dorothy may worry about making joyce worse with her influence (because dorothy’s gonna dorothy), but this has blinded her to the real truth of their situation, which is that joyce’s influence makes her stupider
Robin was definitely a sapphic-in-denial, right? Her intelligence has never really seemed top-notch. Of course she just failed upward into Congress and then a professorship, so she’s doing fine for herself regardless…
Stupider in some ways, but also more authentic, less guarded. With both Walky and Joyce it seems a common theme is Dorothy wants people who can bring out her silly side.
Definitely not every strip, but in this particular case, Booster’s final line of that strip has been living in my head rent-free for the past 5 months. Knowing who was in it, a quick search of the amber+booster tag combo found it easily enough.
Combining tags is a gateway to abilities some find unnatural.
But it makes finding strips a hell of a lot easier, especially if you know a combination of three or four characters who all appeared in the one you’re looking for.
In this case it also helps that Booster is a relatively new character, so there are fewer strips with them to sift through than there would be for, say, Leslie.
I fully expect Booster to be on Team Drama/Mess/Sickos, but I also kinda hope that they look at Dorothy and Joyce, think for a moment, and then just walk on, muttering something about how that’s just too easy, he’s a sportsman, damn it. 😀
I will say Booster does seem to love saying uncomfortable inner truths, so I suspect their reaction wouldn’t just be “I love this mess” and more to analyze Joyce and Dorothy’s unconscious motivations driving them to each other and to cheat.
Less of a passive observer, and more someone who will prompt panicked self-reflection.
Ya I am actually right there with you. When I saw how big the bar for cis het dudes was, my knee jerk reaction was that the data was compromised by botting.
Actually it makes sense if you consider how popular Shortpacked! was with the toys-and-superheroes demographic. I wouldn’t be surprised if a sizable population of readers came here from there.
That was my theory yesterday — which I think is bolstered by how big the 30-39 line is, since that’s prime Transformers fandom ages (along with the 40+s like me who got into it in the early 1980s).
I asked Erica for another crosstab that would show us what percentage of “cis dude” are “straight” and vice versa, just because while it seems like the obvious interpretation of the data the charts we have don’t actually show that yet.
That’s what I wanted. ~60% of our cis men identify as straight, meaning that approximately 30% of our respondents are cis/het/male, which strikes me as kinda low for the average online space where people can freely express opinions.
And finally a note on the upgrade that I’ve been trying to post in a way it won’t flag:
I’ve gotten thirty-six back out of fifty. Thank you all so much! The upgraded plan is ninety-nine. If I can get to seventy, I’ll chip in the rest myself so we get crosstabs and other advanced features.
I’m somehow surprised that less than 2% of people are in my age group, but at the same time I probably shouldn’t be considering how few people my age read traditional webcomics compared to things like webtoons
Webcomics (for examples see pretty much everything under the Hiveworks umbrella) usually have a dedicated website and you need to check up on them or subscribe to their RSS feed to get updates
Webtoons are specifically designed to be optimized for mobile viewing and you’re almost barred from seeing them outside of the app they were made for (assuming the author hasn’t posted it elsewhere, which most webtoons don’t do)
I actually really like webtoons because of the ability to have everything saved and tracked in one place, but my favorite comics aren’t on there unfortunately
This doesn’t explain all the difference but I just noticed that the age ranges are wildly unequal. Under 18, 18-20, a couple 4 or 5 year ranges, then 30-39, 40-49, 50+. Like, 25-29 is slightly bigger than 40-49, but it’s _also_ only 5 years instead of 10, so it’s much higher readership per year. Conversely, if you normalized for number of years, 30-39 would be only somewhat ahead of 25-29, rather than the huge spike it naively looks like.
That’s true. I did it that was based on my assumption that the older you get the less difference age makes so I didn’t significant variation between someone who’s 32 vs 38, vs 22 and 28 is a lot more significant as is 18 vs 21. But it does have a big impact on how the data is presented
I added a few things after the fact based on the comments. I know it throws off the data so unfortunately it probably will prevent me from getting published
Hey, stupid question: can we see the crosstab of “orientation” vs. “gender identity”? I’m curious as to how many of that huge “cis male” bar is “straight” vs, anything else — there’s been an assumption they correlate, but I crave knowledge.
I can’t do a crosstab report without upgrading 🙁 I can do that if I get enough help. I can also export all the raw data if you want to play with it yourself!
Anyway though, I can provide comparison charts by gender identity and by orientation! Here you go
WOW Poly folks are overrepresented here, that’s crazy. Like I expected the comic to draw all the queerfolk and I guess the queerfolk are more poly than the straightfolk, but damn.
Seconding comments that this place is waaaaay more cis men than I expected. And fewer cis women, despite the genre being one that data shows tends to be preferred by women. I wonder what’s up with that. Maybe a holdover from people following since It’s Walky! or Shortpacked?
The straightness is less surprising. If ninety percent of everyone is straight then this place is super disproportionately queer even with like half straight folks, which is more or less what I would have expected.
I have noticed that in queer circles, and especially younger queer circles, poly is becoming very ‘in’! I myself, already have a hard enough time living with myself, let alone a partner, let alone more, but I can see the appeal in multiple partners. Just imagine the chores that can be divided between three or more people… they’d be unstoppable…
As a poly person myself I can say from what limited experience I’ve had with the community that it’s not very common for everybody in a polycule to actually be living together. Arrangements vary quite a bit.
Yeah hinges seem way more common than all points connect, and in hinge situations it seems way more common that people have their own living situations and maybe a nesting partner than like full everyone lives together ktp.
I’m 42 and poly, but I live alone and my current partners live in different parts of the country. It works for us, though I’ve been pestering one of my partners to move here to have access to better healthcare (they live in a fairly remote corner of the US and their doctors keep leaving for greener pastures.)
Don’t forget: aluminium foil has different electromagnetic interactions to foil that’s actually made from tin; apparently, the former can actually amplify signals on government-used frequencies instead of blocking them.
Nah. The longer it’s been, the more I look back at that moment and figure that it’s just some real fortune cookie vibes going on.
They knew enough about each person and could estimate at what their largest problem might be, and are generally aware that when people portray one aspect of themselves, there is a second hidden side, and sometimes you have to look at what’s conspicuously normal to figure out where the truth lies.
Yeah, I’ve always interpreted that was Booster low-key indicating they were gender neutral rather than queer, with it going over Joyce’s head. But your interpretation has something to recommend it. I note that she’s hanging out with Booster and Walky.
I’m going with the former. Your mileage may vary, but every ace, bi, pan, nonbinary, trans etc person I’ve met in my (very rainbow-forward) city happily accept queer as a designator to mean “we all have one thing in common, and it’s that cishet allosexuals hate us”.
Tbf I have blindspots. I don’t often rub elbows with the non-cishet people above their 40s much, and I know that’s a word that’s more charged for a lot of Gen-X plus.
As a decidedly over 40, queer generally meant gay, when used by cishets, at first, then was embraced to de-stigmatise it, then came to gradually mean anything and or anyone who is not toeing the cishet line (as opposed to merely being cishet). I was both gobsmacked and delighted to find that I had ‘joined’ the ranks of the queer, feeling almost undeserving of it! But heteronormativity is very powerful, and you can spend most of your life thinking you are cishet when you are not!
Heh, I love this, mostly because I’m reminded that one of my other friend groups more or less forcibly insisted that I was “queer” — it had not occurred to me that since my partner transitioned that most of the line-toers would no longer think I was “het”, and I didn’t want to be one of those white cishet guys who grabbed a marginalized identity just for funsies.
Which is stupid, because of course I’m not “hetero” if I’m married to someone who isn’t a woman, even if they were at one point. But that’s how it goes sometimes.
But I think it’s valid if you personally still feel identity with “straight” even if your partner has transitioned. Like you can acknowledge you aren’t, but you also identified that way for so long it still is the way you automatically think of yourself. I also totally hear you on not wanting to try to take up space in marginalized circles that you don’t feel you have a right to.
As I said the other day, “straight” as a class is like “white” as a class. It’s not defined by logic, it’s defined by exclusion.
If you’re straight with one exception, you’re not straight. In fact, if you’re straight and gender-nonconforming, you’re not really straight.
If you have any kinda “weird” going on with your gender or your sexuality, the queer community had better welcome you, because pericisheterosexist society’s acceptance is provisional, depending on you performing your gender and your sexuality in a very, very rigid way.
“Passing privilege” that vanishes the second you’re honest about who you are? That’s not a privilege, that’s a closet.
BUT, I would argue that if you walk down the street holding your partner’s hand and everyone perceives you as straight (say, because your partner is nonbinary but presenting in a way where people would assume they are a man or woman), then you still have straight privilege. If you have to go out of your way to tell people you’re not straight, you have straight privilege, as opposed to my gay buddy who is outing himself to the world just by going on a date with his boyfriend in public.
BUT, I would argue that if you walk down the street holding your partner’s hand and everyone perceives you as straight (say, because your partner is nonbinary but presenting in a way where people would assume they are a man or woman), then you still have straight privilege.
If this is the definition your gay buddy told you, he has biphobia and transphobia to unlearn, because it’s a very hurtful definition, and it ignores that even some gay couples can walk down the street holding hands and be presumed straight.
If a cis woman is butch enough and walking with her femme partner, for example.
Like I just said: if your “””privilege””” depends on you lying to people about who you are, it’s not a privilege, it’s a closet.
Heck, even two visibly femme women could hold hands and still be presumed straight.
Your buddy’s definition is very, very narrowly focused on only his specific experiences. I am going to assume he’s very young, because that’s the kindest assumption, but he needs to start listening to other queer people.
I mean I think that’s true, that a queer couple who appears straight to strangers has a degree of privilege other queer couples don’t – and I’m in no way saying they aren’t marginalized, but it’s a different experience. There’s nothing wrong with having privilege! Almost all of us do in various areas. It’s just something to be mindful of and I don’t think Big Z is wrong for feeling the way he does.
Erica, your friend is just wrong about this, period.
If it helps, you’re not talking to someone who would have “””passing””” privilege even if it existed. I am an AFAB person in a relationship with another AFAB person. I am bi but I’ve only ever dated women. I’m nonbinary but I am EXTREMELY non-passing. No one has ever taken me as anything other than a very gay cis woman.
And the concept that “straight privilege” is something any memento of the queer community has any meaningful access to is absurd and hurtful, as your friend would know if he were listening more to people less like himself.
Some of us are more “clockably” queer, but first of all, BOY is that contextual — how much gender-nonconformity is acceptable depends on where you live, and it depends on how much you weigh, and oh yeah, it depends on how white you are.
But second of all: again, if you are only “safe” as long as you lie about who you are, you do not have any real access to the privilege you’re talking about.
At this point, at least post-gender-conforming surgery for my partner, it’s honestly both frustrating as much as it is funny.
I present OBVIOUSLY cis male: clothes, beard, etc. Always have a baseball hat on (either “nerdy” or “kid’s sports team”). Usually have an aloha shirt on.
My partner in theory presents ambiguous: no breasts, short hair, AFAB facial structure, dresses androgynous-to-masc (usually jeans and a t-shirt).
Most people who have to react to us before an introduction (store clerks, new faces at a hobby group, etc) misgender my partner, since most people still haven’t made “they/them” a daily-driver mental option. HOWEVER, if my partner is alone, they get it right more often or they at least take a second to try to figure it out.
When my partner is obviously with me, they ALWAYS get misgendered as female.
I assume this is due to cultural confirmation bias. (“Even if I know trans people exist and accept that, the SAFE bet is that the average couple is one man and one woman.”)
Also, @Erica: I want to apologize for my tone, because I know you’re only repeating what you’ve been told in good faith!!
I am really really trying to be kind about your friend, too. Especially if he’s young. I don’t wanna bite anyone’s head off, especially not by proxy.
The logic behind his argument makes me want to cry and also scream into a pillow because it’s so hurtful. But I am hoping he’ll just keep learning and growing and talk to more folks who aren’t cis gay guys.
Every community on Earth seems to try to invent “passing privilege” at some point. I don’t think we’ve found an instance yet where it wouldn’t be better to call it something else, like “conditional safety”, and to acknowledge that it’s both precarious and exhausting.
Privilege is neither. It’s a privilege if you never have to think about an aspect of your identity — not if you live your life dreading anyone ever discovering what that aspect of your identity really is.
@Li More of a minor quibble than anything but I would say that if you’re straight but gender non-conforming you are queer (I’d say being GNC definitely falls under that umbrella) but still straight in the same way that a trans woman who is only interested in dating and/or sex with men is straight because she’s a woman who only wants sex and/or romance with male partners.
Whether or not you are cis is something you might want to ask yourself but ultimately that’s something that’s not going to be quite as clear as “Am I interested in dating and/or romance with partners of the same sex and/or gender as myself.”
Li no worries. It’s okay, I just decided to bow out because it’s really not my topic to speak on or my place to argue. I find the discussion interesting but it seemed I was upsetting you so I didn’t want to press more. I am listening and thinking about everything said
@Proxiehunter: We don’t have a good word for the thing I was using “straight” to mean.
I’ve talked about it before with a capital S, Straight — but what I mean is non-queer. Someone who’s cis, non-intersex, heterosexual, and heteroromantic.
Trans folks can be heterosexual, but they can’t be Straight in this sense, and they don’t have any meaningful access to Straight Privilege: because again, if you’re a heterosexual trans woman, transphobic society sees you not as a straight woman but as……….. well, honestly as a freak. They’ll happily misgender you and call you a man, but they don’t really see you as a man either. You’re just a freaky pervert and they want you to stop existing.
So yeah, I was drawing a distinction between “heterosexual (and romantic)” and “straight”, with the latter being the thing people use as a synonym for “normal” or “default”, and definitely not being something that any queer person can be, because we’ll never be “normal” to a queerphobic society.
@Erica: You’re very welcome, and also I’m sorry I wasn’t able to rein that in more. 🙁 I hope you have a great rest of your day!
@ an earlier comment, it’s possible to be cishet and partnered with a queer person. My husband and I didn’t know when we met that I’m nonbinary. He’s attracted to women, and to my mostly-femme appearance/presentation. If anyone says something bad about trans people he wants to punch them.
So… still a cishet guy, even though our relationship is not straight.
It’s not more charged for Gen-X plus. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” was their slogan.
Don’t fall for the radfem misinformation campaign. It’s not that nobody has ever been uncomfortable with queer, it’s that all of our words make some people uncomfortable and that queer has always been far and away the most popular term within the community. Every single survey says so.
Queer was also used for the more radical wing, in opposition to assimilationist gay movements. That usage has blurred and it’s become more common as a inclusive term than for any other kind of radicalism, but either way is a reason for more conservative gay and lesbian people to reject it.
Yeah, those people need to get their heads out of their butts. There’s no such thing as a “respectable enough” gay man, even if he’s white, even if he’s the most stereotypically masculine and clean-cut.
You are just a useful idiot. A pawn. If you let yourself be turned against your “weirder” siblings, if you shouted “get the L out”, if you had “gay not queer” or anything else in your bio, if you thought the “””gender critical””” movement had reasonable concerns — congratulations on being part of why gay marriage is now on the chopping block. You let them weaken our coalition, you let them pick off “””acceptable””” targets, and now you’re next.
Maybe wake up and realize there is no future in assimilation.
1. No. Being agender != being cis, so. Individual people may or may not consider themselves trans, usually because they’ve been told they’re not allowed to use that word by gatekeepy assholes with internalized transphobia to work through, but the identity is still LGBTQIA+ / queer.
2. Booster has expressed attraction to both men and women. Even if they were cis, they’d still be queer.
It’s amazing how absolutely terrible these two are at not acting suspicious. I hope they never try to play poker because they would lose so much money.
OMG, THE RETURN OF BOOSTER! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! 😀 I love them so much, if anyone is going to be the kryptonite to these two steal-challenged sapphics, its’ gonna be Booster. This is better than I could have expected. Fuck it, I’m buying the whole comments section a round of popcorn. Let’s fucking go!
I’m of the opinion that we should normalize carrying smoke bombs at all times for this very reason. Social anxiety? Horrible family members at Thanksgiving?
The thing is, presumably Booster would be plenty happy to not out either of them, though I guess this is complicated by Booster being Walky’s roommate, as well as being the grand sovereign of shit-stirrers.
Billie interprets this as Amber having a crush on Sal. She takes the story to Daisy, who just kinda blue-screens the minute her imagination gets going.
Both! I know people like Booster IRL, and they kinda suck… but having them show up in this comic reminds me constantly that these folks are funny when they’re in someone ELSE’S friend group.
Way I think of it is this, I love Dr. House. I watch that shit with popcorn and a grin on my face. Gregory House is an endlessly entertaining asshole. That said, if I met someone who acted like that character in real life, I would not spend five seconds with them.
Granted, I don’t think Booster is anywhere near as rude or as much of a dick as Dr. House can be, but that analogy has been my go-to for years.
Booster also doesn’t have nearly the same capacity for harm as House does, since they can’t diagnose anyone with anything, can’t prescribe them any medication, can’t recommend any treatments, none of it.
You wouldn’t ever guess that from reading the comments, though.
Well, kind of. John Cassell invented a type of lighting oil and his company called it Casselline in his honor, but for reasons marketed it under the brand name Cazeline. Shortly after there was a copycat product under the name Gazeline that sold really well, and you can imagine how it went from there.
So be happy. If John had been an architect, your home could be your Cassell.
Perhaps he is with us in another way… as a Jedi becomes one with the Force, Mike is now part of something more. An ascension into a higher plane of asshole.
One cannot intentionally summon him, but anytime someone thinks to themselves “can this day get any worse” he will be there.
He is the sudden rain out of the clear blue sky. He is the inexplicable leg cramp in the morning. He is the keening shriek in the ear of all who suffer from tinnitus. He is every spilled coffee, every flat tire, every clogged toilet.
I feel like Mike would be ending the strip casually informing them he’s deciding whether to go tell Joe or Walky first when they try to distract him by asking where he’s headed. Employing some tactical threats is the best way to achieve results while also getting to enjoy the sweet suffering of their panicked flailing. We know for a fact from his flashbacks re: Amber and Ethan, not to mention his final night around, that he’s great at tactics that involve blatantly manipulating people to mess with them in a way that ultimately ends up benefiting more people than it hurts.
Alternately, he would flatly tell them that no, absolutely, he’s very happy for them and thinks they should cheat even harder and he just hopes he gets to watch when Joe and Walky finally find out so he can see their hearts shatter in realtime, because that’d likely hit them even harder. I feel like that option might actually be even more plausible, thinking about it.
Okay, so I actually don’t like today’s strip and idk why. Something about the joke in Panel 2 fell weirdly flat for me.
But Booster is KILLING that outfit today, this is like when Joe got messy hair but for Booster. I don’t know if it’s the first time we’ve seen them in a T shirt like that or just the first wide shot with it, but still.
Also, I love Booster and am so stoked for more Booster. I don’t care if Booster celebrates this development, they’re messy af and I love them. Sit pretty comfortably next to AG for my favorite character.
It’s kinda funny that door still has the drawing Mary did for them on it. If I’m remembering that correctly. It feels like an artifact from a different time, a different comic.
I wouldn’t mind Mary being reintegrated but toned down just slightly, like she’s still a fundie dickbag and has no friends, but sometimes people actually hang around her on purpose because she’s tolerable while she’s drawing stuff.
Mary has a weirdly creative and artistic side that feels like a remnant of a character she used to be or could’ve been but it kinda clashes with the person she is now. Or maybe that just makes her more realistic, even the worst person you know could have aspects to them that would surprise you.
Obviously this is just my own limited anecdotal experience, but sometimes interest in anime can be the closest thing a Bible-Thumper kid has to exposure outside the bubble, as well as stories that aren’t squeaky-clean PureFlix slop.
Many of these parents assume “comics/cartoons = for children” so fundie kids can skate by on that assumption and read all kinds of stuff (like yaoi and yuri, for instance) they’d never be able to sneak past the church ladies otherwise.
I still have all the old Harry Potter books I bought when I was a teenager and college student, though I’ve soured on the series in the years since after the author revealed herself to be a horrible bigoted POS.
That’s always the weirdest thing to me. She was already a billionaire. She could have said nothing and gone down as a beloved children’s author. Most celebrities who are privately shitty at least pretend to be nice in public, at try not to set their own brand fire, then double down and pour kerosene on it.
She wasn’t even a billionaire because she donated so much of her wealth, and all that goodwill got flushed down the toilet because of her transphobic views. And despite her crappy views she still doesn’t come off half as bad as some other artists from Eric Clapton to Neil Gaiman.
JK may not have committed literal crimes the way Neil Gaiman has (forgive me, I’m unfamiliar with Eric Clapton) but the bar is in hell. Even if she hasn’t been as irreprehensible as the likes of Gaiman in that regard, I think the money she’s pushed into anti-trans bills and legislation as well as the way she’s galvanized people to be more comfortable being anti-trans assholes under the guise of feminism is harmful on a societal level.
It was because of JK Rowling that Imane Khelif wound up harassed on an incredibly large scale because JK Rowling would rather raise alarms about trans athletes rather than do her due diligence and actually understand what she’s talking about. I completely understand what you mean here, but I’d still argue that JK’s issue is more than just crappy views and can still be broadly horrific and terrifying. Just in an entirely different way.
I agree here. Her influence may less direct, but from what I hear the amount of money she pours towards political campaigns and special interest groups has far, far, far reaching effects on UK public policy.
JK doesn’t have to break laws to hurt people when she can instead get the laws rewritten to make it perfectly legal to hurt her preferred victims.
Genuinely do not think she is in any material way better than a sexual abuser, and the creepy way transphobes talk about trans people often does involve them basically saying they’d be happy to sexually assault us if they had the opportunity.
And that’s even without pointing out their obsession with what’s in everyone else’s pants, how they advocate for cis men to go into women’s bathrooms to “verify”, how they sometimes demand children be inspected by strange adults they’ve appointed to keep trans kids out of sports teams.
I’m gonna say, the day some random dude demands to inspect my (AFAB, beefy) kid’s genital situation because she happens to be extra athletic is probably the day I got to jail, honestly.
This is always the most bizarre part to me. One does not have to have a trans kid, or even children at all to not instantly clock that proposal as insanely creepy.
Even if one is paranoid enough to think that these children are some kind of existential threat, how does anyone with two brain cells to rub together not immediately think “that sounds like a system that would be really easy to abuse.” Wouldn’t even the most transphobic asshole say something like; “I kinda feel like there are less weird ways to address this.”
Kellie-Jay Keen, AKA Posie Parker, has specifically advocated for cis men to go into women’s spaces with guns to keep trans women out.
She and JK Rowling have also both publicly defended actual child predators like Kaeley Triller, because (CW: I’m about to get slightly more specific about horrible shit), if you’re a cis woman grooming and sexually assaulting teenage boys under your care when you’re a counselor, that’s fine I guess.
I hate all the “compromise” positions, too, like, “Well I don’t know, what if trans people DO have an advantage at sports? Maybe we can just have sports bans until we figure it out?”
Fuck THAT noise:
1) statistically, we have far FEWER trans athletes competing at the top level of sports that allowed them than one would expect from population statistics alone — currently, the evidence is that “being trans” is a net detriment to your odds of being a champion athlete.
2) many, many international sports regulatory bodies (a group of entities notoriously beholden to politics, run by rich men, and more conservative than average) have done the research and concluded that trans athletes should compete as their preferred gender. We DID figure it out, TERFs and jerks just didn’t like the answer.
Plus, and I know this won’t be a popular take but… sports are kinda dumb. They’re just games where you kick a ball around. Winning or losing them is so, so, so, so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. By which I mean; the idea of using “fairness in sports” to yank away civil liberties is the most asinine trade-off.
“Yeah, we would leave you alone and stop policing your underpants, but the sanctity of the Rough Riders Preschool Tee-Ball League in Bumfuck, Idaho is simply too great a sacrifice.”
The issue is, of course, twofold:
1) for the top 0.001% of athletes, sports is a pathway to making a LOT of money to kick a ball around.
2) an astoundingly large number of the top 9.999% immediately below them in ability, and the parents of same, have an unrealistically high opinion of their chances of making it to that 0.001% and view ANYTHING that might reduce their chances as tantamount to stealing their future fortunes.
Okay, I had to look up Imane Khelif, had zero knowledge of this name because I am negative-zero units interested in the Olympics but… goddamn. This whole story is ridiculous. More than anything it comes across as her opponent being salty they lost and throwing a tantrum.
I’ve gone from not knowing what a TERF is a couple years ago to just wishing they’d all shut the everloving fuck up forever.
The ESPECIALLY dumb thing about Khelif is that she’s the latest victim of “anytime a promising Russian woman boxer loses a major bout, there’s a good chance her opponent gets accused of being trans” which is in particular far more common than makes any sense.
Yeah, I’ll say it, sometimes the glacial pacing is a little much. It’s a good thing there’s nothing serious going on with Amber today or anything like that.
It would be interesting to see Booster respond to something with that level of seriousness. They often seem fairly unflappable, but if they learned Amber was seriously injured it might extract a spontaneous moment of sincerity.
Im more worried about the twisted or broken ankle that would result from her landing. One of her legs is already at an angle and her legs are about as straight as she is, meaning she either lands hard on her ass, or tries to land on her feet again but does so horrible and messes up her ankle pretty bad.
Remove one shower clog, take off sock, take off one pant leg, put shower clog back on. Repeat on other side. I would’ve done it in college. Also maybe she can get naked in the bathroom but just needs the clogs for in the shower when it is wet?
It’s statistically unlikely that everyone on the floor is queer. That’s where the unnamed background and often unseen implied characters come into play.
Thirty-three steps means there’s probably one room pair between Sal/Malaya’s room and Dina/Amber/AG’s room. Maybe some of those four people are cishet.
Sal, Sarah, Amber, Mary, Rachel, Joe, Jacob, Walky, those are the cishets I think we can solidly confirm. Might still be outnumbered 2 to 1 if we count all the background gays. I guess Jennifer doesn’t live there anymore to add to the queer lead.
Willis is amused by the idea of Roz being the only cishet cast member, from making more characters queer whenever someone complains “where’s all the straight people” etc.
I don’t think the bit works for Mary, though. Undermines this interaction.
So if Roz, Mary, and nameless and forgotten bg characters are the straight ones, the strip with highest ratio of straight to queer floor residents is: Boring
mary’s an anime fan who has a shirt based on the yaoi thing from QC so im gonna throw it out there: i think mary is transmasc and will never have the ability to realize it bc, yknow. it’s mary
I think Willis listed Sal and Roz as straight at one point.
Walky has said a few too many questionable things for me not to feel like he’s gonna casually reveal himself as bi eventually.
I think I agree solidly about Sarah and Joe, I definitely agree about Mary (and I think Willis has very negatively lampshaded the idea of her being in any way queer)… Jacob certainly thinks he’s straight, because I think otherwise he definitely would have come out to Ethan by now if for no other reason than a bid to reach the guy, you know? “Hey, guess what, we’ve got something in common!”
Rachel and Amazi-Girl, I have no read on at all. Amazi-Girl was attracted to Danny, but I don’t get the feeling that she’s attracted to Walky. Rachel hasn’t said anything about any kind of attraction, I don’t think, but we can probably assume she’s at least attracted to guys based on her Walkyverse version.
Same, I think he just doesn’t reflect on things the way most people do. My partner is someone like this. They never came out, they just went about existing in the world as a queer person with zero qualms (and their family still never saw the obvious)
Let’s see…
His initial attraction to Dorothy formed around her interest in Dexter & Monkey Master: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/02-uphill-from-here/dexter/ — while the previous strip could have indicated an initial appearance-based attraction to Dorothy, it could just as well have been the folder catching his eye.
His attraction to Amber could easily have been about being “garbage”, along with her physical similarity to Dorothy (who he’d developed significant feelings for since the initial D&MM thing), and it was never especially deep: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/04-is-a-song-forever/belong/
And then there’s Lucy, who approached him; he mostly viewed her as a friend, despite his own efforts…
Sal getting her girlfriend stolen by her sister as Danny and Walky go the trans for trans lesbian route. That’s very long odds but we’ll throw that ship in I guess.
I am just gonna hold onto Willis joking that it would be amazing if Dorothy realizes that actually she’s only ever dated women.
And that’s totally true to the life experiences of some real folks! Think they’re straight, turns out they just have an uncanny ability to tell that the people they’re interested in are actually the same gender as them.
True story: I honestly knew a guy who was the opposite of that , in that something like 80% of his ex-girlfriends turned out to be lesbians. But not in a “he’s so bad he turned me off men” way, he’s still friends with most of ’em.
My dude was just catnip for ladies who were on their last attempt at trying to prove to themselves they liked guys.
Plus, I bet he’s good-looking, possibly in a very conventional way? “Surely I’ll be attracted to this man, he looks exactly like I know men are supposed to look” sort of a thing.
I guess I’m more invested in transfem Danny than Walky because Danny reminds me more of myself when I was an egg, and also we already know what Walky would look like if he transitioned, because it’s Sal.
The irony is that he looks and acts like a lower-rent Dr. House. So yeah, kinda conventionally good looking, but also kind of an ass, but also the kind of person who can be trusted ultimately to tell the truth even if it hurts.
Have we seen Rachel demonstrate attraction to anyone?
I guess she wound up with Joe in Walkyverse, so assuming we’re standing by sexualities consistent across universes, boys are presumably on the table, but I find it difficult to call that “confirmed” het. I feel like she could pretty easily turn out either demi or pan.
It feels like every college has that one dorm where the statistically unlikely happened and that’s where they put all the queer students until there was enough overflow they had to start putting them in other dorms instead.
I can imagine first-semester Joyce adjusting her pace to make it work out that way, and then walking the path to Dorothy’s door the same way every time until it became ingrained reflex.
For a complete change of topic, anyone here had watched the pitt? I started it yesterday and hadn’t stopped said, and you know it’s good because my ability to focus on new shows is of a goldfish.
Had to double check the tags before commenting after reading all of them. But if Dorothy and Joyce thought Charlee was Booster and panicked for no reason I’d love that. Then if Booster was oblivious for once, but Charlee had lesbian perception powers that would be a fun twist.
It’s funny that Booster thinks she’s this master cold reader and psychologist but hasn’t figured out how PROFOUNDLY WEIRD the campus is with its own superhero despite them being involved in high profile events.
Nah, shitty people would abuse it by saying something horrific and then editing it to be more reasonable so all the people responding to them looked like jerks who had jumped at shadows.
I’m a very bad person. I kinda want Booster to analyze the heck out of how this development in their eerily accurate yet also buzzkill way, and at least momentarily dent the New[ly Acknowledged] Love high that Dorothy and Joyce are riding right now. It’s just so chock full of things Booster can pick apart in the worst/best way, as they always do: Dorothy’s destructive behavior, the protest backdrop and the possibility of pictures from a public event, Joyce building up her night with Joe and then jumping into this, the codependence, the trauma involved, the obvious guilt while they still indulge.
And the best part about it is, Booster can both be right, and the worst for pointing it out. “You’re right, and I hate you” is what Booster often serves, and they’re great at it. AND, Booster is still rather new to the friend group, so Booster doesn’t have to mournfully break any super important friendships to do it. If there’s anyone who can tackle all of the sucky uncomfortable parts of this without we, the readers, having to marinate in how sad it is [as we had to with Sarah, and will when Joe/Walky get their say, and maybe Becky], it’s Booster.
Do it, Booster. Unleash the worst of your psychoanalytic and eerily perceptive abilities. Please. It would be awful. And it would be glorious.
I…Don’t suspect Booster will though. If Booster probably intends to be Amber’s confidant (I am quietly loading cargo at the dock for my Booster x Amber ship to come in, don’t mind me), they will let Dorothy and Joyce have this one for now. When Amber likely comes to Booster, regretful of her part in this (and realizing manipulation is another thing she has in common with her dad), they will probably offer up that Joyce and Dorothy was an inevitable, regardless of if Amber wanted Walky at the time.
I don’t mean to sound down on the ship, ship away, but is Booster trying to be Amber’s confidante at the moment? Booster finds Amber’s trainwreck personality fascinating and wants to be associates– Amber didn’t like the “friend” label, at least at first–but they haven’t exactly been trying to spare Amber’s feelings about this. I have no doubt Amber and Booster’s conversation about Amber sabotaging Walky/Dorothy will come up again between them, but that doesn’t have to stop Booster from having their version of fun and analyzing Dorothy/Joyce now. They love how destructive and awful this situation is, and they can do that to Dorothy and Joyce’s “obviously shady” faces now, AND talk to Amber about her role or lackthereof in it later. Double the fun, for them.
I don’t really think it will happen either. But more because I think having Booster get their take in now will cheapen the same observations from other characters like Joe, Walky, and Becky. Sarah’s words to Joyce hit hard because someone was FINALLY saying the unpleasant part. If Booster “helpfully” lays it all out now, the same observations lose some of their punch later.
But I can still dream. Maybe we’ll get a strip of Booster just unpacking the situation to themselves as Dorothy and Joyce escape down the hall. Booster’s been used as a semi-fourth wall break before, it could happen again.
Entertaining myself with the wrong but still fun idea that Booster’s entire existence spun out of working backwards to make this single punchline happen
idk i know it’s good for people to be able to leave comments with their honest opinions but sometimes i feel like people forget it’s one person drawing like 5 pictures a day for us for free. If a pro artist draws me 5 pictures for free even just once i dont wanna be like “boring, draw something else”. Obviously i don’t say this every time i see a negative comment but i feel like somebody should point it out sometimes
If you think Willis is doing this for free, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. He has two Patreons which give him a revenue easily in the 5 digit range. And that’s not including ad/merch/Slipshine revenue. Not anything to make him rich, but he’s getting by fine.
And Willis is a big boy. He can handle a little bit of light criticism.
i know im subscribed lol. They don’t do it for free, but we get it for free. And obviously they can handle a shit ton of negativity. But idk, u put up 20000 pages of story for free, i just wish people could be a little more gracious in their criticism sometimes. Idk i wont keep going on about it, just been thinking it a lot lately and felt the need to say it once
it was more the padding comment. Just saying, willis probably spent a good few hours on this. Sorry to everyone including adeptus for saying so much about it though i know its not that deep
Willis’s pronouns are he/they, so perhaps “grown adult”.
Also, keeping the comment section has been valuable for Willis, but also for the rest of us. So many people have thanked him for keeping it open because it’s where they first started unlearning racism, or figured out they themselves were queer, or something else. And sometimes commenters have found something in one of Willis’s blind spots that Willis in turn was extremely grateful for.
But like, just because Willis is an adult doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings, and just because this comment section does enough good to outweigh the bad doesn’t mean it’s open season to test that maxim, heh.
Also, the comic IS being shared with us for free. Willis has a tip jar on the counter, where a lot of people are putting their money voluntarily, but the website doesn’t charge admission. You don’t have to pay anything.
Note: I am talking broadly about the idea of “being mean”. I know this specific criticism wasn’t even that mean. I am just talking about the underlying logic.
I definitely see folks saying stuff around here that I can’t imagine saying where I know the artist is gonna see it, not because it’s so mean but because it’s just been phrased very rudely or bluntly, the way I’d be more likely to talk casually among friends?
If that makes sense. Nothing wrong with a good old fashioned hate-read if you enjoy that sorta thing either, but usually that too is done with friends…
The other parasociality problem — this IS where some of us hang out with our friends to discuss this webcomic. Y’know, our good friends we talk to every day, like Li and Taffy and Big Z and Nymph and thejeff et al.
Even beyond that, normally you just don’t get to share casual spaces with creators of things in any meaningful way. Hell, the one time I came close to that (long story short, I used to be in an amateur theater club with Tony Kushner’s cousin), the average normie response is “HOLY SHIT I’M STANDING NEXT TO TONY KUSHNER” rather than, say, chatting with him about the couple of structural problems I had as an actor when I was in Slavs!.
And if you do share casual spaces with creators in meaningful ways, they’re probably not talking about work, unless it’s actually a working space for them.
At least not most of the time. Not more than the average person talks about their job when you’re hanging out.
I certainly respect that viewpoint, but this is one of the more minor/politely phrased critiques I’ve seen lately — I myself have said that J&D are boring, and I’ve seen opinions like “fanservice” and “destroyed characterizations for a ship” that are frankly ridiculously harsh by comparison.
Having been a fan of Willis’ work since I was in middle school, I consider it incumbent upon me to express what I like or dislike about what is happening in the story without mincing words.
This is all making me wonder what Becky picked up on that made her think Joyce was gay when she first showed up. It had to be something before the Joyce-Dorothy friendship since she just got there and already believed this. At the time I assumed Becky was just projecting, but its increasingly likely Becky’s gaydar also picked up on something even before Joyce was aware of it.
I mean, they grew up together. Becky spent a lot of her life watching how Joyce reacted to other girls, hearing how she talked about other girls, etc. I’m guessing there were similarities, and Becky picked up on them.
i feel like becky really was codependent ride or die homosocial besties with joyce before dorothy was. Joyce’s whole gay awakening now is like a sequel to the one Becky had with her. Becky had already experienced all these things Joyce is now, and had of course concluded that a relationship like that doesn’t happen completely asymmetrically. So she came to the conclusion “oh, WE were gay”
and maybe she was right? Which might mean that Joyce did have those kind of feelings for her at some point, on some level, and just completely wasn’t ready to understand or accept them, and so began to conceptualize their relationship specifically as something that could never be that. Idk that’s headcanon really but i’m so excited to see them talk about it, even if it turns out to be brief and not very dramatic. but if it is dramatic im so there for it
My fear is that he, for want of a better word, regresses.
“I was being good… I tried to be a better person… It’s been thrown back in my face by someone who I thought was perfect, not just as a person, but for ‘me’… I must be garbage…”
I think it’s less about the ethics and more about why JOE was doing it.
Joe has said pretty directly that he *chooses* to be a no-attachments, objectify-everyone-including-myself hedonist as, basically, a defense against his own fear of becoming his dad. “If nobody gets attached then nobody can ever get hurt.”
So it’s not about promiscuity being good or bad, it’s about Joe using promiscuity as a coping mechanism instead of dealing with his shit.
I’d like something like that, I think, but I don’t know how to make it work. Just going for casual sex, but without the list and all the objectification and red flags that went along with it will look superficially like regression, but will also reinforce the idea that Joe was never actually bad, since there isn’t anything wrong with the casual sex part. I don’t think he’d stick with it either, though he might try. He wants the connection now.
I don’t think he’ll go back to the “I can be creepy and gross to women as long as I don’t let emotions get involved. That way I can’t hurt anyone” thing that was his real problem.
The more I think about it, he never seemed really happy with the brief period (including Liz) where he seemed to be doing “casual sex, but not asshole” — I think he’s not going to regress because frankly he’s not the person who fucked up here. His previous behavior was designed to avoid “victimizing people by being a cheater like my dad”, after all, and while I expect he’s going to be very hurt I don’t think he’ll regress from finding out that he can also be the victim!
No, that happened in All-New X-Men, not this comic. Those are completely unrelated characters who aren’t canon to Dumbing of Age and have never appeared in it.
A moment of silence for the straights who are so mad that they lost (checks writing on hand) Iceman, a character none of them cared about even a tiny bit beforehand, but suddenly he’s an important part of their childhoods.
Spoiled brat behavior lol, you didn’t even like that toy but you’re gonna throw a tantrum now that your mom’s given it away.
Just like the guy who’s still mad his mom tossed out one of his seven identical Ice Age 2: The Meltdown Burger King kid’s meal toys, and he brings it up at least twice a year. Don’t be that guy. Don’t bring that energy to the table.
Same thing about the people who were pissed about the Aquaman casting. Aquaman spent DECADES upon DECADES being a character nobody cared about, the absolute butt monkey of the Justice League, everyone constantly making fun of his power set. Nobody liked or gave even one shit about Aquaman. Then Jason Mamoa got the part, and SUDDENLY he was an integral part of these whiny babies’ childhoods and it hurt them deeply that the role hadn’t gone to a blond enough white enough guy.
These people would claim Jar-Jar Binks as their personal Comfort Character ™ if Disney made him bisexual in a cartoon.
Wait… people were… butthurt about Jason Momoa being Aquaman? Fucking really? That movie was the first time I ever gave two shits about Aquaman. Momoa just is Aquaman to my brain at this point. Seriously, that movie had Marie Poppins voicing a kaiju. What on earth was there to complain about?
Yep. They didn’t like that he wasn’t White Enough. I’m sure his defense of Indigineous Hawai’ians’ rights to get their land back, like, also pissed them off, but IIRC he hadn’t said a word when racists first lost their minds.
My headcanon is that Jar-Jar is entirely ace for the sole reason that I do not want to hear him when he’s trying to be flirty. Oh dear god… it might just ruin foreplay forever.
Even if this weren’t sarcasm… the whole “infinite parallel universes” thing is baked right in. To quote James Gunn, “it’s canon until it isn’t because at the end of the day NONE OF THIS IS REAL.” (Emphasis mine.)
More like he was an old toy given a hasty paint job and passed off as new for us gays to play with. If we must frame Iceman as a toy, which we don’t have to do. I’m willing to accept that Bobby only dated Vera (there’s your forgettable character) because he was expected to act hetero, but it’s far more difficult to ignore his history of being infatuated with Lorna Dane and getting all up in Havok’s face about her every other issue.
I think people are forgetting Mr. W is very at keeping track of which characters know what and when. It is a superb storytelling skill and I’m envious.
It takes
33 steps to get to your place
Just half a minute down the hallway
Daily I end up at your door
That’s where I’ll be
Until you open it and greet me
We’ll watch some Dexter over your sheets
With my cheek touching your shoulder
And when it gets late
Well, what’s the reason I should not stay
We’ll watch until we drop where we lay
I guess your boyfriend can stay too
In the morning
We’ll hit the caf or do some laundry
Just normal laundry, nothing horny!
That isn’t something that I do!
(at least not before I met you)
And I swear, it’s just platonic female friendship
There’s nothing wrong with women being close
We happen to be galpals not some end-game-ship
Isn’t that right, my Perfect Cinnamon Roll?
to clarify, I don’t mean the word “stalker” to be related to this situation, I just find the lyrics and melody of that song rather delightful and was inspired by “33 steps”
So the bit is going to be that they drag their feet and so get found out by everyone before telling their partners. So Joe/Walks are the last two to find out for just an extra level of gut punch.
Based on the game I’m been playing lately, my mind immediately tried to come up with something like “Dorothy Obscur: Expedition 33 (steps to her dorm room).”
Absurd thought: if we REALLY want to drag this out, what we need is some dorm shenanigans that have nothing to do with these dweebs but still affect them.
For example, and this is a thing that really happened to me in college, “masked dorks from the floor below steal some fire extinguishers and spray them in the hallway and through several of the door air vents. Motive? ‘The intramural football team that all the background dudes play on just beat us in the championship, despite the fact that we’re the jock floor and you guys are the queer nerd floor’.”
As my roommate was the captain of said team (turns out nerds have a lot of pent-up hostility and can easily be taught to play competitive flag football), I spent a couple days vacuuming shitty white fire suppressant powder out of EVERYTHING, and a couple of dudes from downstairs had to pay a severe fine and help the custodial staff deal with the hallways.
This has been on my brain so much that I had a dream about the next comic last night: Joyce comes into her room to find Joe taking back the blanket and grabbing his things, she’s like what’s going on and he says “I’m just here for my stuff”. Her stomach drops and she opens her phone and discovers their kiss is all over the Internet. Not kidding, I literally dreamed this
The thing with this is that it COULD have gone well, and into a possibly poly end point, but the longer it takes the worse it gets. We’re already in “Probably going to take a lot of talking to work out” and it’s not much longer before “Probably irricoverable”
It seems to me that Joe, at least, is going to be less likely to count the time in “hours” and more likely to count the time in “you accepted a gift, we had sexytimes, and then you went back to her without even mentioning it?”, and one of those is plenty to shoot down a poly situation for a dude already hung up on cheating.
I was happy with how I overanalyzed yesterday’s blocking of the strip, that I wanted to try my hand at it again. (Not as a daily thing, just for funsies.)
But I’m not actually sure what to say.
There’s this concept I heard about in visual storytelling for English-speaking audiences. The idea that if you wanna imply a character is moving forward metaphorically, you show them going towards the right side of the screen. Conversely, going left is implying the character is reversing, going back away from something. Just how English is read from left to right.
Although I’d chalk today’s blocking out to be more about how the building was designed rather than a hidden meaning about Joyce and Dorothy not moving forward with communication or what not.
These two have been sharing their panels a lot, so the sudden introduction of Booster signals a change and something is going to happen. In fact, the last panel has Booster in the middle of both trying (and failing) to hide their obvious attraction to each other. I don’t think Booster is going to split them up or anything, just that they’re now getting frontrow seats to the drama (like me!)
Hell, in the first two panel, we have Dorothy peeking out the door, covered in decorations from the past, saying “You were so gay for me.” Like recontextualizing the past. Plus Dorothy is still not quite ready to come out (to Becky), so she is hiding behind the (not-closet) door.
Oh I have seen some excerpts of that book. Now’s a great time to actually look at it, because I was thinking about the medium of movies and static paintings.
It dissects in detail the interconnection of comic layout and time and what that means for film and art in general.
It is brilliant.
Id definitely say its time to read it in full. It only takes like three hours to read to. But a life time to understand and re–reference and have it change what you understand as you reread it.
Oh, poor Joyce and Dorothy. There’s no use trying to hide that you are into each other. Everyone already knew that. They just might be surprised that you two finally figured it out.
honestly this storyline has made me look back on Joyce re: romance and lowkey… she reads super aromantic to me now. I don’t think she is meant to be, but as someone aromantically-aligned myself it’s definitely ringing some bells that I wish it weren’t, given the storyline lmao.
I think she does have romantic aspects, but that she’s also so profoundly repressed and has such janky views on what romance even looks like that it’s contributed to her being really, really impulsive.
I’m not aro but I kinda see it. Her approach to romance is very similar to one of my lesbian friends’ approach when she was dating men and really drowning in comp het (except unlike with my friend, I see it in the beginnings of her relationship with Dotty, not just with men). She’s doing everything ‘right’* according to what she’s been told romance is supposed to be, but at the same time doesn’t seem to be genuinely feeling it. I don’t have any evidence of this since it’s just like, my personal evaluation of some of her expressions and stuff (and also because like I said I don’t think it’s intended or will be validated ever).
*not the cheating obviously, but the lovey-dovey talk and stuff
YES EXACTLY AXEL. It really does feel like she’s following what she believes are the rules/steps to interacting with someone you are physically attracted to rather than something that she exhibits naturally
As someone obsessed with romance in abstract- being pro romance is very different than experiencing romantic attraction. People who are aromantic are not emotionless and can experience happiness and contentment in a relationship. Again, I don’t think it’s intentional whatsoever. It simply resonates 🤷
This strip might be a good reminder that this /is/ a cartoon, and as such doesn’t map 1:1 to reality and how people actually behave. Some amount of nonsense kinda has to be shrugged off as “yeah, because this is a cartoon”. Like the Dina-vs-overalls thing- it’d be a lot more notable than just “ah yep that happened” if someone were to actually jump on another person and tear a piece of said person’s clothing off with their teeth over dinosaur misinformation.
(obviously the, yanno, actual IRL-realistic actions like being horny idiots are exempt, but I keep seeing people in the comments treating cartoon nonsense in a serious light, which seems to be kinda missing the point of this being. again. basically a cartoon.)
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dorothy may worry about making joyce worse with her influence (because dorothy’s gonna dorothy), but this has blinded her to the real truth of their situation, which is that joyce’s influence makes her stupider
And we love to see it
When it’s funny, sure.
And for me it’s always funny
Might be a DoA-wide effect: sapphics in denial get an intelligence debuff.
That fantastic last-panel Dorothy is strong evidence.
Last-panel Dorothy needs to be a gravatar
Last-panel Dorothy damn near reached liftoff, she may be in orbit next strip, we just don’t know
She’s returning to her people!
‘Towel-Hat’ Joyce as well!
There is no last panel Dorothy. She cannot be perceived.
Who’s Dorothy? It’s just Booster and Joyce.
I feel like all three of them in the last panel are pretty clearly intended magnet designs
How about a magnet? Unperceiveable Dorothy
Wow, so Willis thinks lesbians are stupid? /s
Robin was definitely a sapphic-in-denial, right? Her intelligence has never really seemed top-notch. Of course she just failed upward into Congress and then a professorship, so she’s doing fine for herself regardless…
DoA-wide?
last I checked that applies to all sapphic-in-denial related comics
Stupider in some ways, but also more authentic, less guarded. With both Walky and Joyce it seems a common theme is Dorothy wants people who can bring out her silly side.
This is true! And I find silly Dorothy to be the best Dorothy.
So we got paladin rep with Sarah, guess it’s Booster’s time to embody the sickos
Oh booster is absolutely here for the mess
Always has been: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/thumpasprunging/
How do you do this? Do you just have every DOA strip memorized and on hand in your head?
Definitely not every strip, but in this particular case, Booster’s final line of that strip has been living in my head rent-free for the past 5 months. Knowing who was in it, a quick search of the amber+booster tag combo found it easily enough.
Combining tags is a gateway to abilities some find unnatural.
But it makes finding strips a hell of a lot easier, especially if you know a combination of three or four characters who all appeared in the one you’re looking for.
Tan is DoA’s answer to QC’s Bookbeard
I have this same question about some of the commenters here. They must reread a lot?
It helps if you remember which characters were in a given comic, and it helps even more if it’s a rare interaction.
In this case it also helps that Booster is a relatively new character, so there are fewer strips with them to sift through than there would be for, say, Leslie.
So your saying you don’t do a yearly reread of :Roomies, Its Walky, Joyce and Walky, Shortpacked, and rereading up to current Dumbing of age?
I thought it was just something people do?
Trash Goblin clocking in for this hot mess
All I want is for Booster to do their thing. Allllll I want.
I fully expect Booster to be on Team Drama/Mess/Sickos, but I also kinda hope that they look at Dorothy and Joyce, think for a moment, and then just walk on, muttering something about how that’s just too easy, he’s a sportsman, damn it. 😀
You got it right a few times, but there’s a pronoun mistake at the end there, just so you know.
FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK.
I try, I really do, stupid instincts (and a minor amount of booze)…
Nah no harm, no foul, mistakes happen I just figured you’d want to know (I would).
shoot accidental flag. sorry bout’ that. anyways that would make for a very funny punchline.
I will say Booster does seem to love saying uncomfortable inner truths, so I suspect their reaction wouldn’t just be “I love this mess” and more to analyze Joyce and Dorothy’s unconscious motivations driving them to each other and to cheat.
Less of a passive observer, and more someone who will prompt panicked self-reflection.
Booster ain’t just a card-carrying member, they’re the freakin’ club president.
Survey results! https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-fu7pUMvpsBTEiYJetnuNDw_3D_3D/
Link if you still want to take the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZRHLW8K
Huh! Surprised how many straight cis dudes we have around here
NOT ME LOL
Ya I am actually right there with you. When I saw how big the bar for cis het dudes was, my knee jerk reaction was that the data was compromised by botting.
Actually it makes sense if you consider how popular Shortpacked! was with the toys-and-superheroes demographic. I wouldn’t be surprised if a sizable population of readers came here from there.
That was my theory yesterday — which I think is bolstered by how big the 30-39 line is, since that’s prime Transformers fandom ages (along with the 40+s like me who got into it in the early 1980s).
Just for fun, if you’re curious, here’s the original comparison chart with Cis Men filtered out (sorry Big Z!)
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-duGtuO8veILNnEpBcRLj0A_3D_3D/
There’s still a handful of cis men but this indicates that they also selected at least one other identity so that’s interesting
I asked Erica for another crosstab that would show us what percentage of “cis dude” are “straight” and vice versa, just because while it seems like the obvious interpretation of the data the charts we have don’t actually show that yet.
My god, I’ve tried to reply to you three times and it keeps putting me in Awaiting Moderation.
I can’t do crosstabs without upgrading, but I can provide some more comparison charts! I can also give you the raw data if you want! Here you go
Gender Identity: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-D9xdpJS7dwodnWQatKCEcw_3D_3D/
That’s what I wanted. ~60% of our cis men identify as straight, meaning that approximately 30% of our respondents are cis/het/male, which strikes me as kinda low for the average online space where people can freely express opinions.
Kind of low, but it’s cis/het/women who are absurdly low.
True! Our respondent demographics are all over the place relative to typical.
Sexual Orientation: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-EzygoKgIFPC2kZDJ2wuKjg_3D_3D/
Relationship style: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-cvFBql0BnzDWCi_2BxXLprbg_3D_3D/
And finally a note on the upgrade that I’ve been trying to post in a way it won’t flag:
I’ve gotten thirty-six back out of fifty. Thank you all so much! The upgraded plan is ninety-nine. If I can get to seventy, I’ll chip in the rest myself so we get crosstabs and other advanced features.
2,200 people against 8,800 on main poll. Perhaps it’s a clue
I’m somehow surprised that less than 2% of people are in my age group, but at the same time I probably shouldn’t be considering how few people my age read traditional webcomics compared to things like webtoons
Is there a distinction?
Webcomics (for examples see pretty much everything under the Hiveworks umbrella) usually have a dedicated website and you need to check up on them or subscribe to their RSS feed to get updates
Webtoons are specifically designed to be optimized for mobile viewing and you’re almost barred from seeing them outside of the app they were made for (assuming the author hasn’t posted it elsewhere, which most webtoons don’t do)
I actually really like webtoons because of the ability to have everything saved and tracked in one place, but my favorite comics aren’t on there unfortunately
Not true; every webtoon I read I read via its rss feed off webtoons.
The app may be “encouraged” but just feedly + web browser works fine.
Does that mean you’re over 30 or under 30?
Under
After reviewing the data again, that should have been obvious to me
This doesn’t explain all the difference but I just noticed that the age ranges are wildly unequal. Under 18, 18-20, a couple 4 or 5 year ranges, then 30-39, 40-49, 50+. Like, 25-29 is slightly bigger than 40-49, but it’s _also_ only 5 years instead of 10, so it’s much higher readership per year. Conversely, if you normalized for number of years, 30-39 would be only somewhat ahead of 25-29, rather than the huge spike it naively looks like.
That’s true. I did it that was based on my assumption that the older you get the less difference age makes so I didn’t significant variation between someone who’s 32 vs 38, vs 22 and 28 is a lot more significant as is 18 vs 21. But it does have a big impact on how the data is presented
And of course the age results will stay the same almost forever because of the sliding comic timescale
Nice job making fairly balanced Jorothy responses!
Thank you!
I find it funny that less than 10% are of the main cast’s age range. Granted, I /started/ reading when I was 18 and am in my 30s now.
Yep, started when I was 21 in 2013
I somehow missed the last question when I took the survey. Looks like I wasn’t the only one
I added a few things after the fact based on the comments. I know it throws off the data so unfortunately it probably will prevent me from getting published
Comparison chart: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-6mhyRRE5W_2F5Ack9czVQ_2BRw_3D_3D/
Hey, stupid question: can we see the crosstab of “orientation” vs. “gender identity”? I’m curious as to how many of that huge “cis male” bar is “straight” vs, anything else — there’s been an assumption they correlate, but I crave knowledge.
I can’t do a crosstab report without upgrading 🙁 I can do that if I get enough help. I can also export all the raw data if you want to play with it yourself!
Anyway though, I can provide comparison charts by gender identity and by orientation! Here you go
Sexual Orientation:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-EzygoKgIFPC2kZDJ2wuKjg_3D_3D/
Gender Identity:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-D9xdpJS7dwodnWQatKCEcw_3D_3D/
Relationship Style:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-cvFBql0BnzDWCi_2BxXLprbg_3D_3D/
WOW Poly folks are overrepresented here, that’s crazy. Like I expected the comic to draw all the queerfolk and I guess the queerfolk are more poly than the straightfolk, but damn.
Seconding comments that this place is waaaaay more cis men than I expected. And fewer cis women, despite the genre being one that data shows tends to be preferred by women. I wonder what’s up with that. Maybe a holdover from people following since It’s Walky! or Shortpacked?
The straightness is less surprising. If ninety percent of everyone is straight then this place is super disproportionately queer even with like half straight folks, which is more or less what I would have expected.
This is very cool, thank you for doing it!
Overrepresented was maybe the wrong word. But represented here vastly disproportionately to their presence in the general population was what I meant.
I have noticed that in queer circles, and especially younger queer circles, poly is becoming very ‘in’! I myself, already have a hard enough time living with myself, let alone a partner, let alone more, but I can see the appeal in multiple partners. Just imagine the chores that can be divided between three or more people… they’d be unstoppable…
Also helpful if you need people for your gaming group!
Or if you need roommates and want ones you REALLY like.
… to split rent, he wanted to say, but hit the wrong button.
I thought that that was the actual reason why people choose poly – to have enough people for the board game nights
I mean… not “no” but…
As a very monogamous person in a very alt scene, I can tell you that boy this made dating difficult for me
As a poly person myself I can say from what limited experience I’ve had with the community that it’s not very common for everybody in a polycule to actually be living together. Arrangements vary quite a bit.
Yeah hinges seem way more common than all points connect, and in hinge situations it seems way more common that people have their own living situations and maybe a nesting partner than like full everyone lives together ktp.
I’m 42 and poly, but I live alone and my current partners live in different parts of the country. It works for us, though I’ve been pestering one of my partners to move here to have access to better healthcare (they live in a fairly remote corner of the US and their doctors keep leaving for greener pastures.)
We’re also a triangle, not a hinge. Communication is important to us.
The number of cis dudes isn’t surprising, the fact that trans practically equal cis women is very funny
Feeling a little lonely as a binary trans man uwu
I am offended by being thrown in the same pile as 51 year old kiddos.
+1
betta watch out
they gotz them jedi mind tricks to know ya ain’t been playin by the kosherized rules! XD
(1000 points to whoever can get both references)
These two are going to be the death of me😆
It’s true. Towel Hat is scientifically proven to block mind-reading.
Rookie, you need to put foil in it
I thought the point of the towel was to cover the foil, because just wearing tin foil would look weird.
Don’t forget: aluminium foil has different electromagnetic interactions to foil that’s actually made from tin; apparently, the former can actually amplify signals on government-used frequencies instead of blocking them.
Also, obligatory Weird Al:
https://youtu.be/urglg3WimHA
Oh boosters known for years
That would be impressive since they’ve only known Joyce and Dorothy for a few weeks
That’s just how good Booster is at picking up vibes
Booster retroactively has known their whole life
Booster has low-grade omniscience
Just gonna drop this link here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/sobstory/
Holy heck, that isn’t telepathy that is witchcraft.
Nah. The longer it’s been, the more I look back at that moment and figure that it’s just some real fortune cookie vibes going on.
They knew enough about each person and could estimate at what their largest problem might be, and are generally aware that when people portray one aspect of themselves, there is a second hidden side, and sometimes you have to look at what’s conspicuously normal to figure out where the truth lies.
So more like stage magic than witchcraft, still cool though.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/rebounding/
Second panel even more pointed!
Yeah, I’ve always interpreted that was Booster low-key indicating they were gender neutral rather than queer, with it going over Joyce’s head. But your interpretation has something to recommend it. I note that she’s hanging out with Booster and Walky.
I’m going with the former. Your mileage may vary, but every ace, bi, pan, nonbinary, trans etc person I’ve met in my (very rainbow-forward) city happily accept queer as a designator to mean “we all have one thing in common, and it’s that cishet allosexuals hate us”.
Tbf I have blindspots. I don’t often rub elbows with the non-cishet people above their 40s much, and I know that’s a word that’s more charged for a lot of Gen-X plus.
As a decidedly over 40, queer generally meant gay, when used by cishets, at first, then was embraced to de-stigmatise it, then came to gradually mean anything and or anyone who is not toeing the cishet line (as opposed to merely being cishet). I was both gobsmacked and delighted to find that I had ‘joined’ the ranks of the queer, feeling almost undeserving of it! But heteronormativity is very powerful, and you can spend most of your life thinking you are cishet when you are not!
Heh, I love this, mostly because I’m reminded that one of my other friend groups more or less forcibly insisted that I was “queer” — it had not occurred to me that since my partner transitioned that most of the line-toers would no longer think I was “het”, and I didn’t want to be one of those white cishet guys who grabbed a marginalized identity just for funsies.
Which is stupid, because of course I’m not “hetero” if I’m married to someone who isn’t a woman, even if they were at one point. But that’s how it goes sometimes.
But I think it’s valid if you personally still feel identity with “straight” even if your partner has transitioned. Like you can acknowledge you aren’t, but you also identified that way for so long it still is the way you automatically think of yourself. I also totally hear you on not wanting to try to take up space in marginalized circles that you don’t feel you have a right to.
As I said the other day, “straight” as a class is like “white” as a class. It’s not defined by logic, it’s defined by exclusion.
If you’re straight with one exception, you’re not straight. In fact, if you’re straight and gender-nonconforming, you’re not really straight.
If you have any kinda “weird” going on with your gender or your sexuality, the queer community had better welcome you, because pericisheterosexist society’s acceptance is provisional, depending on you performing your gender and your sexuality in a very, very rigid way.
“Passing privilege” that vanishes the second you’re honest about who you are? That’s not a privilege, that’s a closet.
BUT, I would argue that if you walk down the street holding your partner’s hand and everyone perceives you as straight (say, because your partner is nonbinary but presenting in a way where people would assume they are a man or woman), then you still have straight privilege. If you have to go out of your way to tell people you’re not straight, you have straight privilege, as opposed to my gay buddy who is outing himself to the world just by going on a date with his boyfriend in public.
But to your second point, I agree that the queer community should welcome you (though it’s really not my place to say, as a cishet person)
BUT, I would argue that if you walk down the street holding your partner’s hand and everyone perceives you as straight (say, because your partner is nonbinary but presenting in a way where people would assume they are a man or woman), then you still have straight privilege.
If this is the definition your gay buddy told you, he has biphobia and transphobia to unlearn, because it’s a very hurtful definition, and it ignores that even some gay couples can walk down the street holding hands and be presumed straight.
If a cis woman is butch enough and walking with her femme partner, for example.
Like I just said: if your “””privilege””” depends on you lying to people about who you are, it’s not a privilege, it’s a closet.
Heck, even two visibly femme women could hold hands and still be presumed straight.
Your buddy’s definition is very, very narrowly focused on only his specific experiences. I am going to assume he’s very young, because that’s the kindest assumption, but he needs to start listening to other queer people.
I mean I think that’s true, that a queer couple who appears straight to strangers has a degree of privilege other queer couples don’t – and I’m in no way saying they aren’t marginalized, but it’s a different experience. There’s nothing wrong with having privilege! Almost all of us do in various areas. It’s just something to be mindful of and I don’t think Big Z is wrong for feeling the way he does.
Erica, your friend is just wrong about this, period.
If it helps, you’re not talking to someone who would have “””passing””” privilege even if it existed. I am an AFAB person in a relationship with another AFAB person. I am bi but I’ve only ever dated women. I’m nonbinary but I am EXTREMELY non-passing. No one has ever taken me as anything other than a very gay cis woman.
And the concept that “straight privilege” is something any memento of the queer community has any meaningful access to is absurd and hurtful, as your friend would know if he were listening more to people less like himself.
*member
Having to “go out of your way to tell people you’re not straight” is just the default when living in a society when people are assumed to be straight.
^^^^
Some of us are more “clockably” queer, but first of all, BOY is that contextual — how much gender-nonconformity is acceptable depends on where you live, and it depends on how much you weigh, and oh yeah, it depends on how white you are.
But second of all: again, if you are only “safe” as long as you lie about who you are, you do not have any real access to the privilege you’re talking about.
In re: walking down the street holding hands:
At this point, at least post-gender-conforming surgery for my partner, it’s honestly both frustrating as much as it is funny.
I present OBVIOUSLY cis male: clothes, beard, etc. Always have a baseball hat on (either “nerdy” or “kid’s sports team”). Usually have an aloha shirt on.
My partner in theory presents ambiguous: no breasts, short hair, AFAB facial structure, dresses androgynous-to-masc (usually jeans and a t-shirt).
Most people who have to react to us before an introduction (store clerks, new faces at a hobby group, etc) misgender my partner, since most people still haven’t made “they/them” a daily-driver mental option. HOWEVER, if my partner is alone, they get it right more often or they at least take a second to try to figure it out.
When my partner is obviously with me, they ALWAYS get misgendered as female.
I assume this is due to cultural confirmation bias. (“Even if I know trans people exist and accept that, the SAFE bet is that the average couple is one man and one woman.”)
Yep, very consistent with experiences I’ve heard from other nonbinary and transmasc people partnered with obvious cis men.
One guy I know has a beard, but somehow still gets ma’am’d when he’s with his partner.
Also, @Erica: I want to apologize for my tone, because I know you’re only repeating what you’ve been told in good faith!!
I am really really trying to be kind about your friend, too. Especially if he’s young. I don’t wanna bite anyone’s head off, especially not by proxy.
The logic behind his argument makes me want to cry and also scream into a pillow because it’s so hurtful. But I am hoping he’ll just keep learning and growing and talk to more folks who aren’t cis gay guys.
Every community on Earth seems to try to invent “passing privilege” at some point. I don’t think we’ve found an instance yet where it wouldn’t be better to call it something else, like “conditional safety”, and to acknowledge that it’s both precarious and exhausting.
Privilege is neither. It’s a privilege if you never have to think about an aspect of your identity — not if you live your life dreading anyone ever discovering what that aspect of your identity really is.
@Li More of a minor quibble than anything but I would say that if you’re straight but gender non-conforming you are queer (I’d say being GNC definitely falls under that umbrella) but still straight in the same way that a trans woman who is only interested in dating and/or sex with men is straight because she’s a woman who only wants sex and/or romance with male partners.
Whether or not you are cis is something you might want to ask yourself but ultimately that’s something that’s not going to be quite as clear as “Am I interested in dating and/or romance with partners of the same sex and/or gender as myself.”
Li no worries. It’s okay, I just decided to bow out because it’s really not my topic to speak on or my place to argue. I find the discussion interesting but it seemed I was upsetting you so I didn’t want to press more. I am listening and thinking about everything said
“it’s both precarious and exhausting. Privilege is neither. It’s a privilege if you never have to think about an aspect of your identity”
This is very interesting. Thank you for this.
@Proxiehunter: We don’t have a good word for the thing I was using “straight” to mean.
I’ve talked about it before with a capital S, Straight — but what I mean is non-queer. Someone who’s cis, non-intersex, heterosexual, and heteroromantic.
Trans folks can be heterosexual, but they can’t be Straight in this sense, and they don’t have any meaningful access to Straight Privilege: because again, if you’re a heterosexual trans woman, transphobic society sees you not as a straight woman but as……….. well, honestly as a freak. They’ll happily misgender you and call you a man, but they don’t really see you as a man either. You’re just a freaky pervert and they want you to stop existing.
So yeah, I was drawing a distinction between “heterosexual (and romantic)” and “straight”, with the latter being the thing people use as a synonym for “normal” or “default”, and definitely not being something that any queer person can be, because we’ll never be “normal” to a queerphobic society.
@Erica: You’re very welcome, and also I’m sorry I wasn’t able to rein that in more. 🙁 I hope you have a great rest of your day!
@ an earlier comment, it’s possible to be cishet and partnered with a queer person. My husband and I didn’t know when we met that I’m nonbinary. He’s attracted to women, and to my mostly-femme appearance/presentation. If anyone says something bad about trans people he wants to punch them.
So… still a cishet guy, even though our relationship is not straight.
@Leorale totally up to him, ofc! Whether or not one wants to change ones identity labels is always a personal choice.
He’s welcome in any community I’m a part of, though.
Its a bit dicer in more heavily conservative areas too, in my lived experience.
It’s not more charged for Gen-X plus. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” was their slogan.
Don’t fall for the radfem misinformation campaign. It’s not that nobody has ever been uncomfortable with queer, it’s that all of our words make some people uncomfortable and that queer has always been far and away the most popular term within the community. Every single survey says so.
Queer was also used for the more radical wing, in opposition to assimilationist gay movements. That usage has blurred and it’s become more common as a inclusive term than for any other kind of radicalism, but either way is a reason for more conservative gay and lesbian people to reject it.
Yeah, those people need to get their heads out of their butts. There’s no such thing as a “respectable enough” gay man, even if he’s white, even if he’s the most stereotypically masculine and clean-cut.
You are just a useful idiot. A pawn. If you let yourself be turned against your “weirder” siblings, if you shouted “get the L out”, if you had “gay not queer” or anything else in your bio, if you thought the “””gender critical””” movement had reasonable concerns — congratulations on being part of why gay marriage is now on the chopping block. You let them weaken our coalition, you let them pick off “””acceptable””” targets, and now you’re next.
Maybe wake up and realize there is no future in assimilation.
1. No. Being agender != being cis, so. Individual people may or may not consider themselves trans, usually because they’ve been told they’re not allowed to use that word by gatekeepy assholes with internalized transphobia to work through, but the identity is still LGBTQIA+ / queer.
2. Booster has expressed attraction to both men and women. Even if they were cis, they’d still be queer.
Don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious
Whistle unconvincingly.
Without context it looks like they’re about to do a two-person combo takedown on Booster
Which admittedly would be entertaining, can we get that soon?
Booster’s only surprised you two only started kissing NOW
It’s amazing how absolutely terrible these two are at not acting suspicious. I hope they never try to play poker because they would lose so much money.
Booster embodying the commenters who “don’t see it,” as their only blind spot, would be hilarious.
OMG, THE RETURN OF BOOSTER! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! 😀 I love them so much, if anyone is going to be the kryptonite to these two steal-challenged sapphics, its’ gonna be Booster. This is better than I could have expected. Fuck it, I’m buying the whole comments section a round of popcorn. Let’s fucking go!
It’d be simultaneously a huge letdown and JUST the right amount of “Damn you, Willis!” if Booster just lets this slide on past, this one time.
I would be in a state of pure and profound confused angry respect. The combination of the traditional DYW and a sincere, if pained, “well played.”
* meant to say “stealth-challenged,” there… not “steal-challenged”
The th was in stealth mode.
God I wish I could upvote comments on here. That was beautiful.
Damn these bongos gay. Not really good for them right now.
But it’s really good for this bongo 👈
(that means to be pointed at myself, i get that wasn’t very clear)
I notice you trust Booster. This is an excellent choice.
Look, girls, the only thing that’s going to surprise anyone here is that you waited until yesterday to suck face.
And, sorry Dorothy, that’s not how bisexual invisibility works.
But it should be!
Agreed, where the duck is my ability to just hiss and poof out of sight on command?!
I’m of the opinion that we should normalize carrying smoke bombs at all times for this very reason. Social anxiety? Horrible family members at Thanksgiving?
BOOM! Ninja your way out of that shit.
Doesn’t she remember Danny learning the same lesson?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/grim/
Smooth.
Real smooth.
I’ve been on the record as saying I hate this, but I love “it’s ongoing”
“35 steps” okay yeah this was never not going to happen
33, w/e
The thing is, presumably Booster would be plenty happy to not out either of them, though I guess this is complicated by Booster being Walky’s roommate, as well as being the grand sovereign of shit-stirrers.
“Eh, your guys’ issues are small peanuts. I have my sights set…”
Amber and Sal arrive
“…higher.”
“I see you’re pursuing Amazi-Girl,” Booster says to Amber.
Billie interprets this as Amber having a crush on Sal. She takes the story to Daisy, who just kinda blue-screens the minute her imagination gets going.
And by higher you mean hotter
Exactly so. By “higher” they mean “higher temperatures.” LET’S TURN UP THE HEAT!!!
Seriously, ever since someone suggested the Danny/Sal/Amber throuple, I am so on board with that ship they gave me rank and uniform.
You can add Booster to any situation and it immediately make it more entertaining. It’s like gasoline to the dumpster fire.
Amen, a thousand times amen. I’m giddy with excitement.
I can appreciate why people would feel that way, but I’ve known a couple people like Booster irl and it kinda sours the experience.
More Booster for me then!
Both! I know people like Booster IRL, and they kinda suck… but having them show up in this comic reminds me constantly that these folks are funny when they’re in someone ELSE’S friend group.
Way I think of it is this, I love Dr. House. I watch that shit with popcorn and a grin on my face. Gregory House is an endlessly entertaining asshole. That said, if I met someone who acted like that character in real life, I would not spend five seconds with them.
Granted, I don’t think Booster is anywhere near as rude or as much of a dick as Dr. House can be, but that analogy has been my go-to for years.
Booster also doesn’t have nearly the same capacity for harm as House does, since they can’t diagnose anyone with anything, can’t prescribe them any medication, can’t recommend any treatments, none of it.
You wouldn’t ever guess that from reading the comments, though.
Nadamas, your analogy is backwards. Gasoline acts a Booster to a dumpster fire.
Look when you find someone named gasoline you come and call me so i can be happy again
Well, kind of. John Cassell invented a type of lighting oil and his company called it Casselline in his honor, but for reasons marketed it under the brand name Cazeline. Shortly after there was a copycat product under the name Gazeline that sold really well, and you can imagine how it went from there.
So be happy. If John had been an architect, your home could be your Cassell.
Towel hay? What’s happened with the tin foil hat?
she wasn’t carrying tin foil to the bathroom and you make do with what you have
Wrapping your head in a towel is to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, as any Douglas Adams fan knows.
It’s times like this I wonder what Mike would have picked up on if he were still around.
Perhaps he is with us in another way… as a Jedi becomes one with the Force, Mike is now part of something more. An ascension into a higher plane of asshole.
One cannot intentionally summon him, but anytime someone thinks to themselves “can this day get any worse” he will be there.
He is the sudden rain out of the clear blue sky. He is the inexplicable leg cramp in the morning. He is the keening shriek in the ear of all who suffer from tinnitus. He is every spilled coffee, every flat tire, every clogged toilet.
Murphy writes the Law, and Mike enforces it.
^^
“I am the terror that flaps in the night.
I am the batteries that are not included.
I am Darkwing Duck.”
“I am the terror that flaps in the night.
I am the fingernails on the chalkboard of your soul.
I am Darkwing Duck.”
It’s a nice notion that gives me comfort.
Mike would have clocked them immediately and had a field day.
I feel like Mike would be ending the strip casually informing them he’s deciding whether to go tell Joe or Walky first when they try to distract him by asking where he’s headed. Employing some tactical threats is the best way to achieve results while also getting to enjoy the sweet suffering of their panicked flailing. We know for a fact from his flashbacks re: Amber and Ethan, not to mention his final night around, that he’s great at tactics that involve blatantly manipulating people to mess with them in a way that ultimately ends up benefiting more people than it hurts.
Alternately, he would flatly tell them that no, absolutely, he’s very happy for them and thinks they should cheat even harder and he just hopes he gets to watch when Joe and Walky finally find out so he can see their hearts shatter in realtime, because that’d likely hit them even harder. I feel like that option might actually be even more plausible, thinking about it.
Man, I miss Mike.
That’s a great estimation of what he’d do. Damn I miss him too.
“It is ongoing” is such a Dina line xD
Don’t trust Booster….I guess. I mean I know they’re already a polarizing character so that ain’t breaking no new ground.
Aw rats, I was a little too slow.
I just appreciate the dedication to the bit.
Okay, so I actually don’t like today’s strip and idk why. Something about the joke in Panel 2 fell weirdly flat for me.
But Booster is KILLING that outfit today, this is like when Joe got messy hair but for Booster. I don’t know if it’s the first time we’ve seen them in a T shirt like that or just the first wide shot with it, but still.
Also, I love Booster and am so stoked for more Booster. I don’t care if Booster celebrates this development, they’re messy af and I love them. Sit pretty comfortably next to AG for my favorite character.
Oh, but I do love the final punchline, that was really funny. I apparently had forgotten to zoom out on my phone lol.
“Oh my God you were so gay for me” book title right there
…what the hell lol
Joyce is canonically 9’5″, so 33 steps for her is about 2.5km.
(ooh a Kinger avatar! <3 )
I like Kinger a lot. He’s fun.
“Why is happening?!”-Kingler
Kinger is my 48 year old babygirl.
That doesn’t sound right.
Damn that’s a big dorm
Forced perspective does a lot of work.
BOOSTERRRRR YAAAAAAAAY
The absolute worst person to have this information now does.
gg
Rachel’s not here, what do you mean?
one of the surveymonkey comments was something like, their cheating was “rushed.” it’s been over 10 years (cry emoji)
Real casual gals being pals. Nothing to suspect here.
It’s kinda funny that door still has the drawing Mary did for them on it. If I’m remembering that correctly. It feels like an artifact from a different time, a different comic.
I wouldn’t mind Mary being reintegrated but toned down just slightly, like she’s still a fundie dickbag and has no friends, but sometimes people actually hang around her on purpose because she’s tolerable while she’s drawing stuff.
Mary has a weirdly creative and artistic side that feels like a remnant of a character she used to be or could’ve been but it kinda clashes with the person she is now. Or maybe that just makes her more realistic, even the worst person you know could have aspects to them that would surprise you.
Obviously this is just my own limited anecdotal experience, but sometimes interest in anime can be the closest thing a Bible-Thumper kid has to exposure outside the bubble, as well as stories that aren’t squeaky-clean PureFlix slop.
Many of these parents assume “comics/cartoons = for children” so fundie kids can skate by on that assumption and read all kinds of stuff (like yaoi and yuri, for instance) they’d never be able to sneak past the church ladies otherwise.
I still have all the old Harry Potter books I bought when I was a teenager and college student, though I’ve soured on the series in the years since after the author revealed herself to be a horrible bigoted POS.
That’s always the weirdest thing to me. She was already a billionaire. She could have said nothing and gone down as a beloved children’s author. Most celebrities who are privately shitty at least pretend to be nice in public, at try not to set their own brand fire, then double down and pour kerosene on it.
She wasn’t even a billionaire because she donated so much of her wealth, and all that goodwill got flushed down the toilet because of her transphobic views. And despite her crappy views she still doesn’t come off half as bad as some other artists from Eric Clapton to Neil Gaiman.
JK may not have committed literal crimes the way Neil Gaiman has (forgive me, I’m unfamiliar with Eric Clapton) but the bar is in hell. Even if she hasn’t been as irreprehensible as the likes of Gaiman in that regard, I think the money she’s pushed into anti-trans bills and legislation as well as the way she’s galvanized people to be more comfortable being anti-trans assholes under the guise of feminism is harmful on a societal level.
It was because of JK Rowling that Imane Khelif wound up harassed on an incredibly large scale because JK Rowling would rather raise alarms about trans athletes rather than do her due diligence and actually understand what she’s talking about. I completely understand what you mean here, but I’d still argue that JK’s issue is more than just crappy views and can still be broadly horrific and terrifying. Just in an entirely different way.
I agree here. Her influence may less direct, but from what I hear the amount of money she pours towards political campaigns and special interest groups has far, far, far reaching effects on UK public policy.
JK doesn’t have to break laws to hurt people when she can instead get the laws rewritten to make it perfectly legal to hurt her preferred victims.
Genuinely do not think she is in any material way better than a sexual abuser, and the creepy way transphobes talk about trans people often does involve them basically saying they’d be happy to sexually assault us if they had the opportunity.
And that’s even without pointing out their obsession with what’s in everyone else’s pants, how they advocate for cis men to go into women’s bathrooms to “verify”, how they sometimes demand children be inspected by strange adults they’ve appointed to keep trans kids out of sports teams.
I’m gonna say, the day some random dude demands to inspect my (AFAB, beefy) kid’s genital situation because she happens to be extra athletic is probably the day I got to jail, honestly.
Yep. These people are SO HORRIFICALLY CREEPY about kids and teens especially.
Never has “every accusation is a confession” been more apt than with the way transphobes accuse the rest of us of wanting to hurt children.
This is always the most bizarre part to me. One does not have to have a trans kid, or even children at all to not instantly clock that proposal as insanely creepy.
Even if one is paranoid enough to think that these children are some kind of existential threat, how does anyone with two brain cells to rub together not immediately think “that sounds like a system that would be really easy to abuse.” Wouldn’t even the most transphobic asshole say something like; “I kinda feel like there are less weird ways to address this.”
Like, does bigotry brainrot go that deep?
It absolutely does.
Kellie-Jay Keen, AKA Posie Parker, has specifically advocated for cis men to go into women’s spaces with guns to keep trans women out.
She and JK Rowling have also both publicly defended actual child predators like Kaeley Triller, because (CW: I’m about to get slightly more specific about horrible shit), if you’re a cis woman grooming and sexually assaulting teenage boys under your care when you’re a counselor, that’s fine I guess.
I hate all the “compromise” positions, too, like, “Well I don’t know, what if trans people DO have an advantage at sports? Maybe we can just have sports bans until we figure it out?”
Fuck THAT noise:
1) statistically, we have far FEWER trans athletes competing at the top level of sports that allowed them than one would expect from population statistics alone — currently, the evidence is that “being trans” is a net detriment to your odds of being a champion athlete.
2) many, many international sports regulatory bodies (a group of entities notoriously beholden to politics, run by rich men, and more conservative than average) have done the research and concluded that trans athletes should compete as their preferred gender. We DID figure it out, TERFs and jerks just didn’t like the answer.
+500
Plus, and I know this won’t be a popular take but… sports are kinda dumb. They’re just games where you kick a ball around. Winning or losing them is so, so, so, so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. By which I mean; the idea of using “fairness in sports” to yank away civil liberties is the most asinine trade-off.
“Yeah, we would leave you alone and stop policing your underpants, but the sanctity of the Rough Riders Preschool Tee-Ball League in Bumfuck, Idaho is simply too great a sacrifice.”
Gimme a goddamn break.
The issue is, of course, twofold:
1) for the top 0.001% of athletes, sports is a pathway to making a LOT of money to kick a ball around.
2) an astoundingly large number of the top 9.999% immediately below them in ability, and the parents of same, have an unrealistically high opinion of their chances of making it to that 0.001% and view ANYTHING that might reduce their chances as tantamount to stealing their future fortunes.
Okay, I had to look up Imane Khelif, had zero knowledge of this name because I am negative-zero units interested in the Olympics but… goddamn. This whole story is ridiculous. More than anything it comes across as her opponent being salty they lost and throwing a tantrum.
I’ve gone from not knowing what a TERF is a couple years ago to just wishing they’d all shut the everloving fuck up forever.
The ESPECIALLY dumb thing about Khelif is that she’s the latest victim of “anytime a promising Russian woman boxer loses a major bout, there’s a good chance her opponent gets accused of being trans” which is in particular far more common than makes any sense.
Well that just makes Russians sound like a bunch of sore losers. The response anytime that claim comes up should just be “skill issue.”
“It is ongoing” of course
Oh my god yes. The exact person we needed.
This is going to be a looooooooooooooong day.
Yeah, I’ll say it, sometimes the glacial pacing is a little much. It’s a good thing there’s nothing serious going on with Amber today or anything like that.
You’re gonna see another page in like 24 hours. That’s one day. “Glacial” my ass.
Oh my gof kinger! My favorite little guy!
It would be interesting to see Booster respond to something with that level of seriousness. They often seem fairly unflappable, but if they learned Amber was seriously injured it might extract a spontaneous moment of sincerity.
That the jugs can survive such leaps is a testament to Carla’s engineering skill.
As an aside wouldn’t Joyce have to remove them to disrobe, therefore exposing herself to the shower floor?
We haven’t seen her come down yet so we don’t know they can survive
Im more worried about the twisted or broken ankle that would result from her landing. One of her legs is already at an angle and her legs are about as straight as she is, meaning she either lands hard on her ass, or tries to land on her feet again but does so horrible and messes up her ankle pretty bad.
Remove one shower clog, take off sock, take off one pant leg, put shower clog back on. Repeat on other side. I would’ve done it in college. Also maybe she can get naked in the bathroom but just needs the clogs for in the shower when it is wet?
Came here to say exactly this, but add “totter precariously as you balance on one leg”
Socks in the shower!?
Wait until they encounter Carla once more
if I say jump, Dorothy says, “How high”
It’s statistically unlikely that everyone on the floor is queer. That’s where the unnamed background and often unseen implied characters come into play.
Thirty-three steps means there’s probably one room pair between Sal/Malaya’s room and Dina/Amber/AG’s room. Maybe some of those four people are cishet.
Sal, Sarah, Amber, Mary, Rachel, Joe, Jacob, Walky, those are the cishets I think we can solidly confirm. Might still be outnumbered 2 to 1 if we count all the background gays. I guess Jennifer doesn’t live there anymore to add to the queer lead.
I forgot Roz. She probably cishet right?
I feel like Roz’s sexuality is “I’ll fuck anyone if it gets me attention”
Willis is amused by the idea of Roz being the only cishet cast member, from making more characters queer whenever someone complains “where’s all the straight people” etc.
I don’t think the bit works for Mary, though. Undermines this interaction.
So if Roz, Mary, and nameless and forgotten bg characters are the straight ones, the strip with highest ratio of straight to queer floor residents is: Boring
mary’s an anime fan who has a shirt based on the yaoi thing from QC so im gonna throw it out there: i think mary is transmasc and will never have the ability to realize it bc, yknow. it’s mary
I think Willis listed Sal and Roz as straight at one point.
Walky has said a few too many questionable things for me not to feel like he’s gonna casually reveal himself as bi eventually.
I think I agree solidly about Sarah and Joe, I definitely agree about Mary (and I think Willis has very negatively lampshaded the idea of her being in any way queer)… Jacob certainly thinks he’s straight, because I think otherwise he definitely would have come out to Ethan by now if for no other reason than a bid to reach the guy, you know? “Hey, guess what, we’ve got something in common!”
Rachel and Amazi-Girl, I have no read on at all. Amazi-Girl was attracted to Danny, but I don’t get the feeling that she’s attracted to Walky. Rachel hasn’t said anything about any kind of attraction, I don’t think, but we can probably assume she’s at least attracted to guys based on her Walkyverse version.
Honestly, I think Walky’s come out at least twice already, but everyone’s ignored it because he frames everything as a joke.
Same, I think he just doesn’t reflect on things the way most people do. My partner is someone like this. They never came out, they just went about existing in the world as a queer person with zero qualms (and their family still never saw the obvious)
Let’s see…
His initial attraction to Dorothy formed around her interest in Dexter & Monkey Master: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/02-uphill-from-here/dexter/ — while the previous strip could have indicated an initial appearance-based attraction to Dorothy, it could just as well have been the folder catching his eye.
His attraction to Amber could easily have been about being “garbage”, along with her physical similarity to Dorothy (who he’d developed significant feelings for since the initial D&MM thing), and it was never especially deep: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/04-is-a-song-forever/belong/
And then there’s Lucy, who approached him; he mostly viewed her as a friend, despite his own efforts…
More on Lucy: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/preface-2/ — while, in the following strip, he says he had to be told to ask her out because he doesn’t expect pretty girls could like him… how about attractive boys? None have approached him.
Also: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/conceding/
I’m not making assumptions here, but if an appealing boy were to ask him out, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he decided to at least go along with it and see how things end up.
That Lucy link got me questioning my previous claim that she approached him, so I dug through more… yes, I misremembered. However, here’s the strip with Dorothy telling Walky to ask her out: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/askout/
If it had been Jacob being attracted to him instead, would his reaction have been much different? Hard to know.
More evidence of his romantic obliviousness, from earlier: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/invited-2/
Asher. Asher is the appealing boy who could successfully ask Walky out.
Sal is bi because she is happily dating Danny, who as we know is a deeply closeted trans girl 😌
Sal getting her girlfriend stolen by her sister as Danny and Walky go the trans for trans lesbian route. That’s very long odds but we’ll throw that ship in I guess.
I am just gonna hold onto Willis joking that it would be amazing if Dorothy realizes that actually she’s only ever dated women.
And that’s totally true to the life experiences of some real folks! Think they’re straight, turns out they just have an uncanny ability to tell that the people they’re interested in are actually the same gender as them.
True story: I honestly knew a guy who was the opposite of that , in that something like 80% of his ex-girlfriends turned out to be lesbians. But not in a “he’s so bad he turned me off men” way, he’s still friends with most of ’em.
My dude was just catnip for ladies who were on their last attempt at trying to prove to themselves they liked guys.
He should take that as a compliment, it probably means he exudes safety.
Plus, I bet he’s good-looking, possibly in a very conventional way? “Surely I’ll be attracted to this man, he looks exactly like I know men are supposed to look” sort of a thing.
I guess I’m more invested in transfem Danny than Walky because Danny reminds me more of myself when I was an egg, and also we already know what Walky would look like if he transitioned, because it’s Sal.
Counterpoint: an additional Sal with short hair would be excellent.
The irony is that he looks and acts like a lower-rent Dr. House. So yeah, kinda conventionally good looking, but also kind of an ass, but also the kind of person who can be trusted ultimately to tell the truth even if it hurts.
Danny’s a good egg.
Be better if she cracked!
Just in case anyone took it the wrong way: I was punning on the way people used to say that in comments, such as under https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/itemize/
I’m hopefully being overly cautious, but I like that strip anyway.
I thought he had casually revealed that when he said he’d go down on a guy to get free pizza.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the earlier instance where in regards to Jacob he said “C’m on, everyone’d hit that, right?”
Have we seen Rachel demonstrate attraction to anyone?
I guess she wound up with Joe in Walkyverse, so assuming we’re standing by sexualities consistent across universes, boys are presumably on the table, but I find it difficult to call that “confirmed” het. I feel like she could pretty easily turn out either demi or pan.
It feels like every college has that one dorm where the statistically unlikely happened and that’s where they put all the queer students until there was enough overflow they had to start putting them in other dorms instead.
Deeply amazing strip.
33 steps? The years of the Chirst.
Coincidence? I think not! 😛
I can imagine first-semester Joyce adjusting her pace to make it work out that way, and then walking the path to Dorothy’s door the same way every time until it became ingrained reflex.
That is an amazing shirt, Booster.
Yeah, this is EXTREMELY obvious and Booster’s pretty perceptive.
I wonder how we’ll see Joyce completely disregard Joe to booster or ignore anything Booster says on the matter
For a complete change of topic, anyone here had watched the pitt? I started it yesterday and hadn’t stopped said, and you know it’s good because my ability to focus on new shows is of a goldfish.
Had to double check the tags before commenting after reading all of them. But if Dorothy and Joyce thought Charlee was Booster and panicked for no reason I’d love that. Then if Booster was oblivious for once, but Charlee had lesbian perception powers that would be a fun twist.
It’s funny that Booster thinks she’s this master cold reader and psychologist but hasn’t figured out how PROFOUNDLY WEIRD the campus is with its own superhero despite them being involved in high profile events.
Booster’s pronouns are they/them.
I appreciate you continuing to keep the comments section honest on Booster’s pronouns. This is a good and valuable service. Thank you.
Aww thank you!💕
+1!
That was unfortunate and a mistake I would have corrected if I had an edit button. My apologies to the nonbinary members of the forum.
Totally fair, mistakes happen! Ty for acknowledging 💕
My kiiiingdom for an edit button.
Nah, shitty people would abuse it by saying something horrific and then editing it to be more reasonable so all the people responding to them looked like jerks who had jumped at shadows.
I don’t suppose Willis is spinning this out so that he can hit us with Joe and Walky saying “knew it” and “what took so long”?
I’m a very bad person. I kinda want Booster to analyze the heck out of how this development in their eerily accurate yet also buzzkill way, and at least momentarily dent the New[ly Acknowledged] Love high that Dorothy and Joyce are riding right now. It’s just so chock full of things Booster can pick apart in the worst/best way, as they always do: Dorothy’s destructive behavior, the protest backdrop and the possibility of pictures from a public event, Joyce building up her night with Joe and then jumping into this, the codependence, the trauma involved, the obvious guilt while they still indulge.
And the best part about it is, Booster can both be right, and the worst for pointing it out. “You’re right, and I hate you” is what Booster often serves, and they’re great at it. AND, Booster is still rather new to the friend group, so Booster doesn’t have to mournfully break any super important friendships to do it. If there’s anyone who can tackle all of the sucky uncomfortable parts of this without we, the readers, having to marinate in how sad it is [as we had to with Sarah, and will when Joe/Walky get their say, and maybe Becky], it’s Booster.
Do it, Booster. Unleash the worst of your psychoanalytic and eerily perceptive abilities. Please. It would be awful. And it would be glorious.
I…Don’t suspect Booster will though. If Booster probably intends to be Amber’s confidant (I am quietly loading cargo at the dock for my Booster x Amber ship to come in, don’t mind me), they will let Dorothy and Joyce have this one for now. When Amber likely comes to Booster, regretful of her part in this (and realizing manipulation is another thing she has in common with her dad), they will probably offer up that Joyce and Dorothy was an inevitable, regardless of if Amber wanted Walky at the time.
I don’t mean to sound down on the ship, ship away, but is Booster trying to be Amber’s confidante at the moment? Booster finds Amber’s trainwreck personality fascinating and wants to be associates– Amber didn’t like the “friend” label, at least at first–but they haven’t exactly been trying to spare Amber’s feelings about this. I have no doubt Amber and Booster’s conversation about Amber sabotaging Walky/Dorothy will come up again between them, but that doesn’t have to stop Booster from having their version of fun and analyzing Dorothy/Joyce now. They love how destructive and awful this situation is, and they can do that to Dorothy and Joyce’s “obviously shady” faces now, AND talk to Amber about her role or lackthereof in it later. Double the fun, for them.
I don’t really think it will happen either. But more because I think having Booster get their take in now will cheapen the same observations from other characters like Joe, Walky, and Becky. Sarah’s words to Joyce hit hard because someone was FINALLY saying the unpleasant part. If Booster “helpfully” lays it all out now, the same observations lose some of their punch later.
But I can still dream. Maybe we’ll get a strip of Booster just unpacking the situation to themselves as Dorothy and Joyce escape down the hall. Booster’s been used as a semi-fourth wall break before, it could happen again.
Don’t forget that Booster admitted to being attracted to Amber a few days ago.
Entertaining myself with the wrong but still fun idea that Booster’s entire existence spun out of working backwards to make this single punchline happen
Would’ve been really funny if this was Charlie instead.
Still not entertained by this. I hope we can move on soon.
Strips like this feel like padding.
do u think it might be kind of rude to comment this on somebody’s art
Last I checked people can have negative opinions on things, and voice them.
idk i know it’s good for people to be able to leave comments with their honest opinions but sometimes i feel like people forget it’s one person drawing like 5 pictures a day for us for free. If a pro artist draws me 5 pictures for free even just once i dont wanna be like “boring, draw something else”. Obviously i don’t say this every time i see a negative comment but i feel like somebody should point it out sometimes
If you think Willis is doing this for free, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. He has two Patreons which give him a revenue easily in the 5 digit range. And that’s not including ad/merch/Slipshine revenue. Not anything to make him rich, but he’s getting by fine.
And Willis is a big boy. He can handle a little bit of light criticism.
i know im subscribed lol. They don’t do it for free, but we get it for free. And obviously they can handle a shit ton of negativity. But idk, u put up 20000 pages of story for free, i just wish people could be a little more gracious in their criticism sometimes. Idk i wont keep going on about it, just been thinking it a lot lately and felt the need to say it once
They literally just said “I’m not entertained by this”. That’s about the lightest most gentle criticism you can possibly give.
it was more the padding comment. Just saying, willis probably spent a good few hours on this. Sorry to everyone including adeptus for saying so much about it though i know its not that deep
Willis’s pronouns are he/they, so perhaps “grown adult”.
Also, keeping the comment section has been valuable for Willis, but also for the rest of us. So many people have thanked him for keeping it open because it’s where they first started unlearning racism, or figured out they themselves were queer, or something else. And sometimes commenters have found something in one of Willis’s blind spots that Willis in turn was extremely grateful for.
But like, just because Willis is an adult doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings, and just because this comment section does enough good to outweigh the bad doesn’t mean it’s open season to test that maxim, heh.
Also, the comic IS being shared with us for free. Willis has a tip jar on the counter, where a lot of people are putting their money voluntarily, but the website doesn’t charge admission. You don’t have to pay anything.
Note: I am talking broadly about the idea of “being mean”. I know this specific criticism wasn’t even that mean. I am just talking about the underlying logic.
I definitely see folks saying stuff around here that I can’t imagine saying where I know the artist is gonna see it, not because it’s so mean but because it’s just been phrased very rudely or bluntly, the way I’d be more likely to talk casually among friends?
If that makes sense. Nothing wrong with a good old fashioned hate-read if you enjoy that sorta thing either, but usually that too is done with friends…
The other parasociality problem — this IS where some of us hang out with our friends to discuss this webcomic. Y’know, our good friends we talk to every day, like Li and Taffy and Big Z and Nymph and thejeff et al.
Even beyond that, normally you just don’t get to share casual spaces with creators of things in any meaningful way. Hell, the one time I came close to that (long story short, I used to be in an amateur theater club with Tony Kushner’s cousin), the average normie response is “HOLY SHIT I’M STANDING NEXT TO TONY KUSHNER” rather than, say, chatting with him about the couple of structural problems I had as an actor when I was in Slavs!.
The internet will warp your brain.
Yeah, I getcha.
And if you do share casual spaces with creators in meaningful ways, they’re probably not talking about work, unless it’s actually a working space for them.
At least not most of the time. Not more than the average person talks about their job when you’re hanging out.
I certainly respect that viewpoint, but this is one of the more minor/politely phrased critiques I’ve seen lately — I myself have said that J&D are boring, and I’ve seen opinions like “fanservice” and “destroyed characterizations for a ship” that are frankly ridiculously harsh by comparison.
yeah thats true, i kind of saw one and decided to say what id been thinking for a while randomly, sorry it started a whole thread on this one comment
Having been a fan of Willis’ work since I was in middle school, I consider it incumbent upon me to express what I like or dislike about what is happening in the story without mincing words.
Flawless. They won’t suspect a thing.
This is all making me wonder what Becky picked up on that made her think Joyce was gay when she first showed up. It had to be something before the Joyce-Dorothy friendship since she just got there and already believed this. At the time I assumed Becky was just projecting, but its increasingly likely Becky’s gaydar also picked up on something even before Joyce was aware of it.
She has no boundaries with women . Brushing hair. Burying face in billies bosom
I mean, they grew up together. Becky spent a lot of her life watching how Joyce reacted to other girls, hearing how she talked about other girls, etc. I’m guessing there were similarities, and Becky picked up on them.
i feel like becky really was codependent ride or die homosocial besties with joyce before dorothy was. Joyce’s whole gay awakening now is like a sequel to the one Becky had with her. Becky had already experienced all these things Joyce is now, and had of course concluded that a relationship like that doesn’t happen completely asymmetrically. So she came to the conclusion “oh, WE were gay”
and maybe she was right? Which might mean that Joyce did have those kind of feelings for her at some point, on some level, and just completely wasn’t ready to understand or accept them, and so began to conceptualize their relationship specifically as something that could never be that. Idk that’s headcanon really but i’m so excited to see them talk about it, even if it turns out to be brief and not very dramatic. but if it is dramatic im so there for it
I feel like Willis is trying to soften the blow with these over reactions their part but I def see a red background panel with Joe in our future.
My fear is that he, for want of a better word, regresses.
“I was being good… I tried to be a better person… It’s been thrown back in my face by someone who I thought was perfect, not just as a person, but for ‘me’… I must be garbage…”
“Joe V.2.0: Return of the Horndog”
I feel like he’ll start being a little slut again sans the list
I still have no idea what is wrong with being a ”slut”.
Not sure that’s even implied — his post-list pre-Joyce behavior was, at least the highlights I remember, characterized by ethical sluttery.
I think nothings wrong with being a little slutty.
Shit if I was charismatic and good looking enough I’d probably slut it around.
I think it’s less about the ethics and more about why JOE was doing it.
Joe has said pretty directly that he *chooses* to be a no-attachments, objectify-everyone-including-myself hedonist as, basically, a defense against his own fear of becoming his dad. “If nobody gets attached then nobody can ever get hurt.”
So it’s not about promiscuity being good or bad, it’s about Joe using promiscuity as a coping mechanism instead of dealing with his shit.
I’d like something like that, I think, but I don’t know how to make it work. Just going for casual sex, but without the list and all the objectification and red flags that went along with it will look superficially like regression, but will also reinforce the idea that Joe was never actually bad, since there isn’t anything wrong with the casual sex part. I don’t think he’d stick with it either, though he might try. He wants the connection now.
I don’t think he’ll go back to the “I can be creepy and gross to women as long as I don’t let emotions get involved. That way I can’t hurt anyone” thing that was his real problem.
The more I think about it, he never seemed really happy with the brief period (including Liz) where he seemed to be doing “casual sex, but not asshole” — I think he’s not going to regress because frankly he’s not the person who fucked up here. His previous behavior was designed to avoid “victimizing people by being a cheater like my dad”, after all, and while I expect he’s going to be very hurt I don’t think he’ll regress from finding out that he can also be the victim!
Ethical horndog?
Maybe he could go that route for a bit, but that’s already what so many people think he was, that I think it would be counterproductive.
Of course, if he doesn’t, then he’s just the past ethical horndog who’s now learned he wants more from a relationship.
Oh, look. Here’s Jean Grey about to tell Bobby Drake she knows he’s been gay along, and since she’s a telepath, it must be true.
No, that happened in All-New X-Men, not this comic. Those are completely unrelated characters who aren’t canon to Dumbing of Age and have never appeared in it.
Oh phew, I was worried I had missed a chapter somewhere.
Are people still malding about that
And just randomly out of nowhere.
A moment of silence for the straights who are so mad that they lost (checks writing on hand) Iceman, a character none of them cared about even a tiny bit beforehand, but suddenly he’s an important part of their childhoods.
Spoiled brat behavior lol, you didn’t even like that toy but you’re gonna throw a tantrum now that your mom’s given it away.
Just like the guy who’s still mad his mom tossed out one of his seven identical Ice Age 2: The Meltdown Burger King kid’s meal toys, and he brings it up at least twice a year. Don’t be that guy. Don’t bring that energy to the table.
Yep.
Same thing about the people who were pissed about the Aquaman casting. Aquaman spent DECADES upon DECADES being a character nobody cared about, the absolute butt monkey of the Justice League, everyone constantly making fun of his power set. Nobody liked or gave even one shit about Aquaman. Then Jason Mamoa got the part, and SUDDENLY he was an integral part of these whiny babies’ childhoods and it hurt them deeply that the role hadn’t gone to a blond enough white enough guy.
These people would claim Jar-Jar Binks as their personal Comfort Character ™ if Disney made him bisexual in a cartoon.
Jar Jar is my comfort character, and if they don’t make him bisexual in a cartoon, I’ll burn down the Library of Alexandria.
snorfle
Jar-Jar is already canonically bisexual…
…in my heart.
Wait… people were… butthurt about Jason Momoa being Aquaman? Fucking really? That movie was the first time I ever gave two shits about Aquaman. Momoa just is Aquaman to my brain at this point. Seriously, that movie had Marie Poppins voicing a kaiju. What on earth was there to complain about?
Yep. They didn’t like that he wasn’t White Enough. I’m sure his defense of Indigineous Hawai’ians’ rights to get their land back, like, also pissed them off, but IIRC he hadn’t said a word when racists first lost their minds.
God these people are among the most tedious and exhausting that walks this Earth.
My headcanon is that Jar-Jar is entirely ace for the sole reason that I do not want to hear him when he’s trying to be flirty. Oh dear god… it might just ruin foreplay forever.
Still not over the edit of Jar Jar shirtless with the caption “Yousa daughter call meesa daddy too”.
How dare you remind me of the cursed image. I had forgotten… I was free… why?
Hey, I’ve been shipping Iceman and Firestar since they were on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends back in 1982! They TOOK that from me!
…/s
<3
Even if this weren’t sarcasm… the whole “infinite parallel universes” thing is baked right in. To quote James Gunn, “it’s canon until it isn’t because at the end of the day NONE OF THIS IS REAL.” (Emphasis mine.)
More like he was an old toy given a hasty paint job and passed off as new for us gays to play with. If we must frame Iceman as a toy, which we don’t have to do. I’m willing to accept that Bobby only dated Vera (there’s your forgettable character) because he was expected to act hetero, but it’s far more difficult to ignore his history of being infatuated with Lorna Dane and getting all up in Havok’s face about her every other issue.
Am I the only one who is irritated by the position of the door in the last panel? It should be somewhere behind Booster and Dorothy.
good, Booster doesn’t suspect a thing, now
Sunday is boosters analysis day off
Maybe the minutes roll over, so anything left over means Monday is going to be nuts.
The kind of analysis that wrecks but also solves your life
Sounds like a net positive to me. Sometimes a body just needs a good ugly cry. It’s healthy.
Checkovs transing
I think people are forgetting Mr. W is very at keeping track of which characters know what and when. It is a superb storytelling skill and I’m envious.
Booster already knows more than Joyce and Dorothy. They are confirming it.
This is Booster’s most recent previous strip
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/temerity/
Oh, and this one too
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/thumpasprunging/
tune (and parody): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VUvmFYABSk" title=" The Stalker Song by Channing and Quinn”>
It takes
33 steps to get to your place
Just half a minute down the hallway
Daily I end up at your door
That’s where I’ll be
Until you open it and greet me
We’ll watch some Dexter over your sheets
With my cheek touching your shoulder
And when it gets late
Well, what’s the reason I should not stay
We’ll watch until we drop where we lay
I guess your boyfriend can stay too
In the morning
We’ll hit the caf or do some laundry
Just normal laundry, nothing horny!
That isn’t something that I do!
(at least not before I met you)
And I swear, it’s just platonic female friendship
There’s nothing wrong with women being close
We happen to be galpals not some end-game-ship
Isn’t that right, my Perfect Cinnamon Roll?
——————–
that’s all I can do for now, have to sleep
to clarify, I don’t mean the word “stalker” to be related to this situation, I just find the lyrics and melody of that song rather delightful and was inspired by “33 steps”
Something’s going on with those two. I can tell. It’s subtle, but I’m keenly aware of things.
So the bit is going to be that they drag their feet and so get found out by everyone before telling their partners. So Joe/Walks are the last two to find out for just an extra level of gut punch.
Based on the game I’m been playing lately, my mind immediately tried to come up with something like “Dorothy Obscur: Expedition 33 (steps to her dorm room).”
Needs work, but the gist is there.
Smoooth.
Absurd thought: if we REALLY want to drag this out, what we need is some dorm shenanigans that have nothing to do with these dweebs but still affect them.
For example, and this is a thing that really happened to me in college, “masked dorks from the floor below steal some fire extinguishers and spray them in the hallway and through several of the door air vents. Motive? ‘The intramural football team that all the background dudes play on just beat us in the championship, despite the fact that we’re the jock floor and you guys are the queer nerd floor’.”
As my roommate was the captain of said team (turns out nerds have a lot of pent-up hostility and can easily be taught to play competitive flag football), I spent a couple days vacuuming shitty white fire suppressant powder out of EVERYTHING, and a couple of dudes from downstairs had to pay a severe fine and help the custodial staff deal with the hallways.
This has been on my brain so much that I had a dream about the next comic last night: Joyce comes into her room to find Joe taking back the blanket and grabbing his things, she’s like what’s going on and he says “I’m just here for my stuff”. Her stomach drops and she opens her phone and discovers their kiss is all over the Internet. Not kidding, I literally dreamed this
Technically Joyce doesn’t even have to be lying, assuming her current thoughts are purely ‘don’t let this guy find out’ and such.
That would be misgendering of her!
Them, Booster is Nonbinary
And Joyce is a her!
Not in the fanfic I’m writing.
Also: Joyce in panel three, interpreting “act casual” as “do your impression of Keep On Truckin'”. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_On_Truckin%27_(comics) )
Love panel 2. “It is ongoing,” indeed!
The thing with this is that it COULD have gone well, and into a possibly poly end point, but the longer it takes the worse it gets. We’re already in “Probably going to take a lot of talking to work out” and it’s not much longer before “Probably irricoverable”
It has been less than 24 hourssssssssssssssssssssssssss
It seems to me that Joe, at least, is going to be less likely to count the time in “hours” and more likely to count the time in “you accepted a gift, we had sexytimes, and then you went back to her without even mentioning it?”, and one of those is plenty to shoot down a poly situation for a dude already hung up on cheating.
I was happy with how I overanalyzed yesterday’s blocking of the strip, that I wanted to try my hand at it again. (Not as a daily thing, just for funsies.)
But I’m not actually sure what to say.
There’s this concept I heard about in visual storytelling for English-speaking audiences. The idea that if you wanna imply a character is moving forward metaphorically, you show them going towards the right side of the screen. Conversely, going left is implying the character is reversing, going back away from something. Just how English is read from left to right.
Although I’d chalk today’s blocking out to be more about how the building was designed rather than a hidden meaning about Joyce and Dorothy not moving forward with communication or what not.
These two have been sharing their panels a lot, so the sudden introduction of Booster signals a change and something is going to happen. In fact, the last panel has Booster in the middle of both trying (and failing) to hide their obvious attraction to each other. I don’t think Booster is going to split them up or anything, just that they’re now getting frontrow seats to the drama (like me!)
Hell, in the first two panel, we have Dorothy peeking out the door, covered in decorations from the past, saying “You were so gay for me.” Like recontextualizing the past. Plus Dorothy is still not quite ready to come out (to Becky), so she is hiding behind the (not-closet) door.
Go read: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
It will not just help you hear of these concepts. Its the go to book to learn them in action.
Oh I have seen some excerpts of that book. Now’s a great time to actually look at it, because I was thinking about the medium of movies and static paintings.
It dissects in detail the interconnection of comic layout and time and what that means for film and art in general.
It is brilliant.
Id definitely say its time to read it in full. It only takes like three hours to read to. But a life time to understand and re–reference and have it change what you understand as you reread it.
‘the sudden introduction of Booster signals a change’ sounds to me like something from a tarot card reading.
Yeah I think I forgot the words for “setting up the punchline of this strip and the next strip” lmfao
Oh, poor Joyce and Dorothy. There’s no use trying to hide that you are into each other. Everyone already knew that. They just might be surprised that you two finally figured it out.
I mean, Booster probably expects you two to get together EVENTUALLY, but now you’ve confirmed eventually means “right now”
I see Dorothy has rolled a chaotic rogue for her next D&D campaign.
Booster is now displeased. They had “next week Thursday afternoon” in the betting pool.
honestly this storyline has made me look back on Joyce re: romance and lowkey… she reads super aromantic to me now. I don’t think she is meant to be, but as someone aromantically-aligned myself it’s definitely ringing some bells that I wish it weren’t, given the storyline lmao.
I think she does have romantic aspects, but that she’s also so profoundly repressed and has such janky views on what romance even looks like that it’s contributed to her being really, really impulsive.
(I don’t think she’s meant to be either, but)
I’m not aro but I kinda see it. Her approach to romance is very similar to one of my lesbian friends’ approach when she was dating men and really drowning in comp het (except unlike with my friend, I see it in the beginnings of her relationship with Dotty, not just with men). She’s doing everything ‘right’* according to what she’s been told romance is supposed to be, but at the same time doesn’t seem to be genuinely feeling it. I don’t have any evidence of this since it’s just like, my personal evaluation of some of her expressions and stuff (and also because like I said I don’t think it’s intended or will be validated ever).
*not the cheating obviously, but the lovey-dovey talk and stuff
YES EXACTLY AXEL. It really does feel like she’s following what she believes are the rules/steps to interacting with someone you are physically attracted to rather than something that she exhibits naturally
As someone obsessed with romance in abstract- being pro romance is very different than experiencing romantic attraction. People who are aromantic are not emotionless and can experience happiness and contentment in a relationship. Again, I don’t think it’s intentional whatsoever. It simply resonates 🤷
oh whoops the reply isnt there anymore!
Huh. I think I’ve lost the ability to find their antics amusing anymore. Well…shit.
This strip might be a good reminder that this /is/ a cartoon, and as such doesn’t map 1:1 to reality and how people actually behave. Some amount of nonsense kinda has to be shrugged off as “yeah, because this is a cartoon”. Like the Dina-vs-overalls thing- it’d be a lot more notable than just “ah yep that happened” if someone were to actually jump on another person and tear a piece of said person’s clothing off with their teeth over dinosaur misinformation.
(obviously the, yanno, actual IRL-realistic actions like being horny idiots are exempt, but I keep seeing people in the comments treating cartoon nonsense in a serious light, which seems to be kinda missing the point of this being. again. basically a cartoon.)