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(he/him)
⚧
New game! BOLTED 
2075? So… almost spring break?
Beat me to it.
(okay, by a lot.)
Actually, 2075 is the year we finally learn what happened to Mike.
2075:the Mikening
I’m already pre-emptively bracing myself for tomorrow’s strip
Should i take that as ominous?
I don’t have any foreknowledge of tomorrow’s strip, but it did occur to me that there is little tension among these three, and that it might be a set-up for them to receive an extraneous shock, such as some news.
Don’t tell me though. Don’t even tell me whether you can tell me.
Tomorrow we cut to Walky eating Mcnuggets.
Or to Steve eating cereal and the whole strip moves to Northampton, Massachusetts.
Or crosses the border and ends up in Montreal where English speakers are an alien minority that most are unable or unwilling to communicate with.
Won’t THAT be fun?
Ethan goes “y’know, I think I’ve decided I really just wanna date Mike, whom I loved all along” and then Willis confirms he’s dead
^^ this.
Nonsense. Ethan will be standing in front of the mortuary. He will be escorted down the hall by a policeman to where the body is. The sheet will be pulled back. There will be a panel showing Ethan”s face. And then in the final panel, there on the slab will be Jacob.
There will be no explanation until a month later.
A month is generous
More like fifty of them
An in-universe month. So, 2075.
Dorothy, Joyce: great way to reward behaviour that you want to encourage. Really top-notch work.
Imagine not being able to tease your friends. Besides, it’s not that they want to encourage Sarah to be a social butterfly, or to be anyone other than the curmudgeonly misanthrope that she proudly is.
It’s okay to make fun of your friends, as long as everyone’s on board with it and no one gets hurt. Sarah’s obviously been on board from being just as teasing as the two of them from the get go.
The thing is that there is no way to say that you aren’t on board with it. When you ask people to stop, there are always some people who take that as a joke, and always some people who think that they are such good friends, and always someone hears about it who is glad to know of a way to get to you.
A lot of people just refuse to accept that you might have boundaries in this.
I mean, Dotty starts out saying they should leave her alone, so her saying they can stay is SORT of a “no it’s fine”
Sarah getting up and walking away is the “ok stop” vs. the last panel’s “well, I asked for it”
[source: introvert tired of people’s shit]
It’s a reluctant agreement that she would rather put up with the shit they’re going to give her for letting them sit there than with the shit they would give her for saying “no”. It is reluctant permission to give her the shit that the social convention dictated by extraverts says they are allowed to. It is not a freely-given invitation to snark at will. It does not indicate that Sarah welcomes and enjoys their smug extravert bullshit.
[source: perhaps even more introvert and more exhausted than you are]
This is why you never give extroverts as much as an inch. They never fail to try to turn it into an Astronomical Unit.
*plays “Leave Me Alone” on the hacked Muzak*
*cues up “When I’m Old and Wise”*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4HI1_LTWIk
Dorothy, don’t be silly, Sarah already said she likes you. Out loud, even.
Joyce, you know she does and she’s said it out loud, but her little sister so by law you are on thin fucking ice.
DoA Book 10: “Okay” Is A Very Precarious Tier
2075? That will be the end of next summer break, right? Start of sophomore year?
spring midterms at this rate
I’d say the end of their freshman year at the latest.
Oh, no, we’ll be working through the Advent Calendar.
If we estimate that generally one DoA week passes per real-world year, 2075 will be November of next school year.
But one side-effect of the Mike thing is that the pace of the strip has slowed down even more. It’s been six weeks to get to lunchtime. Add a couple of cliffhangers like this and by 2075 we will still be at the Christmas break.
Sooner or later, no matter what we do, we all succumb to entropy.
Eat Arby’s.
Willis’ buffer is the only known entity in the multiverse known to defy entropy with some measure of success.
So we can have Ghost-Mike back for Halloween! Kewl!
Friends are who we can really be smartasses with.
It works best if the “jokes” are actually witty.
I love, love, LOVE the Joyce&Dorothy double act.
They got good chemistry it’s like watching the MOST in sync comedy duo/couple
I’m just waiting for the sliding timeline to make Dorothy(?)’s prediction in the past.
Also, Billie’s fake ID will claim that she’s 82, and the booze store clerk will still be going, “Yeah, looks plausible.”
Billie’s dad is rich, and can afford to buy her really good anti-aging creams.
If Billie’s dad is still buying her anti-aging creams when she’s 82, he’s got to be keeping the really, really good ones for himself.
Well, naturally.
Or a really good plastic surgeon on retainer!
In 2075, maybe they’ll be Sophomores.
OMG! They referenced a year! in 2076 fans of the comic are going to be sooo confused! Unless.. time machines? An alternate universe that travels backward in time?
You don’t understand. There’s a floating timeline, so every year Willis will go into the comic and nudge the date by 1.
I do think it would be funny as hell if he quietly went in and did that. The strip with Billie’s fake id birth date mentioned above would be the best place to start.
Of course, the really tricky part is breaking into everyone’s house and updating the paper copies he’s sold.
In 2075 everybody will be too busy fighting against our Robot Overlords to be admiring holograms.
Considering the state of US politics today (and where it appears to be going in the future), I think I would almost welcome the robot overlords.
Robots? Soggies may rule.
-b-b-but…Where Is Mike???
…I can’t help but recall the ominous scene in the film Watership Down, in which Fiver seeks Hazel, who’s disappeared after being shot. Propelled by clairivoyance, Fiver stares deep into the shadowy mouth of a sewer pipe….and faintly hears a slow, damp, heartbeat.
Bright Eyes, burning like fire…
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
let’s see we are ten years in but still less than 3 months in-comic so doing the math (2075-2020)/3.33 gives us an additional 16.516516516517 months so about the end of sophomore 1st semester.
As soon as 2075? That’s an optimistic prediction!
I wonder if Joyce and Dorothy are aware of just how a perfectly-organised double-act they’ve become?
I’m sure Dorothy is aware. She is very self-aware.
I’m sure Joyce is aware. She knows that she and Dorothy are soul mates that are meant to be together for ever and ever and ever (in a very platonic way, I’m sure).
Although, I do wonder if Joyce realises, in some part of her psyche, that she really doesn’t know where ‘platonic’ ends.
Yes, she does…she commented once that growing up with Becky skewed her idea of platonic interaction.
alt text : meh, close enough
I’m not really sure what delaying the news on Mike is supposed to accomplish besides irritate readers in a “not good” way. There’s no suspense, there’s just a bunch of “why” and not confronting it seems like a cheap way to extend out the story line longer than he needs to.
It’s simple. It ensures that everyone visits the site every day in the hope that they’ll find out.
Honestly, I hope it’s to piss people. I am perfectly fine waiting. We’ll get there when we get there. I like seeing everyone’s every day life without random drama, we know it’s there, we just don’t normally see it cause that doesn’t make an interesting comic. The only thing annoying about waiting to hear about Mike is every day in the comments there’s at least someone going “where’s Mike?”. The joking ones are okay, if not redundant at this point, the whiny ones not so much.
I guess you are aware that we are getting these everyday strips because the drama knob is about to be suddenly push to 11.
*pushed
Oh yeah…I’m unfortunately aware. At least the chaos it will bring will be entertaining, I hope.
So, Mike’s fate is like a wizard?
It may also be that he’s got a particularly good way to handle the return to that plot in mind, but it needs to be later in the day (or night). In that case, the “delay” is a natural consequence of the slow pace of the strip. Can’t just skip over what’s going one with everyone else.
Semi-seriously , I’m expecting it will come with tonight’s return of Amazigirl. Assuming she ever returns.
Amazi-Girl returning requires Mike returning alive and well. If Mike died because she failed, that would be it for Amazi-Girl.
So, no, she’s never coming back. Willis is going to transfer his desire to draw superhero action to Sarah.
Mike, being Mike, believes his jerkass behavior is a ‘necessary’ thing, that people need him.
This whole thing is extended proof that life moves on without Mike.
Nobody needs Mike in the DoAverse. It’s we the readers who need him. He plays (played?) Greek chorus for us.
shruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuug.
*in 2075, Sarah gets MentoBook post on Joyce&Dorothy image*
Here’s a picture posted to your wall in 2020. Share the memory with your friends!
*Sarah reposts*
Sarah: MEH.
Jacob: Wow, you reposted! And no downvotes or poop emojis? Awww, that’s sweet!
*Sarah deletes Jacob from friend list*
*friend list now empty*
Sarah: Ah, Nirvana…
Looking at these strips, I realise Sarah’s hair has changed. It’s gone from … one round mass of hair with curvy outlines to several longer shapes. (english is not my first language, I don’t know how else to describe it). It’s been happening slowly over her apperances, so I didn’t notice till now.
Right! The hair is growing!
Yeah! It’s grown into a… giant spider?
“Ah, yes, Joy and Dora, the annoying lesbian couple. I remember them.”
I am liking the snarksey twins in this page, very good banter there.
The Masked Vigilante was startled to be called by name. Putting his fist down he turns to confront this stranger.
He is clad in black, a katana is strapped to his back. He bows and removed his face covering mask. “Greetings Mike-san. You can call me…Rick”
But what happened to the
mouseglad hand?I like Sarah’s hoodie
For having a sisterly animosity, okay is a great start.