If I ever pay for that tier I might have to go for Ethan’s mom with Ruth. If you get it, you win… oh, hell if I know. I already awarded the entire internet to Doctor_Who.
To be perfectly fair, when one is used to waking up early every day it can be hard to sleep in that much. Using myself as an example, since I switched to working just mornings rather than evenings or a mix of mornings and evenings I’ve had trouble sleeping later than 9am on my days off. This has been compounded lately with working a six day schedule, which has left me waking up even earlier on my one day off.
All that being said, I think she maybe did sleep in, seeing as David is awake…
Wishing you all a belated Happy Dumbing Day, which this year was back on Friday the 14th. TLDR: We celebrate DUMBING DAY on whatever date (month and day) in real life that happens to correspond to the current in-story date of DoA (according to the deductions/assumptions of Walkypedia). I’m sorry I missed it, but it was a very busy day for me and it completely flew under my radar. And it was even a very special Dumbing Day, as it occurred on the same weekday (Friday) as in the actual storyline, which has never happened on a previous Dumbing Day. Oh well. See you next year around January 18….
Hmmm….
Looking at the URL from your link in your post you have an extra set of characters on the end, specifically “%E2%80%9D”, which correspond to the Unicode “right quotation mark” symbol as encoded in UTF-8 text encoding.
I’m guessing that somewhere in your system settings an option to replace flat quotation marks with their “nice” looking variant is set. You may be able to find that and disable it, so just typing in HTML markup code like that works as expected, but you can bypass that behavior while leaving it set if you just copy and paste from the displayed HTML tags displayed below the text entry field on this site.
Ruth’s Walkyverse birthday was established as “…y 13”. If that’s to be presumed as January 13 and assuming it stays the same (as it has for the Walkerton twins, born on April 1 in both ‘verses), then yes.
That would mean Ruth’s birthday was on Wednesday, and this is Sunday the 17th?
Bonus inference: January 13th fell on a Wednesday in 2021, so presumably DoA is following 2021’s calendar now. Good thing their universe exists in a timeline where 2020 lost. Help them all if they’re stuck perpetually living in a world where 2020 won.
I think the Wiki timeline might actually be based on my previous deductions from last year. Specifically, they’re based on the previous deductions/assumptions from last semester. If the Wiki is correct in dating the first strip of DOA, a Sunday, on August 29th, then that would place the first day of classes for the Spring semester (Monday) on January 10 (assuming it isn’t, say, a week earlier or a week later). Unfortunately that isn’t compatible with placing Ruth’s birthday on January 13. So either that’s wrong, the deductions/assumptions about the fall semester were wrong, or the timelines for the two semesters simply aren’t compatible.
The first semester calculations are correct, “season 1” was definitely timed out around 2010’s calendar. That’s what I based my 66:1 passage of time calculation on way back when.
I think the time skip was long enough to safely obfuscate the difference. It covers almost as much story time as the comic’s first real-time decade, what’s an extra day or two? The second semester / “season two” was always supposed to be a soft reboot anyway, we can realign to the new calendar and handwave away the discrepancy under the MST3K Mantra.
I think you’d actually have to remove a day to make it work. Not sure what you mean by a “soft reboot”. As far as I know, it was only a time skip. So unless the Word of God says otherwise, My preference would be to go with a calendar that doesn’t break continuity.
By “soft reboot”, it’s meant that the beginning of Season Two—which started with Book 11–is intended as a good starting point in the comic for new readers, especially those who might not at first be interested in reading through a solid decade’s worth of precursor strips (including a rather janky art style at the beginning, compared to today). Hence us being given introductions to all of the characters all over again, given summarizations of what happened over the preceding ten years of strips, etc. There was even discussion and speculation back then as a result as to whether Season Two would use 2011’s calendar as Season One used 2010’s, or if—as now seems might be the case—it’d use the present year for calculating the weekdays instead.
But if the calendar didn’t break with the first semester’s, the timeline doesn’t fit. Either Dumbiverse Ruth’s birthday is the 12th, or the skip obscured the time discrepancy. There’s one too many chapters to follow 2011’s calendar to the letter given the one-chapter-per-day pace and the assumptions we’re working with.
@Needfuldoer: Yeah, which is why I’m personally assuming that the post-timeskip timeline is following the 2021 calendar. It would be in keeping with the spirit of the “DoA is always set in 20[present year]” rule to update the calendar to be more current after the soft-reboot, instead of continuing to use the calendar from over a decade ago.
And I personally don’t see a need to assume that all the characters’ birthdays are the same across the two universes (though a few may be the same), given that DW changed all their relative ages to begin with. Works better in my head than assuming, say, that DOA is set in a universe in which December has only 30 days.
Thank you, I’m flattered! If I have time, I’ll try to edit that to prove more info and dates. But we should put a big disclaimer on that, because, as discussed above, the dates are based on inferences and assumptions that may be incorrect, or may be incompatible with DW’s own plans for his story. And it’s his story — he can break continuity if he wants.
To be fair to Walky she dropped that bomb on him while there was a bunch going on, he was probably more mentally occupied with not getting the comic gig then anything Joyce was saying
I’ll maintain that, regardless of bedtime apparel, gym shorts are more appropriate walking-around-the-dorm apparel than exposed underwear.
It is odd to me how many characters are seen walking the halls in their underwear, since that is very different from my personal college experience. (I find it a believable thing for college kids to do; it just wasn’t my experience in my particular dorm hall on my particular campus.)
Always thought the worst part of being religious (Christian version) was committing to spend all your Sunday mornings churching it up. Doncha ever wanna play basketball or est waffles or jerk off or whatever?!
I was an altar boy. That was even worse, you had to get there even earlier, put on a stupid robe, carry heavy-ass candles, and remember all these formations to march around in.
Honestly considering how much Joyce’s newly-public atheism is shaping up to be a major driving theme of Book 12, “Nobody Should Have To Wear Pants On Sunday Morning” is probably the perfect title.
They both love things that have been extinct for millennia, they both occasionally harm or harass a person physically, they’re both definitely fans of meat on pizza, and both of them have died violently in an alternate universe. Plus, there’s the size difference to consider.
Honestly, some of the pairings these commentators come up with, they boggle the mind. Although I do sometimes wonder which ones have been…exercised, fanfic-wise.
Wait, has Walky actually been brought up to date on Joyce being an atheist before now? I feel like it was sort of a secret until, like, 2 days ago in-universe, and I’m not sure anyone told Walky once the cat was out of the bag.
I can’t find a specific place (might’ve been on tumblr for all I know), but I recall Willis saying something about the site needing the ads. Which would probably be pulled if the comic had regular appearances of characters’ junk. 😛
…I mean, they have A kid. Not sure about “kids” plural, though. If they ever had a second one, we never saw them. And Joyce was pretty weirded out the firsttime…
It’s supposed to be a constant, ever-present reminder of their commitment to the faith, which I guess sounds nice to them but strikes me as the most stalkery thing ever. And I think it ties back to the clothes that God made for Adam and Eve, somehow?
In total fairness that’s not completely out there? It’s why Jews (are supposed to) wear tzitzit at all times, and wear tefillin if you’re at a service that’s not on a holiday (including Shabbat).
Going off of my dad’s experience when he was religious, that undershirt the tzitzit could get sweaty and that could be a problem, especially if you were walking to your son’s soccer game because you didn’t want to drive on the sabbath 😬
Neurodivergent. Ya know, us autists and ADHD types, the OCD crowd, dyslexic folks, and the English. We’re no too thrilled about that last one, but we weren’t exactly surprised by it, either.
But even the selection listed seems to me like a keyhole — there are so many of us with many unique and beautiful combinations of neurodivergent stripes that really aren’t captured that well by such big, sweeping labels.
Might as well try to photograph an Aurora Borealis with a disposable camera.
I see it as the same sort of label as “queer”. It doesn’t fully describe us all, but it’s a decent enough start. If I gave out my full list of diagnoses and homofabulous quirks, it’d make The Normals nervous. You know that look they get, the borderline panic as their eyes start wandering the room, looking for the nearest blunt object in case this rambling escaped mental patient suddenly attacks them.
So instead, you can just umbrella the whole thing as “neurodivergent”, their silly little brains can autocorrect that to the R-slur, and we can all carry on with our day.
I’d really like to discuss this right now, but seeing that I really need some sleep, I guess that’s fair enough.
Suffice it to say though that I really just with that the way we described neurodivergence was more like the system we have for gender / sexual identity, where you could say something like “I’m a Nonbinary Panromantic Bisexual” and nicely capture all your unique stripes for that particular aspect of yourself.
But what really bothers me the most about the way current neurodivergent labels are is that they’re so broad and sweeping that they make it very difficult for neurotypicals to tell the difference between our disabilities and our PERSONALITIES. Worse yet, a lot of people who form impressions extrapolated from those big labels INSIST on those hurtful assumptions about us and get defensive when those hurtful assumptions are challenged, in which they ultimately end up saying basically this —
“The stars in your galaxy of a brain don’t align with my current categories and calculations.
I know MY maps and sciences are perfect, so it’s YOUR stars that must be wrong!”
Yeah, if we ain’t Rain Man or Sheldon Cooper, we’re liars to The Usual Crowd. Bigots gonna big…it. Lost the flow on that one. Sleep is for the straights.
I myself have experienced years of physical and psychological abuse because of the “autism” label in particular.
Even if there’s no malicious intention, people will make hurtful assumptions based on these labels and stick with them because, well, as the saying goes, “a little knowledge only increases ignorance”. Homo sapien brains are just hardwired like that to distort their perceptions to be consistent with what they think they already know, and even when they’re aware of that there’s no way to turn it off, as is the case with many biased clinicians. Even if they’re not downright bigoted, this kind of automatic thinking based on big, sweeping labels like this is still very egregious. 😣
Tell me, Taffy, just how many times have people made hurtful assumptions about you because of a label like “autism”?
Do you think they’d be less likely to make those assumptions if only we had better, more clear ways of describing our unique and beautiful combinations of neurodivergent stripes?
We already have a comparatively cushy lexicon for queer folks, like you said, and it’s widely and easily accessible, but people still call us faggots and perverts and kill us in broad daylight anyway. There’s been a relatively robust classification system that’s also readily and easily accessible for years, and anyone who’s not a boring loser still gets treated like a ticking time bomb of psychopathic rage.
Respectfully, the reality you’ve proposed is the one we’re in already, barring a few extra keywords that would just be ignored anyway, and people frankly seem to be getting worse to us the more visible we get. I won’t venture too far into personal experiences here, for safety reasons, but being a gender-nonconforming autist has 100% painted a target on my back since childhood, no matter how well people have understood what those things even mean. If anything, the ones that bother to learn about us will just use that info as a weapon.
It’s maybe a little pessimistic of me, but frankly I feel it’s naive to expect shitty or easily-influenced people to start treating us better just because we added a few new adjectives to a list they’ve already proven they don’t care about. I hope that doesn’t come off too harshly.
I guess bigots be bigots, and the best we can do for now is learn to live separately from them, which I was unlucky enough to learn the hard way.
But surely those who are not deliberately malicious but just lack perspective or experience still have a chance, if only they had better tools for learning about us? I mean, following the same pessimism of yours for LGBTQ+, would it then not be redundant to have that kind of gender diversity in fiction, or classes required for college graduation?
We do these kinds of things not because we know they have immediate benefit, but because they give us our best probability of having a future where we can be treated fairly and show our unique and beautiful combinations of stripes as individuals for all the world to see.
If we fail through this peaceful venue, then the cards were stacked against us so we never stood a chance. And oh well. I guess try as we might, there’s only so much that humans, the product of 4.5 billion years worth of happy accidents, can do right.
It means Joyce wants to see less (none) of Walky’s underwear.
From context and knowing Joyce’s personality, it means she wants some pants covering up the underwear. But someone else complaining about the presence of underwear, in a different context, could mean they want Walky’s underwear removed.
The water might be used to save a queer or non-white person, or even worse, a person who generally shares his religious beliefs but differs slightly on an innocuous topic. Therefore the fire hydrant is Satan setting us up to betray God, symbolised by its red coloring. Although I more often tend to see yellow hydrants with blue caps, so maybe it actually symbolizes Asians and left-wingers trying to control us.
Is that extreme enough? I’ve only seen a few Chick Tracts, so I assume they’re all equally unhinged.
Forgive me if other people pointed it out already, but I’d like to do so as well: over analyzing the line she says in panel 4, it’s not that Joyce doesn’t believe that a god exists; she states that “doesn’t believe in Him”. It sounds more like she’s lost faith in His authority, and all of her current behavior is her lashing out at God for letting her down. So it’s more that she believes God exists but doesn’t care, than true atheism.
Close: God’s existence to Joyce was authority. God was rules, obeying her parents and superiors, and accepting that the Earth was 6000 years old and dinosaurs were on the ark no matter how many times she was called stupid for this.
Her belief in God was fueled by him being an objective, inerrant fact of the universe. The only faith Joyce ever had was in an adult telling her what to think.
Fair enough. But as an aside, given how insular her childhood sounded, I don’t think Joyce has ever been called stupid for her beliefs until she entered college.
I wouldn’t put it past Carol to have intentionally harassed people at the grocery store, while conditioning Joyce to see it as normal and the people’s responses as “What you can expect from Those People”.
Eeeeeeh, that’s not my read of it at all. We’ve followed Joyce’s crisis of faith pretty closely and the subject of her thinking that God *doesn’t exist* came up quite a few times (most obviously here https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/ultimately/). And she’s been going on about how “everything is random and nothing matters”, rather than the world being actively malicious towards her. Most of her anger has been directed at her church and community than at “God”.
She’s made her atheism pretty clear, that she’s still using very christian language to talk about god and belief is a decently common artifact of growing up in a christian dominated environment
It will take a bit for her to break out of the “wake up early and get dressed for church” habit.
Eventually she’ll roam the halls in something like a three-sizes-too-large Dexter and Monkey Master t-shirt under a hoodie. It will look like she’s Donald Ducking but she’s actually got sorts on underneath, because Joyce.
GOD… If you are in heaven, please forgive him, he knows not what he does. Yes, he is a sinner, and a slob, but will, one day, albeit far, far …. far … away repent his sinful transgressions.
The alt text took the best possible book title from this strip, but I think “Church Admittedly Had Less of Your Underwear in It” is a good second choice.
It’s okay, Joyce. Habits are hard to break, especially when it’s an ‘every week on this day my whole life until like a month ago’. Go get grape juice if you want it, and also better crackers than the flavorless church garbage. Grape juice and crackers don’t have to be God, they can just be weird.
And then you gave grape juice with which to stain the clothes of people who mock you. Win-win.
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Joyce, one of the pros of Not Church is sleeping in and NOT SEEING WALKY UNDERPANTS
Woah! What is it, change your avatar day?
Is that Liz with Dina’s mom?
…ships never cease to surprise me
Her ride is here at last.
…you win the entire internet.
They are a time traveller.
We have no idea if that’s going to be canon.
No, Ana’s the time traveler. Tairan’s the assassin, while Jen and Sue are…uh…
Pick your cides.
Jen’s a city planner, expertise in population control.
Sue’s a therapist. Specializes in… well, call her hotline and find out.
It’s not a very serious ship and that’s the point
If I ever pay for that tier I might have to go for Ethan’s mom with Ruth. If you get it, you win… oh, hell if I know. I already awarded the entire internet to Doctor_Who.
What did Emperor Norton have to say about that?
I’d go for, hmm…
JoexDrew.
Would their ship name be Doe or Jrew?
To be perfectly fair, when one is used to waking up early every day it can be hard to sleep in that much. Using myself as an example, since I switched to working just mornings rather than evenings or a mix of mornings and evenings I’ve had trouble sleeping later than 9am on my days off. This has been compounded lately with working a six day schedule, which has left me waking up even earlier on my one day off.
All that being said, I think she maybe did sleep in, seeing as David is awake…
Eh, I got up early every day of MAGFest bc free hotel breakfast
Then I went back to bed lol
My hero!
Free hotel breakfast is the best thing in the world, in the moment.
Once you get some caffeine and carbs into you and your brain finishes booting, you realize it was worth every penny you paid for it.
I had a whole-ass plate of scrambled eggs each day bc I was wary about loading up only on meats even though my doc says I can have it now
Not eating eggs again for a while… 🤢
Wait… is Ana Chronistic also Jen Aside, or not? 🤫
Also, Damnit Walkerton, it’s Tuesday, not Sunday. Don’t rub it in.
Not only Jen, but also Tairan Aside and Sue Aside and perhaps more. The Asides are many and varied.
(Both Jen and Sue have even appeared/been referenced as characters in the comic itself!)
Agreed, I still wake up at 4am every morning.
One of the good things about being an atheist is you can do whatever you want on Sunday mornings. Unless of course you have to work then or something.
FiLtHy AthEiSts WoRk On SuNdAyS PrOvE ThEy ArE GrEeDy EvIlS ThAt WoRsHiP mOnEy As MaMmOn AvAtAr AnD tAkE oUr ChRiStIaN jObS.
Because obviously work on sunday is a lifestyle and not economical.
Jesus fucking Christ, who commissioned Liz and Dina’s mother?
No He didn’t 😲
Gravatar checks out
Actually, today’s sermon is about the torments of hell, so Walky’s underwear features quite prominently.
Wishing you all a belated Happy Dumbing Day, which this year was back on Friday the 14th. TLDR: We celebrate DUMBING DAY on whatever date (month and day) in real life that happens to correspond to the current in-story date of DoA (according to the deductions/assumptions of Walkypedia). I’m sorry I missed it, but it was a very busy day for me and it completely flew under my radar. And it was even a very special Dumbing Day, as it occurred on the same weekday (Friday) as in the actual storyline, which has never happened on a previous Dumbing Day. Oh well. See you next year around January 18….
(That link was supposed to go to my comment on that strip. I can never get the links right.)
Hmmm….
Looking at the URL from your link in your post you have an extra set of characters on the end, specifically “%E2%80%9D”, which correspond to the Unicode “right quotation mark” symbol as encoded in UTF-8 text encoding.
I’m guessing that somewhere in your system settings an option to replace flat quotation marks with their “nice” looking variant is set. You may be able to find that and disable it, so just typing in HTML markup code like that works as expected, but you can bypass that behavior while leaving it set if you just copy and paste from the displayed HTML tags displayed below the text entry field on this site.
Thank you Vlademir.
(Again, being quoted in a tweet feels weird! But appreciated.)
How did we finally pin it down to an exact day? Was Ruth’s birthday pre-established?
Ruth’s Walkyverse birthday was established as “…y 13”. If that’s to be presumed as January 13 and assuming it stays the same (as it has for the Walkerton twins, born on April 1 in both ‘verses), then yes.
Okay, I think something’s off by one here, either the timeline on Walkypedia or my calculations.
“Hompk!” takes place on Ruth’s birthday, established as January 13th.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/choices/
“Trial and Sarah” is the following Sunday, assuming we didn’t miss any days.
https://imgur.com/z9XO4BP
That would mean Ruth’s birthday was on Wednesday, and this is Sunday the 17th?
Bonus inference: January 13th fell on a Wednesday in 2021, so presumably DoA is following 2021’s calendar now. Good thing their universe exists in a timeline where 2020 lost. Help them all if they’re stuck perpetually living in a world where 2020 won.
I think the Wiki timeline might actually be based on my previous deductions from last year. Specifically, they’re based on the previous deductions/assumptions from last semester. If the Wiki is correct in dating the first strip of DOA, a Sunday, on August 29th, then that would place the first day of classes for the Spring semester (Monday) on January 10 (assuming it isn’t, say, a week earlier or a week later). Unfortunately that isn’t compatible with placing Ruth’s birthday on January 13. So either that’s wrong, the deductions/assumptions about the fall semester were wrong, or the timelines for the two semesters simply aren’t compatible.
The first semester calculations are correct, “season 1” was definitely timed out around 2010’s calendar. That’s what I based my 66:1 passage of time calculation on way back when.
I think the time skip was long enough to safely obfuscate the difference. It covers almost as much story time as the comic’s first real-time decade, what’s an extra day or two? The second semester / “season two” was always supposed to be a soft reboot anyway, we can realign to the new calendar and handwave away the discrepancy under the MST3K Mantra.
Or maybe the DoA universe had an extra leap day. We’re through the looking glass here, people.
I think you’d actually have to remove a day to make it work. Not sure what you mean by a “soft reboot”. As far as I know, it was only a time skip. So unless the Word of God says otherwise, My preference would be to go with a calendar that doesn’t break continuity.
By “soft reboot”, it’s meant that the beginning of Season Two—which started with Book 11–is intended as a good starting point in the comic for new readers, especially those who might not at first be interested in reading through a solid decade’s worth of precursor strips (including a rather janky art style at the beginning, compared to today). Hence us being given introductions to all of the characters all over again, given summarizations of what happened over the preceding ten years of strips, etc. There was even discussion and speculation back then as a result as to whether Season Two would use 2011’s calendar as Season One used 2010’s, or if—as now seems might be the case—it’d use the present year for calculating the weekdays instead.
But if the calendar didn’t break with the first semester’s, the timeline doesn’t fit. Either Dumbiverse Ruth’s birthday is the 12th, or the skip obscured the time discrepancy. There’s one too many chapters to follow 2011’s calendar to the letter given the one-chapter-per-day pace and the assumptions we’re working with.
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/monthly.html?year=2011&month=1&country=1
@Needfuldoer: Yeah, which is why I’m personally assuming that the post-timeskip timeline is following the 2021 calendar. It would be in keeping with the spirit of the “DoA is always set in 20[present year]” rule to update the calendar to be more current after the soft-reboot, instead of continuing to use the calendar from over a decade ago.
And I personally don’t see a need to assume that all the characters’ birthdays are the same across the two universes (though a few may be the same), given that DW changed all their relative ages to begin with. Works better in my head than assuming, say, that DOA is set in a universe in which December has only 30 days.
DoA Wiki Article on ‘Dumbing Day’ has been created.
Thank you Lingo, for the content.
Thank you, I’m flattered! If I have time, I’ll try to edit that to prove more info and dates. But we should put a big disclaimer on that, because, as discussed above, the dates are based on inferences and assumptions that may be incorrect, or may be incompatible with DW’s own plans for his story. And it’s his story — he can break continuity if he wants.
Interesting difference in reaction to “walky in underwear” and “Joe in underwear”
Walky has a hoodie on
Joe’s like a foot taller, it was much closer to eye height for Joyce.
I think the abs are what do it.
Doesn’t Walky canonically have abs?
He did at the start of the school the year, who knows if he still does by now.
Everybody does.
Walky probably just looks more toned than he is because he’s somehow scrawny despite his diet. Joe actually works out.
Yes, and they’re sculpted caramel.
Well, if anyone would know, it would be Lucy.
“You want less Walky underwear? Okay that can-”
“I’ll call Ruth.”
“Putting pants on now.”
To be fair to Walky she dropped that bomb on him while there was a bunch going on, he was probably more mentally occupied with not getting the comic gig then anything Joyce was saying
tbf, there was lots of underwear in her church, it was just generally not seen due to intervening pants
“Intervening Pants” is the third-best song on the new Guided by Voices album, btw
There may of been a lot of underwear at her church, but the point is, it wasn’t Walky’s underwear.
What Cliff said!
…as far as YOU know
Sounds like the name of an indie rock band that released two EPs before disbanding because someone’s class schedule changed.
Walky is very relatable, although I usually wear pyjama pants.
I probably spend more time in lounge pants than I should, especially on the weekend.
I maintain that basketball shorts are the comfiest bedtime apparel.
I’m a sweatpants guy. No underwear.
I’ll maintain that, regardless of bedtime apparel, gym shorts are more appropriate walking-around-the-dorm apparel than exposed underwear.
It is odd to me how many characters are seen walking the halls in their underwear, since that is very different from my personal college experience. (I find it a believable thing for college kids to do; it just wasn’t my experience in my particular dorm hall on my particular campus.)
Joyce, Honey, your roots are showing. Leave that Christian judgyness in church where they distill it, bottle it and use it for Molotov cocktails.
In fairness, I don’t want to see random people’s undies either. Doubly so when they’re people I don’t like all that much anyways.
No, no she’s allowed to judge the dude walking around the halls in PUBLIC in his underpants.
Always thought the worst part of being religious (Christian version) was committing to spend all your Sunday mornings churching it up. Doncha ever wanna play basketball or est waffles or jerk off or whatever?!
I was an altar boy. That was even worse, you had to get there even earlier, put on a stupid robe, carry heavy-ass candles, and remember all these formations to march around in.
Those Galifrain alter boys had it tough.
As a non-religious I think it’d be nice to go to a place every week and connect with members of the community
Though tbh five year old Catholic me didn’t agree. Unless we went to the church with donut holes.
Honestly considering how much Joyce’s newly-public atheism is shaping up to be a major driving theme of Book 12, “Nobody Should Have To Wear Pants On Sunday Morning” is probably the perfect title.
I’m glad that nachitos were tagged in this, they deserve some respect.
Without them, Walky would lose like a third of what he normally eats.
I love Joyce and Walky. Not romantically, but as friends that kind of hate each other while still being so in sync. Such a good dynamic.
But imagine that they did fall in love with each other, how would it be?
Shame there is no comic that touches on this topic.
going for the real crack!ship here, huh? there’s always one…
No way. That ship would be totally out of this world.
That pairing is ridiculous.
I am finding the pairing depicted in your avatar somewhat disturbing.
They both love things that have been extinct for millennia, they both occasionally harm or harass a person physically, they’re both definitely fans of meat on pizza, and both of them have died violently in an alternate universe. Plus, there’s the size difference to consider.
It’s Walky, what in the world could motivate Joyce to fall for him?
Joyce & Walky is a total crackship.
Honestly, some of the pairings these commentators come up with, they boggle the mind. Although I do sometimes wonder which ones have been…exercised, fanfic-wise.
What’s next? Joe and Rachel? Mike and Amber? Pfffft.
Hear me out—Mike and Dina.
See, that just sounds like a ticking time bomb.
It’d probably end in tears, but it was the best she could do.
I dunno, aren’t there all those Bible verses about girding up your loins?
So instead of underwear, Walky should be wearing girdles?
Why must you taunt us so, with these sinful thoughts?
Shouldn’t he be wearing PajamaJeans(tm)?
Is Pajeamas a forbidden word?
Oh I get it a dot k dot a probably parses as some forbidden domain or something, got it
I don’t think pajeamas is even a word, or that there is any problem with .k.
Well, I posted it with an a dot k dot a first and it disappeared so it didn’t like something, I just don’t know what.
I like to think Dorothy burned those while he wasn’t looking.
Wait, has Walky actually been brought up to date on Joyce being an atheist before now? I feel like it was sort of a secret until, like, 2 days ago in-universe, and I’m not sure anyone told Walky once the cat was out of the bag.
Joyce told him
He was likely more mentally occupied with not getting the comic then anything Joyce was saying
Stupid dress codes. Won’t let me walk around in my underwear in church.
Actually, I think they would prefer you to wear underwear as you walk around church.
Jesus probably didn’t wear Fruit of the Looms, I’ll say that much.
depending, some priests and youth ministers definitely prefer if you don’t.
You can, they just expect you to wear something over them. (Otherwise, aren’t they just “wear”?)
If you build a church out of underwear, then everyone can walk around in underwear when they go to church.
Maybe Joyce would feel more comfortable if she took of her pants and joined the ritual.
Walky is awfully non-chalant about going pantless in a public hallway. I’d be shielding myself with a towel, even if it’s “just” underwear.
Walky has already accidentally shown the world his nethers, so he’s probably pretty blase’ about it by now. (Ref: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/dont-button/ And then he was hugged by Mike’s mom in that state, and I still don’t know how that didn’t make the universe explode.)
He’s relatively uninhibited about nudity anyway.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/wellrested/
JESUS SAVES you from seeing Walky’s underpants.
walky underwear are still better than church
at least the underwear don’t call you a sinner for wanting to kiss pretty girls
Are your underwear not sentient?
A good recurring gag would be if everytime Walky was outside his dorm room in his underwear he gets a punch in the balls
I dunno bruh… I think there’s a lot more potential here! 🤣
Funny than seeing Walky getting a sack tap every now and then?
Did you see the hovertext?!?!
Why doesn’t Willis do stuff like this more often?
I can’t find a specific place (might’ve been on tumblr for all I know), but I recall Willis saying something about the site needing the ads. Which would probably be pulled if the comic had regular appearances of characters’ junk. 😛
I don’t remember that page at all. Which means I am well overdue for an archive dive.
Do guys stills do- what am I saying, of course they do.
Reminder: these two get married and have kids in another universe
Given, that universe also has aliens, so it’s all sorts of wacky
…I mean, they have A kid. Not sure about “kids” plural, though. If they ever had a second one, we never saw them. And Joyce was pretty weirded out the first time…
That version of Walky envisioned having two at one point.
Reminder that their child, the genetic offspring of Joyce and Walky, sees Dorothy for approximately two minutes and instantly falls in love with her.
I don’t think that’s how genetics or attraction work but that is still a good point
“That’s not how the Force works!”
I can see that happening here. They have the romcom couple that hates each other at first dynamic.
If you don’t want to be conscious of other people’s underwear on Sundays, Joyce, never go LDS.
Though, TBF, when it comes to the list of problems with LDS, the underwear’s pretty near the bottom.
…. yes, I did that JUST for the pun.
What the fuck is it with their sacred underwear anyway?
Is the rationale in their biblical fanfiction or what?
It’s supposed to be a constant, ever-present reminder of their commitment to the faith, which I guess sounds nice to them but strikes me as the most stalkery thing ever. And I think it ties back to the clothes that God made for Adam and Eve, somehow?
In total fairness that’s not completely out there? It’s why Jews (are supposed to) wear tzitzit at all times, and wear tefillin if you’re at a service that’s not on a holiday (including Shabbat).
Going off of my dad’s experience when he was religious, that undershirt the tzitzit could get sweaty and that could be a problem, especially if you were walking to your son’s soccer game because you didn’t want to drive on the sabbath 😬
that undershirt the tzitzit are attached to could get sweaty, rather
Look, those sorts of people are just wired differently than us normal ND folks
ND?
Neurodivergent. Ya know, us autists and ADHD types, the OCD crowd, dyslexic folks, and the English. We’re no too thrilled about that last one, but we weren’t exactly surprised by it, either.
Very well then!
But even the selection listed seems to me like a keyhole — there are so many of us with many unique and beautiful combinations of neurodivergent stripes that really aren’t captured that well by such big, sweeping labels.
Might as well try to photograph an Aurora Borealis with a disposable camera.
I see it as the same sort of label as “queer”. It doesn’t fully describe us all, but it’s a decent enough start. If I gave out my full list of diagnoses and homofabulous quirks, it’d make The Normals nervous. You know that look they get, the borderline panic as their eyes start wandering the room, looking for the nearest blunt object in case this rambling escaped mental patient suddenly attacks them.
So instead, you can just umbrella the whole thing as “neurodivergent”, their silly little brains can autocorrect that to the R-slur, and we can all carry on with our day.
I’d really like to discuss this right now, but seeing that I really need some sleep, I guess that’s fair enough.
Suffice it to say though that I really just with that the way we described neurodivergence was more like the system we have for gender / sexual identity, where you could say something like “I’m a Nonbinary Panromantic Bisexual” and nicely capture all your unique stripes for that particular aspect of yourself.
But what really bothers me the most about the way current neurodivergent labels are is that they’re so broad and sweeping that they make it very difficult for neurotypicals to tell the difference between our disabilities and our PERSONALITIES. Worse yet, a lot of people who form impressions extrapolated from those big labels INSIST on those hurtful assumptions about us and get defensive when those hurtful assumptions are challenged, in which they ultimately end up saying basically this —
“The stars in your galaxy of a brain don’t align with my current categories and calculations.
I know MY maps and sciences are perfect, so it’s YOUR stars that must be wrong!”
Yeah, if we ain’t Rain Man or Sheldon Cooper, we’re liars to The Usual Crowd. Bigots gonna big…it. Lost the flow on that one. Sleep is for the straights.
I myself have experienced years of physical and psychological abuse because of the “autism” label in particular.
Even if there’s no malicious intention, people will make hurtful assumptions based on these labels and stick with them because, well, as the saying goes, “a little knowledge only increases ignorance”. Homo sapien brains are just hardwired like that to distort their perceptions to be consistent with what they think they already know, and even when they’re aware of that there’s no way to turn it off, as is the case with many biased clinicians. Even if they’re not downright bigoted, this kind of automatic thinking based on big, sweeping labels like this is still very egregious. 😣
Tell me, Taffy, just how many times have people made hurtful assumptions about you because of a label like “autism”?
Do you think they’d be less likely to make those assumptions if only we had better, more clear ways of describing our unique and beautiful combinations of neurodivergent stripes?
We already have a comparatively cushy lexicon for queer folks, like you said, and it’s widely and easily accessible, but people still call us faggots and perverts and kill us in broad daylight anyway. There’s been a relatively robust classification system that’s also readily and easily accessible for years, and anyone who’s not a boring loser still gets treated like a ticking time bomb of psychopathic rage.
Respectfully, the reality you’ve proposed is the one we’re in already, barring a few extra keywords that would just be ignored anyway, and people frankly seem to be getting worse to us the more visible we get. I won’t venture too far into personal experiences here, for safety reasons, but being a gender-nonconforming autist has 100% painted a target on my back since childhood, no matter how well people have understood what those things even mean. If anything, the ones that bother to learn about us will just use that info as a weapon.
It’s maybe a little pessimistic of me, but frankly I feel it’s naive to expect shitty or easily-influenced people to start treating us better just because we added a few new adjectives to a list they’ve already proven they don’t care about. I hope that doesn’t come off too harshly.
I guess bigots be bigots, and the best we can do for now is learn to live separately from them, which I was unlucky enough to learn the hard way.
But surely those who are not deliberately malicious but just lack perspective or experience still have a chance, if only they had better tools for learning about us? I mean, following the same pessimism of yours for LGBTQ+, would it then not be redundant to have that kind of gender diversity in fiction, or classes required for college graduation?
We do these kinds of things not because we know they have immediate benefit, but because they give us our best probability of having a future where we can be treated fairly and show our unique and beautiful combinations of stripes as individuals for all the world to see.
If we fail through this peaceful venue, then the cards were stacked against us so we never stood a chance. And oh well. I guess try as we might, there’s only so much that humans, the product of 4.5 billion years worth of happy accidents, can do right.
The underwear thing is even stranger when you realize these are the same people who came up with the concept of “Soaking”.
I like wearing pants. They are like a socially acceptable security blanket for your legs.
You think a hoodie would also be like a security blanket if it were long enough, like say a hoodie dress?
Anything can be a security blanket, depending on how broadly you define “blanket”.
Pretty sure I have seen a hoodie dress.
Back in the day we just called those “robes”.
Ok this my English or last Joyce sentence can be interpreted that she want Walkie without underwear?
It can be, but context and delivery make the intended meaning clear and it is the opposite of that
Hold up, Franco here is onto something.
It means Joyce wants to see less (none) of Walky’s underwear.
From context and knowing Joyce’s personality, it means she wants some pants covering up the underwear. But someone else complaining about the presence of underwear, in a different context, could mean they want Walky’s underwear removed.
chapter title: trial and sarah – I’m tingling in anticipation. Did Liz got a new name?
Chick tracks should have warned about atheists having to deal with Walky’s underwear
That would have required Jack Chick to stop getting pissy about fire hydrants or whatever.
???????
Is…. is that a sex thing?
Fire hydrants go against God’s plan to let some buildings burn
The water might be used to save a queer or non-white person, or even worse, a person who generally shares his religious beliefs but differs slightly on an innocuous topic. Therefore the fire hydrant is Satan setting us up to betray God, symbolised by its red coloring. Although I more often tend to see yellow hydrants with blue caps, so maybe it actually symbolizes Asians and left-wingers trying to control us.
Is that extreme enough? I’ve only seen a few Chick Tracts, so I assume they’re all equally unhinged.
Chick Tracts also think Islam is an offshoot of Catholicism, because Catholicism is the Whore of Babylon, so… yeah, I think you’ve got it right.
I don’t want to be Walky’s underwear anymore! I want to be Debbie.
A lot of smooch new avatars. I wish I got one, too.
To paraphrase a character from a comic I’m sure is unrelated to this one, there’s nothing wrong with paying a premium for aesthetic. Or makeouts.
Makes me with I made my new avatar little more crazy. Ah well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
At least somebody around here is bound to have a parasite fetish.
I always think of Dina when I see your avatar…
The wisest words you’ll ever hear from Walky.
Forgive me if other people pointed it out already, but I’d like to do so as well: over analyzing the line she says in panel 4, it’s not that Joyce doesn’t believe that a god exists; she states that “doesn’t believe in Him”. It sounds more like she’s lost faith in His authority, and all of her current behavior is her lashing out at God for letting her down. So it’s more that she believes God exists but doesn’t care, than true atheism.
Close: God’s existence to Joyce was authority. God was rules, obeying her parents and superiors, and accepting that the Earth was 6000 years old and dinosaurs were on the ark no matter how many times she was called stupid for this.
Her belief in God was fueled by him being an objective, inerrant fact of the universe. The only faith Joyce ever had was in an adult telling her what to think.
Fair enough. But as an aside, given how insular her childhood sounded, I don’t think Joyce has ever been called stupid for her beliefs until she entered college.
I wouldn’t put it past Carol to have intentionally harassed people at the grocery store, while conditioning Joyce to see it as normal and the people’s responses as “What you can expect from Those People”.
Eeeeeeh, that’s not my read of it at all. We’ve followed Joyce’s crisis of faith pretty closely and the subject of her thinking that God *doesn’t exist* came up quite a few times (most obviously here https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/ultimately/). And she’s been going on about how “everything is random and nothing matters”, rather than the world being actively malicious towards her. Most of her anger has been directed at her church and community than at “God”.
She’s made her atheism pretty clear, that she’s still using very christian language to talk about god and belief is a decently common artifact of growing up in a christian dominated environment
I move for a Vote of no confidence in God’s leadership.
Referring to god as ‘he’ doesn’t make you a believer. I don’t ‘believe’ in Spiderman either, but he would make a great antenna repairman.
Doritos for breakfast, Walky? Really?
S’natter? U run out of cold pizza?
Those are Nachitos.
(They’re just like Doritos, but without the royalties to Pepsico.)
The real name of Dumbing of Age Book 12 should be “Dumbing of Age Book 11 had less of Walky’s Underwear In It”
I wonder how much will take before Joyce start to walk around in her pyjama. Looks kinda cathartic.
It will take a bit for her to break out of the “wake up early and get dressed for church” habit.
Eventually she’ll roam the halls in something like a three-sizes-too-large Dexter and Monkey Master t-shirt under a hoodie. It will look like she’s Donald Ducking but she’s actually got sorts on underneath, because Joyce.
GOD… If you are in heaven, please forgive him, he knows not what he does. Yes, he is a sinner, and a slob, but will, one day, albeit far, far …. far … away repent his sinful transgressions.
“They are called trousers, you horrible colonials.”
/channeling a certain overeducated bartender
Knickers.
The alt text took the best possible book title from this strip, but I think “Church Admittedly Had Less of Your Underwear in It” is a good second choice.
I can understand being attracted to Walky, but I can also understand being disgusted by him.
Aside from the giant stain, Walky’s hoodie seems less white than it used to be. I appreciate the detail that it’s gotten dingier
she’s not even shocked to see him in underwears
Walky: What am I going to make fun of Joyce for now?
It’s cool, Becky’s still keeping up the pace.
Walky may unfortunately have to give up his needling Joyce now that she’s no longer a YEC.
I mean it was never about ideology. Walky just likes making fun of her.
Sometimes I wish I had Walky’s life philosophy, and was actually able to enjoy free time without worrying that I’m not doing enough
He’s very good at enjoying the simple pleasures in life.
Oh how I wish I could get that anxiety to stop in me.
Alt book title: “Welcome to the Carefree Songbird-Chirpy World of Not Church Where We Can Eat Snacks and Do Jack Nothing.”
“Suddenly I’ve become Christian again, how’d that happen? Anyway, goodbye forever”
Alternately, Sunday mornings are when you get to not wear a bra.
It’s okay, Joyce. Habits are hard to break, especially when it’s an ‘every week on this day my whole life until like a month ago’. Go get grape juice if you want it, and also better crackers than the flavorless church garbage. Grape juice and crackers don’t have to be God, they can just be weird.
And then you gave grape juice with which to stain the clothes of people who mock you. Win-win.