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1) The Pity Meal should be a real thing at McDonalds. It consists of oversalted fries, a 96 oz drink, and a McDLT. And a toy that’s not as good as you remember the toys being when you were a kid.
2) I have, on occasion, compared Joyce with her blonde hair, giant blue eyes, triangular grin, and general perkiness to Gwenpool. But Becky’s blatant medium awareness in panel 5 has me wondering…
I seem to recall something called a “McFeast” back in the 1980s that isn’t on their menu any more either. And then there was a larger burger (quarter-pound or maybe a third-pound patty) called a “Big Classic” that was served on a Kaiser roll.
There seems to have been a lot of various sandwiches that McD’s have tried and cancelled over the years.
– Microwave a Banquet “Backyard BBQ” meal
– Slap that rib-shaped, meat-related-substance patty on a bun
– Add more sauce to taste
– Add pickle and onion
From Wiki: McFeast – a hamburger with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and mayonnaise, in most markets from April 1977. McFeasts has been served since the mid-1980s in Sweden and was later introduced to the rest of the Nordic countries; the McFeast in Sweden contains a quarter pounder patty, lettuce, modified mayonnaise with lemon juice, onion and tomato. In the rest of the countries, the McFeast also contains ketchup, but not in Sweden. The same burger was sold under the name Mega Feast in New Zealand for several years during the 1990s but has since been discontinued. The McFeast Deluxe was sold in Australia until the late 1990s and contained: mustard, ketchup, large onions, McFeast Deluxe sauce, lettuce, a tomato slice, dill pickles, regular cheese and a quarter pounder patty served in a Quarter Pounder/McChicken Bun. It returned to the Australian menu in 2009 and in August 2011 using the same ingredients, however,it contained McChicken sauce in place of the original ‘McFeast Deluxe’ sauce.[13] The McFeast has been sold in Germany and Austria since the 1990s under the name Hamburger Royal TS (T for “Tomate” (tomato); S for “Salat”, the German word for lettuce). It contains a quarter-pounder patty, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cheese and the McChicken sauce. For special occasions, it is sold in Germany as a McFresh which also contains cucumber slices. Renamed in U.S. as Quarter Pounder with Cheese Deluxe since July 2019.
Remember the “Big n’ Tasty”, their attempt at competing with Wendy’s? I liked it better than the Big Mac, especially if you could get them to put Big Mac sauce on it for you. I think it was a continuation of the McDLT. The big, two-compartment styrofoam box was a marketing gimmick more than anything, but came out when people were starting to care about the environment, so that went over well…
Now if I’m going to any of the big three, Wendy’s is the first choice, Burger King following behind. The food’s better and they still look like real restaurants; all the McD’s around here look like prisons that give you diabetes. (The local BK actually hasn’t changed all that much since the 80s. ‘Member the BK Kid’s Club?)
Easy, just order an adult meal and a kids meal to go. They’ll just assume the kid is at home and you are bringing it home for them. Heck order 2 or 3 kids meals without an adult meal and they’ll probably make the same assumption.
I have no shame. I don’t even eat at McD’s because I am a vegetarian and they don’t really have much of anything veg (even the fries are cooked in beef) so whenever they have Pokemon cards I just walk right in and ask to buy the toy, by itself, without a meal.
No one has ever been weird about it, they probably assume I have a kid at home or am a giant nerd (both answers are correct…I keep the TCG card for my collection and give the accompanying Pokemon toy to my kid).
Yeah, back when my Dad and I played Yu-Gi-Oh! and they’d occasionally have those 2-card packs, he and I’d go down to McDonald’s once or twice a week and buy, like, 6-10 kid’s meals and split them down the middle. I was in high school and he was in his 40’s. I come from a long line of “gives no fraks”
@ Pilot, Kali, Rel, King Dan:
You’re all right, and you’re all wrong.
This has been your arthropod Rorschach test for the week.
Tune in next week when my avatar will have compound eyes, wings and mandibles.
It could also be that interim grades are hardcoded to be in or else soon. I don’t usually think midterms are, but every school data infrastructure is its own unique breed of Fucked Up.
That said, I’m assuming at least one instructor who’s the ‘If you ACTUALLY DIE the day before the midterm I will still expect your corpse to show up and take this exam’ level of hardass.
Today’s alt text makes me wonder when those get written. I mean…it’s certainly plausible that that alt text joke got written in April (ish? I’m estimating here), but it’s just close enough to make me curious.
Given we have reached Animal Crossing Is Relevant To The Author’s Thoughts (including the ‘oh shit I just got a supportive letter from my fake mom and I’m having Complex Emotions’ type,) sometime after March 20th or so, which was just when social distancing really entered the cultural lexicon.
Could’ve been written when the strip was uploaded to the buffer, could’ve been written yesterday.
Come on Robin, why do you have to block Becky’s chances of getting to second (maybe even third) base? After all she’s been through, that could really cheer her up.
As a doctor* I propose makeouts and cuddling for solving all your mental health needs. Any questions?
What about orgasm achieved by penetrative sex, that may not necessarily be phallic? (since orgasms can be achieved with surface contact)
I always took home run to be an orgasm achieved through conventional intercourse. (or possibly intercourse -less- the orgasm). But clearly the ballgame analogy fails when its not flexible enough to handle the rainbow of sexual expression. But you have a point. I suspect a home run is best used to describe receiving an orgasm from a partner.
There’s a joke in here about playing without balls, but I’m not sure it can be structured to effectively target the analogy instead of peoples identity or expression…
Analogy cancelled due to not recognizing play without balls?
Well, there was a comic book back in the 1980s called “Cadillacs and Dinosaurs”(a spinoff of “Xenoxoic Tales”), originally published by Kitchen Sink Press, which in turn spawned an animated TV show, an arcade video game, a role-playing game, and a couple of video/computer console games, so there’s always hope.
So…do the characters get to avoid the pandemic, due to it not being very logistically realistic to integrate that in with the …what is it called, lapsing timeline?
I think Willis mentioned something to that effect a while ago. (The trope for it is Comic Book Time; I’ve also seen it referred to as a “sliding timescale”.) There may be references to the pandemic once it’s over, but the Dumbingverse never makes direct mention of who the current president is for the same purpose – namely, to avoid the comic becoming a period piece.
(More oblique references are fair game for current mention, and once the Current Thing becomes a thing of the past then they can be named more directly, is the general rule.)
If the time line is sliding along, lapsing as time itself lapses, also, would that be Co-llapsing Timeline?
Also is Willis allowed to go all “Our Town,” with the characters making Meta-references to the fourth wall? Don’t you need a permit for that stuff? A Wilder license from SDComicCon or something?
Willis also makes subtle changes to update things over the course of the comic without drawing our attention to it directly. For example, in one of the early comics Sal was playing “MarioKart” on what most everybody agreed was a Nintendo DS. Yesterday’s comic, however, shows Becky playing “Animal Crossing” on what looks vaguely like a Nintendo ‘Switch’.
That doesn’t sound like anything other than consistency with the sliding timescale – using the current technology at the time the specific comic strip is drawn.
Ngl part of me wishes the pandemic could be incorporated, because I’ve found it weirdly therapeutic to read comics that have included the characters dealing with it, but I know that would be kinda impossible with this one considering the buffer time on it. Willis would have to abandon his next several months of storylines and rush to do a whole bunch of new comics and I would not wish that on any creator.
Considering that the Dumbingverse is also always theoretically set in “Present Year” (i.e. 20XX), having the pandemic take place in DoA would also imply that it’ll last for the rest of time, considering that we’ll still presumably have the comic in circa 2026.
Even the Black Death – by some measures the gold standard of pandemics – didn’t last that long.
Plus the campus closed in the spring because of the pandemic and is quite likely to do again this fall, even if they are open at the start of the term. That’s a disruption to the story far beyond even just redoing the buffer.
Yeah, schools are still trying to figure out if having people on-campus is even remotely feasible, and so far responses have ranged from ‘no, not whatsoever’ to ‘a long, drawn out fuuuuuuuck as they continue to scramble.’ (Especially considering that a lot of the professors with tenure are, well. Old enough to be considered high-risk.) Among other things, theater and music majors are pretty much screwed until there’s a vaccine – the breath control methods you use to be projected and hold notes also mean they travel farther, to the point where you can’t safely socially distance in a live performance. This doesn’t affect most of our cast academically, but it’s the reason why churches are so incredibly high risk. I can see it not impacting churches like Joyce’s, where stubbornness and refusal to acknowledge science mean they’ll try anyway (and probably get a bunch of background characters killed,) but the whole bit where Joyce goes to Jacob’s service and sees if she feels God? Or any further experimentation? Not really a viable storyline.
So covering the pandemic would probably make the setting itself untenable for the foreseeable future and could disrupt a major character arc. It changes SO much it probably breaks the strip.
Sounds like what’s happened to our lives – disrupting major character arcs and making the setting untenable for the foreseeable future. I’m screenshotting this.
At the risk of being a “Debbie Downer”, I feel compelled to point out the current trajectory of the disease in the U.S. does not bode well for this Fall. If (and only if) there is a new administration next year, things will get better.
Robin is the worst. Well, no, there are like three or four people worse than her annoyance-wise, and that’s not even counting the murder-folk and the abductioneers, but yeah, Robin sucks and Dina should start farting strategically.
And they seem to recognize that it’s mostly for show/fun at this point rather than serious insecurity about her position as Joyce’s Best Friend (though I suppose Joyce saying ‘Nope! You’re my sister now’ and Jocelyne and Hank both accepting this probably helped on that front.)
At least, I’m HOPING by now Becky still feels secure in her position in Joyce’s heart, but we haven’t seen Significant Reaction Shots as she feels uncomfortable about that or anything in a while. (Probably also helps that by now she has relationships to people in their social circle independent of Joyce. Dina, obviously, but she’s been on good terms with Amber and Walky before as well.)
Just because Blaine is an out-and-out monster who came close to destroying Amber and whose actual overt crimes make him the most overt antagonist in the strip does not necessarily make him a bad parent. The Walkertons (I voted for Charles Walkerton) have their own unique brand of awfulness by dressing up abuse, neglect and bigotry with a facade of care and claims to want to protect Walky.
Oh, he’s an abusive monster as a parent as well, I have nothing good to say about Blaine (or, for that matter, Ross,) I just voted for Linda because she’s one of the most realistically bad and abusive parents and has appeared more recently than Carol. Also, I was seriously annoyed by people claiming Linda wasn’t as bad as the top three, for the reasons you singled out.
So, were panels 1-4 Becky explaining to Dina and Robin what she thinks Joyce is doing right now or is she just that good at reading Joyce and Dorothy’s minds?
If panels 1-4 really did happen, then I think Sarah is wondering if anyone could plausibly believe that Joyce and Dorothy aren’t already in a relationship.
Did we find out how much time has passed since the kidnapping? Because it seemed like Joyce’s parents have been in town for a while but Dorothy JUST finished her midterm and the kidnapping happened the night before midterms? Though I assume it makes sense that the kidnapping victims had their midterms postponed since what kind of awful teacher makes someone take a midterm right after being kidnapped?
(though if this was art school they’d have to take them anyway! I had a teacher once tell us if we got into a terrible accident and were in the hospital our assignment still better make it to class or else we’d fail the assignment)
We fond out from Sal some comics ago that this is the day after the kidnapping. It was yesterday morning that the Big Events came to their traumatic conclusion.
In theory, but there’s no reason to think so. Nothing’s changed.
We cut from that scene to Robin and Becky, where Robin talked about inviting Dina over to watch movies and play video games. A couple of other cuts – to Amber and Ethan and then back to Sal and Walky talking to Billie and we’re back to Dina and Becky playing video games.
But it seems like if people just got kidnapped then the teachers may give them an extra day or 2 before their exams. And she mentioned that her parents were still in town like it was a big thing.
I suspect that neither Becky nor Dina would even consider this, but I suppose that they could start kissing Robin’s neck and/or nuzzling her earlobes at the same time. Either Robin would freak out and leave or Willis would have a new Slipshine project…
-Robin, which feeling is worse, healthy grief, or the rage and frustration you’re engendering in Becky’s heart right now?
-Clam-jamming your social media director may not be a smart move, either.
-Becky – what, like PABST? Ew.
-Willis, I don’t mind a few tasteful ads on a page, but ads that PREVENT THE PAGE FROM LOADING 75% OF THE TIME just piss me off. (I am on Firefox, so maybe it’s me, but still.)
While it looks like a 4th wall nod (and to be fair it was gonna be Becky or Amaziberike) I think this also works as just a response to the state change from yesterday. Becky and Dina playing games, Becky starting to cry, SMASH CUT to Becky throttling her tears because she can’t cuddle Dina and cry into her hair with Robin suddenly in the way. i.e. Robin plowing in between them is the smash cut. So ultimately I think it’s a 4th wall nod by willis to readers by bracketing panels 1-4 between yesterday and todays #5
Christ, Dorothy, you got kidnapped, nearly died, missed an entire night’s sleep, and somehow still got your midterm done early? Admit it, you’re some kind of superhuman android.
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Okay, couple of observations.
1) The Pity Meal should be a real thing at McDonalds. It consists of oversalted fries, a 96 oz drink, and a McDLT. And a toy that’s not as good as you remember the toys being when you were a kid.
2) I have, on occasion, compared Joyce with her blonde hair, giant blue eyes, triangular grin, and general perkiness to Gwenpool. But Becky’s blatant medium awareness in panel 5 has me wondering…
3) What a Superhot girlfriend may look like.
1) Arch Deluxe. It was supposed to be better than the McDLT but it turned out to be worse.
The Arch Deluxe was my favorite burger they’ve ever had in my lifetime and I’m still sad it failed when I remember it.
I seem to recall something called a “McFeast” back in the 1980s that isn’t on their menu any more either. And then there was a larger burger (quarter-pound or maybe a third-pound patty) called a “Big Classic” that was served on a Kaiser roll.
There seems to have been a lot of various sandwiches that McD’s have tried and cancelled over the years.
none of which explains McRib (aka McGristle)
You can make a McRib at home!
– Microwave a Banquet “Backyard BBQ” meal
– Slap that rib-shaped, meat-related-substance patty on a bun
– Add more sauce to taste
– Add pickle and onion
I will have a McRib when Zombie Ross MacIntyre points a McRifle at me.
They tested individual pizzas in our area back in the ’90s. I wish those had made the cut.
From Wiki: McFeast – a hamburger with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and mayonnaise, in most markets from April 1977. McFeasts has been served since the mid-1980s in Sweden and was later introduced to the rest of the Nordic countries; the McFeast in Sweden contains a quarter pounder patty, lettuce, modified mayonnaise with lemon juice, onion and tomato. In the rest of the countries, the McFeast also contains ketchup, but not in Sweden. The same burger was sold under the name Mega Feast in New Zealand for several years during the 1990s but has since been discontinued. The McFeast Deluxe was sold in Australia until the late 1990s and contained: mustard, ketchup, large onions, McFeast Deluxe sauce, lettuce, a tomato slice, dill pickles, regular cheese and a quarter pounder patty served in a Quarter Pounder/McChicken Bun. It returned to the Australian menu in 2009 and in August 2011 using the same ingredients, however,it contained McChicken sauce in place of the original ‘McFeast Deluxe’ sauce.[13] The McFeast has been sold in Germany and Austria since the 1990s under the name Hamburger Royal TS (T for “Tomate” (tomato); S for “Salat”, the German word for lettuce). It contains a quarter-pounder patty, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cheese and the McChicken sauce. For special occasions, it is sold in Germany as a McFresh which also contains cucumber slices. Renamed in U.S. as Quarter Pounder with Cheese Deluxe since July 2019.
Remember the “Big n’ Tasty”, their attempt at competing with Wendy’s? I liked it better than the Big Mac, especially if you could get them to put Big Mac sauce on it for you. I think it was a continuation of the McDLT. The big, two-compartment styrofoam box was a marketing gimmick more than anything, but came out when people were starting to care about the environment, so that went over well…
Now if I’m going to any of the big three, Wendy’s is the first choice, Burger King following behind. The food’s better and they still look like real restaurants; all the McD’s around here look like prisons that give you diabetes. (The local BK actually hasn’t changed all that much since the 80s. ‘Member the BK Kid’s Club?)
… Didn’t Gwenpool have that same haircut at one point?
As Becky, I mean
You might be thinking of Spider-Gwen (Ghostspider/Gwen Stacy) during Into the Spiderverse.
Which Miles still isn’t allowed to have an opinion on.
Your Pity Meal sounds like a standard Happy Meal with a Super-Soaker soda.
honestly the option of being an adult and getting a toy along with my food without having to ask awkward questions is very appealing.
Right? Sometimes I just want a Pokemon keychain, some fries, and no judgment.
Speaking as someone who once walked out of a Jack in the Box with an armful of Justice League toys, I can only agree.
Easy, just order an adult meal and a kids meal to go. They’ll just assume the kid is at home and you are bringing it home for them. Heck order 2 or 3 kids meals without an adult meal and they’ll probably make the same assumption.
I have no shame. I don’t even eat at McD’s because I am a vegetarian and they don’t really have much of anything veg (even the fries are cooked in beef) so whenever they have Pokemon cards I just walk right in and ask to buy the toy, by itself, without a meal.
No one has ever been weird about it, they probably assume I have a kid at home or am a giant nerd (both answers are correct…I keep the TCG card for my collection and give the accompanying Pokemon toy to my kid).
The fries are cooked in veg oil with beef flavoring.
Which wasn’t good enough for Hindus so that may make no difference for you, either.
The McDonalds menu in India looks… different. I’m sad we can’t get a McSpicy Paneer or a Mexican McAloo Tikki where I live.
Yeah, back when my Dad and I played Yu-Gi-Oh! and they’d occasionally have those 2-card packs, he and I’d go down to McDonald’s once or twice a week and buy, like, 6-10 kid’s meals and split them down the middle. I was in high school and he was in his 40’s. I come from a long line of “gives no fraks”
I’m a guy who really enjoys his sodium–my doctor says I shouldn’t so much–and I can’t imagine what “oversalted McD’s fries” would be like.
ROBIN NO
ROBIN YES
ROBIN MAYBE
ROBIN PERCHANCE
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF ROBIN
ROBIN GOODFELLOW! Shakespeare drop.
With the right choke hold she could BE a Blue Robin.
HOLY VARIATIONS ON A THEME, BATMAN!
ROBIN SPARKLES
oh were we done
The Weather Channel says the Rob-Con is 6 today.
ROBIN COULD YOU REPEAT THE QUESTION?
ROBIN YOU”RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME NOW AND YOU’RE NOT SO BIG!
Robin: Still Trying.
ROBIN MOVE.
Oh that’s right, they all still go to school
Achievement Unlocked!
I know your avatar is meant to be a face, but I can’t help but see it as a two-headed alien throwing their hats in the air.
I see a squat black bug with a gold coloured head on a yellow background… personally…
… a guy with a hardhat, a beard, and eyebrows on the outside of the hardhat?
Wearing a mask, because we’re in a pandemic.
@ Pilot, Kali, Rel, King Dan:
You’re all right, and you’re all wrong.
This has been your arthropod Rorschach test for the week.
Tune in next week when my avatar will have compound eyes, wings and mandibles.
Wait. Dorothy was kidnapped and they still made her take her midterm? Boo!
Knowing Dorothy’s work ethic, I think she insisted on taking it as a further shining example that she should be in Yale.
I could see Dorothy finally having a breakdown if they tried to stop her
Ethan took his too, it may depend on the class/instructor
It could also be that interim grades are hardcoded to be in or else soon. I don’t usually think midterms are, but every school data infrastructure is its own unique breed of Fucked Up.
That said, I’m assuming at least one instructor who’s the ‘If you ACTUALLY DIE the day before the midterm I will still expect your corpse to show up and take this exam’ level of hardass.
They could be cuddling right now if it wasn’t for you, Robin!
Maybe even touching forheads
Hey! There could be children reading this comic.
Even kids need to know about safe forehead touching. Dina must keep her hat on at all times.
Needs more Senso-Rings!
Or fondling scalps!
It’s fun to watch what makes Becky f-bomb.
And the Keeners are good people.
Hey! Dorothy’s wearing her glasses again!
Today’s alt text makes me wonder when those get written. I mean…it’s certainly plausible that that alt text joke got written in April (ish? I’m estimating here), but it’s just close enough to make me curious.
I always thought he draws the comics months in advance, but the alt-text is written day of and is current
That might be the case, since the alt-text seems to be more like something written as a retrospective look.
Given we have reached Animal Crossing Is Relevant To The Author’s Thoughts (including the ‘oh shit I just got a supportive letter from my fake mom and I’m having Complex Emotions’ type,) sometime after March 20th or so, which was just when social distancing really entered the cultural lexicon.
Could’ve been written when the strip was uploaded to the buffer, could’ve been written yesterday.
Yeah, probably one of those.
Come on Robin, why do you have to block Becky’s chances of getting to second (maybe even third) base? After all she’s been through, that could really cheer her up.
As a doctor* I propose makeouts and cuddling for solving all your mental health needs. Any questions?
*Not actually a doctor.
If you’re talking second/third base, then that should be makeouts, cuddling, and orgasms.
Fair point.
Wait. If first, second and third base are makeouts, cuddling and orgasms, what the heck counts as a home run?
Well, they are in lesbians with each other, so… moving in together?
Getting a cat.
As always, XKCD has the answer:
https://xkcd.com/540/
After careful study of the diagram, I’m even more confused. It seems a home run would reenter the virginity line.
What Mike does with our Moms.
For a nickel.
Speaking of which, the important bit of news I got from this strip was that there is a mass visit of Mike planned for later in the day.
This will end well.
… penetration, I think?
… I dunno, baseball’s not my game.
Kinda wish you had Ruth’s avatar to go with that statement. Laughed my ass off still.
What about orgasm achieved by penetrative sex, that may not necessarily be phallic? (since orgasms can be achieved with surface contact)
I always took home run to be an orgasm achieved through conventional intercourse. (or possibly intercourse -less- the orgasm). But clearly the ballgame analogy fails when its not flexible enough to handle the rainbow of sexual expression. But you have a point. I suspect a home run is best used to describe receiving an orgasm from a partner.
There’s a joke in here about playing without balls, but I’m not sure it can be structured to effectively target the analogy instead of peoples identity or expression…
Analogy cancelled due to not recognizing play without balls?
That would be the old “hidden ball trick” (see “Little Big League” for a classic example).
Hey, look at Joyce establishing what other people need/want and then respecting their needs and boundaries!
So, ”Jurassic Park” or “Clueless” at Robin’s place?
If only there was a dinosaur retelling of “Emma” in movie format.
Dear Hollywood, please remake Clueless with dinosaurs.
Thank you, everyone
You know, if they ever made a movie with zombies AND dinosaurs, I would have a real dilemma.
Iron Sky 2
Though the first was better.
Well, there was a comic book back in the 1980s called “Cadillacs and Dinosaurs” (a spinoff of “Xenoxoic Tales”), originally published by Kitchen Sink Press, which in turn spawned an animated TV show, an arcade video game, a role-playing game, and a couple of video/computer console games, so there’s always hope.
So…do the characters get to avoid the pandemic, due to it not being very logistically realistic to integrate that in with the …what is it called, lapsing timeline?
I think Willis mentioned something to that effect a while ago. (The trope for it is Comic Book Time; I’ve also seen it referred to as a “sliding timescale”.) There may be references to the pandemic once it’s over, but the Dumbingverse never makes direct mention of who the current president is for the same purpose – namely, to avoid the comic becoming a period piece.
(More oblique references are fair game for current mention, and once the Current Thing becomes a thing of the past then they can be named more directly, is the general rule.)
If the time line is sliding along, lapsing as time itself lapses, also, would that be Co-llapsing Timeline?
Also is Willis allowed to go all “Our Town,” with the characters making Meta-references to the fourth wall? Don’t you need a permit for that stuff? A Wilder license from SDComicCon or something?
Willis also makes subtle changes to update things over the course of the comic without drawing our attention to it directly. For example, in one of the early comics Sal was playing “MarioKart” on what most everybody agreed was a Nintendo DS. Yesterday’s comic, however, shows Becky playing “Animal Crossing” on what looks vaguely like a Nintendo ‘Switch’.
That doesn’t sound like anything other than consistency with the sliding timescale – using the current technology at the time the specific comic strip is drawn.
Thank you. I knew that phrase but my brain wanted to substitute synonyms.
Ngl part of me wishes the pandemic could be incorporated, because I’ve found it weirdly therapeutic to read comics that have included the characters dealing with it, but I know that would be kinda impossible with this one considering the buffer time on it. Willis would have to abandon his next several months of storylines and rush to do a whole bunch of new comics and I would not wish that on any creator.
Considering that the Dumbingverse is also always theoretically set in “Present Year” (i.e. 20XX), having the pandemic take place in DoA would also imply that it’ll last for the rest of time, considering that we’ll still presumably have the comic in circa 2026.
Even the Black Death – by some measures the gold standard of pandemics – didn’t last that long.
The cholera pandemics in the 19th century lasted 7 and 11 years.
Plus the campus closed in the spring because of the pandemic and is quite likely to do again this fall, even if they are open at the start of the term. That’s a disruption to the story far beyond even just redoing the buffer.
Yeah, schools are still trying to figure out if having people on-campus is even remotely feasible, and so far responses have ranged from ‘no, not whatsoever’ to ‘a long, drawn out fuuuuuuuck as they continue to scramble.’ (Especially considering that a lot of the professors with tenure are, well. Old enough to be considered high-risk.) Among other things, theater and music majors are pretty much screwed until there’s a vaccine – the breath control methods you use to be projected and hold notes also mean they travel farther, to the point where you can’t safely socially distance in a live performance. This doesn’t affect most of our cast academically, but it’s the reason why churches are so incredibly high risk. I can see it not impacting churches like Joyce’s, where stubbornness and refusal to acknowledge science mean they’ll try anyway (and probably get a bunch of background characters killed,) but the whole bit where Joyce goes to Jacob’s service and sees if she feels God? Or any further experimentation? Not really a viable storyline.
So covering the pandemic would probably make the setting itself untenable for the foreseeable future and could disrupt a major character arc. It changes SO much it probably breaks the strip.
Maybe soon they’ll be able to say ‘the pandemic was last year’ she said hopefully.
Sounds like what’s happened to our lives – disrupting major character arcs and making the setting untenable for the foreseeable future. I’m screenshotting this.
Well, so far, the pandemic is a Jan/Feb through July thing, and these kids are in October, so…
At the risk of being a “Debbie Downer”, I feel compelled to point out the current trajectory of the disease in the U.S. does not bode well for this Fall. If (and only if) there is a new administration next year, things will get better.
True, but we have absolutely no idea how bad it’s going to be come RL October, so it’d be a bit hard to depict.
Robin is the worst. Well, no, there are like three or four people worse than her annoyance-wise, and that’s not even counting the murder-folk and the abductioneers, but yeah, Robin sucks and Dina should start farting strategically.
Yes, how dare Robin be concerned for the young woman in her employ who just had her dad kidnap all her friends and then get murdered. Ho terrible.
She’s rightly concerned, but her method of helping isn’t great.
She’s clit-blocking the nice lesbian and she’s some kinda reactionary “Millenial” Republican congresscritter. Case closed.
Robin DeSanto: Clit Blocker.
I believe that the proper term is “Clam Jammer”.
Robin’s always been defined by her appetites, and I think right now she subconsciously wants a sandwich.
It always makes me giggle when Joyce is upstaged in her own game – and of Dorothy of all people!
also, it is nice to see that Dorothy and Joyce treat Becky’s one-sided feud with Dorothy with exactly the amount of respect it deserves.
And they seem to recognize that it’s mostly for show/fun at this point rather than serious insecurity about her position as Joyce’s Best Friend (though I suppose Joyce saying ‘Nope! You’re my sister now’ and Jocelyne and Hank both accepting this probably helped on that front.)
At least, I’m HOPING by now Becky still feels secure in her position in Joyce’s heart, but we haven’t seen Significant Reaction Shots as she feels uncomfortable about that or anything in a while. (Probably also helps that by now she has relationships to people in their social circle independent of Joyce. Dina, obviously, but she’s been on good terms with Amber and Walky before as well.)
Not gonna lie: After Joyce’s panel two line I was waiting for a sitcom laugh track to kick in.
Becky: “Well, have a fucking blue ribbon.”
Becky, if you’re going to offer someone a beer, for God’s sake please give them a good one.
There’s worse,…. much worse. She could do better. But she could do worse, too?
This reminds me that I am REALLY annoyed that Leslie has more votes than Robin in the poll right now!!!
Given that they’re both in the 1% region right now, the term ‘below statistical noise level’ comes to mind.
Sure but I’m still annoyed. How did Leslie manage to get ANY votes?
I think everybody who didn’t vote for Blaine missed that it’s a ‘worst parent’ poll.
Just because Blaine is an out-and-out monster who came close to destroying Amber and whose actual overt crimes make him the most overt antagonist in the strip does not necessarily make him a bad parent. The Walkertons (I voted for Charles Walkerton) have their own unique brand of awfulness by dressing up abuse, neglect and bigotry with a facade of care and claims to want to protect Walky.
Oh, he’s an abusive monster as a parent as well, I have nothing good to say about Blaine (or, for that matter, Ross,) I just voted for Linda because she’s one of the most realistically bad and abusive parents and has appeared more recently than Carol. Also, I was seriously annoyed by people claiming Linda wasn’t as bad as the top three, for the reasons you singled out.
This isn’t the Snyder Cut people were hopping for.
Becky has become
a w a r e
The first three walls were never enough to contain her
She habitually destroys closets, so The Fouth Wall wasn’t gonna be safe for long.
So, were panels 1-4 Becky explaining to Dina and Robin what she thinks Joyce is doing right now or is she just that good at reading Joyce and Dorothy’s minds?
If panels 1-4 really did happen, then I think Sarah is wondering if anyone could plausibly believe that Joyce and Dorothy aren’t already in a relationship.
Becky’s anger has allowed her consciousness to ascend beyond the bounds of the 4th wall, apparently.
Did we find out how much time has passed since the kidnapping? Because it seemed like Joyce’s parents have been in town for a while but Dorothy JUST finished her midterm and the kidnapping happened the night before midterms? Though I assume it makes sense that the kidnapping victims had their midterms postponed since what kind of awful teacher makes someone take a midterm right after being kidnapped?
(though if this was art school they’d have to take them anyway! I had a teacher once tell us if we got into a terrible accident and were in the hospital our assignment still better make it to class or else we’d fail the assignment)
We fond out from Sal some comics ago that this is the day after the kidnapping. It was yesterday morning that the Big Events came to their traumatic conclusion.
But that was a few comics ago. It is possible that there was a time skip of a day or two.
In theory, but there’s no reason to think so. Nothing’s changed.
We cut from that scene to Robin and Becky, where Robin talked about inviting Dina over to watch movies and play video games. A couple of other cuts – to Amber and Ethan and then back to Sal and Walky talking to Billie and we’re back to Dina and Becky playing video games.
But it seems like if people just got kidnapped then the teachers may give them an extra day or 2 before their exams. And she mentioned that her parents were still in town like it was a big thing.
This is DOROTHY. If anyone’s going to take her exam the day of, it’s gonna be her.
I figured it was something like this
Early morning – Kidnapping
Afternoon – Parents start showing up (like the Keeners and Browns)
They spend the night.
Hence ‘still’ in town.
Also, we have literally been told immediately by a narration box in-comic every single time we got a day-plus timeskip.
(And there’s Willis’s own rule of 1 Chapter = 1 Day, unless otherwise immediately specified as above.)
Robin, you’re momming too hard right now
Eesh. I wouldn’t invite her if I was in Dorothy’s situation. But Dorothy’s a lot nicer, even to people who are continuously rude to her.
Dorothy’s probably still making allowances for “homeless gay orphan”.
I suspect that neither Becky nor Dina would even consider this, but I suppose that they could start kissing Robin’s neck and/or nuzzling her earlobes at the same time. Either Robin would freak out and leave or Willis would have a new Slipshine project…
Couple of things:
-Robin, which feeling is worse, healthy grief, or the rage and frustration you’re engendering in Becky’s heart right now?
-Clam-jamming your social media director may not be a smart move, either.
-Becky – what, like PABST? Ew.
-Willis, I don’t mind a few tasteful ads on a page, but ads that PREVENT THE PAGE FROM LOADING 75% OF THE TIME just piss me off. (I am on Firefox, so maybe it’s me, but still.)
I’ve seen Willis respond to people complaining about ads here, though I don’t remember his exact words so I don’t want to paraphrase.
But it’s not something he has direct control over, and IIRC, he reports such ads to the ad network for removal.
Comment to hiveworks. They’re the ones who can do something about it.
Becky seems to have some kind of sixth sense about what’s going on elsewhere in the comic. A sort of… COMIC SANS
So, Robin is THAT TYPE of mother… Unexpected, but funny.
Well…someone was going to break that 4th wall again, sooner or later…
While it looks like a 4th wall nod (and to be fair it was gonna be Becky or Amaziberike) I think this also works as just a response to the state change from yesterday. Becky and Dina playing games, Becky starting to cry, SMASH CUT to Becky throttling her tears because she can’t cuddle Dina and cry into her hair with Robin suddenly in the way. i.e. Robin plowing in between them is the smash cut. So ultimately I think it’s a 4th wall nod by willis to readers by bracketing panels 1-4 between yesterday and todays #5
Oh no, Becky can break the fourth wall. She’s too powerful!
SHE SAID FUCK
Becky’s said Fuck before.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/unlimited/
It’s Joyce who doesn’t.
So this is what they mean when they talk about Congress meddling in the lives of ordinary people?
Christ, Dorothy, you got kidnapped, nearly died, missed an entire night’s sleep, and somehow still got your midterm done early? Admit it, you’re some kind of superhuman android.