Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Mac Hall
Matt Boyd
The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
2 Slices
RJ Morel
After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
Countdown to Countdown
Velinxi
Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Slightly Damned
Chu
Rhea Snaketail returns from the dead, befriending a Demon who falls in love with an Angel. The afterlife ain't what it used to be!
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
Fantomestein
Beka Duke
Desperate for companionship, Frankenstein's Monster pretends to be the Opera Ghost. A grave mistake.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
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Sorry, didn’t mean to flag (stupid phone, stupid sausage fingers) I wanted to say “that’s some serious hostage situation” but now I feel it wasn’t worth the “accusation” :’v
This is your regular reminder that accidental flagging is fine and not worthy of freaking out; it takes a whole bunch of flags for a post to get removed, and no one can tell in the meantime.
I suspect she needs human contact, and this is an acceptible way for her to get it. I’m sure Becky would be glad to hold hands with her as long as Dina was there to chaperone. I’m also sure there are others on her floor she would be willing to hold hands with for a second or two, but it’s hard to get as much human touch as she needs like that.
Sounds right. If I were Joyce I would really need a hug right now… from someone who will have 0 psychoanalytical commentary on what that means about my neurotype.
Right now, Joe is the perfect overlap of someone willing to touch her and unwilling to do either teasing or speculation.
Wait jojo isn’t already inoverdrive?(anime only watcher btw).
Speaking of hamon, I heard that the reason Araki switched from hamon to stands is that he felt he had run out of ways of using it creativly. He felt constrained by it being the main powersystem.
he did, however, sort of double down on the vibe, since he introduced ‘Spin” in addition to Stands in Steel Ball Run, then basically abandoned it in JoJolion (Just Like Hamon fell by the wayside when Stands were introduced.)
I confess, I rather miss simple slash-naming. But I suppose that was either too linked with certain old (and mostly gay, because fandom) pairings, or was too transparent and easy-to-understand, and thus didn’t appeal to those who prefer knowledge of the Secret Words to be strictly an insider thing (again, because fandom).
I’ll still always go with slashes over anything else, but I think a good part of them dying out was just social media platforms that didn’t support using the / in tagging
huh, I didn’t consider the role of technology (and the limitations thereof) in common use at the time(s). interesting possibility to think about, thank you.
Honestly, same. I don’t like ship names that are incomprehensible unless you spend a lot of time in the fandom. Usually name portmanteaus can be worked out, but good ol’ A/B or A x B is my preferred format.
Again, that is IMO a good part of the reason they exist. Fandom(s) LOVE their Sekrit Inside Jokes/References/Jargon/Knowledge that only TRUE fans get. In-groups and out-groups and tribalism, yo.
That was something I liked about Homestuck shipping names because they were usually pretty clever and consistent to a given character’s aesthetic, like “Cotton Candy,” or “Spider 8reath.” I usually only ever saw them used on forums and tumblr blogs though, never on the usual fanfiction websites. Maybe that’s because of the in-group/out-group incomprehensibility problem that Pig and StClair mention, though.
I reckon that getting diagnosed when you’re older is really the lesser of two evils.
If you were diagnosed as a kid back in the late 90’s or early 2000’s, insidious ableism meant that people around you could have denied your autonomy, gaslit you, dehumanized you and subjected you to all kinds of severe indignities, some of which basically amount to legal torture.
But I suppose either way, life never gets any easier for us autistics, does it?
Yeah, I came to a realization that it’s not about whether or not you’re autistic, but rather about being in a place where you’re not punished for it.
I am very grateful to Willis and his fans for creating such a place in this little corner of the online world. Here I can safely have a private label for myself, despite the great amount of time and effort it will take to change a broken system. 🥲
I think that’s because most of the people here are ND of some kind or multiple kinds. Personally I’m probably a little autistic, have a TBI, and more than 4 almost 5 decades of untreated PTSD.
It’s a blessing- and the result of a mountain of hard work done mostly by other autistic people- that some children these days don’t get systemically abused for it.
And until that’s every child, fuck ABA and other conversion therapies that would literally-literally be illegal if you treated a dog like that, fuck “autism mommies”, fuck every mental health professional whose knowledge is rooted in having read one book thirty years ago and refuses to update it before treating someone, and may every member of Autism Speaks step on a flaming bag of dog shit and incinerate themselves.
I’m not really up on the latest information— I was just wondering, could you please help me understand what ABA is and why it is bad?
My younger cousin is on the autism spectrum and derived real benefit from a friendship with a woman who was an ABA therapist. I don’t know whether she used any ABA techniques on my cousin. But she did serve as a peer supporter and life coach for my cousin, and seemed to draw some insight from her work. But I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of it.
I’m also not clear what is meant by “autism mommies”. Could someone please enlighten me?
I’ve spent a lot of time caring for my cousin in loco parentis, and I don’t want to inadvertently slip into being an autism mom if that’s something bad.
Ok, no, never mind, I’m sorry — I should have just done the research myself rather than asking folks to do the work of educating me on such a sensitive and painful topic. I sincerely apologize.
Looks like many criticize ABA because it has often been done in punitive and controlling ways. And folks criticize the mothers of people with autism who wear their children’s diagnoses as a badge. I hope I got that right…
There’s a lot I don’t know. Especially when it comes to social commentary and trends in society. I am truly sorry for causing offense with my question.
So, ABA stands for Applied Behavioral Analysis, and it’s essentially conversion therapy for autistic kids. It was developed by the same guy and uses a lot of same techniques. The core idea behind it is using operant conditioning to develop more “normal” or “functional” behaviors in the patient. At it’s best, it can help autistic people integrate better into neurotypical society – by teaching/programming them to constantly mask and never express or acknowledge their needs. At it’s worst, it involves using literal shock collars to punish its “patients” for deviant behavior. And while that extreme is rare, other abusive tactics, such as withholding basic necessities as a means of negative reinforcement, are fairly common. It’s ethical guidelines are worded broadly and ambiguously, there’s very little oversight, its actual goal is fundamentally misguided – and it’s the most common and well-known therapy for autistic people, particularly autistic children. It’s promoted by a lot of well funded groups like Autism Speaks (which is considered by many autistic people to be a hate group) and so a lot of poorly informed parents end up putting their kids in it and traumatizing those kids for life.
“Autism mommies” in this context probably refers to… well, the type of parent who’s likely to send their kid to ABA. Parents who see having an autistic kid primarily as a burden, who would rather their kid be “normal” than happy, who claim to speak for autistic people while consistently ignoring and talking over us. They’re the kind of people who post videos of their kids having a meltdown for pity and clout, because their child’s suffering is less important to them than how it might affect their social status. They have a frustrating amount of resources and clout (again, via Autism Speaks and similar groups), and they end up drawing a lot of resources and attention away from actual advocacy for and by autistic people while reinforcing systemic abuse and mistreatment of autistic people.
Autism mommies refers specifically to the kind of martyr parent (usually a mom because of gendered childrearing expectations) who acts like their child’s autism is a grand tragedy inflicted on the parent in particular and makes it their mission to cure or reverse the autism at all costs. Many of them blog for attention and validation of their beliefs and behavior, and a significant portion of them engage in and promote abusive behaviors that would get you investigated by CPS in a hurry if the kid(s) were NT (I am talking giving your kids bleach solutions or tying your child up much of the day or openly fantasizing about murder suicide) but which are brushed off as understandable and “due to a lack of services” if the child is autistic. Look up the Stapleton woman who tried to kill her autistic daughter for a prime example.
The autistic community generally holds autism mommies responsible for the “autism community”‘s general refusal to abide by best practices in disability movements (namely, involving people with the disability in real positions of power and responsibility at all levels and genuinely listening to their input – Autism Speaks has literally 0 autistic senior leaders. 0. Because it was started by the O.G. autism mommy and her husband), society’s general attitude that murdering an autistic person is somehow understandable or justifiable (read any story about a murdered autistic kid and you’re lucky to find a single paragraph about the kid but you’ll find 90%of the story is spent painting the murderer as a victim), and the abuse their children suffer in the name of normal.
Sorry, for clarity: that’s what autistic people refer to when we use the term.
Autism mommies use it to refer to all parents of autistic people to try to muddy the waters, when a substantial and growing amount of those parents don’t want anything to do with treating their kids like a burden who only deserves love in small doses as a reward for being normal, conditional entirely on making their parents look good.
Addendum: a typical parent who uses ABA would not be considered an “autism mommy” by most of the autistic community. There’s a specific constellation of behavior and attitudes needed to earn that derisive moniker: making a big and constant attention seeking show of their own martyrdom, scapegoating their autistic child(ren) for anything wrong in the family, and a drive to make their kid normal at all costs or die trying (sometimes that latter part is meant literally).
A typical parent of an autistic kid might fall down the forced normal rabbit hole because ABA’s marketing is fantastic for something known to cause PTSD and long term mental health issues with an efficacy equal to or worse than placebo depending on the study, but usually won’t have the attention seeking, scapegoating, or willingness to go to extremes and harm their child to achieve their ends.
It’s alright ischemgeek, it was eventually gonna happen anyway, given the nature of this very comic.
Speaking of which, if Dumbing of Age is at all gonna take the topic of autism seriously, it has to cover ABA and autism mommies and Autism Speaks, we really need to do whatever we can to fight these grave injustices unto us.
Thank you for explaining it to me, ischemgeek. I had read about that, about the prevalence of filicide, but I didn’t know the term. I am so sorry to have brought up such a painful topic. How awful.
You know what bothers me the most about these “conversation therapies”? Even at their best (which is still bad), their whole existence is justified by the misguided idea that it’s easier to conform to traditional social expectations of “normal” than it is to change a broken system.
I can recall similar stories of minority parents who would bleach their children’s hair and coat their skin with egg whites and all kinds of rediculous concoctions imaginable in increasingly desperate attempts to make them more white-passing.
I honestly don’t see how these “conversion therapies” are any less misguided and denigrating.
Yeah, so basically all of those terms amount to The Enemy. The kind of people who will absolutely kill us just for being different and then cry about how “hard” it was for them to “have to” do it. Probably this is a little radical but… Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they were subjected to the same shit they put us through. Nobody “deserves” it in the first place, but I don’t have any ethical qualms about a torturer getting a taste of their own medicine, especially the kind that lies and says it’s for the victim’s own good.
Wow — I’d read about the abusive schools that use shock collars and other terrible punishments (actually had a dear friend who was sent to a school like that… *shudder*) but I wasn’t thinking of those as specifically connected with ABA. Thank you so much for waking my mind up to that. I am so sorry for my ignorance.
I don’t think those kinds of abuse have happened to my cousin since they lost their parents and I stepped in as an advocate to help them remain independent and stable as an adult. But it IS good to know what the extremes are, so I can steer clear of those kind of influences myself!
Personally, I don’t think ignorance is inherently something to apologise for. Nobody can know everything, and often we don’t know what we don’t know until we’re told about it. How can somebody know they should look up certain things if they’ve never encountered or heard of those things before? There’s a stigma around it and a lot of implications that all ignorance is willful, but I figure as long as we eventually learn about something (and of course use that knowledge for good), it’s a net positive.
This may just be me, but I think it’s better to say something like “Oh, well now I know what to look for, thank you”, rather than “I’m sorry for not knowing”. A lot of personal blame is put on people who don’t Know about these things, with phrases like “Google is free” and “read a book”, but again, if you’re only just encountering something it’s silly and (in my eyes) petty to hold that against you. (That’s the Royal You, not the specific.) The resources are absolutely available to learn, but even the smallest library still has someone to help guide you to the section you’re after.
Long winded, possibly repetitive, but I hope it’s helpful.
My husband, best friend and I have all come to that conclusion. (Although I’m the only one who was a child in the 90s- husband in the 80s, best friend in the 70s. Ish.) And yeah- if the understanding of how it can actually manifest had allowed any of us to be recognised as autistic then… it likely would have been even harder than it already was.
I hope things are much better for children now who have autism. I hope that so fiercely.
The latest generation of autistic kids at least has something we didn’t, and I hope dearly that it helps them have better lives. There’s no sense in our generations suffering if the next one can’t have it better, and all that.
My mom might’ve been autistic. She also had bipolar disorder and BPD and refused to take meds for them. (One of her pals from AA got to her and told her that meds were for weak-willed people.) She had these “scripts” for people and got frustrated when they deviated from them. I think she would’ve been much happier if she had actually sought real treatment for her illnesses and disabilities.
is this not what is called “catch 22”? that popular paradox that claims that if you know that your are crazy, then you really are not… are they applying the catch 22 to autism?
“You’re either Rain Man or Sheldon Cooper, and anything else is a lie for attention’
Although in later seasons Sheldon does actually seem less severe. He holds down a steady relationship with a person who Gets him, they have Proper Adult conversations, and he’s apparently quite good in the sack. Those episodes felt a little truer to life than the show’s usual Hollywood Autism.
Big Bang Theory has been at least somewhat triggering for me ebcause of how relentlessly the shows writing mocks/bullies Sheldon for his autistic behaviours. I’d never considered it from the angle that he’s at least somewhat succeeding at functioning in society in the later seasons. Thank you!
Note: The show is also horribly annoying in that Sheldon also frequently behaves in horrible ways, and the show doesn’t mock that to the same extent.
Yeah. Like, Jennifer made her feel a little better, but primarily by being so hilariously misguided about it all that Joyce found the condescension of it (“not knowing the term the weirdos use to refer to the normals is proof that I’m normal, don’t you think?”) funny instead of grating.
…..
I really, really hope Joe doesn’t ruin this by panicking or running away or closing up.
(because he doesn’t want to hurt her and yet, like certain other members of the cast, he’s convinced himself that’s what will inevitably happen if he gets close to someone he cares for.)
Eh, I feel like Joyce is way more likely to panic and/or run away. She literally ran away from the pharmacy with her prescription like an hour ago in-universe because she was stressed by the situation. And she’s had a pretty emotionally taxing last few days.
My prediction; Joyce is too overwhelmed to process this and just ignores her feelings. Or has a moment of genuine emotional connection with Joe that she will blame on her hormones/mental state later.
Is that Joyce dong an intimate/romantic interlocking of fingers or is that supposed to be her interlocking her fingers in a vice-grip like manner because she’s annoyed at Joe? It’s a little hard to tell.
Wondering the same. Is she interlocking and a hand hold way, or is she about to bend his hand back to his arm real hard? Also, how long was her fingers like that? Just now, or right after the high five?
Huh, I honestly didn’t expect that. Maybe Joyce isn’t as mad at Joe as we thought. Still I have my concerns. I feel like Joe is going to blow it and it will erupt right in his face.
Now I wonder, how much of Joyce’s hysteria is… performative? passive aggressive? a learned behavior to have a voice in a sexist environment, because anything inbetween perfect obedience and hysterics is unfeminine and sinful, which hurts more than being childish.
Joyce could use more tools to express herself, is what I’m saying. She could have, like, dropped a ‘we still cool?’ between telling Dorothy off and asking for art classes, but she doesn’t know that option. She doesn’t have a role model for it.
Joe’s Mom is someone we know so little about at this point, isn’t she? If she’s autistic, or at least has a lot of overlap with that, it makes that much more sense Joe seemed to really not sweat it when Joyce threw that out there, if it’s a topic he actually knows a bit about, whereas so much of the cast like Dorothy and Sarah seem to be rather clueless about it.
All we know about her is she’s divorced, she fought a lot with Joe’s dad (he was a cheating asshole) and she was really proud of Joe when he was 12 because he was kind, courteous and read philosophy. She took him to orientation and when Joe’s dad drops him off, she calls to see if he made it okay.
Looking it up, she does appear in a patreon-only strip, but I think that may be her only onscreen DoA appearance so far. I haven’t read the strip, though, as I haven’t had the opportunity to be a patron yet.
I’m retroactively impressed that Joe’s conversation was so pleasant and helpful while Joyce’s hand was just… Doing some kind of slow transition into the last panel position??
Fucking KISS ALREADY THEN. If we’re doing, like, regency hand porn, already.
Oh also some serious stuff happened here that made me ship them even harder. But also *rolls up everything I’ve ever said about how they need to grow as people even though it’s still true, sets fire to it, makes s’mores while watching the sparks from the blaze drift off over the smoke, pondering the likelihood of a future where I wish they’d waited a little longer* kisssssssssss
That’s because human babies are more like marsupials than other mammals, significant amounts of development are post-natal compared to other animals like cows or zebras or giraffes that are walking minutes after birth, compared to humans that don’t walk until an average of one year.
They probably would. Also, I think it’s kind of funny that outside of Joyce having had a crush on Walky as a kid due to his church mouse role, she seems to have been drawn most often to the tall, broad-shouldered cast members. Ethan, Jacob, Joe. Guess she has a type. Maybe it’s for the best she hasn’t met Beef that I am aware of.
We could probably find out exactly what Joe and Joyce’s kids look like by digging up that one Walkyverse storyline about all the future kids from all possible timelines coming back.
Oh also just. Joe wasn’t just going “neat” as a neutral acknowledgement. He *really thinks this is a good thing* for Joyce if it’ll help her out the way his mom probably hoped a diagnosis would help her. That is a world of difference from “oh yeah, clocked you” from Sarah and Jennifer, or “how dare you leapfrog the non-existent line” from Dina, or even, “don’t worry, I’ll support you and help you find resources to deal with this” from Dorothy. Just…oh yeah? Cool for you! I hope this a good thing for you. Joyce deserves so fucking much more baseline “cool, I’m glad for you” from the people around her when she’s confronting shit that rocks her core sense of identity.
hm, i get that it’s an important issue but other than some kinda ‘disability’? benefits of a job, or being able to be prescribed medicine easier like “anxiety” or something that’d reduce sensitivity to overstimulation/sensory issues, would you really need a diagnosis (if joe’s mom specifically wanted it , unless she just wanted to narrow down/eliminate other stuff for other practical reasons, while the internet isn’t always reliable, there’s probably a bit more research by now to be able to look up “How to live with autism as an adult/being an autistic parent” or so)
Well, for example, I Yoto have been told I may be neurodivergent…by people and not by a medical professional because I don’t got to the doctor. But the idea that I may be would explain my habits, some of my difficulties in performing work (such as how hard it is to stay focused for long periods of time) and the idea that it’s not my fault could be comforting. ALSO it could give me a method on which to work with my disability, such as medication that may help with my issues or techniques that can keep me on track. Knowing the nature of the beast can be a saving grace.
i know some ppl can have both, tho ppl do say adhd overlaps with autism and there is some medication that works with adhd to balance/adjust (apparently caffeine isn’t as effective? it makes me sleepy quicker but wake up early the next day, other than also the stomach issues, i feel like a daily morning hot coffee might not be that helpful as opposed to just taking a hot or cold shower and drinking a hot drink to warm/wake you up before a long day ahead/work/etc)
But yeah i’m sure knowing for sure would be helpful. Though among friends/ppl you can trust you could casually say “yeah sometimes it’s hard to deal with X thing b/c of my autism/neurodivergent tendencies”
No. A diagnosis is not necessary for an autistic person to be… well, autistic. Plus the older the person the more time they’ve had to learn their autism traits, the harder to be diagnosed. And autism diagnosis can massively hinder in certain ways.
There’s also no treatment out there (unlike for say, ADHD, a condition with a lot of comorbidities- aka traits in common- and a high likelihood of people with one having high symptoms of the other). There is only management. And a diagnosis may put Joyce, in her particular situation, in touch with them. There may, for example, be support structures, educational groups or therapists that would only work with someone with a diagnosis.
But in general? No, a diagnosis is often not particularly helpful beyond saying “yes it’s definitely true I have a diagnosis” (whether to convince the self or others) and can be harmful. Autistics are still discriminated against, sometimes to the point of being considered incapable of functioning as an adult when they definitely are.
A friend of mine doesn’t tell anyone at their work that they are autistic for this reason. I do think a diagnosis can give some people peace, but it can also be a tremendous stigma.
Fun fact: Nearly time I’ve disclosed my autism to an employer, they’ve gone out of their way to make things as difficult and unaccommodating as possible. Sometimes to the point of pretending not to understand simple sentences so they could claim I “refused to communicate”. And they get away with it no matter what, like bigots always do.
Interestingly enough, I fairly recently got a two months worth of paid weekly commissions for game programming, all remote for some guy who wants me to turn his art into a game.
It pays much less than minimum wage, but at least it’s such a light load for me that I don’t have any reason to disclose my autism to him, and between my conditions and the economy as it is, it’s about as close as I’ll get to a real job.
For reals though this shit needs to fucking stop.
We have to spread the message that it’s just not enough to be un-bigoted. We have to be anti-bigot.
it’s incredibly validating for some people to know what they have. There are so many experiences people may have, but since they don’t have the word for it, they can’t talk or emphasize with others effectively. Also, if you’re diagnosed, you can deal with aholes much more effectively than if you’re self-diagnosed.
Sometimes you also don’t know what a problem you have until you go to a doctor, anyway. I had debilitating “shyness” since elementary school and I just figured I was quiet and preferred to think before I acted, to the point it was detrimental. Talked to my old childhood psych because work was causing me to have panic attacks, and the medicine they gave me actually let me stop being stuck in my head. I can actually speak to others with more confidence and self-assurance, without spending 30 minutes wondering if my opinion even has merit. I didn’t even know how bad my anxiety was!
As for diagnoses that I’ve known about forever, I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, so I was able to spend years building coping mechanisms for that. It doesn’t come up anymore because I’ve dealt with it for so long that I can pass as normal. But other people might just be starting out, and might just be figuring out their coping mechanisms because they weren’t diagnosed earlier in life.
Thing about Christian subculture is you can put ‘Christian’ in front of anything. Christian Tax Services. Christian Tile and Flooring. The hardcore fundies will buy anything if it’s labeled Christian. That’s why it’s so popular in America, because it sells out.\
As a woman in their 30s who only just got diagnosed last year… Yeah. I wish it had happened sooner. Maybe it would have made a lot of things easier. Maybe not. But I’m sadly just as much in a situation where people in authority don’t give a crap.
(Long story short, been unemployed for a long while, and the Danish jobcenter system forced me into a retail job despite me practically begging for them to help me find one in graphic design. So yeah, there’s my own load of salt)
That sucks, though other than having your own portfolio and graduating from like an art school (not that you need to go to a college/university to be an artist of course), i’d assume a job center would be something like a “temp” kinda company that’d help you find ‘basic’/common jobs so I wouldn’t expect a graphics design company to be an option rather than a company sending an email to a personal website/online portfolio or so
It’s a bit different for the Danish system, where jobcenters are run by the government. At the very least, they are fully capable of guiding one towards possible jobs that suit my actual skills, but they have been known for several years to be more focused on shoving people into jobs that are just readily available, instead of trying to look into things. They have proper access to places, that might have something that can build up levels of experience.
I straight up had one jobcenter councillor ask me “Why do you want to be a graphic designer anyway?” And I was just so frustrated and confused, because her tone indicated that I was wasting my time, when I would be better off doing retail or SOSU (Social og Sundhed, basically healthcare for the elderly).
She and so many others basically told me, that I wasted my time on things I’m actually good at, instead of using her own capable skills to give me proper advice for my portfolio or resume. Instead, she sat there, with this deadpan stare and might as well have asked me: “Hey, why are you insisting on being a drain on society?”
They have been like this for MANY years, and I’m not the first or last to have problems with this.
What a shit councilor. It’s not like there’s graphic design in like, every aspect of our lives or anything… I hope you find the job you want! I’m in uni for graphic design myself <3
Seconded. It’s their job to help people find jobs, not belittle them for not already having one or going into a field that the councillor personally isn’t interested in. Imagine someone with any other job doing that. A hobby supply cashier talking down to you for buying art supplies because they don’t draw. A Dominoes delivery person making fun of you for eating pizza. They’d lose their job and be on the other side of the counter the next day, and you know they’d hate for somebody to do the same to them.
IMO it’s almost certainly a case of “stop holding out for the Cool Job(s) with very short supply and a high barrier of entry, I’m not here to place you in your dream job, just A Job Any Job”.
There are two possibilities: either Joyce has finally been hit by how nice Joe is to her and is letting her feelings for him flow (♡) or she can’t stand anymore being told how lucky she was to find the right doctor and is about to pull him down and hit him using her head. Still, it’s great that Joe can confront the situation that happened to his mother and be so sincerely supportive to Joyce.
No! It’s the only relatively positive relationship Joyce’s got right now!
But also cue for Joe to panic about getting emotionally involved with someone and lean back into the manslut routine. I hope not, but…that’s the comic we’re reading, isn’t it.
I’ve wanted to see them together since reading the one arc in It’s Walky! where Joyce and Joe have a sort-of thing going on. I felt like they worked really well together. If only Joe wasn’t quite so… *Joe* back then.
Now, FUCK. Don’t just Kiss. A Kiss is sweet, and maybe passionate. This is different. This is built-up aggression about Joe suddenly transforming into Lust. This feeling would be negated if he was being a dick, but as he is being a better Joe, and physical contact has been established in the positive, they are about to Walk the Dinosaur. Open the Door. Get on the Floor!
This is either about to be Joe’s best Rosh Hashanah ever or he’s about to say something he’ll need to ask Joyce’s forgiveness for really really well before Yom Kippur next week.
I am loving every second of this. Because this is really a turning point for both characters. Joe I think has been legitimately interested in Joyce since their date and he’s been a legit source of advice and companionship when Joyce couldn’t really talk to anyone else about what’s going on. And Joyce is beginning to realize how much she relies on Joe because he doesn’t force her into a box or get up on her ass about things. Even with the religion he was fine to just let her rant (so was Sarah to an extent). I don’t need this to be a full fledged relationship but a deep and honest friendship is worth more sometimes and I’d be perfectly happy to see that be a thing if that’s where Willis wants to take it
“Straight in. suck up and go,
cool it, swallow, swallow
Breathe deep, take it all
it comes cheap
Push it through the doors
because in between the lines
I’m gonna pack more lines
so I can get in
Ooh traffic jam got more cars
than a beach got sand
Suck it up suck it up suck it up
fill it up until no more
I’m no crazy creep, I’ve got it coming
to me because I’m not satisfied
The hunger keeps on growing
I eat too much
I drink too much
I want too much
Too much
I’ve got to get it somewhere
I mean, you never know, maybe
you’re dreaming
Who do you think you’re watching
Who do you think you need
Play for me, play more.
ten times in the same day
I need more. I’m going
over my borders
I’m going to take more, more
from you, letter by letter
I eat too much
I drink too much
I want too much
Too much
I told god I’m coming
to your country
I’m going to eat up your cities.
your homes, you know
I’ve got a stomach full it’s not
a chip on my shoulder
I’ve got this growl in my tummy
and I’m gonna stop it today
I eat too much
I drink too much
I want too much
Too much
Oh yeah, I hadn’t considered that. I mean, I figured he’d be seeing Dina more often due to this class and due to Amber, but this does add an additional layer.
I love how so many of the people in the strip are reacting to the autism diagnosis with happiness, like “ah hey now you’ve got a word for it and resources!” And Joyce is stuck back in the beforetimes where autism is a bad thing.
Hope her friends eventually get through to her about the positives of it.
I’m sure she’ll get there. She’s been busy unprogramming other things from her childhood, and this one won’t be taking a backseat now that it’s at the forefront
I’m pretty sure it should be “suss” in this case, since it’s not being used as a short form for suspicious but a way of finding out something. No idea the root of the word, though, so I’m just voicing my opinion into the void.
According to the etymology dictionary I use for these sorts of things, it’s short for “suspect” originally (1950s police jargon) and then transformed to meaning something akin to “to investigate/discover/figure out” in the 1960s.
AHHHHHHHHHH JOYCE. I also want to mention that, Mr. Willis, your depiction of Joyce got me an autism diagnosis, and I am taking my steps towards therapy and counseling and treatment for the various other mental illnesses that go with it. I honestly can’t thank you enough. I’ve been reading your comic since it was It’s Walky
I was panicked that my 7-year-old might freak out during the face melting scene in Indiana Jones but she said "I guess he shouldn't have opened that" as seriously as possible and I've been crying laughing for 10 minutes
look i have a lot to say about this beetle bailey strip okay
anyway, nobody's hands reach their own crotches while their arms are fully extended, so plato only has to bend his elbows like 10 degrees to put his hands on his hips
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...
Bill Corbett @billcorbett.bsky.social ⋅ 9h
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 3d
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“ok I didn’t LITERALLY mean hang”
High five!
Up high!
Down low!
(kiss Joe)
High five!
Up high!
Down low!
These fingers are MINE now!
Sorry, didn’t mean to flag (stupid phone, stupid sausage fingers) I wanted to say “that’s some serious hostage situation” but now I feel it wasn’t worth the “accusation” :’v
This is your regular reminder that accidental flagging is fine and not worthy of freaking out; it takes a whole bunch of flags for a post to get removed, and no one can tell in the meantime.
Honestly feel like the flagging thing should be in the about/read before posting page, with a note to stop apologizing for hitting the wrong button.
M. Bison: YES YES
Mr. Burns: Excellent…
Violet, Lee Chaolan from Tekken’s alternate ego: EXCELLENT!
Announcer from Unreal Tournament: WICKED SICK
Yeah, that’s why. It’s because she’s bad at high-fiving. Not like she wants to hold Joe’s hand at all, or anything…
I suspect she needs human contact, and this is an acceptible way for her to get it. I’m sure Becky would be glad to hold hands with her as long as Dina was there to chaperone. I’m also sure there are others on her floor she would be willing to hold hands with for a second or two, but it’s hard to get as much human touch as she needs like that.
Sounds right. If I were Joyce I would really need a hug right now… from someone who will have 0 psychoanalytical commentary on what that means about my neurotype.
Right now, Joe is the perfect overlap of someone willing to touch her and unwilling to do either teasing or speculation.
NANI!!!!!?????
And just like that, the USS Jotty took a broadside from-
…
Hrm. Joe and Joyce don’t exactly create an easy Shipping name. Joeyce, maybe?
I think I’ve seen “JoJo” floating around.
“Yes, this is a JoJo reference!” *proceeds to drink hundreds of gallons of blood*
VERY enthusiastic ̶w̶a̶l̶k̶s̶ JoJo references
SO NO CHI NO SADAMEEEEE
JOOOOOOOOOOOJO
I’m pretty sure Hamon users can increase the surface tension of water, so yeah that checks out.
Bet y’all can’t wait before they kick it into overdrive
But for reals, while stands are really cool, I think Hamon has a lot of untapped potential as a hard magic system.
Also I really want to see what would happen if a pillar man made it into the 21st century.
Well, one did. Kind of. Just, not on Earth anymore.
What about Santviento/Santana? I don’t remember if he was ever fully finished off.
He absolutely wasn’t, he’s still stuck in that one fragment of his body under UV light at the Speedwagon Foundation, AFAIK
Although he might not have made it through Stone Ocean events
Wait jojo isn’t already inoverdrive?(anime only watcher btw).
Speaking of hamon, I heard that the reason Araki switched from hamon to stands is that he felt he had run out of ways of using it creativly. He felt constrained by it being the main powersystem.
he did, however, sort of double down on the vibe, since he introduced ‘Spin” in addition to Stands in Steel Ball Run, then basically abandoned it in JoJolion (Just Like Hamon fell by the wayside when Stands were introduced.)
The Spin is present throughout all of Part 8, technically.
Haman? BOOOO
This is why we need to go with Young Justice shipname rules. No portmanteaus, just pick something that’s meaningful to the couple.
I confess, I rather miss simple slash-naming. But I suppose that was either too linked with certain old (and mostly gay, because fandom) pairings, or was too transparent and easy-to-understand, and thus didn’t appeal to those who prefer knowledge of the Secret Words to be strictly an insider thing (again, because fandom).
I’ll still always go with slashes over anything else, but I think a good part of them dying out was just social media platforms that didn’t support using the / in tagging
huh, I didn’t consider the role of technology (and the limitations thereof) in common use at the time(s). interesting possibility to think about, thank you.
Honestly, same. I don’t like ship names that are incomprehensible unless you spend a lot of time in the fandom. Usually name portmanteaus can be worked out, but good ol’ A/B or A x B is my preferred format.
Again, that is IMO a good part of the reason they exist. Fandom(s) LOVE their Sekrit Inside Jokes/References/Jargon/Knowledge that only TRUE fans get. In-groups and out-groups and tribalism, yo.
That is a very good point!
I remember these being a thing in the Pokémon fandom as well. It’s what got me into the Adventures manga.
So face punching by mike, weird ship name, but it works
That was something I liked about Homestuck shipping names because they were usually pretty clever and consistent to a given character’s aesthetic, like “Cotton Candy,” or “Spider 8reath.” I usually only ever saw them used on forums and tumblr blogs though, never on the usual fanfiction websites. Maybe that’s because of the in-group/out-group incomprehensibility problem that Pig and StClair mention, though.
Could go by last names.
I think Joe would appreciate the ship name Brothal, while Joyce would get flaily about how it ends in -al, not -el, so not what you’re thinking.
Or combo last and first names into Rosejoy or Joyrose, which at least makes for a cute combo of words.
Rosenjoy has a lovely sound to it. I put my vote (which means nothing) on that.
Joyseph? Assuming Joe is short for Joseph, of course.
It’s actually Joelene
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
I’ve seen JoJo and Joeyce.
“Joece” works.
Is she going to break his fingers????
Okay, but seriously I’ve been waiting for this since their first date. GONNA GET MARRIED~
And aybe it’s Maybelline. I guess we’ll never know.
Hear that? That’s the sound of ships being made.
These ships were built for hundreds of years, decades even, well ok, A decade. But they’re sturdy, and have carried many a fanon.
*plays David & David’s “Welcome To The Boomtown” on the maybe-hacked-ish Muzak* (If you saw the video, you know why.)
They are so cute oh my god
Watch her blame the meds
She hasn’t taken the meds yet. She can blame Dina.
Joe. She’s definitely going to blame Joe.
I reckon that getting diagnosed when you’re older is really the lesser of two evils.
If you were diagnosed as a kid back in the late 90’s or early 2000’s, insidious ableism meant that people around you could have denied your autonomy, gaslit you, dehumanized you and subjected you to all kinds of severe indignities, some of which basically amount to legal torture.
But I suppose either way, life never gets any easier for us autistics, does it?
I want to acknowledge that you seem to be using that word with a lot more ease now.
Yeah, I came to a realization that it’s not about whether or not you’re autistic, but rather about being in a place where you’re not punished for it.
I am very grateful to Willis and his fans for creating such a place in this little corner of the online world. Here I can safely have a private label for myself, despite the great amount of time and effort it will take to change a broken system. 🥲
I think that’s because most of the people here are ND of some kind or multiple kinds. Personally I’m probably a little autistic, have a TBI, and
more than 4almost 5 decades of untreated PTSD.Here’s hoping you find treatment or other care with the PTSD, Opus. We care about you.
It’s a blessing- and the result of a mountain of hard work done mostly by other autistic people- that some children these days don’t get systemically abused for it.
And until that’s every child, fuck ABA and other conversion therapies that would literally-literally be illegal if you treated a dog like that, fuck “autism mommies”, fuck every mental health professional whose knowledge is rooted in having read one book thirty years ago and refuses to update it before treating someone, and may every member of Autism Speaks step on a flaming bag of dog shit and incinerate themselves.
FUCKING RIGHT?!?!?!
Willis, please implement an upvote system so this comment can be at the top where it deserves.
Hi,
I’m not really up on the latest information— I was just wondering, could you please help me understand what ABA is and why it is bad?
My younger cousin is on the autism spectrum and derived real benefit from a friendship with a woman who was an ABA therapist. I don’t know whether she used any ABA techniques on my cousin. But she did serve as a peer supporter and life coach for my cousin, and seemed to draw some insight from her work. But I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of it.
I’m also not clear what is meant by “autism mommies”. Could someone please enlighten me?
I’ve spent a lot of time caring for my cousin in loco parentis, and I don’t want to inadvertently slip into being an autism mom if that’s something bad.
Thank you for helping me to learn more!
Ok, no, never mind, I’m sorry — I should have just done the research myself rather than asking folks to do the work of educating me on such a sensitive and painful topic. I sincerely apologize.
Looks like many criticize ABA because it has often been done in punitive and controlling ways. And folks criticize the mothers of people with autism who wear their children’s diagnoses as a badge. I hope I got that right…
There’s a lot I don’t know. Especially when it comes to social commentary and trends in society. I am truly sorry for causing offense with my question.
Thank you for your understanding and patience!
So, ABA stands for Applied Behavioral Analysis, and it’s essentially conversion therapy for autistic kids. It was developed by the same guy and uses a lot of same techniques. The core idea behind it is using operant conditioning to develop more “normal” or “functional” behaviors in the patient. At it’s best, it can help autistic people integrate better into neurotypical society – by teaching/programming them to constantly mask and never express or acknowledge their needs. At it’s worst, it involves using literal shock collars to punish its “patients” for deviant behavior. And while that extreme is rare, other abusive tactics, such as withholding basic necessities as a means of negative reinforcement, are fairly common. It’s ethical guidelines are worded broadly and ambiguously, there’s very little oversight, its actual goal is fundamentally misguided – and it’s the most common and well-known therapy for autistic people, particularly autistic children. It’s promoted by a lot of well funded groups like Autism Speaks (which is considered by many autistic people to be a hate group) and so a lot of poorly informed parents end up putting their kids in it and traumatizing those kids for life.
“Autism mommies” in this context probably refers to… well, the type of parent who’s likely to send their kid to ABA. Parents who see having an autistic kid primarily as a burden, who would rather their kid be “normal” than happy, who claim to speak for autistic people while consistently ignoring and talking over us. They’re the kind of people who post videos of their kids having a meltdown for pity and clout, because their child’s suffering is less important to them than how it might affect their social status. They have a frustrating amount of resources and clout (again, via Autism Speaks and similar groups), and they end up drawing a lot of resources and attention away from actual advocacy for and by autistic people while reinforcing systemic abuse and mistreatment of autistic people.
Autism mommies refers specifically to the kind of martyr parent (usually a mom because of gendered childrearing expectations) who acts like their child’s autism is a grand tragedy inflicted on the parent in particular and makes it their mission to cure or reverse the autism at all costs. Many of them blog for attention and validation of their beliefs and behavior, and a significant portion of them engage in and promote abusive behaviors that would get you investigated by CPS in a hurry if the kid(s) were NT (I am talking giving your kids bleach solutions or tying your child up much of the day or openly fantasizing about murder suicide) but which are brushed off as understandable and “due to a lack of services” if the child is autistic. Look up the Stapleton woman who tried to kill her autistic daughter for a prime example.
The autistic community generally holds autism mommies responsible for the “autism community”‘s general refusal to abide by best practices in disability movements (namely, involving people with the disability in real positions of power and responsibility at all levels and genuinely listening to their input – Autism Speaks has literally 0 autistic senior leaders. 0. Because it was started by the O.G. autism mommy and her husband), society’s general attitude that murdering an autistic person is somehow understandable or justifiable (read any story about a murdered autistic kid and you’re lucky to find a single paragraph about the kid but you’ll find 90%of the story is spent painting the murderer as a victim), and the abuse their children suffer in the name of normal.
Sorry, for clarity: that’s what autistic people refer to when we use the term.
Autism mommies use it to refer to all parents of autistic people to try to muddy the waters, when a substantial and growing amount of those parents don’t want anything to do with treating their kids like a burden who only deserves love in small doses as a reward for being normal, conditional entirely on making their parents look good.
Addendum: a typical parent who uses ABA would not be considered an “autism mommy” by most of the autistic community. There’s a specific constellation of behavior and attitudes needed to earn that derisive moniker: making a big and constant attention seeking show of their own martyrdom, scapegoating their autistic child(ren) for anything wrong in the family, and a drive to make their kid normal at all costs or die trying (sometimes that latter part is meant literally).
A typical parent of an autistic kid might fall down the forced normal rabbit hole because ABA’s marketing is fantastic for something known to cause PTSD and long term mental health issues with an efficacy equal to or worse than placebo depending on the study, but usually won’t have the attention seeking, scapegoating, or willingness to go to extremes and harm their child to achieve their ends.
At this point, I think calling an “autism mommy” a “mommy” is fucking disgusting.
Also, hai PTSD trigger
Sorry wellerman, should have provided a TW. My bad.
It’s alright ischemgeek, it was eventually gonna happen anyway, given the nature of this very comic.
Speaking of which, if Dumbing of Age is at all gonna take the topic of autism seriously, it has to cover ABA and autism mommies and Autism Speaks, we really need to do whatever we can to fight these grave injustices unto us.
TW:
Thank you for explaining it to me, ischemgeek. I had read about that, about the prevalence of filicide, but I didn’t know the term. I am so sorry to have brought up such a painful topic. How awful.
You know what bothers me the most about these “conversation therapies”? Even at their best (which is still bad), their whole existence is justified by the misguided idea that it’s easier to conform to traditional social expectations of “normal” than it is to change a broken system.
I can recall similar stories of minority parents who would bleach their children’s hair and coat their skin with egg whites and all kinds of rediculous concoctions imaginable in increasingly desperate attempts to make them more white-passing.
I honestly don’t see how these “conversion therapies” are any less misguided and denigrating.
So terrible. I don’t know what to say, NG, except that I am here, I am listening, and I do care.
Yeah, so basically all of those terms amount to The Enemy. The kind of people who will absolutely kill us just for being different and then cry about how “hard” it was for them to “have to” do it. Probably this is a little radical but… Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they were subjected to the same shit they put us through. Nobody “deserves” it in the first place, but I don’t have any ethical qualms about a torturer getting a taste of their own medicine, especially the kind that lies and says it’s for the victim’s own good.
Wow — I’d read about the abusive schools that use shock collars and other terrible punishments (actually had a dear friend who was sent to a school like that… *shudder*) but I wasn’t thinking of those as specifically connected with ABA. Thank you so much for waking my mind up to that. I am so sorry for my ignorance.
I don’t think those kinds of abuse have happened to my cousin since they lost their parents and I stepped in as an advocate to help them remain independent and stable as an adult. But it IS good to know what the extremes are, so I can steer clear of those kind of influences myself!
Personally, I don’t think ignorance is inherently something to apologise for. Nobody can know everything, and often we don’t know what we don’t know until we’re told about it. How can somebody know they should look up certain things if they’ve never encountered or heard of those things before? There’s a stigma around it and a lot of implications that all ignorance is willful, but I figure as long as we eventually learn about something (and of course use that knowledge for good), it’s a net positive.
This may just be me, but I think it’s better to say something like “Oh, well now I know what to look for, thank you”, rather than “I’m sorry for not knowing”. A lot of personal blame is put on people who don’t Know about these things, with phrases like “Google is free” and “read a book”, but again, if you’re only just encountering something it’s silly and (in my eyes) petty to hold that against you. (That’s the Royal You, not the specific.) The resources are absolutely available to learn, but even the smallest library still has someone to help guide you to the section you’re after.
Long winded, possibly repetitive, but I hope it’s helpful.
Thank you, Taffy.
Wow. Thank you so much, thakoru. I’m sorry — I didn’t know all that. Goodness gracious. *barf emoji* How horrible.
My husband, best friend and I have all come to that conclusion. (Although I’m the only one who was a child in the 90s- husband in the 80s, best friend in the 70s. Ish.) And yeah- if the understanding of how it can actually manifest had allowed any of us to be recognised as autistic then… it likely would have been even harder than it already was.
I hope things are much better for children now who have autism. I hope that so fiercely.
The latest generation of autistic kids at least has something we didn’t, and I hope dearly that it helps them have better lives. There’s no sense in our generations suffering if the next one can’t have it better, and all that.
What have they got that previous generations didn’t? Things still seem pretty bleak in a lot of ways.
My mom might’ve been autistic. She also had bipolar disorder and BPD and refused to take meds for them. (One of her pals from AA got to her and told her that meds were for weak-willed people.) She had these “scripts” for people and got frustrated when they deviated from them. I think she would’ve been much happier if she had actually sought real treatment for her illnesses and disabilities.
is this not what is called “catch 22”? that popular paradox that claims that if you know that your are crazy, then you really are not… are they applying the catch 22 to autism?
“You’re not literally Rain Man, therefore you can’t be autistic!”
Barf.
“You’re either Rain Man or Sheldon Cooper, and anything else is a lie for attention’
Although in later seasons Sheldon does actually seem less severe. He holds down a steady relationship with a person who Gets him, they have Proper Adult conversations, and he’s apparently quite good in the sack. Those episodes felt a little truer to life than the show’s usual Hollywood Autism.
Big Bang Theory has been at least somewhat triggering for me ebcause of how relentlessly the shows writing mocks/bullies Sheldon for his autistic behaviours. I’d never considered it from the angle that he’s at least somewhat succeeding at functioning in society in the later seasons. Thank you!
Note: The show is also horribly annoying in that Sheldon also frequently behaves in horrible ways, and the show doesn’t mock that to the same extent.
I’d stopped watching it by the time I heard it was “blackface for nerds/NDs” and it’s not a show I miss or have any desire to revisit.
Please, I was ALMOST diagnosed back in the 60’s, but they didn’t have an actual term to pin on me.
Is Joe possibly the first one to succeed in being comforting about this with Joyce or am I forgetting someone?
He seems to be the first to do so without the frustration/condescension/personal baggage of her usual companions.
Yeah. Like, Jennifer made her feel a little better, but primarily by being so hilariously misguided about it all that Joyce found the condescension of it (“not knowing the term the weirdos use to refer to the normals is proof that I’m normal, don’t you think?”) funny instead of grating.
-3-
If that is the impetus for someone to hold my hand in any way possible
I am splashing water on hot grease
Even a little candle becomes a Trogdorian fireball if you try to extinguish it with water
I never expected Joe to become one of my faves but here we are. Just like in shortpacked
Joe/Joyce warriors… tonight we ride
We need not raise the flag. They’ve already raised the flags for us.
¡ARRRRIBA!
AYYYYY
…..
I really, really hope Joe doesn’t ruin this by panicking or running away or closing up.
(because he doesn’t want to hurt her and yet, like certain other members of the cast, he’s convinced himself that’s what will inevitably happen if he gets close to someone he cares for.)
Eh, I feel like Joyce is way more likely to panic and/or run away. She literally ran away from the pharmacy with her prescription like an hour ago in-universe because she was stressed by the situation. And she’s had a pretty emotionally taxing last few days.
My prediction; Joyce is too overwhelmed to process this and just ignores her feelings. Or has a moment of genuine emotional connection with Joe that she will blame on her hormones/mental state later.
I bet Becky and/or Dina interjects and breaks the moment.
Betting on Becky or whatever Professor Doc. I forget his DOA name, but it’s him.
“whatever Professor Doc is called now.” Damn my incoherent brain.
Professor Kellan Brock.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/03-see-you-in-the-funny-page/kellan/
NOW KISS
Insert yelling bird meme here
I understood that reference dot gif.
Sha la la la la la my oh my.
Is that Joyce dong an intimate/romantic interlocking of fingers or is that supposed to be her interlocking her fingers in a vice-grip like manner because she’s annoyed at Joe? It’s a little hard to tell.
I’m going to guess a bit of both. Probably the latter more than the former.
Doesn’t matter, held hands.
But she cried the whole time!
Doesn’t matter, held hands.
She put a bag on Joe’s head!
Still counts!
Wondering the same. Is she interlocking and a hand hold way, or is she about to bend his hand back to his arm real hard? Also, how long was her fingers like that? Just now, or right after the high five?
Joyce Dong hehehehehe
First one, then the other.
I’m guessing that Joyce is unaware (up to now) that she is gripping Joe’s hand.
Huh, I honestly didn’t expect that. Maybe Joyce isn’t as mad at Joe as we thought. Still I have my concerns. I feel like Joe is going to blow it and it will erupt right in his face.
What are the odds of that?
That last sentence of the first paragraph is the start of a slip shine.
I didn’t even think of that. Gravatar checks out though. lol
Now I wonder, how much of Joyce’s hysteria is… performative? passive aggressive? a learned behavior to have a voice in a sexist environment, because anything inbetween perfect obedience and hysterics is unfeminine and sinful, which hurts more than being childish.
Joyce could use more tools to express herself, is what I’m saying. She could have, like, dropped a ‘we still cool?’ between telling Dorothy off and asking for art classes, but she doesn’t know that option. She doesn’t have a role model for it.
Joe’s Mom is someone we know so little about at this point, isn’t she? If she’s autistic, or at least has a lot of overlap with that, it makes that much more sense Joe seemed to really not sweat it when Joyce threw that out there, if it’s a topic he actually knows a bit about, whereas so much of the cast like Dorothy and Sarah seem to be rather clueless about it.
All we know about her is she’s divorced, she fought a lot with Joe’s dad (he was a cheating asshole) and she was really proud of Joe when he was 12 because he was kind, courteous and read philosophy. She took him to orientation and when Joe’s dad drops him off, she calls to see if he made it okay.
And her name is Karen.
Looking it up, she does appear in a patreon-only strip, but I think that may be her only onscreen DoA appearance so far. I haven’t read the strip, though, as I haven’t had the opportunity to be a patron yet.
She has a very sparse Walkypedia page!
https://walkypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Karen_Rosenthal
Handholding?! Before marriage?! I know Joyce is Atheist now, but this is just too far…
I’m pretty sure I remember her holding hands with Ethan at some point.
(does a quick search of the archives)
Yeah, here we go. And again here. This isn’t anything new to her.
And she dares to complain about the word hussy with two, TWO, (2!!), confirmed on screen hand-holding partners in one academic year.
It’s almost too much for my delicate eyes.
Y’all you’re in a class, do your weird flirty thing later.
Class hasn’t started yet.
No! Do it now! Some of of have been waiting a long time for significant emotional hand-grasping!
Until the teacher starts talking, class is just a background.
Joyce, your feelings are showing!
Cheese and rice, not in public!
Hey if anything, Joyce and Dina be so salty I should have them with watermelon to make things even sweeter.
Add Mac and Cheese and fried chicken, and imma happy camper!
YES YES YES YES YES
I’m retroactively impressed that Joe’s conversation was so pleasant and helpful while Joyce’s hand was just… Doing some kind of slow transition into the last panel position??
Fucking KISS ALREADY THEN. If we’re doing, like, regency hand porn, already.
Oh also some serious stuff happened here that made me ship them even harder. But also *rolls up everything I’ve ever said about how they need to grow as people even though it’s still true, sets fire to it, makes s’mores while watching the sparks from the blaze drift off over the smoke, pondering the likelihood of a future where I wish they’d waited a little longer* kisssssssssss
Ugh me too… Set fire to all that introspecting!!! Just kiss already!
Yay, more info on Joe’s mom!
And yeah about diagnoses, ain’t that the truth.
Now, about you two (eyes emoji)
I WANT THEM TO SMOOOOOCH. I WANT THEM TO SMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCH.
Grist for your fan-art mill!
Yessssss, sexual tension between my favorite not-a-couple!
Er…between the members of my favorite not-a-couple, I mean…
favorite not-a-couple yet!
Ooohh mmmYYYYY GOOOOOOOD
PRE-MARITAL HAND-HOLDY HANKY-PANKY
PRE-MARITAL HANDY-PANDY!
Y’know everyone seems to be riding the Joe/Joyce train so I’m gonna go ahead and make it weird.
They’d have the cutest kids.
They really would though.
They’re both absolute 10s, it’s inevitable.
i don’t think that’s too weird. while some ppl are “ew babies” , there are a handful of fandom ships/fanartists who have made fan-children ocs or so as well (https://ladyfubuki.tumblr.com/post/108314372318/i-should-not-be-allowed-to-draw-nozakura)
I actually don’t like babies but I do like kids. Babies are gross to me. They constantly excrete out of every orifice they can.
That’s because human babies are more like marsupials than other mammals, significant amounts of development are post-natal compared to other animals like cows or zebras or giraffes that are walking minutes after birth, compared to humans that don’t walk until an average of one year.
They probably would. Also, I think it’s kind of funny that outside of Joyce having had a crush on Walky as a kid due to his church mouse role, she seems to have been drawn most often to the tall, broad-shouldered cast members. Ethan, Jacob, Joe. Guess she has a type. Maybe it’s for the best she hasn’t met Beef that I am aware of.
She wants to climb Mt. Rosenthal.
… yes, yes they would.
We could probably find out exactly what Joe and Joyce’s kids look like by digging up that one Walkyverse storyline about all the future kids from all possible timelines coming back.
lol this is either gonna be flirting or joyce successfully trolling 8D; (wouldn’t mind a bit of both)
Yeeees…. YEEEEEEEES!
Oh also just. Joe wasn’t just going “neat” as a neutral acknowledgement. He *really thinks this is a good thing* for Joyce if it’ll help her out the way his mom probably hoped a diagnosis would help her. That is a world of difference from “oh yeah, clocked you” from Sarah and Jennifer, or “how dare you leapfrog the non-existent line” from Dina, or even, “don’t worry, I’ll support you and help you find resources to deal with this” from Dorothy. Just…oh yeah? Cool for you! I hope this a good thing for you. Joyce deserves so fucking much more baseline “cool, I’m glad for you” from the people around her when she’s confronting shit that rocks her core sense of identity.
well-said!
hm, i get that it’s an important issue but other than some kinda ‘disability’? benefits of a job, or being able to be prescribed medicine easier like “anxiety” or something that’d reduce sensitivity to overstimulation/sensory issues, would you really need a diagnosis (if joe’s mom specifically wanted it , unless she just wanted to narrow down/eliminate other stuff for other practical reasons, while the internet isn’t always reliable, there’s probably a bit more research by now to be able to look up “How to live with autism as an adult/being an autistic parent” or so)
Well, for example, I Yoto have been told I may be neurodivergent…by people and not by a medical professional because I don’t got to the doctor. But the idea that I may be would explain my habits, some of my difficulties in performing work (such as how hard it is to stay focused for long periods of time) and the idea that it’s not my fault could be comforting. ALSO it could give me a method on which to work with my disability, such as medication that may help with my issues or techniques that can keep me on track. Knowing the nature of the beast can be a saving grace.
i know some ppl can have both, tho ppl do say adhd overlaps with autism and there is some medication that works with adhd to balance/adjust (apparently caffeine isn’t as effective? it makes me sleepy quicker but wake up early the next day, other than also the stomach issues, i feel like a daily morning hot coffee might not be that helpful as opposed to just taking a hot or cold shower and drinking a hot drink to warm/wake you up before a long day ahead/work/etc)
But yeah i’m sure knowing for sure would be helpful. Though among friends/ppl you can trust you could casually say “yeah sometimes it’s hard to deal with X thing b/c of my autism/neurodivergent tendencies”
No. A diagnosis is not necessary for an autistic person to be… well, autistic. Plus the older the person the more time they’ve had to learn their autism traits, the harder to be diagnosed. And autism diagnosis can massively hinder in certain ways.
There’s also no treatment out there (unlike for say, ADHD, a condition with a lot of comorbidities- aka traits in common- and a high likelihood of people with one having high symptoms of the other). There is only management. And a diagnosis may put Joyce, in her particular situation, in touch with them. There may, for example, be support structures, educational groups or therapists that would only work with someone with a diagnosis.
But in general? No, a diagnosis is often not particularly helpful beyond saying “yes it’s definitely true I have a diagnosis” (whether to convince the self or others) and can be harmful. Autistics are still discriminated against, sometimes to the point of being considered incapable of functioning as an adult when they definitely are.
A friend of mine doesn’t tell anyone at their work that they are autistic for this reason. I do think a diagnosis can give some people peace, but it can also be a tremendous stigma.
Fun fact: Nearly time I’ve disclosed my autism to an employer, they’ve gone out of their way to make things as difficult and unaccommodating as possible. Sometimes to the point of pretending not to understand simple sentences so they could claim I “refused to communicate”. And they get away with it no matter what, like bigots always do.
FUCKING BASTARDS!!!
I am absolutely appalled at the abuse you went through, I’m so sorry that happened to you Taffy. I swear this made me fucking see red.
Eh, ’tis what ’tis. Sucks to have difficulty with work, but at least I got Final Fantasy to keep busy with in between.
Interestingly enough, I fairly recently got a two months worth of paid weekly commissions for game programming, all remote for some guy who wants me to turn his art into a game.
It pays much less than minimum wage, but at least it’s such a light load for me that I don’t have any reason to disclose my autism to him, and between my conditions and the economy as it is, it’s about as close as I’ll get to a real job.
For reals though this shit needs to fucking stop.
We have to spread the message that it’s just not enough to be un-bigoted. We have to be anti-bigot.
(for clarification, that’s the royal “we”)
Validation is a big thing. Especially if other doctors etc have waved it off, said you’re imagining it, etc.
adding to myself – or ‘there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re just not trying enough’
it’s incredibly validating for some people to know what they have. There are so many experiences people may have, but since they don’t have the word for it, they can’t talk or emphasize with others effectively. Also, if you’re diagnosed, you can deal with aholes much more effectively than if you’re self-diagnosed.
Sometimes you also don’t know what a problem you have until you go to a doctor, anyway. I had debilitating “shyness” since elementary school and I just figured I was quiet and preferred to think before I acted, to the point it was detrimental. Talked to my old childhood psych because work was causing me to have panic attacks, and the medicine they gave me actually let me stop being stuck in my head. I can actually speak to others with more confidence and self-assurance, without spending 30 minutes wondering if my opinion even has merit. I didn’t even know how bad my anxiety was!
As for diagnoses that I’ve known about forever, I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, so I was able to spend years building coping mechanisms for that. It doesn’t come up anymore because I’ve dealt with it for so long that I can pass as normal. But other people might just be starting out, and might just be figuring out their coping mechanisms because they weren’t diagnosed earlier in life.
oh no I want them to kiss so bad. Joyce was SMOOTH with that hand holding
* barely stifled squee *
Oh my GOD.
Just kill me now. I need them to kiss so badly.
L-Lewd…
i am absolutely l o s i n g i t
I think “now kiss” would be kinda premature but i desperately want them to at least hug or something PLS
there shall be no hand holding in my christian minecraft server, thank you very much.
Christian Minecraft server? That’s a thing?
confusedPikachu.gif
Thing about Christian subculture is you can put ‘Christian’ in front of anything. Christian Tax Services. Christian Tile and Flooring. The hardcore fundies will buy anything if it’s labeled Christian. That’s why it’s so popular in America, because it sells out.\
Whoops! Can’t show that in a Christian Manga!
Issa meme.
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/676946
As a woman in their 30s who only just got diagnosed last year… Yeah. I wish it had happened sooner. Maybe it would have made a lot of things easier. Maybe not. But I’m sadly just as much in a situation where people in authority don’t give a crap.
(Long story short, been unemployed for a long while, and the Danish jobcenter system forced me into a retail job despite me practically begging for them to help me find one in graphic design. So yeah, there’s my own load of salt)
That sucks, though other than having your own portfolio and graduating from like an art school (not that you need to go to a college/university to be an artist of course), i’d assume a job center would be something like a “temp” kinda company that’d help you find ‘basic’/common jobs so I wouldn’t expect a graphics design company to be an option rather than a company sending an email to a personal website/online portfolio or so
It’s a bit different for the Danish system, where jobcenters are run by the government. At the very least, they are fully capable of guiding one towards possible jobs that suit my actual skills, but they have been known for several years to be more focused on shoving people into jobs that are just readily available, instead of trying to look into things. They have proper access to places, that might have something that can build up levels of experience.
I straight up had one jobcenter councillor ask me “Why do you want to be a graphic designer anyway?” And I was just so frustrated and confused, because her tone indicated that I was wasting my time, when I would be better off doing retail or SOSU (Social og Sundhed, basically healthcare for the elderly).
She and so many others basically told me, that I wasted my time on things I’m actually good at, instead of using her own capable skills to give me proper advice for my portfolio or resume. Instead, she sat there, with this deadpan stare and might as well have asked me: “Hey, why are you insisting on being a drain on society?”
They have been like this for MANY years, and I’m not the first or last to have problems with this.
What a shit councilor. It’s not like there’s graphic design in like, every aspect of our lives or anything… I hope you find the job you want! I’m in uni for graphic design myself <3
Seconded. It’s their job to help people find jobs, not belittle them for not already having one or going into a field that the councillor personally isn’t interested in. Imagine someone with any other job doing that. A hobby supply cashier talking down to you for buying art supplies because they don’t draw. A Dominoes delivery person making fun of you for eating pizza. They’d lose their job and be on the other side of the counter the next day, and you know they’d hate for somebody to do the same to them.
IMO it’s almost certainly a case of “stop holding out for the Cool Job(s) with very short supply and a high barrier of entry, I’m not here to place you in your dream job, just A Job Any Job”.
I love how those two are slowly developing
Maybe it’s Maybelline.
Now pull him closer….clooooser
Now let’s hold hand and watch dinosaurs
That’s your response to everything, Bagge!
I might have been listening to Head Over Heels while I read this update, and the chorus hit on that last panel.
I’m in, godspeed to Joe/Joyce
-gasp-
cue sitcom audience going “Whooooooooohhhhh!”
ewwwww
joyce. c’mon joyce. knock it off.
There are two possibilities: either Joyce has finally been hit by how nice Joe is to her and is letting her feelings for him flow (♡) or she can’t stand anymore being told how lucky she was to find the right doctor and is about to pull him down and hit him using her head. Still, it’s great that Joe can confront the situation that happened to his mother and be so sincerely supportive to Joyce.
It could be both! The spot where these two instincts intersect is known as the “Toradora Junction.”
Is it weird that I always wanted them to get together?!
No! It’s the only relatively positive relationship Joyce’s got right now!
But also cue for Joe to panic about getting emotionally involved with someone and lean back into the manslut routine. I hope not, but…that’s the comic we’re reading, isn’t it.
That’s what I’m afraid of, yes.
Or, as others have noted, for some other “funny” interruption.
I’ve wanted to see them together since reading the one arc in It’s Walky! where Joyce and Joe have a sort-of thing going on. I felt like they worked really well together. If only Joe wasn’t quite so… *Joe* back then.
Now, FUCK. Don’t just Kiss. A Kiss is sweet, and maybe passionate. This is different. This is built-up aggression about Joe suddenly transforming into Lust. This feeling would be negated if he was being a dick, but as he is being a better Joe, and physical contact has been established in the positive, they are about to Walk the Dinosaur. Open the Door. Get on the Floor!
I’m wondering if and when Joe will start panicking. If Willis turned the Character Development knob, I’d like to know to which number.
That is absolutely adorable
I didn’t realize just how invested I was in these two until today T_T
Welcome to the club, we have cookies!
Aaagh my shipper heart <3
This is either about to be Joe’s best Rosh Hashanah ever or he’s about to say something he’ll need to ask Joyce’s forgiveness for really really well before Yom Kippur next week.
I am loving every second of this. Because this is really a turning point for both characters. Joe I think has been legitimately interested in Joyce since their date and he’s been a legit source of advice and companionship when Joyce couldn’t really talk to anyone else about what’s going on. And Joyce is beginning to realize how much she relies on Joe because he doesn’t force her into a box or get up on her ass about things. Even with the religion he was fine to just let her rant (so was Sarah to an extent). I don’t need this to be a full fledged relationship but a deep and honest friendship is worth more sometimes and I’d be perfectly happy to see that be a thing if that’s where Willis wants to take it
Every once in a while, a perfect moment. Joe validates Joyce, Joyce unconsciously holds hands with Joe.
Yeeeeesssssssssss hold Joe’s hand, Joyce.
Joe missed his chance to run away lol
He can still throw himself down and play dead.
Joyce keeps her position as the whitest characte in the entire comic.
Assume this is abt her Dina comment? Because yeah lol. Once she gets the current suspects sorted shes def gotta do some research on white privilege
What do we know about Joe’s mother again?
Becky’s ass belongs to Dina. Now Joe’s hand belongs to Joyce. That’s just the rules of parallel narrative development.
*banging a fork and knife on a table with an empty plate in front of me* KISS! KISS! KISS! KISS!
“Straight in. suck up and go,
cool it, swallow, swallow
Breathe deep, take it all
it comes cheap
Push it through the doors
because in between the lines
I’m gonna pack more lines
so I can get in
Ooh traffic jam got more cars
than a beach got sand
Suck it up suck it up suck it up
fill it up until no more
I’m no crazy creep, I’ve got it coming
to me because I’m not satisfied
The hunger keeps on growing
I eat too much
I drink too much
I want too much
Too much
I’ve got to get it somewhere
I mean, you never know, maybe
you’re dreaming
Who do you think you’re watching
Who do you think you need
Play for me, play more.
ten times in the same day
I need more. I’m going
over my borders
I’m going to take more, more
from you, letter by letter
I eat too much
I drink too much
I want too much
Too much
I told god I’m coming
to your country
I’m going to eat up your cities.
your homes, you know
I’ve got a stomach full it’s not
a chip on my shoulder
I’ve got this growl in my tummy
and I’m gonna stop it today
I eat too much
I drink too much
I want too much
Too much
Suck it up…”
-Dave Matthews Band, Too Much
This adds a lot of context to Joe’s relationship with Dina and I’m here for it
Didn’t even see it like that. Good catch.
Substantially so, yea
Oh yeah, I hadn’t considered that. I mean, I figured he’d be seeing Dina more often due to this class and due to Amber, but this does add an additional layer.
We’re about to get a HORRIBLY embarrassed Joyce and I’m all in favor.
I really enjoy these two.
Joyce has now dropped the defenses… let’s see what happens
Man, I enjoy these two as friends but romantically I can think of few pairings more doomed to failure.
Depends on the expectations that they set on the relationship i guess.
I love how so many of the people in the strip are reacting to the autism diagnosis with happiness, like “ah hey now you’ve got a word for it and resources!” And Joyce is stuck back in the beforetimes where autism is a bad thing.
Hope her friends eventually get through to her about the positives of it.
I’m sure she’ll get there. She’s been busy unprogramming other things from her childhood, and this one won’t be taking a backseat now that it’s at the forefront
And the trap snaps shut
Narrator: Joyce was in fact immensely good at high fives.
Pancakes or waffles? Always waffles.
French Toast.
Do you like Wendy’s French Toast Sticks?
I can’t wait to try them myself!
Cute!
I just wanna hug Joyce…
People get excited about Joyce holding a hand with Joe, wondering a makeup so hard… is like me, when somebody touch me.
Pls, Willis?🥺
I am so absolutely HERE for adorable Joyce / Joe interactions.
I’m pretty sure it should be “suss” in this case, since it’s not being used as a short form for suspicious but a way of finding out something. No idea the root of the word, though, so I’m just voicing my opinion into the void.
According to the etymology dictionary I use for these sorts of things, it’s short for “suspect” originally (1950s police jargon) and then transformed to meaning something akin to “to investigate/discover/figure out” in the 1960s.
AHHHHHHHHHH JOYCE. I also want to mention that, Mr. Willis, your depiction of Joyce got me an autism diagnosis, and I am taking my steps towards therapy and counseling and treatment for the various other mental illnesses that go with it. I honestly can’t thank you enough. I’ve been reading your comic since it was It’s Walky
hot dang that’s amazing
mashing f5 right now