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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social ⋅ 8hDavid M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 8d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 8d
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social ⋅ 21d
Gwen Snyder is uncivil @gwensnyder.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Ash Parrish @adashtra.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Katie @katiestp.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Hunter S Schafer @bolt451.bsky.social ⋅ 4d
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(he/him)
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I wish the jerks talking on the phone IN THE BATHROOM would learn about acoustics
mostly bc I can’t bring myself to void myself while they are on the phone
I went in a public restroom the other day and somebody was in one of the stalls watching Youtube (and presumably doing other things.) Dude had his phone turned up louder than I keep the stereo in my car.
I decided that there were other bathrooms.
If they’re loudly having a phone conversation in there, make as much noise as you plausibly can. Assert dominance.
Oh dude. That’s when you do the loudest, nastiest voiding of bowels you can manage. Get into character. Get vocal. Pound the stall’s walls. Get political. Hell – find religion while defecating.
Give them a reason to end their call.
I’ve got a stressophagus, will randomly just inflame out of nowhere trapping food I’ve swallowed. I’ve gotten pretty good at hacking it back up but it does not sound pretty
If I went into a bathroom and someone was talking full volume on the phone (especially if they’re like on speaker phone or something), I’d just make it sound like I got some serious food poisoning and they’ll have front row seats
idk, part of me agrees wholeheartedly
another part is Joyce in a bathroom full of Roz (who is streaming in multiple senses)
Perfect gravatar face is perfect.
Seriously, who talks on the phone in the bathroom? Especially while going to the bathroom?
This is several days old but I experienced the weirdest bathroom phone conversation several years ago that lives rent free in my head. I was in the stall, he was either using the urinal or maybe just washing his hands, I dunno. But he was doing, like, active listening, except to an insane degree. Every couple of seconds, “Yes, yeah, yep, uh-huh, yup, um-hmm,” then, after like, 2 straight minutes of this, he said “But I thought you said you didn’t love her anymore?!” And I almost fucking lost it right there, it was NOT what I was expecting him to say
Holy shit. Joe might lose his virginity!
Virginiknee.
That’s virgi-knee-ty, i think you’ll find
They’re different things. Virginiknee is a knee which is virginal. Virgi-knee-ty is the virginal status of a particular knee. So – for example – we are assuming Joe’s virginiknees have their virgi-knee-ty.
I thought Virgiknee was a down home way to say Virginia
Carry Me Back to Old Virgiknee
Methinks it’s not Joe’s knees which are going to be involved.
This be my thought as well.
Oh no, someone beat me to it.
Hahaha that’s amazing, favourite strip of the year
I like how Joyce just engages with the randos
…. “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE??”
Campus would have a lot of students; it is a very teenager-y thing to chime in on convos esp when they have a chance to make sexual jokes lol
I hope they ‘show up’ more but we never see their faces lol
Like a Greek Chorus? I think I remember that role being given to some other characters in this story, though.
Maybe these two are them. Or maybe they can be geeks so we can call them a Geek Chorus.
I mean, sure, but why are their windows open in this weather?
Smokers? They heard people talking and got curious? Why not, because they’re not the ones paying for heat?
If they don’t have individually controlled heat in the rooms it might be the only way of–
It’s a fucking comic strip. Strict realism is in another castle.
I mean, this was the case for me. In theory I had control, in practice, radiators simply aren’t that precise, and the difference between off and boiling was a lot more difficult to adjust than cracking the window an inch or two.
If you’re wondering how they eat and breathe
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself “It’s just a web comic,
I should really just relax
For Dumbing of Age 3000.”
We know exactly how Joyce and Dina eats in any case.
IRL Willis was a student at IU, i pretty sure he also discovered them acoustics by pure accident XD
I come from the Canadian version of the Mid-West, and I can confirm – when it’s winter, the cold air acts as a really, really good conduit for any sound projected in any direction. I don’t know how it works because sound wave science makes my brain hurt, but I do know that it is a thing. I’ve heard full conversations spoken in low tones from what I would’ve thought was out-of-earshot during quiet winter nights. Also, if these dorms are anything like the dorm I lived with during my uni days, and the heating was done by hot-water radiators, they are typically cranked stupidly high in the wintertime, especially if you lived on the lower floors, and you can’t turn it down. I lived on the second floor, and during the coldest cold-snaps, I had my dorm window open and wore shorts and tank tops indoors exclusively.
having the windows open in the winter is actually the intended use for a lot of steam radiators, because they were designed so that people could stay warm and still get fresh air circulating, after the influenza outbreak of the 1910s. it was a pandemic solution!
Sorry I accidentally clicked report comment. Seemed to easy to do tbh? Good pikachu avatar btw
We’ve only met a microscopic fraction of DoA!IU’s student population. If it weren’t for the background randos, the campus would feel hauntingly barren.
It would be like the last season of Ed, Edd n’ Eddy, which was set at their school but the creators didn’t introduce any new characters.
Agreed. Background randos NEED tags! After all, they had a speaking part!
On uncommon occasion, one needs the Greek Chorus around for a scene. This is one of those uncommon occasions.
*Votes for Background Randos*
You know, I’m just going to assume that the Background Rando’s are based on the commentariate and leave it there.
ngl that’s probably exactly it XD
Yes. Ha ha ha… YES!
How do we arrange to get Willis to start tagging our commenters? He’s got plenty; he can just start at the top (let’s say Ana Chronistic at first) and throw in a new tag every day.
There is precedent!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/teams/
I’ll admit to confusion (and failing my “DoA Commenters Community Lore” check). Which of our people are representified in that strip?
Sue / Jen Aside, who may or may not also be Ana.
Good on the peanut gallery for calling this out. Figuratively and literally.
I mean that sounds like good therapy tbh
Getting pegged by a therapist would certainly be an experience lol (makes me think of kiley from ma3 doing more ‘sexual therapy’)
Sex worker with a psych degree?
A great webcomic! I miss the old crew. (new crew is okay, but i miss me some gary and zii shenaniganing)
If pegging isn’t sex, them there’s no real sex just like there’s no true scotsman, and so Joyce can do whatever the hell she wants.
She clearly *wants* to be told what to do. The rest is just window dressing.
At this point I’m imagining Dorothy as Joyce’s dom or something. She needs to ask her mistress for permission to fuck her boyfriend.
@Sirksome, I’d definately give this a thumbs up if I could.
are there platonic doms? because once you get past the point where you’re holding someone’s hand while teaching them to masturbate it doesn’t feel like it’s platonic but describing it that way will probably make it easier on Joyce.
There are definitely plenty of cases where the dominant and submissive aren’t also in a sexual or romantic relationship. I doubt it passes for what most people consider to be ‘platonic’ given the other kinds of intimacy and trust going on, but yeah that happens.
This, im bet Joyce get brilliant idea to invite Dotty to be spectator/moderator “that night”
“so you dress as a teacher… Not like my MOM obviously, but maybe Leslie? But with more cleavage? Like when Roz’s sister the congresswoman was visiting our class? And you’ll have a ruler and whiteboard pens and you’ll rap on the board and tell is what to do and when…”
Dorothy (the patient one) as sex ed teacher; Joyce (the bratty one) and Joe (the earnest one) as students. Such a wacky threesome idea. Someone oughta write this smutfic for AO3.
Or it works like a double negative and positively becomes sex, Joyce.
Or, to quote Mr Boddy, “The double negative has led to proof positive; I’m afraid you gave yourself away!”
You say they aren’t characters. I say that I lived in a residence hall that had shouting outside all the time.
joyce really does love a butt huh
Joe might be about to lose HIS virginity.
Is there any indication this isn’t something he’s tried already?
She’s got butts disease. Possibly incurably. We can only blame Jacques and Willis.
I’m officially naming them “Peggy” and “Kneejob”.
I hope Joyce gets the pegging-inclusive Slipshine we all deserve.
Those people are us in the comments section
xD
Off-panel commentariat for next Patreon bonus strip?
A very different take on fanservice! It’s us, the Greek (Geek?) Chorus!
I assume a kneejob is like a footjob only about 12-20 inches higher.
I’m pretty sure a knee job is when you dress up your knee with a little fedora and necktie and briefcase, and your other knee is wearing pearls and lipstick and you act like it’s saying “be home in time for dinner, I’m making your favorite!” and then your first knee goes to your partner’s knee which is holding a little cigar and has a combover and a mustache sharpied on and he’s all “Johnson! I kneed that report on my desk by noon!”
I feel like it would be more so “Parker! Get me pictures of Spider-man!”
Thank you, I’m cry-laughing.
Happy to be of soivice
I was thinking it sounded like a specific form of frottage.
Some decades ago, a friend of mine wrote in her journal about grinding on her boyfriend’s knee while making out. This might be Joyce’s idea. Joyce stimulating herself on Joe’s knee?
Imagine being kneed in the crotch. Now, imagine you enjoyed it.
y’know what’s funny. I also wouldn’t consider pegging sex but that’s cuz I very personally think of sex as involving ones own anatomy and another’s anatomy.
In general I have an aversion to toys and the like so it could just be a hangup with that.
And aversion to toys? Damn, what kind of boring-ass sex is a person having if there’s no Megazord involved? Like, not even a 1994 Barbie? A yo-yo? One of those little rubber ninjas you can get in capsule machines?
All fun and games until you step on a lego mid-coitus.
unless of course masochism is your kink lel XD
E.R. doctors have seen such scary cases, unfortunately. Oh the horror. You think rug burn is as bad as it gets, and then calamity strikes!
I promise, anatomy is still involved.
You would be incorrect and explicitly excluding certain kinds of queer and trans sex alongside the cis people who are cool and like pegging too.
cis-het I meant, but you get the point.
This opens an interesting avenue of inquiry. So like… what if you’re holding a dildo and your partner is holding a fleshlight? Zero skin contact. Show of hands, who thinks that should count as sex?
I think it depends if the participants fell sexual pleasure from the act.
Coward.
Aw, I was hoping they’d get character tags.
We can vote for them as background random, right?
That alt-text won’t stop me because I can’t read!
Their names are Randall and Randolph.
C’mon, at least name one of them Mortimer…. Or maybe Statler and Waldorf?
Dumbing of Age, Book 17: If We Do This, Can We Do It Inside Where It’s Warm?
Dumbing of Age, Book 17: Pegging Is Definitely Sex, by the Way
Dumbing of Age, Book 17: What About a Knee-job?
I made a bet with myself about how far down in the comments I would have to go to find someone suggesting this. (It was, in fact, further than I’d expected.)
Bad acoustics is why I don’t like cathedral ceilings or open house designs for the most part. It just makes everything noisy and no part of the house is quiet. Had a house with a cathedral ceiling growing up, and you could hear the tv better in my bedroom (down the hall and to the right) better than in the room the tv actually was in. It wasn’t even minorly better, but tens of times better for understanding the dialogue, even with the door closed.
Did you grow up in a hot region or were tall ceilings just a popular thing?
It was a house built by someone going through chemo in the 80s. There was a lot of weird stuff and designs in it (rough wood shingles directly in the showers anyone?). I grew up in New England (in the NE US), so not typically considered a hot area. It can get hot and humid in the summer, but also quite cold in the winter. Guessing style due to that. Also had no attic, which was horrible due to the flying squirrels that would get into the ceiling and ruin everything (very gross). You couldn’t get to them due to no attic.
I think that a lot of people just like the look of cathedral ceilings and open house concepts. Functionally though, you really only want your kitchen and dining room in an “open” design, and any noisy rooms, with tvs or where the kids play, work best when closed off. High ceilings work better than cathedral normally sound wise, but that can depend a lot on the materials of the wall. If you have any stone or other masonry, I have a feeling that the acoustics are always going to be rough with any type of high ceiling.
Two-story tall spaces were super popular in the 2000s McMansion boom. That whole trend of faux opulence was peak baby boomer clout chasing.
Here in the northeast, they just mean your house has a ton of empty air space where all your heat goes.
Girl just opened up one of those tier lists and wrote all them down, didn’t she?
The internet is very helpful!
Is a tier list like a Purity Test?
OK but are the background randos more likely to be dudes or dudettes?
I was leaning towards dudes but that felt stereotypically predictable…
Kneejob is intercural sex? Or wait that’s more of a thigh thing?
Intercruciate?
I fully agree with the voice on the upper left.
Appropriate name to go with rando!
Mr. Random was my father.
Please, call me Mister.
Yeah, if you’re getting the inner in-there, I’d definitely call it intercourse. Of course, it’s arbitrary, anyway, and what is and isn’t sex is generally up to the participants.
The shift to defining what is sex *to you* is pretty cool. People don’t have to share your perspective on it in defining your own experiences. Even the person(s) you’re having sex with don’t have to agree, as long as everyone is onboard with what’s happening.
For me, this has mostly been in recognizing that some activities of mine might not “count” as sex in the broader societal standard, but it felt like sex to me, so that’s how I’m going to describe it. Also helpful when feelings of sexual shame start to rise up in a way that’s drawing from ideas of what’s “right” according to some imaginary people– I go, okay, well those people wouldn’t even consider this sex, so what do they know.
100%
I started really thinking about it like that because I’m in the kink scene where everyone has their own ideas about what sex is. For me, kink play and sex are separate, sex is for sexual gratification and kink is for… Idk… the enjoyment of difference sensory experiences or something. Sexual acts done as part of a scene isn’t sex, and kink acts done for sex isn’t itself kink. I also count masturbation as sex, which a lot of people don’t.
IMAO, it is sex if the intention is to cause at least one person to have an orgasm.
Ya couldn’t have said that earlier, voices????
Dorothy what’s a kneejob
Joyce has learned from Riki Lindhome, I see.
What’s the gray area, the knee or the job?
New poll? “What’s ga—” *stares at Willis INTENSELY
You’re feeding the shippers but also messing with us!
If you won’t name the background weirdos, Statler and Waldorf, then I certainly will.
Oh no, now I’m reading the dialogue with their voices!
xD xD
OH HO HO HO!
I can’t vote for them on Patreon, but I can vote for them in next month’s ballot.
No one can stop us.
Well, I mean, I guess for Joyce, anything that doesn’t lead to babies isn’t considered sex? XD
No form of sex leads to babies, either. There is not even one single sex act which will cause a person to become pregnant. That’s not how sex works. Please get this myth out of your head and correct anyone you know who still perpetuates it.
What about sex with storks?
That’s a felony, I promise you.
Though the soaking described last page could have that result…
reminded of that one scene from DBZ Abridged, actually
Which one?
Y’know…that one.
statler and wahldorf cameo
See, I totally believe that people can hear them, but I’m less convinced that they can talk back. Mostly because I live in a building with “great acoustics” and can listen in on arguments several floors down in the alleyway, but yelling at them to go away and let me sleep has zero effect. They don’t even yell back.
Maybe I just need to yell better.
Damn you, Willis! Not giving those randos names!
i hope it’s a reccuring thing to where it’s always randos, but diff sets of randos chiming in every time to the point where all the unnamed students in their college know them
It’s the Utena Shadow Girls. They’re back.
They need to be named after us!
I just think of it as literally the comment section yelling at the strip.
Just because HE refuses to name them, doesn’t mean WE won’t. In fact, I think we took it as a dare.
funny thing is doin’ it in the butt is, as near as I can tell, absolutely not a loophole in any generaly real way, even in mormonisim. It’s just what happens if you’re Real Horny.
however I do think Joyce should get to try pegging if she’d like. then she can have sexytimes AND bury her face in joes big ol muscular shoulderblades.
And let’s not forget how much she likes butts.
Define “real” in this context?
There is definitely a segment of the populace who (claim to) care about such things who maintain that a girl only loses her virginity when her vagina is penetrated.
I think the point is that those groups that tie virginity strictly to vaginal penetration tend to be even more against anal.
I don’t care of logic, please let this conversation continue with the roof people
Oh goodness how long has Willis been setting this one up.
Garfunkel and Oates, Joyce is a woman of culture.
https://youtu.be/j8ZF_R_j0OY?si=YfInW4C4-Z4IXCiA
It amazes me when people who believe in an all knowing deity thinks that they can outsmart a god by using loopholes.
Like god is gonna go “oh man, I didn’t think of that. You really got me there. Carry on with your grey area not quite sex act. I guess its cool until the next holy text comes out.”
it’s only a loophole until He adds it to the patch notes
But if he’s all-knowing he must be aware of the loopholes and have put them there deliberately. probably.
Even if he was real, he didn’t put loopholes in. Paul didn’t say vagina stuff bad, butt stuff ok, he told people to be celibate and if they can, or marry if they can’t tolerate celibacy.
Any christian who pretends that butt stuff is ok isn’t finding a loophole, they are simply making random things up.
I feel like this is a part where Jewish people and Christian people tend to differ in worship
Early Old Testament, you could definitely trick God! He was just a powerful dude, then.
Power escalation came later.
The longer God stays in the yellow sun, the more powerful He becomes.
There’s something funny about the bible having power creep!
Early OT preserves echoes of the original polytheist pagan nature of Hebrew religion. Rewritten to make it less obvious, but with plenty of traces if you read critically.
It wasn’t until the Exile, most likely, that YHWH came to be seen as something larger than the specific God of the people and land of Judah.
Ah yeah, power creep is an issue in most longer series. Just look at X-men comics.
willis doesn’t need to name the rando voices because their names are just your username. yes, you, reading this. you are the rando. congrats.
I knew it!
But I want tags for us! :O
God? is that you??
There’s 2 differents persons talking. If one is God, who could be the another one?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/drafty/ second appearance?
God and… Flying Spaghetti monster?
For those who don’t remember, this is back from the kickstarter when 2 people paid $10,000 each to make their OCs canon. The greek choir here are those OCs.
Ah yes, Randall Background and Miranda Background. It’s been a while.
Are they the Greek Chorus or the Geek Chorus?
Ethnically, they’re Finnish.
Well I’m glad _someone’s_ finishing!
I just read (and took) the new poll. “What is gayer?” Yes, I recognize that word, gayer, as a word. It’s whatever kind of speech it is (Adverb? Adjective? Whatever, not an English major, or even minor…) and when I read that, I have to admit that I asked myself, should that be “What is lesbianer?” and realized that doesn’t work.
Ahh, American English, one of the hardest languages to learn the rules for, and stupiders too.
Got to give me credit at least, for using the write to…er right two.
It’s an adjective, and -er is only consistently used with adjectives and adverbs of one syllable; with more than two, you use more instead. With exactly two, -ly gets -er (friendlier); others, common and slender in particular, are a gray area.
Source: was taught English as a foreign language.
No that can’t be right. “What is lesbianmore?” doesn’t sound any more correct.
I assume this is a joke, but somehow “more lesbian” doesn’t sound quite right to me either, yet “most lesbian” sounds fine. Think the first one not sounding right can be amended by just thinking it more.
That must be why you understand it so well. I was trying to work out what makes the difference between “X-er” and “more X” — I don’t believe that I was ever told.
I think the real difficulty here is whether “gay” can have a comparative (or superlative) form. One expects it to be absolute. (Which is, of course, part of what makes the question fun.)
This is less gay, verging on ungay.
This feels like a challenge to find exceptions, like as a puzzle, not in a “must prove you wrong” way. I’ve got one three syllable root word so far, but I’m unhappy with it because it has a prefix.
Raggedy, Raggedier, Raggediest. I cheated and looked at a list of superlatives, but I did have to filter out all the ones that also had a “most X” version that was better.
Good rule though, that I was either not explicitly taught, or I was so young I didn’t even remember.
Former English Teacher and Linguistician here. “Gay” ’tis an adjective, so you modify with “-er” to get “gayer”. All good. But “Lesbian” ’tis a noun, so you don’t modify with “-er”. You can modify with “-ly” or “-able” (as two common approaches) to convert the noun to an adjective based on “quality”. Then modify with “-er”. Thus: “lesbianlier” or “lesbianabler”. They sound odd, but that’s because you’re not accustomed to hearing or seeing those words. You just need more exposure to lesbianing.
“Lesbian” is a noun AND an adjective. eh, whatever’s explanation was more accurate.
As a guy, I’m not lesbianable?
With a little bit of identibilification, yes, you too can be!
This is less lesbianish.
i am midly horrified
But are you less horrifiedish?
You know… this makes me think that the entire campus got a very nice earful of Amber going Brock Samson on the creep guy.
Perhaps that’s why she wasn’t arrested. Up to a hundred witnesses, hearing the creep guy’s confession, hearing him attack Amber, and hearing (but not seeing, thankfully) the results of Amber’s response.
That’s a good point
That’d be really funny and cool. A courtroom scene where they’re like “bring in the witnesses” and 34 people come in, and then all of them have identical stories when questioned. Except for this one guy who insists she did a backflip over Phone Guy’s head first.
It’d be like that scene in Miracle on 34th Street where they bring in the sacks full of letters addressed to Santa Claus.
My petition for the names of the two randos: Fucko and Clyde
… No, Joyce. Doing it in the butt is NOT a loophole, no matter what the silly fundies might tell you.
Also, I agree with the mysterious shouter. Pegging most DEFINITELY counts as sex; it is an internal, penetrative act involving an erogenous zone enacted for sexual satisfaction/pleasure.
Kneejobs could go either way depending on the body parts involved, but if sexual gratification is the endgoal, then yes, it is also a sexual act.
Okay but now I desperately need to know if Joyce has heard ‘The Loophole’ by Garfunkel & Oates.
My head canon is that Walky sent it to her to scandalize her, which worked amazingly*. Now she has a different world view but it’s one of those things that sticks in her brain and she’ll invoke given the opportunity, whether or not that’s her current belief. Y’know, some people say that’s a loophole…
* Especially the very raunchy line ending in “… ’cause I love Jesus!”
Honestly, this makes sense. That “considered a loophole” bit isn’t something people are likely to actually say; those who believe it probably wouldn’t admit to doing such things anyway, while those who are more open about their sex lives probably tend not to feel any need to worry about whether those activities can arguably be technically considered not-sex.
It might be the kind of thing that teens desperately looking for a excuse to do the sexy stuff they want tell themselves or their partners.
So if you orgasm from a kneejob that means you are having a kneejerk reaction right?
It’s a sin that only one guy reacted to this magnificent terrible pun.
This fucking fanbase I s2g
*would give an angry “like” if she could*
Sometimes a statement must be made even if it’s late and superfluous: Willis is very good at this.
strip about anal sex titled, “Where it’s warm”
people need to stop doing big meaningful conversations out here I guess
it looks fun to skate though
Joyce you have severe repressed sexual tension and you’re either going to find out you like girls too or Jacob will be in a wheelchair for a month
I MEANT JOE F U C K
joe fuck is right
Considering how Lucy is currently working him, Jacob might also be in a wheelchair for a month
no no joyce, pegging is definitely not sex. you should try it with joe. i think youd both like it.
She can practice with Dorothy. It’s not sex, after all.
after all
I ship the two offscreen voices in this strip with each other
Each of them is attracted to the other, and they’ve had small, politely flirty encounters every so often, but their schedules never line up to let them spend more than about two minutes in the same place. Three days from this strip, they’ll both have perfectly aligned schedules and show up to an event hosted by a guy who knows a chick who knows an enby who shares a class with each of their roommates, and they’ll both show up on a whim, and they’ll both join in on the party’s impromptu Smash Bros. tourney and make it to the final round as Peach and Toon Link. They’ll make a bet that the loser buys the winner a slice at Galasso’s, and once the game is over they’ll celebrate and go get their pizza, and then they’ll be up all night just talking.
I was surprised that Joyce had heard of pegging, until I remembered that early in the comic, she was told that Ethan would be happy if she got a strappon. And she looked it up.
Love this. Like people popping up on social media and making random comments on your post, only in real life!