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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 14h
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 13h
NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! 🤯
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
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Slobby Dearest?
I hate dumb puns.
How appropriate. I love dumb puns!
This one barely qualifies as a pun, though.
Some say puns are the lowest form of comedy but I believe puns should be considered high art.
So says Stephan “da Vinci” Pastis.
Others believe it’s the highest form of humor, because it’s one of the few ways to make a joke at no ones expense.
What about the wild slapstick that goes on in SpongeBob?
That’s not true, puns come at the expense of having to hear them.
Yay, i always thought the quality of a good pun was measured by the amount of Groans it causes.
Highest points if you inflict light physical pain ,like someone facepalming to hard or hitting his head on a table.
I’m fond of absurdity and non sequiturs, myself.
Trout, anyone?
Absurdity and randomness is really funny too!
Those with more generous palates may enjoy some YTPs for that stuff!
“Humour is a rubber sword – it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.”
I take this to mean that art is below comedy, and you are knocking puns down yet another peg. How dare you!
Well, if she never hangs up her clothes, that would mean that she uses “No WIRE HANGERS, EVERRRRRRRR!!!!!!”
I don’t get it.
By the way, just where did you get that striking avatar?
I’m quoting Mommy Dearest.
And the avatar is a picture I took of myself a number of years ago lit with a “floating disco ball” pool toy (I think).
More ominous Ethan mentions, though I kinda doubt we’ll be seeing him for a while.
At least he’s confirmed alive.
Did I miss a strip about him going off to conversion therapy?
You forgot to put the “therapy” into quotation marks.
He and Amber don’t really talk much anymore, and apparently he’s going through an Emo phase
I sure hope it’s not conversion therapy…
Side note, I think many characters here would look AWESOME with a Venom-style symbiote!!!
Nah, no way would these characters stand for that.
They wouldn’t stand for so-called conversion therapy, that is. I don’t know their stances on symbiotes.
I mean ambers got a tulpa and everyone’s okay with it so maybe?
Also Anti-Joyce in the Walky-verse, so there’s that.
What if these symbiotes were like the stands from JoJo, and had powers and personalities that really fit the characters?
Given he’s apparently still at college to be invited, doubt it. Fortunately. Those tend to require isolating the victims from anyone who might be able to help.
Besides, I think most of them are explicitly CHRISTIAN-based
torturepray the gay away, which I don’t think Naomi would be thrilled with. Maybe as a last resort given Joyce, but then I don’t think she expected Ethan to STAY with the fundie once he’d been fucked straight.The fact that people usually don’t accept such atrocious action is exactly why their instigators repackage it as something it’s not, like “therapy”.
Speaking of which, please forgive me for forgetting to put “therapy” in quotation marks above right there.
Yes, but I meant more that to my knowledge it usually (or at least frequently) involves actively keeping someone removed from the general population, so that they don’t get any relief from the bombardment of You Are Wrong And Shameful. The wearing down of defenses is a key part of how it ‘works,’ and therefore any contact with the outside world would reduce that. (Admittedly and thankfully, I’m not an expert on the subject, so I could be wrong.) Thus, camps, or ‘facilities’ with ‘inpatient stays’ that have no medical bearing whatsoever but do resemble psychiatric hospitals in the potential to be horribly traumatized by someone with power over you including reserving the ability to leave for the compliant.
Especially with an adult living away from home who’s pretty well accepted he’s gay, there are limited ways for Naomi to get him to go without actually holding him there against his will. So if he’s still at school, that’s probably not going on. Plus the aforementioned ‘most remaining are religiously-motivated and explicitly CHRISTIAN’ thing.
You might not be an expert, but it looks like you have the gist of it.
Is Naomi intrinsically skeptical of “faith-healing” in general, or just the Christian kind in particular?
Even then, she could still potentially be manipulated into letting those kinds of people have their way with their son, through repackaging their actions in the manner described above. I mean, that’s how Scientology recruits people into their scheme.
Ethan and his family are Jewish, and given Naomi’s reference to ‘praying every day’ that he’d stop disappointing her (man I forgot that bit of awfulness,) she at least is probably actively practicing. So I suspect she’d be resistant to sending him anywhere involving evangelical Christianity, because they’d almost certainly try to convert Ethan in the process.
And since, again, I’m pretty sure MOST remaining places trying to torture gay people straight in the US are actively and openly Christian, this is something Naomi would know and be assuming most were, rather than assuming secularity and being surprised. She’s terrible, but she can catch a hint and I’m pretty sure any member of a heavily-marginalized religion living in Indiana of all places would learn to spot cues that they’re dealing with evangelicals. To avoid getting Surprise Proselytizing, if nothing else.
The only Jewish groups I know of that would actively try to repress gay people in a manner even close to that of the Christian Conversion “Camps” would be the Haredim (ultra-orthodox believers) in Israel.
On the other hand, she might fall for a group like the Unification Church, which try to appeal to broad (Abrahamic) groups of believers while repressing gay people and even arranging marriages.
Given those tend to be either Christian sects in unconvincing hats or straight-out cults, see my previous comment about a member of a heavily-marginalized religion learning to recognize cues. ‘Abrahamic’ values aren’t nearly as much a thing as US Christians try to pretend. Christianity made a permanent split from Judaism around when Paul decided he was The Absolute Authority on What Jesus Wanted despite never meeting the guy, at latest.
Well the Unification Church still manages to convince at least a few really intelligent Jews.
Regardless, it just pays to respect the fact that guarding against manipulation is just like preventing disease — not necessarily by dehumanizing these groups, but by acknowledging a very important fact —
We can ALL be manipulated.
For the record:
There are Jewish conversion “therapy” practitioners. They used to operate under the umbrella of an organization called JONAH, until a lawsuit got it shut down, but they created another organization that’s essentially the same.
Also, I was going to Indiana University when I was seeing a Christian conversion “therapist.”
Or so you’ve been manipulated into claiming.
My sympathies. I suspected I could be wrong but hoped I wasn’t – the fewer of those fucking torture facilities in existence, the better.
I still doubt until proven otherwise the narrative’s going that way in general, because ‘parent tries to force gay kid to not be gay’ has already been pretty well tread via Becky and Willis went to pretty specific lengths for her NOT to get subjected to it, but ‘unfortunately possible’ is the case, huh.
Even if he does go there, it probably wouldn’t be for very long.
His dearest friends would all use their abilities to help him escape in an EPIC cinematic way, like in Hey Arnold! or Recess: School’s Out, with some Disney elements mixed in!!!
Has it been confirmed he’s actually still in school there? For some reason I kept thinking he’d dropped out but I can’t remember if it’s actually been made clear why we haven’t seen him lately/why he wasn’t on the new cast image.
I think so? He’s been mentioned, and if he dropped out I think that would have come up
Yeah, Joyce invited him (implying there’s a chance he could physically come,) Walky mentioned his new look (meaning he’s seen Ethan since we last did,) and Amber’s discussion about how they’re not really friends anymore doesn’t imply distance is the problem – it’s the rift that meant he didn’t come up to Garbage Roof in the last pre-skip scene, and her recognizing she had to give him that space. He’s almost certainly avoiding Amber and Danny, which means seeing less of the rest of the cast since they were his closest friends there and everyone else is friends with at least one of the two (so it’d be awkward).
No criticism from me here. Except, aside from generally being on the same page, can we just call it what it is?
Conversion Torture
Yeah, after all the build-up since the time skip I can only assume that his return is going to be a massive shocker when it finally happens.
A few of the characters are going to be sitting down eating or something, and we will only see close ups of them talking. second to last panel will have a speech bubble coming from off screen. The last panel will be a shot of the other, now stunned, characters looking at Ethan, who is just sitting there like his return isn’t a big deal.
Don’t be surprised when Chekhov’s Ethan is fired.
In response to the alt text:
n
Also n from me
(y’all saw the actual poll, right?)
I had not thank you now answered
Funny story: before I commented, I reloaded the home page to see if it was actually the new poll… and it wasn’t yet. So I commented. And now it is.
Only? No.
Mainly? ………I don’t have to listen to these wild accusations.
If by “cake”, you mean “chance to spend time with her besty and her roommate and perhaps find out why they’re acting so weird”, then yes, Dotty is just here for the ‘cake’.
The important thing is what kind of cake is that?
And is it a lie?
Looks like a plain vanilla cake with chocolate frosting to me, but I could be wrong….
That’s what it looks like to me as well.
So yes, it IS a lie.
Given the exotic origin, and ignoring entirely the history that led to vanilla being ‘normal’ or ‘default’, THERE IS NOTHING PLAIN about vanilla cake or otherwise. I mean, I’m a chocolate dude myself, but I gots mad respect for what vanilla brings to the table when dancing with cocoa. I’ll fight anyone who’s gonna so casually denigrate such a delicate and complex flavour.
That, and it’s natural vanilla’s not gonna be common for long unless we do something about climate change OR genetically engineer the plant OR transplant the flavonoid genes into some other organism.
No no no Wagstaff. This is the internet. We can’t /agree/. That is entirely too civil an approach.
Luckily the imitation stuff will be around as long as wood is, knock on.
I’d like to think red velvet it’s not but I like to think it is. Maybe Yellow Cake with hard fudge icing. But in the end it is probably just Vanilla cake with chocolate frosting probably purchased at a local Meyers or Wal Mart or Target maybe even Aldis. I a. not sure of the locations of groceries stores in Bloomington and their proximity to the campus.
There’s one close enough that Rose went there at least once to buy a block of cheese.
Dotty is a treasure.
*plays “Victoria’s Laboratory Theme” by Winifred Philips on Voxola PR-76*
Where are they, anyway? The lobby? Weird place for a party. Why are they sitting on the floor?
I was wondering about that too. Seems like they could find somewhere with a table.
Artistic convenience?
I really don’t know….
ehh, I feel like having lowkey but midsize gatherings in dorm lobbies/common rooms was pretty common (heh) back in college? And by fall semester the frat bros had basically destroyed like 80% of our freshman dorm’s common room furniture. And a wall.
I don’t know anything about Bonnie but that sounded like using your dead mom as an excuse to be a slob that can’t be challenged to me. And let’s be honest if you can’t use dead parents for that then what can you use them for?
You can use them as an excuse to be Batman.
Fertilizer.
I was thinking that at least a few of them could be used as future museum exhibits, but that works too!!!
I know some that don’t deserve the honour. “It’s got to be Scientific Experimentation for” that lot. The leftovers can be fertilizer.
Oh, but at least a few of the bad ones SHOULD get a place in the Old Information Age exhibit. That way, future generations can learn how NOT to have those unfortunate attitudes!
Oh right good point good point. Hmmm… document real stories of their crimes, but don’t let their names be displayed? Or maybe their names become synonymous with the crime.
I reckon they’d have the same kind of significance as the thousands of unnamed soldiers who worked under figures like Nicholas de Ovando, Cortez and the Conquistadors, Constantinople, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, McCarthy and HUAA, etc……
The RNC
Yeah.
If your parents can’t do anything for you anymore, might as well use them to win arguments.
Who else will show up? I’m betting Walky, but with him it really will just be for the cake.
Well, they sent out a Facebook invite, which I don’t think most young people use anymore. Dorothy might be the only one who got the message.
What do young people use nowadays for something like that?
discord? maybe?
Nah. He’ll quickly learn that the cake is feels-adjascent and skedaddle.
Besides, he’s got a new girlfriend, he’s going to be a stranger to the whole rest of the dorm for at LEAST a week.
How likely various characters are to be there, on a scale of one to ten:
Dina: 10. I can see virtually no scenario in which she isn’t there for Becky.
Joe: 9, Confirmed. He already knows what’s going on, and clearly wants to be supportive to Joyce. Their ship will likely sail into new and exciting Lands.
Danny: 6. Isn’t directly connected to Joyce or Becky, but has enough mutual friends (especially Joe) that it’s not impossible, and generally tries very hard to be supportive to people.
Ethan: 2. Not impossible, given that he’s namedropped here, but I think he’s being saved. Er, not that way.
Amber: 1. Other people annoy her at the best of times, and she’s got her own shit to deal with.
Leslie: 8. Already has to actively stop herself from trying to be Becky’s mom. I’d say she’ll probably be there.
Robin: Let’s hope not
Ruth: 7. She actually does care about the students in her dorm, even if she isn’t really equipped for the R.A. job she’s been forced into, and she might have
good adviceadvice on coping with birthdays of dead parents.Walky: 5. Either or. Maybe higher, if Lucy drags him into it. Also there’s cake
Lucy: Will likely come if she knows about it
Jennifer: Might get dragged into it by some combination of the above
Asher: Maybe out of guilt over his involvement in the kidnapping? Wait, wasn’t I doing numbers
Mike: i^x, where x is a positive integer
Head Alien (singing): My Bonnie lies over the ocean….
… God, I want to see that last one.
“Hello, random teenager I DIDN’T abduct and experiment on as a child in any universe I know of! I see you have a dead parent. Rules say I get to taunt you about it now. Give me twenty minutes to really personalize it.”
Sounds more like GLaDOS to me. I love it.
With the Dargon commenting a bit ago I’m really wanting to see some kind of Walkyverse crossover . . . but only of secondary characters/antagonists.
That’s right, I say Head Alien was a secondary antagonist, because at the end of the day Young Adulthood was the main villain of the piece.
I mean, I’m pretty sure that antagonist’s already showed up.
Seriously though. They expect Dexter and Monkey Master, they get someone who once used your dead parents (who he killed) as a bargaining chip/means to taunt you. He expects sitting ducks since this universe doesn’t have abductees, he gets Amazi-Girl and a baseball bat to the helmet. It’s perfect.
Frankly I’m surprised Dina’s not already there.
Maybe she’s still arguing with the baker about the supermarket’s inaccurate cartoon dinosaur cake.
Joyce sent the invitation via Facebook, so maybe Dorothy’s the only one who regularly checks Facebook and had to inform everyone else. Dina’s getting her Festive Dinosaur Finery ready.
Or, of course, she’s already here, just offpanel.
Blaine: 10, and he’s definitely here not just for the cake.
*cringes so hard that my eyes touch my visual cortex*
Not funny.
I think I would give Danny and Leslie lower scores on account of them being less likely to be invited. I don’t think Joyce would specifically exclude either of them, however I think Leslie might not even occur to her in this situation if she even has Leslie added on social media. I also don’t think it’s been established that Joyce has gotten any more familiar with Danny than at the time of this comic.
By the way, points for expressing the probability of Mike showing up with such mathematical beauty!!!
Although I don’t really know how imaginary numbers can help us in probability and statistics at all (unlikely really), it is still really neat what you did there!
the difference between this and the currently rerunning J&W storyline is, uh, jarring
Walkyverse Dorothy is only there for the cake.
Nah, really she’s there for the punch.
I love this punchline.
Also, Dorothy’s probably not just here for cake, but if she had a sweet tooth, that would indeed be endearing.
Whether or not inviting Ethan is a mistake is an interesting thing. I guess last we saw him, he was really not keen on Danny or Amber for different reasons, so it’s possible he just has been keeping his space from all of them.
Yeah gotta admit, Becky’s last line there is a pretty good burn. Got a chuckle out of me.
Dorothy will eat pudding cups without a spoon if necessary (when she’s in manic study mode). I’m pretty sure she has at least a bit of a sweet tooth.
Manic study mode… one of the only things I personally enjoy MORE than sweets!!!
or even cannabis for that matterWhile I was able to accomplish a LOT durung such times, my retention of such was abysmal beyond the relevant semester. Did you have methods which allowed you to improve retention during such times?
1. Use the Memory Palace technique.
2. Don’t cram. Space out your repetition and review.
3. GET SLEEP!!!! If you don’t sleep, nothing else you do will matter. Even if you can’t fall asleep for whatever reason, know that just closing your eyes is restorative, and it’s better than nothing.
4. Use the Pomodoro Technique for studying.
5. Exercise during your breaks! Preferably aerobic, but walking is also really good! Exercise releases BDNF and other chemicals that enhance cognition, memory, and many other aspects of your health!!!
6. Eat foods like legumes, grains, healthy fats and complex carbs that slowly release their energy throughout the day.
7. Eliminate distractions like social media and what not. Personally I set my phone so that the only notifications I get are for text messages — for email and everything else, I dedicate a specific time of day to checking them.
So yeah those are my tips for studying. Now I’m off to cook some sesame chicken — A.K.A. the heroin of the food court!
She took Becky’s peace offering donut that one time, too.
Sugary baked goods must be one of Dorothy’s few known weaknesses.
WELL TOO BAD, YOU BECOME DOROTHY’S FRIEND AND YOU GET BACKUP MOMMING.
see, it’s in the contract, page 47, section 5, subsection q, point 1.
Pretty much my thought too.
Oh, they sent out a facebook invite. So it’s just going to be Dorothy then.
I say no, because if cake was the main motivator there’d be like 15 other people already there trying to claim theirs.
Dorothy is here for the cake but she was secretly hoping for a different flavor so now she is here for the people
Okay, but what’s up with Ethan?
Also, just went back a bit and noticed he’s not on the cast banner at the start?
He’s still on the cast page at least. There will probably be a big reveal at some point. Not sure we can say the same for Jacob.
I don’t think Jacob’s necessarily going to have had a big change the way Ethan’s implied to be, but I’m reasonably sure he’ll show up again at some point. (Probably not in Joyce’s or Sarah’s storyline, at least not immediately, but I think he’s off-limits in Patreon voting and that says to me there IS potential for him to come back later.) Jacob’s current arc with Joyce was done, but we’ve seen him play off Joe well, he’s Ethan’s roommate and Ethan’s clearly got more storyline, and he’s a generally useful character to have in reserve, not just as a target to be fought over in Raidah and Sarah’s feud.
He’s the Campus Butt Stabber. He crawls around at night with a knife in his mouth, looking for unsuspecting butts to stab. So far, he’s been unsuccessful, probably because he keeps giggling maniacally while he’s approaching people.
He’s mysteriously absent. He and Amber aren’t really friends anymore, and apparently he’s got a bit of an Emo thing going on but that’s all we really know.
Mike’s death and the events of the kidnapping seem to have hit him a lot harder than the rest of the cast.
Pretty sure Dorothy isn’t human
Becky in the last panel might be fibbing.
Dorothy’s here because she wrote “do something social” in her bullet journal
Why the hell are they eating on the floor of a public space, that’s so gross
It’s in tribute to Beckymom being a slob
(Impressive that Joyce pulls it off, though)
I know right?
Nobody eats out in public.
Is that supposed to be a double-ententre?
If so, that’s some wicked good humor you have!!!
Thanks Wag.
I think Will and Stacy would disagree.
It’s not like they’re eating cake directly off the floor. They have plates.
I love that in addition to the joke about Dorothy momming on Becky in panel 5, we also have Joyce momming on Becky in panel 2
Obviously Dorothy’s not here just for the cake. This is her room where she sleeps and, more importantly, studies.
Aaaaand cancel all that. I’m blind.
More allusions to Bonnie’s depression. I’m hoping this goes somewhere interesting.
Ohh, it wasn’t only me!
That Becky’s speech gave me some hints about Bonnie, and how so hard her life could be…
Leslie: BUT I WANT TO BE YOUR MOM!
YOU HEARD HER DOROTHY, SHE’S NOT LOOKING FOR A NEW MOM ANY LONGER, SO BACK OFF
Well, Becky had to get it from somewhere and it wasn’t plausible for it to be her dad!
Get what? Sorry, but there’s just too many posts too far down to tell if you’re responding to the strip or someone else’s reply.
The slobbiness? Nah. If Ross turned out to be tidy, that would be a surprise, not something we’d expect. Seriously, it’s like the only skill he ever bothered to develop was learning to sound like a Hollywood depiction of a reverend from Puritan times!
It’s kind of been implied Bonnie had to basically wipe her husband’s butt for him for their entire marriage. Bonnie also being “domestically impaired” and thus it could have been her where Becky got it is news.
Y
Dorothy looks SUPER CUTE in pink though!!! ♥
So first step is Legally Blonde, then Congressional Representative Rose, and cap it off with Presidentially Pink? Yeah, I’d vote for that. Oh wait. I’m not American. Oh well.
President Dorothy Keener: “I don’t get mad, I was just disappointed. And since I have control of the nuclear codes, my disappointment is not to be earned lightly.”
Becky having nightmares about Dotty nuking her for not washing the dishes or putting the laundry away.
Might as well use a fire hose to get rid of a spider.
Hey, it gets rid of the spider and cleans the wall you aimed it at. I mean, it may clean the wall of the paint on it, but still.
Provided your local city or county doesn’t reduce fire hose pressure due to “budget cuts”, it’ll probably also leave a dent of some kind if you spray it against the wall.
Leave a dent on the wall… oh right you make your walls out of cardboard…
Hey now. Carboard retains *some* tensile strength when wet. Gypsum wall board just sogs into a wet puddle.
Have you even seen a fire hose in action before?
Is hate to use such an example, but they’re sometimes used by policemen to blast and incapacitate protesters.
Now, use a nuke to get rid of the spider and you won’t have to worry about such petty things as “city councils” and “budget cuts”.
Giant Mutant Spiders Might become an issue though.
Yeah, they’re a massive hazard in Fukushima.
Good thing the Japanese have plenty of experience fighting Kaijuu
Nice to see how Becky is loved by her friends ♡.
C’mon dorothy we all know that’s worse
Just because Becky’s mom was a slob doesn’t mean Becky has to be one too. I’ve said this before, but two years in a row of roommates who were slobs was the main reason I got single rooms in my last two years of college.
it doesn’t, she’s using that as an excuse.
Am I the only person to read Joyce and Wally! first before reading Dumbing of Age? J&W today Joyce arrived just in time to stop Dorothy pounding on Walky and the first words out of Dorothy today on DofA is “Hey, did I make in time?” Meta level of coincidence!
Wow, didn’t figured it out. I thought Willis just update J&W to bring old pages he drew.
The callback is strong with this one.
Great comeback to “I’m not mad, just disappointed.”
I have had friends whose moms were slobs, so I had a couple expectations when Becky mentioned her mom was. They were not disappointed.
I’m just here for the cake.
Obligatory “The cake is a lie” joke.
Mandatory “it’s already been done” response.
Redundant “cake is a lie” retort.
I’d kinda thought her Pile of Lesbos was getting out of control, but I see now, it’s just her SlobMom shrine.
Of course Dorothy didn’t just come for cake! There’s a balloon there too.
Now I want cake.
Oh, right. The last time Ethan actually appeared in the comic was August 16 2020, just over a year ago.
Oh wow, I’ve been back a year now.
I came back and I got rid of Ethan. This rocks!
The alt text reminds me of a Jim Gaffigan bit:
“Hey, it’s Bob’s birthday!”
“I don’t care, I hate that guy.
“There’s gonna be cake!”
“…Well, I should at least say hello”
Nobody use Facebook anymore, Joyce.
(OK, I just don’t know what’s year of DoA).
I still use because my relatives and old friends. I’m millenial who get angry on Twitter.
I believe DoA is squarely in comic time.
That said, I assure you, people still use Facebook. For example, all of my religious family members use it religiously. In both of the senses of that word of which I’m familiar.
Given Joyce’s family, I expect that she still perceives it as something that’s in mainstream use.
Yep. DoA is sliding scale ‘the present.’ Danny and Amber went from DSes to 3DSes to Switches, the freshmen experienced lockdown (but COVID hasn’t been covered in, essentially, the hopes it’s temporary so masks would later be anachronistic past being needed and the fact that it would have broken the plot in 2020,) and Joe’s ‘presidential’ dig in 2017 or so was in fact referring to Trump.
There’s no way she opens with that smarminess and is just here for the cake
She’s here to crack Becky and stake a claim in her heart of hearts
I mean I don’t think Dorothy is ONLY there for the cake.