There are some people of whom I occasionally think “Well, at least [name] isn’t alive to see this. Because he would’ve been happy about it, and he absolutely doesn’t deserve happiness.” Jack Chick is one of them. A certain hate-preacher who traveled from university to university is another.
Read the last panel again. If IU’s paper puts a price on ‘after the first’ issues grabbed, then yes, she’s committing theft.
As that panel notes, such policies were instituted after several incidents where campus political groups (mostly, though not exclusively conservative in nature) would claim all the copies of a paper that expressed a view they disagreed with, in order to prevent dissemination.
Why is Dorothy so worked up about this? The only person she was dreading telling was Walky, and Joyce just took care of that. Joyce is worried more about her parents, who get the online version, and besides that it’s what, Becky?
Wouldn’t it be more practical to just go find Becky?
Telling Becky is far too scary to actually do. Dorothy couldn’t even tell Walky and he’s just the boyfriend she cheated on, not her roommate who had a crush on Joyce.
Well, even if general readership is low, this issue has girls snogging on the front page, which would at least get people to stop to look at it. Probably. IDK, I don’t think I even *saw* newspaper stands for my college newspaper
as someone who’s current literary purchasing habits hinges on the amount of girl snogging in it, I would like to confirm this as a valued metric for evaluation
When I went to college, if you needed the internet you had to walk out of your room, go down the hall, take the elevator the lobby and invent the internet. Using punch cards. I’m older than heck / Hank. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/loft/
The first computer I worked on, the Burroughs B6700, had core memory and a HUGE punch card deck to restart it. The computer and its peripherals filled a 50×50 foot room. The floor was raised two feet to accommodate the cables.
I went to an engineering school. We didn’t even have a student paper. We had three English classes: General English, English Taught By A Pretentious Failed Author Who Gets Really Mad When You Proofread His Work And Give It Back To Him With All The Spelling And Grammar Errors Marked Up And That’s Why I Had To Take General English Over The Summer, and Technical Writing.
I corrected my english teacher’s grammar once and he gave me a bonus mark on my final grade. Took me from a B+ to an A-. It was a triumphant moment for me.
His fault for handing out copies of one of his stories for no better reason than to feed his ego by showing off how amazing his writing was. And let’s just say, there were reasons he was teaching English at a tiny technical college rather than actually being a published author.
I started knitting mail over the summer because there was nothing else to do on our tiny campus in the middle of nowhere with literally nine students for the summer session, and I got a mail hauberk out of the deal, which I’ve frankly gotten far more use out of over the last thirty years than I have the English class. I have no regrets.
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if the school I went to had a paper… much less what it was called. Logically, I assume they must’ve, but I don’t remember ever reading it… or ever seeing it (and I’m in my early 40s, so while the internet certainly existed and everyone had some sort of computer, it wasn’t leveraged well-enough to justify discontinuing a printed paper).
Back when I was in college, admittedly now more than two decades in the rear view but we DID have the internets, kinda, a majority of people would at least pick up the student daily paper and glance at the headlines on the way to the comics/crossword.
I think the main crux of the problem here is that Joyce still has her cartoons running in this particular paper, so a lot of her friends (including Becky) are likely to pick up a copy just for that reason.
Oooooh okay, so, a thought: newspapers everywhere are struggling, and it can’t be easy for student ones in particular. The IDS has got its hands on a banger of an image, Daisy would be a fool not to start running off posters of it, right?
Tour buses for crime solving roller derby teams to travel the country in don’t come cheap. Well, they usually ARE cheap, and break down in creepy places with surprise celebrity guest stars. But, they don’t come cheap.
If he doesn’t want people finding the coins, he shouldn’t have deliberately built an eye-catching tourist attraction right next to them, with a plaque on the wall that talks about how his great grandpappy buried gold coins all over the property. And he definitely shouldn’t be selling shovels and lanterns and pickaxes and buckets in the gift shop.
As a complete aside, I’m rereading the archives and found this piece of dialogue from walky: “change is easier to swallow than admitting who we’ve been all along”, which has been a recurring theme for years here.
I have to ask: was swapping the uppercase I and lowercase L intentional, perhaps as a subtle AI confusion trick, or an accident?
Basically, I’m wondering if it’s something I should be doing too.
(hey completely off topic but i started reading this comic like… 3 days ago? and by proxy been following your art for the same amount of time. just got to 2020 where you apparently made a giant compilation album of all your art but the link’s dead and i’ve been informed the gallery got nuked some time ago. is there any other place you got all the art stored where I could go look at it?)
On second thought, I prefer your prediction. Less generic sitcom twist, and generally more fun (with also the potential for Joyce to try to delicately figure out whether Becky’s sincerely happy for them or, once again, burying her true feelings).
Anyway, the whole cliché of “attempting to hide it instead draws attention to it”, in addition to being so common it has its own Wikipedia page, can still work even if it doesn’t involve Becky; if most students tend to ignore the newspaper but end up reading this one due to the attempted coverup, that’s already enough to be entertainingly distressing for Joyce and Dorothy.
Now I’m looking forward to Daisy thanking them for boosting the newspaper’s circulation.
At the risk of accidentally writing fanfic, I started musing further on this idea…
Many people have been clamouring for consequences to the cheating, and annoyed at Joe being so calm about it, and Walky’s reacting to it like it was simply a predictable plot twist. What if the consequences are, instead, that Joyce and Dorothy become famous gay icons, despite their hopes to keep it secret, and then, due to people looking further into events, the cheating becomes just as famous, leading to them being hated for their misdeeds not by Joe and Walky but instead by society at large.
Well, people were hoping for drama and/or consequences. This might provide.
This is not a bad take..Counterpoint—in the hypothetical event that they become famous and queer around campus, it cramps the early months of their relationship because they can’t be alone and the potential backlash means no polycule even if Joyce would really like to broach it to Dorothy.
I would find that unsatisfying, like 180 degrees from satisfying. Sicko, though, at least for Dorothy’s part in everything. Maybe a paladin, if anything, for Joyce+Joe.
I want drama and consequences from characters that have emotional investment, not randos.
I like to imagine that they succeed in taking the remaining papers from all newsstands around the campus before Becky sees anything, but they don’t see where they’re going while carrying these huge stacks of newspapers and crash into Becky, who is now suddenly surrounded by a thousand images of them kissing.
Dina doesn’t seem to care much about any relationships outside of hers with Becky. If there was anything to that look, it may have been annoyance that one of the people at the protest that got Amber hurt was there.
(Clarification, thanks to the inherent issues with English: the protest that got Amber hurt, not one of the people that got Amber hurt, because she was going to do what she did regardless of whether Dorothy and Joyce were even there.)
So is Dorothy’s next step to call daisy and ask her to pull the article from the website? ‘The girl isn’t out to her parents, who read our newspaper’ is probably one that would work well for Daisy? We’ve never seen daisy have to actually choose between journalism or being horny, she just never wins in either.
I like to think she’d make the right choice if asked, especially considering the risk of real life harm
But she approved the cover in the first place without giving them the heads up, which is kind of messed up considering she works with both of them and could have at least shot a text their way
I suspect that the girls went viral the night of, so the cats already sailed the coop.
Meanwhile, Ace Reporter Jennifer Billington won’t be getting out of bed until sometime after noon. By which time, two extra editions will have come out, none of them having her byline.
Or that’s someone coming to tell Daisy that this issue was so popular all the copies have disappeared from the racks, prompting a change in the paper’s editorial direction as the staff assumes all those papers are being read…
It wouldn’t matter, and doesn’t work like that, which Dorothy would hopefully know since she’s a reporter — but even if she did ask, Daisy wouldn’t be able to help. Honestly, even if she had requested it before the story went to press, it would’ve been a major conversation about the ethics of running it v. pulling it. But now, it’s a moot point. The paper has gone to press. A copy has probably been archived to the university special collections. The online edition may have been screenshotted, etc., etc. Once something goes to press, it’s out. You can run errata to update/correct, but you can’t, like. take it back. This is why journalism has a whole code of ethics about what they can/can’t should/shouldn’t publish.
To an extent. It’s not going to delete it from the public record entirely, but it might well drop the changes Hank sees it, since he’s not exactly going to be checking university special collections or even internet archiving tools for earlier versions. It’s not foolproof of course. He could have already seen it. Someone else in his circle could have seen it and sent him a copy asking if those were his kids.
But it would help.
Also when Dorothy and Joyce find Daisy they would be completely justified to perform some sort of obscene wrestling tag team move on her for this shit.
Or a rarity in DoA, for that matter. We’ve had two TAs who’ve had sex with students, a gender studies teacher who let her attraction to a politician override her sense, that same politician (after getting a job in the university) abusing her position to rehire one of those TAs (which, ironically, may have been one of the more ethical things she’s done)…
I feel like I’m forgetting others.
I’m not surprised that Daisy focused more on the two women kissing, that fits her character as a horny lesbian. But I do wish she had focused more on the genocide that the protest was about, and the police brutality in response.
How do we know she doesn’t focus on the protest and the genocide? All we know is the headline and the image. This could be a ploy to get eyes on the article, the article might focus heavily on the genocide and the politics
Depressing or not, it would absolutely be the right thing to do. Though focusing on that when there’s a photo of two girls kissing would be out of character for Daisy.
Dorothy and Joyce aren’t hitting, either. Daisy, that is. Hitting Daisy. Dorothy and Joyce aren’t.
But they could be. Maybe Daisy has some cool fight moves and is able to take both of them on in a challenging and exciting fight that travels across most of the news building. We haven’t had a good boss fight in a while.
See, if Joyce had let Joe be involved, he could be setting up the folding table and dousing it in gasoline as we speak, get some real ECW style shit ready to roll.
The actual reason Becky will be upset is that Joyce wasn’t bisexual previously but is now. The idea that sexuality can be fluid has been repeatedly shown to be upsetting to her because it makes her wonder if it were possible to just not have been gay and saved herself a lot of grief.
I wonder if Becky would’ve been more susceptible to Mary’s TERFy rhetoric if she was around for the ten seconds that was a thing. She’s really uncomfortable with the idea of sexuality not being innate and eternal.
Daisy could have at least texted them to give them a heads up that they had their picture take, maybe even asked permission before plastering it all over the school
(Answering far too seriously for no reason) Then you’d be selfishly preventing all other people from doing art projects with them – instead you could just contact the school newspaper folk and say “hey, when the un-claimed newspapers get replaced with tomorrow morning’s new sheet, can I have them?”
I appreciate the sad Dorothy avatar comboed with the comment, great match.
They’re divorced so he’s probably not showing her his copy. She’s going to see it though. And Daisy can take down the online version, but it may be too late to keep Hank from seeing it and to keep the image from spreading.
Idk I could see this being an issue there willing to “put aside there differences” for, I’d consider there views on LGBT people to be that kind of slightly more progressive “I’ll be nice to them to there faces and will have certain gay people I consider friends, nothing more nothing less” kind of Christians but when it comes to there daughter I could see it suddenly becoming alot more of a problem for them
Eh, Hank’s been pretty supportive of Becky in the grand scheme of things, even opening a joint bank account with her after the first kidnapping. Obviously, he could react differently when it’s his own daughter, but I don’t think he’d immediately jump to involving his extremely recent ex-wife whom he knows to be *more* homophobic than him.
Not to mention her extremely dangerous attitudes towards the safety of both Becky and Joyce outside of homophobia. I fully believe that Hank is aware that Carol is not safe to be consulted on this one.
Considering recent events Joyce probably has some walls up regarding Carol’s opinions on… well anything, really. Will Joyce likely be emotionally hurt by whatever miserable way Carol responds? Most definitely. But until that actually happens there’s only one parent whose opinion she feels comfortable caring about.
Her mom isn’t going to read the paper for Joyce’s comic, no.
She might check on the student newspaper because there was a massive event on campus, violence “between” police and protestors (that’s how she’s see it anyway).
She might not even see the student newspaper. There’s plenty of ways that picture could reach her, maybe through other news orgs, maybe through social media…
I think that works out well for Jen. She wants to do different stories that aren’t lust driven Amazi-Girl articles. Dorothy in charge might actually do that for her.
Aside from the actual being outed, I suspect Dorothy is extra stressed by the fact they had a plan which has been ruined by the paper and she no longer has control
Dorothy went from about a 6 to an 11 when Joyce mentioned her dad gets the online version of the paper. Dorothy has a recurring nightmare about Joyce’s safety from evil dads.
This does feel a little messed up on assumedly Daisy’s end to out two people and make hat front page news without at least first seeking them for approval. Unless having your intimate moments broadcast to everyone is just the risk you take by kissing in public. It seems objectively a bad thing that was done, especially on a campus where it is known a guy showed up with a gun to kidnap his gay daughter. Really not a great look.
That would be amazing spin considering the cops are the ones that escalated the protest reflecting the real life event that inspired that, then of course would be the school administrators Daisy directly works for and/or reports to, then maybe after those two, in a distant third, you could possibly blame AG for assaulting a cop that had already escalated things by attacking Joyce unprompted to try and arrest her for evacuating. All while Daisy was I assume skulking unseen in the shadows taking photos from relative safety. I’d love to see Daisy try and make that argument and immediately catapult herself into at least the top 5 in DoA’s worst characters.
Maybe Daisy plans to work for Cop News Network, where cops don’t do anything wrong according to the five cops they bring on for a roundtable whenever cops get caught doing brutality.
Hey, let’s be fair… there are many news outlets that’ll perform olympic-level gymnastics to avoid the reality of police misdeeds. Daisy’s really boosting her career prospects on this one.
Given that ICE arrested several people who were fighting an active wildfire in my (blue) state, and I only learned about it because one of our senators raised a stink on social media this morning, yes, I agree that many (most!) news outlets will outdo the Cirque de Soliel in their acrobatics to avoid letting cops look bad.
Thats actually the only time they’ve been on screen together. When someone commented that both of them work for daisy I did the character combo tag search: https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/joyce+daisy/
Other hand, they’re at a protest that is being journalism’ed all over the place, climbed on top of a snow pile, belted out the Lesbian Bible Verse with full chest, and then started necking in full view of the cameras, cops, and fleeing protesters.
And they’re shocked its front page? I’m amazed that wasn’t on FOXNEWS or The View or something.
So…is Joyce really THAT recognizable from a photo of the back of her head wearing a jacket that isn’t hers with her face obscured entirely by…um…Dorothy’s face?
In a vacuum, probably not, but Dorothy seems much more recognizable in it and anyone who knows both of them could probably put two and two together. For Joyce’s dad specifically, maybe he doesn’t recognize Dorothy, but Jocelyne is also in the picture, which could get him to look closer.
I wonder what’s written in the accompanying article? Daisy knows both Joyce and Dorothy (they’re contributors to the newspaper). It’s possible they’re both identified in the text… or maybe the picture’s intended just as an attention-grabber (and Daisy-pleaser) and the actual text is an honest take on suppressive UI policies and brutal police overreach with no actual mention of the kissing.
Everyone’s flaming Daisy, and I understand why, but there’s also a very large part of me that is satisfied the cheaters cheating made the front page. ha!
Not sure why everyone thinks Daisy’s done something wrong here. Not only did Joyce and Dorothy make out in broad daylight, they did so smack dab in the middle of a major protest. The entire purpose of a protest is to attract attention, there was less than no expectation of privacy. It’s not Daisy’s fault that our girls chose to demonstrate their love for one another in the most impulsive and thought-free manner possible!
I mean, if someone walked into a protest and did what they did, you’d think it was a planned stunt.
I don’t think they have to get the okay from people streaking a sportball field to show the footage either. Pretty sure the only requirement is having to play Yakkity Sax over it.
Not that streaking and kissing are in anyway the same thing. Before I get accused of saying that… Again.
There are several image galleries of women around the world standing up to and getting in the face of police during protests. Handing them flowers, not backing down, etc. Two girls ignoring violence to smooch is definitely a power move in the face of fascism (to anyone not knowing the characters or what is going on). I know I don’t recognize people well and Daisy might have been too busy and excited to actually recognize them in the chaos.
For schools they ask for photo release forms. I’m not sure if that would extend to a college which would mean either A) Joyce and Dorothy aren’t recognizable enough (like a certain amount of their faces exposed) to be identified to ask for a release or B) When they enrolled (or were hired by the paper) they signed release forms stating their likeness could be used. That might put them at the “public official” level and makes this even juicier.
Some events hand out release forms and wrist bands of what level they agree to be in images. That makes going through the photos easier before publishing so they can be edited.
I took one photo and my friend took a photo of me with Katherine Applegate at a book signing. I cropped myself out, though, because she was wearing a “Protect Trans Kids” shirt and it wasn’t about me. But I’ve had people call bs when I say I’m in it and I post to my Twitter from the day of and post my copy of me in it. Still, I didn’t realize it’d go viral and I hope it didn’t cause KA Applegate any grief, but she has been very supportive of her trans kid.
You don’t *have* to do shit. The press can absolutely report on people who don’t want to be reported on, otherwise no scandal could be reported. However, it is adick move to knowingly out two bisexual women who work for you, no legal expectation of privacy sort of being irrelevant.
This was a protest against profiting off of genocide. Any voluntary action taken in the midst of that is presumed to be part of the protest and MEANT to be seen. I’m sorry but if these two blonde white women didn’t want to have their passion known then they should’ve picked ANYWHERE other than the violent climax of a demonstration against the massacre of fictional stand-in Palestinians to get all licky-style on each other ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Somehow I never actually connected bulmeria as being a Palestine stand in, since it’s originally a country in Africa where another universe’s Joyce was theoretically being a missionary. This is where knowledge of the other Willis comics has worked against me lmao. But no, now that it’s pointed out, the ruttech weapons, the bombings, it all tracks.
Doesn’t seem like it! At least not from a legal perspective. There’s an ethical debate about protecting protestors’ identities but, again, I’m not sure there’s a more deliberately attention-grabbing, anonymity-shredding action than passionately making out in the middle of a war protest while tear gas erupts around you and cops beat the shit out of anyone they can reach! Like there are places where PDAs wouldn’t be seen as performing for those assembled but this was decidedly not one of them
I think it’s reaching now to frame the kiss as a performative protest even without context. Like, sure take the picture, it’s a bombastic moment that makes an eye catching front page and no one can legally stop you. Legally and morally you can sleep soundly having gotten away with being horny on main. But proposing it’s anything beyond that without confirming with the subjects is just making stuff up. No one’s really saying Daisy can’t do these things. Just that it was shitty.
Think about this from the perspective of anyone who doesn’t know Joyce and Dorothy (and despite employing them, I really doubt Daisy knows the first thing about either of them). if their passionate face-sucking wasn’t a deliberate act of protest, then it was extremely thoughtless at best and revoltingly tasteless at worst. The protest where this happened was not about Joyce and Dorothy, and I strongly feel Daisy is not the bad guy for having captured this moment.
Was not about Joyce and Dorothy’s forbidden romance, rather. (The kiss itself, if interpreted as an act of protest and not the girls having no sense of appropriate venues for realizing romantic passion, is absolutely fair game as a cover photo standing in for the protest itself.)
Does she know anything about them, though? Like, for instance, any reason to believe they’re closeted? I doubt it. She’s their boss, they’re not friends.
Oops… I misread, sorry — somehow missed the parenthetical note. Yes, it’s entirely possible Daisy just assumed (perhaps based on Joyce’s comic, as Grimeyville’s 1a notes) that they were already a couple.
She could’ve still at least sent them a text or something, though.
Dude sometimes people kiss during protests. They are massive emotional releases, and people are human. Just usually not while the cops are breaking them up, because we’re all trying to protect each other. The way people talk about them here makes me think they’ve never attended one.
Source:
i attend, work at, and plan them, for the last several years.
Maybe they shouldn’t have done this while tear gas was literally billowing in the background then if they didn’t mean for it to be a public statement 🤷
I’ve admittedly only been to one back when the BLM movement was huge post George Floyd. I just think it’s a little problematic to assume anything done at a protest is part of the protest. That seems close to the logic used to claim bad actors represent the whole event and class them as riots. I get that it’s free real estate to take and publish whatever you want in a public space, and that Joyce and Dorothy acted wildly irresponsible and were exploited because of it, but that’s all it needs to be.
I really want a bonus comic of the juxtaposition of whatever Julia Grey comic ran in this edition. I still am having a hard time believing that Joyce didn’t know there was a Sunday edition and that the comic doesn’t have a Sunday run (or that a Sunday newspaper wouldn’t have any comics). Dang I’m going to have to go into the archives and see when Joyce/Walky were getting the job description of what the comic load would be.
If as the headline implies they are the subject of the article it is good journalistic ethics to identify them and reach out for comment. Am I supposed to believe Daisy doesn’t recognize one of her own reporters?
The story is about the police brutality and arresting protestors who were protesting war crimes and the school’s complicity. That photo is not representative of the story. It’s representative of Daisy wanting to see people kiss.
Headlines are at least half of what what people take away from journalism in practice, more including any memorable photo. We should morally judge headlines when they’re misleading, although usually it’s on the editors not the writers.
The subhead is about the arrests. And then a note on the kissing headline says the “bi” part was entirely for the pun, not from any knowledge. The editor would have more direct control of the headline and photo, and it seems like the top headline was just to make a tenuous justification for using that photo.
I am inferring, but I feel fairly confident about it.
1a. Although she may not be aware of it, Daisy has just outed two queer women without knowing whether or not they are out. I might assume that because Daisy has seen Joyce’s comic, she more or less assumed about Joyce and Dorothy what everyone else assumed and was just waiting on. ‘They won’t be upset about this—they’re basically already together.’
1b. Posted a transwoman’s face front and center of a newspaper, who does not attend this university. She has effectively made Jocelyne (as well as Joyce and Dorothy) culpable to whatever inquiry that police might put on them for the protest because it’s proof that they were there. Like you know—they’re identity of that vigilante going full Street Fighter on the riot squad.
1c. Diminishing the very point of the protest in favor of an almost propaganda-like ‘Love wins’ kinda splash page. Not an incorrect take but time and a place, especially as it functionally minimizes all the protesters like Asma who were there to…Y’know. Protest.
I feel like 2 college girls making out shouldn’t take priority as front page news while college students are getting their shit kicked in for protesting war crimes.
nut it will grab attention and help spread the news of the protest by bring eyes to the paper, not to say it isnt dimminishing the real issues of the protest, but from a mximizing circulation veiw it makes sense
But Daisy only chose that image because it’s one of her sexual fantasies come to life. What any other editor would go for would be all the images of an actual costumed superhero beating up the police all by her lonesome. That would have gone national in a heart beat.
To be honest, given Daisy’s obsession, I’d kind of expect Amazi-Girl to be front and center. Maybe she just didn’t get any clear photogenic pictures. The action shots are likely to be distant and blurry.
inb4 perfectly reasonable-seeming objections that Hank was cool about Becky: you’d be surprised how often a parent can be “cool” with you having queer friends but not actually “cool” with you being queer yourself.
I’m not saying Hank will be shitty about this. I’m just saying it is perfectly reasonable, actually, for Joyce to worry that this might be a bridge too far. Because it often is.
I’m encouraged to comment here; I didn’t want to take any chances with yesterday’s chaotic avalanche.
I agree about Walky. Joyce didn’t even let things get properly cleared up, and she just jumped in, flaunting Dorothy as her property. (Seriously, I know it will take time, but I hope Dorothy stops seeing only “spectacular magic” in Joyce and sees the other side of the coin.)
But honestly, I think the best thing for Walky is for him to take time for himself, learn to have faith in himself, and when there’s a strong sense of personal independence, come face to face with Dorothy.
As for Joyce’s parents, it’s obvious the chaos will be worse.
The best thing for Walky right now is for him to go on a meditative retreat to the Nachoitos factory and not leave until every centimeter of his flesh is neon orange.
Mostly agreed. That’s not really how I parsed yesterday’s behavior from Joyce, but it reminds me of the Dobler/Dahmer theory.
Not to treat HIMYM as a worthwhile source or anything, heh, but I do think they had a point about the recipient’s feelings of an action being important on whether the exact same thing is “sweet” or “creepy”.
It’s also gonna matter whether this is the start of a pattern for Joyce, or just a one-time thing that’s also the culmination of fifteen years of Joyce+Walky interactions.
(For the record, my position is “yes Joyce was being a dick there, and that’s worth pointing out, but Walky’s also been a dick to her on this exact subject so often that cumulatively, I’m not sure this WAS actually worse instead of matching his energy”. Also, I laughed, but I respect folks for whom it wasn’t funny, and I am wincing a little on behalf of everyone who’s still annoyed about it today, because I don’t think it’s going to be treated as anything other than a Loony Tunes moment, at least not until Willis has had time to come up with a way of addressing it that they like.
But that’s just my bet, made way too early to be a sure thing. We could cut back to Walky TOMORROW.)
I think there’s a number of reasons Joyce is more concerned about Hank than Carol: she genuinely doesn’t perceive her as an immediate threat in any way because she’s an old lady living in a studio apartment (she could be off base about this), she doesn’t believe she’s imminently likely to learn about what happened whereas she knows Hank gets the digital edition of the paper, Hank’s the one paying her tuition with dentist money so he’s more capable of causing her difficulties with her education, etc. etc. etc.
I am VERY sure she cares more about Hank’s opinion of her than Carol’s, and I agree that Hank is probably the more “credible” threat in terms of her tuition etc, but I still expected the idea of Carol knowing to trigger flashbacks to Ross, on account of Carol calling Joyce after the shooting incident to say the exact same things to Joyce that Ross was saying to Becky.
It could be that Carol isn’t getting a mention because she’s going to actually be the one to show up, but also: again I’ll say that if it didn’t occur to Willis that Joyce might still be afraid of her mom’s judgment, absolutely fair, it’s different when you’re forcibly outed to your bigoted mom at 18-19 and when she dies before you have the chance to come out to her. Just, very different life experiences, I can see why it might not have occurred to them as a possibility.
Yeah I agree with others: I think Carol is basically already a broken relationship she doesn’t care about. Whereas her relationship with Hank is still “salvageable” in a way. And she particularly worries (though not in this moment) about managing the relationship between him and Jocelyne.
I think that’s a fair take! As I noted, my expectations re: Carol have nothing to do with Joyce loving her and everything to do with a potential PTSD trigger, since Carol called her up right after the Ross shooting incident to tell Joyce exactly the same “I would die for you” bullshit that Ross served Becky.
But also if it straight up didn’t occur to Willis, fully understandable.
Dorothy just stalling until they go and see Becky OR is she really so self involved that she thinks trying to get the bolting newspaper horses back into the stable is more urgent
i think maybe, and this is a really wild leap to make, but perhaps the two women who have navigated the past two days of their lives in a blind, fumbling panic over non-stop crisis, aren’t at their most rational, and will continue acting short-sightedly for the foreseeable future
When you’re absolutely seething at a person, all of their actions become painted malicious in your perceptions.
I’m just assuming a fair smidge of the commenters are very upset paladins lashing out about the characters who now have obvious moral failings where none presided before.
Dotty would not use Ruttech after learning about their selling military supplies. She’d still be “down with the boycotts” even during a bisexual awakening mental breakdown.
Or just using it as a generic term for “web searching” – my wife exclusively uses DuckDuckGo, but still refers to the process as “googling”, in much the same way as Bayer’s brand name for salicylic acid, Aspirin, became the generic name.
okay so, question, have we ever seen Dorothy’s parents and has she at all talked about what her parent’s views on this kind of relationship are? Considering her previous job choice, I gotta think that her parents were the more strict kind. You don’t get those kind of aspirations while living in a more lax household.
Regardless of her kissing a girl on the front page, she also ran out into a Protest that was actively under fire by the law enforcement, tear gas and all, where at least 1 person got shot by a live round. Even if they are the more Lax type of parent, the fact that their daughter was in such an event might make them try to pull Dorothy out of that college to put her in a “More Safe” environment.
You never know.. They may only be like that because Dorothy had been a “model kid” for so long we’ve never seen them confront a situation. It also be that they are liberal in the sense that other people being LGBTQ is ok but not if it’s thier own kid. Granted that seems more of a Danny parents thing
They seem very chill and liberal and supportive so the worst that might happen is that turn out to be the kind of hypocrite that’s okay with getting into trouble if it’s other people but not their own child
Dorothy’s parents are just very supportive of their very ambitious daughter. They’re inoffensive in just about every way, aside from the magical hindsight flaw of “Maybe they should have encouraged slightly more play time in between study sessions.”
I suspect Dorothy thinking about Becky seeing the paper and not Joyce’s parents is in part because she knows her own parents won’t have any issue with her being queer.
While it doesn’t explicitly specify: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/safely/ shows Dorothy was checking for reports. Her specific concern was for Amazi-Girl, but she’d likely have noticed and mentioned if those reports mentioned people getting shot at all.
Put another way, she didn’t say anything like “Amazi-Girl doesn’t seem to have been amongst the people shot”.
Considering her previous job choice, I gotta think that her parents were the more strict kind. You don’t get those kind of aspirations while living in a more lax household.
You don’t, but other people do. It’s her aspiration, not her parents’; that’s almost spelled out in an early strip.
I’m waiting for the punch line where the girls somehow deleted all the school newspapers only to find out that their photo was a reprint from the national news.
I’m surprised nobody else mentioned this today. Lots of people assuming it was Daisy, nobody mentioning that the kiss in question happened in a visible cloud of tear gas.
No, no. It’s okay. By all means, continue to defer the emotional fallout of both Walky AND Joe on the back burner. After all, it’s only a webcomic. It’s not real. Willis, damn thee!
Hank right now is probably staring at the paper on his phone, eyes wide, while his entire world shifts.
Not a whole lot. Hank has already been showing, through his compassion and care for Becky, where his priorities lie. Hell, he’s probably the one who Joyce got that adaptability from, when Becky told her and she swung to accept her.
I can just imagine. Say he has tunnel vision. Say that all he sees is Joyce and Dorothy, on the photo, and so he gives a call to Joyce’s closest sibling, who he knows probably had more experience knowing LGBTQ people in college, asking how to express to his little girl that he knows, and its OK, and that he loves her for who she is and she doesn’t have to be afraid to be herself around him.
And *Jocelyne* gets to coach *Hank* on how to be an ally.
Id have a lot more sympathy for Dorothy. If she hadn’t selfishly hijacked someone else antiwar protest. After it wAs over. And deliberately macked her gf making herself the public face of it. ( Like EVERYTHING whatserface said)
I think she should take her lumps and not practice censorship. She already made the decision to be person who was publicly arrested. Yet she wasn’t.
She wasn’t masked. And if she has one I bet she would have ripped it off. Dorothy the paper didn’t out you. You did. Over and over again.
I just don’t think this justifies the harm of depriving the students of university comics. Joyce worked hard for it.
( Been outed in the newspaper in far worse ways while actually being tortured by cops. So I’ve earned a right to an opinion.
Dorothy does know an awful lot about this – and so do we, now. Bless you, Willis, this IS informative.
Also, unrelated: Joyce, if your mum gets all ‘conversion camp’ you’re allowed to lie and pretend this was all an orchestrated stunt. Sure it’s not satisfying vs gloating “yeah mum all your kids are queer except the one who’s a thieving pharisee” but safety first.
I don’t have a lot of religious knowledge, but looking the word up tells me the Pharisees were a prominent Jewish group. Is it weird to call someone a “thieving Pharisee”, and it it also distinct from calling them a “thieving Jew”? I only ask because I don’t have the context, which makes it seem like an odd pejorative to use for (I assume) John, the fundamentalist Christian missionary.
I think it’s a reference to the Pharisees in the New Testament, who were depicted as valuing their worldly concerns over being open to God’s Message (and so being recurring enemies to Jesus — though Nicodemus the Pharisee was noted as being a “defender of Jesus”).
Essentially, where you said “prominent Jewish group”, the “prominent group” part is more relevant, with the “Jewish” part being context.
That said, according to Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees#Relations_with_Christianity — “Because of the New Testament’s frequent depictions of Pharisees as self-righteous rule-followers (see also Woes of the Pharisees and Legalism), the word “pharisee” (and its derivatives: “pharisaical”, etc.) has come into semi-common usage in English to describe a hypocritical and arrogant person who places the letter of the law above its spirit.[64] Jews today typically find this insulting and some consider the use of the word to be anti-Semitic.[65]”
Oh, I should add: I’m going by half-remembered Christianity and the bit of Wikipedia I read before typing that. Please don’t take it as gospel (not sorry for the pun).
I’m thinking in a New Testament context “Pharisee” is pretty much a synonym for “hypocritical power-hungry priest,” and I’m thinking the fact they’re Jewish is irrelevant to the point here. It could just as easily have been a comparison to the corrupt church practices of the 1500s that the Protestant reformation was reacting to.
Not really though, since the non Pharisees were also Jewish? Good, bad and ugly. The only prominent, non Jewish characters I can think of off the top of my head were the Romans, and they were not exactly portrayed as better
They really aren’t, though, or at least the portrayal is different. Most of the Gospels portray the Jewish elite/decisionmakers as bloodthirsty, hypocritical, and frankly worried about Jesus’ influence to the point that they’re willing to fabricate a list of crimes in order to kill him. And don’t forget that the gospels portray the Jewish populace as easily swayed by those leaders, from welcoming Jesus to Jerusalem to being convinced to vociferously support his execution a bare week later.
Meanwhile, the Roman authorities (Pilate in particular) are primarily portrayed as disinterested and deferential to the wishes of the population and Jewish leadership, which is frankly ahistorical to the point of comedy.
It’s probably not a coincidence that this was almost certainly written in about 66-75 AD — about the same time as the Jewish rebellion against the Roman occupation getting decisively crushed in 70AD.
And unfortunately, even if the original literary intent for SOME of the gospels may have been “Hey, uh, Romans, we aren’t like those OTHER guys whose ass you had to comprehensively kick” (debatable!), the practical outcome is that it comes across as very antisemitic.
Pharisees were one of many socioeconomic political castes, but are the ones most prominent in the gospels because they’re the ones who claim to be the most holy, spiritually and morally correct, who dictate the rules that others should follow. The gospels are literally full of the Pharisees being absolute hypocrites as they hold the Jewish people to an insane standard that actually contradicts what the scriptures actually say.
An example. God said, one day a week, that’s the Sabbath, that’s your day off, just stay home and enjoy yourself you rascally humans, you deserve it. Pharisees step in and are like, OK, God *commanded* that, so it’s sinful to do work on the sabbath, now let’s figure out what “work” is, how many steps can someone take a day before its “work,” is it “work” to make food or to have guests or to speak in a loud voice… etc.
Basically, when you look at modern “Christians” who are all about calling out other people’s faults, acting holier-than-thou, pointing out a ton of “sins” as they say that they’ll pray for you, all while listening to some podcast that tells them that when God says “love” what he really means is be an asshole to nonChristians because how else will they be saved, that’s a modern Pharisee. That sort of person would shout for Jesus to be crucified as some sort of woke hippie socialist.
“Thieving Pharisee” really doesn’t make a lot of sense, as the Pharisee’s defining quality was that they pretended to be good, pure followers of God, and “Thou Shalt Not Steal” is clear as day. Unless what is happening is that someone is using the letter of the law to deprive people of what is theirs. Then I could see it.
Thing is, what you describe in those first two paragraphs is basically the Christian take on the Jewish Law. Not just some ancient no longer relevant group of hypocrites, but the Law that Jews followed for centuries afterwards even down to today. Rabbinical Judaism developed out Pharasaic schools of thought after the destruction of Jerusalem.
Jews today (or from what we can tell, back in Jesus’s time either) don’t see the Law as “an insane standard that actually contradicts what the scriptures actually say”.
You are right here and now echoing centuries of Christian antisemitism. I don’t think you mean to, but you are.
What I describe in those first two paragraphs IS the Christian take on the Jewish law. 100% absolutely, and 100% intended.
Taffy is asking about someone using the term “Pharisee” as a derogatory term, something which is only used by Christians, and asking of its meaning in that context. If I am not responding from the Christian perspective on what the term means here, I am not responding to what is being asked.
And by that measure of COURSE this is going to contradict how Jewish people today, and the non-Christian Jews saw the expression and execution of the law. Because Christianity has come from Judaism, and doesn’t see modern Judaism as being “different but equal,” but rather a faith that has fallen away and denied God. Just as Muslims believe that they have the true message from God, and that Judaism and Christianity are religions that have fallen away.
This isn’t antisemitism, or at least, not how people today use the word “antisemitism.” It would be antisemitism if I said that this is how they WERE and it was unquestionably the truth. The first sentence I said, “the ones who claim to be the most holy, spiritually and morally correct,” that IS true, and you halfway confirm that yourself by pointing out that they have ultimately directed the development of Judaic customs. What I said after that was also true, in that the GOSPELS describe them as being hypocrites and not understanding the true nature of the Law.
I then provided an example for how the modern Christian understands a Pharisee. I could’ve provided a scriptural one – Matthew 12:1, Jesus and disciples eat some grain they pick while walking on the Sabbath, and they are criticized because the act of picking the grain is considered work – but I chose something that was a bit more approachable. Again, I’m not saying that this is how they was, but what modern Chrisitan understanding of them is, and what the gospel writers’ intent was in depicting them. It is the Pharisees who are the “villains” of the Gospel stories.
If that is antisemitic, than Christianity itself is antisemitic, as is Islam. But then that also means that Judaism and Islam are equally prejudiced against Christianity, and Judaism and Christianity are prejudiced against Islam. Not in what their followers do, but simply the fact that each of these are founded on the idea that their interpretation and expression of their faith is correct and that the others are incorrect.
If I was purporting this to be unquestionably true, 100%, or advocating for the Christian version to be correct, then yes, absolutely. But I’m simply pointing to other sources, and saying that these interpretations have created this specific understanding to the modern Christian of what a “Pharisee” is, and isn’t it so funny, that’s literally what 90% of loud, vocal Christians act like.
And I just want to add – this information is so important because when someone today calls someone a Pharisee, they’re calling them that not because they know the law exceedingly well or are such strong religious leaders, but because they’re being an overly-legalistic hypocrite and missing the forest for the trees.
The fact that modern Judaism and Judaic tradition has evolved from those Roman-era interpretations of the Law (read: not the actual law itself, but the interpretation of it) is an interesting piece of trivia, but not related at all in the conversation because it’s more than likely that the person Taffy is talking about doesn’t even know about that.
If you’re saying that using the word “Pharisee” itself as an insult to another person is antisemitic, I 100% agree with you.
This feels like it’s all over the place and I really can’t tell where you’re going with it. You seem to be simultaneously explaining why using “Pharisee” is antisemitic, arguing that it isn’t, then saying at the end that it is.
That final line, you 100% agree that when you use “Pharisee” to describe such modern “Christians”, you’re being antisemitic? Or is it only some other use of Pharisee as an insult?
As for pointing out that rabbinical Judaism evolved from the Pharisees, the point of that was not that the person using the term knew that and was using it deliberately because of that, but that while many Christians think of Pharisees just an ancient group with no modern relevance, that’s not actually true.
The pharisees were proto-rabbinical. house of Hillel, house of Shammai sort of thing. They debated, they didn’t all have the same opinions as each other. A historical Jesus would have been associated with them, a lot of the ideas Christians attribute to him are in line with the house of Hillel.
It’s how they’re potrayed in some of the gospels, and in Christianity as a whole, that makes them villains. But like, when some pharisees warn Jesus the cops are looking for him, that’s not a threat. That’s a genuine warning, they’re worried about his well-being. But Christianity portrays it as something devious.
Using Pharisee as meaning hypocritical bastard who doesn’t actually follow the word of God.
For context just remember basically everyone who interacted with Jesus, including Jesus himself, was Jewish, Christianity only starts after his death
So yeah, apologies if it read somehow as an antisemitic insult but it would definitely wasn’t in my mind.
“Everyone Jesus interacted with was Jewish” doesn’t really cut it when the Gospels were not written by Jews and communicate a fundamentally antisemitic narrative.
Do they? I mean I’ve heard it said that some people say “booh the Jews killed Jesus” but I never actually heard anyone saying that .
I can see how it could be used that way though. I’m not sure that it’s fundamentally is anti-semitic per se, I am however 100% convinced it can be and has been use that way, but then people will weaponise anything.
Are there other anti Jewish “arguments”? Forgive my asking you, you seem to know more about the topic.
The Gospels were written in the wake of the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule, and they take great pains to absolve the Romans of any responsibility in the death of Jesus while shifting all the blame onto the Jewish authorities and citizens of Jerusalem (“his blood be on us and our children”). They portray jewish leaders and teachers as self-interested charlatans who need to be put down and refuted by Jesus, who conspire and scheme to maintain their own power. It’s an antisemitic narrative, which is why Christian antisemitism was such an enduring force for centuries (and continues to linger). Lots of justification for it in the narrative of the Gospels. In this very strip we see examples of Christian antisemitism, such as when Joyce and co. went to church and the sermon was about how the Jews “failed to” identify Jesus as the Messiah.
on;y comment i will make is that the book was basically rewritten (greek to latin) somewhere around 2-300ad to make sure the roman were not depicted worse and to remove any gospel written from a nonpatriarcial veiwpoint. then rewritten for the kingjames edition. and even that edition was written before oliver cromwell ALLOWED JEWISH PEOPLE BACK onto the british lands. I will never blame anyone who is of a non-western eyropean culture feeling that the book has inherent racism through out it.
I have a great distaste for all the ”Abrahamic” religions.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all look like watered down and simplified Zoroastrianism from the viewpoint of Comparative Religion.
I find Zoroastrianism to be mythologically much richer and more nuanced than any of the monotheistic pyramid scructure variants that took the world by storm.
Religion is IMO pretty nasty, but monotheism feels especially toxic. Their model is super convenient for reinforcing top-down social structures, keeping women in their place, and justifying the divine right of kings and emperors.
Apologies to and and all religious people who are offended by this. This is my truth as somebody who is an avid student of religion and mythology. I wish nobody took them seriously in the present day, and we could just all marvel together at the things that used to go on in our shared past.
That’s a shitty thing to say when people are having a pleasant discussion about their religions’ interconnectedness. “I think your religions suck and nobody should be involved with them.” Well, who are you, though?
Also, sorry Dot for engaging at all. But Adeptus, your description of “monotheistic religions” is extremely Christian. Your comparative religions class was awful if it left you with the impression that “super convenient for reinforcing top-down social structures, keeping women in their place, and justifying the divine right of kings and emperors” in any way describes Judaism. Judaism doesn’t even support the “divine right” of the actually divine.
Check out that parable where three rabbis are having an argument and one of them asks God to say which of them are right, and God says “yeah, it’s you,” and the other rabbi says, “hey you gave US this book to decipher, it’s up to US what’s right, not you,” and God says, “oh dang you’re right” and goes away.
I come at this from the PoV of comparative religion.
This comic deals with awakening from religious indoctrination. IMO that goes for all of them, rather than just ”This flavour of American Christianity is bad”.
I’m not going to apologise further. I did say I’m sorry if this offends, but this is my take as somebody who is very interested in mythology.
I have the mast exposure to (Lutherian) Christianity here in the Nordics, as well as (both cultural/secular as well as religious) Judaism. I have also lived in the Middle East for a few years, and consider Islam fully a branch of the other two, which I know gets some people’s fur up.
I’m quite sad that this is such a hot issue still, and the offence people take. I wish it could be discussed calmly and in good faith (as the saying goes), without immediately painting me as the enemy and some kind of a bigot.
Anyway: just gonna reiterate that if you haven’t even read the Torah (and you obviously haven’t), you should stop pretending to know anything about Judaism.
It’s okay not to know things. It’s okay to just talk about the shortcomings of Christianity if that’s all you have meaningful experience with. You’ll find that you “”””offend”””” (read: amuse and exasperate) fewer people that way.
I mean Jewish belief extends beyond the Torah as well. There’s the Nevi’im, the Ketuvim, the Talmud, the Zohar if you want to get sexy… if all you know of Jewish belief and custom is Christian interpretations of their Old Testament, you’re going to end up with a very Christian lens of what Jews believe. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.
But pardon me for being positive they haven’t even read a translation of one part of it, let alone the original language, let alone the rest of the texts…
@Li: Honestly, I’d argue that reading the Torah is a spectacularly bad way of learning about Judaism. Much like reading the Bible is a bad way to learn about Christianity. Both religions are living religions with traditions and theologies and beliefs that are drawn from the foundational texts, but are not inherently present in those texts.
This is especially problematic for Christians (or those raised in a Christian context) reading the Torah to understand Judaism, because we’ve been steeped in a Christian perspective on those texts. The texts themselves, at least in a good scholarly edition, are going to be nearly identical between Jewish and Christian versions, but the interpretation won’t be.
At least suggest the Talmud. 🙂
, but maybe worse because it’s very easy to read the 5 books of Moses from a
I was genuinely not suggesting they start there! I was suggesting they haven’t even done the most obvious “try actually taking Judaism in its original context instead of through a Christian lens” step.
Like absolutely good points all around! I would not claim to know a ton about Judaism, I’ve literally just… listened to my friends and people I follow on social media.
But I promise I didn’t mean that as a one-step solution to understanding Judaism! 🙂
“Only people who have red the Torah know anything about Judaism” is a statement I don’t think I’ll even try to unpack. That’s quite a statement for sure.
I’ll just say that it sounds like a technique to shut down discussion. There is a whole lot more to religions and cultures than reading through their sacred texts. I’ll leave this now, as this seems worse than pointless.
@Adeptus As an atheist, congrats! You are acting like the most douchy stereotype of one possible, you are not being “offensive” you are just being an asshole, and people are rightfully mocking you for it.
Cool, so you definitely haven’t read it, much less any of their other texts. But you still feel like you can speak not only authoritatively but condescendingly about that religion. Interesting.
I categorically do not subscribe to a notion that one has to read a religion’s sacred texts to say anything about it. It feels like comparative religion is an uknown scientific discipline to many here. Maybe don’t condemn a science if you don’t know how it functions and what it is about.
Religions can be treated as sociological phenomena, and the big monotheistic religions have a ton in common. Picking one of them as a special snowflake that requires special care before one is allowed to talk about it is just weird.
You guys are quick to call me an arsehole, but this has been an extremely hostile response. I’m once again reminded that speaking with Americans about religion is practically impossible. Everybody is so sensitive and defensive.
Everybody in this thread is so hostile, and feel free to resort to ad hominem attacks that this is worse than pointless.
I did not attack anybody’s person, nor talk crap about them, but Taffy immediately miscaracterised what I said, and Li went for a personal attack.
I’m done. You guys are behaving very badly, and no doubt will never have even a moment of doubt that you’d have been anything but paragons of virtue in this.
Thanks for your replies, to this comment and others. I’ll dig a bit more into that when I have time.
For context into my personal, admittedly myopic view, I grew up in a Catholic family, and both in religious instruction and at home, the issue of Jewishness never really surfaced when we were younger. It was always framed as “people”, “tribes”, “clans” etc.
Only when we grew older was it discussed that we were talking about Jewish people, and even then we were taught “some imbeciles use that to justify antisemitism. Don’t be an imbecile. These stories are metaphors for how people, all people, everywhere, treat one another, they’re being Jewish is incidental because that’s what people were back then in that region”.
Clearly other Christian groups have been taught otherwise. I’ll be sure to avoid using Pharisee from now on.
Apologies for the faux pas! I was imagining what the dialogue would go like in a family that sees itself as good Christians. (I almost wrote “in good faith”, then I though “wait, is this going to be an inadvertent insult too”, jeez that’s full of traps, no wait I probably shouldn’t be saying jeez either)
Ah, yes, the Vatican. It might sound strange if you’re not familiar with “my kind of Catholic” but anticlerical Catholics who don’t feel held to the Pope’s views abound.
There are plenty of “Catholics” by tradition who are culturally, not religiously Catholic. Official doctrine is one thing, the beliefs of people who think of themselves as Catholics are very varied and our ranks include atheists and Protestants.
In fact I used to think “man US Christians are crazy” until two years ago when I interacted up close with Catholics-by-doctrine for the first time, so now I’ve amended my views to “man doctrinal people are crazy”
But official church doctrine is very different from everyday views, and in the Catholic Church only gets updated notoriously late after everyone already moved except for a few hundred people with funny hats. So… not incompatible
If you knew it was official church doctrine, why did you characterize it as “some imbeciles”? As if no one should pay any attention to or be concerned about it?
I didn’t know, that’s kind of my point. I wasn’t talking about doctrine or theory but explaining my lived experience of small town Catholicism in France circa 1990. It’s how it was to me, Catholicism was very freestyle
You don’t think some of your lived experience of 1990 Catholicism regarding antisemitism might have been a deliberate whitewashing of a horrific history of centuries of antisemitism?
Oh yes, absolutely, the fact that we weren’t taught about the historical context is a problem (that honestly is to be expected, I have yet to see any religious instruction that begins with “first we’re going to talk about all the reasons everything we’ll say after is at best vaguely true for wrong reasons but most probably very wrong”)
However, while I already agreed that ok, there’s antisemitism here and it wasn’t clear to me, I still also think that there’s groups of Christians who do not *want to be/act* antisemitic and do what they can to course correct and keep some of their heritage, and among these people were the nice ladies who told us about “do unto others” and “don’t adore money” and organized food drives.
And before someone jumps at me about this: yes, not acknowledging the antisemitism is anti-semitic. I’m hardly arguing you can’t be inadvertently antisemitic, since my doing it a few comments earlier is what started this discussion in the first place.
I’ll still argue that flawed as it may have been, there were already plenty of people who did their best with limited intellectual tools (the discourse wasn’t really there back then I think), and within the constraints of their reality (women being here to serve the Church). So it resulted in them picking the parts they could work with to discuss morality with little kids. So yes, good intentions, bad results and definitely whitewashing, you’ll not get an argument from me here
Dude. Vatican II is when Catholicism officially stopped holding all Jewish people alive TODAY as categorically responsible for the death of Jesus.
It was very much not just “some” Catholics specifically who believed that, it was official church doctrine for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
That was horrific for sure. The ancient curse of antisemitism is as bewildering as it is stupid. It also makes it almost impossible to talk about Israel and Palestine online. 🙁
Bringing up a point of fact, Jesus interacted with Samaritans and/or “Syrophoenicians” (polytheists) too. Mostly bringing it up because the “That Mitchell and Webb Look” sketch about the Good Samaritan is pretty funny and some of you might find it funny too.
There’s a flowchart from a new book (unfortunately, the only online reference I can find currently is in a TikTok video, as the author appears to have, quite sensibly, deleted his Xitter account) on whether it’s appropriate to call someone a “Pharisee”. Essentially, that only works if a) the person lived in or before the first century CE; b) the person was a member of the Pharisees; and c) you’re not trying to use the name as an insult. Otherwise, no, calling them a “Pharisee” is not appropriate, and is likely to be in fact antisemitic.
I used to do basically this professionally, it’s pretty easy to go from having the bundle in both arms to swinging one hand out so you can use your phone one-handed.
never did that with papers, but a doube stack of 25 vhs tapes held in both arms as you restock the return to the shelve in the video rental store is very much the same
Probably partly because this wasn’t originally going to happen so quickly, so there would have been more time to deal with Dorothy and Walky.
But also it showed Dorothy trying to pretend she wasn’t into Joyce and it gave Dorothy a stake in the “cheating” directly. Minimized though that is being.
i mean it’d be a little inconvenient versus digital but i don’t think i’d care enough to pay for a copy versus like being that disappointed if no copies left
Honestly, I’m surprised that anyone is giving Daisy so much credit or benefit of the doubt. Daisy’s not evil or anything, but just perusing her old appearances displays how…ethically casual she is? And horny for hot girls and hot girl action. She mentions hot girls, or hot girl action, in a near majority of her strips. She had to loudly remind Jennifer/Billee that she wasn’t TECHNICALLY her boss after kissing her, and her biggest gripe about being promoted is having to stop lusting after subordinates. And for all she talks about hard facts and “no gossip,” she pedals in speculation and gossip constantly if there’s the chance a hot girl’s involved. To the point that she can’t even pretend to remember that Nightguy is a guy, because she so hopes it’s Nightgirl. She’s also doesn’t seem to be that great at going for hard hitting stories, either, but maybe that’s just how it’s panned out with Dorothy and Jennifer’s Amazigirl saga. She did want to splash the sex tape scandal all of the paper, which is…both ethically dicey since it involved students, and involved her asking if Roz was into girls because, again: hot girl.
Two girls making out at a student protest? Catnip to her. Two hot girls making out at a student protest that Amazigirl was seen at? Irresistible. The protest itself? Sure, gotta be important, such a dramatic event, but make sure to show the hot lady action. I don’t think it was MALICIOUS, but that was always the angle Daisy was going to seize if she could. Even if it’s shitty for a number of reasons.
I think Daisy’s line of thinking is that
1. It’s a public display so she consider it is fair to assume they have already outed themselves
2. Neither of their faces are showing, so technically, their anonymity is preserved.
I think Daisy come from a place where her family and close friends were always accepting and only had to deal with bigotry from outsiders. So it’s less obvious for her to consider that pictures where only close relatives and friends could recognise you can in itself still be a problem.
Perfectly possible on all points. Like I said, I don’t think Daisy did it maliciously, super villain style. It’s still a shitty thing to do, for a variety of reasons. Making it the headline of the protest, not great. Potentially–in this case very actually– outing two students to a wider audience, not great. Yes, it was public, but “happened in a public space” and “was specifically publicized to the student body” are different things. Given Daisy’s horniness to the point of distraction, her motives for this do not feel great. She objectifies hot women constantly, and has shown multiple times that she’ll put her titillation over actual objective news: if Dorothy couldn’t get Roz to talk as the sister of a political candidate at least Roz has good sex moves and can be the sex columnist; go interview the hot girl on the motorcycle instead of write an article on abusive RAs; Nightguy? nah, Nightgirl!; the vigilante superhero is a pointless story, unless they’re a hot woman with a boob window, then it’s super important. Comedic, perhaps. But really, really suspect and uncomfortable in a situation like this. One, because just because she grew up in a safe[r] environment doesn’t mean everyone did. Two, because I don’t believe, as of right now, that she put any thought into that at all beyond “hot girls making out, put that front page [and ask if they have any single friends]!!!!”
As a lesbian myself I have long had a problem with how Daisy is portrayed. It veers way too close to like, actual harmful lesbian stereotypes for my taste.
It, perhaps weirdly, originally felt to me (as a cis dude) like she was back-in-the-day intended to feel like a counterpart to Old Joe, but she hasn’t had a growth arc yet.
(replying to myself because I immediately had a clarifying thought) … and in particular, the FEEL of the storylines has changed since then quite a bit, but Daisy really hasn’t changed at all and now feels out of place in these more fraught times.
I think even back then doing that kind of character with a lesbian instead of a straight guy brought along some unfortuante implications, especially since this was whole-cloth new characterization for her which wasn’t present in the Walkyverse.
I think it would be a far bigger issue if she was the only lesbian character in the story.
As it is, this no longer appears as a specific to lesbians in general (as no other lesbian in this webcomic behave remotely close to this), but specific to her character.
At least, that’s how it naturally comes out to me. But I am straight (and a guy) and only speak for myself, so I can’t say how it come out for anyone else.
There being a handful of lesbians doesn’t make Daisy any less of a harmful stereotype. If i had a cast full of complicated and nuanced Jewish characters and also Shylock Goldstein who’s obsessed with money, that’d still be antisemitic, wouldn’t it?
Thing is, people who are almost solely obsessed with money actually exist.
When most jewishes charcters in a story don’t behave like this except for one, I do’nt think “Jewish stereotype” I think “yeah, we all know a dude who act like that”.
But I’ll wholly admit not everyone will think like I do.
Things about behavioral stereotypes is that almost all of them are actually evenly commons throughout the population, but have been arbitrary assigned to a group or an other when, in reality, it is not otherwise more prevalent than anywhere else. And this make white people (and furthermore white guys) “immune” to presenting such behavior without damning all white people. “It’s just him”.
And I don’t know how to make so generic behavior are no longer assigned to a whole minority group the moment one of them display it, but it inevitably limit how you can write non-white character in a way you are not limited for white characters.
But for me, showcasing that other people of that group does not feature such behavior is precisely how you no longer make it a stereotype, but just an behavior you can encounter everywhere.
No idea if what I am saying is clear or even make sense.
Best way to illustrate my point is Vladek, from Maus, by Art Spiegelman, with the obvious caveat, that it was the depiction of a real person and not a fictional character Spiegelman chose to depict this way.
There is even a point in the comic where Spiegelman express his struggle to depict honestly his father while fearing it will result in his reader just seeing him as a bad Jewish caricature.
This is an issue you don’t encounter when you have to write a white character.
“Making it the headline of the protest, not great.”
Kind of a cynical view, there, but I think it went with the optic of “what will draw the largest amount of people to pick up the newspaper and hopefully read it”.
To inform, you have to first hook up the reader and she went firs the firstpage that would hook up the most. then she can carry her mission of informing the reader of the actually important issues.
I am not arguing that it is justified, simply describing how someone with an editorial position might come to make that kind of decisions.
Wrapped in a blanket, quirky, or idiot. Eyebrows? They are quirking. No blankets, some idiotic behaviour. Most idiotic? Most quirky?? Most blanketed???
I mean, my OTP in this strip is Billie/Ruth because for however dysfunctional and toxic they could be, they were interesting to watch and I still feel invested in the possibility that they could make something healthy work between them.
Honestly, I’ve been feeling that bit about them reinforcing the worst aspects of each other for a while. They are both enabling the other to be an awful person, but we’re supposed to ignore it because ‘cute’?
Like, it’s not even about homophobia or whatever else people want to dismiss it as. Becky and Dina are adorable while being incredibly honest and healthy. When one of them has a hang up, they talk about it openly and work through it.
Dorothy and Joyce are, to quote Glossaryck, “Like a runaway dump truck: Hot, fast and full of garbage.”
I would bet them bringing out the worst* in each other is intentional, since Dorothy mentioned it. But it’s not working for me either. I care very little now about Joyce, and Dorothy already had her self-inflicted shit she was going through.
*but not the worst, because the people who are justified in being upset are somehow responsible for it.
The thing that gets me about Jennifer and Ruth is that for all the things about them that were terrible…
Ruth *got better* because of that relationship. That relationship was *insanely* positive for her, and it only went sour because Jennifer refused to grow. If Jennifer could get the fuck over herself and learn to grow then Ruth/Jennifer would honestly be amazing.
Excatlyyyy and Billie is finally in a place where she CAN get the fuck over herself and actually improve… Ruth/Billie stocks WILL be rising soon, watch this space
That’s not really true though. Jennifer got better as well. She stopped drinking, got some therapy. They were in a good place, when Ruth torpedoed it at Halloween. In fact, Ruth said it was because they were in a good place that she dared kill it.
Both of them regressed afterwards, but only Ruth went back to drinking.
You are ofc welcome to talk about how much they DO bore you, and I hope that no one’s too big of a jerk in response to folks just making threads to vent together about mutually agreed-upon frustrations with the comic.
But you asked why people ship them, and that’s the answer. I found this strip extremely cute and I’ve always really liked their dynamic. One person’s wheat is another person’s chaf.
I really hope Daisy’s gets reamed for this, not just by Dorothy and Joyce. There are probably other writers for the paper, besides Jennifer, some who may have a serious article about the protests and for their stories to get tossed to the side or second page for this?
I’m also banking on many readers who wanted to read about the protests. They might complain.
Then there are those who were at the protest who whole relieved they were not on camera find out and get annoyed that what the protests were about. The important issues they wanted people to become ware of is pushed to the side like that? Ugh. This has got to hurt for Asma.
She’s going to walk past another stack with a picture of her stealing the current stack: “PROTEST PARAMOUR PILFERS PAPERS”. The subtitle will be “We know she’s super gay, but HOW super gay?”
Could have easily had a strip between the last one and this one where Dorothy chides Joyce only to be distracted by Joyce showing her the newspaper. Dorothy red panel Joyce face as a punchline. As it stands Dorothy just apparently has nothing to say and we’re apparently not supposed to read Joyce’s actions last strip as at all objectionable.
genuinely how would that read? we just did a gag strip, now you want one character to harangue the other for the joke? when do you see this in a webcomic? come on. this isn’t. tv show, it’s a comic.
What I want is for Dorothy’s breakup with Walky to be given then time and consideration that it deserves. I’m willing to suspend disbelief for a punchline sometimes, but when the entire strip is punchline, I do kind of have to take the strip on its own and I am perfectly entitled to expect there be some kind of acknowledgement, at the very least, that Joyce did something Dorothy might have an issue with. I don’t need the point to be belabored necessarily, but a single strip where Dorothy is shown giving a shit would go a long way towards not making this entire affair completely agonizing to watch play out.
“It’s a comic” is not really an explanation/excuse for what some folks are perceiving as whiplash tone shifts, any more than, say, someone could justify dropping an anvil on Gendo in the middle of Evangelion by saying “it’s just animation.”
My bet is on either “she didn’t process what happened as cruel to him” or “incredibly distracted by the newspaper”. The former is probably more likely, because as you note it wouldn’t have been that hard to have an extra strip between this and yesterday’s.
If that’s the case then it reflects pretty poorly on Dorothy since it was pretty straightforwardly cruel to Walky, haha. And not fair to Dorothy to swoop in and dump him for her! Lots Dorothy should really be objecting to before we get here.
I getcha. I just think the answer is likely to be “Dorothy didn’t take it seriously, as Willis didn’t intend the readership to take it seriously”, which is a frustrating position to be in when you did, in fact, take it seriously, and is likely to lead to a slew of strips where people are, by that read, continuing to be callous about it.
I am still hoping that wasn’t Walky’s real reaction, but I’ll personally be surprised if anyone points out it was an asshole move on Joyce’s part — for a while, at least?
I’d phrase it as “Dorothy didn’t take it as any different that the usual bickering between Joyce and Walky, in which Walky gives her shit as often as she gives him shit if not more so.”
I mean, I don’t disagree with that take generally, but I wasn’t trying to start an argument. My point is that I think Dorothy is likely not reacting to it not because she’s being intentionally written as callous, but because she didn’t experience it as Joyce being cruel to Walky.
And I absolutely sympathize with folks who read yesterday’s strip differently. For them, this strip is compounding yesterday’s error; yesterday, it was Joyce being cruel to Walky, and today it’s Dorothy being fine with Joyce’s cruelty. If I’m right, the compounding is going to continue for a while before it gets better, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Willis, reading the specifics of the criticism, decides to have someone call these two on it later.
Because we still have the plausible deniability of them being high on NRE. Dorothy being too busy feeling delighted by Joyce’s possessiveness to have processed the splash damage, for example? Joyce being so full of adrenaline that she, too, didn’t really realize she’d crossed a line.
So Willis could do that if they wanted to, and they might. They’ve done it before!
The other two who were at the protest and vanished completely were Leslie and Robin.
I do hope Leslie made it out safely, but I was kind of looking forward to Robin shouting “Do you know who I am?!” as they shoved her into the back of a police van.
So Dorothy IS cool with how Joyce just treated her ex-boyftirnd. Got it. Cool. *So* cool, good to know Dorothy actuslly cared so little about Walky’s feelings as a partner /s.
She has always taken Walky for granted. Even when they were broken up and she pushed him at Lucy, she was clearly certain she could have him back anytime she wanted.
I mean she didn’t look happy breaking up with Walky and she’s had a rough few months realizing she doesn’t like anything about herself or her ambitions and doesn’t know who she is. This is the kind of expected euphoria you get from “oh god I was gay and my best friend wants me back this is incredible”
As I’ve said, the story could have been structured in such a way that Dorothy could have commented on the events of last strip before we got back to the newspaper.
“In both Maryland and California, taking multiple free newspapers can be a crime, particularly if done with the intent to prevent others from reading them. While a single copy is typically not an issue, state laws exist to protect the free press from censorship and damage by groups or individuals.
Maryland law on newspaper theft
Maryland has a specific law, § 7-106 of the Criminal Law Code, that makes newspaper theft a misdemeanor offense.
The law applies to any newspaper distributed on a “complimentary or compensatory basis”.
It is illegal to knowingly or willfully take unauthorized control of newspapers “with the intent to prevent another from reading the newspapers”.
Also the idea that Daisy did this is very funny to me
That’s been pretty clear and it’s bothered me all along. Joyce seems to be in the same boat really. They went to tell their boyfriends first not because they were the priority, but because that was easier and they were putting off telling Becky.
I bet Daisy tried to reached both of them, like, 10 times yesterday, but these two goobers never checked their phones after the protest. Too busy feeling twitterpated.
Yeah, like, would be nice, but Dorothy checked her phone intently for news of Amazi-Girl, and if Daisy recognized either of them, she would’ve recognized Dorothy for sure as her employee.
(Not recognizing them wouldn’t make it better, to be clear.)
Ooh, right. How did I forget that, I’ve never once forgotten that her comic is IN the paper. I agree it’s unlikely they’ve had a lot of conversations though, whereas it seems like Daisy’s reporters do pitches in-person for stories they want to cover.
Much like the “is this cheating” debate I expect this to nevertheless continue to be something that is re-litigated ad nauseam in the comments despite the characters involved clearly landing on the side of the affirmative
Especially since we don’t see any real resolution between the two of them on “we were outed!” vs. “we are kinda being obvious about it”.
Which is also why I’m not touching that debate with two Dina clones glued end-to-end — it definitely feels to me like “being outed” has changed the nuance of it’s meaning a lot since campus Pride events were more “protest” and less “celebration”.
If they didn’t want to risk being on the front page of a newspaper they wouldn’t have made loud dramatic speeches and made out on a raised mound in full view of a crowd of protesters and also police while tears-gas rained down around them.
It’s not peeping if people see you dance naked in the middle of the street, kind of thing.
This kind of reminds me of when Joe was panicking over the List and had Dan there to excitably drag him into the CS wing. I’ve been having fun these last few strips, chickens are coming home to roost but it’s still funny
Sorry… Are we not going to touch on Walky again at all? Dorothy makes a move on him when he’s with Lucy because she’s sexually frustrated and in love with Joyce. Then Lucy and him break up and then Dorothy and Walky “get back together” immediately, only for her to turn around like a week later and cheat on him? Makes for a great story for sure but would be nice to see him process some emotions besides “womp womp comedy gag”. Maybe that will come later…
Honestly, this reads to me more like we’re gonna get to Walky’s thoughts LATER – and I think the fact that he was so easily brushed aside now is gonna play a big role in that. I doubt this’ll be the end of Walky’s POV.
There’s certainly also some interesting story here in how Joyce seems to be more able to focus on how this is affecting “people other than Joyce and Dorothy” than Dorothy is, including being able to actually TELL the boyfriends today instead of hemming and hawing.
I’m not sure if it’s important, but it’s certainly interesting that both of them managed to get through it without actually having to get the words out themselves. To their own boyfriends at least. Joyce could do it to Walky, but that’s different.
Oh we’re absolutely getting that, but Walky has had misgivings and doubts about the relationship the entire time since they got back together. He might just dejectedly accept it and leave and develop more complex, difficult feelings later once he realizes he got done dirty.
Well, sure, on paper, but things keep getting complicated. Now she’s in love with him. Now they’re on a break. Now they’re sleeping together again. Now they’re broken up for real. Now she wants him back but sets him up with Lucy. Now she’s changed her mind and wants to steal him from Lucy. Now he and Lucy are broken up and she swoops in immediately to claim him. Now she’s acting strangely and not being open with him about why. Now she’s cheating on him. And now she’s gone.
Dorothy has never been a very good partner to Walky. She herself would admit this.
Yes, it will come up later, although maybe not in those specific terms. I think if Dorothy thought Joyce had been cruel to Walky just now, she would object.
Walky is part of the ongoing fallout from this. Danny will have an opinion. Sarah is still steaming. Becky won’t be a one comic event or even just one event. She rooms either Dorothy. The comic will be about this until further notice It would have been easier just to fake their deaths.
As I said yesterday, in the absence of any anger or upset from the wronged parties, anyone external to the relationships who express any such anger or upset comes across as a histrionic busybody who’s sticking their nose in where it isn’t needed.
I like that Dorothy’s character traits are still there, she’s not entirely a clone of Joyce yet. She still reflexively thinks she can control this situation. Let me fix that, she thinks she can control this situation.
She thinks has a solution, but hasn’t figured out what the problem is, or even listen to what the problem is. And her knowledge is something she just looked up and is irrelevant.
A note, because some of you need it, recognizing these doesn’t mean I think she’s evil. They make her ordinary. And relatable.
When I was in college, we ran an annual convention. The convention dates at the time lined up with McDonald’s doing their “monopoly game” promotion where you could get scratch-off stickers to put on a monopoly board sheet and if you got all of a single color, you won a big prize. But there were a bunch of instant win stickers that gave you a burger or drink or something.
SO, in order to get people into it, McD would get an insert in the school paper that had info about the game and a couple of free stickers.
We would often swipe a bunch of papers and go through the stickers, saving the instant-win ones to help with food costs for convention staff and guests.
I like how obsessed they’ve been over “what will WALKY THINK?! what will JOE THINK?! what will BECKY THINK?!” and the reaction has (so far) “oh hey cool glad that’s finally happened.”
The *dad* thing is an issue, but I think the *dad* thing is an issue because he will see Joyce as having lied to him about Jocelyne. I am sincerely certain that even if Becky is hurt by this (and I’m not sure she will be), she’s going to be supportive and happy that Dorothy and Joyce are on Team Girl Kissing
In the trend of everyone panicking over stuff that turns out to be nothing, Hank’ll be fine with Joyce being gay and he already knows about Jocelyne – which was hinted at when she came back with the “I need to tell you before you find out from dad” bit.
God if that actually went down somehow, I’d have to applaud the sheer ‘idgaf’ -balls- it would take to, quote, ‘blow up your webcomic’, and then dodge every potential drama bullet like Neo in the Matrix. Genuinely it would elevate this story line to high art for me, no sarcasm.
I mean, if one side doesn’t like the cheating and the other side wants the cheating for the drama, it IS a very David ‘Damn You’ Willis move to have cheating and no drama.
How can she be looking things up while holding all the papers with both hands? We can see them when she says it’s only illegal in Maryland and California. Obviously, Dorothy has spent many a late night pondering over laws related to student newspapers, perhaps in connection with some argument with Billie.
Fellow Americans in the readership: can’t recommend Belle of the Ranch on YouTube enough for keeping informed without despairing. She’s got lots of practical advice, too.
(You may be familiar with the channel as Beau of the Third Column; he’s still working on the channel but Belle is the face right now, and doing great.)
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So who else was spamming F5 for the last 10 minutes?
Oh, just me? Damn.
congrats you made it to first comment!
here, have a cookie 🍪
Yesterday was one of those comics that was like Ok now I HAVE to see tomorrow’s. Guess the real trainwreck is still a few comics away.
I went to peruse leftovers, developed a Dagwood situation, sat down to eat it, and realized I’d missed the thing by like half an hour.
Sounds totally worth it. What was in the sandwich?
Kimchi, hummus, balsamic reduction, frozen primavera vegetable mix, last bits of some pepper and onion jelly, probably too much sriracha.
“Too much sriracha.”
Hmm.
Well, I recognize all the words, but putting them in that order …
Hmm.
OH!! I get it now. That’s only the last half of “There is never too much sriracha.” There. Fixed it.
well they got the “be gay, do crimes” part XD
Aren’t they currently only doing a crime in Maryland or California?
well in theory most of the really dramatic incidents they’ve been involved in probably weren’t strictly legal
plus the underage drinking that one time
Given the protest and attack by the cops, it appears in the first 24 hours of their gay journey, they have commited multiple crimes.
Truly, this is the dark path the Chick tracts warned us of.
In these troubled times, it’s comforting to remember he’s stone dead.
GOOD.
There are some people of whom I occasionally think “Well, at least [name] isn’t alive to see this. Because he would’ve been happy about it, and he absolutely doesn’t deserve happiness.” Jack Chick is one of them. A certain hate-preacher who traveled from university to university is another.
Read the last panel again. If IU’s paper puts a price on ‘after the first’ issues grabbed, then yes, she’s committing theft.
As that panel notes, such policies were instituted after several incidents where campus political groups (mostly, though not exclusively conservative in nature) would claim all the copies of a paper that expressed a view they disagreed with, in order to prevent dissemination.
Look at them, only just coming out, and already doing crimes. So proud of them.
So, I got a question here. Sincerely, not snide.
Why is Dorothy so worked up about this? The only person she was dreading telling was Walky, and Joyce just took care of that. Joyce is worried more about her parents, who get the online version, and besides that it’s what, Becky?
Wouldn’t it be more practical to just go find Becky?
Telling Becky is far too scary to actually do. Dorothy couldn’t even tell Walky and he’s just the boyfriend she cheated on, not her roommate who had a crush on Joyce.
I’m impressed by how many people read student newspapers in Dumbing of Age.
I think when I went to uni I never saw anyone actually pick up a single copy.
I read my uni’s paper every week.
This was also right before the iPhone was released though, so newspaper reading was common.
Well, even if general readership is low, this issue has girls snogging on the front page, which would at least get people to stop to look at it. Probably. IDK, I don’t think I even *saw* newspaper stands for my college newspaper
Page 1 girls.
+applause+
i dunno, joe’s copy made it look like the actual smooch was below the fold
which is bad layout, frankly, but whatever
as someone who’s current literary purchasing habits hinges on the amount of girl snogging in it, I would like to confirm this as a valued metric for evaluation
I rarely ever read the school newspaper when I was in college.
You know who definitely will, don’t you? Mary.
Lotta parents subscribe, because a lot of kids don’t phone home. It’s a way to stay connected, or have something to ask about when checking in
I went to college circa 1990. We didn’t have smartphones. We didn’t even have flipphones until a few years later.
Let’s be old together.
When I went to college, if you needed the internet you had to walk out of your room, go down the hall, take the elevator the lobby and invent the internet. Using punch cards. I’m older than heck / Hank. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/loft/
The first computer I worked on, the Burroughs B6700, had core memory and a HUGE punch card deck to restart it. The computer and its peripherals filled a 50×50 foot room. The floor was raised two feet to accommodate the cables.
Aww but I’ve got a plane of core sitting on my mantelpiece. There’s been some definite WT*F*?!s from visitors who’ve recognised it.
(next to it is a flanged flail I made from a pair of 5.25″ HDs, and the reactions to that can be pretty damn satisfying too.)
I went to an engineering school. We didn’t even have a student paper. We had three English classes: General English, English Taught By A Pretentious Failed Author Who Gets Really Mad When You Proofread His Work And Give It Back To Him With All The Spelling And Grammar Errors Marked Up And That’s Why I Had To Take General English Over The Summer, and Technical Writing.
I corrected my english teacher’s grammar once and he gave me a bonus mark on my final grade. Took me from a B+ to an A-. It was a triumphant moment for me.
This is *legendary*. Maybe not smart, but awesome nonetheless.
His fault for handing out copies of one of his stories for no better reason than to feed his ego by showing off how amazing his writing was. And let’s just say, there were reasons he was teaching English at a tiny technical college rather than actually being a published author.
I started knitting mail over the summer because there was nothing else to do on our tiny campus in the middle of nowhere with literally nine students for the summer session, and I got a mail hauberk out of the deal, which I’ve frankly gotten far more use out of over the last thirty years than I have the English class. I have no regrets.
When I went to… oh, well, nevermind. It was at least, after the Apollo moon landings.
I had a brief comic in my college newspaper—eventually got replaced for someone else’s.
Admittedly they were much funnier than me (I was still aggravated at the time).
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if the school I went to had a paper… much less what it was called. Logically, I assume they must’ve, but I don’t remember ever reading it… or ever seeing it (and I’m in my early 40s, so while the internet certainly existed and everyone had some sort of computer, it wasn’t leveraged well-enough to justify discontinuing a printed paper).
Back when I was in college, admittedly now more than two decades in the rear view but we DID have the internets, kinda, a majority of people would at least pick up the student daily paper and glance at the headlines on the way to the comics/crossword.
I think the main crux of the problem here is that Joyce still has her cartoons running in this particular paper, so a lot of her friends (including Becky) are likely to pick up a copy just for that reason.
I used to read mine fairly often in college, and I still read it almost every week (except during the summer).
Only 47 more stands to go.
Actually, this has potential for a money making deal.
Autographed copies.
Oooooh okay, so, a thought: newspapers everywhere are struggling, and it can’t be easy for student ones in particular. The IDS has got its hands on a banger of an image, Daisy would be a fool not to start running off posters of it, right?
Autographed ones though? SET FOR LIFE.
Tour buses for crime solving roller derby teams to travel the country in don’t come cheap. Well, they usually ARE cheap, and break down in creepy places with surprise celebrity guest stars. But, they don’t come cheap.
Eh, it’s always Old Man Cheevers trying to scare everybody away from his great grandpappy’s secretly buried Mason jars full of gold coins.
If he doesn’t want people finding the coins, he shouldn’t have deliberately built an eye-catching tourist attraction right next to them, with a plaque on the wall that talks about how his great grandpappy buried gold coins all over the property. And he definitely shouldn’t be selling shovels and lanterns and pickaxes and buckets in the gift shop.
[chaos gremlin wallpapering Becky’s room with all the front pages]
Dorothy laughing in Becky’s face that Joyce is hers now.
There’s a supremely easy way to tell Becky imo. “You got a promotion Becky! You’re now my bestest and only best friend!”
Or maybe that’s how she’ll phrase it herself.
That seems reasonable. After all, Becky’s been mean to Dorothy and we’ve established that made it perfectly fine for Joyce to do that to Walky.
Toxic yuri, but only toward other people.
Hey, if she wants to be arch-nemeses, she’s got to be prepared for Dorothy to actually do some arch-nemesising.
Listen, just be glad only that undercover cop girl and fundamentalist chick were on the cover versus the real protestors.
Daisy was protecting their identities!
I mean, it looked like Jocelyne was also on the cover, and she was one of the real protestors.
Otherwise, good theory. I think it’s unlikely, but I like your moxie.
Better buy out the school newspaper domain somehow too
Amber can’t hack it and crash it for them right now.
She can’t do it in her sleep?
Dina will, I believe, harm anyone who tries to wake her up enough to ask her.
Velociraptor roomie protocol
the first one’s free but the next one’s gonna cost ya
Joyce’s dry delivery in panel 2 is absolutely golden. Incredible comedic skills.
As a complete aside, I’m rereading the archives and found this piece of dialogue from walky: “change is easier to swallow than admitting who we’ve been all along”, which has been a recurring theme for years here.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/glassesperson/
Walky’s quoting Booster from this earlier strip.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/sobstory/
Don’t trust google.
I second that; anymore like 90 percent of the images it gives you are Al sIop.
I have to ask: was swapping the uppercase I and lowercase L intentional, perhaps as a subtle AI confusion trick, or an accident?
Basically, I’m wondering if it’s something I should be doing too.
Idk how this will affect AI, but it’ll be a nightmare for folk who use screen-readers
I was delighted to discover recently that DuckDuckGo’s preferences menu includes a “don’t show me A.I. garbage in the image search” option.
Fair’s fair. I like this strip.
(hey completely off topic but i started reading this comic like… 3 days ago? and by proxy been following your art for the same amount of time. just got to 2020 where you apparently made a giant compilation album of all your art but the link’s dead and i’ve been informed the gallery got nuked some time ago. is there any other place you got all the art stored where I could go look at it?)
Little late, don’t know if you’ll see this but here’s the backup after imgur go nuked: https://imgchest.com/p/ne7bw5ovn75
very much appreciated
I wonder how many people already saw a copy of the newspaper front page before Dorothy and Joyce, like Joe. And how many people read it online.
My prediction: almost everyone has, but not Becky; their attempts to stop her seeing it are what draw her attention to it.
Plot twist: Becky actually saw it before anyone else and she’s actually not mad, just busy setting up an extravagant Coming Out party for them.
On second thought, I prefer your prediction. Less generic sitcom twist, and generally more fun (with also the potential for Joyce to try to delicately figure out whether Becky’s sincerely happy for them or, once again, burying her true feelings).
Anyway, the whole cliché of “attempting to hide it instead draws attention to it”, in addition to being so common it has its own Wikipedia page, can still work even if it doesn’t involve Becky; if most students tend to ignore the newspaper but end up reading this one due to the attempted coverup, that’s already enough to be entertainingly distressing for Joyce and Dorothy.
Now I’m looking forward to Daisy thanking them for boosting the newspaper’s circulation.
At the risk of accidentally writing fanfic, I started musing further on this idea…
Many people have been clamouring for consequences to the cheating, and annoyed at Joe being so calm about it, and Walky’s reacting to it like it was simply a predictable plot twist. What if the consequences are, instead, that Joyce and Dorothy become famous gay icons, despite their hopes to keep it secret, and then, due to people looking further into events, the cheating becomes just as famous, leading to them being hated for their misdeeds not by Joe and Walky but instead by society at large.
Well, people were hoping for drama and/or consequences. This might provide.
This is not a bad take..Counterpoint—in the hypothetical event that they become famous and queer around campus, it cramps the early months of their relationship because they can’t be alone and the potential backlash means no polycule even if Joyce would really like to broach it to Dorothy.
I would find that unsatisfying, like 180 degrees from satisfying. Sicko, though, at least for Dorothy’s part in everything. Maybe a paladin, if anything, for Joyce+Joe.
I want drama and consequences from characters that have emotional investment, not randos.
This is a possible option. She’s the queerness paladin, and may welcome them with joy.
I like to imagine that they succeed in taking the remaining papers from all newsstands around the campus before Becky sees anything, but they don’t see where they’re going while carrying these huge stacks of newspapers and crash into Becky, who is now suddenly surrounded by a thousand images of them kissing.
From the look Dina was giving Dorothy earlier, I’m almost certain she knows. And I’m not convinced Dina would keep that from Becky.
Dina doesn’t seem to care much about any relationships outside of hers with Becky. If there was anything to that look, it may have been annoyance that one of the people at the protest that got Amber hurt was there.
(Clarification, thanks to the inherent issues with English: the protest that got Amber hurt, not one of the people that got Amber hurt, because she was going to do what she did regardless of whether Dorothy and Joyce were even there.)
So is Dorothy’s next step to call daisy and ask her to pull the article from the website? ‘The girl isn’t out to her parents, who read our newspaper’ is probably one that would work well for Daisy? We’ve never seen daisy have to actually choose between journalism or being horny, she just never wins in either.
“Ask” (read “Demand”)
Daisy: Sure, then I’ll call the cops on you!
Dorothy: WHAT!?
Daisy: Face heel turn! *hits Dorothy with a steel chair*
I like to think she’d make the right choice if asked, especially considering the risk of real life harm
But she approved the cover in the first place without giving them the heads up, which is kind of messed up considering she works with both of them and could have at least shot a text their way
this would be wise to attempt, we’ll see if she can clear her mind enough to do it
I suspect that the girls went viral the night of, so the cats already sailed the coop.
Meanwhile, Ace Reporter Jennifer Billington won’t be getting out of bed until sometime after noon. By which time, two extra editions will have come out, none of them having her byline.
Based on this preview panel, that seems to be where’s they’re headed next.
Wow! What an incredible spoiler!
Or that’s someone coming to tell Daisy that this issue was so popular all the copies have disappeared from the racks, prompting a change in the paper’s editorial direction as the staff assumes all those papers are being read…
It wouldn’t matter, and doesn’t work like that, which Dorothy would hopefully know since she’s a reporter — but even if she did ask, Daisy wouldn’t be able to help. Honestly, even if she had requested it before the story went to press, it would’ve been a major conversation about the ethics of running it v. pulling it. But now, it’s a moot point. The paper has gone to press. A copy has probably been archived to the university special collections. The online edition may have been screenshotted, etc., etc. Once something goes to press, it’s out. You can run errata to update/correct, but you can’t, like. take it back. This is why journalism has a whole code of ethics about what they can/can’t should/shouldn’t publish.
For some reason, I feel like Charlie would actually know what you wrote, thus making the gravatar perfect.
Media pulls and modifies online stories all the time. Not a big deal
To an extent. It’s not going to delete it from the public record entirely, but it might well drop the changes Hank sees it, since he’s not exactly going to be checking university special collections or even internet archiving tools for earlier versions. It’s not foolproof of course. He could have already seen it. Someone else in his circle could have seen it and sent him a copy asking if those were his kids.
But it would help.
I suppose it would depend when the daily newsletter email is sent out, and if it’s just a link or if images are embedded.
Alternately, be crime, do gay
Also when Dorothy and Joyce find Daisy they would be completely justified to perform some sort of obscene wrestling tag team move on her for this shit.
She wants titillation, this photo, this scoop, is absolutely titillating.
Getting wrestled to the ground by two bisexual women in a loving relationship…
Truly titillating for her
Titillation over professional ethics I guess. Wouldn’t be the first time for Daisy.
Or a rarity in DoA, for that matter. We’ve had two TAs who’ve had sex with students, a gender studies teacher who let her attraction to a politician override her sense, that same politician (after getting a job in the university) abusing her position to rehire one of those TAs (which, ironically, may have been one of the more ethical things she’s done)…
I feel like I’m forgetting others.
If only they’d been page 3 girls instead, for maximum titillation.
Listen, what was Daisy supposed to do? Report on the police brutality? The genocide?
That would be depressing.
but that’s what NEEDS the attention
wrestling move or not, she really needs a long talking to about a thing called JOURNALISM ETHICS
I’m not surprised that Daisy focused more on the two women kissing, that fits her character as a horny lesbian. But I do wish she had focused more on the genocide that the protest was about, and the police brutality in response.
How do we know she doesn’t focus on the protest and the genocide? All we know is the headline and the image. This could be a ploy to get eyes on the article, the article might focus heavily on the genocide and the politics
Posting the picture makes Raidah *right* though. We can’t have that.
Depressing or not, it would absolutely be the right thing to do. Though focusing on that when there’s a photo of two girls kissing would be out of character for Daisy.
I’m getting the feeling that the sarcasm of this post is not hitting.
Yeah, we’ve killed nuance a bit in the comment section recently.
Dorothy and Joyce aren’t hitting, either. Daisy, that is. Hitting Daisy. Dorothy and Joyce aren’t.
But they could be. Maybe Daisy has some cool fight moves and is able to take both of them on in a challenging and exciting fight that travels across most of the news building. We haven’t had a good boss fight in a while.
Walky was already prepared to help fight one of the IU bosses: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/fancypantslounge/
Maybe it’d work as a form of catharsis after recent events?
Dorothy and Joyce aren’t hitting on Daisy
Yet.
But they could be! We haven’t had a good threesome in a while… in fact I think we’ve only had the Mandy-Grace-Sierra triad?
And I don’t remember ever seeing them do it on-screen.
This could be interpreted as implying you’ve seen them do it off-screen. Secret Patreon tier?
Dangit… maybe I’ve spent too long finding Daisy links for Mal, below. It’s contagious!
The actual story was buried on page 18.
The headline implies that the story was indeed about those matters, but Daisy couldn’t resist running a pic with a headline that made a pun.
Well, sure, that. But her biggest crime is obviously that headline pun choice.
Obviously a Meltzer Driver.
A Doomsday Device would be easier for the untrained to perform. Dorothy and Joyce woukd likely hurt themselves trying a Meltzer Driver.
As I said in a post lower down from here…3D right through a table!
See, if Joyce had let Joe be involved, he could be setting up the folding table and dousing it in gasoline as we speak, get some real ECW style shit ready to roll.
I’m beginning to think the actual reason Becky will be upset is simply that someone else came out of the closet more dramatically than her.
Not *willingly*, but…
Upset, but impressed. Grudgingly giving respect, at that. Then biding her time to outdo them all. Muah. ah ah ha.
Willis-ing.
Becky has a lot of issues, but this would be more of a Carla thing, and she’s out.
I think you’ll find that at the moment, it’s Dorothy who has a lot of issues, and she’s hoping to get them all!
Hit her with the “Dudly Boyz 3D” special.
That was meant for Yoto
“DINA, we gotta fuck at a protest to out-gay those two and claim back my title!!!”
“Becky, I do not believe that sexual intercourse would scientifically out-gay their raw sexual tension.”
“Well what WOULD outgay them?!?”
“According to my scientific analysis… A foursome with us, Joyce and Dorothy”
***BECKY.EXE HAS IRREPARIBLY MALFUNCTIONED***
The actual reason Becky will be upset is that Joyce wasn’t bisexual previously but is now. The idea that sexuality can be fluid has been repeatedly shown to be upsetting to her because it makes her wonder if it were possible to just not have been gay and saved herself a lot of grief.
I wonder if Becky would’ve been more susceptible to Mary’s TERFy rhetoric if she was around for the ten seconds that was a thing. She’s really uncomfortable with the idea of sexuality not being innate and eternal.
Daisy could have at least texted them to give them a heads up that they had their picture take, maybe even asked permission before plastering it all over the school
Yeah, this is a sound strategy… if we weren’t in the digital age 🤖
what if I wanted to steal copies coz of a big art project
(Answering far too seriously for no reason) Then you’d be selfishly preventing all other people from doing art projects with them – instead you could just contact the school newspaper folk and say “hey, when the un-claimed newspapers get replaced with tomorrow morning’s new sheet, can I have them?”
I appreciate the sad Dorothy avatar comboed with the comment, great match.
Ah, interesting, Joyce does realize that her father would see the picture.
…but, by inference, hasn’t reasoned that her mother might see it too…
They’re divorced so he’s probably not showing her his copy. She’s going to see it though. And Daisy can take down the online version, but it may be too late to keep Hank from seeing it and to keep the image from spreading.
Idk I could see this being an issue there willing to “put aside there differences” for, I’d consider there views on LGBT people to be that kind of slightly more progressive “I’ll be nice to them to there faces and will have certain gay people I consider friends, nothing more nothing less” kind of Christians but when it comes to there daughter I could see it suddenly becoming alot more of a problem for them
Sorry should’ve said in my original comment but I could totally see Hank sharing it to Daisy in a “we need to be unified against this” kind of way
Sorry brain fart meant to say carol not Daisy
This is why we rehearse.
Eh, Hank’s been pretty supportive of Becky in the grand scheme of things, even opening a joint bank account with her after the first kidnapping. Obviously, he could react differently when it’s his own daughter, but I don’t think he’d immediately jump to involving his extremely recent ex-wife whom he knows to be *more* homophobic than him.
Fair enough, idk maybe I’m not giving him enough credit for his recent character growth
Not to mention her extremely dangerous attitudes towards the safety of both Becky and Joyce outside of homophobia. I fully believe that Hank is aware that Carol is not safe to be consulted on this one.
Considering recent events Joyce probably has some walls up regarding Carol’s opinions on… well anything, really. Will Joyce likely be emotionally hurt by whatever miserable way Carol responds? Most definitely. But until that actually happens there’s only one parent whose opinion she feels comfortable caring about.
Her dad reads her comic, I think? Dunno about mom, who didn’t wanna keep the childhood art.
I think it was less that she didn’t want to keep it and more that she no longer had room, because she sold her house.
Her mom isn’t going to read the paper for Joyce’s comic, no.
She might check on the student newspaper because there was a massive event on campus, violence “between” police and protestors (that’s how she’s see it anyway).
She might not even see the student newspaper. There’s plenty of ways that picture could reach her, maybe through other news orgs, maybe through social media…
She might, but if her dad reads the paper he will.
Seriously, Dorothy has every right to go light Daisy up for this. Forget stealing the papers, make Daisy actually look at what she did here.
They need to steal the papers first to limit the spread. Then they go light her up.
Steal the papers, then they have kindling.
Anything rather than talking to Becky.
This ends up getting Dorothy Daisy’s position much to the frustration of Jennifer.
I think that works out well for Jen. She wants to do different stories that aren’t lust driven Amazi-Girl articles. Dorothy in charge might actually do that for her.
Yeah but she’ll be grouchy about Dorothy failing upward (in her pov)
Interesting how Dorothy seems to be reacting more intensely to the paper.
“I can’t be the poster child for lesbians in Indiana!”
“Technically we’re bisexual…”
“I can’t be the Bisexual poster child for Indiana!”
Aside from the actual being outed, I suspect Dorothy is extra stressed by the fact they had a plan which has been ruined by the paper and she no longer has control
Her to-do list is expanding to infinity.
Dorothy went from about a 6 to an 11 when Joyce mentioned her dad gets the online version of the paper. Dorothy has a recurring nightmare about Joyce’s safety from evil dads.
This does feel a little messed up on assumedly Daisy’s end to out two people and make hat front page news without at least first seeking them for approval. Unless having your intimate moments broadcast to everyone is just the risk you take by kissing in public. It seems objectively a bad thing that was done, especially on a campus where it is known a guy showed up with a gun to kidnap his gay daughter. Really not a great look.
Two people that she knows. Its not like she would need to put in any real effort to ask for approval, just fire off a couple texts
Daisy: I would have but you might have said no. Oh, and you’re fired for starting a riot that almost got me and other people there killed.
Dot: what.
That would be amazing spin considering the cops are the ones that escalated the protest reflecting the real life event that inspired that, then of course would be the school administrators Daisy directly works for and/or reports to, then maybe after those two, in a distant third, you could possibly blame AG for assaulting a cop that had already escalated things by attacking Joyce unprompted to try and arrest her for evacuating. All while Daisy was I assume skulking unseen in the shadows taking photos from relative safety. I’d love to see Daisy try and make that argument and immediately catapult herself into at least the top 5 in DoA’s worst characters.
Maybe Daisy plans to work for Cop News Network, where cops don’t do anything wrong according to the five cops they bring on for a roundtable whenever cops get caught doing brutality.
Hey, let’s be fair… there are many news outlets that’ll perform olympic-level gymnastics to avoid the reality of police misdeeds. Daisy’s really boosting her career prospects on this one.
“Officer involved shooting”
Given that ICE arrested several people who were fighting an active wildfire in my (blue) state, and I only learned about it because one of our senators raised a stink on social media this morning, yes, I agree that many (most!) news outlets will outdo the Cirque de Soliel in their acrobatics to avoid letting cops look bad.
since when does she know Joyce?
They met when Joyce submitted her comic that is regularly run in the news paper.
Thats actually the only time they’ve been on screen together. When someone commented that both of them work for daisy I did the character combo tag search: https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/joyce+daisy/
On the one hand, yeah shitty thing to do.
Other hand, they’re at a protest that is being journalism’ed all over the place, climbed on top of a snow pile, belted out the Lesbian Bible Verse with full chest, and then started necking in full view of the cameras, cops, and fleeing protesters.
And they’re shocked its front page? I’m amazed that wasn’t on FOXNEWS or The View or something.
So…is Joyce really THAT recognizable from a photo of the back of her head wearing a jacket that isn’t hers with her face obscured entirely by…um…Dorothy’s face?
She’s got an iconic haircut.
In a vacuum, probably not, but Dorothy seems much more recognizable in it and anyone who knows both of them could probably put two and two together. For Joyce’s dad specifically, maybe he doesn’t recognize Dorothy, but Jocelyne is also in the picture, which could get him to look closer.
I wonder what’s written in the accompanying article? Daisy knows both Joyce and Dorothy (they’re contributors to the newspaper). It’s possible they’re both identified in the text… or maybe the picture’s intended just as an attention-grabber (and Daisy-pleaser) and the actual text is an honest take on suppressive UI policies and brutal police overreach with no actual mention of the kissing.
Everyone’s flaming Daisy, and I understand why, but there’s also a very large part of me that is satisfied the cheaters cheating made the front page. ha!
Plot Twist: Mr. Brown confronts Dorothy and Joyce.
Hank: So how long have Dorothy and your brother been dating?
Joyce: What?
Hank: I recognize the back of my son’s head anywhere!
Hank also assumes Jocelyne running away is Joyce in this scenario.
Hank: Was she okay?
Dorothy: Yes she was.
Depending on the grain on the photo this is entirely possible.
It would also be funny if people thought the back of Joyce’s head was Daisy.
…and Daisy encourages the rumour because it’s the closest thing she’s has to an actual relationship.
Too late. I already did this plot twist!
Daisy’s just doing the same as these two: let her horny override her reason and/or ethics.
Love this one. Dorothy’s reaction and attempt at damage control is a delight.
I’m aching to get to Becky. The buildup has been killing me.
Lmao, even in panic mode Dorothy is still Dorothy isn’t she?
Not sure why everyone thinks Daisy’s done something wrong here. Not only did Joyce and Dorothy make out in broad daylight, they did so smack dab in the middle of a major protest. The entire purpose of a protest is to attract attention, there was less than no expectation of privacy. It’s not Daisy’s fault that our girls chose to demonstrate their love for one another in the most impulsive and thought-free manner possible!
I feel like you usually gotta ask people before you feature them in newspaper articles but that might not be true. Still seems…Ethical tho.
At the very least give them a heads up so they aren’t blindsided by being front page news
I mean, if someone walked into a protest and did what they did, you’d think it was a planned stunt.
I don’t think they have to get the okay from people streaking a sportball field to show the footage either. Pretty sure the only requirement is having to play Yakkity Sax over it.
Not that streaking and kissing are in anyway the same thing. Before I get accused of saying that… Again.
“I mean, if someone walked into a protest and did what they did, you’d think it was a planned stunt.”
I haven’t seen anyone suggest this at any point, and I’m kind of surprised, because like…that is a reasonable idea.
It’s kinda too bad newspapers are a visual-only medium, because the idea of that front cover having Yakkity Sax playing over it is kinda amazing.
There are several image galleries of women around the world standing up to and getting in the face of police during protests. Handing them flowers, not backing down, etc. Two girls ignoring violence to smooch is definitely a power move in the face of fascism (to anyone not knowing the characters or what is going on). I know I don’t recognize people well and Daisy might have been too busy and excited to actually recognize them in the chaos.
Legally no. I think I recall it being different for photos of kids.
But also like, still very shitty.
For schools they ask for photo release forms. I’m not sure if that would extend to a college which would mean either A) Joyce and Dorothy aren’t recognizable enough (like a certain amount of their faces exposed) to be identified to ask for a release or B) When they enrolled (or were hired by the paper) they signed release forms stating their likeness could be used. That might put them at the “public official” level and makes this even juicier.
Some events hand out release forms and wrist bands of what level they agree to be in images. That makes going through the photos easier before publishing so they can be edited.
I took one photo and my friend took a photo of me with Katherine Applegate at a book signing. I cropped myself out, though, because she was wearing a “Protect Trans Kids” shirt and it wasn’t about me. But I’ve had people call bs when I say I’m in it and I post to my Twitter from the day of and post my copy of me in it. Still, I didn’t realize it’d go viral and I hope it didn’t cause KA Applegate any grief, but she has been very supportive of her trans kid.
https://www.acep.org/how-we-serve/sections/publication-of-photographs-is-a-release-required
You don’t *have* to do shit. The press can absolutely report on people who don’t want to be reported on, otherwise no scandal could be reported. However, it is adick move to knowingly out two bisexual women who work for you, no legal expectation of privacy sort of being irrelevant.
This was a protest against profiting off of genocide. Any voluntary action taken in the midst of that is presumed to be part of the protest and MEANT to be seen. I’m sorry but if these two blonde white women didn’t want to have their passion known then they should’ve picked ANYWHERE other than the violent climax of a demonstration against the massacre of fictional stand-in Palestinians to get all licky-style on each other ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Somehow I never actually connected bulmeria as being a Palestine stand in, since it’s originally a country in Africa where another universe’s Joyce was theoretically being a missionary. This is where knowledge of the other Willis comics has worked against me lmao. But no, now that it’s pointed out, the ruttech weapons, the bombings, it all tracks.
I didn’t remember Bulmeria being where Joyce went off to serve a mission, either, until I was just rereading archives!
Doesn’t seem like it! At least not from a legal perspective. There’s an ethical debate about protecting protestors’ identities but, again, I’m not sure there’s a more deliberately attention-grabbing, anonymity-shredding action than passionately making out in the middle of a war protest while tear gas erupts around you and cops beat the shit out of anyone they can reach! Like there are places where PDAs wouldn’t be seen as performing for those assembled but this was decidedly not one of them
I think it’s reaching now to frame the kiss as a performative protest even without context. Like, sure take the picture, it’s a bombastic moment that makes an eye catching front page and no one can legally stop you. Legally and morally you can sleep soundly having gotten away with being horny on main. But proposing it’s anything beyond that without confirming with the subjects is just making stuff up. No one’s really saying Daisy can’t do these things. Just that it was shitty.
Think about this from the perspective of anyone who doesn’t know Joyce and Dorothy (and despite employing them, I really doubt Daisy knows the first thing about either of them). if their passionate face-sucking wasn’t a deliberate act of protest, then it was extremely thoughtless at best and revoltingly tasteless at worst. The protest where this happened was not about Joyce and Dorothy, and I strongly feel Daisy is not the bad guy for having captured this moment.
Was not about Joyce and Dorothy’s forbidden romance, rather. (The kiss itself, if interpreted as an act of protest and not the girls having no sense of appropriate venues for realizing romantic passion, is absolutely fair game as a cover photo standing in for the protest itself.)
Daisy does know them, though. Here’s just one strip of her chatting with Dorothy about the latter’s contribution to the newspaper:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/oldfashioned/
And the newspaper also publishes Joyce’s comic; here’s Daisy telling Joyce about some of the complications she’ll have to deal with as a result: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/jerkiest/
Does she know anything about them, though? Like, for instance, any reason to believe they’re closeted? I doubt it. She’s their boss, they’re not friends.
Oops… I misread, sorry — somehow missed the parenthetical note. Yes, it’s entirely possible Daisy just assumed (perhaps based on Joyce’s comic, as Grimeyville’s 1a notes) that they were already a couple.
She could’ve still at least sent them a text or something, though.
Dude sometimes people kiss during protests. They are massive emotional releases, and people are human. Just usually not while the cops are breaking them up, because we’re all trying to protect each other. The way people talk about them here makes me think they’ve never attended one.
Source:
i attend, work at, and plan them, for the last several years.
Maybe they shouldn’t have done this while tear gas was literally billowing in the background then if they didn’t mean for it to be a public statement 🤷
I’ve admittedly only been to one back when the BLM movement was huge post George Floyd. I just think it’s a little problematic to assume anything done at a protest is part of the protest. That seems close to the logic used to claim bad actors represent the whole event and class them as riots. I get that it’s free real estate to take and publish whatever you want in a public space, and that Joyce and Dorothy acted wildly irresponsible and were exploited because of it, but that’s all it needs to be.
I really want a bonus comic of the juxtaposition of whatever Julia Grey comic ran in this edition. I still am having a hard time believing that Joyce didn’t know there was a Sunday edition and that the comic doesn’t have a Sunday run (or that a Sunday newspaper wouldn’t have any comics). Dang I’m going to have to go into the archives and see when Joyce/Walky were getting the job description of what the comic load would be.
If as the headline implies they are the subject of the article it is good journalistic ethics to identify them and reach out for comment. Am I supposed to believe Daisy doesn’t recognize one of her own reporters?
There’s a million photos of people kissing at protests that make news.
The story is about the police brutality and arresting protestors who were protesting war crimes and the school’s complicity. That photo is not representative of the story. It’s representative of Daisy wanting to see people kiss.
I mean we don’t know the contents of the article, only the headline, which centers the gay kiss.
Headlines are at least half of what what people take away from journalism in practice, more including any memorable photo. We should morally judge headlines when they’re misleading, although usually it’s on the editors not the writers.
The subhead is about the arrests. And then a note on the kissing headline says the “bi” part was entirely for the pun, not from any knowledge. The editor would have more direct control of the headline and photo, and it seems like the top headline was just to make a tenuous justification for using that photo.
I am inferring, but I feel fairly confident about it.
1a. Although she may not be aware of it, Daisy has just outed two queer women without knowing whether or not they are out. I might assume that because Daisy has seen Joyce’s comic, she more or less assumed about Joyce and Dorothy what everyone else assumed and was just waiting on. ‘They won’t be upset about this—they’re basically already together.’
1b. Posted a transwoman’s face front and center of a newspaper, who does not attend this university. She has effectively made Jocelyne (as well as Joyce and Dorothy) culpable to whatever inquiry that police might put on them for the protest because it’s proof that they were there. Like you know—they’re identity of that vigilante going full Street Fighter on the riot squad.
1c. Diminishing the very point of the protest in favor of an almost propaganda-like ‘Love wins’ kinda splash page. Not an incorrect take but time and a place, especially as it functionally minimizes all the protesters like Asma who were there to…Y’know. Protest.
Trans woman. Two words.
Apologies. ._.
I feel like 2 college girls making out shouldn’t take priority as front page news while college students are getting their shit kicked in for protesting war crimes.
nut it will grab attention and help spread the news of the protest by bring eyes to the paper, not to say it isnt dimminishing the real issues of the protest, but from a mximizing circulation veiw it makes sense
But Daisy only chose that image because it’s one of her sexual fantasies come to life. What any other editor would go for would be all the images of an actual costumed superhero beating up the police all by her lonesome. That would have gone national in a heart beat.
To be honest, given Daisy’s obsession, I’d kind of expect Amazi-Girl to be front and center. Maybe she just didn’t get any clear photogenic pictures. The action shots are likely to be distant and blurry.
Also best not to condemn Amber (or more likely Sal) to be arrested for beating cops.
Though to be fair, the cops know about that part. They don’t need a newspaper story to tell them.
ah yes Dorothy you’re being so normal and discreet about this
Excellent strip, love Dorothy being Maximum Dorothy here, still hope we are gonna get more Walky feelings sooner rather than later.
Wondering whether Hank gets the mention and not Carol because Joyce doesn’t want to think about her or…
But either way, we were all right: it was Becky AND her family.
inb4 perfectly reasonable-seeming objections that Hank was cool about Becky: you’d be surprised how often a parent can be “cool” with you having queer friends but not actually “cool” with you being queer yourself.
I’m not saying Hank will be shitty about this. I’m just saying it is perfectly reasonable, actually, for Joyce to worry that this might be a bridge too far. Because it often is.
I’m encouraged to comment here; I didn’t want to take any chances with yesterday’s chaotic avalanche.
I agree about Walky. Joyce didn’t even let things get properly cleared up, and she just jumped in, flaunting Dorothy as her property. (Seriously, I know it will take time, but I hope Dorothy stops seeing only “spectacular magic” in Joyce and sees the other side of the coin.)
But honestly, I think the best thing for Walky is for him to take time for himself, learn to have faith in himself, and when there’s a strong sense of personal independence, come face to face with Dorothy.
As for Joyce’s parents, it’s obvious the chaos will be worse.
The best thing for Walky right now is for him to go on a meditative retreat to the Nachoitos factory and not leave until every centimeter of his flesh is neon orange.
I do think he needs a period of being single and being okay with that, but he got it over the timeskip and it didn’t help.
So: I am revising it to a period of being single while also having friends, friends who prioritize him.
Mostly agreed. That’s not really how I parsed yesterday’s behavior from Joyce, but it reminds me of the Dobler/Dahmer theory.
Not to treat HIMYM as a worthwhile source or anything, heh, but I do think they had a point about the recipient’s feelings of an action being important on whether the exact same thing is “sweet” or “creepy”.
It’s also gonna matter whether this is the start of a pattern for Joyce, or just a one-time thing that’s also the culmination of fifteen years of Joyce+Walky interactions.
(For the record, my position is “yes Joyce was being a dick there, and that’s worth pointing out, but Walky’s also been a dick to her on this exact subject so often that cumulatively, I’m not sure this WAS actually worse instead of matching his energy”. Also, I laughed, but I respect folks for whom it wasn’t funny, and I am wincing a little on behalf of everyone who’s still annoyed about it today, because I don’t think it’s going to be treated as anything other than a Loony Tunes moment, at least not until Willis has had time to come up with a way of addressing it that they like.
But that’s just my bet, made way too early to be a sure thing. We could cut back to Walky TOMORROW.)
I think there’s a number of reasons Joyce is more concerned about Hank than Carol: she genuinely doesn’t perceive her as an immediate threat in any way because she’s an old lady living in a studio apartment (she could be off base about this), she doesn’t believe she’s imminently likely to learn about what happened whereas she knows Hank gets the digital edition of the paper, Hank’s the one paying her tuition with dentist money so he’s more capable of causing her difficulties with her education, etc. etc. etc.
She also probably cares about his reaction since she’s already written off her mom as a lost cause.
^
Also a factor!
I am VERY sure she cares more about Hank’s opinion of her than Carol’s, and I agree that Hank is probably the more “credible” threat in terms of her tuition etc, but I still expected the idea of Carol knowing to trigger flashbacks to Ross, on account of Carol calling Joyce after the shooting incident to say the exact same things to Joyce that Ross was saying to Becky.
It could be that Carol isn’t getting a mention because she’s going to actually be the one to show up, but also: again I’ll say that if it didn’t occur to Willis that Joyce might still be afraid of her mom’s judgment, absolutely fair, it’s different when you’re forcibly outed to your bigoted mom at 18-19 and when she dies before you have the chance to come out to her. Just, very different life experiences, I can see why it might not have occurred to them as a possibility.
yay we both were right!
hi5
Yeah I agree with others: I think Carol is basically already a broken relationship she doesn’t care about. Whereas her relationship with Hank is still “salvageable” in a way. And she particularly worries (though not in this moment) about managing the relationship between him and Jocelyne.
I think that’s a fair take! As I noted, my expectations re: Carol have nothing to do with Joyce loving her and everything to do with a potential PTSD trigger, since Carol called her up right after the Ross shooting incident to tell Joyce exactly the same “I would die for you” bullshit that Ross served Becky.
But also if it straight up didn’t occur to Willis, fully understandable.
Dorothy just stalling until they go and see Becky OR is she really so self involved that she thinks trying to get the bolting newspaper horses back into the stable is more urgent
i think maybe, and this is a really wild leap to make, but perhaps the two women who have navigated the past two days of their lives in a blind, fumbling panic over non-stop crisis, aren’t at their most rational, and will continue acting short-sightedly for the foreseeable future
What? How would that be “self involved”?
When you’re absolutely seething at a person, all of their actions become painted malicious in your perceptions.
I’m just assuming a fair smidge of the commenters are very upset paladins lashing out about the characters who now have obvious moral failings where none presided before.
Look at that bongo, eating crackers like she owns the place.
Precisely.
I was an editor for my college paper and I’m so impressed you knew this
Dorothy autistic icon
Is this the first time they’ve used Google instead of the legally-distinct Ruttech version, or just the first time I’ve noticed?
Dotty would not use Ruttech after learning about their selling military supplies. She’d still be “down with the boycotts” even during a bisexual awakening mental breakdown.
Or just using it as a generic term for “web searching” – my wife exclusively uses DuckDuckGo, but still refers to the process as “googling”, in much the same way as Bayer’s brand name for salicylic acid, Aspirin, became the generic name.
Leslie uses google in the first Dec 2014 bonus strip.
okay so, question, have we ever seen Dorothy’s parents and has she at all talked about what her parent’s views on this kind of relationship are? Considering her previous job choice, I gotta think that her parents were the more strict kind. You don’t get those kind of aspirations while living in a more lax household.
Regardless of her kissing a girl on the front page, she also ran out into a Protest that was actively under fire by the law enforcement, tear gas and all, where at least 1 person got shot by a live round. Even if they are the more Lax type of parent, the fact that their daughter was in such an event might make them try to pull Dorothy out of that college to put her in a “More Safe” environment.
Joyce might not be the only one at risk here.
I really don’t think the Keeners could be meaner then the other parents we’ve seen so far.
You never know.. They may only be like that because Dorothy had been a “model kid” for so long we’ve never seen them confront a situation. It also be that they are liberal in the sense that other people being LGBTQ is ok but not if it’s thier own kid. Granted that seems more of a Danny parents thing
We’ve seen them quite a few times.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/04-is-a-song-forever/ownership/
Deborah and Jeremiah
They seem very chill and liberal and supportive so the worst that might happen is that turn out to be the kind of hypocrite that’s okay with getting into trouble if it’s other people but not their own child
Dorothy’s parents are just very supportive of their very ambitious daughter. They’re inoffensive in just about every way, aside from the magical hindsight flaw of “Maybe they should have encouraged slightly more play time in between study sessions.”
From their appearance back in the freshman family weekend storyline, they seem extremely chill and supportive, including encouraging her to choose her own religion.
I suspect Dorothy thinking about Becky seeing the paper and not Joyce’s parents is in part because she knows her own parents won’t have any issue with her being queer.
We’ve seen them before during the freshman family weekend way back in this chapter, and compared to a lot of other parents they seemed pretty nice.
“at least one person got shot by a live round” – that is an assumption.
While it doesn’t explicitly specify: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/safely/ shows Dorothy was checking for reports. Her specific concern was for Amazi-Girl, but she’d likely have noticed and mentioned if those reports mentioned people getting shot at all.
Put another way, she didn’t say anything like “Amazi-Girl doesn’t seem to have been amongst the people shot”.
who got shot by a live round?
You don’t, but other people do. It’s her aspiration, not her parents’; that’s almost spelled out in an early strip.
Amazi-Girl explicitly was not shot.
I’m waiting for the punch line where the girls somehow deleted all the school newspapers only to find out that their photo was a reprint from the national news.
Lol.
I’m surprised nobody else mentioned this today. Lots of people assuming it was Daisy, nobody mentioning that the kiss in question happened in a visible cloud of tear gas.
No, no. It’s okay. By all means, continue to defer the emotional fallout of both Walky AND Joe on the back burner. After all, it’s only a webcomic. It’s not real. Willis, damn thee!
This is escalating so much faster than I expected, and I’m so here for it.
Hank right now is probably staring at the paper on his phone, eyes wide, while his entire world shifts.
Not a whole lot. Hank has already been showing, through his compassion and care for Becky, where his priorities lie. Hell, he’s probably the one who Joyce got that adaptability from, when Becky told her and she swung to accept her.
I can just imagine. Say he has tunnel vision. Say that all he sees is Joyce and Dorothy, on the photo, and so he gives a call to Joyce’s closest sibling, who he knows probably had more experience knowing LGBTQ people in college, asking how to express to his little girl that he knows, and its OK, and that he loves her for who she is and she doesn’t have to be afraid to be herself around him.
And *Jocelyne* gets to coach *Hank* on how to be an ally.
Id have a lot more sympathy for Dorothy. If she hadn’t selfishly hijacked someone else antiwar protest. After it wAs over. And deliberately macked her gf making herself the public face of it. ( Like EVERYTHING whatserface said)
I think she should take her lumps and not practice censorship. She already made the decision to be person who was publicly arrested. Yet she wasn’t.
She wasn’t masked. And if she has one I bet she would have ripped it off. Dorothy the paper didn’t out you. You did. Over and over again.
I just don’t think this justifies the harm of depriving the students of university comics. Joyce worked hard for it.
( Been outed in the newspaper in far worse ways while actually being tortured by cops. So I’ve earned a right to an opinion.
No one come at me unless you’ve been there too
Dorothy does know an awful lot about this – and so do we, now. Bless you, Willis, this IS informative.
Also, unrelated: Joyce, if your mum gets all ‘conversion camp’ you’re allowed to lie and pretend this was all an orchestrated stunt. Sure it’s not satisfying vs gloating “yeah mum all your kids are queer except the one who’s a thieving pharisee” but safety first.
I don’t have a lot of religious knowledge, but looking the word up tells me the Pharisees were a prominent Jewish group. Is it weird to call someone a “thieving Pharisee”, and it it also distinct from calling them a “thieving Jew”? I only ask because I don’t have the context, which makes it seem like an odd pejorative to use for (I assume) John, the fundamentalist Christian missionary.
I think it’s a reference to the Pharisees in the New Testament, who were depicted as valuing their worldly concerns over being open to God’s Message (and so being recurring enemies to Jesus — though Nicodemus the Pharisee was noted as being a “defender of Jesus”).
Essentially, where you said “prominent Jewish group”, the “prominent group” part is more relevant, with the “Jewish” part being context.
That said, according to Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees#Relations_with_Christianity — “Because of the New Testament’s frequent depictions of Pharisees as self-righteous rule-followers (see also Woes of the Pharisees and Legalism), the word “pharisee” (and its derivatives: “pharisaical”, etc.) has come into semi-common usage in English to describe a hypocritical and arrogant person who places the letter of the law above its spirit.[64] Jews today typically find this insulting and some consider the use of the word to be anti-Semitic.[65]”
[64] links to https://www.thefreedictionary.com/pharisee and [65] is attributed to “Michael Cook 2008 Modern Jews Engage the New Testament 279″
Oh, I should add: I’m going by half-remembered Christianity and the bit of Wikipedia I read before typing that. Please don’t take it as gospel (not sorry for the pun).
I’m thinking in a New Testament context “Pharisee” is pretty much a synonym for “hypocritical power-hungry priest,” and I’m thinking the fact they’re Jewish is irrelevant to the point here. It could just as easily have been a comparison to the corrupt church practices of the 1500s that the Protestant reformation was reacting to.
The fact that they’re Jewish is extremely relevant lol the Pharisees as portrayed in the gospels are explicitly an antisemitic canard
You’ve got it backwards: that portrayal is where a bunch of antisemitic canards come from.
Please do continue to lecture the Jew about antisemitism, by all means
So it’s not antisemitic if it’s in the christian bible?
Gotta agree with Dot here.
Not really though, since the non Pharisees were also Jewish? Good, bad and ugly. The only prominent, non Jewish characters I can think of off the top of my head were the Romans, and they were not exactly portrayed as better
The Romans were absolutely portrayed as better, and this was in fact a political aim of the Gospels
They really aren’t, though, or at least the portrayal is different. Most of the Gospels portray the Jewish elite/decisionmakers as bloodthirsty, hypocritical, and frankly worried about Jesus’ influence to the point that they’re willing to fabricate a list of crimes in order to kill him. And don’t forget that the gospels portray the Jewish populace as easily swayed by those leaders, from welcoming Jesus to Jerusalem to being convinced to vociferously support his execution a bare week later.
Meanwhile, the Roman authorities (Pilate in particular) are primarily portrayed as disinterested and deferential to the wishes of the population and Jewish leadership, which is frankly ahistorical to the point of comedy.
It’s probably not a coincidence that this was almost certainly written in about 66-75 AD — about the same time as the Jewish rebellion against the Roman occupation getting decisively crushed in 70AD.
And unfortunately, even if the original literary intent for SOME of the gospels may have been “Hey, uh, Romans, we aren’t like those OTHER guys whose ass you had to comprehensively kick” (debatable!), the practical outcome is that it comes across as very antisemitic.
(ex-Catholic married to a Jew here)
Pharisees were one of many socioeconomic political castes, but are the ones most prominent in the gospels because they’re the ones who claim to be the most holy, spiritually and morally correct, who dictate the rules that others should follow. The gospels are literally full of the Pharisees being absolute hypocrites as they hold the Jewish people to an insane standard that actually contradicts what the scriptures actually say.
An example. God said, one day a week, that’s the Sabbath, that’s your day off, just stay home and enjoy yourself you rascally humans, you deserve it. Pharisees step in and are like, OK, God *commanded* that, so it’s sinful to do work on the sabbath, now let’s figure out what “work” is, how many steps can someone take a day before its “work,” is it “work” to make food or to have guests or to speak in a loud voice… etc.
Basically, when you look at modern “Christians” who are all about calling out other people’s faults, acting holier-than-thou, pointing out a ton of “sins” as they say that they’ll pray for you, all while listening to some podcast that tells them that when God says “love” what he really means is be an asshole to nonChristians because how else will they be saved, that’s a modern Pharisee. That sort of person would shout for Jesus to be crucified as some sort of woke hippie socialist.
“Thieving Pharisee” really doesn’t make a lot of sense, as the Pharisee’s defining quality was that they pretended to be good, pure followers of God, and “Thou Shalt Not Steal” is clear as day. Unless what is happening is that someone is using the letter of the law to deprive people of what is theirs. Then I could see it.
Thing is, what you describe in those first two paragraphs is basically the Christian take on the Jewish Law. Not just some ancient no longer relevant group of hypocrites, but the Law that Jews followed for centuries afterwards even down to today. Rabbinical Judaism developed out Pharasaic schools of thought after the destruction of Jerusalem.
Jews today (or from what we can tell, back in Jesus’s time either) don’t see the Law as “an insane standard that actually contradicts what the scriptures actually say”.
You are right here and now echoing centuries of Christian antisemitism. I don’t think you mean to, but you are.
^
What I describe in those first two paragraphs IS the Christian take on the Jewish law. 100% absolutely, and 100% intended.
Taffy is asking about someone using the term “Pharisee” as a derogatory term, something which is only used by Christians, and asking of its meaning in that context. If I am not responding from the Christian perspective on what the term means here, I am not responding to what is being asked.
And by that measure of COURSE this is going to contradict how Jewish people today, and the non-Christian Jews saw the expression and execution of the law. Because Christianity has come from Judaism, and doesn’t see modern Judaism as being “different but equal,” but rather a faith that has fallen away and denied God. Just as Muslims believe that they have the true message from God, and that Judaism and Christianity are religions that have fallen away.
This isn’t antisemitism, or at least, not how people today use the word “antisemitism.” It would be antisemitism if I said that this is how they WERE and it was unquestionably the truth. The first sentence I said, “the ones who claim to be the most holy, spiritually and morally correct,” that IS true, and you halfway confirm that yourself by pointing out that they have ultimately directed the development of Judaic customs. What I said after that was also true, in that the GOSPELS describe them as being hypocrites and not understanding the true nature of the Law.
I then provided an example for how the modern Christian understands a Pharisee. I could’ve provided a scriptural one – Matthew 12:1, Jesus and disciples eat some grain they pick while walking on the Sabbath, and they are criticized because the act of picking the grain is considered work – but I chose something that was a bit more approachable. Again, I’m not saying that this is how they was, but what modern Chrisitan understanding of them is, and what the gospel writers’ intent was in depicting them. It is the Pharisees who are the “villains” of the Gospel stories.
If that is antisemitic, than Christianity itself is antisemitic, as is Islam. But then that also means that Judaism and Islam are equally prejudiced against Christianity, and Judaism and Christianity are prejudiced against Islam. Not in what their followers do, but simply the fact that each of these are founded on the idea that their interpretation and expression of their faith is correct and that the others are incorrect.
If I was purporting this to be unquestionably true, 100%, or advocating for the Christian version to be correct, then yes, absolutely. But I’m simply pointing to other sources, and saying that these interpretations have created this specific understanding to the modern Christian of what a “Pharisee” is, and isn’t it so funny, that’s literally what 90% of loud, vocal Christians act like.
And I just want to add – this information is so important because when someone today calls someone a Pharisee, they’re calling them that not because they know the law exceedingly well or are such strong religious leaders, but because they’re being an overly-legalistic hypocrite and missing the forest for the trees.
The fact that modern Judaism and Judaic tradition has evolved from those Roman-era interpretations of the Law (read: not the actual law itself, but the interpretation of it) is an interesting piece of trivia, but not related at all in the conversation because it’s more than likely that the person Taffy is talking about doesn’t even know about that.
If you’re saying that using the word “Pharisee” itself as an insult to another person is antisemitic, I 100% agree with you.
This feels like it’s all over the place and I really can’t tell where you’re going with it. You seem to be simultaneously explaining why using “Pharisee” is antisemitic, arguing that it isn’t, then saying at the end that it is.
That final line, you 100% agree that when you use “Pharisee” to describe such modern “Christians”, you’re being antisemitic? Or is it only some other use of Pharisee as an insult?
As for pointing out that rabbinical Judaism evolved from the Pharisees, the point of that was not that the person using the term knew that and was using it deliberately because of that, but that while many Christians think of Pharisees just an ancient group with no modern relevance, that’s not actually true.
The pharisees were proto-rabbinical. house of Hillel, house of Shammai sort of thing. They debated, they didn’t all have the same opinions as each other. A historical Jesus would have been associated with them, a lot of the ideas Christians attribute to him are in line with the house of Hillel.
It’s how they’re potrayed in some of the gospels, and in Christianity as a whole, that makes them villains. But like, when some pharisees warn Jesus the cops are looking for him, that’s not a threat. That’s a genuine warning, they’re worried about his well-being. But Christianity portrays it as something devious.
Using Pharisee as meaning hypocritical bastard who doesn’t actually follow the word of God.
For context just remember basically everyone who interacted with Jesus, including Jesus himself, was Jewish, Christianity only starts after his death
So yeah, apologies if it read somehow as an antisemitic insult but it would definitely wasn’t in my mind.
And thieving because of the sports car vignette
“Everyone Jesus interacted with was Jewish” doesn’t really cut it when the Gospels were not written by Jews and communicate a fundamentally antisemitic narrative.
Do they? I mean I’ve heard it said that some people say “booh the Jews killed Jesus” but I never actually heard anyone saying that .
I can see how it could be used that way though. I’m not sure that it’s fundamentally is anti-semitic per se, I am however 100% convinced it can be and has been use that way, but then people will weaponise anything.
Are there other anti Jewish “arguments”? Forgive my asking you, you seem to know more about the topic.
The Gospels were written in the wake of the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule, and they take great pains to absolve the Romans of any responsibility in the death of Jesus while shifting all the blame onto the Jewish authorities and citizens of Jerusalem (“his blood be on us and our children”). They portray jewish leaders and teachers as self-interested charlatans who need to be put down and refuted by Jesus, who conspire and scheme to maintain their own power. It’s an antisemitic narrative, which is why Christian antisemitism was such an enduring force for centuries (and continues to linger). Lots of justification for it in the narrative of the Gospels. In this very strip we see examples of Christian antisemitism, such as when Joyce and co. went to church and the sermon was about how the Jews “failed to” identify Jesus as the Messiah.
on;y comment i will make is that the book was basically rewritten (greek to latin) somewhere around 2-300ad to make sure the roman were not depicted worse and to remove any gospel written from a nonpatriarcial veiwpoint. then rewritten for the kingjames edition. and even that edition was written before oliver cromwell ALLOWED JEWISH PEOPLE BACK onto the british lands. I will never blame anyone who is of a non-western eyropean culture feeling that the book has inherent racism through out it.
I have a great distaste for all the ”Abrahamic” religions.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all look like watered down and simplified Zoroastrianism from the viewpoint of Comparative Religion.
I find Zoroastrianism to be mythologically much richer and more nuanced than any of the monotheistic pyramid scructure variants that took the world by storm.
Religion is IMO pretty nasty, but monotheism feels especially toxic. Their model is super convenient for reinforcing top-down social structures, keeping women in their place, and justifying the divine right of kings and emperors.
Apologies to and and all religious people who are offended by this. This is my truth as somebody who is an avid student of religion and mythology. I wish nobody took them seriously in the present day, and we could just all marvel together at the things that used to go on in our shared past.
Really not the time or place to be saying this, tbh. Non-sequitur in this context.
That’s a shitty thing to say when people are having a pleasant discussion about their religions’ interconnectedness. “I think your religions suck and nobody should be involved with them.” Well, who are you, though?
Yeah? Have you actually read the Torah? Or did you just read the Old Testament and assume it was the same thing? Because… lol.
P.S.: no one actually familiar with all three religions thinks they’re similar enough to be called “Abrahamic”.
Also, sorry Dot for engaging at all. But Adeptus, your description of “monotheistic religions” is extremely Christian. Your comparative religions class was awful if it left you with the impression that “super convenient for reinforcing top-down social structures, keeping women in their place, and justifying the divine right of kings and emperors” in any way describes Judaism. Judaism doesn’t even support the “divine right” of the actually divine.
Check out that parable where three rabbis are having an argument and one of them asks God to say which of them are right, and God says “yeah, it’s you,” and the other rabbi says, “hey you gave US this book to decipher, it’s up to US what’s right, not you,” and God says, “oh dang you’re right” and goes away.
I come at this from the PoV of comparative religion.
This comic deals with awakening from religious indoctrination. IMO that goes for all of them, rather than just ”This flavour of American Christianity is bad”.
I’m not going to apologise further. I did say I’m sorry if this offends, but this is my take as somebody who is very interested in mythology.
I have the mast exposure to (Lutherian) Christianity here in the Nordics, as well as (both cultural/secular as well as religious) Judaism. I have also lived in the Middle East for a few years, and consider Islam fully a branch of the other two, which I know gets some people’s fur up.
I’m quite sad that this is such a hot issue still, and the offence people take. I wish it could be discussed calmly and in good faith (as the saying goes), without immediately painting me as the enemy and some kind of a bigot.
Nailing yourself to that cross is sending mixed messages.
Well-put, Taffy.
Anyway: just gonna reiterate that if you haven’t even read the Torah (and you obviously haven’t), you should stop pretending to know anything about Judaism.
It’s okay not to know things. It’s okay to just talk about the shortcomings of Christianity if that’s all you have meaningful experience with. You’ll find that you “”””offend”””” (read: amuse and exasperate) fewer people that way.
I mean Jewish belief extends beyond the Torah as well. There’s the Nevi’im, the Ketuvim, the Talmud, the Zohar if you want to get sexy… if all you know of Jewish belief and custom is Christian interpretations of their Old Testament, you’re going to end up with a very Christian lens of what Jews believe. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.
Oh for sure.
But pardon me for being positive they haven’t even read a translation of one part of it, let alone the original language, let alone the rest of the texts…
@Li: Honestly, I’d argue that reading the Torah is a spectacularly bad way of learning about Judaism. Much like reading the Bible is a bad way to learn about Christianity. Both religions are living religions with traditions and theologies and beliefs that are drawn from the foundational texts, but are not inherently present in those texts.
This is especially problematic for Christians (or those raised in a Christian context) reading the Torah to understand Judaism, because we’ve been steeped in a Christian perspective on those texts. The texts themselves, at least in a good scholarly edition, are going to be nearly identical between Jewish and Christian versions, but the interpretation won’t be.
At least suggest the Talmud. 🙂
, but maybe worse because it’s very easy to read the 5 books of Moses from a
Ignore that last line. An editing change that I forgot to delete. Scribal error.
I was genuinely not suggesting they start there! I was suggesting they haven’t even done the most obvious “try actually taking Judaism in its original context instead of through a Christian lens” step.
Like absolutely good points all around! I would not claim to know a ton about Judaism, I’ve literally just… listened to my friends and people I follow on social media.
But I promise I didn’t mean that as a one-step solution to understanding Judaism! 🙂
“Only people who have red the Torah know anything about Judaism” is a statement I don’t think I’ll even try to unpack. That’s quite a statement for sure.
I’ll just say that it sounds like a technique to shut down discussion. There is a whole lot more to religions and cultures than reading through their sacred texts. I’ll leave this now, as this seems worse than pointless.
@Adeptus As an atheist, congrats! You are acting like the most douchy stereotype of one possible, you are not being “offensive” you are just being an asshole, and people are rightfully mocking you for it.
Cool, so you definitely haven’t read it, much less any of their other texts. But you still feel like you can speak not only authoritatively but condescendingly about that religion. Interesting.
I categorically do not subscribe to a notion that one has to read a religion’s sacred texts to say anything about it. It feels like comparative religion is an uknown scientific discipline to many here. Maybe don’t condemn a science if you don’t know how it functions and what it is about.
Religions can be treated as sociological phenomena, and the big monotheistic religions have a ton in common. Picking one of them as a special snowflake that requires special care before one is allowed to talk about it is just weird.
You guys are quick to call me an arsehole, but this has been an extremely hostile response. I’m once again reminded that speaking with Americans about religion is practically impossible. Everybody is so sensitive and defensive.
Actually, sod this.
Everybody in this thread is so hostile, and feel free to resort to ad hominem attacks that this is worse than pointless.
I did not attack anybody’s person, nor talk crap about them, but Taffy immediately miscaracterised what I said, and Li went for a personal attack.
I’m done. You guys are behaving very badly, and no doubt will never have even a moment of doubt that you’d have been anything but paragons of virtue in this.
Thanks for your replies, to this comment and others. I’ll dig a bit more into that when I have time.
For context into my personal, admittedly myopic view, I grew up in a Catholic family, and both in religious instruction and at home, the issue of Jewishness never really surfaced when we were younger. It was always framed as “people”, “tribes”, “clans” etc.
Only when we grew older was it discussed that we were talking about Jewish people, and even then we were taught “some imbeciles use that to justify antisemitism. Don’t be an imbecile. These stories are metaphors for how people, all people, everywhere, treat one another, they’re being Jewish is incidental because that’s what people were back then in that region”.
Clearly other Christian groups have been taught otherwise. I’ll be sure to avoid using Pharisee from now on.
Apologies for the faux pas! I was imagining what the dialogue would go like in a family that sees itself as good Christians. (I almost wrote “in good faith”, then I though “wait, is this going to be an inadvertent insult too”, jeez that’s full of traps, no wait I probably shouldn’t be saying jeez either)
The Catholic Church only took a firm stance in opposition to antisemitism in 1965.
Ah, yes, the Vatican. It might sound strange if you’re not familiar with “my kind of Catholic” but anticlerical Catholics who don’t feel held to the Pope’s views abound.
There are plenty of “Catholics” by tradition who are culturally, not religiously Catholic. Official doctrine is one thing, the beliefs of people who think of themselves as Catholics are very varied and our ranks include atheists and Protestants.
In fact I used to think “man US Christians are crazy” until two years ago when I interacted up close with Catholics-by-doctrine for the first time, so now I’ve amended my views to “man doctrinal people are crazy”
But official church doctrine is very different from everyday views, and in the Catholic Church only gets updated notoriously late after everyone already moved except for a few hundred people with funny hats. So… not incompatible
If you knew it was official church doctrine, why did you characterize it as “some imbeciles”? As if no one should pay any attention to or be concerned about it?
I didn’t know, that’s kind of my point. I wasn’t talking about doctrine or theory but explaining my lived experience of small town Catholicism in France circa 1990. It’s how it was to me, Catholicism was very freestyle
You don’t think some of your lived experience of 1990 Catholicism regarding antisemitism might have been a deliberate whitewashing of a horrific history of centuries of antisemitism?
Oh yes, absolutely, the fact that we weren’t taught about the historical context is a problem (that honestly is to be expected, I have yet to see any religious instruction that begins with “first we’re going to talk about all the reasons everything we’ll say after is at best vaguely true for wrong reasons but most probably very wrong”)
However, while I already agreed that ok, there’s antisemitism here and it wasn’t clear to me, I still also think that there’s groups of Christians who do not *want to be/act* antisemitic and do what they can to course correct and keep some of their heritage, and among these people were the nice ladies who told us about “do unto others” and “don’t adore money” and organized food drives.
And before someone jumps at me about this: yes, not acknowledging the antisemitism is anti-semitic. I’m hardly arguing you can’t be inadvertently antisemitic, since my doing it a few comments earlier is what started this discussion in the first place.
I’ll still argue that flawed as it may have been, there were already plenty of people who did their best with limited intellectual tools (the discourse wasn’t really there back then I think), and within the constraints of their reality (women being here to serve the Church). So it resulted in them picking the parts they could work with to discuss morality with little kids. So yes, good intentions, bad results and definitely whitewashing, you’ll not get an argument from me here
Dude. Vatican II is when Catholicism officially stopped holding all Jewish people alive TODAY as categorically responsible for the death of Jesus.
It was very much not just “some” Catholics specifically who believed that, it was official church doctrine for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
That was horrific for sure. The ancient curse of antisemitism is as bewildering as it is stupid. It also makes it almost impossible to talk about Israel and Palestine online. 🙁
Bringing up a point of fact, Jesus interacted with Samaritans and/or “Syrophoenicians” (polytheists) too. Mostly bringing it up because the “That Mitchell and Webb Look” sketch about the Good Samaritan is pretty funny and some of you might find it funny too.
There’s a flowchart from a new book (unfortunately, the only online reference I can find currently is in a TikTok video, as the author appears to have, quite sensibly, deleted his Xitter account) on whether it’s appropriate to call someone a “Pharisee”. Essentially, that only works if a) the person lived in or before the first century CE; b) the person was a member of the Pharisees; and c) you’re not trying to use the name as an insult. Otherwise, no, calling them a “Pharisee” is not appropriate, and is likely to be in fact antisemitic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeXZrioaCH4
Dorothy is using both hands to hold the newspapers and Googling at the same time? That’s … impressive
She’s typing it with her tongue.
That’s something to look forward to for Joyce, then.
Thanks, I now have soda up my sinuses-
and i coffee in my lap!
I said it on Patreon and I’ll say it here: a SMARTPHONE SCREEN?? GIRL NO
Like the dexterity certainly bodes Good Times for Joyce but like if that tongue has been on a smartphone you are gonna have to Listerine that bongo
To bad Amber’s out of commission right now, maybe they could have talked her into hacking the site.
My heart dropped when I saw the title in my RSS feed. Thankfully we still have a bit more time until we must Confront Becky.
More impressive than “Googling while walking” is “Googling while carrying a massive stack of newspapers with both hands.”
I used to do basically this professionally, it’s pretty easy to go from having the bundle in both arms to swinging one hand out so you can use your phone one-handed.
Much easier than the other main maneuver for that situation which is taking one off the top and delivering it safely.
never did that with papers, but a doube stack of 25 vhs tapes held in both arms as you restock the return to the shelve in the video rental store is very much the same
So that was all we got from Walky in this storyline huh? Why did he and Dorothy get back together? Was it just to give Lucy an unearned speech moment?
I am 100% certain we will see Walky interact with Dorothy and Joyce again in the not-too-distant future.
Probably partly because this wasn’t originally going to happen so quickly, so there would have been more time to deal with Dorothy and Walky.
But also it showed Dorothy trying to pretend she wasn’t into Joyce and it gave Dorothy a stake in the “cheating” directly. Minimized though that is being.
Dorothy summoned him for a booty call specifically because she was trying to reaffirm her position as a supposedly straight woman.
How would you know that’s all we got from him this storyline? Do you have future vision or something?
i mean it’d be a little inconvenient versus digital but i don’t think i’d care enough to pay for a copy versus like being that disappointed if no copies left
I’m sure the realization that the situation is beyond their control won’t trigger Dorothy’s control issues and kidnapping PTSD at all!
Everything is fine, nothing is the matter.
Honestly, I’m surprised that anyone is giving Daisy so much credit or benefit of the doubt. Daisy’s not evil or anything, but just perusing her old appearances displays how…ethically casual she is? And horny for hot girls and hot girl action. She mentions hot girls, or hot girl action, in a near majority of her strips. She had to loudly remind Jennifer/Billee that she wasn’t TECHNICALLY her boss after kissing her, and her biggest gripe about being promoted is having to stop lusting after subordinates. And for all she talks about hard facts and “no gossip,” she pedals in speculation and gossip constantly if there’s the chance a hot girl’s involved. To the point that she can’t even pretend to remember that Nightguy is a guy, because she so hopes it’s Nightgirl. She’s also doesn’t seem to be that great at going for hard hitting stories, either, but maybe that’s just how it’s panned out with Dorothy and Jennifer’s Amazigirl saga. She did want to splash the sex tape scandal all of the paper, which is…both ethically dicey since it involved students, and involved her asking if Roz was into girls because, again: hot girl.
Two girls making out at a student protest? Catnip to her. Two hot girls making out at a student protest that Amazigirl was seen at? Irresistible. The protest itself? Sure, gotta be important, such a dramatic event, but make sure to show the hot lady action. I don’t think it was MALICIOUS, but that was always the angle Daisy was going to seize if she could. Even if it’s shitty for a number of reasons.
Daisy’s kind of a scummo, yeah.
A few links to support your point (was going to limit it to two, to prevent automoderation, but decided to be a little more comprehensive):
Generally horny: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/running/
Kiss: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/likethis/ (“never technically hired you” is in the following strip)
Not a gossip rag: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/supervisor/ (and then suggests a story about a “really hot girl with an awesome motorcycle”)
Early mention of the “campus vigilante”: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/legitimate/ — note how dismissive she is, until the following strip, where Daisy suddenly becomes interested upon hearing the vigilante’s female; the strip immediately after shows Daisy asking if her costume has a chest window.
Nightgirl: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/newcape/ (and go back one strip to see Daisy’s J. Jonah Jameson impersonation)
The sex tape scandal and “see if she’s into girls”: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/news-2/
Bonus: “Man, nobody ever wants to bribe me with sexual favors”: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/03-the-first-step-towards-recovery/favors/
I still say that Dorothy could have avoided this public outing on the front page if she’d just designed a chest window into Amazi-Girl’s new outfit.
It’s really her fault, you see.
I think Daisy’s line of thinking is that
1. It’s a public display so she consider it is fair to assume they have already outed themselves
2. Neither of their faces are showing, so technically, their anonymity is preserved.
I think Daisy come from a place where her family and close friends were always accepting and only had to deal with bigotry from outsiders. So it’s less obvious for her to consider that pictures where only close relatives and friends could recognise you can in itself still be a problem.
It’s still bad ethics to not let ONE OF YOUR REPORTERS know that they’re about to become a news story.
Perfectly possible on all points. Like I said, I don’t think Daisy did it maliciously, super villain style. It’s still a shitty thing to do, for a variety of reasons. Making it the headline of the protest, not great. Potentially–in this case very actually– outing two students to a wider audience, not great. Yes, it was public, but “happened in a public space” and “was specifically publicized to the student body” are different things. Given Daisy’s horniness to the point of distraction, her motives for this do not feel great. She objectifies hot women constantly, and has shown multiple times that she’ll put her titillation over actual objective news: if Dorothy couldn’t get Roz to talk as the sister of a political candidate at least Roz has good sex moves and can be the sex columnist; go interview the hot girl on the motorcycle instead of write an article on abusive RAs; Nightguy? nah, Nightgirl!; the vigilante superhero is a pointless story, unless they’re a hot woman with a boob window, then it’s super important. Comedic, perhaps. But really, really suspect and uncomfortable in a situation like this. One, because just because she grew up in a safe[r] environment doesn’t mean everyone did. Two, because I don’t believe, as of right now, that she put any thought into that at all beyond “hot girls making out, put that front page [and ask if they have any single friends]!!!!”
As a lesbian myself I have long had a problem with how Daisy is portrayed. It veers way too close to like, actual harmful lesbian stereotypes for my taste.
Yeah, agreed. Daisy is kind of a gross caricature. It’s bugged me, too.
Daisy is a gross caricature sounds about right. A charitable read might be that she is a gender bender version of a scummy tabloid hound dog.
It, perhaps weirdly, originally felt to me (as a cis dude) like she was back-in-the-day intended to feel like a counterpart to Old Joe, but she hasn’t had a growth arc yet.
(replying to myself because I immediately had a clarifying thought) … and in particular, the FEEL of the storylines has changed since then quite a bit, but Daisy really hasn’t changed at all and now feels out of place in these more fraught times.
I think even back then doing that kind of character with a lesbian instead of a straight guy brought along some unfortuante implications, especially since this was whole-cloth new characterization for her which wasn’t present in the Walkyverse.
Yeah, not arguing with that.
I think it would be a far bigger issue if she was the only lesbian character in the story.
As it is, this no longer appears as a specific to lesbians in general (as no other lesbian in this webcomic behave remotely close to this), but specific to her character.
At least, that’s how it naturally comes out to me. But I am straight (and a guy) and only speak for myself, so I can’t say how it come out for anyone else.
There being a handful of lesbians doesn’t make Daisy any less of a harmful stereotype. If i had a cast full of complicated and nuanced Jewish characters and also Shylock Goldstein who’s obsessed with money, that’d still be antisemitic, wouldn’t it?
Thing is, people who are almost solely obsessed with money actually exist.
When most jewishes charcters in a story don’t behave like this except for one, I do’nt think “Jewish stereotype” I think “yeah, we all know a dude who act like that”.
But I’ll wholly admit not everyone will think like I do.
Things about behavioral stereotypes is that almost all of them are actually evenly commons throughout the population, but have been arbitrary assigned to a group or an other when, in reality, it is not otherwise more prevalent than anywhere else. And this make white people (and furthermore white guys) “immune” to presenting such behavior without damning all white people. “It’s just him”.
And I don’t know how to make so generic behavior are no longer assigned to a whole minority group the moment one of them display it, but it inevitably limit how you can write non-white character in a way you are not limited for white characters.
But for me, showcasing that other people of that group does not feature such behavior is precisely how you no longer make it a stereotype, but just an behavior you can encounter everywhere.
No idea if what I am saying is clear or even make sense.
Best way to illustrate my point is Vladek, from Maus, by Art Spiegelman, with the obvious caveat, that it was the depiction of a real person and not a fictional character Spiegelman chose to depict this way.
There is even a point in the comic where Spiegelman express his struggle to depict honestly his father while fearing it will result in his reader just seeing him as a bad Jewish caricature.
This is an issue you don’t encounter when you have to write a white character.
“Making it the headline of the protest, not great.”
Kind of a cynical view, there, but I think it went with the optic of “what will draw the largest amount of people to pick up the newspaper and hopefully read it”.
To inform, you have to first hook up the reader and she went firs the firstpage that would hook up the most. then she can carry her mission of informing the reader of the actually important issues.
I am not arguing that it is justified, simply describing how someone with an editorial position might come to make that kind of decisions.
God, look at Dorothy’s doinkers
Have those things ever been more doinked?? I don’t believe they have. Not for a minute
If you tell me what you mean by “doinkers”, I can attempt to research an answer to your question. Though it’ll probably still be “no”.
Wrapped in a blanket, quirky, or idiot. Eyebrows? They are quirking. No blankets, some idiotic behaviour. Most idiotic? Most quirky?? Most blanketed???
Doinkers is the official term for Dotty’s goofy little hair curl things that look kinda like horns or like wing-ears
Well, they were pretty doinked back in https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/thetruth/ but you’re probably a better judge of doinkage than I am.
…But you present a compelling case! Joyce-spooning hair DID create truly beautiful donkey!
i agree! https://www.tumblr.com/queenofsodor/793136351294963712/todays-strip-is-very-very-good-dorothys-anxious?source=share
LOOK UPON THEM, YE PEOPLE
LOOK AT THE DOINKERS GO
LOOK UPON HER DOINKERS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!
I love the animation, Queen, I love it a lot. It’s so good. ❤️
Uh, if she’s carrying all those papers with both hands, how is she using her phone to google?
It’s sitting on top of the stack and she is using her nose and voice input XD
…Dorothy, Joe and assumedly a lot of other people already got their copie of it.
Why do people ship these two? This is a terrible couple.
You may have answered your own question there.
I mean, my OTP in this strip is Billie/Ruth because for however dysfunctional and toxic they could be, they were interesting to watch and I still feel invested in the possibility that they could make something healthy work between them.
Joyce and Dorothy are just boring to watch.
I’m with Dot. This is what I meant.
Joyce and Dorothy are an unpleasant couple who reinforce the worst aspects of each other. They aren’t fun or interesting.
Honestly, I’ve been feeling that bit about them reinforcing the worst aspects of each other for a while. They are both enabling the other to be an awful person, but we’re supposed to ignore it because ‘cute’?
Like, it’s not even about homophobia or whatever else people want to dismiss it as. Becky and Dina are adorable while being incredibly honest and healthy. When one of them has a hang up, they talk about it openly and work through it.
Dorothy and Joyce are, to quote Glossaryck, “Like a runaway dump truck: Hot, fast and full of garbage.”
I would bet them bringing out the worst* in each other is intentional, since Dorothy mentioned it. But it’s not working for me either. I care very little now about Joyce, and Dorothy already had her self-inflicted shit she was going through.
*but not the worst, because the people who are justified in being upset are somehow responsible for it.
The thing that gets me about Jennifer and Ruth is that for all the things about them that were terrible…
Ruth *got better* because of that relationship. That relationship was *insanely* positive for her, and it only went sour because Jennifer refused to grow. If Jennifer could get the fuck over herself and learn to grow then Ruth/Jennifer would honestly be amazing.
Excatlyyyy and Billie is finally in a place where she CAN get the fuck over herself and actually improve… Ruth/Billie stocks WILL be rising soon, watch this space
That’s not really true though. Jennifer got better as well. She stopped drinking, got some therapy. They were in a good place, when Ruth torpedoed it at Halloween. In fact, Ruth said it was because they were in a good place that she dared kill it.
Both of them regressed afterwards, but only Ruth went back to drinking.
Some people don’t find them boring! Hope that helps.
It’s a good reminder Li. Of course me not liking it doesn’t mean it can’t be great for others. I’m glad it works for you.
You are ofc welcome to talk about how much they DO bore you, and I hope that no one’s too big of a jerk in response to folks just making threads to vent together about mutually agreed-upon frustrations with the comic.
But you asked why people ship them, and that’s the answer. I found this strip extremely cute and I’ve always really liked their dynamic. One person’s wheat is another person’s chaf.
Absolutely. Thanks for sharing.
I really hope Daisy’s gets reamed for this, not just by Dorothy and Joyce. There are probably other writers for the paper, besides Jennifer, some who may have a serious article about the protests and for their stories to get tossed to the side or second page for this?
I’m also banking on many readers who wanted to read about the protests. They might complain.
Then there are those who were at the protest who whole relieved they were not on camera find out and get annoyed that what the protests were about. The important issues they wanted people to become ware of is pushed to the side like that? Ugh. This has got to hurt for Asma.
She’s going to walk past another stack with a picture of her stealing the current stack: “PROTEST PARAMOUR PILFERS PAPERS”. The subtitle will be “We know she’s super gay, but HOW super gay?”
She is Nixoning it, trying to shut down the scandal XD
I am not a Leslie Bean
Heh. You got Daisy’s (as J. Jonah Jameson’s) alliteration down pat.
So Dorothy has nothing to say about Joyce being cruel to Walky? Dumping him for her without being asked? Intruding on a private and sensitive moment?
Ok. Cool. Great couple.
Yeah that also annoys be and Dotty might have been about to say something but got distracted by the paper.
I’m annoyed but on the small scale, but I’m more annoyed at Daisy’s right now.
Could have easily had a strip between the last one and this one where Dorothy chides Joyce only to be distracted by Joyce showing her the newspaper. Dorothy red panel Joyce face as a punchline. As it stands Dorothy just apparently has nothing to say and we’re apparently not supposed to read Joyce’s actions last strip as at all objectionable.
genuinely how would that read? we just did a gag strip, now you want one character to harangue the other for the joke? when do you see this in a webcomic? come on. this isn’t. tv show, it’s a comic.
What I want is for Dorothy’s breakup with Walky to be given then time and consideration that it deserves. I’m willing to suspend disbelief for a punchline sometimes, but when the entire strip is punchline, I do kind of have to take the strip on its own and I am perfectly entitled to expect there be some kind of acknowledgement, at the very least, that Joyce did something Dorothy might have an issue with. I don’t need the point to be belabored necessarily, but a single strip where Dorothy is shown giving a shit would go a long way towards not making this entire affair completely agonizing to watch play out.
“It’s a comic” is not really an explanation/excuse for what some folks are perceiving as whiplash tone shifts, any more than, say, someone could justify dropping an anvil on Gendo in the middle of Evangelion by saying “it’s just animation.”
This. ”it’s a comic” is not a get out of jail free card.
Not only that it devalues the amazing stories that have heen told IN THIS “comic”
Yeah its almost a thought-terminating statement, the way some people try to use it
It’s the only thing on her to-do list that they’ve accomplished.
My bet is on either “she didn’t process what happened as cruel to him” or “incredibly distracted by the newspaper”. The former is probably more likely, because as you note it wouldn’t have been that hard to have an extra strip between this and yesterday’s.
If that’s the case then it reflects pretty poorly on Dorothy since it was pretty straightforwardly cruel to Walky, haha. And not fair to Dorothy to swoop in and dump him for her! Lots Dorothy should really be objecting to before we get here.
I getcha. I just think the answer is likely to be “Dorothy didn’t take it seriously, as Willis didn’t intend the readership to take it seriously”, which is a frustrating position to be in when you did, in fact, take it seriously, and is likely to lead to a slew of strips where people are, by that read, continuing to be callous about it.
I am still hoping that wasn’t Walky’s real reaction, but I’ll personally be surprised if anyone points out it was an asshole move on Joyce’s part — for a while, at least?
I’d phrase it as “Dorothy didn’t take it as any different that the usual bickering between Joyce and Walky, in which Walky gives her shit as often as she gives him shit if not more so.”
I mean, I don’t disagree with that take generally, but I wasn’t trying to start an argument. My point is that I think Dorothy is likely not reacting to it not because she’s being intentionally written as callous, but because she didn’t experience it as Joyce being cruel to Walky.
And I absolutely sympathize with folks who read yesterday’s strip differently. For them, this strip is compounding yesterday’s error; yesterday, it was Joyce being cruel to Walky, and today it’s Dorothy being fine with Joyce’s cruelty. If I’m right, the compounding is going to continue for a while before it gets better, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Willis, reading the specifics of the criticism, decides to have someone call these two on it later.
Because we still have the plausible deniability of them being high on NRE. Dorothy being too busy feeling delighted by Joyce’s possessiveness to have processed the splash damage, for example? Joyce being so full of adrenaline that she, too, didn’t really realize she’d crossed a line.
So Willis could do that if they wanted to, and they might. They’ve done it before!
What, you think he would’ve been less dumped if Joyce had waited around for half an hour for Dorothy to maybe get to the point?
Perhaps we could have seen some actual emotion and drama between Dorothy and Walky? That might have been nice?
Next step, get Amber to hack the online version and shut it down.
Depends if Amber feeling well enough. That makes three people I want to see in the comic soon if they are okay. The others are Asma and Carla.
The other two who were at the protest and vanished completely were Leslie and Robin.
I do hope Leslie made it out safely, but I was kind of looking forward to Robin shouting “Do you know who I am?!” as they shoved her into the back of a police van.
Damn forgot about them. I hope they are okay. I’m pretty sure Robin is though I do want that situation, maybe get a Doctor Who reference our of it.
Okay new list of what I want to see
Daisy getting called out.
Other protestors that have tags get an update.
Asma especially. She was devastated and I want to know she is okay.
Carla. She had a mental bomb dropped on her and I hope she is okay while processing everything.
Amber gets enough rest and recovers
And thanks to my typo yesterday I want to see Joyce as a duck.
“Why a duck?” ( because someone had to )
Mary. Mary was at the protest.
Duck typo: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/minenow/#comment-1926599
Mary was at the counter protest. Not sure any of the counter protesters are in the shot that got taken of Dorothy and Joyce.
[Interior, jail cell, containing ROBIN and MARY]
[awkward silence]
ROBIN: “So… hey, you’re like totes Jesus girl. You voted for me, right?”
MARY: “Not after you made that lesbian your campaign manager.”
[awkward silence]
[enter COP]
COP: “Get up. Your bail’s been posted.”
MARY (rising): “I told you if you just called my church group-”
COP: “Not you. Sit your butt-face down. The ‘Congresswoman’.”
LESLIE (behind him): “You owe me for this, Robin.”
[exeunt, leaving MARY alone in the cell]
Cop: I know who you Were.
Ethically I’m mad at daisy, but for the narratives sake I’m thankful she sped this up
So Dorothy IS cool with how Joyce just treated her ex-boyftirnd. Got it. Cool. *So* cool, good to know Dorothy actuslly cared so little about Walky’s feelings as a partner /s.
🙁
I actually used to like Dorothy a lot. Now if feel every thing I liked about her was an illusion, and a front she was keeping up.
I mean, that’s not exactly inconsistent with the rest of their interactions? She’s generally treated Wally as pretty disposable.
I don’t think Dorothy’s always the best partner.
She has always taken Walky for granted. Even when they were broken up and she pushed him at Lucy, she was clearly certain she could have him back anytime she wanted.
I mean she didn’t look happy breaking up with Walky and she’s had a rough few months realizing she doesn’t like anything about herself or her ambitions and doesn’t know who she is. This is the kind of expected euphoria you get from “oh god I was gay and my best friend wants me back this is incredible”
Or the fact that she just became front page news has rearranged her priorities a bit
As I’ve said, the story could have been structured in such a way that Dorothy could have commented on the events of last strip before we got back to the newspaper.
well yeah its walky. it’s not like joyce was mean to Hat.
“In both Maryland and California, taking multiple free newspapers can be a crime, particularly if done with the intent to prevent others from reading them. While a single copy is typically not an issue, state laws exist to protect the free press from censorship and damage by groups or individuals.
Maryland law on newspaper theft
Maryland has a specific law, § 7-106 of the Criminal Law Code, that makes newspaper theft a misdemeanor offense.
The law applies to any newspaper distributed on a “complimentary or compensatory basis”.
It is illegal to knowingly or willfully take unauthorized control of newspapers “with the intent to prevent another from reading the newspapers”.
Also the idea that Daisy did this is very funny to me
Dorothy has now given as much care, if not more so, to what Becky thinks of her kissing Joyce than she ever did to cheating on Walky. Cool.
That’s been pretty clear and it’s bothered me all along. Joyce seems to be in the same boat really. They went to tell their boyfriends first not because they were the priority, but because that was easier and they were putting off telling Becky.
I bet Daisy tried to reached both of them, like, 10 times yesterday, but these two goobers never checked their phones after the protest. Too busy feeling twitterpated.
They checked their phones after retrieving them and would have seen any communications from Daisy then.
Yeah, like, would be nice, but Dorothy checked her phone intently for news of Amazi-Girl, and if Daisy recognized either of them, she would’ve recognized Dorothy for sure as her employee.
(Not recognizing them wouldn’t make it better, to be clear.)
They are both technically on her payroll, but she only met Joyce the once afaicr
Ooh, right. How did I forget that, I’ve never once forgotten that her comic is IN the paper. I agree it’s unlikely they’ve had a lot of conversations though, whereas it seems like Daisy’s reporters do pitches in-person for stories they want to cover.
On seeing a newspaper:
Grace, Mandy (and sometimes Sierra): “Called it!”
Billie: “I am a genius for getting them together.”
Raidah: “They’re lesbianing wrong.”
Dorothy and Joyce neatly recapping the “is this technically outing them or not” arguments in panels 1 and 2, I see.
Much like the “is this cheating” debate I expect this to nevertheless continue to be something that is re-litigated ad nauseam in the comments despite the characters involved clearly landing on the side of the affirmative
Especially since we don’t see any real resolution between the two of them on “we were outed!” vs. “we are kinda being obvious about it”.
Which is also why I’m not touching that debate with two Dina clones glued end-to-end — it definitely feels to me like “being outed” has changed the nuance of it’s meaning a lot since campus Pride events were more “protest” and less “celebration”.
*any real VERBAL resolution
Stop gluing Dina clones together. If they’re going to be glued to anyone they would want it to be Becky clones.
If they didn’t want to risk being on the front page of a newspaper they wouldn’t have made loud dramatic speeches and made out on a raised mound in full view of a crowd of protesters and also police while tears-gas rained down around them.
It’s not peeping if people see you dance naked in the middle of the street, kind of thing.
This kind of reminds me of when Joe was panicking over the List and had Dan there to excitably drag him into the CS wing. I’ve been having fun these last few strips, chickens are coming home to roost but it’s still funny
Sorry… Are we not going to touch on Walky again at all? Dorothy makes a move on him when he’s with Lucy because she’s sexually frustrated and in love with Joyce. Then Lucy and him break up and then Dorothy and Walky “get back together” immediately, only for her to turn around like a week later and cheat on him? Makes for a great story for sure but would be nice to see him process some emotions besides “womp womp comedy gag”. Maybe that will come later…
Honestly, this reads to me more like we’re gonna get to Walky’s thoughts LATER – and I think the fact that he was so easily brushed aside now is gonna play a big role in that. I doubt this’ll be the end of Walky’s POV.
There’s certainly also some interesting story here in how Joyce seems to be more able to focus on how this is affecting “people other than Joyce and Dorothy” than Dorothy is, including being able to actually TELL the boyfriends today instead of hemming and hawing.
Hm. Counterpoint: Joyce was struggling to say the words too, JOE said them for her and then rolled out the newspaper.
If Walky had done the same, he would know too. If Joe hadn’t done that, are we sure Joyce wouldn’t have hemmed and hawed for another six strips?
I’m not sure if it’s important, but it’s certainly interesting that both of them managed to get through it without actually having to get the words out themselves. To their own boyfriends at least. Joyce could do it to Walky, but that’s different.
Idk. I honestly don’t envy either of them the conversation. They’re hard words to say.
But. But. You know. So many other things.
Oh we’re absolutely getting that, but Walky has had misgivings and doubts about the relationship the entire time since they got back together. He might just dejectedly accept it and leave and develop more complex, difficult feelings later once he realizes he got done dirty.
Was he done dirty? It feels like his relationships with Dorothy have *always* been pretty upfront about their temporary nature.
Well, sure, on paper, but things keep getting complicated. Now she’s in love with him. Now they’re on a break. Now they’re sleeping together again. Now they’re broken up for real. Now she wants him back but sets him up with Lucy. Now she’s changed her mind and wants to steal him from Lucy. Now he and Lucy are broken up and she swoops in immediately to claim him. Now she’s acting strangely and not being open with him about why. Now she’s cheating on him. And now she’s gone.
Dorothy has never been a very good partner to Walky. She herself would admit this.
Nope, Walky will never appear again in the comic.
It’s (not) Walky!
Lol
Yes, it will come up later, although maybe not in those specific terms. I think if Dorothy thought Joyce had been cruel to Walky just now, she would object.
Walky is part of the ongoing fallout from this. Danny will have an opinion. Sarah is still steaming. Becky won’t be a one comic event or even just one event. She rooms either Dorothy. The comic will be about this until further notice It would have been easier just to fake their deaths.
As I said yesterday, in the absence of any anger or upset from the wronged parties, anyone external to the relationships who express any such anger or upset comes across as a histrionic busybody who’s sticking their nose in where it isn’t needed.
Yeah! That would be… Not only unsatisfying, but outright bad in certain cases
I’m in Sarah’s corner on this one, and I have been for a while. She hasn’t always been right, but damn it her growth has been amazing.
It’s just classic third party forgiveness effect.
Come on, you put a gay kiss in a photo and expect Daisy to *not* immediately slam it on the front page?
I like that Dorothy’s character traits are still there, she’s not entirely a clone of Joyce yet. She still reflexively thinks she can control this situation. Let me fix that, she thinks she can control this situation.
She thinks has a solution, but hasn’t figured out what the problem is, or even listen to what the problem is. And her knowledge is something she just looked up and is irrelevant.
A note, because some of you need it, recognizing these doesn’t mean I think she’s evil. They make her ordinary. And relatable.
Joyce, by contrast, realized two strips ago that the situation is no longer controllable.
Well, as a high school journalism teacher in Maryland or California, *I* appreciated this strip. Very informative. Thanks, Willis!
A salute to teachers of journalism! May your pay fly high!
When I was in college, we ran an annual convention. The convention dates at the time lined up with McDonald’s doing their “monopoly game” promotion where you could get scratch-off stickers to put on a monopoly board sheet and if you got all of a single color, you won a big prize. But there were a bunch of instant win stickers that gave you a burger or drink or something.
SO, in order to get people into it, McD would get an insert in the school paper that had info about the game and a couple of free stickers.
We would often swipe a bunch of papers and go through the stickers, saving the instant-win ones to help with food costs for convention staff and guests.
Oh, well if only her dad reads it then he just won’t tell her mom, right?
Her parents are NOT talking lmao
Man, Math Squad’s gonna be awkward..
I like how obsessed they’ve been over “what will WALKY THINK?! what will JOE THINK?! what will BECKY THINK?!” and the reaction has (so far) “oh hey cool glad that’s finally happened.”
The *dad* thing is an issue, but I think the *dad* thing is an issue because he will see Joyce as having lied to him about Jocelyne. I am sincerely certain that even if Becky is hurt by this (and I’m not sure she will be), she’s going to be supportive and happy that Dorothy and Joyce are on Team Girl Kissing
In the trend of everyone panicking over stuff that turns out to be nothing, Hank’ll be fine with Joyce being gay and he already knows about Jocelyne – which was hinted at when she came back with the “I need to tell you before you find out from dad” bit.
God if that actually went down somehow, I’d have to applaud the sheer ‘idgaf’ -balls- it would take to, quote, ‘blow up your webcomic’, and then dodge every potential drama bullet like Neo in the Matrix. Genuinely it would elevate this story line to high art for me, no sarcasm.
I mean, if one side doesn’t like the cheating and the other side wants the cheating for the drama, it IS a very David ‘Damn You’ Willis move to have cheating and no drama.
How can she be looking things up while holding all the papers with both hands? We can see them when she says it’s only illegal in Maryland and California. Obviously, Dorothy has spent many a late night pondering over laws related to student newspapers, perhaps in connection with some argument with Billie.
https://www.tumblr.com/queenofsodor/793136351294963712/todays-strip-is-very-very-good-dorothys-anxious?source=share
This is canon to me nkw.
Fellow Americans in the readership: can’t recommend Belle of the Ranch on YouTube enough for keeping informed without despairing. She’s got lots of practical advice, too.
(You may be familiar with the channel as Beau of the Third Column; he’s still working on the channel but Belle is the face right now, and doing great.)
Great channel, Beau of the Fifth kept me sane for a good while, and Belle has filled his shoes admirably.
❤️ they both seem like very steady, very knowledgeable folk.
Honestly after all this buildup I’m kind of starting to think Becky’s reaction might just end up being like “Oh cool! More girls into girls.”
I’m betting a floppityjillion dollars that Becky already knows, because of how she was acting just a few strips ago
Joyce better hope her mom doesn’t read the school newspaper. Carol would probably abduct Joyce and have her exorcised.
Alt text is to short. Should be Be gay —> Show gay —-> Try to control outing being gay after showing gay —> Do crimes
https://bsky.app/profile/vaporlight.bsky.social/post/3lxify2vz4c2k
Left your stand suggestions down.
But Dorothy, I thought you liked making it into the paper
I take multiple issues of free “local” newspapers. I use them as props in my magic show.