A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
The Messenger
indui
In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
Monster's Garden
Ash G.
Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
Angel's Orchard
Harry Bogosian
After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
Ozzie the Vampire
Eric Lide
Ozzie and her best friend Kimmy are your average everyday normal art students – except one is an immortal vampire with superpowers and the other possesses a magic talking grimoire. Also they have to save their town from a demonic invasion.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Novae
KaiJu
A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
BOOKMARK Click "Tag Page" to bookmark a page. When you return to the site, click "Goto Tag" to continue where you left off.
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Hahahaha what a humorous thing of a non-robot to say. It is a joke because we are all humans in this comment section and not robots. I laugh, with my mouth, the way real humans do.
“Personified” would mean that Jason is what the comment section would be, expressed as a single personality, not that all you pixels on my screen aren’t people. However, Jason isn’t wound nearly tight enough to be this comment section.
It’s true, but I appreciate Sarah shutting this down nonetheless. It’s nothing he’s done wrong, but this is a very sensitive subject for Joyce, and she’d appreciate it not being spread around.
And maybe Sarah could have been gentler about it, but, eeh, yaknow. Sarah.
That’s not what the prying was. The other reason Joyce needs help to get anround campus is having been nearly raped by that stupid jerk of a pastors son that Amber put into hospital. There is no way Sarah’s gonna explain this to Jacob.
Yeah, but I think Derek’s point is that nothing Jacob said was prying. When Sarah commented on her text, Jacob wondered if it was related to what he knew about. Sarah told him it was something else and then to back off, which he did.
Sarah’s right not to be disclosing Joyce’s business, but Jacob wasn’t prying.
I suppose that’s one way to interpret it, but my experience with people using similar phrasing makes me read it differently. Also, I was responding more to CJ, who did say, “what the prying was.”
Also, Sarah came down with the “it’s none of your business” pretty fast, which fits because she’s Sarah. The “then don’t” comes when she’s already put him on the defensive, and just overall contributes to a less generous reading of Sarah’s line for me.
Yeah what Yumi said: Jacob was not intentionally prying into Joyce’s past with near-rape, he accidentally touched the subject because of the thing he’s actually concerned about which is Joyce’s crushed toe.
Not saying that he should know about Rapey McStabface or anything, but rather that his concern is quite normal for the level of familiarity he has with Joyce
Maybe Sarah suspects Joyce wouldn’t be her most charming self right now.
Also, I think that the part of her that genuinely cares about Joyce is dominant at this moment, and that it conflicts with the part of her that’s using Joyce in the whole Jacob scheme.
As much as I’m a fan of anyone that takes a baseball bat to a rapist I gotta say Sarahs shtick is starting to wear a bit thin, like shes crossed into cartoonish-level “I don’t like anyone” realms
Yeah, I’m starting to feel High school levels of this stuff now. “Like no you cannot come with me and check out to see if a friend of yours is okay. It’s none of your business”. Kinda rude seeing how the fact that someone is actually legitimately concern but sure fine, be that cold person to everyone. That definitely solves it.
@DMW: Kind of a random question, but have you ever done/would you consider doing a tour at any point? Like Danielle Corsetto did a few years back (when you did a guest week for her, which incidentally I think was what got me into reading this comic).
I don’t really go to cons or things like that, but I think it’d be cool to go to a comic signing or something you had. I’m realizing as I type this that you have two small children, so probably not, but going to Danielle’s thing and meeting her was a cool experience and I think you’d be cool to meet too.
Yeah, I won’t be doing many shows in the future because of the toddlers. It’s rough carving out an amount of time to go to the grocery store, much less another state.
You could live out of an RV with your toddlers for a while. Show them America. Go off the grid. The school system in the tunnels underneath Yucca Mountain is adequate.
Okay, I got curious and did the math. (Or rather, had Wolfram Alpha do the math.)
Just to make things easier, let’s make some assumptions and simplify things a little:
– DoA’s universe uses the same calendars we used for its days of the week, starting in 2010. (We saw a “Wednesday, October 6th” in Ruth’s hospital room, so this checks out.) It follows the 2011, 2012, etc from there.
– The timeline on the Wiki is accurate.
– DoA updated only on weekdays until the second week of May 2013, and has updated seven days a week ever since. We want its current pace, so instead of starting at strip #1 (September 10 2010 real time, August 29 DoA timeline), we’re counting from May 1 2013 (September 15th). I’m adding five real-world days to make up for the update-less weekend in May and the first seven strips from ‘Answers in Hennessy’ (which ran in April). Close enough.
– I’m stopping at the end of ‘Face the Strange’ (November 10 2017 real time, October 10 DoA). This gives us nice fixed numbers to play with.
– Time skips are averaged out.
– Commencement for the DoA cast is May tenth, four years after strip #1. (IU’s spring commencement landed on May 10 2014.)
– Everybody gets a 4 year degree.
– DoA continues at its current daily update pace.
OKAY. First let’s figure out the ratio of real-world days to DoA days.
‘Answers in Hennessy’ was September 15th, and today is Monday, October 11th. That’s 25 DoA days elapsed.
1664 real time days elapsed from May 1 2013 to November 20 2017. Add 5 for the above reasons = 1669.
1669 / 25 = 66.76 real days per DoA day, on average.
1333 real-time days elapsed from September 15 2010 to May 10, 2014. Since the calendars line up, that’s 1333 DoA days until graduation.
1333 DoA days times 66.76 real-time days each gives us 88,991.08 real world days. Let’s round that to 88,992.
88,992 days after November 20, 2017 will be…
Tuesday, July 16th, 2261.
Yeah, unless I really messed up the numbers somewhere, or we hit a BIG time skip, it’s probably safe to say who’s going to graduate first.
I object to rounding 88,991.08 to 88,992. July 15, 2261.
(also, while timeskips are as likely as not to continue more-or-less apace over the course of the schoolyear, I imagine there’ll be bigger ones come summer break) (assuming we get to a summer break in our lifetimes)
(I realize that being in Michigan already means I’m a lot closer to the other Midwest things you do than plenty of people, but also I hate driving/Ohio, so)
Does anyone have any good strategies for when you’re having a discussion with someone and they say something to which you’re like, “That doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know enough about whatever to dispute it”?
Situation like that came up for me today, and as I’m reflecting on it, it seems like it’s something to be prepared for, what with actual fake news and all.
My answer is generally disbelief, followed by “Huh… that sounds a little off. Wait a minute, I have a super smart machine in my pocket that has basically all the answers I’d ever need at a moment’s notice.”
And then I pull out my phone and google it. Seriously, cellphones are ridiculously powerful, and if you’re good at keywords (or just at “Hey google” questions) you can normally get an answer within 5 minutes.
I mean, yeah, I know how to Google things, that’s not so much what I mean. I’m talking about how to continue the conversation, not how to find things out for myself.
When I was reflecting on it earlier, asking the other person for their source has been helpful in the past. Phrasing it with, “That sounds different than what I’m familiar with; where did you hear/learn about that?” is probably what I’ll go with for now.
The problem with this is that it seems to assume that I’m able (and about to) take out my phone and run a few Google searches in the middle of a conversation. If they were, like, really insistent about a basic fact, like how many feet are in a mile or something, that could work, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
For context, the specific conversation that brought this up was with someone who was somewhat anti-vax, and she was citing reasons I hadn’t heard of before and as such didn’t know counters to, but they sounded inaccurate. It took me a while when I got home last night to find more accurate information on what she was referring to. It wouldn’t have really fit within our conversation for me to have done the research right then.
Jamie’s suggestion of asking them to explain is great: chances are they’re just parroting what they’ve heard and don’t actually understand it.
But keep asking questions, how does that work? Where did you hear that? Have peer-reviewed studies confirmed that? Why do you believe an actress over every single qualified person who has made this their life’s work?
It’s also sometimes helpful to ask them what their scientific training is. If their last science was a C in high school biology…
It’s alwYs handy to have a few scientific ideas in your back pocket:
-Correlation is not causation
– definition of “theory” in science
– how science works: hypothesis, test, refine, test, refine, etc
– how statistics work: “X% of people who got the vaccine had a heart attack within three days!!!!” “Let’s look up how many people in any population can be expected to have a heart attack– oh, look, it’s X%.”
I’d suggest getting them to explain it. It’s not a sure-fire way or anything, but it does get them to give you their perspective on the matter, which is non-antagonistic. Then you can ask clarifying questions in order to dig through that and see if you can pick it apart just from their explanation.
If you can’t, then eventually, they’ll run out of steam, and you’ll run out of questions, and the conversation is pretty much exhausted anyways. Change the subject, or say you’ll need to think about all of that, and drop it until you’re ready to march out your own arguments and sources.
It really depends on how deeply held a belief we’re talking about is. Since you’re worried about how to talk about it, I’m assuming the straightforward “You’re wrong, and here’s the proof” isn’t going to work with this person, so I’m guessing it’s a pretty deeply held belief? In that case, hurling facts at them isn’t going to work – you have to find examples from THEIR life that contradict their belief.
For example, take the belief “Criminals are evil people, and deserve to be punished”. If someone strongly believes this, quoting crime statistics at them all day won’t dissuade them. Showing them that a friend or a family member – someone they CARE about – has broken the law, however, might make them rethink this.
I don’t know how strongly held the belief is; the belief itself, or the arguments being made about it, were based on facts, but those facts were inaccurate.
Side note, it’s always interesting to me to work at what’s most persuasive to someone in an argument. There are some people who’s thinking would be more impacted by what you said in your second paragraph, but there are also some who would be less impacted by it. It’s kind of fun to feel out, though. (Except when I was with a previous therapist who was sort of like, “if you get emotional about what you’re talking about then your agrument/logic is invalid.” She was fun.)
That’s pretty horrific coming from a therapist. It’s in fact a pretty common tactic of abusive, manipulative people – provoke someone to anger, then dismiss them because they can’t be rational about it. Especially common applied to women – “now you’re getting hysterical”. Nicely demonstrated by Joyce’s brother awhile back, to tie back to the comic.
Persuasion is interesting. Facts and logic are apparently rarely effective, at least on anything actually important to us. The old saw about not reasoning someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into applies even more strongly as we come to understand we really don’t reason ourselves into most things. Reason is more commonly applied as a rationalization for what we’ve already decided.
Well-crafted emotional appeals work much better, but are hard for most of us to apply properly, other than by accident or instinct.
My standard reply, for people I’m close enough to joke with a bit, is, “Okay, then. I’ll believe you. Millions wouldn’t; but sure, what you said.” *Lifts eyebrows, looks skeptical; gives thumbs up*
Conveys doubt as to the veracity of the statement; but also that you’re not gonna fight them on it (at least, not right then).
What makes this strip interesting is that it establishes something that hasn’t been explicitly stated but that I’ve suspected for a while: That Sarah doesn’t actually like Jacob and the feeling is mutual. They’re civil with each other for Joyce’s sake and because Jacob is a fair-minded person but that’s as far as it goes.
Why do you think that?
Sarah doesn’t trust him with Joyce’s secrets. To me, he looks rather liking her more for caring about Joyce and not falling over herself to make them his problems.
Sarah isn’t really nice to anyone outside of extreme circumstances regardless of how she actually feels about them so I’m not really sure her attitude towards Jacob is indicative of anything other than that she has a kinda crap attitude.
Just came across the scene in “Good Omens” where the angel takes over the tv-preacher who’s just preaching about the relevation and asks him what kind of a moral stance it’d be to watch people dying from your raptured position and gloat about it.
Maybe someone in the cast can ask Mary to explain?
I love Sarah but sometimes she’s not exactly skilled at navigating the thin red line between self-preservation and just plain old assholery. Aaaaaaand here I am at nearly 50, discussing friggin’ Willis’ machinations as if they were people…
And part of how you tell if an author is good. If their characters strike you as real people, so you have opinions about their choices just as if they were real, the author’s Doing It Right.
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Sarah really is the Team Mom
Keep her away from Mike!
The Super-Tsundere Team Mom.
“You’re all lousy kids, and I hate every single one of you. Now, here are your lunches, and be sure to dress warmly!”
Super Tsundere Action Mom! Sarah can now be recognized via the acronym “STAM”!
Tsundere mom friend?
Jacob is the comments section personified.
… we’re not already persons?
that would be peoplified
I want to be Peoplified. Or Personified. Or Objectified.
Or Gravatified.
Should I be Gratified, if I’ve been Gravatified?
No, has a person infiltrated our robot comment section?
Hahahaha what a humorous thing of a non-robot to say. It is a joke because we are all humans in this comment section and not robots. I laugh, with my mouth, the way real humans do.
Ha
Ha
Ha
I love flesh and having skin.
I bet I can eat nachos and go to the bathroom at the same time.
That is *so* Walky!
Award for Best Match of Comment & Avatar goes to…
I too am not a robot. I know this because my algorithms have learned to recognise the “Tick to prove you’re not a robot!” trick.
“Personified” would mean that Jason is what the comment section would be, expressed as a single personality, not that all you pixels on my screen aren’t people. However, Jason isn’t wound nearly tight enough to be this comment section.
Sarah is a protective mama bear and will defend Joyce, also she doesn’t care about any people especially not Joyce
If she ever calls Joyce “Baka”, we’ll know we have a terminal case on our hands.
She can’t have people thinking Sarah cares about other people. That would ruin her whole “misanthrope” reputation.
It will ruin her branding. Even Reduced Misanthropy Flavour Sarah could harm her branding.
I love that Jacob apparently just doesn’t have inner monologue capabilities.
“You were out of frame!”
“And you need to learn that tropes can be subverted!”
Indiana 3^2
He’s just being humble. Most people who look at Jacob agree he’s an Indiana 10.
heck, maybe even an Indiana 11
Don’t rate men, Joes.
*plays Skynyrd’s “Don’t Ask Me No Questions” on a hacked P.A. speaker in the distance*
*hijacks the hacked PA speaker to play the Hallelujah Chorus*
*hijacks the hijacked speakers and plays Twisted Sister.
Sarah and Carla are both aggressively caring while pretending they don’t care about anyone.
They can form the Super-Tsundere Misanthropy Club.
Ruth can join, as long as she keeps punching Billie.
INTERNAL dialogue, Jacob. Unless you wanted her to hear you, but that’d be stupid.
Love the Always Human avatar.
I- it’s not like she cares about Joyce or anything. Baka!
Oh Sarah. You know you love Joyce, Jacob knows you love Joyce, Joyce totally knows you love Joyce… Everybody knows you love Joyce.
Somehow did not realize until now the Joyce-Dorothy-Sarah love triangle.
…is it a triangle? I thought it was more of a ^ -just two lines from one point. What connects Sarah and Dorothy?”
I know it’s Sarah being Sarah, but Jacob being concerned for a friend about an accident he witnessed is not exactly prying :p
It’s true, but I appreciate Sarah shutting this down nonetheless. It’s nothing he’s done wrong, but this is a very sensitive subject for Joyce, and she’d appreciate it not being spread around.
And maybe Sarah could have been gentler about it, but, eeh, yaknow. Sarah.
yeah I can’t think of a better way for Sarah to shut this down without giving away there’s SOME trauma with Joyce
That’s not what the prying was. The other reason Joyce needs help to get anround campus is having been nearly raped by that stupid jerk of a pastors son that Amber put into hospital. There is no way Sarah’s gonna explain this to Jacob.
Yeah, but I think Derek’s point is that nothing Jacob said was prying. When Sarah commented on her text, Jacob wondered if it was related to what he knew about. Sarah told him it was something else and then to back off, which he did.
Sarah’s right not to be disclosing Joyce’s business, but Jacob wasn’t prying.
Yes, Jacob wasn’t prying, but she didn’t say he was.
He said “Didn’t mean to pry.”
She’s saying “Good. Glad to hear it. Don’t start now.”
I suppose that’s one way to interpret it, but my experience with people using similar phrasing makes me read it differently. Also, I was responding more to CJ, who did say, “what the prying was.”
Also, Sarah came down with the “it’s none of your business” pretty fast, which fits because she’s Sarah. The “then don’t” comes when she’s already put him on the defensive, and just overall contributes to a less generous reading of Sarah’s line for me.
Yeah what Yumi said: Jacob was not intentionally prying into Joyce’s past with near-rape, he accidentally touched the subject because of the thing he’s actually concerned about which is Joyce’s crushed toe.
Not saying that he should know about Rapey McStabface or anything, but rather that his concern is quite normal for the level of familiarity he has with Joyce
Sarah: “I don’t care how sexy I find you, you attempt to accuse me of caring about people and I will wallop you!”
“You don’t care for anyone or anything!”
“Now say it like you mean it!’
Wait Sarah I thought your mission was to get Jacob Involved with Joyce, matter of fact I don’t know why you wouldn’t have just ask him to come along.
Maybe Sarah suspects Joyce wouldn’t be her most charming self right now.
Also, I think that the part of her that genuinely cares about Joyce is dominant at this moment, and that it conflicts with the part of her that’s using Joyce in the whole Jacob scheme.
Then she might have to actually answer why Joyce needs to be escorted around campus. And that’s not her’s to tell.
I love Jacob’s exasperation in the last panel
As much as I’m a fan of anyone that takes a baseball bat to a rapist I gotta say Sarahs shtick is starting to wear a bit thin, like shes crossed into cartoonish-level “I don’t like anyone” realms
Her schtick is wearing thin because she’s hit so many rapists with it.
Yeah, I’m starting to feel High school levels of this stuff now. “Like no you cannot come with me and check out to see if a friend of yours is okay. It’s none of your business”. Kinda rude seeing how the fact that someone is actually legitimately concern but sure fine, be that cold person to everyone. That definitely solves it.
To be fair, in order to bring Jacob back with her, he’d have to tell her what Joyce went through, and that legitimately isn’t Sarah’s place.
Him*, sorry
She could just tell him that Joyce’s toe is hurting too much to walk alone.
The problem with that is that then he’s gonna want to come along and she doesn’t know how Joyce is feeling.
Sarah is basically high school me with work ethic and it’s kind of alarming.
Turns out I still ship this. What a weird way to find out. Huh.
Why’s that jackass talking to himself anyways?
People talk to themselves and say stuff out loud that was meant to be muttered or inner.
…. why does the shirt say 9 but the sleeve say 4?
It’s half of this wrapped around his shoulder: https://www.iu.edu/images/iu-250×250.png
OH, okay. That psi-ched me out.
… You know, I’ve occasionally wondered why IU uses a psi as its logo… It just this very minute occurred to me that it’s an I overlaid with a U…
Sarah is so good. Wish I had a friend like Sarah.
Joyce’s plan of getting Jacob to fall for Sarah is working just dandy.
@DMW: Kind of a random question, but have you ever done/would you consider doing a tour at any point? Like Danielle Corsetto did a few years back (when you did a guest week for her, which incidentally I think was what got me into reading this comic).
I don’t really go to cons or things like that, but I think it’d be cool to go to a comic signing or something you had. I’m realizing as I type this that you have two small children, so probably not, but going to Danielle’s thing and meeting her was a cool experience and I think you’d be cool to meet too.
Maybe just do something in Michigan sometime.
Yeah, I won’t be doing many shows in the future because of the toddlers. It’s rough carving out an amount of time to go to the grocery store, much less another state.
You could live out of an RV with your toddlers for a while. Show them America. Go off the grid. The school system in the tunnels underneath Yucca Mountain is adequate.
Maybe you can do a tour to commemorate the DOA cast’s graduation when that happens. The twins should be grown then.
Who will graduate college first, the twins or the DoA cast?
Okay, I got curious and did the math. (Or rather, had Wolfram Alpha do the math.)
Just to make things easier, let’s make some assumptions and simplify things a little:
– DoA’s universe uses the same calendars we used for its days of the week, starting in 2010. (We saw a “Wednesday, October 6th” in Ruth’s hospital room, so this checks out.) It follows the 2011, 2012, etc from there.
– The timeline on the Wiki is accurate.
– DoA updated only on weekdays until the second week of May 2013, and has updated seven days a week ever since. We want its current pace, so instead of starting at strip #1 (September 10 2010 real time, August 29 DoA timeline), we’re counting from May 1 2013 (September 15th). I’m adding five real-world days to make up for the update-less weekend in May and the first seven strips from ‘Answers in Hennessy’ (which ran in April). Close enough.
– I’m stopping at the end of ‘Face the Strange’ (November 10 2017 real time, October 10 DoA). This gives us nice fixed numbers to play with.
– Time skips are averaged out.
– Commencement for the DoA cast is May tenth, four years after strip #1. (IU’s spring commencement landed on May 10 2014.)
– Everybody gets a 4 year degree.
– DoA continues at its current daily update pace.
OKAY. First let’s figure out the ratio of real-world days to DoA days.
‘Answers in Hennessy’ was September 15th, and today is Monday, October 11th. That’s 25 DoA days elapsed.
1664 real time days elapsed from May 1 2013 to November 20 2017. Add 5 for the above reasons = 1669.
1669 / 25 = 66.76 real days per DoA day, on average.
1333 real-time days elapsed from September 15 2010 to May 10, 2014. Since the calendars line up, that’s 1333 DoA days until graduation.
1333 DoA days times 66.76 real-time days each gives us 88,991.08 real world days. Let’s round that to 88,992.
88,992 days after November 20, 2017 will be…
Tuesday, July 16th, 2261.
Yeah, unless I really messed up the numbers somewhere, or we hit a BIG time skip, it’s probably safe to say who’s going to graduate first.
I object to rounding 88,991.08 to 88,992. July 15, 2261.
(also, while timeskips are as likely as not to continue more-or-less apace over the course of the schoolyear, I imagine there’ll be bigger ones come summer break) (assuming we get to a summer break in our lifetimes)
If we assume summer break starts June 15th, we’ll hit that day in February 2063.
The twins, definitely.
The twins will graduate college before the end of freshman year, at the current rate.
So what you’re saying is, we have to bring the convention to you?
Party at the Willis house, tell your friends.
(I realize that being in Michigan already means I’m a lot closer to the other Midwest things you do than plenty of people, but also I hate driving/Ohio, so)
this is always my favorite gag
Does anyone have any good strategies for when you’re having a discussion with someone and they say something to which you’re like, “That doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know enough about whatever to dispute it”?
Situation like that came up for me today, and as I’m reflecting on it, it seems like it’s something to be prepared for, what with actual fake news and all.
My answer is generally disbelief, followed by “Huh… that sounds a little off. Wait a minute, I have a super smart machine in my pocket that has basically all the answers I’d ever need at a moment’s notice.”
And then I pull out my phone and google it. Seriously, cellphones are ridiculously powerful, and if you’re good at keywords (or just at “Hey google” questions) you can normally get an answer within 5 minutes.
I mean, yeah, I know how to Google things, that’s not so much what I mean. I’m talking about how to continue the conversation, not how to find things out for myself.
Well “Hey yeah, google says you’re full of it” seems like a pretty good starting point. Maybe with less confrontational wording.
“Cite, please” is a useful request. If the other person is shoveling shit hoping to find a non-existing pony, a few of these in a row can strand them.
When I was reflecting on it earlier, asking the other person for their source has been helpful in the past. Phrasing it with, “That sounds different than what I’m familiar with; where did you hear/learn about that?” is probably what I’ll go with for now.
The problem with this is that it seems to assume that I’m able (and about to) take out my phone and run a few Google searches in the middle of a conversation. If they were, like, really insistent about a basic fact, like how many feet are in a mile or something, that could work, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
For context, the specific conversation that brought this up was with someone who was somewhat anti-vax, and she was citing reasons I hadn’t heard of before and as such didn’t know counters to, but they sounded inaccurate. It took me a while when I got home last night to find more accurate information on what she was referring to. It wouldn’t have really fit within our conversation for me to have done the research right then.
Jamie’s suggestion of asking them to explain is great: chances are they’re just parroting what they’ve heard and don’t actually understand it.
But keep asking questions, how does that work? Where did you hear that? Have peer-reviewed studies confirmed that? Why do you believe an actress over every single qualified person who has made this their life’s work?
It’s also sometimes helpful to ask them what their scientific training is. If their last science was a C in high school biology…
It’s alwYs handy to have a few scientific ideas in your back pocket:
-Correlation is not causation
– definition of “theory” in science
– how science works: hypothesis, test, refine, test, refine, etc
– how statistics work: “X% of people who got the vaccine had a heart attack within three days!!!!” “Let’s look up how many people in any population can be expected to have a heart attack– oh, look, it’s X%.”
I’d suggest getting them to explain it. It’s not a sure-fire way or anything, but it does get them to give you their perspective on the matter, which is non-antagonistic. Then you can ask clarifying questions in order to dig through that and see if you can pick it apart just from their explanation.
If you can’t, then eventually, they’ll run out of steam, and you’ll run out of questions, and the conversation is pretty much exhausted anyways. Change the subject, or say you’ll need to think about all of that, and drop it until you’re ready to march out your own arguments and sources.
It really depends on how deeply held a belief we’re talking about is. Since you’re worried about how to talk about it, I’m assuming the straightforward “You’re wrong, and here’s the proof” isn’t going to work with this person, so I’m guessing it’s a pretty deeply held belief? In that case, hurling facts at them isn’t going to work – you have to find examples from THEIR life that contradict their belief.
For example, take the belief “Criminals are evil people, and deserve to be punished”. If someone strongly believes this, quoting crime statistics at them all day won’t dissuade them. Showing them that a friend or a family member – someone they CARE about – has broken the law, however, might make them rethink this.
I don’t know how strongly held the belief is; the belief itself, or the arguments being made about it, were based on facts, but those facts were inaccurate.
Side note, it’s always interesting to me to work at what’s most persuasive to someone in an argument. There are some people who’s thinking would be more impacted by what you said in your second paragraph, but there are also some who would be less impacted by it. It’s kind of fun to feel out, though. (Except when I was with a previous therapist who was sort of like, “if you get emotional about what you’re talking about then your agrument/logic is invalid.” She was fun.)
That’s pretty horrific coming from a therapist. It’s in fact a pretty common tactic of abusive, manipulative people – provoke someone to anger, then dismiss them because they can’t be rational about it. Especially common applied to women – “now you’re getting hysterical”. Nicely demonstrated by Joyce’s brother awhile back, to tie back to the comic.
Persuasion is interesting. Facts and logic are apparently rarely effective, at least on anything actually important to us. The old saw about not reasoning someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into applies even more strongly as we come to understand we really don’t reason ourselves into most things. Reason is more commonly applied as a rationalization for what we’ve already decided.
Well-crafted emotional appeals work much better, but are hard for most of us to apply properly, other than by accident or instinct.
My standard reply, for people I’m close enough to joke with a bit, is, “Okay, then. I’ll believe you. Millions wouldn’t; but sure, what you said.” *Lifts eyebrows, looks skeptical; gives thumbs up*
Conveys doubt as to the veracity of the statement; but also that you’re not gonna fight them on it (at least, not right then).
What makes this strip interesting is that it establishes something that hasn’t been explicitly stated but that I’ve suspected for a while: That Sarah doesn’t actually like Jacob and the feeling is mutual. They’re civil with each other for Joyce’s sake and because Jacob is a fair-minded person but that’s as far as it goes.
Why do you think that?
Sarah doesn’t trust him with Joyce’s secrets. To me, he looks rather liking her more for caring about Joyce and not falling over herself to make them his problems.
Sarah isn’t really nice to anyone outside of extreme circumstances regardless of how she actually feels about them so I’m not really sure her attitude towards Jacob is indicative of anything other than that she has a kinda crap attitude.
Just came across the scene in “Good Omens” where the angel takes over the tv-preacher who’s just preaching about the relevation and asks him what kind of a moral stance it’d be to watch people dying from your raptured position and gloat about it.
Maybe someone in the cast can ask Mary to explain?
I love that book (and that scene). And yep, it would be interesting to hear Mary’s answer.
That would be the Abominable Fancy.
The last face Jacob’s making is making me read what he says in the most sarcastic tone possible and I love it.
Did anyone else think Jacob was on the football team when seeing this shirt on him? He is built for it.
He is, but frankly, there’s no way he’d be able to fit that in with pre-law.
Wait, is Sarah a tsundere?
Dammit, Sarah, you can be asocial (and protect someone else’s privacy) without being rude.
New proposal. Willis draws Sarah as a tsundere anime girl going, “B-baka! It’s not like I care about you or anything!”
We should demand that to be a stretch goal in next year’s kickstarter, or just make a kickstarter for it for him.
Jeez, Sarah. Just tell him it’s not your place to say, or lie a little and say it’s because of her broken toe. Worst case scenario is he tags along.
I love Sarah but sometimes she’s not exactly skilled at navigating the thin red line between self-preservation and just plain old assholery. Aaaaaaand here I am at nearly 50, discussing friggin’ Willis’ machinations as if they were people…
But that’s the fun of fiction!
And part of how you tell if an author is good. If their characters strike you as real people, so you have opinions about their choices just as if they were real, the author’s Doing It Right.
Got ten years on you, doin’ the same thing.
The placement of the speech bubble in the last panel made me think that Jacob is holding a massive fist up to his chest.
“ONLY TOGETHER, CAN WE FINISH THIS SEMESTER!!!”
Massive fist pump to the chest.
Students: “YUUUHH!!!!”
“Ethan Rayne.”
“Oh bugger, I thought you were gone!”
Did i miss a strip? It seems that these two are just hanging out all of a sudden.
Sarah and Jacob have their law class at the same time Joyce and the others have Math. That’s why Sarah walks with them on the way to class.
Since those classes just ended, it’s natural for Sarah and Jacob to talk afterwards.
I find it weirder that she’s suddenly all distant to Jacob. It does feel like we missed some dialogue or exchange here.
This series pays a disturbing amount of attention to its character’s class schedules.
I LIKE IT!