DUMBING OF AGE BOOK 8 KICKSTARTER UPDATE!
A new thing we’re trying out this year are the DIGITAL PLUS MAGNET and the DIGITAL COMPLETE PLUS MAGNET tiers! If you’ve ever wanted just a PDF instead of a book, but you also wanted a magnet, your time has finally come!
After the campaign ends and I finish the PDF, you’ll get that emailed to you, but I’ll also be sending you an address survey, upon which you can tell me which of the character magnets you’d like mailed to you in a small envelope!
And if the Dorothy magnet is unlocked by the campaign, you’ll receive her, too!
Tier price includes shipping to anywhere in the world.
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COURTESY?! does not compute
Who are you and what have you done with Joyce?
Respecting boundaries? Madness!
amazing what 9 years does to a person
Don’t you mean 9 weeks? 😛
When will they likely graduate in the real world, given the time ratio?
The same time Freefall ends probably
Never. Long after all of us and more importantly Willis are dead.
It’s been running very roughly 1 week per year, so that’s nearly 200 years for four years of school.
That is why Sir Willis is working so hard to extend his buffer.
“Phrasing!”
Becky, this is how we do things when we want Sal to NOT destroy our faces off
Joyce has been choked twice by Sal in such situations already. Becky, only once.
Clearly you need to be choked twice to get the message.
Two examples make a concept.
Maybe. Maybe not.
…okay not sure how I messed that up, but between the link, strip and link’s hovertext my joke is still there so *shrug*
Reminds me of Darth & Droid’s concept of a ‘warning choke’ from Vader…
Joyce is the Goku to Sal’s Vegeta, there will never be a time she doesn’t on some level want to destroy someone’s face off.
The dream is slipping away from her? Hmm.
It will affect her subconsciously, Freudian style.
Bit of a white lie there I think … along with the new-found boundary respecting.
The details of the dream might have slipped away from her, but I think maybe it’s had some lasting effects that she’s not even aware of. Like boundary conditions.
No wait, I mean boundaries. “Boundary conditions” was a term from my maths degree. xD
I think it’s a double meaning. Either the dream could be slipping away from her, or her belief in God is.
The boundary respecting I think is more about the conversation she had with Sal about not objectifying her.
I don’t think it matters. The dream is revelatory of her internal changes, not causative.
That’s a good point.
YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH, BECKY, JOYCE IS FINALLY GETTING OVER ONE OF HER MOST IRRITATING HABITS, DO NOT ENCOURAGE IT.
Seriously though, I’m so glad Joyce is finally stopping. Mildly concerned she’s not talking about the dream (I noticed that pause before you said you forgot, Joyce!) but still mostly happy she’s not doing this anymore. I don’t enjoy migraines born of fury when she does stuff like that. 😛
I don’t think she’s lying. Dreams, no matter how intense they seem when you wake up, tend to very quickly lose details in your memory, unless you keep a dream journal.
So unless she was lucid dreaming, she may have been subconsciously aware of some of the easier-to-remember points (Becky and Rich Mullins were there!), but maybe not the whole thing.
The reason I think she’s lying is because of the pause and the look on her face when she says it.
It reads more like a ‘….what was it about? Huh. I can’t remember’ pause, but who knows.
I think with the pause she remembers some of it – at least the tone of doubt that’s been stewing for a while in her conscious thoughts, too.
That could be it too.
Also the look on her face when she woke up from said dream (a few strips ago) indicates that it was disturbing enough to remember.
Yeah, I tend to have very intense dreams (especially lately: sleep deprived) but the details fade almost immediately upon waking, leaving me with only vague general impressions of what they were about. The locales, however, are sometimes less vague.
Maybe just an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. Whatever.
Joyce, if at the stroke of twelve a short glowing fairy in a pointy hat shows up, just go along with them.
I almost always forget my dreams unless I write them down in my dream journal within a few minutes after I wake up.
I get the thing where I confuse waking reality with dream reality too. This has been especially scary given that a theme of many of my dreams including breaking laws and being on the run. Questioning if I actually committed a crime or not is a weird feeling.
I don’t remember my dreams at all. I assume that’s because I’m a really slow waker-upper. Only one actual dream has ever stayed with me over the years.
I did once know someone who remembered her dreams to such an extent that during the day, she sometimes had to ask herself if her memory of an event was a real-life memory, or part of a dream. My assumption is that she and I are at opposite ends of a statistically normal distribution.
I remember some dreams and I remember bits and pieces of others. I’m not saying it’s impossible she forgot, I’m saying I don’t think she did because of the way she’s talking about it and how she looks while she says it.
My dreams are really vivid and I usually remember a fair bit of it when I wake up but it slips away after 5-15 minutes. I think its a side effect of my medication.
I still remember a dream I had as a small child, in which a skeleton was chasing me while holding a pie.
Most people will only consciously recall significant dreams that occur late in sleep (during the final REM period verging into it’s followup stage 1 NREM period) for a short time, maybe 10 minutes to an hour, after waking. It is fairly rare for people to maintain any conscious memory of the dreams from prior REM periods (people typically experience 4 to 5 of them per night) and it is unusual to maintain memory of dreams beyond the first hour after waking unless one specifically records them (in a dream journal for example) and/or discusses them with someone during that period.
All that said, I may just find the topic interesting because I only very rarely remember my own dreams since leaving childhood (probably due to my more significant caffeine intake and less normalized sleep schedule in adolescence and adulthood).
I seem to be somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. My dreams can be intense and I usually remember them for about a day, sometimes less or more depending on intensity. There have been a few exceptions to this; I’ve had a few dreams of being shot, and I never forget those, the first one I had is still burned into my memory in vivid detail, one does not easily forget the sensation of dying. Also, I suffer through sleep paralysis from time to time(more often than I’d like really), and the waking hallucinations that feel like dreams can stick with me for days, probably because I’m technically awake. And then there was the time I was on Welbutron, an antidepressant that is known for its side effects on dreaming for the first for weeks. Dreams were so long and so real feeling it felt like I was living weeks or months in a single night. It was so weird.
I’m at your friend’s end of the scale. I sometimes “remember” things only to figure out it was a dream, but the craziest was the time in high school when I dreamed Wednesday.
When I started to go to my Thursday afternoon classes and my friends asked what I was doing I thought they were all messing with me, because I distinctly remembered all my Wednesday classes.
Man, that was a long week.
Oops, my above comment was supposed to go here.
I use tobacco in form of snuff/snus. When I fall asleep with one of those I always remember my dreams vividly. I think its because nicotine is a stimulant and hinders me from reaching full REM sleep.
I am pretty sure that old shamans did something similar to remember their own dreams and interpreted them.
Exactly my thoughts. Shutupshutup Becky. Not sure if Becky is being sarcastic or not, but also not sure Joyce could tell… soo… yay Joyce, finally getting some boundary awareness!
Becky must confront Anti-Joyce once again!
That strip’s last panel joke was referencing an old coffee commercial.
Ahh, neat! I don’t drink coffee though. You can keep that reference. I’ll stick with the IW! reference.
And then, SNL made a skit about it that was absolutely genius.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdQKVDUBu2g
Oh man, maybe she DID forget the dream! Maybe I called it. 😀
I could quote Sondheim but I won’t, as a service to you.
This implies that they’ve been jimmying the lock all this time. Which flies in the face of the evidence that Joyce can teleport.
They share a half-bath.
Joyce seems to teleport without thinking about it. Sarah mentioned that she can, and we’ve outright seen her do it, but she isn’t aware of it. My guess is that Joyce teleported in the first time, but the second time with Becky, Becky picked the lock.
And the half-bath, apparently, has no locks on either side of either door. No jimmying necessary. Knocking would seem to be the polite thing to do anyway.
It seems like it really should have some locks for while you’re using it, but it doesn’t seem real practical.
That moment when you start growing out of the idiot habits you developed as a child that make everyone hate you.
I’m still waiting for mine.
“Oh, I’m going to knock first and if she doesn’t answer I’m going to teleport into her bed like nightcrawler.”
Y’know, this strip and the last are the clearest indicators of Willis’ short-hair-hood.
I know, right? There’s no way they’d be able to casually chat over the sound of that hair dryer.
Now that I think about it, how was Joyce getting into Sal’s room anyway? Is it because she can teleport?
Joyce/Sarah and Billie/Sal’s rooms are connected via a half-bath.
Do you not lock the door to the half bath?
Can’t. It doesn’t lock that way.
I mean can you lock it so that people can’t just walk into your room through the half bath? Cause if not that sound very concerning when you consider basic privacy rights and not wanting people from the other dorm to have unlimited access to your room.
Letting it lock that way would also mean someone could get locked into the half-bath with no way out.
Honestly this just seems like a terribly designed system. Either you risk getting locked into the half bath or you risk someone breaking into your room because you have no way of knowing what idiots your friends will bring into the dorm. Hell I’ve seen dorm rooms get broken into by complete strangers, who would be okay with a system that gives people like that access to their room that easily?
Someone randomly assigned by the university ALREADY has total access to their room because it’s also their room
All this means is that two more people who aren’t technically your roommate also have access to your room. It’s not as if any random person can get in
All security is a compromise. The shared half-bath arrangement means you have to trust three other people instead of just one other person. But it also means you don’t have to go outside and walk down a corridor to pee.
I’ve spent like half my life in three- or four-bedroom apartments. Pretty much the same dynamic.
Yeah, think of it as a 2 bedroom suite, connected by the half-bath rather than a hallway.
What I don’t quite get is whether you can lock the bathroom while in use and how that would work. Seems like you’d have to lock both doors and that would lead to forgetting to unlock the one you don’t leave through, leaving the people in the other dorm room locked out.
Then again, you already have one roommate with unlimited access to your room, so whats the big difference. (Which is why I’ve always avoided living in dorms.)
Sadly, they can’t. IU rule – freshmen have to live in the dorms.
I’m hoping to move into an apartment with my own room for my Junior year, its mainly so I can finally be free of the tyranny that is pants.
That’s why I had a roommate first year of college! He liked blasting his music, didn’t seem to ever consider using headphones, and even recorded his own rap music!
I mean, I had(have?) my own problems, but yeah I wasn’t keen on having another college roommate after that one.
Pants are an illusion and so is death, per Big Bang Theory. 😛
Some1: I have some sad news for you. Unless you are going to live in a hermit’s cave with no visitors, for the sake of basic hygiene you are going to have to wear some kind of butt-covering, or you’re going to have to put towels on every surface you sit on.
I recommend sweatpants. I prefer underwear under the sweatpants, but that’s a matter of personal preference.
Shit, that should be per Avatar: The Last Airbender, not Big Bang Theory. Can you tell what was on in my living room?
@Marsh Maryrose: That’s what underwear is for. Alternatively (or additionally. Additionally preferred) keep one’s buttocks clean.
I don’t remember how it was drawn in comic, but some half baths are the commode in a lockable water closet a la public restrooms and the shared sink across the way… so 5x 8 with 2’ x5’ sink, 3’ x5’ walk way with a door at either end and 3’x5’ toilet stall for privacy. I don’t think that’s what exists in this comic/uni but it drastically reduces the “ooops!” Moments in real life
Yes.
ANTI-JOYCE
Joyce is learning… I don’t buy it, what’s the catch?
Wh-what the? A courteous Joyce? Did aliens replace her with a facsimile?
Yup. I’m calling it now. At the rate that Joyce is changing over the weeks, Thanksgiving with the family is going to be life-changing one.
Or at least Christmas.
By Christmas, Carol will be telling her she’s not allowed to come over and celebrate Jesus’s birth because she doesn’t believe in Jesus.
…. that’ll be around 12 years from now, depending on timeskips. Thanksgiving should only be, mmm, about 8 years.
Oh, the irony how what we know as Christmas is mostly pagan tradition…
To be fair, most of the major feasts in the liturgical calendar fall at about the time of some pre-Christian pagan celebration/rite and that was done intentionally as part of the Christianization of Europe even if some residual pagan elements oft remained in folk celebrations (in later periods without the direct symbolic understanding of their intent).
I’m pretty sure the Buffer Watch has never been more than six months ahead of the current date (I seem to remember that that was a deliberate cap). That would be three in-comic days.
In-strip Thanksgiving is a loooong ways away. Given Willis’s dramatic tendencies, I’m pretty sure we won’t have to wait that long for some sort of fraught and drama.
Apropos Thanksgiving, from the now-retired Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle:
Many Thanksgivings are family gatherings, and family gatherings are often fraught. My suggestion is: Embrace the fraught. You’d miss the fraught if it weren’t there.
…. okay, so is Panel 6 Becky being sarcastic/ironic, or does she really think that?
Well, that’s what Joyce did before, so I think that’s Becky’s way of saying, “Who are you and what have you done with Joyce?”
Maybe the latter?
Well, she whole heartedly went along with Joyce barging in and waking Sal that way her first day after rooming with her. “It’s morning! It’s time for everyone to get up and let us love them!”
Sal strangled them both.
Without God, Joyce has lost her self-righteousness. She has to stop pushing people around. I know, it might me other things besides self-righteousness, but those things are too hard for me.
Genie voice: That’s right! She CAN be taught!
Also, darnit Willis, now I want to watch Megamind.
Sal, I’m respecting your privacy by knocking but asserting my authority as your friend by coming in anyway!
Compromise!
“Fine by me, but it’s not okay with my roommate, so you’ll have to assert her authority with her instead. I dunno, talk to her about God wanting you to knock on doors and have them open or something.”
(Yeah, I know, definitely not a Sal thing to do to passively-aggressively sic Joyce on Malaya rather than fighting her own fights.)
I dunno, it would piss off Malaya.
There was this cartoon I watched in sunday school (I think? It’s been a long time) that I remember but can never find and this seems like the best place to ask. Anybody remember a very basic CGI- sort of like the characters were made of legos? (I don’t think they were actually supposed to legos it was just most likely made in the 90s) What’s happening is most likely a modern plauges of Egypt. A family is hiding in the bathroom when a kid turns on a sink and the water turns to blood. I don’t remember after that because I scared a scared I looked away for the rest of the video. Was it just a dream?? This is my personal Clockman.
ah well. You know what cgi Christain cartoon I ways also forced to watch but actually liked? 321 Penguins!
Is it just me, or does Joyce look 30 years old in panel 3?
Nah, she’ll be 20 in September.
*22 in September
Oh dang, Becky got real excited about being in Joyce’s dream.
Also, I love Joyce’s blow dryer hair!
Ok, Joyce isn’t harassing people and is more liberal about what she wants. Is she becoming one of the demonic secularists her family fears? Is she finally learning to respect boundaries and be nice at appropriate times? Is Willis going to give these characters maturity and happiness? So many miracles happening at once!
Hit it Gamzee!
Eh, she’s fine so long as she doesn’t start being amazed by magnets. That’s the TRUE danger sign.
Joyce: “Magnets. How do they work?”
Let’s be fair.
It’s not like Joyce doesn’t have cause to be amazed by magnets
http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/183372924902/the-eighth-book-collection-is-here-and-you-can-go
SKRULL
Dang it, I was going to say that…
And it turns out Joyce actually knocking on Sal’s door before entering and Sarah admitting to liking a holiday is because Joyce is still dreaming. One of those dream-within-a-dream things.
Yeah, those dream-within-dream things have become a much more popular trope in the past decade or so. I wonder when their inception was.
No way, I’m a nineties kid and they have been around my whole life.
great pun dude
Check out an episode of the Dick Van Dyke show from the sixties, that starred Danny Thomas as a space alien in a dream. Also another one where he thought he was losing his hair. Both had dreams within dreams. Also both are pretty funny and worth watching.
Becky sassing Sarah in panel one is life and love.
It is, it truly is.
if only every insensitive person could have a dream and turn like this
I think it’s more about Sal’s outburst at Joyce when she wanted to use her as a Barbie doll one time too many.
Plus about Joyce poking at things insensitively like her screaming about how Sal had a scar yesterday.
This is a new and strange concept for Becky
I’m so proud, my baby is learning.
Displaying your characters in the mirror so you have to draw them from two different angles is a cartoonist’s way of showing off, right?
In theory. In practice it’s usually just a cartoonist’s way of needlessly doubling his workload.
I mean, I AM impressed, so if it was intended to show off it’s working.
Especially panel two, with two angles of Joyce’s floofy hair.
I am fit to burst from JOY over all these strips. Willis, you run the risk of spoiling us. <3
Is Becky being sarcastic or do she and Joyce really normally think that way?
I’m pretty sure she’s facetious for the sake of comic effect, an also gently probing Joyce to figure out where this sudden change in behavior come from.
While Becky doesn’t always HONOR boundaries, I’m pretty sure she understands them.
Becky understands better than most the possible consequences of someone barging through an unlocked door.
I’m not sure she’s much better than Joyce in this regard or why she should be.
She was happy to go loom over a sleeping Sal with Joyce earlier.
I’m guessing here, but if I were to project there thoughts on the matter it would be something like
Joyce: I see no reason not to loom over a sleeping Sal.
Becky: It’s hilarious to loom over a sleeping Sal.
It’s all fun and games until you get choked.
Then again being choked by a pretty biker miiiiight not be the deterrent Sal hopes it is for Becky. 😛
Although if you’re Mike, the fun and games might start when you get choked.
It’s possible, but I haven’t see any real indication her take is any different from Joyce’s – “This is normal behavior.”
There is stuff like this, where she is shown to be mindful and actively worried about stepping on Leslie’s boundaries – a person she is actually dependent on.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/mojo/
Even with Joyce, there may well be a difference between boundaries of peers and of adults.
I doubt Joyce (or Becky) were encouraged to cross their parents boundaries, but were allowed none of their own.
She barged into Sal’s room to hover over her when she’s sleeping too, remember?
I think she’s being serious but also self-effacing. Like just putting it into words makes her realize how ridiculous it is. Becky’s really good at that.
…I sense a potential Malaya encounter.
Or more adventures with Fuckface. I prefer this please.
One tends to go hand-in-hand with the other, so it’s a question of if more Fuckface adventures are worth more Malaya.
… personally I’d say yes.
Joyce both wants to talk about the dream and not talk about her dream. So she changes the subject.
Dreams do that, though. She may be telling the truth.
…
SOMEONE CALL CAPTAIN MARVEL! SOME SKRULLS KIDNAPPED AND REPLACED JOYCE!
“Dumbing of Age: Secret Invasion”. This is where Captain Marvel sent all those Skrulls. THANKS FOR NOTHING, DANVEERS!!
Joyce! I’m so proud of you!
Sal opened up to her and told her, in explicit terms, that being treated like a doll bothered her. Joyce is listening because she wants to be a good friend. This is wholesome and sweet and pure. C:
I know! I’m so proud of her! Clearly being snapped at for treating her like a doll and then again yesterday for poking at the scar got through to her.
Okay, Sal, now yell at her about boundaries more generally, it didn’t work when Dorothy or Sarah did it but I BELIEVE IN YOU. XD
Clearly every girl on the floor is going to have to have a talk with Joyce about boundaries, one by one. Think of all the heartfelt conversations we’d get that way!
(I jest- I’m really proud of Joyce here, too!)
But that’s so much less convenient when Sal can do it in two conversations! 😛
(I know! This is such a great moment!)
Pavlol DOES work!
Eventually.
Willis has really mastered the art of making a cute, wholesome, strip, that makes my brain go “Oh, how will THIS explode?”
An evil, foreshadowing, genius. Makes it look SO unassuming, in some strips.
Foreshadowing based on so much previous context.
It’s almost like she’s learning that Becky skewed her idea of what was acceptable or not in platonic female relationships… and is now realizing this in full ramifications.
Apparently this one’s her parent’s fault – they gave Joyce the task of getting her brothers up and so now she thinks it’s okay to barge into people’s rooms and wake them because ‘it’s so cool you can’t lock me out! We’re like a family!’
Her parents taught her certain boundaries are crossable, certainly. The fact that anyone can be like Becky (in that closeness of female friends), that she wanted a sister in her dormmate from the get go, or a sister in her husband’s significant other that she hadn’t met, or that she can declare Billie her best Christian friend so quickly and unilaterally… I think is less ignoring boundaries and more this is how you make friends because friends act this way… Her best friend at least, which she wants more of as she creates a new pseudo family in college. Some boundaries to her are “harmless” and she needs to learn that is not okay and is doing so, but I’m convinced that her relationship with Becky also made her blind to a whole slew she’s finally just seeing…
Sorry for two part- phone and fingers aren’t cooperating.
And yes, this is bedroom entering, and that boundary blur is her parents, but i feel it’s a secondary problem to, and entwined with, her lack of understanding how most people make interpersonal relationships and how quickly/deeply they form. That quickness to adopt outsiders to a familial level is part of the Becky influence of best friend/sister she never had and wants so bad. Also, Becky just showed up in her dorm… bad circumstances yes, but Joyce wasn’t THAT surprised initially. I could also see past interactions where Becky showed up in her room back home for shenanigans and that was just How Girls Are Friends.
Okay, I can definitely see where Becky and Joyce’s dynamic feeds this, but Joyce has said that the waking people up and jumping in their beds is from her time at home.
It’s great to see Joyce learning and getting better at stuff like this.
1: OK, so first of all, Joyce -does- remember her dream, and is deflecting from it. Sure, I’ve seen lots of posts with other commenters talking about how they (and people in general) don’t remember their dreams well. My counterpoint is that this is a fictional world, and in fiction, everyone remembers their dreams perfectly all the time*. Perfect dream memory is a classic trope, and if you don’t believe me, I’m sure there is a certain webpage that I’m not going to link to (because I value your time) that will have about three hundred examples ready.
2: Joyce has taken another important step on her road of redemption. A step about boundaries. Is she still perfect? Absolutely not! Is she getting better? Oh yes. Is she already a better person than I am? Without a doubt.
*Except for a few of the stories in Sandman.
Perfect dream memory is less a trope than it is an application of Chekov’s Gun.