Plausible deniability. It was just a joke between friends. Really good friends. Really good friends who go horseback riding together. This weekend? Just the two of us? Alone? Oh, sure, Joe can tag along; there’s an area he can just kick back and watch.
Washing machine riding was last weekend’s activities. Dorothy had that dream of riding some giant horse with Joyce; I choose to imagine that it’s a dream of things to come, rather than things past.
JOE: This is going to sound pretty wild. Somehow, we’ve entered what seems to be a temporal causality loop. We think we’re stuck in a particular fragment in time, and we’ve been repeating that same fragment over and over again.
JOYCE: Is this what’s causing our déjà vu?
JOE: Yes, but it’s more than that. In déjà vu, you only think you’re repeating events. We actually are. Every time the loop begins again, everything resets itself, and starts all over. We don’t remember anything that happened before, so each time through the loop, we think it’s the first.
JOYCE: You mean we could have come into this room and had hanky-panky a dozen times already?
JOE: A dozen, a billion, it’s impossible to tell.
You know what, Intended this to be a joke but I don’t know what scarier that fact that it’s not funny at all or that it’s to real on the account of the different politicians I can name the fit this description.
Yeah, not a smart move. Both of them have boyfriends and that Joyce will not likely find this manner of friendly tease, assuming that is what this is, funny. However, even ignoring those facts, I was thought that one should never put that kind of image of yourself out into the cloud forever. That it is dangerous.
Dotty is far smarter than this. Which is why I wonder if she is not thinking with her brain.
I don’t think even an actively malicious agent getting ahold of a closeup of cleavage can do much harm with it, and we have no reason to think Dorothy has any enemies
In different ways and times, Joyce has called Carla, Jocelyne, and Sarah her sister. She has not called Dorothy her sister. So clearly the two are the goodest of gal pals.
I can totally imagine some rom com manga where a straight girl is obliviously sending pics to some girl with a crush on her like “this bra i got is cute right” or dragging her along with like clothes shopping for a “date with her ‘boyfriend'” and her quietly fuming/suffering before eitehr confessing or finding someone else to date lol
funny enough, the first alphabet ever created on earth for ancient Hebrew didn’t have no vowels at all — for their alphabet and writing system wasn’t intended to replace oral traditions of passing down stories and wisdom via speech and song in so much as a way of *aiding* that means of preserving collective memory
There weren’t no vowels because for it’s intended purpose it wasn’t needed, any speaker of the Hebrew language and member of the culture could tell which vowel sounds were needed for any given word just by context
look I’ll put Dorothy’s face on in-game coins for whatever that’s worth
but as much a monumental novelty a lady POTUS would be, there are MUCH better ways Dorothy could and SHOULD be helping people than via our broke-ass government
hell even the tradition that there has to be a SINGLE person with all that power representing our massive diverse population is still part of the problem
The ship needs a figurehead – it doesn’t necessarily do much of anything, but it represents the ship, and when things go right, it gets to take the credit for leading the ship to success, and when things go wrong, we blame it for failings that are really the fault of the crew and/or the ship’s passengers.
No, not really, the president very much do things, when things “go right or wrong” is often direct repercussions of their decisions. A figurehead can’t decided to start turning the ship towards the rocks because they think it can handle it and it will rid of stowaways.
It’s really hard to think of better ways to help people than by running the government. Easier ways to start certainly, but not more effective if you manage to get there.
And even if a single person having all that power is part of the problem that doesn’t change the fact that it’s how we’re set up now, so someone is going to have that position and thus who that person is remains critically important.
“the way we’re set up now” is because of the people who wrote our plan for government over 200 years ago who had no foresight of post-industrial, post-war, information age circumstances whose impact can NOT be overstated. The Founding Fathers’ priority was creating a democratic government which could get the approval of slave states and citizens who sought to migrate westward to live on sustenance farms, the mode of production they were used to seeing as the default before the industrial revolution.
Consider that over 100x more people live in this country today than 200 years ago, that’s over 100x more diverse people a single person needs to be able to represent AND be an effective leader AND actually want a position of power like that in our current system. You’re NOT going to find everything you need for accurate representation of our country’s massive population AND effective leadership in a single person, that’s just NOT how human nature works.
The election of a single president is a game which is inevitably gonna favor The Everyman; that in which being the everyman confer Power upon you is literally systemic bigotry by very definition. Even back in 1790 a lot of people were actually very opposed to the idea of a single president with all that power, they thought it was too much like a king.
Well beyond the foresight of the Founding Fathers, consequences of industrialism, the massive population boom, sciences, technologies, climate change, etc, mean that orders of magnitude more tumultuous change is possible in the span of 4 years today than what was all possible 200 years ago when the United States was just barely industrialized.
Let alone the fact that appointed Judges can serve for LIFE. Back then this was alright because, let’s face it, people back then just didn’t live as long as they do now. Back in the colonial era, death by diseases like smallpox, malaria, measles, etc. was so fucking common that if you got sick at all, the people living then could tell with astounding accuracy whether or not you were gonna make it, and had but long accepted this as a fact of life. Formal implements for removing corrupt officials simply were not designed to be as powerful as they should be today, because before modern medical science, the people could quite literally rely on death and disease to do that for them.
Do you really think the Founding Fathers would have worded the second amendment the way they did if they had any foresight of the machine gun and the military industrial complex? What of the fact that cities can now hold orders of magnitude more people than ever thought possible, and urban centers’ resulting impact on the Electoral College meta? The circumstances and results of the Civil War including deeply impoverished south, the innovation of the air plane and emergent concept of Fly-Over States, the internet, social media and their incredible influence on the informed public needed for democracy to work, all have profound impact which can NOT be overstated.
As much as getting people into office positions like president or governor, etc, can help mitigate the damage being done to vulnerable minorities, the “traditional” way we do democracy can no longer accurately represent the interests of our massive and diverse population in 21st century circumstances.
The way we have democracy set up is in need of a MAJOR overhaul for all our sakes, but until that happens what needs to happen NOW for the sake of vulnerable people, we gotta look into setting up social safety nets derived from means OTHER than our current formal government which we can’t rely on for that purpose anymore (or even from the very get go for that matter).
I don’t even disagree with most of that, but this is the system we’re living in at the moment and while non-government social safety nets can be great, they’re still effectively at the mercy of the current formal government, which leaves who’s running that as a critical role. If only because, as Trump’s likely to demonstrate, they can target and shut down such non-government safety nets.
Beyond that I don’t really buy into the idea that having a single figure as the executive is the problem or really understand what an alternative would look like. One of the reasons the power of the executive has grown in recent decades is that the legislative branch is too often deadlocked and unable to act, but things still need to get done. We do have many ways to limit and check the power of a single executive, as we’ve seen throughout Biden’s term. Even Trump wouldn’t be nearly as great a threat if he didn’t have the other branches lined up behind him – though incompetence is a threat of its own.
Like if it were up to me, it’d be a GROUP of people who are making those decisions instead of just a single person, as well as MUCH shorter terms for judges and executive officials alike at the very least.
To put this into real perspective, between 1760-1780 CE, white colonists including the Founding Fathers had not yet conceived of any alternative to their current British Government which they had once thought to be the best there ever can be. Of course that didn’t stop them from accepting that their current government had demonstrated itself to be one which simply could no longer accurately represent their interests, as is government’s very purpose, thus warranting replacement.
It took but 33% of property-owning citizens in the colonies to be on board with the Revolution for it to happen, 33% still clung to the long-venerated intrinsic good of the aristocracy of their European homeland, and the rest were undecided.
If there’s anything we’ve learned from the past 200 years of history, it is this: a king who is liable for being replaced every 4 years is still a king, and in the words of Jewish Political Philosopher Moses Herbert Marcuse, “slaves who are free to elect their masters are still slaves”. Especially if said masters are allowed to appoint other masters which serve for life (of the Supreme Court Judges who *decided* that segregation and the Jim Crow South was okay as long as blacks had access to “separate but equal” facilities, three of them were in fact former slave owners).
The ultimate determining factor is the mentality and education of the majority of citizens. So unfortunate then, that European-descended white culture in the US and its pervasive influence have not really done away with their aristocratic indoctrination from era’s past, but merely repurposed it.
Instead of being brought up to cling to the demonstrably impossible hope for an ideal King they can trust to deliver them from their condition, they are now raised to cling to the romanticized, equally futile hope for the ideal president to come along to accurately represent everyone and solve their problems by controlling the price of eggs or some shit through some mechanism they’re not even sure of themselves. Dorothy was/is very demonstrably no exception.
re: social safety nets, if there is anything we can learn from the likes of the Jim Crow south and corporate-driven convict lease system designed to circumvent the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, it’s that formal declaration of social justice in Law does NOT automatically make it so in life.
To the southern white aristocracy and white folk who mutually benefited from White Supremacy, the Abolition of Slavery was basically to them like the government saying they didn’t own their homes anymore, and all their wealth just fucking VANISHED (combined dollar value of every slave was more than all the North’s factories, railroads and banks). Given the North had a 50 year head start in industrialization, northern goods often bankrupting southern businesses, the impoverished South had just about no chance of competing in the game of industrial US capitalism.
They went out of their way to re-establish White Supremacy outside of what formal government allowed, because based on how they were brought up to THINK and what they had to work with, systemic bigotry / slave-based social hierarchy just works. According to their (mis)-education and culture they were entrenched in, the slave-supported aristocracy, their Means of Production, was this God-given, natural, universal order. This was of course but another grand illusion deployed by the bourgeois to mystify their true economic relations and to perpetually reproduce the working class.
Poor white Southerners back then were brought up to dream of owning their own slaves basically the same way we’re brought up today to dream of being millionaire corporate owners. The former were made oblivious to the fact that the very system of slavery ITSELF was there to keep the rich rich and the poor poor, and nonetheless people in the United States are very much in need of reminders that under late capitalism, YOU are always closer to being homeless than you are to being a millionaire.
If there is one thing thousands of years of history demonstrate, is that earthlings will only continue this cycle of class resentment, revolution, war, violence and all the ugliness thereof so long as they continue to passively, unconsciously revolve their thinking around the unspoken need for a Ruling Class.
Education is pivotal in a thriving democratic society. Even outside of formal government, bringing people up to venerate awareness of the cycles of disease, the spread of bacteria and viruses and steps to prevent that such as washing hands, covering up sneezes, vaccination, etc, have reduced child mortality and increased average lifespan tremendously since the 20th century. Long gone are the days you had to have 5-6 kids at a time under the premise most of them were gonna die at a very young age, thus for the first time in history, humans did not accept that as a fact of life, and could get emotionally attached to their children from the day they’re born.
That’s just how powerful knowledge itself is is. The power of Science.
Think about what could happen if people at large were brought up to venerate awareness of the nature of society’s Cycles of Class Struggles.
Think about how much better things can be with the power of education. Think about what we can DO.
There is hope. Where there is life, there is hope.
Unless you’re asking for unarmed combat tips or tips on certain games asking Amber for advice is a bad idea. At least with Amazi-girl you know she won’t tell you to do anything illegal or unethical. Other than engaging in vigilantism.
lol omg Dorothy, chaos monkey won that round. Why not, what the American people want in a president is a felon, an adulterer, an instigator, an inciter of violence, a guy who can’t finish a sentence. Dorothy should start a crime spree and rip people off with crypto or meme stocks to get filthy rich. That’s how you become president now. Just buy the election.
That it is time for new conflicts to be generated for Joyce, so I agree, I mean, things have been going too well lately.
But hey, I didn’t want Dorothy to be involved, yes, I know that no one is saved in this comic, but the girl is getting out of one problem and getting into another.
Please don’t let this go in a direction that breaks up Joyce and Joe… Please don’t let this go in a direction that breaks up Joyce and Joe…
Like, yesterday I was all for Dorothy doing this. And I’d love the fanfiction version of all this where Joyce has her boyfriend Joe and her friends with benefits Dorothy. But I think Joe might need a monogomous relationship right now (this is his first rodeo with romance instead of sex). And I have trouble seeing Joyce being ready for a non-fairy tale version of romance where who you’re with and what the boundaries are requires a flowchart. And who the fuck know what the fuck Walky would make of this!
All I know is that, yesterday, I wanted this. But the moment Dorothy sent the pic, I got scared.
I really hope this isn’t how Willis is planning to break our hearts and break up Joe and Joyce.
I’m disappointed, Dotty is usually the kind of person to go out of her way to do something properly, but she’s just making the same amateur mistakes as Joyce.
You:
1. Set the timer cam
2. Hold the phone in your teeth, pointing down
3. Use *both* hands to hold open your collar properly
4. Lean towards the nearest light source
Well, the point was to ‘imitate’ joyce as opposed to some pinup selfie in some sports bra at the gym but it would be funny if somehow joyce received it and itdisplayed as an ‘unknown’ number for some reason and she thought it was some unsolicited pic as opposed to recognizing dorothy’s chest/freckles
I honestly believe that the confusion and embarassment this causes (remember, Joyce still doesn’t actually know she’s been sending the pics to Dorothy) will delay any possible lesbians by at least a month. Their time.
Well done Dorothy! Great Amber with her advice. Now let’s see if it ends here, with some laughter and a little embarrassment, or will continue with other photos.
In my very personal opinion that isn’t meant to upset anyone I just don’t like her but she’s fictional so that’s fine please don’t be mad at me I’m very sensitive
You know, the funny outcome would be Joyce and Dorothy starting a secret texting relationship like the one she and Joe had before but with naughty pictures.
Joyce and Joe are likely closer together in Dorothy’s contacts than Joe and Dorothy are in Joyce’s. This both opens the door to hilarity and some questions about how Joyce managed that while still texting Joe.
We had the answer to this in a previous comment section (I’m not going hunting) essentially Dorothy is saved in Joyce’s phone as something closer to Joe’s name. I can’t remember what it was, but we’ve seen it on screen before.
So if we want to theory-craft a little, Jennifer Billingsworth or Sarah Clinton could be next to Joyce Brown on Dorothy’s contact list. That is, if Dorothy actually does make the same mistake.
I think one thing to consider re silly jokes like that, is time elapsed. If it’s within a few minutes as a joke it’s a lot less weird than if you do it 2 days later.
Dorothy, NO
Clear up the thing with Joyce.
The only appropriate reply is “um, did you mean to send those to me”
-> “No, i’m so sorry!” “Okay, i’ll delete them from my phone.”
-> “Yes ;)” -> send one back if you like, or tell her you aren’t into it
Wait, i remembered this is a webcomic and we all live for the drama
LOLi ‘m surprised she hasn’t contacted her about this yet already then again it is a comedy strip and she’s unworried about it ‘affecting her presidency” (even tho she has given up? on it by now or so lol)
but i’m surprised joyce hasn’t double checked the name considering dorothy and joe name wise shouldn’t be that close to each other unless she had multiple chats open
LOL i wonder if amber would freak otu (tho i don’t think she cares too much about f/f ships versus the mlm ships she’s mentioned) if dorothy did admit “yeah i taught joyce how to masturbate”
Dorothy has really not been okay for the past 1.5 story arcs. Relationships, death, and a few other things have kinda caused her “sanitized planner” side of her ego to die. A lot of her big plans have come crashing down under the stress of life and she’s still figuring the world out.
What appears to be her latent bisexuality has been bubbling to the surface lately and she’s having a hard time reconciling her feelings for those around her. It’s the kind of thing where she knows what’s happening (as Amber’s Amazigirl persona sorta helped her point out) but is curious enough to fire back.
Nobody can make you do what you didn’t want to do in the first place… at least that’s how I see it.
Not saying it applies here, but while people might not be able to make you do something you don’t want to do a persuasive enough person can make you want to do things you didn’t want to before.
Alternative idea: Dorothy forwards Joyce’s lewd photos to Joe, without a comment. That’ll be the very best way to debunk the idea that Joyce and Dorothy have *anything* going on. 😛
Anyone else kinda skeeved out that Dorothy is sending lewds while in a relationship with someone else? Walky is in a weird fall back spot relationship-wise and I can only imagine how he’s gonna spiral further after finding this all out.
Joe’s reaction is at least going to be better since Joyce was obviously trying to send those pix to him, in front of him. So he’ll be more likely to understand imo.
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“WHAT’S ONE MORE BAD DECISION”
Amber always gives the best advice.
I mean she outright admitted she gives awful advice, and then Dorothy took it.
Feel like Dorothy went to Amber and then pushed her to basically get this advice 😛
Plausible deniability. It was just a joke between friends. Really good friends. Really good friends who go horseback riding together. This weekend? Just the two of us? Alone? Oh, sure, Joe can tag along; there’s an area he can just kick back and watch.
“Really good friends who go washing-machine riding together.”
There, fixed it for you.
“Maytag Gal Pals”
That’s preposterous, when has the name Maytag ever been associated with wlw content?
Washing machine riding was last weekend’s activities. Dorothy had that dream of riding some giant horse with Joyce; I choose to imagine that it’s a dream of things to come, rather than things past.
Amber might have ulterior motives. Her expressions speak.
your “might” is doing some pretty heavy lifting there
One, more or less.
Reminds me of when booster said “Go seek out the worst? person for advice and then do the opposite of what they say”
So, who will it be funniest for Dorothy to accidentally send that to?
Ruth
I snort laughed XD
<–
Joe, who assumes it’s the photo Joyce said she sent him.
“Well, you got more freckles and smaller boobs, that’s normal.”
Don’t know if we can call Joe a connoisseur of breasts, but surely he can tell the difference between Joyce’s and Dotty’s pendulous parts at a glance.
Just sayin’ but neither one is anywhere near “pendulous” yet. Dorothy is decades away from that.
hair is pendulous!
Might depend on the amount of blur.
I was going to say Danny, but on second thought let’s make it Becky.
Yes, especially if Dorothy makes it explicitly clear it’s for Joyce
Jenifer.
Or Daisy.
+1.
Definitely Daisy.
Becky, who naturally interprets it as some kind of 5 dimensional chess power-play
This made me laugh.
“You win this round Dorothy”
*meanwhile Dorothy is crying over her feelings for Joyce*
no no, Amber is round, Dorothy is a skinny poindexter.
Damn
You win this turn PirateTawnee
Yes, but if we had a perfectly spherical Dorothy, in a vacuum…
Actually, that’s the vibe I get from a lot of the behavior-policing comments.
A 5 dimensional CHEST power-play, if you will.
Yes, I do believe I will 😀
*applauds
I can absolutely picture Becky coming to that conclusion, and it’s hilarious. Honestly hoping this happens
Booster.
Her parents.
Amber.
Joyce’s Dad
If this was still Shortpacked?
Batman.
Amber’s phone buzzes, because she shares it with Amazi-Girl and she’s about as close as there is to a Batman in the Dumbiverse.
I thought Sal was
Prf. Brook
Groupchat with Joyce and Joe with a text that makes it clear that CCing Joe was an accident.
Carla
Head of the college newspaper.
Daisy?
👀
Excellent gravatar usage. 🙂
Danny.
Or
Walkie.
Somebody in the comments section.
WE’LL GET GAY YET FELLAS
Hooray!
Purposefully gay. As opposed to the accidental/plausible deniability gay that has gayed(1) so far.
(1) gayed like bayed? gaid like said?
Amber’s power is enviable!
Trash Goblin Power, MAKE UP!!!! XD
She played it magnificently and is truly the queen of trash goblins 😀
Even Amazigirl doesn’t have this kind of power.
Amber is the Mistress of the Tropes. The Tropestress.
alas, another scandal to beset the Keener Campaign forty years hence
All is proceeding as Mike has forseen.
So when is Joe going to grow a billion dicks?
Well, not till Joyce snaps.
Cause and effect?
Emergent temporal coherence.
Events which are not temporally coherent wind up in different parts of Hilbert Space.
Cause and Effect, you say…
JOE: This is going to sound pretty wild. Somehow, we’ve entered what seems to be a temporal causality loop. We think we’re stuck in a particular fragment in time, and we’ve been repeating that same fragment over and over again.
JOYCE: Is this what’s causing our déjà vu?
JOE: Yes, but it’s more than that. In déjà vu, you only think you’re repeating events. We actually are. Every time the loop begins again, everything resets itself, and starts all over. We don’t remember anything that happened before, so each time through the loop, we think it’s the first.
JOYCE: You mean we could have come into this room and had hanky-panky a dozen times already?
JOE: A dozen, a billion, it’s impossible to tell.
At least it’s not a collapsing warp bubble.
Hopefully with no groundhog nearby. Or stargate.
It’s really going to undermine morale in warband on the march
Meanwhile her opposition will have a long list of underage individuals that they’ve dated and passed around and no one will bat an eye.
You know what, Intended this to be a joke but I don’t know what scarier that fact that it’s not funny at all or that it’s to real on the account of the different politicians I can name the fit this description.
It is way too real on so many accounts, unfortunately.
It’s like that claymation pirate meme.
” Well, XD, but also D: “
“Hey, what do you think of my bra?”
“It’s cute! What about mine?”
are you serious dotty
I mean by the looks of it her bra is still covering her breast…
bust still, LOL XD
You thought Dorothy would immediately ignore Amazi-Girl’s warning not to put anything online she wouldn’t want discovered? She’s not that far gone.
Yeah, you gotta keep still when doing the pix…the phone cams blur out too easily.
She’s very dotty, but don’t call her Serious.
Seriously taking photos fof where the dots are most concentrated.
Shirley she can’t be Serious?
Yeah, not a smart move. Both of them have boyfriends and that Joyce will not likely find this manner of friendly tease, assuming that is what this is, funny. However, even ignoring those facts, I was thought that one should never put that kind of image of yourself out into the cloud forever. That it is dangerous.
Dotty is far smarter than this. Which is why I wonder if she is not thinking with her brain.
Dotty hasn’t been thinking with (only) her brain, regarding Joyce, for some time now.
I don’t think even an actively malicious agent getting ahold of a closeup of cleavage can do much harm with it, and we have no reason to think Dorothy has any enemies
Serious? Damn right she’s serious — whatever she thinks she’s saying, she’s saying it with her whole chest.
I knew this story line would lead to Joyce admitting she has a boy AND girlfriend.
You can share anything with your sister.
In different ways and times, Joyce has called Carla, Jocelyne, and Sarah her sister. She has not called Dorothy her sister. So clearly the two are the goodest of gal pals.
And once again, Dorothy’s hopeless desire for Joyce carries the day
By Jove, she is doing it. Time for the hi-jinx to rule again. Or repercussions, who’s to say.
wdym amber doesn’t know aaaaanything about tropes, is Dorothy affirming that it’s a big deal or
The reprecusions come after the hijinx are over.
Gayjinx
AMBER NO
AMBER YES
The juxtaposition of pickonecard and Dara’s gravatar faces had me chortling aloud. 😀
AMBER ALWAYS YES!
amber peharps
Amber YES
Amber, yes please.
Amber YES PLEASE
AMBER YES >:D
Amber no!
You should have sold Dorothy on escalation! Not just reciprocation!
A fair point.
Amber ye–
Hm, yeah, good point.
Well there’s always next time!
Dorothy, yes!
I don’t see this going well for Dorothy
A reliably repeatable summary.
She managed to take a weight off her shoulders…and put on another one unconsciously.
Oh Dorothy…..you’re still my favorite, but please stop.
50/50 on joyce having a new ‘freak out face’ versus her being non chalant about it
Or becky’s head/’rivalry’ exploding learning that Dorothy sent joyce a ‘suggestive’ selfie lol
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
A new variant for Amber’s “don’t say you should go fuck them” face.
IT BEGINS
Those are the kind of picture you want to get when you are out with your sister. We are going to get a Joyce face people.
Oh my! Even more hilarious that Joyce is out with her sister and her boyfriend now. She won’t hide her reaction.
TBH I want to see the Joe Face as he desperately struggles to hide his conflicting reactions
Is the ‘one strap overall’ look Amber is sporting an actual thing for workouts?
Why not?
I think it’s just regular overalls and she only did one strap up to keep them up.
Switching straps when you switch arms lol
One strap means Amber. Both straps means A-G.
(* totally making that up)
It’s an actual thing for people who are wearing overalls with one strap undone and working out.
amber’s greatest heroic act
Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need.
Fanfiction is the ideal model of human behaviour.
Fellas, is it gay for a girl to send titty pics to her best friend? Yes. Yes it is.
Sh!
Seems normal to me!
Girls do that all the time.
We won’t know who she sent them to until next week, technically.
Can you really say you’re straight if you don’t kiss the homies goodnight?
I can totally imagine some rom com manga where a straight girl is obliviously sending pics to some girl with a crush on her like “this bra i got is cute right” or dragging her along with like clothes shopping for a “date with her ‘boyfriend'” and her quietly fuming/suffering before eitehr confessing or finding someone else to date lol
THE HORNY DEVIL GOT IN
“did somebody say my name?” XD
Not me. I can’t pronounce it on account of no vowels.
you supposed to say the names of the letters :p
funny enough, the first alphabet ever created on earth for ancient Hebrew didn’t have no vowels at all — for their alphabet and writing system wasn’t intended to replace oral traditions of passing down stories and wisdom via speech and song in so much as a way of *aiding* that means of preserving collective memory
There weren’t no vowels because for it’s intended purpose it wasn’t needed, any speaker of the Hebrew language and member of the culture could tell which vowel sounds were needed for any given word just by context
Panel 5: The face of a woman trying to deny to herself that it was a big fucking deal.
Also Panel 5: The face of a woman trying to keep a straight face.
There’s a certain logic to this, honestly. Doing it back can be playful.
And trying to hide it would raise it above the noise floor (if she’s still worried about protecting her future self’s public image).
Obligatory “It’s Not Called Smartening Of Age” comment
You haven’t heard about the name change?
Hooray! Joyce’s natural bisexual is going to blossom soon.
What are the odds Joyce could set up her first “real” sexy times with both Joe, and Dorothy at the same time?
I’m not counting the hand job as true sexy times because that is frequently just the beginning.
Umm..
Depends on your perspective.
In Willis World? I’d say maybe 33%.
In Fanfic World? 100% def.
And now Joyce has a titty pic from a future-president (maybe)
We can only hope.
look I’ll put Dorothy’s face on in-game coins for whatever that’s worth
but as much a monumental novelty a lady POTUS would be, there are MUCH better ways Dorothy could and SHOULD be helping people than via our broke-ass government
hell even the tradition that there has to be a SINGLE person with all that power representing our massive diverse population is still part of the problem
The ship needs a figurehead – it doesn’t necessarily do much of anything, but it represents the ship, and when things go right, it gets to take the credit for leading the ship to success, and when things go wrong, we blame it for failings that are really the fault of the crew and/or the ship’s passengers.
No, not really, the president very much do things, when things “go right or wrong” is often direct repercussions of their decisions. A figurehead can’t decided to start turning the ship towards the rocks because they think it can handle it and it will rid of stowaways.
Not to mention, ships’ capacities are in no way close to 300,000,000+ people XD
It’s really hard to think of better ways to help people than by running the government. Easier ways to start certainly, but not more effective if you manage to get there.
And even if a single person having all that power is part of the problem that doesn’t change the fact that it’s how we’re set up now, so someone is going to have that position and thus who that person is remains critically important.
“the way we’re set up now” is because of the people who wrote our plan for government over 200 years ago who had no foresight of post-industrial, post-war, information age circumstances whose impact can NOT be overstated. The Founding Fathers’ priority was creating a democratic government which could get the approval of slave states and citizens who sought to migrate westward to live on sustenance farms, the mode of production they were used to seeing as the default before the industrial revolution.
Consider that over 100x more people live in this country today than 200 years ago, that’s over 100x more diverse people a single person needs to be able to represent AND be an effective leader AND actually want a position of power like that in our current system. You’re NOT going to find everything you need for accurate representation of our country’s massive population AND effective leadership in a single person, that’s just NOT how human nature works.
The election of a single president is a game which is inevitably gonna favor The Everyman; that in which being the everyman confer Power upon you is literally systemic bigotry by very definition. Even back in 1790 a lot of people were actually very opposed to the idea of a single president with all that power, they thought it was too much like a king.
Well beyond the foresight of the Founding Fathers, consequences of industrialism, the massive population boom, sciences, technologies, climate change, etc, mean that orders of magnitude more tumultuous change is possible in the span of 4 years today than what was all possible 200 years ago when the United States was just barely industrialized.
Let alone the fact that appointed Judges can serve for LIFE. Back then this was alright because, let’s face it, people back then just didn’t live as long as they do now. Back in the colonial era, death by diseases like smallpox, malaria, measles, etc. was so fucking common that if you got sick at all, the people living then could tell with astounding accuracy whether or not you were gonna make it, and had but long accepted this as a fact of life. Formal implements for removing corrupt officials simply were not designed to be as powerful as they should be today, because before modern medical science, the people could quite literally rely on death and disease to do that for them.
Do you really think the Founding Fathers would have worded the second amendment the way they did if they had any foresight of the machine gun and the military industrial complex? What of the fact that cities can now hold orders of magnitude more people than ever thought possible, and urban centers’ resulting impact on the Electoral College meta? The circumstances and results of the Civil War including deeply impoverished south, the innovation of the air plane and emergent concept of Fly-Over States, the internet, social media and their incredible influence on the informed public needed for democracy to work, all have profound impact which can NOT be overstated.
As much as getting people into office positions like president or governor, etc, can help mitigate the damage being done to vulnerable minorities, the “traditional” way we do democracy can no longer accurately represent the interests of our massive and diverse population in 21st century circumstances.
The way we have democracy set up is in need of a MAJOR overhaul for all our sakes, but until that happens what needs to happen NOW for the sake of vulnerable people, we gotta look into setting up social safety nets derived from means OTHER than our current formal government which we can’t rely on for that purpose anymore (or even from the very get go for that matter).
I don’t even disagree with most of that, but this is the system we’re living in at the moment and while non-government social safety nets can be great, they’re still effectively at the mercy of the current formal government, which leaves who’s running that as a critical role. If only because, as Trump’s likely to demonstrate, they can target and shut down such non-government safety nets.
Beyond that I don’t really buy into the idea that having a single figure as the executive is the problem or really understand what an alternative would look like. One of the reasons the power of the executive has grown in recent decades is that the legislative branch is too often deadlocked and unable to act, but things still need to get done. We do have many ways to limit and check the power of a single executive, as we’ve seen throughout Biden’s term. Even Trump wouldn’t be nearly as great a threat if he didn’t have the other branches lined up behind him – though incompetence is a threat of its own.
Like if it were up to me, it’d be a GROUP of people who are making those decisions instead of just a single person, as well as MUCH shorter terms for judges and executive officials alike at the very least.
To put this into real perspective, between 1760-1780 CE, white colonists including the Founding Fathers had not yet conceived of any alternative to their current British Government which they had once thought to be the best there ever can be. Of course that didn’t stop them from accepting that their current government had demonstrated itself to be one which simply could no longer accurately represent their interests, as is government’s very purpose, thus warranting replacement.
It took but 33% of property-owning citizens in the colonies to be on board with the Revolution for it to happen, 33% still clung to the long-venerated intrinsic good of the aristocracy of their European homeland, and the rest were undecided.
If there’s anything we’ve learned from the past 200 years of history, it is this: a king who is liable for being replaced every 4 years is still a king, and in the words of Jewish Political Philosopher
MosesHerbert Marcuse, “slaves who are free to elect their masters are still slaves”. Especially if said masters are allowed to appoint other masters which serve for life (of the Supreme Court Judges who *decided* that segregation and the Jim Crow South was okay as long as blacks had access to “separate but equal” facilities, three of them were in fact former slave owners).The ultimate determining factor is the mentality and education of the majority of citizens. So unfortunate then, that European-descended white culture in the US and its pervasive influence have not really done away with their aristocratic indoctrination from era’s past, but merely repurposed it.
Instead of being brought up to cling to the demonstrably impossible hope for an ideal King they can trust to deliver them from their condition, they are now raised to cling to the romanticized, equally futile hope for the ideal president to come along to accurately represent everyone and solve their problems by controlling the price of eggs or some shit through some mechanism they’re not even sure of themselves. Dorothy was/is very demonstrably no exception.
re: social safety nets, if there is anything we can learn from the likes of the Jim Crow south and corporate-driven convict lease system designed to circumvent the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, it’s that formal declaration of social justice in Law does NOT automatically make it so in life.
To the southern white aristocracy and white folk who mutually benefited from White Supremacy, the Abolition of Slavery was basically to them like the government saying they didn’t own their homes anymore, and all their wealth just fucking VANISHED (combined dollar value of every slave was more than all the North’s factories, railroads and banks). Given the North had a 50 year head start in industrialization, northern goods often bankrupting southern businesses, the impoverished South had just about no chance of competing in the game of industrial US capitalism.
They went out of their way to re-establish White Supremacy outside of what formal government allowed, because based on how they were brought up to THINK and what they had to work with, systemic bigotry / slave-based social hierarchy just works. According to their (mis)-education and culture they were entrenched in, the slave-supported aristocracy, their Means of Production, was this God-given, natural, universal order. This was of course but another grand illusion deployed by the bourgeois to mystify their true economic relations and to perpetually reproduce the working class.
Poor white Southerners back then were brought up to dream of owning their own slaves basically the same way we’re brought up today to dream of being millionaire corporate owners. The former were made oblivious to the fact that the very system of slavery ITSELF was there to keep the rich rich and the poor poor, and nonetheless people in the United States are very much in need of reminders that under late capitalism, YOU are always closer to being homeless than you are to being a millionaire.
If there is one thing thousands of years of history demonstrate, is that earthlings will only continue this cycle of class resentment, revolution, war, violence and all the ugliness thereof so long as they continue to passively, unconsciously revolve their thinking around the unspoken need for a Ruling Class.
Education is pivotal in a thriving democratic society. Even outside of formal government, bringing people up to venerate awareness of the cycles of disease, the spread of bacteria and viruses and steps to prevent that such as washing hands, covering up sneezes, vaccination, etc, have reduced child mortality and increased average lifespan tremendously since the 20th century. Long gone are the days you had to have 5-6 kids at a time under the premise most of them were gonna die at a very young age, thus for the first time in history, humans did not accept that as a fact of life, and could get emotionally attached to their children from the day they’re born.
That’s just how powerful knowledge itself is is. The power of Science.
Think about what could happen if people at large were brought up to venerate awareness of the nature of society’s Cycles of Class Struggles.
Think about how much better things can be with the power of education. Think about what we can DO.
There is hope. Where there is life, there is hope.
“Life finds a way…” 🥲
I think ol’ Dotty could be a great scotus judge.
Nah, she is not nearly corrupt enough.
Well, not for the current political climate controlling that bunch. But in general, she’d be great at it.
She can’t be any worse than the current President-elect.
That’s underselling it. It would be difficult for her not to SAIL over that bar in her sleep tbh.
Dorothy could not do that deliberately even if she wanted to.
Unless you’re asking for unarmed combat tips or tips on certain games asking Amber for advice is a bad idea. At least with Amazi-girl you know she won’t tell you to do anything illegal or unethical. Other than engaging in vigilantism.
Well this got interesting.
lol omg Dorothy, chaos monkey won that round. Why not, what the American people want in a president is a felon, an adulterer, an instigator, an inciter of violence, a guy who can’t finish a sentence. Dorothy should start a crime spree and rip people off with crypto or meme stocks to get filthy rich. That’s how you become president now. Just buy the election.
That went sideways.
But this comic is very amusing! I can’t wait to see how this goes for Dorothy and Joyce.
That it is time for new conflicts to be generated for Joyce, so I agree, I mean, things have been going too well lately.
But hey, I didn’t want Dorothy to be involved, yes, I know that no one is saved in this comic, but the girl is getting out of one problem and getting into another.
(sigh) we just have to wait.
Amber doing the lord’s work
And she 100% did not use the phrase “gal pals” on accident. She knows what she is doing.
Amber is the writer of all the good tropes.
All the garbage-ing, goblin-ing, mess-ing, and tropes-ing.
Just gals being pals.
Absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan, and I unreservedly endorse it.
We’re on the train, and there is no turning around now.
In real life, this would earn a, “What the hell, Amber!?”
But as this is a comic, I am laughing and cheering on that chaos goblin
Someone missed the advice of “do opposite of what Amber suggests.”
I think everyone forgot that advice, except for AG.
Please don’t let this go in a direction that breaks up Joyce and Joe… Please don’t let this go in a direction that breaks up Joyce and Joe…
Like, yesterday I was all for Dorothy doing this. And I’d love the fanfiction version of all this where Joyce has her boyfriend Joe and her friends with benefits Dorothy. But I think Joe might need a monogomous relationship right now (this is his first rodeo with romance instead of sex). And I have trouble seeing Joyce being ready for a non-fairy tale version of romance where who you’re with and what the boundaries are requires a flowchart. And who the fuck know what the fuck Walky would make of this!
All I know is that, yesterday, I wanted this. But the moment Dorothy sent the pic, I got scared.
I really hope this isn’t how Willis is planning to break our hearts and break up Joe and Joyce.
I think narratively it’ll just lead to Joyce realising her feelings for Dorothy but still sticking with Joe cause she still loves him
Dorothy on the other hand? That’s where the delicious chaos truly begins
The last panel…oh god and believe me, everything Dorothy went through and indirectly put another torment on top of her.
With Joyce, anything can happen, but really wanting to harm Joe and throw his efforts away would clearly be very low.
And now Walky, when it seemed that my favorite ship was back….Dorothy, you are still my favorite….but this was not necessary.
I’d guess at least Walky would find this hilarious.
We may find out.
Problem is, Walky is super insecure under his jokey persona mask.
I BELIEVE IN THE OT3!!!
I am pretty sure that fanfic version is a poly relationship.
Wait!
Zoom in on panel five
LIP BITE!
ENHANCE! 😏
We’ve got her!
Definitely should have checked if this was Amber or Amazi-Girl advice…
So…would this qualify as the trash goblin grooming Dorothy?
It was consensual and requested.
DOROTHY NO/YES
Dorothy is way stupider and easily manipulated than I thought. she fell for such a dumb and transparent ploy
Isn’t it amazing? I love seeing the smart one discover how much they’re not.
Or she got the answer she came here for.
That seem weirdly and unnecessarily harsh, but then again, that is to be expected from you.
I’m disappointed, Dotty is usually the kind of person to go out of her way to do something properly, but she’s just making the same amateur mistakes as Joyce.
You:
1. Set the timer cam
2. Hold the phone in your teeth, pointing down
3. Use *both* hands to hold open your collar properly
4. Lean towards the nearest light source
Well, the point was to ‘imitate’ joyce as opposed to some pinup selfie in some sports bra at the gym but it would be funny if somehow joyce received it and itdisplayed as an ‘unknown’ number for some reason and she thought it was some unsolicited pic as opposed to recognizing dorothy’s chest/freckles
Parkour, crime fighting, IT, and the entirety of TVtropes in her head weren’t skills enough.
Amber also demonstrated her mastery with playing Dot like a fiddle.
Tempest in a B-cup.
+1!
🙂
heheheh
And it didn’t occur to Dorothy to ask AmaziGirl’s final input? I mean, she caved real fast to Amber’s not very subtle manipulation.
I mean… maybe she wanted to. ~<3
“You know, the funny thing is… I know you’re playing me… but you’re right.”
“Amber, no!”
“Amber, Yes!”
fuck! once again I really want to be able to upvote comments,
kudos to the both of you. ~<3
EMERGENCY STATIONS! it’s happening, the casual flirting is now upgraded to intentionally sending boob pics. ~<3
Raise the torpedoes; arm the shields!
hee hee… torpedoes. ~<3
I’d say don’t base your decisions on what happens in fanfic but then who even would Amber BE?
Thank you, Amber, for being the garbage gremlin the fandom needs.
Dorothy remains my favourite person.
CarlaDinaAmber remains my favorite person.Fixed that for you.
Amber remains
my favorite personthe absolute worst.Fixed that for you.
(Sorry, it turns out I’m way too autistically invested in these people to embrace chaos.)
It’s okay, we are all wrong sometimes.
Dina is my favorite person always T_T <3
There are apparently multiple trash goblins who crave mess here today
looks up from trash “wumph?” ~<3
Look, I’ve got all this perfectly good popcorn that Willis made me waste.
We are (trash goblin) fans!
We demand (trash goblin) service!
I don’t know what you mean
😈
Is lesbians happening? Is this the beginning??? Holy shit i thought it was a joke the whole time
Yes, but Joyce is gonna solve the conflict by setting Dorothy up with Joycelene.
Jocelyne*
That would actually be a delightful resolution to it
“Joycelene” sounds like a pretty blond motor fuel.
Genius, but also, kinda creepy.
“Hey I know you’re into me, so how about you go out with my sister that looks almost identical?”
I honestly believe that the confusion and embarassment this causes (remember, Joyce still doesn’t actually know she’s been sending the pics to Dorothy) will delay any possible lesbians by at least a month. Their time.
I don’t know what you mean
😈
Et tu, Dorothy? X’D
Well done Dorothy! Great Amber with her advice. Now let’s see if it ends here, with some laughter and a little embarrassment, or will continue with other photos.
And then she accidentally sent it to danny
Hahaha yes! YES!
God Amber is the WORST
In my very personal opinion that isn’t meant to upset anyone I just don’t like her but she’s fictional so that’s fine please don’t be mad at me I’m very sensitive
You know, the funny outcome would be Joyce and Dorothy starting a secret texting relationship like the one she and Joe had before but with naughty pictures.
I know Willis is teasing us, but I’m very much enjoying this storyline. ~<3
No you’re right, she’s a fuckin degenerate
And so it begins.
Joyce and Joe are likely closer together in Dorothy’s contacts than Joe and Dorothy are in Joyce’s. This both opens the door to hilarity and some questions about how Joyce managed that while still texting Joe.
We had the answer to this in a previous comment section (I’m not going hunting) essentially Dorothy is saved in Joyce’s phone as something closer to Joe’s name. I can’t remember what it was, but we’ve seen it on screen before.
Roll, Perfect Cinnamon
Rosenthal, Joe
So if we want to theory-craft a little, Jennifer Billingsworth or Sarah Clinton could be next to Joyce Brown on Dorothy’s contact list. That is, if Dorothy actually does make the same mistake.
Oh my gods, Amber, you’re evil! (i love this please continue with your villainous machinations)
This is gonna make Joyce question her sexuality/relationship with Dorothy, isn’t it?
i mean she basically gave her a ‘sex list’ so idk if she should feel too flustered by seeing dorothy’s cleavage
AG sitting in their brain, rolling her eyes.
Always remember: if you can’t make a situation better, you can always make it worse.
I’ve always found that to be inspiring advice.
WOOO WOOOOO, THE SHIP IS SAILING!
I think one thing to consider re silly jokes like that, is time elapsed. If it’s within a few minutes as a joke it’s a lot less weird than if you do it 2 days later.
i don’t know how much time has passed so far but i think it’s within the 24 hour mark, maybe?
Dorothy! The person who straight admits to be trying to cause problems on purpose is not who you should listen to the advice of!
Dorothy, NO
Clear up the thing with Joyce.
The only appropriate reply is “um, did you mean to send those to me”
-> “No, i’m so sorry!” “Okay, i’ll delete them from my phone.”
-> “Yes ;)” -> send one back if you like, or tell her you aren’t into it
Wait, i remembered this is a webcomic and we all live for the drama
LOLi ‘m surprised she hasn’t contacted her about this yet already then again it is a comedy strip and she’s unworried about it ‘affecting her presidency” (even tho she has given up? on it by now or so lol)
but i’m surprised joyce hasn’t double checked the name considering dorothy and joe name wise shouldn’t be that close to each other unless she had multiple chats open
yes
hahaha
yes!
dorothy
what
YES YES YES YES
LOL i wonder if amber would freak otu (tho i don’t think she cares too much about f/f ships versus the mlm ships she’s mentioned) if dorothy did admit “yeah i taught joyce how to masturbate”
Oh god my brain is melting I didn’t think she would ACTUALLY DO IT…Dorothy wth…
Dorothy has really not been okay for the past 1.5 story arcs. Relationships, death, and a few other things have kinda caused her “sanitized planner” side of her ego to die. A lot of her big plans have come crashing down under the stress of life and she’s still figuring the world out.
What appears to be her latent bisexuality has been bubbling to the surface lately and she’s having a hard time reconciling her feelings for those around her. It’s the kind of thing where she knows what’s happening (as Amber’s Amazigirl persona sorta helped her point out) but is curious enough to fire back.
Nobody can make you do what you didn’t want to do in the first place… at least that’s how I see it.
Not saying it applies here, but while people might not be able to make you do something you don’t want to do a persuasive enough person can make you want to do things you didn’t want to before.
This isn’t Amber’s persuasion making Dorothy do this.
This is Amber’s permission allowing Dorothy to do this.
It’s normal, don’t worry about it.
poor AmaziGirl. giving good advice but being outvoted by the horny council
Amber’s superpower is being able to make fanfic a reality
Alternative idea: Dorothy forwards Joyce’s lewd photos to Joe, without a comment. That’ll be the very best way to debunk the idea that Joyce and Dorothy have *anything* going on. 😛
…Goddamn it Amber.
Amber’s working out face looks identical to her horny face.
Anyone else kinda skeeved out that Dorothy is sending lewds while in a relationship with someone else? Walky is in a weird fall back spot relationship-wise and I can only imagine how he’s gonna spiral further after finding this all out.
Joe’s reaction is at least going to be better since Joyce was obviously trying to send those pix to him, in front of him. So he’ll be more likely to understand imo.
Somehow i feel like Walky would be unbothered and unthreatened, if the context is explained to him. he’d just keep teasing Dorothy about Joyce.