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preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 6h
Hunter S Schafer @bolt451.bsky.social ⋅ 14h
Sophia_Nyx 
⚧️ @sophianyx.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Onyx | 
Emerald | 
Obsidian ⚧️ 
@onua-ryder.neocities.org ⋅ 2d
Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social ⋅ 4m
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 4d
Reuters Legal @legal.reuters.com ⋅ 2d
the_dude @lebowski76.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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Barb O. Saur 
Say it, Joyce…
L-l-l-l-l-lesbian
I meant love…I wasn’t trying to trick you or anything.
I lesbian you guys right now
I would say I’m in lesbians with you for saying that
but I don’t think I’m allowed to be in lesbians.
I suddenly realize I could have been using Lesbian as a verb this whole time.
I would lesbian someone, but I’m worried they’d Hetero me.
Truer words never spoken…
YOUR ICON.
I want to see that picture!
Darnation
Joyce, trying to reenact the comedy stylings of Carlos Mencia.
If someone steals a joke from Carlos Mencia does that make it original again?
No, it just makes them incredibly desperate.
Is Carlos Mencia even a thing? Last I heard of him was the South Park “Fish Sticks” thing. Maybe he was just some strange shared illusion?
He’s still around but he’s on the out circuits of entertainment.
For those watching at home and reading the alternate text, the reason is strippers.
What does it say about me that I read that as “shippers” first?
You can get given singles for shipping? No wonder so many people around here do it.
Shipping is its own reward.
And it’s not like we can KEEP ourselves from doing it.
If Mike had a nickle for every ship in these comments, he’d have all of our mothers.
>Implying that Mike has not already done so
> Implying that Mike doesn’t get a nickle for every ship in these comments.
I’d ship me and money, for a dollar.
Both answers are acceptable.
It says that you win at life because Joe ships himself with every female that is available that is not Joyce or similar to Joyce.
I haven’t been to a stripper bar since I was in the Navy. But I think with inflation and all, they aren’t going to be too impressed by a single. Unless you fold it up so you can’t see the denomination, which I still remember how to do.
No, not strip bars. Ship bars. There, *everything* costs only a nickel.
And the only people dancing are mothers.
“Do you know of a place where sailors hang out?”
“Sailors? I often see them at night.”
</shenmue>
Where do I put the nickel? Do I… do I put it in someone’s slot?
(I’ll show myself out.)
You should be nippled and dimed for that statement.
EROGENEOUS ZONES!!!
…Wait. I did it wrong. Shit.
See, I got that too, but for some reason I read that as Joe getting a lot of them because he was the one stripping.
Hey man, either option is possible.
I bet Joe gives those singles to the homeless
Only if they strip for him.
Joyce will learn how to curse when Dorothy takes her virginity.
Nah, she’ll be all, “Oh gosh! Ohmigosh! Fudge me harder!”
That’s just wrong. And a huge turn-off.
Unless actual fudge is involved.
Someone needs to draw this. Like now
Rule 34, no need to hurry.
That you have that gravatar, when saying it’s a turn off makes this comment a million times better.
Heh, it might be forever indeed.
Suddenly Joyce has gotten really, really attached to Dorothy.
They’ll need to be surgically removed.
Suddenly?
But Billie is still the body she lusts for.
I think its more she dosen’t want to be left with Joe :p
Duh-duh-duh-duh-DEMOCRAT!
Duh-duh-duh-DUMBING OF AGE!
Duh-Duh-Duh–Decade!
Sorry, Kamen Rider reference.
But considering we’re discussing Joyce and Dorothy being ‘together’ it DOES give give Decade’s ‘final attack ride’ a whole new meaning.
Duh-duh-duh-DAIRANGER!
Watch yo mouth!
I’m just talkin’ ’bout Dumbing Of Age.
Then we can dig it!
Duh-duh-duh-duh-digging it!
You should know by now, we are the Duh-duh-duh-duh-
I-i-i-it doesn’t matter what your name is.
second panel is the Joyce adorable face of the week
Love how she’s reaching out to Dorothy. She’s like a baby who wants her binky.
She wants some Dorothy in her mouth.
But only if first separated into her component parts. Can’t have them touch!
No, silly, she doesn’t separate integrated components. Her bread doesn’t become flour and water and yeast, etc. It’s the separate real foods that come apart.
Thus, only if Dorothy is separated from all her clothing.
I like her better with the fourth panel. Antigrav eyebrows!
* IN the fourth panel. Not “with”.
Hello! I Must Be Going/I cannot stay/I came to say “I Must Be Going”/I’m glad I came but just the same/I Must Be Going…
I’ll stay a week or two / I’ll stay the summer through / but I am telling you / I must be going.
Groucho FTW.
BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE
Oh, wrong song?
Duuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeellll!
DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!!!! BLOODGUN IS THE BEST COMIC EVER!!!!
ROB LIEFELD IS A GENIUS! WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET!
Joe buys lots of soda’s from the soda machines. A guy get thirst when he’s at the stripper bar all night.
(Ha. I totally went there)
Or…Joe really like to make it rain.
I wonder if you could use the Macy’s day parade balloons as giant umbrellas.
The soda machines here take credit cards. It is the best.
omg how is she sooooo cuuuuutieeee with a mouthful of food even??
Aw, Joyce loves Dorothy. How cute.
Walky was right
There’s a sentence that you don’t see often. XD
But only in a wholesome biblical way.
And she wants to get to know Dorothy. In a biblical way.
How can you not love Dorothy?
that was literally the second most adorable thing I have seen all week
@alt-text: Joe you devil you.
Why is Joyce’s mouth so full in the 2nd panel when she reduced her taco to tiny seperate parts?
She separated them to shove them into her mouth all at once.
Smaller pieces means you can compact it more?
Does tht count as a vice?
Comic evidence suggests she is eating all of the cheese.
Damn you, Willis! It’s getting more and more impossible to NOT ship them by the day! So the closet lesbian is dating a closet gay guy?
Wait. That works out perfectly….
Buy one beard, get a second one free.
You say closet lesbian like its a fact
Nah, Joyce likes guys way too much to be a lesbian.
But bi is a thing.
Maybe…
Maybi.
Les-bi-an now sounds almost like a workable threesome.
All versions of this argument explained away in one strip:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/gorge/
I, for one, am proud of Joyce for not compromising her principles in the face of this ridiculous peer pressure.
I agree
Where they principles or inhibitions? She seemed to really want to swear when Dorothy left.
I think its a bit of both and that makes the comic better because nothings black and white in real life so it makes Joyce and more rounded character
They may have originally been principles, but now they’re compulsions. She’ll faux-swear at the drop of a hat, literally as hard as she can, and twice in this conversation made a real attempt to real-swear for very little reason. So it’s hard to be impressed by her ‘principles’ – she doesn’t have any, about this anyway. She’s got a sailor’s mind behind a care bear’s mouth.
“A compulsion and not a principle” definitely best describes my refusal to swear as a young adult.
Panel 2 is just what I needed. You know, I was slowly losing my sanity this morning.
“D”
“Duh”
“Dude looks like a lady!”
Duh Duh Nuh Nuh Nuh Nuh BATMAN!
Also, be on the lookout for a certain prehistoric shark.
Okay I now ship Joyce and Dorothy.
All I hear is Knives Chou fading Nooooo
I don’t understand why one not wanting the other to leave is grounds for immediate suspicion of lesbitude
Honey, it’s not grounds on it’s own, it’s yet another step on the path through the grounds of lesbianism. It’s a path she’s been on for a LOOOOONG time now, to the point where Dorothy’s boyfriend is actively commenting on it regularily.
Idunno I just feel like like people are just trying to fit their head canon into the actual story without a whole lot of evidence
Shocking.
When has that not happened?
Dorothy did not correct Walky when he said so.
Honestly, I don’t actually think that Joyce is significantly bisexual, or even really bicurious. Biconfused, maybe. Mainly I think she’s just too inexperienced to be sure what she’s thinking herself.
But if it turns out that she actually is bi, it’s not something that would be coming out of nowhere. There’ve been an awful lot of hints that she might be. She’s clearly way more attached to Dorothy than is typical for platonic friends, and jealous of Walky over her. She’s waxed rhapsodic about Sal’s appearance, her hair in particular. She’s expressed a desire to crawl into Billie’s cleavage. While she gets upset, she hasn’t ever actually denied it when Walky teases her about wanting to get with Dorothy. (She hates homosexuality… and also lying.) She threw a toy at Dorothy’s head. She is herself concerned that her thoughts about the other girls on her floor might make her gay. And I have real trouble reading this strip as anything but subtext.
So, yeah, if she actually turns out bi, I’ll be surprised… but not shocked. And in the meantime it’s fun to ship ’em.
It’s interesting… I never really noticed the art style evolving, but there’s a significant difference. The most obvious aspect is the extra layer of hilights in characters’ hair that is present now and not then.
The highlights were one thing I noticed when they started appearing, but don’t usually now (though occasionally they appear where I don’t think there should be highlights, and it looks weird), and don’t notice the absence of when I jump back in the archives.
What jars me about the early strips is the change in proportions. People were maybe 4 heads tall back in the beginning of the strip, and while they’re still not anything like realistically proportioned, they’re much more so now. That change happened gradually enough that I didn’t notice it as it was happening, but when I jump back into the early strips, it’s like, “What the hell, everybody turned into Miis of themselves.”
The lines have gotten a lot smoother, too. I think some of that may have been updated hardware.
that makes too much sense
1) People don’t always mean things seriously on the internet.
2) There have literally been comics already with Joyce suspecting she might have less-than-platonic feelings for girls. Well, fearing, really, but none of this is coming out of nowhere.
3) People don’t seem to have a problem with this when it goes the other way (as in a not-lesbians way), so I don’t see a point in complaining.
She wanted to crawl into Billie’s boobs.
I don’t think she’s into girls, but she sure does say and acting in damning ways sometimes.
Excellent ways, says this lesbian.
Danging ways.
Even if you’re not a lesbian, who doesn’t love boobs?
What if Zordon was looking for teenagers with lesbitude instead of “attitude”?
Nice try Joyce but no, and now we go back to either amber or Billie and Ruth, or both with a little bit of Mike PLEASE! I will never ask for anythink else in a skit
If you want Willis to give you a Mike strip tomorrow you should have made the request two months ago.
three
You and your buffer …… It’s as if you were organized and have a long term plot outline written out or something silly like that….
Now I’m craving a “Sad Joyce in Snow” sketch.
I would like to see 2nd panel Joyce do John Belushi’s impersonation of a pimple.
Call it a “zit” like he did.
And then Mike yells “FOOD FIGHT!” while pieing Walky in the face.
(Firefox likes “pieing” but hates “statted” (past tense of “to stat”)? Strange.)
I’m a little surprised that Joe’s spending this time and effort (and a dollar) trying to get Joyce to swear.
I mean, has he not noticed that her shirt’s done a button lower than usual? Pretty sure this is the first outfit she’s worn in the dumbiverse, non-dress category, that’s shown boobcrack at all.
I say that not to be crude (although it is, to be fair) but rather to point out that teasing her about her language is likely to put her on the defensive and make her less likely to loosen her tongue.
OTOH, maybe she’s showing more of the twins because of Sal’s sweater vest comment. I dunno.
He sees a girl showing cleavage and his first instinct is to tip her. Sounds pretty Joe to me.
I think the second panel is disgusting. Maybe taking this to serious..oh well.
I have seen Mr. W’s panels of Joyce being absolutely adorable, and weird, and sad, and cute, and scared, and everything in between. But this is just sad.
But good God Gertie (to quote my favorite Aunt), if I were in a public place with a person of an age equal to mine, and she was not mentally handicapped (and not drunk) and she did that to me….
I think I would not be seen in too many public places with her.
And yeah, I do have to be proud of her for not giving in and swearing, she does have a good stong sense of right and wrong for herself and tries to uphold it, even with all the peer pressure.
Like to see some Mike, hasn’t been around in awhile and I’m goody two shoe’d out. Need some down right Mikeness.
Dramatic people like Joyce in that panel are not my kind of people, but jeez, that’s harsh, and I’d agree you’re taking it too seriously. I’m really not sure how getting Joe punched repeatedly in public is LESS terrible than this, which is just her having an attachment to a friend who she probably would not have expected to make before going to college. She’s obviously not that socially aware in this setting, so it’d also be fair to give her a bit of slack on the enthusiasm levels.
Yeah, definitely taking it too seriously. I hope your friends know that you don’t tolerate even a little bit of silliness; you should probably make that clear, so they don’t get dropped for a moment of impulsive not-adult-enough behavior.
DAMMIT! (not in relation to comic.)
Okay, I’m on an IPad, and I can see the alt-text. SOMEHOW…
Still can’t figure out which gesture triggered it so I’m going to describe what I see in hopes that SOMEONE will know how this happens.
The entire comic grows shades darker as the alt-text appears in the center with a glowing white. If I tap to the side, which is the only part of the comic unaffected, it grows darker, if I tap again, the comic reverts to normal.
Will someone PLEASE figure this out?
Cause I can’t….
I have no idea, but a quick search for “alt text iPad” returned this result which may prove useful: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100404045906105
You could use a real computer instead of what is basically an oversized smartphone that still can’t make calls……
Phones can make call ? Seriously, they don’t know what new gimmick to add to their products.
OR you can understand that:
a) people like using tablets, which were designed for portable internet browsing;
b) people have computer issues sometimes and use a back-up (I read on my phone for a week because of this);
c) people aren’t necessarily home when they check the comic;
d) people don’t necessarily have access to a computer.
I’ve never figured out why people like using tablets. Tablets appear to be trying to fill a niche between smartphone and laptop that doesn’t seem to me to actually exist. They’re not small enough or durable enough to pocket and carry around on your person at all times like a phone (smartphones aren’t really, either, come to that), they can’t make phone calls, and they’re nowhere near as capable as a real computer. If I’m going to be lugging something the size of an iPad around, I might as well be carrying a netbook and have a full-up multitasking OS with a real UI.
My girlfriend carried around a mini-tablet and used that as her smartphone/music player (free wifi on campus) before she got a smartphone, and even after she got a smartphone for a while. My mom brings her iPad to people’s houses and stuff to read, and to read ebooks and browse the internet while traveling. She doesn’t travel with a laptop.
Tablets are great for surfing the web while you’re in bed or you don’t want to wait for your laptop to boot up or lug it around. When I’m traveling I usually wish I had a tablet because reading on my iPhone for too long sucks. Reading the comments here on my iPhone sucks. Every morning over breakfast and at lunch I boot up my laptop for 10-40 minutes just to read while eating, when it’d be easier to do on a tablet. It’s not something that would be necessary for me, but it’d make me happier.
Isn’t that a lot of cleavage on Joyce? Who helped her get dressed?
Billie
Guys, guys, you’re reading the alt text all wrong. Clearly Joe has all those singles from his job at a strip club, not as a customer.
This storyline has made me think about swearing and what it really is. Most swear words have meanings beyond being swear words. Some that even have other words that describe the same thing but aren’t considered swear words.
That got me thinking really swear words are just words used to give oompf to what you are saying so Dangit or any variation of is also a swear word because they are used in the same way as dammit is. “Cleaning it up” doesn’t really stop it from being a swear because if you think about it it’s not the words themselves that are swears but the feeling behind them.
…No, not really. What is and what isn’t a swear is a more or less mutual decision made by a culture. You can’t just go and say “CHAIR!” is a swear because someone said it in a really vehemently angry way.
Basically. There are a lot of adjectives that provide impact, and any word can be an anger-loaded exclamation (“dangit”, “heck” — on the adjective side, basically any negative adjective could make your point harsher), but the anger won’t be conveyed as well as if you had used a swear word, which are generally accepted to have that meaning.
OH YEAH? WHY DON’T YOU GO AND CHAIR YOURSELF, MISSY/MISTER? >:(
For Joyce:
http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/351/d/6/you_tried__by_the_mexican_whovian-d5od4z7.png
And mike has a backpack full of nickels. these are both constants…
That is a big empty space in that there cafeteria.
Joyce in panel 2….
Panel 4 Joyce is the cutest :3
Joyce is missing someone like Becky to talk things over with. She had a very sheltered childhood, with no sisters. (kinda) Homeschooled, probly not allowed to play unsupervised. Sarah isn’t the chatty type.
It might look like first romance, but she is probly just working through her first real friendship and her friend did not stick up for her and then walked away. I feels for her. She wants some human contact, but she’s just not that important to anybody. Dorothy puts studying first, as does Sarah. Ethan is just hiding behind her. Sal considers a child. She’s a source of amusement to Joe. Awful alone.
There are hints of possible bisexuality but all of that is a good point, as well. Becky’s gone silent and Dorothy’s her closest friend. Though she does have a new love of cartoons to share with Ethan.
I’m still thinking that, whether Joyce is actually bi or not, Becky has a serious girl-crush on Joyce, and being the target of that for all these years may have skewed Joyce’s perception of what “best friends” means.
Becky has a crush on Joyce?
I went back and read all posts tagged with Becky and it isn’t obvious that that is the case… They were definitely close, and there is some subtext (“has she replaced you in my heart?”), but nothing too obvious.
Dammit, Dorothy. Joyce rebelled against her parents for you. Wait for her to finish.
By the rate at which she’s rebelling, she’s gonna create a black metal band. Joyce is lead vocal, Sal and Walky are on guitars, Dorothy’s on drums, and Dina’s on keyboards.
Dina on keyboards evokes the image of some proggy math-rock act with 150 minute long albums consisting of only one song…
The tracks are each titled with the latin name of a dinosaur, and the lyrics are a complete description of everything known about the species in question. Scientific accuracy is never sacrificed for the sake of rhyme or metre.
Meanwhile, behind the singer & keyboard player, the two guitarists rampage about the stage on animatronic velociraptors. There are serious backstage arguments about whether their antics are distracting the audience from the lyrics: can Dorothy broker a compromise?
Reduce the number down to three and with some concerted cajoling you might get RUSH to try this.
150 minute Dino-rock symphony ….. that is something that must exist ….
Joe keeps the single dollars because he is secretly The Dollar Knight. He runs around in a Speedo.
Do I hear lesbian bells?
LOL.
Joyce is hilarious in panel 2.
To be fair to Joyce, tomorrow in class won’t be until sometime in February or so.
She gets a cake. In frosting it reads:
At Least You Tried
How is Dorothy having to spend every waking moment working? The only explanation could be that she’s taking, like 9 classes, because she clearly doesn’t have a job…
Take it from someone who has experienced a couple of major breakdowns, both partially from over-studying: There’s an infinite amount of study you can do. If you set your standards too high, there simply isn’t enough time in the world to study what you want to an adequate standard.
“Yes, I’m hungry and tired, but re-reading the chapter and rewriting all my cue cards won’t hurt.”
Holy crap, you neurotypicals have noooooooo idea how easy you have it. Some of us have to acutually work. 20-30 hours a week is not an unusual amount of time to spend studying. When I read the last batch of comments about Dorothy’s study time, I was pretty shocked. The ease with which some of you described handling undergraduate coursework was totally alien to my experience. Fuck, man, I’m jealous, also pissed off at the….I guess privilege and entitlement I see in the comments. If it was so easy for you, be grateful, instead of judging those who have to work harder than you do. (I know Drizzle My Kizzle was just curious, but some of the earlier ones seemed pretty nasty IMO) Maybe she has some kind of learning difference or alternate brainwiring. Willis might be down with some neurodiversity, without spelling it out with diagnoses; look at Dina and her apparent autistic traits.
Also some people just really do work harder, especially if they have concrete goals and a competitive program they want to get into. I was approaching being a slacker, but a friend I know really wanted to be a vet, and to do that you need grades in the 90s-range. She worked has ass off all four years to maintain that mark.
Who does Joyce think she is? Luke Skywalker?
I kinda sympathize with Joyce here. I too went through a period where I never used curse words.
I’m a little cooler with it now (to a point – I still don’t like the F-word, or the B-word for that matter) but I’ve learned that it’s not always okay to just casually throw those words around whenever you feel like it, because the more you cuss without thinking, the less likely people will take you seriously.
And not cussing is getting people to take Joyce so seriously…
In my fundamentalist days, I went several years without swearing. (I was a convert, so there was a before and an after, when I did, and do, swear.) I still don’t see it as a requirement, and I think they are all being total douchebags to goad her like that. Too bad she can’t express herself more forcefully without fake-cussing. Coincidentally, swearing is supposedly forbidden in my workplace, so I’m in kind of the same boat she is. What do I say instead of “fuckin’ asshole”?
I love the second panel. NOOOOOOOOOOOOO…
great page
There is a fine line between adorable and pitiable, and Joyce is standing right on top of it.
I do have a sense of humor, and silliness can be fun. I’m pretty much a hermit, but the friends I do have know that. If others don’t, that is their problem.
A teenager girl in college, acting like a baby, stretching out her arms with grabbing motions, while she hollers ‘nooooo’, and spits food all over everyone is not “silly”.
Her friend has to study. How hard is that to grasp?
Joyce is not being silly, she is dead serious.
I still think it’s disgusting.