So now it turns into a spirited discussion about Dorothy’s brand of shower gel, where she gets it, whether the store brand is just as good, should you pick a scent that compliments your shampoo, and so on.
Man, women get to smell like real things. Coconut, lavender, honey, strawberry. What the fuck is [i]”cool sports rush”[/i] and why y’all assume I wanna smell like it?
Thankfully, there’s been a push for Guy Stuff™ that doesn’t just smell like antibacterial engine oil. It’s not at complete global saturation yet, but that’s to be expected in Prisonland.
As a person who looks like a dude in public, I’ve just given up on the usual bullshit and started buying Dove or Natural, gravitating toward whatever makes me smell most like baked goods. Nobody’s complained about it so far, despite my excellent beard and hyper-masculine voice.
Okay, “antibacterial engine oil” is a description that is absolutely sublime. It’s both colorful and fairly accurate. You are a wordsmith. If I had a hat on, aforementioned hat would be off to you.
(You didn’t quite say there, just inferred… something that makes me assume NB? I’m bad at it admittedly. On the spectrum, I am skilled with English but prefer directness: I use he/him.)
Antimicrobial engine oil friggin seems like what some of these genuinely go for and it’s just so weird! It COULD be a weird hormone chasing thing but I’m PRETTY sure sandlewood has that covered, and Old spice is just the fact that alcoholism has never been as gendered as they want it to be, so what that is all about is just… patriarchy nonsense, Stockholm syndroming all our damn noses.
I had enough Axe body spray and soap in the first three DAYS of middle school gym that should have been an entire lifetime’s supply. And certainly it emptied my patience for it. I swore then that I would smell fruity if I darn well wanted to, just went and bought the feminine brand that smelled like apples, and it only took exactly two stiff sentences and one slap across the face for everyone to accept that. As a (then assuming) completely straight guy.
Wish that was exaggeration of necessity, but the 90s were a weird transition time between bigotry overrule and well established kids of hippies who were kids of rebellious and or liberal leaning boomers. Establish don’t start none won’t be none and no one blinks.
These days I work in a welder shop and actually argue these points with wrinkled manbabies who have their heads in the sand on political lines, showed em it just don’t gotta be that way, and I have successfully started a war with expensive feminine perfumes that I am extremely satisfied with.
Slightly less satisfied that someone found ahmm, REALLY GENUINE spray on feminine scents somewhere, damn the internet’s infinite potential for stupid, and has started to intrude on the pleasant aromas again. (The joke about diseases from organically sourced scents was made and seriously tested before he resumed hostilities.) But oh well. I own damn near 38 different scents of candles, scheming on how to successfully sneak a playful seance/exorcism onto the man in question. That’s gonna take some doing and probably some help to sneak in 38 ball canning jar pints of homemade candles… I think I know my guy to help…
This current storyline has genuinely frustrated me enough to nearly want to get the patreon, so that marketing is 1000% working. I dislike needless cheating storylines but this isn’t… deep in yet… so I’m still in the “young and stupid and b’gods it’s entertaining” camp.
You didn’t quite say there, just inferred… something that makes me assume NB?
Pretty much. The specific term I use for myself is “agender”, which I say to mean I’m not particularly fussed about gender role stuff and don’t feel inclined toward any gender in particular. In private and online, I go with they/them, but in physical public I don’t correct anyone who says “he/him”, because it’s kind of a chore.
Frankly, my gender identity tends to feel closer to “Whatever video game or creative activity I’m engaging in right now.”
But what about your olfactory identity? Do you smell of baked goods because you’re currently doing a playthrough of Breadslaughter 2155 AD – Muffin Wars (Special Baker’s Edition)? I mean it sounds like a great scent to go for in general, but the recent release of Breadslaughter had me wondering.
I know it’s three weeks later so basically nobody is going to see this, but I will note that A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking is a pretty damn good read.
Old Spice makes one that smells like citrus, I used to use it religiously until I had to switch to one that stops staining all my black shirts white haha
Ooh, I was wondering last night why I was smelling like Custard Creams, then realised it was most likely because I’d braided my hair after using my Lush Super Milk conditioning hair primer stuff (I use it as a leave-in conditioner/detangler), so my hands, shoulders and hair were smelling like vanilla cookie custard sandwiches…
Oh god the cool sports rush and the fresh irish spring smells, I feel bad for guys when it comes to that. Whenever I’ve gone shopping for my dad or for my dude best friend and tried to look at stuff meant for men it’s always such strong musky smells.
My current gel of choice is a vanilla cafe smell and I love smelling like coffee! I think everyone should have the right to smell like a fresh baked snack or a freshly ground cup of coffee! Market these things to everyone, silly corpos!
In the last few years Old Spice has added Lavender to their scent catalog. There was a whole ad campaign to all about how men want to smell nice and it’s totally not feminine to want that. That was their big innovation! That was groundbreaking! 😂
See, I couldn’t smell like lavender. There’s a local donut shop that sells this flavor called “lavender-lemon donuts”, and if I smelled like that all day… I would not be able to focus on account of unceasing ravenous hunger.
Lavender is severely underrated as a baking ingredient.
I got a bottle of lavender extract I use to make cupcakes for parties and things. A teaspoon in a batch of white cake mix, and a half teaspoon in a can of cream cheese frosting (plus some food coloring because what’s the point in making things lavender flavored if you can’t tell because they’re light purple?) and you have a dessert that people will inhale.
In this vein, when my partner and I have our Mother’s Day party in the spring, we usually put a huge handful of fresh lavender in the lemonade. SO good.
It’s basically either that, or just INFINITY MENTHOL.
Some of that stuff is ludicrously strong too. I had one bottle of bodywash that made my eyes sting in the shower (without any actually getting on my eyes), and made the unfortunate mistake of washing downstairs with it. Significant amount of pain was had for hours.
I don’t understand the how men’s hygiene and fragrance industry got to the point of such insane naming conventions. Why is my deodorant choice between smelling like a werewolf, dragon, or kraken?! Why does my body wash need to say “Eaglefangs” instead of “with aloe”? You can just say it smells like pine needles. You don’t have to put a grizzly bear or an anaconda on it and name it “Nightpanther” or “Avalanche”.
If your soap doesn’t involve a violent predator, a mythical monster, or a natural disaster, how will men women know you’re sexually available to them? Women love violent predators, lies, and catastrophic destruction of their lives.
Okay, but unironically, if they started naming a fragrance after a dinosaur, I would be hard-pressed to not at least try it out. Even as an adult, I’m still a “dinosaur kid” at heart… that would totally work on me.
Also, I’ve started giving Old Spice a pass on this, but only because it’s increasingly seemed like they’ve been taking the piss about it rather than seriously being very “SMELL NAEM MUST BE MACHO”.
Never gonna forgive them for discontinuing the aluminum-free Hawksridge, though, my partner loved that scent and now I can’t wear it.
I will admit I still use Old Spice. When I was younger I thought it was really cool that my deodorant had a dragon on it…..and it still is! Yeah! It’s just harder not to see the ridiculousness in it. I do like some of the art on the packaging. Maybe that’s all it is really. Just cool graphic designs to attract the eye at a glance and not some deeper misogynistic cope advertising where they must make even smelling good and being clean seem tough and masculine.
At least in terms of the language of their advertising, they’ve been, at least in the last decade, seemingly trying to split the difference between “extreme masculinity is inherently ridiculous” and “masculinity means being a romantic dude who is interested in things women stereotypically like and being a pleasant guy who is chill (and really obsessed with Fiji for some reason)”.
Like, it’s hard to parse, say, the commercials where Terry Crews screams his way into a Snuggle commercial on a jet ski as an endorsement of “tough masculinity rules” as opposed to “we’re all taking the piss here a bit, but it does smell good even if you’re macho jackass”.
See, as a gender queer afab type, I secretly want to smell like a dragon or a kraken or a manly night panther. Not a real one, which would probably smell meaty and rotten and musty, but a mythical one.
Honestly, I always assumed it was tongue-in-cheek because I truly cannot imagine anyone taking such nomenclature seriously. I just assumed it was a corporate marketing strategy like “how do you do, fellow kids! We can do quasi-satirical hyperbole humour too!”
Especially when the first spokespeople for it were Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa performing wild parodies of specific masculinity performances. The whole thing is clearly a relic of a particular era of advertising that just happened to work out for Old Spice.
(it helps that both stars were willing to play their overacting completely straight-faced, and that the writing approached “not bad” several times, which is high praise for an advertisement)
As a masc of center lesbian, i actually like “men’s” bodywash/deodorant for myself. But, i agree that more options should be available. Honestly, the gendering of products is just silly.
I used to love Eau de Rochas pour homme! It was one of those bergamot-citric- pine needly- resiny perfumes. But nowadays I’m allergic to fragrances (contact allergy, I get a rash) so everything I use is unperfumed.
Really all they should do is say “Hey, this scent smells like wild strawberries, coconut, and leather. We ain’t gonna apply stereotypes or conventions on it. We just gonna tell you what it smells like and let you decide for yourself whether or not that’s something you’re interested in. Guys, gals, nonbinary pals? What do we look like, cops? Pour this stuff on your french fries for all I care.”
as a human allergic to perfume with asthma and other enviromental alergies, FUCK THE PERFUME INDUSTRY OUTLAW IT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(seriously i’ve had asthma attacks triggered by coworkers who microwaved fish (she can rot for it))
I’m inclined to agree, as although the smells don’t bother me, I can’t use any perfumed stuff without developing a rash, and well over 99% of even the most basic cosmetics are perfumed…and it’s an extremely common allergy, just underdiagnosed! Add to that a couple of more allergies and it becomes very, very hard to find even the most basic cosmetics. Also, it tends to happen that when I find something I’m neither allergic to, nor it’s so harsh on skin that I might as well be, after a couple of years they stop manufacturing or selling it.
mens scents are supposed to invoke a “feeling or experience” hence why they are named such, they used to make it clear in the 90S ads where the cool rush aftershave ad would have the guys cheek turn blue and frosty while he’s doing some “Totally Radical!” stunt or something
Bring back Fudge products. I used to smell like tutti fruttis. Women floated down the street to me like a cartoon hobo to a pie. Now I can smell like leather and ballsack OR gunmetal and ballsack. I’m not trying to attract Alex frigging Jones over here.
I highly recommend choosing scents (or a lack of scents) that you personally enjoy rather than worrying about what women want to smell. It sounds exhausting to be constantly trying to make yourself attractive to a group of people with widely varied interests and opinions. Better off enjoying the smell of the person you have to spend the most time around: you!
As an AMAB, hyper-masc presenting dude, I’ll piggyback on this advice to say that in addition to “choose to smell a way you like”, the other great pieces of advice are “choose to add a scent that compliments what you already have going on, smell-wise” and “choose the scent that your partner(s) prefer”.
Often those latter two are the same thing if you’re any good at figuring out what scents compliment your own.
I just remembered I’m also annoyed at Lush for discontinuing Smuggler’s Soul, which also smells great and smells great on me.
At least I still have Grave Before Shave vanilla bourbon beard oil. Because having your mustache smell like a high-end whiskey all day is delightful, if you’re me.
it’s SO much better, in the long run, to find a partner who likes you smelling the same way you like to smell.
You didn’t actually say you prefer smelling a certain way, but whether what you like is “natural musk”, “strawberries and cream”, or anything in-between… much better to do things you like, and find a partner who shares your interests, than to spend your life trying to tailor your interests to what you think the highest proportion of hypothetical future partners will like.
Who said they couldn’t? Where’s any level of prevention occurring? If you want soap that doesn’t smell like anything, use some on yourself. Nobody’s stopping you.
Absolutely. and how a person smells depends on their diet, genetics, lots of things.
My wife tells me that many of her friends, widows, keep an item from their departed husbands, and lament the fading of their smell as months go by.
They shouldn’t be allowed to call a thing sandalwood without having even a speck of sandlewood sawdust or oil in it… I’m so over the marketing these days, idgaf I just want to smell like a snack of any sort. Been preferring fruity, particularly pommegranite, but might swap to pie or baked goods soon too.
DoA chat talking about the IMPORTANT things in life!
Meanwhile I get jealous that the male branded ones get all the wonderful wood smells, but they keep putting them in combinations with other scents I hate and hilariously deeply dye the soap a dark “manly” blue.
One of them firmly disagrees with the other two. All three immediately trek off to the shower for scientific testing. Dina learns of this, and she and Becky join in to provide proper experiment structuring.
Anger in someone else prompts a defensive mentality–you immediately start to think of justifications for your behavior. “Disappointment”, on the other hand, just leaves you with nowhere to go.
Anger generally comes across as “You have harmed me/someone I care about”. Disappointment is, “You’re better than this; why have you lowered yourself in this fashion?”
Just think, this might all be irrelevant because Mary saw them making out at the protest and went to tell everybody she could just to be her cruel self.
You know, I could see Daisy doing this, AND it fitting the general theme of “white girls discovering themselves at a political protest that had nothing to do with them”.
Honestly I’m more worried about a post-nut Evangelical shame/self-loathing trip. I’m terrified Joyce’s would be even worse than Becky’s… I mean, I hope not. She has made a lot of progress in a relatively short time… but that “catholic guilt” has a tendency to sneak up on you when you least expect it. 🙁
*Yes, I know. Joyce isn’t Catholic. It’s just the phrase. “non-denominational conservative american evangelical guilt,” while more accurate, is not a phrase so much as a sentence fragment.
I think Joyce will handle it fine. While she, and Joe have only done sex acts that aren’t “penis/strap-on/scissoring/etc. she still considers it sex. So in her mind she’s already moved past the initial hurdle of a sexual relationship outside of marriage. Will there still be difficulties? The nature of the comic say yes. Will Joyce have a complete meltdown in response to “going all the way?” Probably not.
The dumbest thing MY horny teenage ass ever did was “try to deal with depression and loss of my faith by having impulse sex with a woman who’d been trying to get with me for months as a FWB, on the grounds that I figured I’d want to have had sex before I died.”
(As it turned out, she was a pretty awesome FWB — we kept hooking up for YEARS after college. And the fact I did this thing alerted my roommate to haul my ass to counseling. So, uh, task failed successfully?)
Yeah, that is a good observation. I do wonder how much of that is Joyce-specific, and how much of it might also be the rest of her journey the day before, confronting her inner self that wants peace and quiet, but would prefer “quiet” if given the choice between the two, and how that part of herself probably has fed into her survivor’s guilt and PTSD. Like, she had a big day even outside of Joyce kisses.
Just wanted to say… that comment had me burst out laughing. Had the rest of the house not been asleep, I would have probably done the full Brian Blessed top-of-my-lungs guffaw. Thank you for that. 😀
The current Fortnite Battle Pass contains HALO and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the latter of which is something I’ve been expecting/demanding for at least a year. I already have the core 5 Rangers skins and their weapons, and once I reach Level 100, I’ll have the Green and White Ranger as well. In a month, the Dino Megazord will become available on top of all that. I’m in a very Power Rangers mood at the moment.
God Freaking Fortnite, let me tell you that i fell an incredible amounts of .. nothing about it. It mostly baffles ne a bit that it becomes such a big thing with countless crossover skins when it looks to be a pretty generic shooting game. Maybe i am too old or bad at shooters to get it.
I mean, or maybe people just like the generic arena shooter. It has brighter colors than most battle royales, and is a bit silly and fun, there doesn’t have to be a ton more to it really.
See, that’s about where I was on it at first, and I only got it because a Final Fantasy buddy was into it at the time. Aside from just the skins, it has fun and silly story events happening all the time, it’s got Guitar Hero as a full game mode now, a LEGO mode that’s always adding features, a whole racing game even, and there’s a massive market of player-crested game modes like tower defense, escape rooms , and obstacle courses, all available right from the main menu. Even down to the weapons and vehicles, they’re always cycling things in and out, and beyond the generic shooty bang-bang guns, they have stuff like grappling guns, Kamehameha waves, full-on superpowers and transformations, and all that whatnot.
Basically, the scale of it comes from a genuinely good variety of gameplay experiences, no up-front cost so you’re not dropping $60 to find out if you enjoy it, and then there’s the Item Shop with all the emotes and skins and songs and other frankly overpriced miscellany for people who like playing dress-up. Hell, my sister doesn’t really do shooters at all, but they had a Lady Gaga event in the rhythm game mode that drew her in, and she plays the LEGO mode almost daily.
And then there’s the word salad appeal of being able to say “Spider-Gwen just hit me with the Kamehameha and then I got ran over by Bruno Mars driving a Ninja Turtles van, can I get a rez?” It’s too silly of a game to really get heated over, which helps keep the vibes clean.
this may be just the way I compartmentalize types of attraction and affection, but I never got the idea that Joyce is sexually attracted to women. [to Billie] “I want to climb on your bosom and feel warm and safe” doesn’t read as sexual to me, wanting to feel safe and cared for is just a normal want.
[to Sal] “I want to brush you hair” same thing
In the case of Billie’s breasts, I’d say part of it is maybe the different between just wanting a hug with your friend versus wanting to climb into her breasts. I’m sapphic myself, and I definitely like the thought of curling up next to a lovely woman, resting my head upon her breasts, and feeling warm and safe. It’s an intimate sort of attraction!
Aside from that, context matters. Here’s the strip in question: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/curiosity/
Without that context, I could accept it being a passing thought, influenced by faint baby memories of comfort and security, that someone with a faulty social filter might voice… but she’d just been panicking over the mere possibility of being attracted to women, and in fact had just recoiled after realizing how her gripping Jennifer’s shirt could imply an attraction to breasts. She was very aware, in that moment, of how gay she looked, and yet…
Notice also how, in the first panel, Joyce is reacting defensively to the claim made by Jennifer in the previous strip. Is she really likely to be instinctively seeking comfort and shelter in the person who triggered such a reaction?
I suspect that is partly because, like me, you’re a dude. Men describe their sexual attraction in different ways than women do, for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that they usually seem to experience such attraction in different ways. The old saying went something like, “Men heat up like light bulbs; women heat up like clothes irons.”
I’ve heard that before and I’ve always disliked it as a metaphor, largely because lightbulbs and clothes irons heat up the same way: electrical resistance. Indeed, unless you’re dealing with theatrical/film lights or shitty pre-1950’s examples of either, it doesn’t even convey the shitty message it’s trying to convey! I invite you to touch a 1980’s incadescent and a 1980’s clothes iron at zero, five, twenty, and 45 seconds after turning on and find out which burns you first. On the other end of the stupid metaphor, I don’t recommend running a non-industrial clothes iron for 8 hours straight.
As a raging bisexual, I can tell you that men and women (as a whole) are pretty equally perverts, when given a safe venue to express their thoughts. The only way to guess a semi anonymous lewd artist’s gender is by their anatomy mistakes, usually.
As a demisexual pan male myself I can confirm that the affection I’d give to friends is far more guided by what they seem comfortable with than social norms, OR how I view them romantically. I was just glaring suspiciously at this general comment thread wondering how to slip that in when Adeptus here piped up last. Thanks!
I guess this is evidence that Joyce likes to be big spoon with Dorothy?
I guess that means Joyce’s ideal sleeping fantasy would be for her to be a Joyce sandwich where Joe big spoons Joyce while Joyce big spoons Dorothy, with just the right amount of compression pressure.
Not too long ago, it’d’ve seemed much the same way to me too: trapped under a heavy weight? How is that comfortable?
Then I got a weighted blanket. Giles Corey may have had a point.
In fact, a threesome group of friends of mine (one married couple of bi-folks; one gal of lezzieness) used to do this. The older gal liked to be sandwiched between the other two. She likes both the compression and extra heat (’cause circulation issues or cold blood lizard thing, unsure).
My husband’s healthy body temperature is a good degree, maybe degree and a half, warmer than mine. Lovely at first when I’m icy – but when he wraps himself around me and GLOMPS so he’s against my back, with his arms around my torso and his legs wrapped around mine, the blanket sometimes folded double over me coz he fidgets in his sleep, I can overheat a bit… Despite having cold blood lizard circulation issues 🤷🏻♀️
I wish this lovely disaster couple a very I hope this relationship sets your entire friend group on fire. A baptism in the precursor flames a creation. So that a new better friend group might rise from the ashes like the divine phoenix of myth. One with Asma, and Lyle and that one Amazi-Girl catchphrase lady./s
“She smells like sapphism and tear gas! And tastes like…” :swishes mouth around: “… No, wait, that’s Joe. I didn’t brush after I sucked him off last night.”
Huh. So the buffer was stuck on July 11 2026 for long enough that I was starting to wonder if Willis had actually finished DoA completely, or had just decided to take a vacation, or whether something in the story happened then as devastating as that one death in It’s Walky.
And now suddenly it says September 21, 2025, which would mean Willis changed their mind about something which meant they had to jettison 10 months of strips, making for an almost book-length alternate story.
Intriguing.
Or, y’know, something’s up with the buffer counter, it can’t handle being over a year in advance, and it should be saying September 2026.
2025-12-31 Wed – Versions of Intuit’s QuickBooks for DOS – dates fail at end of year
2026-01-19 Mon – CCSDS 32-bit time code MSB sets 03:14:08 TAI, 2^31 seconds from 1958-01-01 (q.v.)
2026-06-29 Mon – Day 100000 of the UK Gregorian Calendar
From the big list of J R Stockton Critical and Significant Dates:
That’s interesting. I hadn’t noticed the buffer had changed that much before now. I know a lot of people, myself included, have expressed that we feel that Willis didn’t handle the protest story arc very well. I wonder if that’s part of the reason for the change, or if it’s just a bug in the buffer counter.
yeah like even then there’s a lot of other good reasons he’d be doing so
pretty number go up, but pretty number have point of diminishing returns!
if his goal is to make the comic more relevant and relatable to an audience of modern US college students, a super-long buffer would unfortunately continue to be an obstacle no matter which way ya slice it
Willis recently had some thoughts about some of his characters and decided to make better use of some of them. Having a year long buffer means they can insert new content into the storyline when and how they feel it’s important. I’d imagine that adding in new strips is messing with the buffer count.
As a guess, possibly he pulled everything more than a month out and is deciding on a strip-by-strip basis whether this goes back in as-is, or with minor edits, or gets replaced. So I doubt all of it (or even probably the majority of it) is getting binned when all is said and done, but it might take a bit before the buffer is back up to formally a year
So how does this comic read. Did Dorothy intend to come clean about the cheating? The reaction to what Joyce said made me think she meant to finesse things even at this stage.
I think she meant for Joyce to admit that they’re a thing (Dotty/Joyce), but not like, describe an intimate moment. Thus though “okay sort of that truth.”
She wanted Walky and Joe to hear it from them first, both in the sense of being the first to know and in the sense of not being told by someone else. We know this, because she said as much earlier. Hiding it from Sarah until they’ve had the chance to tell the boys was part of that plan.
I see what you did there.
(and sarah can see what joyce did there.)
((or who joyce did there.))
(((which is sad since joyce hasn’t done her there yet)))
The girls seem to be having problems admitting to any ‘gayness’ to others. Even Dina was more upfront about when asked “Are you into girls?” in essence said yes! (or the more cutsie “That hypothesis needs to be repeatedly tested.”)
I love the way Faye’s was handled in QC. I have mild issues with the bi rep in QC (I cannot go into it because I suck at wording my issue with it because it’s complicated. Being bi is frustrating sometimes with media), but generally the way it handles their characters realizing their sexuality has always been fantastic and I like that it generally avoids the most harmful tropes. Granted, it could maybe use a bit more actual stakes.
oh! okay well now I know for sure that this is a proper GL plotline. the bit about liking girlsmell comes up surprisingly often once you start paying attention to i
correct, and I believe many consider it as such? at the very least most manga aggregators list it within the genres (although I’d personally call it a subgenre within the romance genre, but good luck finding anyone sorting by subgenres (except BL in some JP bookstores))
OK, not just girl love; I met an old flame after many years (more than a lustrum) and in the process of hugging her, I remarked that her hair smelled just the same. Of course, my nose was buried in said hair at that moment.
I could believe it’s an autism thing
and actually I also have anecdote suggesting it’s not just a trope too! I was dating an early transwoman a couple years back (she started HRT while we were dating). I always struggled to get into the mood with her because her smell would deter me a little (so much guilt over that)
we ended up breaking up amicably over other matters. back at easter I was visiting my parents, so I invited some friends to catch up, and she was one of them. we were still flirty with each other, and we ended up enjoying a one day fling together, and it was the most into it I had ever been. at some point I realized I was enjoying her smell, and I bet the HRT had a hand in that
so yea, boysmell doesn’t do it for me, but girlsmell absolutely does~
Still glad to have you on board, lol. So often in popular culture the Roman Empire is portrayed as this group of wise, noble statesmen… then you study their history and it’s like “oh wait, they were actually a bunch of patriarchal violent psychopaths!”
Ah wonderful I can take solace in the ‘Dumbing of Age’ comments discourse to take my mind off the ‘Viviepop is executive producing a Homestuck animated show with Toby Fox voicing John Egbert’ comments discourse 😌
Is that the one behind those demon shows that say “fuck” in every sentence? I remember when the Hazbin Hotel pilot came out and there was a lot of buzz for it, and then I didn’t watch anything until a season finale happened to be on while I was in the room. I haven’t seen the other show really at all, but the wolf girl seems popular.
When you are into something that has a disproportionate hatedom (or multiple things even) for long enough your “give a fuck about your opinion” meter rapidly reaches zero and never goes back up.
Listen, you must remember that any happiness you can squeeze out of the giant shit bucket that is living on this planet is precious and no one’s pathological to dhame others for their taste in fucking cartoons is worth giving a smidgen of a shit about.
(In less profanity loaded words: Just enjoy what make you happy and ignore the people who try to tell you it suck because it doesn’t cater to them.)
(Sorry for the goofy way I worded that reply earlier, I just got done watching a youtube vid that was a compilation of tumblr posts… the unique verbiage of that place seeped into my typing. Hopefully didn’t come out too deranged.)
Oh are people whining about that? Screw the haters, that might be the only way I ever ingest Homestuck. They can make their own damn YT show or machinima and give it away for free if they’re that bothered.
They should probably talk about that between themselves first, though it would be amusing for Joyce (or Joe?) to suggest it and Dorothy to be all “No, I want you to myself”.
Yeah, I mean, I’m poly myself, but any reasonable chance of that ship believably sailing ran aground and caught fire when Joyce accepted his gift and gave him a blowjob without mentioning any of what was happening.
I’m beginning to think that the only thing that could make people happy would be if there was a one week timejump with “…and everyone told everyone exactly what you think they need to, and everyone felt appropriately bad but not traumatized about it” as an intertitle. Everyone knows they need to tell Walky and Joe. But when every 5 seconds of dialog takes 24 hours of real-time to be released, there are two separate conversations that need to happen, and it’s still practically dawn of the morning after, it’s going to take a bit before we see it.
The timescale is part of it, but it’s also that they were going to do it last night, but chickened out and slept together instead. It’ll be interesting to see if they do talk to the boys today or if the pattern holds and they find excuses not to.
ngl, even though i tend to be the little spoon, there is some combination of my being ace and my being OCD that makes the knowledge that someone could just sniff the back of my neck absolutely HORRIFYING and i am considering a year round turtleneck wardrobe to compensate.
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So now it turns into a spirited discussion about Dorothy’s brand of shower gel, where she gets it, whether the store brand is just as good, should you pick a scent that compliments your shampoo, and so on.
It’s got nothing to do with her shower gel, the back of her neck just smells like that.
Maybe the smell comes from her shampoo!
Man, women get to smell like real things. Coconut, lavender, honey, strawberry. What the fuck is [i]”cool sports rush”[/i] and why y’all assume I wanna smell like it?
godammit, i was using different syntax again…
Thankfully, there’s been a push for Guy Stuff™ that doesn’t just smell like antibacterial engine oil. It’s not at complete global saturation yet, but that’s to be expected in Prisonland.
As a person who looks like a dude in public, I’ve just given up on the usual bullshit and started buying Dove or Natural, gravitating toward whatever makes me smell most like baked goods. Nobody’s complained about it so far, despite my excellent beard and hyper-masculine voice.
Okay, “antibacterial engine oil” is a description that is absolutely sublime. It’s both colorful and fairly accurate. You are a wordsmith. If I had a hat on, aforementioned hat would be off to you.
A true monarch among wordsmiths, glorious human.
(You didn’t quite say there, just inferred… something that makes me assume NB? I’m bad at it admittedly. On the spectrum, I am skilled with English but prefer directness: I use he/him.)
Antimicrobial engine oil friggin seems like what some of these genuinely go for and it’s just so weird! It COULD be a weird hormone chasing thing but I’m PRETTY sure sandlewood has that covered, and Old spice is just the fact that alcoholism has never been as gendered as they want it to be, so what that is all about is just… patriarchy nonsense, Stockholm syndroming all our damn noses.
I had enough Axe body spray and soap in the first three DAYS of middle school gym that should have been an entire lifetime’s supply. And certainly it emptied my patience for it. I swore then that I would smell fruity if I darn well wanted to, just went and bought the feminine brand that smelled like apples, and it only took exactly two stiff sentences and one slap across the face for everyone to accept that. As a (then assuming) completely straight guy.
Wish that was exaggeration of necessity, but the 90s were a weird transition time between bigotry overrule and well established kids of hippies who were kids of rebellious and or liberal leaning boomers. Establish don’t start none won’t be none and no one blinks.
These days I work in a welder shop and actually argue these points with wrinkled manbabies who have their heads in the sand on political lines, showed em it just don’t gotta be that way, and I have successfully started a war with expensive feminine perfumes that I am extremely satisfied with.
Slightly less satisfied that someone found ahmm, REALLY GENUINE spray on feminine scents somewhere, damn the internet’s infinite potential for stupid, and has started to intrude on the pleasant aromas again. (The joke about diseases from organically sourced scents was made and seriously tested before he resumed hostilities.) But oh well. I own damn near 38 different scents of candles, scheming on how to successfully sneak a playful seance/exorcism onto the man in question. That’s gonna take some doing and probably some help to sneak in 38 ball canning jar pints of homemade candles… I think I know my guy to help…
This current storyline has genuinely frustrated me enough to nearly want to get the patreon, so that marketing is 1000% working. I dislike needless cheating storylines but this isn’t… deep in yet… so I’m still in the “young and stupid and b’gods it’s entertaining” camp.
You didn’t quite say there, just inferred… something that makes me assume NB?
Pretty much. The specific term I use for myself is “agender”, which I say to mean I’m not particularly fussed about gender role stuff and don’t feel inclined toward any gender in particular. In private and online, I go with they/them, but in physical public I don’t correct anyone who says “he/him”, because it’s kind of a chore.
Frankly, my gender identity tends to feel closer to “Whatever video game or creative activity I’m engaging in right now.”
But what about your olfactory identity? Do you smell of baked goods because you’re currently doing a playthrough of Breadslaughter 2155 AD – Muffin Wars (Special Baker’s Edition)? I mean it sounds like a great scent to go for in general, but the recent release of Breadslaughter had me wondering.
I’ve never heard of that, no. I just enjoy smelling like pie.
IN A.D. 2101
WAR WAS BEGINNING.
I haven’t bothered with computer games since 1990 but I’d play that.
Combat Scones! Fairy Cakes of Death! Actual Devils food cake!
I know it’s three weeks later so basically nobody is going to see this, but I will note that A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking is a pretty damn good read.
ayyyy always nice to see fellow agenders, virtual hi five
✋🏻
Yay I DID get it (almost) right! 😀 good luck to you, will try and remember in future.
Old Spice makes one that smells like citrus, I used to use it religiously until I had to switch to one that stops staining all my black shirts white haha
I think it’s called wolfthorn?
Ooh, I was wondering last night why I was smelling like Custard Creams, then realised it was most likely because I’d braided my hair after using my Lush Super Milk conditioning hair primer stuff (I use it as a leave-in conditioner/detangler), so my hands, shoulders and hair were smelling like vanilla cookie custard sandwiches…
When I was using Irish Spring soap and Speed Stick deodorant, several people told me that I smelled like Froot Loops. I still managed to get married.
… Could I get some antibacterial engine oil shampoo? That’d be a massive upgrade on the usual garbage. =/
Multi-purpose body-wash/shampoo/conditioner/lighter fluid/toothpaste/wood polish/engine oil/rubbing alcohol/bear repellent! 😀
Oh god the cool sports rush and the fresh irish spring smells, I feel bad for guys when it comes to that. Whenever I’ve gone shopping for my dad or for my dude best friend and tried to look at stuff meant for men it’s always such strong musky smells.
Maybe I wanna smell like a snack too, sometimes! You ever think about that, you filth corpos?
*filthy corpos
My current gel of choice is a vanilla cafe smell and I love smelling like coffee! I think everyone should have the right to smell like a fresh baked snack or a freshly ground cup of coffee! Market these things to everyone, silly corpos!
In the last few years Old Spice has added Lavender to their scent catalog. There was a whole ad campaign to all about how men want to smell nice and it’s totally not feminine to want that. That was their big innovation! That was groundbreaking! 😂
See, I couldn’t smell like lavender. There’s a local donut shop that sells this flavor called “lavender-lemon donuts”, and if I smelled like that all day… I would not be able to focus on account of unceasing ravenous hunger.
Lavender is severely underrated as a baking ingredient.
I got a bottle of lavender extract I use to make cupcakes for parties and things. A teaspoon in a batch of white cake mix, and a half teaspoon in a can of cream cheese frosting (plus some food coloring because what’s the point in making things lavender flavored if you can’t tell because they’re light purple?) and you have a dessert that people will inhale.
In this vein, when my partner and I have our Mother’s Day party in the spring, we usually put a huge handful of fresh lavender in the lemonade. SO good.
It’s basically either that, or just INFINITY MENTHOL.
Some of that stuff is ludicrously strong too. I had one bottle of bodywash that made my eyes sting in the shower (without any actually getting on my eyes), and made the unfortunate mistake of washing downstairs with it. Significant amount of pain was had for hours.
Mountain Mist Moose Musk Bear Breath and whatever the heck axe body spray smells like.
I don’t understand the how men’s hygiene and fragrance industry got to the point of such insane naming conventions. Why is my deodorant choice between smelling like a werewolf, dragon, or kraken?! Why does my body wash need to say “Eaglefangs” instead of “with aloe”? You can just say it smells like pine needles. You don’t have to put a grizzly bear or an anaconda on it and name it “Nightpanther” or “Avalanche”.
If your soap doesn’t involve a violent predator, a mythical monster, or a natural disaster, how will
menwomen know you’re sexually available to them? Women love violent predators, lies, and catastrophic destruction of their lives.They’ve got two of the three in this strip alone!
My favorite underarm antiperspirant is Gillette Clearshield Velociraptor Blitzrush. Sure, it’s a little bitey at times, but it gets the job done.
Okay, but unironically, if they started naming a fragrance after a dinosaur, I would be hard-pressed to not at least try it out. Even as an adult, I’m still a “dinosaur kid” at heart… that would totally work on me.
Look, I NEED that Glacier Rush — it gives me a 30′ charge attack that’s immune to interrupts. Plus I smell vaguely like fir trees!
Surely it also inflicts ice damage?
I haven’t hit anything that’s survived the initial hit for the cold damage to proc, I camp the newbie zones to feel powerful you see.
Also, I’ve started giving Old Spice a pass on this, but only because it’s increasingly seemed like they’ve been taking the piss about it rather than seriously being very “SMELL NAEM MUST BE MACHO”.
Never gonna forgive them for discontinuing the aluminum-free Hawksridge, though, my partner loved that scent and now I can’t wear it.
I will admit I still use Old Spice. When I was younger I thought it was really cool that my deodorant had a dragon on it…..and it still is! Yeah! It’s just harder not to see the ridiculousness in it. I do like some of the art on the packaging. Maybe that’s all it is really. Just cool graphic designs to attract the eye at a glance and not some deeper misogynistic cope advertising where they must make even smelling good and being clean seem tough and masculine.
At least in terms of the language of their advertising, they’ve been, at least in the last decade, seemingly trying to split the difference between “extreme masculinity is inherently ridiculous” and “masculinity means being a romantic dude who is interested in things women stereotypically like and being a pleasant guy who is chill (and really obsessed with Fiji for some reason)”.
Like, it’s hard to parse, say, the commercials where Terry Crews screams his way into a Snuggle commercial on a jet ski as an endorsement of “tough masculinity rules” as opposed to “we’re all taking the piss here a bit, but it does smell good even if you’re macho jackass”.
I wish more commercials would interrupt each other. If they’re gonna scream and babble for my attention anyway, they could at least be entertaining.
See, as a gender queer afab type, I secretly want to smell like a dragon or a kraken or a manly night panther. Not a real one, which would probably smell meaty and rotten and musty, but a mythical one.
Honestly, I always assumed it was tongue-in-cheek because I truly cannot imagine anyone taking such nomenclature seriously. I just assumed it was a corporate marketing strategy like “how do you do, fellow kids! We can do quasi-satirical hyperbole humour too!”
Especially when the first spokespeople for it were Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa performing wild parodies of specific masculinity performances. The whole thing is clearly a relic of a particular era of advertising that just happened to work out for Old Spice.
(it helps that both stars were willing to play their overacting completely straight-faced, and that the writing approached “not bad” several times, which is high praise for an advertisement)
The scent of every Axe body spray is “Mistake”.
As a masc of center lesbian, i actually like “men’s” bodywash/deodorant for myself. But, i agree that more options should be available. Honestly, the gendering of products is just silly.
I used to love Eau de Rochas pour homme! It was one of those bergamot-citric- pine needly- resiny perfumes. But nowadays I’m allergic to fragrances (contact allergy, I get a rash) so everything I use is unperfumed.
Really all they should do is say “Hey, this scent smells like wild strawberries, coconut, and leather. We ain’t gonna apply stereotypes or conventions on it. We just gonna tell you what it smells like and let you decide for yourself whether or not that’s something you’re interested in. Guys, gals, nonbinary pals? What do we look like, cops? Pour this stuff on your french fries for all I care.”
as a human allergic to perfume with asthma and other enviromental alergies, FUCK THE PERFUME INDUSTRY OUTLAW IT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(seriously i’ve had asthma attacks triggered by coworkers who microwaved fish (she can rot for it))
I’m inclined to agree, as although the smells don’t bother me, I can’t use any perfumed stuff without developing a rash, and well over 99% of even the most basic cosmetics are perfumed…and it’s an extremely common allergy, just underdiagnosed! Add to that a couple of more allergies and it becomes very, very hard to find even the most basic cosmetics. Also, it tends to happen that when I find something I’m neither allergic to, nor it’s so harsh on skin that I might as well be, after a couple of years they stop manufacturing or selling it.
mens scents are supposed to invoke a “feeling or experience” hence why they are named such, they used to make it clear in the 90S ads where the cool rush aftershave ad would have the guys cheek turn blue and frosty while he’s doing some “Totally Radical!” stunt or something
Bring back Fudge products. I used to smell like tutti fruttis. Women floated down the street to me like a cartoon hobo to a pie. Now I can smell like leather and ballsack OR gunmetal and ballsack. I’m not trying to attract Alex frigging Jones over here.
Can people not just smell of themself? I mean possibly not unwashed sick-in-bed for a week self, but normal healthy person self?
What, and not monetize every aspect of the human experience? Are you a commie or something?
In other words, I agree completely.
I don’t WANT to smell like myself, though. I want to smell like something I like better than “normal human”.
People totally can. I choose to smell like vanilla and coconut because I like those smells.
the majority of women i have met(who swing that way) prefer a mans natural musk
I highly recommend choosing scents (or a lack of scents) that you personally enjoy rather than worrying about what women want to smell. It sounds exhausting to be constantly trying to make yourself attractive to a group of people with widely varied interests and opinions. Better off enjoying the smell of the person you have to spend the most time around: you!
As an AMAB, hyper-masc presenting dude, I’ll piggyback on this advice to say that in addition to “choose to smell a way you like”, the other great pieces of advice are “choose to add a scent that compliments what you already have going on, smell-wise” and “choose the scent that your partner(s) prefer”.
Often those latter two are the same thing if you’re any good at figuring out what scents compliment your own.
I just remembered I’m also annoyed at Lush for discontinuing Smuggler’s Soul, which also smells great and smells great on me.
At least I still have Grave Before Shave vanilla bourbon beard oil. Because having your mustache smell like a high-end whiskey all day is delightful, if you’re me.
Also:
it’s SO much better, in the long run, to find a partner who likes you smelling the same way you like to smell.
You didn’t actually say you prefer smelling a certain way, but whether what you like is “natural musk”, “strawberries and cream”, or anything in-between… much better to do things you like, and find a partner who shares your interests, than to spend your life trying to tailor your interests to what you think the highest proportion of hypothetical future partners will like.
I smell like Chex Mix if I don’t wear at least some deodorant.
Who said they couldn’t? Where’s any level of prevention occurring? If you want soap that doesn’t smell like anything, use some on yourself. Nobody’s stopping you.
Absolutely. and how a person smells depends on their diet, genetics, lots of things.
My wife tells me that many of her friends, widows, keep an item from their departed husbands, and lament the fading of their smell as months go by.
This is why my beard oil smells like vanilla with bourbon notes.
Honestly guy stuff is usually just some kind of mint they just don’t call it that because of marketing.
Don’t forget “bay rum” and “sandalwood/cedarwood”, the other legs of the “generic male scents” tripod.
They shouldn’t be allowed to call a thing sandalwood without having even a speck of sandlewood sawdust or oil in it… I’m so over the marketing these days, idgaf I just want to smell like a snack of any sort. Been preferring fruity, particularly pommegranite, but might swap to pie or baked goods soon too.
DoA chat talking about the IMPORTANT things in life!
Meanwhile I get jealous that the male branded ones get all the wonderful wood smells, but they keep putting them in combinations with other scents I hate and hilariously deeply dye the soap a dark “manly” blue.
“So now it turns into a spirited discussion about Dorothy’s brand of shower gel”
You know us too well.
One of them firmly disagrees with the other two. All three immediately trek off to the shower for scientific testing. Dina learns of this, and she and Becky join in to provide proper experiment structuring.
Love bed-head Dorothy!
her job is just bed-head
10 comedy points =)
I don’t think Dorothy got as far as bed head last night.
Her hair is really cute. More mussed-up hairstyles for the main cast.
Some people can absolutely rock that as a haircut. It’s true.
Even the truth can’t be trusted now!
Also don’t trust bed head. The hair specifically, the person is probably fine…unless they’re not. 🤨
Fellas i don’t think I trust Sirksome :/
I don’t think I trust people with trust issues.
Wait, do _I_ have trust issues?
But on you, it looks good. Trust me.
THAT’S JUST WHAT SOMEONE WHO CAN’T BE TRUSTED WOULD SAY!!!
Should I start a running countdown? I got a good feeling about tomorrow!
eh, knock yaself out
I mean, the countdown would just be (1) and then (0). Maybe start a drumroll instead.
honestly Joyce could’ve said that at any time in the last ten years of comics and it would’ve been in character
rushing up to sal and amber, still in her pajamas, desperate to get the information about neck smells out there
I’ve missed judgy-face Sarah
Sarah, don’t laugh!
Joyce is trying; that much is obvious. I wonder what Sarah’s reaction is going to be. Angry? Disappointed?
Given the somewhat maternal nature of Joyce and Sarah’s friendship, I would imagine the latter would be more distressing for Joyce than the former.
Why is someone being disappointed in you is more impactful rather than them being angry?
I’m not saying that isn’t the case; I’m just legitimately curious as to why people respond that way. Anyone have an answer?
Anger in someone else prompts a defensive mentality–you immediately start to think of justifications for your behavior. “Disappointment”, on the other hand, just leaves you with nowhere to go.
Anger generally comes across as “You have harmed me/someone I care about”. Disappointment is, “You’re better than this; why have you lowered yourself in this fashion?”
“Look, I’m just worried about how much drama you guys are going to be bringing into my room. And you both have SOs, so… take it elsewhere, please?”
You had one job, Joyce. Just one single job.
She already did that last night
Alt Text: Ok, but that’s gonna be PRETTY hard to outgay
Not at the rate these two are going.
It’s Joyce. I’m pretty sure she’s already said gayer things than that. And she’ll do it again.
The optimist hopes the alt-text is wrong. The pessimist fears that it is.
THATS the g- wait, I said that yesterday. Maybe I should just stop saying that.
I’m guessing the eventual top winner will be “I do”
Willis really is just dragging this out to torment us as much as possible.
Just think, this might all be irrelevant because Mary saw them making out at the protest and went to tell everybody she could just to be her cruel self.
And if anyone took a picture of it for the school newspaper, Daisy has probably made it the front page story by now.
You know, I could see Daisy doing this, AND it fitting the general theme of “white girls discovering themselves at a political protest that had nothing to do with them”.
we do have a daisy preview panel coming up at the end of the month
The suspense is terrible! I hope it’ll last.
(I think we can be confident it’s going to last xD )
Who’s being tortured? Certainly not me. I’m basking in being right.
I eating so much popcorn
I’m used to
Girl’s too horny to function and i love that for her
omg, this gonna lead to her seeking post-nut clarity, ain’t it?
Honestly I’m more worried about a post-nut Evangelical shame/self-loathing trip. I’m terrified Joyce’s would be even worse than Becky’s… I mean, I hope not. She has made a lot of progress in a relatively short time… but that “catholic guilt” has a tendency to sneak up on you when you least expect it. 🙁
*Yes, I know. Joyce isn’t Catholic. It’s just the phrase. “non-denominational conservative american evangelical guilt,” while more accurate, is not a phrase so much as a sentence fragment.
I think Joyce will handle it fine. While she, and Joe have only done sex acts that aren’t “penis/strap-on/scissoring/etc. she still considers it sex. So in her mind she’s already moved past the initial hurdle of a sexual relationship outside of marriage. Will there still be difficulties? The nature of the comic say yes. Will Joyce have a complete meltdown in response to “going all the way?” Probably not.
come to think of it, I don’t think we’ve seen any scissoring in the slipshines :0
*slams the desk like J. Jonah Jameson*
MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY
I hope so, for her sake. I wouldn’t wish that song-and-dance on anyone but my worst enemies.
I cannot relate at all and its so fascinating.
Said it before, will say it again: man, I’m glad that even when I’m so horny I’m dumb I have never been as dumb as Joyce and Dorothy are.
Yeah, same. The dumbest thing my 18yo self did when horny was stay up until 2am making out instead of working on project I had due the next day.
Does it count if you started at 1:59:23am?
The dumbest thing my horny teenage ass ever did was jerk off in class. Amazingly, I was never caught…
The dumbest thing MY horny teenage ass ever did was “try to deal with depression and loss of my faith by having impulse sex with a woman who’d been trying to get with me for months as a FWB, on the grounds that I figured I’d want to have had sex before I died.”
(As it turned out, she was a pretty awesome FWB — we kept hooking up for YEARS after college. And the fact I did this thing alerted my roommate to haul my ass to counseling. So, uh, task failed successfully?)
Does this mean the front of her neck *doesn’t* smell terrific?
When Joyce is in front, she’s not studying Dorothy’s neck.
Red Sky At Morning, Sarah Take Warning.
It’s like lesbian flag lighting!
Red Sky At Noon, Fly A Balloon!
Ngl thats pretty hetero
I choose to believe this is an indication that Joyce secretly wants to be a butch himbo.
Joyce goes by Jorts now
Dorothy can’t take “Dord” because it would reignite the QC/DoA Feud. (and that dang near kicked off ww3 last time, so best not to chance it again)
There was a feud?
I can’t believe she buttered Jorts
Oh, sorry, I’ve been spending a lot of time on Reddit recently… (And yes, it’s safe for work and hysterical if anybody wants to Google it)
“Okay… That was even gayer than I was prepared for.”
It’s sweet that this is the first time in a while that we’ve been shown Dorothy waking up without having a nightmare.
Yeah, that is a good observation. I do wonder how much of that is Joyce-specific, and how much of it might also be the rest of her journey the day before, confronting her inner self that wants peace and quiet, but would prefer “quiet” if given the choice between the two, and how that part of herself probably has fed into her survivor’s guilt and PTSD. Like, she had a big day even outside of Joyce kisses.
Thi is a refreshing feeling, to see her relieved from this.
“The truth is, Joe’s girlfriend is cheating on him with a woman.”
we’ll get her to have gay sex that passes the bechdel test ONE day
Just wanted to say… that comment had me burst out laughing. Had the rest of the house not been asleep, I would have probably done the full Brian Blessed top-of-my-lungs guffaw. Thank you for that. 😀
And meanwhile, Dorothy can’t seem to fuck without Joyce being involved somehow. Complete bozos, the both of ’em.
Is your profile pic Power Ranger coins? Because if so that is an awesome idea.
The current Fortnite Battle Pass contains HALO and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the latter of which is something I’ve been expecting/demanding for at least a year. I already have the core 5 Rangers skins and their weapons, and once I reach Level 100, I’ll have the Green and White Ranger as well. In a month, the Dino Megazord will become available on top of all that. I’m in a very Power Rangers mood at the moment.
I don’t play Fortnite, but I love the Power Rangers. I am subscribed the official Power Rangers YouTube channel, so I can binge watch full seasons.
I’m old so I still love the first 3 seasons the most.
God Freaking Fortnite, let me tell you that i fell an incredible amounts of .. nothing about it. It mostly baffles ne a bit that it becomes such a big thing with countless crossover skins when it looks to be a pretty generic shooting game. Maybe i am too old or bad at shooters to get it.
I mean, or maybe people just like the generic arena shooter. It has brighter colors than most battle royales, and is a bit silly and fun, there doesn’t have to be a ton more to it really.
And i would get that. It’s just the scale of itvthat confuse me.
See, that’s about where I was on it at first, and I only got it because a Final Fantasy buddy was into it at the time. Aside from just the skins, it has fun and silly story events happening all the time, it’s got Guitar Hero as a full game mode now, a LEGO mode that’s always adding features, a whole racing game even, and there’s a massive market of player-crested game modes like tower defense, escape rooms , and obstacle courses, all available right from the main menu. Even down to the weapons and vehicles, they’re always cycling things in and out, and beyond the generic shooty bang-bang guns, they have stuff like grappling guns, Kamehameha waves, full-on superpowers and transformations, and all that whatnot.
Basically, the scale of it comes from a genuinely good variety of gameplay experiences, no up-front cost so you’re not dropping $60 to find out if you enjoy it, and then there’s the Item Shop with all the emotes and skins and songs and other frankly overpriced miscellany for people who like playing dress-up. Hell, my sister doesn’t really do shooters at all, but they had a Lady Gaga event in the rhythm game mode that drew her in, and she plays the LEGO mode almost daily.
And then there’s the word salad appeal of being able to say “Spider-Gwen just hit me with the Kamehameha and then I got ran over by Bruno Mars driving a Ninja Turtles van, can I get a rez?” It’s too silly of a game to really get heated over, which helps keep the vibes clean.
I’m not sponsored by Fortnite, by the way, I just wanted to hopefully explain why it’s as big as it is.
Hey yeah i huess with all that it makes sense it’s so popular. Still not for me, mostly because i suck at both shooters and online games.
this may be just the way I compartmentalize types of attraction and affection, but I never got the idea that Joyce is sexually attracted to women. [to Billie] “I want to climb on your bosom and feel warm and safe” doesn’t read as sexual to me, wanting to feel safe and cared for is just a normal want.
[to Sal] “I want to brush you hair” same thing
In the case of Billie’s breasts, I’d say part of it is maybe the different between just wanting a hug with your friend versus wanting to climb into her breasts. I’m sapphic myself, and I definitely like the thought of curling up next to a lovely woman, resting my head upon her breasts, and feeling warm and safe. It’s an intimate sort of attraction!
EXACTLY THIS. Holy shit this. It’s important! emotionally. or something.
Aside from that, context matters. Here’s the strip in question:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/curiosity/
Without that context, I could accept it being a passing thought, influenced by faint baby memories of comfort and security, that someone with a faulty social filter might voice… but she’d just been panicking over the mere possibility of being attracted to women, and in fact had just recoiled after realizing how her gripping Jennifer’s shirt could imply an attraction to breasts. She was very aware, in that moment, of how gay she looked, and yet…
Notice also how, in the first panel, Joyce is reacting defensively to the claim made by Jennifer in the previous strip. Is she really likely to be instinctively seeking comfort and shelter in the person who triggered such a reaction?
The very next day’s strip: She doesn’t WANT to end up gay like everyone else in college! And, lo, the Dramatic Irony. Or, Sapphic Irony, if you will.
By the way: accidentally reported your comment, sorry. Leaving this here so that David Willis knows to disregard that report.
Don’t worry he doesn’t check out every report, they get automatically deleted if they get enough reports.
I suspect that is partly because, like me, you’re a dude. Men describe their sexual attraction in different ways than women do, for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that they usually seem to experience such attraction in different ways. The old saying went something like, “Men heat up like light bulbs; women heat up like clothes irons.”
I’ve heard that before and I’ve always disliked it as a metaphor, largely because lightbulbs and clothes irons heat up the same way: electrical resistance. Indeed, unless you’re dealing with theatrical/film lights or shitty pre-1950’s examples of either, it doesn’t even convey the shitty message it’s trying to convey! I invite you to touch a 1980’s incadescent and a 1980’s clothes iron at zero, five, twenty, and 45 seconds after turning on and find out which burns you first. On the other end of the stupid metaphor, I don’t recommend running a non-industrial clothes iron for 8 hours straight.
As a raging bisexual, I can tell you that men and women (as a whole) are pretty equally perverts, when given a safe venue to express their thoughts. The only way to guess a semi anonymous lewd artist’s gender is by their anatomy mistakes, usually.
Hey now, it’s not nice to mock me and my male characters’ sometimes freakishly tiny hands /j
Derek, it might be that you’re describing something like the demisexual – freysexual axis.
If affection and sexual desire are not connected for you, then what Joyce is saying probably doesn’t parse the same as for people to whom they are.
As a demisexual pan male myself I can confirm that the affection I’d give to friends is far more guided by what they seem comfortable with than social norms, OR how I view them romantically. I was just glaring suspiciously at this general comment thread wondering how to slip that in when Adeptus here piped up last. Thanks!
Well now you been shown you were wrong about that. Yay.
I mean, at least Dorothy’s self-esteem is good enough now to agree that she smells good…?
ok but how does Joe’s neck smells, comparatively ?
Joyce, Joyce, Joyce. This is EASY. Just throw a Monkey Master figure at Dorothy’s head and then Sarah will understand completely!
That or a smoke bomb, to buy her some time to formulate a less hormone-addled response.
Joyce long ago initiated her courtship of Dorothy in the accepted manner: Throwing a toy at her head.
Wow. I had completely forgotten about Beach Day!
https://imgur.com/a/DvkBdNJ
Shhhh. They’re sleeping.
[Air horn at 300 decibels]
I’m going to be that guy and note that 300 decibels will kill them and everyone in nearby buildings.
Log scales are nasty.
Fine, 400. 💅🏻
kame hame AIR HORN BLAST XD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCyXsHC-lQ4&t=30s
Awww!! That is so adorable ;;
Sweet art once again Yotomoe <3
*Sarah’s glare intensifies until the bunk catches fire*
(Jokes aside, that is perfection.)
The boob grope and drool fool are exquisite elements. 5/5. 🙂
Not quite meant to be a boob grope, though I can’t deny Joyce is at least in the ballpark of grabbin titty.
Thank the gods of the sun and stars for your lovely art!
I guess this is evidence that Joyce likes to be big spoon with Dorothy?
I guess that means Joyce’s ideal sleeping fantasy would be for her to be a Joyce sandwich where Joe big spoons Joyce while Joyce big spoons Dorothy, with just the right amount of compression pressure.
Obviously each to their own, but Joyce’s desire for being “smooshed” sounds like the opposite of comfort. I’d find it claustrophobic, not soporific!
Not too long ago, it’d’ve seemed much the same way to me too: trapped under a heavy weight? How is that comfortable?
Then I got a weighted blanket. Giles Corey may have had a point.
Never heard that name. Looked it up. I learned something new today.
It’s gonna kill her, but she would find it worthy.
In fact, a threesome group of friends of mine (one married couple of bi-folks; one gal of lezzieness) used to do this. The older gal liked to be sandwiched between the other two. She likes both the compression and extra heat (’cause circulation issues or cold blood lizard thing, unsure).
My husband’s healthy body temperature is a good degree, maybe degree and a half, warmer than mine. Lovely at first when I’m icy – but when he wraps himself around me and GLOMPS so he’s against my back, with his arms around my torso and his legs wrapped around mine, the blanket sometimes folded double over me coz he fidgets in his sleep, I can overheat a bit… Despite having cold blood lizard circulation issues 🤷🏻♀️
I tend to run a pretty high body temp as well. Made me popular in the winter months. Not so much in the summer.
I wish this lovely disaster couple a very I hope this relationship sets your entire friend group on fire. A baptism in the precursor flames a creation. So that a new better friend group might rise from the ashes like the divine phoenix of myth. One with Asma, and Lyle and that one Amazi-Girl catchphrase lady./s
Wait… who’s Lyle? (I mean, other than the Kindly Viking. Half an internet to anyone who gets that reference without googling.)
Lucy’s brother.
Thank you for that. In my defense, it’s been a while since he made an appearance.
Rogelio’s boyfriend in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. He and Adora go way back in the Horde.
If I could post the Captain America gif with “I understood that reference” in here, I would. SPOP references score extra brownie points in this dojo.
That’s Kyle. A Lyle is a stringed insturment from ancient Greece.
That’s a lyre. Lyle is a Hawaiian girl who made friends with Experiment 626.
That’s Lilo! Lyle are those ropes cowboys use to herd cattle.
That’s a lasso. Lyle is an Eric Clapton song first released in March of 1971.
That’s Layla. Lyle is a especially potent chemical drain cleaner.
That’s why there’s so many new character models for previously very minor characters. Book 16 introduces the replacement cast.
“She smells like sapphism and tear gas! And tastes like…” :swishes mouth around: “… No, wait, that’s Joe. I didn’t brush after I sucked him off last night.”
“TOO MUCH TRUTH!”
Sucking off your bf then going to bed necking your gf and holding her oh so close. I don’t think ya’ll are ready for what Joyce truly is.
What Joyce truly is? I’d say living the dream, except for it probably blowing up in her face soon.
…Not like that!
That was last night in Joe’s room.
Sarah: C’mon, I know you can do gayer than-
Joyce: It TASTES incredible, too!
Sarah: There you go.
That is not the way you were supposed to word that truth, Joyce!
Huh. So the buffer was stuck on July 11 2026 for long enough that I was starting to wonder if Willis had actually finished DoA completely, or had just decided to take a vacation, or whether something in the story happened then as devastating as that one death in It’s Walky.
And now suddenly it says September 21, 2025, which would mean Willis changed their mind about something which meant they had to jettison 10 months of strips, making for an almost book-length alternate story.
Intriguing.
Or, y’know, something’s up with the buffer counter, it can’t handle being over a year in advance, and it should be saying September 2026.
Maybe one of these Y2K-esque bugs:
2025-12-31 Wed – Versions of Intuit’s QuickBooks for DOS – dates fail at end of year
2026-01-19 Mon – CCSDS 32-bit time code MSB sets 03:14:08 TAI, 2^31 seconds from 1958-01-01 (q.v.)
2026-06-29 Mon – Day 100000 of the UK Gregorian Calendar
From the big list of J R Stockton Critical and Significant Dates:
https://people.cs.nycu.edu.tw/~tsaiwn/sisc/runtime_error_200_div_by_0/www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/critdate.htm
That’s interesting. I hadn’t noticed the buffer had changed that much before now. I know a lot of people, myself included, have expressed that we feel that Willis didn’t handle the protest story arc very well. I wonder if that’s part of the reason for the change, or if it’s just a bug in the buffer counter.
yeah like even then there’s a lot of other good reasons he’d be doing so
pretty number go up, but pretty number have point of diminishing returns!
if his goal is to make the comic more relevant and relatable to an audience of modern US college students, a super-long buffer would unfortunately continue to be an obstacle no matter which way ya slice it
I have also wondered about the massive buffer. It suggests Willis can’t easily react and comment to what is happening in the real world.
Seems like a benefit.
Willis recently had some thoughts about some of his characters and decided to make better use of some of them. Having a year long buffer means they can insert new content into the storyline when and how they feel it’s important. I’d imagine that adding in new strips is messing with the buffer count.
Well we’ve already jumped up to October 22 over the course of the day.
Guessing the new content has grown to the point where a major reordering of the existing buffer need to take place.
That or Willis has drawn 30 strips today.
Rip Willis’ dominant wrist
As a guess, possibly he pulled everything more than a month out and is deciding on a strip-by-strip basis whether this goes back in as-is, or with minor edits, or gets replaced. So I doubt all of it (or even probably the majority of it) is getting binned when all is said and done, but it might take a bit before the buffer is back up to formally a year
Joyce is already nailing being a gay/bi disaster.
🎵 V is very, very extraordinary!🎵
Willis, you will *never* run out of the gayest things for Joyce to say. It is an infinite fractal progression with unlimited variety.
Out of nowhere, Jennifer Rush’s The Power Of Love starts softly playing
So how does this comic read. Did Dorothy intend to come clean about the cheating? The reaction to what Joyce said made me think she meant to finesse things even at this stage.
I think she meant for Joyce to admit that they’re a thing (Dotty/Joyce), but not like, describe an intimate moment. Thus though “okay sort of that truth.”
this
She wanted Walky and Joe to hear it from them first, both in the sense of being the first to know and in the sense of not being told by someone else. We know this, because she said as much earlier. Hiding it from Sarah until they’ve had the chance to tell the boys was part of that plan.
Right. Makes sense I guess.
“She smells like cucumbers and her voice is like warm butter.”
I love it when a comic shows someone so into a woman
https://betweenfailures.com/comics1/2851-the-whitest-girl-you-know
I mean I would have the same reaction from seeing Carol, tbh.
Oh, I wouldn’t blame anyone. But before I started reading webcomics I didn’t even know what yuri was, and now I can’t do without it.
Good thing the comic’s saved as a .PNG file with transparency, because Sarah can see right through Joyce.
I see what you did there.
(and sarah can see what joyce did there.)
((or who joyce did there.))
(((which is sad since joyce hasn’t done her there yet)))
I wonder if Joe will see Dorothy swiping Joyce as an act of revenge for whatever happened in highschool.
Also, I love bedhead Dorothy
The NorthDorothy remembers…Joyce: it’s the p h e r o m o n e s
The girls seem to be having problems admitting to any ‘gayness’ to others. Even Dina was more upfront about when asked “Are you into girls?” in essence said yes! (or the more cutsie “That hypothesis needs to be repeatedly tested.”)
Joyce out here looking like she’s gonna need a fourth digit to accurately measure her blood pressure.
Okay Dracula, slow your roll, are there any other truths you could share?
new writer’s block unlocked: running out of innuendos
Awww, Joyce, those big blue eyes! How cruel of Sarah to force you to ‘fess up thusly!
Love the opalescent rainbow detail in Joyce’s eyes for emphasis.
Who would win: Sarah’s epic glare, or Joyce’s TMI blast? Place your bets!
God can it finally be Stupid Prizes time?
The comic is yuri trash now, we’re gonna be in this conversation until the end of September.
I want Willis to name the next book “This Comic is Yuri Trash Now” but they don’t name them after comments. Very sad.
I would sign all rights away if I could get art of dina and becky’s wedding with her as the T-Rex and Becky as Ellie Sattler.
If Willis reads these comments, I’d like to state that I too would definitely enjoy having such an art print available for purchase.
Maybe he can have someone say it about the Julia Grey comics. And then Amber can explain it to Joyce.
Sarah is totally going to confront them about being at the protest isn’t she, and not give a fuck about their relationship drama.
This ^
Random cheerful poll — what are some other long-running comic strips or webcomics where a central character came out later in the strip?
Cheerful because I presume that people will recommend things they enjoy 😊 Also this might be spoiler-ful, I don’t know if we have spoiler tags.
To start:
Questionable Content (Faye)
Haven’t read it in years, but I heard Dresden Codak had one of these moments recently. Won’t spoil whom, just in case some folks aren’t caught up yet.
So you’ve missed what, two pages? (I kid, I kid, I love that comic and its glacial update schedule).
Last I read it was before Dark Science had even begun… and now there’s so much to catch up on it just looks intimidating, lol.
To be fair, it’s fewer pages than this current story arc in DoA.
I love the way Faye’s was handled in QC. I have mild issues with the bi rep in QC (I cannot go into it because I suck at wording my issue with it because it’s complicated. Being bi is frustrating sometimes with media), but generally the way it handles their characters realizing their sexuality has always been fantastic and I like that it generally avoids the most harmful tropes. Granted, it could maybe use a bit more actual stakes.
Much as I hate all of this I love that it came right on the heels of Sarah becoming better friends with Joe
Yeah, part of that face is, IMHO, “I JUST started trying to accept that lunkhead has changed, FOR YOU SPECIFICALLY, and now you pull THIS SHIT?”
oh! okay well now I know for sure that this is a proper GL plotline. the bit about liking girlsmell comes up surprisingly often once you start paying attention to i
GL? I’m gonna guess girl love, but is that a genre?
correct, and I believe many consider it as such? at the very least most manga aggregators list it within the genres (although I’d personally call it a subgenre within the romance genre, but good luck finding anyone sorting by subgenres (except BL in some JP bookstores))
OK, not just girl love; I met an old flame after many years (more than a lustrum) and in the process of hugging her, I remarked that her hair smelled just the same. Of course, my nose was buried in said hair at that moment.
Or it could be a autistic spectrum thing.
I could believe it’s an autism thing
and actually I also have anecdote suggesting it’s not just a trope too! I was dating an early transwoman a couple years back (she started HRT while we were dating). I always struggled to get into the mood with her because her smell would deter me a little (so much guilt over that)
we ended up breaking up amicably over other matters. back at easter I was visiting my parents, so I invited some friends to catch up, and she was one of them. we were still flirty with each other, and we ended up enjoying a one day fling together, and it was the most into it I had ever been. at some point I realized I was enjoying her smell, and I bet the HRT had a hand in that
so yea, boysmell doesn’t do it for me, but girlsmell absolutely does~
lus·trum
/ˈləstrəm/
noun
1.
Roman History
a purificatory sacrifice made after a census every five years.
2.
rare
a period of five years.
I like that. I’m stealing that. Fuck you, Rome.
Oh, hey, thanks for the definition. I just realized that others might think a lustrum was an alcoholic aphrodisiac.
Yeah, I kind of assumed it was something like “a brief period of intense infatuation”, so I looked it up.
I would like to say I appreciate that someone else is also on the “fuck Rome” bandwagon of history nerds. Well met, comrade.
Oh, I’m not a history nerd of any description, I just wanted to insult some Romans.
Still glad to have you on board, lol. So often in popular culture the Roman Empire is portrayed as this group of wise, noble statesmen… then you study their history and it’s like “oh wait, they were actually a bunch of patriarchal violent psychopaths!”
“They weren’t racist, though!”
“That’s because they invented different kinds of bigotry the world hadn’t seen yet.”
One day the vain, arrogant sons of Romulus shall pay for what they did to my Gaelic ancestors. Asterix will rise again.
“Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.”
And that was a Roman writing, albeit putting words into the mouth a Briton. Most people don’t quote the first part,
(To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.)
Marvelous. Thank you for this knowledge. I genuinely love it.
Considering that Joe & Walky are part of this love… square? Except a square would indicate a connection between Joe & Walky… so I guess a love U?
Anyway, at this point, I wouldn’t say it’s a GL so much as BiL.
The truth is… I am Iron-Man.
Welcome back, Mr. Stark. You’re looking mighty healthy for someone whose mortal frame was ravaged by phenomenal cosmic power.
Ah wonderful I can take solace in the ‘Dumbing of Age’ comments discourse to take my mind off the ‘Viviepop is executive producing a Homestuck animated show with Toby Fox voicing John Egbert’ comments discourse 😌
Is that the one behind those demon shows that say “fuck” in every sentence? I remember when the Hazbin Hotel pilot came out and there was a lot of buzz for it, and then I didn’t watch anything until a season finale happened to be on while I was in the room. I haven’t seen the other show really at all, but the wolf girl seems popular.
Yep, that’s Viviepop.
Her stuff’s definitely Not For Me™, and I have no strong opinions about the writing in Homestuck, but I guess it’s neat someone’s animating it.
Sounds like my decision to block youtube comments on every device I own continues to be a wise decision.
I am for once incredibly happy and wish all the hater a merry “die mad about it”.
This is the objectively correct response.
When you are into something that has a disproportionate hatedom (or multiple things even) for long enough your “give a fuck about your opinion” meter rapidly reaches zero and never goes back up.
Teach me your ways, sensei. The damnable voices that forever whisper that I am “cringe” never silence. I must learn this power.
Listen, you must remember that any happiness you can squeeze out of the giant shit bucket that is living on this planet is precious and no one’s pathological to dhame others for their taste in fucking cartoons is worth giving a smidgen of a shit about.
(In less profanity loaded words: Just enjoy what make you happy and ignore the people who try to tell you it suck because it doesn’t cater to them.)
Wise words, indeed.
(Sorry for the goofy way I worded that reply earlier, I just got done watching a youtube vid that was a compilation of tumblr posts… the unique verbiage of that place seeped into my typing. Hopefully didn’t come out too deranged.)
I am native of Tumblr so I didn’t even noticed anything weird. It was funny and you are cool.
Oh are people whining about that? Screw the haters, that might be the only way I ever ingest Homestuck. They can make their own damn YT show or machinima and give it away for free if they’re that bothered.
They both need to have a sit-down discussion with Walky & Joe, and the words “Poly” definitely need to be brought up, and ASAP.
oh please, if poly rep was to show up here I’d be over the moon
beyond the sierra/mandy/grace background trio? would hit different with core cast, fair enough
They should probably talk about that between themselves first, though it would be amusing for Joyce (or Joe?) to suggest it and Dorothy to be all “No, I want you to myself”.
Yeah, I mean, I’m poly myself, but any reasonable chance of that ship believably sailing ran aground and caught fire when Joyce accepted his gift and gave him a blowjob without mentioning any of what was happening.
I’m more of a hair smell kind of person
Although I guess the neck is basically near there
I’m beginning to think that the only thing that could make people happy would be if there was a one week timejump with “…and everyone told everyone exactly what you think they need to, and everyone felt appropriately bad but not traumatized about it” as an intertitle. Everyone knows they need to tell Walky and Joe. But when every 5 seconds of dialog takes 24 hours of real-time to be released, there are two separate conversations that need to happen, and it’s still practically dawn of the morning after, it’s going to take a bit before we see it.
But it has to be now now now now now or I’m gonna hold my breath until I get what I want.
You could squeam and squeam and squeam…. but that might lead to hyperventilating. I gess alternating the two might work.
The timescale is part of it, but it’s also that they were going to do it last night, but chickened out and slept together instead. It’ll be interesting to see if they do talk to the boys today or if the pattern holds and they find excuses not to.
Ah, yes, the ol’ “I’m going to exaggerate people’s words to make them look bad”, what a rhetorical play. We never see that here.
ngl, even though i tend to be the little spoon, there is some combination of my being ace and my being OCD that makes the knowledge that someone could just sniff the back of my neck absolutely HORRIFYING and i am considering a year round turtleneck wardrobe to compensate.
tbf if you’re that physically close it’s probably either consensual or you have bigger issues to worry about
….. is the bigger thing to worry about the OCD I mentioned initially or…????