Dumbing of Age characters who attend Indiana University and don't live in Read Hall.
Because of the large Ensemble Cast and Switching P.O.V., characters are listed in alphabetical order by full first name.
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Forrest Hall
Jennifer Yunru "Billie" Billingsworth
"I'm starting to think I've been oversold on college."
The top girl at her high school, she came to college expecting more of the same. She knew Walky and Sal from childhood, and shares a room with the latter prior to getting transferred to Forrest and rooming with Lucy.
- Adaptational Romance Downgrade: Fell in love with and ended up marrying Danny in the original continuity, whereas here she only attempts a fling with him and is turned down when Danny sees she's using Sex for Solace. Afterward, the two never interact again, and the comic focuses on her on-again/off-again relationship with Ruth.
- The Alcoholic: Her alcoholism is quite well known:Billie: Sal. Yeah, it's one in the afternoon and I'm drinking. Fuckin' surprise.
Sal: It's not a surprise. Alcoholism is yer definin' characteristic. - Alpha Bitch: Her position in High School, given by name here.
- Always Someone Better: An ongoing theme of her adventures is running into someone who does what she does better.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Billie is eventually moved to a new dorm wing full of girls who quickly begin looking up to her. However, Billie soon realizes that while the rest of the cast have adjusted to adult life decently well, these girls never grew out of their high-school mentalities, and that keeping up appearances with them will only stunt her own development. After this, Billie finally owes up to her toxic behavior and begins to clean herself up.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Despite putting on pounds since high school, Billie is still considered attractive.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Claims her dad showers her with money because he doesn't know how to show affection.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: She's so well-endowed even other women find themselves staring at her chest.
- Closet Geek:
- For all her hatred of NERDS Billie uses a lot of phrases like "life-force" in casual conversation...
- Girl certainly knows her Reagan-era journalism.
- She loses the "closet" part after coming clean to Forest Quad in an attempt to knock herself off the pedestal they put her on, admitting to being a fan of Kit Fisto and having ran a fanfiction blog for him.
- For all her hatred of NERDS Billie uses a lot of phrases like "life-force"
- Closet Key: Billie had at least one pre-college fling with another woman, but Ruth apparently "found out she was into girls" through her.
- Cruel Cheerleader: A downplayed and not-entirely-unsympathetic case: she was a head cheerleader in high school and clings to that part of her identity in college, and while usually she's not deliberately malicious and tries to be helpful, she's insecure, self-destructive and willing to get physical with people that annoy her.
- Culturally Religious: Billie claims in an early strip to believe in God, but doesn't do any active practicing beyond that, even claiming she views going to church as a waste of time.Joyce: So then, are you someone who believes it's preferable to have a more intimate, one-on-one fellowship with God rather than mindlessly attend church?Billie: I'm someone who believes it's preferable to sleep in on Sunday.
- Establishing Character Moment: Being pegged by the staff of Indiana University as an alcoholic.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Seemingly more so than the guys.Billie: You're still staring at them.
Joyce: (small voice) i could crawl up into them and be safe and warm forever - Fallen Princess: Was very popular in high school, but in college finds herself at the bottom of the food chain. It's taken her a while to realize it's happening.
- Fatal Flaw: Billie's biggest flaw is being so deeply insecure that she's quite willing to do almost anything that seems like it'll get her back the respect she used to have in high school, even if it's ultimately self-destructive.
- Hates Being Nicknamed: Post-timeskip, has started going by Jennifer, quite insistently.
- Holier Than Thou: Billie thinks that being willing to acknowledge her faults gives her moral superiority over her peers that (to her knowledge) are not, which is what led to her drifting apart from the main cast after the time-skip.
- Hope Spot: After moving to Forest Quad, she discovers to her pleasant surprise that everyone living there has the same high-school mindset as her, and practically worships her for being a cheerleader just like she wants. She is once again the Alpha Bitch and loving every minute of it. However, Joyce had to show up and obliviously ruin everything for her.
- Heroic BSoD: After a few too many mistakes and hits to her self-worth, Billie takes to Walky's bed and refuses to speak. Ruth pries her out of it... just in time for Billie to run into, and be publicly rejected by, Alice.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Went from Alpha Bitch to Butt-Monkey simply by graduating. Has slowly begun to realize this and the results are not pretty.
- Hypocrite:
- Attempted to shame Sal for sleeping with Jason to try and get her grades up. Given that she herself tried to matchmake Ruth with Daisy to land a job at the university's newspaper, she doesn't have much room to judge.
- Was offended by people calling Walky "David", adamantly insisting that he only be called by his nickname, even though she's renounced her own nickname at this point and just as adamantly insists that she never be called by it.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Popular friends, that is.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: She's convinced that she's better than all these geeks...because deep down she's fighting crippling self-image problems.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Talks a good game about not wanting to be friends with the rest of the cast but still spends all her time with them, helps set-up Walky with Dorothy, looks out for Joyce and even showed concern for Ruth, her tormentor and confused love interest. She also tries to pay off Raidah after Sarah hits her (without much success), despite the fact that Sarah's made her dislike for her quite clear.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All:
- About relationships. She thought she had it all together in High School, in college not so much. It's downplayed overall as she still gives decent advice.
- It gets worse post-book 10. After cleaning up her act and breaking up with Ruth, Billie has become convinced she's changed for the better and has nothing left to learn, talking down to everyone as if she's the Only Sane Man of the group when she clearly isn't.
- Like an Old Married Couple: Dorothy described Billie and Walky this way early on in the strip. Billie was unamused.
- Like Brother and Sister: Their actual relationship, vouched for by them both, with shades of Vitriolic Best Buds. Combined with her better relationship with the Walkertons than her own parents Billie can basically be considered the third Walkerton sibling.
- Loving a Shadow: It's heavily implied that her new relationship with Asher is based on this, with her liking his rebellious, smoking, bad-boy image. When he starts loosening up and acting a bit goofier (and remarkably similar to Walky of all people), she's obviously upset about it, and begins growing more distant and pushing him away.
- Not Helping Your Case: Ruth got her tickets to a football game by claiming she was a "troubled teen". Billie doesn't take this well.Billie: The Hell I'm a troubled teen! I'll punch you in you face!
Ruth: Very convincing. - Offscreen Breakup: While it had been implied to have occurred during the timeskip, Word of God is that Billie and Ruth indeed broke up at some point. The flashback in Book 12 during Halloween finally shows Ruth and Billie breaking up, with Ruth being the one who ended the relationship as she relizes how toxic the relationship is.
- One-Steve Limit: Invoked. In a flashback, we see that the reason she went by Billie is because the girls she introduced herself to on the bus on her first day of kindergarten were also named Jennifer, and so made fun of her for being a "name-copier." She decided then to go by Billie instead.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Walky bestowed it on her during their childhood, in retaliation for her calling him "Walky," and evidently it's just stuck. Post-timeskip, she decides to start going by her real name and the tags were updated to reflect that. It is shown in a flashback that it was another girl named Jennifer that made fun of her name being the same. Jennifer then started going by Billie to stop the girls from making fun of her.
- Parental Neglect: She sees her parents so little that she's more attached to Sal and Walky's mom and dad. Tellingly, Sal and Walky's mom and dad seem to like her more than their actual children. Especially Sal.
- Race Lift: In mainline continuity, Billie was just white, but apparently Willis got asked enough if she was Asian during its run that he decided to make her half-Asian here.Willis: Everyone always assumed she was Asian back in Roomies!, what with the black hair and fair complexion, even though she was conceived as thoroughly English. So I figgered this go-round, hey, she's half-Asian, why not? ... Her dad, of course, is still white through-and-through, because, dude, last name's friggin' Billingsworth, man.'
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Is pale with black hair, and is considered attractive.
- Relationship Upgrade: Ends up dating Ruth, until their break-up following Book 10, and she starts dating Asher.
- Selective Obliviousness: The only way she's managed to avoid a Heroic BSoD thus far. While it seems finally start getting broken after Ruth initially breaks up with her and Alice gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, she relapses once she changes dorms and gets a taste of the popular life again.
- Sequel Non-Entity: Billie was gone from the narrative for the first post-time-skip arc - she hasn't been seen at all, and has only been referenced in vague ways, namely the notion that the cast lost her, and that Walky phrased her as being elusive. Not helping matters is that she and Ruth had an Offscreen Breakup and that whenever it looks like she's about to be mentioned, the discussion immediately changes subjects. She reappears in the second arc, apparently having drifted into Asher's orbit.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Post-Book 10, Billie has cleaned up her act... But she's also become even more abrasive towards the others than she was previously, culminating in her telling Walky point-blank that she doesn't consider them friends.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Billie has no issues with indulging in her vices, including drinking, but in the process drags others down with her. The car accident she and Alice were in came as a result of her drunk driving, with Alice only going along with it because she trusted Billie. After Ruth was nearly Driven to Suicide, Billie attempted to get better for Ruth, but gave into her habits once she changed dorms and was considered popular again, unaware to the pain this was causing Ruth. She eventually comes to realize this herself, but rather than try to change, she simply alienates herself from Ruth so Ruth can continue to get better while she remains toxic. This gets put to a stop once she sees that Ruth relapsed due to her leaving, so for both their sake, Billie decided to finally change, not only putting down the bottle, but admitting to her new dorm she's a Closet Geek and in a relationship with Ruth so as to knock herself off the pedestal they put her on. Admittedly, the last part is undone by Lucy getting Forest Quad to give her a fresh start in an attempt to be nice to her, but the sentiment is still there.
- Weight Woe: Has put on a few pounds, probably due to all the drinking and stress. She lets slip that she can't lift her right leg as high as she used to. Whether this is a permanent injury from her drunken car accident or just her not stretching regularly, she doesn't say.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Early on, she tries to act as though she were still an Alpha Bitch in high school, not realizing that college works very differently.
Lucy Glenn
Malaya's initial roommate, avid comic book fan, and Nice Girl.
- Ascended Extra: Initially a tertiary character due to being Malaya's roommate, she elevates to the Ensemble Cast once she becomes Billie's roommate.
- Black and Nerdy: Combined with hints of Yaoi Fangirl, at least if this is any indication.
- Demoted to Extra: While a major character in the last few years of Shortpacked!, she's an extremely minor one at first here. Subverted once she joins the Ensemble Cast.
- Fatal Flaw: Naivete. Lucy is too much of a Nice Girl for her own good, causing her to be oblivious to Malaya's dislike of her. She believes every hateful thing Raidah and her clique say about Sarah, causing her to become hostile to the latter in later interactions, and she has a hard time processing that Walky's parents, an interracial couple, could be racist towards her.
- Irony: Considering the... um, challenging cast of this strip, Malaya could've done a lot worse than Lucy as far as roommates go. Doesn't stop her from acting like she's a nightmare.
- Nice Girl: Despite Malaya calling Lucy her "awful roommate" and insisting that she's "the worst," Lucy is very friendly and amiable. Though she can be a bit too excited about her shipping.
- What Does She See in Him?: Lucy has a crush on Walky, Booster says she "can do much better". It's only a one time moment.
Nashita
One of the residents of Forest Quad fangirling over Billie.
- Girl Posse: Part of one, spontaneously formed when Billie moved to her dorm.
- In-Series Nickname: Goes by Nash, and the tags refer to her as such.
- I Resemble That Remark!: Does this to herself at one point.An' I thought I was supposed to be the nosy one. At least, that's what it says in [Rose's] journal.
- Never Bareheaded: Wears a hijab.
Rose Xandria Pepper
One of the residents of Forest Quad fangirling over Billie.
- All There in the Script: Her middle name was only used in a Tumblr post.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Before becoming a recurring extra when Billie moved to Forest Quad, she was seen in a single 2014 strip.
- Girl Posse: Part of one, spontaneously formed when Billie moved to her dorm.
- Trademark Favourite Food: Cheese, cut from a block with a knife swiped from the dining hall.
Other students
Alice Chen
Billie's best friend from high school, who decided to break all ties with her over her self-destructive behavior.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives one to Billie regarding her past behavior in high school. An especially unfortunately timed one, as Billie was just starting to come to a similar conclusion herself only to have Alice hammer it home in no uncertain terms:Walky: I just want the, y'know, old Billie back.
Billie: Well, I'm pretty fuckin' sure I don't.
Alice: Finally, an epiphany. You should have taken the damn clue when I didn't talk to you all summer.
Asher Park
- Armor-Piercing Question: When Walky tries to brush off Linda's prior relationship with the dean of IU as unimportant, Asher asks him to consider whether it was because of that relationship that Sal was even allowed to attend IU. This momentarily stuns Walky.
- Armor-Piercing Response: After Walky blames him for getting Sal sent away for five years and further straining their relationship, Asher points out that he only called the cops on her, not sent her away. Rather, it was the Walkerton's parents that decided to send Sal away. Asher saying this leaves Walky in a Stunned Silence with tears welling up in his eyes.
- The Chessmaster: After Blaine manipulates him into participating into a kidnapping plot, Asher is heavily implied to have waited just long enough to let Blaine fuck things up for himself before alerting his grandfather to the scheme.
- Defeat Equals Friendship: He holds no grudge against Walky for punching him, and even joked with him about how they dressed the same for breakfast.
- Dresses the Same: After the incident where he and Walky wore the same hoodie and jacket, it's revealed he was wearing a butt taco shirt underneath.
- Early-Bird Cameo: He initially debuts in Sal's flashback detailing how Sal would eventually come to rob the convenience store, and doesn't show up in the present until three chapters later.
- Good Is Not Nice: He is honestly trying to reform himself and gives needed Brutal Honesty to Walky. That said he has Blaine assassinated for threatening his own life, the life of others, and getting two people killed, one at Blaine's own hands.
- He Is All Grown Up: He's definitely changed a lot from when he was thirteen: Amber outright calls him hot, much to Walky's shock, and Sal lampshades the trope when she meets up with him again.Sal: Yeah, yeah, puberty has been kind to us both. Shut up.
- Insult Backfire: When he catches Amber and Walky spying on him, he concludes they were checking out whether or not he was up to his old ways, shortly after giving a smug smirk while saying its understandable.
- Misplaced Retribution: A victim of it. After learning that he was the one who called the cops on Sal, Walky hits his Rage Breaking Point and slugs Asher in the face, blaming him for Sal being sent away for five years and further straining their relationship. Asher rightfully points out though that he didn't send Sal away, their parents did.
- Reformed, but Not Tamed: For dramatic effect. He is honestly trying to reform. But when Blaine threatens him and kidnaps and kills people he actually knows, Asher uses his Korean mafia connections to have Blaine assassinated.
- Reformed Criminal: He tells Walky and Amber that he isn't the same Asher that robbed places, and has both severed ties with his old crew and come to college to be a law abiding citizen. When Blaine approaches him later, he reveals he truly is trying to reform, much to his grandfather's disappointment.
- Smoking Is Cool: He's been smoking cigarettes since he was a kid.
- Stopped Dead in Their Tracks: While sulking after a fight with Jennifer, he passes by Ethan and, clearly smitten, stops to look at him.
- Took a Level in Cheerfulness: After the time skip, he's no longer the mysterious, morally ambiguous bad boy he was, but instead a friendly, kind of goofy nice guy, having more in common with Walky than anyone had ever thought.
- Toxic Friend Influence: He was the one who inspired Sal to rob stores to gain enough money to help out Marcie, with Sal joining him and his friend on a heist, and later dropping Sal off at the convenience store that she'd meet Amber and Ethan at.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He and his buddy were pulling off a heist around the same time Sal held up the convenience store Amber and Ethan were at, and being a dumb thirteen-year-old, he called the cops on Sal's robbery, both to keep them off his own ass, and because he thought it would be funny. While he doesn't consider it funny now and told Walky to tell Sal he's sorry, his actions ultimately lead to Ethan being held hostage, which in turn led to Amber stabbing Sal through the hand.
Charlie Sanchez
Booster's twin sister.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: She's very distractable to an almost crippling extent, to the point where her teacher, classmates, and sibling accept that they need to wrangle her.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Where Booster is perceptive and attentive to an almost Genre Savvy degree, Charlie is so distractible that she needs constant redirection.
Daisy Conrad
The sex-starved editor of the school newspaper.
- Adaptational Comic Relief: Goes from a hard-working alien hunter to an Adorkrable loser with no luck with no luck in the dating department.
- Da Editor: She's professional enough to be exasperated with Billie, but tends to prioritize "titillation" (her own).
- Epic Fail: Jennifer sets her up on a date with Ruth. It takes her three tries just to get the hostess to show her to her table without fleeing in embarrassment, and when she finally meets Ruth, the date goes so horribly that Ruth ends up hooking up with Jason instead.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Definitely believes in this and is constantly looking for it. For instance, in a Patreon strip when she overhears the confrontation between Amazi-Girl and Sal at the DeSanto rally while on the toilet, her first reaction is to imagine something steamy.
- Skewed Priorities: Her desire for lesbian sex tends to screw with her priorities when it comes to the newspaper, and is best exemplified when she's informed that Amazi-Girl is real.Daisy: Did. She have. A chest window? ...God, a chest window woulda... made a great front page splash image.
- You Need to Get Laid: Apparently it's been a while; she references her desire for sex with varying degrees of subtlety all the time.
Jason Chesterfield
The former TA of Joyce, Walky, Sal, Billie, and Mike's freshmen math class, originally hailing from Knightsbridge in England.
- Abusive Parents: Does not get along with his father, describing Dargon Chesterfield as a "cruel and powerful captain of industry", and he implies to Walky that part of his reasoning for going to IU for grad school was to get as far away from him as possible.
- The Bartender: After he's fired from his TA job, Walky hooks him up with a new job as the bartender at Galasso's through questionable means. He's still working there after the time-skip.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Sal for all of about four strips before they go straight to the belligerent sex. It's more evident with Penny, who derides him for being "emotionally unavailable".
- British Stuffiness: Complete with bowtie, sweater, and overly-prim vocabulary.
- Culture Clash: He is clearly having some trouble aligning himself with the needs of his students, and this seems to be the cause.
- Double Standard: Penny comments on this when Jason comments on her having a relationship with a student, saying that people actually like her, so if she's caught, nobody will care. On the other hand, most people find Jason to be an irritable prick, so if he's caught in a relationship with a student (which he is), he'd be the one to lose his job and reputation.
- Everyone Has Standards: He is not above having sex with one of his students, but he is above allowing that to affect her grade, and has one of his fellow TAs mark her exam for him.
- Fish out of Water: Comes off as out of his element at anything that's not TA-ing.
- Framing the Guilty Party: Accidentally happens to him. When Penny gets in trouble for sleeping with a student, she claims that Jason has too...and had no idea at the time that he did. Since Sal has no interest in corroborating to get him in trouble, he'd probably have gotten away with it with a simple denial, but has too much dignity and accepts being fired.
- Smart People Speak the Queen's English: When Sal asks him what his accent is, he claims he doesn't have an accent, and he's the only one speaking real English.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Sal seduces him in an effort to get her grades up. This is not particularly surprising metawise, as their intense but ultimately doomed attraction to each other was one of the most stable elements of the Walkyverse where they originated.
Raidah Rasheed
An old friend of Sarah's—or more specifically, of Sarah's roommate Dana. Hates Sarah for getting Dana removed from school, though they eventually call a cease-fire. However, after Jacob dumps her she comes back with a vengeance, now with Joyce in her crosshairs as well.
- All There in the Manual: Raidah's last name was only revealed in the tags for this preview panel on the Dumbing of Age Tumblr.
- Alliterative Name: Raidah Rasheed.
- Amoral Attorney: She's studying to be a lawyer. Given how much she loves glossing over details to try and paint the subjects of her ire in as negative a light as possible, she's not going to be a particularly ethical one.
- Arc Villain: From Book 11 onwards Raidah starts taking over as one of the strip's main antagonists, as she begins making moves to progressively steal people away from Joyce and Sarah's social circle as revenge for what happened with Dana and Jacob.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Around people who can help her social standing rise, like Jacob or Billie, Raidah will hide or downplay her less-savory qualities (though this doesn't stop her from insulting Billie behind her back).
- Even Evil Has Standards: She's more of a jerk than outright evil, but she calls out Char for mocking Dina for her (perceived) mental impairment.
- Hypocrite:
- She criticizes her friend for calling Dina "retarded", but she still speaks in a distinctly condescending tone to her and even bluntly calls her mentally challenged to her face.
- Tells Jacob that she cut Sarah out of her life for her own well-being, the exact same reason Sarah called Dana's dad.
- Condemns Dorothy for wanting to be president, believing that committing war crimes is something they're required to do. Spreading misinformation to try and turn people against your rivals is also something morally bankrupt politicians do, but Raidah doesn't pay much mind to this.
- Jerkass: She may draw the line at "retarded", but she still calls Dina "mentally-challenged" to her face and talks down to her like a small child. That's not going into the way she's treated Sarah. She's also subtly but noticeably condescending to Joyce during their lunch with Jacob and Becky at Galasso's.Dina: Her tone of voice and her posture denotes condescension, correct?
- Jerkass Has a Point:
- In this strip, Raidah immediately refers to Joyce as "MAGA-ass." Fan consensus has been that while they don't like it, it's not an unreasonable assumption considering who Joyce was prior to starting college.
- A more downplayed example is her assertion that Sarah will abandon her friends when they become inconvenient. While Sarah getting Dana sent home was justified due to the latter's drug problem, she suggests to Lucy (unprompted) that she should just break up with Walky rather than deal with his racist parents, which ends up confirming to Lucy that what Raidah said about her was true.
- In this strip
- My Master, Right or Wrong: Shows Undying Loyalty to Dana, despite her increased mental health issues.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Her default way of engagement with Sarah, with her resentment and hate towards her evident with every word she says to her despite her current tone. She drops the "passive" part when it comes to Joyce though ever since the latter played a role in Jacob breaking up with her.
- Self-Serving Memory: Whenever Raidah recounts her history with Sarah to others, she tends to omit any details that might portray her in a remotely positive light:
- She conveniently leaves out her continued harassment of Sarah when telling Jacob about Sarah punching her, along with Sarah's apology the very next day.
- While having breakfast with Walky and Lucy, she and Carl tell them about how Sarah got Dana pulled out of school, but leave out the parts where she was actually concerned for her well-being rather than just looking out for her own grades, as well as how she tried to warn them that Dana's condition wasn't improving but they all just blew her off.
- Shadow Archetype: As a two-faced liar and manipulator more concerned with making business connections than personal ones who is also quick to ostracize anyone she can't keep under her thumb, Raidah is essentially what Dorothy is trying to avoid being in her quest to become president.
Ryan
The son of a pastor that Joyce meets at a college party. A date rapist and an all-around terrible person.
- Adaptational Villainy: Ryan in the Walkyverse was hardly a nice person by any stretch of the imagination, having manipulated a much younger Ruth into having sex with him and then moving on to his next "conquest", but here he's an outright attempted rapist.
- Arc Villain: He is the main antagonist of "Yesterday Was Thursday".
- As the Good Book Says...: Is quite fond of quoting Bible verses, which is what he uses to make Joyce believe he's a nice guy.
- Attempted Rape: Tries this on Joyce, but luckily Sarah's there to stop him with a baseball bat.
- Bait the Dog: He introduces himself to Joyce speaking Bible verses and treats her with respect. This is all part of his plan to get her alone and attempt to drug and rape her.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: If you didn't know anything about him, he'd seem like a perfectly nice guy, since his true nasty personality only comes through when he loses his patience.
- Blatant Lies: When asked to clarify a Bible quote sent to him by his mom.Ryan: Just some random thing about, y'know, Jesus.
- Bullying a Dragon: He knows that Amber / Amazi-Girl can kick his ass, and still thinks a knife is all he needs. Needless to say, he bit off about fifty times more than he can chew.
- The Bus Came Back: He makes his first real appearance (as opposed to a nightmare or fear hallucination) after his debut arc as a DeSanto supporter during one of her rallies.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Parts of his plan fail due to this. He sent Joyce off to get friends to play games with them while he drugs her drink, not anticipating her actually gathering a bunch of drunks. Revealing his true nature to Joyce and attempting to drag her away with eyes on him didn't exactly go well for him either since it got him scarred by Joyce and beaten by a bat wielding Sarah.
- He falls victim to this again when he decides to hunt down Joyce and her friends, after a brawl with Amazi-Girl. He's ecstatic when he finally confronts her, ready to overpower her with a knife. He fails to consider that maybe the superhero who chased him down might be all too willing to fight back.
- Dramatic Irony: The Bible verse his mother sent him, 2 Corinthians 11:14, reads: "And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light." This describes Ryan to a tee.
- Evil Counterpart: Joyce warns The Casanova Joe that Ryan is him taken to his logical extreme.
- Faux Affably Evil: The mask of the pleasant pastor's son slips off when his patience wears thin.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: When he finally shows up again in person at the end of Book 6 into the beginning of Book 7, it's revealed that the wound he sustained from Joyce smacking him with her glass ended up scarring.
- Hypocrite: Quotes "you reap what you sow" at Joyce, eager to get revenge on her for hurting him. It doesn't seem to occur to him that the quote applies to him for everything he's done.
- In-Series Nickname: Following his attempted revenge on the girls he blames for his troubles, he is now known as Druggo McStabbed.
- It's All About Me: Yes, how dare Joyce defend herself from a potential rapist?
- Jerkass: Entitled, misogynistic, and absolutely vile in his every scene.
- Karma Houdini: Double subverted. He gets smashed in his face with a glass and hit with a bat for his actions, only to escape any permanent consequences.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: His luck finally runs out when he makes the mistake of threatening Amber with a knife.
- Knight of Cerebus: The first truly horrible character to appear in the strip, whose actions have heavy repercussions on Joyce's psyche.
- Manipulative Bastard: Easily picks out Joyce from a crowd as an easy mark and quickly figures out what will gain her favor. At one point, he has her hold "his" drugged drink and then distracts her enough that she forgets where she got it and starts drinking it.
- Nothing Is Scarier: To Joyce, in a way. The fact he's still out there with no idea where he could be terrifies her.
- Plot Armor:
- He manages to somehow crawl away from a huge crowd surrounding him without anyone noticing until he's long gone, then when he returns manages to get away from Amazi-Girl and Sal, manages to sneak away again without either of them noticing until he's long gone, while taking Amazi-Girl's phone and deleting the photo of him while fleeing, and even accumulates three Dawson "goons" and a getaway driver somehow.
- Later when Dorothy tries to ask Robin about her interns (of which Ryan was one) to try and find out more about Ryan, Leslie immediately has Robin leave before she has a chance to answer and refuses to let Dorothy leave to find out from Robin.
- His luck finally runs out when he confronts Amber and Dorothy at knife-point and receives a swift and painful lesson about the intricacies of Amber's psychosis.
- Psycho Knife Nut: After tracking down Amber and Dorothy, he aimed to stab them, then go after Joyce next. Unfortunately, he chose to take on Amber first.
- Put on a Bus to Hell: He hasn't appeared in a strip since 2017, largely on account of deciding to pull a knife on Amber, getting beaten and stabbed by her, and ending up in the hospital.
- Real Name as an Alias: He later admits in Directory that Ryan is his middle name.
- Slasher Smile:
- Gives Amazi-Girl one when she thinks she's incapacitated all of his goons, only for Tyler to grab her from behind.
- Then he gives an even bigger one to Amber and Dorothy when he pulls a knife on them.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Officially appears in only two arcs (three if you count his appearance at the very end of Book 6), but his actions hover over Joyce's college life.
- Stalker without a Crush: Several background shots show him tailing Dorothy, Walky, and Joe.
- Truth in Television: People who go by their middle names often have to use their first names for legal purposes. Such as student directories, or jobs...
- Wham Line: Come to find out his name might not be actually Ryan.
- Withholding Their Name: He has been keeping his first name a secret from his friends who call him Ryan.
