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Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
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August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
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Guilded Age
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Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
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After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
The Messenger
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A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
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It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
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That might be the thing I dislike the most about where I live. The leaves here do not change colors. Well, some of them turn brown just before dropping their leaves, but that’s the only color they change to.
I dislike fall in general here. I feel like we don’t get fall. We get a backwards spring. It always cools down extremely slowly, so that it’s hardly noticeable. The daily highs and lows stay relatively similar.
That means spring flowers start popping up again and flowering shrubs keep flowering non-stop.
It often doesn’t get cold enough for the trees to drop their leaves until sometime between mid-December and Mid-January. And then spring starts coming back around again in late-February.
I get massively cheated out of seasons every dang year.
We have the opposite problem where I live, we somehow have winter/slosh up until summer with spring being more of a “blink and you’ll miss it” type of deal. Not that summer’s bad or anything, but it doesn’t arrive any earlier.
As for fall… Fall is basically amazing ’round here until the first fall rain. After that all those lovely fall colored leaves are mush on the ground in a dark-brown, wet, cold and bananapeel-y sort of way.
Sounds like where I live most years. Fall generally starts from mid-September and goes through to mid-November(ish) (this year is late – we’re still having mild fall weather in the last week of November, and it’s predicted to stay mild well into December, which is weird, and we only had our first snow like three days ago which is late).
Spring, though. What spring? We don’t get spring, we get Still Winter. Blizzards in May aren’t uncommon and then when summer DOES come, you’ll often get this bizarre temperature shock where it literally goes from -15C to +30C in the space of a week or two (a month at the very most). It comes all at once, and if we’re lucky it’s dry because otherwise the flooding is just unreal.
I live in south Texas. The few trees we have don’t tend to catch on fire as much as the grasses do.
And what we call a “tree” is more like a shrub to people that come from places where there are actual forests.
Summer this year lasted, I’d say, from late-March to last week. It was in the mid-70s today so that means we finally found fall.
Last year it actually never got cold enough for the trees to drop their leaves. In spring when the new leaves were coming in, they had to squeeze in because the trees still had more than half their leaves from the previous year.
And this year might be the same since they haven’t started dropping even one leaf yet.
The squirrels kind of go “hibernation? Huh? What’s that?”
I live in Miami and it is worse here. We only have the one season here: summer. Almost always at least 90F all year round, with like 70% humidity. Yesterday it was 80! Must be a sign of the apocalypse.
People here bundle up in winter coats if it ever hits 70. These people are what I like to call insane.
I’m in south Texas. Pretty much draw a line west from Tampa and when you hit land again that’s just about where I live.
People had their jackets on today because the high was “only in the 70s” and it was 90-100% humidity.
In 2004 we actually got several inches of snow on Christmas Eve and it was cold enough that it stayed on the ground all of Christmas Day! It was like a. Christmas miracle. It was the first significant snow since the 1890s.
By New Year’s Day 2005 the high was 82°. So, the miracle Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were the extent of our winter.
And I’d say that’s the average length of our winter except that normally it happens in mid-January.
Sounds like what happens in Central Florida, some leaves turn brown & die & fall off, some annuals remain green until say late January & February then decide ” OH! It time to drops my leaves at the same time the first false spring produces buds an green shoots come out.
Then wham! another late cold snap comes & kill those.
That’s how t is a bit further north of where I live now.
I currently live near Corpus Christi, and it really is more like southern Florida with less rain (but the same amount of humidity. Someone explain that to me!). But I grew up in San Antonio. In college I lived in Orlando for a year (Disney College Program) and the weather was so much like San Antonio that it sometimes made me homesick.
I worked Outdoor Foods at Epcot and my co-workers from Canada and northern states couldn’t figure out how I could spend all day working a popcorn cart and literally not break a sweat.
“Guys, this is normal weather. Y’all are the weird ones with your snow and blizzards and spring.”
Uruk-Hai Hockey team?…Congratulations, you’ve discovered the one thing that could make hockey more violent. The only question is, would they be penalized for eating one of the other team’s players?
Yay speculation time! My ideas, in no particular order:
Dorothy (from the existentially jealous perspective of Joyce)
Dorothy (in Becky’s eyes in composition for Joyce’s preference)
Amazi-girl (in Amber’s self-depreciating eyes)
Amazi-girl (in Daisy’s lustful fantasies)
Sal (In Amber/Amazi-girl’s viciously judgemental inner conflict)
Joyce (in her mother’s ideal eyes of who she wants her daughter to be)
Amber (In Danny’s bi-confused eyes, baffled by why Ethan is so distracting)
Becky (in Joyce’s conflicted eyes wondering how Becky reconciles religion and recent events so well whereas Joyce has a faith crisis)
Joyce (ironically, in the eyes of her parents, since she is no longer the perfect naive believer she once was I.e. “I’m not that girl” contrasted with her past self)
Joyce (in the eyes of Dina, relationship drama over Becky’s lingering feelings)
Dina (in the eyes of Joyce, jealous that she couldn’t have been gay for Becky and happily paired with her best friend)
Senator Desanto (in the eyes of prof Bean. Lol)
Joyce in her own eyes, but in a semi-ironic sense where “perfect” means “willing to blindly follow her upbringing without questioning the shittier parts of it.”
Billie (In her own eyes. Well not Billie at the moment. More of how Billie sees her past before the DUI).
Mary. (In her own eyes of course. She’s a sterling example of how to live life in Christ’s example! For some strange reason nobody else sees it this way)
My guess? We’re going to be looking at ‘perfect girl’ from two angles:
1) Ruth and Billie continually telling each other that the other is the ‘perfect girl’ for them, despite the fact that they’re almost continually arguing and angering each other;
2) Joyce taking clear and overt steps to stop being ‘that perfect girl’ that her parents had wanted her to be.
I’m going with Mary. Preview panels show Mary appearing a bunch. And Willis did joke about making a storyline all about Mary. It could be a red herring, but
The sad part of this is that in her various bouts of suicidal ideation, she probably envies those leaves. “Stupid leaves get to flame out and die young, why can’t I?”
AAAACtually, leaves have to actively destroy their chlorophyll in order to ensure the nutrients they laboriously collected over the spring (and used to collect more nutrients in the summer) don’t fall to the ground to be laboriously recollected.
The red leaves work even harder in their suicide mission, by actively producing the red pigments to shade the chlorophyll so they have enough time break it down. This is because the mechanisms the chlorophyll feeds are broken down first, leaving the chlorophyll nowhere to store all their solar energy except mechanisms that really don’t need it.
So, sorry to burst your bubble, but SCIENCE must prevail.
I’m pretty sure he said that mostly in relation to inter-panel timing. One probable example would be how a reader will often spend time “inside” a panel that correlates to the amount of dialog in it, but a wordless one will unintuitively be longer, as it invites readers to pause and think/admire artwork.
…But yeah, sure. Apply that quote to “Comic Book Time,” as well.
I’m having to adjust my tracking calendar, though. If we’re setting this storyline as the first day of October…
2016~’17 = Second week of October
2017~’18 = Third week of October (including midterms! And College Night for High School Seniors!)
2018~’19 = Last week of October (up to and possibly, but NOT necessarily–Halloween).
2019~’20 = First week of November (Homecoming?)
2020~’21 = Second week of November (Basketball Season starts!)
2021~’22 = Third week of November
2022~’23 = Fourth week of November (Turkey Day! Black Friday! Last Football Game of the Season!)
2023~’24 = Last week November/First week December (Cram time; new students register for Spring term.)
2024~’25 = Second week of December (Finals!)
2025~’26 = Third week of December (Holidays begin. Bowl Game for the school?)
The Holiday Break takes a little over two weeks and Willis can present this in any manner he likes, of course.
I learned some interesting facts about the difference between how American leaves change compared to those in the UK (where I am). Which is good because I would be confused about how red-orange the tree is in tune first panel otherwise.
I read that article too! Apparently in Europe they all turn yellow because bugs and whatnot all froze to death during the ice age because they were trapped by the mountain ranges whereas in North America they were able to migrate and the trees evolved to have their leaves turn red to prevent the bugs and other animals from eating them. Or something like that.
Argh, forgot I can’t do links the way I thought I could. One’s a link to wiley online (let’s see if I can write a link in an approved way: Wiley online library), the other was a Science Daily page.
I have read that it’s the colder night-time temperatures that stimulate the production of the red-carotonin proteins. Cooler temps – such as in the UK – and the yellower the leaves are.
Scandinavia and Continental Europe always have great autumn displays of leaves, where as the UK is variable.
Actually, it’s not just “America”. This is Indiana we are talking about, and its particular color-film defying coloration is locally associated with “Indian Summer” (which is actually supposed to be something else according to the dictionary).
Autumn is my favorite time of the year. I like them all but think Fall is beautiful.
I like winter snow, and spring buds and summer heat.
But still, Fall is my faoritie.
Great intro for these two :).
I’m not a fan of prescriptivist grammar (people telling other people how they should speak or write), but it’s even worse when it’s some wanna-be who doesn’t understand why differences in pluralization exist.
Jason, it all depends on the type of tree and if it gets a good deep frost the night before followed with lots of sunshine.
Gives the best colors. From the firey orange yellow above, to bright yellow, dark purple and deep red. Maples, oaks, and others all have their own colors.
Lately ‘Holding me Back’ by the Buddaheads has been reminding me less of Anakin Skywalker’s petulant rage during his fall to the Dark Side than of Joyce clawing her way past the toxic parts of the ideologies she was taught.
Most likely the immediate fallout of the Toepocalypse would have consumed much of the next day or two, and Willis probably wants to focus on different characters/plot developments for now.
To let the aftershocks of Ross’s psychotic episode fully filter through the Campus community and beyond.
I have no doubt that the RAs like Ruth may be under pressure from the Dean (because he is under pressure from the Trustees and the parents) to get an early warning of future problems. That may lead to Ruth acting out because of being under pressure (and Mary doubtlessly spreading slander that it was somehow Ruth’s fault).
Additionally, it allows Amber to fully digest Sal’s threats in the forest and decide on a reaction. It also allows the Browns to have come to some manner of a decision about how they’re going to respond to Joyce’s voice mail.
Seeing that, according to the preview panels, Joyce is meeting with her father and possibly returning home, I’d say it’s so we see the change in her relationship with her parents in a more immediate manner. If we didn’t have a time skip it would be a year in real life before we hit this point.
Sooo….. four days have passed since Toedad pulled out a rifle on campus. I would be curious to see the fallout from that. I wonder if people are still talking about it, or if the majority of students are too desensitized to care. It would be really unfortunate if the latter is the case.
Oh, and now we’re seeing some sober (I think) Ruth/ Billie interaction. Based on preview panels, it seems that we’ll be seeing quite a bit of those two in this new story-line.
We skipped Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of Week Two waiting for pajama jeans, and Thursday and Friday of Week Three studying with Dorothy between the fire alarm and the Parentpocalypse.
OMG. So I just wanted to know if red/orange/yellow leaves are technically dead or still alive when they’re on the tree. So I googled “are autumn leaves dead” and THIS WAS THE FIRST RESULT:
We should have a poll for most tragic walkyverse/dumbiverse character.
I vote Faz (shortpacked)
Having a dad abandon you, and your mom somehow being connected to the korean mafia doesn’t make for a very happy childhood. If you think about it, this situation perfectly explains Faz’s personality. He truly does want to be loved, however he has know idea how the world works. Not only did his dad leave, never actually meeting his son (fuck you Blaine) but its entirely possible that his mom had more then one lover. (prostitute) he would have spent his childhood seeing creeps everyday. He gets it into his head that’s how you talk to people and you get a pervert who is immature enough to think his dad is a space pirate. (but hey thats just a theory, a webcomic theory!) Thanks for reading.
Although to be fair Faz might have turned out even worse if Blaine had been in his life, It’s sad when your such a piece of shit that the best thing you can do for your kid is fucking leaving.
Spoilers ahoy for anyone who’s only reading the It’s Walky! redux.
I think Tony from It’s Walky! could count.
Mostly he’s just completely pointless. He feels like he should be the strapping hero and center of Squad 128, and instead he dies, comes back as a ragezombie and lives in terror of losing control again, loses his father while he’s dead, loses his job to that Walky goob, loses his girlfriend to that British jerk, is completely inconsequential, and ultimately welcomes death when it comes to him.
I don’t know how much of it was intentional, but Tony’s tragic story arc, I thought, was one of the stronger elements of It’s Walky! for how it played around with established character tropes.
Hard to argue with all of that.
Potential runner-up might be Jason, for growing up with perhaps the most evil human Willis has ever written for a father, and not even being valued by him.
Sometimes, Ruth’s maudlin self-pity clearly rubs Billie up the wrong way. I’m wondering if this chapter is going to address just how healthy or unhealthy their relationship actually is.
The Clarkson in me wants to identify all the cars in this comic after the red Mazda and the Toedadmobile were so important to the last story. From left to right: 2006-07 Honda Accord sedan, not sure what the middle SUV is, and a couple-generations-old Toyota RAV4?
I’m reminded of the Doctor Who line that sad is “happy for deep people”. I’m also reminded that Steven Moffat was asked if he actually believed that and replied “God, no”. Billie would approve.
All these people freaking out over a four-day time skip. As if every day in these people’s lives need to involve a personal epiphany or tragic accident.
Actually technically the color is generated when leaves basically pass through a period that imitates decomposition (tho controlled by the trees hormones) so it has that color because IT’S ALREADY A CORPSE… Just let that sink it
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 ⋅ 1d
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
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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I really like the leaves colour, as well.
That might be the thing I dislike the most about where I live. The leaves here do not change colors. Well, some of them turn brown just before dropping their leaves, but that’s the only color they change to.
I dislike fall in general here. I feel like we don’t get fall. We get a backwards spring. It always cools down extremely slowly, so that it’s hardly noticeable. The daily highs and lows stay relatively similar.
That means spring flowers start popping up again and flowering shrubs keep flowering non-stop.
It often doesn’t get cold enough for the trees to drop their leaves until sometime between mid-December and Mid-January. And then spring starts coming back around again in late-February.
I get massively cheated out of seasons every dang year.
We have the opposite problem where I live, we somehow have winter/slosh up until summer with spring being more of a “blink and you’ll miss it” type of deal. Not that summer’s bad or anything, but it doesn’t arrive any earlier.
As for fall… Fall is basically amazing ’round here until the first fall rain. After that all those lovely fall colored leaves are mush on the ground in a dark-brown, wet, cold and bananapeel-y sort of way.
Sounds like where I live most years. Fall generally starts from mid-September and goes through to mid-November(ish) (this year is late – we’re still having mild fall weather in the last week of November, and it’s predicted to stay mild well into December, which is weird, and we only had our first snow like three days ago which is late).
Spring, though. What spring? We don’t get spring, we get Still Winter. Blizzards in May aren’t uncommon and then when summer DOES come, you’ll often get this bizarre temperature shock where it literally goes from -15C to +30C in the space of a week or two (a month at the very most). It comes all at once, and if we’re lucky it’s dry because otherwise the flooding is just unreal.
But fall is gorgeous.
Where you are, what time of the year do the trees catch fire and burn?
I live in south Texas. The few trees we have don’t tend to catch on fire as much as the grasses do.
And what we call a “tree” is more like a shrub to people that come from places where there are actual forests.
Summer this year lasted, I’d say, from late-March to last week. It was in the mid-70s today so that means we finally found fall.
Last year it actually never got cold enough for the trees to drop their leaves. In spring when the new leaves were coming in, they had to squeeze in because the trees still had more than half their leaves from the previous year.
And this year might be the same since they haven’t started dropping even one leaf yet.
The squirrels kind of go “hibernation? Huh? What’s that?”
Where do you live so I can move there.
Oh, so you live in Florida too then?
I live in Miami and it is worse here. We only have the one season here: summer. Almost always at least 90F all year round, with like 70% humidity. Yesterday it was 80! Must be a sign of the apocalypse.
People here bundle up in winter coats if it ever hits 70. These people are what I like to call insane.
I’m in south Texas. Pretty much draw a line west from Tampa and when you hit land again that’s just about where I live.
People had their jackets on today because the high was “only in the 70s” and it was 90-100% humidity.
In 2004 we actually got several inches of snow on Christmas Eve and it was cold enough that it stayed on the ground all of Christmas Day! It was like a. Christmas miracle. It was the first significant snow since the 1890s.
By New Year’s Day 2005 the high was 82°. So, the miracle Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were the extent of our winter.
And I’d say that’s the average length of our winter except that normally it happens in mid-January.
Sounds like what happens in Central Florida, some leaves turn brown & die & fall off, some annuals remain green until say late January & February then decide ” OH! It time to drops my leaves at the same time the first false spring produces buds an green shoots come out.
Then wham! another late cold snap comes & kill those.
That’s how t is a bit further north of where I live now.
I currently live near Corpus Christi, and it really is more like southern Florida with less rain (but the same amount of humidity. Someone explain that to me!). But I grew up in San Antonio. In college I lived in Orlando for a year (Disney College Program) and the weather was so much like San Antonio that it sometimes made me homesick.
I worked Outdoor Foods at Epcot and my co-workers from Canada and northern states couldn’t figure out how I could spend all day working a popcorn cart and literally not break a sweat.
“Guys, this is normal weather. Y’all are the weird ones with your snow and blizzards and spring.”
Ha! We say almost the same thing down here in Los Angeles. “We have two seasons here, green and brown.”
Although it’s more brown than green, these days, due to drought and water conservation measures.
Winter is coming doesn’t mean much here. :p
Ah, Ruthless, don’t ever change.
Ruth needs to be making this observation from the top of a tower with a huge flaming eye behind her or something
And the eye has almost the same name as her, and then they try to magically cure her depression and rule the world.
In any particular order?
Ruth would make a pretty good supervillain. Can’t wait to see her daring heist of the Stanley Cup.
and then when she talks to her wizard friend on the phone she’s all BUILD ME A HOCKEY TEAM WORTHY OF MORDORRRRRRRRRR
Uruk-Hai Hockey team?…Congratulations, you’ve discovered the one thing that could make hockey more violent. The only question is, would they be penalized for eating one of the other team’s players?
When it comes to guys like them, rules don’t apply anymore.
Nah, we use modified bloodbowl rules at that point. Get some elves, humans, and dwarves too, and you have a small league.
Ooh, that would be cool. My pick would be a Skaven/Goblin team.
First they would need to eat the refs. Then they would be golden.
To be fair, that’s probably the only way a Leafs fan will ever see the Stanley Cup. (Says the Flyers fan… yeah, I know.)
I’d like to see what happens to Billie for making that observation.
:3
You…you mean that all of that isn’t there right now?
Ohh, I think Harvey’s gave me a bad burrrgerrrr.
Sauron wouldn’t agree on that.
All trees in Mordor seems to have died a long time ago, anyway.
…or, walked off.
…heh.
Ent it the truth?
Mordor pines for its trees, but they all had to leaf. It’s the root of their problem.
Aaaaaaand scene.
Hell Yeah! Screw foliage! Gimmee snow year round baby!
Then it would be Icing of Age.
We’d need a lot of frosting to ice the hole cast.
Is the hole cast everyone that’s been on video having sex?
That’s most of them, if we count anyone who’s been in a slipshine.
I can’t remember the last time we saw these two sober.
Who says they’re sober?
I prefer to think that means that Billie and Ruth have drank so much that they’re blood is now partially made of alcohol.
Well, they don’t have the little bubbles floating by their heads.
The end of Book5Chapter3, after Joyce’s dorm party.
Well, maybe. Billie was drinking at the party, but then Ruth showed up and everyone watched a movie, so maybe she sobered up.
Who knows what Ruth was doing, but I doubt she’d bust up a dorm party drunk.
Anyway, neither of them had Drunkeness Bubbles above them in the aforementioned scene, so
The leaves also represent the hopes of the Leafs.
They don’t usually fall off until February, though.
And here I thought Ruthless would be a fan of…Leafs.
So.
Who’s That Perfect Girl?
Dina, duh.
Too early to tell, but I suspect That Perfect Girl is gone.
No need to dread the approach of winter when the cold never bothered her anyway.
Yay speculation time! My ideas, in no particular order:
Dorothy (from the existentially jealous perspective of Joyce)
Dorothy (in Becky’s eyes in composition for Joyce’s preference)
Amazi-girl (in Amber’s self-depreciating eyes)
Amazi-girl (in Daisy’s lustful fantasies)
Sal (In Amber/Amazi-girl’s viciously judgemental inner conflict)
Joyce (in her mother’s ideal eyes of who she wants her daughter to be)
Amber (In Danny’s bi-confused eyes, baffled by why Ethan is so distracting)
Becky (in Joyce’s conflicted eyes wondering how Becky reconciles religion and recent events so well whereas Joyce has a faith crisis)
Joyce (ironically, in the eyes of her parents, since she is no longer the perfect naive believer she once was I.e. “I’m not that girl” contrasted with her past self)
Joyce (in the eyes of Dina, relationship drama over Becky’s lingering feelings)
Dina (in the eyes of Joyce, jealous that she couldn’t have been gay for Becky and happily paired with her best friend)
Senator Desanto (in the eyes of prof Bean. Lol)
Any more to add, fellow readers?
*in competition, not in composition LOL
Joyce in her own eyes, but in a semi-ironic sense where “perfect” means “willing to blindly follow her upbringing without questioning the shittier parts of it.”
So yeah, I’d say it refers partially to Joyce becoming more self-aware.
Sal (in the eyes of Jason who’ll never admit such a thing out loud.)
Sal (in the eyes of Jason who will never admit such a thing out loud.)
Billie (In her own eyes. Well not Billie at the moment. More of how Billie sees her past before the DUI).
Mary. (In her own eyes of course. She’s a sterling example of how to live life in Christ’s example! For some strange reason nobody else sees it this way)
Mike.
I like this one
“Blithe smile, lithe limb
she who’s winsome,
she wins him,
gold hair with a gentle curl,
that’s the girl he chose
and heaven knows,
I’m not that girl”
My guess? We’re going to be looking at ‘perfect girl’ from two angles:
1) Ruth and Billie continually telling each other that the other is the ‘perfect girl’ for them, despite the fact that they’re almost continually arguing and angering each other;
2) Joyce taking clear and overt steps to stop being ‘that perfect girl’ that her parents had wanted her to be.
I’m going with Mary. Preview panels show Mary appearing a bunch. And Willis did joke about making a storyline all about Mary. It could be a red herring, but
Oh man Mary’s gonna get character development, isn’t she :/
Ways Mary could stop being hated by the commenters:
…Start a relationship with Daisy?
That’s pretty much all I can think of.
You forgot stop being a massive ego and start being a person.
No, no, you’re reading too much into it. This chapter is going to be about Joyce and Co singing Frozen karaoke.
I prefer winter for the beautiful sights, but I can’t say that I like shoveling my car out of the snow..
The sad part of this is that in her various bouts of suicidal ideation, she probably envies those leaves. “Stupid leaves get to flame out and die young, why can’t I?”
They also don’t have to make an effort to die.
AAAACtually, leaves have to actively destroy their chlorophyll in order to ensure the nutrients they laboriously collected over the spring (and used to collect more nutrients in the summer) don’t fall to the ground to be laboriously recollected.
The red leaves work even harder in their suicide mission, by actively producing the red pigments to shade the chlorophyll so they have enough time break it down. This is because the mechanisms the chlorophyll feeds are broken down first, leaving the chlorophyll nowhere to store all their solar energy except mechanisms that really don’t need it.
So, sorry to burst your bubble, but SCIENCE must prevail.
Deep as a kiddie’s wading pool.
But an infinitely sad kiddie’s wading pool, deflated, abandoned, alone! *sob*
Four days later is like seven months in real time.
As said by Scott McCloud, “Time in comics is infinitely weird.”
I’m pretty sure he said that mostly in relation to inter-panel timing. One probable example would be how a reader will often spend time “inside” a panel that correlates to the amount of dialog in it, but a wordless one will unintuitively be longer, as it invites readers to pause and think/admire artwork.
…But yeah, sure. Apply that quote to “Comic Book Time,” as well.
I’m having to adjust my tracking calendar, though. If we’re setting this storyline as the first day of October…
2016~’17 = Second week of October
2017~’18 = Third week of October (including midterms! And College Night for High School Seniors!)
2018~’19 = Last week of October (up to and possibly, but NOT necessarily–Halloween).
2019~’20 = First week of November (Homecoming?)
2020~’21 = Second week of November (Basketball Season starts!)
2021~’22 = Third week of November
2022~’23 = Fourth week of November (Turkey Day! Black Friday! Last Football Game of the Season!)
2023~’24 = Last week November/First week December (Cram time; new students register for Spring term.)
2024~’25 = Second week of December (Finals!)
2025~’26 = Third week of December (Holidays begin. Bowl Game for the school?)
The Holiday Break takes a little over two weeks and Willis can present this in any manner he likes, of course.
And now we’re back to the homosexual pairing that doesn’t need bigots with guns to get destroyed.
They can destroy themselves thank you very much.
So, Ethan and Danny ?
Does it count as destroyed if it hasn’t been built?
If you build it, they will come.
There’s a pretty significant hurdle to that.
You know. His girlfriend.
I UNDERSTAND THAT REFERENCE
Also I see what you did there
She spits on em, I step on em. To each their own.
Am I the only one who takes naps in them?
Leaf them alone!
I learned some interesting facts about the difference between how American leaves change compared to those in the UK (where I am). Which is good because I would be confused about how red-orange the tree is in tune first panel otherwise.
So, what color do they change to, if not red-orange?
Some deciduous trees’ leaves turn yellow in autumn.
I read that article too! Apparently in Europe they all turn yellow because bugs and whatnot all froze to death during the ice age because they were trapped by the mountain ranges whereas in North America they were able to migrate and the trees evolved to have their leaves turn red to prevent the bugs and other animals from eating them. Or something like that.
Uh. It’s the first time I hear of this. [/french]
Bear in mind it’s currently a theory that has some good evidence and reasoning behind it, but which hasn’t been considered settled yet.
Searching for “Simcha Lev-Yadun tree leaves” got me some nice results, from the original (I think) article , to this pop-sci page
Argh, forgot I can’t do links the way I thought I could. One’s a link to wiley online (let’s see if I can write a link in an approved way: Wiley online library), the other was a Science Daily page.
I have read that it’s the colder night-time temperatures that stimulate the production of the red-carotonin proteins. Cooler temps – such as in the UK – and the yellower the leaves are.
Scandinavia and Continental Europe always have great autumn displays of leaves, where as the UK is variable.
Actually, it’s not just “America”. This is Indiana we are talking about, and its particular color-film defying coloration is locally associated with “Indian Summer” (which is actually supposed to be something else according to the dictionary).
Autumn is my favorite time of the year. I like them all but think Fall is beautiful.
I like winter snow, and spring buds and summer heat.
But still, Fall is my faoritie.
Great intro for these two :).
We’ve finally made it to a nother month people .
And I think for some reason we’ve started it off with some sort of emo Ruth
Wtf is ‘leafs’ ? -OH!
Cue 200 Internet Grammar-nazis
I hope Willis just Blocks them all.
Please make this happen.
I’m not a fan of prescriptivist grammar (people telling other people how they should speak or write), but it’s even worse when it’s some wanna-be who doesn’t understand why differences in pluralization exist.
Toronto Maple Leafs. The jersey she’s always wearing.
Jason, it all depends on the type of tree and if it gets a good deep frost the night before followed with lots of sunshine.
Gives the best colors. From the firey orange yellow above, to bright yellow, dark purple and deep red. Maples, oaks, and others all have their own colors.
Oh, I see. A time skip to give a realistic reason for the leaves changing, a visual aid for the recent changes in Joyce’s life.
I wonder if we’ll see Becky curse those leaves for not turning when she needed them to.
The trees never sprout leaves again.
(Becky is lady lesbian Jesus)
As opposed to when we had a timeskip so that we could fast-forward to the fruition of Mike’s assholery. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/04-time-keeps-on-slippin/year/ (Waaaaait, is Walky making a joke about how slow the timeline of this comic moves?)
This is how I feel about fall. Screw your PSL. The only good thing is Halloween
The day after Halloween is better. Discount candy beats even costumed revelry.
Personally, I love autumn for more moonlight and colder air.
Perverse
Sexual
Lust?
And we’re back to college angst. Life goes on.
Is Ruth coming down with Seasonal Affective Disorder?
are you saying she’s S.A.D?
Whoa, I so did not see that there like ever.
reminds me of onion article: “Seasonal Depression To Take Over For Chronic Depression For A Few Months”
Oooooooh time jump! Wonder what the reason for that is. Can’t wait to find out!
And yay, my favorite dysfunctional alcoholic queer girls are back, I missed you bbs.
Probably so Joyce can go back home for the weekend.
*plays Spandau Ballet’s “Only When You Leave” on the hacked Muzak*
I4ll go with Vivaldi’s 4 seasons.
Lately ‘Holding me Back’ by the Buddaheads has been reminding me less of Anakin Skywalker’s petulant rage during his fall to the Dark Side than of Joyce clawing her way past the toxic parts of the ideologies she was taught.
A four-day skip? WHAT IS THIS SORCERY
Fuck dead leaves! I’ll punch their babies!
Now let’s see how long it takes for Joyce to come back as the cool girl.
Ruth’s last line makes me think she needs some strip time with Carla. Carla would probably appreciate that kind of thinking.
Why the time jump?
Why not ?
Presumably it allows the cast to have already moved away from “holy shit there was a gunman on campus” and let things normalize a bit.
Most likely the immediate fallout of the Toepocalypse would have consumed much of the next day or two, and Willis probably wants to focus on different characters/plot developments for now.
To let the aftershocks of Ross’s psychotic episode fully filter through the Campus community and beyond.
I have no doubt that the RAs like Ruth may be under pressure from the Dean (because he is under pressure from the Trustees and the parents) to get an early warning of future problems. That may lead to Ruth acting out because of being under pressure (and Mary doubtlessly spreading slander that it was somehow Ruth’s fault).
Additionally, it allows Amber to fully digest Sal’s threats in the forest and decide on a reaction. It also allows the Browns to have come to some manner of a decision about how they’re going to respond to Joyce’s voice mail.
Seeing that, according to the preview panels, Joyce is meeting with her father and possibly returning home, I’d say it’s so we see the change in her relationship with her parents in a more immediate manner. If we didn’t have a time skip it would be a year in real life before we hit this point.
Sooo….. four days have passed since Toedad pulled out a rifle on campus. I would be curious to see the fallout from that. I wonder if people are still talking about it, or if the majority of students are too desensitized to care. It would be really unfortunate if the latter is the case.
Oh, and now we’re seeing some sober (I think) Ruth/ Billie interaction. Based on preview panels, it seems that we’ll be seeing quite a bit of those two in this new story-line.
*Four Days Later* ( A Friday )
Reminds me of something.
But Google thinks its this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se7yAkqu3Ek
So If Jesus walks in next panel to save Becky, be nice. Because he has procrastination superpowerz.
Wait… It’s been a month already?! Dang, I thought we were still mid-september.
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Skipping four days!? That’s like, 5 months of real world time!
Well Thursday began in September 2014. And Monday began August 2015. So it’s just about a year in real time.
I guess Walky was right on the money.
Jesus! I read the strip and immediately checked my calendar because I thought I’d gone into fugue until April….
(Yes, yes, I know, April fugue’s day. So droll.)
Is it me or is this the first time he’s jumpped in time like this?
Nope, he jumped four days when Mike bought Walky the pajama jeans, as Carriethedragon linked to in her post above.
We skipped Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of Week Two waiting for pajama jeans, and Thursday and Friday of Week Three studying with Dorothy between the fire alarm and the Parentpocalypse.
Ruth’s hair is a defiant tapestry of reds! She’s like an audaciously cheerful autumn tree all year round!
Yeah, I look forward to Winter as well. Once summer is over.
OMG. So I just wanted to know if red/orange/yellow leaves are technically dead or still alive when they’re on the tree. So I googled “are autumn leaves dead” and THIS WAS THE FIRST RESULT:
http://christiananswers.net/kids/autumnleaves.html
Google wants you to come to Jesus.
Ya think? I googled “4 days Later “and came here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se7yAkqu3Ek
Its Jesus Answers, all the way down
That’s deep, Ruth. You should post it on your DeadJournal.
Way to break the tension with pretentiousness.
What part of valar morghulis do you not understand?
The valar part.
Also the morghulis part.
Seriously nobody gave me a lexicon for that.
“All men must die.”
is a man.
(Try number 2) [insert favorite male politician here] is a man.
Of course the shooting happened on a Monday
The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload.
And nobody’s gonna go to school today,
She’s going to make them stay at home.
That was a jab at the Maple Leafs, wasn’t it.
We should have a poll for most tragic walkyverse/dumbiverse character.
I vote Faz (shortpacked)
Having a dad abandon you, and your mom somehow being connected to the korean mafia doesn’t make for a very happy childhood. If you think about it, this situation perfectly explains Faz’s personality. He truly does want to be loved, however he has know idea how the world works. Not only did his dad leave, never actually meeting his son (fuck you Blaine) but its entirely possible that his mom had more then one lover. (prostitute) he would have spent his childhood seeing creeps everyday. He gets it into his head that’s how you talk to people and you get a pervert who is immature enough to think his dad is a space pirate. (but hey thats just a theory, a webcomic theory!) Thanks for reading.
Although to be fair Faz might have turned out even worse if Blaine had been in his life, It’s sad when your such a piece of shit that the best thing you can do for your kid is fucking leaving.
We should have a poll for worst dumbiverse dad (walkyverse is probably pointless – fuck you, Blaine!).
I think Blaine still wins easily in the dumbiverse. He’s a special kind of asshole.
I’d pick Ross for worst.
Stop…stop making me feel these things for Faz.
Spoilers ahoy for anyone who’s only reading the It’s Walky! redux.
I think Tony from It’s Walky! could count.
Mostly he’s just completely pointless. He feels like he should be the strapping hero and center of Squad 128, and instead he dies, comes back as a ragezombie and lives in terror of losing control again, loses his father while he’s dead, loses his job to that Walky goob, loses his girlfriend to that British jerk, is completely inconsequential, and ultimately welcomes death when it comes to him.
I don’t know how much of it was intentional, but Tony’s tragic story arc, I thought, was one of the stronger elements of It’s Walky! for how it played around with established character tropes.
Hard to argue with all of that.
Potential runner-up might be Jason, for growing up with perhaps the most evil human Willis has ever written for a father, and not even being valued by him.
WV!Dorothy had it pretty bad too, but that’s J&W! spoilers and if I describe it here Willis is probably going to break my knees with a crowbar.
Or delete my post. One or the other.
He won’t break your kneecaps, he will however send you a strongly worded
e-mail. complete with a GIF of someone breaking someones kneecaps.
Quick Billy, bully the goth kid!
Four days timeskip? That’s a LOT of mouth smooches for Becky and Dina.
The last four days Becky and Dina have been locked in their room with nothing but the sound of giggling and heavy smooching echoing from inside.
Amber’s been forced to live in a tree and has been adopted by a family of squirrels.
SQUIRREL GIRL!!!
Amazi-Squirrel!!
Holy cow, they just skipped like a year’s worth of time!
Would it be very unreasonable of me to whine about wanting more Becky? I know that we just finished two heavy Becky-arks, but… WANNA MORE BECKY
NO, wish granted:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/morebecky/
Sweet!
It’s a good thing we can’t see her. That means she’s hiding well.
Finally a tree color more to her liking.
My headcanon is now that every time we see a tree with autumn color, Becky will be climbing it.
Becky camouflage, just 4 days late…
God DO answer lesbian prayers but is a bit of a slowpoke
I prefer Gyrados.
Well tree leaves take time to change and she had only just asked. What do you want? A miracle?
Sometimes, Ruth’s maudlin self-pity clearly rubs Billie up the wrong way. I’m wondering if this chapter is going to address just how healthy or unhealthy their relationship actually is.
OH SHIT ITS THE FUTURE
The way this strip is laid out is really lovely!
The Clarkson in me wants to identify all the cars in this comic after the red Mazda and the Toedadmobile were so important to the last story. From left to right: 2006-07 Honda Accord sedan, not sure what the middle SUV is, and a couple-generations-old Toyota RAV4?
Not very deep, no, but a very astute observation of situational irony.
“audacious” … great word.
I love Autumn, especially Autumn Leaves (Eva Cassidy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXBNlApwh0c or Miles Davis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsz6TE6t7-A ).
Sadly there’s no Autumn in Indianapolis so I have to make do with Autumn in New York. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO2Ij1eO-GQ
Or maybe just a damp lacklustre British Autumn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhtKWfsoym4
Sad, minor discordant chords with a hint of defiance. Do not go gently …
Ruth’s cynical. Billie’s cynical about her cynicism.
I’m reminded of the Doctor Who line that sad is “happy for deep people”. I’m also reminded that Steven Moffat was asked if he actually believed that and replied “God, no”. Billie would approve.
Eats, shoots, and leaves.
4 days later? That’s like a year and a half’s worth or strips. Don’t be getting lazy on us now.
Jk…have a good Thanksgiving.
Leif’s belief leaves the Leafs’ leafy sleeves. Relief! Go Habs Go!
“Ha ha! Screw you, stupid leaves! I get to live for another season!”
All these people freaking out over a four-day time skip. As if every day in these people’s lives need to involve a personal epiphany or tragic accident.
The second “people” refers to the characters.
You mean you have days without personal drama? How boring. You should fire your writer.
I’m with Ruth here. Fuck the dying leaves and their mold.
Leafs, not leaves.
Oh, wait.
Actually technically the color is generated when leaves basically pass through a period that imitates decomposition (tho controlled by the trees hormones) so it has that color because IT’S ALREADY A CORPSE… Just let that sink it
OK, we just jumped forward 4 days in DOA/Willis time. Does that mean that today is September 4, 2016 now in real time?
Sliding timescale.
DoA is always going to take place in the fall of 20XX.
DoA is always concurrent with Mega Man X.
I look forward to Maverick Hunter Joyce and her battles against Sigma.
So like, is it any of the Dumbs who gives speeches with armor pieces, or is it Leslie?
Woah, so we just skipped over about five years worth of comics?!
And their comments sections!
That would Hammy from Over the Hedge sad.
“And then I go eat at Arby’s.”
Is this why you originally decided to make Ruth’s hair red, Willis? She’s really pretty and then she dies?
hmmmm
Yeah. If it’s fall, it’ll take at least a few months of the Leafs to fall off and die.
But just like the leaves, they will. Every year. Without fail. It’s nature.