We don’t have any evidence of that. We know that they planned to have a gay old time, as evidenced by the fact that they say “We’ll have a gay old time”. But that’s in future tense, declaring their intention to have such, implying that it has not happened yet. We never actually learn if their goal is successful.
People used “gay” to talk about homosexuality in a coded way even in the early 1900s. For example, you would be able to say “would you like to go to a party with me this weekend? It’s going to be a gay old time!” at work, in public, or anywhere. Everyone else would think you were talking about a fun party, but to those in the know, it meant homosexual. Source: “Gay New York” by George Chauncey. (It goes into a lot of the coded language and behaviors in homosexual communities in NY from the 1890’s to the 1970’s.)
Or care. At this point, it’s clearly not actual concern that Willis would actually break his rule, but, it’s just a meme like ‘faaaace’ or ‘for a nickle’.
Or a comment about the characters’ apparent unconcern for Dina.
I like to think that Becky took up her concerns for her girlfriend with the police, and has received reassuring news, in the past hour or so, and that were just weren’t shown it because it wasn’t dramatic or funny. I seem to recall that Becky never shared the other characters’ propensity to overlook, ignore, and forget Dina.
Don’t forget, none of them have any idea that Dina actually encountered Toedad. Last anyone knew, Becky & Dina ran away into the woods and Ross later appeared in the car at the fountain. When Becky asked if he’d hurt Dina, he just said “I don’t know who that is”.
Honestly, I’d expect them to be trying to reach Dina mostly to reassure her that Becky’s alright.
No, gay is what is measured. A Gayscale, if you will. There doesn’t seem to be units for it, but it’s measured a bit like how Americans get the metric system explained to them. Like “10 cm?, What?”
“The width of an apple.”
“Oh, okay.”
Doorknobs are about a meter off the floo~oo~oor
A Popsickle stick’s about a decimeter/A little bit less or a little bit more
And if you’re using a staple to fasten the words to this so~o~ong
You’ll find that a staple is just about a centimeter lo~o~ong!
Here in the UK, where we (mostly) use the metric system, cannabis is still sold in ounces or halves/quarters/eighths/sixteenths of ounces. So are you telling me that in the metric-resistant US, it’s sold in grams? Because that would be fantastic 😀
cannabis is in ounces in the US as well. i think they were referring to other drugs, like cocaine, which is in grams and kilos. the US has metric in some weird places, actually. we drink 2 liter bottles of pop, but drink milk in quarts and gallons.
I’m Canadian, and in grade 3, when we were learning about the different magnitudes of length, we were taught that a decametre (10cm) was the width of a floppy disk.
There have been calls for the myria- prefix to be added to the list of approved SI prefixes though. Personally I like it and think it should be included.
Then again, I also think the numbers one millillion (10^6000) and one millimillillion (10^6million) sound cool. xD
‘Myria’ would be a terrible SI prefix.
1) It breaks the pattern of the super-Hecto prefixes in having the exponent as a multiple of 3. (And sub-Centi are multiples of -3.)
2) There’s no symbol available for it. M, m, and μ are all in use and capital μ is identical to M.
The symbol for Myria- was apparently “My” (or “my”) but was later changed to just M, which was then superceded by M standard for Mega- (1000) and became obsolete.
Canadians tend not to. Oh, we’re all taught them, but I’ve never heard anyone say anything other than “10 cm”.
It’s about the length of your palm, and a cm is about the width of your pinkie nail. But I’ve always thought of 10 cm as “about a third of a foot”.
Canadians are in sort of a weird limbo between metric and Imperial right now. The program that was supposed to supervise the switch over to metric got axed. So Officialdom will want to know your height and weight in metric; and we all know that in inches and pounds. And we take temperatures for sick people in Imperial (unless you’re a doctor), but temperatures for weather in Celsius (which just makes more sense, sorry). Distances are measured in kilometres; but for shorter ones you can use either centimetres/metres or inches/feet pretty interchangeably. Mileage can be measured in either miles per gallon (which is how I tend to think) or litres per 100 km; but that at least is switching over to metric since dealerships dropped the mpg rating and only use the l/100km now.
Our food is sold in grams, but the amounts for a lot of things are still Imperial-sized, so you get 454 grams of butter (because that’s a pound), and cans are all in sizes that make sense when you convert to fluid ounces; but milk is in litres, and dry pasta is usually in sensible things like 500 grams. It’s a strange place.
why is it that governments have to make laws to force people to use the metric system in the first place? surely if people are simply given the choice they will use the system that is more useful for them.
of course they will, and they do. the problem is that while metric is more useful for scientific measurement because of being arbitrarily in base 10, Imperial on the other hand is far superior for measuring things that humans can use as it has evolved over thousands of years of use by humans and was originally build around human proportions before becoming standardized.
You know how 3 English feet make 1 yard? If you instead use 3 of the French pieds, you get almost exactly 1 metre.
People who say the former is designed for human use, but not the latter, are almost always just talking about what they have personally gotten used to.
Imperial is the enforced measuring system of the British Empire, not some perfect evolution of measurements. Prior to British standardization people used all kinds of odd measurements, like “the volume of the amount of hay a strong man can gather in a day” and things like that. People use what they are taught and call it “more natural” when they have trouble with other systems.
So it’s not strange that governments try to enforce changes to measurements in the name of standardization. People adapt and in a generation or so the new thing is the “natural” one.
Imperial is the measuring system of the British Empire (based largely on the Roman system) that is correct just as Metric was the measuring system of the French Revolution,
both are equally arbitrary and we could just as easily use a system based on Hexadecimal or Binary to denote that we live in a digital age.
but for all it’s supposed inferiority I bet you still use Imperial time of a 24 hour day rather than Decimal Time which consists of 10 hour days composed of 100 minuets each. makes a 40hr work weeks brutal AF.
somehow though I don’t see you asking your employer to pay you only for the 4.8 Decimal hours rather than the standard 8 imperial hours of a normal work shift.
Same reason that King Offa of Mercia had to make a law to force people to use a standard pound, or King Edward had to make a law to force people to use a standard yard, or Queen Elizabeth had to make a law to change the mile from 5,000 feet to 5,280 feet (so that it would be a round number of furlongs). Same reason that the British Empire made a law in 1824 to standardise the Imperial gallon, pint, and fluid ounce. Someone in there increased the pound from twelve ounces to fifteen then sixteen.
Government have been legislating to standardise weights and measures for thousands of years, and government action has always been needed to impose uniform standards and to change and simplify systems.
Yes, some systems are inherently “more natural” than others. Okay, so everyone in the British Empire used the Imperial system of weights and measures, and it made sense to them because they had always used it. But there is still a definition of “natural” whereby the Metric system is “more natural” than Imperial.
Why do I say that? Because the Imperial system uses an oddball collection of multipliers to get from one unit to the next. 12 inches=1 foot, 3 feet=1 yard, 5.5 yards(?!) = 1 rod, 4 rods=1 chain, 10 chains=1 furlong, 8 furlongs=1 mile. Okay I’ll admit, if you’ve grown up with that bizarre assortment of units, calculating with them would be fine (probably), but an outside person willing to learn them would find it difficult. Whereas the metric system, with the constant multipler of 10 (or 1000) is much easier for an outsider to learn, simply because it has a constant multiplier. (The only reason so many Brits have trouble learning the Metric system is quite simple….they don’t want to).
I myself am not anti-Imperial units; I was brought up with them (the law forcing the usage of Metric came in in the mid-late 90s, as I recall, when I was in secondary school). It’s quite handy actually, as most things these days are listed in Metric units, and I’m pretty good at converting them into Imperial for my dad to understand (he’s one of the ones I mentioned above who never wanted to learn Metric weights and measures). I also have to convert Celsius (which is arguably Metric) to Fahrenheit (which is arguably more like Imperial) ‘cos he doesn’t understand that one either.
Basically though, as others have said, governments have to impose laws forcing standardised and easily-calculable measurements, otherwise everybody would simply measure things in a way that best suited them – ie. shops would use it as a perfect excuse to short-change all their customers, everything would weigh as much or as little as you said it did, it would be a mess.
And to the above comment about using non-“Metric” time (you mean non-decimal, but I’ll let that slide) – I would love to use a Decimalised system of time units. 100 seconds = 1 minute, 100 minutes = 1 hour, 10 hours = 1 day. And if someone could figure out a way to make the year exactly 360 days long (or better yet, 300), that would be perfect! 🙂 But you’d need to get every country in the world to agree to such a fundamental change in the way we measure out periods of time (as the current standard is basically global now), and all change at the together. Let’s face it, how likely is that to happen?
…when we eventually get off this rock properly and start living on other worlds, perhaps we’ll come up with a more straightforward, decimal time system for those planets; since, after all, each planet would need its own system anyway, as each planet would have a different day length, year length, and year/day ratio….
Also Canadian here, and I always have to convert to find out how many kilos I weigh. Also, never used a decimeter to describe the length of ANYTHING in real life, and I have a background in interior design, where measuring things is kinda important.
Also, Fahrenheit is a strange language I do not understand. I prefer the system of 100 = boiling water and 0 = freezing water, thank you very much. 🙂
And we take temperatures for sick people in Imperial
I’ve never seen anyone born after 1970 do that.
Case in point…about 2 years ago, my niece had a low-grade fever, and when her mother called my parents to tell them, they had to ask me what body temperature was in Celsius – because that’s what she’d given them.
I miss when floppy disks were relevant. I don’t miss how a single essay would fill the damn thing up sometimes, but they were nice. Then everything changed when the flash drives attacked. Which could only hold about a single essay in the beginning.
*Looks at my 3 inch AMSTRAD-brand floppy disks* Oh well then…
But yeah, the “3.5 inch” standard IBM-compatible floppies were by far the most common. My gran for years had a BBC Micro PC which used the older 5.25 inch floppy disks (and unlike the smaller ones, they genuinely *were* floppy too xD)
I know that. But in the case of the 5.25inch floppies, the outer case was also floppy. 3.5inch floppies had a hard outer case to protect the flexible medium inside. 🙂
That can’t be wright. Everybody knows that when Americans need to have metric measurements explained to them, the explanation must include “football fields” somewhere.
Yes yes Joyce and Dorothy, we get that you’ve both been kinda hiding from each other recently and you’re both feeling sorry about it now ‘cos of the near-deathness…so kiss and make-out already!
…um I think I meant “kiss and make up”… yeah, that’s what I meant. >_>
actually, wait. the only case in which you’d have to choose one over the other would be if you are space-limited. so, whatever fits, i guess! but that’s buttsex for you
i’m sure you planned it out ahead of time that your comic would be cracking a gay Republican joke on the same night as another one of those Republican circlejerk things
Nono, these are just the debates for the primaries. The primaries run next February through June. Then we have the debates between the actual Presidential candidates, and then the election! 😀
Geez, the US elections are THAT long coming? Over here (UK) the party leaders start heading up their campaigns proper in March or April, and the election is then held in early May. Then it’s all over by the day after the results are in. 🙂
Hey, we only get to do this every four years so we need the time to work ourselves up to enough apocalyptic frenzy that we won’t notice that nothing really changes.
They weren’t always this bad. I think we’ve given up on getting the actual people in office to do anything substantive, so we’ve started focusing on who we’ll replace them with.
pretty much the only difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is what flavor you want the erosion of your basic human rights and ever growing tyrannical dictatorship in.
We have similar problems here in the UK – the two main parties are the Conservatives and Labour, but they’re basically as bad as each other. And actually, they have policies that are so similar, you might as well just vote for which guy has the nicer face (hence Cameron leading the Tories in power, against Ed Miliband…and now against Jeremy Corbyn).
And because they’re so similar – and both just as rubbish – we don’t bother to try to get them to do anything good, but neither do we bother planning who we’re gonna replace them with, because we know the replacement will be just as rubbish as they are. So instead we just moan about how all MPs are useless and/or corrupt, and leave it at that. That’s why voter turnout is never usually above 60%.
(And in some areas, you get some people who say that the whole of British democracy is just crap and we should get rid of it all and give the power back to the crown. Not sure if reverting to absolute monarchy would be the best road forward right now, but could it really be much worse? lol)
Her father is OK, she may not have realized that Dina maybe isn’t OK, she’s OK, everyone she knows is OK… also she may just be joking as a way of coping.
Either way, its been at least 20 minutes since they were at the park.
I think it’s because she has so much levity even though the story is telling you this is serious.
It’d be like if Arale showed up and Beat up Cell. It’d be really weird for such a silly gag character to fight such a villainous biomechanical man eating bug man.
She just broke her hand punching out a man who weighs four times what she does, and had to be physically restrained from beating him into a stain on the grass, while cursing and taking the lord’s name in vain for the first time in eighteen years.
She didn’t break it, it’s merely a sprain or a strain. That’s not a cast she wearing, that’s a wrist brace meant to hold the wrist and hand steady to prevent any additional stress and pain. She should be out of that in a week, which means that for the next year (real-time) Willis will need to either draw this every time we see Joyce or camouflage it underneath long-sleeve shirts, sweaters, or sweatshirts.
Like he did in the panel of Joyce and her dad scheduled to appear 1/31/2016.
Becky has had a stress that’s been looming since before she even got on the bus to Bloomington. I’m sure she’s feeling quite relieved, and will have plenty of time later to realize how close to death she was on multiple occasions in the last few hours. It won’t be fun.
I think she’s still giddy about being rescued. I mean, there’s so much she’ll probably internalize as deep deep scars. But right now, she’s safe, her dad’s going to jail, and she’s not going to some sort of hellish torture camp.
Besides the fact that she’s all jelly and wants to be sandwiched, I’d say she’s riding a high right now that will collapse into tears much much later.
Yeah, between the adrenaline and Becky’s general “ssh, no worries, focus on right now” attitude/coping mechanism (because seriously, I think both our darling fundies manage their trauma by just putting it off as long as they can,) I doubt we’re going to see her actually react to all of this until she’s alone in her room again and trying to sleep or something.
At which point, I really hope she has SOMEONE to comfort her then, because whenever she crashes it’s going to be HARD.
I think Joyce just remembered how she herself was avoiding Dotty because she knew about herself and Ethan and how Sarah told Joyce that Dotty would no longer be her friend if she found out about Ethan and so she was afraid when she learned that Dotty did know about Ethan being gay. Now that Dotty is apologizing, Joyce probably feels a bit awkward.
I could see Sal and Sarah getting fed up with everyone around them moping and tiptoeing around each other by shoving all of the principles in a closet.
I don’t think she’s really relaxed and okay with things. I’m pretty sure this is a mask she’s hiding behind, because in her mind, she’s “supposed” to be loud and fun.
She doesn’t really need a mask right now. The thing she was most afraid of happened and instead of it wrecking her life Joyce came for her. She. Came. For. Her. And now she knows she’s not alone, she’s free from her dad, most of her fear is gone and everyone came out without permanent damage as far as she knows right now. Even her dad lived so she doesn’t have to feel anything about his wellbeing, only that he’s not going to be able to come after her anytime soon.
This must feel strange. Joyce avoided her best friend for ah… days? And just before the whole Toedad mess happend, she decided -with a push from Sal and outdoor panic- to call her. It must be super surreal to have Dorothy apologizing now.
I don’t think Dorothy has realized how grave the danger for Becky was because for once, she was to much stuck on the scenario in her head.
We don’t know if they have told her much about what happened yet. She’s not even in reporter-mode.
Becky will, as we alread know, grab at anything that keeps the mood up to avoid showing her feelings. Both ‘Dorothy stole Joyce’ and the Dingdong bandit are valid topics there…
I think its Spider Man coping mechanism.
I do that too. You smile, laugh, joke and actually manage to cover up the stress as long as you have people around you.
Its when you are alone and undistracted when everything comes crushing down.
It’s a coping mechanism. Becky feels alienated and alone, so she acts out to draw attention to herself. (I’m not discounting her friends, this is how she feels, it doesn’t have to reflect reality.) I was kind of a goofball in high school, I cracked stupid (sometimes offensive) jokes to get attention.
I’d be worried if she wasn’t doing it – trying to make friends is better than giving up.
Not true in all cases. Possibly not true in Becky’s, we have no idea of the bathroom arrangements at her house after her Mother died. Toedad’s robe may not have met all the way.
Koalas have bifurcated penises. Maybe if I see one I’ll finally realize I’m koala sexual. Oh wait, I never needed to see a vagina to know women were for me and men… much less so. Silly me.
I get that, but be careful of that particular joke. It’s one of the main justifications that people use to “correctively rape” dykes. Even the chance that someone would mean that terrifies me on the regular.
That’s probably where they show a 2 second shot of one of the Log Cabin Republicans, so they can honestly claim that gay people are visible members of the Republican Party.
Anti-gay crusader Republican politicians getting caught trying to pick up dudes in truck stop bathrooms or sexually harassing their same-sex interns and so on is so common that it’s not even news anymore.
It’s a bunch of overly sweaty men trying to impress a bunch of other overly sweaty men by yelling a lot to demonstrate who is the biggest asshole. Sounds pretty gay to me. And why is gay not in my spellchecker’s vocabulary?
As a Republican lawmaker continues to rail against LGBT rights, the probability that s/he will be found in a public bathroom soliciting sex from a person of the same gender approaches 1.
Based on the theory that homophobes are often closet gay, and the observation that many notable (and homophobic) Republicans have been found, say, trying to hook up with men in public restrooms. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal)
Not so much a theory as a thing that happens. Self repression leads to self hatred which leads to external hatred. Basicly they hate themselves so they hate anyone else that’s like what about themselves they hate.
Compartmentalisation. They’re so in denial that I guess that to some of them it’s like having a drug addiction or something – they get their “fix”, they hide their secret and then they live deep in denial until the next time it gets too much.
The first time I ever watched the Daily Show, they did a segment on the Republican National Convention. After showing a montage of every speaker having the same terrible haircut, Jon Stewart said “You see? This is what happens when you won’t let gay people touch your hair”.
Becky didn’t survive a car crash caused by her absuive dad fighting a superhero in the middle of a highway to settle for entry-level lesbianism, goddamn it!
I scrolled down to find out if anyone else had wondered this as well. In her right hand, she holds trauma… and JUSTICE. Her left hand is free for a comically large calculator.
Tha party for Joyce was supposed to be a safe event. Guests were vetted, no oe that Joyce was uncomfortable with. She wasn’t supposed to think about the *bad* party. It was the fact that drinking happened, and Joyce was disappointed. (Billie said it shouldn’t matter since it was roofies that caused the incident, not booze) It was the principle of the thing.
Triggers are often annoyingly illogical. Like, the most random ass shit can put you in a flashback because “oh I was wearing this outfit” or “I was thinking about this comic” or whatnot. It’s absolutely possible that she developed a trigger around drinking simply because that was probably the first party Joyce ever had with drinking (given her sect’s views on alcohol) even though that had nothing to do directly with the assault.
I once spent a semester of school having debilitating panic attacks, then got flashbacks to it a year later from using the same shower gel (the smell did it). Triggers are fucking stupid.
I think the high pedestal that Joyce puts Dorothy on, combined with some bad associations with the last party that Joyce went to, made Joyce uncomfortable when Dorothy got drunk.
There is also the fact that Sal told Joyce that if she had done something-or-other she would alienate Dorothy. Joyce did whatever-it-was and hasn’t got around to confessing it to Dorothy yet.
It’s like, say you know that the host of the party you’re attending is very liberal, and you decide to bring Mike Huckabee as your plus-one. It’s kind of a dick move.
I… I had never before realized how much I want someone to bring Mike Huckabee to one of my (liberal, poly, bi, heathen, etc…) friends’ parties. Oh my god it would be no end of hilarity.
Or she’s fine and probably waiting for Becky to get back. She shows up in a preview panel for January 28 and she seems perfectly fine. Given how slow time passes in comic, it probably takes place not much later after this. http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/131265907762/january-28-2016-rest-easy
I would prefer that her supposed friends showed a little more concern for her wellbeing. But then they have been remarkably oblivious of her for a long time.
It was practically the first thing out of Becky’s mouth when Ross turned up at the fountain with the gun. Becky probably thinks she’s fine since Ross said he hadn’t hurt anybody. (For asshole values of ‘hurt’, apparently, but Becky doesn’t know that.) Other than Joyce, who also heard him say that, I don’t think anyone else even knows Dina was involved.
Yeah, and I suppose that the others — Ambazi-Girl, Dorothy, and Sal are the only regular cast characters we’ve seen since the Return of the Astounding Toe — have no reason to be particularly concerned, since they don’t know that Dina was with Becky when the Encounter with the Mad Toe occurred, and so have no cause for concern.
I’ll be really pleased if Sal has gone to check on Dina and bring her to Dina. As poor Joyce needs the comfort of her bonily Platonic Poindexter, how much more does Becky need comforting by her girlfriend?
They have been kinda focused on other things. Knowing the way the mind works, I’m sure Becky’s gonna go, ‘… OMG Dina!’ and go running off, at some point. Give it time.
Eh, they have the word of someone who was also quick to hurt people and has a habit of not seeing her secular friends as people. Sooo…. Becky is probably internally trying to believe in the best case scenario while fearing the worst and might be keeping one ear out for someone mentioning a girl in a dinosaur hat coming in.
Maybe. I think she’s taking him at his word, but there’s also been so much trauma heaped on her and Joyce today and she’s not all there yet.
Since we already know Dina’s okay, she’ll probably show up around the time Becky asks about her. Plus since she’s got Dina’s phone Becky can’t easily contact her.
On the other hand, there’s not just Dina’s physical well-being to be concerned about. She’s a tiny, un-confident, non-straight, minority woman with inadequate social contacts and a negligent and incompetent RA who has just lost a fistfight with a huge and violent racist bigot. I hope someone is expressing sympathy by means of light physical contact.
Dorothy’s one of my favourite characters in the strip at the moment. She’s representing a common feat a lot of us have (what if the last thing I said to them was an argument, or something unfriendly, etc.). Beyond that, she’s honestly one of the most grounded and… non-depressed characters in the strip, which is something that’s refreshing when the other stars are Joyce/Ruth/Billie/Sal/Amber.
I am glad to see Dorothy/ Joyce interaction in the comic again. I’ve missed that these past several months.
Joyce had been on the verge of telling Dorothy about her fear of being outside alone before all of this happened. Now, after everything that happened with Toedad, I suspect that’s not going to come up at this point in time.
Meanwhile, Joyce has experienced another traumatic incident. That should make for some interesting character development, but also a whole lot of pain and suffering for Joyce.
Joyce got off easier than any other person involved but Sal.
She got a wild ride, and a change to release a lot of rage by punching out Toedad- a great standin for her try to be rapist.
She ended up with a sprained wrist.
Her best friend was kidnapped by gun by her crazy dad. Taken on a wild ride. Hit by her father. Was in a roll over car accident.
Don’t forget, Becky also tends to avoid and bottle up these things even more than Joyce does. Her response to the car crash was that excited “Again!” after all, and she made it a whole day before the reveal of “I’m on the run from my dad” without tipping Joyce off that anything was wrong. I think at the moment avoiding it and joking about things and, to a degree, having Joyce to worry about rather than what just happened and could have happened to her is all her way of coping. Not a particularly good method, we’ve seen how it works with Joyce after all, but for now it keeps her running and maybe it’ll do until things have gotten more permanently settled.
Speaking from personal experience, using the keep on moving method to avoid drifting into despair can help one be really productive about keeping one’s life together or building a new life, but presents one hefty bill on the day you no longer need to keep running.
So, if Becky is anything like me on that, I expect we’ll see her breaking into tears a bit when everything is finally happy and stable for her.
When you go through something like what Becky went through, it may well give her nightmares for awhile. But, I don’t think she will agonize over it. She is so much better off now than she was 24 hours ago, and she is smart enough to know it.
Joyce was on the outskirts of the action. She got a wild motorcycle ride and a chance to let out a ton of rage on Toedad with a great right cross. I can’t see where she will have nightmares over any of it, but maybe the ride will.
Sal, just another day’s work.
Amber, is a mental mess already. And now she has physical wounds to match. And where is she?
I wonder if Dorothy is having second thoughts about her support of Amazi-girl. Her statement in the first panel (before she knew about the shooting) was that maybe someone was doing some petty vandalism. She might now be worried that Amazi-girl was getting in over her head.
So Dorothy manages to win back the ‘all-time good girl’ award by showing how very sorry she is for betraying Joyce’s trust. She is a very good friend with very strong morals and, frankly Joyce probably won’t be able to do better for a best friend right now.
What I like about this long-term arc is that it humanises Dorothy. She has previously come across as a bit unrealistic – too high-minded, principled and, not to beat around the bush, perfect to be completely plausible. The fact that she made an enormous mistake (possibly in an attempt to impress Walky) and now bitterly regrets it makes her seem far more like a real college Freshman who is struggling to find the balance of having an adult’s freedoms whilst also having an adult’s maturity.
Becky, I know that this may surprise and horrify you, but people can be friends without there being a romantic component. You really, really need to get over Joyce and you need to get over your fantasy that someone ‘stole her’ from you.
I think its more about Becky realizing just how gay her “platonic friendship” with Joyce was now that she is seeing Joyce recreating those dynamics (because that’s how platonic friendships look to Joyce) with Dorothy. And it probably keeps triggering her jealousy, because she a) yes, has a crush on Dorothy, but also b) somewhat misses that nebulous phase with Joyce, when she was just crushing out in this deeply homoerotic friendship.
So, with Dorothy, she sees from the outside just how gay her friendship with Joyce was and also gets hit with being outside of that particular dynamic (the dynamic of friendship they are building now is better, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting for Becky and her insecurities) and feeling “locked out” of that particular flavor of closeness (even if they are actually closer than ever currently, thanks to their new dynamic and what they’ve weathered together).
Yeah, I think Becky is internally going “Was this how we looked were we like this ALL THE TIME before God how did no one catch on and get us in trouble years ago?” a little.
This strip resonates a lot with me. Dorothy is so worried, she only heard what happend second hand, she could just imagine how her friends were doing. She begins to understand how scary the world Joyce and Becky come from is, and is even more awed about Joyce standing up to her parents for her.
We know how much ‘perfect cinnamon roll’ Dorothy means for Joyce. It’s heartwarming to see that it works both ways.
I think I need some backstory here. What exactly did Dorothy do at this party that both she and Joyce seem to think is so terrible? I remember her and lots of others getting drunk (or at least tipsy) on Billie’s secret stash, but that was about it. True, Ruth came and gatecrashed it, but it’s not like she ruined the evening either.
I very much like the casual way Becky is with Dorothy now. Realising AmaziGirl isn’t an affection nickname give to Dorothy by Joyce has really lofted her hostility.
It’s moments like this where I think “wtf Dorothy you can have a character flaw” but I guess this kind of is her thing? Taking responsibility for every terrible thing that happens in her vicinity as if she’s personally responsible for not solving every problem she comes across, and being torn up about hurting someone, even completely unintentionally, even though if someone else did the same to her she’d be willing to let it slide.
Roz (Robin, Riley, and an undefined but implied large number of other sisters), if she counts as main. (She does have a cast page entry.)
Amber has at least Faz. If the other universe is a guide, Rose is her half-sister, too. Of course, there’s a difference between a sibling growing up in the same house, and your father scattering his genes across half the Midwest.
Dorothy and Joyce both are afraid to disappoint their friends. They are adorable together like that. Just look at poor Joyce, she still has trouble accepting that she was allowed to be upset that Dorothy did something that hurt her.
Yeah. Even Joyce eventually realized that it wasn’t so tremendously huge a deal or that it was but Dorothy is more important to her than being angry at her, but Dorothy seems to have been feeling guilty about it for days now. She seems like the kind of person who just gets swallowed up with guilt if they do anything to harm someone else, but she also just casually puts up with a lot of stuff from, say, Walky or even Joyce herself.
It can be a control thing too. For some people “taking responsibility” can be a way of attempting to assert control. It’s easily taken advantage of by the wrong others.
I think it’s more that Dorothy feels that if she can do something, then she should, and if something goes wrong when she could have gotten involved, then she’s to blame on some level. When she first found out that Ethan was gay her first idea was to lament she wasn’t more hands on in trying to steer Joyce away from dating him.
I think that’s part of her drive to be a politician. She wants to change the world for the better and help where she can, in the most impactful way she can. In this way, she has a similar drive to Amazi-girl, which might be why she said to her “All my dreams are decades from being realized, but what you do… I envy you for being able to live your dream now.”:
I think what you describe is her character flaw… or rather an aspect of herself that can cause her to be overly hard on herself.
Dorothy has always been defined in this universe by her ambition and her desire to improve herself and be the best person she can be, morally. And part of that is that she is extra rough on herself with regards to her empathy and is prone to being harsh with herself when she perceives herself as hurting someone (I mean, her first arc in the whole series is her debating and going back and forth on hurting someone simply because it is necessary due to them wanting different things in the relationship).
The other part is when her empathy and ambition collide as we saw in the “learning about Amber’s secret” arc, her empathy tends to win. She’ll put aside her academic progress or a glowing piece of career work to do right by someone. (This means she has made her goals extra difficult, by wanting to succeed as a politician while also being a woman, an atheist, a feminist, and as seen, a person of conscience who doesn’t want to succeed at another person’s expense).
Her other main character conflict is her relationship with societal sexism, trying to reconcile her sex drive with a future where powerful women aren’t really allowed publicly to admit to being sexual creatures.
Spot on (I wish I had phrased my original post better because it seems to come off antagonistically).
I wonder how much Dorothy thinks that being the absolute best person she can be is something she needs to do. Like, if she falters in one area, if she caves and acts selfish (in a way that anyone else would just brush off because it’s impossible to always do the right thing), then everything about her would collapse because she wasn’t inflexibly moral.
She’s shown to be flexible morally, but that she has a lot of debate about where her goals are in conflict. Like, her notes with Joyce about being scared about being herself with regards to her sexuality and enjoying sex when she knows that will make her political goals harder. Or feeling conflicted about taking time off for mental health care or to hang with loved ones. And her empathy and practicality debated a lot with regards to Danny.
So I think it’s less a “everything will collapse if I fail my morality” and more a “if I make the wrong decision, will that fuck me over irreparably”?
Yeah, “collapse” was the wrong word since it implies that failure would totally break her in the same way that Amber “failing” would, but I think Dorothy kind of bases her sense of self worth on having to live up to her own expectations, and she’s been coming out of that as the series goes on and realizing how to be studious and achieving without getting wrapped up in it, and also allowing herself to not have to be Perfect Amazing Dorothy all the time.
I think you’re right on that. In that, she’s a good counterpart to Amber in that way as well. Both struggle with perfectionism and high standards, but Dorothy adapts to them for her mental well-being and Amber uses them as a tool to injure herself.
Becky is totally the gay version of me. Well, I’m not raised religious but my family is mad crazy, so that counts?
And yes. I mean also mean “Becky before people started liking her character”.
And that’s kinda an important thing. A lot of the times, especially with those standing up against asshole parents on sexuality fronts, the real battle and the real separation is about that core self you just can’t betray by pretending to be what you’re not.
And that’s often a risk that comes with a lot of pain, but when one succeeds at it, like Becky did, it comes with a lot of triumph and feelings of inner strength. Becky weathered the long dark toe-time of the soul and she’s come out battered, but just as Becky as she started.
Y’know, eventually Joyce is going to have to tell Becky about the Whiteboard Ding-dong Bandit incident… before someone else does. I wonder if she’s realised that? XD
Well, only Amber and Sierra know that she was the one who did it and Sierra didn’t believe her, so, even if she does hear about it, it’s just going to be “wacky mishap” with “awesome superhero lady who saved me from my dad” rather than that was an embarrassing moment for Joyce.
Hmm…. maybe Dorothy is the one who might be bi after all, not Joyce. She certainly hasn’t been discouraging Joyce’s unusual “platonic lady friendship” gestures.
Though she might be more willing to let a friendship be a bit… gal-pal looking, even if she is 100% straight, not only just because she’s a really laid back and comfortable with her sexuality woman, but also because as a proud atheist in very Christian areas, she’s had difficulties keeping platonic friendships, so she may be more inclined to let one be what it is as well as not having the richest amount of comparisons to draw on. I mean, her parents noted this earlier:
That… might actually happen. Becky and Joyce were very centrally located for a lot of the kidnapping and threats and so may be requested to provide their evidence in his trial. And that might be a big emotional deal for both of them as both will likely be thought of as traitors by the folks back home for testifying against a “godly” man. Plus, I imagine it is not easy to face your own father in court, nor is it easy to face your own abuser in court, so Becky might end up being hit by a lot of emotions when that happens, including potentially trained in shame or self-doubt.
So, yeah, we could actually see a more Becky-focused arc surrounding court hijinks within a couple of years.
I’m hoping that when we see that upcoming storyline with Joyce at home, the elder Browns surprise me and end up deciding to help Becky, which might shield her from some of the crap that will no doubt be occurring in that community. (And definitely provide her with some better financial grounding)
I’m hoping that, but my expectation is that that storyline is going to end with the first true crack between Joyce and her parents and a break that’ll only get worse.
At least that kind of trial probably wouldn’t go down for at least a couple months in-universe, so probably not for like a decade our-time.
Next panel — the Dean (remember him?) comes by to speak with Joyce.
“What happened out on the highway between you and Beckie’s father is a complete secret, so, naturally the whole school knows.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You all realize, of course, that in the past few days you and Miss McIntyre have broken perhaps a dozen school rules.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that there is sufficient evidence to have you expelled.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Therefore, it is only fitting that you both receive… ‘Special Awards for Services to the School’ “.
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How about Flintstones gay?
You’ll get a bone alright.
Is… that a thing?
Well there’s rule 34, but never heard about the Flinstone version.
Trust me, there’s Rule 34 of The Flintstones. Couple different movies, actually.
Amen to that. Straight, gay, swinging, and even bestial. Why should Dino get left out?
Go look at the Flinstones song, its a thing.
“You’ll have a gay old time” is right in the theme song.
But everyone was having a gay old time back in those days.
Even the appliances?
Especially the appliances.
“Eh, it’s a living…”
This thread took a wonderful turn somewhere.
Around the point when Cheetodust came in
Yes, but then we’re right back to Republican National Convention level gay.
“We’ll have a gay OLD time”
GOP = Gay Olde Party
PAX = Poff Amazing Xylophones
We don’t have any evidence of that. We know that they planned to have a gay old time, as evidenced by the fact that they say “We’ll have a gay old time”. But that’s in future tense, declaring their intention to have such, implying that it has not happened yet. We never actually learn if their goal is successful.
Back when the flinstones first came out gay meant bright, jolly, happy
Bringing Up Baby (1938) has Cary Grant using the word ‘gay’ as it is meant today
People used “gay” to talk about homosexuality in a coded way even in the early 1900s. For example, you would be able to say “would you like to go to a party with me this weekend? It’s going to be a gay old time!” at work, in public, or anywhere. Everyone else would think you were talking about a fun party, but to those in the know, it meant homosexual. Source: “Gay New York” by George Chauncey. (It goes into a lot of the coded language and behaviors in homosexual communities in NY from the 1890’s to the 1970’s.)
Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
Falalalala, lala la la. Also it is too early for Christmas carols.
I think Lou was referring to, ‘Don we now our _gay_ apparel’
She’s hoping more for Xena gay.
Xena bisexual.
We’re Flintstones kids. Ten million strong and growing.
Id yabba dabba do ya all night long.
Am I gonna be the only one making Flinstone innuendos? Cause Im ready to unload my pebbles.
Bamm-Bamm: Thank you, ma’am
I’ll make your Bedrock.
Just give me a quick Rubble and I’ll be yours ’til morning.
Twitch, twitch.
.
.
.
what? too obscure?
I will find my own way out.
This might be Batman and Robin caliber.
Ha ha, so we’re just pretending that we don’t care about WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO DINA. Right?
Dina is fine! She has been shown in the previews.
Not that they’d know.
Or care. At this point, it’s clearly not actual concern that Willis would actually break his rule, but, it’s just a meme like ‘faaaace’ or ‘for a nickle’.
Or a comment about the characters’ apparent unconcern for Dina.
I like to think that Becky took up her concerns for her girlfriend with the police, and has received reassuring news, in the past hour or so, and that were just weren’t shown it because it wasn’t dramatic or funny. I seem to recall that Becky never shared the other characters’ propensity to overlook, ignore, and forget Dina.
Don’t forget, none of them have any idea that Dina actually encountered Toedad. Last anyone knew, Becky & Dina ran away into the woods and Ross later appeared in the car at the fountain. When Becky asked if he’d hurt Dina, he just said “I don’t know who that is”.
Honestly, I’d expect them to be trying to reach Dina mostly to reassure her that Becky’s alright.
FAAAAACE
FAAAAAAACE
….for a nickel. 😛
Stop the Faces!
Good point.
I can’t stop my faaaaaaace, it’s attached to the front of my heeeeeeead. 😛
The preview actually shows Toedad wearing Dina’s skin.
You are my favorite.
I will kill you last.
No one is gonna die. Everyone is fine. Its all good. Foam and helmets for everyone.
Gay is a unit of measure now?
How did you think the gaydar worked?
Reflected gayons?
No, gay is what is measured. A Gayscale, if you will. There doesn’t seem to be units for it, but it’s measured a bit like how Americans get the metric system explained to them. Like “10 cm?, What?”
“The width of an apple.”
“Oh, okay.”
but what kind of apple? macintosh? granny smith? fuji? crab? they arent all the same!!
If its gonna be on the gay unit of measure, its definitely gonna be crabs…
I’ll see myself out.
More like Fabs.
Nah, it’s a Golden Delicious. ;D
Pink Lady? Gala? 😀 (naw, Golden Delicious is fabulous. You win.)
Cool. 🙂 Golden Delicious are my apple of choice for nomming, they taste as fabulous as they look. 😀
I like to think that those apples’d be the Spartan ones.
A whole bushel filled with dewy Spartan apples.
#BAM #Winning
Doorknobs are about a meter off the floo~oo~oor
A Popsickle stick’s about a decimeter/A little bit less or a little bit more
And if you’re using a staple to fasten the words to this so~o~ong
You’ll find that a staple is just about a centimeter lo~o~ong!
–METRIC MARVELS, Saturday Mornings on NBC.
30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is cold, and zero is ice!
there is an interpretation of this that might apply to centimeters and not celsius
I can imagine American drug dealers who use the metric system being insulted by this.
Pretty sure drug dealers deserve to offended….
True enough. Apologies to those metric-literate drug dealers and users, and thank you for encouraging the use of the metric standard.
Here in the UK, where we (mostly) use the metric system, cannabis is still sold in ounces or halves/quarters/eighths/sixteenths of ounces. So are you telling me that in the metric-resistant US, it’s sold in grams? Because that would be fantastic 😀
I suppose that says something about something.
cannabis is in ounces in the US as well. i think they were referring to other drugs, like cocaine, which is in grams and kilos. the US has metric in some weird places, actually. we drink 2 liter bottles of pop, but drink milk in quarts and gallons.
Yeah, in Australia you still buy ounces of weeds but points (i.e decimal points of grams) of speed.
And penis size is also inches.
But the labels on condom packets are in millimetres.
But 1 inch is 2.5cm! Where are you seeing 4 inch wide apples?? I need some of them, man.
Maybe they meant circumference — 4 inches (10cm) around.
…
*grabs a ruler and an apple*
That’s… a really bad approximation.
I usually grab Honeycrisp apples; upon reflection, they’re much larger than the average. Also I’m TERRIBLE at estimating distances, short or long.
You need to use American-sized apples.
You can’t measure American-sized apples in centimeters.
I’m Canadian, and in grade 3, when we were learning about the different magnitudes of length, we were taught that a decametre (10cm) was the width of a floppy disk.
Decimetre. A decametre would be 10m. 3-storey floppy disk house! \o/
Aww shit, you’re right.
I knew that deca- means “ten” while deci- means “tenth”, but for some reason in my head I swapped “metre” with “centimetre”.
It’s not like anybody ever uses a decimetre…
Swedish people do, in my experience.
We sure do! Everyone else not using it is mildly disturbing news to me.
The decametre (10m) and hectometre (100m) are sorely underused too.
And then there’s the even-less-well-known myriametre (10,000m)…
The myria- prefix is not part of the SI. I’ve used “pentameter” as a unit of distance for fun (half a decameter).
There have been calls for the myria- prefix to be added to the list of approved SI prefixes though. Personally I like it and think it should be included.
Then again, I also think the numbers one millillion (10^6000) and one millimillillion (10^6million) sound cool. xD
Oh my god can we please have MyriaMeters???
‘Myria’ would be a terrible SI prefix.
1) It breaks the pattern of the super-Hecto prefixes in having the exponent as a multiple of 3. (And sub-Centi are multiples of -3.)
2) There’s no symbol available for it. M, m, and μ are all in use and capital μ is identical to M.
@ Kamino Neko
And yet, “deca” is abreviated “da” despite “D” being perfectly available.
The symbol for Myria- was apparently “My” (or “my”) but was later changed to just M, which was then superceded by M standard for Mega- (1000) and became obsolete.
So we could just bring back My for Myria-. 🙂
The next town is 10 km away, or 1 Mym away. 🙂
Canadians tend not to. Oh, we’re all taught them, but I’ve never heard anyone say anything other than “10 cm”.
It’s about the length of your palm, and a cm is about the width of your pinkie nail. But I’ve always thought of 10 cm as “about a third of a foot”.
Canadians are in sort of a weird limbo between metric and Imperial right now. The program that was supposed to supervise the switch over to metric got axed. So Officialdom will want to know your height and weight in metric; and we all know that in inches and pounds. And we take temperatures for sick people in Imperial (unless you’re a doctor), but temperatures for weather in Celsius (which just makes more sense, sorry). Distances are measured in kilometres; but for shorter ones you can use either centimetres/metres or inches/feet pretty interchangeably. Mileage can be measured in either miles per gallon (which is how I tend to think) or litres per 100 km; but that at least is switching over to metric since dealerships dropped the mpg rating and only use the l/100km now.
Our food is sold in grams, but the amounts for a lot of things are still Imperial-sized, so you get 454 grams of butter (because that’s a pound), and cans are all in sizes that make sense when you convert to fluid ounces; but milk is in litres, and dry pasta is usually in sensible things like 500 grams. It’s a strange place.
why is it that governments have to make laws to force people to use the metric system in the first place? surely if people are simply given the choice they will use the system that is more useful for them.
of course they will, and they do. the problem is that while metric is more useful for scientific measurement because of being arbitrarily in base 10, Imperial on the other hand is far superior for measuring things that humans can use as it has evolved over thousands of years of use by humans and was originally build around human proportions before becoming standardized.
Like Fahrenheit?
*mic drop*
You know how 3 English feet make 1 yard? If you instead use 3 of the French pieds, you get almost exactly 1 metre.
People who say the former is designed for human use, but not the latter, are almost always just talking about what they have personally gotten used to.
Imperial is the enforced measuring system of the British Empire, not some perfect evolution of measurements. Prior to British standardization people used all kinds of odd measurements, like “the volume of the amount of hay a strong man can gather in a day” and things like that. People use what they are taught and call it “more natural” when they have trouble with other systems.
So it’s not strange that governments try to enforce changes to measurements in the name of standardization. People adapt and in a generation or so the new thing is the “natural” one.
Imperial is the measuring system of the British Empire (based largely on the Roman system) that is correct just as Metric was the measuring system of the French Revolution,
both are equally arbitrary and we could just as easily use a system based on Hexadecimal or Binary to denote that we live in a digital age.
but for all it’s supposed inferiority I bet you still use Imperial time of a 24 hour day rather than Decimal Time which consists of 10 hour days composed of 100 minuets each. makes a 40hr work weeks brutal AF.
somehow though I don’t see you asking your employer to pay you only for the 4.8 Decimal hours rather than the standard 8 imperial hours of a normal work shift.
Same reason that King Offa of Mercia had to make a law to force people to use a standard pound, or King Edward had to make a law to force people to use a standard yard, or Queen Elizabeth had to make a law to change the mile from 5,000 feet to 5,280 feet (so that it would be a round number of furlongs). Same reason that the British Empire made a law in 1824 to standardise the Imperial gallon, pint, and fluid ounce. Someone in there increased the pound from twelve ounces to fifteen then sixteen.
Government have been legislating to standardise weights and measures for thousands of years, and government action has always been needed to impose uniform standards and to change and simplify systems.
Half of 3/8? 3/16 Half of that? 3/32 Half of that? 3/64. Half of .9525 cm? Who the hell knows?
Yes, some systems are inherently “more natural” than others. Okay, so everyone in the British Empire used the Imperial system of weights and measures, and it made sense to them because they had always used it. But there is still a definition of “natural” whereby the Metric system is “more natural” than Imperial.
Why do I say that? Because the Imperial system uses an oddball collection of multipliers to get from one unit to the next. 12 inches=1 foot, 3 feet=1 yard, 5.5 yards(?!) = 1 rod, 4 rods=1 chain, 10 chains=1 furlong, 8 furlongs=1 mile. Okay I’ll admit, if you’ve grown up with that bizarre assortment of units, calculating with them would be fine (probably), but an outside person willing to learn them would find it difficult. Whereas the metric system, with the constant multipler of 10 (or 1000) is much easier for an outsider to learn, simply because it has a constant multiplier. (The only reason so many Brits have trouble learning the Metric system is quite simple….they don’t want to).
I myself am not anti-Imperial units; I was brought up with them (the law forcing the usage of Metric came in in the mid-late 90s, as I recall, when I was in secondary school). It’s quite handy actually, as most things these days are listed in Metric units, and I’m pretty good at converting them into Imperial for my dad to understand (he’s one of the ones I mentioned above who never wanted to learn Metric weights and measures). I also have to convert Celsius (which is arguably Metric) to Fahrenheit (which is arguably more like Imperial) ‘cos he doesn’t understand that one either.
Basically though, as others have said, governments have to impose laws forcing standardised and easily-calculable measurements, otherwise everybody would simply measure things in a way that best suited them – ie. shops would use it as a perfect excuse to short-change all their customers, everything would weigh as much or as little as you said it did, it would be a mess.
And to the above comment about using non-“Metric” time (you mean non-decimal, but I’ll let that slide) – I would love to use a Decimalised system of time units. 100 seconds = 1 minute, 100 minutes = 1 hour, 10 hours = 1 day. And if someone could figure out a way to make the year exactly 360 days long (or better yet, 300), that would be perfect! 🙂 But you’d need to get every country in the world to agree to such a fundamental change in the way we measure out periods of time (as the current standard is basically global now), and all change at the together. Let’s face it, how likely is that to happen?
…when we eventually get off this rock properly and start living on other worlds, perhaps we’ll come up with a more straightforward, decimal time system for those planets; since, after all, each planet would need its own system anyway, as each planet would have a different day length, year length, and year/day ratio….
Also Canadian here, and I always have to convert to find out how many kilos I weigh. Also, never used a decimeter to describe the length of ANYTHING in real life, and I have a background in interior design, where measuring things is kinda important.
Also, Fahrenheit is a strange language I do not understand. I prefer the system of 100 = boiling water and 0 = freezing water, thank you very much. 🙂
I’ve never seen anyone born after 1970 do that.
Case in point…about 2 years ago, my niece had a low-grade fever, and when her mother called my parents to tell them, they had to ask me what body temperature was in Celsius – because that’s what she’d given them.
And my parents (born in the mid-50s, FTR) still use Fahrenheit for ambient temperatures, not just body temperature.
My dad only understands the Fahrenheit system, but everybody else I know uses Celsius. Luckily, I can calculate conversions for him. 🙂
Also,
04 = 40
16 = 61
28 = 82
40.1 = 104
can be quite handy approximations. 🙂
“What’s a ‘floppy disk’?”
Dating yourself, there.
Eeh. I’m 20 and I know what a floppy disk is.
Then again my dad’s a computer nerd and raised me like one, so maybe I’m not the best reference for what my generation knows about old computer stuff.
I’m 33, and I knew a couple of kids at school just 2 or 3 years below me who had no idea about floppy disks, or vinyl records. It was sad.
(And the shock of hearing one of those girls asking her friend “What’s a record? O, do you mean a CD?” nearly caused me to walk into a door!)
Oh. Wow. I had no idea there were people that much older than me who didn’t even know about vinyls. Scary how fast old technologies get forgotten.
You mean the save icon?
I miss when floppy disks were relevant. I don’t miss how a single essay would fill the damn thing up sometimes, but they were nice. Then everything changed when the flash drives attacked. Which could only hold about a single essay in the beginning.
In fact they are exactly 90 mm. “3.5 inches”, as they’re called in the US, is an approximation.
*Looks at my 3 inch AMSTRAD-brand floppy disks* Oh well then…
But yeah, the “3.5 inch” standard IBM-compatible floppies were by far the most common. My gran for years had a BBC Micro PC which used the older 5.25 inch floppy disks (and unlike the smaller ones, they genuinely *were* floppy too xD)
They’re called “floppy” because the actual disc part inside the case is on a flexible medium (mylar) rather than hard plates.
I know that. But in the case of the 5.25inch floppies, the outer case was also floppy. 3.5inch floppies had a hard outer case to protect the flexible medium inside. 🙂
That can’t be wright. Everybody knows that when Americans need to have metric measurements explained to them, the explanation must include “football fields” somewhere.
*right
I shouldn’t post before coffee.
*shrug*
10 cm is the distance light covers in vacuum in a 2997924580th part of a second.
There’s a really easy way to explain and memorize the conversion ratio of 1 to 2.54.
“10 centimetrers are about 4 inches. 10-4?
“So 10 is 4… 10-4!”
Its rated in Mercury’s.
Becky is 34 centimecury’s. Ethan is 82 centimecury’s.
Joyce feeling the burn of ALSO hiding from Dorothy in that last panel. Glad to see they’ll both make amends.
Maybe we run into Ryan getting a checkup on his face. That’ll be fun.
Joyce, it totally said on your discharge paperwork not to hit any more people.
She didn’t glass someone this time, so…progress!
But is she feeling the Bern?
Or maybe she is just uncomfortable with the politically-incorrect humor. If only Becky would stop with her gay-bashing!
Yes yes Joyce and Dorothy, we get that you’ve both been kinda hiding from each other recently and you’re both feeling sorry about it now ‘cos of the near-deathness…so kiss and make-out already!
…um I think I meant “kiss and make up”… yeah, that’s what I meant. >_>
^_~
Where is the subtext?
Woops, browser issue..
But for the record it’s in Becky’s word balloon.
This is DoA. It’s just text.
It’s over there, in a box.
That is the next stop after it leaves the closet
Hidden in the anagram of “buttsex”. That is one of my favorite facts ever
That is good to know, it’ll make family scrabble games a lot less awkward.
hey, for a bingo, you may just have to put ‘buttsex’ down in front of your parents. though i doubt it’s in the dictionary…
actually, wait. the only case in which you’d have to choose one over the other would be if you are space-limited. so, whatever fits, i guess! but that’s buttsex for you
i’m sure you planned it out ahead of time that your comic would be cracking a gay Republican joke on the same night as another one of those Republican circlejerk things
Willis are you lying about your buffers or are you Nostradamus because these coincidences are starting to be a little bit too convenient.
Honestly, it’s not that hard to plan for a comic to fall during the Republican primary, given how stupidly long your American elections are.
Nono, these are just the debates for the primaries. The primaries run next February through June. Then we have the debates between the actual Presidential candidates, and then the election! 😀
Geez, the US elections are THAT long coming? Over here (UK) the party leaders start heading up their campaigns proper in March or April, and the election is then held in early May. Then it’s all over by the day after the results are in. 🙂
Hey, we only get to do this every four years so we need the time to work ourselves up to enough apocalyptic frenzy that we won’t notice that nothing really changes.
They weren’t always this bad. I think we’ve given up on getting the actual people in office to do anything substantive, so we’ve started focusing on who we’ll replace them with.
pretty much the only difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is what flavor you want the erosion of your basic human rights and ever growing tyrannical dictatorship in.
This is patently untrue.
We have similar problems here in the UK – the two main parties are the Conservatives and Labour, but they’re basically as bad as each other. And actually, they have policies that are so similar, you might as well just vote for which guy has the nicer face (hence Cameron leading the Tories in power, against Ed Miliband…and now against Jeremy Corbyn).
And because they’re so similar – and both just as rubbish – we don’t bother to try to get them to do anything good, but neither do we bother planning who we’re gonna replace them with, because we know the replacement will be just as rubbish as they are. So instead we just moan about how all MPs are useless and/or corrupt, and leave it at that. That’s why voter turnout is never usually above 60%.
(And in some areas, you get some people who say that the whole of British democracy is just crap and we should get rid of it all and give the power back to the crown. Not sure if reverting to absolute monarchy would be the best road forward right now, but could it really be much worse? lol)
Omggggggggggg dotty ilu
I am growing increasingly concerned at how relaxed and okay with everything Becky appears to be. I mean I know she bounces back easily, but still.
Joyce mind you, also seems “okay”, but she also looks like she might completely lose it any second.
Her father is OK, she may not have realized that Dina maybe isn’t OK, she’s OK, everyone she knows is OK… also she may just be joking as a way of coping.
Either way, its been at least 20 minutes since they were at the park.
I think it’s because she has so much levity even though the story is telling you this is serious.
It’d be like if Arale showed up and Beat up Cell. It’d be really weird for such a silly gag character to fight such a villainous biomechanical man eating bug man.
And yet, they exist in the same world…
Um, they exist in the mind of the same creator.
And Arale should -totally- beat up all the boring DBZ characters.
Which is most of them.
Maybe she will show us her shattered psyche when she believes that nobody else is around, who know?
She just broke her hand punching out a man who weighs four times what she does, and had to be physically restrained from beating him into a stain on the grass, while cursing and taking the lord’s name in vain for the first time in eighteen years.
I think it’s safe to say that It was lost.
She wasn’t taking god’s name in vain, she was literally asking for him to intercede on her behalf.
She didn’t break it, it’s merely a sprain or a strain. That’s not a cast she wearing, that’s a wrist brace meant to hold the wrist and hand steady to prevent any additional stress and pain. She should be out of that in a week, which means that for the next year (real-time) Willis will need to either draw this every time we see Joyce or camouflage it underneath long-sleeve shirts, sweaters, or sweatshirts.
Like he did in the panel of Joyce and her dad scheduled to appear 1/31/2016.
Becky has had a stress that’s been looming since before she even got on the bus to Bloomington. I’m sure she’s feeling quite relieved, and will have plenty of time later to realize how close to death she was on multiple occasions in the last few hours. It won’t be fun.
I think she’s still giddy about being rescued. I mean, there’s so much she’ll probably internalize as deep deep scars. But right now, she’s safe, her dad’s going to jail, and she’s not going to some sort of hellish torture camp.
Besides the fact that she’s all jelly and wants to be sandwiched, I’d say she’s riding a high right now that will collapse into tears much much later.
Yeah, between the adrenaline and Becky’s general “ssh, no worries, focus on right now” attitude/coping mechanism (because seriously, I think both our darling fundies manage their trauma by just putting it off as long as they can,) I doubt we’re going to see her actually react to all of this until she’s alone in her room again and trying to sleep or something.
At which point, I really hope she has SOMEONE to comfort her then, because whenever she crashes it’s going to be HARD.
I think Joyce just remembered how she herself was avoiding Dotty because she knew about herself and Ethan and how Sarah told Joyce that Dotty would no longer be her friend if she found out about Ethan and so she was afraid when she learned that Dotty did know about Ethan being gay. Now that Dotty is apologizing, Joyce probably feels a bit awkward.
You know, this comic makes me appreciate Toedad. Who else would be there to put everyone over and bring them together. #RespectTheJobbers
omg you mark (so am I)!
I could see Sal and Sarah getting fed up with everyone around them moping and tiptoeing around each other by shoving all of the principles in a closet.
I suspect that Becky has something of a Stepford Smiler deal going on, especially based on this comic. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/downer/
I don’t think she’s really relaxed and okay with things. I’m pretty sure this is a mask she’s hiding behind, because in her mind, she’s “supposed” to be loud and fun.
She doesn’t really need a mask right now. The thing she was most afraid of happened and instead of it wrecking her life Joyce came for her. She. Came. For. Her. And now she knows she’s not alone, she’s free from her dad, most of her fear is gone and everyone came out without permanent damage as far as she knows right now. Even her dad lived so she doesn’t have to feel anything about his wellbeing, only that he’s not going to be able to come after her anytime soon.
They both have a lot of practice at burying stress.
She’s in a hospital. They probably gave her a comfortable dose of diazepam.
This must feel strange. Joyce avoided her best friend for ah… days? And just before the whole Toedad mess happend, she decided -with a push from Sal and outdoor panic- to call her. It must be super surreal to have Dorothy apologizing now.
I don’t think Dorothy has realized how grave the danger for Becky was because for once, she was to much stuck on the scenario in her head.
We don’t know if they have told her much about what happened yet. She’s not even in reporter-mode.
Becky will, as we alread know, grab at anything that keeps the mood up to avoid showing her feelings. Both ‘Dorothy stole Joyce’ and the Dingdong bandit are valid topics there…
I think its Spider Man coping mechanism.
I do that too. You smile, laugh, joke and actually manage to cover up the stress as long as you have people around you.
Its when you are alone and undistracted when everything comes crushing down.
Nobody likes a Debby Downer.
Remember how cheerful she was when she first showed up? Kicked out of school, homeless and on the run from her dad and not showing a hint of it.
It’s a coping mechanism. Becky feels alienated and alone, so she acts out to draw attention to herself. (I’m not discounting her friends, this is how she feels, it doesn’t have to reflect reality.) I was kind of a goofball in high school, I cracked stupid (sometimes offensive) jokes to get attention.
I’d be worried if she wasn’t doing it – trying to make friends is better than giving up.
Becky wants to know about the ding dongs
To the snack food aisle!
Y’know she’s never seen one before that’s why she’s a lesbian.
I think it will take more than a taste of that cream filling to move Becky down the Kinsey Scale.
Well, she could knock 18 or 19 points off and still only be down to regular lesbian, so she’s probably good.
Oh right, she did say she was 24 or 25 plus she nuked the closet from orbit.
Captain America voice: I got that one.
Actually, it should be: She is a lesbian, therefore she has never seen one.
Not true in all cases. Possibly not true in Becky’s, we have no idea of the bathroom arrangements at her house after her Mother died. Toedad’s robe may not have met all the way.
Eugh. You don’t need to be a lesbian to really, really dislike that mental image.
…I bet it looks like a thumb.
eugh
*hands you an internet*
So I guess he can twiddle three thumbs, and thumb wrestling gets him hot and bothered.
That was the moment she became lesbian?
Tons of lesbians have seen and interacted with penises. The majority of dykes that I’ve interacted with have.
1) Lesbians who have trans women as partners
2) Lesbians who have previously had sex with men with penises
Well, given that Becky is a repressed Lesbian… not having seen one is a given. But, seeing one isn’t likely to change her mind/self.
Koalas have bifurcated penises. Maybe if I see one I’ll finally realize I’m koala sexual. Oh wait, I never needed to see a vagina to know women were for me and men… much less so. Silly me.
(Poe’s Law alert: I was mocking the dude a few weeks ago who apparently meant that seriously.)
I get that, but be careful of that particular joke. It’s one of the main justifications that people use to “correctively rape” dykes. Even the chance that someone would mean that terrifies me on the regular.
Answer: Ding dongs. Question: What snack isn’t served at the Republican National Convention. At least not when anyone’s watching.
Becky’s statement could spawn a lot of comments.
Oh come on, the Republican National Convention is one of the world’s biggest Ding Dong fests!
The Republican National Convention has a Big Tent.
“Republican National Convention gay”????o_0
“It’s impossible you say to be republican and gaaay.”
What, you don’t remember the time when Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum [remainder of post deleted]
It’s probably far more gay than the Republicans are ready to admit.
The joke is in the subtext. “She wants overt, not suppressed”.
That’s probably where they show a 2 second shot of one of the Log Cabin Republicans, so they can honestly claim that gay people are visible members of the Republican Party.
and why wouldn’t they be?
are gay people not allowed to favor personal accountability or finical responsibility?
You can do what you want, but the Republicans ain’t got shit to do with those things. They’re more defined by their opposition to groups of people.
You know, outwardly homophobic, super closeted?
Like Fred Phelps! (theoretically)
I was thinking more along the lines of the whole thing being a big ol’ circle jerk.
Anti-gay crusader Republican politicians getting caught trying to pick up dudes in truck stop bathrooms or sexually harassing their same-sex interns and so on is so common that it’s not even news anymore.
well of course why do you think they are so opposed to something that if they were straight would not affect them in the slightest?
I tend to go with Orson Scott Card, who could not be more obviously a self-loathing gay man.
I’ve yet to read it (if only because Orson Scott Card is a giant asshole) but from what I hear there’s a lot of (unintentional?) homoeroticism.
Ender’s Game, I mean. Forgot to namedrop.
They’re proudly displaying their Ding Dongs for the world to see. And their ding dongs are the ding dongiest ding dongs in Eagleland.
Trolling the men’s room between speeches.
It’s a bunch of overly sweaty men trying to impress a bunch of other overly sweaty men by yelling a lot to demonstrate who is the biggest asshole. Sounds pretty gay to me. And why is gay not in my spellchecker’s vocabulary?
Well, the zero on her scale is holier-than-thou MacIntyre anti-gay. Republican Conventions are a jerkfest in comparison.
Is this the next Slipshine?
Danny and Ethan Perform An RNC?
Super gay is my favorite super hero. He’s just really good at accessorizing and is a damn good wingman.
Some superhero where the fuck was he when this going down?
On the sideline screaming “YAAAAAS, YAS GURL!” at Amazi-Girl, Sal and Joyce.
you mean https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjt3rC8jxDGSQ74e5xrssqCurCI80bPox
He just wants to help out, but Florida Man fights him whenever he tries.
Becky seems to want that Slipshine really fast.
Someone clue me in on “RNC gay” please?
I believe the alt text is relevant here
Oh I mean the context of the punchline.
As a Republican lawmaker continues to rail against LGBT rights, the probability that s/he will be found in a public bathroom soliciting sex from a person of the same gender approaches 1.
Based on the theory that homophobes are often closet gay, and the observation that many notable (and homophobic) Republicans have been found, say, trying to hook up with men in public restrooms. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal)
Ah-ha. Thanks for the examples.
See also: Haggard’s Law.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Haggard%27s_Law
Not so much a theory as a thing that happens. Self repression leads to self hatred which leads to external hatred. Basicly they hate themselves so they hate anyone else that’s like what about themselves they hate.
Earlier this year North Dakota representative Randy Boehning opposed an anti-discrimination bill in spite of his love of sending pictures of his dick on Grindr.
With a name like Randy Boning, what do you expect?
Not much better than John Boner.
Also known as “Methinks, the man doth protest too much.”
But if it is too overt, how can you possibly feel dirty when you do it then?
Compartmentalisation. They’re so in denial that I guess that to some of them it’s like having a drug addiction or something – they get their “fix”, they hide their secret and then they live deep in denial until the next time it gets too much.
Stay tuned for the continuing adventures of Supergay!, after these following messages.
Hopefully Joyce’s painkillers are kicking in by now, and she’s ready to forgive and forget.
No pain killers. She told Doktor to remove her pain inhibitors. Joyce is going to go into Ripper mode.
The first time I ever watched the Daily Show, they did a segment on the Republican National Convention. After showing a montage of every speaker having the same terrible haircut, Jon Stewart said “You see? This is what happens when you won’t let gay people touch your hair”.
That’s cute but fails to explain Trump.
Nothing can explain Trump.
I think he’s a minion of one of the Great Old Ones.
He’s a demon of greed in an ill-fitting meat suit
Ah so cute
Dotty is the cutest. Now hug it out, you two. Or make out, whatever floats your (& Becky’s) boat.
Becky didn’t survive a car crash caused by her absuive dad fighting a superhero in the middle of a highway to settle for entry-level lesbianism, goddamn it!
“Entry-Level” Sounds pretty lewd on its own.
Where’s Dina?
So that’s the name of that huge elephant in the middle of the room.
Yes, where is Becky?
Where is AG Amber?
Becky is on the far right of the first and fourth panels.
Hey…isn’t that the same hand she cut herself on with the glass from that party way back when? http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/smash/
It’s her accumulating trauma hand.
Joyce and Sal both have hurt hands. They could be scar sisters maybe?
more like her FACE-BREAKING FIST
come on, she’s a righty, what’d you expect? no one should half-ass a righteous poundin’
It’s caused a fair amount of trauma too in the process.
Blunt force trauma, right in the toe, for great justice.
You would expect it to be her dominant hand, and thus the same one each time.
I scrolled down to find out if anyone else had wondered this as well. In her right hand, she holds trauma… and JUSTICE. Her left hand is free for a comically large calculator.
Maybe now she might associate that hand with righteously punching Toedad the fuck out instead of what happened at the party with Ryan.
For a moment there, I thought Becky in the last panel said, “lube me in.” ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Well, you know, first time nerves and the like, sometimes friction reduction is required.
“Give me a hand, if you please.”
Becky is maybe okay with bony poindexters if she gets to be the other piece of bread in the Joyce sandwich.
Gross. They’d be like…a vanilla oreo with white cream filling. The worst kind of Oreo.
God now I wonder if something like actually that exists.
Golden Oreos.
They’re actually not bad. For some definitions of not bad.
They’re not really good, either. They’re just kind of… there. They’re better than no Oreo at all, I guess.
Better than those “duplex” cookies (fake Oreos with one vanilla and one chocolate cookie) which you can find at any grocery store for a buck.
Better than the watermelon ones.
I prefer them to regular Oreos. But then, I don’t like chocolate.
The Golden Oreo is regularly sold at stores.
That would be the Republican National Convention Oreo.
Put becky in the middle and you can get the Limited Edtion Vanilla Oreos with Fruit Punch filling. (It was red)
That would be like a tofurky sandwich and Becky would prefer to be the top bun thank you very much!
Stop putting bones in my sandwiches!
I dunno, Becky. The Republican National Convention seems to be getting gayer all the time.
Becky: COME ON! I feel like you guys are going to do it behind my back sooner or later at least just one three way that’s all I’m asking !
DINA (leaning in from off-panel): WHAT?
BECKY: Fine. Four-way.
Four-and-a-half. Daisy wants to record it.
Why is the drinking such a big deal?
Because Joyce has PTSD about being surrounded by drunk people at a party.
Notice how she’s looking at her hand in that last panel, too.
Or at the very least feels hurt that her friends didn’t respect that the drinking might have been triggering.
Tha party for Joyce was supposed to be a safe event. Guests were vetted, no oe that Joyce was uncomfortable with. She wasn’t supposed to think about the *bad* party. It was the fact that drinking happened, and Joyce was disappointed. (Billie said it shouldn’t matter since it was roofies that caused the incident, not booze) It was the principle of the thing.
Triggers are often annoyingly illogical. Like, the most random ass shit can put you in a flashback because “oh I was wearing this outfit” or “I was thinking about this comic” or whatnot. It’s absolutely possible that she developed a trigger around drinking simply because that was probably the first party Joyce ever had with drinking (given her sect’s views on alcohol) even though that had nothing to do directly with the assault.
I once spent a semester of school having debilitating panic attacks, then got flashbacks to it a year later from using the same shower gel (the smell did it). Triggers are fucking stupid.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/rulingout/
I think the high pedestal that Joyce puts Dorothy on, combined with some bad associations with the last party that Joyce went to, made Joyce uncomfortable when Dorothy got drunk.
Not the alcohol, per se, but the underage drinking. She expected higher standards from Dorothy.
There is also the fact that Sal told Joyce that if she had done something-or-other she would alienate Dorothy. Joyce did whatever-it-was and hasn’t got around to confessing it to Dorothy yet.
It’s like, say you know that the host of the party you’re attending is very liberal, and you decide to bring Mike Huckabee as your plus-one. It’s kind of a dick move.
I… I had never before realized how much I want someone to bring Mike Huckabee to one of my (liberal, poly, bi, heathen, etc…) friends’ parties. Oh my god it would be no end of hilarity.
okay so everyones good now alright now… WHERE THE HELL IS DINA
This fanbase is more riled up than the Glenn fanbase from The Walking Dead.
Probably standing behind a door somewhere.
I would have guessed she would call her own phone from a landline by now, but perhaps it rang in an evidence locker.
Or she gave all her small change of Mike’s mom.
Or she’s lying in the woods with a brain haemorrhage.
Or she’s fine and probably waiting for Becky to get back. She shows up in a preview panel for January 28 and she seems perfectly fine. Given how slow time passes in comic, it probably takes place not much later after this.
http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/131265907762/january-28-2016-rest-easy
I would prefer that her supposed friends showed a little more concern for her wellbeing. But then they have been remarkably oblivious of her for a long time.
It was practically the first thing out of Becky’s mouth when Ross turned up at the fountain with the gun. Becky probably thinks she’s fine since Ross said he hadn’t hurt anybody. (For asshole values of ‘hurt’, apparently, but Becky doesn’t know that.) Other than Joyce, who also heard him say that, I don’t think anyone else even knows Dina was involved.
*For asshole values of ‘hurt’ and ‘anybody’…
Yeah, and I suppose that the others — Ambazi-Girl, Dorothy, and Sal are the only regular cast characters we’ve seen since the Return of the Astounding Toe — have no reason to be particularly concerned, since they don’t know that Dina was with Becky when the Encounter with the Mad Toe occurred, and so have no cause for concern.
I’ll be really pleased if Sal has gone to check on Dina and bring her to Dina. As poor Joyce needs the comfort of her bonily Platonic Poindexter, how much more does Becky need comforting by her girlfriend?
I’m pretty sure Dina can take care of herself…
They have been kinda focused on other things. Knowing the way the mind works, I’m sure Becky’s gonna go, ‘… OMG Dina!’ and go running off, at some point. Give it time.
Eh, they’ve all gone through a traumatic incident. It’s probably hard to think about anything other than what’s in front of them right now.
Plus Becky and Joyce heard Toedad say that he “didn’t hurt anybody” when they asked about Dina, so they at least have that as proof that she’s okay.
Eh, they have the word of someone who was also quick to hurt people and has a habit of not seeing her secular friends as people. Sooo…. Becky is probably internally trying to believe in the best case scenario while fearing the worst and might be keeping one ear out for someone mentioning a girl in a dinosaur hat coming in.
Maybe. I think she’s taking him at his word, but there’s also been so much trauma heaped on her and Joyce today and she’s not all there yet.
Since we already know Dina’s okay, she’ll probably show up around the time Becky asks about her. Plus since she’s got Dina’s phone Becky can’t easily contact her.
You make do with what you’ve got.
On the other hand, there’s not just Dina’s physical well-being to be concerned about. She’s a tiny, un-confident, non-straight, minority woman with inadequate social contacts and a negligent and incompetent RA who has just lost a fistfight with a huge and violent racist bigot. I hope someone is expressing sympathy by means of light physical contact.
I’m going to guess that the bed ending for this day is going to be Becky and Dina desperately hugging each other after the craziness of this day.
Dragging a semi-conscious Amber through the woods.
Time for the raptor to feed.
Huh. There’s some family resemblance in that last panel.
I have at least three issues of SuperGay
Dorothy’s one of my favourite characters in the strip at the moment. She’s representing a common feat a lot of us have (what if the last thing I said to them was an argument, or something unfriendly, etc.). Beyond that, she’s honestly one of the most grounded and… non-depressed characters in the strip, which is something that’s refreshing when the other stars are Joyce/Ruth/Billie/Sal/Amber.
Plus she’s rocking that outfit right now.
I realize it’s the wrist she just hurt, but is anyone else worried about the way Joyce is holding it? It seems reminiscent of her trauma with Ryan.
It is a similar motion to what she does when she’s triggered, so yeah, you might be on to something there.
I also think that Joyce is very surprised at how demonstrative that Dorothy is being. So she’s a bit ‘dumbfounded limp’.
I am glad to see Dorothy/ Joyce interaction in the comic again. I’ve missed that these past several months.
Joyce had been on the verge of telling Dorothy about her fear of being outside alone before all of this happened. Now, after everything that happened with Toedad, I suspect that’s not going to come up at this point in time.
Meanwhile, Joyce has experienced another traumatic incident. That should make for some interesting character development, but also a whole lot of pain and suffering for Joyce.
Joyce got off easier than any other person involved but Sal.
She got a wild ride, and a change to release a lot of rage by punching out Toedad- a great standin for her try to be rapist.
She ended up with a sprained wrist.
Her best friend was kidnapped by gun by her crazy dad. Taken on a wild ride. Hit by her father. Was in a roll over car accident.
And Becky ends up comforting ‘poor’ Joyce.
In the two strips we’ve seen thus far, no one is comforting anyone else…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/damn/
Don’t forget, Becky also tends to avoid and bottle up these things even more than Joyce does. Her response to the car crash was that excited “Again!” after all, and she made it a whole day before the reveal of “I’m on the run from my dad” without tipping Joyce off that anything was wrong. I think at the moment avoiding it and joking about things and, to a degree, having Joyce to worry about rather than what just happened and could have happened to her is all her way of coping. Not a particularly good method, we’ve seen how it works with Joyce after all, but for now it keeps her running and maybe it’ll do until things have gotten more permanently settled.
Speaking from personal experience, using the keep on moving method to avoid drifting into despair can help one be really productive about keeping one’s life together or building a new life, but presents one hefty bill on the day you no longer need to keep running.
So, if Becky is anything like me on that, I expect we’ll see her breaking into tears a bit when everything is finally happy and stable for her.
“Yeah okay guys that’s all well and good but either kiss now or tell me more about this dingdong thing that sounds HILARIOUS”
I loved the look on Joyce’s face in the first panel.
I wanna see Dotty and Becky’s face as they learn Joyce was the Ding Dong bandit.
I’ve been lowkey looking forward to Dotty finding that out since Amazi-girl figured it out.
When you go through something like what Becky went through, it may well give her nightmares for awhile. But, I don’t think she will agonize over it. She is so much better off now than she was 24 hours ago, and she is smart enough to know it.
Joyce was on the outskirts of the action. She got a wild motorcycle ride and a chance to let out a ton of rage on Toedad with a great right cross. I can’t see where she will have nightmares over any of it, but maybe the ride will.
Sal, just another day’s work.
Amber, is a mental mess already. And now she has physical wounds to match. And where is she?
And where is Dina?
And WHERE’S RACHEL?
I wonder if Dorothy is having second thoughts about her support of Amazi-girl. Her statement in the first panel (before she knew about the shooting) was that maybe someone was doing some petty vandalism. She might now be worried that Amazi-girl was getting in over her head.
Are you supposed to have auto-play loud ads on your site? Cuz that scared me, and then it annoyed me. >.<
We are not supposed to have those, but if you could provide more detail, we could try to hunt them down and remove them.
The AdChoices spot below the Patreaon banner on the right hand side seems to be auto playing a Chevy ad with sound.
You may want to check your system for malware.
I am fine by the way too.
I hope my phone is undamaged.
You better look in a mirror, though. Looks like you got sucked into a different body.
Can’t be helped, when this much lady gayness gathers Daisy manifests.
That’s kind of mean to poor Daisy…all this lady-lovin’ that she can’t actually get tangled up in…
I’m just imagining her doing the reporting tonight. Like, wait, lesbian, ooh is she single? Girlfriend in the woods? NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Turns out it wasn’t because of Ross that we haven’t seen Dina lately…
erm.. what about Dina?
So Dorothy manages to win back the ‘all-time good girl’ award by showing how very sorry she is for betraying Joyce’s trust. She is a very good friend with very strong morals and, frankly Joyce probably won’t be able to do better for a best friend right now.
What I like about this long-term arc is that it humanises Dorothy. She has previously come across as a bit unrealistic – too high-minded, principled and, not to beat around the bush, perfect to be completely plausible. The fact that she made an enormous mistake (possibly in an attempt to impress Walky) and now bitterly regrets it makes her seem far more like a real college Freshman who is struggling to find the balance of having an adult’s freedoms whilst also having an adult’s maturity.
Becky, I know that this may surprise and horrify you, but people can be friends without there being a romantic component. You really, really need to get over Joyce and you need to get over your fantasy that someone ‘stole her’ from you.
I think its more about Becky realizing just how gay her “platonic friendship” with Joyce was now that she is seeing Joyce recreating those dynamics (because that’s how platonic friendships look to Joyce) with Dorothy. And it probably keeps triggering her jealousy, because she a) yes, has a crush on Dorothy, but also b) somewhat misses that nebulous phase with Joyce, when she was just crushing out in this deeply homoerotic friendship.
So, with Dorothy, she sees from the outside just how gay her friendship with Joyce was and also gets hit with being outside of that particular dynamic (the dynamic of friendship they are building now is better, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting for Becky and her insecurities) and feeling “locked out” of that particular flavor of closeness (even if they are actually closer than ever currently, thanks to their new dynamic and what they’ve weathered together).
Yeah, I think Becky is internally going “Was this how we looked were we like this ALL THE TIME before God how did no one catch on and get us in trouble years ago?” a little.
This strip resonates a lot with me. Dorothy is so worried, she only heard what happend second hand, she could just imagine how her friends were doing. She begins to understand how scary the world Joyce and Becky come from is, and is even more awed about Joyce standing up to her parents for her.
We know how much ‘perfect cinnamon roll’ Dorothy means for Joyce. It’s heartwarming to see that it works both ways.
So they were both thinking the same thing.
I think I need some backstory here. What exactly did Dorothy do at this party that both she and Joyce seem to think is so terrible? I remember her and lots of others getting drunk (or at least tipsy) on Billie’s secret stash, but that was about it. True, Ruth came and gatecrashed it, but it’s not like she ruined the evening either.
Here is Joyce’s view of it
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/rulingout/
I very much like the casual way Becky is with Dorothy now. Realising AmaziGirl isn’t an affection nickname give to Dorothy by Joyce has really lofted her hostility.
Dorothy doesn’t know about any of that, though.
And Becky doesn’t know that Joyce’s actual nickname for Dorothy is “Perfect Cinnamon Roll”.
It’s moments like this where I think “wtf Dorothy you can have a character flaw” but I guess this kind of is her thing? Taking responsibility for every terrible thing that happens in her vicinity as if she’s personally responsible for not solving every problem she comes across, and being torn up about hurting someone, even completely unintentionally, even though if someone else did the same to her she’d be willing to let it slide.
Do we know if Dorothy has younger siblings? Her behaviour does echo that of children who have been caring for siblings for some time.
Pretty sure she’s an only child. The only main characters with off-screen siblings that we know of are Danny, Ruth and Sarah.
And Joyce. Forgot about Joyce’s older brothers and sister.
Roz (Robin, Riley, and an undefined but implied large number of other sisters), if she counts as main. (She does have a cast page entry.)
Amber has at least Faz. If the other universe is a guide, Rose is her half-sister, too. Of course, there’s a difference between a sibling growing up in the same house, and your father scattering his genes across half the Midwest.
If I recall correctly, Blaine didn’t father half the US population in this verse, and Faz is his stepson while Rose is completely unrelated.
Dorothy and Joyce both are afraid to disappoint their friends. They are adorable together like that. Just look at poor Joyce, she still has trouble accepting that she was allowed to be upset that Dorothy did something that hurt her.
Yeah. Even Joyce eventually realized that it wasn’t so tremendously huge a deal or that it was but Dorothy is more important to her than being angry at her, but Dorothy seems to have been feeling guilty about it for days now. She seems like the kind of person who just gets swallowed up with guilt if they do anything to harm someone else, but she also just casually puts up with a lot of stuff from, say, Walky or even Joyce herself.
It can be a control thing too. For some people “taking responsibility” can be a way of attempting to assert control. It’s easily taken advantage of by the wrong others.
I think it’s more that Dorothy feels that if she can do something, then she should, and if something goes wrong when she could have gotten involved, then she’s to blame on some level. When she first found out that Ethan was gay her first idea was to lament she wasn’t more hands on in trying to steer Joyce away from dating him.
If I could edit my comment, I’d have added “assert control over things affecting one’s own life.”
I think that’s part of her drive to be a politician. She wants to change the world for the better and help where she can, in the most impactful way she can. In this way, she has a similar drive to Amazi-girl, which might be why she said to her “All my dreams are decades from being realized, but what you do… I envy you for being able to live your dream now.”:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/alter-ego/
Those two are not mutually exclusive though, for me it’s often a combination of both.
I think what you describe is her character flaw… or rather an aspect of herself that can cause her to be overly hard on herself.
Dorothy has always been defined in this universe by her ambition and her desire to improve herself and be the best person she can be, morally. And part of that is that she is extra rough on herself with regards to her empathy and is prone to being harsh with herself when she perceives herself as hurting someone (I mean, her first arc in the whole series is her debating and going back and forth on hurting someone simply because it is necessary due to them wanting different things in the relationship).
The other part is when her empathy and ambition collide as we saw in the “learning about Amber’s secret” arc, her empathy tends to win. She’ll put aside her academic progress or a glowing piece of career work to do right by someone. (This means she has made her goals extra difficult, by wanting to succeed as a politician while also being a woman, an atheist, a feminist, and as seen, a person of conscience who doesn’t want to succeed at another person’s expense).
Her other main character conflict is her relationship with societal sexism, trying to reconcile her sex drive with a future where powerful women aren’t really allowed publicly to admit to being sexual creatures.
Spot on (I wish I had phrased my original post better because it seems to come off antagonistically).
I wonder how much Dorothy thinks that being the absolute best person she can be is something she needs to do. Like, if she falters in one area, if she caves and acts selfish (in a way that anyone else would just brush off because it’s impossible to always do the right thing), then everything about her would collapse because she wasn’t inflexibly moral.
She’s shown to be flexible morally, but that she has a lot of debate about where her goals are in conflict. Like, her notes with Joyce about being scared about being herself with regards to her sexuality and enjoying sex when she knows that will make her political goals harder. Or feeling conflicted about taking time off for mental health care or to hang with loved ones. And her empathy and practicality debated a lot with regards to Danny.
So I think it’s less a “everything will collapse if I fail my morality” and more a “if I make the wrong decision, will that fuck me over irreparably”?
Yeah, “collapse” was the wrong word since it implies that failure would totally break her in the same way that Amber “failing” would, but I think Dorothy kind of bases her sense of self worth on having to live up to her own expectations, and she’s been coming out of that as the series goes on and realizing how to be studious and achieving without getting wrapped up in it, and also allowing herself to not have to be Perfect Amazing Dorothy all the time.
I think you’re right on that. In that, she’s a good counterpart to Amber in that way as well. Both struggle with perfectionism and high standards, but Dorothy adapts to them for her mental well-being and Amber uses them as a tool to injure herself.
Becky is totally the gay version of me. Well, I’m not raised religious but my family is mad crazy, so that counts?
And yes. I mean also mean “Becky before people started liking her character”.
Thank god, Becky’s there to keep it light.
We need more interaction between her and Walky.
“They are going to bang.”
“They totally are going to bang.”
“They are so gay for each other.”
“I know, right. I’M gay but they are super gay”
“KNOCK IT OFF, IT WASN’T FUNNY THE FIRST TIME”
…
“Butts”
“Super butts”
“Tacos.”
“Tacos.”
Seriously though, give it some time and those two will be best buds.
Same old Becky. 😀
Same old Becky :-). ToeDad with a gun couldn’t beat that out of her. That’s called winning.
“You can scar me, but you can’t break me.”
And that’s kinda an important thing. A lot of the times, especially with those standing up against asshole parents on sexuality fronts, the real battle and the real separation is about that core self you just can’t betray by pretending to be what you’re not.
And that’s often a risk that comes with a lot of pain, but when one succeeds at it, like Becky did, it comes with a lot of triumph and feelings of inner strength. Becky weathered the long dark toe-time of the soul and she’s come out battered, but just as Becky as she started.
…long dark toe-time of the soul…
*slow clap*
Slow clap indeed
so Becky wants a hug that lasts just a few moments longer than would be socially-straight. because hugs after a terrifying experience are a thing.
anyone else love the look on Joyce’s face when Becky’s wondering about the Ding-Dong Bandit?
C’mon, David.. Yah gotta show me that Dina’s okay. My nerves are so on edge that I can’t even play Fallout 4 anymore.
Dina’s fine. She’s in a preview panel for January.
I’m still waiting to see if Amber is okay.
Dina probably either headed to or was detained by the Campus Authorities, or simply didn’t make it back to the fountain in time.
Y’know, eventually Joyce is going to have to tell Becky about the Whiteboard Ding-dong Bandit incident… before someone else does. I wonder if she’s realised that? XD
Well, only Amber and Sierra know that she was the one who did it and Sierra didn’t believe her, so, even if she does hear about it, it’s just going to be “wacky mishap” with “awesome superhero lady who saved me from my dad” rather than that was an embarrassing moment for Joyce.
Hmm…. maybe Dorothy is the one who might be bi after all, not Joyce. She certainly hasn’t been discouraging Joyce’s unusual “platonic lady friendship” gestures.
She’s definitely open to the possibility that she’s not 100% a Kinsey 0:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/kinsey/
So, who knows?
Though she might be more willing to let a friendship be a bit… gal-pal looking, even if she is 100% straight, not only just because she’s a really laid back and comfortable with her sexuality woman, but also because as a proud atheist in very Christian areas, she’s had difficulties keeping platonic friendships, so she may be more inclined to let one be what it is as well as not having the richest amount of comparisons to draw on. I mean, her parents noted this earlier:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/areligious/
Honestly, my money is on both.
I used to think Joyce might be, but after her tearful rejection of Becky I doubt it, personally.
Oh Becky you’re my favorite. Now for an entire arc about you seeing your dad go to jail.
That… might actually happen. Becky and Joyce were very centrally located for a lot of the kidnapping and threats and so may be requested to provide their evidence in his trial. And that might be a big emotional deal for both of them as both will likely be thought of as traitors by the folks back home for testifying against a “godly” man. Plus, I imagine it is not easy to face your own father in court, nor is it easy to face your own abuser in court, so Becky might end up being hit by a lot of emotions when that happens, including potentially trained in shame or self-doubt.
So, yeah, we could actually see a more Becky-focused arc surrounding court hijinks within a couple of years.
Yep, that’s gonna be a downer alright.
Kind of glad it’ll take at least a number of years to get to.
I’m hoping that when we see that upcoming storyline with Joyce at home, the elder Browns surprise me and end up deciding to help Becky, which might shield her from some of the crap that will no doubt be occurring in that community. (And definitely provide her with some better financial grounding)
I’m hoping that, but my expectation is that that storyline is going to end with the first true crack between Joyce and her parents and a break that’ll only get worse.
At least that kind of trial probably wouldn’t go down for at least a couple months in-universe, so probably not for like a decade our-time.
That’s what I call a feels attack.
I totally didn’t see Dorothy’s admission/apology coming. As a writer, I adore the continuity and handling of this subplot.
Next panel — the Dean (remember him?) comes by to speak with Joyce.
“What happened out on the highway between you and Beckie’s father is a complete secret, so, naturally the whole school knows.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You all realize, of course, that in the past few days you and Miss McIntyre have broken perhaps a dozen school rules.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that there is sufficient evidence to have you expelled.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Therefore, it is only fitting that you both receive… ‘Special Awards for Services to the School’ “.
The Dumbledore in this comment is so damn high, I have to go listen to some Harry Potter soundtracks now.
So long as, next semester, Joyce doesn’t have to kill a 100-foot-long snake with an antique (and probably not combat-ready) sword, I’ll be content.
I could totally see Becky as a cosplay Ron.
(must draw this now)
YESDRAW EET
Dorothy really is a good person, and a good friend.
Her contact name on Joyce’s phone is truly spot on ^^
Her intentions are excellent, but it’s often better to let people apologise when they have something they want to get off their chests.
Joyce looks like she’s about to cry in the last panel. : / I hope she doesn’t try to bottle it up, nothing good ever comes from that.
Dorothy only learned about all this through the news? Where were the text alerts and sirens. Fictional IU is getting a Clery Act fine for sure.