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Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com ⋅ 2h
trash panzer @panzertron.bsky.social ⋅ 8h
Meredith Rose @mrose.ink ⋅ 1d
Alex Wayne @aawayne.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
David F Walker a.k.a. BadAzz MoFo @davidfwalker.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Arren @arrenm.bsky.social ⋅ 3m
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Nothings Monstered @nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
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“…now I have TWO big sisters! Sarah and Carla!”
“Not Dorothy?”
“I dunno, it just feels wrong with I try to put her in the “sister” box in my head. Not sure why, I’m sure it’s nothing.”
It’s as if countless comment chains cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced…
“Dorothy/Joyce shipper? Well, of course I know them. They’re me.”
Welcome onboard. Endgame ship
we need to get uniforms or badges or something. ~<3
“DorJoJo Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”
Joe says “I love you.” Joyce responds, “I know.”
Dorothy says “I love you.” Joyce responds, “I know.”
Nah. Dorothy is in Joyce’s Goddess box.
Jocelyne: “I must find these other elder sisters and destroy them.”
By the transitive property, they’re her sisters too.
I read that first as *transvestite property* and well, that sounds like a math topic they teach in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Giggling now. Thanks for the comment.
Three elder sisters enter, one elder sister leaves.
Wonder when Jocelyn’s gonna get wind of this.
“Carla! You’re my sister now!”
“Sister? I don’t want a sister. … How about a minion? You wanna be my minion, my little hench-gal?”
“Sure!”
Hench-champ
Can’t believe Joyce was this universe’s version of the Zoomers this whole time
Did Willis really predict Tesla way back in 2010?
Tesla was founded in 2003…
So yes.
oooooooo… They were Hench-mates…
Perfection.
Carla: wait since when am I your sister?
Sarah: join the club.
Joyce is like a cat, you get adopted and you have no say in the matter
Ethan’s credentials are just going to get more and more impressive in Joyce’s mind.
“Thank goodness I asked a Nobel Prize winning expert in transgenderism with several bestsellers.”
“Besides, ‘sister’ will make it weird when, if we (I already have a… don’s say this part out loud)… I said that part out loud, didn’t I?”
oh dear…
Carla ain’t your sister Joyce, she’s your GODDESS
Dumbing of Age Book 15: I Literally Just Said I’m Not the Expert
But of course, “literally” doesn’t necessarily literally mean literally any more.
literally has been used as an intensifier since the early 20th century, it’s literally been this way for nearly a century
they said, completely unironicly.
This comment literally makes no sense.
Oh, good. A chance to explain. You see, Casi first says that literally has been used as an intensifier since the since the early 20th and then uses it as an intensifier when they point out it’s literally been used this way for nearly a century BUT is also completely factually correct in doing so. If it was an intensifier without being completely correct, that would have been ironic. But since it is both, it is completely unironic.
By way of contrast, this comment is an ironic riff on the motif of a male over-explaining the completely obvious.
I’m not certain, however, if it’s literally ironic.
I’m not going to read that, have a nice day.
On top of that: This isn’t the first time that an English word meaning “in actual fact” has lost that meaning and become an intensifier. “Really”, “indeed”, and even “very” all went through this centuries ago.
Which word’s meaning can we obfuscate next? I nominate “verily.”
Fuck it, let’s do “car”. Any and all vehicles with engines are cars now. Vans, trucks, Fords, airplanes, trains, submarines, space shuttles, they’re all cars.
What about train cars without engines? Do they still count?
If it was already called a car, it’s still a car. Nothing has changed.
As long as we don’t do sandwiches next.
A glass of water is a sandwich because it’s a thing and another thing.
It’s not really a surprising pattern.
Wonder if it holds in other languages as well.
Okay but he did literally just say he’s not the expert on this
This can only go well
If nothing else Joyce will be prepared when Jocelyne finally comes out to her
Oh my gods THAT is what Ethan thinks she means!! I knew there was a misunderstanding but I was drawing a total blank on what yesterday’s strip meant, thank you.
In your defense, it’s been years for us in real-time since we last saw that development between Jocelyne and Ethan.
It just clicked for me, i was trying to make it make sense that amazigirl and amber being split personality and i really couldnt process anything making sense but also amber and ethan and ethan and sal were the only relationships that came to mind i just was lost and confused. so thanks for updating my mental software.
it only just clicked for me just now as well.
Actually, Ethans words make more sense now.
Joyce is right about Carla tho, if you don’t know someone very closely, you don’t necessarily call them your sister. For someone on the outskirts of your friend circle, the only thing required is to respect her pronouns and don’t focus on them being trans where it doesn’t affect your life or hers.
Now when *Jocelyne* comes out, THAT is when the SISTERS talk and the active support comes in!
In “The One Where Jocelyne Returns”, Jocelyne is going to arrive on campus to confess things to her sister only to find Joyce hugging famous trans icon Carla Rutten to her body like an unwilling 6’ tall cat on roller skates
Oh no, I’m starting to ship Joyce/Carla sloppy make outs
Isn’t MaryxCarla the crack ship of choice?
I’ll let you in on something:
There are always more crack ships.
Is it still a crack-ship if people in-universe thought it could be a thing?
That does kind of disqualify it. A good crack ship must be absolutely insane on all levels, like MikexGender Studies Teacher.
Professor Brock x Jennifer XD
Their meet-cute features Jennifer demanding to sleep with him because by God she’s in college she is GOING to seduce a professor, and Prof. Brock telling her she’s not even really a conscious entity, that’s just her proteins demanding to exchange gametes, and so the act is ultimately meaningless
Jennifer has never been more turned on in her life and they fuck right there in the lab based on how her proteins can rock his proteins’ stupid nonexistence
I beg to disagree. Billie/Ruth was a totally crack ship, even while being completely canon.
Hey, you could probably convince Walky of Mike x Old!Alex. They both ran away to Bulmeria and are hiding under witness protection, right? /s
So, Carla and Jocelyne have to fight over who is Joyce’s best sister?
While Sarah is technically in the running and refuses to admit she’s happy she’s included.
Plus Sarah. But, while Sarah has the bat, Carla has the rube-goldberg-pie thrower. Poor Jocelyne only has her writing.
Is the pen truly more powerful than the pie thrower? These are intriguing questions.
*Yakety Sax plays*
My cringe settings are very excited for Joyce’s next interaction with Carla. The rest of me is looking ahead to her and Jocelyn.
hopefully ethan picked up on that ‘familiar’ comment, but that line did make me think of that monster prom line with zoe and vera like “we’re sisters, not cisters” lol
I really want Joyce to bring this up when Charlie is around so that Carla is forced to accept Joyce’s terrible, terrible misdirected love
Just stop thinking about what’s in their pants.
It’s easy.
Was this comment supposed to go on yesterday’s strip?
But it’s making a really loud buzzing sound. Not everyone can “just” tune those out.
Buzzing sound? Is this a Jezebel joke?
I don’t know what you mean, but don’t call me a Jezebel.
What comes after Jezebel? Strumpet second class?
Don’t look at me. I probably rank about Private Tartlet.
“John Lovitz has ruined the word Tartlets for me. Every time anyone says it I just sit there going ‘Tartlets… Tartlets.. Tartlets… The word has lost all meaning’.”
Stolen from a youtube comment as it is precisely what I want to express.
That place (and Lifehacker, Jalopnik, etc) just hasn’t been the same since Gawker Media went *thbbbt*
Is Ethan talking about Jocelyn, or Carla?
Because this would be a hell of a way to find out.
Ethan is talking about Jocelyne. She came out to him during freshman family weekend.
Ethan has misunderstood the reason why Joyce is suddenly curious about trans topics, yes, and thinks she is referring to Jocelyn. In both’s defense, this is a case where there are reasons to be hesitant to name names, so the confusion makes sense.
Kudos to Ethan for not just assuming yes. Ethan gets a good noodle star on his board.
It also makes sense Ethan, like everyone, doesn’t think anyone in the world doesn’t know about Carla so there’s no reason to think Joyce might be talking about her, even when she’s currently zooming down the hall. A watertight setup for comical misunderstanding.
Carla is now Joyce’s sister. Too bad for Jocelyne she’s been beaten twice in the big sister game.
I think once Jocelyne comes out to Joyce she’ll reclaim the top spot almost instantly.
A dramedy of errors.
Gotta love “One dialogue, two conversations”.
Aw, Ethan. This is incredibly sweet from him, seriously.
Did it go a bit over Joyce’s head? Sure. But he knows her and it DID accomplish what he wanted to convey – The certainty of the answer, without outing Joce before she chooses to do so.
This is a bit of old Ethan poking through.
I hope Joyce is as much fun to write as she is to read :3
This is the most present/”normal” Ethan has been in a while. It’s nice. Good of him to talk about this with Joyce through the awkwardness and comedy of errors
It likely helps that Ethan is largely fond of Joyce, even if he’s exasperated by her sometimes, and that he has admiration for Jocelyn and respects her. This is a situation where his usual cynicism isn’t as omnipresent because he genuinely wants this to work out for everyone. Naomi did a number on this guy, and he doesn’t likely wish that on anyone else.
Well, he’s been writing her for almost 30 years now, so I gotta imagine she’s an entertaining brain to occupy.
Bah, replied to the wrong comment.
I think Ethan and Joyce will be friends for life. Ethan is Joyce’s one friend that respects her as an adult. The others, even Dorothy tend to see Joyce as someone who needs taking care of, but Ethan and Joyce bonded when they were briefly dating, he understands Joyce because they have some of the same hangups and I think that manifests in a respect they don’t really get from their other friends.
Who the hell is Naomi?
Ethan’s mom
Ethan’s mom was one of the minor characters in the docu-drama For the Love of Chair.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/naomi/
“largely fond of Joyce, even if he’s exasperated by her sometimes” probably fits 90% of the cast.
She tends to be worth it in the end.
Wonder if Asher is getting more turned on by seeing Ethan genuinely be nice.
Depends on how much worse Billifer fucked him up.
Y’know, this honestly doesn’t have a particularly high chance of even blowing up for Joyce. Like, if she says this stuff to Carla I imagine she’ll think it’s kind of weird but sweet in that “Joyce is always strange but always earnest” kind of way.
I think Carla will recognize it a Spock line, think its some nerdy Trek shit
every blue moon you hear about jocelyn but we’ll never see her in our lifetime
Just how soon were you going to die?
you know as well as i do this comic moves at a glacial pace, it’s been over 10 years and they’ve only barely finished one semester
I believe the entire comic will only cover 1 year; so yes it is moving slowly, but we’re already past the halfway mark.
And they only finished that one because we skipped over half of it.
Well, yes, but the very next chapter is named The One -Where Jocelyne Returns. If you’re planning on casting off the mortal coil first, you better plan on buckling down and getting to it chop chop.
Always assuming the chapter doesn’t come and go without Jocelyn ever showing up. But obviously, toying with the readers that way is something Willis would never do.
You mean Jordan.
We’ve seen Jocelyn multiple times.
i don’t mean Jordan, i mean Jocelyn who gets mentioned every few months as a tease to keep people reading. it’s been like 12 years and Joyce still doesn’t know because it’s just not actually relevant to the story
I mean the very next storyline has her in the name, but
…in my case? Probably quite right.
I cannot tell if this is something everyone else already knows about or if you want to elaborate. Because it sounds like you’re either going blind or dying.
I haven’t been reading the comments regularly for a while so if this is something you’ve already gone over, I’m not trying to make you rehash things.
I can’t believe Ethan would out Carla as a secret Brown like this.
The fiend!
It all makes sense now!
Carla is Jordan.
The most shocking discovery since Radagon being Marika!
When this comes up for Joyce latter, David? Incredible power move on Ethan’s part, whether he was sure or not who she was asking about.
These are quality shenanigans that are afoot. Or ablade, as the case may be.
Oooooooooh, subtle! Good job Ethan!
oh no, the comedy of errors, its coming
Oh
oooooooooooh.
I really didn’t think yesterday that Ethan was thinking of Jocelyne.
Same here. I thought for some reason he was thinking it was Amber? I legitimately forgot about Jocelyne.
You think Ethan thinks Amber is trans?
Well, she transforms into Amazigirl, so …
Ethan did his best and it’s honestly solid advice, even if it wasn’t about Carla. I wonder if Joyce will parrot this to her.
Also, would Leslie have given better advice? I know that this is a spur-of-the-moment situation and she just asked the closest “most appropriate” person, but I’m curious.
Leslie: You came to me because I am your gender studies teacher, right? Not because I was a lesbian?
Joyce: Well…
Was?!
Before she died.
That’s right, Leslie is secretly Mike.
do your best joyce
Joyce is gonna take this literally.
And yet, not literally enough.
MMW, she is gonna make Carla cringe. Because now she’s gonna come off as someone trying to be ally of the year.
Whoops!
What’s this called again?
…. oh, right. One dialogue, two conversations
…. I think the next step is for Joyce to come away from the conversation thinking that it’s now confirmed that Carla is Mary’s estranged sister.
Not tonight, tvtropes rabbit hole. Not tonight!
10/10 sitcom contrivance. No notes.
This confirms something that’s been bothering me for years now.
Joyce (coughing): “I have been – and always shall be – your sister.”
Carla: “wut”
Joyce: (dies)
I wish this comic had a Search feature, because now I wanna know all the strips about Jocelyne.
Just go to the Jocelyne tag.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/jocelyne/
Ethan seems a bit more… aware now, and not lost in his head
Once Joyce collects all of the Infinity Sisters she can snap her fingers and turn all the food into macaroni and cheese texture.
You know what would make this conversation even more relevant? If Joyce calls Jocelyne for advice. Because either she finds out and has to actually confront her biases on a personal level, or she doesn’t and everybody comes out confused. Either way, it’ll start out with Joyce putting her foot in her mouth for at least several minutes and that part is always funny to me.
Ethan thinking Joyce JUST realized she has a sister instead of a brother and Joyce toeing that line again… ~<3
Dammit… the frustrating thing is, this is good advice for Jocelyn but not amazing advice for Carla. I feel like Carla is NOT gonna want Joyce to find her and say they’re sisters now. They do have a fairly good relationship, I love Joyce and Carla interactions, but I feel like the correct tack for her specifically is just, act the same way she always had. Being weird about it, even weirdly over-affirming, can be off putting.
I’m only hoping this storyline ends up with Joyce learning the truth about Jocelyn, presumably in some wacky way
the unfortunate happenstance when people play the pronoun game (cinemasins) instead of being upfront about who they are referring to. 90’s sitcoms were littered with this concept ~<3
But here Ethan at least is deliberately being vague in case he’s wrong about who she’s thinking of. Which he is.
So it’s not quite the usual sitcom misunderstanding.
oh, oh my god i completely forgot about Joyces sibling (and that ethan knows about her) lmaoo
Is everyone FORGETTING?? One of Joyce’s siblings has lots of tells including distance from the family. I mean, yeah, it’s been almost a decade since she was mentioned…
Did you read none of the previous comments? No one is forgetting.
…okay, nearly no one.
…okay, just me I think.
jjjyeeeeah don’t go up to a trans person you don’t know very well and act like you’re her bestie if you weren’t before. that’s a bit creepy.
Just, in general, show support. Educate yourself. Be the person that speaks up for trans rights. Be the one that punches Mary in the face the next time she spouts this TERF crap (maybe do it with words or contact authorities, the literal punching is not usually advisable)
Unless the topic comes up, don’t mention it. I hate it when someone come up to me with THAT LOOK that means my status is about to become an involuntary conversational topic.