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Patrick Willems @patrickhwillems.bsky.social ⋅ 1m
The Verge @theverge.com ⋅ 1d
Transformers Wiki @tfwiki.net ⋅ 1d
Josiah Hawthorne @josiahhawthorne.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Transformers Wiki @tfwiki.net ⋅ 1d
Darci Meadows, Published Author @saintwalker98.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
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LAKE YELLOWWOOD SLAUGHTER on Kickstarter now
Barb O. Saur 
⚧️
Flurple! Only unicorns can see it.
You’re not missing much, it’s not a very pretty color.
well that’s cute
Riviera?
Oh! So it matches her eyes!
Cute! (^-^)
It’s actually the same shade as Geraldo Rivera’s moustache!
There was actually a lifetime supply of it in Al Capone’s vault, but he didn’t want to share so it was hidden from the cameras.
You’re nailing it, Joyce.
She did break into a house with her sister!
Borrow her clothes without permission?
That’s something sisters do, right?
According to my wife they do, yes.
Provided you both wear the same size clothes, yes. Otherwise it is left to accessories and jewelry.
Tbh, I think some of that comes from hand-me-downs or having jewelry that the kids could trade wearing (since kid sized). As I was the youngest child (and a skinny bean growing up), I would always get the hand-me-downs from my sister. I still sometimes do. The problem arose when I could fit it before she grew out of it and we both liked it.
Being in a dorm with international students who would have to “downsize” their wardrobe before going back home was nice too. So many nice free shirts at the end of the year that they would dump in a cardboard box labeled “free”.
Yes.
Problem with borrowing clothes is that Joyce has to worry about her jugs.
You know, the milk-jug shoes that Carla designed for the shower.
I hope we get the Bulmeria plot and it’s a deep one.
Because politics in the RL have been absolute crap.
Bulmeria is a stand-in for Gaza and corresponding student protests just so you know
Which is why I also kinda resent how those are being covered up by that pseudonym if I’m being honest
In ten years when something else is being protested irl people reading the comic for the first time will find it more useful as fictionalized. That and Willis wrote this like a year ago so how could he know what was appropriate or not to say about Gaza now?
If Murphy’s law for writing ten years ahead is that peace breaks out in the middle east…
Bulmeria was also Russia when Alex became Snowden.
It’s also a couple of other places.
Here, it’s a stand in for Gaza but we don’t know how that will end.
The fictional country of Bulmeria has existed in-comic since the days of Roomies! so I don’t know why you think it’s a Gaza reference. Without word from Willis himself, I’ve always assumed it was a generic African country. (since that’s where most missionaries go)
Thisthisthisssss.
true what you said about the role it’s played in the past but,
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/02-the-one-where-jocelyne-returns/carve/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/02-the-one-where-jocelyne-returns/divest/
Besides Jocelyn stating that their University invests in military contractors who’re fueling the genocide, the fact that it’s taking place in Dunn Meadow of all places references the very real Pro-Palestine protests at IU which happened just last year
It does have parallels to Gaza, but it’s not the 1:1 reference you seem to be arguing. As for it taking place in Dunn Meadow… that’s where these things happen. You can find articles from the 90s about people gathering there to protest the Gulf War. (Gets a mention here, for instance: https://archive.is/8RtMi )
It would be nice if US weapons being used for genocide/atrocities in other countries was a one-off situation that specifically referred to a particular example rather than an evergreen general concept, but that’s not the timeline we live in.
(nicer still if it was just an unimaginable piece of fiction, of course)
Bulmeria is eternal. Bulmeria is a stand-in for all of the stupid wars, atrocities, and injustices which are tolerated or ignored by the country perpetrating them, simply because it is far away, and those people do not look like me, and I have enough going on without worrying about something I can’t cortrol.
In 30,000 years, when space archeologists uncover a remarkably well-preserved anthology of Dumbing of Age within clay jars in caves along the Dead Sea, they will marvel at the word of Willis and his prophecies. “Bulmeria! Is this not a stand-in for the Florxians of Rigel 7, and how the Todad are occupying them?” “No, the neckless father Saint Becky is an allegory for the todads; the Bulmerian Prophecy refers to the conquest of the Blojokats.”
In 30 000 years the Dead Sea will be under three miles of hive city
A religion based on all of the holey scriptchers of dumbing of age, its walky, and shortpacked, would be a convoluted thing indeed. True, the ethics and morality are pretty cut-and-dried, but the dogmatic disagreements would lead to several major schisms.
The originalist sect that held to young Willis’s morality from the early Roomies! would have a lot of conflicts with everyone else.
Its the “I don’t want the forum to disintegrate into factional screaming” country I’m guessing.
The problem was I didn’t automatically assume Jocelyn was talking about Gaza. I was confused by the Eastern European name and was wondering why Jocelyn was protesting sending weapons to Ukraine.
So then the problem was assuming it was a specific real world place
Bulmeria has been a stand-in for a lot of countries in Willis comics over the years, some real and some fictional. I agree with you that it’s probably a stand-in for Gaza this time.
I also hope the Bulmeria plot line ends up being really deep and interesting. Anxious about what the comment section will do, but interested still.
Sadly IRL politics have been absolute crap for a lot of people for a very long time, not just recently. And I’d rather not elaborate on that.
RIVIERA – Green(tm) – “Turquoise Blue” is not fucken GREEN, mates
what other colours do you have in your GREEN. any REDS? any REDS in your GREEN range?
i hate branding so much xD
It’s a brightful color. As Joyce tends to wear light color clothes, her eyes and nails are the only things with strong color.
Oh I like the colour. I’m just mad they’re calling it green. It’s not. It’s not even a little. Aqua, okay, I’ll live with calling that a green. Turquoise is not green and I’m salty about it.
Looks like they do have reds in their Green range. https://us.manucurist.com/products/indian-summer
YAY everything is stupid! xD
(Yes I read the other comments below saying it’s vegan and plant based. Calling it green is still stupid and looking at specifically colour products used as colourant and seeing “green” is still gonna make me salty because STOP LYING TO ME. xD )
Green as in plant based and vegan. not a great name choice for finger nail polish. Not quite as bad as Petchow brand rat poison, though.
are you making that up
oh okay it’s a comedy skit that’s fine xD
I used to work in an Amazon fulfillment center and I remember my initial confusion when trying to find a Green toy truck because the only one in the bin was blue, only to realize that was the name of the brand.
But turquoise IS green. It’s just also blue.
I’m of the opinion that turquoise is neither green nor blue, in the same way that gray is neither black nor white, or orange is neither red nor yellow. It is turquoise.
It is also a gem, in the same way that orange is a fruit and periwinkle is a flower and salmon is a fish and green is people.
Marketing is one of the stupidest forces in capitalism.
that it is, and that stupidity is a direct result of the very premise that makes capitalism capitalism:
that products and services are developed not directly for usability, but first and foremost for profit; under capitalism, goods and services are only made for use indirectly in theory, however as we’ve seen then and now, this is HARDLY always the way it turns out in practice :/
“under capitalism”?
This is hardly original to capitalism. Unless capitalism covers most of written history.
um, no?
hunter-gatherer societies were/are those in which products and processes were developed primarily for use, even with intention to barter, as before the invention of money it was not nearly as common on account of the need for double coincidence of wants, at a time when human populations were not nearly as large as they were today
the widespread practice of production oriented primarily for profit was a result of the introduction of stores of universally accepted value to use in future trade (money), specifically emergent desire to acquire massive surpluses of value to acquire ownership of capital
no less than socialism and capitalism, hunter-gatherer and traditional economies of eras past are still economies, even though the latter two are not oriented towards growth and development (in traditional economies such as that in Medieval Europe, even with the invention of money, prices for commodities were not set by their producers but fixed via legal fiat)
HG societies don’t fall under written history, so you’re basically agreeing there.
“traditional economy” seems a very broad term covering a huge variety of systems – everything between hunter-gatherers and whenever we say capitalism starts.
Prices being set by legal fiat doesn’t mean people don’t do things for profit. There’s also a lot of room I think between “primarily for use” and “primarily for profit”. The staggering amount of wealth held by the upper classes in antiquity and medieval periods seems to belie a “primarily for use”. The elites were acquiring massive surpluses of value even in those traditional economies of the past, even if the peasants weren’t far from subsistence agriculture.
Turquoise is a green and I will die on this hill.
There are, in fact, many red polishes in the Green™ range! Which is so named because it’s vegan, largely plant-based, and allegedly better for people and the environment than other polishes.
(I have no idea whether any of that holds water, but it doesn’t bother me that it’s using a different sense of “green” than the color.)
They’re still gonna be using acetone and the thing is acetone is produced by animals including humans so you can say its totes organic and natural but that still doesn’t actually make it good for you xD
Well of course acetone is organic. There’s carbon in it.
According to their website: “Can be removed at home, without acetone, by rubbing “
Wonder if it contains as much plastic as vegan plant based alternatives to leather do.
I get ya, I really do, even if ‘green’ turns out to be a brand name. When the ‘rainbow’ spectrum of colours were quantified and named, the one after (lime) green was called “blue” but actually it was cyan/turquoise, call it what you will, and the next one (Indigo) was what we now call blue. People draw it as purple, but violet is the purple one. But then they are drawing with pigment, not light. So when people get in an argument about where green stops and blue begins, just direct them to cyan/turquoise/aqua. Then they can argue where green or blue ends and cyan begins!
Why if I really get specific with my favorite color, I say crayola crayon cerulean, as it can vary in what it looks like depending on who is defining it. Copper solutions (like copper sulfate or copper chloride) can sometimes be the color I am looking for too, though that can vary in its color.
It is, turns out, but it’s still just … I’m looking at a blue, the biggest word and the only specifically colour word on the label is GREEN in all caps. I’m looking at a red, and the biggest word and the only specifically colour word on the label is GREEN in all caps.
STOP LYING TO ME
that’s all I’m saying. stoppit. i hate it. xD
This comment looks like it should be a poem. It isn’t, but it could be with a little polish.
I have seen greenish turquoise, but that turquoise is not green. Their azure also isn’t very azure (saphir).
I knew someone who thought that school buses and lines on the road were orange instead of yellow.
You might like the site:
ismy.blue
I learned that I’m 83% green.That means I see more green than blue. So I might see Riviera as green.
I had not known of that website. Turns out I’m at 80%. Turquoise is def blue. Thanks!
Your screen color settings could affect that.
It’s neither green nor blue. It’s in between. It’s turquoise.
Grue. Or maybe bleen.
No, not the Grue! :O
*promptly gets eaten
Should have carried a flashlight.
Dang! I always forget that!
I mean, there is a reason why we call things blue-green or red-orange. Sometimes it is more one than another but othertimes it is basically halfway in between and is neither. It would be like asking if something is blue or yellow when it is green.
I’ve long since lost any ability to care about color names in the business world since they obviously don’t make any sense. My theory is that most color names today are the result of somebody drinking too much absinthe. Just give me the HLS coord.s please.
Ah Absinthe, the Sea Foam fairy.
Riviera (sample from screenshot):
Hue: 187
Sat: 48.7%
Lightness: 61%
Sometimes what looks blue in the bottle turns out looking a lot more green when it’s on human-colored nails. It’s happened to me!
Those two need a full-on sleepover. Make-up isn’t enough of a sistery thing.
Riviera? I’m starting to think blue is Joyce’s fave color
With _those_ eyes? Nah.
No, pls! Come back, Jocelyne.
Jocelyne walks outside, and Ruth and Jennifer are still at the steps, staring at each other in silence.
Mandatory Damn You Willis!
Booster limps away with a bruised ass.
Great art joke here.
Nice pun likewise.
Willis delivering a double punch with two very subtle jokes.
I do have a little sister. I dye her hair and she steals my clothes, but also we just… Listen to each other in good times and bad, and spend time together doing whatever, including having fun meals. I do things like Jocelyne’s this weekend, and she doesn’t participate on but she supports me.
Joyce is doing more than alright :33
Honestly? Yeah, you probably should’ve. Painted nails really are affirming as heck, and having someone else to teach you makeup is so fucking nice.
Maybe Joyce can bring nail polish to the tent…
and some marshmallows and hotdogs ^^
I suppose technically Jocelyne is on a camping trip…
Painting nails is also fun with another person. When my mom was alive, she and I would help paint each other nails since she was lefthanded and I’m righthanded, so we were able to help paint each other’s dominant hands.
Painting nails is funn but I fidget too much for mine to last any length of time. I would love someone to teach me about makeup, since that sounds like it could be fun.
Doing henna tattoos on each other can be a fun experience too. If you aren’t that great at freehanding on a non-flat surface, you can use wet paper with a stencil (cut out where the henna would go). I did a really nice rose on someone’s shoulder that way.
I love the casual interaction between Joyce and Becky in the final panel.
Like, I have no profound observations or anything. Just really love that moment of casual friendship.
Same. It’s such a casual reminder that yes, friendships never have to die they just change in dynamics.
If it’s the same riviera that comes up on google (matches her glasses) then yeah, it IS a nice colour.
She’d have to ask Carla how to do make-up.
The fingernail polish meta-joke though. It’s familiar, but last time they left it ambiguous if Joyce was wearing any, iirc. just trying to remember who she was talking to.
>a href=”ttps://www.dumbingofage.com/commune/#sidebar-overblog”>Bonus strip June 2018
le sigh.
Bonus Strip June 2018
Aside from the sweetness of the comic, panel 2 Becky looks uncannily Sonic-esque in that pose.
There will be time for nails later, which is good, because nail polish is so goddamn fun and interesting.
Man I hate it when actual plot gets interrupted for no fucking reason. It’s not even a good tease, it’s not even a weekend cliffhanger, it’s just…. Whatever this is
Cry
The only thing I’m crying about is you missing a perfectly good opportunity to say ‘it is Tuesday’
This is plot. It may not be the plot we wanted, but plot it is.
It’s the plot I wanted.
Buddy idk how to tell you this but… interpersonal relationships ARE the plot in this comic.
And I was watching one particular interpersonal relationship that had quite a good moment get friggin cutawayed.
… a slice of life comic having a slice of life?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Unprecedented
What do you mean? What makes this less “plot” then the Jennifer/Ruth thing from yesterday or the Sarah and Booster thing for before?
the sarah booster thing was also plot and i’m annoyed at it being cut away too.
it’s a willis strip. if you don’t like the meta humor how have you survived this guy’s whole career
The reason is to let time advance in the story we just left, without us watching it, and to advance other stories that are happening the same day.
Were gonna get back to Billie and Ruth tomorrow night and they’re still gonna be staring at each other.
One strip in between is rookie numbers. Let’s see them still staring at each other tomorrow night, comic time.
off screening emotional impact is bad writing.
I love it when the comic takes the time to show these characters just being friends and having normal conversations. It keeps things from feeling overly dire.
get yo nails dun gurl
I fully believe Joyce will show up to the protest and turn it into a riot by assaulting a cop.
Dorothy will end up in jail and think it finally frees her from Presidency (but will be good for her profile)
Dorothy becomes the second president to have prior convictions.
Current Joyce is the sibling I need
I have no idea how to select gravitars, send help.
Change the capitalization of your email you use to comment.
cloud@example.com will get one avatar.
Cloud@example.com will get a different avatar.
cLoud@example.com will get a third avatar.
etc.
Pedantically a gravatar is an avatar you set for yourself with your email address at gravatar.com which will then show up hear and other places. (It has something to do with wordpress.com also.)
You can set any picture you supply there. That is how I’ve got that picture of Bear from the anime .hack//SIGN there.
(I assume there are *some* limits on what picture you can use, like nothing obscene or associated with hate literature, etc.)
Gravatar/Wordpress lets you set “ratings” for your gravatars. This forum uses the G rated ones. It’s all self-assigned though. I could set my “PG” avatar as G and it would show up.
Such a nice little moment.
See, it’s funny because Nice is on the Riviera.
If only she painted her nails Warszawa Blue… **that** would be some actual polish!
I had not seen what he did there. But now, thank to you, I see what he did there. And I see what you did there.
He’s done it before. The colour of Joyce’s glasses came up. I was not quick enough to spot it back then. Not sure if I can claim credit here if I needed someone to point it out to me earlier.
If we have seen further, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Joyce had to be reminded she’s a girl.
Awww Joyce. Joyce is being adorable.
I hope we see more of Jocelyne in the comic. I like her and I like her relationship with Joyce.
Is it possible to get an A+ in “Trans Ally” or normal to want one?
Possible? Yes.
Normal to want? … Wish I could say it was, but I’m hoping it becomes normal real soon.
I’m gonna stick my neck out and say I hope it doesn’t. I hope it soon becomes normal to treat people as individuals and let them be who they are.
Mind, I don’t expect that anytime soon, but that’s what I’d like.
It’s possible? Who’s in charge of the grading? Is there a rubric?
It’s not that Joyce desperately wants the Rainbow Unicorn sticker that you get for performing A+ Allyship, it’s just that she’s afraid to do anything wrong and possibly hurt her sister. But yeah, I guess trying to be an ally comes with overdoing it in the learning stage.
Fretting about what affirming fun thing you could have done better is like the best possible problem to have in this situation, Joyce. Put it on your bucket list for stuff to do next visit.
Becky’s colourblind ?
If being unable to identify the made-up colour names of nail polishes by sight classifies you as colour blind then sure, her and me both.
Nail polish colors have all sorts of names. It’s never just “blue” or “green” like you can see with your eyes.
This feels like the first time in ages that Becky and Joyce have hung out by themselves! Hope they get a good friend catch up in.
For what Jocelyne will be doing in the next couple of days Joyce should have fashioned her with some Lightning Claws instead.
Joyce, you don’t have to do stereotypical “girly” things to affirm your sister’s gender. You’ve already done pretty good just by accepting her for who she is.
And while I kinda want to see some of Jocelyne at the Bulmeria protests, I get the feeling that would result in a lot of arguing in the comments, so I’m also fine if we don’t get to see that.
I was gonna say I’d never seen Joyce in makeup excepting the Drank Caper.
Then I realized, “Wait, is the meta joke about how Willis doesn’t draw fingernails?”
Stop making up anatomy
Peridot: Where are our noses?
Steven: Oh, that’s kinda part of my style lately.
Peridot: Is not having fingers also your style?
Freckles, yes. Fingernails, no.
Willis needs to give us an occasional Ren & Stimpy style closeup.
It’d get in the way of the buffer though, and we need to bring that up to three years or what are we (i.e. Willis) even doing?
Preferably of Joyce’s gnarly toenail that she stubbed in the gym!
…or maybe we don’t want anything to do with Ren & Stimpy and their problematic creator. Yikes.
I see freckles on Becky. But I see no painted fingernails on Joyce.
Freckles are smaller than fingernails.
Mr. Willis, I look upon you with judgement.
This is why Becky needs to ask which color she painted them.
Sure sure, BUT she’s got way more freckles than nails. So at this level of detail, the freckles average out to “a few” and the fingernails average out to “take my word for it, bro”.
That’s just math.
I thought Riviera was going to be roughly the same shade of skin that Joyce has before the alt-text and art style got me.
Joyce, it’s 2025. Technically, you could’a done her nails before she even introduced her as Jocelene. Though it would’ve made your parents lose their shit all the same.
For me its Sally Hansen Xtreme wear Pacific Blue. Cheap, cheerful and it wears like iron.
Which of her friends have sisters, so she can ask them what sisters do? Is it just Sarah? So sisters swoop in on potential suitors. That’s already covered.
Does Walky count as a friend? Because his sister is Sal and that’s a hard act to follow
Walky’s like the last person she needs sister advice from. His sister might be Sal, but he sucked as a brother for ~99% of their lives.
To be fair, he was a child while she was gone.
He was also a child during the 13 years she wasn’t gone, and the flashbacks don’t make him look great during those either.
Five years, ages 13-18 for both of them.
Taffy said “the 13 she wasn’t gone.”
Walky doesn’t count because nobody’s stabbed Jocelyne through the hand, so who would Joyce dry hump? “What do sisters do with each other” implied, but that’s secondary to no knife maniac to dry hump.
Well… she could ask Roz?
Honestly, I think that’d be funny considering other recent inquiries made of Roz… she’d definitely assume it was time for more Sex Talk as a tangle of misunderstandings built.
A makeup brand released a eyeshadow palette with the name Riviera and the colors were super cute https://www.temptalia.com/product/anastasia-eyeshadow-palette/riviera/