The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
The Otherknown
Lorian Merriman
Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
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.
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
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!
Countdown to Countdown
Velinxi
Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
Slightly Damned
Chu
Rhea Snaketail returns from the dead, befriending a Demon who falls in love with an Angel. The afterlife ain't what it used to be!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
2 Slices
RJ Morel
After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
Fantomestein
Beka Duke
Desperate for companionship, Frankenstein's Monster pretends to be the Opera Ghost. A grave mistake.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
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.
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
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BUFFER WATCH
Comics are currently drawn and uploaded through:
Technology Connections: a half-hour video about the development of glasses, how they work, and how they contributed to the RCA SelectaVision videodisc system and subsequent downfall of the Radio Corporation of America.
AlternateHistoryHub: “What if General Custer could have seen what he was up against?”
Regular Car Reviews: “1967 Wayfarers: the Ford Fairmont of glasses frames”
Linus Tech Tips: “THESE will COMPLETELY CHANGE how you SEE THE WORLD (and our mousepads lttstoredotcom)”
Captain Disillusion: This is how the glasses were 3D modeled and filmed
History Buffs: This movie about glasses is fairly historically accurate, except for a few details
The Spiffing Brit: The glasses are perfectly balanced, perfect for sipping your Yorkshire Tea and saluting the Queen
I’m gonna bet she never really thought much about electoral politics until fairly recently, aside from a general “respect the office if not the person” sort of fuzziness about the Presidency. Also, there’s the sliding timescale to think of.
The lack of edit feature is frustrating. Fantasyland is major hyperbole, and it’s probably going to be read significantly more derogatorily than I intended.
Willis has confirmed that Trump was elected president in the Dumbiverse (I recall a comment of theirs back in 2017 which stated that they were looking forward to the day when said presidency could be referred to in the past tense in-comic, and there’ve already been oblique references by at least some characters), so, uh…I don’t think the Republicans are any less horrid here.
Welp, because of the distorted time scale, it could be that the presidential term of office in the Dumbiverse is limited to a month. That’s an awfully short time in which to impeach a President.
She existed in the Walky!verse too, but yet there’s a specific story arc about how Galasso does not know what sex is, and Leslie and Ethan take it upon themselves to explain both sex and gender to him.
There’s a second path: You’ve been a rebel from SUCH AN EARLY AGE by now you just want to be told you’ve been good (and specially in a context where consequences for disobeying are consensual and awaited for with a smile) |DDD
Lacking activity wouldn’t mean there’s no influence involved, even with low priority and significance. Pecking order is who’s under who, in various aspects.
And that’s not even blindly following! Not only did the optometrist give a reason, it was a reason that Joyce understood, retained, and explained back to you unprompted.
ikr, it’s real strange that they’re all latching onto Joyce’s real medical issue as a metaphor for control/change/lack thereof. Like Dorothy (and Walky of all people) are the only ones not projecting the universe’s other issues onto the plain fact that Joyce can’t see and she needs treatment for it. …And Joyce is really the only one justified in doing that because it’s her own issue.
Oh that depends on how short-sighted you are. Easier to read if I don’t have to have the book ON my nose. Plus being able to see people when I talk to them was amazing. Actually that is what surprised me about Joyce here. I was 13 when I got glasses and being able to see stuff was a legit experience. I went around telling people ‘hey! You can see the tower from here!’ And ‘ask me the time! Go on! I can See the clock now!’ Maybe Joyce just resents the glasses so much she is hating that too ‘trees look stupid now! With the detail and the leaves. I liked them blurry!’
Getting used to them is subjective and if she’s going to ignore a doctor then this is probably fairly harmless. To be honest, ‘wear them all the time’ seems like strange advice for someone who is nearsighted. In particular, unless they are bifocals or low strength, I would think she should be taking them off to read books, etc. without eye strain.
You shouldn’t really force yourself to read through distance lenses, anyway.
I’m nearsighted and I can only read things at least an arm’s length away through mine. Without them, or through the reading part of my bifocals, I can focus up to about halfway up my forearm before things start getting too blurry.
Do you wear glasses? I have for over a decade and a half, and you don’t take off your glasses unless your nearsightedness is so minor that you can use store bought reading glasses in lie of prescription.
Right, but remember how Joyce is thinking here. If she gets past “I should listen to my doctor”, she’s not going to go “okay, I’ve considered the evidence and since wearing the glasses all the time is just to help me get used to them, so it’s okay to only wear them when I need them”, she’ll jump straight to “Doctors are no longer real authority figures and not to be trusted!”
Isn’t nearsightedness the most common reason people need glasses? People wear their glasses all the time. Some people wear contacts, and you can’t just take those on and off.
Well, Ms. Demon Blood is a doctor. Literal, practicing medical doctor with an MD. So while medical professionals in general are a good idea to listen to… maybe some of them should be ignored.
Might I interest anyone in reading about Patient-Centered Care?
It’s currently the prefered model of care taight in Australian universities and is focused on improving the quality of care for patients through holistic practices, shared decision making and patient education.
If Dr op was trained in and engaged with this model of care then Joyce would have the agency to make informed decisions for herself and, as a result be more likely to follow health advice.
I think Sarah’s giving good advice (I literally said the same thing in the last strip so I’m chuffed!).
She’s not telling Joyce what to do, she’s telling jJoyce that she has agency over her own body and her own life and make her own decisions about her health, too. No-one, not even doctors know 100% what’s best for each individual!
“Advice” as in panel 1: If wearing them bothers her so much then she doesn’t need to wear them all the time.
My sister is near sighted and uses glasses, but prefers to only use them if she’s doing things like driving or watching tv because she’s used to her vision and finds them irritating.
For example, the doctor could have given Joyce advice and then explained the reasoning, making sure that Joyce understood. Perhaps she would leave the office and follow the advice, and be able to explain to her roommate why she was doing so.
Like happened.
There was a time when I got new glasses and I had to swap back to my old ones to drive home. Those new glasses made me sick for like two days, but I kept wearing them because I obviously had to get over that if I wanted to be able to, y’know, see.
I think Willis will have trouble fitting “Sarah, in the Past Year I’ve Jettisoned God, Religion, My church, Probably My Political Party, My Parents, and Becky’s Dad, and So My Optometrist is Actually the Current Highest-Ranking Authority Figure I’ve Got!” onto the spine of the book.
I refer you to DOA 9: NOW LET’S GO COMMIT SOMETHING MILDLY SUBVERSIVE WHICH AT WORST WILL SERVE AS A HUMANIZING ANECDOTE AND NOT AS ANYTHING TRULY THREATENING TO THE POWER STRUCTURES AT HAND.
Depending on the font size, that could fill up most of the front cover of the book too. Maybe shorten it to “My Optometrist is Actually the Current Highest-Ranking Authority Figure I’ve Got!”
Since we don’t know how bad her near-sightedness actually, we don’t know at what distance her vision starts blurring. But it’s a safe bet that unless she’s staring into a book or her computer screen, most of the time she’s going to be looking at things far enough away that the glasses will help.
And of course, there is the whole ‘getting used to it’ thing. I imagine young girls go through the same process when they get their first bras.
I didn’t wear glasses for so long that I stopped trying to see things, so when I finally got them (after five years) it actually gave me headaches and fatigue to wear them! My eyes were suddenly having to change focus between things far away and close up, and it hurt my eyeballs cuz they hadn’t been using those muscles or whatever. (I assume. I didn’t ask anyone because I didn’t have health insurance.) It was very cool to see things that were far away, but ugh, I hated wearing glasses for the first two weeks until my eyes got used to changing focus again.
Have you seen the teachers at this school? If they even actually exist! There’s one maybe two teachers that are okay. One of them is Leslie. The other is not Robin. I wouldn’t give any of the other chumps the time of day.
Works better if you use them as roleplaying training wheels, a way of encouraging players to think about motivation using a simplistic categorization that works well for a lot of common character types
You do need to listen to some people. If Joyce is short sighted she actually needs to keep the glasses on. Listening to your medical professional is not the same as blindly following an authority figure.
as a college lecturer I’m sad but not surprised that my profession ranks after the lunch lady in authority.
I’m not calling this in question, mind. I think it’s a fair depiction of the chain of command as it is and should be, but it is a blow to my professional pride.
“A medical professional told you to do something, so you just ARE?”
This reminds me of when I had braces as a teenager. Some of the corrections took longer than intended because the adjustments would end up overcorrecting, so then they would try to fix that and that would overcorrect. It became obvious pretty quickly that the orthodontists did not actually expect me to follow their instructions and doing so made me an anomalous teen.
She definitely followed her parents political allegiance and I think there’s some art floating around of Carol holding up a Trump sign. Of course at her current age relative to the year Joyce wasn’t old enough to vote in the last election so I wonder how much this matters. It’s pretty interesting actually that over the span of this comic Joyce went from probably voting for Trump in her first ever election, to potentially voting for Biden, soon to Biden just being president before she votes in her first election.
You think Carol would be one of the people who stormed the capitol in that coup attempt? With enough time that reality becomes more and more possible! I would divorce someone for that!
When Dumbing of Age started, Obama hadn’t yet been elected to his second term – if anything, Joyce would’ve started out in the comic as a likely-Romney-voter originally. (Also, IIRC the art with Carol holding the Trump sign was pre-2016, also officially declared by Willis to be non-canonical since it was part of a strip showing Joyce as an older child in explicitly-2008, when as of 2021 she’d have been five then.)
The rest of your comment though is accurate, I’d say.
I think she’d probably go third party. Fundamentalists of the Brown family’s ilk generally do not believe Mormons are Christians, and many consider it a cult. I don’t think that she would support Romney.
And in that time, R-Money became one of the most moderate Republicans by just not substantially changing his positions all that much and watching the party shift around him.
Meanwhile, the GOP has gone from the Freedom Caucus, to the Tea Party, to Trumpism, to completely losing control of the monster they created.
Romney likely lost some votes from being Mormon, but he still won the white Evangelical vote overwhelmingly. Much like Trump won it, despite not being more than nominally Christian.
Because the religious right isn’t so much about religion as about hating the right people.
He has the magic R next to his name, which is probably the only reason about 75% of the votes he got went to him.
This is what happens when you have a first-past-the-post voting system that’s marketed like a sports competition where every member of one team is scrambling to become the most extreme parody of what they claim they are.
Well if you have a progressive lens you do have to wear it for a bit to get used to it. At least this conversation is giving some insight into Joyce’s frame of mind.
I’m in my early thirties and I’ve had bifocals for over 20 years. (My first optometrist said it would be a good idea to have zero-power reading lenses, because I’m primarily nearsighted and exercising the eye muscles apparently slows the progression or keeps it from getting as severe.) Might have to get progressives this time though, because now the dashboard is blurry through the reading lens.
Alright, gonna run two quick grav roulettes; the only way I’d consider giving up my Julia Gray grav is if I somehow luck into Dina or Asher, or maybe Danny.
The GOP-vangelicals only believe in Supply Side Jesus, who by sheer coincidence tells them exactly what they want to hear without any of the stuff that sounds likePiNkO lEfTiSt SoCiAlIsM like “caring about others” and “equal opportunity” and “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s…”
this is a test post to see what gravatar i get but i feel like i should make a relevant comment about the strip too, so uhhh
[laughs nervously about how i still don’t remember to wear my glasses regularly even though i’ve had them for years and my eyesight’s steadily been getting worse]
Why, whatever do you mean? This gravatar is clearly not related to mild mannered Joyce Brown in any way! This is JULIA GRAY, SPACEFORCE CAPTAIN EXTRAORDINAIRE
My eyesight isn’t all that bad, I can get by without glasses, but it becomes physically uncomfortable to not wear them once I’m used to them. Maybe because each eye is a little different (which I am aware is common) and the subtle difference in vision in each eye is more noticeable once I’ve worn my glasses for a while and it annoys me. So I like wearing mine all the time lol.
originally i only had to get them to help with driving, which i didn’t do much of, so i never got used to just wearing them casually. nowadays though, i have trouble reading LED clocks or reading the sign at the end of the grocery store aisle, so it’s becoming an issue. i spend 90% of my life sitting two feet away from a computer screen though, so i STILL never get used to wearing them casually!
You can be on good terms with someone while still realizing that they are no longer an authority figure you can trust or at the very least rely on without question.
Hank is probably not doing great emotionally, what with the divorce, and so Joyce has probably had to face the fact that her dad is just a flawed person who can and probably is wrong at least sometimes, at least unwittingly if not maliciously. She can love him while still not feeling like she can rely on him, you know?
I hope Joyce isn’t looking for a perfectly infallible entity to recalibrate her moral compass and sense of authority to, because she sure as hell isn’t going to find one in the real world.
Word to the wise, Joyce — once you’ve gotten used to the glasses, your next purchase should be prescription sunglasses. Forget clip-ons or flip-downs that clamp onto your existing glasses, or even the self-darkening lenses; find a frame you like and get the darkest lenses you can tolerate. You will thank me for this advice later.
Or you can do like I did — spend 25 or more years trying all the alternatives before finally getting a set of prescription sunglasses, and then kick yourself for waiting so long. I now have three; one which stays in the car, one which is available for everyday use, and a spare just in case.
They do take a couple minutes to fully adjust, yeah. But once they do, I find them adequate for all but the brightest lights. Then again, I’m mostly an indoors, sedentary hermit who rarely goes outside, so take my experiences with a grain of salt.
Mine only seem to take forever when I’m returning indoors from being out in the cold, and they’re both dark and fogged up. Masks make the fog worse, but that’s just a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.
Actually a good question. Becky was against the idea simply because Dorothy was for it and that was her wacky dynamic up until about three seconds ago. Joyce has rather severe issues regarding even minor stuff like her food touching or the whole thing the time Jacob took her to his church, she is just bucking it because it’s a change and she takes everything as relating to her core identity. Walky is being Walky because being irritating is his genre, you might as well ask BB King to not play the blues as ask him not to be annoying. No idea about Sarah besides “she just wants to beeline to ‘whatever gets Joyce to not complain’ and thats it right now”. I don’t think anyone’s actually anti medicine here. Yet.
It’s more about being against listening to any authority figures. Because they’re all 18-20 years old now and don’t need to listen to boring grown-ups!
Becky had motive, but don’t think Sarah’s against listening to the doctor. I think she’s for practicing agency.
Imma drop another link about patient-centered practice for an example of a better model of care than the “I’m a doctor you must do as I say” model (more effective, higher quality, produces better outcomes).
Personally, I think that Joyce agreed with the optometrist’s advice on purely practical terms but it’s still annoying and she still wants to complain about it. That makes her human and it would be funny if Sarah realises this and starts teasing Joyce about ‘you have learned your lessons well, my young Apprentice’.
Meanwhile, I also think that Joyce is learning that self-determination is hard.
That could also prove to be problematic depending on who one gives their loyalty to. After watching the siege on Capitol Hill last week, it dawned on me that the fanatical Trump supporters don’t want a President (or democracy); they want a King named Trump who can do whatever he (and by extension, them) wants without being beholden to the checks and balances that keep the Executive Branch in check.
Their Gasden flags should say “Tread on ThEm” to actually reflect what they want.
This is what happens when you spend decades equating “freedom” and “liberty” to “you get to do and say whatever you want without consequence and anything less than that is oppression” while simultaneously repeating “tHeY should know their place”.
To be fair, it is important to listen to your doctors, regarding medical advice. If Madame Eyeball started giving out political commentary, or legal advice, maybe take it with a few grains of salt?
That’s what authoritarianism ultimately comes down to, isn’t it?
The simultamious longing for, and fear of, the mystical, magical, unquestionable parent.
Some apologists claim that belief in authority (or gods) is a moral value in and of itself, because it adds the weight of authentic to moral instruction, and helps ensure compliance.
Beliefs that ensure compliance, however cannot have intrinsic moral value. Belief in authority adds weight to any instruction, moral or immoral: instructions to ostracize certain groups; instruction to withhold life-saving medical treatment from children; instruction to mutilate their bodies without consent.
The real important factor is belief that the person setting the standard is a good person and has a demonstrable claim to be doing so for your best interests. Personally, I think that’s a very difficult standard to achieve for most political and even religious leaders, given their very obvious hypocrisies and blatant looting of their followers.
If these people become your standard of truth and morality, you cannot move past them. This problem is of incredible relevance today.. Would it be a “sin” to colonize other planets, taking what was “meant for others”; or “playing god” to genetically modify food?
Our future comes with new moral questions for which ancient magical heroes and outmoded authorities can offer no explicit guidance. Our awareness of the universe and moral landscape evolves with time, so it is a given that truely moral systems have to be open systems, to give room for such crucial development.
Therefore, for the sake of truth and morality, it is only right to move past blind adherence to those we endow with magical hero status: those we use to excuse ourselves from any real thinking.
In order to move past our authority figures, our magical heroes, we have to dethrone them.
Optomestrists are pretty decent authority figures, as long as you’re only following what they tell you on eye care. Might not be a good idea to listen to what they tell you about politics though.
We threw it out along with all the extra “U”s we streamlined out of our vocabulary. They didn’t go to waste though, because I think I saw Canada grab them off the curb.
I mean, Sarah being black and both of them being women, from what I’ve heard of medical stories from those fitting those categories with summaries of “my doctor didn’t believe me” or “my doctor was wrong but didn’t listen” that might not be the worst lesson to impart on her somewhat?
Joyce should listen to Sarah, I’m the only one in my family not fully dependent on eyewear specifically because I never wore them unless they were absolutely necessary.
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What about LegalEagle
or
…Ruth?
Eh. I’d rank the optometrist higher. Especially on “should I wear my glasses” questions.
Always good to see a LegalEagle fan+
I thinking more of lines of Chubbyemu. “A college student took off her glasses for three hours. This is what happened to her eyes”
How would other YouTubers cover glasses?
Technology Connections: a half-hour video about the development of glasses, how they work, and how they contributed to the RCA SelectaVision videodisc system and subsequent downfall of the Radio Corporation of America.
AlternateHistoryHub: “What if General Custer could have seen what he was up against?”
Regular Car Reviews: “1967 Wayfarers: the Ford Fairmont of glasses frames”
Linus Tech Tips: “THESE will COMPLETELY CHANGE how you SEE THE WORLD (and our mousepads lttstoredotcom)”
Rob Scallon: I bet I could play some Pantera on those if I wired ’em up just right…
Puffin Forest: The time our party was TPK’d by a sentient pair of glasses!
Overly Sarcastic Productions: Red: Trope Talk: You Wouldn’t Hit a Guy with Glasses!
Blendtec’s Will it Blend?: yeah, this one’s a little too obvious
GamerNexus: An extremely in depth discussion and benchmark of the glasses with steve along with other tech news.
Extra Credits: Extra History: A 5 part episode on the history of Optometry and Opthamology
Tier Zoo: Are Glasses OP?
Start all: Everything on Earth was once a star. Your glasses are made of stardust!
StarTalk
Damn phone
autocorrect, the most common cause of death for failed jokes across the interwebs
Captain Disillusion: This is how the glasses were 3D modeled and filmed
History Buffs: This movie about glasses is fairly historically accurate, except for a few details
The Spiffing Brit: The glasses are perfectly balanced, perfect for sipping your Yorkshire Tea and saluting the Queen
Jomboy Media: Girl Gets Glasses, A Breakdown
theoffcamerashow: Fred Armisen: Why I chose BFG’s for SNL
Game Theory: How Joyce’s Glasses are the real killer in Five Nights at Walky’s
Fact Fiend with Karl Smallwood: That Time a Pair of Glasses Kicked a Man’s Ass.
Jackson Crawford: Vikings didn’t use glasses.
Hm. I guess being disowned and dispising authority from a young age can be a good thing considering Joyce’s reaction in the last panel…
Up top!
But how can she be blindly listening while wearing the glasses that allow her to actually see?
The hearing aid was turned off?
Then that’d be “deafly listening”, right?
I get were Joyce is coming from. Sometimes you just wanna be mad at something
And People don’t think Walky is good for anything.
“*probably* my political party?”
Joyce, you need to get sure.
Considering that she’s barely old enough to vote, it may be that she only sorta considered them her party in the first place.
What I was thinking as well. Her parents/church would have told her what to think.
Does this mean she’s not going to vote a straight Libertarian ticket in the next election?
I don’t think she’s full of enough smug self-confidence to vote Libertarian.
I’m gonna bet she never really thought much about electoral politics until fairly recently, aside from a general “respect the office if not the person” sort of fuzziness about the Presidency. Also, there’s the sliding timescale to think of.
I mean maybe the Dumbing of Age Republican party equivalent is less evil? Given the superhero shenanigans we’re clearly in fantasyland here
The lack of edit feature is frustrating. Fantasyland is major hyperbole, and it’s probably going to be read significantly more derogatorily than I intended.
Willis has confirmed that Trump was elected president in the Dumbiverse (I recall a comment of theirs back in 2017 which stated that they were looking forward to the day when said presidency could be referred to in the past tense in-comic, and there’ve already been oblique references by at least some characters), so, uh…I don’t think the Republicans are any less horrid here.
there’s always a chance the GOP jettisoned him at the third or fourth ‘danger sign’ and he is mostly ineffectual as the first ‘third-party’ president.
I personally hope it was the time his echopraxia had him mocking a reporter with arthrogryposis on national television.
Welp, because of the distorted time scale, it could be that the presidential term of office in the Dumbiverse is limited to a month. That’s an awfully short time in which to impeach a President.
She’s still processing it all. It takes time.
Is this how subs are born?
Ask Galasso!
Don’t ask Galasso, he doesn’t even know how people are born.
Well… it’d still be fun.
Conquest exists in the DoAverse, so he must have figured at least part of the process out (or was extensively coached by Pamela).
She existed in the Walky!verse too, but yet there’s a specific story arc about how Galasso does not know what sex is, and Leslie and Ethan take it upon themselves to explain both sex and gender to him.
Yes! Found him again!
Now, now, I’m pretty sure he learned a few things during the Free Pizza Meet ‘n’ Greet, at least.
My thought exactly.
There’s a second path: You’ve been a rebel from SUCH AN EARLY AGE by now you just want to be told you’ve been good (and specially in a context where consequences for disobeying are consensual and awaited for with a smile) |DDD
But yeah, mostly.
…….. Oh man. IS SAL A SUB? I don’t have the cash for Slipshine O_O Can anyone confirm?
If Sal is into BDSM, I’m sure she’s a switch or a bratty sub
It’s sort of give and take,judging by the positions
When a mommy sub and a daddy sub love each other very much . . .
Dean Henry’s not the highest?
Walking at night without glasses might be a problem anyway…
*plays Pompeii by Bastille?*
Dean Henry (and Ruth) aren’t giving Joyce active orders.
You know, it’s time to link a fanfic. Humane experiments have shown it can be enjoyed without knowing the source material. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6255031/1/Ready_Sette_Go
What the… How could you? Chapter six ends with, “I really must put in an concerted effort to finish this story…” and is dated 2013. That’s just cruel.
Lacking activity wouldn’t mean there’s no influence involved, even with low priority and significance. Pecking order is who’s under who, in various aspects.
Deans don’t interact with average students. Faculty, donors, that sort of thing sure. I’m pretty sure Joyce has never interacted with him.
Practically speaking, yes, but he did show up in genders studies way back when – with Robin about Roz and Joe’s sex tape.
How am I going to be an optometrist about this?
Yeaaaaahhhhh, that’s never an easy adjustment, but it’s part of maturation.
When I first read your comment, I thought it said “masturbation” instead of “maturation” and I was very confused for a moment.
Sarah, why are you trying to convince Joyce not to listen to a doctor?
And that’s not even blindly following! Not only did the optometrist give a reason, it was a reason that Joyce understood, retained, and explained back to you unprompted.
Right? This reeks of “Don’t listen to those elites! They are out of touch and don’t know anything!”
If a doctor tells me to do something, chances are pretty damn good I am going to do it unless it causes a serious side effect.
Friend, do you wear glasses? This isn’t a health risk.
…what isn’t? I’m mostly finding Sarah’s behavior here weird.
Why so many characters are trying to make Joyce NOT LISTEN TO A DOCTOR is beyond me tbh…
ikr, it’s real strange that they’re all latching onto Joyce’s real medical issue as a metaphor for control/change/lack thereof. Like Dorothy (and Walky of all people) are the only ones not projecting the universe’s other issues onto the plain fact that Joyce can’t see and she needs treatment for it. …And Joyce is really the only one justified in doing that because it’s her own issue.
Right? “THE GLASSES ARE A METAPHORE JOYCE!”
Oh that depends on how short-sighted you are. Easier to read if I don’t have to have the book ON my nose. Plus being able to see people when I talk to them was amazing. Actually that is what surprised me about Joyce here. I was 13 when I got glasses and being able to see stuff was a legit experience. I went around telling people ‘hey! You can see the tower from here!’ And ‘ask me the time! Go on! I can See the clock now!’ Maybe Joyce just resents the glasses so much she is hating that too ‘trees look stupid now! With the detail and the leaves. I liked them blurry!’
Getting used to them is subjective and if she’s going to ignore a doctor then this is probably fairly harmless. To be honest, ‘wear them all the time’ seems like strange advice for someone who is nearsighted. In particular, unless they are bifocals or low strength, I would think she should be taking them off to read books, etc. without eye strain.
Glasses shouldn’t cause eyestrain while reading, not for simple nearsightedness.
Yeah, that should be fine unless you have myopia. I’ve never had trouble reading with my glasses on.
You shouldn’t really force yourself to read through distance lenses, anyway.
I’m nearsighted and I can only read things at least an arm’s length away through mine. Without them, or through the reading part of my bifocals, I can focus up to about halfway up my forearm before things start getting too blurry.
Do you wear glasses? I have for over a decade and a half, and you don’t take off your glasses unless your nearsightedness is so minor that you can use store bought reading glasses in lie of prescription.
I used to take my glasses off to read occasionally. I guess it was just nice that there was one thing I could actually see without them.
I gave it up when I realized I was holding books about an inch away from my nose.
Right, but remember how Joyce is thinking here. If she gets past “I should listen to my doctor”, she’s not going to go “okay, I’ve considered the evidence and since wearing the glasses all the time is just to help me get used to them, so it’s okay to only wear them when I need them”, she’ll jump straight to “Doctors are no longer real authority figures and not to be trusted!”
Isn’t nearsightedness the most common reason people need glasses? People wear their glasses all the time. Some people wear contacts, and you can’t just take those on and off.
Well, Ms. Demon Blood is a doctor. Literal, practicing medical doctor with an MD. So while medical professionals in general are a good idea to listen to… maybe some of them should be ignored.
Sure. But criticizing her for listening to a doctor’s advice directly related to treatment she just received without any reason for doing so is… odd.
Might I interest anyone in reading about Patient-Centered Care?
It’s currently the prefered model of care taight in Australian universities and is focused on improving the quality of care for patients through holistic practices, shared decision making and patient education.
If Dr op was trained in and engaged with this model of care then Joyce would have the agency to make informed decisions for herself and, as a result be more likely to follow health advice.
https://www.oneviewhealthcare.com/the-eight-principles-of-patient-centered-care/#:~:text=It%20includes%20listening%20to%2C%20informing,values%20guide%20all%20clinical%20decisions.%E2%80%9D
I think Sarah’s giving good advice (I literally said the same thing in the last strip so I’m chuffed!).
She’s not telling Joyce what to do, she’s telling jJoyce that she has agency over her own body and her own life and make her own decisions about her health, too. No-one, not even doctors know 100% what’s best for each individual!
What advice? She’s mostly just insulting her.
Do you, like, not understand the concept of glasses?
“Advice” as in panel 1: If wearing them bothers her so much then she doesn’t need to wear them all the time.
My sister is near sighted and uses glasses, but prefers to only use them if she’s doing things like driving or watching tv because she’s used to her vision and finds them irritating.
Well, that’s not okay at all!
For example, the doctor could have given Joyce advice and then explained the reasoning, making sure that Joyce understood. Perhaps she would leave the office and follow the advice, and be able to explain to her roommate why she was doing so.
Like happened.
This is what I was coming here to mention! “Oh, you need glasses? But why are you wearing them NOW?”
Cause it takes time for eyes to adjust to them for fucks sake Sarah!
There was a time when I got new glasses and I had to swap back to my old ones to drive home. Those new glasses made me sick for like two days, but I kept wearing them because I obviously had to get over that if I wanted to be able to, y’know, see.
Yeah it’s cause she’s whining about it constantly, and yet won’t take them off, so she continues to whine and complain. Like. That is quite annoying.
She’s not ordering Joyce to take them off, she’s just asking why Joyce is wearing them if she hates them that much.
Because she needs them. And that’s probably the part she actually hates anyway, but she can’t just decide not to.
Because Joyce keeps whining about them so the logical response is “jeez, don’t wear them then.” What else is Sarah supposed to say?
“ Man that sucks, want some spicy nugs?”
She’s just trying to get Joyce to stop complaining. It’s not like she’s telling her to skip meds or something
Do I spy a Book 11 title?
DOA 11: Very Possibly!
DoA 11: You’re inside, and Dorothy’s not here. So who CARES?
I think Willis will have trouble fitting “Sarah, in the Past Year I’ve Jettisoned God, Religion, My church, Probably My Political Party, My Parents, and Becky’s Dad, and So My Optometrist is Actually the Current Highest-Ranking Authority Figure I’ve Got!” onto the spine of the book.
I refer you to DOA 9: NOW LET’S GO COMMIT SOMETHING MILDLY SUBVERSIVE WHICH AT WORST WILL SERVE AS A HUMANIZING ANECDOTE AND NOT AS ANYTHING TRULY THREATENING TO THE POWER STRUCTURES AT HAND.
Admittedly it was truncated on the spine.
Depending on the font size, that could fill up most of the front cover of the book too. Maybe shorten it to “My Optometrist is Actually the Current Highest-Ranking Authority Figure I’ve Got!”
The bigger problem will be topping that for the subsequent book.
There’s still room to go Full Light Novel with this.
DOA 11: Taking Orders From The Lunch Lady
*looks for some Queen in the record collection*
https://youtu.be/pUJwTHSQjrM
No! NOT THE POLITICAL PARTY!! Anything but the POLITICAL PARTY!
What’s wrong with celebrating the political?
As long as there’s cake
The cake is a lie.
At the elections to the ACT Legislative Assembly in 1989 I voted for the Party! Party! Party! party.
Party! Party! Party! party.
I thought you lived in WA. The swan must have confused me.
I’m surprised it only took me 3 strips to get used to glasses joyce
Same!
Adjustments aside, wearing them all the time is a good way to keep from losing them.
There’s also a good chance she’s been straining her eyes for a long time without realizing it. Keeping the glasses on = fewer headaches.
Since we don’t know how bad her near-sightedness actually, we don’t know at what distance her vision starts blurring. But it’s a safe bet that unless she’s staring into a book or her computer screen, most of the time she’s going to be looking at things far enough away that the glasses will help.
And of course, there is the whole ‘getting used to it’ thing. I imagine young girls go through the same process when they get their first bras.
Their vision blurs?
Maybe – but the boys’ eyesight sure gets better.
I didn’t wear glasses for so long that I stopped trying to see things, so when I finally got them (after five years) it actually gave me headaches and fatigue to wear them! My eyes were suddenly having to change focus between things far away and close up, and it hurt my eyeballs cuz they hadn’t been using those muscles or whatever. (I assume. I didn’t ask anyone because I didn’t have health insurance.) It was very cool to see things that were far away, but ugh, I hated wearing glasses for the first two weeks until my eyes got used to changing focus again.
Possibly taking orders from a lunch lady? That’s honestly bigger than the atheism, Joyce has so many food neuroses she’d be forced to reckon with
She should bow down to GLASSOS!
At least the Lunch Lady has sloppy joe!
Joe wishes.
So one just… cancels their optometrist? That felt like an odd choice of words.
I think she means in the colloquial sense. As in jettisoned from society by controversy.
Could have just said “Yes.”
Interesting that Joyce’s professors don’t seem to rank anywhere in there.
Considering the only one we know so far is Robin, can you really blame her?
Have you seen the teachers at this school? If they even actually exist! There’s one maybe two teachers that are okay. One of them is Leslie. The other is not Robin. I wouldn’t give any of the other chumps the time of day.
Alex is cool but Joyce almost certainly hasn’t met her.
TBH I wouldn’t take any of the depicted profs as an authority figure either.
Somebody get Joyce some stability before she accidentally joins a cult again
The Lunch Lady cult gains a new follower.
Joyce and Dorothy are Lawful Good besties.
I hate the Law/Chaos alignment of D&D as a general straitjacket but sometimes it fits very well.
Works better if you use them as roleplaying training wheels, a way of encouraging players to think about motivation using a simplistic categorization that works well for a lot of common character types
Fortunately 5E has made it meaningless.
Joyce is right (for once), the optometrist IS the 17º in the line of succession.
You do need to listen to some people. If Joyce is short sighted she actually needs to keep the glasses on. Listening to your medical professional is not the same as blindly following an authority figure.
I know I shouldn’t find that last panel funny, but holy hell if I can’t help but admire Joyce’s character at almost all moments.
as a college lecturer I’m sad but not surprised that my profession ranks after the lunch lady in authority.
I’m not calling this in question, mind. I think it’s a fair depiction of the chain of command as it is and should be, but it is a blow to my professional pride.
Stick with it though. With hard work, some day you too may become a Lunch Lady.
“One day,” he mutters to himself, dragging yet another stack of exam papers to grade over the desk. “One day they will listen to me.”
But that will be after you retire. (30+ years of college lecturing here)
To be fair, sometimes the lunch lady actually listens more, or doesn’t expect to be held up as an authority, so the students open up to them more.
“Why hello there, children!”
“Hey, Chef.”
“How’s it goin’?”
“Bad.”
“Why bad?”
That’s because the stomach complains more than the brain when they’re not being fed.
“A medical professional told you to do something, so you just ARE?”
This reminds me of when I had braces as a teenager. Some of the corrections took longer than intended because the adjustments would end up overcorrecting, so then they would try to fix that and that would overcorrect. It became obvious pretty quickly that the orthodontists did not actually expect me to follow their instructions and doing so made me an anomalous teen.
Was Joyce a Republican?
Robin had “the letter [Joyce and her family] like” next to her name when she was in Congress, so presumably.
She definitely followed her parents political allegiance and I think there’s some art floating around of Carol holding up a Trump sign. Of course at her current age relative to the year Joyce wasn’t old enough to vote in the last election so I wonder how much this matters. It’s pretty interesting actually that over the span of this comic Joyce went from probably voting for Trump in her first ever election, to potentially voting for Biden, soon to Biden just being president before she votes in her first election.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/blog/antichrist/
That last picture is so relatable to me right now
And some of the comments… I wish things turned out as well as we hoped they would back then.
(That is, things became so much worse than we even feared they would…)
You think Carol would be one of the people who stormed the capitol in that coup attempt? With enough time that reality becomes more and more possible! I would divorce someone for that!
When Dumbing of Age started, Obama hadn’t yet been elected to his second term – if anything, Joyce would’ve started out in the comic as a likely-Romney-voter originally. (Also, IIRC the art with Carol holding the Trump sign was pre-2016, also officially declared by Willis to be non-canonical since it was part of a strip showing Joyce as an older child in explicitly-2008, when as of 2021 she’d have been five then.)
The rest of your comment though is accurate, I’d say.
I think she’d probably go third party. Fundamentalists of the Brown family’s ilk generally do not believe Mormons are Christians, and many consider it a cult. I don’t think that she would support Romney.
On the other hand, Romney does have “the letter we like” next to his name – still, ‘s one of the reasons I only had her as a “likely” Romney voter.
And in that time, R-Money became one of the most moderate Republicans by just not substantially changing his positions all that much and watching the party shift around him.
Meanwhile, the GOP has gone from the Freedom Caucus, to the Tea Party, to Trumpism, to completely losing control of the monster they created.
Romney likely lost some votes from being Mormon, but he still won the white Evangelical vote overwhelmingly. Much like Trump won it, despite not being more than nominally Christian.
Because the religious right isn’t so much about religion as about hating the right people.
He has the magic R next to his name, which is probably the only reason about 75% of the votes he got went to him.
This is what happens when you have a first-past-the-post voting system that’s marketed like a sports competition where every member of one team is scrambling to become the most extreme parody of what they claim they are.
Well yeah, but that still counters the “probably go third party” claim.
Well if you have a progressive lens you do have to wear it for a bit to get used to it. At least this conversation is giving some insight into Joyce’s frame of mind.
I doubt that Joyce is wearing progressive lenses. I was in my late forties before I needed to go with progressive/bifocals.
If we eliminate a progressive lens, are we suspecting a moderate lens or a conservative lens? I guess it depends on how you frame it.
I’m in my early thirties and I’ve had bifocals for over 20 years. (My first optometrist said it would be a good idea to have zero-power reading lenses, because I’m primarily nearsighted and exercising the eye muscles apparently slows the progression or keeps it from getting as severe.) Might have to get progressives this time though, because now the dashboard is blurry through the reading lens.
She also has to wear them to, like, see.
Alright, gonna run two quick grav roulettes; the only way I’d consider giving up my Julia Gray grav is if I somehow luck into Dina or Asher, or maybe Danny.
Spin one?
NO WAY
…spin two?
Giving myself one more free spin, since I somehow lucked into Dina first spin of the day
And Dina it is! Though I reserve Julia Gray as a backup.
a VERY close call.
But I wonder what you will do now, when you have reached the very top.
You kept the GOP over Jesus, huh, Joyce? You and a bunch of other evangelicals.
Note: Said by someone raised evangelical before becoming more generically Christian.
The GOP-vangelicals only believe in Supply Side Jesus, who by sheer coincidence tells them exactly what they want to hear without any of the stuff that sounds likePiNkO lEfTiSt SoCiAlIsM like “caring about others” and “equal opportunity” and “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s…”
I know that feel, Joyce.
this is a test post to see what gravatar i get but i feel like i should make a relevant comment about the strip too, so uhhh
[laughs nervously about how i still don’t remember to wear my glasses regularly even though i’ve had them for years and my eyesight’s steadily been getting worse]
Interesting how there are two different Joyce gravs. Standard Joyce, and Joyce’s rebellious alter-ego.
Why, whatever do you mean? This gravatar is clearly not related to mild mannered Joyce Brown in any way! This is JULIA GRAY, SPACEFORCE CAPTAIN EXTRAORDINAIRE
My eyesight isn’t all that bad, I can get by without glasses, but it becomes physically uncomfortable to not wear them once I’m used to them. Maybe because each eye is a little different (which I am aware is common) and the subtle difference in vision in each eye is more noticeable once I’ve worn my glasses for a while and it annoys me. So I like wearing mine all the time lol.
originally i only had to get them to help with driving, which i didn’t do much of, so i never got used to just wearing them casually. nowadays though, i have trouble reading LED clocks or reading the sign at the end of the grocery store aisle, so it’s becoming an issue. i spend 90% of my life sitting two feet away from a computer screen though, so i STILL never get used to wearing them casually!
I figured Joyce was on good terms with her dad. Maybe not, judging by that last panel?
You can be on good terms with someone while still realizing that they are no longer an authority figure you can trust or at the very least rely on without question.
Hank is probably not doing great emotionally, what with the divorce, and so Joyce has probably had to face the fact that her dad is just a flawed person who can and probably is wrong at least sometimes, at least unwittingly if not maliciously. She can love him while still not feeling like she can rely on him, you know?
That’s very true, you’re right.
I hope Joyce isn’t looking for a perfectly infallible entity to recalibrate her moral compass and sense of authority to, because she sure as hell isn’t going to find one in the real world.
Except maybe Mister Rogers.
Poor Hank.
Word to the wise, Joyce — once you’ve gotten used to the glasses, your next purchase should be prescription sunglasses. Forget clip-ons or flip-downs that clamp onto your existing glasses, or even the self-darkening lenses; find a frame you like and get the darkest lenses you can tolerate. You will thank me for this advice later.
Or you can do like I did — spend 25 or more years trying all the alternatives before finally getting a set of prescription sunglasses, and then kick yourself for waiting so long. I now have three; one which stays in the car, one which is available for everyday use, and a spare just in case.
Self-darkening lens + hat usually work for me. Hat protects my nose so I want it anyway.
I wonder if I still have my clip-ons, I hardly ever used them.
I find the photochromic glasses are too slow to change.
They do take a couple minutes to fully adjust, yeah. But once they do, I find them adequate for all but the brightest lights. Then again, I’m mostly an indoors, sedentary hermit who rarely goes outside, so take my experiences with a grain of salt.
Mine only seem to take forever when I’m returning indoors from being out in the cold, and they’re both dark and fogged up. Masks make the fog worse, but that’s just a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.
That will be how the Julia Gray Mirror Aviators of Coolness get written into DoA proper.
Why are so many of these characters so against listening to doctors
Actually a good question. Becky was against the idea simply because Dorothy was for it and that was her wacky dynamic up until about three seconds ago. Joyce has rather severe issues regarding even minor stuff like her food touching or the whole thing the time Jacob took her to his church, she is just bucking it because it’s a change and she takes everything as relating to her core identity. Walky is being Walky because being irritating is his genre, you might as well ask BB King to not play the blues as ask him not to be annoying. No idea about Sarah besides “she just wants to beeline to ‘whatever gets Joyce to not complain’ and thats it right now”. I don’t think anyone’s actually anti medicine here. Yet.
It’s more about being against listening to any authority figures. Because they’re all 18-20 years old now and don’t need to listen to boring grown-ups!
Becky had motive, but don’t think Sarah’s against listening to the doctor. I think she’s for practicing agency.
Imma drop another link about patient-centered practice for an example of a better model of care than the “I’m a doctor you must do as I say” model (more effective, higher quality, produces better outcomes).
https://www.oneviewhealthcare.com/the-eight-principles-of-patient-centered-care/#:~:text=It%20includes%20listening%20to%2C%20informing,values%20guide%20all%20clinical%20decisions.%E2%80%9D
Sarah’s less anti listening to doctor, more anti listening to Joyce complain endlessly about something she could just not do. Cant blame her tbh
Personally, I think that Joyce agreed with the optometrist’s advice on purely practical terms but it’s still annoying and she still wants to complain about it. That makes her human and it would be funny if Sarah realises this and starts teasing Joyce about ‘you have learned your lessons well, my young Apprentice’.
Meanwhile, I also think that Joyce is learning that self-determination is hard.
Even her dad who was her bedrock …and really stood by her and backy? wow joyce, wow
Well, she didn’t kick at Becky’s idea of hitting him up for stuff..So that avenue is still open.
Poor Hank.
I think she’s conflicted on their relationship, maybe still thinking of him and Carol as a unit as authority figures go.
This is how it begins. By the end, Asma shall be her queen.
Dr. Eye knows best!
If you don’t follow your optician’s advice you probably will be following everything else blindly later on.
I see what you did there.
I don’t.
I surmise that you did not follow your optometrist’s advice.
And I see what YOU did there.
Become a monarchist, Joyce.
That could also prove to be problematic depending on who one gives their loyalty to. After watching the siege on Capitol Hill last week, it dawned on me that the fanatical Trump supporters don’t want a President (or democracy); they want a King named Trump who can do whatever he (and by extension, them) wants without being beholden to the checks and balances that keep the Executive Branch in check.
Their Gasden flags should say “Tread on ThEm” to actually reflect what they want.
This is what happens when you spend decades equating “freedom” and “liberty” to “you get to do and say whatever you want without consequence and anything less than that is oppression” while simultaneously repeating “tHeY should know their place”.
Discounting the band and Aretha Franklin, all monarchs are useful only as part of displays for guillotines in action.
To be fair, it is important to listen to your doctors, regarding medical advice. If Madame Eyeball started giving out political commentary, or legal advice, maybe take it with a few grains of salt?
That’s what authoritarianism ultimately comes down to, isn’t it?
The simultamious longing for, and fear of, the mystical, magical, unquestionable parent.
Some apologists claim that belief in authority (or gods) is a moral value in and of itself, because it adds the weight of authentic to moral instruction, and helps ensure compliance.
Beliefs that ensure compliance, however cannot have intrinsic moral value. Belief in authority adds weight to any instruction, moral or immoral: instructions to ostracize certain groups; instruction to withhold life-saving medical treatment from children; instruction to mutilate their bodies without consent.
The real important factor is belief that the person setting the standard is a good person and has a demonstrable claim to be doing so for your best interests. Personally, I think that’s a very difficult standard to achieve for most political and even religious leaders, given their very obvious hypocrisies and blatant looting of their followers.
Whatever happened to just thinking for yourself?
If these people become your standard of truth and morality, you cannot move past them. This problem is of incredible relevance today.. Would it be a “sin” to colonize other planets, taking what was “meant for others”; or “playing god” to genetically modify food?
Our future comes with new moral questions for which ancient magical heroes and outmoded authorities can offer no explicit guidance. Our awareness of the universe and moral landscape evolves with time, so it is a given that truely moral systems have to be open systems, to give room for such crucial development.
Therefore, for the sake of truth and morality, it is only right to move past blind adherence to those we endow with magical hero status: those we use to excuse ourselves from any real thinking.
In order to move past our authority figures, our magical heroes, we have to dethrone them.
Optomestrists are pretty decent authority figures, as long as you’re only following what they tell you on eye care. Might not be a good idea to listen to what they tell you about politics though.
Yeah right, I’m pretty sure your dad is still pretty high up the list.
(I was pretty sure it was spelt “cancelled”, but it turns out british english puts 2 L and US english only us one uh. Weirdoes.)
We threw it out along with all the extra “U”s we streamlined out of our vocabulary. They didn’t go to waste though, because I think I saw Canada grab them off the curb.
US rarely uses spelt because spelled follows rules that are easier to teach kids. Plus spelt is a kind of wheat and spelled is not.
Poor Joyce doesn’t realize she still has a creator to rage against.
“Gosh darn it Willis! When will you stop using me as an unsubtle metaphor?”
Joyce is autobiographical.
She’s a metaphor for “experiences he actually went through”.
So muhc jettisoning. That AMong Us game will be over in no time flat.
Carol is sus
*Rest of shipmates unanimously vote to eject Needfuldoer on the grounds that anyone who fingers someone else must be the Imposter.
Now, now, let’s not be too quick to dismiss the option of jettisoning Carol either way. You know, out of principle.
This is why I still play Team Fortress 2 (and sometimes Astroneer).
Given yesterday’s historical events, today’s alt text is incredibly prescient.
Hm. In this, she’s also rebelling against big sister Sarah, isn’t she?
At least slightly?
well it is always good to follow a doctor’s advice…
Joyce just does not want to admit that she likes being able to see things over 3 feet away.
She might not be at that point yet, depending on how bad her eyes are yjr adjustment might be causing some pretty bad headaches.
Sarah has a point, but… let’s not encourage Joyce to NOT listen to medical professionals regarding issues of her own health, yeah?
I mean, Sarah being black and both of them being women, from what I’ve heard of medical stories from those fitting those categories with summaries of “my doctor didn’t believe me” or “my doctor was wrong but didn’t listen” that might not be the worst lesson to impart on her somewhat?
That is also true. There is merit to being taught to advocate for yourself, when it’s needed.
Sure, but that’s not really relevant to wearing glasses.
An authority structure is very important to have for some.
Joyce should listen to Sarah, I’m the only one in my family not fully dependent on eyewear specifically because I never wore them unless they were absolutely necessary.
So that definitely isn’t how that works, and also sounds way more difficult to live with than “dependence” on glasses.
There are a lot of people in the comments who don’t seem to get the concept of glasses and that is super weird.
Isn’t it time for Joyce to become her own authority figure?