Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
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Obviously the move is to make three boxes of kraft and they each get their own sauce pan. Done. Anything less than a whole box is grossly insufficient and disrespectful to Mac&Cheesus, our lord and savior.
I have fond memories of an all day gaming session where four of us made four boxes in one pot — we did have bowls though. (and we were teenage boys so I think some of us were still hungry after)
I have! A decent sauce can make even a crummy steak good. Even the worst steak leaves some fond on the pan, add a chopped shallot (cost you less than 50 cents), some butter, de-glaze with a bit of Worcestershire, and you’ve got a pan sauce.
Your $5 steak is now as good as a $25 dollar steak.
A1 is good though. I mean I usually just don’t bother buying the tough as hell little ribeyes, if I don’t have the money for at least a flank steak or something I just don’t buy steak, but you can make a pan sauce that goes well with A1.
Y’see, that’s what I don’t get: why have a cheap, crummy steak rather than something else at the same price but good? I don’t understand either what “poorly made” means, is it the cut? I know some countries have different cutting/slicing traditions, but is it that bad? I mean you can alway recut it a bit?
Poorly made in this case would be like, not tenderized and cooked too long for the cut. I.E. someone done fucked up the steak but you need to eat it anyway so you put a little tasty flavor on it.
a bad steak is better complimented by the addition of caramelized onions and mushrooms
that said, it’s a bit disrespectful to the caramelized onions and mushrooms to put them with a steak when they’re so perfect on their own, so sauce is probably fine
I had to look up a whole disambiguation page to find.
It’s not even that interesting.
I now know more about fast food that I’ll never eat and never even would want to eat than about, say, hmong linguistics or peul empire history, and that somehow makes me feel ashamed…
Because it goes well on hamburgers and chicken sandwiches too … much better than that glorified Thousand Island dressing McD’s tries to pass of as their “special sauce” on a Big Mac. In fact, they even did a commercial once in which they noted that hamburger was ground-up steak, not ground-up ham – so if you put A-1 on a steak, why N̲O̲T̲ put it on a hamburger?
Pretty sure it’s just the brand. Far as I know it’s only in the states so I don’t ever interact with it, but it feels very much to me like how people say French’s mustard
I mean, so much of Becky’s idea of a relationship with Joyce was based on (what she thought was) their shared faith that the whole Joyce-Atheism thing may finally have been the nail in that coffin.
Pretend I can actually write Joyce dialogue.
“Becky. I wasn’t being honest with myself (despite my opening pining for Dorothy and my gushing about Sal’s river of chocolate hair). Neither of us would have been happy if you made a move before and you? You are now taken. And I <know you love Dina more than you’ll regret not being available when I had m-my BI Awakening. So let’s just agree to stay friends, and leave it at that.”
Well you only can find homemade mac and cheese here (which means you don’t find mac and cheese), so I made it once and nobody home liked it, so Willis may be on something. Drugs concealed as food additive in the Kraft recipe, possibily, but still.
Hmm, do ya think maybe I should just stop cooking them in literal mud, then? The mind-control spores don’t cook out regardless, but I could at least make them taste better.
100% agreement. My family adds mushrooms to the lasagna, and I haven’t had it in years, since grandma passed. She’d make one without the shrooms cause she knew some (myself and my brother) hated them. Rest of the family ain’t that nice.
wtf? Without going my mum’s length who always made a specific meal for each picky eater (which I wasn’t), I always make a part of the meal without the thing my kids don’t like – not a separated lasagna plate, but a half with what they like better. It’s not that nice, it’s basic consideration….
Even as someone who consistently makes his Mac and Cheese too solid, I still have concerns about your assertion it is something that should be measured in *slices*…
@moon, sorry if that sounded curt , I guess I’m just tired of people complaining that Taco Bell isn’t “real Mexican food”. It’s not supposed to be, and it doesn’t need to be to be good, you know?
Possibly, but there was only one box on the counter, very little amount of butter, and that pot looks like a one serving of mac and cheese. I’m not holding hope. But I can also eat two boxes myself so I may be a little off on how normal people eat mac and cheese.
Re: new poll, there’s no “hot sauce AND pepper” option so I picked pepper. I mean I guess I could’ve picked “everything” but I’m not putting hot dogs in my mac and cheese WTF
There are some things I like sauce on (though seldom hot sauce), but mac and cheese is not one of those, no. Honestly I probably only eat it at all a handful of times per year, it’s had a tendency in the past to make me physically nauseous if it’s not just right—but I don’t know what the preparatory conditions for “just right” are.
Gruyere is actually really good in homemade mac n cheese. I wouldn’t eat it with Kraft, though, because if I wanna eat Kraft then I just wanna eat Kraft.
I chose “never”, because I don’t even know if it exists in the UK. As far as I know the options here are a) buy it completely pre-made in the ready-meals aisle or b) make it from scratch.
I went with everything because I do a whole bunch of different stuff. Technically I’ve never put black pepper in (which is usually what pepper on its own means) but I have put in jalapeno peppers. And onions. Hot dogs are nice in there, but if you’ve ever had bacon as an option that’s like 200% better. Haven’t done panko yet, but I know restaurants serve them with bread crumbs so that’s on the list to try some day
Kraft does sell some stuff here, but I’ve never, ever seen their mac and cheese in the shops. I’ve had Heinz tinned macaroni cheese…. never thought to add anything to it. But if I did, i’d probably add carrots in a feeble attempt to be healthy.
For me, my “never” vote was partly protest against there being no mix option that wasn’t “everything”, and partly because as I mentioned above it often makes makes me nauseous.
I know Joyce is supposed to be straight but it would be awesome if she wasn’t. Then her and Dorothy can get married and rule the world together, one box of mac and cheese at a time.
I’d just appreciate some more bi rep personally. they wouldn’t even have to hook up, it would just be nice to know Joyce at least thinks about it. But overly close, platonic, infatuation is okay too…I guess.
Problem is, even if Joyce has some bi-tendencies (her conversation with Billie/Jennifer a long time ago), we have not seen anything similar from Dorothy.
In theory, we could get a story arc where Joyce decides she is bi, tries to kiss Dorothy, but Dorothy reject her (sort of the mirror image of Joyce/Becky)
We’ve even got a textual ‘I’m completely straight as far as I can tell’ from Dorothy at one point, and Joyce has also flat out said that she can only imagine being with a woman if parts below the neck don’t exist.
It is certainky possible people are imagining joyce’s interest in women/bisexuality.
But… She did become… Obsessesd with billie’s/jennifer’s breasts in one strip (i can crawl into them and be safe and warm forever). So it is something to indicate she is interested in more than just “above the neck”. (Unlless of course the strip was meant as a one-off joke rather than evidence of joyce liking the female body)
Yeah, I’m not completely aboard the bi-Joyce train, but there’s at least textual evidence. It’s funny that gets hashed out at length every time it comes up, with the assumption that if Joyce is bi she’ll obviously hook up with Dorothy, who’s shown no such signs.
Yeah, FWIW I’m aboard the “Joyce might be biromantic at least” theory-train myself, but barring the comic stating it outright I’m not going to claim it myself as anything more than just a theory about where the comic will go–certainly not taking it as “Joyce being bi is 100% canon already and there’s no doubt about it”.
This is gonna sound bad but I’d prefer Joyce just be straight. I feel like her chemistry with Dorothy is so good it makes people ship them. But I honestly think her being straight works well for her character. Just my opinion though.
Joyce herself once said that growing up with Becky skewed the way she perceives platonic friendship with other women. Whether that’s putting the cart before the horse is another question.
Well, this is nice for now! Let’s see how it goes.
My closest experience with people being huffy in a steakhouse is my friends or my boyfriend’s family forgetting I need to order my meat medium well or well done for health reasons and teasing me about it. XD
the point is they’re good kids who don’t do drugs on principle, even if it’s just marijuana
but no worries, i for one totally understand overthinking things and potentially ruining the joke by going through those thoughts aloud. (although i feel like it could be seen as condescending rather than earnestly informative, in a sort of “you sheeple watch too many lifetime movies; get woke” kinda way? but it’s nbd)
Pot stimulates salivation and taste buds. Everything is like you’ve eaten it for the first time.
ALSO BTW I couldn’t reply to yesterday’s thread and I’m falling asleep so even though I’ve got #opinions about this strip, I’ve came here only to high-five you, Slick ^^ Yay for genderfluid rep around these places indeed! Our numbers grooooow 8D And it always gives me such a rush of happiness too!
Re: Pot, kinda interesting you say that, for me for some reason it just makes things saltier, but along with all other kinds of marvelous effects, it makes orgasms feel out of this world!!! I guess given the nature of pot, everyone has a unique experience. On that note, I wonder just how many other neurodivergents around here have actually tried it before.
Re: Genderfluid, I know, right?!?! Believe it or not, when I was tweaking the colors of my avatar some time ago, I actually wound up using the colors of the genderfluid flag!! Pretty cool, huh?
Man, glad I looked up, cause yeah, that’s what I wanna say too. Becky would probably have no problems eating out of a pot. Dorothy most DEFINITELY wouldn’t, the prude, and Joyce…I dunno, something just doesn’t let me think she’d eat out of the pot. Can’t pin why, it just doesn’t seem like something Joyce would do.
I think the pertinent question is less whether Becky is being meaner than usual and more whether or not it was right to begin with.
Teasing your friends is fun, because it comes with the assurance that whatever you’re saying it’s coming from a place of love. If I am teasing someone, it’s because I like them enough that I can say that and they won’t hate me, and vice versa; poking the bear is fun!
But with how Joyce and Becky’s friendship has been recontextualized since the Faith-Off began, I don’t think Joyce ever established a boundary of “joking about my neuroses is funny!” so much as she just lets Becky say whatever she wants. It’s fine because it’s Becky, her lifelong best friend who she loves more than anyone in the world, and Becky, someone who grew up in an environment of conditional love by way of authoritarian parenting, feels safe poking the bear because Joyce is never going to stop liking her.
It’s a pretty consistent aspect of Joyce’s relationships within the cast that it is okay to laugh at her. She’s a dumb fundie, she’s gay for Dorothy, you can pay her money to swear, and her food taste is bland. It’s fine to laugh at Joyce because Joyce is being a weirdo in ways that are amusing to someone else, and they’re amusing in a way that she’s wrong for getting mad about.
I talk about Joe like he is perfect boyfriend material, this is because he is and you can’t tell me otherwise, but the first thing he says to her upon pairing up in bio class is that Joyce being a big dumb fundie is going to be a problem for him. It’s fine to make fun of Joyce directly to her face, because Joyce thinks Satan put dinosaur bones in the ground to trick us and thinks the Earth is 6000 years old. He only changes his tune when Joyce tells him that she’s an atheist and that it’s a big deal, whereupon he begins carrying some emotional labour for her, but there’s yet to be any indication that he thinks he did wrong previously, much the same way that I would not care if I thought a YEC was stupid. They are stupid.
(the subtext I’m getting at is that the cast treats Joyce the way Joyce has started treating Becky when they argue about their belief in God)
Becky’s acted like this to Joyce the entire series, it’s just been funny. Not “seen as” funny or anything, I’m not retroactively declaring their entire friendship as Problematic, but the total lack of boundaries they had for the other was rooted in black & white codependent thinking that, now that it’s out in the open by way of a consequence occurring once Joyce went off-script for the first time ever and Becky and Dorothy felt entitled to know what was going on, it’s easier to see that the overwhelming love and affection for Joyce that Becky has is something that’s got a bit of darkness to it that they’ll need to work through.
Yup. It’s always been part of their friendship. Apparently since they were little kids. I get that some people don’t like it, but at this point, Becky not teasing Joyce would abnormal, a acceptance that something was broken between them.
Maybe it is and they need to renegotiate that, but right now it seems intended to show that things haven’t changed that much. They can still be normal, despite the conflict.
I wonder, are these nice bowls? Just since you can totally get like a whole stack of cheapie plastic bowls for like a couple of bucks, so unless she’s fucked a bunch of them up, it’s wild she only has the two.
I only had 2 living on campus. What does a college student need with more than 2? I just need one to use when I’m too lazy/depressed/ADHD to wash the other.
Joyce’s “fussy kid” food preferences – too fussy even for the very kid-friendly hot dogs in macaroni and cheese variation – remind me of my relatives from back East, most of whom are too afraid to eat anything more “exotic” than chicken soft taco from Taco Bell. And there’s one uncle in particular who raves about Fuddruckers…and the only thing he ever gets is a plain hamburger, with ketchup on it. I am not one of those who feel that it’s not real food unless you’re inflicting severe pain on the spice receptors in your tongue or want to cover the world in the Dark Side of Cooking (cilantro! mango chutney!) but, yeeeeeeesh, I don’t get it, people.
I’m not a fan either, but it’s notable that even such a kid-centric dish as that is unthinkable to Joyce, and that her objection to it is that it’s altering the recipe on the box. She probably wouldn’t like broccoli in there either, which is the best thing to put in macaroni, in this or any universe. I am Barf! I have spoken!
I started experimenting with more cooking techniques and spices after I got my own place. Since the Hereditary GI Problems Fairy has apparently passed me by, I don’t have to cling to food as spicy as a steamed carrot.
I’d suspect that she’d have been fine with hot dogs in mac and cheese if that’s the way she’d been introduced to it as a little kid, but since it isn’t they’re forbidden.
Of course, then she would have been freaked out when she tried to make it herself and the directions didn’t include the dogs.
I’m standing by my take: This chapter ends in Joyce recklessly kissing Dorothy without thinking and Becky seeing, Dorothy not reciprocating, and Joyce ending the chapter alone, probably on Valentine’s Day. Becky’s last line is dramatic irony foreshadowing.
I add pace picante sauce when I eat it
Which is not often because I can barely digest dairy so if I’m having dairy it’s not likely to be Kraft Mac and cheese. it’s gonna be pizza tbh.
My dad uses Pace as a sort of pasta sauce base (pace + extra onion + hamburger + a little sour cream, on pasta – it’s very tasty), so I’d bet it could be a soup.
Washington Post has a recipe for a red lentil salsa soup that uses a jar of whatever salsa you prefer, and my wife and I love it. Very quick and easy and great with cornbread.
You think sharing germs is gonna freak her out? Wait until she finds out about sucking face and swapping spit!! (at least that’s what we called it back when I was Joyce’s age…)
Re: the poll, I usually make Anne’s Organics brand Mac & Cheese. So Kraft is pretty much never. Only when my brother makes some and I eat some of his.
You are also missing broccoli for the add-ins.
I stopped eating Kraft mac and cheese; now it’s all texture with no flavour. My new first choice is “President’s Choice White Cheddar Deluxe Macaroni & Cheese Dinner.” I add grated cheese, ham, and a bit of black pepper for extra deliciousness.
honestly, how is the poll missing “a handful of extra cheese”? it’s the only thing you need. kraft straight from the box is perfect but sometimes a bit of extra cheese and gooeyness can make it even more perfect.
Dorothy seems like the sort who would not only insist on bowls but would also prefer if everyone sat down at a table rather than standing in the kitchen or sitting in front of the TV like you should when eating Kraft Dinner.
Tbh that can be pretty nice living on campus. I remember on my last Halloween before the world ended, after the big dorm party outside my mom/wifefriend upstairs made a big proper dinner and juice, our guy friends pushed all the tables in the common area together and we had like a real “family” dinner together. It was healing for the soul
Yeah, I always just keep the pot and put the mac and cheese I want to eat on a plate and eat it that way. If nobody else is eating with me, I can serve myself seconds from the pot if I’m still hungry after the first plate.
It’s weird how friendly teasing stops feeling like friendly teasing after bitter fights that recontextualize your whole friendship that just capped off with the two of them admitting they are now total strangers.
The new “chess match” texture is interesting, though. And it shows that the “total strangers” thing was an exaggeration. They know each other well enough to plan moves within moves.
Speaking as one of the loudest shouters for “It’s Joyce who’s being the jerk with her New Atheism nonsense”, I just want to firmly state that it is definitely Becky who’s being the jerk here.
I just really hope everyone here who’s gone off about Edgy Atheism the past two months does not treat actual real life people who’ve undergone horrible trauma at the hands of an institution of massive cultural devastation as annoying children.
I’m going to be extremely real for a moment, but I wasn’t expecting a place like the Dumbing of Age commentariat to be so meticulously upholding of the honour of the thing that coulda made go homeless if my dad didn’t love me more than he loved all the bullshit he was taught to think that led him to casually express homophobic jokes. That’s ‘coulda,’ I feel like this would be a much harsher conversation had my suffering occurred and not been a looming and expectant Sword of Damocles.
Like, I’m extremely lucky there, I didn’t just have to compromise and stop being bisexual around him so I wouldn’t die, I didn’t have to tearfully thank him for accepting my freakish, dick-sucking self, he radically altered his every thought process on how he processed the existence of queer men so I would not only feel safe, but accepted. He fucking set me up on a dating site once and specified “find a nice girl or boy!” for fuck’s sake.
But I was terrified as the truth finally crawled out of my throat in a public restaurant, and if my life did go down the shitter, would I still be an Edgy Atheist if I spoke the truth to the thing that caused it? Is the fact that my dad did right by me being miraculous not the most fundamentally brazen proof that shit has gone wrong?
How the hell do you even get to be angry at the Christian church without being a New/Problematic/Edgy Atheist or whatever? Because it feels like y’all just wanna shut down anything to contrary because if no one’s talking about the problem, then the problem doesn’t exist.
I’m happy things worked out for you, family-wise, and you weren’t Leslie’d or Becky’d instead!
I was DEFINITELY expecting the DoA commentariat to do exactly that, though, because the whole beef so many people have with Roz started exactly when she didn’t immediately cave to the pretty christian girl’s accusations of her being a “hell-bound whore”.
“I liked Joyce when she dated Ethan to turn him straight” feels like the kind of thing I would write as a parody of how we capitulate to the harm caused by the majority where all they have to do is “mean well” or learn a lesson after ruining someone’s day, and it’s something I’ve seen written with complete sincerity like three times.
I feel like one of the issues with Joyce is, to a point it doesn’t entirely feel like she’s earned all of her anger.
She’s angry about things that arguably hurt Becky far more than her, something that made her hurt other people, which of course in turn hurt Joyce as well, but…it doesn’t ring quite as earned as if Becky were the angry atheist.
I relate a lot to Joyce because I was an angry atheist too (I’ve had some time to find some peace by now), but I also am transmasc myself and being a christian was seriously painful for me. Everything that I am was WRONG to my religion. I couldn’t just pretend everything was okay because the religion targeted me specifically as well as the people around me.
That’s not something Joyce had. If she didn’t have Becky or any of her other friends who were there straining her religious stances, then all Joyce would have is the clenched feeling of having to pretend the pseudoscience makes sense and a lot of sexual repression. This isn’t nothing, but when she’s shouting about how angry she is and she lets that anger hurt Becky who was hurt by religion far more than she was? That’s kind of messed up.
I don’t think it’s wrong for Joyce to be angry. I don’t think the comic thinks it’s wrong either. What’s wrong is the way she addressed it to the people around her.
There’s a missing brand of angry atheist in the mix here. It’d be nice to see somebody else go through this who has every possible reason to be angry, or somebody who is angry and doesn’t take it out on people who don’t deserve it.
But I do also relate to some of Joyce’s misdirected anger. The messy anger that doesn’t help anyone except her. I went through that too, even if I “earned” a little more of mine. The trauma and that absolute, blinking in the sun breakthrough, the brain unclench, it makes you messy.
I love Joyce. I’m glad she and Becky are riding this out. I didn’t see the comments you were referring to, but yeah, Joyce should be allowed to be angry, as long as she learns to point that anger the right direction.
I feel like one of the issues with Joyce is, to a point it doesn’t entirely feel like she’s earned all of her anger.
She’s angry about things that arguably hurt Becky far more than her, something that made her hurt other people, which of course in turn hurt Joyce as well, but…it doesn’t ring quite as earned as if Becky were the angry atheist.
She was drugged and assaulted by the son of a pastor, nearly shot in the face by Becky’s dad, her mother got that guy released so he could kidnap Joyce and all her friends, and she was taught to believe objective falsehoods that everyone around her constantly laughed at her for parroting.
What the fuck else does she need to have happen before she’s allowed to have a beef?
I think he meant more that Joyce’s anger is something that seems to be coming from “Becky suffered, and I’m mad about that!”
Which, Becky’s suffering certainly helped with that, it started with Joyce refusing to believe she deserved to go to Hell, except Hell is a factually real place to Joyce where you have to obey certain rules so as not to go, so Joyce had to find a way to cheat by squaring her literal reading of the bible with Becky.
Then all the bullshit happened and the problem was due to Joyce’s cultural upbringing as an American fundie.
I think Joyce has a right to be angry. And I do think her friends (Mostly Sarah and Dorothy) should/could have been more understanding. They are how ever hardly equipped to deal with that situation, because they can’t really understand what Joyce went trough.
But I also think that Joyce did some shitty things and lashed out at the wrong people. Regarding her falling out with Becky I always though that both had a point but could have dealt with the situation better. And sometimes friendships just come to an natural end point, with out someone being the “bad guy”.
When it comes to the thing with Ruth and Jason Joyce was just out of line. She should have minded her own business.
Now that I think about it Joyce and Becky do have in common that they are not great with boundaries.
TBH, “I hate the church because it creates bigots” hits a whole hell of a lot different than “I hate the church because it’s dumb to think dinosaurs were vegetarians before the magic garden kicked out humanity”.
That is what being raised as a biblical literalist does to you, yeah.
Also I think the near-rape, attempted murder, being violently thrown into a speeding car twice in one day, and her mom repeatedly insisting that all of this was acceptable because it was by her team had more to do with it than all the stupid bullshit she was taught to treat as fact that everyone loved to laugh at her for. Do you think Joyce woke up one day in between all that and went “huh, maybe there weren’t dinosaurs on the ark” and that’s it?
I don’t know what it is about North American Christianity that’s in danger of being harmed by its fucking victims that so many of you feel the need to cape for it on the level of “saying bad things about them makes you problematic.”
*shrugs* Fuck Christianity, and it’s perfectly fine that trauma is messy. I’m not mad at Joyce, even. You’re not taking this to any less extremes than anyone else is.
With the latter, it can be hard to tell that someone is just aiming at an actual institution and not every human being who’s anything less than some bullshit, pseudoscientific, often pretty damn racist ideal of rationality. Dorothy ought to know better. Most people ought to give the benefit of the doubt, especially considering it’s obvious Joyce has encountered both. But there is a difference between hating something based on actual harm done and… not.
Upon reflection, I feel like a lack of context in my response did make some negative implications, and I’m sorry for that; this is a pretty emotionally fraught topic and even if it is for me as well, I should be more careful.
Maybe not in today’s comment section, but there have definitely been some repeat commenters in the past two months who’ve declared that any religious person is either a victim or morally equivalent to the Nazis, for instance. In their words.
(It’s part of why I’ve mostly withdrawn from this whole aspect of debating in the comments altogether, for my part.)
It’s comparable. More filling, though, on account of there being butter and milk in the recipe. OTOH, means you need to have butter and milk to make it properly.
Well, everything is fine now? Becky and Joyce are friends again and their will eat together like good friends. Becky will have fun seeing Joyce struggling with food and there’s not even a tiny bit of possibility that all of this will return to be a huge discussion between them. Good♡.
I only knew Mac & Cheese through Willis and whatever meager glimpses he offered made me fear for the worst when someone insisted on making it for dinner. Turns out it’s actually pretty decent! Homemade Mac & Cheese, mind you, with bell peppers and bacon added.
Joyce’s peculiarities remind me of a friend who laboured under the impression that sugared macaroni constitutes a dinner.
I have never eaten Kraft macaroni and cheese in my 41 years of life, and don’t intend to start, so I can’t relate to these arguments or nostalgic feelings regarding it.
Also, as a picky eater, anything I eat is always MY way. If it happens to go along with the cook’s way, fine. But if not, oh well. I do believe that good steak doesn’t need sauce, but I won’t be sauced-shamed if I do add it.
You’re not missing anything. Velveeta Shells & Cheese is superior in every way. I grew up with Velveeta Shells & Cheese and had Kraft for the first time in college and my reaction was, “Why would you buy this when the Velveeta Shells & Cheese was RIGHT THERE?”
For real. Great Value mac is also a superior option. If I want blunt-force cheese flavor in my mouth, leaving chemical burns on my tongue, I’ll just huff a bag of crunchy Cheetos.
hah, kraft was for the rich bastards ….. we poor unwashed unworthy slobs had to settle for off brand slop like Anthonys as kids.. occasionally we were blessed to be able to add tuna or hamburger.. but the most only thing that was added was ketchup cause we were also eating made of slightly higher than cat food grade turkey bits off the floor hot dogs ….. no I’m not bitter … well much anyways
Steak house getting Huffy if you ask for A-1? Jeeze, I want to go her steak houses. I practically have to threaten waitstaff to keep that shit off my table and away from my perfectly tasty steak.
For real, some places are friggin’ aggressive with those condiments and such. Went to Chili’s recently and got a burger, and the waitperson I swear came by like every 90 seconds on the dot, asking us questions we’d either already answered or physically couldn’t because we were chewing. Put five of us at the smallest table, then decided to just put stuff in front of us before we could move other stuff, too. I wanna go to these places where they get an attitude if you want something, so I can just eat in peace without sensory overload.
Some kids (~11yos) were having a discussion today that was like this:
Kid 1: “I’m kind of a picky eater, I don’t like lots of things.”
Kid 2: “Like what?”
Kid 1: “Like, I don’t like mushrooms, tomotoes…”
Kid 2: “Okay, okay.”
Kid 1: “I don’t like mac and cheese…”
Kid 2 & other kids who weren’t even in the conversation: “WHAT?!?!?!”
I’ve been “predicting” a falling out between Joyce, Dorothy and Becky, which I’m thinking will happen here (to my dismay, probably, since I thought it would happen two other times this chapter, but having both of them in the same room feels like the most ripe for juicy drama), and while part of that feels to me as the natural conclusion to what’s gone on since the Faith-Off, the other part is mostly that I think it’d be most interesting.
For lack of a better way to put this, I think the relationship between Joyce, Dorothy and Becky has been unequal long before it eventually became what I see as a major subtextual element come these last two chapters, and so I’m hoping that everything just collapses really hard in such a way that when they eventually become friends again, it doesn’t feel so much like Joyce fawning and slavishly submitting to the other two.
I feel like the curtain’s been pulled back so hard on the dynamic these three share that returning to it with a big “let’s talk about feelings :)” moment doesn’t seem like it’d be enough. Much like how Ethan’s in a point where he honestly can’t bring himself to give a shit about Amber’s drama, I think it’d be interesting for Joyce to be in a place where Dorothy can’t gently handhold her and for her to not have to dither over Becky. Amber got herself another tall, well-chinned dude to be emotionally supportive except Joe’s supportive in a way that’s, like, actually meaningfully helpful to her like Walky was on Garbage Roof, and it sounds like a lot of fun, and more importantly, like a fount for tons of drama, if Joyce’s two main friendships in the comic suddenly got the rug pulled out from under her.
AND THEN SHE’LL HAVE NO ONE TO TURN TO BUT JOE AND THEN ROMANCE???
I say, mostly ironically. But only mostly.
(More likely it will just be more drama but drama with romantic tension this time. Which, being honest, I am The Most Game For. Give it to me. GIVE IT TO MEEEE.)
not a lot to say about this mary worth other than i was curious how you make vegan lasagna and i looked it up and received psychic damage from three-to-four different revulsions/phobias
today in #9chickweedlane i learned that despite being ostensibly new yorkers, the characters in this strip sure like to talk about british royalty all the time
For April's second bonus strip, we see ROBIN in an unused strip that would've run April 16! But didn't! Read this bonus strip and hundreds of previous at the Dumbing of Age Patreon: patreon.com/dumbingofage
and remember you can always pledge up to read tomorrow's strip right the eff now
CBS on the cardinals: "One thing we know they're not doing is checking Instagram because their devices have all been confiscated. I believe the kids call it rawdogging."
if you want to know my secret to finishing 6 strips in two days, it's -- you know it -- autism and blaring NES Ducktales Moon Theme nonstop for 36 hours, but i repeat myself
WEEKLY WEDNESDAY @tfwiki.net PIC TWOFER!
It's nigh two minutes on two Generation Two toys that are too expensive, the unreleased Laser Cycles SOUNDWAVE and JAZZ! Man I hope we get a Legacy-molded Soundwave bike someday, but I ain't holding my breath.
youtube.com/shorts/v_S44...
before this skybound kickstarter ends, can we talk about how, no, you can't just draw optimus prime's season 2 revision head and color the eyes yellow and have it be a marvel optimus
marvel optimus never had the season 2 revision head
question: does the UK still call the ninja turtles the hero turtles, and if not, how far back did they stop
in other words, would dumbing of age's jason, who's like 22, still call them the hero turtles
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
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a rookie mistake
ONE BOWL IS PLENTY
Obviously the move is to make three boxes of kraft and they each get their own sauce pan. Done. Anything less than a whole box is grossly insufficient and disrespectful to Mac&Cheesus, our lord and savior.
I have fond memories of an all day gaming session where four of us made four boxes in one pot — we did have bowls though. (and we were teenage boys so I think some of us were still hungry after)
Hear, hear.
Dottie doesn’t need her own bowl. Two get bowls, the third eats out of the saucepan.
THE WAY YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO EAT IT
I was going to make a snarky comment about calling a pot a sauce pan, but then google showed me that I’m the one who’s been wrong his whole life.
But you’re right about eating it straight out of the saucepan (that still feels weird lol). Why bother getting any other dishes dirty?
“then google showed me that I’m the one who’s been wrong his whole life”
How are you going to handle moving forwards from this disappoting development?
If it’s a metal thing with a handle, and you put it on the stove to cook things in, it’s a pot. That’s the rule.
Frying pans are not pots.
Seems like there needs to be some kind of height/width ratio rule.
That’s a fair point. If it’s obviously wide and flat, it’s a skillet. The deepish ones are pots.
What’s a dutch oven then
The best cookware ever invented
Pots have two handles. Pans have one.
btw, yesterday’s alt, Heathcliff isn’t the orange perfection.
Becky is. (maybe I guess, dunno)
As someone who has first tasted A1…
OH GOSH MY TONGUE
Ate at a service plaza on the New Jersey Turnpike. My meal came with mashed potatoes and gravy. I got mashed potatoes with A1 sauce on them. Ghastly.
I honestly think A1 is okay if you get it on, like, a burger. Five Guys offers A1, it’s alright.
But to do that to a steak? Blasphemy.
y’all have clearly never had cheap, poorly made, steak… ~<3
I have! A decent sauce can make even a crummy steak good. Even the worst steak leaves some fond on the pan, add a chopped shallot (cost you less than 50 cents), some butter, de-glaze with a bit of Worcestershire, and you’ve got a pan sauce.
Your $5 steak is now as good as a $25 dollar steak.
It’s all in the SAUCE!
A1 is good though. I mean I usually just don’t bother buying the tough as hell little ribeyes, if I don’t have the money for at least a flank steak or something I just don’t buy steak, but you can make a pan sauce that goes well with A1.
Though it’s better on chicken. :d
Y’see, that’s what I don’t get: why have a cheap, crummy steak rather than something else at the same price but good? I don’t understand either what “poorly made” means, is it the cut? I know some countries have different cutting/slicing traditions, but is it that bad? I mean you can alway recut it a bit?
Poorly made in this case would be like, not tenderized and cooked too long for the cut. I.E. someone done fucked up the steak but you need to eat it anyway so you put a little tasty flavor on it.
a bad steak is better complimented by the addition of caramelized onions and mushrooms
that said, it’s a bit disrespectful to the caramelized onions and mushrooms to put them with a steak when they’re so perfect on their own, so sauce is probably fine
What does A1 even mean?
That the security in question is investor-grade, with some low credit risk.
“A-Number-One (graffiti tag ‘A-No.-1’) — the hobo character played by Lee Marvin in the 1973 movie “Emperor of the North Pole”.
I had to look up a whole disambiguation page to find.
It’s not even that interesting.
I now know more about fast food that I’ll never eat and never even would want to eat than about, say, hmong linguistics or peul empire history, and that somehow makes me feel ashamed…
Probably the inventor’s claim to quality.
The only tidbit I have about A-1 is that, last I knew, the majority of it isn’t used on steak, so it’s a somewhat aspirational idea being sold.
The A-1 label no longer says “Steak Sauce”, so spread it around.
If you put it on chicken, you can call it “Cluckin’ A”
Because it goes well on hamburgers and chicken sandwiches too … much better than that glorified Thousand Island dressing McD’s tries to pass of as their “special sauce” on a Big Mac. In fact, they even did a commercial once in which they noted that hamburger was ground-up steak, not ground-up ham – so if you put A-1 on a steak, why N̲O̲T̲ put it on a hamburger?
It’s a very large size of paper.
Pretty sure it’s just the brand. Far as I know it’s only in the states so I don’t ever interact with it, but it feels very much to me like how people say French’s mustard
It means it is the first upgrade of that particular weapon.
Preach!
I can’t tell if Becky’s last line is meant to be reverse psychology or not… which is pretty much par the course with Becky.
I think she’d be fine either way. One option is great entertainment, the other option means more distance between Joyce and Dotty.
BOWL-MARRIED BOWL-MARRIED
DOROTHY AND JOYCE BOWL-MARRIED
Jorothy real by 2030
That’s October in their sophmore year in comic time.
As long as they bowl shall live!
Sharp-eyed person in the last comments section…
Would Becky prefer Uncomfortable Joyce over Joyce Discovering Bi Feelings?
I think she would be uncomfortable either way
Eh, I don’t think Joyce has sudden epiphanies without massive external pressure, which sharing a bowl with someone probably wouldn’t apply
I mean, so much of Becky’s idea of a relationship with Joyce was based on (what she thought was) their shared faith that the whole Joyce-Atheism thing may finally have been the nail in that coffin.
Becky likes to laugh at Awkward Joyce, but I think she’d be hurt by Openly Bi Joyce in a “was I not good enough” kind of way.
Pretend I can actually write Joyce dialogue.
“Becky. I wasn’t being honest with myself (despite my opening pining for Dorothy and my gushing about Sal’s river of chocolate hair). Neither of us would have been happy if you made a move before and you? You are now taken. And I <know you love Dina more than you’ll regret not being available when I had m-my BI Awakening. So let’s just agree to stay friends, and leave it at that.”
If Joyce could have reasonable discussions and an understanding of her own feelings that easily, there would be no Joyce hijinks.
I feel like all of them would have their minds blown by a good slice of homemade mac n cheese.
look we had regular from-scratch mac and cheese in my home but kraft was still the good stuff
Is American Kraft different from the Canadian Stuff? Because in my experience it isn’t even the good stuff from the Box
Comfort food doesn’t have to be good, it has to be comfortable.
strong “McDonalds is better than home-cooked food because it’s McDonalds” energy.
Well you only can find homemade mac and cheese here (which means you don’t find mac and cheese), so I made it once and nobody home liked it, so Willis may be on something. Drugs concealed as food additive in the Kraft recipe, possibily, but still.
Tell it, brother!
Oh, indeed. We have a recipe for mac-n-cheese that will enlarge your soul.
Joyce probably wouldn’t touch it because of the mushrooms.
Ugh mushshrooms…poor noods
Fungus belongs nowhere near edible food. Keep the dirt-flavored spongy things away.
That’s what I’ve been saying for years, but the spores got to ’em already and they won’t listen to reason.
What kind of mushrooms are you eating that taste like dirt? Mushrooms just taste like whatever you cook them in
Hmm, do ya think maybe I should just stop cooking them in literal mud, then? The mind-control spores don’t cook out regardless, but I could at least make them taste better.
100% agreement. My family adds mushrooms to the lasagna, and I haven’t had it in years, since grandma passed. She’d make one without the shrooms cause she knew some (myself and my brother) hated them. Rest of the family ain’t that nice.
wtf? Without going my mum’s length who always made a specific meal for each picky eater (which I wasn’t), I always make a part of the meal without the thing my kids don’t like – not a separated lasagna plate, but a half with what they like better. It’s not that nice, it’s basic consideration….
Even as someone who consistently makes his Mac and Cheese too solid, I still have concerns about your assertion it is something that should be measured in *slices*…
When I make Mac and cheese in the oven, it is measured in scoops.
Soupy Cheese ‘n’ Mac is odious. Better slice-able than pour-able.
Are indirect kisses a thing in the Dumbiverse?
Are they a thing outside manga?
As someone who went through grade school, yes. Yes they are.
And it looks like College Bowl season will end with UGA on top! How ‘Bout Dem DAWGS?!
what if I made us both mac and cheese but there was only one bowl and we were both girls
oh my god, they were ROOMMATES
Don’t you mean… “roomies”?
Two Girls, One Bowl!
You went there.
Only heard stories about it, actually.
Did you know it was just a preview clip for a DVD?
Again, THE SAUCEPAN
I would very much like that
AND THERE WAS ONLY ONE
BEDBOWL!‘Course the chef could eat right from the pot, after the two guests got their share in the bowls.
Right? They clearly aren’t looking for maximum efficiency.
That’s what I was going to say.
This is the way.
The ONLY right way…
With the serving spoon
The college way
I love the idea of demonstrating “Your way” as though it’s not the same way everyone else does it.
I think that is “her” way though. Like I thought part of the appeal of box mac n’cheese was the customization potential.
I think the primary appeal is that it’s simple and quick and hard to screw up
and that there are Directions to Follow, and if you Follow the Directions you are Right. No uncertainty.
I add taco bell sauce packets… there’s always at least 2 or 3 around here
theyre also pretty good on ramen, hot dogs if you don’t have anything else.. probably cuz taco bell sauce is just msg and water
Really? I love Taco Bell and their sauce, but any time I’ve tried to put their sauce on something else, I’ve been disappointed
@Moon how dare you besmirch the good name of taco bell SAUCE, it is so much more than just MSG and water!
@Sporky have you maybe tried it in conjunction with other sauces?
@moon, sorry if that sounded curt
, I guess I’m just tired of people complaining that Taco Bell isn’t “real Mexican food”. It’s not supposed to be, and it doesn’t need to be to be good, you know?
I just realized…they only made one box? For three teenagers? …Y’all going to the cafeteria after this for more food, ain’tcha?
Well, technically its possible that she actually cooked more than 1 box.
Possibly, but there was only one box on the counter, very little amount of butter, and that pot looks like a one serving of mac and cheese. I’m not holding hope. But I can also eat two boxes myself so I may be a little off on how normal people eat mac and cheese.
True. She was waving around 3 boxes when she made the invitation though.
Of three different kinds of mac and cheese. There’s NO way Joyce would mix all three.
Re: new poll, there’s no “hot sauce AND pepper” option so I picked pepper. I mean I guess I could’ve picked “everything” but I’m not putting hot dogs in my mac and cheese WTF
I’d have chosen hot dogs and pepper, I demand this option at once!!
SAUCE?
There are some things I like sauce on (though seldom hot sauce), but mac and cheese is not one of those, no.
Honestly I probably only eat it at all a handful of times per year, it’s had a tendency in the past to make me physically nauseous if it’s not just right—but I don’t know what the preparatory conditions for “just right” are.
Like saucin’ hotdogs though?
Occasionally.
What sauce? Probably distinct from what you like in your Mac and Cheese, no?
I mean, I’m a big fan of throwing in additional real cheese. A good grating of Gruyere can really make it taste a whole lot better…
Gruyere is actually really good in homemade mac n cheese. I wouldn’t eat it with Kraft, though, because if I wanna eat Kraft then I just wanna eat Kraft.
I just pretended “hot dog” was a stand in for “any sliced meat”
I chose “never”, because I don’t even know if it exists in the UK. As far as I know the options here are a) buy it completely pre-made in the ready-meals aisle or b) make it from scratch.
You can tell the poll isn’t Scottish because there isn’t an “add a pastry casing” option.
https://scottishscran.com/scottish-macaroni-pie-recipe/
Hot dogs are usually the only thing I’ll put in my mac and cheese.
I went with everything because I do a whole bunch of different stuff. Technically I’ve never put black pepper in (which is usually what pepper on its own means) but I have put in jalapeno peppers. And onions. Hot dogs are nice in there, but if you’ve ever had bacon as an option that’s like 200% better. Haven’t done panko yet, but I know restaurants serve them with bread crumbs so that’s on the list to try some day
Fun fact: if you answered “never” on the poll, you are actually forbidden by Joyce from reading this webcomic ever again.
I honestly had to Google what Kraft was while reading this comic (I’m not from US though). So “never” is kinda the only option XD
Kraft does sell some stuff here, but I’ve never, ever seen their mac and cheese in the shops. I’ve had Heinz tinned macaroni cheese…. never thought to add anything to it. But if I did, i’d probably add carrots in a feeble attempt to be healthy.
I figure all the nevers (especially when they’re the largest group) is just people who live outside NA in any region that doesn’t actually sell KD
For me, my “never” vote was partly protest against there being no mix option that wasn’t “everything”, and partly because as I mentioned above it often makes makes me nauseous.
You’re gonna have to get used to sharing germs when eventually you ask Dorothy to put her tongue in your mouth.
I know Joyce is supposed to be straight but it would be awesome if she wasn’t. Then her and Dorothy can get married and rule the world together, one box of mac and cheese at a time.
I’d just appreciate some more bi rep personally. they wouldn’t even have to hook up, it would just be nice to know Joyce at least thinks about it. But overly close, platonic, infatuation is okay too…I guess.
Problem is, even if Joyce has some bi-tendencies (her conversation with Billie/Jennifer a long time ago), we have not seen anything similar from Dorothy.
In theory, we could get a story arc where Joyce decides she is bi, tries to kiss Dorothy, but Dorothy reject her (sort of the mirror image of Joyce/Becky)
We’ve even got a textual ‘I’m completely straight as far as I can tell’ from Dorothy at one point, and Joyce has also flat out said that she can only imagine being with a woman if parts below the neck don’t exist.
For the “Joyce is bi” crowd, I’ve argued before especially in regards to that line that Joyce might be heterosexual but biromantic.
It is certainky possible people are imagining joyce’s interest in women/bisexuality.
But… She did become… Obsessesd with billie’s/jennifer’s breasts in one strip (i can crawl into them and be safe and warm forever). So it is something to indicate she is interested in more than just “above the neck”. (Unlless of course the strip was meant as a one-off joke rather than evidence of joyce liking the female body)
Found it:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/curiosity/
Yeah, I’m not completely aboard the bi-Joyce train, but there’s at least textual evidence. It’s funny that gets hashed out at length every time it comes up, with the assumption that if Joyce is bi she’ll obviously hook up with Dorothy, who’s shown no such signs.
Yeah, FWIW I’m aboard the “Joyce might be biromantic at least” theory-train myself, but barring the comic stating it outright I’m not going to claim it myself as anything more than just a theory about where the comic will go–certainly not taking it as “Joyce being bi is 100% canon already and there’s no doubt about it”.
Biromantic/heterosexual is an interesting concept and it wouldn’t surprise me. Seems like it would be confusing.
I think it’s the other way around. Joyce definitely isn’t a Kinsey 0 but Dorothy definitely seems to be.
This is gonna sound bad but I’d prefer Joyce just be straight. I feel like her chemistry with Dorothy is so good it makes people ship them. But I honestly think her being straight works well for her character. Just my opinion though.
I think her character is quite ok if she were straight too. (But i do like some of the jokes surrounding her bisexuality)
Joyce herself once said that growing up with Becky skewed the way she perceives platonic friendship with other women. Whether that’s putting the cart before the horse is another question.
Well, this is nice for now! Let’s see how it goes.
My closest experience with people being huffy in a steakhouse is my friends or my boyfriend’s family forgetting I need to order my meat medium well or well done for health reasons and teasing me about it. XD
…these are college students? Really?
Because I see three bowls right there: Two being held by Dorothy, and a third that already has a bunch of Mac and Cheese in Joyce’s hands!
That’s the pan/pot/whatever that she cooked it in.
Which can easily serve as a bowl.
Joyce and Dorothy aren’t about to think of that and Becky isn’t about to bring it up
I think you’re right.
What rule says that can’t be eaten out of?
After everyone else gets their helpings obviously
A pot is also a bowl if you don’t want to dirty more than needed.
And it has a convenient handle!
It’s best right out of the pan. What’s wrong with you?
RIGHT??
Ok good I was going to comment this, I’m glad someone else also got there!
These are three extremely straight-laced college students. They don’t do pot.
Goddamn it Reltzik good job
I don’t get it.
The three of them are too straight-laced (uptight) to do pot (marijuana).
Statistics beg to differ. All kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds do pot.
But of course you wouldn’t know that from the movies.
And once again I feel painfully awkward for ruining a joke
the point is they’re good kids who don’t do drugs on principle, even if it’s just marijuana
but no worries, i for one totally understand overthinking things and potentially ruining the joke by going through those thoughts aloud. (although i feel like it could be seen as condescending rather than earnestly informative, in a sort of “you sheeple watch too many lifetime movies; get woke” kinda way? but it’s nbd)
Oh! I definitely didn’t mean to wokescold, and I’m SO sorry if I hurt anyone here! 🥺
Nah, overanalyzing the joke is itself a joke. You’re good.
I, on the other hand, am going to overanalyze the overanalyzing the joke joke, and that’s no- *vaudeville hook*
And as there’s more legalization going around, no doubt those statistics will beg louder and louder to be included into the movies
Mmm… pot mac n’ cheese… ;-9
Hey, I never even thought to have it that way either!
Pot stimulates salivation and taste buds. Everything is like you’ve eaten it for the first time.
ALSO BTW I couldn’t reply to yesterday’s thread and I’m falling asleep so even though I’ve got #opinions about this strip, I’ve came here only to high-five you, Slick ^^ Yay for genderfluid rep around these places indeed! Our numbers grooooow 8D And it always gives me such a rush of happiness too!
Re: Pot, kinda interesting you say that, for me for some reason it just makes things saltier, but along with all other kinds of marvelous effects, it makes orgasms feel out of this world!!! I guess given the nature of pot, everyone has a unique experience. On that note, I wonder just how many other neurodivergents around here have actually tried it before.
Re: Genderfluid, I know, right?!?! Believe it or not, when I was tweaking the colors of my avatar some time ago, I actually wound up using the colors of the genderfluid flag!! Pretty cool, huh?
Meredith hears this part of the conversation, excitedly pops her head in the kitchen, and wanders off again disappointed.
I want this site to be reddit for a moment so that I can gold this comment :D.
You’re calling Becky Straight? She gonna pop up behind you screaming she’s a lesbian. Somehow.
Man, glad I looked up, cause yeah, that’s what I wanna say too. Becky would probably have no problems eating out of a pot. Dorothy most DEFINITELY wouldn’t, the prude, and Joyce…I dunno, something just doesn’t let me think she’d eat out of the pot. Can’t pin why, it just doesn’t seem like something Joyce would do.
They’re still fairly new at being college students and haven’t yet internalized the fact that every bowl they dirty is one they have to wash.
I highly doubt that Joyce has managed yet to discover *other people’s* fanfiction, and yet she’s laying right into ye olde There’s Only One Bed trope.
She reads Amber’s.
And back to Joyce’s discomfort being premium entertainment for becky.
ughhhhhh.
Yup. :p
Yeah, nothing at all has been solved, as lampshaded by Joyce’s “everything is alright”.
Yyyyeeeeeeppp.
It’s fine, though, she’s just being unapologetically herself.
Wasn’t there a strip when Becky first returned about how uncomfortable!Joyce was her favourite Joyce to watch?
Yes there was. This isn’t a new or extra mean Becky trait. Part of her getting along with Walky instantly was that they both enjoy teasing Joyce.
I think the pertinent question is less whether Becky is being meaner than usual and more whether or not it was right to begin with.
Teasing your friends is fun, because it comes with the assurance that whatever you’re saying it’s coming from a place of love. If I am teasing someone, it’s because I like them enough that I can say that and they won’t hate me, and vice versa; poking the bear is fun!
But with how Joyce and Becky’s friendship has been recontextualized since the Faith-Off began, I don’t think Joyce ever established a boundary of “joking about my neuroses is funny!” so much as she just lets Becky say whatever she wants. It’s fine because it’s Becky, her lifelong best friend who she loves more than anyone in the world, and Becky, someone who grew up in an environment of conditional love by way of authoritarian parenting, feels safe poking the bear because Joyce is never going to stop liking her.
It’s a pretty consistent aspect of Joyce’s relationships within the cast that it is okay to laugh at her. She’s a dumb fundie, she’s gay for Dorothy, you can pay her money to swear, and her food taste is bland. It’s fine to laugh at Joyce because Joyce is being a weirdo in ways that are amusing to someone else, and they’re amusing in a way that she’s wrong for getting mad about.
I talk about Joe like he is perfect boyfriend material, this is because he is and you can’t tell me otherwise, but the first thing he says to her upon pairing up in bio class is that Joyce being a big dumb fundie is going to be a problem for him. It’s fine to make fun of Joyce directly to her face, because Joyce thinks Satan put dinosaur bones in the ground to trick us and thinks the Earth is 6000 years old. He only changes his tune when Joyce tells him that she’s an atheist and that it’s a big deal, whereupon he begins carrying some emotional labour for her, but there’s yet to be any indication that he thinks he did wrong previously, much the same way that I would not care if I thought a YEC was stupid. They are stupid.
(the subtext I’m getting at is that the cast treats Joyce the way Joyce has started treating Becky when they argue about their belief in God)
Becky’s acted like this to Joyce the entire series, it’s just been funny. Not “seen as” funny or anything, I’m not retroactively declaring their entire friendship as Problematic, but the total lack of boundaries they had for the other was rooted in black & white codependent thinking that, now that it’s out in the open by way of a consequence occurring once Joyce went off-script for the first time ever and Becky and Dorothy felt entitled to know what was going on, it’s easier to see that the overwhelming love and affection for Joyce that Becky has is something that’s got a bit of darkness to it that they’ll need to work through.
Yup. It’s always been part of their friendship. Apparently since they were little kids. I get that some people don’t like it, but at this point, Becky not teasing Joyce would abnormal, a acceptance that something was broken between them.
Maybe it is and they need to renegotiate that, but right now it seems intended to show that things haven’t changed that much. They can still be normal, despite the conflict.
Yuuup. And I still dislike the hell out of her for it.
Yeah, it stopped being funny for me a long long time ago.
In all fairness, Joyce’s discomfort is hilarious
Sure, but that’s because Joyce is fictional. To Becky, she is not.
and that’s half of why, for me, it never was.
the other half being, I know people like that in real life. they’re not funny either.
That is an incredibly eloquent way of putting it.
Sharing a bowl in this decade is pretty much forbidden. Someone’s got to have the pot.
I’m picturing Joyce and Dorothy doing the Lady and the Tramp thing. With a macaroni.
Somebody activate the Yoto-Signal!
“THE MOAR YOU SHARE THE MOAR YOWR BOWL WILL BE PWENTIFUL”
Why can’t she eat out of the mixing bowl? I wouldn’t even have got it out the pot to be honest. Kids these days.
You know I noticed there were two bowls last comic but I figured that Becky was gonna bring a third one so I didn’t bring it up
I should have known that it would end up the punchline for the next strip
Foreshadowing!
Your reminder that the plague has not yet affected the Dumbiverse
I mean, I guess we could shut down the webcomic for a decade?
not going to happen at all, given the sliding timescale
Eventually, it will have happened in the Dumbiverse past.
Why would you even WANT that
Idgaf about art reflecting literal truth if it makes the art complete shit.
No. No no no no no. NO!
You can live in December 407’th, 2020* if you want to, but let us have this escape from our current reality.
(*Applying the Eternal September calendar principle to the ongoing 2020.)
Becky trolling Joyce, nature is healing.
I wonder, are these nice bowls? Just since you can totally get like a whole stack of cheapie plastic bowls for like a couple of bucks, so unless she’s fucked a bunch of them up, it’s wild she only has the two.
She’s never needed more.
I only had 2 living on campus. What does a college student need with more than 2? I just need one to use when I’m too lazy/depressed/ADHD to wash the other.
I can assure that nature is not healing. They are trying to force it to heal.
What percentage of Joyce’s discomfort is true germaphobia and what is nervousness about potentially swapping saliva with her crush
100% and 100%, respectively.
Joyce’s “fussy kid” food preferences – too fussy even for the very kid-friendly hot dogs in macaroni and cheese variation – remind me of my relatives from back East, most of whom are too afraid to eat anything more “exotic” than chicken soft taco from Taco Bell. And there’s one uncle in particular who raves about Fuddruckers…and the only thing he ever gets is a plain hamburger, with ketchup on it. I am not one of those who feel that it’s not real food unless you’re inflicting severe pain on the spice receptors in your tongue or want to cover the world in the Dark Side of Cooking (cilantro! mango chutney!) but, yeeeeeeesh, I don’t get it, people.
I don’t think I’d choose to serve hot dogs in Mac & Cheese either. Wouldn’t be my preference
I’m not a fan either, but it’s notable that even such a kid-centric dish as that is unthinkable to Joyce, and that her objection to it is that it’s altering the recipe on the box. She probably wouldn’t like broccoli in there either, which is the best thing to put in macaroni, in this or any universe. I am Barf! I have spoken!
I started experimenting with more cooking techniques and spices after I got my own place. Since the Hereditary GI Problems Fairy has apparently passed me by, I don’t have to cling to food as spicy as a steamed carrot.
One particular favorite has been steaks that aren’t rib eyes cooked past “well” on propane. Skirt steak cooked directly on chunk charcoal comes out perfectly seared every time.
I’d suspect that she’d have been fine with hot dogs in mac and cheese if that’s the way she’d been introduced to it as a little kid, but since it isn’t they’re forbidden.
Of course, then she would have been freaked out when she tried to make it herself and the directions didn’t include the dogs.
The option the poll excludes is a dollop of sour cream. Might sound weird, but it makes the cheese extra creamy
Sour Cream is the best condiment, I’m not sure a meal exists that isn’t improved by its presence
I mean, I wouldn’t put it in anything that’s a soup.
All kinds of cream soups, plus a dollop on borscht, and possibly others.
That’s what I’ve been saying for years, but the spores got to ’em already and they won’t listen to reason. Put it in your coffee, see what happens.
Wait, what the fuck? Only the coffee part was supposed to be in this, and I have no idea how the duplicate sporeposting got there.
The spores got to you already and have started duplicating.
Good lord, the caller is inside the house!
*strongly* recommend you make the spore thing your copypasta at the end of every business email.
Bold of you to assume I get business emails.
I’m standing by my take: This chapter ends in Joyce recklessly kissing Dorothy without thinking and Becky seeing, Dorothy not reciprocating, and Joyce ending the chapter alone, probably on Valentine’s Day. Becky’s last line is dramatic irony foreshadowing.
That’s spicy and I love it.
I am hoping and wishing this is what happens
I simultaneously love and hate this, which is the highest honor I can bestow.
Ladies, please
I add pace picante sauce when I eat it
Which is not often because I can barely digest dairy so if I’m having dairy it’s not likely to be Kraft Mac and cheese. it’s gonna be pizza tbh.
I used to love Kraft Mac and cheese but tbh I now make a dairy free macaroni and cheese I enjoy more. That kind of makes me sad. Lost innocence.
Sorry for your loss.
Although, do you think Pace Picante sauce would make a good soup base?
My dad uses Pace as a sort of pasta sauce base (pace + extra onion + hamburger + a little sour cream, on pasta – it’s very tasty), so I’d bet it could be a soup.
I was thinking more along the lines of something you’d get at Home Town Buffet or something like that.
Srsly though, anyone got any recipes?
Washington Post has a recipe for a red lentil salsa soup that uses a jar of whatever salsa you prefer, and my wife and I love it. Very quick and easy and great with cornbread.
SAUCE please?
You think sharing germs is gonna freak her out? Wait until she finds out about sucking face and swapping spit!!
(at least that’s what we called it back when I was Joyce’s age…)
“We would also have to sit really close, so I can reach the bowl”
“I can just pass the bo-“
“No no, gotta be close”
Re: the poll, I usually make Anne’s Organics brand Mac & Cheese. So Kraft is pretty much never. Only when my brother makes some and I eat some of his.
You are also missing broccoli for the add-ins.
I stopped eating Kraft mac and cheese; now it’s all texture with no flavour. My new first choice is “President’s Choice White Cheddar Deluxe Macaroni & Cheese Dinner.” I add grated cheese, ham, and a bit of black pepper for extra deliciousness.
You are a person of taste, I see.
That actually sounds good, ngl
I could never do hot sauce with Kraft, though.
What does it say I cackled at Joyce’s discomfort with sharing a bowl?
honestly, how is the poll missing “a handful of extra cheese”? it’s the only thing you need. kraft straight from the box is perfect but sometimes a bit of extra cheese and gooeyness can make it even more perfect.
Just. Eat from the pot? two bowls plus one pot is 3 bowls. the pot. it’s right there. less washing up. get to eat from pot like gobling. No downside.
Came here to say this, was not disappointed someone beat me to it.
Dorothy seems like the sort who would not only insist on bowls but would also prefer if everyone sat down at a table rather than standing in the kitchen or sitting in front of the TV like you should when eating Kraft Dinner.
Tbh that can be pretty nice living on campus. I remember on my last Halloween before the world ended, after the big dorm party outside my mom/wifefriend upstairs made a big proper dinner and juice, our guy friends pushed all the tables in the common area together and we had like a real “family” dinner together. It was healing for the soul
Yeah, I always just keep the pot and put the mac and cheese I want to eat on a plate and eat it that way. If nobody else is eating with me, I can serve myself seconds from the pot if I’m still hungry after the first plate.
It’s weird how friendly teasing stops feeling like friendly teasing after bitter fights that recontextualize your whole friendship that just capped off with the two of them admitting they are now total strangers.
The new “chess match” texture is interesting, though. And it shows that the “total strangers” thing was an exaggeration. They know each other well enough to plan moves within moves.
Speaking as one of the loudest shouters for “It’s Joyce who’s being the jerk with her New Atheism nonsense”, I just want to firmly state that it is definitely Becky who’s being the jerk here.
That wasn’t meant to be a reply, but it kind of works as one?
I just really hope everyone here who’s gone off about Edgy Atheism the past two months does not treat actual real life people who’ve undergone horrible trauma at the hands of an institution of massive cultural devastation as annoying children.
I’m going to be extremely real for a moment, but I wasn’t expecting a place like the Dumbing of Age commentariat to be so meticulously upholding of the honour of the thing that coulda made go homeless if my dad didn’t love me more than he loved all the bullshit he was taught to think that led him to casually express homophobic jokes. That’s ‘coulda,’ I feel like this would be a much harsher conversation had my suffering occurred and not been a looming and expectant Sword of Damocles.
Like, I’m extremely lucky there, I didn’t just have to compromise and stop being bisexual around him so I wouldn’t die, I didn’t have to tearfully thank him for accepting my freakish, dick-sucking self, he radically altered his every thought process on how he processed the existence of queer men so I would not only feel safe, but accepted. He fucking set me up on a dating site once and specified “find a nice girl or boy!” for fuck’s sake.
But I was terrified as the truth finally crawled out of my throat in a public restaurant, and if my life did go down the shitter, would I still be an Edgy Atheist if I spoke the truth to the thing that caused it? Is the fact that my dad did right by me being miraculous not the most fundamentally brazen proof that shit has gone wrong?
How the hell do you even get to be angry at the Christian church without being a New/Problematic/Edgy Atheist or whatever? Because it feels like y’all just wanna shut down anything to contrary because if no one’s talking about the problem, then the problem doesn’t exist.
I’m happy things worked out for you, family-wise, and you weren’t Leslie’d or Becky’d instead!
I was DEFINITELY expecting the DoA commentariat to do exactly that, though, because the whole beef so many people have with Roz started exactly when she didn’t immediately cave to the pretty christian girl’s accusations of her being a “hell-bound whore”.
“I liked Joyce when she dated Ethan to turn him straight” feels like the kind of thing I would write as a parody of how we capitulate to the harm caused by the majority where all they have to do is “mean well” or learn a lesson after ruining someone’s day, and it’s something I’ve seen written with complete sincerity like three times.
I feel like one of the issues with Joyce is, to a point it doesn’t entirely feel like she’s earned all of her anger.
She’s angry about things that arguably hurt Becky far more than her, something that made her hurt other people, which of course in turn hurt Joyce as well, but…it doesn’t ring quite as earned as if Becky were the angry atheist.
I relate a lot to Joyce because I was an angry atheist too (I’ve had some time to find some peace by now), but I also am transmasc myself and being a christian was seriously painful for me. Everything that I am was WRONG to my religion. I couldn’t just pretend everything was okay because the religion targeted me specifically as well as the people around me.
That’s not something Joyce had. If she didn’t have Becky or any of her other friends who were there straining her religious stances, then all Joyce would have is the clenched feeling of having to pretend the pseudoscience makes sense and a lot of sexual repression. This isn’t nothing, but when she’s shouting about how angry she is and she lets that anger hurt Becky who was hurt by religion far more than she was? That’s kind of messed up.
I don’t think it’s wrong for Joyce to be angry. I don’t think the comic thinks it’s wrong either. What’s wrong is the way she addressed it to the people around her.
There’s a missing brand of angry atheist in the mix here. It’d be nice to see somebody else go through this who has every possible reason to be angry, or somebody who is angry and doesn’t take it out on people who don’t deserve it.
But I do also relate to some of Joyce’s misdirected anger. The messy anger that doesn’t help anyone except her. I went through that too, even if I “earned” a little more of mine. The trauma and that absolute, blinking in the sun breakthrough, the brain unclench, it makes you messy.
I love Joyce. I’m glad she and Becky are riding this out. I didn’t see the comments you were referring to, but yeah, Joyce should be allowed to be angry, as long as she learns to point that anger the right direction.
I feel like one of the issues with Joyce is, to a point it doesn’t entirely feel like she’s earned all of her anger.
She’s angry about things that arguably hurt Becky far more than her, something that made her hurt other people, which of course in turn hurt Joyce as well, but…it doesn’t ring quite as earned as if Becky were the angry atheist.
She was drugged and assaulted by the son of a pastor, nearly shot in the face by Becky’s dad, her mother got that guy released so he could kidnap Joyce and all her friends, and she was taught to believe objective falsehoods that everyone around her constantly laughed at her for parroting.
What the fuck else does she need to have happen before she’s allowed to have a beef?
No but see, Becky’s trauma is worse, so Joyce should just shut up and get over this stupid phase already /s
I think he meant more that Joyce’s anger is something that seems to be coming from “Becky suffered, and I’m mad about that!”
Which, Becky’s suffering certainly helped with that, it started with Joyce refusing to believe she deserved to go to Hell, except Hell is a factually real place to Joyce where you have to obey certain rules so as not to go, so Joyce had to find a way to cheat by squaring her literal reading of the bible with Becky.
Then all the bullshit happened and the problem was due to Joyce’s cultural upbringing as an American fundie.
I think Joyce has a right to be angry. And I do think her friends (Mostly Sarah and Dorothy) should/could have been more understanding. They are how ever hardly equipped to deal with that situation, because they can’t really understand what Joyce went trough.
But I also think that Joyce did some shitty things and lashed out at the wrong people. Regarding her falling out with Becky I always though that both had a point but could have dealt with the situation better. And sometimes friendships just come to an natural end point, with out someone being the “bad guy”.
When it comes to the thing with Ruth and Jason Joyce was just out of line. She should have minded her own business.
Now that I think about it Joyce and Becky do have in common that they are not great with boundaries.
TBH, “I hate the church because it creates bigots” hits a whole hell of a lot different than “I hate the church because it’s dumb to think dinosaurs were vegetarians before the magic garden kicked out humanity”.
That is what being raised as a biblical literalist does to you, yeah.
Also I think the near-rape, attempted murder, being violently thrown into a speeding car twice in one day, and her mom repeatedly insisting that all of this was acceptable because it was by her team had more to do with it than all the stupid bullshit she was taught to treat as fact that everyone loved to laugh at her for. Do you think Joyce woke up one day in between all that and went “huh, maybe there weren’t dinosaurs on the ark” and that’s it?
I don’t know what it is about North American Christianity that’s in danger of being harmed by its fucking victims that so many of you feel the need to cape for it on the level of “saying bad things about them makes you problematic.”
*shrugs* Fuck Christianity, and it’s perfectly fine that trauma is messy. I’m not mad at Joyce, even. You’re not taking this to any less extremes than anyone else is.
With the latter, it can be hard to tell that someone is just aiming at an actual institution and not every human being who’s anything less than some bullshit, pseudoscientific, often pretty damn racist ideal of rationality. Dorothy ought to know better. Most people ought to give the benefit of the doubt, especially considering it’s obvious Joyce has encountered both. But there is a difference between hating something based on actual harm done and… not.
Upon reflection, I feel like a lack of context in my response did make some negative implications, and I’m sorry for that; this is a pretty emotionally fraught topic and even if it is for me as well, I should be more careful.
Ok but what about someone who hates the church for both reasons
Like Joyce
Hate the church, love the churchgoer.
Her churchgoers bailed out the guy who almost shot her in the face.
I appreciate your comments here, keep being awesome.
F the church, F church apologists, F people who say being angry in Joyce’s situation is uncalled for. Its completely called for.
She will mellow out, but not on anyone else’s perfect ideal time scale.
Hate the Church as an institution, hate the churchgoers for their actions(/inaction), but not because they believe in Jesus.
….. nobody here has said that in any context.
Maybe not in today’s comment section, but there have definitely been some repeat commenters in the past two months who’ve declared that any religious person is either a victim or morally equivalent to the Nazis, for instance. In their words.
(It’s part of why I’ve mostly withdrawn from this whole aspect of debating in the comments altogether, for my part.)
Good for her.
We don’t have Mac & Cheese here. Only for compare, is it better than Instant Lamen or not?
Better, if only because you cook it on the stove and it doesn’t taste like a bullion cube.
It’s comparable. More filling, though, on account of there being butter and milk in the recipe. OTOH, means you need to have butter and milk to make it properly.
I’m not familiar with Instant Lamen. Is that a similar cheesy-noodle product?
Why get a third bowl dirty? Two get bowls, the third eats straight out of the pot.
Well, everything is fine now? Becky and Joyce are friends again and their will eat together like good friends. Becky will have fun seeing Joyce struggling with food and there’s not even a tiny bit of possibility that all of this will return to be a huge discussion between them. Good♡.
I gotta admit, I’m a bit surprised that Becky isn’t more upset that Joyce’s first response was to share a bowl with Dorothy instead of with her.
I only knew Mac & Cheese through Willis and whatever meager glimpses he offered made me fear for the worst when someone insisted on making it for dinner. Turns out it’s actually pretty decent! Homemade Mac & Cheese, mind you, with bell peppers and bacon added.
Joyce’s peculiarities remind me of a friend who laboured under the impression that sugared macaroni constitutes a dinner.
But it says “dinner” right there on the box…
I have never eaten Kraft macaroni and cheese in my 41 years of life, and don’t intend to start, so I can’t relate to these arguments or nostalgic feelings regarding it.
Also, as a picky eater, anything I eat is always MY way. If it happens to go along with the cook’s way, fine. But if not, oh well. I do believe that good steak doesn’t need sauce, but I won’t be sauced-shamed if I do add it.
You’re not missing anything. Velveeta Shells & Cheese is superior in every way. I grew up with Velveeta Shells & Cheese and had Kraft for the first time in college and my reaction was, “Why would you buy this when the Velveeta Shells & Cheese was RIGHT THERE?”
For real. Great Value mac is also a superior option. If I want blunt-force cheese flavor in my mouth, leaving chemical burns on my tongue, I’ll just huff a bag of crunchy Cheetos.
hah, kraft was for the rich bastards ….. we poor unwashed unworthy slobs had to settle for off brand slop like Anthonys as kids.. occasionally we were blessed to be able to add tuna or hamburger.. but the most only thing that was added was ketchup cause we were also eating made of slightly higher than cat food grade turkey bits off the floor hot dogs ….. no I’m not bitter … well much anyways
“If I had a million dollars
We wouldn’t have to eat Kraft dinner
But we would eat Kraft dinner
Of course we would, we’d just eat more
And buy really expensive ketchups with it
That’s right, all the fanciest Dijon ketchups”
–the Barenaked Ladies
Dijon ketchups? Then they’d get attacked live on FAUX News for being anti-american.
Well, the Barenaked Ladies are the most celebrated *Canadian* alt-rock band of the mid 90s.
Yeah, it starts running through my mind every time Kraft dinner comes up in this comic.
“Dijon ketchup” does make me crack up though.
So they’re going to be attacked for being socialists, too.
Steak house getting Huffy if you ask for A-1? Jeeze, I want to go her steak houses. I practically have to threaten waitstaff to keep that shit off my table and away from my perfectly tasty steak.
For real, some places are friggin’ aggressive with those condiments and such. Went to Chili’s recently and got a burger, and the waitperson I swear came by like every 90 seconds on the dot, asking us questions we’d either already answered or physically couldn’t because we were chewing. Put five of us at the smallest table, then decided to just put stuff in front of us before we could move other stuff, too. I wanna go to these places where they get an attitude if you want something, so I can just eat in peace without sensory overload.
I’m glad at least 5% of us voted for adding hot dogs with mac and cheese.
I do this thing where I add Tuna and peas to Velveeta Shells and Cheese with a little garlic powder. I call it bachelor chow.
Joyce, you know macaroni isn’t long enough to do the Lady and the Tramp thing, right?
Some kids (~11yos) were having a discussion today that was like this:
Kid 1: “I’m kind of a picky eater, I don’t like lots of things.”
Kid 2: “Like what?”
Kid 1: “Like, I don’t like mushrooms, tomotoes…”
Kid 2: “Okay, okay.”
Kid 1: “I don’t like mac and cheese…”
Kid 2 & other kids who weren’t even in the conversation: “WHAT?!?!?!”
Great, now I’ hungry. And I don’t even really like Mac and Cheese.
Oh right, I wanted to say this too.
I’ve been “predicting” a falling out between Joyce, Dorothy and Becky, which I’m thinking will happen here (to my dismay, probably, since I thought it would happen two other times this chapter, but having both of them in the same room feels like the most ripe for juicy drama), and while part of that feels to me as the natural conclusion to what’s gone on since the Faith-Off, the other part is mostly that I think it’d be most interesting.
For lack of a better way to put this, I think the relationship between Joyce, Dorothy and Becky has been unequal long before it eventually became what I see as a major subtextual element come these last two chapters, and so I’m hoping that everything just collapses really hard in such a way that when they eventually become friends again, it doesn’t feel so much like Joyce fawning and slavishly submitting to the other two.
I feel like the curtain’s been pulled back so hard on the dynamic these three share that returning to it with a big “let’s talk about feelings :)” moment doesn’t seem like it’d be enough. Much like how Ethan’s in a point where he honestly can’t bring himself to give a shit about Amber’s drama, I think it’d be interesting for Joyce to be in a place where Dorothy can’t gently handhold her and for her to not have to dither over Becky. Amber got herself another tall, well-chinned dude to be emotionally supportive except Joe’s supportive in a way that’s, like, actually meaningfully helpful to her like Walky was on Garbage Roof, and it sounds like a lot of fun, and more importantly, like a fount for tons of drama, if Joyce’s two main friendships in the comic suddenly got the rug pulled out from under her.
AND THEN SHE’LL HAVE NO ONE TO TURN TO BUT JOE AND THEN ROMANCE???
I say, mostly ironically. But only mostly.
(More likely it will just be more drama but drama with romantic tension this time. Which, being honest, I am The Most Game For. Give it to me. GIVE IT TO MEEEE.)
I know it’s been said in the comments again, but I’m sure we all agree it warrants saying again.
THERE’S A PERFECTLY GOOD POT RIGHT THERE DOROTHY, WHY WOULD YOU BOTHER GOING TO YOUR ROOM FOR A BOWL
The Doylist answer, I’m guessing? So Joyce and Becky can talk while Dorothy’s away.
Oh, yea, I suppose that would be a good excuse if she wanted to give them a few private words
On a completely unrelated note, i was getting boosted while commenting earlier. My arm hurts….with IMMUNITY!!!
HOORAAYY!!!!
(if only I could send you cookies through my screen)
Did you tell them to pump it straight into your veins?
Also, welcome to the Boosted Club, we don’t have cookies, but we DO have a lower chance of infection and lighter symptoms even when we do!
Can’t tell if it’s gay panic or germophobe panic
The answer is yes
Becky’s jealousy is no match for Becky’s love of watching Joyce get grossed out and make funny faces
The last one eats in the pot
There should be an option to add a can of chili – chili mac is the best.