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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 22d
Bayjmin Tuckles @bayjmin-tuckles.bsky.social ⋅ 17h
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 22d
Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen.bsky.social ⋅ 21h
Mae Dean @maegodhavemercy.com ⋅ 2d
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Joyce’s taunts could use a little workshopping.
Taking bets on whether she’s singing this to the tune of a song from one of those Hymnal cartoons.
That would be appropiate for this situation since we know that Walky appeared in an episode.
I heard it in my head to the tune of ‘I have some iiiiiiiiiice cream’ from Eddie Murphy’s routine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J61aeN7apF0
I don’t know, her last statement couldn’t be more annoying if it tried.
“Your beliefs don’t maaaatter and they’re so stuuuupid and wroooong that you’ll drooop them on your ooooown because you knoooow that I’m riiiiiight!”
“Walky and Billie sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes LOVE
Then comes MARRIAGE
Then comes Walky with a BABY CARRIAGE
Then comes Billie, dragging you to JESUS
Because you know that will please us!”
…I tried
(take #5, not sure why this isn’t posting)
THERE it is, SHEESH
So THIS is where you got the Grav. And the name is certainly fitting. Well, was, at any rate, before this comic.
BenRG’s Rating: 7.5/10 — Hey! I liked it!
I better not be hearing that when I walk past a playground.
Joyce is probably one of those people who think guys and girls can’t be purely platonic friends.
Of course now she’s friends with Ethan, so we’ll see how long that argument holds water.
It was established early on that one of the reasons Joyce went to college was to find ‘Mr Right’. Given the way the other characters in her immediate circle are pairing off, she could be forgiven for believing that this is the sole reason why one goes to college.
But what if I don’t wanna come to Jesus?
Then you and I are watching very different types of pornography.
But Joyce said not to watch porn.
… but you just said come to Jesus. Your statements are contradicting.
I’m sorry I misread your question. I just need sleep :S
Well then Joyce needs to be more specific on her definition of coming. Also, if you don’t wan to come to Jesus, boy did you get an ironic avatar.
Joyce also looked up pictures of real penises to draw them on doors.
you made me laugh out loud!
I got that as a dark joke. Don’t go there.
Just kidding go ahead.
Don’t worry. He’ll come to you. He’s like a loyal pet or a terrifying stalker.
He’s always made a point of leaving that up to you.
I notice an odd lack of Dorothy here… o.o
Dorothy isn’t in their Calc class, she is in their Gender Studies class.
Which would explain the whole Joyce-insisting-on-WalkyBillie-shipping thing.
Yup, if Dorothy showed up, she’s change her time to the ever-popular “please don’t hate me because I tried to fix my gay boyfriend”. Weird that she’s ok with teasing Walky in this manner when she already dreads that Dorothy may hate her. Or that soggies may rule…
She doesn’t have math with them, and has a super early class (which is where she probably is).
She usually meets that during/after lunch to go to gender studies.
Oh my god, I know webcomic characters’ schedules better than my own.
i think they’re walking to math class, which Dorothy isn’t in.
Ahh, maths class.
My favourite 3 years of university. 
It’s been established that Dorothy isn’t in this class (I think that this must be the math class that Jason teaches).
Joyce NO ! it’s such a nice weather, please do not invoke the rain.
She’s in for one hell of a wakeup call.
Dibs on her trying things to see if they’re right for her?
At least she is not singing the Sound of Music.
Manage your expectations there, Joyce. For LOTS of different reasons.
Wonder how weirded out Joyce will feel when she finds out Billie’s boyfriend is actually her girlfriend. So many gay friends.
Now that I think about it, doesn’t she only have like, 3 straight friends?
Lessee, Walky, Dorothy, Sarah.
I suppose you might count Mary as her friend. As much as Mary is anyone’s friend, anyway.
Y’forgot Amber.
(Yes I know things between them were rough with Ethan, but considering Joyce was willing to invite Amber to her dorm party, as well as the events towards the end of the Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit incident…)
If Mary’s being counted, Joe and mine ought to be counted.
Heck even roz honestly
Roz is more a friend than Joe. Joyce at least respects her.
Still she didn’t want Joe to come to the party. She even Becky to tell him that he’s not invited.
*sent*
What about Sal?
I dunno. Walky isn’t completely a 0 on the Kinsey scale. I would probably put him at a 2. (Would suck dick for pizza, and slightly homoerotic statements, though mostly in jest.)
Mike, sort of? He counts as a friend insofar as Joyce had Becky invite him to her party, notwithstanding that his welcome was conditional on being nice. But is Mike straight in this universe? In Shortpacked he seemed to be somewhere near the middle of the Kinsey Scale.
Sexuality remains constant through the universes. (So Mike remains whatever you don’t want him to be. And for that matter Walkyverse Danny is also bi, and Walkyverse Becky is gay)
I don’t think Kinsey’s scale really took into account sexualities based entirely in spite and/or blackmail. You can’t really make any definitive statements about what Mike’s sexuality is.
I think he’s pretty definitively kinky. Sadomasochist is a sexuality
She’ll probably try and explain really awkwardly that she’s chill with that idea. Though she already knows that Billie has had girlfriends before, so we won’t even get a shocked Joyce face out of it.
(Though Billie isn’t telling anyone it’s actually a girlfriend anytime soon I would guess. Having everyone think boyfriend is at least going to throw the likes of Joyce off the trail of discovering who Billie is having a relationship with)
This is me but, given how mutually destructive the Ruth/Billie relationship is, I’ve got a horrible feeling that Joyce will find out only when the disaster finally happens and then she will be too focussed on helping Billie recover and rediscover her centre to worry too much about the nature of said relationship.
[insert sex joke related to coming here]
coming to Jesus, no less. I hope they asked first.
Was that coming to Jesus, or coming on Jesus. Is this why Jesus is so white in American Church depictions?
#yesiknowiamgoingtohell
I will high-five you on the way down.
They don’t call it The Second Cumming for nothing.
Or is it coming out of the closet to Jesus?
Well, coming IN the closet is just gross.
These are the thoughts I’ve always had about the part of Mass where they say “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD. Hosannah, hosannah in the highest!”
Well people do tend to yell out “OH GOD” during climax, so…y’know…
I’m particularly fond of one part in the Latin Mass. The English translates as “As was promised to Abraham and his descendants”. The Latin, however, is “quam olim Abrahae et semini ejus”. The last bit sounds exactly like what you think it does. I particularly like Mozart’s setting of the words in his Requiem. Lightens the mood a bit.
Looking forward to 2020: The year of Halloween costumes.
You just gave me an excuse to talk about the passage of time in this comic, and pull out my Extremely Crude DoA Calendar(TM). By my reckoning, as the series started with Book 1 as the 2nd week of August, as of this chapter now, we’re starting the 3rd week of September (with the next chapter the first full day of Autumn). If Willis holds to this model (and there is no law saying that he must, because in the words of Scott McCloud “Time in comics in INFINITELY weirder than THAT!”):
2017~’18 = Last week of September
2018~’19 = First week of October
2019~’20 = Second week of October
2020~’21 = Third week of October (including midterms! And College Night for High School Seniors!)
2021~’22 = Last week of October (up to and possibly, but NOT necessarily–Halloween).
And I damn myself, for typing too fast. It ought to be…
2016~’17 = Last week of September
2017~’18 = First week of October
2018~’19 = Second week of October
2019~’20 = Third week of October
2020~’21 = Last week of October
to be fair, the first few weeks of freshman year are infinitely more eventful than the rest of the semester combined, so the pacing of notable events will probably slow down soon, and thus the comics, which only care about notable events, should cover more time as they go on.
*plays The Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus Is Just All Right” on the Muzak*
I like that song, despite the actual lyrics. But it sounds good, and I love the Doobie Brothers, so.
When it was a hit somebody else did a pop-rock version of The Lord’s Prayer. Religiousity in the mass media was a slightly different thing back then.
Pop-rock? Weaksauce. Get on the Norwegian level already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82BYUPCAYyU
That song always makes me think of a Bible/Firefly crossover.
“Jesus is a great man!” *stab* “Well, he’s a good man.” *stab* “Well, Jesus is just alright with me.”
I sincerely wonder what Joyce will be like in DOA two years. Will she ever become areligious? Who knows.
Naw, I’m sure she’ll still be Christian, but she’ll leave behind her bigotry from her upbringing
Depends on exactly how far she moves down the Willis autobio track I think.
We’re never going to see anything past their freshman year, so we won’t be finding out. We can only imagine what their lives might be like after that time. Considering the fact that Joyce is based on David Willis, I suspect that she is on a path to eventually make a full break from her fundamentalist roots. I can absolutely see her becoming areligious eventually.She still has a way to go on said path, however, which is understandable, seeing as she’s only a few weeks into freshman year, and autumn has only just begun.
perhaps the comic will end with an anime house style ending.
Dammit animal house
I mean really, either works.
I believe that Joyce will remain religious. Based on my own experiences, she will begin to recognize that just like there is more than just one way to get from La Porte to Bloomington there is also more than one way to find God, and will become more tolerant of those who are not following the exact same path as she is.
Now if you excuse me I’m going to focus on Dina and Becky holding and hands and smiling.
I’ve made enough sex jokes tonight, so I think I’ll join you
Squeeeeeeee
What? Autumn?
How many weeks has it been since the beginning of freshman year?!
About 4 I think?
I’m looking forward to Joyces reaction when she finds out whats up but it is nice to see her wearing less clothes, I’m assuming it means shes feeling more in control of herself or something
Joyce pairing Walky/Billie was cute before, but now that her “bestie” is and has been dating Walky, sticking to the construct seems vaguely inappropriate….
If Joyce can get Billie and Walky together, she could have a shot at Dotty.
And then Becky will be all ‘I KNEW IT!” and be trapped somewhere between being really pissed and really turned on by the idea.
How far exactly are we into the school year? It can’t be more than a couple of weeks…
Start of week 6.
It’s an interesting sign of character development when Joyce starts using “come to Jesus” as a taunt rather than a commandment.
She did it to Walky before when they found out about his life as a cute little mouse boy.
It’s a bit in line with Sals advice about owning your own identity
I wonder if Joyce knows what Mpreg is.
She DOES know about shipping…
And strap-ons, and vibrators. School is for learning new things after all!
Becky’s only recently been exposed to secular biology, but has expressed an interest in learning more. Perhaps she’ll read about seahorse reproduction at some point.
And what we’ve all been waiting for has occurred, the return of Mike!
cautiously staying away from the happy couple.
Unfortunately he’s a Dina/Faz shipper.
When are we going to find out more about Mike’s secret crush on Joyce, is what I want to know.
I’d rather me and Jesus keep the relationship proffessional.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Joyce did that to the tune of a Stryper song…
I know Dorothy isn’t around, but come on, Joyce. That’s your best-not-Becky friend’s boyfriend you’re shipping with someone else.
Ikr I thought it was a little mean too
Almost as if she doesn’t like him, possibly for being rude and teasing her for weeks.
I get her teasing/being mean (depending on how serious you take it) to Walky, but she’s doing it in a way that also seems mean to someone she really likes.
Sure, she should be nicer to Billie than trying to inflict Walky on her but then it frees up Dorothy for better people.
Look, as little as you like it, it is honestly and sincerely disrespectful to a person you like to not-so-subtly try and get their SO together with someone else. Not everyone you like has to get along with one another – it’s not disrespectful to Dotty for them to be enemies (Or frenemies, whatever. He was invited to the party). It *IS* disrespectful to Dotty to try and break them up.
Is that directed at me? I never said it wasn’t disrespectful, I know it is. (I don’t care that it is, but that’s a different issue).
I don’t think she’s trying to break them up, but she’s found a way to get under Walky’s skin, and she’s leveraging it.
Well, remember that she kinda hates Walky and would rather Dorothy be dating someone “better” in her eyes.
Though yeah, it’s a little odd, because she has also been repairing that friendship and finding Walky less threatening and offputting as of late, so maybe she’s just imagining 20 year down the line future babies or some such shit.
Yep, and that ‘someone better’ rhyme’s with “Boyce’s tuppressed band henied kisexual jendencies.”
She’s not ‘shipping’ in the classical sense of the word. I think that she’s aware that Walky and Billie were once in a mutual orbit of sorts and is jumping to conclusions about why he’s so concerned about Billie.
It’s basically a typical girl’s schoolyard taunt. No need to read too much into it.
I’m just using her own phrasing.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/gross/
To be fair, Walky. We’re all jealous of Billie’s “boyfriend”. Alchoholic or not this is BILLIE we’re talking about. She’s got it goin’ on.
*Co-signs*
Wait, how are they just getting into autumn now? What season did they start college in o.o
In the midwest it doesn’t usually start looking/feeling like autumn until late September, and school starts in early to mid-August usually. This is about right, it’s taken years for them to get 6(?) weeks into the semester.
I’m confused by the claim I’ve seen a couple times here about school starting in early to mid-August. I go to a Midwest, Big 10 school, and we always start near the end of August. I just looked up IU’s schedule, and this school year started for them on August 24th.
Ah, well fair enough.
Man I feel so bad for the folks who don’t start in September
(btw B1G here too, high five!) (cept RU so we kinda shouldn’t be here loi)
You know, I wouldn’t have expected Joyce to be so accepting of unmarried cohabitation. I guess the chance of having oodles of Christian babies balances out that sin in her eyes.
In an alternate universe we see Billie and her boyfriend stuck in a sultry heterosexual murder promise.
Sadly Walkyverse Danny doesn’t follow through with those promises.
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/no-way-out/
(Seeing your post just made me remember that. If you were just doing word play with the phrase “Sexy lesbian suicide pact” then my bad)
Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesussssssss
Hey, Dina and Becky are holding hands in the first panel.
Ahem…
…squee…
…that is all.
Squee indeed
For some reason my brain just totally parsed that last panel as Joyce sing-songing him marrying the boyfriend and I was all “Wow, Joyce, that’s some nice quick progress to being okay with a gay couple adopting children! Good girl!”
Well, “the boyfriend” is Ruth, who is bisexual, so that would work out.
im pretty sure she means that hes jealous of the boyfriend, and that he and billie will have kids
Gotta say I like seeing Joyce get to be the one deliberately annoying Walky for a change.
Oh Joyce, be ever hopeful and annoying!
Panel 4 Joyce face is troll face.
I just realised this makes two lesbian relationships in DoA now between a black-haired Asian girl with problems adapting to college life and a freckled redhead in an abnormal position in life
I mean, just about everyone has problems adapting to college life here. It’s kind of the crux of the storytelling.
Two same sex relationships. Of those four ladies only one is a lesbian.
Poor Joyce thinks she FINALLY had figured out a situation. Billie is in love, Walky is jealous. No self destruction or best-friend-worries here…
Here’s another point made plain here: Joyce is a romantic! She really does believe that you can have ‘happily ever after’.
She is, she really is and it’s absolutely adorable.
I especially love how recent events with Dina and Becky kinda proved her point for her. Becky was in DEEEP trouble…until she fell in love and ToeDad got sent on a bus and his car towed and Becky got money for a date, and parental figures that are now invested in her wellfare and… SQUEEEEEEE!
I’m afraid to ask…
is this a real song?
That song would be oddly specific to the situation.
I really want a Dumbing of age/Walkyverse crossover, simply so there can be a scene where Walkyverse Joyce mentions that she’s pregnant with Walkys child to dumbing of age Joyce…Dumbing of age Joyce spends the next couple strips screaming.
This crossover could take place when she’s asleep and dreams about it.
I’m actually plotting out a fan-fiction based on this. Walkyverse Joyce has a lot to tell her younger, far more naive and innocent counterpart. A lot of it a warning about Anti-Joyce, who I’d like to see return as the devil on DoA-verse Joyce’s shoulder.
However, she’s also got something to tell her about superpowers…
I would read that fanfiction. Especially if at some point everyone teamed up to fight the soggies.
I’m not sure whether to be intrigued by this fanfic, or wary of the inevitable DoA Joyce/Walkyverse Anti-Joyce kiss.
I don’t think Dumbing Joyce needs to worry about Anti-Joyce. She’s nowhere near as repressed and crazy as Walkyverse Joyce was, and there won’t be any aliens to create a clone of her.
To clarify: Not Anti-Joyce as a separate entity but as the voice of her temptations and ‘naughty’ side. Perhaps occasionally manifested in dreams.
So, Walky is genuinely worried about Billie.
He’s a good friend
Haha oh troll Joyce. I love the Joyce-Walky dynamic so much in this universe, its always fun to watch. Well, read.
It’s fun watching DW’s two autobiographical characters make fun of each other, even if it’s a bit of a mindfuck when you think about it that way.
It is only when they exist in harmony that the rift in the author’s mind will finally heal
I actually had to think a while about Walky’s snappy come-back in panel 5. I believe that he is referring to Joyce’s own confirmed batchelorette state. Meanwhile, her little song showing that she’s basically okay with it.
That said, I think that Walky suspects that there is something not quite right about the story Billie has been telling them about her relationship status.
Meanwhile, it does look like Mike may be about to reclaim his Shortpacked! role as the mean-spirited and short-tempered Token Sane One. Given how generally messed up everyone else in Freshman Year seems to be, that wouldn’t be too superlative an achievement on his part!
…Shortpacked! Mike was the “token sane one?”
Is there a third universe that I haven’t heard about?
Dammit, that was only supposed to italicize the first word. Oh well.
Yeah, he actually did seem to be the one who saw things the most clearly in Shortpacked!, although he was still a mean-spirited (expletive deleted)!
It’s easy to see things clearly when you’re not actually invested in the problems.
And these two became an item in the Walkovers how?
_
Oh, yeah. Mindwipes.
Remember that the Walkyverse Joyce and Walky got together after years in each other’s company confronting and surviving pretty nasty end-of-the-world scenarios as well as triumph and grief together. What they are in Joyce and Walky is the end result of about a decade of a life-style and shared experiences that the DoA characters probably can’t imagine!
is this thing working? my posts haven’t gone through =(
GDI
Had internet problems recently?
idk I was at a friend’s house until about 1a and only just tried posting at 2:30
but I posted the post, then it didn’t appear, and each subsequent time I tried to post, it said it was a duplicate post, so I don’t think it was internet as such
That’s happened to me a few times. I think that WordPress decides that it doesn’t like certain origin IPs or certain words and refuses to print some submissions.
Joyce is that a threat
because that kinda sounds like a threat
Walt is being threatened with a drunken, horny, biracial cheerleader. Poor guy
Not only is Dumbing of Age now in autumn, it’s also now a musical it seems.
Joyce, you sound like my mother, and that’s not a good thing
Just FWIW, I always imagine Joyce having a really sweet singing voice normally but, when she sings something hymn-like, it becomes raucous and atonal. This coming from a habit of shouting out praise in church or something.
The church she goes to has a guitar. I don’t think she’ll be atonal.
I think you got the relationship between music and churches backwards. Singing in a group at least once a week (depending on what church you attend) would probably make you a better singer than somebody who never sings unless it’s karaoke night.
So considering that this is set in Indiana, that puts us around, what, early to mid October?
The Dumbing of Age characters were going through freshman orientation and the desperate, giddy let’s-all-be-friends rush at the same time I was. It was kind of comforting.
Now it is autumn at Indiana University and I’m going into grad school. Can I make doctor before Christmas break? Ready, set, go!
I’ve been thinking about this. DoA goes out with a single-row strip daily. Given average page sizes, that means that one week’s output is a single two-page spread. Or, if you prefer, a year (taking into consideration DMW’s focus on buffers), one calendar year gives you a maxi-sized 50-page special issue of a regular comic book.
This means we are at the beginning of issue 6 (assuming one issue/volume) of a comic book. Or, if this wasn’t a daily webcomic but, instead, a monthly mainstream comic book, we’d be six months into the run of the title.
When you bear this in mind, suddenly being barely one month into Joyce and her friends’ college adventures isn’t that surprising.
The thing that strikes me is how short this group is. Mike looks quite tall and he isn’t at all. Even Ethan is supposed to be only six feet, which isn’t noticeably tall, except in this comic, where he looks like a giant. Like a height based Lake Wogegone where everyone is below average height.
The only two heights I’ve seen confirmed are Amber (5′ 5″) and Sal (5′ 7″).
Joe is 6’2″, I think.
Six feet seems noticeably tall to me (I’m about 5′ 9″ fwiw). Do you live in a land of little giants?
I think that’s because they’re walking up a slope and Mike is at the front. Mind you, he is taller than everyone else in the group (and basically the entire extended cast outside of Ethan, Joe, and Jacob, and older adults).
“And you’ll all come to Jeeeeeeeeesus”
Holiest of slipshines confirmed?
…So we’re just gonna overlook that Joyce is making the awesomeface in the last panel?
Pretty much. We have our own memes here.
Besides, she makes that face all the time.
Oh my god, she went from “endearingly” annoying to “I’m not talking to you anymore” annoying in the space of two stretched out syllables. Go away, Joyce.
So It’s September 21st there?
I think just autumn in the sense that the leaves have started to turn. It has to be a Monday, but it doesn’t have to be a year where September 21st is both the first day of fall, and on a Monday. I want to say this is the beginning of week 5? So general late September/early October.
Mike looks cool here.
now I REALLY want her to find out Billie’s boyfriend is a girl.
Yes, I want her to find out. The worse means possible.
Say, thumbing through the selfies on Billie’s phone, sees a red bush, BSOD causing Billie to explain just it’s an unshaven armpit…
Anyone who looks through someone else’s image folders deserves every bit of shock, horror, and disgust that they will inevitably feel.
About the same as what would happen if she looked in her roommate’s underwear drawer?
You know i was going to ask what they will do when it is winter break in the year 2020 with becky but then i thought…. Dina will take her home with her duh.
Walky’s concern for Billie has always been one of the most humanizing aspects of him, I’d say even moreso than his relationship with Dorothy.
I think it’s fairly obvious that Walky was really hurt by Sal leaving, but he decided to internalize it by saying he shouldn’t really care. With Billie, someone who loudly talks about how much he annoys her, Walky insists on actively spending time with her and cuts back on his more annoying tendencies with her when she’s hurting. When Billie went missing, he practically bounded out of his room to Ruth’s to find her.
The way I see it, between his relationships with Sal, Billie and Dorothy, Walky is scared of losing people, but doesn’t know how to express that through his views on proper masculinity.
I agree on the first part but not the second.
Walky and Billie used to be really close, much closer than he ever was with Sal. He and Sal only grew further apart as she got madder about how their parents favoured him. From what we’ve seen of his thoughts on the matter so far he might have just shrugged off Sal getting shipped off with a ‘yeah, that was bound to happen’.
I think he did so because he didn’t know how to deal with actually losing Sal. He decided that it was just something to deal with, and he wouldn’t put any actual effort into showing he cared for Sal because that’s feelings, man. Instead of acknowledging that he missed his sister he built a narrative where caring about her wasn’t worth it.
Eww! Does Joyce listen to Rappy McRapperson?
Joyce’s face in that last panel kinda makes me want to punch her. It’s such a punchable expression.
I want something bad to happen to her but then I remember the bad things that have happened so now instead of that I just hope a big bird flys along and takes a dump on her head
You know, Joyce, you were there when Billie was going through her meltdown. You should know how legit Walky’s concern is.
I find this particularly amusing as parallel universe Joyce and Walky are currently having babies