The first cat I got to name was Pinklepurr, after one of A.A. Milne’s poems.
The second was Pixel, after Heinlein. It was prophetic: on at least two occasions when I was the only human in the house and all doors, windows, etc. were definitely closed, I let her into the house… twice in a row.
Unless you actually read the comics, you wouldn’t know about the Greek Gods angle. From the outside, she is just a superhero woman who wears the same type of scanty clothing as all the others and has a rope to tie up bad guys with. At least she has American symbols in her costume, which might make her better than some other female heroes.
Which brings us to that point mentioned in the alt-text:
WE HAVE CANONICAL EVIDENCE OF JOYCE AS A KID, IN A WONDER WOMAN COSTUME, CHAPERONED BY JOYCELYNE!!! If that’s not the cutest thing EVER I have no idea what is. Patreon voters, we have heard the call. We have the power. This art MUST happen.
Since I don’t think you saw my comment from yesterday, I’ll say it again here:
““Transvestite” is also often considered an outdated and sometimes offensive term, though I have known people who use it for themselves. I’m not sure if you meant transgender, which is different, or someone who crossdresses.”
And it’s not appropriate here in the crossdressing sense either because she wasn’t crossdressing; I guess it’s unclear if she would have thought she was at the time.
This too. I wouldn’t apply any of these terms to a kid wanting to dress up for Halloween as a character of a different apparent gender. Especially a younger kid. It might be a hint or it might just be a character they like.
I didn’t know “transvestite” was considered offensive. So “crossdresser” is the acceptable term instead? (And yes, I know Jocelyne identifies as transgender and neither word is appropriate in her case).
It is, in the situation under discussion, wrong (at least part of the time), though. Calling Mana or Eddie Izzard women would be just as wrong as calling Jocelyn a man. (Of course, Izzard refers to himself as a transvestite, so he confuses the issue under discussion.)
Eddy Izzard is also more gender queer now. I don’t remember precisely what they identify as, but it was clear being a transvestite was just a part of their gender identity/journey.
I didn’t know THAT! Do you have any links to them talking about it? I’ve always liked Eddie Izzard and the fact that they were all “this is what I’m wearing on stage because I WANT TO”. If they’re openly genderqueer… that’s a huge thing.
I think he still uses he/him pronouns, though. That’s what his official website uses.
I love him and remember watching his specials as a kid, and I think that help influence some of my thoughts about gender. And like it was said, he uses transvestite for himself, or at least has in the past, so for a while that seemed more okay to me, but I’ve also been told that in addition to generational language shifts, there might be a difference between what’s more okay in UK vs US English. For the record, I’m coming from an American perspective (despite what students have repeatedly thought this week).
Izzard has started explicitly calling himself transgender recently, but this isn’t a part of a change of his identity, but making explicit that it is his identity, not just his stage persona, or a kink. He still uses he/him and calls himself a transvestite.
Since we’re talking about Eddie Izzard now, there’s a quote of his I love: “No, I wear dresses. They’re not women’s dresses. They’re my clothes. I buy them.”
A young trans character may reference it in a manuscript I’m working on.
As I recall, people have given him also given him shinola for being too subtle. They were expecting the flamboyant ‘Dress to Kill’ costume and he’d chosen to wear a few tasteful hints of make up and a tailored suit that day.
A man can wear a woman’s costume. In this case, Jocelyne wore it — and we don’t know how she saw it at the time — but men can dress up as women without it saying anything about their identity, you know, as costume.
Honestly, it really varies with the person, but in a general sense I’d go with “crossdressing” over “transvestism.” Once my high school Spanish teacher was talking about the subject, trying to be respectful, and used “transvestites.” I mentioned to her after class that another term might be preferable for what she was describing, and she was open to that, saying she had thought “transvestite” was better because it sounded more medical– which I then said could actually be a problem with it.
It has a complicated history. Its present, as I know it, is a lot of people cringing when they hear it used by someone who doesn’t identify that way themself.
*Note that now I’m pretty “smash gender roles, just let people wear what they want,” but these labels still come up for people. Gender non-conforming might also be used in a similar sense at times, but that term can get confusing to. And, like, there’s a lot of LGBTQ+ discussion that gets connected, but a lot of people who crossdress identify as cis and straight.
My spouse identifies as gender nonconforming, but dresses and presents as male. I had no idea that it was tied into gender presentation rather than gender identity.
It’s a lot of things! It can be really confusing. I feel like I hear it most in reference to children? Like “trans and gender non-conforming children,” and that really widens it and can be used to talk about gender in an unhelpful way sometimes, but it can also just be intending to include kids who aren’t sure how they identify. (I have also personally experienced cases of parents who are like, “My daughter* isn’t transgender! She’s* just gender non-conforming!” and then you meet the kid and he’s very clear that he’s a boy.)
Idk, I’m non-binary, and when I see “gender non-conforming,” I often don’t know whether it’s meant to include me or not. I’m trying to phrase this right, but it’s 5am and I haven’t slept… like, there are a lot of terms that have been taken away from the people they’re actually for and then used in really confusing ways, so while I support people self identifying with many of those terms, I sometimes have issues with them in more general senses.
That makes sense. I suppose, if I think about it, these days I’d define “transvestite” as a male person who identifies as male (gay or straight or anything in between) who likes to dress up in feminine garb, but “crossdresser” is probably preferable there.
For some reason, of course, this doesn’t apply to women, as women dressing in male clothes are just dressing in something. But that’s because women get more choice in what to wear anyway. (Please note that this paragraph, while containing more than a kernel of truth, is heavily sarcastic. But I mean honestly, who looks at Marlene Dietrich dressed in top hat, white tail and tails and calls her a crossdresser/transvestite as opposed to just “Marlene Dietrich being hot as fuck”?)
I mean, it used to be that women weren’t allowed to wear clothing “appropriate to the opposite sex” either, but thankfully that’s changed. It’s good to see it changing (albeit extremely slowly) for guys as well! Their clothing choices have been too damned limited (especially for formal wear!!) for too damned long.
I mean, when you think about it, it is extremely weird to insist that the shape and cut and colour of one’s clothing be determined by the shape of one’s genitals, beyond the differences required to make them fit properly.
Like, you’d think style would be exclusively about personality, and occasion, and what looks good on your particular body shape, right? But no; we also limit choices according to whether your genitals are inverted or everted, and that’s just f*cked up.
–So far as it being okay for women to cross-dress, but it being much less socially acceptable for men to, the difference there is that men are still considered socially superior to women. So a woman dressing in men’s clothing is (traditionally) seen as dressing up as a superior, which is, like, cute in the sense of “Aww, look; she thinks she’s people!” sense. (Please note that these is hold-overs from old stereotypes and not what I nor anyone else in their right mind these days actually thinks).
But a guy is dressing down, pretending to be a social inferior, and that is seen as a negative, the same way that a woman exhibiting traditionally “masculine” qualities is seen as “better” than a man exhibiting traditionally “feminine” qualities.
I mean, it’s all complete bullshit; but it’s why women can “get away” with dressing in masculine clothing easier than men can with women’s clothing. And of course WWII and women wearing trousers to work in factories etc did a lot to advance that. But yeah, anyways.
Yup. Much of it comes from gender roles being much more strictly enforced in the past. Part of why men and women wore different clothes was because they needed to do different things. Clothing standards overall used to be more strict as well even within a gender. Individual, personal style mattered less than what social role you needed to perform – which still exists in things like business wear and the like. Jeans being strictly for the working class and even they wore button down shirts and hats.
A good part of the reason women have more freedom to wear male-style clothing is simply that it’s often more practical and thus isn’t necessarily a statement of masculinity, but of practicality. Trousers in factories, as you say.
It’s all bullshit, but it’s deeply rooted bullshit that it’s hard to even dig out of yourself, much less the rest of society.
It is extremely weird that society insists clothing is somehow coded to genitalia… but it also makes sense when you realize how much people think they have a right to know what’s in another person’s pants. =_=
As a straight cis woman who is only attracted to / interested in male genitalia, this should be relevant information to me ONLY if we are currently discussing whether or not we are going to bang. Otherwise, it’s none of my damn business.
It’s important for pronoun use. Clothing is a clear signaler of which “team” you’re on, and since each team has its own pronoun, it makes it easier so you don’t have to ask every single time. The Japanese language has genders and other specifiers for the “I” pronoun, so they don’t have this problem, since it comes out immediately when they refer to themselves.
And do the Japanese have less gender restricted clothing than we do? Since there’s no need to signal for pronoun use.
I’m no expert, but I don’t think so.
Our coded gender roles and assumptions go much deeper than pronouns. Much more about how we treat and react to each other is gender based than we generally like to think.
You’re right though that a lot of the clothing rules (as well as things like hair length and styles) are intended to be obvious signals so we don’t get confused about what roles each other are supposed to play.
It’s pretty simple: both transvestite and crossdresser (in this context) mean that somebody who identifies as a man is dressed as a woman. Jocelyne doesn’t match the first part, even while still in the closet.
I think a better way to say would be something like “Going en femme as wonder woman.” I’ve seen several people online using that phrase while they were transitioning and partially closeted to describe how they were going to present at a given time.
I generally would use transvestite if it turns them on, crossdresser in any other situation where someone is dressing as a gender they don’t identify as (other than trans people who must stay closeted for any reason). And drag queen if they are gay and it has a performative element.
‘Cross dresser’ is usually only appropriate if the person still identifies as their assigned gender, but then I’ve seen a few people use it in regards to when they were experimenting with their gender identity, so it might be applicable here
It’s deeply awful in all sorts of ways, but I’ve got a soft spot for it from the 6 months or so I went semi-regularly back in the 80s. Cringy as it was, I think it was also an outlet for some people who didn’t have the options they might today.
I appreciate a lot of the the cultural impact it had, but also with a sense of, “Y’all. We can move on now.”
It’s still so popular in LGBTQ+ communities, including among younger members, that in my experience, if such a group proposes a movie night, someone is going to suggest Rocky Horror. And that’s part of what was so jarring for me when I did watch/experience it, that communities that I had learned a lot of values from didn’t have more of an issue with the whole thing. (I do think that’s changing now, as one person who used to rave about Rocky Horror five years ago more recently posted something like, “I know it has X, Y, and Z, but…”)
Oh, man, in college, I took Theater Appreciation (watch a movie, write a paragraph on what you thought about it, easy A), and the prof thought he was doing us a favor by showing Rocky before Fall Break as he invited his theater friends to give us the full treatment. Those guys did things you’re not allowed to do in the theater anymore, pissed off one student so bad he yelled, “Fuck you,” at them before storming out, and wrecked the classroom so badly that the prof spent 3 hours cleaning it. He profusely apologized for it next class.
I wonder how old we’re talking here. If Carol held on to these negative Halloween views past Joyce’s time as a little kid, you’d think Joyce would have picked up on them and maybe taken on some of them.
Maybe by the time Joyce was old enough to understand (a) it was clear she really enjoyed it, (b) the news had stopped stirring tensions, (c) if the costume was Joceylyne’s it wasn’t at the forefront of her mind any more (maybe Jordan stuff provided a distraction? Maybe enough time had passed for her to assume it wasn’t indicative of anything) so Carol kept it to herself? Or maybe Hank stepped in and said something in support of his kids?
I’m guessing that she would have if she hadn’t been the youngest child, but since she is when she got old enough to notice her parents shunning the holiday she was also old enough that she just figured they thought she was old enough to have outgrown it and weren’t bothering to do anything for it. By then word had probably gotten out in the area to avoid the crazy fundy houses so she didn’t see any new confrontations, and missed any old ones due to being out with Joce.
Do we know the relative ages of the siblings? I can’t quite put together a timeline here.
If the hate for Halloween started when Jocelyne was just old enough to go, that’s got to be well before the Jordan incident, right. That’s implied to be when Jordan was old enough to leave and Jocelyne isn’t that much younger, is she? How old is “old enough to go” anyway?
It could also be a hint that it wasn’t just cable news, but the young Jocelyne wanting girl costumes for Halloween that triggered it.
I’d assume she’s at least five years older than Joyce, but based on some flashback strips, not much more than that. John is referred to as “by far” the oldest and out of the house almost as long as Joyce can remember, so I’m going to guess he’s at least 30, 12 years older than Joyce. I’m going to go ahead and make up that Jordan is about three years older than Jocelyne, guess that the incident or whatever happened when he was 18, making Joyce 10 at the time.
So that’s my timeline. It’s inadequately sourced, but I’m going with it until we get more information.
…. it’s bated breath. BATED breath. It’s the same root and pretty much the same meaning as “abate”. Bated breath means that you’re either holding your breath or are breathing very slowly and lightly, probably in anticipation or suspense.
“Baited breath” sounds like you’ve eaten a bunch of tuna in the hope of luring a kitten into your open maw.
Don’t make that mistake, man! THINK OF THE KITTENS!
When I read that, you could have knocked me over with a fender. I thought that for all intensive purposes they were the same. Don’t worry, I’ll remember from now on, I have a photogenic memory.
Like I want it to be Jocelyn (and if Joyce doesn’t remember, it maybe being that Joc changed at a friend’s house after dropping Joyce off at home), but it would be so adorable if Jocelyn stood up to their parents because little Joyce loved the Wonder Woman costume she saw and Joc resolved her little sister going to gosh darn get to wear it.
It’s not really on the Patreon page, unless that’s what tomorrow’s update is. There are some strips (one of which is a flashback) relating to Jocelyne in the Patreon bonus strips.
How old did y’all go trick-or-treating (if you went) until? I imagine I’m on the upper end of that– I went until I was 15. I don’t remember that Halloween very distinctly, but I’m sure I went with some friends, so I wasn’t alone in that. And I remember some drama forming around trick-or-treating groups the year I was 14, so I know at least a decent number of people around me were doing it into high school as well.
around 15 or 16 – I got lazy and fam got…more aware that as catholics we shouldn’t be celebrating Halloween. I’m joining the Halloween cult next full moon :<
I stopped going myself when I was around 12, but that’s because we moved to a new town and I didn’t know anyone yet.
Luckily, I got a brother 10 years younger than me, so when he was old enough I got to take him around. Sure, I was a teenager and just wearing a hockey mask “”””ironically””””, but I still accepted candy.
16 or 17 but I was taking my little sister around at the time, other wise it would’ve been earlier. Did a awesome witch costume the last year. Went full hunchback and staff.
The last year my mom let me go was at 14, but the next year, I did get to take my little bro around the neighborhood, and some of the neighbors took pity on me and gave me candy. 🙂
It sucks to have to stop going, or feel like you do, when you don’t want to. I stopped after 15 because the next year I had a AP Chem test on November 1. A bunch of us were like, “But that’s the day after Halloween!” And our teacher was like, “You’re too old for trick-or-treating anyway.”
You know how Daylight Savings ends Nov. 3rd or so? It ought to end Nov. 1st!! Think about it: we could do it just a couple days earlier, and get an extra hour of sleep the day after Hallowe’en!!
WHY ISN’T THIS A THING?!!? Call your representative today!! 😀
19. Though we’d only go out after most kids were done. Lots of people quite happy to just dump out the last of their candy to get rid of the temptation
I went out door to door from 3 through 12. At 13 I hit that “too cool for all that” phase and started handing out candy then hitting the Nov 1 candy sales instead to get the candy I actually wanted rather than the mixed lottery of handouts. Our school district still did the “Halloween Costume Day” thing (since discontinued as I understand it) and I still did a costume for that until I graduated. In ’96, for example, I was a Romero style zombie with a “Zombies for Bob” campaign pin I made from card stock in the style of Dole’s actual campaign pins.
I moved to Ontario in October of the year I turned 13, and I went ToTing here at least twice (I remember doing it in 2 different neighbourhoods). I continued dressing up until 16, when I stopped after being mocked, even though dressing up was expected at school.
When I was young, Mom would buy me some cheapo store-bought costumes that were basically a plastic smock with a cheap mask with the eyes cut out (and never anyone I actually liked, as I never got asked), and it would only be for school purposes. When I was a pre-teen, Mom splurged for one (1) costume that was my favorite color but again nothing I wanted, and I had to reuse that for three years (one year was Tinkerbell, one year Peter Pan, and one year was ‘look, just be a generic fairy or something’). I wore those to a cousin’s house the few times they had Halloween parties, which were just sitting around eating potato chips in costume. By the time I was old enough to stand up for myself, nobody in the family was having ‘parties’ anymore, and I didn’t want to be the lone person dressing up in the family just to get ridiculed (and also having nowhere to go, since trick or treating wasn’t a thing where we lived).
I guess it’s all okay in the end, though, since I don’t really like most candies, and I dress in black with skull accessories every day of the year now anyway. Halloween is every day if you just believe in yourself! :p
Last time I went was when I was in my thirties, but there was a small child involved, so I’m not sure it counts. (My costume was WAY better though – mostly homemade Darth Vader costume for the win!)
I’m pretty sure I stopped at 15, I vaguely remember the first year of high school being my last for Halloween trick or treating. Thought I’m short I felt like I really couldn’t pass as a kid anymore. Never stopped wearing a costume every year though
Has the cat been named before? Because if not, I want her to be named Willow because that’s my cat’s name and she is also calico. Also, if the cat goes unnamed, I’ll just call her Willow; that also works for me.
Seeing the name Willow makes me think of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Which I’m sure is a show the elder Browns wouldn’t let their kids see, even though I suspect one or both may have watched it when they were younger.
That’s pretty much why my cat got to keep her name. I wanted to get a cat and name it Asami (after the character from Legend of Korra), but then I picked out my cat at the shelter (well, she picked me– I sat down and she climbed into my lap), and her name was Willow, and I was like, “Damn, that’s a good name and reminds me of another fictional queer brainiac, I guess that’s also acceptable.”
Is it cruel of me to want to see Willis write himself into a corner where he has to draw Joyce and Becky and Carla all in plaids and a calico as well? (Yes. Yes it is.)
The pink word balloons are used for whoever’s on the other end of the phone. In panel 4, Joyce’s word balloon is the pink one because we’re seeing Jocelyne’s side of the conversation. (Not sure if this has been the case throughout the comic, or maybe females get pink and males get blue word balloons?)
You’ve basically got it, just that it’s a more overarching thing than that. Characters usually have one or more colors associated with them, and it’s reflected in places like their wardrobes and certain word balloons. Like how Dina trends towards green in her wardrobe and her thought bubbles in Walking with Dina are green.
Joyce has orange, Dorothy and Sarah trend towards purple (not 100% with Sarah), stuff like that. Willis talks about these kinds of associations in the end of the printed Book 1 (maybe others but 1 is the only one I’m sure of) when talking about his process for designing and updating the characters when starting DoA.
It’s a fairly common thing to do in character design, and A: I love that kinda stuff, it’s always fun and neat and effective and B: Willis does it very well, using such colors more frequently but not exclusively, which is pretty realistic (like most things in the comic!). Also it is Cool and Good that Jocelyne’s ‘primary’ color is pink. Yay!
but no seriously, cable news radicalizes people all the time. Someone was talking in the comment section of the last strip how the Browns presumably sunk deeper and deeper into fundamentalism, and in all likelihood cable news – which feeds on your paranoia to drive up viewership – did not help them at all.
It depends on which channel you’re talking about. Too many of them devote too much air time to “outrage of the moment” editorial personality shows masquerading as hard news. They’re audio-visual supermarket tabloids.
Local stations (not owned by Sinclair) and C-SPAN are worth watching.
I find myself wondering if Jocelyne decided on her name because a shortened version sort of sounds like Josh, or if she chose her name because of her closeness to Joyce. The Browns have a whole names begin with Jo thing going on, but Jocelyne could have chosen Joan, or Josephine, and kept the tradition intact.
My theory is that little Joyce had a little trouble saying “sh” sounds so, for example, “fish” came out “fiss” and “Josh” came out “Joss”, which you may note is the first syllable of “Jocelyne”.
This feeds into my other theory, that Joyce’s mother, infinite jerk that she is, kept correcting her into saying “Joshua” (or at least “Jossua”), a habit she still carries to this day. Why, you may ask? to keep her darling little boy from turning into a girl, or worse, a writer of science fiction television! The horror! (Can you tell I’m being sarcastic? I’m trying to be sarcastic.)
Dang, I should’ve refreshed before posting my reply. I hadn’t even considered the “Patreon-only information” angle until I read your comment. I’m sorry, Willis!
Watching Jocelyne and Joyce interact makes me so happy. I’m an older sister myself with a similar relationship to my younger sibs, so seeing that bond reflected here (though so rarely! more screen time for Jocelyne 2k19!) is really nice. 🙂
If your younger sib doesn’t know about half the times you went to bat for them against your parents, you’re doing the older sibling thing right. But also, now I wanna see cute lil’ kid Halloween pics.
Finally, I have a new favorite character now and it’s Miss Sakaki. Look at that excellent floofy friend. >^o.o^<
1) Called it. (About Jocelyn liking Halloween because of the costumes she got to wear.)
2) Didn’t quite call it, but the idea that Carol started hating Halloween when Jocelyn was old enough to go makes perfect sense in tandem with #1 — Halloween becomes particularly evil because it’s leading her perfect son to wear a dress.
3) OK, so Willis’s art is not something I usually comment on, because for all its wonderful subtleties, I don’t generally find it something to write home about. (I read a lot of webcomics; the only ones where I’ll add the detail “And the art is amazing when recommending them to someone are Lackadaisy, Sunstone, and Wilde Life, and occasionally Gunnerkrigg Court.) But I am in awe of this strip, partly because I’m not quite sure how he’s done it. OK, so every time we’ve seen Jocelyn so far, it’s been in circumstances where she’s still presenting as male. This is the first time we’ve seen her on her own. And somehow — I’m not sure how — Willis has managed to show her as indubitably female. I don’t know if it’s the open-collar and the pink shirt, or if somehow the floppy sleeves read as feminine, or if it’s just that at this angle the haircut looks more feminine than agender, or what — but there’s just absolutely no question that that’s a woman. Bravo, sir.
4) The battle she picked was about getting a cat, wasn’t it? After all, we know the Browns are dog people.
If you like good webcomic art, http://tjandamal.com/comic/?id=4
Also, its main characters are gay. (A few strips are NSFW but that’s not its focus – it’s about romance, friendship, and maybe character development. Plus a road trip.) One of the few webcomics I’ve ever bought in paper.
Recommending Wilde Life and http://www.Kahmith.com about cute aliens. Also (with h trigger warning)LeveL and new to me “Someday” and “Achilles Heel” (both with gay main characters)
You’re quite welcome. I also highly recommend The Bright Side, which is not nearly as well known as it should be. It doesn’t end up on my “The art is great” list, but it doesn’t need too.
Wilde Life is brilliant, but be aware that Pascale isn’t kidding when she calls it a horror comic. It’s mostly just sweetly supernatural with some dark moments, but when it gets creepy, it gets really creepy. (Mostly by mixing supernatural horror with real-life stalker horror. But that might be a spoiler.)
It’s gloriously beautiful, but also packed with body horror, existential horror, sympathetic horror, lurking horror, and just plain grossness. Which is not to say that it’s bad! But people who experience hyperempathy may want to scroll very quickly past some pages and get a feel for what happened in the comments.
Thumbnail for those who don’t know: The series starts 90 years after a mysterious pathogen infected most of the world, killed almost everybody outside a few quarantined areas, and turned the survivors into hideously distorted squelching ravening immortal zombies that have the souls of the infected trapped helplessly inside. (They can be heard screaming for help or sobbing in despair on the frequencies people usually use for radio communication.) The only way to retake infected areas is to burn everything and replant. Our Heroes are members of an expedition that plans to go out ahead of the burn teams to rescue the most precious of portable treasures: books. Plot twists ensue.
Also the pathogen infects every mammal except felids. So also check the box for “Does the Dog Die?” and add a note, “No, but you’ll wish he had.”
Also some of the smaller monsters are strongly implied to have been children, or babies.
Point 4: the Browns are dog people.
Yeah, no, Carol is def NOT a dog people. If anything I b’lieve she is a “sheep” person. And Joss seems to g t her goat. Pun in 10 ded.
This sounds un-necessarily harsh, sorry!
Most of these characters have fears, but Carole seems to have fear as her main feature. Her Raisin ‘Deter, as it was. (Were? Is?).
And fear based living leads to bad decisions and heartbreak, no? Well it has in my life. So, go boldly and fearlessly. And avoid swordchucks.
No no, it’s two steps actually. The order goes “Writer”, then “Late night “pro” gamer”, THEN “Morlock”. Writers may be hermits, but at least they leave their basements occasionally…
The second thing I noticed about her was the eyes. Large and blue, like crystal ponds in a fairytale forest, like a window to her soul, innocent and pure and open for the whole world to see. Eyes like that made you think of things that weren’t, but perhaps could have been. What things would have been like in a world, not as ugly as this one, and what you could have been in such a world. You could loose yourself in those eyes.
And if you did, you would take your eyes off her fists. That would be a big mistake.
She came into my office like a breath of fresh summer rain in a city block that otherwise mostly smells like the sort of rain you expect in the back of local dive the night the cheap beer truck comes to town. That was the third thing I noticed about her. Her… everything. Everything that stuck out like a soar toe in this part of town. Her honesty where we peddled in falsehoods. Her hope where we glutted ourselves on nihilism. Her fire where all we had left were ash.
She stood in front of my desk, as far away as possible from all the no doubt unhygienic things my office had to offer, her hands nervously fidgeting with a fidgety thing. It must have been bad, whatever caused her to seek me out. They never come to me unless it is.
“I have this problem…” she said. They always had. “There’s this question…” she said. There always was. She bit her lip, she fidgeted a bit more while I counted under my breath, and just before I came to thirteen she took a deep breath and said “there’s this lady…”
Ah.
There always was.
As it happened, I knew the lady in question. ‘Carol’, like those things that are supposed to spread joy at Christmas. Nasty piece of work. Some said she worked with the Toe, although nothing stuck on her when they hauled him away. “I cook, but I won’t burn”, as she liked to say.
Kinda sounds a bit like a threat now when I think of it.
This case made all sorts of alarm bells go off, but I took it anyway. Of course I did. They say you are not supposed to live vicariously through others, but sometimes you take whatever victories you can. And if my client were to stand up against Carol I knew a little girl from a long time ago who very much cheered on that fight.
The first thing I noticed about my client was how strong she was. I’m not only talking about the fists (although I knew enough not to take my eyes off them). This was a girl still capable of doing the right thing. Still capable of wielding the truth like a golden weapon instead of skulking in the shadows with all us other liars. Almost enough to make an old cynic believe in super heroes again.
Almost.
My name is Jocelyne and I’m a writer. They tell you to write what you know. And knowing things is my business.
She named. A kitty. After the Best Azumanga Daioh Girl. I must be hers. *immediately goes off to buy a huge bouquet of flowers, a nice tux, and an engagement ring*
Sarah: “Wait, your bro wore a Wonder Woman costume?”
Joyce: “She is a cool super hero.”
Sarah: “But she is a woman.”
Joyce: “I dress as Monkey Master and he is a guy.”
Sarah: “Don’t you think your brother is actually your sister?”
Joyce: “Sarah, gay men aren’t women. Ethan told me.”
Sarah: *Facepalms.*
Carla: “I felt this conversation was related to me like any good conversation. Also, I am dressed as Ultracar because she is cool and to make Walky angry.”
Yes, but men who dress as women are not necessarily women. Not even transwomen. Drag Queens are often still men, not women, not trans*. Guys who cross dress for conventions, still men. Men who dress like a girl for halloween, generally still men.
Obviously, this is a sign of other things for Jocelyne, but we can’t just assume that someone is trans* just because they wore a costume once.
Also — again different — there are guys who wear “women’s clothes” (whatever that is) or make-up and are not Drag Queens, nor would they see themselves as crossdressing. Because what they’re wearing are their clothes and they like it. (I have a male friend who wears a skirt. He wouldn’t say that he’s crossdressing, because it’s his skirt, not a woman’s skirt. Like a woman wearing trousers. I also have a friend who regularly wears nailpolish and eye make-up, but not because he wants to look like a woman. It’s just his look.)
Lets be honest its sort of weird that you can literally change everything else about yourself for Halloween or a convention and no one will care but changing gender suddenly says something about yourself. At least if your a guy I don’t think people would blink if a woman decided to be Superman.
SISTER BONDING SISTER BONDING SISTER BONDING. I really want them to both get this bc iirc Joyce herself said she always wanted a sister and like… I’ve been WAITING for this since we found out about Jocelyn BEING Jocelyn (i might be mispelling her name but it’s been a while) So like… HYPE
Well, what’s easier to bring up as a topic of conversation: how your day’s going or that trauma you went through when you were thirteen?
Like, being more comfortable with something “lighter” is pretty normal. That said, I do think in this case Halloween is important as it reflects on their family dynamics and how they navigate them. And starting off with a less intense topic can lead to building to talking about the more intense one.
Important to note – it goes both ways, because she doesn’t know she has a sister named Jocelyn either. She’s the youngest. She isn’t going to get those open to communication cues easily unless someone in her family starts providing them to her.
The Halloween subject allows Joyce to get a better feel on where Joycelyn falls on certain stances, and its not high risk because Joyce already knows that Joycelyn does not believe in blindly following their parents, and is cool with Halloween herself. So either they will laugh at how silly Joyce was to think her parents hated Halloween, or Joyce gets to learn how Joycelyn was on her side once again. And this all is valuable information about how safe Joycelyn is with bigger stuff.
Specifically, WITH GOD, CHURCH, EVIL DADS, HORRIBLE MOMS, SLIMY POLITICIANS, OBNOXIOUS ARCHITECTURE AND ANYONE ELSE WHO MIGHT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH BECKY. WHAT’S THAT? YOU DON’T AGREE WITH HER SEXUALITY? WELL, PERHAPS JOYCE’S FISTS DON’T AGREE WITH YOUR FAAAACE!
I remember when CNN first started and a lot of the indie channels and local news used their stories used them for news and they’d run the old “razor blades in the candy ” bs all of Sept and Oct…
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=O
MISS SASAKI, YOU BUSTED FREE OF THE PAYWALL
(and JOSS… yesssssss, WW is rad as fuck)
Miss Sakaki is the best name for a cat, and I’m mad I didn’t think about it when naming mine.
I thought of Curiosity Kildekat
I named my cat Raspberyl. ‘Cause she’s a delinquent.
Not a badass freakin’ overlord?
Zetta probably doesn’t flee whenever the Roomba starts up, so no.
He might. Don’t a page tearing, do we?
My husband’s uncle had a cat named Clawed dePussy
She sticks her tongue out and goes “pbbbbt”?
The first cat I got to name was Pinklepurr, after one of A.A. Milne’s poems.
The second was Pixel, after Heinlein. It was prophetic: on at least two occasions when I was the only human in the house and all doors, windows, etc. were definitely closed, I let her into the house… twice in a row.
I feel like Miss Sasaki needs their own tag.
You have two wishes remaining.
We are the Emperor of the Internet. We do not wish, We command.
And We are pleased that Our command was obeyed so swiftly.
Yeah? Well, I’m the Lord of Time.
Calm down, you’re both pretty.
They’re pretty, I’m petty.
Aww, you didn’t want to pull off both?
Wonder Woman costume… or Miss Sasaki?
HMM 🤔
I choose Miss Sasaki wearing a tiny Wonder Woman costume.
Someone remind me of this when I have the funds to commission a sketch.
You choose well.
I mean, yeah https://www.amazon.com/Comics-Costume-Small-Wonder-Woman/dp/B00C6UWYRE
If I had known Patreon folks got a cat and Jocelyne I would have signed up before this.
Miss Sasaki will win the next favorite DoA character poll.
OMG miss sakaki self insert ! We all knew she was the was drawing the comic
This is so sweet, I love it???
*looks for the Lynda Carter episode of The Muppet Show in the DVD pile*
Wundah Wumaaaaaan
dun dun dun da da dun dun
In your satin tights
Fighting for our rights
And the Ol’ Red White an Bluuuuuue
dun dun dun dun
Youre a wundah, Wundah Wumaaaaan
Get us out from undah, Wundah Wumaaan
da da dun dah daa
DUN DUN DUN DA!
“Flash! Bam! Alakazam! Out of an orange-colored sky!”
— I like that episode.
Wait, which of them was going as Wonder Woman?
Yes.
Question: How was Wonder Woman a thing in their household inasmuch as, you know, there’s that whole Greek Gods thing going on?
Maybe the patriotic swimsuit fooled the parents into thinking she is a good upstanding Christian lady?
Lord what fools these mortals be
Unless you actually read the comics, you wouldn’t know about the Greek Gods angle. From the outside, she is just a superhero woman who wears the same type of scanty clothing as all the others and has a rope to tie up bad guys with. At least she has American symbols in her costume, which might make her better than some other female heroes.
^
|
|
She did.
Joyce.
Which brings us to that point mentioned in the alt-text:
WE HAVE CANONICAL EVIDENCE OF JOYCE AS A KID, IN A WONDER WOMAN COSTUME, CHAPERONED BY JOYCELYNE!!! If that’s not the cutest thing EVER I have no idea what is. Patreon voters, we have heard the call. We have the power. This art MUST happen.
Which begs the question – what DID Jocelyne wear then if Joyce was WW?
Colonel Steve Trevor Jr.
Yup, I was right about someone being a transvestite at Halloween
Since I don’t think you saw my comment from yesterday, I’ll say it again here:
““Transvestite” is also often considered an outdated and sometimes offensive term, though I have known people who use it for themselves. I’m not sure if you meant transgender, which is different, or someone who crossdresses.”
And it’s not appropriate here in the crossdressing sense either because she wasn’t crossdressing; I guess it’s unclear if she would have thought she was at the time.
And also, besides all those important things, she was dressing up as Wonder Woman, not ‘a transvestite’
(I just reread and AntJ said ‘at Halloween’ not ‘for Halloween’ but I’m still adding this)
This too. I wouldn’t apply any of these terms to a kid wanting to dress up for Halloween as a character of a different apparent gender. Especially a younger kid. It might be a hint or it might just be a character they like.
Wonder how old this was for Jocelyne?
This is a good wording of what I kind of meant to expand my comment into
I didn’t know “transvestite” was considered offensive. So “crossdresser” is the acceptable term instead? (And yes, I know Jocelyne identifies as transgender and neither word is appropriate in her case).
Just say woman? Its. Really not hard.
Well, it seems like they were asking about transvestite vs crossdresser, and “woman” isn’t really the answer for that.
Sorry. I mean no disrespect.
It is, in the situation under discussion, wrong (at least part of the time), though. Calling Mana or Eddie Izzard women would be just as wrong as calling Jocelyn a man. (Of course, Izzard refers to himself as a transvestite, so he confuses the issue under discussion.)
Eddy Izzard is also more gender queer now. I don’t remember precisely what they identify as, but it was clear being a transvestite was just a part of their gender identity/journey.
I didn’t know THAT! Do you have any links to them talking about it? I’ve always liked Eddie Izzard and the fact that they were all “this is what I’m wearing on stage because I WANT TO”. If they’re openly genderqueer… that’s a huge thing.
Eddie Izzard just went on Joe Rogan and referred to themselves as Trans. it’s on the JRE youtube channel, actually.
20 minute clip titled: “Eddie Izzard on being Transgender”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AF7Qv-ughQ
I think he still uses he/him pronouns, though. That’s what his official website uses.
I love him and remember watching his specials as a kid, and I think that help influence some of my thoughts about gender. And like it was said, he uses transvestite for himself, or at least has in the past, so for a while that seemed more okay to me, but I’ve also been told that in addition to generational language shifts, there might be a difference between what’s more okay in UK vs US English. For the record, I’m coming from an American perspective (despite what students have repeatedly thought this week).
Yeah, I checked before making my post, and it’s all masculine pronouns. He’s also still referred to as a transvestite on the site.
Izzard has started explicitly calling himself transgender recently, but this isn’t a part of a change of his identity, but making explicit that it is his identity, not just his stage persona, or a kink. He still uses he/him and calls himself a transvestite.
Since we’re talking about Eddie Izzard now, there’s a quote of his I love: “No, I wear dresses. They’re not women’s dresses. They’re my clothes. I buy them.”
A young trans character may reference it in a manuscript I’m working on.
As I recall, people have given him also given him shinola for being too subtle. They were expecting the flamboyant ‘Dress to Kill’ costume and he’d chosen to wear a few tasteful hints of make up and a tailored suit that day.
A man can wear a woman’s costume. In this case, Jocelyne wore it — and we don’t know how she saw it at the time — but men can dress up as women without it saying anything about their identity, you know, as costume.
Honestly, it really varies with the person, but in a general sense I’d go with “crossdressing” over “transvestism.” Once my high school Spanish teacher was talking about the subject, trying to be respectful, and used “transvestites.” I mentioned to her after class that another term might be preferable for what she was describing, and she was open to that, saying she had thought “transvestite” was better because it sounded more medical– which I then said could actually be a problem with it.
It has a complicated history. Its present, as I know it, is a lot of people cringing when they hear it used by someone who doesn’t identify that way themself.
Good to know. Thanks.
*Note that now I’m pretty “smash gender roles, just let people wear what they want,” but these labels still come up for people. Gender non-conforming might also be used in a similar sense at times, but that term can get confusing to. And, like, there’s a lot of LGBTQ+ discussion that gets connected, but a lot of people who crossdress identify as cis and straight.
My spouse identifies as gender nonconforming, but dresses and presents as male. I had no idea that it was tied into gender presentation rather than gender identity.
It’s a lot of things! It can be really confusing. I feel like I hear it most in reference to children? Like “trans and gender non-conforming children,” and that really widens it and can be used to talk about gender in an unhelpful way sometimes, but it can also just be intending to include kids who aren’t sure how they identify. (I have also personally experienced cases of parents who are like, “My daughter* isn’t transgender! She’s* just gender non-conforming!” and then you meet the kid and he’s very clear that he’s a boy.)
Idk, I’m non-binary, and when I see “gender non-conforming,” I often don’t know whether it’s meant to include me or not. I’m trying to phrase this right, but it’s 5am and I haven’t slept… like, there are a lot of terms that have been taken away from the people they’re actually for and then used in really confusing ways, so while I support people self identifying with many of those terms, I sometimes have issues with them in more general senses.
That makes sense. I suppose, if I think about it, these days I’d define “transvestite” as a male person who identifies as male (gay or straight or anything in between) who likes to dress up in feminine garb, but “crossdresser” is probably preferable there.
For some reason, of course, this doesn’t apply to women, as women dressing in male clothes are just dressing in something. But that’s because women get more choice in what to wear anyway. (Please note that this paragraph, while containing more than a kernel of truth, is heavily sarcastic. But I mean honestly, who looks at Marlene Dietrich dressed in top hat, white tail and tails and calls her a crossdresser/transvestite as opposed to just “Marlene Dietrich being hot as fuck”?)
I mean, it used to be that women weren’t allowed to wear clothing “appropriate to the opposite sex” either, but thankfully that’s changed. It’s good to see it changing (albeit extremely slowly) for guys as well! Their clothing choices have been too damned limited (especially for formal wear!!) for too damned long.
I mean, when you think about it, it is extremely weird to insist that the shape and cut and colour of one’s clothing be determined by the shape of one’s genitals, beyond the differences required to make them fit properly.
Like, you’d think style would be exclusively about personality, and occasion, and what looks good on your particular body shape, right? But no; we also limit choices according to whether your genitals are inverted or everted, and that’s just f*cked up.
–So far as it being okay for women to cross-dress, but it being much less socially acceptable for men to, the difference there is that men are still considered socially superior to women. So a woman dressing in men’s clothing is (traditionally) seen as dressing up as a superior, which is, like, cute in the sense of “Aww, look; she thinks she’s people!” sense. (Please note that these is hold-overs from old stereotypes and not what I nor anyone else in their right mind these days actually thinks).
But a guy is dressing down, pretending to be a social inferior, and that is seen as a negative, the same way that a woman exhibiting traditionally “masculine” qualities is seen as “better” than a man exhibiting traditionally “feminine” qualities.
I mean, it’s all complete bullshit; but it’s why women can “get away” with dressing in masculine clothing easier than men can with women’s clothing. And of course WWII and women wearing trousers to work in factories etc did a lot to advance that. But yeah, anyways.
Also holy crap, yes, Marlene Dietrich!! <333
Yup. Much of it comes from gender roles being much more strictly enforced in the past. Part of why men and women wore different clothes was because they needed to do different things. Clothing standards overall used to be more strict as well even within a gender. Individual, personal style mattered less than what social role you needed to perform – which still exists in things like business wear and the like. Jeans being strictly for the working class and even they wore button down shirts and hats.
A good part of the reason women have more freedom to wear male-style clothing is simply that it’s often more practical and thus isn’t necessarily a statement of masculinity, but of practicality. Trousers in factories, as you say.
It’s all bullshit, but it’s deeply rooted bullshit that it’s hard to even dig out of yourself, much less the rest of society.
It is extremely weird that society insists clothing is somehow coded to genitalia… but it also makes sense when you realize how much people think they have a right to know what’s in another person’s pants. =_=
As a straight cis woman who is only attracted to / interested in male genitalia, this should be relevant information to me ONLY if we are currently discussing whether or not we are going to bang. Otherwise, it’s none of my damn business.
It’s important for pronoun use. Clothing is a clear signaler of which “team” you’re on, and since each team has its own pronoun, it makes it easier so you don’t have to ask every single time. The Japanese language has genders and other specifiers for the “I” pronoun, so they don’t have this problem, since it comes out immediately when they refer to themselves.
And do the Japanese have less gender restricted clothing than we do? Since there’s no need to signal for pronoun use.
I’m no expert, but I don’t think so.
Our coded gender roles and assumptions go much deeper than pronouns. Much more about how we treat and react to each other is gender based than we generally like to think.
You’re right though that a lot of the clothing rules (as well as things like hair length and styles) are intended to be obvious signals so we don’t get confused about what roles each other are supposed to play.
Or, you know, “being Marlene Dietrich”.
It’s pretty simple: both transvestite and crossdresser (in this context) mean that somebody who identifies as a man is dressed as a woman. Jocelyne doesn’t match the first part, even while still in the closet.
I think a better way to say would be something like “Going en femme as wonder woman.” I’ve seen several people online using that phrase while they were transitioning and partially closeted to describe how they were going to present at a given time.
I generally would use transvestite if it turns them on, crossdresser in any other situation where someone is dressing as a gender they don’t identify as (other than trans people who must stay closeted for any reason). And drag queen if they are gay and it has a performative element.
‘Cross dresser’ is usually only appropriate if the person still identifies as their assigned gender, but then I’ve seen a few people use it in regards to when they were experimenting with their gender identity, so it might be applicable here
At least, from what I know anyway
The main context these days it’d be used for is Rocky Horror cosplay.
God, I hate Rocky Horror.
Saaaame.
It’s deeply awful in all sorts of ways, but I’ve got a soft spot for it from the 6 months or so I went semi-regularly back in the 80s. Cringy as it was, I think it was also an outlet for some people who didn’t have the options they might today.
I appreciate a lot of the the cultural impact it had, but also with a sense of, “Y’all. We can move on now.”
It’s still so popular in LGBTQ+ communities, including among younger members, that in my experience, if such a group proposes a movie night, someone is going to suggest Rocky Horror. And that’s part of what was so jarring for me when I did watch/experience it, that communities that I had learned a lot of values from didn’t have more of an issue with the whole thing. (I do think that’s changing now, as one person who used to rave about Rocky Horror five years ago more recently posted something like, “I know it has X, Y, and Z, but…”)
Oh, man, in college, I took Theater Appreciation (watch a movie, write a paragraph on what you thought about it, easy A), and the prof thought he was doing us a favor by showing Rocky before Fall Break as he invited his theater friends to give us the full treatment. Those guys did things you’re not allowed to do in the theater anymore, pissed off one student so bad he yelled, “Fuck you,” at them before storming out, and wrecked the classroom so badly that the prof spent 3 hours cleaning it. He profusely apologized for it next class.
While this thread contains many gems of useful information, it seems all based on a misunderstanding!
David M. Willis has clarified here, that it was Joyce going as Wonder Woman, not Jocelyne.
Hell yeah, girl.
I wonder how old we’re talking here. If Carol held on to these negative Halloween views past Joyce’s time as a little kid, you’d think Joyce would have picked up on them and maybe taken on some of them.
Maybe by the time Joyce was old enough to understand (a) it was clear she really enjoyed it, (b) the news had stopped stirring tensions, (c) if the costume was Joceylyne’s it wasn’t at the forefront of her mind any more (maybe Jordan stuff provided a distraction? Maybe enough time had passed for her to assume it wasn’t indicative of anything) so Carol kept it to herself? Or maybe Hank stepped in and said something in support of his kids?
I’m guessing that she would have if she hadn’t been the youngest child, but since she is when she got old enough to notice her parents shunning the holiday she was also old enough that she just figured they thought she was old enough to have outgrown it and weren’t bothering to do anything for it. By then word had probably gotten out in the area to avoid the crazy fundy houses so she didn’t see any new confrontations, and missed any old ones due to being out with Joce.
Do we know the relative ages of the siblings? I can’t quite put together a timeline here.
If the hate for Halloween started when Jocelyne was just old enough to go, that’s got to be well before the Jordan incident, right. That’s implied to be when Jordan was old enough to leave and Jocelyne isn’t that much younger, is she? How old is “old enough to go” anyway?
It could also be a hint that it wasn’t just cable news, but the young Jocelyne wanting girl costumes for Halloween that triggered it.
I’d assume she’s at least five years older than Joyce, but based on some flashback strips, not much more than that. John is referred to as “by far” the oldest and out of the house almost as long as Joyce can remember, so I’m going to guess he’s at least 30, 12 years older than Joyce. I’m going to go ahead and make up that Jordan is about three years older than Jocelyne, guess that the incident or whatever happened when he was 18, making Joyce 10 at the time.
So that’s my timeline. It’s inadequately sourced, but I’m going with it until we get more information.
Regarding alt text. Give.
I will await the next patreon voting post with baited breath.
ew
*twitch*
….
…. it’s bated breath. BATED breath. It’s the same root and pretty much the same meaning as “abate”. Bated breath means that you’re either holding your breath or are breathing very slowly and lightly, probably in anticipation or suspense.
“Baited breath” sounds like you’ve eaten a bunch of tuna in the hope of luring a kitten into your open maw.
Don’t make that mistake, man! THINK OF THE KITTENS!
When I read that, you could have knocked me over with a fender. I thought that for all intensive purposes they were the same. Don’t worry, I’ll remember from now on, I have a photogenic memory.
*fake shutter clicking sound that all cameras make now, even though few of them actually have shutters*
Yep, it looks great!
For all INTENTS AND purposes!
Don’t make me hit you!
*feather, *photographic. I think you missed the joke.
Unless you’re Mulch Diggums, baited breath is usually a bad idea.
+1, please do!
Wills might as well just skip the next patreon voting post.
Jocelyn, yesssssss
Also I love that Jocelyne gets pink speech bubbles
She’s secretly Gwenpool!
I miss that series bunches. And WCA is on the way out too.
That series was great.
I was pissed when they cancelled that comic, it was one of the two I bought anymore, the other is Squirrel Girl, if you were wondering.
Me too. I like to picture Gwen and Doreen and Tippy-Toe hanging out together. Pizza and soda and nuts.
Murdering random people, including Howard the Duck? Jocelyne is more rational and empathetic than Gwenpool.
yeah that sounds like carol all right
If that wonder woman costume becomes a patreon strip so help me I will actually sign up finally.
Same it’s super needed for my eyeballs
I don’t care whether she means for herself or just for Joyce but I’m so happy.
Like I want it to be Jocelyn (and if Joyce doesn’t remember, it maybe being that Joc changed at a friend’s house after dropping Joyce off at home), but it would be so adorable if Jocelyn stood up to their parents because little Joyce loved the Wonder Woman costume she saw and Joc resolved her little sister going to gosh darn get to wear it.
I get the feeling that Jocelyn knows the real reason, yet chooses to blame cable news…
Cable news gets pretty universally blamed these days.
I mean, it is to blame for a lot of things, so it’s not like people won’t believe you.
NOTE: I’m not in any way blaming her for this. I see now how it looks that way, and I apologize for the wording.
Well, she can’t tell Joyce the real reason and cable news probably did harden their parent’s attitudes.
Is the backstory of Jocelyn on the Patreon page? Will we see it here?
It’s not really on the Patreon page, unless that’s what tomorrow’s update is. There are some strips (one of which is a flashback) relating to Jocelyne in the Patreon bonus strips.
How old did y’all go trick-or-treating (if you went) until? I imagine I’m on the upper end of that– I went until I was 15. I don’t remember that Halloween very distinctly, but I’m sure I went with some friends, so I wasn’t alone in that. And I remember some drama forming around trick-or-treating groups the year I was 14, so I know at least a decent number of people around me were doing it into high school as well.
14 or 15 as well. The last year was with a big group of friends of friends and it wasn’t fun.
around 15 or 16 – I got lazy and fam got…more aware that as catholics we shouldn’t be celebrating Halloween. I’m joining the Halloween cult next full moon :<
we still give out candy, but i’m still just so tired (also hell yeah half price candy the day after)
12 years old was the last I went.
I stopped going myself when I was around 12, but that’s because we moved to a new town and I didn’t know anyone yet.
Luckily, I got a brother 10 years younger than me, so when he was old enough I got to take him around. Sure, I was a teenager and just wearing a hockey mask “”””ironically””””, but I still accepted candy.
15 or 16 iirc.
15 or 16 too, and only coz I had twin baby siblings and a little cousin the same age to “chaperone”. ^~^; I was Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos.
16 or 17 but I was taking my little sister around at the time, other wise it would’ve been earlier. Did a awesome witch costume the last year. Went full hunchback and staff.
The last year my mom let me go was at 14, but the next year, I did get to take my little bro around the neighborhood, and some of the neighbors took pity on me and gave me candy. 🙂
I went up until 15, since after that I started college in a different city and everyone else in my dorm was 19-ish and I felt embarrassed. 🙁
It sucks to have to stop going, or feel like you do, when you don’t want to. I stopped after 15 because the next year I had a AP Chem test on November 1. A bunch of us were like, “But that’s the day after Halloween!” And our teacher was like, “You’re too old for trick-or-treating anyway.”
You know how Daylight Savings ends Nov. 3rd or so? It ought to end Nov. 1st!! Think about it: we could do it just a couple days earlier, and get an extra hour of sleep the day after Hallowe’en!!
WHY ISN’T THIS A THING?!!? Call your representative today!! 😀
19. Though we’d only go out after most kids were done. Lots of people quite happy to just dump out the last of their candy to get rid of the temptation
I went out door to door from 3 through 12. At 13 I hit that “too cool for all that” phase and started handing out candy then hitting the Nov 1 candy sales instead to get the candy I actually wanted rather than the mixed lottery of handouts. Our school district still did the “Halloween Costume Day” thing (since discontinued as I understand it) and I still did a costume for that until I graduated. In ’96, for example, I was a Romero style zombie with a “Zombies for Bob” campaign pin I made from card stock in the style of Dole’s actual campaign pins.
Around 10, I think. One year I caught pneumonia around Halloween and couldn’t go, then just didn’t after that.
Uh…14, I think.
I moved to Ontario in October of the year I turned 13, and I went ToTing here at least twice (I remember doing it in 2 different neighbourhoods). I continued dressing up until 16, when I stopped after being mocked, even though dressing up was expected at school.
I was out in costume around 20 but that was because I was taking my 7-10 years younger siblings out.
The last time I collected candy for myself was when I was 17 (again with the siblings), my senior year of high school
Never went trick or treating!
When I was young, Mom would buy me some cheapo store-bought costumes that were basically a plastic smock with a cheap mask with the eyes cut out (and never anyone I actually liked, as I never got asked), and it would only be for school purposes. When I was a pre-teen, Mom splurged for one (1) costume that was my favorite color but again nothing I wanted, and I had to reuse that for three years (one year was Tinkerbell, one year Peter Pan, and one year was ‘look, just be a generic fairy or something’). I wore those to a cousin’s house the few times they had Halloween parties, which were just sitting around eating potato chips in costume. By the time I was old enough to stand up for myself, nobody in the family was having ‘parties’ anymore, and I didn’t want to be the lone person dressing up in the family just to get ridiculed (and also having nowhere to go, since trick or treating wasn’t a thing where we lived).
I guess it’s all okay in the end, though, since I don’t really like most candies, and I dress in black with skull accessories every day of the year now anyway. Halloween is every day if you just believe in yourself! :p
Last time I went was when I was in my thirties, but there was a small child involved, so I’m not sure it counts. (My costume was WAY better though – mostly homemade Darth Vader costume for the win!)
I’m pretty sure I stopped at 15, I vaguely remember the first year of high school being my last for Halloween trick or treating. Thought I’m short I felt like I really couldn’t pass as a kid anymore. Never stopped wearing a costume every year though
I am of a certain age, but I pinned a toy spider to my cap last Halloween. A bunch of trick-or-treaters saw it and went Yay!
So was it Jocelyne wearing that Wonder Woman costume, or Joyce?
If it was Joyce, Jocelyne was absolutely wanting to wear it.
The answer, dear commenter, is “yes”.
Why isn’t the kitty named in the tags?
Has the cat been named before? Because if not, I want her to be named Willow because that’s my cat’s name and she is also calico. Also, if the cat goes unnamed, I’ll just call her Willow; that also works for me.
Seeing the name Willow makes me think of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Which I’m sure is a show the elder Browns wouldn’t let their kids see, even though I suspect one or both may have watched it when they were younger.
That’s pretty much why my cat got to keep her name. I wanted to get a cat and name it Asami (after the character from Legend of Korra), but then I picked out my cat at the shelter (well, she picked me– I sat down and she climbed into my lap), and her name was Willow, and I was like, “Damn, that’s a good name and reminds me of another fictional queer brainiac, I guess that’s also acceptable.”
So Asami is her middle name.
Fellow calico “staff” here. Calicos and torties are my favorites, but they must be a pain to draw.
The only other one I can think of in a webcomic is Zot, from Queen of Wands.
Is it cruel of me to want to see Willis write himself into a corner where he has to draw Joyce and Becky and Carla all in plaids and a calico as well? (Yes. Yes it is.)
Well, it could be worse. Miss Sasaki looks to be mostly white with a few marks. Many of them are called “Patches” for a good reason.
I was wondering that as well.
It must be known! It’s Sasaki, right?
I think Miss Sasaki’s name has only been mentioned in Patreon bonus strips so far.
And the alt-text on this one.
Er…wait…now I’m confused. Maybe I conflated the tags with the alt text before checking. Bah, brain. Hate you. Hate you so much, brain.
The model is Willis’s own calico cat, Miss Sakaki.
Patreon folks have seen Jocelyne talking to her cat, but not addressing the cat by name, so there is as yet no canon name.
Welp, I guess Miss Sakaki has a canon name now.
. . . .Jocelyne and her pink Word balloons are the absolute best. Why can’t I have pink word balloons?
Hey, it’s not like we can naturally see our own word balloons. Maybe you’ve had pink word balloons this whole time without knowing it!
The pink word balloons are used for whoever’s on the other end of the phone. In panel 4, Joyce’s word balloon is the pink one because we’re seeing Jocelyne’s side of the conversation. (Not sure if this has been the case throughout the comic, or maybe females get pink and males get blue word balloons?)
In panel 4 Joyce’s word balloon is indeed the coloured one, but it’s a different colour, not pink!
Jocelyne is wearing a pink shirt (under the sweater) and Joyce an orange one. That’s my theory for the word balloons.
You’ve basically got it, just that it’s a more overarching thing than that. Characters usually have one or more colors associated with them, and it’s reflected in places like their wardrobes and certain word balloons. Like how Dina trends towards green in her wardrobe and her thought bubbles in Walking with Dina are green.
Joyce has orange, Dorothy and Sarah trend towards purple (not 100% with Sarah), stuff like that. Willis talks about these kinds of associations in the end of the printed Book 1 (maybe others but 1 is the only one I’m sure of) when talking about his process for designing and updating the characters when starting DoA.
It’s a fairly common thing to do in character design, and A: I love that kinda stuff, it’s always fun and neat and effective and B: Willis does it very well, using such colors more frequently but not exclusively, which is pretty realistic (like most things in the comic!). Also it is Cool and Good that Jocelyne’s ‘primary’ color is pink. Yay!
I know I’ve said this before, but I’m really digging Joyce’s self discovery through maybe others
Oh no. NOT CABLE NEWS! THOSE POOR BASTARDS
but no seriously, cable news radicalizes people all the time. Someone was talking in the comment section of the last strip how the Browns presumably sunk deeper and deeper into fundamentalism, and in all likelihood cable news – which feeds on your paranoia to drive up viewership – did not help them at all.
I’d be entirely unsurprised if the Browns are big Fox News fans.
I’d be surprised if they weren’t.
…that wasn’t canon already?
https://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/151688836477/it-was-probably-the-black-guy
I’m choosing to take this as canon.
It depends on which channel you’re talking about. Too many of them devote too much air time to “outrage of the moment” editorial personality shows masquerading as hard news. They’re audio-visual supermarket tabloids.
Local stations (not owned by Sinclair) and C-SPAN are worth watching.
I mean, it was unquestionably a good battle to pick, Joss. It seems absolutely rad. Fuck yeah, girl.
Joss’s cat doesn’t get a tag? Disappointed.
I find myself wondering if Jocelyne decided on her name because a shortened version sort of sounds like Josh, or if she chose her name because of her closeness to Joyce. The Browns have a whole names begin with Jo thing going on, but Jocelyne could have chosen Joan, or Josephine, and kept the tradition intact.
My theory is that little Joyce had a little trouble saying “sh” sounds so, for example, “fish” came out “fiss” and “Josh” came out “Joss”, which you may note is the first syllable of “Jocelyne”.
This feeds into my other theory, that Joyce’s mother, infinite jerk that she is, kept correcting her into saying “Joshua” (or at least “Jossua”), a habit she still carries to this day. Why, you may ask? to keep her darling little boy from turning into a girl, or worse, a writer of science fiction television! The horror! (Can you tell I’m being sarcastic? I’m trying to be sarcastic.)
I’d wondered about this too, and I like your idea that it might be because of her bond with Joyce. That just seems really sweet.
Hm, there was a strip dealing with this on Patreon, but I’m not sure if I can talk about it here since it was a Patreon bonus strip.
Dang, I should’ve refreshed before posting my reply. I hadn’t even considered the “Patreon-only information” angle until I read your comment. I’m sorry, Willis!
According to a Patreon bonus strip, Jocelyne already liked the name she chose before Joyce was born.
…. huh.
The Wonder Woman film is way too recent to have inspired the costume (whoever wore it). AT THE PRESENT.
But in, say, another 6 years (around Christmas-time in-comic, I’d guess), it WILL be the perfect timing.
One might wonder if Willis has given any thought about how comic-time characters have their backstories age into popular culture.
Two words: Lynda Carter. In the Cable Age, no TV series is ever dead.
Justice League Unlimited, on the other hand, would have been on the air, or just recently ended, depending on when Joss started taking her out.
Watching Jocelyne and Joyce interact makes me so happy. I’m an older sister myself with a similar relationship to my younger sibs, so seeing that bond reflected here (though so rarely! more screen time for Jocelyne 2k19!) is really nice. 🙂
also I love her cat and her cozy long sleeves
JOCELYNE! JOCELYNE! JOCELYNE! JOCELYNE!!!!
I want to see more of her, especially for Joyce’s sake.
Jocelyne has a wealth of experience, already, at picking battles, keeping access to resources, and knowing when to bend the rules, or to not let transgressions slide.
If your younger sib doesn’t know about half the times you went to bat for them against your parents, you’re doing the older sibling thing right. But also, now I wanna see cute lil’ kid Halloween pics.
Finally, I have a new favorite character now and it’s Miss Sakaki. Look at that excellent floofy friend. >^o.o^<
Your wish is Willis’s Tumblr post.
First clue!
1) Called it. (About Jocelyn liking Halloween because of the costumes she got to wear.)
2) Didn’t quite call it, but the idea that Carol started hating Halloween when Jocelyn was old enough to go makes perfect sense in tandem with #1 — Halloween becomes particularly evil because it’s leading her perfect son to wear a dress.
3) OK, so Willis’s art is not something I usually comment on, because for all its wonderful subtleties, I don’t generally find it something to write home about. (I read a lot of webcomics; the only ones where I’ll add the detail “And the art is amazing when recommending them to someone are Lackadaisy, Sunstone, and Wilde Life, and occasionally Gunnerkrigg Court.) But I am in awe of this strip, partly because I’m not quite sure how he’s done it. OK, so every time we’ve seen Jocelyn so far, it’s been in circumstances where she’s still presenting as male. This is the first time we’ve seen her on her own. And somehow — I’m not sure how — Willis has managed to show her as indubitably female. I don’t know if it’s the open-collar and the pink shirt, or if somehow the floppy sleeves read as feminine, or if it’s just that at this angle the haircut looks more feminine than agender, or what — but there’s just absolutely no question that that’s a woman. Bravo, sir.
4) The battle she picked was about getting a cat, wasn’t it? After all, we know the Browns are dog people.
Your third point was something I noticed too. She seems more comfortable and herself here (and bonus points because kitty).
If you like good webcomic art, http://tjandamal.com/comic/?id=4
Also, its main characters are gay. (A few strips are NSFW but that’s not its focus – it’s about romance, friendship, and maybe character development. Plus a road trip.) One of the few webcomics I’ve ever bought in paper.
I already knew Lackadaisy and Gunnerkrigg, but thank you all for the new reading material!
Wilde Life is real good.
Recommending Wilde Life and http://www.Kahmith.com about cute aliens. Also (with h trigger warning)LeveL and new to me “Someday” and “Achilles Heel” (both with gay main characters)
You’re quite welcome. I also highly recommend The Bright Side, which is not nearly as well known as it should be. It doesn’t end up on my “The art is great” list, but it doesn’t need too.
Wilde Life is brilliant, but be aware that Pascale isn’t kidding when she calls it a horror comic. It’s mostly just sweetly supernatural with some dark moments, but when it gets creepy, it gets really creepy. (Mostly by mixing supernatural horror with real-life stalker horror. But that might be a spoiler.)
Stand Still, Stay Silent is AMAZING art, the author is downright painterly and still managed 4 updates a week
It’s gloriously beautiful, but also packed with body horror, existential horror, sympathetic horror, lurking horror, and just plain grossness. Which is not to say that it’s bad! But people who experience hyperempathy may want to scroll very quickly past some pages and get a feel for what happened in the comments.
Thumbnail for those who don’t know: The series starts 90 years after a mysterious pathogen infected most of the world, killed almost everybody outside a few quarantined areas, and turned the survivors into hideously distorted squelching ravening immortal zombies that have the souls of the infected trapped helplessly inside. (They can be heard screaming for help or sobbing in despair on the frequencies people usually use for radio communication.) The only way to retake infected areas is to burn everything and replant. Our Heroes are members of an expedition that plans to go out ahead of the burn teams to rescue the most precious of portable treasures: books. Plot twists ensue.
Also the pathogen infects every mammal except felids. So also check the box for “Does the Dog Die?” and add a note, “No, but you’ll wish he had.”
Also some of the smaller monsters are strongly implied to have been children, or babies.
So. Enjoy–it’s a fantastic series–but be warned.
Point 4: the Browns are dog people.
Yeah, no, Carol is def NOT a dog people. If anything I b’lieve she is a “sheep” person. And Joss seems to g t her goat. Pun in 10 ded.
This sounds un-necessarily harsh, sorry!
Most of these characters have fears, but Carole seems to have fear as her main feature. Her Raisin ‘Deter, as it was. (Were? Is?).
And fear based living leads to bad decisions and heartbreak, no? Well it has in my life. So, go boldly and fearlessly. And avoid swordchucks.
Good art: Scurry Comic! Warning, can be quite bleak.
I love Jocelyne but I’m worried about those dark panels. Why are they dark? Why am I worried? Anyone please hold me.
She probably pays for utilities.
“Writer” is only one step removed from “Morlock”
No no, it’s two steps actually. The order goes “Writer”, then “Late night “pro” gamer”, THEN “Morlock”. Writers may be hermits, but at least they leave their basements occasionally…
The warped thing is, I think it’s easier to make decent money from the video games.
It’s funny cause it’s true!
The second thing I noticed about her was the eyes. Large and blue, like crystal ponds in a fairytale forest, like a window to her soul, innocent and pure and open for the whole world to see. Eyes like that made you think of things that weren’t, but perhaps could have been. What things would have been like in a world, not as ugly as this one, and what you could have been in such a world. You could loose yourself in those eyes.
And if you did, you would take your eyes off her fists. That would be a big mistake.
She came into my office like a breath of fresh summer rain in a city block that otherwise mostly smells like the sort of rain you expect in the back of local dive the night the cheap beer truck comes to town. That was the third thing I noticed about her. Her… everything. Everything that stuck out like a soar toe in this part of town. Her honesty where we peddled in falsehoods. Her hope where we glutted ourselves on nihilism. Her fire where all we had left were ash.
She stood in front of my desk, as far away as possible from all the no doubt unhygienic things my office had to offer, her hands nervously fidgeting with a fidgety thing. It must have been bad, whatever caused her to seek me out. They never come to me unless it is.
“I have this problem…” she said. They always had. “There’s this question…” she said. There always was. She bit her lip, she fidgeted a bit more while I counted under my breath, and just before I came to thirteen she took a deep breath and said “there’s this lady…”
Ah.
There always was.
As it happened, I knew the lady in question. ‘Carol’, like those things that are supposed to spread joy at Christmas. Nasty piece of work. Some said she worked with the Toe, although nothing stuck on her when they hauled him away. “I cook, but I won’t burn”, as she liked to say.
Kinda sounds a bit like a threat now when I think of it.
This case made all sorts of alarm bells go off, but I took it anyway. Of course I did. They say you are not supposed to live vicariously through others, but sometimes you take whatever victories you can. And if my client were to stand up against Carol I knew a little girl from a long time ago who very much cheered on that fight.
The first thing I noticed about my client was how strong she was. I’m not only talking about the fists (although I knew enough not to take my eyes off them). This was a girl still capable of doing the right thing. Still capable of wielding the truth like a golden weapon instead of skulking in the shadows with all us other liars. Almost enough to make an old cynic believe in super heroes again.
Almost.
My name is Jocelyne and I’m a writer. They tell you to write what you know. And knowing things is my business.
#JocelyneNoir
This deserves a ton of likes, but alas, I lack a like button. (Yikes, don’t say that three times fast.)
I concur.
After over three years, it returns! Huzzah!
Moir noir is welcome anytime.
Saved, for Great Justice!
She named. A kitty. After the Best Azumanga Daioh Girl. I must be hers. *immediately goes off to buy a huge bouquet of flowers, a nice tux, and an engagement ring*
Good news, this cat is named after Willis’s real life cat. Bad news, Willis is already married.
But is the cat married?
The cat isn’t ready to settle down.
Cats usually aren’t until they choose to be.
Then clearly the man has good taste. ^_^
This makes two webcomics I’m a regular at who have Azumanga Daioh nods. Wonder if the universe is trying to tell me something…
Yes alt-text, it most certainly is.
He might a well get started on it now, we’re all going to vote for it!
oh neat pink speech bubbles!
I MISSED YOU JOCELYNE
We ALL have!
Jocelyne!!!!!!!
All of the pluses for this: yes!
Sarah: “Wait, your bro wore a Wonder Woman costume?”
Joyce: “She is a cool super hero.”
Sarah: “But she is a woman.”
Joyce: “I dress as Monkey Master and he is a guy.”
Sarah: “Don’t you think your brother is actually your sister?”
Joyce: “Sarah, gay men aren’t women. Ethan told me.”
Sarah: *Facepalms.*
Carla: “I felt this conversation was related to me like any good conversation. Also, I am dressed as Ultracar because she is cool and to make Walky angry.”
Yes, but men who dress as women are not necessarily women. Not even transwomen. Drag Queens are often still men, not women, not trans*. Guys who cross dress for conventions, still men. Men who dress like a girl for halloween, generally still men.
Obviously, this is a sign of other things for Jocelyne, but we can’t just assume that someone is trans* just because they wore a costume once.
Yup, this.
Also — again different — there are guys who wear “women’s clothes” (whatever that is) or make-up and are not Drag Queens, nor would they see themselves as crossdressing. Because what they’re wearing are their clothes and they like it. (I have a male friend who wears a skirt. He wouldn’t say that he’s crossdressing, because it’s his skirt, not a woman’s skirt. Like a woman wearing trousers. I also have a friend who regularly wears nailpolish and eye make-up, but not because he wants to look like a woman. It’s just his look.)
Lets be honest its sort of weird that you can literally change everything else about yourself for Halloween or a convention and no one will care but changing gender suddenly says something about yourself. At least if your a guy I don’t think people would blink if a woman decided to be Superman.
SISTER BONDING SISTER BONDING SISTER BONDING. I really want them to both get this bc iirc Joyce herself said she always wanted a sister and like… I’ve been WAITING for this since we found out about Jocelyn BEING Jocelyn (i might be mispelling her name but it’s been a while) So like… HYPE
Subtle pink triangle is subtle.
Also, that Miss Sakaki is adorable! My aunt had one just like her!
So she won’t call Jocelyne to discuss important stuff but she will call to discuss Halloween lol
Well, what’s easier to bring up as a topic of conversation: how your day’s going or that trauma you went through when you were thirteen?
Like, being more comfortable with something “lighter” is pretty normal. That said, I do think in this case Halloween is important as it reflects on their family dynamics and how they navigate them. And starting off with a less intense topic can lead to building to talking about the more intense one.
Important to note – it goes both ways, because she doesn’t know she has a sister named Jocelyn either. She’s the youngest. She isn’t going to get those open to communication cues easily unless someone in her family starts providing them to her.
The Halloween subject allows Joyce to get a better feel on where Joycelyn falls on certain stances, and its not high risk because Joyce already knows that Joycelyn does not believe in blindly following their parents, and is cool with Halloween herself. So either they will laugh at how silly Joyce was to think her parents hated Halloween, or Joyce gets to learn how Joycelyn was on her side once again. And this all is valuable information about how safe Joycelyn is with bigger stuff.
Good heavens Miss Sakaki, you’re beautiful
Perhaps- but what about an Ethan/Mike slip shine???
May 17
I read this and thought it was a crack suggestion and was like “lol Willis is such a troll for joking around with us like this”
And then I remembered that it’s canon after all 😮
i love these jocelyne panels. So sweet
Jocelyn and Joyce sister time woooo!
Gosh I hope I get to see more of this. 🙂
The expression on her face in panel 5 makes my heart hurt. Such resigned sadness in her posture and expression. DYW! And well done, Sir.
Calico! What’s her name? I LOVE CATS
Same! I’m so glad Jocelyne has a kitty friend to brighten her life!
Joyce also learnt to pick her battles.
Specifically, WITH GOD, CHURCH, EVIL DADS, HORRIBLE MOMS, SLIMY POLITICIANS, OBNOXIOUS ARCHITECTURE AND ANYONE ELSE WHO MIGHT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH BECKY. WHAT’S THAT? YOU DON’T AGREE WITH HER SEXUALITY? WELL, PERHAPS JOYCE’S FISTS DON’T AGREE WITH YOUR FAAAACE!
one punch joyce
I love that this is a connection that keeps getting made, it’s great.
As I said once long ago. Joyce is a Social Justice Barbarian. The world needs such beings in it.
I remember when CNN first started and a lot of the indie channels and local news used their stories used them for news and they’d run the old “razor blades in the candy ” bs all of Sept and Oct…
is it me or does the cat have the same eyes as the iguana?
FUCKFACE IS A SHAPESHIFTER
that hissing thing cats do?
TO IMPERSONATE SNEKS
Ah, yes. That would be the thing.
This one got to me.