Right? This only solidifies my belief that Becky really isn’t a good friend, or more that she doesn’t know what being a good friend entails.
To her, being a good friend is agreeing with damn near everything they want, but a good friend is somebody that will call you out when you’re being an idiot.
Oddly enough… doesn’t that kinda mean that Dorothy is Becky’s best friend at this point? The only other times I can remember ANYONE even thinking of restraining Becky was Joyce having a freakout(but not to Becky’s face) about Too Much Becky, and Jocelyne advising Becky not to borrow her social security number shortly before educating Joyce on the joys of pragmatically disguising your anger to keep yourself within access to resources.
Well I don’t think that’s really true… Becky certainly never quieted her own coming out to suit Joyce! I think Becky has her strengths and weaknesses just like everyone, but she’s loyal and caring even when it’s really hard. In this case she’s just being a co-conspiratory doofus. Sure she needs to grow up, but it IS Dumbing of Age, after all!
What part of Christian fundamentalism teaches you to feed your best friend answers to an eye exam as part of some weird self imposed proxy war over the fate of her future visual acuity waged against a girl you’ve only known for 3 months? I don’t remember that being in the Old Testament.
1.) Christian fundamentalism has very little to do with what’s in the Bible.
2.) Glasses are a weakness and you can’t show weakness. Even though admitting weakness is 99% of the point of what Christianity is “supposed” to be.
That might be certain sects, but I don’t think Joyce and Becky’s church promoted this. Jocelyne wears glasses. I think maybe John does too? I of th owe can directly blame fundamentalism for this, much as I’d like to.
No, for some reason Joyce doesn’t want to wear the, maybe because of not wanting too many things to change at once. And Becky is going along with her because she wants to go against Dorothy, and also she probably thinks enabling Joyce’s fears makes her a good friend.
This.
Joyce has a problem with change. NOT wearing glasses is part of her self-image, and she’s already wary, and weary, of the number of changes that have already occurred to her self-image.
It’s also one she can’t hide from the rest of the world. Glasses are obvious.
It’s right up there with not wanting her food to touch, and favoring macaroni and cheese for every meal.
If it’s linked, I’d frame this as a reaction to their fundamentalism rather than as that fundamentalism directly.
The way you generally wind up being horrible to people for their own good in fundamentalist circles is by denying what they want, for their own supposed good. What Becky’s doing here can be seen as the opposite – supporting Joyce’s surface desire without considering that it might really be bad for her.
Yeah, I suspect it’s a combination of this and SeanR above’s mention that not wearing glasses is a self-image thing. Honestly I think Becky’s just as afraid of Joyce changing, too. If she doesn’t have to get glasses then things really haven’t changed forever in ways they can’t avoid, like being kidnapped and dead parents and divorcing parents and the clear fact that the congregation they grew up in is largely unsalvageable.
I promise I didn’t leak it from Patreon; A. I’m not on there yet and B. I forgot to check and attempt to decipher the blurry freebie preview yesterday.
Happy New Year! I have finished my DoA fanvideo. Some bits rendered differently than they looked on the preview, but I wanted to have this for today, and, also, I got lazy. But! I hope some of you will still check it out.
It features images from the first semester of DoA and the song “Sober Up” by AJR. Also, if anyone needs four hundred assorted images without text or with blanked out speech bubbles… I have that now.
Thanks! Yeah, I kind of forgot about a lot of Billie and Ruth’s story because they weren’t in focus as much at the end, but looking back over the strip for this reminded me of how much they really struggled.
Wow! Thank you for this! It really drives home some of the struggles (as well as the close friendships and romances made along the way). The song fits so well!
Someone at the DMV tried to get me to take the test they do without my glasses. “You only just need to pass, and then I can take the ‘corrective lenses’ requirement off and you won’t get in trouble for driving without your glasses!”
“I can’t pass without my glasses. Even if I could, I certainly couldn’t drive without them. Even if I could, I couldn’t make it to my car without them. The idea that I’d just take them off is completely alien to me in the first place.”
“But you might want to go out without them!”
“…is the concept that I actually can’t see completely foreign to you?”
I had to argue with her to get her to start the test without “just trying it first” without them.
Things go blurry a palm away from my face. My glasses come off for sleeping and bathing, and they go back on right afterwards. The idea that I can see something as spidery as LETTERS without them is so alien to me that ir slaughters its way through a squad of amrines and gets its ass kicked by Sigourney Weaver.
I can distinguish stop signs from yield (both color and shape) and that’s about it. I can’t tell any other signs apart and couldn’t tell a green light from a green arrow. I also can’t tell a person in a green windbreaker apart from foliage without my glasses. I should not be driving without corrective lenses.
My wife has, since college, made a point of being asleep at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I don’t care about arbitrary dates. I put the kids in bed and came here to read the comic.
I can’t think of a reason this benefits Becky other than she’s really ride or die for Joyce. Joyce has stated she doesn’t want to wear glasses so while Dorothy’s being a realist and saying “Well your vision is blurry. You need to wear glasses.” Becky is saying “If you don’t want to wear glasses I’ll be your seeing eye Becky!”
Like if Joyce wanted to kill someone Dorothy would advice her not to but Becky would help plan the murder.
Good friends will calm you down when you are mad.
Great friends will let you vent and will agree with everything you say.
Best friends will hand you a baseball bat while they are holding a shovel to help hide the body.
I’m pretty sure it’s half “Joyce doesn’t want glasses, so I’ll help her avoid it” and half “this was Dorothy’s idea, so I need to sabotage it.”
I love Becky, but she’s established herself to be quite petty.
There’s a fine line between being a friend and being an enabler, and their religious background may have been such as to teach them the line doesn’t exist.
I’d guess their upbringing taught them the opposite and that Becky’s overreacting to that.
That rather than enabling a good friend should police godly behavior.
Becky has mistakenly conflated “being your best friend” with “I must see to it that I ALWAYS support you and do my best to help you”, even if doing the latter means that you’re causing MORE harm to your friend/loved one in the long run. It’s a bit like a friend with a substance abuse problem, and you can see that it’s affecting their life, but instead of trying to help them get clean, you continue to enable them because “if I go against them, that would make them sad, and that would make me a bad friend.”
This arc in particular is really starting to make me not like Becky. I don’t get why Becky thinks trying to fool the eye doctors into thinking Joyce has better vision than she actually does will somehow help Joyce. Joyce needs to be able to see properly even if she’s uncomfortable with having to wear glasses for a while.
Dorothy correctly sees Joyce needs something, Joyce drags her heels (because of course she does, she pitched a fit about grape juice once), Becky sees this as a way of scoring Bestest Friend Evar points by helping Joyce be stubborn. Ta da
I have to be careful on those, because the lines are standardized and I’ve had so many eye tests over the last 43 years that I’ve almost memorized it. So I have to stop and ask myself things like, “Should I actually be able to tell that this is a Q, or am I just remembering it?”
Once upon a time my father was administering an eye test to a chap who was applying to join the Post Office. Dad asked the candidate to read the bottom line of the chart. The man squinted a bit and said “J D West, Government Printer, 1962”….
Fun fact: I had memorized the eye chart as a kid because I am good with strings of info like that. I was also weirdly literal. Because my eye doctor always asked “What’s the smallest line?” Instead of “What’s the smallest line you can see?” I needed glasses for about 3 years before they found out (we moved and got a new eye doctor who had a different chart system – an electronic projector instead of the standard chart).
My vision, btw, is bad enough I can’t even see the big E at the top of the standard chart.
Yeah, same problem here. Or being able to conclude what it must be from the blurry image I get. I was happy once, when instead of letters or numbers, they used circles with openings in different positions and wanted me to say where those were.
I went with my dad to his two most recent eye exams this past month, and on some of the tests I could watch what he was looking at because they set a mirror on the opposite wall of the projection screen. I could tell what he was getting right and what he was getting wrong. I really had to fight off the urge to critique or “help” him.
This storyline is funny to me–but reminds me of how when I first went to college and like on the first day of my first class I sat in the back of the class and couldn’t see shit on the powerpoint and went, “crap I need glasses” and went and got some and the rest is history
This is similar to my story as well.
Go to a lecture in the first week of uni and sit at the back, realise I can’t see shit and probably need to deal with that.
Don’t worry Joyce, apart from having to pay for them it’s not that bad…
I was in bed asleep by half past ten. And then woken by my dog yelling his head off at twenty past midnight. There was an all-but naked young man passed out drunk+ in my laundry.
I’m sorry that happened! Also… what? How… what? I have many questions! Also, I hope you are okay and everything works out fine. Also also, Happy New Year!!! (Also also also, please say “hi” to your doggo for me.) I hope the rest of this year is less eventful than the start. xD
The rest of the story is neither noble nor glorious. I have been attacked in my carport by young men who came to my back door, and now I’m eleven years older, have a bum shoulder, and was alone. I didn’t feel safe going out to do a wellness check, so I called 000 and got the police to do it. The nice young constable told me that the drunkened reveller had technically committed a trespass and would be arrested if I gave a statement. I said that he hadn’t done any damage and hadn’t meant any harm, so I wouldn’t make a complaint. So the policeman told me that they would take him safely to where-ever he was going, and that was that. The police took him away, I turned off the lights, went back to bed, and didn’t sleep a wink until morning.
I suppose that I’m going to cop flak for that now. But the police here are nothing like as dangerous as those in America.
We do have a problem with police brutality in Australia, but our police shoot and kill one person per five million population per year instead of one person per three hundred thousand population per year.
My laundry is under the sitting-room. It has a door to the outside and a door into the carport. It’s kind of inside and kind of not, but it is definitely oitside the perimeter of doors and windows with security screens.
Becky, that was stupid. If you actually cared about her you wouldn’t help her. You were only supposed to be there to stop them from putting needles in her eye- not cheap on the test!
Do neither of them know the ASL manual alphabet? I thought everybody knew that. (At least, everybody in America, because sign language is not universal.)
Pro tip: If somebody else’s small child is being a teensy bit loud and fidgety in their seat in a waiting room or on a bus, you can often distract them by teaching them how to spell their name and several common words with their hands.
At least in our school district, all preschoolers learn ASL alphabet. Doing physical signs can help cement verbal words in many children. That said, it isn’t universal in America and if you dont use it you lose it.
I tried to learn it, and my parents/cousins/aunt definitely know ASL, but I only ever picked up some signs like ‘mom’, ‘dad’, ‘old’, ‘ugly’, ‘pretty’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, etc. For context, my mom is partially deaf/blind so she learned ASL in a school for the deaf/blind, and my dad and aunt learned when they were younger so they could sign with her. It’s definitely something that requires study and my school didn’t offer any ASL classes.
I’ve never personally met anyone who knew ASL beyond three or four gestures. I’d love to learn it, but I have next to no dexterity and it’s embarassing to learn things because of anxiety.
I’m almost hoping he doesn’t leave and tries to stay. I would derive so much pleasure from watching a squad of US Marines ⃥p⃥e⃥r⃥p⃥-⃥w⃥a⃥l⃥k⃥i⃥n⃥g⃥ escorting him and Melania out the front portico.
It would be even better if they would hog-tie him and drag him out by his heels, but I suppose that’s asking just a little too much.
I have a gut feeling he’s going to pull some attention-grabbing stunt around the 20th, like have an “alternative inauguration” at his Florida estate. (Just like the “alternative electors” who cast meaningless votes for him in a parking lot.) Then he’ll preach to his flock as the “real president” for as long as they keep throwing him their pennies.
Too much of the trust, stability, and continuity of our government hinges on the assumption that those in charge will act in good faith.
Then again, that’s one genie they might not want out of its bottle for the precedent it will set. It would basically spell the end of presidential elections as we know them, and if the Senate flips in 2022 then they’ve effectively forfeit 2024. Never mind the far right, ravenously awaiting its chance to get elected via primary. That’s why McTurtle is playing the long game, trying to keep his Senators in line; he’s evil but he’s not stupid. Lindsey Graham was right, the RNC elected Trump, is getting destroyed for it, and deserved it. I just wish there wasn’t so much splash damage.
The Senate does not have that option. The votes are counted in front of a joint session of Congress and if any slate of electors is objected to, both the Senate and the House vote separately on the objection and only if both agree is the objection sustained. Otherwise the votes are counted.
We will probably see this happen, but there’s no way the House will agree to the objection and given that I think it’s unlikely a majority of the Senate would either – since it still wouldn’t work.
Isn’t this another case of 19th century verbiage saying “shall = must”? The Senate cannot selectively discard votes because that would be like the states interfering with each others’ elections?
You’d think the Democrats would have played this card in 2000 and 2016 if this was actually a viable strategy…
Not at all. There is simply no option for the Senate to do this. The Senate’s only role in counting the votes is to join with the House in objecting to a particular state’s slate of electors.
There is a crackpot theory you might be thinking of where the Vice President has the job of opening the envelopes containing the electoral ballots and some idiots think he can just determine the election by not opening the Democratic ones.
sorry, A, the good news is “no”, the bad news is it’s worse than you think.
the Senate knows that all he needs to do is not jump into the dumpster fire, and in two years both chambers will be republican, and in two years and a day the democrats will be impeached and removed, with no evidence presented (again!). the Senate knows he has a fair shot at preventing any judicial openings from being filled in the interim, and that in any case 48 republican votes gives him a dependable majority in virtually all matters.
the US has been dead for at least thirty years, what you’re smelling is putrefaction.
So, in grade school, they were giving everyone a simple eye test like this. As the rest of us were lined up in the hall, waiting our turn, we all started memorizing the chart. Which we could read, through a window, at two or more times the distance of the test. You know, just incase we wouldn’t be able to read it up close. Wouldn’t want to flunk. It was a test, after all.
Simulating an eyepatch and a hook, like a pirate, to sign-language an ‘R’? This has just made the short list of funniest strips, Willis
… but you’ve still got a long ways to go to top the seven or eight strips that featured the creation and deployment of the Rube Goldberg machine that made up “Carla’s Cold, Swift, and Absolutely Ridiculous Revenge Against Mary Plan” back in May of 2016.
So the moral is that Becky is the one who actually needs glasses, to help her see the truth, which means Joyce is right about her not needing them. The metaphors win!
Well, almost? Joyce Wants this non-help, while Becky explicitly didn’t want her dad’s. There is a clear divide in terms how appreciated the overall harmful non-help is.
My biggest hope for 2021 is that all the people who were rah-rah’ing Biden realise he’s shit, too. Either that, or he dies, Harris takes the presidency, and everybody realises that rich black women are just as bad as every other demographic with “rich” in it.
So your biggest fucking hope is that things don’t improve, that Biden and Harris are as bad as Trump and just keep making things worse. Because it’s not like people are going to realize they’re “shit” if things actually get better.
I mean, I fully intend to protest as soon as I feel safe being in public again, but I do expect improvement. Insufficient improvement since there’s so much ground to recover cleaning up after the previous administration, but improvement nonetheless.
Also they respond to public pressure. We’ve seen that one already. That means we can probably gain a bit more ground if people come out in force. But yeah, I do have some serious concerns about complacency from people who spent the last four years blaming Trump for everything that went wrong.
Yeah, a 52/100 is better than a 49/100. Neither is good but one is measurably better. I mean, for one, Biden’s taking the coronavirus pandemic a lot more seriously than Trump is, which is a step up already.
Becky is getting more and more unlikeable by the minute. Honestly, is anyone defending her here? Interfering with her *best friend’s* health to this extent? Asshole move.
You’re not wrong. Just for context, I’d remind people that Becky was homeschooled by Toedad Ross. This is shit that most children in school would figure out by the 3rd grade. Hell, in Joyce’s case, she would’ve been given an eye exam before, and not had any rational fear of it. This isn’t justifying their lack of growth, simply that they are behind most people due to their upbringing.
The weird thign is that no-one is Joyce’s family opposes eyesight correctives, because they all clearly wear them (without any “for me, but not for thee” bullshit justification).
I mean. That could make it worse for several reasons including:
1) Decreasing feeling of uniqueness among family, triggering insecurities about self-identity.
2) Knowing the hassle of glasses (easily lost, can break, might not fit right on ears or nose without adjustments, needing new prescriptions as eyes worsen with age typically).
3) Feeling more like family she wants less association with (her mum and judgemental brother).
4) It contributes to her already existing anxiety about not being what people want her to be. That she is changing or possibly always was this person (that needed glasses). And this will not be something she can hide like she can hide being an atheist.
Glasses don’t change much physically but mentally you can tie yourself into real knots over them for emotional reasons.
She got her definition of regular human behavior from Willis, since he writes her (and every other character in DOA). I agree with Bicycle Bill that it is one funny strip.
Chicxulub crater remake.
Yellowstone eruption.
Nuclear winter because kim has a tantrum.
Invasion. By anybody, (but let’s posit China for this one.)
Covid 2, the mutation.
Locusts.
Carrington event, the remake, now with computerized infrastructure.
9.0 Richter scale earthquake.
Need I go on?
Several of these would go hand in hand. Like the Chicxulub impact, supervolcano eruption, and earthquake.
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cheating on tests only hurts yourself
especially this kind of test
you’ll see someday
Hindsight 2020
lol at “you’ll see someday”! Pun intended?
you need the slash! Never forget the slash when typing that!
Right? This only solidifies my belief that Becky really isn’t a good friend, or more that she doesn’t know what being a good friend entails.
To her, being a good friend is agreeing with damn near everything they want, but a good friend is somebody that will call you out when you’re being an idiot.
Ooof. That was a baaaaad time for a random gravitar change.
Quite funny, though.
Oddly enough… doesn’t that kinda mean that Dorothy is Becky’s best friend at this point? The only other times I can remember ANYONE even thinking of restraining Becky was Joyce having a freakout(but not to Becky’s face) about Too Much Becky, and Jocelyne advising Becky not to borrow her social security number shortly before educating Joyce on the joys of pragmatically disguising your anger to keep yourself within access to resources.
Well I don’t think that’s really true… Becky certainly never quieted her own coming out to suit Joyce! I think Becky has her strengths and weaknesses just like everyone, but she’s loyal and caring even when it’s really hard. In this case she’s just being a co-conspiratory doofus. Sure she needs to grow up, but it IS Dumbing of Age, after all!
Fitting that 2020 would end with an eyesight themed story
I was impressed that Dorothy found the development perfectly predictable.
It’s possible Dorothy heard Becky getting asked to leave, but I like to think she was just using her powers of abduction.
Pretty sure all the characters with powers of abduction are already dead.
I want to upvote this.
Too bad you’re likely wrong.
DEduction?
No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
Ha. She’s being a pirate for, “R.”
Thanks, that was confusing me.
Yeah, I thought she was doing sign language for X. But the pirate thing makes more sense.
Likewise, I was definitely confused about how those hand signs translated to “R” until now.
I thought she was doing a lower-case R (r), but this world doesn’t do lower-case. Love the pirate-ing, tho.
So it was Becky’s first day with the hook?
The hook just yanked her off the stage.
…Seagull.
After deploying a corny joke like that, I’ll show myself out.
I don’t know who but someone totally called Becky feeding Joyce answers.
I didn’t think even Becky would stoop to something so low but there you go
What was it called when people are terrible to their loved ones for presumably good reasons that are actually bad ones?
…oh, right. Fundamentalism.
What part of Christian fundamentalism teaches you to feed your best friend answers to an eye exam as part of some weird self imposed proxy war over the fate of her future visual acuity waged against a girl you’ve only known for 3 months? I don’t remember that being in the Old Testament.
I did not specify that it had to be Christian.
You have to read between the lines, but the meaning is clear.
Only if you don’t need (or are wearing) glasses.
1.) Christian fundamentalism has very little to do with what’s in the Bible.
2.) Glasses are a weakness and you can’t show weakness. Even though admitting weakness is 99% of the point of what Christianity is “supposed” to be.
That might be certain sects, but I don’t think Joyce and Becky’s church promoted this. Jocelyne wears glasses. I think maybe John does too? I of th owe can directly blame fundamentalism for this, much as I’d like to.
No, for some reason Joyce doesn’t want to wear the, maybe because of not wanting too many things to change at once. And Becky is going along with her because she wants to go against Dorothy, and also she probably thinks enabling Joyce’s fears makes her a good friend.
Everyone in Joyce’s family wears glasses, except her parents, who wear contacts.
Which is funny, because they arent in contact.
In addition to contact lenses, they have contacted lawyers.
This.
Joyce has a problem with change. NOT wearing glasses is part of her self-image, and she’s already wary, and weary, of the number of changes that have already occurred to her self-image.
It’s also one she can’t hide from the rest of the world. Glasses are obvious.
It’s right up there with not wanting her food to touch, and favoring macaroni and cheese for every meal.
This has nothing to do with chistianity becky is being an enabler
If it’s linked, I’d frame this as a reaction to their fundamentalism rather than as that fundamentalism directly.
The way you generally wind up being horrible to people for their own good in fundamentalist circles is by denying what they want, for their own supposed good. What Becky’s doing here can be seen as the opposite – supporting Joyce’s surface desire without considering that it might really be bad for her.
Yeah, I suspect it’s a combination of this and SeanR above’s mention that not wearing glasses is a self-image thing. Honestly I think Becky’s just as afraid of Joyce changing, too. If she doesn’t have to get glasses then things really haven’t changed forever in ways they can’t avoid, like being kidnapped and dead parents and divorcing parents and the clear fact that the congregation they grew up in is largely unsalvageable.
I promise I didn’t leak it from Patreon; A. I’m not on there yet and B. I forgot to check and attempt to decipher the blurry freebie preview yesterday.
You can’t fool us. We can clearly see you are a powerful clairvoyant using the deduction and deciphering to conceal your arcane powers.
You know that’s right. I am Shawn Spencer, confirmed.
Happy New Year! I have finished my DoA fanvideo. Some bits rendered differently than they looked on the preview, but I wanted to have this for today, and, also, I got lazy. But! I hope some of you will still check it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIJW4HT_1m4
It features images from the first semester of DoA and the song “Sober Up” by AJR. Also, if anyone needs four hundred assorted images without text or with blanked out speech bubbles… I have that now.
Again, happy New Year!
Wow! That was really well edited. Also the it really reminds you that Billie has and alcohol dependency problem.
Thanks! Yeah, I kind of forgot about a lot of Billie and Ruth’s story because they weren’t in focus as much at the end, but looking back over the strip for this reminded me of how much they really struggled.
Great editing choices! I really enjoyed that. Thank you
Thank you!
Wow! Thank you for this! It really drives home some of the struggles (as well as the close friendships and romances made along the way). The song fits so well!
Thank you! Quite a trip, remembering ten years of storylines in a couple of minutes. Nicely done!
This was fantastically well done, and also I cried a little watching it. Thank you.
Wow! Just wow!
Wow, that’s great. Thank you for making and sharing it!
This is AMAZING!
Man, there really IS a lot of drunkenness going around in DoA, isn’t there?
Also, it ight say something about me that my favourite part was the quick succession of “POW” panels in rhythm with the instrumental hits.
Not to sound too Dora the Explorer, but I liked that part too.
Thanks!
Thank you, everyone!
Dorothy didn’t even look up. I’d say “seen it all demeanor”, but who has seen someone cheating on an eye exam?
She’s logical, it’d be the only reason for Becky to be out so soon without Joyce
Someone at the DMV tried to get me to take the test they do without my glasses. “You only just need to pass, and then I can take the ‘corrective lenses’ requirement off and you won’t get in trouble for driving without your glasses!”
“I can’t pass without my glasses. Even if I could, I certainly couldn’t drive without them. Even if I could, I couldn’t make it to my car without them. The idea that I’d just take them off is completely alien to me in the first place.”
“But you might want to go out without them!”
“…is the concept that I actually can’t see completely foreign to you?”
I had to argue with her to get her to start the test without “just trying it first” without them.
…what.
I was offered the chance to try the eye test and I was like, “Uhhh I literally can’t clearly see my hand in front of my face without glasses so… No?”
Things go blurry a palm away from my face. My glasses come off for sleeping and bathing, and they go back on right afterwards. The idea that I can see something as spidery as LETTERS without them is so alien to me that ir slaughters its way through a squad of amrines and gets its ass kicked by Sigourney Weaver.
Yeah same.
I can distinguish stop signs from yield (both color and shape) and that’s about it. I can’t tell any other signs apart and couldn’t tell a green light from a green arrow. I also can’t tell a person in a green windbreaker apart from foliage without my glasses. I should not be driving without corrective lenses.
oh so this wasn’t just me! terrifying…
This is why all those makeover montages that dump the glasses are a blight on humanity.
Who might cheat on an eye exam? I can think of one group. People forced to retake an eye exam to retain a driver’s license or other credential.
Becky no
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTRmwnnrjwo
Happy New Year everybody! So help me god, nobody jinx this one.
And yeah, Becky got busted.
FUCK I forgot the roulette again.
Bah. Back to the wrong Walkerton.
The BBCC search for Sal saga continues! I think 2021 could be your year!
NO. We are not doing the ‘your year’ thing this time. We’re not jinxing 2021! I rebuke thee! XD
Too late. 2021 is officially doomed.
Could be wrose – we keep fucking over the climate and soon years are going to have to be officially DOMED.
Well, at least we know who to blame this year. XD
ah, can’t be. we have at least another six months of 2020 yet.
Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.
Maybe if we ALL say it we can protect 2021.
I don’t understand.
Why wouldn’t you keep Fuckface?
I mean
FUCKFACE
I want Sal.
Thank god 2021 is starting?
Whatever is worse, this year or Joyce’s eyesight
There’s an overlap. Bad sights and 2020 definitely have overlap.
… sowho else came here cause they had nobody to spend new years with? (quarantine aside)
Everyone else on my video call: “I’m usually in bed hours ago; I barely made it; Goodnight everyone, I’m going to bed right now!”
Me after the call ends: “Ooooh, I’m up past midnight; I must check DoA before the comments blow up!”
Happy New Year!!! xD
Thank you, you too!
Does it count if (A) it’s not even 10pm here and (B) I’m here because I have nobody to spend evenings in general with?
I think so?
My wife has, since college, made a point of being asleep at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I don’t care about arbitrary dates. I put the kids in bed and came here to read the comic.
Happy new year anyway.
For what exact purpose does Becky want to help stop Joyce from being able to see properly?
I know this strip is semi-autobiographical but surely this has to be made up, I mean no one can be this pathetic in real life…
Can they?
I can’t think of a reason this benefits Becky other than she’s really ride or die for Joyce. Joyce has stated she doesn’t want to wear glasses so while Dorothy’s being a realist and saying “Well your vision is blurry. You need to wear glasses.” Becky is saying “If you don’t want to wear glasses I’ll be your seeing eye Becky!”
Like if Joyce wanted to kill someone Dorothy would advice her not to but Becky would help plan the murder.
Good friends will calm you down when you are mad.
Great friends will let you vent and will agree with everything you say.
Best friends will hand you a baseball bat while they are holding a shovel to help hide the body.
Amazifriends will provide the body.
I’m pretty sure it’s half “Joyce doesn’t want glasses, so I’ll help her avoid it” and half “this was Dorothy’s idea, so I need to sabotage it.”
I love Becky, but she’s established herself to be quite petty.
There’s a fine line between being a friend and being an enabler, and their religious background may have been such as to teach them the line doesn’t exist.
I’d guess their upbringing taught them the opposite and that Becky’s overreacting to that.
That rather than enabling a good friend should police godly behavior.
Because codependency means bad judgement calls and crossing boundaries.
“A good friend helps their friend pass tests, even by cheating”
Becky has mistakenly conflated “being your best friend” with “I must see to it that I ALWAYS support you and do my best to help you”, even if doing the latter means that you’re causing MORE harm to your friend/loved one in the long run. It’s a bit like a friend with a substance abuse problem, and you can see that it’s affecting their life, but instead of trying to help them get clean, you continue to enable them because “if I go against them, that would make them sad, and that would make me a bad friend.”
This arc in particular is really starting to make me not like Becky. I don’t get why Becky thinks trying to fool the eye doctors into thinking Joyce has better vision than she actually does will somehow help Joyce. Joyce needs to be able to see properly even if she’s uncomfortable with having to wear glasses for a while.
Dorothy correctly sees Joyce needs something, Joyce drags her heels (because of course she does, she pitched a fit about grape juice once), Becky sees this as a way of scoring Bestest Friend Evar points by helping Joyce be stubborn. Ta da
Maybe Becky has a thing for glasses and she doesn’t want to make her lifelong crush any harder for her. 🙂
Cheating is like masturbation; you only screw yourself.
Well… screwing yourself has its good points.
So does cheating on tests, if you get away with it.
….
…. and that would be wrong.
But if you don’t fudge the test, then you miss out on all that delicious chocolate!
… and that would be wrong.
I just realized this plot was a setup for a scene where Becky and Dorothy interact without Joyce from the beginning
Nah, that could’ve been any scene in their shared dorm.
Wait for it.
But this way Joyce can show up behind them without warning and catch Becky being a shitty person.
Nah, that could’ve been any scene in their shared dorm.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/helping/
I have to be careful on those, because the lines are standardized and I’ve had so many eye tests over the last 43 years that I’ve almost memorized it. So I have to stop and ask myself things like, “Should I actually be able to tell that this is a Q, or am I just remembering it?”
Once upon a time my father was administering an eye test to a chap who was applying to join the Post Office. Dad asked the candidate to read the bottom line of the chart. The man squinted a bit and said “J D West, Government Printer, 1962”….
Back in my 20s, I did read out “made in Taiwan” 🙂
Now I probably do need glasses, but not badly and I’m waiting until the pandemic’s over.
I don’t have them memorized but I worry about being able to tell which letter it is even though I can’t really see which letter it is.
Don’t. They chose well when they chose that font.
Fun fact: I had memorized the eye chart as a kid because I am good with strings of info like that. I was also weirdly literal. Because my eye doctor always asked “What’s the smallest line?” Instead of “What’s the smallest line you can see?” I needed glasses for about 3 years before they found out (we moved and got a new eye doctor who had a different chart system – an electronic projector instead of the standard chart).
My vision, btw, is bad enough I can’t even see the big E at the top of the standard chart.
Yeah, same problem here. Or being able to conclude what it must be from the blurry image I get. I was happy once, when instead of letters or numbers, they used circles with openings in different positions and wanted me to say where those were.
Gort…Klaatu barada nikto!
I went with my dad to his two most recent eye exams this past month, and on some of the tests I could watch what he was looking at because they set a mirror on the opposite wall of the projection screen. I could tell what he was getting right and what he was getting wrong. I really had to fight off the urge to critique or “help” him.
Klaatu barada … necktie
Klaatu … barista necktie.
Klaatu barada n- *coughs*
Clickthru barista necktie!
There, perfect! Nipped that portal to the netherworld in the bud!
This storyline is funny to me–but reminds me of how when I first went to college and like on the first day of my first class I sat in the back of the class and couldn’t see shit on the powerpoint and went, “crap I need glasses” and went and got some and the rest is history
This is similar to my story as well.
Go to a lecture in the first week of uni and sit at the back, realise I can’t see shit and probably need to deal with that.
Don’t worry Joyce, apart from having to pay for them it’s not that bad…
Somehow I’m not surprised that strip title hasn’t been used yet
I was in bed asleep by half past ten. And then woken by my dog yelling his head off at twenty past midnight. There was an all-but naked young man passed out drunk+ in my laundry.
Supposed to be a reply to Mordecai.
I’m sorry that happened! Also… what? How… what? I have many questions! Also, I hope you are okay and everything works out fine. Also also, Happy New Year!!! (Also also also, please say “hi” to your doggo for me.) I hope the rest of this year is less eventful than the start. xD
Percy appreciates the pat. He is a big fierce watchdog! Also, it is nearly dinnertime!
Yes, I’m fine, thanks.
The rest of the story is neither noble nor glorious. I have been attacked in my carport by young men who came to my back door, and now I’m eleven years older, have a bum shoulder, and was alone. I didn’t feel safe going out to do a wellness check, so I called 000 and got the police to do it. The nice young constable told me that the drunkened reveller had technically committed a trespass and would be arrested if I gave a statement. I said that he hadn’t done any damage and hadn’t meant any harm, so I wouldn’t make a complaint. So the policeman told me that they would take him safely to where-ever he was going, and that was that. The police took him away, I turned off the lights, went back to bed, and didn’t sleep a wink until morning.
I suppose that I’m going to cop flak for that now. But the police here are nothing like as dangerous as those in America.
Because no one in America is expecting cops to behave like cops should?
(Good to know your laundry is in the carport and no one broke into your home).
We do have a problem with police brutality in Australia, but our police shoot and kill one person per five million population per year instead of one person per three hundred thousand population per year.
My laundry is under the sitting-room. It has a door to the outside and a door into the carport. It’s kind of inside and kind of not, but it is definitely oitside the perimeter of doors and windows with security screens.
Becky what the hell?
Thank Walky, the Savior of Humanity, that 2020 is over!
Thank Dog 2020 is over
…And Bingo was his name-o. (Or perhaps Nickzo.)
Sorry, Becky. Now you have to deal with seeing Joyce in glasses.
If Waklyverse canon holds here, this will make Joyce 130% more irresistible.
Also: WOOHOO! Got my grav!
Becky, that was stupid. If you actually cared about her you wouldn’t help her. You were only supposed to be there to stop them from putting needles in her eye- not cheap on the test!
Nice try, Becky.
Do neither of them know the ASL manual alphabet? I thought everybody knew that. (At least, everybody in America, because sign language is not universal.)
Pro tip: If somebody else’s small child is being a teensy bit loud and fidgety in their seat in a waiting room or on a bus, you can often distract them by teaching them how to spell their name and several common words with their hands.
Who needs sign language if you can yell really loud?
LOUD. AND. OVER-ENUNCIATED.
This also allegedly works on people with average hearing but no comprehension of the language being spoken.
Hilarious idea, the doctor recommends Becky get and eye test because she read the line wrong.
It would be great if everyone knew sign language, but it’s cute if you think that even one country has ‘everybody’ know it. Especially America.
At least in our school district, all preschoolers learn ASL alphabet. Doing physical signs can help cement verbal words in many children. That said, it isn’t universal in America and if you dont use it you lose it.
I tried to learn it, and my parents/cousins/aunt definitely know ASL, but I only ever picked up some signs like ‘mom’, ‘dad’, ‘old’, ‘ugly’, ‘pretty’, ‘cat’, ‘dog’, etc. For context, my mom is partially deaf/blind so she learned ASL in a school for the deaf/blind, and my dad and aunt learned when they were younger so they could sign with her. It’s definitely something that requires study and my school didn’t offer any ASL classes.
I’ve never personally met anyone who knew ASL beyond three or four gestures. I’d love to learn it, but I have next to no dexterity and it’s embarassing to learn things because of anxiety.
L-E-S-B-I-…
It’s like when a Pokémon can only say its name.
Ok, fine.
Thank the non-existent God 2020 is here!
Happy?
Also, this is the year Trump is removed from office, so it’s already got that going for it.
I’m almost hoping he doesn’t leave and tries to stay. I would derive so much pleasure from watching a squad of US Marines ⃥p⃥e⃥r⃥p⃥-⃥w⃥a⃥l⃥k⃥i⃥n⃥g⃥ escorting him and Melania out the front portico.
It would be even better if they would hog-tie him and drag him out by his heels, but I suppose that’s asking just a little too much.
I have a gut feeling he’s going to pull some attention-grabbing stunt around the 20th, like have an “alternative inauguration” at his Florida estate. (Just like the “alternative electors” who cast meaningless votes for him in a parking lot.) Then he’ll preach to his flock as the “real president” for as long as they keep throwing him their pennies.
I have a sinking feeling that the Senate is going to vote not to count a critical proportion of the electoral college votes for Biden.
Too much of the trust, stability, and continuity of our government hinges on the assumption that those in charge will act in good faith.
Then again, that’s one genie they might not want out of its bottle for the precedent it will set. It would basically spell the end of presidential elections as we know them, and if the Senate flips in 2022 then they’ve effectively forfeit 2024. Never mind the far right, ravenously awaiting its chance to get elected via primary. That’s why McTurtle is playing the long game, trying to keep his Senators in line; he’s evil but he’s not stupid. Lindsey Graham was right, the RNC elected Trump, is getting destroyed for it, and deserved it. I just wish there wasn’t so much splash damage.
The Senate does not have that option. The votes are counted in front of a joint session of Congress and if any slate of electors is objected to, both the Senate and the House vote separately on the objection and only if both agree is the objection sustained. Otherwise the votes are counted.
We will probably see this happen, but there’s no way the House will agree to the objection and given that I think it’s unlikely a majority of the Senate would either – since it still wouldn’t work.
Isn’t this another case of 19th century verbiage saying “shall = must”? The Senate cannot selectively discard votes because that would be like the states interfering with each others’ elections?
You’d think the Democrats would have played this card in 2000 and 2016 if this was actually a viable strategy…
Not at all. There is simply no option for the Senate to do this. The Senate’s only role in counting the votes is to join with the House in objecting to a particular state’s slate of electors.
There is a crackpot theory you might be thinking of where the Vice President has the job of opening the envelopes containing the electoral ballots and some idiots think he can just determine the election by not opening the Democratic ones.
“I declare presidency!”
– Vice President Michael Scott
You say “crackpot” and yet this is actually happening right now.
The Republican party has left the stage. In it’s place is the ignorant party of idiots and tantrums.
sorry, A, the good news is “no”, the bad news is it’s worse than you think.
the Senate knows that all he needs to do is not jump into the dumpster fire, and in two years both chambers will be republican, and in two years and a day the democrats will be impeached and removed, with no evidence presented (again!). the Senate knows he has a fair shot at preventing any judicial openings from being filled in the interim, and that in any case 48 republican votes gives him a dependable majority in virtually all matters.
the US has been dead for at least thirty years, what you’re smelling is putrefaction.
Could be impeached if the GOP takes the House in 2022. Can’t be removed without a 2/3rds majority vote in the Senate, which they won’t have.
I don’t think it matters how he leaves, he’s probably going to prison after.
I keep saying, make it a pay-per-view and you can solve the US national debt.
So, in grade school, they were giving everyone a simple eye test like this. As the rest of us were lined up in the hall, waiting our turn, we all started memorizing the chart. Which we could read, through a window, at two or more times the distance of the test. You know, just incase we wouldn’t be able to read it up close. Wouldn’t want to flunk. It was a test, after all.
Here’s to the new year. May she be a damn sight better than the old one.
And may we all be alive and healthy at the end of it.
Simulating an eyepatch and a hook, like a pirate, to sign-language an ‘R’? This has just made the short list of funniest strips, Willis
… but you’ve still got a long ways to go to top the seven or eight strips that featured the creation and deployment of the Rube Goldberg machine that made up “Carla’s Cold, Swift, and Absolutely Ridiculous Revenge Against Mary Plan” back in May of 2016.
2020 Remastered
In Becky’s defence, she’s trying to help Joyce. It’s just that she’s helping her with the wrong things and for the wrong reasons.
You dont “ Help” during an eye exam just to spite someone you are jealous of, this is sabatoge pretending to be concern
saphatage
What Becky’s doing here is pretty much the opposite of helping when it comes to an eye exam.
The point is that she doesn’t see it that way.
So the moral is that Becky is the one who actually needs glasses, to help her see the truth, which means Joyce is right about her not needing them. The metaphors win!
By this logic, Ross is the best dad ever.
Well, almost? Joyce Wants this non-help, while Becky explicitly didn’t want her dad’s. There is a clear divide in terms how appreciated the overall harmful non-help is.
Like, logically you’re right. But I also hate being “wrong” on an eye exam.
Yeah, when you’re wrong its when they bust out the needles
Let’s just be glad this is just an eye exam and not some other important medical procedure Joyce might not like
Not that I could imagine any invasive test a young woman might not like
I don’t have high hopes for 2021. In face I’ve been kinda expecting 2021 isn’t gonna be much better than 2020 was for a while now.
My biggest hope for 2021 is that all the people who were rah-rah’ing Biden realise he’s shit, too. Either that, or he dies, Harris takes the presidency, and everybody realises that rich black women are just as bad as every other demographic with “rich” in it.
So your biggest fucking hope is that things don’t improve, that Biden and Harris are as bad as Trump and just keep making things worse. Because it’s not like people are going to realize they’re “shit” if things actually get better.
From Trump? I fully expect them to improve.
I mean, I fully intend to protest as soon as I feel safe being in public again, but I do expect improvement. Insufficient improvement since there’s so much ground to recover cleaning up after the previous administration, but improvement nonetheless.
Also they respond to public pressure. We’ve seen that one already. That means we can probably gain a bit more ground if people come out in force. But yeah, I do have some serious concerns about complacency from people who spent the last four years blaming Trump for everything that went wrong.
Yeah, a 52/100 is better than a 49/100. Neither is good but one is measurably better. I mean, for one, Biden’s taking the coronavirus pandemic a lot more seriously than Trump is, which is a step up already.
Becky is getting more and more unlikeable by the minute. Honestly, is anyone defending her here? Interfering with her *best friend’s* health to this extent? Asshole move.
Becky seems to spell “Best Friend” E-N-A-B-L-E-R.
You’re not wrong. Just for context, I’d remind people that Becky was homeschooled by Toedad Ross. This is shit that most children in school would figure out by the 3rd grade. Hell, in Joyce’s case, she would’ve been given an eye exam before, and not had any rational fear of it. This isn’t justifying their lack of growth, simply that they are behind most people due to their upbringing.
The weird thign is that no-one is Joyce’s family opposes eyesight correctives, because they all clearly wear them (without any “for me, but not for thee” bullshit justification).
Joyce isn’t afraid of the eye exam (other than maybe big city ones being different from what she’s used to. Why not? Everything else is.)
She’s afraid of needing glasses. Which is also irrational, but common.
I suppose it feels weird Joyce being afraid of needing glasses when everyone in her family uses some sort of visual corrective device.
I mean. That could make it worse for several reasons including:
1) Decreasing feeling of uniqueness among family, triggering insecurities about self-identity.
2) Knowing the hassle of glasses (easily lost, can break, might not fit right on ears or nose without adjustments, needing new prescriptions as eyes worsen with age typically).
3) Feeling more like family she wants less association with (her mum and judgemental brother).
4) It contributes to her already existing anxiety about not being what people want her to be. That she is changing or possibly always was this person (that needed glasses). And this will not be something she can hide like she can hide being an atheist.
Glasses don’t change much physically but mentally you can tie yourself into real knots over them for emotional reasons.
Here’s hoping that 2021 at least doesn’t get me a dog bite for Christmas.
You don’t want a lot for Christmas,
There’s just one thing you need,
That each and every dog picks
somebody else on whom to feed.
Perhaps Joyce gets the same frames as Dorothy and Becky’s brain breaks.
Or Joyce with glasses is even more attractive to her then without them and THEN Becky’s brain breaks.
Doctor: “Okay, try the fifth line.”
Joyce: “X-Y-Z-Z-Y” *teleports back to the waiting room next to Dorothy*
All right, can Becky stop being stupid? This is a medical exam. She shouldn’t be “helping” Joyce…
I’m starting to feel like Becky got her definition of “regular human behaviour” from bad sitcoms.
She got her definition of regular human behavior from Willis, since he writes her (and every other character in DOA). I agree with Bicycle Bill that it is one funny strip.
She learned her behavior from her mother, who was using wackiness to cover for suicidal depression.
Hide the Pain
HaroldBonnie.🙁
“Nobody likes a Debbie Downer.”
Probably. We know Joyce did. Or at least romcoms.
So where Joyce got her impression of romance.
I mean yeah I’m pretty sure tv was the most socialization she got outside of church, and she knows that the church’s socialization was bad, sooo
I’m torn between being entirely over Becky lately and laughing at her pirate impression for the letter “R.”
Yeah, that was funny as hell 😀
Panel five: Becky MacIntyre, La Porte charades champion, ages 10-15 homeschool division.
There’s NO WAY 2021 could be a WORSE year than t-
*tackled and strangled by loved ones before they can complete the sentence*
Chicxulub crater remake.
Yellowstone eruption.
Nuclear winter because kim has a tantrum.
Invasion. By anybody, (but let’s posit China for this one.)
Covid 2, the mutation.
Locusts.
Carrington event, the remake, now with computerized infrastructure.
9.0 Richter scale earthquake.
Need I go on?
Several of these would go hand in hand. Like the Chicxulub impact, supervolcano eruption, and earthquake.
Vacuum decay.
@Jnon,
I forgot about Vacuum Decay.
Presumably that’d be over in a flash and we’d never know it happened.
Look as long as we can finally find Sasquatch, the country can blow the fuck up for all I care.
So to whomever predicated this?
There ya go.
*predicted
Jesus we need an edit button.
Maybe Joyce getting glasses is what breaks a few characters, like Becky or Joe or Walky.
That ‘pirate’ R … it’s been a while since I laughed so much at a comic.
That’s a good “r”
Unhealthy. But gonna love Becky for this effort ♡.
After going through the distance vision test, it always gives me a feeling of power to ace the close vision test.