Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
Girl Genius
Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
Between Failures
Jackie Wohlenhaus
The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
Lighter Than Heir
Melissa Albino
A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
Sam & Fuzzy
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Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
Paranatural
Zack Morrison
Superpowered middle schoolers fight evil spirits in their rural hometown. Come for the jokes, stay for the cast, the creatures, and the mystery that ties them all together!
Kiwi Blitz
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
Sufficiently Remarkable
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Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Wychwood
Varethane
When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
Hazy London
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A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Sister Claire
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In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
The Automan's Daughter
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Aisha Osman and her uncle Siddig outwit bikers, spies and kidnappers while gearing up for a showdown with the formidable Widowmaker mecha.
Demon's Mirror
Harry Bogosian
Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Knights Errant
J.R. Doyle
Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
Cut Time
Juby
Rel and her trusty avian friend Fugue are on a quest to save a world that's lost track of time. Follow them and their new recruits, in a story written with help from the stars.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Godslave
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Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
Goodbye to Halos
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Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
Fireweeds Moors
Gato Iberico
A cat-headed man and a girl with a sandwich hankering accidentally end up in a myth-infused country where magic chalices are a really big thing.
Go Get a Roomie
Clover
Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
Nerf Now!!
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A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Devil's Candy
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A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
Kochab
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A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Awaken
Koti Saavedra/Flipfloppery
Superpowers, monsters and conspiracies. Piras, the spoiled Dameschi heir, fights to recover his identity after becoming a terrorist!
Alice and the Nightmare
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Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Starhammer
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A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
Wilde Life
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Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
El Goonish Shive
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WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Real Science Adventures
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Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
Caramel Corn
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Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
The End
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Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Monster Pulse
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Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
Lilith's Word
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If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
The Sanity Circus
Windy
Magic, monsters and mysteries await in the odd city of Sanity. It's up to Attley and a colorful group of characters to find out just what is going on.
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
The Witch Door
Anni K.
Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
[un]Divine
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A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
This is Not Fiction
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What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Stand Still, Stay Silent
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A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
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I hate how my only lasting memory of that song is Conan O’Brien playing Richard Fairbrass during the Napster trial and crying about how he’s “not too sexy to eat day old bagels.”
“Hate” is the wrong word for that. I definitely enjoyed that part of the skit (I don’t remember them doing much with Tracy Morgan as Larry Blackmon from Cameo).
This does not sound like the kind of magazine Walky would read. Remember, this is the guy who can’t have more than one pair of shoes without worrying about threats to his manhood.
Eeyore is kind of a manipulative bully in the original stories. He constantly whines that nobody bothers with him, whilst making no effort to get off his arse to bother with anyone else. For an excellent insight into Eeyore’s character, read the part where he attempts to terrorise Piglet with three sticks, right up until he discovers that even Rabbit knows what an ‘A’ is. Disney sanitised him. But hey, this is the company that thought Little Mermaid would be improved by giving it a happy ending.
There, there, if it makes you feel better, I once called my ex-girlfriend a different name by mistake… it’s three years later and I still regret doing that. -_-
Because Dorothy didn’t even know until Joyce not-told her before gender studies. (Because Dorothy doesn’t jump to conclusions about people based on appearances.)
And for that matter concluding someone is gay based on their public interactions with their girlfriend is super problematic, and being right doesn’t actually change that.
It’s kinda like pregnancy – you can guess with varying degrees of accuracy, but it’s incredibly rude to ask, and even worse if you ask and you’re wrong.
I dunno, her arm is pretty much blocking the boobular area anyway in the wide shots. A slight adjustment or two, and it wouldn’t matter much if she were topless.
Am I early to comment or is my computer being slow?
But yeah, I agree with Dorothy’s thoughts re: love. Idk how I’d feel about it if I were actually in a romantic relationship, but so far it’s had a lot of meaning to me for certain family and friends.
That last panel would indicate people did figure it out. Sarah could tell instantly, Walky apparently caught on due to body language, Amber knew due to inside information….
They are, and it’s really adorable. Now we are getting into a nice little parallelism where both Joyce and Dorothy have opinions about the other’s partner (but with plenty of things that doesn’t fit – especially that Joyce and Ethan already broke up)
Yes, yes she does. Physical age doesn’t mean jack shit, especially when you’ve been realised in an environment that actively encourages ignorance, obedience and naivite
Yeah but repeatedly attacking someone for things completely beyond their control, while said person is actively defying her family, religion, and the college she’s staying at to provide for her best friend, kind of kills any validity Roz had, at least in my eyes. ]
Being rude and having bad timing doesn’t make you wrong. It just makes you a jerk. There are kinder ways that the “there are probably people you could go apologize to” truth bomb could have been dropped. Instead, Roz took the fire and brimstone approach. Admittedly, Joyce may be used to that approach, but it typically comes out of the mouths of people who hold views entirely different from Roz’s.
It’s not that I think Roz is wrong, I just don’t think she’s in any place to judge Joyce, let alone after she expressed legitimate horror at the injustices LGBT kids have to face. She’s mad at Joyce because she didn’t change her mind fast enough, or that it had to be changed at all, and that’s just silly.
Every single one of us has, at some point, held terrible views that we needed to grow out of. Are we supposed to feel guilty for the rest of our lives because we used to be ignorant? Because we were given the wrong answers?
Maybe because it’s another sling at female anatomy? Iunno, a lot of swearing is implying something negative about being female or feminine. Like son of a bongo as an insult to a dude is not insulting him, but instead finding a way to insult the mother. The only real male equivalent is dick. Asshole is a nice, gender-neutral insult.
So far as I’m concerned it just *sounds* awful. It’s one of those words that just feels bad in the mouth. I wonder if it still would if I didn’t know what it meant.
I just think it’s ridiculous how Roz decided to make her point. Nobody asked her to treat Joyce like a hero, nobody asked her to comment on Joyce’s viewpoint, and then she outright blames Joyce for what’s happened to kids who get thrown out to the streets. At the risk of getting memed, not all Christians are responsible for the others actions.
What *was* her point? That the plight of LGBT kids is awful? That it shouldn’t be ignored? Yeah dude, that’s what Joyce had just realized. It’s a little late to start moralizing at her when she’s actively rejected the terrible parts of her religion that she didn’t even know existed.
Joyce has actively rejected a terrible part of her religion that she quite definitely did know existed, she just didn’t think it was terrible until it came home to roost. Thinking of those issues as external to her is a good way to avoid having to examine the other parts and make sure they’re consistent with her inherent goodness.
If Roz had told Joyce off a week ago, or even a couple days ago, she would have had a point, but she perversely chose the exact moment when she stopped being right to harp on the subject and not let it go even when Leslie ordered her to.
I don’t think Ethan appears gay to casual acquaintances. I think Walky guessed based on a stereotype of how straight college men act with their girlfriends, and he just happened to guess right. Sarah guessed, but she possibly has good instincts about some people.
Dorothy can’t allow herself to fall for Joyce because that would mean that Walky was right and she was wrong, and that can’t be.
It would also lead to plenty of shenanigans and jealousy, and on a meta level, the “Joyce best friend has the hots for her” is already done so I doubt it.
I’ve been out of the linguistics game for a while, but I bet this kind of syntax has been giving NL and MT programmers kittens since, oh, Buffy at least. The schadenfreude is delicious.
I’ve been out of the linguistics game so long, computational linguistics was not even offered at my university when I did my degree. We studied something called “Government and Binding”. I never understood it, but it sounds deliciously kinky.
Hey, Walky, what I said yesterday about you not joking away the issue when Dorothy talks about emotions is still a good idea, dofus (although you deserve credit for not making a lesbian-joke). That said, well spotted and thanks for reminding us that you are neither stupid nor clueless.
Dorothy – wonderful sentiment (even if part of it sounds scarily close to a breakup), and I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear Joyce say the same thing about love. You might also do well to remember that the fact that you love Joyce and is her friend doesn’t mean it’s your responsibility to educate her.
I was thinking the same thing in that it did sound a little close to a break up. I don’t think that’s what is happening. I think this is more closely Dorothy beginning to rationalize a way to be able to leave Walky when the time comes.
I think you are right. She is balances her earlier wish to keep the relationship casual and her deeper feelings at the same time, and lay the ground for rationalizing a breakup. It’s a pre-breakup.
Is it gentler for Dorothy to rationalize it aloud to herself and to Walky? I guess it forewarns him that a breakup could happen, too, and could help cushion the blow if it does eventually come, so maybe so. Still seems like she’s playing takesy-backsies with her first “I love you” by hair-splitting her way out of it, though.
She does, but it’s not directed at Walky – see yesterday’s comment about she lying to herself about certain things. I think that’s why Walky is getting a bit snarky now, she’s flailing back and forth in the conversation and he starts to feel like a spectator.
Walky’s like a lot of dudes his age really (and also a lot of dudes way older than his age). When it comes to other people’s relationship stuff his observations are spot on, but his own relationship stuff is a total blind spot that sends him into full derp mode. We’ve all been there (some of us are still there).
That seems backwards to me. If I recall correctly, they’ve only known each other several weeks, not even two months. Walky is the realistic one and Joyce is high on post-orgasmic 18 year old hormones so she is talking blithering nonsense.
I’ve been able to scan a room for five minutes and quite accurately tell you who is sleeping with whom, who ‘secretly’ hates whom, etc etc… to the point that good friends of mine have taken me along to events to give them the scoop.
But can I figure out if a woman likes me before she tells me in exasperation? Nope. Never. It’s like a gift. Or the opposite of a gift. A fine?
Just so we’re being clear, we are talking about softwear pirates and a member of the Wyoming (or some other sufficiently usless state) state senate, right?
Not sure of the numbers any more, but the economy of Somaliland – that’s the English-speaking north-western third of the country that is reasonably prosperous and stable and really insists it’s no longer part of the rest of Somalia – more or less depends on the revenue from black market pirated goods. Of the digital and physical kind.
It’s hard for people, especially in our modern, disconnected world, to be open about our feelings without alleviating the awkwardness of intimacy with jokes.
I guess Dorothy’s being pragmatic, they’ve only been dating, at most, a few weeks, right? So it’s smart of her to not expect that it’ll be forever right away, but it still has to feel like stepping on fingers to Walky, so I get where he’s coming from too.
It’s still a surprisingly mature attitude towards love. Dorothy has her blind spots (Yale being one of them) but she might be the most level-headed of the entire cast.
Dorothy said she loves Joyce and is talking about getting more hands-on with her, and Walky’s talking about Ethan’s sexual orientation? Who is this person and what did he do with the real Walky?
Sweet, some Dorothy emotion towards Joyce! I know Dorothy cares, but a lot of it comes off a bit “a person is sad in my proximity, I care because I am a good person” and not like “I care because I care about Joyce”, you know? So this is a cool development. Also: “if I’d been more hands-on”? It’s true she could have been more attentive given what she knew about what Joyce was going through, but that’s a poor attitude to take. It’s also worth noting, I think, that even though Dorothy acknowledged Walky’s problem he was hiding might not have been about her, she seems to think that it is. Maybe a tiny bit of a self-centered streak?
Oh it’s absolutely a poor attitude to take. Honestly, I love that. It’s a character flaw. Dorothy blames herself for not being useful enough when those she loves have problems, and I have the feeling this is neither the first nor last time we’ve seen that.
It’s a very real, down to earth problem to have; one I personally have, actually. I like that, a lot really.
I think that was part of the problem with how she botched the breakup with Danny (now I’m talking about stuff that took place before the comic started so this is all speculation). Instead of focusing solely on her needs (“I want to break up with Danny, and I also want to be flexible enough to be able to transfer to Yale without problems”), she took it upon herself to coach him (“Danny needs to find a good college to get a computer degree, and he needs to have a plan for when I transfer”). When she discussed it with him in those terms he thought (“OK, so if she transfer I follow her and find a tech-job or something. Sweet, I have a plan”), which missed the bigger point that she actually wanted to break up with him.
The fun thing is that they have tried to “help” each other at different points. Joyce wanted to help Dorothy keep chaste, Billie wanted to give Joyce a better fashion sense, Dorothy want to help Dorothy Joyce become more open to diversity, Both Joyce and Dorothy joined Walky in the search for Billie and want to help her with her depression (and Joyce will help her brainstorm names of her seven children).
Misguided and often unwelcome as many of these attempts are, I think all of them cherish the attitude that lies behind it. Even Billie grudgingly admits that she values Joyce’s friendship.
Given how smooth the breakup went I kinda think it will be, but I think it will lead to a larger discussion of how much stress Joyce is under. Hopefully they will manage to get Becky to sit still and listen long enough to realize that Joyce has plenty of problems of her own and needs her help rather than the other way around.
They sure do. Becky has already opened up to Joyce and Joyce is helping her, that is established. Now they have to go the other way. Joyce is too good at martyring herself, she has to admit that she is the one that needs help, and Becky has to take a break in her coming-out-rush long enough to take a good look at Joyce and see how much stress she is under.
Walky is not stupid (despite the 26 grade, that was his wake up youre in college call), nor is he clueless. He just avoid responsibility when he can.
Agree Dorothy has no reason for guilt, she was there for Joyce to talk to if Joyce wanted.
Still find it an interesting thought that while Dorothy is so motivated to get into Yale: what if she and Walky apply, and she doesn’t get accepted and Walky does.
Dorothy…while I admire your sentiment here, I’m a little confused. You got angry at Walky for claiming he “loved you” as a life hack and said you believed love could be a powerful word. Yet here you are saying that love could be a lot of things and you love a lot of people. Back-pedaling? Or…what? I don’t know, I want to read this as Dorothy’s maturity, but it feels more like side-stepping issues than an honest emotional place.
I don’t think that’s back pedaling. Love is a powerful thing, which can apply to a number of people and situations. The fact that it is a concept which can be applied to more than one thing does not lessen its power, nor the fact that, yeah, saying you love someone and not meaning it is a pretty dickish, pointless lie.
Maybe Dottie said “I love you” in the heat of the moment and now feels like she needs to free herself, since saying that does imply a certain level of commitment in a romantic relationship. But yeah, if she never was going to allow herself to let down her guard enough to mean it, I wish she’d had the foresight to not say it at all.
Also, am I the only one who thinks negating “I love you” with a magnanimous platitude like “love can mean a lot of things…love evolves” is particularly insulting, even if that’s exactly what she believes?
I’ve been in this conversation… or one sufficiently similar to it, anyway. If Dorothy is anything like that particular young lady, then the realisation of her admission of love for Walky is now really starting to aggravate her control-freakishness. This is ‘damage limitation’. Being truly, deeply in love with someone means surrendering quite a lot of control to that person. She’s trying to get some of her control back, and what she says about Joyce is more evidence of that too.
Exactly. She didn’t get the reaction from Walky that she wanted when she said, “I love you,” so now she’s saying, “but love doesn’t always mean love love.”
This may be a stretch, but I actually read Dorothy’s current train of thought as having nothing to do with the way she feels about Walky right now. Right now, she definitely loves him in a very specific way that’s separate from the ways in which she loves anyone else. What she is trying to do is assure herself and him that, if she has to leave him behind in however many months or years, her feelings for him will continue to have meaning, even if it’s a much less intense and immediate meaning than they hold now. Hard to know if that will really be the case, but Dorothy seems like the kind of person who could make it so if she really wanted to.
The amusing thing about Walky’s last comment is that “No touching!” is the kind of thing that Joyce would expect from a normal dating situation, given her background. After all she brought along a chaperone when she went out with Joe to prevent anything inappropriate. Right now even a chaste good night kiss would probably get Joyce worried she was crossing the line.
I’m not the touchiest person I know – I get uncomfortable when my friends impulsively hug me – yet even I would want to put my arm around a girl I’m having a romantic relationship with. Small gestures of physical contact are a big part of an intimate relationship, and their total absence screams repression and concealment, to me.
What kind of probability distribution are we looking at here? Is the diffuse tail all that falls in the “always love” area, or is it closer to the peak? Gaussian lineshape? Lorentzian? Oooh! Maybe it’s a multimodal distribution! That would be exciting, wouldn’t it?
Among the immortal elves of Errant Story, it was well known that all love eventually ends. Which is why, for a time, it was very fashionable to take human lovers, who will have the decency to die a mere few decades later, while things are still “fresh”, allowing the elf to look back fondly on the unspoiled memory and idea of what they had.
Of course, this had the minor side-effect of producing a lot of half-elves (the “errants” of the title), most of which were unfixably screwed up in various ways – an error which the elves later tried to correct via the expedient of genocide.
Hey, Willis, your poll might be bugged;
I voted for Carla, Mike, and I forget the third one, probably Ruth.
I just checked it (a few days later), and it’s telling me I voted for Becky, Joyce, and Carla- or at least, it has those bolded and italicized, which is what I assume that means.
So not quite sure what that means, but Becky and Joyce aren’t exactly my top picks [not near snarky enough to be on my top list].
More to the point, while I’m hardly the most reliable sort at doing things right, I always include Mike and Carla in my picks, so it’s really off that Mike isn’t listed.
Maybe I misclicked- or maybe the data is mis-set.
Alternatively, you’re rigging the poll in favor of Becky..
:eyes you: But you wouldn’t do that.. right?
Yep Walky. The lying has begun and you have no real expectation of exclusivity or longevity. She “loves” him but would drop him like a hot potato for more important things. Dorothy shares that with Joe, but she prefers a long term casual relationship to short term ones. Walky is a sidekick with benefits, so I see why Dorothy liked Danny, since he was well suited for the role. Nope, I don’t find that to be mature on her part and if she was a guy pulling this kind of bs, I would hope that the woman would cut her losses and move on. But at 18, I would have made the sexy times last as long as possible.
Three weeks into a relationship I think that it’s at least as mature an attitude as “you are my true love” or “let’s pick out baby names”, especially when transfer might be in the cards.no-one knows how long they will last after so short time
Dorothy is trying to avoid her mistake with Danny by communicating a lot, and overdoes it a bit. She also d debates her conflicting desires with Walky as a soundingboard.
I’ll own that I want friendship and loyalty to be prerequisites for anyone I sleep with. But speaking as a guy who’s basically been single for longer than I’m gonna admit to I say its basically impossible for me to “overrate” the sexins. I suppose I just chalk it up to the simple fact that by the time we’re at that stage I’ll already be getting and giving all loyalty and friendship and all the other things that go into a relationship in great abundance.
I don’t think Dorothy is being abnormally or alarmingly control freakish. It is definitely unhealthy to think that she could somehow have engineered Joyce’s social development in a better direction by keeping a closer eye on her, especially given that Dorothy would probably burn out fast and hard if she tried to keep tabs on someone else and live her own very full life at the same time. (Could I be projecting that assumption because the same thing has happened to me repeatedly? Uh… no. Not in the slightest.) But a whole lot of people, maybe most of us, are prone to attempting such things, and I think an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for other people can be especially acute in kids who are trying to deal with adulthood for the first time.
Also, it seems very likely that her wish to have a more active role in Joyce’s life is rooted partially in lingering guilt over leaving her by herself at a party three weeks ago, and maybe over her powerlessness to do all that much for her in the aftermath of the assault. Joyce’s response, the one time Dorothy brought it up the day after, was to smile brightly and brush it off, and she might try to respond the same way even now. Someone as perceptive as Dorothy eventually has to see the bullshit in Joyce’s claims that she’s fine, but trying to help someone cope with trauma is an incredibly sensitive thing that Dorothy has presumably never dealt with before. So she hasn’t really known what to do about it besides just be there for Joyce as much as possible in other, smaller crises. So what she’s doing now could be largely informed by her “failure” to help Joyce with her most serious problems.
Times like these, I wish Dorothy knew Billie a little better. Billie can be quite good at diagnosing other people’s issues, and this situation might need a little bit of Dorothy’s generalized sensitivity and a little bit of alpha b***h. (Sorry to subvert the filter, but I’m not gonna bongo up Billie’s own description of herself.)
Also also, it’s fairly comforting to see Dorothy talk about Joyce’s awful path when Joyce has already started pulling herself off that path. I think this is one set of problems that the characters might actually handle sanely, which means that we’re due to have a different set of people screw something up hardcore.
I also find it interesting that the one thing Joyce asked Dorothy to do to help her was the one thing Dorothy couldn’t do – go to church with her.
Sure, she joined her but that led to a row with Mary and tip-toeing around invisible-sky-God-topics of conversation and general awkwardness. Dorothy was not able to join Joyce in the church experience she wanted.
Yeah, that worked out poorly and seemed to just add to Joyce’s internal conflicts. Fortunately, I suspect that the new gay-positive Joyce is going to want to find herself a more inclusive congregation (surely Bloomington has a few) to help her reconcile her faith with her recently acquired convictions. In that context, with Mary nowhere in sight, I could see Dorothy giving church another try and perhaps feeling less uncomfortable. In fact… what is the in-universe day of the week, Friday? We might actually see that happen in the storyline after next.
Now that I’m looking at older strips through a lens of Dorothy not quite being able to be there for Joyce, this one, which I originally thought was funny and sweet, now seems a little sad. If part of what’s going on is that Joyce needs the reassurance of girl company when Dorothy needs to be elsewhere… well, as Joyce said, dangit.
Yeah, my best best is that either Amber gets seriously triggered again or Mary tells the IU housing authority about Ruth and Billie. Maybe both. ‘Cause that’s where the drama’s at right now.
I’m going to paraphrase a friend of mine. Sure, we all use that word for friends, but it means something different when you say it to someone you’ve been going out with (and sleeping with) for a few weeks. You can’t use it the same way without regard for context.
Hot Toys Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith 1/6 Scale Darth Vader Deluxe ($495) & Standard ($315) is up for preorder at Sideshow - shrsl.com/4wcx6 #ad
If you preorder make sure to hit the Exclusive versions since they include a commemorative plaque and cost the same.
btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 12h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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*looks for a song about shirts*
Petey Pablo’s “Raise Up”I’ve got nothing.She’s too sexy for her shirt . . .
If you want to destroy my sweaterrrrrrr (woahwoahwoooooah)
I hate how my only lasting memory of that song is Conan O’Brien playing Richard Fairbrass during the Napster trial and crying about how he’s “not too sexy to eat day old bagels.”
You have my sympathy!
“Hate” is the wrong word for that. I definitely enjoyed that part of the skit (I don’t remember them doing much with Tracy Morgan as Larry Blackmon from Cameo).
Keith Urban, “You Look Good in My Shirt.”
+1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWrU3kROXww
The music doesn’t start until 2:25 or so, but the whole thing is worth listening to.
You beat me to it!
Mother’s Finest
Walky is more observant than I gave him credit for.
In the “Ten Signs Your Boyfriend May Be Gay” feature, No. 1 was “His hands and their proximity to you never.”
This does not sound like the kind of magazine Walky would read. Remember, this is the guy who can’t have more than one pair of shoes without worrying about threats to his manhood.
It’s a manly magazine, for men. Point 27 on the list is “he’s your friggin’ boyfriend”
impresiv considering the titel had only mentiod ten signs
Manly men don’t worry about arbitrary limits.
They’re also obsessed with not being gay. And, generally, not very observant…
And, oh yes, bad at counting.
Manly men only get 26 on math tests, for example
Bagge! Yes.
Only if Amber wrote it.
Magazine? It was a buzzfeed article full of animated GIFs.
Is it just me, or are those articles hellspawn from rabbit hell (by which I mean to suggest a bunny-related rate of reproduction)?
I’ve always assumed them to be of Orky origin. Namely, Warhammer 40k orks, who are produced en masse from vats of fungal slurry.
(Incidentally, this is how I presume internet trolls are produced, as well.)
I don’t know, but bunny-hell sounds adorable!
That’s part of why it’s hell. It sounds adorable.
Well…that doesn’t appear to have worked. In any case. Rabbit hell?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9usbDsAQkrk
And so Walky starts the discussion about exclusivity; particularly, Ethan’s hands, Joyce’s body, and the fact that the two are mutually exclusive.
He just hides it well. Why, I’ll never truly understand.
Because the lower everyone’s expectations of you, the less work they dump on you.
A philosophy to live by.
I think it’s because Walky is pretty comfortable being Walky and doesn’t feel the need to prove himself to others.
Also, going around trying to prove to everyone how smart/insightful/observant you are often make you obnoxious as well.
I don’t think Walky worries about being obnoxious…
Walky being observant – is this a sign of the apocalypse?
Hah! Classic Walky.
Eorothy admitted it! Joyce love for the win!
Ugh. Eorothy….:|
That’s her little sister. Her parents are very well organized. She has three older siblings named Aorothy, Borothy, and Corothy.
I feel better now.
Love this thread!!!
Eeyore is my spirit animal.
Which one? The Disney version that’s pretty nice? Or the book version who’s kind of a conceited dick?
Doesn’t really matter. I call spirit animal dibs on the one you’re not using.
I always thought of Eeyore as depressed.
That goes without saying.
His voice is mine. Yes, I DO mean Optimus Prime.
I have sometimes amused myself by imagining the lines of one delivered in the style of the other.
“Freedom is the right of all sentient beings… I suppose.”
“One shall stand, one shall fall… probably me.”
Eeyore is kind of a manipulative bully in the original stories. He constantly whines that nobody bothers with him, whilst making no effort to get off his arse to bother with anyone else. For an excellent insight into Eeyore’s character, read the part where he attempts to terrorise Piglet with three sticks, right up until he discovers that even Rabbit knows what an ‘A’ is. Disney sanitised him. But hey, this is the company that thought Little Mermaid would be improved by giving it a happy ending.
Now if we could get Eeyore in the Kraft Mac and Cheese shirt… that would be the cherry on top of this cake.
Over 1000 hours in MSPaint.
http://i.imgur.com/e8J8Fqp.gif
Sad dotty is sad.
http://i.imgur.com/8vs66WO.png
YESSSSSS!
There, there, if it makes you feel better, I once called my ex-girlfriend a different name by mistake… it’s three years later and I still regret doing that. -_-
Is that why she’s your ex? <_<
Clever boy.
Dina suddenly jumps into the room.
She already there. She’s behind every door, always.
*Insert Lesbian joke here*
I love how everyone is so worried about this sham relationship like two hours after Joyce told Ethan they had to end their sham relationship.
It’s a lot like real life. People often don’t notice or care until it’s over, or they feel free to speak about it.
Well, none of them know it’s over, is it?
er, “do they”
Didn’t Dorothy figure it out because it was over and they were acting so coy?..eh who knows? I guess it doesn’t matter much.
Nah Dorothy missed the break-up, and then they were all too focused on Becky.
Dorothy just barely figured out the true nature of the relationship, give her some time.
Next week on Dumbing of Age: “Yes, but does Joyce KNOW we know she knows we know?”
I know you know that I’m not telling the truth?
I don’t know that she knows that I know that she doesn’t know I’m lying. It’s simple, really.
How did Dorothy think that people DIDN’T know Ethan was gay?
Because Dorothy didn’t even know until Joyce not-told her before gender studies. (Because Dorothy doesn’t jump to conclusions about people based on appearances.)
Amber also didn’t know Ethan was gay. “Everyone knows he’s gay” is entertaining in fiction, but not reliable in real life.
Yeah, to my knowledge only Sarah and Walky have picked up that Ethan’s gay without being told outright.
I think it was implied that Mike had fgured it out, in true Mike fasion, before Ethan and Amber did. Also plausibly Jocelyne.
Well, it’s easier to pick up on it when he’s hitting on you.
Let’s not forget Sarah – her gaydar is, apparently, excellent.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/04-time-keeps-on-slippin/manual/
And for that matter concluding someone is gay based on their public interactions with their girlfriend is super problematic, and being right doesn’t actually change that.
And, much as I hate to say it, so is basing it off of first impresstions, too.
Because Ethan hadn’t told them, so no matter how much they “know” he’s gay they don’t actually know anything until he tells them either way.
It’s kinda like pregnancy – you can guess with varying degrees of accuracy, but it’s incredibly rude to ask, and even worse if you ask and you’re wrong.
I dunno, her arm is pretty much blocking the boobular area anyway in the wide shots. A slight adjustment or two, and it wouldn’t matter much if she were topless.
Willis has shown his mastery of naughty-bit obscuration in the past:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/downtime/
He does it well.
I enjoy seeing Dorothy’s boobular areas though.
I have loved this love more than anyone could love love like this love!
Yotomoe confirmed for secretly being George Lucas.
Nah, needs more sand metaphors.
And Walky hasn’t killed a village yet.
Not that we know about, anyway.
It happened immediately after Walky realized he could skip class. He became a living god, and a vengeful one at that.
Came damn close to that point emotionally in It’s Walky!
It takes a village to raise a Sith…
My heart can love a lovey-love love…
…But only…in my dreams…
But because I talk-y with Walky-ness…
The dreams I dream I’ll dream~
Rather than musically, I read that Christopher Walken-style.
Happy Love Day, everyone! (In about six months)
You should write songs.
Am I early to comment or is my computer being slow?
But yeah, I agree with Dorothy’s thoughts re: love. Idk how I’d feel about it if I were actually in a romantic relationship, but so far it’s had a lot of meaning to me for certain family and friends.
Goddamn autoplay video ad for Twix. (Also, dog treats.)
(With audio)
I’m pretty much with walky on this one. The last panel I mean.
Seriously. How had nobody not figured it out yet?
The same way no one recognizes Amber is Amazigirl. Just go with it.
To be honest, I’m too
lazytired to find a propert TV Tropes article to link to.Because it isn’t actually obvious to the people in the comic?
Most of his behaviour we’ve seen is just doing everyday things around them.
That last panel would indicate people did figure it out. Sarah could tell instantly, Walky apparently caught on due to body language, Amber knew due to inside information….
“If I’d been more hands on”
Gross, Dorothy. She’s not a fucking child- she doesn’t need your ‘guidance’.
Dotty did say she wanted to show Joyce she “loved” her.
Just because you’re legally an adult doesn’t mean you’re not a child. If anyone needs guidance or they won’t survive, its Joyce.
I like to think she could “Mr. Magoo” her way through life.
Dorothy and Joyce are both similar busybodies.
They’re gettin’ “busy” with their “bodies,” am I right? Eh? Eh?
…I’ll leave now.
They are, and it’s really adorable. Now we are getting into a nice little parallelism where both Joyce and Dorothy have opinions about the other’s partner (but with plenty of things that doesn’t fit – especially that Joyce and Ethan already broke up)
Yes, yes she does. Physical age doesn’t mean jack shit, especially when you’ve been realised in an environment that actively encourages ignorance, obedience and naivite
I think IJ’s accusing Dorothy of being condescending.
So was I supposed to agree with Roz earlier? Because she was such a bongo she was practically an entire drum set.
There’s no rule that states just because one is a drum they are automatically wrong.
Just as long as we forego the beatings.
Yeah but repeatedly attacking someone for things completely beyond their control, while said person is actively defying her family, religion, and the college she’s staying at to provide for her best friend, kind of kills any validity Roz had, at least in my eyes. ]
Agreed!
Being rude and having bad timing doesn’t make you wrong. It just makes you a jerk. There are kinder ways that the “there are probably people you could go apologize to” truth bomb could have been dropped. Instead, Roz took the fire and brimstone approach. Admittedly, Joyce may be used to that approach, but it typically comes out of the mouths of people who hold views entirely different from Roz’s.
It’s not that I think Roz is wrong, I just don’t think she’s in any place to judge Joyce, let alone after she expressed legitimate horror at the injustices LGBT kids have to face. She’s mad at Joyce because she didn’t change her mind fast enough, or that it had to be changed at all, and that’s just silly.
Every single one of us has, at some point, held terrible views that we needed to grow out of. Are we supposed to feel guilty for the rest of our lives because we used to be ignorant? Because we were given the wrong answers?
Roz doesn’t know about Becky’s whole situation. As far as Roz knows Joyce is all talk no walk.
Problem is Roz had no way of knowing any of that.
Neither did Dorothy when she was judging the hell out of her over her sex tape. And Dorothy was equally as wrong then as Roz is about Joyce now.
What’s bongo mean here?
I literally can’t type what it means cause it will auto replace with bongo…
-whispers- It’s the B-word
Batarang?
Bigfoot?
Bananahammock?
I’d like to think Banana-hammock is in fact the real B-Word.
Bothriospondylus?
Botulism! No, wait. Bulimia?
BANGARANG!
BANGARANG JOYCE BROWN
BOOGALOO!
A few weeks ago so many people called Roz an epitaph for a female dog that the site now auto filters it into “bongo.”
*epithet
Should filter into “Badonkadonk” so it still starts with a B and is a silly word for a semi-rude thing.
So bongo is worse than *unt??
Whod’ve thunk
More like we weren’t using conga, since Americans consider it a grave insult for reasons that escape me (and I’m American!)
Maybe because it’s another sling at female anatomy? Iunno, a lot of swearing is implying something negative about being female or feminine. Like son of a bongo as an insult to a dude is not insulting him, but instead finding a way to insult the mother. The only real male equivalent is dick. Asshole is a nice, gender-neutral insult.
So far as I’m concerned it just *sounds* awful. It’s one of those words that just feels bad in the mouth. I wonder if it still would if I didn’t know what it meant.
Writing instead of is offensive to witches; thus .
It’s a good thing we care about witches more than we do ethnic Sudanese (or equatorial Africans…or antelope…).
interesting that the filter didn’t catch that one…
Could be the quotes.
No, I think there’d have to be an intentional dodge.
Yeah, apparently there’s a non printable character after the “bi”, in this case a soft hyphen, or unicode 0xC2AD.
Which is clever, but a little non comunity minded.
I think the part of Roz’s speech Dorothy is referring to is how Roz called out Dorothy for not doing more to change Joyce’s beliefs.
Which can only be correct if she was correct about the rest of it, too.
Which, by Word of God, she was.
Roz’s problem was tone and post-rant hypocrisy. That does not change that what she said was true.
Rightfully criticize her for being rude. Don’t pretend that invalidates her point.
I just think it’s ridiculous how Roz decided to make her point. Nobody asked her to treat Joyce like a hero, nobody asked her to comment on Joyce’s viewpoint, and then she outright blames Joyce for what’s happened to kids who get thrown out to the streets. At the risk of getting memed, not all Christians are responsible for the others actions.
What *was* her point? That the plight of LGBT kids is awful? That it shouldn’t be ignored? Yeah dude, that’s what Joyce had just realized. It’s a little late to start moralizing at her when she’s actively rejected the terrible parts of her religion that she didn’t even know existed.
Joyce has actively rejected a terrible part of her religion that she quite definitely did know existed, she just didn’t think it was terrible until it came home to roost. Thinking of those issues as external to her is a good way to avoid having to examine the other parts and make sure they’re consistent with her inherent goodness.
If Roz had told Joyce off a week ago, or even a couple days ago, she would have had a point, but she perversely chose the exact moment when she stopped being right to harp on the subject and not let it go even when Leslie ordered her to.
In short, Roz is a teenager.
No, this is just Dotty being a control freak
So Dorothy and Walky have caught on that Ethan’s gay and Joyce is in a total bind involving him? Talk about open secrets.
I don’t think Ethan appears gay to casual acquaintances. I think Walky guessed based on a stereotype of how straight college men act with their girlfriends, and he just happened to guess right. Sarah guessed, but she possibly has good instincts about some people.
Yes, I think a lot of people wish you’d been more hands-on with Joyce.
Eh? Eh? Anyone?
Okay, I’ll go back to my corner now.
Hey, she’s already expressed her jealousy, asking if Joyce was cheating on her. IT’S CANON
sarcastic canon, but sure.
Dorothy can’t allow herself to fall for Joyce because that would mean that Walky was right and she was wrong, and that can’t be.
It would also lead to plenty of shenanigans and jealousy, and on a meta level, the “Joyce best friend has the hots for her” is already done so I doubt it.
Dang, my grammar is so rusty, parsing Walky’s last line would be a nightmare.
He’s basically saying that it was obvious because Ethan’s hands never touch Joyce.
I’ve been out of the linguistics game for a while, but I bet this kind of syntax has been giving NL and MT programmers kittens since, oh, Buffy at least. The schadenfreude is delicious.
I’ve been out of the linguistics game so long, computational linguistics was not even offered at my university when I did my degree. We studied something called “Government and Binding”. I never understood it, but it sounds deliciously kinky.
Mmm, yeah, gerrymander that district! I’m gonna filibuster till that pork barrel is full!
… on second thought, the policy double-entendre game is really skeevy.
The kinkier the better!
.. except politics. Shit’s too weird for me.
I love that “her” could also be possessive in that sentence. Ethan’s hands on Joyce’s “never”! Hot, hot, hot!
*insert All You Need Is Love joke here*
brrrrrrra-da-da-dada…
All together now!
Hey, Walky, what I said yesterday about you not joking away the issue when Dorothy talks about emotions is still a good idea, dofus (although you deserve credit for not making a lesbian-joke). That said, well spotted and thanks for reminding us that you are neither stupid nor clueless.
Dorothy – wonderful sentiment (even if part of it sounds scarily close to a breakup), and I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear Joyce say the same thing about love. You might also do well to remember that the fact that you love Joyce and is her friend doesn’t mean it’s your responsibility to educate her.
I was thinking the same thing in that it did sound a little close to a break up. I don’t think that’s what is happening. I think this is more closely Dorothy beginning to rationalize a way to be able to leave Walky when the time comes.
I think you are right. She is balances her earlier wish to keep the relationship casual and her deeper feelings at the same time, and lay the ground for rationalizing a breakup. It’s a pre-breakup.
Is it gentler for Dorothy to rationalize it aloud to herself and to Walky? I guess it forewarns him that a breakup could happen, too, and could help cushion the blow if it does eventually come, so maybe so. Still seems like she’s playing takesy-backsies with her first “I love you” by hair-splitting her way out of it, though.
She does, but it’s not directed at Walky – see yesterday’s comment about she lying to herself about certain things. I think that’s why Walky is getting a bit snarky now, she’s flailing back and forth in the conversation and he starts to feel like a spectator.
Walky’s like a lot of dudes his age really (and also a lot of dudes way older than his age). When it comes to other people’s relationship stuff his observations are spot on, but his own relationship stuff is a total blind spot that sends him into full derp mode. We’ve all been there (some of us are still there).
That seems backwards to me. If I recall correctly, they’ve only known each other several weeks, not even two months. Walky is the realistic one and Joyce is high on post-orgasmic 18 year old hormones so she is talking blithering nonsense.
Uh, I hope you mean Dorothy.
Dorothy, oy vey.
I’ve been able to scan a room for five minutes and quite accurately tell you who is sleeping with whom, who ‘secretly’ hates whom, etc etc… to the point that good friends of mine have taken me along to events to give them the scoop.
But can I figure out if a woman likes me before she tells me in exasperation? Nope. Never. It’s like a gift. Or the opposite of a gift. A fine?
Incidentally, I’m 32 and I’ve negotiated with pirates and senators.
Tell me, how old or experienced in reading people do I have to be before this changes?
Just so we’re being clear, we are talking about softwear pirates and a member of the Wyoming (or some other sufficiently usless state) state senate, right?
Actually, both of those could be sports teams…
Uh… sure, they probably stole software, too. The Somali ‘Coast Guard’ isn’t very discriminating…
I intended to go to Wyoming once, but I ended up detouring through Colorado instead.
So uh, not to pry, but if I had to guess, sounds like you’re in the Navy?
No, I worked for an NGO. I wanted to join the Navy when I finished college, but that didn’t work out.
Isn’t piracy like a 22 billion a year (probably more these days) business in Somali?
Not sure of the numbers any more, but the economy of Somaliland – that’s the English-speaking north-western third of the country that is reasonably prosperous and stable and really insists it’s no longer part of the rest of Somalia – more or less depends on the revenue from black market pirated goods. Of the digital and physical kind.
Let me guess, the pirates were more likely to honor their agreements, right?
In point of fact, they did, actually. But it was a one-time thing, I’d hate to generalize.
It’s hard for people, especially in our modern, disconnected world, to be open about our feelings without alleviating the awkwardness of intimacy with jokes.
I guess Dorothy’s being pragmatic, they’ve only been dating, at most, a few weeks, right? So it’s smart of her to not expect that it’ll be forever right away, but it still has to feel like stepping on fingers to Walky, so I get where he’s coming from too.
It’s still a surprisingly mature attitude towards love. Dorothy has her blind spots (Yale being one of them) but she might be the most level-headed of the entire cast.
Dorothy said she loves Joyce and is talking about getting more hands-on with her, and Walky’s talking about Ethan’s sexual orientation? Who is this person and what did he do with the real Walky?
He still remember what Big Sister said last time he made a lesbian joke (a few hours ago).
Sweet, some Dorothy emotion towards Joyce! I know Dorothy cares, but a lot of it comes off a bit “a person is sad in my proximity, I care because I am a good person” and not like “I care because I care about Joyce”, you know? So this is a cool development. Also: “if I’d been more hands-on”? It’s true she could have been more attentive given what she knew about what Joyce was going through, but that’s a poor attitude to take. It’s also worth noting, I think, that even though Dorothy acknowledged Walky’s problem he was hiding might not have been about her, she seems to think that it is. Maybe a tiny bit of a self-centered streak?
Yay, Dorothy development!
Oh it’s absolutely a poor attitude to take. Honestly, I love that. It’s a character flaw. Dorothy blames herself for not being useful enough when those she loves have problems, and I have the feeling this is neither the first nor last time we’ve seen that.
It’s a very real, down to earth problem to have; one I personally have, actually. I like that, a lot really.
I agree. Again, a similar attitude to Joyce.
I think that was part of the problem with how she botched the breakup with Danny (now I’m talking about stuff that took place before the comic started so this is all speculation). Instead of focusing solely on her needs (“I want to break up with Danny, and I also want to be flexible enough to be able to transfer to Yale without problems”), she took it upon herself to coach him (“Danny needs to find a good college to get a computer degree, and he needs to have a plan for when I transfer”). When she discussed it with him in those terms he thought (“OK, so if she transfer I follow her and find a tech-job or something. Sweet, I have a plan”), which missed the bigger point that she actually wanted to break up with him.
“I know what’s best for my friends” is absolutely a self-centered steak, and not a tiny one.
Definitely, and it’s one she shares with Joyce, oddly enough.
And Billie, pre-epiphany.
The fun thing is that they have tried to “help” each other at different points. Joyce wanted to help Dorothy keep chaste, Billie wanted to give Joyce a better fashion sense, Dorothy want to help Dorothy Joyce become more open to diversity, Both Joyce and Dorothy joined Walky in the search for Billie and want to help her with her depression (and Joyce will help her brainstorm names of her seven children).
Misguided and often unwelcome as many of these attempts are, I think all of them cherish the attitude that lies behind it. Even Billie grudgingly admits that she values Joyce’s friendship.
Tell me, are those steaks tender?
Really wondering how the conversation tween Dorothy and Joyce is going to go down.
Dorothy: Hey Joyce I heard you’re dating a gay guy.
Joyce: I broke up with him.
Dorothy: Oh ok…Who wants pizza!?
We can only hope its something this casually amusing.
Feet must end up in mouths.
Feet in mouths are my literal fetish.
Feetish.
Given how smooth the breakup went I kinda think it will be, but I think it will lead to a larger discussion of how much stress Joyce is under. Hopefully they will manage to get Becky to sit still and listen long enough to realize that Joyce has plenty of problems of her own and needs her help rather than the other way around.
They need each other’s help.
They sure do. Becky has already opened up to Joyce and Joyce is helping her, that is established. Now they have to go the other way. Joyce is too good at martyring herself, she has to admit that she is the one that needs help, and Becky has to take a break in her coming-out-rush long enough to take a good look at Joyce and see how much stress she is under.
Walky is not stupid (despite the 26 grade, that was his wake up youre in college call), nor is he clueless. He just avoid responsibility when he can.
Agree Dorothy has no reason for guilt, she was there for Joyce to talk to if Joyce wanted.
Still find it an interesting thought that while Dorothy is so motivated to get into Yale: what if she and Walky apply, and she doesn’t get accepted and Walky does.
Dorothy…while I admire your sentiment here, I’m a little confused. You got angry at Walky for claiming he “loved you” as a life hack and said you believed love could be a powerful word. Yet here you are saying that love could be a lot of things and you love a lot of people. Back-pedaling? Or…what? I don’t know, I want to read this as Dorothy’s maturity, but it feels more like side-stepping issues than an honest emotional place.
Also, cheers for perception, Walky.
I don’t think that’s back pedaling. Love is a powerful thing, which can apply to a number of people and situations. The fact that it is a concept which can be applied to more than one thing does not lessen its power, nor the fact that, yeah, saying you love someone and not meaning it is a pretty dickish, pointless lie.
Maybe Dottie said “I love you” in the heat of the moment and now feels like she needs to free herself, since saying that does imply a certain level of commitment in a romantic relationship. But yeah, if she never was going to allow herself to let down her guard enough to mean it, I wish she’d had the foresight to not say it at all.
Also, am I the only one who thinks negating “I love you” with a magnanimous platitude like “love can mean a lot of things…love evolves” is particularly insulting, even if that’s exactly what she believes?
No. +1
I’ve been in this conversation… or one sufficiently similar to it, anyway. If Dorothy is anything like that particular young lady, then the realisation of her admission of love for Walky is now really starting to aggravate her control-freakishness. This is ‘damage limitation’. Being truly, deeply in love with someone means surrendering quite a lot of control to that person. She’s trying to get some of her control back, and what she says about Joyce is more evidence of that too.
As is the fact that she’s taken by surprise at her boyfriend knowing something she hasn’t told him.
Exactly. She didn’t get the reaction from Walky that she wanted when she said, “I love you,” so now she’s saying, “but love doesn’t always mean love love.”
This may be a stretch, but I actually read Dorothy’s current train of thought as having nothing to do with the way she feels about Walky right now. Right now, she definitely loves him in a very specific way that’s separate from the ways in which she loves anyone else. What she is trying to do is assure herself and him that, if she has to leave him behind in however many months or years, her feelings for him will continue to have meaning, even if it’s a much less intense and immediate meaning than they hold now. Hard to know if that will really be the case, but Dorothy seems like the kind of person who could make it so if she really wanted to.
The amusing thing about Walky’s last comment is that “No touching!” is the kind of thing that Joyce would expect from a normal dating situation, given her background. After all she brought along a chaperone when she went out with Joe to prevent anything inappropriate. Right now even a chaste good night kiss would probably get Joyce worried she was crossing the line.
While that is true, there are layers to such things. It’d be odd, even from her background, for them to not even engage in hand holding for example.
I’m not the touchiest person I know – I get uncomfortable when my friends impulsively hug me – yet even I would want to put my arm around a girl I’m having a romantic relationship with. Small gestures of physical contact are a big part of an intimate relationship, and their total absence screams repression and concealment, to me.
I love these two. The last panel is amazing.
“No matter what happens, it’s possible I’ll always love you.”
Wow. That’s deep commitment.
Hmmm… yes… ‘possible’, such a romantic qualifier.
Thumbs up!
What kind of probability distribution are we looking at here? Is the diffuse tail all that falls in the “always love” area, or is it closer to the peak? Gaussian lineshape? Lorentzian? Oooh! Maybe it’s a multimodal distribution! That would be exciting, wouldn’t it?
She’s realistic about it.
I mean, people going “ooh our love will stay forever and eveeer !!!1!!” ? yeah, pff
Among the immortal elves of Errant Story, it was well known that all love eventually ends. Which is why, for a time, it was very fashionable to take human lovers, who will have the decency to die a mere few decades later, while things are still “fresh”, allowing the elf to look back fondly on the unspoiled memory and idea of what they had.
Of course, this had the minor side-effect of producing a lot of half-elves (the “errants” of the title), most of which were unfixably screwed up in various ways – an error which the elves later tried to correct via the expedient of genocide.
AND Walky moves into the 2000s in the favorite character poll (probably been there a day or 2, I don’t pay that much attention)
Hey, Willis, your poll might be bugged;
I voted for Carla, Mike, and I forget the third one, probably Ruth.
I just checked it (a few days later), and it’s telling me I voted for Becky, Joyce, and Carla- or at least, it has those bolded and italicized, which is what I assume that means.
So not quite sure what that means, but Becky and Joyce aren’t exactly my top picks [not near snarky enough to be on my top list].
More to the point, while I’m hardly the most reliable sort at doing things right, I always include Mike and Carla in my picks, so it’s really off that Mike isn’t listed.
Maybe I misclicked- or maybe the data is mis-set.
Alternatively, you’re rigging the poll in favor of Becky..
:eyes you: But you wouldn’t do that.. right?
Software behind the poll must’ve come from Florida.
*triggered*
Yep Walky. The lying has begun and you have no real expectation of exclusivity or longevity. She “loves” him but would drop him like a hot potato for more important things. Dorothy shares that with Joe, but she prefers a long term casual relationship to short term ones. Walky is a sidekick with benefits, so I see why Dorothy liked Danny, since he was well suited for the role. Nope, I don’t find that to be mature on her part and if she was a guy pulling this kind of bs, I would hope that the woman would cut her losses and move on. But at 18, I would have made the sexy times last as long as possible.
Three weeks into a relationship I think that it’s at least as mature an attitude as “you are my true love” or “let’s pick out baby names”, especially when transfer might be in the cards.no-one knows how long they will last after so short time
Dorothy is trying to avoid her mistake with Danny by communicating a lot, and overdoes it a bit. She also d debates her conflicting desires with Walky as a soundingboard.
Sure, sure…but I prefer the kind of love that occasionally involves sexins.
“sexins” are overrated, it’s all about friendship and loyalty, one can do without the sex
I value sexins a lot but I can go without it because who the fuck cares about what I want out of a relationship amirite?
I’ll own that I want friendship and loyalty to be prerequisites for anyone I sleep with. But speaking as a guy who’s basically been single for longer than I’m gonna admit to I say its basically impossible for me to “overrate” the sexins. I suppose I just chalk it up to the simple fact that by the time we’re at that stage I’ll already be getting and giving all loyalty and friendship and all the other things that go into a relationship in great abundance.
I don’t think Dorothy is being abnormally or alarmingly control freakish. It is definitely unhealthy to think that she could somehow have engineered Joyce’s social development in a better direction by keeping a closer eye on her, especially given that Dorothy would probably burn out fast and hard if she tried to keep tabs on someone else and live her own very full life at the same time. (Could I be projecting that assumption because the same thing has happened to me repeatedly? Uh… no. Not in the slightest.) But a whole lot of people, maybe most of us, are prone to attempting such things, and I think an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for other people can be especially acute in kids who are trying to deal with adulthood for the first time.
Also, it seems very likely that her wish to have a more active role in Joyce’s life is rooted partially in lingering guilt over leaving her by herself at a party three weeks ago, and maybe over her powerlessness to do all that much for her in the aftermath of the assault. Joyce’s response, the one time Dorothy brought it up the day after, was to smile brightly and brush it off, and she might try to respond the same way even now. Someone as perceptive as Dorothy eventually has to see the bullshit in Joyce’s claims that she’s fine, but trying to help someone cope with trauma is an incredibly sensitive thing that Dorothy has presumably never dealt with before. So she hasn’t really known what to do about it besides just be there for Joyce as much as possible in other, smaller crises. So what she’s doing now could be largely informed by her “failure” to help Joyce with her most serious problems.
Times like these, I wish Dorothy knew Billie a little better. Billie can be quite good at diagnosing other people’s issues, and this situation might need a little bit of Dorothy’s generalized sensitivity and a little bit of alpha b***h. (Sorry to subvert the filter, but I’m not gonna bongo up Billie’s own description of herself.)
Also also, it’s fairly comforting to see Dorothy talk about Joyce’s awful path when Joyce has already started pulling herself off that path. I think this is one set of problems that the characters might actually handle sanely, which means that we’re due to have a different set of people screw something up hardcore.
Those are some interesting insights and I thank you for making this comment.
Hear, hear!
I also find it interesting that the one thing Joyce asked Dorothy to do to help her was the one thing Dorothy couldn’t do – go to church with her.
Sure, she joined her but that led to a row with Mary and tip-toeing around invisible-sky-God-topics of conversation and general awkwardness. Dorothy was not able to join Joyce in the church experience she wanted.
Yeah, that worked out poorly and seemed to just add to Joyce’s internal conflicts. Fortunately, I suspect that the new gay-positive Joyce is going to want to find herself a more inclusive congregation (surely Bloomington has a few) to help her reconcile her faith with her recently acquired convictions. In that context, with Mary nowhere in sight, I could see Dorothy giving church another try and perhaps feeling less uncomfortable. In fact… what is the in-universe day of the week, Friday? We might actually see that happen in the storyline after next.
Now that I’m looking at older strips through a lens of Dorothy not quite being able to be there for Joyce, this one, which I originally thought was funny and sweet, now seems a little sad. If part of what’s going on is that Joyce needs the reassurance of girl company when Dorothy needs to be elsewhere… well, as Joyce said, dangit.
You’re welcome, neeks. Thanks for saying.
Next up on People Screwing Something Up Hardcore of Age… Amber’s been a bit happy lately.
Yeah, my best best is that either Amber gets seriously triggered again or Mary tells the IU housing authority about Ruth and Billie. Maybe both. ‘Cause that’s where the drama’s at right now.
Wait, best best? Best bet.
“I think I love Joyce, too”
Fund it
“If I’d been more hands on..”
FUND IT.
I don’t think there was much that Dorothy could have done for Joyce. You can’t force people to change their minds.
You know, conveniently-placed-elbow has hidden many a nipple over the years. . .
A lot of people hate that, Dorothy.
D’aww, I love Dorothy’s hair all messy.
In the last panel, Dorothy’s posture reminds me of Scandinavia And The World characters.
I’m going to paraphrase a friend of mine. Sure, we all use that word for friends, but it means something different when you say it to someone you’ve been going out with (and sleeping with) for a few weeks. You can’t use it the same way without regard for context.
Willis, kudos on somehow not taking the easy punchline after the rampant accidental innuendo in panel 4.