Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social ⋅ 6h
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net ⋅ 2d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social ⋅ 3dDavid M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
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…Dina-less T^T
Only momentarily.
And only as far as we can tell. She could appear at any moment.
She could be here already without us seeing her.
Willis said we’re getting 0.5 Dina appearances this storyline ;-;
Yeah, because you are here to talk about Dorothy near make out stuff.
Nice to see that both ends of this mess are doing poorly!
It’s like watching a train wreck also, somehow, fall down 12 flights of stairs
Onto a pile of banana peels.
Careening into another trainwreck
In an oil refinery.
The oil refinery is connected to a hydrogen fuel cell manufacturing facility.
Which is inexplicably next to dry cask storage for nuclear waste
Thomas the Tank Unhinged ain’t got nothin on this one >:D
Ahhhh.
Maze.
Zing.
AMAZING.
That video was a roller coaster ride. I got vertigo!
Thank you for sharing something so fully engrossing!
hahhaha I’m glad! ^-^
I’m sure there should also be a giant grand piano in there somewhere, falling on top of everything.
Oh good, I was worried things might get awkward after last night.
no way, these are some stable adults doing stable adult stuff. ~<3
So consistent. So mature. So stable.
I know people get heated about her sometimes, but Becky got a laugh out of me with the last panel.
Becky is great. Though sometimes I wonder why she seems to have an accent and Joyce does not, if they were raised in the same community from a young age. Does Becky have an more southern style-accent? If so it is not to the degree Sal does, so it is hard to tell.
My impression is that Joyce is very careful about her pronunciation, just as Joyce is very careful about everything she does.
Becky may be affecting a bit more of a “country” (or “relaxed” or “informal”) pronunciation as a semantic signifier of her affected “carefree” persona.
I know my Southern twang comes in, when I’m trying to appear personable and welcoming. As well as intentional colloquialisms, when I’m trying to appear not too stuck up. Not too formal. It helps me to appear more “honest” and “plainspoken”. Not a bad attribute for a professional persuader.
…But that’s just me. I’m a compulsive dialect- and accent-copier. It’s habit. Happens all the time.
That’s the impression I got too. That Becky was putting on a shtick. As part of her lovable orphan lesbian ambassador personality. Sort of a survival mechanism.
Yeah, Becky’s definitely laying it on thick. I’m from Southern IN in the rural part and even the hicks don’t sound completely like it appears that Becky does. Having said that, it’s not that uncommon to occasionally play up like Becky does. I still sometimes ask my wife if she wants to watch “one of them movin’ pictures”.
My brother, sister, and I grew up in the same house with the same parents, each of us there for our entire childhoods. I speak with a federated or general American English dialect, my brother has a East Texas dialect, and my sister has a Southern American English dialect. I guess it’s who we chose to be.
Just poking in to say I found the combination of “compulsive dialect and accent copier” and the Booster Gravatar funny. Just seems about right to me!
Except Dorothy…
I keep imagining her as having the voice of Sam, that one southern girl Chris thought was a boy initially in an early episode of Family Guy. So like I was imagining her with that accent from like day 1, even before she came out even. So I don’t think I realized that she has one that fluctuated until now.
It can be part of neurodivergence. I’ve always had an odd accent and nobody in the family knows where it came from. In recent years it’s leaned more southern, but I still get the odd rando asking if I’m British from time to time, which I’ve never understood as I’ve never been to the UK. It’s even happened with people from former Commonwealth countries. I absolutely don’t sound British imo, I don’t get it.
Joyce might have something similar going on (albeit not with whatever weirdness people hear in my voice, she might just be over-enunciating her words). Walky and a few other members of the cast seem to have more subdued but similar pronunciations to Becky, so I’m assuming hers sounds more like the accent up there. Idk though, I’ve never been to Indiana.
Plenty of Hoosiers, especially in rural areas, do speak with a twangy, vaguely southern-sounding accent. (Indiana basically is a southern state in most senses other than the purely geographic.) Most others speak with a very flat, neutral accent, even if raised and schooled in the same town. A big reason many businesses have located their call centers to the Midwest is that almost any English speaker can understand us.
Up until I was in my twenties, people kept asking me what part of England I was from and when I moved up here. Apparently, when I was very young, my English accent was so pronnounced that a playschool teacher asked my mother when she moved up here, and she couldn’t have sounded more Invernesian. Apparently, I sound more Invernesian now, but I can’t really tell the difference myself.
At the time, we blamed the BBC, but neurodivergence is probably a factor as well, since my sister watched as much TV as I did, and she sounds perfectly Scottish (although exactly where in Scotland varies; she spent a lot of time in Aberdeen and Glasgow, and picked up elements of the local accents).
I get asked where I’m from quite often (actually, this seems to happen less often lately, though it did just come up the other day), with most people who ask assuming England. For me, it’s a speech impediment, but there could be some neurodivergent slant that sort of convergence it into sounding like an accent.
I had a friend in high school who had an experience like what you described, people often said he talked like he was British, and his family attributed it to a story they would tell about him getting a terrible ear infection as a very young child and they claimed he started talking funny after he recovered from it. Did you have anything like that, a disruptive event as a small child to your language acquisition?
tbh, I’ve lived in the Bible Belt my whole life and don’t really have the accent at all. like people ask if I’m from the northern US all the time. sometimes accents are weird (and I didn’t realize that it could be neurodivergence, but come to think of it, my also-autistic dad and sibling are also like that)
i can’t speak for indiana, but accents in washington where i grew up frequently ran up against each other in the same community. some of the folks i went to school with had much twangier accents than i did. feel like you get outside of the major cities and you’re a lot more likely to run into a distinct transregional redneck accent
In rural Washington (state), no one had a twangy southern accent, but huntin’ and fishin’ roll right off my tongue, and I occasionally catch myself saying something like “I’ve got a meetin’ after lunch.”
I’m scared to ask what it is that makes folks “heated” about her, I’ve been reading for a while but maybe not long enough lol
Becky is A Lot but Becky is Good
Stop asking me about Dorothy, already!
And specifically stop asking me about having sex with Dorothy! I already told you I don’t want to talk about all my questions which I don’t have about how that works!
Not that Dorothy is on my mind! Nor am I thinking about rubbing my tongue against her tongue! For example!
Yup Joyce is gonna fumble her way upwards isn’t she Dorothy can’t stop this nobody can she’s gonna somehow kool-aid man her way through Dorothy’s new second better than the last closet.
Feel it is worth noting that Joyce’s closet she has constructed is more like a cardboard box she found behind a dumpster and it remains to be seen how powerful the rule of comedy is with how long she can get away with this and if everyone figures it out right away and plays along with the bit.
Hmm, I’m curious where Joyce is taking this, and whether it is a good idea or not. Becky is definitely going to find out, and things will be less than great when she does.
So how is this going to play out? Joyce walking in on Dorothy and Walky? Dorothy’s continued denial of her bisexuality?
I’m worried that Becky might relapse into her feelings for Joyce if she finds out she’s bi. She could lose the beautiful relationship she’s worked for with Dina just because the crush she’s had since she before she knew what love is has such a big stranglehold on her.
This.
Exactly.
*Facepalm.*
*SMDH*.
But maybe Becky will finally consciously acknowledge that she and Dina have something very special that’s better than any dream she used to have about a made-up version of Joyce. (Sorry, I can’t see half the page here, it’s always like this.)
(darn ads, sometimes I’ll see “But maybe Becky” and the entire rest of the screen is covered by an ad and I can’t do anything to change it. Not that you said your issue was specifically ad related)
Becky is fluent in Joyce and she just heard Joyce talk about not-Dorothy-sex-stuff with not-Dorothy. So if she doesn’t know going forward, it’s semi-willful.
Maybe try Adblock? I like UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger (from EFF).
Barring that, Mozilla and Brave (Opera too, perhaps?) sometimes have ad blockers and pop-up blockers built in to the browser settings. If you use Chrome, you can disable pop-ups and auto-play and Javascript, in the settings, and that helps considerably.
Good luck!
I honestly think that Becky is going to handle this better. She’s already accepted that she’s not dating Joyce and she has Dina. I’d be more worried if she didn’t have Dina, then she would have a reason to seek out Joyce. Which might happen in the far future (well, I hope it doesn’t).
at what point does plausible deniability become implausible deniability
like, sure, you’re talking about not-that
Becky is really in top form here!
Which is ironic, given that she’s absolutely a botto—*MAULED BY RAPTORS*
Yeah, but she’s into that.
What is all this tops and bottoms stuff? Having disposed of an unhelpful gender binary, is there now an urge to have an unhelpful sexual behaviour binary?
They are just part of a spectrum, and each is its own separate spectrum. It’s all spectrum.
It’s spectrums all the way down…
…to the bottom.
HEYOOOOOOO
All a normal part of the ought-istic spectrum. As in, you ought to try all of it to find out what best fits you.
It’s not an unhelpful sexual behavior; you can be a top, or a bottom, or a switch, or like certain aspects of either one while not liking others. Some people like to have a dom/sub relationship, but being a top, or bottom is not mutually exclusive.
You could have a relationship with one person where you are a bottom, but later have a relationship where you are a top, or go back and forth with it, and that’s perfectly ok.
You’re making that up! People can only ever be one thing, and one thing only! Also they can’t touch
without enthusiastic consent and a safeword./s
+1 for excellent sarcasm.
+1
Like all other labels, if they don’t apply to you, they don’t apply, but they’re useful for lots of people. Top/bottom/verse and dom/sub/switch are in fact not just like… made up for porn lol. Plenty of people do in fact have strong preferences for a variety of reasons.
It’s a little annoying when someone goes super ham on bottom=sub=femme in fandom portrayals, sure, but like. That’s almost certainly a new writer who’s gonna grow out of that anyway. Let fourteen-year-olds be cringe.
Y’ALL IT WAS A JOKE WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL
IT WAS A WORDPLAY JOKE D:
“Top form” has nothing to do with Becky preferring to have sex/behave sexually as a “bottom”! Juxtaposition! Come on now!
(Also what are you talking about, “urge to have an unhelpful binary”? What is that? Do you look at any mild categorization of two things and go OH LOOK, ANOTHER BINARY? Please touch grass.)
Well, I liked your wordplay plus joke. The “mauled by raptors” was a nice touch. Gives “polite interrupting cow” vibes.
That’s right, don’t let on to Becky that you’re thinking about sexy times with a woman whi isn’t her.
I’m pretty sure Beckster already knows about Joyce’s interest in Dotty’s body.
The only people who haven’t been aware of it until now were Dorothy and Joyce.
Methinks she doth profess too much.
Exeunt. Pursued by a bear.
Huh. Today I found…
https://myshakespeare.com/hamlet/act-3-scene-2
Remember kids, confessing is a few short steps away from professing. Just ‘fess up, whether pro or con.
Ooohhh….
This conversation between the three of them is going to be fun to read.
Only the next day and Joyce is denying she almost kissed Dorothy. There is a great information chasm between readers and characters.
I feel she _does_ want to talk about it, but not risk Becky being mad with her for whatever reasons are running through her head.
Fingers crossed that Becky is a lot more mature and confident in her relationship with Dina than she lets on. Since she likes drama and fun, she likes to make a big deal out of stuff just for the amusement factor.. We see that she rose to the occasion to help Dorothy. (Let’s hope she finally had a brainstorm and cleaned the room too.)
how many times will she deny Dorothy?
I believe three is traditional.
I thought Not-Dorothy was in another dorm, the one for mirror-universe students.
(They need special foods because of chirality issues.)
Fascinating!
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Organic_Chemistry/Supplemental_Modules_(Organic_Chemistry)/Chirality
Today I learned…
Oh yeah. Chirality is fascinating stuff. Like, there could be an entirely different entire ecosphere somewhere, totally incompatible with ours. But looking just like ours.
Whoa! Where? Here, somewhere?
I wonder if Not-Dorothy has accepted that she’s bi and told Not-Joyce about her feelings for her yet. If not, maybe when she gets back to her universe.
Isn’t there a meme that goes “ gay sex will not fix this situation. honestly, it’d probably make it worse. that being said i think we should give it a shot anyway.” Feels very appropriate here.
That’s an incredibly Beckypilled meme
Becky and Ruth/Billie-pilled lmao
Someone is being absolutely normal about this
indeed, totally normal earthling stuff, nothing to see here, move along
Joyce: Dave, my mind is going. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do….
Open the pod bay doors, Sal.
Bravo! +1 internet point!
While editing tomorrow’s newspaper in her office, Daisy feels her ears burn and smiles. Somewhere, a lesbian is saying her name.
+11
TvTropes calls this Suspiciously Specific Denial
I’m not linking it because I care about y’all and that thing is an all-consuming black hole of time. But yeah. Yeah oh my god, Joyce
Rubbing my little gremlin hands together in glee.
People will confess to things a therapist would never hear from me. Often in the weirdest ways.
Pff FWIW I just meant the strip and the suspiciously specific denial and incoming drama, not your kind reticence to link the Executive Dysfunction Black Hole Website.
Nah, link it. Kill the weak.
To link it, I would have to look it up, and then i would never escape.
I’m wearing the appropriate safety equipment and believe I have the corresponding will power to procure the link and not get pulled in: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuspiciouslySpecificDenial
I feel like I oughta hand out Informed Consent forms before an actual link ngl. I was once linked to TvTropes as a teen and now I’m a Lit major.
I assume you took the courses to counteract the website’s decaying influence on your understanding of fiction.
Naw, I was vaccinated – Already knew how to read before going in. It’s a tool repository, and the rest is mnemonics :3 I’d wager cinemasins did way more damage to its audience.
I too have fallen into the all-consuming void of TVT. Several times. One may escape its event horizon only on a temporary basis, never permanently.
Not even once. You try it this one time and wake up face down on the keyboard, 250 tabs open, seeing Structures. From then on it’s just a countdown to your next relapse.
There is zero chance that Becky doesn’t see right through this. She’s hiding it, but she KNOWS and you can’t convince me otherwise.
I dunno, Becky’s pretty used to both Joyce’s neuroses and rationalizing their friendship as just-friends-because-she’s-not-into-girls. Especially because Becky was so certain that orientation could never change, never, period, end of story. If Joyce is prattling about awkward phrasing and how shes trying very hard to not talk about sex and Dorothy, I’m not sure if that’s suspicious enough to lead Becky to the correct conclusion. Far more likely for her to just rationalize it as some sort of drama involving Dorothy and Joyce regarding her closeness with Joe.
Oh, tomorrow will be interesting. We will start to uncover what’s Joyce’s deal
Sure! Absolutely sexless talk!
Eh, Joyce looks too much like Jocelyn.
We may have to replace Joyce with her sister who had the look and name first.
Maybe Joyce should mention Dorothy a few more times, just to make it absolutely clear that she’s definitely not there to talk about Dorothy.
And definitely not there to talk to not-Dorothy about not-Dorothy-sex-stuff.
Becky is going to hurl herself out the window the moment Joyce starts talking about non-lesbian sex
I think she would also hurl herself out the window if she starts talking about lesbian sex with Dotty.
Which she just did if Becky speaks Joyce as well as I think she does.
You can absolutely keep everything in that box Joyce, this is totally doable and healthy
updating my list of cast members’ birthdays, jan 29th: not Becky.
There went my theory that Joyce went full neurodivergent and completely misread the situation.
Yes, something like that for me as well.
Condolences to the “Joyce is 1000% straight with no signs that she’s interested in Dorothy or women” crew!
Kind of hoping someone goes for another round of mental acrobatics though, this one requires some creativity.
It’s just PTSD. The feelings aren’t real.
It’s not real. It’s never been real. They’ll never be real.
Joyce is just having a trauma response.
Good point, Dorothy got ahead of the crowd with that one!
Joyce: I’m totally not having sexy thoughts about my best friend, because I’m straight and have a boyfriend
Becky: Of course you’re not, because you’re straight and sexual preferences NEVER CHANGE and Dina will stay with me forever
(Two Best Friends In Denial)
(…)
(PART TWO)
I dont know what you’re talking about. She says she’s *not* looking for Dorothy, and going to be talking about *not* Dorothy Sex stuff. What you are implying is the exact opposite of what she is saying.
I mean, I know theres a lot of stuff to keep track of, but you gotta listen for the context here. That’s how you’d know that Joyce is of course not lying because she loves Becky and would never lie about not-sex.
By the way – COMPLETE aside – the way I see it, unless Leslie’s first semester class also had a class about divorce proceedings, Walky and Joe are still man-married by the authoritative powers of the Gender Studies course. You know. Just in case thay stuff one day becomes relevant.
I think chuckroast is talking about yesterday strip
I think the way comments thread here got you confused. If it helps, your comment got me confused. Confusion aplenty.
Ooo, don’t remember that but I’m 100% on-board.
I giggled, ty.
I am REALLY hoping that attitude finally dies out once and for all. The phobes were phobing.
Same!
Interesting that Joyce showed up in person to find Becky if she’s trying to avoid Dorothy. They have cell phones, right? She could have texted Becky to come over to her room to chat, so I wonder if that’s subconscious.
(it could also just be that Willis wanted to gift us this very informative scene, and that’s reason enough for me)
I just noticed your pic.
lmao thank you
It would be nice. Like, fingers crossed!
Hm, this is probably one of the better ways this could play out. Much better for Joyce to come to Becky about her bi awakening than for Becky to find out from someone else. Of course I still think Becky is going to be hurt by this, at least a bit. But I’m hoping Becky comes out of this alright, she’s got Dina to take the edge off of it
She might just feel vindicated: “See! I knew it all along!”
Phrasing.
Seems completely convincing to me!
What a strange storyline. Everyone just going around, saying, “Oh, I’m fine! Nothing wrong. Everything’s hunky dory!” It’s so wonderful to hear that everyone’s so well adjusted and healthy.
… actually, in attempting to make that joke, I ran down the line to see who was “next most troubled” and make a joke about how we were now going to focus on something inconsequential… and realized that everybody IS right now well-adjusted and healthy. Jennifer/Billie is accepted and with real friends. Lucy and Sarah both have people who genuinely care about them. Ethan’s recovering. Amber and Amazi-Girl are as stable as they can be. Hell, even Malaya and Carla have SOs. So does Sal, and while her parent situation sucks, she finally has her brother in her side and she’s not alone.
Everything else… is doing… great, I guess? With major plot lines and conflicts… resolved?
Uh oh.
Ah, now you understand.
DAMN YOU, WILLIS
Wait Malaya has a partner? Who? When did I miss that? Are they dating Marcie?
They aren’t?
Yeah, Sal basically told ’em to. It hasn’t come up much because Marcie is regrettably a side character, but those two are gayin’ it up in the margins.
Literally begging for more Marcie screening.
Screentime* phones are a menace
It’s much more apparent in the bonus strips.
March 2020, March 2021, July 2021, September 2024
The dawning!
The black obelisk!
Thus Spake Zarathustra!
I adore just how smug Becky looks in this one, she entirely deserves it
Now, the big question is whether that expression is before or after hearing Joyce’s last line.
I thought panel one was a mirror at first and was confused by the idea that Willis made such a blatant art error since Joyce wasn’t mirrored.
poor becky, running afoul of the westermarck effect to her sorrow
+1 internet point for science
That, OR Joyce just isn’t into her. Being into chicks doesn’t mean Every Chick Ever.
Ah, more repression.
That always ends well.
Absolutely. Every time a DoA character just shuts something down, harder, it gets better. For everyone!
Well I meant in general, but especially in that context.
The denial is mutual!!!!
… wait, is that good news or bad news?
Oh I’m sure it’s fine, what’s more gasoline gonna do?
Becky isn’t Dorothy, so it’s fine.
Joyce, walking into the room unprompted: I’M NOT GAY, YOU’RE GAY!
Joyce is not good at hiding.
Joe is going to have some negative beliefs about himself “confirmed,” it seems. On the positive side, I think he’s going to be genuinely happy if Joyce gets something that makes her happy. However, he could easily see it as proving his inability to provide real and valuable emotional connection, meaning he’s not deserving of the same from others. Basically, close to the beliefs that underpinned his old persona. The good.news is I don’t think Joe is likely to take this in an incel/misogyny direction, just go back to seeing himself as only able to deliver one thing, and only deserving of receiving the same thing.
Joyce’s intense sexual desire for Dorothy, contrary to popular belief, is not antimatter and will not detonate if she also carries around matter-based intense sexual desire for Joe!
You can feel intense sexual desire for two people, even if you are committed to monogamy, so I really do not understand this comment!!
Bisexuality erasure continues. It seems a lot of people just can’t accept it is real.
It could get complicated if one is bisexual AND also demisexual and monogamous though.
(Not speaking about Joyce specifically though, she hasn’t exhibited any traits of being demisexual afaik.)
I’m not sure what negative beliefs Joe is going to have confirmed?
Glad I read past the first sentence, I think your point stands no matter what the relationship(s) look like in the near term future. (Joyce+Dorothy, Joyce+Joe, poly, or even splitsville)
Joyce has had some heartfelt talks with Joe, but she’s also been pretty vocal about her sexual desire for him. His insecurities could easily make him dismiss their emotional intimacy.
It’s great to pretend you’re superior based on a central thesis of complete bullshit, huh? You can pretend you did any analysis because you put a pipe in your mouth and talked about Joe’s emotional intimacy issues, except just saying “those exist” and “Joyce might trigger them” does not magically make the central thesis of “negative beliefs about himself” any less unsupported bullshit.
On the one hand, Becky is the best person to talk to about this.
On the other hand, Becky is the worst person to talk to about this.
Willis, you evil genius.
That’s why we keep coming back
Becky was the best of friends. She was the worst of friends….
SHES BECOMING SELF AWARE…. -er. Self aware-er. arguably Joyce becoming self aware is one of the motivating threads of this comic, come to think of it.
Good, this is good. Both of them are finally starting to address how they feel about each other. Being honest with your feelings is the first step in healthier relationships, both platonic and intimate. Hopefully this arc concludes with Dorothy and Joyce having an open and candid conversion about being thirsty towards each other.
There is a small chance I don’t experience lust in the same way other people do, but for me lust is one of the easier desires to control. All you gotta do is consistently remind yourself that other people are peers first and sex toys second. After a couple years it’ll stick and it’ll be automatic. Then it becomes easy to be open and honest about your and their sexual desires and you can have a passionless conversation about sex. Which isn’t sexy, but it lays the groundwork for consent among people you do not yet know well enough to know when they are counter signalling.
As someone pointed out on the Patreon yesterday, Joyce is doing her whole Tristan thing about Dorothy here, which Becky really should recognize. I wonder what’s going to happen when Joyce runs into Dorothy while operating at that level of denial. I suspect it will be awkward.
Huh.
YEAH.
I’m gonna go ahead and add “this ends with a polyamorous quad” to my bingo card.
You’re not allowed to admit those exist.
*screaming, pulling the “pull in case of polyamory mention” alarm, running into the arms of strictly monogamous firemen sobbing my eyes out*
What, bingo cards? It’s fine, I’m not gambling actual money. /j