice word or phrase.)
zoelogical
Mary says the things that benefit her most in the moment.
to her it does not always seem like a lie, but she would not hesitate to lie if it benefited her. and for that moment it would be her truth, more or less, because the lie needs to become your truth in order for you to deliver it like truth.
but really explicit, complicated lies are difficult to hold up for very long, because the truth of who and what you are gets through. so when Mary was trying to manipulate people while Ruth had her meltdown, she was instantly seen through because her smugness of nature was just. very present.
Mary would never say the c-word as part of her general persona, because she’s not a girl who says the c-word. but Ruth doesn’t count, because she’s a lesbian, and Mary can call her a c-word if she wants because she’s a sinner. and why wouldn’t a lesbian lie about her? she’s a lesbian, after all. she’s got more problems than those kinds of delusions.
like. this is someone who looks at Ruth and sees “victim”. sees prey. sees the possibility to destroy and goes for it because she can. so like yeah her perception of reality is mega skewed but that doesn’t make any of the things she says any more true, if that makes sense
Pat
I said that she says things that are not true because her perception =/= reality.
Rukduk
Well, considering the old laws of inheritance you could be a claimant to the now vacant throne of France depending on your ancestors so…maybe you are? You don’t happen to have any ancestors from the 1700s by the name Louis do you? But, yeah, there weren’t a whole lot of options of what Mary was going to say that start with c.
Spaz
…….now I want to move to France, take up cross-dressing, and be naed the Drag Queen of France.
Sensei Le Roof
Maybe, but is your spoon too big?
John
Ruth doesn’t actually specify which ‘C’-word, either.
And even if Mary was going to say “cow” or “college student” or something, she’s still definitely lying. She’s on the F-bomb scoreboard, and said “goddamn” twice in the same strip she earned her spot on there. I’m not sure if anyone besides Carla witnessed it, though.
Passchendaele
Ah, true (I had forgotten about her past cursing)! Still, keep in mind that there aren’t that many C-words out there that would be used as an effective invective, and I’m pretty sure Mary was attempting to say the worst one in the way that she addresses Ruth intensely angrily. Too, if she’s like her walkyverse incarnation, she still swears when she wants and also has hypocritical relations with other people (looking at you, Eric). Because she’s not a self-righteous lying twit, no. 😛
shoeboxjeddy