Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
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.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Hemlock
Josceline Fenton
A witch accidentally marries a monster, and now she and her familiar has to navigate life around her monstrous husband and her even more terrifying in-laws.
All Known Alternatives
Karolina 'Kajotko' Jankiewicz
Akane has only one way to get back home: collect the 42 keys to parallel worlds. Eri and Ben are just trying to get through the summer before university. When a magical key turns up in an old spare set, all three are forced to change their plans and fast.
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As it turns out, and much to Dina’s profuse confusion and frustration, the Anchiornis was the Library’s librarian (as per the librarian outfit and ID card on said outfit) didn’t have feathers and was scaled like a lizard (as per the employee photo on the ID card), and was human-sized height-wise (all the skeletons we’ve found up until now were just juveniles or hatchlings).
Mary and Velociraptor (an actual velociraptor – whom looks exactly like the ones from Jurassic Park, much to Dina’s unending frustration – that goes by the name Velociraptor, whom Dina and Charlie find in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon working as a gardener, as mentioned by Doctor_Who earlier).
She’s at least learning to jump to that inclusion, which I wouldn’t recommend for most people, but…Joyce may need that instinct baked into her thinking, at least for a few years, until she’s used to not instinctually devouring her own feet.
Sort of? This whole thing strikes me as not entirely unlike when she she dumped Ethan — not the fact she did just how over the top she went with it — crossed with a side order of when she met Booster (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/uses/) and didn’t understand about pronouns and wanted to make up for it.
Plus, you know, a lot of other Joyce moments.
It’s possible getting diagnosed as potentially autistic has led her to at least ask the question a lot earlier than she would have otherwise. As well as maybe overcompensating for lots of her previous… less ideal reactions except in the other direction. Or mayve just provided her with a way to phrase the question.
You know, like privileged people who suddenly find out about the concept of privilege and start acknowledging it every three seconds even when it’s really, really not necessary.
(This may have got away from me, I’m not entirely sober.)
Well, at least Sarah is being nicer about it than she would’ve been (although she is fairly kind to joyce either way) as opposed to her gloating/mocking if it was someone else making such a huge social faux pas
This made me want to squeeze into the internet to hug Joyce. She’s doing her absolute best because she loves so much, and I know she’s going to feel so ashamed once the full realization sets in.
it’s quite possible that this may be a set-up for somethin we least expect
remember in Trial-and-Sarah? it ain’t no coincidence that Liz was getting picked up (Sarah along for the ride), Joyce had her shark week, etc, which just so happened to leave a lot of room for Dina and Becky to do SCIENCE
similarly, them homies splitting up and spreadin far apart may very well be settin the stage up for somethin HUGE
@NGPZ well, hopefully it’s not leading to a breakup tho with “love dares you to change” i would hope it’d be a step forward in a positive way for some ppl’s relationships
No.
IMPROVEMENT is positive.
If I enter my study to discover I now need dry socks because there’s water on the floor and the solid oak floorboards have deformed, that’s “change”, because the floor was previously bone-dry and in excellent condition.
Well, it is a little odd Dina wouldn’t respond to becky’s texts if not a specific ringtone
Unless her phone’s at their room or so versus her and Charlie being in the middle of ‘vault hijinks’ to where she couldn’t respond/no signal lol
Tho it’s probably more so becky’s insecurity possibly being jealous as opposed to thinking “oh no they’re in trouble” even tho carla has concerns about their “combined traits” or so
Conceivably, she’s been there at least one semester. She’s still alive, still enrolled, and (seemingly) still doing well. I’m guessing the various accommodations and supports she has had so far (Booster, university, instructors, roommate [does she have one?], etc) have been enough to help her stay successful so far in her college life.
The problem some have here is that the characterization we’re shown of her doesn’t fit with that background story. She doesn’t know where she is most of the time. She gets distracted in the hall outside class thinking about something else and doesn’t bother going in. We’ve never seen any accommodations or supports.
Pretty sure Dorothy would just rather hang out with Joyce and Sarah over Becky and Carla, if it weren’t so clearly the inefficient option. Which, fair. If there are two characters I would LEAST want to be around irl, it’s Becky and Carla.
She’d definitely rather hang out with Joyce and Sarah, but it’s a pretty big step for her that she realises she doesn’t NEED to — Joyce’s social-whatever can be sorted out without her being the Mom Friend.
Becky’s worry makes a lot of sense to me, since she’s lost both her parents. After I lost my mom, anytime I came home and my cousin and her son were NOT home, and I did NOT anticipate that they’d be gone, I would start to worry and freak out a bit. Definitely an overreaction, because clearly my cousins were always fine, but after that death my first thought would be “oh god, oh no, where are they, are they dead”.
You know what, I’m proud of Sarah here. Not only is she forcing herself to cope, she actually provided a useful suggestion to get Joyce to stop digging herself into an ever-deepening hole.
She may well find that the difficulty of keeping it up is lesser than the difficulties she was bringing on herself by being a fuckin’ b-hole all the time.
she’ll just be abused and mistreated again as a consequence of being nice. Maybe she’ll get scammed or something. And that will just confirm her previous world view. The world is too dark and twisted to allow fragile people to try to be nice. And Sarah is definitely fragile.
I mean, one can be nice *and* also avoid scams. It’s not an either or thing, thinking it is has been a pretty big source of Sarah’s stress socially/romantically.
The only way you can be certain Dina is NOT is to put people in every space that could hold a Dina. When all those spaces are occupied by people who are not Dina, then Dina is not in the room.
When you’re just self-conscious enough to know you do the awkward, stupid thing, but not self-conscious enough to stop yourself as a preventive measure.
And remember, folks. If someone you know acts better than expected, let them know it! Tone matters, though, so keep it in mind.
“I expected you to handle that way worse. ” – Dismissive, sounds like you’re upset with them anyway. It’s similar to “look who finally came out of their room”, subtly punishes good behavior.
“You handled that better than I expected. ” Playful, emphasizes their good behavior without ignoring their usual baseline. Has an implied “keep it up”, for encouragement.
I think, depending on context, the second one would still feel kinda rude? Maybe it’d just the BPD but I would totally get caught on thinking “so you expected me to fail”.
The type of encouragement I personally prefer is more along the lines of “you did a lot better than you would have in the past” – doesn’t indicate that they had low expectations of me, does indicate that they understand and are proud of my growth.
Sure, you could word it more politely if that’s your preference. Really, any mention of expectations lower than you performed is going to be less than perfect, that’s fine.
I really hope Sarah is going to teach Joyce some etiquette now. Joyce is so damn unaware, even while she actually *tries* to be an ally.
The best part of being an ally is LEARNING and LISTENING, and when you learn something and a trans person tells you “well that does not apply to me“ or even “that’s utter bs, where did you even hear that?!”, then you put THEIR insight over your own.
This is all true and good advice, but frustrating as it is, I think it’s easy to go to far in blaming Joyce here. She’s trying. She even went to get advice and followed it, which exploded in her face due to a wacky misunderstanding, which it’s really hard to blame her for.
Speaking as someone who has been on both sides of this kind of interaction (Originally a “good” Christian, turned well-meaning ally, had to learn lots of things the hard way, realized I was lgbtqia+ all along, then over-studied to where I knew more about it than most other people in my lgbtqia+ categories), this is absolutely true.
It’s so tempting to retreat into the familiar instead of pushing forward, and people being way too impatient with new allies is a huge problem, because it really stunts the ability to learn.
I feel like no one’s talking about the way Becky’s panicking… it reads to me as less jealousy/insecurity and more trauma from the kidnappings and all that. She’s worried about their safety
do you think Joyce is going to bring this experience up with Jocelyne, prompting her to come out as trans? or will Jocelyne come out to her first, and then Joyce will suddenly realize why Ethan gave her this advice? or will she never realize anything ever
Is it just me or is everyone freaking out over nothing? Why is this such a big deal? Dina and Charlie went hat shopping. Everyone knows this. I realize this is a drama-packed age and that Carla tends to respond…differently, but come on. They’re hauling out the Amaze-Signal* because two adults have been out of their field of vision for an hour.
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jump-cut to Dina and Charlie
who have located the Library of Alexandria
and a new specimen of Anchiornis that they name lizbian
Dina: “How did we get to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?”
Charlie: “We’re in a garden?”
As it turns out, and much to Dina’s profuse confusion and frustration, the Anchiornis was the Library’s librarian (as per the librarian outfit and ID card on said outfit) didn’t have feathers and was scaled like a lizard (as per the employee photo on the ID card), and was human-sized height-wise (all the skeletons we’ve found up until now were just juveniles or hatchlings).
Not sure how I feel about a librarian who isn’t an orangutan. (Ook)
My mind was going there too.
Either an orangutan (Discworld series) or a Cheshire cat (Thursday Next series).
Let’s not forget the long-necked ferret-owl from Avatar: The Last Airbender. He takes his vacations AT THE LIBRARY!
Why not a sphinx like Phix? https://wapsisquare.com/comic/phix/
She’s the Librarian of the series Wapsi Square.
Clair, on the other hand, is The Librarian of Cubetown in Questionable Content
https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5005
Awww, yisss…I’m a fan of Claire. I hope she beats, cajoles, and molds Cubetown into better shape.
I hope she aims for trapezoid – I always rather liked that shape.
I’m prolly the only one thinking of the Evil Librarians that Alcatraz had to fight, especially the Curators
jump-cut to Dina and Charlie
They are watching one of Gris Wrestling matches while sitting on Davans and Rorys shoulders.
Technically, if one navigates through space, then one navigates through spacetime.
If DC is Dina-Charlie, who’s Marvel?
Mary, and an as of yet unintroduced character. Up to you how cursed this pairing might be.
Yeah, I wracked my brain and I couldn’t think of any characters with a V in their name.
There’s a teacher named Vivian.
(How do I remember this, I don’t remember anyone’s names irl.)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/vivian/
(And Walky is David, sort of.)
Well, Amazigirl is marvelous.
Mary and Vella.
Close. Mary takes up with a member of the Scooby gang.
…who is a confirmed lesbian.
I’d go gay for Coco Diablo, too.
Mary and Velociraptor (an actual velociraptor – whom looks exactly like the ones from Jurassic Park, much to Dina’s unending frustration – that goes by the name Velociraptor, whom Dina and Charlie find in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon working as a gardener, as mentioned by Doctor_Who earlier).
I *do* believe JP Velociraptors are confirmed lesbians as well, due to their frog DNA, which makes them lesbifibians.
I approve of this ship, since it will result in Mary’s permanent absence from the comic.
Marcie and Sal
Dark Horse, meanwhile, will have to be made up of Dorothy and Hank. Which definitely qualifies as a dark horse pairing.
“How Dorothy became the literal mom friend”
You win, but I’m gonna play anyway.
Image is just Linda Walkerton.
IDW is I Damn Willis
Does this mean Joyce recognizes she was being inappropriate?
She’s at least learning to jump to that inclusion, which I wouldn’t recommend for most people, but…Joyce may need that instinct baked into her thinking, at least for a few years, until she’s used to not instinctually devouring her own feet.
Learning to jump to that conclusion is truly part of the autistic experience
(At least the afab enby/girl autistic experience)
If jumping to conclusions were in any way actually calisthenic, I would have the endurance of marathon runners.
If i was joyce i’d prolly assume it’d be inappropriate 80% of the time although hopefully she’ll be able to have a better convo with jocelyne
Sort of? This whole thing strikes me as not entirely unlike when she she dumped Ethan — not the fact she did just how over the top she went with it — crossed with a side order of when she met Booster (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/uses/) and didn’t understand about pronouns and wanted to make up for it.
Plus, you know, a lot of other Joyce moments.
It’s possible getting diagnosed as potentially autistic has led her to at least ask the question a lot earlier than she would have otherwise. As well as maybe overcompensating for lots of her previous… less ideal reactions except in the other direction. Or mayve just provided her with a way to phrase the question.
You know, like privileged people who suddenly find out about the concept of privilege and start acknowledging it every three seconds even when it’s really, really not necessary.
(This may have got away from me, I’m not entirely sober.)
-…Am I acting poorly?
– You are acting according to expectations.
– Oh, NO.
Perfection.
I am pleased/saddened/entertained that Joyce understands that that is a negative thing. Good job Willis, you did good.
Well, at least Sarah is being nicer about it than she would’ve been (although she is fairly kind to joyce either way) as opposed to her gloating/mocking if it was someone else making such a huge social faux pas
Yes, this dialogue was flawless
This made me want to squeeze into the internet to hug Joyce. She’s doing her absolute best because she loves so much, and I know she’s going to feel so ashamed once the full realization sets in.
Same, and late in life the shame can become a fatal burden.
I mean. Dina and Charlie are fully capable young women. Is it possible this is a bit of an overreaction?
What could go wrong?
Four words. An ancient incantation of four words. And the universe (a brat) loves hearing them.
They’ve just split up to cover more ground, so obviously, nothing could possibly go wrong.
Sadly, they’re all far too young to have any of them randomly claim they’re two days away from retirement.
Sadly they split up without using the other ancient invocation. “Let’s split up gang!”
Yes.
it’s quite possible that this may be a set-up for somethin we least expect
remember in Trial-and-Sarah? it ain’t no coincidence that Liz was getting picked up (Sarah along for the ride), Joyce had her shark week, etc, which just so happened to leave a lot of room for Dina and Becky to do SCIENCE
similarly, them homies splitting up and spreadin far apart may very well be settin the stage up for somethin HUGE
(munches popcorn)
Other Rachel is about to commit arson.
@NGPZ well, hopefully it’s not leading to a breakup tho with “love dares you to change” i would hope it’d be a step forward in a positive way for some ppl’s relationships
“Change”, I would think, is positive.
No.
IMPROVEMENT is positive.
If I enter my study to discover I now need dry socks because there’s water on the floor and the solid oak floorboards have deformed, that’s “change”, because the floor was previously bone-dry and in excellent condition.
And trust me, it is not positive.
That…is an oddly specific example of negative change. Did such an event occur recently in your experience? :O
(if so, sympathies! i’ve had a wood floor go to warp drive due to flooding also)
Yes, it has. I’m <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xckM85Vsimg" title="in the middle of it" right now.
… well, that didn’t work as expected.
Yay for the edit butt– oh wait.
“You guys get an edit button?”
“Let’s split up, gang!” is just one of the things you’re obligated to do in the third act when you’re solving a mystery as a group.
Good results when you’re in a Scooby Doo gang.
Bad results when you’re in a D&D party.
I really do think Becky’s freaking out because of the kidnapping. Carla I think is just thinking of their endless capacity for hijinks.
Well, it is a little odd Dina wouldn’t respond to becky’s texts if not a specific ringtone
Unless her phone’s at their room or so versus her and Charlie being in the middle of ‘vault hijinks’ to where she couldn’t respond/no signal lol
Tho it’s probably more so becky’s insecurity possibly being jealous as opposed to thinking “oh no they’re in trouble” even tho carla has concerns about their “combined traits” or so
Reception isn’t all that good in an underground bank vault.
They’re in Ft. Knox, a notorious cell phone dead zone.
Dina, maybe, but Charlie seems like she wouldn’t know where her own feet were unless you stuck her head in a vice and drew her a map
Or, you could put an iguana (or similarly weighted hat) on her head.
what makes you think Charlie is a fully capable person? She can’t walk to her own dorm room without getting lost
Conceivably, she’s been there at least one semester. She’s still alive, still enrolled, and (seemingly) still doing well. I’m guessing the various accommodations and supports she has had so far (Booster, university, instructors, roommate [does she have one?], etc) have been enough to help her stay successful so far in her college life.
The problem some have here is that the characterization we’re shown of her doesn’t fit with that background story. She doesn’t know where she is most of the time. She gets distracted in the hall outside class thinking about something else and doesn’t bother going in. We’ve never seen any accommodations or supports.
Yeah, definitely, on the face of it, just given what we’ve seen so far. Perhaps Booster is helping out when they’re “off-stage”.
In Becky’s and Carla’s cases at least, their capability has nothing to do with their concern. It’s their compatibility that’s the issue.
Sarah is going to have a stroke by the end of the day if she keeps this up.
I felt a little guilty at laughing at this, but that *SNAP* is going to be spectacular!
Don’t worry, Dorothy, her big sister’s got this.
Pretty sure Dorothy would just rather hang out with Joyce and Sarah over Becky and Carla, if it weren’t so clearly the inefficient option. Which, fair. If there are two characters I would LEAST want to be around irl, it’s Becky and Carla.
Which is why they need Dorothy.
She’d definitely rather hang out with Joyce and Sarah, but it’s a pretty big step for her that she realises she doesn’t NEED to — Joyce’s social-whatever can be sorted out without her being the Mom Friend.
Dotty, I see you checkin’ out Becky’s ass. Not even trying to be subtle about it.
Becky’s worry makes a lot of sense to me, since she’s lost both her parents. After I lost my mom, anytime I came home and my cousin and her son were NOT home, and I did NOT anticipate that they’d be gone, I would start to worry and freak out a bit. Definitely an overreaction, because clearly my cousins were always fine, but after that death my first thought would be “oh god, oh no, where are they, are they dead”.
Oooh yeah. I had the same reaction post paternal abandonment. If someone was running late I would immediately jump to the worst possible explanation.
I got a message from a younger relative this week; “Is my mother alive?” Heartbreaking.
Point did the self awareness to Joyce. As late as it is.
You know what, I’m proud of Sarah here. Not only is she forcing herself to cope, she actually provided a useful suggestion to get Joyce to stop digging herself into an ever-deepening hole.
Agreed, I’ve been down in Sarah for a long time but this is good, hopefully she’ll keep it up
She will under no circumstances keep it up.
She may well find that the difficulty of keeping it up is lesser than the difficulties she was bringing on herself by being a fuckin’ b-hole all the time.
she’ll just be abused and mistreated again as a consequence of being nice. Maybe she’ll get scammed or something. And that will just confirm her previous world view. The world is too dark and twisted to allow fragile people to try to be nice. And Sarah is definitely fragile.
I mean, one can be nice *and* also avoid scams. It’s not an either or thing, thinking it is has been a pretty big source of Sarah’s stress socially/romantically.
That’s probably the most polite way to say you don’t want to be associated with someone I’ve seen.
“Oh no!”
“Oh no!”
“Oh no!”
She’s at least learning to let go a little.
Me searching the backgrounds for arrows or silhouettes indicating that they are literally right over there… possibly as timeless ghost beings.
Oh hey. Joyce is me in this strip.
Damn Sarah, that was the smoothest way to say “You are up to your usual nonsense” I have ever seen.
How many people does it take to search a Dorm Room
2 people to look
1-5+ to be there to “help” but actually hinder
That depends; can you ever be certain that Dina is not in a room by searching it?
The only way you can be certain Dina is NOT is to put people in every space that could hold a Dina. When all those spaces are occupied by people who are not Dina, then Dina is not in the room.
Panel 2 Joyce is very relatable.
When you’re just self-conscious enough to know you do the awkward, stupid thing, but not self-conscious enough to stop yourself as a preventive measure.
“I’m not even visible to them, am I ?” — Dorothy
Who said that???
Yeah if you ever catch me acting according to expections, for the love of god stop me
And remember, folks. If someone you know acts better than expected, let them know it! Tone matters, though, so keep it in mind.
“I expected you to handle that way worse.
” – Dismissive, sounds like you’re upset with them anyway. It’s similar to “look who finally came out of their room”, subtly punishes good behavior.
“You handled that better than I expected.
” Playful, emphasizes their good behavior without ignoring their usual baseline. Has an implied “keep it up”, for encouragement.
I think, depending on context, the second one would still feel kinda rude? Maybe it’d just the BPD but I would totally get caught on thinking “so you expected me to fail”.
The type of encouragement I personally prefer is more along the lines of “you did a lot better than you would have in the past” – doesn’t indicate that they had low expectations of me, does indicate that they understand and are proud of my growth.
Sure, you could word it more politely if that’s your preference. Really, any mention of expectations lower than you performed is going to be less than perfect, that’s fine.
Or even a minimalist; “Well done!”
I really hope Sarah is going to teach Joyce some etiquette now. Joyce is so damn unaware, even while she actually *tries* to be an ally.
The best part of being an ally is LEARNING and LISTENING, and when you learn something and a trans person tells you “well that does not apply to me“ or even “that’s utter bs, where did you even hear that?!”, then you put THEIR insight over your own.
It’s easier to listen if people aren’t actively not telling you things.
She listened pretty well to Ethan! Well, minus the last shouted comment. It’s just that. Well.
No no no, that’s definitely listening well to Ethan too. Ethan just gave her the wrong script to work from.
Nah, you can’t put yelling, “I welcome you into my gender!” on what Ethan said.
This is all true and good advice, but frustrating as it is, I think it’s easy to go to far in blaming Joyce here. She’s trying. She even went to get advice and followed it, which exploded in her face due to a wacky misunderstanding, which it’s really hard to blame her for.
Speaking as someone who has been on both sides of this kind of interaction (Originally a “good” Christian, turned well-meaning ally, had to learn lots of things the hard way, realized I was lgbtqia+ all along, then over-studied to where I knew more about it than most other people in my lgbtqia+ categories), this is absolutely true.
It’s so tempting to retreat into the familiar instead of pushing forward, and people being way too impatient with new allies is a huge problem, because it really stunts the ability to learn.
Joyce’s “oh no” really got me giggling. Been there, girlie. Been there.
Poor Joyce, yes, but also poor Carla, who has yet to endure the apology.
I feel like no one’s talking about the way Becky’s panicking… it reads to me as less jealousy/insecurity and more trauma from the kidnappings and all that. She’s worried about their safety
oh a couple people are. yay im not reading too much into it
do you think Joyce is going to bring this experience up with Jocelyne, prompting her to come out as trans? or will Jocelyne come out to her first, and then Joyce will suddenly realize why Ethan gave her this advice? or will she never realize anything ever
Or will Joyce go back to Ethan, wondering in retrospect why he gave such bad advice?
Huh! Good on dorothy for not trying to mom joyce through this.
sarah beginning to act slightly more normal while being cheery
she’s going to have to find a reasonable midpoint before she snaps
Is it just me or is everyone freaking out over nothing? Why is this such a big deal? Dina and Charlie went hat shopping. Everyone knows this. I realize this is a drama-packed age and that Carla tends to respond…differently, but come on. They’re hauling out the Amaze-Signal* because two adults have been out of their field of vision for an hour.
* “Girl-signal” was taken.