Captain Planet took one look at the cast of this comic and their relationships, went “Yeah, this is way over my pay grade. Good luck, kids!”, and nope’d right the f*ck out of there.
I think her last healthy relationship ended with her nearly dying in a drunk driving accident, so maybe this dynamic is for the best? I’m talking about whatever she had with Alice by the way, not the Ruth shit show.
Her relationship with Alice is only “maybe slightly healthy” but considering all of this I’m inclined to say it was probably going badly even before Billie literally drove them into a tree.
Yeah, we don’t know a lot about the Alice situation, but from what we’ve seen, I don’t think it was nearly as healthy as the sexy lesbian suicide pact. Which is saying something.
Among other things, it’s pretty clear she didn’t even realize it was a relationship.
We also have indications she is bi in this universe too, her comments to Leslie about choosing to date men suggests that she’s attracted to both and has previously always just chosen the more socially acceptable dating option… until she met leslie and her brain got broken by how cute she is.
I kinda feel like if you’re going to put Joyce that far to the left, surely Dorothy shouldn’t be all the way over there on the right. They were BOTH enthusiastically participating in that laundry room scene, after all.
I don’t think either of them are in Mary territory, but I mean, that’s too easy, that’s like not being Naomi or Blaine, etc, doesn’t make you a good parent.
In any case, both are deeply frustrating because they’ve given us plenty to sympathize with or care about, or shown moments of decency, but that also makes all the prickly parts of them that much worse.
Yeah, Jennifer’s far from the worst person in the comic, she’s not even the worst person we’ve seen this week. But I’m honestly just tired of her…lack of any real growth whatsoever. She’s still the same insecure girl desperately trying to hold herself and everyone else to her own immature standards of ‘coolness’ and ‘popularity’ like she’s in a high school movie from the 80s. Until she grows out of it even a *little* bit I’m just sick of her.
clif
Wait for it.
Devin
Just another decade or two, right?
Needfuldoer
I wonder what it’s going to take for her to finally have that epiphany. Asher blowing up at her? Watching Ruth move on?
thejeff
She’s not drinking, so she’s in far better shape than she was at the start.
Better shape than Ruth is, honestly.
pope suburban
Y’know, I’m actually not sure about Ruth. She’s still drinking, but not to excess that we’ve seen (Aside from once when she went to talk to Jason at work), and she appears to be thinking about the implications of some of the things she did, like the power-dynamics problems of her dating Jennifer as an RA. It’s not some smooth upward trajectory, but that’s often how recovery is- you stumble, you maybe need to take some time to absorb things. Ruth does seem to be generally growing as a person, though, and that’s not something we can say for Jennifer.
thejeff
Honestly, I’ll be really disappointed with the comic if Ruth is shown to now be able drink responsibly with no further struggles or apparent effort. I also don’t expect that at all.
wonder how fond raidah is of asher unelss she only cares about his potential connections since it seems liek putting up with jennifers bongoy/mean girl attitude would be something she’d not want in her friend group, ladder climbing aside, or try to get jennifer to control her behavior a bit
If so, that explains why many of the characters do not progress correctly.
DailyBrad
Not that we’d really know, honestly. People going to therapy don’t get better immediately, and consider that we’ve barely completed one semester of college in this webcomic. If she went once a week, Jennifer probably hasn’t even had a dozen sessions yet. How much better could we realistically hope she’d be? Especially since she has tackled some of her more obvious issues, like I don’t know if she drinks nowadays.
It’s true, now that I think about it, because I have a feeling that Jennifer was just bragging about going to therapy, I mean, she just told Walky.
fridge_logic
Yeah, Jenifer could be in therapy and not feel like her current relationship drama warrants being talked about, as far as she’s concerned she just solved a problem, why waste therapy time on that.
Mark
Indeed, “the therapists here are no good” could just mean “the one I saw didn’t fix me right away.”
thejeff
She did go to therapy before the timeskip, but it seems like she stopped. Sometime before the start of this semester, though it hasn’t been said explicitly.
Therapy takes time, effort, patient buy-in, vulnerability…I’m guess some of those factors may be lacking on Jennifer’s part. It could also be that the therapist is shitty or not the right fit for her, or just not experienced enough to see past things as Jennifer presents them.
I was anticipating that people were going to say therapy takes time i am well aware, of this fact I was just a jab at how Jenifer just seems to be regressing as person despite taking steps that would under non comedic circumstances would be a good start to improving herself.
204 thoughts on “Pick up”
Ana Chronistic
phew, almost escaped a trash ship
Stephen Bierce
“Witch trash ship?” “Right.”
BBCC
Well I see nothing wrong at all!
Quirdry Tawks
Right? Rock on, you wacky kids.
JepMZ
Probably not first
Thag Simmons
dammit jennifer
Doctor_Who
She’s got some weird kinks.
Ophidiophile
She’s a drama hurricane. (See Thag Simmons’ post about a dozen posts down)
Scoops!
Is not life like a hurricane?
MiaFillene
“here in Duckberg…race cars lasers aeroplanes…it’s a duck blur…”
Corronchilejano
Hope you never meet captain planet Billie because he hates toxic stuff.
Mturtle7
Captain Planet took one look at the cast of this comic and their relationships, went “Yeah, this is way over my pay grade. Good luck, kids!”, and nope’d right the f*ck out of there.
NGPZ
Let’s celebrate Willis’s new buffer record of 6 months and 24 days!!!
On the last day of Oktoberfest!!! ??
True Survivor
Cheers!
(I don’t drink, but that seemed like the appropriate response)
HueSatLight
Prost!
CrazyJ
L’chaim
Quirdry Tawks
Skol!
shanunu
Do you think he ever looks back at the comic that is posted today and cringes at how much his style has changed
Ed Callahan
The archives, going back to “Roomies”, are full of redrawn scripts and apologies by Willis for his amateur drawing skills.
Ellegos
Kanpai!
Laura
Salud!
Dana
Oh, Bennifer. I love you, but you’re an idiot.
Sirksome
I think they will last.
Thag Simmons
In spite of all good judgment and sense
JA
Damn Jennifer, just can’t be in a state where you and the people around you are happy and nonconfrontational, can you.
Sirksome
I think her last healthy relationship ended with her nearly dying in a drunk driving accident, so maybe this dynamic is for the best? I’m talking about whatever she had with Alice by the way, not the Ruth shit show.
Thag Simmons
Her relationship with Alice is only “maybe slightly healthy” but considering all of this I’m inclined to say it was probably going badly even before Billie literally drove them into a tree.
thejeff
Yeah, we don’t know a lot about the Alice situation, but from what we’ve seen, I don’t think it was nearly as healthy as the sexy lesbian suicide pact. Which is saying something.
Among other things, it’s pretty clear she didn’t even realize it was a relationship.
newlland(Henryvolt)
Hey guess what? Made a reddit post for the first time in a while: https://reddit.com/r/dumbingofage/s/pC5eISd0SB
True Survivor
Very cool. Does positioning along the vertical axis have any meaning?
newlland(Henryvolt)
For some of them yeah, if this is about Joyce and Carla than yes that was intentional.
Sporky
That’s the horizontal axis! Vertical axis is up and down.
newlland(Henryvolt)
Oooh then no.
Sporky
Joyce’s placement is perfect
John Campbell
Point of order: Assuming characters’ sexualities are constant across universes, Robin is bi.
fridge_logic
We also have indications she is bi in this universe too, her comments to Leslie about choosing to date men suggests that she’s attracted to both and has previously always just chosen the more socially acceptable dating option… until she met leslie and her brain got broken by how cute she is.
Steelbright
This is cute!!
Mturtle7
I kinda feel like if you’re going to put Joyce that far to the left, surely Dorothy shouldn’t be all the way over there on the right. They were BOTH enthusiastically participating in that laundry room scene, after all.
Coatl
Yeah Jennifer, of course, whatever you say
Schpoonman
Ugh, you’re the worst.
Coatl
indeed
Decidedly Orthogonal
It’s the last day of Oktoberfest. She’s the wurst!
NGPZ
mmmm… perhaps if not Asher sausage, she go for regular sausage and a modicum of beer ???
Nono
People raging about Sarah last week, consider: maybe Jennifer was the real worst person all along.
Jo_cubstar
This^
DailyBrad
I don’t think either of them are in Mary territory, but I mean, that’s too easy, that’s like not being Naomi or Blaine, etc, doesn’t make you a good parent.
In any case, both are deeply frustrating because they’ve given us plenty to sympathize with or care about, or shown moments of decency, but that also makes all the prickly parts of them that much worse.
sakamism
Yeah, Jennifer’s far from the worst person in the comic, she’s not even the worst person we’ve seen this week. But I’m honestly just tired of her…lack of any real growth whatsoever. She’s still the same insecure girl desperately trying to hold herself and everyone else to her own immature standards of ‘coolness’ and ‘popularity’ like she’s in a high school movie from the 80s. Until she grows out of it even a *little* bit I’m just sick of her.
clif
Wait for it.
Devin
Just another decade or two, right?
Needfuldoer
I wonder what it’s going to take for her to finally have that epiphany. Asher blowing up at her? Watching Ruth move on?
thejeff
She’s not drinking, so she’s in far better shape than she was at the start.
Better shape than Ruth is, honestly.
pope suburban
Y’know, I’m actually not sure about Ruth. She’s still drinking, but not to excess that we’ve seen (Aside from once when she went to talk to Jason at work), and she appears to be thinking about the implications of some of the things she did, like the power-dynamics problems of her dating Jennifer as an RA. It’s not some smooth upward trajectory, but that’s often how recovery is- you stumble, you maybe need to take some time to absorb things. Ruth does seem to be generally growing as a person, though, and that’s not something we can say for Jennifer.
thejeff
Honestly, I’ll be really disappointed with the comic if Ruth is shown to now be able drink responsibly with no further struggles or apparent effort. I also don’t expect that at all.
Angel
wonder how fond raidah is of asher unelss she only cares about his potential connections since it seems liek putting up with jennifers bongoy/mean girl attitude would be something she’d not want in her friend group, ladder climbing aside, or try to get jennifer to control her behavior a bit
Quirdry Tawks
I certainly wasn’t raging over Sarah.
Sarah is very good at foreseeing very bad outcomes. That is a chick you wanna keep on Speed Dial.
morhek
“Am I extremely toxic and drive everyone else away? No, it’s Ruth who’s wrong.”
C.T. Phipps
I mean, she is.
Both should never be in any relationship since they use physical and emotional violence on their partners.
thejeff
Just be clear, that’s got nothing to do with why Ruth broke up with her.
UrsulaDavina
I though Jenifer went to therapy? I could have sworn she went? If she is well she needs to find a new one.
RassilonTDavros
The therapists at the college canonically suck at therapy, it’s been addressed before.
Coatl
If so, that explains why many of the characters do not progress correctly.
DailyBrad
Not that we’d really know, honestly. People going to therapy don’t get better immediately, and consider that we’ve barely completed one semester of college in this webcomic. If she went once a week, Jennifer probably hasn’t even had a dozen sessions yet. How much better could we realistically hope she’d be? Especially since she has tackled some of her more obvious issues, like I don’t know if she drinks nowadays.
Coatl
It’s true, now that I think about it, because I have a feeling that Jennifer was just bragging about going to therapy, I mean, she just told Walky.
fridge_logic
Yeah, Jenifer could be in therapy and not feel like her current relationship drama warrants being talked about, as far as she’s concerned she just solved a problem, why waste therapy time on that.
Mark
Indeed, “the therapists here are no good” could just mean “the one I saw didn’t fix me right away.”
thejeff
She did go to therapy before the timeskip, but it seems like she stopped. Sometime before the start of this semester, though it hasn’t been said explicitly.
She’s still not drinking though, which is huge.
Sirksome
Did she go to a campus therapist? She’s one of the few characters rich enough to afford decent psychological care.
Thag Simmons
I think it’s just Dorothy?
Needfuldoer
And Dorothy lies by omission to her therapist in order to protect her future self’s image from muckraking tabloids.
Yumi
Therapy takes time, effort, patient buy-in, vulnerability…I’m guess some of those factors may be lacking on Jennifer’s part. It could also be that the therapist is shitty or not the right fit for her, or just not experienced enough to see past things as Jennifer presents them.
UrsulaDavina
I was anticipating that people were going to say therapy takes time i am well aware, of this fact I was just a jab at how Jenifer just seems to be regressing as person despite taking steps that would under non comedic circumstances would be a good start to improving herself.