Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
[un]Divine
Ayme
A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
Wychwood
Varethane
When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
Fireweeds Moors
Gato Iberico
A cat-headed man and a girl with a sandwich hankering accidentally end up in a myth-infused country where magic chalices are a really big thing.
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
Wilde Life
Pascalle Lepas
Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Paranatural
Zack Morrison
Superpowered middle schoolers fight evil spirits in their rural hometown. Come for the jokes, stay for the cast, the creatures, and the mystery that ties them all together!
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Knights Errant
J.R. Doyle
Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Lighter Than Heir
Melissa Albino
A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Kiwi Blitz
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
Starhammer
J.N. Monk, Harry Bogosian
A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
Lilith's Word
inkPangur
If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
Hazy London
Scotty
A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Monster Pulse
Magnolia Porter Siddell
Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
Cut Time
Juby
Rel and her trusty avian friend Fugue are on a quest to save a world that's lost track of time. Follow them and their new recruits, in a story written with help from the stars.
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
Girl Genius
Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
Godslave
Meaghan Carter
Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
Real Science Adventures
Brian Clevinger
Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
Sufficiently Remarkable
Maki Naro
Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Awaken
Koti Saavedra/Flipfloppery
Superpowers, monsters and conspiracies. Piras, the spoiled Dameschi heir, fights to recover his identity after becoming a terrorist!
Sam & Fuzzy
Sam Logan
Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
Go Get a Roomie
Clover
Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
This is Not Fiction
Nicole Mannino
What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Devil's Candy
Rem, Bikkuri
A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
Caramel Corn
Potchimew
Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
The Sanity Circus
Windy
Magic, monsters and mysteries await in the odd city of Sanity. It's up to Attley and a colorful group of characters to find out just what is going on.
El Goonish Shive
Dan Shive
WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
The Witch Door
Anni K.
Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Demon's Mirror
Harry Bogosian
Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
The Automan's Daughter
Mike Stamm
Aisha Osman and her uncle Siddig outwit bikers, spies and kidnappers while gearing up for a showdown with the formidable Widowmaker mecha.
Between Failures
Jackie Wohlenhaus
The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
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Yep, which is why I think this is Dorothy’s dream. If it was Joyce’s vision of how great she is, everything wouldn’t be going wrong. Instead, this seems to be a classic anxiety dream with an added dose of “And the only thing you have going for you is an entirely misplaced sense of confidence.”
OTOH, it could be Joyce’s dream where everything is going wrong and then at the last moment, Dotty will solve all the problems absolutely perfectly, like Joyce’s personal knight in shining armour. ;D
It’s Joe’s dream. I am calling it now that Joe wakes up, turns to Joyce who is next to him, describes the dream, and she’s just “Oh, yeah, I’ve had that one.”
I’ve had dreams where I went from driving a car to riding a motorcycle to running without any noticeable transition. Disappearing pants are fairly low on the weirdness scale.
It’s disturbing that Dorothy has been so off the rails lately that we genuinely can’t tell if Dorothy is the craziest thing in this dream because she’s a figment of Joyce’s subconscious or that Dorothy has started acting that manic even in dreamland.
Big Brain: It’s Dorothy’s because we haven’t seen her been this confident in months. Not even Joyce has this unshakeable kind of trust in her anymore and she knows it.
Galaxy Brain: It’s Dorothy’s because she’s wearing no pants
Enlightened Brain: ohgod this is hella bi I love them your honor
Dreams as a storytelling device are most useful in revealing inner conflict that couldn’t be narrated any other way because the protag hasn’t even admitted it to themself.
typically a nightmare scratches the sort of itch that’s about deep, nagging fear or shame: “what if I (Dorothy) am not as strong and capable as I want to be?” makes way more sense than “what if my bff is kinda nuts, while i myself am quite reasonable?”
I don’t think it’s Joyce’s dream, I think it’s Dorothy being pantsless about to read Dexter and Monkey Master fanfic instead of her State of the Union address.
Let’s do some psychoanalysis. As Joyce sees Dorothy as an aspirational figure that opened her up to the world of orgasms via sex-fiction… They are riding a horse which might be an animal representation of Joe.
Perhaps Joyce wishes she had the sexual agency to just have sex with Joe as Dorothy would have the gumption to do were she so inclined.
you’re assuming this is Joyce’s dream though. i’m pretty sure it’s Dorothy’s. and the horse is probably just dream logic, and also, an objectively funny animal, and also, this being the first strip of Book 14 it needs a bit of panache, and also, self-deprecating chuckle about how Willis isn’t an expert on horses.
(if i had to find some relevance to it then maybe it’s a tell that Dotty’s childhood presidential dream is really an updated princess fantasy.)
Well, guess we know the Book Title. Have we ever gotten the book title in the literal first strip before? Because “I CAN BUY PANTS ON THE WAY!” is the one to top.
Also, weirdly, I kinda relate to Dorothy on this one. I often have dreams where I am naked or in some state of undress – and while in some of them I attempt to do something about this fact, in others, I’m just like ‘fuck it – I shall carry on without!’ and everything just kinda works out.
I’ll be disappointed if it’s not the title as well. But this certainly is the best first strip of a book yet.
And I’m not completely convinced it’s Dorothy based on her pants disappearing. I’ve certainly had a few dreams where other people’s pants disappear and reappear at random.
Also personally hoping that it ain’t Joyce’s, I don’t wanna have to spend too much time coming up with a title for my next DoA game because “Joyce’s Nightmare” is already taken LOL
I guess people can have different types of dreams, but I have never once in my whole fucking life had a dream where someone else was unexpectedly unprepared in multiple ways for the very thing they were stressing about in waking life and I was the manifestation of their nagging doubts. (put not intended)
Ah but Dorothy is the romantic fixation here! She of the unshakable confidence and mutual sexy times! Or at least the way Joyce sees her, right now Dorothy is probably having stress dreams about banging Walky while Lucy looks on disapprovingly and lectures on morality.
You know what I think would be hilarious if this was neither Joyce nor Dorothy’s dream. Imagine Walky shooting up in bed and wondering What the *$*)*) was that about.
An infinite side-scrolling runner with these two on horseback, jumping between pieces of IU’s buildings and scenery, dashing to collect script pages and Dexter heads, that’s what we really need.
Pretty sure this is Dorothy’s dream. She’s dreaming about how she’s clearly got everything under control. Nothing to worry about, she has the correct answer for everything.
You don’t have to “read” to gain the information you think you see, speaking as an autistic girl who can’t read in dreams (except exactly once, and that was a very special case).
It’s suuuper simple–basically, I dreamed I was in bed and in possession of the then-unpublished book of a series I really liked at the time. It was a big fantastical-looking tome, and when I opened it, glowing letters scribed themselves across the page like the book from Secret of NIMH’s prologue. As I read them, I heard the character’s voices. It was only 2-3 sentences, and I was hearing them aloud. That’s probably why I was able to read it in the dream–minimal cognitive load.
This dream did predict that a certain family in the book series was going to lose some members, so, you know. Basically a prophecy dream.
I’ve had that happen once or twice. No fun lucid dreaming for me, my brain hits STOP and EJECT when I realize it.
I don’t usually remember dreams, but any instance of text I do remember from them is either early-large-language-model nonsense, or it changes every time I look away from and then back to it.
For me, realizing I’m dreaming causes the dream to stumble for a second, and my brain basically telling me “Hey, looks like we’re asleep, you wanna wake up?” and me having the choice of “Wake up” or “Nah, five more minutes”
I’ve even had entire dreams happen on the internet, as in, the dream is reading anything from an old-style heavy-text html webpage to my Tumblr’s dashboard, discord/chat room; or has some plot that relies on most of the information being conveyed through actual written language.
Really?! I’ve never heard that and have had dreams when I’ve been reading before.
Mind, I’ve also had dreams where I was twins (in surround-sound split-screen); an ancient enchantress with painful arthritic hands, casting an illusion to look young, who could fly; a young shape shifting wizard’s apprentice; that I had wings (woke up with a really bad back after that one); that a radio station in another country decided to, as a prank, run a sustained terror campaign against me while I was a college student with a serial killer on my campus, terrifying me to the point I wasn’t sleeping, and that when one of my male friends came to check up on me, I ended up stabbing him then very slowly sawing his leg off with a bread knife while he sobbed that he could never hurt me and I sobbed that I was very sorry but I just couldn’t take that chance… I’ve encountered demonic animated dolls, armies of brainwashed children abducting people, artificer sorcerers trying to destroy orphaned children of surprising power and take over countries, animals becoming human and changing everyone’s memories to give them a space in our world…
I am usually too tired to dream these days (when you have one kid who struggles to get to sleep on her own, all 3 may wake you up at some point in the night, 2 who generally want you to start the day early, a full-time job, and you kinda need to do some of the house stuff even if your husband is awesome and also does a lot of kid stuff and house stuff – but also is NOT going to wake up once he’s asleep, you stay tired). When I do, it’s sometimes EXHAUSTING. But reading is one of the more mundane activities I have done in my sleep.
Whoah that’s a quixotic dreamlife you live there! Love that for you.
I hope you get to experience such wild dreams again soon, maybe once one of your kids is old enough to sub in for you and take care of the smaller ones in the morning every once in a while??
The’re 3, 5 and 8. The eldest does sometimes make breakfast for her sibs term-time but is currently on teenager hours (generally getting to sleep after 11, and mostly getting up after 11 too), and the 5 year old last decided her desire to draw on the kitchen counter right in front of me outweighed the negatives connected to this decision yesterday (she was quite aggrieved that I confiscated the pencil… Thankfully it was a pencil and washed off. With 3 years between them, her sister trying this would just end in a brawl).
I think by the time the eldest will be reasonably able to ensure the middle one wouldn’t get up to mischief, the younger two will have both grown out of random acts of destruction and hopefully by then I will be able to sleep…
I did tell the eldest last night that expecting me to stay up to keep her company until she’s asleep until she’s married and can make her husband do this is unrealistic, and this won’t be happening. But eventually she told me what was bothering her so hopefully tonight will be better…
ahahaha drawing on furniture right in front of parent,
CONS:
– parent make noise @me??? maybe
– ???
PROS:
-V. COOL IDEA
– rly wanna do it
– furniture looking a bit boring rn
– i am artist = parent happy DEFINITELY
– maybe something interesting happen???
– yolo
The biggest one is that impulse control is literally a part of our brain that we’re not born with working. It’s a combination of that part of the brain developing, a learned skill, and hoping neurodivergence doesn’t get in the way because that isn’t fun.
So yeah. Child brain goes “do thing!”, child brain also goes “but consequences whoops I am already doing thing and here are the consequences”. And then often the child is asked why they did the thing, and say they don’t know, because they literally don’t know. The reason is “brain said to and the part that makes me able to not isn’t fully functional yet”.
And then sometimes those of us with ADHD never have that part of the brain working quite right. That’s… delightful to live with.
Yep, assuming no neurodiverseness, only 19 years until I can expect her ability to reason through cause and effect before doing the thing to fully develop…
Kiddo is currently on an all crayons/pencils/felt tips ban (she is still allowed to write/draw on her electronic drawing tablet) because she then managed to do a HUGE (actually quite pretty but NOT THE POINT) abstract rainbow swirl picture on the wall – about 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. I obliterated 2.5 magic sponges removing it. Coz she is old enough to not literally need supervision every waking second, or should be…
So, I’m getting vague symbols from this. Maybe Joyce kinda sees Dorothy as overconfident and sort of bluster-y, with tinge of “I have no idea what I’m doing!” mixed in there.
Yeah, I think this is a Dotty dream, and Dorothy is seeing Joyce, her “project-friend”, sorting her life out and growing.
Glasses, birth control, masturbating, steps towards an autism diagnosis, a boyfriend who can be a total horndog but who seems to be interested in trying to do right by her even if Dorothy doesn’t trust his ability to do that… where does that leave her? Pantsless, riding a giant horse, with a fanfic instead of her speech to Congress, and running late, with the friend she kinda thought she was better-than, calling her on it, apparently.
She’s terrified that she’s out of control, childish with childish dreams and ambitions, and that everyone can see see failing.
Disclaimer: I like Dorothy and don’t think she consciously looks down on Joyce or wants to keep her around to make her feel better about herself. But if you are mature, organised, intelligent, a leader, and going places, you are presumably more mature, organised and intelligent than everyone else. You are fit to lead them. You are going places they are not necessarily capable of going. Even if there isn’t a conscious “and I’m better than you” in there – if you view yourself the way Dorothy views herself, it is, by definition, with respect to other people and means that however much she may like them, and however many good qualities she may recognise in them – she also thinks her good qualities are kinda superior (hence her being the one who should be in charge, when we aren’t talking about an “I’m good ay making sure everyone can play to their strengths, and everything gets done” leadership style, which Western government kinda isn’t)…
Take for example the masturbation. Joyce did not think this was something she should be doing or was missing out by not doing. Dorothy decided she knew better. In this example, Joyce ended up deciding masturbation feels awesome, and Dorothy was trying to help Joyce view Joe objectively, rather than through a haze of horny-hormones, as she was concerned for her friend and didn’t want her to get hurt by a known player – but she also decided FOR Joyce that this act, which she had previously been extremely strongly opposed to, was in her best interests and was therefore going to happen, and that Joyce’s judgement about Joe could not possibly be based on data she was not privy to and was therefore wrong. She knows Joyce didn’t like Joe. She knows they went on a disaster of a date. She knows Joyce knows about The List… She didn’t have the faith in Joyce to assume that if Joyce decided Joe was worth a second chance, it was down to MORE THAN horny-hormones.
While Dorothy may not know she thinks she’s better than Joyce – she thinks she’s better than Joyce.
When Sarah started treating Joyce’s quirks as joke material to flirt with Jacob – at least she realised she was being unkind and stopped pretty quickly. For a ~19 year old who doesn’t generally like people, who is being irritated, and who does want to make a connection and has accidentally stumbled across a way that feels initially quite natural (complaining about little sibling type figure) – she took a good look at herself and course-corrected pretty fast. Dorothy still thinks she’s right.
If Joyce can point out she’s wrong in her dreams – she must be failing…
For the sake of argument, if this is Joyce’s dream, than as Taffy stated, she’s starting to see the cracks in Dorothy’s front.
Joyce admires Dotty a whole bunch, especially after Dotty pushed her out of her comfort zone resulting in several positive changes: birth control, autism diagnosis, and masturbation. However, those were still pushes out of
her comfort zone and no one likes being bulldozed into changing.
And then there’s Joe.
Dorothy was so insistent that Joe was just a creep that she tries to forbid Joyce from dating him, then teaches Joyce to masturbate in a borderline lesbian activity just because she’s convinced Joyce is only being horny and will give up once she has an outlet.
But she’s wrong.
Joe remains endearing to Joyce and makes it clear he’s trying hard to not be a creep. So Joyce introduces him to Dorothy as her boyfriend…
And Dorothy admits she was wrong for once, and Joyce is capable of making her own decisions.
There’s also the fact Dorothy has lost 2 boyfriends to her ambitions, isn’t where she wants to be with her grades, and keeps mentioning how she feels she isn’t where she needs to be to become president.
All in all, Dorothy is looking less capable than she presents herself, and this may be Joyce trying to recognize and reconcile that fact.
That said, I do like and believe the idea that this is Dorothy’s dream. It makes more sense for her to be introspective about her life rather than Joyce to be analytical about Dorothy.
Dorothy’s clothes keep changing, but gradually disappearing until she’s in the nude behind the lectern, live on every channel in the country, staring at blank teleprompters, holding blank papers.
Honestly I just think Becky got slotted into a sister role to Joyce and that’s why she got rejected. I couldn’t imagine Joyce with Sarah either for the same reason. Also the same reason Walky and Billie never hooked up. When you become like family sometimes that’s all it takes to be taken off the table. I shouldn’t be framed as an insult to Becks.
Hahaha ouch. I think that’s honestly sometimes the way it goes though. Sometimes you’re just really close with somebody you don’t wanna bang, regardless of your general sexual orientation
Irt the alt text, I’m of the opinion that a dream about riding a dragon would be significantly improved simply by the presence of riding a dragon. No matter who is dreaming it.
I suspect this is Joyce’s dream resulting from a combo of her Joe conversation and interesting laundry thoughts.
Dorothy is entirely capable of rationalising any bisexual dream (even in her current extremely frayed state)…Joyce on the other hand…Joyce will have issues.
See, that’s interesting because. How long can Dorothy keep rationalizing her attraction (because come on IT IS ATTRACTION) to Joyce?
(Like, gurl I know the rituals are intricate but of all the reactions she could’ve had to Joe, she went “I’LL TEACH HER TO COME SO HARD SHE WON’T THINK OF HIM! >:(“, paragon of straightness that it ain’t.)
I don’t know, i’m not happy about it but I’m on team “Dorothy may well be as straight as she thinks she is”. The laundry room caper actually does make sense as a combination of
– Dorothy’s duty as an enlightened feminist to her less fortunate sister
– genuine worry and sympathy for joyce
– partially hoping that’ll cure her of Joe, yes
– sitcom logic
– INCSOA
…yes ok i made it up, but think of how many human-hours a day would be saved by the DOA commenter community by using this streamlined acronym instead of typing it out every time
I need to have that phrase saved on a sticky note for the next time the comments go crazy over a bad decision made by a 19 year old (or however old some of these kids are).
As someone who illustrated an entire picture book full of dragons, I’ll happily draw dragons over horses any day!
Horse anatomy just…does not make sense. They have been my artistic nemesis since grade school!
Good catch! That’s evidence on this being Dotty’s dream – she went to France with her parents (said so back in the, oh wow, they were drinking at Joyce’s party and she was going like “relax it’s not first time I’ve done it, I tried wine when we went on a trip…”, etc.)
(Really, the thing that boggles my mind the most about anti-maskers is – how are you not protesting against pants first? Those are so much less comfortable! And don’t have the benefit of hiding peoples faces!)
Crack theory: the horse is gonna turn into Joe. Also i just can’t imagine Dorothy would be that confident in her own dream so because of that I’d vote Joyce’s
I thought this was Joyce’s dream about Dorothy going manically out-of-control, but actually it might make more sense for it to be Dorothy’s. I’m interested to see what happens next.
Oooh good game!! ummmmm… Pretty sure i had a whale dream once, but that’s not all that weird… I was looking for my dog this morning, i assume that’s super common (although i don’t actually have a dog irl)…
I think i once dreamt about meeting a tardigrade, which would be very weird except in my dream it was really more of a dog, again
This question has made me realize that for someone who loves animals, has a career drawing animals, and grew up watching mostly animal media…my dreams are weirdly devoid of animals??
I have those “I found a kitten yay!” and “oh no I somehow forgot I had these hamsters/fish and didn’t feed them for a year and somehow some of them are still alive???” dreams…but that’s about it? Literally even my own cats don’t appear in my dreams.
I guess the “weirdest” animal that’s appeared in my dreams have been the very bizarre (and sometimes fictional) aquarium fish my brain comes up with during the “forgotten pet panic” dreams.
So if that’s the Eiffel Tower, that means she’s in Paris. I hope the horse will miraculously become a seahorse, because otherwise she’s gonna be stymied when she gets to the English Channel.
Which of course brings to mind a series of ‘Peanuts’ strips from 1968 (yes, I’m that old that I remember seeing them in the newspapers!) where, after a few turns around Woodstock’s frozen-birdbath-turned-ice-rink, Snoopy sees himself as “the world famous figure skater” and decides he’s going to take part in the Winter Olympic Games being held in Grenoble – so he puts his supper dish on his head like Johnny Appleseed and his cooking-pan hat, and sets off, only to come to a dead end at the Atlantic Ocean. A couple of days later, he’s back home in his usual place on top of his doghouse while Linus asks Charlie Brown about his return. The final panel of that strip showed Snoopy with his thoughts, “Well, there was this ocean, see…”
I’ve always been a bit afraid of horses, because I am a very small person and horses are very big and my parents told me the story of Christopher Reeves at a young age, PLUS a family friend ended up in a coma for a whole because of a horse…
So the first time I ever saw a draft horse was not a fun time! Regular horses are big enough as is. D:
Assuming it’s Joyce’s dream, we now have to ask: are the freckles on Dorothy’s leg just Willis keeping up his character design for her, or Joyce having a vivid memory of it lol
Everyone be talking about Dorothy being out of control or something here, but I don’t get it. I like her dream-attitude. Not letting your obstacles stop you is a strength.
Afraid the dream will go downhill from here though…
Dorothy’s conflict specifically has been basically that she feels like she needs to put pressure on herself and overprepare, and a massive questioning of if she can even do the job she has been striving for.
I mean, I could see someone like Dorothy in local office or even as a senator, but president might be difficult since most presidents have been born into the role, and no president to date has had a political science degree. I picture her being a young progressive much in the vein of AOC.
(Although I would love for a young progressive like AOC to gain a presidential or vice presidential seat)
If this is Joyce’s dream, it’s weird she’s having all these issues for Dorothy. If this is Dorothy’s dream, it’s interesting that Joyce is the voice of reason.
It’s most likely Dorothy’s dream, and it’s not all that weird that Joyce is the voice of reason. In dreamland everyone is *you*, so here Joyce just plays the part of Dorothy’s doubts. In my experience, dream people behave very differently from their real-life counterparts.
Typical example: lovers and partners tend to break up with me brutally and dramatically in my dreams. Do i think they are mean persons who pretend to love me but secretly hate and despise me? Ofc not
Part of freshman year is being certain about a lot of things and finding out how wrong you were. Best time to find out since the costs rise as you get older.
And this dream is Dorothy realizing that she need to craft an actual life and can’t live on The West Wing.
Oh man, I love Horse!!! I’ve loved Horse since Horse first appeared back in the comic, way back when. Horse is def my favorite character. Such a depth of characterization. Such a commanding presence. Such a correct, accurate size.
Even the dream with the two riding together?? Now it’s undeniable. Dorothy feels physical attraction for Joyce! I don’t know if this it’s beautiful or a true disaster.
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 1d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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shared nightmare? did we walk into Dumbingofception?
Honestly, I wasn’t sure at first if this was part of Joyce’s comic or a dream. And if a dream, is it Joyce’s….or Dotty’s?
Dottys. The horse not being a Joe Centaur is a dead giveaway.
That could change; this is only the first strip of the arc.
I don’t think Dorothy is feeling these days as confident as Joyce still and always sees her.
Yep, which is why I think this is Dorothy’s dream. If it was Joyce’s vision of how great she is, everything wouldn’t be going wrong. Instead, this seems to be a classic anxiety dream with an added dose of “And the only thing you have going for you is an entirely misplaced sense of confidence.”
OTOH, it could be Joyce’s dream where everything is going wrong and then at the last moment, Dotty will solve all the problems absolutely perfectly, like Joyce’s personal knight in shining armour. ;D
It’s Joe’s dream. I am calling it now that Joe wakes up, turns to Joyce who is next to him, describes the dream, and she’s just “Oh, yeah, I’ve had that one.”
Joyce aways have the greatests dreams. Just imagine the day when she get any recreative drug. It will last an entire storyline.
I’m hoping its actually Dorothy’s dream.
Me too. And if so, I’m a big fan of “I can buy pants on the way”.
… but she had pants on in the second panel
Or don’t I know how weird dreams operate?
That’s exactly how dream logic works, in my experience
I’ve had dreams where I went from driving a car to riding a motorcycle to running without any noticeable transition. Disappearing pants are fairly low on the weirdness scale.
I actually think it’s Dorothy’s dream
It’s disturbing that Dorothy has been so off the rails lately that we genuinely can’t tell if Dorothy is the craziest thing in this dream because she’s a figment of Joyce’s subconscious or that Dorothy has started acting that manic even in dreamland.
If it is true, Dorothy will get an awesome dream, too.
Big Brain: It’s Dorothy’s because we haven’t seen her been this confident in months. Not even Joyce has this unshakeable kind of trust in her anymore and she knows it.
Galaxy Brain: It’s Dorothy’s because she’s wearing no pants
Enlightened Brain: ohgod this is hella bi I love them your honor
I’m pretty sure this is Dorothy’s dream. It seems to be her anxieties that are being showcased.
Agreed.
Dreams as a storytelling device are most useful in revealing inner conflict that couldn’t be narrated any other way because the protag hasn’t even admitted it to themself.
typically a nightmare scratches the sort of itch that’s about deep, nagging fear or shame: “what if I (Dorothy) am not as strong and capable as I want to be?” makes way more sense than “what if my bff is kinda nuts, while i myself am quite reasonable?”
Great, another timeskip.
At least this time we don’t need to be caught up on events, since this is all so logical.
Indeed.
Might not be a timeskip. Maybe Dorothy…. took a nap?
Clearly horny sapphic dream?!?!?!
New potential DoA game material!?!?!?!? 🤩🤩
I AM STIMMING SO MUCH YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
I can’t think of any other explanation for Dorothy being pantsless in Joyce’s dream, and I doubt science will ever find one.
I don’t think it’s Joyce’s dream, I think it’s Dorothy being pantsless about to read Dexter and Monkey Master fanfic instead of her State of the Union address.
Let’s do some psychoanalysis. As Joyce sees Dorothy as an aspirational figure that opened her up to the world of orgasms via sex-fiction… They are riding a horse which might be an animal representation of Joe.
Perhaps Joyce wishes she had the sexual agency to just have sex with Joe as Dorothy would have the gumption to do were she so inclined.
you’re assuming this is Joyce’s dream though. i’m pretty sure it’s Dorothy’s. and the horse is probably just dream logic, and also, an objectively funny animal, and also, this being the first strip of Book 14 it needs a bit of panache, and also, self-deprecating chuckle about how Willis isn’t an expert on horses.
(if i had to find some relevance to it then maybe it’s a tell that Dotty’s childhood presidential dream is really an updated princess fantasy.)
All we need is a nightcore remix of Erasure’s Always and this things got legs for miles.
Also the 4k official video of this song is somehow even more perfect then an attacking robotic unicorn.
Well, guess we know the Book Title. Have we ever gotten the book title in the literal first strip before? Because “I CAN BUY PANTS ON THE WAY!” is the one to top.
100% Agreed.
Also, weirdly, I kinda relate to Dorothy on this one. I often have dreams where I am naked or in some state of undress – and while in some of them I attempt to do something about this fact, in others, I’m just like ‘fuck it – I shall carry on without!’ and everything just kinda works out.
Yeah, when I’m not wearing clothes in my dreams, I’m all “Woohoo! Look at me, I’m nekkid!”
I have anxiety dreams about being late.
I used to get anxiety dreams about forgetting to do homework for a class.
Now, having been a teacher for 10+ years, I get anxiety dreams about forgetting to show up and teach a class.
I haven’t had any naked dreams for a while. Instead I’m wearing a dress and no one seems to find this odd.
Why would it be odd to wear a dress?
Can’t speak for Wizard, but for some folks (such as me), it’s not compatible with how we experience gender or want to be seen.
Agreed, although I think Dumbing of Age Book X: You’re not wearing any pants has a certain charm to it as well
I’ll be disappointed if it’s not the title as well. But this certainly is the best first strip of a book yet.
And I’m not completely convinced it’s Dorothy based on her pants disappearing. I’ve certainly had a few dreams where other people’s pants disappear and reappear at random.
Suddenly I’m wondering if it’s weird I’ve never once noticed people’s pants (or lack thereof) in dreams.
Me as well. I can’t say I’ve ever had one of those ‘standing in front of the class naked’ dreams. Not once. Is that strange?
alright, place your bets, whose dream is this
Faz’s.
Can’t be, one of them still has pants.
So far.
You can see the rate at which clothing will disappear in Fazz’s dream in this chart.
Dorothy’s. Joyce hasn’t noticed that she’s going off the rails yet, so Dorothy’s the only one who can have this nightmare.
Yeah, that seems the only logical answer to me. We’re clearly meant to think this is Joyce’s, but only Dorothy fits.
Joe’s
Also personally hoping that it ain’t Joyce’s, I don’t wanna have to spend too much time coming up with a title for my next DoA game because “Joyce’s Nightmare” is already taken LOL
Horse’s.
“Why two youngs in my back? That’s a nightmare!”
The horse is dreaming of riding a dragon tho
Joyce, I’m assuming. Where the Horse is a stand in for laundry appliances.
Could work for Dorothy, too. I think Reltzik has a point. Though, Dorothy could be acting strange due to being a figment of Joyce’s mind.
Ooh, that makes a lot of sense.
Becky’s dream
Dorothy is the safe money but Sarah as an out of body observer would be funny
I guess people can have different types of dreams, but I have never once in my whole fucking life had a dream where someone else was unexpectedly unprepared in multiple ways for the very thing they were stressing about in waking life and I was the manifestation of their nagging doubts. (put not intended)
gold star for the horse legs.
Well, the one who is pantsless in public is usually the dreamer.
Horse: no pants. QED.
Ah but Dorothy is the romantic fixation here! She of the unshakable confidence and mutual sexy times! Or at least the way Joyce sees her, right now Dorothy is probably having stress dreams about banging Walky while Lucy looks on disapprovingly and lectures on morality.
You know what I think would be hilarious if this was neither Joyce nor Dorothy’s dream. Imagine Walky shooting up in bed and wondering What the *$*)*) was that about.
*obviously* this is Jocelyn’s cat’s dream.
Dorothy, she’s having a “nightmare” but it’s lucid enough that she’s just ignoring the bad parts.
*Shaking people by the shoulders* “WHOSE DREAM IS THIS??>??”
Okay, we got a new character to vote for for a bonus strip: Horse.
and is Joe the horse?
The washing machine is the horse.
But Joe is also the washing machine.
The walrus is Paul
But Paul is dead.
You are the Crow’s Toes
You are the Fleas’ Cheese
You are the Ants’ Pants
You are the Bees’ Knees
Dumbing of Age Book 14: I Can Buy Pants On The Way!
Not sure which of them is dreaming.
Also it was 12:10 or 12:11 before I could access the new comic. Might be time to give the server a kick.
It’s been 12:12 for me the last couple nights :'(
Nothing odd here
This took a turn.
An early draft of the speech on a draft horse. While getting a bit drafty from lack of pants.
At this rate, the first thing she’ll promise in her speech is to reinstate the draft.
Just gonna drop this here. Panel 2, aye?
Thank you so much for remembering me Robot Unicorn Attack.
An infinite side-scrolling runner with these two on horseback, jumping between pieces of IU’s buildings and scenery, dashing to collect script pages and Dexter heads, that’s what we really need.
With a midi loop of that song “Sober Up”
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
Alright, fuck it, I’m making this!!!
*orders a bulk of energy drink*
Robot Unicorn reference!
Everyone clicked on ‘horse’ to look for prior appearances, right?
No, but I did just now lol
Yeah she’s at least 50% gay.
u b low ballin it XD
Which one though? We don’t know whose dream this is yet.
It truly doesn’t matter.
For all intents and purposes, it might as well be the plural ‘she’. …Which isn’t a thing of course, but she has been working to change that.
*bisexual thoughts intensify*
Pretty sure this is Dorothy’s dream. She’s dreaming about how she’s clearly got everything under control. Nothing to worry about, she has the correct answer for everything.
Oh good, seems we’re getting more Shortpacked content
We see Paris, We see France, We see some ones underpants.
..and that fact that they are color coordinated to her top and socks is somehow one of the realistic things about this dream.
I’m just impressed that horse can take them all the way to the Capitol.
Vertical striped panties are definitely a rarer variant than horizontal, so maybe Dorothy put in the effort to find thee.
Note the Eiffel Tower in the background.
I know. I noticed that. Willis is very clever.
I didn’t realize that yesterday’s comic was the end of a storyline so the sudden shift in tone felt like whiplash
Even more so since it’s a dream sequence (at least I’m assuming it is)
Well that sounds like Dorothy! I can’t see a problem with this.
Don’t they say most people can’t read in dreams?
Not if you’ve got that autism superpower
You don’t have to “read” to gain the information you think you see, speaking as an autistic girl who can’t read in dreams (except exactly once, and that was a very special case).
Feel like telling the story? No pressure!
It’s suuuper simple–basically, I dreamed I was in bed and in possession of the then-unpublished book of a series I really liked at the time. It was a big fantastical-looking tome, and when I opened it, glowing letters scribed themselves across the page like the book from Secret of NIMH’s prologue. As I read them, I heard the character’s voices. It was only 2-3 sentences, and I was hearing them aloud. That’s probably why I was able to read it in the dream–minimal cognitive load.
This dream did predict that a certain family in the book series was going to lose some members, so, you know. Basically a prophecy dream.
Trying to read it dreams always forces me awake as I realize I’m making it up on the spot like one of those predictive text things.
I’ve had that happen once or twice. No fun lucid dreaming for me, my brain hits STOP and EJECT when I realize it.
I don’t usually remember dreams, but any instance of text I do remember from them is either early-large-language-model nonsense, or it changes every time I look away from and then back to it.
Oh yeah, same! Just random-ass text, everywhere I look!
Oh wow! Ass-text of a random nature you say? that must be, i assume, rather arousing and/or silly
Definitely silly! X-D
See also:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/63891/what-is-the-origin-of-suffixing-ass-to-adjectives
For me, realizing I’m dreaming causes the dream to stumble for a second, and my brain basically telling me “Hey, looks like we’re asleep, you wanna wake up?” and me having the choice of “Wake up” or “Nah, five more minutes”
when I graded papers in my dreams I never had that problem.
I’ve even had entire dreams happen on the internet, as in, the dream is reading anything from an old-style heavy-text html webpage to my Tumblr’s dashboard, discord/chat room; or has some plot that relies on most of the information being conveyed through actual written language.
I’m pretty sure it’s The ‘Tism.
I’ve had entire dreams in code. Not sure anything made sense, but I was hunting for bugs.
Really?! I’ve never heard that and have had dreams when I’ve been reading before.
Mind, I’ve also had dreams where I was twins (in surround-sound split-screen); an ancient enchantress with painful arthritic hands, casting an illusion to look young, who could fly; a young shape shifting wizard’s apprentice; that I had wings (woke up with a really bad back after that one); that a radio station in another country decided to, as a prank, run a sustained terror campaign against me while I was a college student with a serial killer on my campus, terrifying me to the point I wasn’t sleeping, and that when one of my male friends came to check up on me, I ended up stabbing him then very slowly sawing his leg off with a bread knife while he sobbed that he could never hurt me and I sobbed that I was very sorry but I just couldn’t take that chance… I’ve encountered demonic animated dolls, armies of brainwashed children abducting people, artificer sorcerers trying to destroy orphaned children of surprising power and take over countries, animals becoming human and changing everyone’s memories to give them a space in our world…
I am usually too tired to dream these days (when you have one kid who struggles to get to sleep on her own, all 3 may wake you up at some point in the night, 2 who generally want you to start the day early, a full-time job, and you kinda need to do some of the house stuff even if your husband is awesome and also does a lot of kid stuff and house stuff – but also is NOT going to wake up once he’s asleep, you stay tired). When I do, it’s sometimes EXHAUSTING. But reading is one of the more mundane activities I have done in my sleep.
Whoah that’s a quixotic dreamlife you live there! Love that for you.
I hope you get to experience such wild dreams again soon, maybe once one of your kids is old enough to sub in for you and take care of the smaller ones in the morning every once in a while??
The’re 3, 5 and 8. The eldest does sometimes make breakfast for her sibs term-time but is currently on teenager hours (generally getting to sleep after 11, and mostly getting up after 11 too), and the 5 year old last decided her desire to draw on the kitchen counter right in front of me outweighed the negatives connected to this decision yesterday
(she was quite aggrieved that I confiscated the pencil… Thankfully it was a pencil and washed off. With 3 years between them, her sister trying this would just end in a brawl).
I think by the time the eldest will be reasonably able to ensure the middle one wouldn’t get up to mischief, the younger two will have both grown out of random acts of destruction
and hopefully by then I will be able to sleep…
I did tell the eldest last night that expecting me to stay up to keep her company until she’s asleep until she’s married and can make her husband do this is unrealistic, and this won’t be happening. But eventually she told me what was bothering her so hopefully tonight will be better…
ahahaha drawing on furniture right in front of parent,
CONS:
– parent make noise @me??? maybe
– ???
PROS:
-V. COOL IDEA
– rly wanna do it
– furniture looking a bit boring rn
– i am artist = parent happy DEFINITELY
– maybe something interesting happen???
– yolo
The biggest one is that impulse control is literally a part of our brain that we’re not born with working. It’s a combination of that part of the brain developing, a learned skill, and hoping neurodivergence doesn’t get in the way because that isn’t fun.
So yeah. Child brain goes “do thing!”, child brain also goes “but consequences whoops I am already doing thing and here are the consequences”. And then often the child is asked why they did the thing, and say they don’t know, because they literally don’t know. The reason is “brain said to and the part that makes me able to not isn’t fully functional yet”.
And then sometimes those of us with ADHD never have that part of the brain working quite right. That’s… delightful to live with.
Yep, assuming no neurodiverseness, only 19 years until I can expect her ability to reason through cause and effect before doing the thing to fully develop…
Kiddo is currently on an all crayons/pencils/felt tips ban (she is still allowed to write/draw on her electronic drawing tablet) because she then managed to do a HUGE (actually quite pretty but NOT THE POINT) abstract rainbow swirl picture on the wall – about 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. I obliterated 2.5 magic sponges removing it. Coz she is old enough to not literally need supervision every waking second, or should be…
She should grow out of this phase eventually…
I think someone got into Joe’s chewable weed before bed.
Those are multi vitamins.
Dorothy went to take multivitamins, but the turned out to be weed gummies.
No, he said they were weed. He said so.
I’m just glad they tagged the horse or I wouldn’t have known what that thing was, even though horses are exactly that size.
My only complaint is the horse isn’t a unicorn.
I actually misread “State of the Union Address” as “State of the Unicorn Address” when I first saw the page.
So, I’m getting vague symbols from this. Maybe Joyce kinda sees Dorothy as overconfident and sort of bluster-y, with tinge of “I have no idea what I’m doing!” mixed in there.
Joyce is the symbol here. Everything she observes/says is how Dorothy is screwing up. Plus this doesn’t quite look like Joyce’s Dreams color palette.
Yeah, I think this is a Dotty dream, and Dorothy is seeing Joyce, her “project-friend”, sorting her life out and growing.
Glasses, birth control, masturbating, steps towards an autism diagnosis, a boyfriend who can be a total horndog but who seems to be interested in trying to do right by her even if Dorothy doesn’t trust his ability to do that… where does that leave her? Pantsless, riding a giant horse, with a fanfic instead of her speech to Congress, and running late, with the friend she kinda thought she was better-than, calling her on it, apparently.
She’s terrified that she’s out of control, childish with childish dreams and ambitions, and that everyone can see see failing.
Disclaimer: I like Dorothy and don’t think she consciously looks down on Joyce or wants to keep her around to make her feel better about herself. But if you are mature, organised, intelligent, a leader, and going places, you are presumably more mature, organised and intelligent than everyone else. You are fit to lead them. You are going places they are not necessarily capable of going. Even if there isn’t a conscious “and I’m better than you” in there – if you view yourself the way Dorothy views herself, it is, by definition, with respect to other people and means that however much she may like them, and however many good qualities she may recognise in them – she also thinks her good qualities are kinda superior (hence her being the one who should be in charge, when we aren’t talking about an “I’m good ay making sure everyone can play to their strengths, and everything gets done” leadership style, which Western government kinda isn’t)…
Take for example the masturbation. Joyce did not think this was something she should be doing or was missing out by not doing. Dorothy decided she knew better. In this example, Joyce ended up deciding masturbation feels awesome, and Dorothy was trying to help Joyce view Joe objectively, rather than through a haze of horny-hormones, as she was concerned for her friend and didn’t want her to get hurt by a known player – but she also decided FOR Joyce that this act, which she had previously been extremely strongly opposed to, was in her best interests and was therefore going to happen, and that Joyce’s judgement about Joe could not possibly be based on data she was not privy to and was therefore wrong. She knows Joyce didn’t like Joe. She knows they went on a disaster of a date. She knows Joyce knows about The List… She didn’t have the faith in Joyce to assume that if Joyce decided Joe was worth a second chance, it was down to MORE THAN horny-hormones.
While Dorothy may not know she thinks she’s better than Joyce – she thinks she’s better than Joyce.
When Sarah started treating Joyce’s quirks as joke material to flirt with Jacob – at least she realised she was being unkind and stopped pretty quickly. For a ~19 year old who doesn’t generally like people, who is being irritated, and who does want to make a connection and has accidentally stumbled across a way that feels initially quite natural (complaining about little sibling type figure) – she took a good look at herself and course-corrected pretty fast. Dorothy still thinks she’s right.
If Joyce can point out she’s wrong in her dreams – she must be failing…
… Dang.
Maybe I’ll try that dream analysis after all.
For the sake of argument, if this is Joyce’s dream, than as Taffy stated, she’s starting to see the cracks in Dorothy’s front.
Joyce admires Dotty a whole bunch, especially after Dotty pushed her out of her comfort zone resulting in several positive changes: birth control, autism diagnosis, and masturbation. However, those were still pushes out of
her comfort zone and no one likes being bulldozed into changing.
And then there’s Joe.
Dorothy was so insistent that Joe was just a creep that she tries to forbid Joyce from dating him, then teaches Joyce to masturbate in a borderline lesbian activity just because she’s convinced Joyce is only being horny and will give up once she has an outlet.
But she’s wrong.
Joe remains endearing to Joyce and makes it clear he’s trying hard to not be a creep. So Joyce introduces him to Dorothy as her boyfriend…
And Dorothy admits she was wrong for once, and Joyce is capable of making her own decisions.
There’s also the fact Dorothy has lost 2 boyfriends to her ambitions, isn’t where she wants to be with her grades, and keeps mentioning how she feels she isn’t where she needs to be to become president.
All in all, Dorothy is looking less capable than she presents herself, and this may be Joyce trying to recognize and reconcile that fact.
That said, I do like and believe the idea that this is Dorothy’s dream. It makes more sense for her to be introspective about her life rather than Joyce to be analytical about Dorothy.
Oh neat, another time skip! I’m a little sad we don’t get to see the election; maybe we’ll get parts of it in a flashback later though.
underrated joke
It’s especially interesting for Dorothy to be pantsless because during their ‘laundry day’ Dorothy still had shorts on the whole time.
Reading this only half an hour after waking yp from my own stress dream where I was also late for something.
If Joyce: she’s undressing Dorothy in her mind and I’m for it
If Dorothy: she’s dreaming about Joyce staring at her ass and I’m for it
I see no downside here, carry on
Dorothy’s clothes keep changing, but gradually disappearing until she’s in the nude behind the lectern, live on every channel in the country, staring at blank teleprompters, holding blank papers.
That’s how we’ll know it’s her nightmare.
But Joyce is the one getting upset about it while Dorothy just blithely rolls with it.
Either way, what a ride &heart;
Nope, it’s Dorothy’s nightmare: Having to give the State of the Union Address in a State of Undress. Joyce wouldn’t have thought of the pun.
“Whoops, sorry Becky! Turns out I actually AM into girls, just not you.”
Honestly I just think Becky got slotted into a sister role to Joyce and that’s why she got rejected. I couldn’t imagine Joyce with Sarah either for the same reason. Also the same reason Walky and Billie never hooked up. When you become like family sometimes that’s all it takes to be taken off the table. I shouldn’t be framed as an insult to Becks.
Finally, someone else puts it into words.
Not an insult so much as an injury. I think Becky picked up on this a long time ago, which is why she was always so mean to to Dotty
Hahaha ouch. I think that’s honestly sometimes the way it goes though. Sometimes you’re just really close with somebody you don’t wanna bang, regardless of your general sexual orientation
Wait, Dorothy has pants in panel two. Where did they go? Did Joyce steal them? Or was it Horse? Whoa. Let it be Horse.
But wait again. The horse appears to be a mare. Never mind.
Irt the alt text, I’m of the opinion that a dream about riding a dragon would be significantly improved simply by the presence of riding a dragon. No matter who is dreaming it.
I believe it’s a reference to a drawing Danny drew of him and Joe riding a dragon when they were little kids.
Oooh, well remembered! I’d forgotten that. And also still adorable.
That horse has character. I trust that horse.
I like that this could be either of their dream.
Also, “I CAN BUY PANTS ON THE WAY!” for potential book title.
I suspect this is Joyce’s dream resulting from a combo of her Joe conversation and interesting laundry thoughts.
Dorothy is entirely capable of rationalising any bisexual dream (even in her current extremely frayed state)…Joyce on the other hand…Joyce will have issues.
See, that’s interesting because. How long can Dorothy keep rationalizing her attraction (because come on IT IS ATTRACTION) to Joyce?
(Like, gurl I know the rituals are intricate but of all the reactions she could’ve had to Joe, she went “I’LL TEACH HER TO COME SO HARD SHE WON’T THINK OF HIM! >:(“, paragon of straightness that it ain’t.)
I don’t know, i’m not happy about it but I’m on team “Dorothy may well be as straight as she thinks she is”. The laundry room caper actually does make sense as a combination of
– Dorothy’s duty as an enlightened feminist to her less fortunate sister
– genuine worry and sympathy for joyce
– partially hoping that’ll cure her of Joe, yes
– sitcom logic
– INCSOA
“INCSOA”?
“It’s Not Called Smarting Of Age”
…yes ok i made it up, but think of how many human-hours a day would be saved by the DOA commenter community by using this streamlined acronym instead of typing it out every time
Of course. I should have known, but I wasn’t thinking in DoA terms.
I need to have that phrase saved on a sticky note for the next time the comments go crazy over a bad decision made by a 19 year old (or however old some of these kids are).
whatever do you mean, alt-text, would a dragon be bad?
Because itd be hella hard to draw, even more so than a horse.
As someone who illustrated an entire picture book full of dragons, I’ll happily draw dragons over horses any day!
Horse anatomy just…does not make sense. They have been my artistic nemesis since grade school!
their hooves are their fingernails!
horse anatomy is horrifying!
I feel like my subtle joke about novelty dildos went unappreciated
Unofficial poll (comment below): Whose dream is this?
*Joyce
*Dorothy
*Horse
*Joe, who dreams of being the horse.
*Carla’s, this world and everything in it belongs to her
I was going to reply Joyce, but your argument is both sound and persuasive…
Carla is great and we are all but bugs!
*Willis, having a nightmare about drawing a horse.
The tumble dryer is dreaming that it is a horse.
Pants are overrated.
“Pants? Where we are going, we don’t *need* pants!”
Is that the Eiffel Tower?
There are lots of iron towers shaped vaguely like that. I’m going to say it’s the Tokyo Tower until directly proven otherwise.
Honestly looks more like Tokyo Tower to me for some reason.
Maybe it’s that knockoff version in Vegas.
The, it’s not the Blackpool Tower. The diagonal bracing is wrong for the Blackpool Tower.
Good catch! That’s evidence on this being Dotty’s dream – she went to France with her parents (said so back in the, oh wow, they were drinking at Joyce’s party and she was going like “relax it’s not first time I’ve done it, I tried wine when we went on a trip…”, etc.)
“I see Paris, I see France, I see Dorothy’s underpants.”
Can’t be Joyce’s dream. She has her pants on.
The worst part is I can’t even tell if this is Joyce’s dream or Dorothy’s. Maybe it’s the horse’s?
For all we know it could be Fuckface’s
I, Fuckface, can confirm that it is.
NO LIMITS!
NO HOLDING BACK!
NO PANTS!
No gods! No masters! No pants!
Or, as my late sweetie used to shout during protests:
“¡No, no, no! ¡No más pantalones!”
NO PANTS!
(Really, the thing that boggles my mind the most about anti-maskers is – how are you not protesting against pants first? Those are so much less comfortable! And don’t have the benefit of hiding peoples faces!)
Crack theory: the horse is gonna turn into Joe. Also i just can’t imagine Dorothy would be that confident in her own dream so because of that I’d vote Joyce’s
“Everybody’s Looking for Nothing” sounds like the major key version of— wait.
Sweet Dreams AREN’T Made of This!! DYW!!!
Awe no more smug (mustard-filled) Joyce face for your avatar
Smug Joyce will be back soon™, just swapping around her many faces
Daring young women? Do your work? I’m stumped. What’s DYW?
Damn You Willis!
<- you have to shake your fist while typing it
Ah! All is clear now. Thank you!
(“Alles klar,” as a kindly road worker once said to me.)
I thought this was Joyce’s dream about Dorothy going manically out-of-control, but actually it might make more sense for it to be Dorothy’s. I’m interested to see what happens next.
funny how, of all people, Joyce would be the voice of disBELIEF lmao
So is this joyce’s dream or dorothy’s…? be fun of they shared the same one tho lol
How best to start a DoA book.
Ok, who’s up for a game?
Tonight’s question is:
What’s the strangest animal you’ve encountered (or been!) in a dream?
I can go first:
Salamanders. Ugh! (*Shudders*)
Oooh good game!! ummmmm… Pretty sure i had a whale dream once, but that’s not all that weird… I was looking for my dog this morning, i assume that’s super common (although i don’t actually have a dog irl)…
I think i once dreamt about meeting a tardigrade, which would be very weird except in my dream it was really more of a dog, again
Yo’, a tardigrade dog is STILL weird!
This question has made me realize that for someone who loves animals, has a career drawing animals, and grew up watching mostly animal media…my dreams are weirdly devoid of animals??
I have those “I found a kitten yay!” and “oh no I somehow forgot I had these hamsters/fish and didn’t feed them for a year and somehow some of them are still alive???” dreams…but that’s about it? Literally even my own cats don’t appear in my dreams.
I guess the “weirdest” animal that’s appeared in my dreams have been the very bizarre (and sometimes fictional) aquarium fish my brain comes up with during the “forgotten pet panic” dreams.
Cool! Ever tried to draw the funny fishies upon waking up??
Ooh, I love bizarre fish!
And I would love to hear more about your amazing career drawing animals!
is that the Eiffel tower ?
Yes. And do you remember who have traveled to Paris?
Exactly, Dorothy.
So if that’s the Eiffel Tower, that means she’s in Paris. I hope the horse will miraculously become a seahorse, because otherwise she’s gonna be stymied when she gets to the English Channel.
Which of course brings to mind a series of ‘Peanuts’ strips from 1968 (yes, I’m that old that I remember seeing them in the newspapers!) where, after a few turns around Woodstock’s frozen-birdbath-turned-ice-rink, Snoopy sees himself as “the world famous figure skater” and decides he’s going to take part in the Winter Olympic Games being held in Grenoble – so he puts his supper dish on his head like Johnny Appleseed and his cooking-pan hat, and sets off, only to come to a dead end at the Atlantic Ocean. A couple of days later, he’s back home in his usual place on top of his doghouse while Linus asks Charlie Brown about his return. The final panel of that strip showed Snoopy with his thoughts, “Well, there was this ocean, see…”
A hollow voice whispers, “Chunnel….”
Want a big horse, look up Draft horses. I didn’t know they were this huge until I read Silver Spoon XD
I’ve always been a bit afraid of horses, because I am a very small person and horses are very big and my parents told me the story of Christopher Reeves at a young age, PLUS a family friend ended up in a coma for a whole because of a horse…
So the first time I ever saw a draft horse was not a fun time! Regular horses are big enough as is. D:
A whole what?
Who are you to disagree? have you travelled the world and the seven seas?
Darn! This was @Suet
Assuming it’s Joyce’s dream, we now have to ask: are the freckles on Dorothy’s leg just Willis keeping up his character design for her, or Joyce having a vivid memory of it lol
Everyone be talking about Dorothy being out of control or something here, but I don’t get it. I like her dream-attitude. Not letting your obstacles stop you is a strength.
Afraid the dream will go downhill from here though…
Dorothy’s conflict specifically has been basically that she feels like she needs to put pressure on herself and overprepare, and a massive questioning of if she can even do the job she has been striving for.
I mean, I could see someone like Dorothy in local office or even as a senator, but president might be difficult since most presidents have been born into the role, and no president to date has had a political science degree. I picture her being a young progressive much in the vein of AOC.
(Although I would love for a young progressive like AOC to gain a presidential or vice presidential seat)
If this is Joyce’s dream, it’s weird she’s having all these issues for Dorothy. If this is Dorothy’s dream, it’s interesting that Joyce is the voice of reason.
Joyce has even said she’s her boss. At least, Joyce knows she’s controlled by her friend.
It’s most likely Dorothy’s dream, and it’s not all that weird that Joyce is the voice of reason. In dreamland everyone is *you*, so here Joyce just plays the part of Dorothy’s doubts. In my experience, dream people behave very differently from their real-life counterparts.
Typical example: lovers and partners tend to break up with me brutally and dramatically in my dreams. Do i think they are mean persons who pretend to love me but secretly hate and despise me? Ofc not
I will be so mad if this turns out to be just a dream!
SAME!!!!
Hey, better a dream than an improv show. They’re completely failing to Yes-And each other.
I can’t tell whose dream this is and that’s very concerning
… Also why is the horse tagged?
I am here for the President-elect’s freckled thighs.
Wait–i understand she’s going to the SOTU and not the Inauguration. I’m still here.
Is that actually the Eiffel Tower in the second frame, or is there some familiar TV or cellular structure in Bloomington that has that top?
If its the Eiffel, what is the significance of them being in Paris?
Wondering and pond’rin’…
I see London, I see France, I see Dotty’s underpants…
I’m not naked in public. YOU’RE naked in public.
“No puppet! No puppet! You’re the puppet!”
Dorothy is channelling Robin just a bit
I’m sure panel 2 is entirely about Dorothy’s insecurities about how accurate this dream horse is
Plot twist: It’s actually Walky’s dream.
Oh no, Dorothy’s on the horse! Drinking turned out to be a gateway to harder stuff.
This is completely unrealistic and I can’t take this comic seriously anymore.
That horse only has 4 legs, and it hasn’t even got a tramp stamp.
see I’m assuming this is Dorothy’s dream because Joyce has a surprising amount of cleavage in a mostly-buttoned shirt
Dorothy is a master of all things. Even lucid dreaming.
What the drugs?
Part of freshman year is being certain about a lot of things and finding out how wrong you were. Best time to find out since the costs rise as you get older.
And this dream is Dorothy realizing that she need to craft an actual life and can’t live on The West Wing.
Will they both be losing clothes?
Joyce has to hang on some where
It’s not as gay as it sounds
which still leaves room for it to be Hella Gay
Oh man, I love Horse!!! I’ve loved Horse since Horse first appeared back in the comic, way back when. Horse is def my favorite character. Such a depth of characterization. Such a commanding presence. Such a correct, accurate size.
i am constantly Baffled and Mesmerized at how accurately sized Horse is
Is Joyce nitpicking her own dream? Cause I’ve done that
I think it might be Dorothy’s dream, myself.
Dorothy is giving strong Galasso vibes there.
Even the dream with the two riding together?? Now it’s undeniable. Dorothy feels physical attraction for Joyce! I don’t know if this it’s beautiful or a true disaster.
I can’t tell if this is Joyce’ dream or Dorothy’s dream. Or maybe the horse?
Is Joyce hallucinating from the burger Joe gave her?
It depends on the breed, but yes, some horses are exactly that size. Good job probably-dream-Dorothy.