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Tea Berry-Blue @teaberryblue.net ⋅ 2d
Truthout @truthout.org ⋅ 2d
Jay Edidin @edidin.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Krispy @feathernotes.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Kendra, regular version @kendrawcandraw.bsky.social ⋅ 4d
www.comicsbeat.com/pride-interv...
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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urge to spill, rising
Okay, for real, what the hax Ana…. https://i.imgur.com/DLLIh5b.jpg
(screenshot not edited at all except to crop and add red arrows)
I think Ana’s sysadmin friend at Hiveworks didn’t fully test that script they wrote her to cheat on comments.
Ana’s comments are so integral that they’re now considered part of the page and not counted with the rest of us.
She’s very powerful.
Also exhibiting Flash-like speed to get her comment typed in the micro-instant between when the code where comments are counted is executed and when the code that assembles the comments are executed. Since the super-human speed required will invariably set the keyboard afire, I deduce she has obtained a unbelievably good deal on the mass purchase of keyboards.
Or…copy paste after pre-making a comment from the patreon day-ahead feed?
If you checked the linked image, it shows Ana as having already made a comment – but with the page still claiming that the comic had had zero comments as of yet.
Oooh nooo
You’re bad at this, Joyce.
Or good at this. Depends what “this” she’s actually aiming for.
Judging by Joyce’s staring at Dorothy every time she says something… I’m going to guess she’s wondering if her prompts have made Dorothy curious enough to spill the beans to. Which, while disappointing, isn’t surprising.
Lots of great Joyce faces here. Panel 4 is my favorite.
Panel four makes me want to see if my aim is good enough to throw popcorn through the fourth wall and into Joyce’s mouth.
Buttered only, no salt.
You think Joyce would have her popcorns and butter touch? They’re in separate bowls and she eats them with different spoons.
I also love her looking for a reaction in panel 5
Yeah, Joyce is thinking, “Really, you’re not asking me to spill?”
*chuckles* I honestly can’t tell if Joyce is just being Joyce or is she is teasing Dorothy with information she will want to know. Or if she just really is THAT bad at keeping gossip down.
I’m reading it as “wants to tell her so badly for the exact reason Dorothy doesn’t need to know”.
“Joyce, I really don’t want this information.”
“But I’ve prepared a musical number complete with choreography!”
I’m reading it as Joyce is trying to manipulate Dorothy into asking Walky about the dorm drama, but I’ll admit it’s kind of a coin flip at this point.
I think Joyce was expecting Dorothy to ask her what the information she knows is, and she didn’t know what to do when Dorothy told her not to tell her.
Oh hi Roz. Is that your impending rising relevance?
You’re so bad at this, Joyce… XD
Yay, time for gender studies? I hope all the drama comes out and Leslie’s like, “Please. Just let me teach this class. Okay, fine, I’ll make it about your lives.”
Leslie has seen the site and realized that she is the only teacher at the school with a cast bio. She will never escape the drama. She has become part of it.
Her lesson planning revolves around predicting the drama in her students’ lives, but sometimes she’s wrong and that gets frustrating.
When she said she was dressing up for Robin, she was really just angling for more panel time. Hanging out in the Dumbingverse is pretty boring if you mostly live in front of backgrounds Willis has yet to find reason to draw.
Leslie knows there’s more coming, but she can’t edit the future. She’s stuck watching the comic play out at its natural pace like the rest of us, and finds that infuriating.
She lives with Becky, which pulls her in to Joyce’s drama.
Somebody better answer that phone because I called it. Joyce, you continue to be just insufferable.
She COULD have just run up and spilled all of Walky’s private information all over Dorothy. She’s actually respecting a boundry right now!
I mean, we’ll see if she can keep it to herself but right now she’s only mildly being inappropriate.
“respecting the boundry” by being the pesky kid sister, putting foot over the “line”, repeatedly.
Hardly. Just doing that thing where you keep bringing a secret up so a person will ask and you’ll feel justified sharing it.
I love Joyce but some of the shit she pulls is irritating
This. She’s deliberately trying to get D to ask her about it even though it was made absolutely clear that D knows it’s a) none of her business and b) probably not very healthy for her.
So Joyce, honey, your *desire* to gossip does not trump Dorothy’s *need* to be left alone.
*plays “Careless Whisper” on the hacked Muzak*
Is He Ever Gonna Dance Again?
Joyce if anyone should do the deed of Breaking Bad news to Dorothy it should be Mike….( not for tactical reasons it’s because the pot needs to be stirred once in awhile)
Did you capitalize Breaking Bad on purpose, or did autocorrect think you were talking about the show?
Uhh, yes?
I used the Google voice translater this time and for some reason it just did that.
I kinda wonder what upcoming election it’ll be by the time we get to election day in-universe.
I think either the 2022 midterms or 2024 presidential, depending on the comic’s pace.
Roughly one DoA week passes per real-life year (though that’s slowing a bit), it’s currently Friday, October 15th, and election day is Tuesday, November 2nd.
The upcoming election? Which upcoming election?
The one Robin’s running in. Seems like a midterm iirc.
Right now, it would probably be the…2020 election, I think, since Dumbing of Age is always set in the eternal present, which would make this strip currently set in 2019.
I’m always sort of amused by how the elections interact with comic time.
Robin is a first term Representative
When she first appeared back in 2011, she was a member of the big Republican wave in 2010.
The rally storyline was in 2016 – She’d won in the smaller wave in 2014. The arc with Leslie continued through the 2016 election into early 2017. I’m not quite sure how that interacts with comic time – whether DoA’s eternal October of Now matches the closest October or the October of the current calendar year.
Robin hasn’t been seen since then, but now she’d have won election for the first time in 2018’s blue wave, which would have been an incredible feat for a Trumpy Republican in a swing district.
Robin is in my district. Sadly, we elected a Trumpy Republican pretty handily in 2018 (though not a first time Republican to be fair). It’s not really that swingy.
But would your district re-elect a Republican who turned out to be a lesbian, and who vowed to prosecute a poor Christian boy who had been victimized by a violent knife-wielding feminist? Oh, and whose party had withdrawn its endorsement of her?
Or would they stay home on election day and let the generic Democrat win?
Roz seems pretty sure it’s the latter, but of course she’s a fictional character.
Looking at the info for Indiana’s 9th District I’d expect that they would. Since the 2011 redistricting they are absolutely Republican leaning (only just a bit less so than Ohio’s 8th, which I live just outside of) and the current zeitgeist of Republican voters (last eight years or so) in the OH/IN/KY tristate area has been of the flavor “better a Republican who doesn’t match the party ideal than a Democrat of any stripe”.
Maybe the redistricting is why the initial take on her seat is that it was something of a tossup.
In-universe, Move-In Day was Sunday, Aug. 29, so election day is Tuesday, Nov. 2, which is 18 days after today. At the current rate, and assuming no major time skips, that’s 1202 days in real time, not counting the strips that are still left in the current storyline (which no one but Willis can count).
That puts us in 2022, somewhere between the middle of May and middle of June, which is the end of the midterm primary season. (Most states, including Indiana, will have already had their primaries by then.)
Oh, for an editing button: in-universe, today is Friday, Oct. 15, hence in-universe Nov. 2 is 18 days away.
Right, and election day is November 2nd because it’s always the first Tuesday of the month, and DoA follow’s 2010’s calendar for its days of the month. (So in 2021 it will align with real time again!)
> because it’s always the first Tuesday of the month
It’s actually the Tuesday after the first Monday of the month. So if November starts on a Tuesday (as it did in 2016), Election Day is November 8th. But regardless, yes, it’s Nov 2.
(the reason for this was to keep consistent the number of days between Election Day and when the Electoral College meets, which at the time was the first Wednesday in December, and now is the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December)
((I don’t know why it’s now the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. They felt it was a good idea in 1936 apparently.))
Okay the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Coffee first, then comment!
“Subtle.”
By which I mean, not at all.
Joyce really wants to tell, but she has to restrain her gossip instincts.
Yes, Dorothy, because if there’s a thing you need, it’s more commitments.
And yeesh, Joyce is not good at subtle is she? Then again, I’m not entirely sure she’s trying to be.
I think she’s more talking about some sort of governmental election, not a school one
That’s still another commitment though.
Though to be fair, if it’s for extra class credit, it may be part of trying to make up for bad grades she got during her slump.
I’m still not really happy that ditching Walky seems to have solved all her problems. But maybe there’s more fallout to come.
It certainly is but I don’t like that she’s replaced one commitment with another.
I don’t think Dorothy’s problems are solved. Her eyes look better but she’s still got her hair in a mess, and we’ve just heard she’s adding more stuff to her plate. I think breaking up with Walky freed some time up but it’s ultimately just kicked the can down the road.
My OTP is Dorothy/Drama-free Life and Joyce is getting in the way of my ship.
Also, if Gender Studies is up next, does that mean we get to see more Roz and Joe, and Joe interacting with Joyce? Please, Willis, I’ve been good so far this year!
Well, based on panel 1, I gotta assume there’s at least going to be more Roz. Hopefully for you, Joe will get there soon.
What was the previous Roz-Joe interaction? Was she mad about the list?
“Don’t rate women, Joe.” Plus the early sex tape.
I don’t think we’ve actually seen them interact since the list came out publicly. She seemed fed up with his schtick even before that though.
Dammit Joyce.
“Where’s Poochie?”
Joyce can you please not remind me of my ever sinking ship. I have enough water filling what USED to be the titanic and is now just a wooden dingy.
Don’t be a gossip, Joyce.
This is our periodic reminder that Becky despite appearances actually is the subtle one.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/dotty/
Panel 5: “Dorothy, you’re missing out on girl code! You really need to watch more romcoms and sitcoms so you’ll know when you’re meant to push me to tell you things!”
He, I bet you anything Dorothy has watched exact amount of romcoms to get a passing understanding of the girl code in an academic sense of the word, and then dismissed it as a behaviour she does not want to promote or abide by.
Similar to her attitude to religion!
Chismosa
Mm-hmm. Loose lips, Joycey.
It looks like Dorothy has been sleeping.
That’s how drama works. It’s all “man, you don’t wanna know” except you want to tell them so they do know but they’ve taken it to heart that they don’t want to know even though you want them to know. Y’know?
Poor Joyce! She’s practically bursting to tell and Dorothy isn’t interested! I wonder how long it will be before she breaks and starts babbling (probably only semi-coherently) about what happened?
Less then a minute, if I know her right
Joyce the gossip queen
When Joyce tries to do subtle
She’s somehow worse than Becky.
Becky CAN do subtle (just re-read when she first showed up – on the run, scared out of her wits, fresh out of the closet, in love and desperate – chill as a bean and not giving anything away until she kissed Joyce). She just doesn’t WANT TO do subtle. It’s an informed choice.
I am really impressed at all the people who have posted who have NEVER been in a situation where they REALLY wanted to tell someone something they probably shouldn’t, but say something hoping to be asked what it is. Apparently I’m the only one here who can totally relaye to Joyce.
Alas, that must remain so. I’m one of those people who EVERYBODY comes to with their secrets because they know that I WILL keep their secrets, and I haven’t the slightest inclination to share with anybody. XD On the one hand, sooooo much blackmail material (that I’ll never act on). On the other hand, sometimes it does get tiresome having to listen to everybody pour out their darkest secrets while thinking “So why on earth are you telling ME this stuff?? You should be sorting this out with X instead of bringing it to me!”
Just because we’ve done it doesn’t mean we can’t find it annoying.
And really, Joyce has hardly done anything to endear herself lately. This is just adding to it.
I’ve never done this. If it’s a secret I feel needs to be kept I keep it and if it’s one I think someone needs to know I tell the person I feel needs to know it without this bizarre attempt to justify myself.
But YOU’re not a religious fundamentalist, a type of person who habitually pores over their religious text of choice looking for any passages that might be interpreted to say what they want them to say. “Be shitty then justify” is pretty much the SOP.
IF I DONT TELL YOU IN THE NEXT TEN SECONDS I WILL DIE.
That’s a very real risk.
Saying it might actually make Dorothy laugh though. But Joyce would have to be more self-aware for those to be the next words out of her mouth.
One funny possibility is that Joyce and Walky will start talking about the situation vis Amber and Lucy and what Walky is going to do about it but only in unintentionally indirect and metaphorical terms, leaving poor Dorothy with an entirely misleading understanding of what’s going on.
ya know everytime I watch those two interact I feel like I’m watching friends, and I LOVE IT!
Wait a minute… Dorothy was canvassing. We know that Robin’s congressional seat is up for election and Robin has been deselected by the GOP. I’m wondering if, off screen, Robin has come forward as an independent candidate and is campaigning for LGBT+ rights (because she is one and she’s hoping it will impress Leslie). I could see Dorothy setting herself up as Robin’s campaign manager in those circumstances.
Foreshadowing for a big upcoming arc in the story?
That seems somewhat in odds with Dorothy’s goal of focusing more on her studies.
So yeah, you might be onto something.
Robin only “came out” in support of LGBTQIA rights because her previous party dumped her, Becky did all the actually coming out for her, and she figures that’s what will get her applauses again. Robin is Trump, and the only reason she ever does anything is for attention and acclaim.
Trump proves that such a strategy gets you elected.
But it doesn’t get you Dorothy… yet, at least.
Hm, that seems far-fetched to me. I would assume Dorothy was canvassing for the Democratic candidate.
Why would she even want to support someone like Robin? (No, I don’t mean “why would she want to support LGBT+ rights?” — of course she would — I mean that Robin hasn’t exactly shown herself to be the kind of principled and genuine polititician that I think Dorothy still sees as the ideal and wants to support, and eventually become herself.)
Yeah, the Democratic candidate is likely to already be in support of LGBT rights and have better policies over all. And Robin would have essentially no chance in that situation anyway. She loses the GOP base by switching, but that won’t make Democrats (or Democratic leaners) like or trust her. Barring some serious scandal on Jake Manley’s part, she’s toast.
Oh, crap. Does this mean Robin will have to get a job? She’ll be panhandling on the street.
She’ll get a bartending job at Galasso’s, possibly via bow-tie related shenanigans
Once she’s homeless, she’ll just move in with Leslie.
Ew.
I didn’t say it was a good plan.
Typically, Robin doesn’t come up with good plans unless she’s really trying very hard.
Joyce continues to be terrible, part eleventy bilion.
I see ya, Roz. I DO like some Roz. She seems a bit slumped over: it’s either still too early for her, or she walked over from the dorm with Joyce and was exposed to over 5 minutes of her – that’d slump me, too.
Oh, so that is Roz. At first glance, it looked like a lifeless body slumped against the wall. I thought Joyce was fighting ninjas again.
Yay, more Roz! <3
There has yet to be a Roz appearance I dislike. Can she keep up that streak? Let’s find out.
Also, if we’re getting Gender Studies now, and therefore more Leslie, I wonder if we’ll get more developments on her relationship with shitty dentist whose name I can’t recall (shitty as a person; for all I know, she’s the ebst dentist in the world).
Anna. She’s based on Mike iirc. Willis commented on the discrepancy between him and a woman of colour with a similar level of assholeishness.
I dunno man, so far Mike is by FAR more of an asshole than Anna. Which (to me) makes him more cartoonish and kind of fun to watch in an entertainment sense. Anna’s too… realistic… for me to like her. She reminds me way too much of a “friend” I had back in middle school… :/
Makes sense. Meanwhile, Mike reminds me far too much of low compassion edge lords for him to be anything less than grating for me, even when he’s light enough to appeal to my sadistic sense of humour with fictional people. Meanwhile, Anna’s nowhere near that grating to me, even while she IS obnoxious to everyone.
Is this for real?
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/16/conscience-abortion-transgender-patients-health-care-289542
Because if it is, JFC, you people.
I mean, it’s not SURPRISING, but still, JFC.
It seems entirely consistent with the pile-o-dreck that is the trump administration.
So, much as I would prefer to believe that it is fake news, I do in fact believe it.
It’s going to take YEARS to get the government back to some degree of fair representation of what people actually want from their government. And that’s assuming the GOP don’t succeed in cheating their way into permanent power.
Man, Joyce…
I hope she returns to being less annoying soon. (She’s definitely been herself in a far less annoying — and selfish — way before.)
Joyce is great during times of crises (see: standing up to her parents, standing up to Toedad, standing up for Becky when visiting home).
But as a day to day person to interact and live with? Definitely aggravating.
My head track is “Heard it through the grapevine” by Gladys Knight and the Pips.
Joyce *is* the grapevine.
Don’t drag Dorothy into dorm drama, dangit!
Dorothy looks nice in that colour btw.
Not that Joyce notices or anything…
Nah, it’s cool, see, Joyce also looks nice today, so she doesn’t notice Dorothy’s wardrobe. They, like, cancel each other out. That’s how that works, right?
I’ve got proof, too! See, I’m over here being far less fashionable and I can’t get over how good Dorothy looks in that rich, deep purple.
Reading the hovertext… it’s kind of a shame that this comic has no sci-fi elements, because a bodyswap episode would be pretty funny.
That’s what fan fiction is for!
Time travel, sci-fi, love triangles involving characters who shouldn’t be together…and that’s usually when I wake up, grinding my teeth.
Sir Willis already did a body swap arc in the previous comic series, so he probably already got it out of his system.
This strip is a perfect encapsulation of what I don’t like about both their personalities. Ugh.
Yeah, how dare that Dorothy…not want to hear gossip about her ex?