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.
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.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
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.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
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!
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.
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.
Mac Hall
Matt Boyd
The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
Fantomestein
Beka Duke
Desperate for companionship, Frankenstein's Monster pretends to be the Opera Ghost. A grave mistake.
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 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.
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?
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Also Kyles. We heard a lot about the Kyles during the storming area 51 thing. So. They’re like early 20 somethings (so Gen Z) who live in their moms basements and play video games and read conspiracy theories on the internet all day.
I also think the abbreviation “dude bro” and related forms functions in much the same way “karen” and its derivatives do, at least for younger guys. It’s not a name, but it’s just as clearly gendered. It’s confusing because bro can also be a good thing but usually when you start a story with “I’m a waitress and one time this dude bro came in…” you know the dude bro is gonna be a jerk just like you do if it said “karen”
It’s different though because it doesn’t spill over onto people who just happen to be named that.
And there are plenty of insulting parallels for dude bro that aren’t names.
Seriously? I’ve never known a Chad and the only ones I’m aware of are a couple of football players and an actor. I suppose it’s possible that one of them did something scandalous.
But more to the point, I’ve never heard the name used to shame someone. Have you?
I worked with a Chad. Idk what the stereotype is but he would be a stereotype. He was lazy, but thought he could get away with it because he was attractive. Missed work for like a month because he was in jail for a DUI (so presumably not his first offense).
I know it exists in incel slang, where a Chad is the “alpha” who’s getting all the women leaving none for them. Not sure if that’s what’s being referred to.
I have to assume, and it annoys me when it’s memeified by non-incels (especially because it’s always preceded by ‘the virgin X’ and uh. Yeah, ace here, that never gets non-alienating as an insult.) Don’t give their ideas that attention, people.
I remember one AskReddit thread where everyone was telling stories about their school bully, and a common theme was that most stories I read had bullies named Josh, to the point that several top level comments were just that observation.
Oh, in Germany there are a few: Horst (an idiot), it even has a verb and flexions: behorstet . it was so widespread in the 80ties and early nineties that feminists invented a female Version, Greta.
Though most other female names indicate a lot more than stupidity. Jackelyn for example was a very widespread name people gave their girls in the 80ties. Unfortunately, a lot of people using that name were unable to pronounce it correctly, so it became a synonym for pretentiousness and low education.
Kevin is one, theres a whole subreddit dedicated to it. Also craig in dnd circles.
Also, am i the only one unbothered by the Karen thing specifically bc it’s almost always used against white women? Like, a Karen used her white privilege and white woman tears to punish others, usually lower than her in class or of a different race. After all the years woc had to deal with racist ass stereotype mocking names, I’m not all that sympathetic to the white tears of Karen’s being called karens
I do sometimes think Karen is used for situations where it shouldn’t apply – someone having a legitimate issue reporting that issue isn’t being a Karen. Karen, in my understanding, was meant to apply to, typically, white, straight, upper class women behaving in an entitled way and using their privilege to make things more difficult for people who lack it. Someone asking for something they are actually entitled to or reporting an actual problem shouldn’t be considered one.
Richard => Dick (Penis, Richard is listed, but here for those who don’t know)
Jacob => Jakes (toilet)
Louie => Loo (toilet, or “Hang a Looee” aka turn left)
Johnson (Penis)
Charles => Chuck (throw away)
Chadwick => Chad (waste material still attached from a hole punch. “Hanging chads”)
and we must never forget (despite being a surname)
Santorum (the goopy combination of lube and feces following rectal coitus.)
Which is weird since Becky is the one being talked to, not the one speaking. Canonically (because yes, of course Baby Got Back has its canonical lore, why wouldn’t it?) the girl saying that is called Linda.
I can understand that but this seems incredibly accurate. Especially after one semester. How does Dorothy have any idea where Joyce’s grades should be or that they’re falling in the larger classes specifically? Unless she’s in every single one of Joyce’s classes? Or is she just paying that much attention to Joyce’s academics? It’s kind of throwing me off.
It could ALSO be a rethorical argument made by Dorothy in order to convince Becky to just agree with her by making her point sound reasonable by pointing out opinions as if they were facts and hoping that the other just agrees with her…
For the woman who wants to be the president, it is a talent she needs to learn xD
Between basic knowledge (like which classes are taken by a majority of freshmen) and talking with Joyce and others, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out the sizes of the classes joyce is in.
My closest friends in college knew all this kind of stuff about me, and I about them. It wasn’t on purpose or anything, but we just picked up on this info about each other over the course of hanging out and spending time together. I don’t remember any of it NOW, of course, since it’s been like 6 years, but I could probably have told you all the classes of my like 6 or 7 closest friends, what size/type of class they were, and how my friends were doing in them.
To be fair, I shared a lot of classes with my friends too, since we mostly all took a combo of science and philosophy/literature classes.
In some places, the grades are public knowledge. I remember some of my professor just literally posted the grades of the whole class on a wall for everyone.
I hate them till this day, but still. All I’m saying is that it ain’t hard to know :v
At a public/state university, that’s a violation of federal law (if any names were attached). The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 prevents giving anyone, even immediate family (yes, even if they’re paying tuition) any information about a student. That includes grades, pass/fail status, section – you aren’t even allowed to confirm or deny that someone is in your class.
I mean, people still talk. It’s very realistic for Dorothy to know how Joyce is doing in class. But if your profs put your name on that sheet, at a public university, after 1974, it was illegal af.
(I’m also a big fan of more people knowing this shit because it takes away a LOT of the leverage abusive parents think they have, and encourages students to be in charge of their own classes.)
It also has more loopholes and exceptions than you’d expect. For example, revealing grades that haven’t been finalized yet aren’t covered. Or at least that’s what the Supreme Court decided in a case where students were grading each others work as the professor discussed the correct answers.
We had a professor who did this with the last 4 of the student ID (though he posted them on the class website at a URL that wasn’t linked from the main page.) This was an issue one semester because two students had ID numbers that ended in the same 4 digits.
…please tell me it’s not one of those schools that repurposes the SSN as a school ID number. (I don’t know why places do that. STOP DOING THAT PLACES.)
In Canada, most professors I had just put the stack on the desk and let us find ours or spread them on the desk and likewise. Most put our grades on the back but if it was on the front, oh well. I never really looked at others though – I just wanted mine. Very very few passed them back personally, though a TA in a smaller tutorial might have done so.
They don’t need to be public knowledge. Dorothy is one of Joyce’s best friends. I can easily imagine Joyce confiding to Dorothy that she wasn’t doing as well as she expected in a couple of her classes.
Apparently it’s common in high school in California. A teacher friend of mine told me about begging one of his students, “What do I need to do so you’ll start applying yourself the way I know you can?” and the student replied, “Stop posting grades. I’ll get beat up if I get good grades.”
It implied , unlike Walky, Joyce tells her about stuff uninitatedly or if Dotty asks how she doing with hw. And Joyce isn’t self conscious about failing grades like Walky is so it wasn’t a big deal answering or sharing at the tine
Every character is as omniscient as Willis requires for story reasons. The one I don’t get so far is Booster, because we haven’t yet seen the story reason (unless it was just exposition for new readers, but I don’t buy that).
Yeah, it’s a bunch of 18-20 year olds, many with bombastic personalities. It’s not like Booster had their work cut out for them, especially since Walky told them who people were with what were likely not always flattering descriptions.
Eh. I’m not to awed by the Booster thing. Walky basically fed them the cliff notes on the main cast before that floor meeting. And frankly I doubt Booster’s hot takes weren’t that accurate mainly because they were based on first impressions which are usually wrong. For instance their analysis of Joyce is proving to be pretty wrong right now. Joyce seems very resistant to this change in her life which according to Booster should be pretty easy for he to swallow or is this admitting that she knew she was always someone who needed glasses? Booster really covered most of the angles with a critique that vague.
She’s the Mom Friend. ^_^; And as someone who falls into that category, I can see why her mother bear instincts are turned up to maximum about Joyce after all the recent trauma and distinct/abrupt change in Joyce’s behavior.
So while it may seem a bit peculiar how far she’s going, pushing Joyce into getting her eyes checked, its a friendship dynamic I’ve seen many times. Sometimes its fine and healthy, other times not so much. Also I have no doubt Dorothy is one of the first to know about Joyce’s grades. In the case of bad ones I feel like Dorothy is most likely gonna be high up on Joyce’s list of shoulders to cry on.
Also I’m joining the Becky defense squad. She is a traumatized barely adult who is now orphaned alongside having her world generally put in an industrial blender. Is how she’s treating Joyce okay? Heck no! Are her follies and poor decisions understandable and relatively reasonable? I argue yes.
I just hope she and Dorothy remember that Joyce needs agency and learn to just talk to her. Esp. once Becky can work through her intense fear of Joyce changing or going away.
Nope. A Horcrux is an object that contains a piece of a soul to keep someone from being permanently killed. A phylactery is an object that contains (usually) the entire soul of an undead lich. As the schtick has already been confirmed to be deceased, we’re in lich territory now.
Hopefully Maybe something like Dorothy’s, but a bit more rectangular with a slightly thicker frame, in dark red kr blue or something like that.
(Sorry, I just can’t get behind thick 50s cat-eye frames. They just make me think “grouchy, nearly retired school lunch lady”. Maybe it’s a 90s kid thing…)
Seriously I don’t think I can ever forgive Robin for voting to pass that LGBTQ discrimination bill. Not even sponsoring Becky makes up for it! She’s needs to sponsor at least a dozen more queer youths to even make a dent in that bad karma.
Or…y’know, campaign for its repeal as a mistake?? I’m sorry, but handing out trinkets to ‘right’ an injustice is…no. it doesn’t work, the injustice is still there, you’re just handing out consolation prizes and trinkets. Reparations are worthless if the bad behaviour continues regardless.
And it’s not like she was the main force behind it or anything. One more shitty representative behind a shitty failed bill.
Sponsoring Becky doesn’t make up for it, but dropping out of Congress is a big move and a step to showing the bad behavior doesn’t continue.
Did she blow it? Dorothy doesn’t exactly look phased.
Like, I get she annoys people in here, but Dorothy dated Walky and hangs out with Joyce, Sarah, etc. I don’t think she’s really that delicate.
Besides, re-read the strip. This is her conceding that Dorothy is likely right. That is progress. That some sass comes with it isn’t exactly the hugest of deals.
Dorothy and Becky ARE friends. You can’t have a ‘friendly rivalry’ without being friends. The people who get offended by Becky’s talk clearly haven’t had siblings, or gone to public school. Shit-talk like this is normal.
Maybe and I think that’s Becky’s intent, but I’m not sure Dorothy’s on board.
And while that kind of shit-talk is fine with some kinds of friendship, trying to use it where it isn’t fine is bad move.
I’m not at all convinced of that. Looks to me, and to many of us, like Dorothy is Becky’s friend but Becky is not Dorothy’s friend. If Willis intends otherwise, he’s failed to show it.
That’s implying a transitiveness in friendship that is not always true. Or in other words: the fact that Joyce and Dorothy are friends and that Joyce and Becky are friends does not make Dorothy and Becky friends.
Jesus fuck, Becky. The woman here is offering you a floral arrangement of olive branches and you keep throwing them to her face. I’m so tired of this. Is it, like, grounds to hate Becky? No. I used to love her a lot, actually. Is it understandable and in character? Well, yes.
But to me as a reader, this schitck of being repeatedly mean to a person he shares living quarters with is exhausting as hell. It’s gone from light ribbing (and jealousy) to blatant hostility and some pretty strong words wrapped in the coy-ish playfulness of… Well, someone who grew up in a toxic cult indeed. I keep wondering if Dorothy is so stubbornly kind because lashing out at the mistreatment would make Becky BE RIGHT about her.
She’s not throwing it in her face. In this very strip, she’s conceding that Dorothy’s right, albeit in an immature way. Previously, she also was getting teary-eyed at Dorothy being kind to her, even if she, again, isn’t necessarily able to leap at accepting it.
Joyce as she sees it is basically the only family she’s got, even if Robin and Leslie are both trying, too, and her last, tenuous grip on anything resembling status quo. Joyce having a new best friend essentially means she’s got nothing of her upbringing left. That isn’t rational, obviously, but that’s the reality of her situation.
She’s conceding Dorothy has a point, because she (Becky) is hurting Joyce by enabling her and Joyce is her Most Important Person: Of course she’d back off. The bar is so low it’s subterranean by this point. But then she goes and calls her “stupid jackass Dotty” – a nickname not exactly born out of affection, and Dorothy requested back in the day to not be called that way. I don’t think she got teary-eyed at Dorothy being kind to her because “omg so kind”. It was more of a frustrated “how dare you after I’ve antagonized you so much”. She literally asked “why can’t you be petty?”, because she wants to hate Dorothy and knows she doesn’t have a good reason for it.
Becky and Dorothy aren’t friends (despite Dorothy’s many efforts). There’s no trust nor past history to justify the way she talks to her.
I understand why Becky is acting like this because, character analysis. Doesn’t mean its actually justified, or enjoyable to witness. It’s toxic as hell, I pity Dorothy because she’s doing Her Best with a roomate (!) who continuously belittles her, her interests and passions, and her relationship with Joyce, who’s also btw Dorothy’s closest friend at college. She doesn’t keep many close relationships either. The traumatic experiences she suffered past semester left Dorothy so scared she actually rejected going to Yale – Her dream for the past 10 years of strips.
By this point I’m like, BEGGING Willis to throw me a bone so I remember why I loved Becky so much. Like, can be Dina be around again or something? So I can watch this girl be smitten by her girlfriend instead of possessively draping all over Joyce?
I think that acceptance letter may be a Chekhov’s Gun. I don’t think Becky is going to get better, at least not yet. Rather, she’s going to do something bad enough that Dorothy finally snaps, be all, “…I got you to snap why do I feel bad?” and even have Joyce snap at her
I reaaaaally want to see Joyce waking up and realizing this isn’t “Wacky Becky & Her Antics” – But her best friend purposely hurting her other best friend for as long as she can keep it up.
I trust Joyce to do the right thing, at least when it’s about the people she loves. The rest will be called “fuck around and find out” “rightful consequences of being a bully”, and everyone will be better off after this snapping.
This so much honestly. Becky is having to manage a lot of roles, none of which pertain to an actual human’s motivations in my mind. She doesn’t likely resemble anybody we know, because she’s become a collection of Foil Traits. She needs to Foil Dorothy for Joyce’s affections, but she also needs to Foil Joyce’s newfound non-religiousness by continuing to be very devout, for no clear or good reason (particularly considering how the oppressive aspects of christianity have directly hurt her time and again, and much less than this has been enough to drive queer friends from the church by the time they were Becky’s age). She needs to foil homophobes and ableists by continuing to have a loving relationship with Dina, which may also be now the longest running relationship among the main cast that hasn’t violently imploded/exploded on or off screen so far.
She isn’t her own character is how she feels at this point, she’s a bunch of traits that reflect off of the different points of utility that space provides the rest of the cast and the overall points of the story.
In reality, there’s no reason any friend would say “NO my friend shouldn’t have a simple eye test, because she’s scared of change and that she might need glasses.” It is also insane that Joyce would be so biased against or afraid of needing glasses when literally all of her (older!) siblings wear them.
I feel like something is trying to be achieved in metaphor with this plotline, pertaining to the christian will to ignore problems and hide from reality, but the allegory kind of falls flat with the example being used and within what has been set up in the world so far.
Alternatively, Willis is setting us up to dislike Becky enough that Dina can break up with Becky which sets us up for the endgame where Dorothy forgoes Yale, not for Joyce, but for Becky.
I actually don’t find Becky implausible. She’s still devout in her own way? That matches people I know; Joyce is one escape route, Becky is another. She’s an ass to Dorothy? Fortunately *doesn’t* match people I know, but the implausible part is Dorothy’s tolerance of it. Relationship with Dina? No problem there.
She doesn’t need the letter, she’s Dina. She could just teleport behind the door of a paleontology lecture and everyone there would just accept her presence.
Except she’s not really conceding the point. She’s obviously CONSIDERING the point, and REALIZES that it’s right, but she’s not actually ACKNOWLEDGING that. Instead, she’s taking the other thing that Dorothy said and finding yet another way to be over-the-top and competitive.
Actually, I wouldn’t recommend doing an escape room with anybody who has been forcefully abducted 3 months ago, but I agree with JBento: why does this come up now?
The last panel of the previous strip and the first panel of this strip both indicate this is not just ‘haha, we’re both in on it’ joking but rather Becky feeling threatened by her inability to get a rise out of Dorothy and skepticism that Dorothy has Joyce’s best interests in mind. That she is using it to cope, struggling without an enemy to resist against, and struggles to trust that this isn’t just a way to somehow control Joyce.
They also never had a pre-established friendship before Becky started to do it. So it’s not like two people being close enough for it to be okay, Becky is just aggressive and Dorothy just chooses not to be in return, giving her a lot of leeway because she knows Becky is hurting. But she’s not going to become the enemy or vicious rival she wants to be able to rebel against.
Spot on. And honestly? Dorothy is a bigger person than most for it. I used to be pretty “meh” on her, like, I liked her but she wasn’t particularly interesting? But now between rejecting Yale and how she’s continuously refused to engage despite the attacks, I’m getting invested on her :’)
I think she thinks she has Becky under control. Becky will probably find that acceptance letter to Yale, start announcing to everybody that her and Joyce will be tighter than ever with Dorothy gone, and Dorothy is going to finally lose it, due to all the piling up stress and now being put on the spot by Becky with having to explain to everybody why she is turning down Yale
Agreed. I suspect she got the letter late enough that her plans for this semester were set already. I can see her not wanting to bring it up this early if she thinks certain people (*cough*Joyce) might spend the next few months trying to convince her out of it.
It really wouldn’t kill Becky if she took it down a few notches once in awhile.
Dorothy is a far better person than me. I would already have requested to trade with Malaya. Room with Sal, a sensible friend who also cares about her grades, and avoid the Thunderdome that would be Becky and Malaya.
Makes me think about how Malaya and Dorothy would go down though. Would Malaya be just as insufferable towards Dorothy? Would they hate how seemingly ‘perfect’ she is and want to knock her down a peg? Or would they be like, chill because Dotty is too much of a nerdy square to bother trying to antagonize.
I mean, Dorothy wouldn’t want to room with Malaya almost certainly because of Fuckface, but still. Just thinking about stuff for funsies.
Good Lord, even if this attitude is a joke or something it’s starting to get grating. I don’t know how people keep defending Becky or how Dorothy allows it. One thing is playful banter among friends, and another is Becky literally taking shots at Dorothy anytime she speaks.
This is like when people defend that one asshole friend. He’s not “always like that” or some variant of that phrase. He’s an asshole and should be called out.
This comic actually shows how Dorothy allows it. She cleverly manipulated Becky into doing the right thing
Dorothy thinks she has Becky controlled
I think the snapping point where she blows up at Becky and people turn on Becky for it will come when Becky does something that Dorothy couldn’t account for. Like, say, snoop through her stuff then tell everybody she gets to be Amber’s one and true friend because, “STUPID DOTTY GOING TO HARVARD! See? Right here, she was accepted!”
That acceptance letter is really looking more and more like a Chekhov’s Gun, and Becky is really looking like she’ll use it only for it to backfire
… This is a really interesting possibility that’s also LIKELY AS HELL. Because Becky, the way she’s behaving? She IS going to take issue at Dorothy not telling her about the acceptance letter, for starters. If she finds it because she was snooping… Yeah. That’s not going to be pretty.
Poor Dorothy. She doesn’t have Becky “managed” nor the situation “under control”. She has her barely contained… For the time being. Until something gives.
So that’s why Dorothy is fine with it. She believes she has Becky managed, and can get her to do the right thing by making her think it’s a screw you to Dorothy
Yes, she is managing Becky and Becky is happy to play along because she makes sense.
Willis has a gift for depicting twisted dysfunctional relationships that work, at least on some level and for some period of time. In the old universe: Joyce and Walky, Robin and Leslie, Mike and Amber. In the DOA universe, Billie and Ruth. I’m not saying there is a romantic component, but I think this could be another case – a dysfunctional frenemyship that works well for both.
Except that’s not what Dorothy did. She didn’t manipulate Becky or play into the competition or anything like that. She just appealed to Becky for Joyce’s sake.
Becky then turned that into “I can be more supportive”, but there’s no hint of that in anything Dorothy says.
And thus this particular matter is dealt with, while the hope that the larger issue might be addressed and/or resolved is merely dangled and then withdrawn.
I wouldn’t really know personally since I’ve worn glasses since I was about 3 or 4 years old, but I’ve heard from people who first got glasses when they were in high school or college that they just assumed their poor vision was normal for all that time.
Pretty much. My sight went so slowly that I didn’t notice the difference from one week to the next, so even though there was significant loss over the course of several years, I just adjusted to each new level of suckage without even realizing the suckage was getting worse.
I went from 20/30 and too irritated with my glasses to bother wearing them for such a relatively small amount of blur, to 20/160 and completely unquestioning of my need to cross a 10-foot room to read the clock on the wall.
Twas a day of many exclamations of amazement when I finally got contacts and suddenly could read street signs a block away.
It’s also weird to demand someone justify why they think someone should get a routine test that everyone that works with computers is expected to get at least once a year.
I’ve worked with computers for decades and no one has ever mentioned this. One place made me get an eye test before being hired, but that was 20+ years ago.
Yeah, I worked with computers from 1972 till I retired for a variety of employers and none of them ever said anything about an eye test. I suppose it could be a new regulation, but it doesn’t seem plausible.
When I started, my work told me they’ll provide me with a free eye test if I apply for one, but in five years I’ve never got round to finding out the details and nobody’s pressed me.
Beyond the standard recommendation of regular eye-tests for the sake of health, I never had work suggest it except the military as part of routine physicals. As I understand it, it’s not a bad idea (no harm done, qnd can catch to correct some problems earlier).
While I’ve noticed my vision degrade a little over the past decade, it still passes 2020 so I’ve been lucky thus far. Worked with screens for 27+ years now and heavy reader.
Can we have, maybe, like 2 more Dorothy good decisions before everything turns terrible again? Positive character growth would really be a nice New Year’s present after the trauma sandwich they’ve had to swallow.
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I’m starting to think you named her Becky for a reason, Willis
She needed a name?
Becky was the Karen of the early ’90s (“Oh. My. God. Becky, look at that butt!”)
I notice that it’s always women that are stigmatized by a common name. Nobody says “Don’t be a Donald.”
Don’t be a Clif, kids.
Don’t be a…Richard?
That’s less a common-name-thing and more a euphemism-for-male-genitalia-thing.
I’ve never heard anything good about men named Earl. Don’t be an Earl, boys.
Nothing can stop the Duke of Earl.
(Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl)
Earl Hickey was a pretty good guy.
trying to, at least
“Earl had to die”
Goodbye, Earl~!
Ain’t it dark, wrapped under that tarp, Earl?
…What did Earl Hinderman do to you?
He played Wilson(the neighbr/guy who always had his face covered) on Home Improvement
What about “Chads”?
Is that a common name.? The only Chads I recall were the hanging kind.
There were two Chads in my high school graduating class.
Also Kyles. We heard a lot about the Kyles during the storming area 51 thing. So. They’re like early 20 somethings (so Gen Z) who live in their moms basements and play video games and read conspiracy theories on the internet all day.
I also think the abbreviation “dude bro” and related forms functions in much the same way “karen” and its derivatives do, at least for younger guys. It’s not a name, but it’s just as clearly gendered. It’s confusing because bro can also be a good thing but usually when you start a story with “I’m a waitress and one time this dude bro came in…” you know the dude bro is gonna be a jerk just like you do if it said “karen”
It’s different though because it doesn’t spill over onto people who just happen to be named that.
And there are plenty of insulting parallels for dude bro that aren’t names.
Kyle is the female Karen per my nephew who works in retail…
Chads are the people having sex when incels can’t.
Chad. No one wants to be a Chad.
Seriously? I’ve never known a Chad and the only ones I’m aware of are a couple of football players and an actor. I suppose it’s possible that one of them did something scandalous.
But more to the point, I’ve never heard the name used to shame someone. Have you?
Yes, in fact in current net parlance a Chad is a male Becky.
I worked with a Chad. Idk what the stereotype is but he would be a stereotype. He was lazy, but thought he could get away with it because he was attractive. Missed work for like a month because he was in jail for a DUI (so presumably not his first offense).
Sounds like a Chad to me!
I haven’t either.
I know it exists in incel slang, where a Chad is the “alpha” who’s getting all the women leaving none for them. Not sure if that’s what’s being referred to.
I have to assume, and it annoys me when it’s memeified by non-incels (especially because it’s always preceded by ‘the virgin X’ and uh. Yeah, ace here, that never gets non-alienating as an insult.) Don’t give their ideas that attention, people.
In the gaming community “Chad” is pretty much portrayed as the person who acts like he’s better than everyone else…. while he actually isn’t.
Theres even a whole nation named Chad. Thats 16 million Chadians.
If there are 16 million of them and they all get more than their share of the desired gender, i’m not sure how that would work mathematically.
Unless maybe they are all secretly French.
Actually, yeah, Chad was a French colony during their colonial days. Maybe some of it rubbed off.
No Johns in Smash Bros.
I remember one AskReddit thread where everyone was telling stories about their school bully, and a common theme was that most stories I read had bullies named Josh, to the point that several top level comments were just that observation.
So we can all agree one way or another that Becky was Joshing.
John is what men that buy the services of prostitutes are called.
Also, its a name for toilets.
“Henceforth, all toilets in the kingdom shall be known as . . . Johns.”
King John was widely despised.
Seriously, don’t be a Don tho.
Oh, in Germany there are a few: Horst (an idiot), it even has a verb and flexions: behorstet . it was so widespread in the 80ties and early nineties that feminists invented a female Version, Greta.
Though most other female names indicate a lot more than stupidity. Jackelyn for example was a very widespread name people gave their girls in the 80ties. Unfortunately, a lot of people using that name were unable to pronounce it correctly, so it became a synonym for pretentiousness and low education.
Uh, it probably was even Jaqueline, the French version.
Jacqueline with a C like in Jacques, please. We need all these extra silents letters to make us look smart by having longer words.
Kevin is one, theres a whole subreddit dedicated to it. Also craig in dnd circles.
Also, am i the only one unbothered by the Karen thing specifically bc it’s almost always used against white women? Like, a Karen used her white privilege and white woman tears to punish others, usually lower than her in class or of a different race. After all the years woc had to deal with racist ass stereotype mocking names, I’m not all that sympathetic to the white tears of Karen’s being called karens
I do sometimes think Karen is used for situations where it shouldn’t apply – someone having a legitimate issue reporting that issue isn’t being a Karen. Karen, in my understanding, was meant to apply to, typically, white, straight, upper class women behaving in an entitled way and using their privilege to make things more difficult for people who lack it. Someone asking for something they are actually entitled to or reporting an actual problem shouldn’t be considered one.
Hey come on, Cliff was an honest mailman even if he was a know-it-all.
Come and get it all, at Boston Pizza!
There’s Chad, Ross (from Friends – I hear the usage as typically ‘you are being such a Ross right now’), and Kevin, just off the top of my head.
Don’t be a Chad
Chad and Kyle.
One its on all the ladies while the other chugs a Monster and punches a hole through the drywall.
Why isn’t Judas a more popular name?
Many already listed above.
Richard => Dick (Penis, Richard is listed, but here for those who don’t know)
Jacob => Jakes (toilet)
Louie => Loo (toilet, or “Hang a Looee” aka turn left)
Johnson (Penis)
Charles => Chuck (throw away)
Chadwick => Chad (waste material still attached from a hole punch. “Hanging chads”)
and we must never forget (despite being a surname)
Santorum (the goopy combination of lube and feces following rectal coitus.)
Wasn’t Chad a nickname for like an entitled man of some sort?
OK chad
There’s Kyle and Chad, for male names.
Which is weird since Becky is the one being talked to, not the one speaking. Canonically (because yes, of course Baby Got Back has its canonical lore, why wouldn’t it?) the girl saying that is called Linda.
Yeah, since she has the good hair.
Dorothy why do you know so much about Joyce? Some things I understand but her grades? What’s happening?
They are friends and maybe they talk about their grades (“what did you get on that exam?” sort of thing).
This is mystery 3500.
You should really just relax~~
Lovin the pfp
How can I relax with LT screaming in your gravatar, presumably over GGaR ending?
Sometimes friends who are in college together talk about their grades?
I can understand that but this seems incredibly accurate. Especially after one semester. How does Dorothy have any idea where Joyce’s grades should be or that they’re falling in the larger classes specifically? Unless she’s in every single one of Joyce’s classes? Or is she just paying that much attention to Joyce’s academics? It’s kind of throwing me off.
It could ALSO be a rethorical argument made by Dorothy in order to convince Becky to just agree with her by making her point sound reasonable by pointing out opinions as if they were facts and hoping that the other just agrees with her…
For the woman who wants to be the president, it is a talent she needs to learn xD
Amber, as we have seen, can hack the grade system with ease. Just assume she’s feeding the information to Dorothy. For reasons.
…OR… all of these people are actually Willis.
Nonsense. The distinctive facial hair would give it away.
Next you’ll be telling me that this is a work of fiction.
Between basic knowledge (like which classes are taken by a majority of freshmen) and talking with Joyce and others, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out the sizes of the classes joyce is in.
My closest friends in college knew all this kind of stuff about me, and I about them. It wasn’t on purpose or anything, but we just picked up on this info about each other over the course of hanging out and spending time together. I don’t remember any of it NOW, of course, since it’s been like 6 years, but I could probably have told you all the classes of my like 6 or 7 closest friends, what size/type of class they were, and how my friends were doing in them.
To be fair, I shared a lot of classes with my friends too, since we mostly all took a combo of science and philosophy/literature classes.
In some places, the grades are public knowledge. I remember some of my professor just literally posted the grades of the whole class on a wall for everyone.
I hate them till this day, but still. All I’m saying is that it ain’t hard to know :v
At a public/state university, that’s a violation of federal law (if any names were attached). The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 prevents giving anyone, even immediate family (yes, even if they’re paying tuition) any information about a student. That includes grades, pass/fail status, section – you aren’t even allowed to confirm or deny that someone is in your class.
I mean, people still talk. It’s very realistic for Dorothy to know how Joyce is doing in class. But if your profs put your name on that sheet, at a public university, after 1974, it was illegal af.
(I’m also a big fan of more people knowing this shit because it takes away a LOT of the leverage abusive parents think they have, and encourages students to be in charge of their own classes.)
Well yes. And we posted the final grades on the door with the last 4 digits of the student ID which was deemed sufficient.
It also has more loopholes and exceptions than you’d expect. For example, revealing grades that haven’t been finalized yet aren’t covered. Or at least that’s what the Supreme Court decided in a case where students were grading each others work as the professor discussed the correct answers.
We had a professor who did this with the last 4 of the student ID (though he posted them on the class website at a URL that wasn’t linked from the main page.) This was an issue one semester because two students had ID numbers that ended in the same 4 digits.
…please tell me it’s not one of those schools that repurposes the SSN as a school ID number. (I don’t know why places do that. STOP DOING THAT PLACES.)
In Canada, most professors I had just put the stack on the desk and let us find ours or spread them on the desk and likewise. Most put our grades on the back but if it was on the front, oh well. I never really looked at others though – I just wanted mine. Very very few passed them back personally, though a TA in a smaller tutorial might have done so.
This happened to my daughter this year (1st year university in Canada)
Yeah, a lot of teachers at my school did it.
Well, it’s quite common to tell your friends your students ID number so they can look up your grade for you.
They don’t need to be public knowledge. Dorothy is one of Joyce’s best friends. I can easily imagine Joyce confiding to Dorothy that she wasn’t doing as well as she expected in a couple of her classes.
I just wanted to add, I remember confiding in my best friend in college that I was getting a bad grade in a class.
Also, that’s terrible that they posted people’s grades like that!
Apparently it’s common in high school in California. A teacher friend of mine told me about begging one of his students, “What do I need to do so you’ll start applying yourself the way I know you can?” and the student replied, “Stop posting grades. I’ll get beat up if I get good grades.”
It implied , unlike Walky, Joyce tells her about stuff uninitatedly or if Dotty asks how she doing with hw. And Joyce isn’t self conscious about failing grades like Walky is so it wasn’t a big deal answering or sharing at the tine
Every character is as omniscient as Willis requires for story reasons. The one I don’t get so far is Booster, because we haven’t yet seen the story reason (unless it was just exposition for new readers, but I don’t buy that).
Booster is really Mike. Explains everything.
I mean, except Joyce, Booster hardly went for low hanging fruit and they spent at least an afternoon with Joyce.
Yeah, it’s a bunch of 18-20 year olds, many with bombastic personalities. It’s not like Booster had their work cut out for them, especially since Walky told them who people were with what were likely not always flattering descriptions.
Eh. I’m not to awed by the Booster thing. Walky basically fed them the cliff notes on the main cast before that floor meeting. And frankly I doubt Booster’s hot takes weren’t that accurate mainly because they were based on first impressions which are usually wrong. For instance their analysis of Joyce is proving to be pretty wrong right now. Joyce seems very resistant to this change in her life which according to Booster should be pretty easy for he to swallow or is this admitting that she knew she was always someone who needed glasses? Booster really covered most of the angles with a critique that vague.
Joyce shares everything with her, overshares really.
Maybe Joyce mentioned it after a long night of sweet sapphic lovemaking?
I CAN DREAM DAMMIT!
Everyone should have a dream.
It begins with S and ends in Talker.
Smooth Talker? That’s more of a Becky thing.
She’s the Mom Friend. ^_^; And as someone who falls into that category, I can see why her mother bear instincts are turned up to maximum about Joyce after all the recent trauma and distinct/abrupt change in Joyce’s behavior.
So while it may seem a bit peculiar how far she’s going, pushing Joyce into getting her eyes checked, its a friendship dynamic I’ve seen many times. Sometimes its fine and healthy, other times not so much. Also I have no doubt Dorothy is one of the first to know about Joyce’s grades. In the case of bad ones I feel like Dorothy is most likely gonna be high up on Joyce’s list of shoulders to cry on.
Also I’m joining the Becky defense squad. She is a traumatized barely adult who is now orphaned alongside having her world generally put in an industrial blender. Is how she’s treating Joyce okay? Heck no! Are her follies and poor decisions understandable and relatively reasonable? I argue yes.
I just hope she and Dorothy remember that Joyce needs agency and learn to just talk to her. Esp. once Becky can work through her intense fear of Joyce changing or going away.
Here’s hoping. ~w~
Dorothy has an extensive spreadsheet which she updates daily.
weren’t they in several classes together last semester? It’d be easy to know he r grades when she’s telling you them after class…
Fuck OFFFF Becky
Oh come on Becky seriously?! Thats way over the line.
It’s about half the epiphany were were hoping for. We could do worse.
Oooooh shoot! The agoraphobia angle!
Look at that Becky & Dorothy rivalry! So finished. Much resolved. /sarcasm
You have to ride a shtick till it’s dead. Its a rule.
It’s already decomposing.
That’s what a phylactery is for. It will be undead forever.
Blowjob Cat is the phylactery.
You guys mean Horcrux, right? *ducks and flees*
What do ducks and fleas have to do with it? Besides, I thought ducks got mites, not fleas.
Nope. A Horcrux is an object that contains a piece of a soul to keep someone from being permanently killed. A phylactery is an object that contains (usually) the entire soul of an undead lich. As the schtick has already been confirmed to be deceased, we’re in lich territory now.
Then you have to jump up and down on its corpse.
Then you have to beat it with a stick until it’s leg stops twitching.
if you get the rhythm right they will twitch for a long time.
Starting to think Dorothy is kind of like the Big Bad from The Fifth Element. The more hostility you throw at her, the more powerful she becomes.
Happy 3500 gift to all us readers! THANK YOU!!
So say we all!!!
Now get busy on the next 3500.
Ditto ditto!
Dammit Becky
Yeah Becky, show her.
Wonder what kind of glasses Joyce will go for. maybe contacts?
i hope they’re huge cat eye glasses
maybe some super-badass prescription shades?
ooh maybe they’ll be aviator goggles
Good luck persuading Joyce to touch her eyes
regularly
this
I predict prescription Gargoyles that look like the Terminator’s (T1 obv).
Whatever glasses she gets, I’m assuming they’ll make her look cuter.
Joe will get his most confusing boner yet.
HopefullyMaybe something like Dorothy’s, but a bit more rectangular with a slightly thicker frame, in dark red kr blue or something like that.(Sorry, I just can’t get behind thick 50s cat-eye frames. They just make me think “grouchy, nearly retired school lunch lady”. Maybe it’s a 90s kid thing…)
Maybe indeed. 80’s kid backing up your assessment. cat-eye or horn-rims.
[shudder]
Good luck with that, Becks. Dorothy is pretty supportive.
Oh, fuck no.
Eh, I can deal with that for a day.
I’m glad/amused to see that Joe meets your standards but Robin does not.
Joe can be a skeevy dick, but his shit doesn’t have national implications. He can stay for 24 hours.
Seriously I don’t think I can ever forgive Robin for voting to pass that LGBTQ discrimination bill. Not even sponsoring Becky makes up for it! She’s needs to sponsor at least a dozen more queer youths to even make a dent in that bad karma.
Or…y’know, campaign for its repeal as a mistake?? I’m sorry, but handing out trinkets to ‘right’ an injustice is…no. it doesn’t work, the injustice is still there, you’re just handing out consolation prizes and trinkets. Reparations are worthless if the bad behaviour continues regardless.
Well, in this particular case, I believe it was said that the bill didn’t pass.
The bill indeed did not pass.
And it’s not like she was the main force behind it or anything. One more shitty representative behind a shitty failed bill.
Sponsoring Becky doesn’t make up for it, but dropping out of Congress is a big move and a step to showing the bad behavior doesn’t continue.
Also….Joe is 18-19. He’s new to the whole adult thing and is still figuring some stuff out. Robin’s a grown ass adult who should have known better.
Plus Joe actually tries. He fails a lot, but he tries
It took Becky basically pouring her soul out online before Robin actually tried
Come on. Cheat. One more won’t hurt.
You have more courage than me. The urge to reroll is there but the fear of Walky grav keep me in check.
My personal conviction is that by now, Willis has managed to hack the grav roulette to make sure BBCC never gets Sal.
The value is in the journey, not the destination.
Which is BS, but it’s DEEP BS.
I had her as my first grav! Then they switched and I got distracted and didn’t continue the roulette. I SHALL RIGHT MY MISTAKE THIS TIME.
I don’t even know how to play. I mysteriously flipped from Dina to Fuckface one day and was all “What does it meeeeeeeeaaaan?!”
Don’ mean diddly.
Becky, you really had a chance here and you fucking blew it. Just be friends with Dotrothy, it isn’t that hard.
It’s not like she’s out to bite you, you aren’t even her type.
So what gravatar do I have now?
Better.
Best. I love Ruth.
appropriate avatars etc.
Or inappropriate as the case may be, given the current semester situation.
Don’t be fooled by her undercover work.
Did she blow it? Dorothy doesn’t exactly look phased.
Like, I get she annoys people in here, but Dorothy dated Walky and hangs out with Joyce, Sarah, etc. I don’t think she’s really that delicate.
Besides, re-read the strip. This is her conceding that Dorothy is likely right. That is progress. That some sass comes with it isn’t exactly the hugest of deals.
Stupid jackass.
Exactly. Not the hugest of deals.
Or at least Dorothy doesn’t seem to think so. And that’s really what counts.
Dorothy and Becky ARE friends. You can’t have a ‘friendly rivalry’ without being friends. The people who get offended by Becky’s talk clearly haven’t had siblings, or gone to public school. Shit-talk like this is normal.
Maybe and I think that’s Becky’s intent, but I’m not sure Dorothy’s on board.
And while that kind of shit-talk is fine with some kinds of friendship, trying to use it where it isn’t fine is bad move.
“Dorothy and Becky ARE friends”
I’m not at all convinced of that. Looks to me, and to many of us, like Dorothy is Becky’s friend but Becky is not Dorothy’s friend. If Willis intends otherwise, he’s failed to show it.
That’s implying a transitiveness in friendship that is not always true. Or in other words: the fact that Joyce and Dorothy are friends and that Joyce and Becky are friends does not make Dorothy and Becky friends.
Jesus fuck, Becky. The woman here is offering you a floral arrangement of olive branches and you keep throwing them to her face. I’m so tired of this. Is it, like, grounds to hate Becky? No. I used to love her a lot, actually. Is it understandable and in character? Well, yes.
But to me as a reader, this schitck of being repeatedly mean to a person he shares living quarters with is exhausting as hell. It’s gone from light ribbing (and jealousy) to blatant hostility and some pretty strong words wrapped in the coy-ish playfulness of… Well, someone who grew up in a toxic cult indeed. I keep wondering if Dorothy is so stubbornly kind because lashing out at the mistreatment would make Becky BE RIGHT about her.
She’s not throwing it in her face. In this very strip, she’s conceding that Dorothy’s right, albeit in an immature way. Previously, she also was getting teary-eyed at Dorothy being kind to her, even if she, again, isn’t necessarily able to leap at accepting it.
Joyce as she sees it is basically the only family she’s got, even if Robin and Leslie are both trying, too, and her last, tenuous grip on anything resembling status quo. Joyce having a new best friend essentially means she’s got nothing of her upbringing left. That isn’t rational, obviously, but that’s the reality of her situation.
She’s conceding Dorothy has a point, because she (Becky) is hurting Joyce by enabling her and Joyce is her Most Important Person: Of course she’d back off. The bar is so low it’s subterranean by this point. But then she goes and calls her “stupid jackass Dotty” – a nickname not exactly born out of affection, and Dorothy requested back in the day to not be called that way. I don’t think she got teary-eyed at Dorothy being kind to her because “omg so kind”. It was more of a frustrated “how dare you after I’ve antagonized you so much”. She literally asked “why can’t you be petty?”, because she wants to hate Dorothy and knows she doesn’t have a good reason for it.
Becky and Dorothy aren’t friends (despite Dorothy’s many efforts). There’s no trust nor past history to justify the way she talks to her.
I understand why Becky is acting like this because, character analysis. Doesn’t mean its actually justified, or enjoyable to witness. It’s toxic as hell, I pity Dorothy because she’s doing Her Best with a roomate (!) who continuously belittles her, her interests and passions, and her relationship with Joyce, who’s also btw Dorothy’s closest friend at college. She doesn’t keep many close relationships either. The traumatic experiences she suffered past semester left Dorothy so scared she actually rejected going to Yale – Her dream for the past 10 years of strips.
By this point I’m like, BEGGING Willis to throw me a bone so I remember why I loved Becky so much. Like, can be Dina be around again or something? So I can watch this girl be smitten by her girlfriend instead of possessively draping all over Joyce?
I think that acceptance letter may be a Chekhov’s Gun. I don’t think Becky is going to get better, at least not yet. Rather, she’s going to do something bad enough that Dorothy finally snaps, be all, “…I got you to snap why do I feel bad?” and even have Joyce snap at her
And that will cause Becky to improve
I reaaaaally want to see Joyce waking up and realizing this isn’t “Wacky Becky & Her Antics” – But her best friend purposely hurting her other best friend for as long as she can keep it up.
I trust Joyce to do the right thing, at least when it’s about the people she loves. The rest will be called
“fuck around and find out”“rightful consequences of being a bully”, and everyone will be better off after this snapping.This so much honestly. Becky is having to manage a lot of roles, none of which pertain to an actual human’s motivations in my mind. She doesn’t likely resemble anybody we know, because she’s become a collection of Foil Traits. She needs to Foil Dorothy for Joyce’s affections, but she also needs to Foil Joyce’s newfound non-religiousness by continuing to be very devout, for no clear or good reason (particularly considering how the oppressive aspects of christianity have directly hurt her time and again, and much less than this has been enough to drive queer friends from the church by the time they were Becky’s age). She needs to foil homophobes and ableists by continuing to have a loving relationship with Dina, which may also be now the longest running relationship among the main cast that hasn’t violently imploded/exploded on or off screen so far.
She isn’t her own character is how she feels at this point, she’s a bunch of traits that reflect off of the different points of utility that space provides the rest of the cast and the overall points of the story.
In reality, there’s no reason any friend would say “NO my friend shouldn’t have a simple eye test, because she’s scared of change and that she might need glasses.” It is also insane that Joyce would be so biased against or afraid of needing glasses when literally all of her (older!) siblings wear them.
I feel like something is trying to be achieved in metaphor with this plotline, pertaining to the christian will to ignore problems and hide from reality, but the allegory kind of falls flat with the example being used and within what has been set up in the world so far.
Alternatively, Willis is setting us up to dislike Becky enough that Dina can break up with Becky which sets us up for the endgame where Dorothy forgoes Yale, not for Joyce, but for Becky.
Nah, I don’t buy it either.
I actually don’t find Becky implausible. She’s still devout in her own way? That matches people I know; Joyce is one escape route, Becky is another. She’s an ass to Dorothy? Fortunately *doesn’t* match people I know, but the implausible part is Dorothy’s tolerance of it. Relationship with Dina? No problem there.
We haven’t seen Dina because she stole the acceptance letter and ATM is in her way to Yale.
She doesn’t need the letter, she’s Dina. She could just teleport behind the door of a paleontology lecture and everyone there would just accept her presence.
Dina is already behind the door of all the paleontology lectures.
Except she’s not really conceding the point. She’s obviously CONSIDERING the point, and REALIZES that it’s right, but she’s not actually ACKNOWLEDGING that. Instead, she’s taking the other thing that Dorothy said and finding yet another way to be over-the-top and competitive.
Some things don’t have to be said for both people to understand them.
Or, the more likely reason as to why dorothy puts up with it, she just doesn’t care. I feel like yesterday’s strip told us as much
Note to self: Erase any and all ideas about escape rooms around poor Joyce
*raises an eyebrow*
*pouts*
Are you confusing agoraphobia with claustrophobia? Otherwise, I’m going to need a clarification why Joye would have problems with escape rooms.
Actually, I wouldn’t recommend doing an escape room with anybody who has been forcefully abducted 3 months ago, but I agree with JBento: why does this come up now?
People keep sassing on Becky for her “rivalry” with Dorothy…
Meanwhile I’m here like, “this is pretty much how all my friends talk to each other”
Like, has there been any indication that Becky is serious? I like to think its become an inside joke at this point….
Has there been any indication it’s not serious?
She’s basically this universe’s equivalent of Daffy Duck, so… many, many indications?
Dorothy refers to it as “play hate” the night of their first day back: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/bff/
They didn’t really establish a close friendship before Becky started insulting her at every opportunity
The last panel of the previous strip and the first panel of this strip both indicate this is not just ‘haha, we’re both in on it’ joking but rather Becky feeling threatened by her inability to get a rise out of Dorothy and skepticism that Dorothy has Joyce’s best interests in mind. That she is using it to cope, struggling without an enemy to resist against, and struggles to trust that this isn’t just a way to somehow control Joyce.
They also never had a pre-established friendship before Becky started to do it. So it’s not like two people being close enough for it to be okay, Becky is just aggressive and Dorothy just chooses not to be in return, giving her a lot of leeway because she knows Becky is hurting. But she’s not going to become the enemy or vicious rival she wants to be able to rebel against.
Spot on. And honestly? Dorothy is a bigger person than most for it. I used to be pretty “meh” on her, like, I liked her but she wasn’t particularly interesting? But now between rejecting Yale and how she’s continuously refused to engage despite the attacks, I’m getting invested on her :’)
I think she thinks she has Becky under control. Becky will probably find that acceptance letter to Yale, start announcing to everybody that her and Joyce will be tighter than ever with Dorothy gone, and Dorothy is going to finally lose it, due to all the piling up stress and now being put on the spot by Becky with having to explain to everybody why she is turning down Yale
A++ Theory, I’d bet cash on it. Don’t worry about the typos because you’ve got everything else about the situation READ.
Perhaps you could back up to the part where she rejected Yale. When did that happen?
Rejecting Yale?
Did I miss something? We saw that Dorothy got an acceptance letter and hid it. When did she turn down the offer from Yale?
Yeah, I don’t quite follow on that part myself.
I think the idea is that it being the start of the semester, she could be spending it in Yale. She does not.
Plus of course, not bringing it up to everybody
Do we have literally ANY PROOF that Dorthey rejected Yale? If she’s going to transfer to Yale it would be next semester….
Agreed. I suspect she got the letter late enough that her plans for this semester were set already. I can see her not wanting to bring it up this early if she thinks certain people (*cough*Joyce) might spend the next few months trying to convince her out of it.
Or just that the admission was for the next year rather than this semester.
Oh yeah, I can’t imagine they admitted her for spring to begin with.
Let her have this.
I think Dorothy’s taking that route.
Honestly, Becky and Dorothy need to fight it out at the all-Valley Tournament.
It’s the only way to end their rivalry.
There is no rivalry. Ask Dorothy.
Becky’s the only one of them who seems to think there’s a rivalry. Dorothy clearly doesn’t see Becky as a rival.
Just wait until Becky takes Dorothy’s slot at Yale.
Leave, Becky. NOW.
It really wouldn’t kill Becky if she took it down a few notches once in awhile.
Dorothy is a far better person than me. I would already have requested to trade with Malaya. Room with Sal, a sensible friend who also cares about her grades, and avoid the Thunderdome that would be Becky and Malaya.
No one in the dorm would be able to sleep if those two shared a room…
Makes me think about how Malaya and Dorothy would go down though. Would Malaya be just as insufferable towards Dorothy? Would they hate how seemingly ‘perfect’ she is and want to knock her down a peg? Or would they be like, chill because Dotty is too much of a nerdy square to bother trying to antagonize.
I mean, Dorothy wouldn’t want to room with Malaya almost certainly because of Fuckface, but still. Just thinking about stuff for funsies.
I suspect that no-one has been able to make Becky feel such a heel since her mother died!
Good Lord, even if this attitude is a joke or something it’s starting to get grating. I don’t know how people keep defending Becky or how Dorothy allows it. One thing is playful banter among friends, and another is Becky literally taking shots at Dorothy anytime she speaks.
This is like when people defend that one asshole friend. He’s not “always like that” or some variant of that phrase. He’s an asshole and should be called out.
This comic actually shows how Dorothy allows it. She cleverly manipulated Becky into doing the right thing
Dorothy thinks she has Becky controlled
I think the snapping point where she blows up at Becky and people turn on Becky for it will come when Becky does something that Dorothy couldn’t account for. Like, say, snoop through her stuff then tell everybody she gets to be Amber’s one and true friend because, “STUPID DOTTY GOING TO HARVARD! See? Right here, she was accepted!”
That acceptance letter is really looking more and more like a Chekhov’s Gun, and Becky is really looking like she’ll use it only for it to backfire
*Yale
Also my internet really sucks tonight geeze
*Joyce, not Amber
I am clearly not in a state to exist
… This is a really interesting possibility that’s also LIKELY AS HELL. Because Becky, the way she’s behaving? She IS going to take issue at Dorothy not telling her about the acceptance letter, for starters. If she finds it because she was snooping… Yeah. That’s not going to be pretty.
Poor Dorothy. She doesn’t have Becky “managed” nor the situation “under control”. She has her barely contained… For the time being. Until something gives.
Will be interesting to see the fall out if I’m right on this
I believe it’s a Chekhov’s gun, but it may well not go off in the direction you expect.
Dorothy really doesn’t seem to care about it tbh, she’s fine
Owning Dotty by doing exactly the thing she asked you to do
Yeah, Becky sure showed her now!
It’s serendipitous how owning Dorothy entails doing what Dorothy wants.
Dorothy might be better in politics than some people think.
So that’s why Dorothy is fine with it. She believes she has Becky managed, and can get her to do the right thing by making her think it’s a screw you to Dorothy
Yes, she is managing Becky and Becky is happy to play along because she makes sense.
Willis has a gift for depicting twisted dysfunctional relationships that work, at least on some level and for some period of time. In the old universe: Joyce and Walky, Robin and Leslie, Mike and Amber. In the DOA universe, Billie and Ruth. I’m not saying there is a romantic component, but I think this could be another case – a dysfunctional frenemyship that works well for both.
Except that’s not what Dorothy did. She didn’t manipulate Becky or play into the competition or anything like that. She just appealed to Becky for Joyce’s sake.
Becky then turned that into “I can be more supportive”, but there’s no hint of that in anything Dorothy says.
Exactly. And notice Dorothy’s smile in the last panel.
And thus this particular matter is dealt with, while the hope that the larger issue might be addressed and/or resolved is merely dangled and then withdrawn.
I wouldn’t really know personally since I’ve worn glasses since I was about 3 or 4 years old, but I’ve heard from people who first got glasses when they were in high school or college that they just assumed their poor vision was normal for all that time.
Pretty much. My sight went so slowly that I didn’t notice the difference from one week to the next, so even though there was significant loss over the course of several years, I just adjusted to each new level of suckage without even realizing the suckage was getting worse.
I went from 20/30 and too irritated with my glasses to bother wearing them for such a relatively small amount of blur, to 20/160 and completely unquestioning of my need to cross a 10-foot room to read the clock on the wall.
Twas a day of many exclamations of amazement when I finally got contacts and suddenly could read street signs a block away.
Just saying, Jocelyn and Jonathan both wear glasses too. Still surprised Joyce couldn’t see it coming. Guess it was a blind spot for her?
You could say she lacked foresight.
You know what they say about hindsight being 20/20.
Hindsight is so 2020.
Becky is still being Becky, but I think that this is a great improvement overall
I’ve been experimenting with the capitalization in my email to see which gravatar I could get that I’d be happy with and I think THIS IS IT
You can do that??
Holy macaroni you can do that!
THE GAME HAS CHANGED
I think Becky should be very happy that Dotty isn’t a bad person. Imagine if that intelligence was used against someone.
She’d be Ozmymandias from Watchmen.
It’s also weird to demand someone justify why they think someone should get a routine test that everyone that works with computers is expected to get at least once a year.
Wait. Expected by who?
I’ve worked with computers for decades and no one has ever mentioned this. One place made me get an eye test before being hired, but that was 20+ years ago.
Yeah, I worked with computers from 1972 till I retired for a variety of employers and none of them ever said anything about an eye test. I suppose it could be a new regulation, but it doesn’t seem plausible.
Work has never made me get a vision test, but I already needed glasses anyway.
When I started, my work told me they’ll provide me with a free eye test if I apply for one, but in five years I’ve never got round to finding out the details and nobody’s pressed me.
Beyond the standard recommendation of regular eye-tests for the sake of health, I never had work suggest it except the military as part of routine physicals. As I understand it, it’s not a bad idea (no harm done, qnd can catch to correct some problems earlier).
While I’ve noticed my vision degrade a little over the past decade, it still passes 2020 so I’ve been lucky thus far. Worked with screens for 27+ years now and heavy reader.
Yeah I suppose that is a bit of a Boosterish comment. Grav checks out. [sigh]. Apologies.
Little steps.
Oh Becky. You almost saw reason.
I think she knows Dorothy’s right, but had to package that in a way so it fits into her one-sided rivalry narrative.
Oh you’ve got to be kidding me
Ugh, GOD but Becky is intolerable.
Can we have, maybe, like 2 more Dorothy good decisions before everything turns terrible again? Positive character growth would really be a nice New Year’s present after the trauma sandwich they’ve had to swallow.
And yes, I’m aware these have been written months in advance. Doesn’t mean I can’t hope.