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Sophia_Nyx 
⚧️ @sophianyx.bsky.social ⋅ 12h
Onyx | 
Emerald | 
Obsidian ⚧️ 
@onua-ryder.neocities.org ⋅ 1d
Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social ⋅ 4m
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Reuters Legal @legal.reuters.com ⋅ 1d
the_dude @lebowski76.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Joe Chouinard @joechoui.bsky.social ⋅ 8m
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Barb O. Saur 
is this going to be a fucking habit
No, only pervy nuns have those.
I’ve seen that anime
I’ve seen that Verhoeven movie
Which one is that? I am going to be doing a verhouven program for my friends and i need all the verhouven i can get
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedetta_(film) I would assume.
What does Whoopi Goldberg have to do with anything?
The Devils of Loudon reference!
I’m old. Sue me.
The floodgates burst open and Joyce lets out a cascade of F-words that makes Sal’s Mario Kart tirade from 2014 sound like a Sesame Street song.
Joe helped to cut the tension, so we probably won’t get more Joyce f-bombs tomorrow. But maybe if we’re lucky…
I had totally forgotten about that offer.
That offer, was for “DAMN” as someone pointed out in yesterday’s comments. That Joyce even had softer less defined lines. That Joe is honouring it now means he is happy that Joyce might use it as a noun and not an adverb.
As an old audio file pointed out (I think George Carlin was involved) Fuck is a versatile word. It can be used as nearly every word in a sentence. “Fuck the fucking fuckers.” is grammatically correct.
I’m thinking it must’ve been The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.
Pretty sure Carlin had nothing to do with that one.
“Shit” is also a noun, a verb, and an adjective.
Cusses are versatile!
I always think of that scene from ‘Boondock Saints’…
“certainly illustrates the versatility of the word…” XD
absofuckinlutely
oooo Joyce finally be collectin da chedda $v$
*plays “Miami” by Jason Byrne on hacked muzak*
A man of his word
that twentys been on the table so long its worth significantly less than when it was first offered due to inflation
Specifically, Joe would have to pay Joyce ~27 dollars to match the value of the $20 he offered in 2013.
He makes up the difference in spooning.
Perfect avatar for that lol
It’s a whole lot more than $27 in PPP, which is the only inflation that actually matters to, you know, ordinary people….
That wouldn’t count on a sliding timeline
It’s only been like what, 6 months since that happened bruh?
Inflation in comic time would be negligible.
Does Joyce swearing just generate money?! I want that power!
Not you, Sarah.
Only saying a swear word she hasn’t said before. So if you wanted to keep exploiting that power after the obvious ones have been used up, you’d have to do some serious social engineering to introduce new ones into the vernacular.
Maybe it’s only Joyce’s Fucks that generate mon…oops no that’s a different thing.
Not you, Sal.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/damnation/
Wow Joe already paying his girlfriend for dirty talk.
Now she must get them … a shrubbery!
Ni
I’m OK with this
Before or after she cuts down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring?
You are skipping a step, next she must get another shrubbery, and then plant it beside the first one, but higher, to get a two level effect, with a little path running down the middle. Only then can you demand lumberjacking using a fish.
A path! A path!!
I cannot tell whether Dina looks proud or concerned in panel 3
Possibly both
Nah, that her scientific curiosity look. She is studying this new phenomenon with interest.
yeah she does seem weirdly concerned but i imagine she isn’t focused on the alcohol anymore lol
There it is. Took a while.
Eleven years!
I like the brick joke joke.
I did not read any of the comments in yesterdays strip so I admit I did not notice Joyce said fucking until now.
Well that’ll teach you to fucking well pay attention, won’t it?
Me neither! I thought the f-word she said that the alt-text referred to last strip was “for”! I thought everyone was so dumbfounded because she had said something so transactional and dismissive and callous to her new boyfriend.
Glad it was just “fucking”. In comparison to telling her boyfriend he only exists as social lubricant to smooth over her mistakes, “fuck” is mild.
Joe probably made a mental note of it
I read that more as “hey back me up here, I keep phrasing things to sound worse than I mean”, but it came out poorly phrased so it sounded worse than she meant.
Can anyone help me refer me to the comic when the twenty was promised because I don’t remember at all.
Here
It’s here, I can’t get the link to work
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/damnation/
Thank you! And aww, the fact that he remembered a semester later and their different relationship now, it adds to Joe’s cuteness and sweetness factors
There’s this one, though not exactly right:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/damnation/
Thanks guys!
read that 4th panel as “but i still got your first “fuck””
the subtext is definitely there XD
Is that Harriet Tubman on that 20? Nice that Willis could just zip that up the Watsonian pipeline. Fuck Andrew Jackson.
You didn’t say “fudge.”
You said THE word.
The big one.
The queen mother of dirty words.
The “F-dash-dash-dash” word.
And then Ralphie’s mother tries the soap.
Isn’t the word Sarah offers, that is partly concealed, the ‘rudest word in the English language’?
That would be the “N” word.
The quintessential four letter word. The one we Define specifically because of how many letters it has even though there are other swears that have four letters.
I do wonder if Joyce can say “damn” now. In the context of her upbringing “damn” is a much greater swear. Without fucking you don’t have a Human Race.
Dina looks concerned, which is very nice given the friction between her and Joyce.
Andrew Jackson looks to me sort of like he has an Afro, a hitler mustache, and a 1980’s style collored shirt; which, given his real life history, makes him seem much less crazy than he actually was.
maybe she’ll offer the alcohol to joyce and observe how it is when she’s buzzed lol
*fuction
(this joke is only funny to me)
Can you explain it so it is also funny to me?
the simplest explanation requires SAT question format
frick : friction :: fuck : ???
I think it’s actually supposed to be Harriet Tubman, there have been a number of campaigns to replace Jackson with her over the years. Largely because Fuck Andrew Jackson.
The beginning of this, for reference:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/damnation/
Well that explains why I couldn’t find it when I was looking up Billiefer strips, she wasn’t the one that made the bet.
lol spend in on a lunch together (tho2 0 bucks for four ppl might not be too much unless there’s a dirt cheap place to go to haha)
“Fuck” is an interesting swear because by definition it doesn’t feel that insulting. It just means to have sex which is a natural action. I wonder why it’s been censored the way it has. I feel like there are way more scandalous and insulting words much more taboo to say. Like any racial slur.
I suspect it has to do with historical sexism and active versus passive implications. And generally messed up attitudes about sex.
And like shit, in the Bad Old Days there were aspects of reality you Just Didn’t Talk About. Especially sex which you were supposed to pretend didn’t exist at all.
Yeah instead of acknowledging a natural experience that is key to continuing the species they would just say unhinged shit like “make the beast with two backs” or whatever.
Historically there have been two categories of swears, the godly ones and the bodily function ones, with which ones are considered worse changing for various reasons. There is a book, Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr that was pretty interesting on it.
Fascinating!
In Firstday School class (like Sunday School class) when I was a kid, there was a whole lesson on obscenity vs. profanity. And which ones were swears vs. curses, and why one shouldn’t say them.
I liked my Firstday School teacher’s explanation: “Well, if I just say, ‘Oh, damn!’ am I really working on addressing my problem? Or am I just complaining about it?” Seemed like a sideways explanation to me, but I respect it more now.
When I was a kid, peers told me “fuck” was an acronym, either for “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge,” or “Fornicating Under the Crown of the King”.
According to Wiktionary, though, it’s neither:
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fuck
Reports of its recorded use in the Bayeux tapestry are, sadly, apocryphal:
From the original social media meme generator:
https://htck.github.io/bayeux/#!/
See, e.g.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrossStitch/comments/b6s7yn/fo_behold_field_of_fucks_bayeux_tapestry/
For further philological and phonemic folderol on fuckery afoot:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/155664/how-many-different-parts-of-speech-can-the-f-word-be-used-as
Forsooth!
Nearly all of them.
The prime example is “fuck the fucking fuckers,”
George Carlin made a recording to this effect. At least it sounds like him.
“Fuck” can’t be a preposition, yet. Which is sad. Since you can’t proposition people by prepositioning them.
How about, “Go the fuck home!” Or “Way the fuck out there”?
“Fuck” there means “all the way to”. Is that a preposition?
“Go the fuck home” uses “fuck” to modify the verb “go” (as an emphatic modifier). So it’s an adverb there. A preposition would replace “for” or “to” or “with” or the like.
Basically any time anyone says that any word that was coined before the last century is an acronym, it’s folk etymology.
“Shit”, similarly, is not an acronym for “Ship High In Transit”. It comes from Old English scitte, and has been in the language longer than the Latinate “transit”.
Indeed, nearly every time somebody gives you a funny story to explain the origin of a word, phrase, or nursery rhyme it’s a folk etymology. Most etymologies are fairly straightforward. There are interesting ones, but those aren’t the ones people think they know.
in spanish speaking countries there are this peculiar nasty swears that “allude to the mother’s body parts”, because mothers are holly figures of authority, you see. In Spain in particular there are this swears about the holly waffer (body of Christ!). Supposedly in the old Soviet Union, swears alluded to politic figures or ideas. So it looks like, what is holly in your culture is made unholy in the expletives.
Fascinating!
That reminds me of the Somali custom of elder women stopping fights by tossing a leather belt sewn with cowry shells between the combatants. The implication is: “These shells symbolize your mother’s vagina, from whence you all came. If you would dare to step over the line this belt has drawn in the dirt between you, your blasphemy will be as bad as stepping on your own mother’s vagina. The only way to respect yourself and your own family is to walk away from this fight.”
Used only as a last resort, to stop fighters who are in a killing rage.
I remember reading that cockleshells had similar sacred symbolism in Europe and North America, but I’m not finding the reference now.
(A Somali grandma I knew showed me the belt and told me the story.)
“Fuck” is probably one of the most versatile words in the English. Here’s a good, short video explaining why (it’s misrepresented as being by George Carlin, who was not involved in this, as far as I know).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZkb4TPI-Lo
The audio file this is based on is older than YouTube by a decade.
Oh yeah, I remember hearing it long before YouTube. No idea how or where I originally heard it, but it wasn’t YouTube. Might’ve been a Napster or Kazaaa download.
There’s a single non-swear use of fuck that I’ve come across (fnah!), dating (according to OED) to around 1600. “Windfucker” is a name for a common kestrel.
From the original word “fuck” meaning “to beat or strike,” right? Like a reference to the flapping of wings?
No idea on that Laura. Best person to ask these questions is usually Susie Dent on Twitter- she’s a pro etymologyistyish person
The word is interesting in that it has so many uses: “WORD, the WORDing WORDer is WORDing WORDed up!” It’s a noun, an adjective, an adverb, and a verb.
The rare long-distance joyce freakout face
Joyce can’t believe what’s happening.
Dina processes how an impossible event is now possible.
Becky happy that her soul friend is growing up.
And Joe keeping his word.
Yup, a lot of things happened.
Due to inflation in the time since this joke was set up, Joe now owes her $26.92.
Can I invest in Joyce Swearing Futures?
But who’s counting?
Blowjob Cat is.
“Mine, you hear? For ever and ever.”
I do love that Becky is so pleased by this that she is over her initial complaint, that Joe gave her the promised 20, and that Dina seems more curious at this development than dwelling on the unintentional insult from Joyce.
I guess when Joyce said that she wanted the f-bomb to have power if she said it, it in fact did.
I suspect Dina is actually realizing just how upset Joyce has to be with herself to break this particular taboo at the moment–in some ways, it’s more meaningful than even a simple apology would’ve been.
And I would imagine that Dina is not unfamiliar with the “I have fucked up things in a way that I had not anticipated. People who I really did not wish to upset are upset and I don’t know how to make things right. An explanation of my hypotheses failed as my assumptions were false and now they may be more angry with me and I don’t know what to do to make things better..!” Possibly including “You! More socially adept individual! Tag in please!”
Although I’m not sure if she has been paid for making this request before…
It didn’t dawn on me until just now that she said “fucking” in the last strip. I was just as confused as Joyce until this strip.
I am an idiot.
a bet is a bet
Joe trying hard not to laugh in Panel 3
Aww, he remembered!
Last semester from his pov; eleven years ago from ours.
Now the question is, what should Dina do with Grampa’s old nasty cough medicine now that she no longer needs it
Chug it!
Like the scene from Parks and Rec.
Left it to teacher Brock
Political bribe.
Joyce moving up fast in the rankings.
Man, Nick Fury showing Steve Rogers the Helicarrier was only worth $10.
Joyce should keep inventing new swears that she won’t say so people offer her money for it, maybe afford some textbooks that way.
Great so nothing really has changed, as long as the balance of firsts is kept up to date Beckys ok
Right up until the next time Joyce dares to do something without Becky
Maybe Dina will say something to her in private. She sort of has that look on her.
I hope so. I like Dina and she deserves better.
My dorm roommate had been raised strict Catholic and so, while she dressed trendy and went to parties, her vocabulary was still squeaky clean. So many people made a big deal of it, most notably our mostly-amiable dudebro neighbors. They did their level best to get her to drop an F-bomb. Little did they know that the secret was acceptance, so that she could speak freely around you. I heard her swear on the regular if infrequently, because it wasn’t like catching a Pokémon. Everyone here is handling this well and I hope they continue to do so. I think that’s likely.
Hooray for money!
Twenty dollars? Oh, I wanted a peanut.
Twenty Dollars can buy MANY peanuts!
Explain how!
Oh see, I totally thought everyone was shocked because Joyce was reducing Joe to pure utilitarianism whilst talking about how much she was putting her foot in it, but this makes way more sense. (And it seems everyone else caught it yesterday
)
A brick joke 11 years in the making.
That’s our Willis!
… okay, Joyce wanted to see Dorothy fuck and now Becky wanted to hear Joyce’s first fuck. What is going on here?
(Besides me deliberately misinterpretting things to bait the slashficcers, I mean.)
Dina is watching this first fuck with scientific curiosity. Joe is paying money (as promised) after the first fuck occurred.
They just want Joyce to give a fuck.
Dina seems to be the only one noticing Joyce being overwhelmed and viewing it as such, rather than moment to crowd around her
Oh yeah, I remember that reaction.
So, is she going to tell Becky that this isn’t actually her first? Would it make a difference if she knew about the context of that actual first time?
I need my memory jogged, sorry.
I need mind, actually, I mistakenly remembered Joyce saying Fuck instead of Damn It, there:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/language/
Joyce supposedly told Dorothy that she wanted to watch (while drinking) but I doubt she used ‘fuck’ to describe that. This was Dorothy retelling this to Wally so who knows the accuracy or if Dorothy was slightly fibbing to get another round or to see if Wally was game for FFM so Dorothy could get farther into Joyce’s pants.
As of five seconds ago when I checked, she did not use the fuck-word in that strip, no.
It’s not “supposedly” and we know she wasn’t “fibbing” because this is a thing that happened on screen last chapter:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/03-trystin-in-the-wind/observe-2/
So what was the first time she said it? I’m pretty sure it was yesterday.
I miss-remembered. My bad.
The context of the actual first time is it just happened five seconds ago so you’re gonna have to fill us in on what you’re talking about
I apologise for sending you all on this wild goose chase.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/language/
what
My bad, I miss remembered it. I had in mind that she had said “fuck”, back then. but it was “damn it”:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/language/
So, yeah, today’s strip was indeed the first time she said “Fuck”. Joe still own her an additional 20, though.
I didn’t even notice the “fucking” yesterday and thought everyone was reacting to the “that’s what you’re for” bit.
Same here; so at least you’re not the only one.
Oh I’m sure when Becky and Dina exit with the booze jug, Joe will probably, with perfect timing, say “Boyfriendness”?
I never had any appreciable pocket money on me when I was in college. Does everyone really around with a preemptive twenty in their pockets just in case *they* were the one nearby when Joyce finally cursed?
This is owed money, iirc – back in the day Joe offered Joyce $20 to say ‘fuck’.
To say ‘damn’ actually.
Has she said “damn” yet? I recall her saying “goddamned” but that’s not quite the same.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/language/A long time ago and in the dramatic meaningful way.
Messed that up, but it should still work.
Thanks.
I mean Joe’s Dad is… what was he again? A doctor? A lawyer? Anyway one of the Rich professions so Joe is definitely not short on disposable cash.
He’s a medical doctor, and a specialist at that.
I think he’s an orthopedic surgeon?
A “bone doctor”, of course.
I honestly thought that maybe he is a gynaecologist… that would be an entire mess of its own. But I think my brain just crossed wires and remembered that one scene from Mel Brook’s Dracula “You’ve got your hand in that too?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s called a ‘twenty’. My dad used to carry it around in his pocket; I now pass it on to you.”
Maybe I’m just living in an affluent bubble, but everybody I knew in college could probably come up with a 20.
No. No, you used it *way* too casually last time for me to believe that was the first time you said “fuck”. This reaction’s got to be performative for them.
Read the entire comic front-to-back and you’ll find exactly two instances of Joyce saying the fuck-word.
When was the first usage?
Yesterday.
Yesterday’s page.
If you click on my name here, you’ll find documentation of (I believe) every time anyone in the comic has said “fuck” or its variants. If you hover over the bars in the top graph, it’ll pop up the sentence and date of the instance responsible for any given segment of the bar. Touching the bar should register as hovering on Android, but last I checked Apple didn’t support it.
No, I mean I think she’s spoken it offscreen beforehand, and since it was done so casually yesterday, I think she’s said it offscreen multiple times.
I don’t remember ever making a concious decision that “bloody” was in my list of Acceptable Words For Me To Say, and then making a point of using it. I just suddenly realised I was doing so without even thinking about it.
For me to start using a word I hadn’t previously, I have to make a very conscious effort to do so. I kind of have to think about what I’m about to say before I say it, or else it is usually incomprehensible to others. It doesn’t naturally occur to me that someone can start using a word without thinking about it first.
That makes sense.
I probably should do that, but I don’t very often. I’m just incomprehensible to others.
Say Willis, is that the Harriet Tubman $20 bill? I didn’t think those were in circulation yet
Maybe he anticipated that they would be out when he drew this seven months ago.
wait’ll the sliding timescale really kicks in.
“See, people used to carry around slips of paper called ‘cash’, which represented a fixed amount of money in physical form. There were also other, smaller tokens, like pennies, dimes, and… nickels.”
“Oh, so that’s what that means!”
joe does forgery in his spare time
Nah he has a wealthy dad, pretty sure that’s how he had a sawbuck in the first place.
I am going to assume this is a parallel universe wherein the Tubman Twenty replaced the Racist Warmonger Twenty
Perhaps someday they will have been.
Ugh, wrong button, see staszu13’s previous comment.
A Lanister (er, Rosenthaler?) always pays his debts.
Dina looks genuinely concerned lol
I love how we are all sitting around talking about fucking, but none of us are doing it…I want to change that.
That’s an incredibly bold and mildly offensive assumption.
why would any of us be reading a webcomic at the same time as doing that?
actually it’s how I write them
oh lol last slide I thought it was “boyfriend”
good pun, alt text!
i missed the connection about the payout. Was there a bet or wager about the virginal fuck bomb?
Way back when, Joe offered her 20 bucks to swear.
Joe is a man of his word
We really got her first two cusses before her first canon nookie…
and before GTA VINo, Becky, your FOMO is still isn’t a FOMO
I thought it was “damn” he had to pay for?
Technically, yes, but I feel this is in the spirit of the original challenge. I gather Joe does, too.
That second panel is perfect.
Joyce better be ready to get this reaction from EVERY person in this college. Everybody will ask her each time she says “fuck”. People still won’t find her “normal”, even after a while.
IU has like 10,000 students. The vast majority of them have no fucking idea who Joyce is.
the near-shooting and kidnapping could tilt that ratio a little
She didn’t have glasses then!
Ah we are Clark Kenting, very wise
Joyce has been, well, fucking around with being secular for such a long time (irl, maybe not that long in-comic) that i didn’t even realize her saying “fucking“ would be such a big deal, but apparently she hadn’t gotten around to saying it yet!
So I’m glad to be wrong with my prediction yesterday but at the same time… does Becky ever actually give one single solitary shit about Joyce’s feelings? Like, Joyce is upset by this to the point where Dina has ‘omg oh no’ concerned face on, and Becky’s just out here ‘LOL LOL LOOK WHO DECIDED TO STOP BEING A STUPID BABY LOL’.
Thank god for Joe providing an immediate distraction without calling Joyce a dumb baby.
Are we literally just reading different comics? Is that what is happening? I hope I never find this strange alternative reality comic where literally every single thing Becky does, says or fells is some selfish misdeed.
Well much as I like Becky she is pretty out there sometimes and she is, like her late unlamented dad, a bit self directed. I prefer to think of her as innocently insensitive rather than deliberately so
I can’t help but read the slur word for trans on the bill
So far, she’s said a “Damn it” and a “god-damned” and several “fuck” variations. Wonder what’s next?
She said “shit” to her mom a while back. I think she’s pretty much covered the bases.