Heck I probably would have also died if i stayed at University post-pandemic haha
freelance game coding may be nowhere near a NASA rocket, but hey, I got to make friends with lots of great people from all over the world, and bring much joy to people with the games I help bring to life
I too started off with grand ambitions. I did do the non-US version of Dotty’s plan and boy did that work out badly. Ambition is great. Sacrificing health for ambition not so much.
I wanted to be an illustrator or animator. I graduated just on time to see Disney completely destroy the industry in America, and only recently has it even shown signs of recovery. Fun times, trying to compete with 20 year industry veterans, and now, a new generation of artists.
Dorothy’s inherent values are incompatible with presidency and she couldn’t/wouldn’t compromise them for the sake of winning (and she lacks charisma in a way that makes her more likeable). Lucy seems more… Like she constructs herself to suit contextual needs and already makes compromises to appeal to others. She’s nice, but doesn’t put that above her own needs and ambitions. She’s nice the way Obama is.
Danny is self-aware that he has grown as a person since he and Dorothy broke up. I’m guessing he’ll merely express some moderate frustration at the news.
And as Sal previously stated – she likes it when he’s just a little bit petty. So it’s all good.
Remember the party? She was already showing leadership before that. Sex with Big Jake was the consequence of Lucy being confident and outgoing (and also Jacob kinda shifting his personality a bit since the earlier end of the comic.)
Leader for what exactly? Dorothy stepped up during the kidnapping but is that a scenario that’s often to come up? When did Dorothy ever make decisions for the group otherwise? This whole sudden leader role seems fairly arbitrary.
Billifer was leading in the polls early on, but crashed and burned about midway through the primaries in the wake of the Being A Human Dumpster Fire-gate scandal
Now I’m confused. Dorothy did tell Joyce that Dorothy had decided she didn’t want to go to Yale and didn’t want to be President. She didn’t tell Joyce that she had gotten in and turned it down, which might be a meaningful detail, but she did share the “no Yale” basics.
Look, Joe, Dotty is bailing on Yale for a whole bunch of reasons, not just because of you three’s inevitable hot-and-heavy sakura-petals-filled sexual poly romance.
Some of them are even issues you and Joyce can’t cure via fucking her! D:
Rather than a good old Stable Triad (or Quarter), I think both couples interlocking in different combinations is the likeliest. Walky/Dorothy, Dorothy/Joyce, Joyce/Joe. Sometimes two participants doubleteam a third for said thirds’s benefit even if they aren’t that into each other. Sometimes Joyce wants to watch and direct from her fujothrone.
Once in a blue moon after one joke too many, Walky admits he’s not as straight as previously stated – maybe even Joecurious. And Booster, who is never wrong, already Dx’d Joe. (It flew over his head – but not for long.)
Realistically, I bet the interlocking couples configuration is the most likely, because of the need to preserve drama resources and all, especially if Walky remains involved, on account of the complicated energy betwixt him and Joyce (though given the elder strip, yes, I know, FAR from an impossible coupling. :P).
However, my little shipper heart is set on a stable arrangement of Joyce x Joe x Dorothy, and I will not be swayed! I shall ne’er! Captain Ahab quotes!
(Joyce is absolutely gonna direct from her fujothrone. Also, yeah, Walky is pan and Joe is at least bi-curious, absolutely.)
Jennifer is furious with this nickname, and immediately leaves to return to the “loving” “embrace” of Raidah’s Elite Society of Future Successes And Also That Awful Idiot, Jennifer Billingsworth
I kind of assume if Dorothy has worked her way towards a Yale acceptance letter that this semester is pretty wrapped up for her. Let her burn out. She was so overloaded first semester she probably has enough credits to take a year off.
You know, during my time at college, I don’t think I ever once walked to class with someone. I did walk back from a class with someone fairly regularly one semester, since it was both our last class of the day and our dorms were next to each other. But that was more happenstance, where we knew each other enough (had other classes together in the past and two that same semester) that it would have been kind of weird to walk that same path spaced out to simply not be walking with each other.
I’ve walked between classes with a classmate who had two classes in a row with me, as well as walking together to a shuttle that went to our respective housing areas, but he was the only one I ever really walked with like that. Though my ace ass realized later part of that was because he had a crush on me, whereas I was just thinking “oh cool a friend to walk with : )”. It only really clicked for me when we were riding the shuttle once and he discretely put an arm behind my chair/around my shoulders.
Valid, but this group had Joyce trying to help Sarah be more social and Joyce being scared to walk around on campus after that party, so I think that helped start the tradition.
I mean, if a bunch of people from my floor that I was friends with had the same class, it probably would have happened. I just don’t think I ever had a class with anyone from the same dorm.
I think I went to MOST of my classes with other people even if we weren’t going to the same exact class. But I also went to a much smaller school and most of the buildings were close to each other.
We would also sometimes choose classes with our friends, so a bunch of us math majors would decide to take combinatorics the same semester so we could have a built-in study group. Or our more general friendship group would try to knock out the same gen ed at the same time (philosophy 101).
It also seems weird that Lucy is so intent on walking at the front she seems oblivious to the fact Sarah and Jacob are walking together. Sarah’s plan to steal Jacob away with her newfound niceness seems to be working well.
By huge slab of black, do you mean you don’t see the silhouettes of the second panel? I know that happens to people sometimes with their device settings.
If you’re not just making a joke, the reason no one’s mentioning it is because it’s not how the comic appears for most of us.
Does Joe realize that Dotty and Joyce are subconciously replaying scenes from “Boy Meets World” where Topenga gets an acceptance letter from Yale but decides not to go for Cory’s sake, even proposing to him at their graduation?
Oh god, is Dorothy going to propose to Joyce? Is that where we’re headed?
We’re going to need a lot more of Joyce waxing melodrama over how she and Dorothy were “always” destined to be together since they were, like, babies, as well as the subsequent and conflicting retconning of their childhoods to support those claims before those two become the next Cory and Topanga. 🙃
Uuugh, when each friend from your group is dating each other more and more, and your single options are more and more scarse. So you starts to get more and more anxious because it…
Sarah is doomed.
“Less Dotty for Yale means more Dotty for me!”
Joe: “You know, I didn’t know how to break this to you, but I just got accepted to Yale.”
Joyce: “I’ll miss you.”
Joe: “That was a joke, I was joking, how come I don’t warrant a bigger reaction?!”
Joyce: “I mean we can still text and stuff”
Look, Joe, we all know who Joyce really loves.
I mean it’s literally better for her to just stay here, Joyce.
Her not leaving to Yale and you being less selfish are not mutually exclusive.
Speaking from personal experience at ten years ahead of her, I do not know if I’d still be alive to type this if I’d gone to the ‘better’ university
So true!
Heck I probably would have also died if i stayed at University post-pandemic haha
freelance game coding may be nowhere near a NASA rocket, but hey, I got to make friends with lots of great people from all over the world, and bring much joy to people with the games I help bring to life
all in all, not a bad trade ^^
A good trade!
I too started off with grand ambitions. I did do the non-US version of Dotty’s plan and boy did that work out badly. Ambition is great. Sacrificing health for ambition not so much.
I wanted to be an illustrator or animator. I graduated just on time to see Disney completely destroy the industry in America, and only recently has it even shown signs of recovery. Fun times, trying to compete with 20 year industry veterans, and now, a new generation of artists.
Dorothy doesn’t want to be President because Sal is meant to be.
Sal would never run for president, the idea of becoming an authority figure would send her into an existential crisis.
…So we’ll need to trick her into it, tell her that the debates are a game show and the winner gets a new bike or something.
Sal would fucking knock a presidential debate out of the park and over the nearest state line.
… and still not get elected.
Alas, Dorothy is our Hillary stand in versus Sal.
Sal will have to be a prosecutor first, though.
Sal is too anti establishment for that. Lucy, on the other hand, could be the first black woman president.
Hopefully, that’s very unlikely.
Lucy is too nice, like Dorothy.
Dorothy’s inherent values are incompatible with presidency and she couldn’t/wouldn’t compromise them for the sake of winning (and she lacks charisma in a way that makes her more likeable). Lucy seems more… Like she constructs herself to suit contextual needs and already makes compromises to appeal to others. She’s nice, but doesn’t put that above her own needs and ambitions. She’s nice the way Obama is.
We’re about to get the first Black woman President, Kamala.
Given the rate this strip is progressing IRL, and the age limits for presidency, I’m hopeful Sal wouldn’t even be the fifth Black woman president…
Boy oh boy, I hope so. The alternative is terrifying and I’m not even from the US
(Also I should have specified US president since there have been several women elected heads of state in various African countries)
I feel like Joe or Sal is gonna tell Danny about Dorothy staying here forever. Maybe shenanigans after that.
Ooooh right, I hadn’t clocked that.
i mean at least danny is in a better place emotionally with all that
although amusing that walky’s surprised that sal’s ‘listening to orders’ b/c not like she’d suddenly change her mind to skip class or so
I mean, Sal is here to walk to class with people. Everyone else is walking to class. Sal is merely walking with them.
She just happens to be walking to the same destination, from the same place, at the same time as they are.
Danny is self-aware that he has grown as a person since he and Dorothy broke up. I’m guessing he’ll merely express some moderate frustration at the news.
And as Sal previously stated – she likes it when he’s just a little bit petty. So it’s all good.
Do Joe and Sal know?
I’ve lost track.
“Gravitas” is a common side effect of sex with Jacob
Does Walky value gravitas more or less than free pizza…?
Who needs gravitas when you got Pride? 🌈
Yay I found it! https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/jim/
I’m willing to go out on a limb and say Walky values gravitas significantly less than pizza.
Of course, based off the last panel here, he’d probably still go for it anyway.
Gravitas is a thing that makes people want to buy you pizza.
The gravitas is his penis.
Are you saying it’s so big as to have its own gravitas field? 🤭
I’m not *not* saying that. 😏
Apparently Sarah’s bat gave her gravitas, so maybe it’s just things that Sarah would grip in both her hands.
And also, that would need two hands for a proper grip
Also they can knock you out if you use them inappropriately.
It give advantage in charisma checks.
Is that why Raidah never had any?
Remember the party? She was already showing leadership before that. Sex with Big Jake was the consequence of Lucy being confident and outgoing (and also Jacob kinda shifting his personality a bit since the earlier end of the comic.)
Does Dorothy really think she was the group’s leader?
…
Wait, was she the group’s leader? Nobody else is coming to mind really
The group used to be consist of her biggest fan girl and a guy who just doesn’t want to do anything hard, so in a way yes.
In absence of any better candidates, yes.
Mmmm, leadership by default, that’s more on-brand for her.
i imagine some ppl ‘compartmentalized’ her as the mom friend
Tho i’m sure there might be some sense of competition if it was roz attempting to ‘lead’
Leader for what exactly? Dorothy stepped up during the kidnapping but is that a scenario that’s often to come up? When did Dorothy ever make decisions for the group otherwise? This whole sudden leader role seems fairly arbitrary.
I think she kinda took the reins when they were trying to track down Ryan?
Billifer was leading in the polls early on, but crashed and burned about midway through the primaries in the wake of the Being A Human Dumpster Fire-gate scandal
Joyce, she leads from behind. She’s kind of the “Is X going to be there?” person. The flagbearer, perhaps.
I totally forgot that Dorothy hasn’t told Joyce about Dorothy choosing not to go to Yale.
When is that bubble going to burst, and how is it going to affect everyone?
Yes she has, in the arc where they go out to a bar together.
Oh wait sorry my bad I read your comment wrong
Now I’m confused. Dorothy did tell Joyce that Dorothy had decided she didn’t want to go to Yale and didn’t want to be President. She didn’t tell Joyce that she had gotten in and turned it down, which might be a meaningful detail, but she did share the “no Yale” basics.
And did Joyce remember that through all the booze? (Probably, but maybe not?)
… anyone know if Dorothy’s told Yale yet?
She hasn’t said yes to their offer, which came before the start of this semester.
It seems most likely it was an offer for this semester, but I guess it hasn’t been explicitly stated.
Why would she need to tell them?
This group had a leader?
I thought they were a semi autonomous collective.
You’re fooling yourselves. They’re living in a dictatorship, a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working class (Sal)—
There you go bringing class into this.
Well that’s what it’s all about! If people like Walky would just listen
Can we just agree to skip ahead to the watery tart?
SUPREME executive power derives from a mandate of the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
So them following Lucy works.
Earthling! Take me to your Lucy.
I do like me some watery tart
I prefer the moistened bint, myself.
But they’re going to class.
There you go bringing class into this.
It does now.
“That was no leader; that was their wife!”
{ba-dum-PSSSSSHHHHH}
Look, Joe, Dotty is bailing on Yale for a whole bunch of reasons, not just because of you three’s inevitable hot-and-heavy sakura-petals-filled sexual poly romance.
Some of them are even issues you and Joyce can’t cure via fucking her! D:
I think Walky x Dorothy x Joyce is a great deal more likely than Joe being involved, tbh
Rather than a good old Stable Triad (or Quarter), I think both couples interlocking in different combinations is the likeliest. Walky/Dorothy, Dorothy/Joyce, Joyce/Joe. Sometimes two participants doubleteam a third for said thirds’s benefit even if they aren’t that into each other. Sometimes Joyce wants to watch and direct from her fujothrone.
Once in a blue moon after one joke too many, Walky admits he’s not as straight as previously stated – maybe even Joecurious. And Booster, who is never wrong, already Dx’d Joe. (It flew over his head – but not for long.)
Realistically, I bet the interlocking couples configuration is the most likely, because of the need to preserve drama resources and all, especially if Walky remains involved, on account of the complicated energy betwixt him and Joyce (though given the elder strip, yes, I know, FAR from an impossible coupling. :P).
However, my little shipper heart is set on a stable arrangement of Joyce x Joe x Dorothy, and I will not be swayed! I shall ne’er! Captain Ahab quotes!
(Joyce is absolutely gonna direct from her fujothrone. Also, yeah, Walky is pan and Joe is at least bi-curious, absolutely.)
Oh, believe me, I’d be so very down for those three being an exclusive thing it’s not even funny ;333 I’m a multishipper and they’d be A Story!
Dorothy knows Joe from back in high school and her attitude towards him made my brain go [DING]
It’s funny ’cause that last line is also Dorothy’s.
time for her to tryyyyyy defyyyying gravitas
time to tryyyyyy defyyyyying gravitas!!!!
I mean she’s supporting her in the direction of Dorothy not being burned out from overwork
It just so happens to also be the direction of her not going to Yale
From now on you all will be know as “Lucy’s bongoes”.
Jennifer is furious with this nickname, and immediately leaves to return to the “loving” “embrace” of Raidah’s Elite Society of Future Successes And Also That Awful Idiot, Jennifer Billingsworth
*Patreon high five!*
*Patreon high fiiiive!*
The loving embrace of RESFSAATAIJB?
Starting tomorrow, the strip will be renamed.
The theme from “Hogan’s Heroes” played in my head as I read that. You’re welcome 🤭
Come on Walky, that’s not being a leader. And like what was Sal gonna do, stay behind and pout ?
lol maybe it just seemed more ‘commanding’ than what he’s used to seeing from lucy
I kind of assume if Dorothy has worked her way towards a Yale acceptance letter that this semester is pretty wrapped up for her. Let her burn out. She was so overloaded first semester she probably has enough credits to take a year off.
You know, during my time at college, I don’t think I ever once walked to class with someone. I did walk back from a class with someone fairly regularly one semester, since it was both our last class of the day and our dorms were next to each other. But that was more happenstance, where we knew each other enough (had other classes together in the past and two that same semester) that it would have been kind of weird to walk that same path spaced out to simply not be walking with each other.
I’ve walked between classes with a classmate who had two classes in a row with me, as well as walking together to a shuttle that went to our respective housing areas, but he was the only one I ever really walked with like that. Though my ace ass realized later part of that was because he had a crush on me, whereas I was just thinking “oh cool a friend to walk with : )”. It only really clicked for me when we were riding the shuttle once and he discretely put an arm behind my chair/around my shoulders.
Luckily in my case, we were both incompatibly queer, so that wasn’t a concern.
Valid, but this group had Joyce trying to help Sarah be more social and Joyce being scared to walk around on campus after that party, so I think that helped start the tradition.
Honestly, I think it’s a nice thing that they do. It just straight-up wouldn’t have occurred to me in college.
I mean, if a bunch of people from my floor that I was friends with had the same class, it probably would have happened. I just don’t think I ever had a class with anyone from the same dorm.
I think I went to MOST of my classes with other people even if we weren’t going to the same exact class. But I also went to a much smaller school and most of the buildings were close to each other.
We would also sometimes choose classes with our friends, so a bunch of us math majors would decide to take combinatorics the same semester so we could have a built-in study group. Or our more general friendship group would try to knock out the same gen ed at the same time (philosophy 101).
I mean wish already granted sort of.
Panel 2 marching order? Lucy, Sal, Jennifer, Jacob and Dorothy?, Walky and Sarah, Joe and Joyce?
Yes, that sounds about right. Good code-cracking!
It also seems weird that Lucy is so intent on walking at the front she seems oblivious to the fact Sarah and Jacob are walking together. Sarah’s plan to steal Jacob away with her newfound niceness seems to be working well.
That was my assessment too 🙂
Wait no, I just realised there was a difference! I have the pairs as Sarah and Jacob, Walky and Dorothy, Joe and Joyce.
Jennifer, Sal, Sarah, Lucy&Jacob, Dorothy&Walky, Joyce&Joe?
That’s what it looks like in Panel 2, but it immediately shifts to Walky & Dorothy next to each other in the close up next panel.
Or it might be Walky/Jacob then Dorothy/Sarah – I think that’s a better match for the heights and hair outlines.
I see Walky/Jacob now, you’re right hair is a better match. And Walky’s posture with the backpack.
It’s that they’re paired up differently in the closeups that seems weird.
last panel, that’s the eyes of a guy who knows his girlfriend’s got a girlfriend 8D;
Don’t be ridiculous! Dorothy is way more like her wife! 😉
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/kd/
Oh wow, I didn’t remember this at all!
Does Joyce not know Dorothy has all but given up on Yale?
She knows.
Statements like that are also why she's our leader.
Me too, Alt Text. Me too.
Sometimes supporting your friends in their depression has selfish reasons, and that’s okay!
Depressed people are more fun anyways
…I think I should take my antidepressants
No one’s mentioning that huge SLAB of back following Panel 1. As if to say AND THEN EVERYONE DIED AND/OR FUCKED and immediately end the series run.
That, or imply IN HINDSIGHT, THIS WAS THE MOMENT WHERE EVERYTHING WENT TO SHIT.
I’m trying to decide which is funnier and my new headcanon.
Apparently Yelling Bird is the staff writer for my headcanon.
Slab of *black. I only just caught that. Dammit the whole thread is ruined now.
[burns everything]
Is that the black slab emitting a slight hum from “Questionable Content”?
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4641
It’s when the dolphins left and the future changed.
By huge slab of black, do you mean you don’t see the silhouettes of the second panel? I know that happens to people sometimes with their device settings.
If you’re not just making a joke, the reason no one’s mentioning it is because it’s not how the comic appears for most of us.
You are absolutely right, as it turns out. I did not see the silhouettes at all.
*sighs*
and it was such a good joke.
in my head.
Lucy’s gravitas comes from her high-gravity boyfriend, those muscles are DENSE.
Does Joe realize that Dotty and Joyce are subconciously replaying scenes from “Boy Meets World” where Topenga gets an acceptance letter from Yale but decides not to go for Cory’s sake, even proposing to him at their graduation?
Oh god, is Dorothy going to propose to Joyce? Is that where we’re headed?
We’re going to need a lot more of Joyce waxing melodrama over how she and Dorothy were “always” destined to be together since they were, like, babies, as well as the subsequent and conflicting retconning of their childhoods to support those claims before those two become the next Cory and Topanga. 🙃
Let’s Joyce keep her crush next, Joe.
… keep her friend next, Joe.
No, no you got it right the first time.
Both?
Little does Joyce know that she is in fact doing the right thing by being selfish.
Look, sometimes the right thing is also the selfish thing. These two things are not related.
Uuugh, when each friend from your group is dating each other more and more, and your single options are more and more scarse. So you starts to get more and more anxious because it…
Sarah is doomed.