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Discussion (154) ¬
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“hotness is an assault weapon that requires appropriate training”
hmm, butt taco AND Dexter
Also Dinobot, I think an octopus? And Dab.
Because apparently Dab Nightmares transcend dimensions. (https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/hes-the-reason-for-the-season … Which is creepy but by far the LESS fucked-up Dab strip, seriously Willis that April Fool’s one still freaks me out.)
I don’t see Dinobot, but I do see Fuckface.
Proper safety protocols must be enforced in order to prevent uncontrolled release or dispersal of weapons grade hotness.
Does getting your hand burnt count as training?
Not in America. In some states, you don’t even need a ten-day waiting period!
With great hotness comes great responsibility! I’m sure our good boy Walky is ready for it.
I don’t think Walky is ready actually, maybe once he matures a bit. I don’t mean to shit on Walky(gods know how many people love to shit on him) but I do think he has some issues he could work on first.
People don’t give Walky enough credit. He’s not Joe. He doesn’t have the nature to capitalize on being hot. Hell a girl has been very obviously into him for potentially weeks now and he hasn’t noticed yet. Sal says he’s improved and he was okay before the timeskip. I think she’s just being pessimistic.
Who are you and what did you do with the real Sirksome?
(/s)
Then there’s the Ocelotina take: with great hotness comes no responsibility whatsoever.
No responsibility, but often a lot of kidnapping and/or bondage.
But in order to learn this lesson, Walky will have to enter a beauty contest, win it, find out the prize money was a bogus, let a criminal get away after stealing the Beauty King crown, find his uncle Ben surrogate dying on the dorm stairs due to said criminal getting away and become some sort of masked hero… Hey, wait a minute!
Why he’s almost there already.
… I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble mixing “Walky” and “responsibility” into a coherent concept without emulsifying it with a negation.
Wait, I’ve got it. “Walky once dated someone who valued responsibility.” There, done.
Here’s the garnish: they broke up because of her sense of responsibility.
Bon appétit!
Here’s another little tidbit that doesn’t really match up: He had already realized he was probably going to need to break up with her so he didn’t hold her back. (That was forestalled by the pause suggestion.)
He handled that whole situation more responsibly and with more maturity than I could have at that age, I suspect. More than a lot of college breakups I saw.
I wish I was hot enough to get a free drink, but on the bright side I’m ugly enough to get a pity drink. That’s a bright side, right…? …guys?
Does it count if the drink is thrown in your face? If your mouth is open, that’s still a lot of drink you might get.
It would count but generally it all hits me in the eye so I miss out.
Bright side, you say? Here, have a drink on the house to cheer you up.
I’m not sure if I’m hot or ugly enough to get free drinks. I’ve never gone to bars all that often anyway, even before the pandemic started.
No you too, Sal, seriously, you’re gonna catch a cold
She’s too hot to be worried about cold.
…. okay, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t play in thermodynamic terms, but it sounds halfway pithy and that’s what’s important.
She’s also so cool that the cold never bothered her anyway.
i feel like i’m missing something is walky actually hot now and i’ blind or??? i feel like walky is not noticeably hotter or less hot.
You’re not blind. His design hasn’t actually changed. His hair did change as part of a small redesign along with Sal’s but no one actually commented on that despite interacting with him multiple times until today. Joyce as least has the excuse of being blind for the first few days.
I’m reading it until proven otherwise as partly being a ‘he woke up and instead of having the usual bedhead his hair actually looks pretty good today’ that isn’t reflected in the simplified artstyle. (No way he styles it any more actively than a haphazard brushing, and honestly I wouldn’t be certain of that even.) As a bonus, that would let the story end with him waking up tomorrow and the spell is once more broken. Or from a nap, depending.
Perhaps it’s the same magic that made Sarah happy for a day? So here me out here, it’s the spirit of Mike. He’s travelling from person to person mystically changing the status quo for established characters. Yesterday it was Sarah, today it’s Walky, maybe tomorrow it will be someone else.
Eh, admittedly I don’t style my hair more than brush it (though I will do a fair bit of brushing) and sometimes it does randomly turn out really well. Doesn’t strike me as particularly weird.
Mike’s residual Ghost Energy making Joyce’s nose itch from the glasses, on the other hand, I’d totally buy. Not like he’d ever do something nice for Walky. Could also have a mundane explanation, but it’s supernatural and dickish which I guess is my line.
Who says he’s doing it to be nice?
Making Walky hot for a day only to teach him some kind of lesson is totally something I’d believe Mike would do.
Maybe not nice, but Mike often had an angle that was about someone seeing truth or becoming a better person. He also chose to be a dick in his implementation.
He really never had those angles. At least, not in the real world. In his head, maybe.
My theory is his bedhead just happens to ‘work’ today. Maybe tomorrow the magic will be gone, and he won’t be able to recapture it despite trying desperately.
And balance will be restored.
Exactly! Sometimes it just does that.
Does Walky do anything desperately? … (Hmmm.. Dorothy’s attention, avoiding maths, seeking chicken nugs…. ) Ok so he does, but desperately engaging in self care seems anathema to him.
Should’ve used *Hygiene instead of self care.
Maybe they realized that Lucy sees him as physically desirable, and that’s three women they know (Lucy, Amber, and Dorothy) that see him that way, so their brains reevaluate him through consensus bias.
I feel like that leaves all the random people starting at him though. Surely they haven’t picked up on the feelings of 3 girls they’ve likely never met.
Joyce’s comment in Panel 4 makes me think we may be about to get an actual exploration of Joyce’s long-hinted repressed bisexuality.
And by “long-hinted,” I mean “a physical manifestation of Walkyverse Joyce’s repressed sexuality attempted to get Walky and Sal to have a threesome with her all the way back in 2001.”
It’s her line in panel four after the ‘he’s only now attractive enough for Dorothy’ and ‘who aren’t attracted to each other’ lines this last week or so that really makes me think it. It’s been a while since we’ve had such steady hints.
Alas, Sal is likely also straight. But Joyce has also DEFINITELY expressed attraction to Jennifer, whose relationship blowing up is totally inevitable, so…
I’m holding the Unsure line on Sal for the time being. I don’t feel like we’ve been presented with any reason to rule out any attractions on her part, aside from individuals (unless I’m forgetting something of course).
This is true!
“Alas, Sal is extremely straight”
Does this prove Sal is straight cause to me it just proves Carla is a huge sub…or maybe a voyeur.
Oh, I guess there’s alt text. Sneaky sneaky alt text.
And we all know that the alt-text can always be trusted and is never ever sarcastic.
Good to know.
Maybe both? Could be both.
(and by both I mean Carla is a sub and a voyeur)
Sal rejecting Marcie’s advances is an unbreakable proof of her straightness.
Yeah, my interpretation of this is geared towards individuals (specifically Marcie and Malaya), but it’s pretty vague. I certainly wouldn’t call it conclusive though.
Oh whoops, didn’t realize you were citing the alt text. Well, that’s Word of Willis right there.
I think that may be the only time in history that Willis has given Word of Straight for one of their characters.
Y’know, we don’t know all that much about Sal’s time in Tennessee come to think about it
Truly, it remains a potentially rich source of flashback material.
*looks in the mirror*
So true Sal. So true
Joyce really said “No homo”
Now just how can anything be the hottest and the coolest?
Now I know why so many around the world loath the English language.
tbf, it’s also why so many around the world love the English language
nah, this is only your average weirdness. every language has this sort of quirks.
people hate the english language for much less entertaining reasons, like cultural imperialism :/
(and maybe spelling.)
Actually, it kind of works.
“Cool”, in this sense, refers to a low-emotion steadiness, usually born of confidence, self-assuredness, independence, and self-reliance. The guy who can shrug off an insult, dress any way he wants and own it, deal with adversity with a level head and without panic, etc, is cool. The key here is the emotional steadiness, not getting pushed into emotional highs by trivial things. Granted, it’s pushed its way into being a broader sense of “clever trick” or “I want to emulate that” or “that thing is held in high-social esteem”, but that’s how the word “cool” was originally applied to “cool” people.
“Hot”, in this sense, means that it raises a strong emotion (desire) in OTHERS. This is in the same way that, say, a microwave emitter is hot. It isn’t actually hot, it just feels hot because it heats you up. (Yes, this is a thing that microwave emitters are getting designed for. I’ve seen it called an Active Denial System, a Heat Ray, or, my personal favorite, a Pain Ray Cannon. It’s a weapon designed for use in crowd control by police and prison guards. Fuuuunnnnnnn…)
So Walky remains cool, by transferring all his heat to his surrounding admirers. It might break the second law of thermodynamics, but makes sense as a metaphor.
+1 for metaphor parsing =)
also, Pain Ray Cannons???!! first i hear about that, sounds terrifying
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
English is rife with homophones and multiple context-based definitions. I guess that’s what happens when you patchwork a language together from bits and pieces of various Old World languages.
wrong link ):
That happens sometimes. Dangit.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl3K63Rbygw
that was a lot of fun =) didn’t know that channel! thanks!
It should be noted that English is very much not alone in having had a massive influx of vocabulary from one or more other languages due to historical stuff. Persian and Turkish have many redundant Arabic loanwords because of their long Muslim history. Most colonized languages have massively “borrowed” words from their colonizers. Languages spoken by ethnic minorities within nation-states will often remain oral and informal, while all the words for stuff that gets taught at school and written about in books will come from the State language.
Just like me
They long to be
Close To You!
So many girls want to touch my hair. It’s super annoying
Don’t be selfish. It’s nice to share.
In middle school, I was a guy with long, full-bodied red hair down to below my shoulder-blades, right around when half the girls in my age cohort started awakening to such things.
In retrospect, I should have just happily accepted and enjoyed when they asked to run their hands through my hair rather than cringing in awkward and being overcome with a million “okay but what does this REALLY mean” doubts and questions. Middle-school me was an idiot.
Compromise. Let’s all play with Sal’s hair.
I love “person (girl category)”
She’s really bad at hiding it.
Sal is yum.
Except for the cigs.
My first serious girlfriend smoked. While the actual smoking bothered me, the effect on how she smelled and tasted was more nuanced. For years after we broke up, I found myself aroused by the scent of tobacco due to the association.
My wife, meanwhile, grew up in a smoking household and hates the smell – even a faint whiff of second hand smoke sends her into coughing fits.
We are both, however, fond of “tobacco notes” in perfume. Which are not produced with real tobacco.
The latter is me – only non-smoker/tobacco user in a smoking household. It doesn’t make me cough, but I hate the smell, and refuse to touch ashes, butts/spent filters etc with bare hands; might as well be poop to me.
Nobody in my immediate family smokes, but all four grandparents did. Mom remembers when grandpa’s buddies would come over, and she’d put a damp towel in front of her bedroom door to stop the hazy cigar smoke from getting in. Dad says his dad would light up for almost anything from answering the phone to getting the mail, like a Pavlovian response.
Nobody in my immediate family smokes, but the lingering smell afterward doesn’t bother me. I still don’t want to be near someone when they’re smoking, though.
While Walky never really has a rabbit’s foot up his bum, I also am in favor of not stroking his ego even further.
I wanna disagree that he’d be an asshole, but lbr, Walky will never let them live it down.
Mentor him, Sal.
I dob’t think he’d be as bad as Joe, at least but yeah Sal mentoring him would help. That is if Walky listens, and if(and that’s a big if) Sal wants to help.
Teach him your hot ways, Sal. Teach him to use his hotness responsibly.
I can’t imagine that conversation being anything but hilarious.
Nooo I dont want Sal to pull an Uncle Ben to inspire Walky to use hit hotness for good
No, please, that’s way too close to yesterday’s incest jokes.
…I’m kinda glad I didn’t read those
I was thinking more of ‘the talk’ kinda way
I’m assuming that conversation would be very awkward, so yeah probably hilarious.
If it’s that much of a distraction just sneak into his room at night and cut of a lock of his hair so it be less effective.
Also Sal’s kind right Walky has to much unearned confidence already he does not need this ego boost.
biblical
Weird. In that first panel, Walky reminds me a lot of Asher? I think I’d already have attributed Sal’s responses in the last few panels to experiences with Asher, but with that first panel, even more so.
It’s something about that particular Vaguely Smiling facial expression, for one thing. It’s one of Asher’s character art expressions.
Dorothy has shown that wavy smile at times lately, too.
YES! THANK YOU! That’s exactly what it was.
*Thumbs up* Happy to help make brain associations clearer!
Just to clarify my comment on Sal being reigning champion, she won ‘DOA Hottest Lady’ in 2011 and 2013-2016, the only years the poll was up.
I wonder how that would go now? I think her curly hair would defend her title.
I’m guessing those polls were dropped for being… entirely too close to Joe’s “do list” for comfort.
…but yeah, she’d likely still win.
There were Hottest Dude polls each time as well, I should probably mention. Mike won the first 3, Ethan won the last 2.
There are official porn comics of the series made by David Willis themself.
…I’m not sure I quite get how that relates? Like, I know about the Slipshines. Drawing characters having sex isn’t inherently objectifying them. But asking people to vote on which lady is the hottest and creating a ranking from that? I’m honestly struggling to see the difference between that and Joe creating a huge spreadsheet ranking them on a scale of one to ten. Beyond the fact that DoA’s cast is fictional relative to us but not relative to Joe, anyway– I suppose that could be a factor.
Sal speaks great wisdom here.
Joyce, conversations like this are why so many people around you think you’re bisexual.
Not to mention so many readers
not to mention the writer
Alt Text: The Rumors are True
Me, reading: “The Rumor Come Out: Does Joyce Brown is Bisexual?”
If it isn’t obvious, I tend to free-associate. A lot.
Also, if the comment posts twice, apologies. Had a website malfunction.
So, my understanding is that Joyce is sort of autobiographical Willis. And I don’t think Willis considers himself bi.
**flat affect**
… really?
I make a sick ‘Does Bruno Mars is gay’ reference, and the only response is someone Mansplaining to me information on the fricken wiki? And, somehow worse yet, only doing so to my comment and not the thread on the actual subject of Joyce’s bisexuality directly above mine?
Seriously, what the actual fuck?
i’d like to extend my heartfelt condolences on your joke.
but seriously. hate it when that happens. or worse still, when i’m the one writing the dumbass tone-deaf comment that walks all over someone else’s brilliant witticism. i murdered a joke like that, was it yesterday or the day before? i was mortified.
Anyway shame on you, Victor. booooo
… can’t tell if serious or sarcastic, but smiled either way, so I’m calling it a win. ^^
I was serious! Who was it said that humour is too serious a business to be left to clowns?
anyway glad I made you smile 🙂
𝅘𝅥𝅮 ManSPLAAAIN
ALL my problems back to me
Save MEEEEE
ALL of your “um, actually”s 𝅘𝅥𝅮
Pretty sure that only aspects of Joyce are autobiographical, so there’s room for flexibility on this.
So Joyce is St. Peter now?
(in the panel from the bonus strip)
Willis comes from a Christian background and you need to consider that when interpreting the scene. The context here is that Joyce is having her own version of a dream that Peter had where God told him not to continue to feel that he has to reject non-Jewish things as ‘unclean’. I haven’t seen that strip but I’m assuming that Willis is explaining in metaphorical terms how, in her head, Joyce started to question her parents’ standards of what is ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’.
I took as the much less esoteric, “Joyce will not eat meat that touches itself.”
Because she’s got a very un-diagnosed mild autism similar to my diagnosed one.
I’ve to check the Bible. Wow, that was nice.
Willis is just talking about personal experience through Sal at the end.
the yearning really coming in waves for Joyce now, huh?
I have done the hotness for drinks schtick sorta accidentally. It was the funniest interaction with straight men I have ever had.
Sal’s life lessons on properly harnessing being hot could land her a columnist position in the school paper.
“Sex and the Campus” by Sal Walters
I’m thinking that she’d use her Walkyverse adoptive name just because she can’t be bothered to deal with the headache of Linda’s back-seat commentary and attempts to ‘punish’ her for having opinions and ideas of her own.
Yeah a pseudonym would be handy. I’d substitute ”Marcella” for the first name, an homage to Marcy.
Okay we really don’t have to have this be a thing.
So, in essence, what Sal is saying is that Walky is entering a dangerous time when he will be tempted by the Dark Side of the Hotness.
That is what I understood.
Just like Darth Plagueis the Hot.
It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you.
You don’t brush curly hair unless you wet it first… you just don’t D: No Joyce, don’t D:
People talkin’ about panel 4 as if that’s what pegs people onto Joyce’s bisexuality, when she explicitly said in the last comic that Walky is only just now hot enough for Dorothy, suggesting that she herself thinks Dorothy is hot a.f.w
DoA Book 11: Considering Your Upbringing, I’m Flabbergasted You’re Not More Weird
oooh that’s good
I meant that as a reply to Keulen
I…. don’t see it. What has changed if anything? No seriously, is he hot? I find him as bland and generic as I ever did. which is bad enough with my Prosopagnosia. It is already really hard to appreciate comics when you can’t recognize faces, but its supremely annoying when you cant recognize faces and a major plot point depends on being able to do so. So legit i ask, does he actually look any different?
No, he looks exactly the same as the day before. (Some claim his hair was a bit different after the timeskip, but not shockingly so, and that was like 3 days ago anyway)
thank you. much appreciated.
Joyce not doing anything to dispel those bi suspicions!
Panel 1 Walky = Caramel Asher
(plus brushable hair)
With borrowed Nintendo accessory and real Nachitos stains! Says seven different phrases! Batteries not included!
Not to change the subject, but today’s syndicated Mark Trail comic strip in the Washington Post has Mark in the back of a vehicle with an iguana sitting on his head.
See you in court, Mark.
Sal has a point. Still, I want to see Dorothy’s reaction.
“Hotness is a doorway to many abilities to some would consider… unnatural.”
Walky is starting to look like Asher, and that in itself is worrying.
Now he just needs a cigarette and a motorcycle and he would look like Asher….and like Sal.
I’m sort of wondering if Sarah noticed that the doe-eyed look Joyce gives Sal is the same as the one Lucy gives Walky?
This reminds me of when I was in college and people started thinking I was hot. Wish I had this support system
C’mon, Joyce, look, I also used to think I just admired girls that were super hot and definitely wanted to brush their hair and wear their clothes for totally just friendship reasons
and now I’m gay. I give Joyce like, one more semester their time.
Looki by forward to Joyce’s coming out in 2032
Did you want to bury yourself in their bosoms for warmth as well?
That thing she said to Jennifer, many moons ago when she was still Billie.
Just girl category? Is anyone hotter than Sal!?!
It’s mentioned above, but I just thought I’d point out that there’s a WikiP page for the NT scene that the Patreon panel is referencing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter%27s_vision_of_a_sheet_with_animals
Acts 10:11-16,28 and Acts 11:4-9
With great hotness, comes great responsibility.
Ok, they’re officially the Wonder Twins now. I want them to fight crime together and for Walky to occasionally turn into water in the form of crying or pissing himself in fear while Sal gets all “Form of Eagle Style” and kicks someone from above.