I wonder if that injury is identical to the one actual toedad had. That can’t be good to dream about something like that, even if it was someone you hate.
I think we can agree it was. In the pertinent comics (which ran from story arc (which ran April 24 and 25, 2020) we see Blaine threatening Toedad with a hammer, then a bloody hammer. Then, when Toedad comes back into the fight, Blaine comments that “your skull’s just that thick”.
So yeah – it would appear that Toedad was killed in the basement, by Blaine, with the hammer to the head.
Bear in mind that this is the start of a new book, so there’s a non-zero chance that somewhere in the future, at some bookshop or con, this will be someone’s THIRD DoA strip.
IKR! I wanna recommend the comic to others but I wasn’t happy with the idea of them starting on whatever that day’s comic is with no context (because they’d just be way less invested in the characters), and while some people might do what I did (read the entire thing over 3 days, for like 8 hours a day, when I had some time off) …most people ain’t doing that :’D
so I made a list of suggested jumping off points! ^_^ to future readers, if this is your third ever DoA strip, maybe try one of these starting places instead!
Book 1-1: Moving In Day. Just reading the whole dang thing 😀 Fair warning the art is simpler & less polished, and there’s quite a bit of casual ableism and fatphobia that is mostly gone by chapter 2. Also since Joyce is coming out of a very White Evangelical bubble, you might find her very cringe inducing at first – people do be like that when first stepping out of such a bubble, so trust me that she’ll get better with time but if ya can’t handle it then try one of the next suggestions.
Book 1-6: Yesterday was Thursday, specifically “Continue” (25/8/2011). Good cold open to quickly clue you in on who’s who, and ya get good context for the DeSantos, two ships and a significant story point
Book 2-6: Strange Beerfellows. The art has improved, and ya get context for two ships
Book 3-2: Guess Who’s Coming To Galasso’s. The art has improved, context for three ships, and it builds nicely into 3-4 which is a very significant chapter story-wise. 3-2 is also when hovertext starts getting added, and much of it is delightfully funny or provides more context and it all adds greatly to the comic 🙂
Book 5-1: When Somebody Loved Me, if you’re really short on time Boundaries (26/10/2014) is where the story shifts. I’d recommend the whole chapter as you get backstory, and context for three ships, but if ya low on time, Boundaries marks a point where the story shifts significantly for Joyce specifically.
Book 10-4: Is a Song Forever, very specifically “Transformative” (September 5th 2020). Starting here will mean you miss out on so much context for *major* story moments, ships & character growth. But I’d say this represents currently the latest place I think I can recommend you jumping in and still being able to get thoroughly invested, plus that specific comic (“Transformative”) has a very very nice group-shot, followed by some simply *gorgeous* art that represents a time-skip of a few months. You will however encounter spoilers for previous books in joining this late in the series.
After the kidnapping incident, we got two most traumatized colleagues from the entire gang: Ethan e, now, Dorothy. I understood Ethan’s pain, but my heart sank for her. She’s already doing therapy, right? How could she be the most devastated one?
The supersized part of that whole episode is it was MRS. Dukakis who’d been receiving treatment for depression, not even the Dukakis that was actually running for office.
I’ll see your Eagleton and raise you a Daniel Ellsberg. Not exactly the same since he wasn’t running for office and the info wasn’t actually used against him. Still, the Plumbers did break into his psychiatrist’s office to look for potentially compromising information.
Nothing about ableism is healthy. I assume by that you mean the dosage that’s baseline for white folks who’ve long known bigotry as exclusive to the domains of deliberate cruelty and interpersonal violence.
think of “a healthy dose” in this context more as healthy for the “dose” than the recipient – as in Dorothy’s share of ableism is robust enough to remain viable under many conditions.
“A healthy dose” is sometimes used tongue in cheek to mean “excessively large” – it’s not always in a negative context (for example, while needing comfort I will say I need a healthy dose of comfort) but can b, such as in this context.
He had a stroke, so that got a lot of people angry even after he was cleared. But then he suffered from depression and chose to pursue treatment, and that made a lot of people even MORE angry. For some reason. For some reason being able to ask for help is a weakness to some people.
Seeing asking for help as a sign of weakness is the biggest sign of weakness I’ve ever seen. I’d hope those people get better but untreated wounds rarely do anything but fester.
Did she actually say that? Genuinely asking because I don’t remember. That’s really stupid though—you can just tell your therapist you don’t *want* medication, it’s not like suggestions that you go on X drug go on your “permanent record” or anything.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/03-joementum/inwithyou/ I think she’s less worried about the medication and more worried about a diagnosis following her. Like, “this just in, Dorothy who is running for president was once diagnosed with PTSD/depression, do we really want a woman in charge, let alone one with PTSD OR DEPRESSION?”
“Slightly misremembered”? She claimed she landed under sniper fire. She was actually met by… a little girl “armed” with a bouquet of flowers. Face it, she has all of her husband’s honesty and none of his charm.
Ptsd isn’t always treated with medications. While they can help, psychotherapy is normally the first type of treatment used. Also it wouldn’t be surprised for it to have reoccurances during moments of stress or pressure. In general, I think that any type of treatment would take time and could have setbacks. Therapy is normally training yourself in how to deal with your problems and fears, which means it doesn’t exactly eliminate them but reduces the impact that they have in your life (make you less scared of them, etc). I am not sure that any type of treatment fully gets rid of all ptsd symptoms, flashbacks, or memories. Dorothy has also been through more than one event that could have caused ptsd within a very short amount of time. I find a lot of people think that if they take medications, all their problems will go away, and I don’t think it works like that. Not that meds can’t make someone’s life extremely better, it just isn’t a guarantee and sometimes takes going through several medications until you find one that helps.
Doonesbury’s been pushing RTM (“Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories”) pretty hard as a type of “silver bullet” therapy for PTSD. (See, e.g., https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2023/08/13) I’ve heard similar praise for EMDR, but never experienced it myself.
RTM seems to be available only for veterans, from what I’ve seen.
Now if only there were a therapy or treatment available for TBI…
(suggestions welcome!)
From what the people I know who offer EMDR say, it can be an effective means to recalibrate if you are stabilized enough to try.
Problem ist, PTSD comes with a load of epigenitic gene changes, so your body is physically wired to create more stress hormones and receptors for those, and getting the body to change the epigenetics again has no one-size-fits-all solution. Few things do. Especially where hormones are involved.
(There also seems to be a study that suggest that emergency contraception with estrogen after a sexual assault reduces the probability of getting PTSD, but as it’s only one study, don’t take it as gospel.)
Readers added context they thought people might want to know:
the study in question was conducted by U-Cal neurobiology and behavior researchers Nicole Kirin Ferree et al. in the US in 2012 on a sample of 111 subjects. It was funded by a federal grant (the NIMH specifically).
The subjects were contacted through a law-enforcement-affiliated private company (“Forensic Nurse Specialists Inc”) providing support and collecting data on sexual assault victims in the Los Angeles and Orange counties of California. They were contacted 6 month after the assault. So, though this isn’t specified in the paper it appears that only victims who reported the assault to the police were considered.
Of the 187 selected subjects meeting the study’s critera (excluded were, among others, developmentally-disabled persons, victims of domestic violence, and people with irregular menstrual cycles) and having a valid phone number, 55 did not respond to multiple sollicitations and 21 declined, quit or were uncooperative. so that’s up to 40% of contacted individuals who for one or another reason did not comply with a study asking them for a short interview about their 6-months-old sexual assault, hormonal treatment history and PTSD-associated symptoms. i think the several filters that produced the final study sample are really interesting.
as a french person, i also find it fascinating that this study provides its sample’s ethnic breakdown but not its socio-professional breakdown. Presumably, the one is assumed to be a good enough proxy for the other? In France it’s the other way around. Racial profiling is considered unethical. but that’s a whole tangent
Weirdly the authors failed to specify that (or even whether) the sexual assault survivors they were interviewing were limited to those where a pregnancy risk from the assault existed. Maybe there’s a forensic or medical reason for that, like are first-responders instructed not to ask or wait for details and just offer emergency contraception regardless? that seems reasonable. But this aspect is not discussed.
Even more weirdly, the authors fail to discuss the possibility that the likelihood/severity of the person’s PTSD was reduced because one of the potential consequences of being raped (pregnancy) was eliminated. Instead, they frame their results purely in terms of the potential effects of the specific molecules (“exogenous hormone administration”, “endogenous sex hormone levels”) on the subjects. is that bizarre? no? just me?
The one interesting result afaict is less PTSD-associated symptoms for survivors who took an estrogen-based emergency contraceptive as opposed to the purely progesteron-based option. (There is no difference in their efficiency as contraceptives.)
the researchers cautiously advance this conclusion but mostly insist on the limitations of their study and call for further research. One point they mention that i found salient is that a lot of PTSD models are based on studies of war veterans, while sexual assault survivors are still understudied.
(now to cross my fingers that i didn’t mess up the HTML tags)
Wow. Thanks. The study was mentioned in the book I’m reading but I hadn’t got around to looking up the details.
From how it’s cited, the (I think German) author of the book was more on a rant about the implication that rape survivors are denied emergency contraceptives. She did say it was one small study and more research was required..
“She did say it was one small study and more research was required..”
and to your credit you said as much too! i do find when i have the time that digging into the actual paper is revealing. at the very least, in such cases, wondering about the sample size, as well as the publishing process (i didn’t mention, it is peer-reviewed) should become automatic. 111 is not a lot, but it’s not the worst a study can get away with. the issue is unless you dig up the paper, or at least the abstract (which may itself be misleading in various ways) you can’t even begin to make an independent opinion on a study, especially around politically charged issues, because the pressure to publish a certain type of result can become intense and mainstream headlines start to matter.
“rape survivors are denied emergency contraceptives”
i did a double take on that because the study itself says the offer of emergency contraception post-sexual assault is “routine”. but that may only be true in some states/counties.
I did EDMR for some truama that happened to me. I was sobbing on my therapists couch but once it was over it was… gone. The feelings had evaporated. I felt physically lighter.
Still having to process and adjust behaviors that truama left me with, but as silly as EDMR seems to people who havent experienced it, it fucking works.
Because she has to work the hardest at pretending everything’s all right–for this future she thought she had a mission to achieve for the sake of everybody else.
Trauma hits everyone differently. My brother and I went through the same events in our childhood, but I ended up with PTSD and he didn’t. (Just explaining, not trying to be glib)
Probably because she won’t own what happened to them as a traumatic event for herself. Dorothy has suggested to Becky that she doesn’t feel like she has a right to “use” what happened as “her” story because everything was so much worse for other people (like Becky), and I imagine that extends to the trauma she feels over it too—she’s suppressing her feelings about witnessing someone die because she doesn’t feel like it’s “right” for her to be having these feelings when people who grew up with him, who knew him as “dad,” went through the same thing.
It’s an interesting arc, but I’m genuinely terrified that her rejection of Yale will stick because, dammit, she doesn’t deserve to lose out on the doors Yale would open for her.
I feel like the fact that this is the *second* time she’s seen someone violently assaulted or murdered in front of her- cue the door- is also making her trauma a lot worse, unbeknownst to her.
I’m honestly surprised that there isn’t an irrational part of her that secretly hates Amber. Maybe we just haven’t seen an opportunity for it to come out.
If so, possibly going back to the party and Joyce getting drugged. Iirc Dorothy internalised blame for that. Her and Joyce being together there was more connected to what happened than the other times violence occurred around Dorothy- she was literally the reason Joyce was there and I’m pretty sure she actually said she shouldn’t have left her alone?- so that’s my guess.
Yeah, I also don’t think Yale would be god for Dorothy. But I want her to see it as a choice *she* makes for *herself,* not because she needs to take care of everyone else.
We didn’t actually see his face when he died, nor the first time he got hit. That’s after they had a chance to clean him up a little for Becky to see him.
Yeah, but it’s still a far cry from the hammer being embedded half way down his head with his eyes bulging out and screaming. He dies a few strips later and Dorothy doesn’t see him again at that point. There’s literally no way to go from the face depicted in Dorothy’s dream to the face depicted in the previous strip.
He looks like this in Dorothy’s dream not because this is what he actually looked like, but because the grotesque visage is closer to how it made her feel.
Human memory is a surprisingly malleable thing. I’ll agree that the sight of a man literally getting his head bashed in did leave her with some serious trauma. But there’s a good chance her memories aren’t a literal representation of what she saw. If anything, her memories might be worse than what she actually saw, especially if she’s holding back from her therapist and actively refusing to deal with the issue.
I dunno about that. Seems pretty normal to me. The only weird part is that she woke up on her own without being killed first. Usually that requires some kind of outside stimulus, like an alarm.
Or some bastard firing up the lawn mower when you’ve only been asleep for two hours. Not that I’m bitter about yesterday or anything…
She’s apparently been holding back a lot from her therapist. Until she’s willing to open up a little more and actually confront the issue I don’t think any therapist is going to be able to help much.
I think so, it has been a while but I don’t remember anything worse than this. Willis has never needed a disclaimer at the top of the comic before now.
I recall a disclaimer being used for the strip where it was revealed that Becky’s mom committed suicide, and Becky found her? But it wasn’t a warning for gore, so that’s new.
Wow, I know Dorothy was worried about using her kid napping and those of her friends to get a leg up in college applications to Yale, but she is truly traumatized. I if she is in that much pain, I don’t think her friends would be grudge her at least getting her dream school out of it (I know her concerns were probably about the general morality of the situation regardless of her friends consent).
I’m not sure that going to her dream school is worth distancing herself from the support network she has here. Sure, everyone else is just as messed up, but here she has people who know her and care about her. Going to Yale would mean starting from zero as far as in person connections go.
I think that if she wants to be President, she’s going to have to deal with a lot of violence and questions of it. That essay will say, “I know what it is like to deal with religious fundamentalism and organized crime.”
Yeah, none of her friends would hold it against her for spinning something positive out of a traumatic event that happened to all of them. That being said, I think moving away from her friends and taking on a much more intense course load at Yale right now would be a teeeeerrible choice for Dorothy.
OTOH, so is giving up on her dreams for them. Even if the goals might be unrealistic or even harmful for her, giving up on them for others will just lead to more stress and resentment.
Whose in the background there? I see Walky, Amazi-girl, Mike, Danny, and what looks like a drunk Dorothy giving a thumbs up (maybe some sort of manifestation of guilt over using this horror to boost her college app?). Who else is there?
From the tags, there’s also Joe. He’s behind thumbs-up, who I think is another Joyce, with a walky grin. They’re all in freefall, so her hair is covering Joe’s face.
Or maybe thumbs-up is the person who is in the single next to Dorothy. They’ve never appeared in the comic, but perhaps they talk a lot off panel, and this is how we get a new character.
She has been stated to be hiding things from her therapist, yes. But it’s also been mentioned that mental health services (or at the very least therapists) in the immediate area are… not optimal.
OK, I’m having a little trouble locating all the characters tagged here.
Little help?
amazi-girl:
Panel 2, right behind Walky.
dorothy:
Panels 1, 2, 3, and 6
joyce:
Panels 1, 3, 4, and 5
mike:
Panel 2, rear left, 11-o’clock from Dorothy
walky:
Panel 2, left, 10-o’clock from Dorothy
ross:
Panels 3, 4, and 5
joe: ??
danny: ??
I see three to four people behind Dorothy and to her right in Panel 2 (about midnight to two-o’clock from her) but I have no idea who they are.
Mystery 1-o’clock person looks somehow stoned (or maybe just sleepy and frazzled) and appears to be hitchhiking or giving a thumbs-up.
I’m not sure the mystery person is Joyce … this person appears to be wearing glasses, and Joyce didn’t get hers until second semester. I thought for a moment it might be Jennifer/Billie, but she wasn’t one of the kidnapees.
Then I remembered that we had multiple Joyces in yesterday’s installment of the dream, so why couldn’t this be a second Dorothy, giving “in-control Dorothy” a thumbs-up?
I wouldn’t have picked it out, but someone else mentioned it and then it was clear. It’s post-laundry room Joyce. Same thumbs-up and you can see her ponytail behind her.
Oh yeah she sure did see a whole-ass man get killed huh.
….Which also means if she accepted that road into her Dream School it would have been on the back of, probably, the most* traumatic night of her life. It doesn’t matter if she was cool and collected and worked a plan out. Trauma is Trauma.
*there was also Stabby Face Gets Moreso’d, which I notice she’s rolling in here, but. Given everything.
A game where you run her around campus, where her clubs, her faculty advisors, and her 8+ classes are all waypoints, and the score at the end is out of 100, and there’s art for getting a 100, and its in a screenshot, it’s literally impossible to get a 100, try again.
This calls for applause. I’m not disturbed by cartoon gore on its own, but combined with the terror of the nightmare and that *face* made this strip actually really harrowing.
Very difficult to reconcile, “you’re very mature, you could be in charge of everyone” that she internalized at 12ish in a safe and supportive environment, with watching an aggravated self-defense and a killing in situations she failed to take charge in.
Re-reading this, Dorothy crumbling after Raidah’s sniping makes even more sense now. If Dorothy could get someone killed by accident just as student, how much violence could she she be responsible for as president…even if it’s just by accident or collateral damage? And Dorothy’s been living with Becky, all the while blaming herself for her Dad’s death. That has to have been hard.
At one point, we might have thought Dorothy was working hard with Joyce to make sure she’d be alright when Dorothy left for Yale. This has me worrying that Dorothy’s been dealing with darker thoughts concerning death.
So after this strip I got curious how much exposure Dorothy had to Ross’ dead body and at least on-screen we don’t see her seeing his dead body… but she absolutely saw him getting bludgeoned until he fell to the floor… which might even be worse because as we see in this dream, sometimes our imaginations are worse than reality…
The door Joyce is behind is drawn to be very like the door Dorothy was locked behind when witnessing Amber’s act of violence (I think it was Amber?) whereas the Joyce she tries- and fails- to save is wearing the outfit she was at the party when she was drugged.
It’s definitely about trauma over multiple events.
And guilt about those multiple events, too. Joyce would not have been at the party had Dorothy not decided to go, nor would she have had that encounter with Ryan if Dorothy had kept track of her. Ryan wouldn’t have been eviscerated (or whatever) had Dorothy not had her Amazi-Girl articles published where he could read them. She’s obvously also feeling guilty about ToeDad’s death.
So trauma, guilt, and maybe realizing that her ambitions had caused a lot of people a lot of grief since September.
If anybody reading this and thinking about stuff of their own, would like a warm, supportive hug; a blanket; a friendly puppy or kitteh; some soft music; or a cup of hot cocoa; they can find one in the replies to this comment.
Here’s the Question:
What would you like to bring to a soft, fluffy nest, full of comforting things?
mmmmmmmm….. listen i’m currently reading Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway and i can’t shut up about it.
so, i would bring that book, i mean, i bring it everywhere i go anyway =P
it’s hardly “comforting” or “fluffy” but… it’s so exciting. and i think it works as escapism too, because it gets quite involved and abstract at times. Although, to be fair, even in the most convoluted passages i keep having insights and illuminations. damn that book is good.
…ok it’s not escapist frankly. i’ll take a lesbian YA romance novel ^^
lots of things happened since then. Willis lost their mom, for instance.
also, the world got scary in novel ways, so maybe trauma and grief seem to grow in relevance as the first massive effects of global warming hit even affluent, temperate areas, as Covid keeps claiming lives, and the liberal democracy, with its failed promise of steady progress, seems on the verge of extinction too…
we’re 13 years older now. Maybe at age 30 you’re thinking “grief is a bummer, no one wants to read about that, i’ll just pretend my characters live forever” but by age 40 you’re having these conversations pretty often and you actually want to explore them in your writing as well?
i’m not satisfied with “liberal democracy and its promise of steady progress”.
liberalism made different promises at different times, but i’d say the ones that are the most in crisis at the moment are not so much progress as tolerance and rationality.
All those deaths also occurred right before the time skip. Or rather the time skip was used right after those deaths so that he could jump over the period when the reaction would be overwhelming.
Which would have been years at this comic’s pace.
There’s one thing you can’t trust the guardians of hell to do, and that’s for Dorothy’s earthling brain sack to turn Ross into PETA’s version of a cake meme.
Ngl, horny/post laundry Joyce being one of the background faces applying pressure on Dorothy is interesting. Most of the background faces have connection to the kidnapping (not Danny though), and that is a much more recent version of Joyce than the one beneath the door…
Why Ross is dead, why Blaine is dead, and likely some twisted reasoning why Mike is also dead. She’s responsible for Ryan getting injured (twice!) and for trying to keep Joe and Joyce apart. She’s toyed with the affections of at least two of the guys there, and one of the gals.
From her POV that panel is populated by people she’s wronged and should feel guilt about wronging. No wonder she’s been doubting her past decisions and ambitions.
That’s from what I figure to be her POV, not mine. Just to be clear.
I really wish that warning had been a lot more noticeable, because this caught me off guard and it’s well done but its also honestly horrifying and upsetting. Because well done but still that is a lot to see right before bed
Yeah, that’s one of the worst executed content warnings I’ve seen. The content is moved down slightly but is still on screen and draws the eye, it just looks like the website hiccupped and loaded the image in the wrong place. I didn’t notice the tiny content warning until after seeing the full strip.
Did Willis edit it? Bc I think being a whole strip sized gap above the comic is pretty good. Then again I read by zooming in on the first panel before I can process the rest so they can be a surprise. So if you’re not zooming in when the page loads up maybe it’s not as effective?
The dead guy was the very first thing I noticed when I loaded the site, since it’s bright red. My phone juggles the strips around a lot anyway, for some reason, so I also figured it was a hiccup for it to be down so low.
Good ol’ ptsd nightmares! Do any of y’all wake up screaming? The only sounds I make are maybe like, a gasp. Although it has been reported that I yell in my sleep. Mostly just teeth grinding tho
I’ve woken up screaming from a nightmare or five, yeah. And then felt like whatever I saw in the dream was lurking right in my periphery for about 20-100 minutes afterward.
Nah. I just have panic attacks when somebody acts like the psycho fuck face who threatened to wait at the foot of my bed and wait for me to wake up before killing me and who had turned all my friends in that friend group against me
Now comes the awkward part — her scream of “NO!” would have awakened Becky, who will now ask what’s wrong.
“I just had a dream about your dead Dad swallowing Joyce”
Oh, you think she’s going to be honest? Especially when there’s a good chance Becky will say something like, “just realized you got a single question wrong on a pop quiz, huh?”, and Dorothy will go, “yep, you got it, that is totally the only thing that could horrify me that badly; let’s keep the conversation moving.”
PTSD, I know these nightmares well, they get to a point where you can’t fall asleep anymore because your body becomes afraid of sleep, so any time you enter the first stage of sleep you get a surge of adrenaline and your heartbeat is suddenly 180+ BPM
I really love the detail of the two Joyces there. Not only can you still see one behind Dorothy, she’s smiling and giving a thumbs up. This one is also the most recent incarnation with the glasses, whereas the one falling into toedad is missing them.
I feel like Dorothy knows on some level Joyce will be ok and can handle herself, but she just can’t stop seeing the girl who was nearly murdered by the cult she escaped.
If anything, it’s actually easier to see, because instead of being way at the top of my screen, it’s close to the middle, where my eye naturally gravitates.
It’s not easy to anticipate the screen resolution of every visitor, even with a dynamic site template. Many sites use a blur overlay with a clickable warning.
In the past this site has given warnings at the beginning of a storyline. There’s no perfect way to do it.
I don’t care if it’s “not easy,” if he was really concerned about censoring the gore he could have tried harder. Put in a little extra space to ensure it’ll be hidden in any screen resolution.
Or just find a way to get the message across that doesn’t involve an image of someone being impaled through the head.
Yeah, on my laptop last night it worked fine space-wise, but on my phone and desktop, it doesn’t really do anything. The blur overlay would be ideal, if it were possible.
If that’s not possible, I also think it’d help if the text at least had a different color background behind it, to help it be more noticeable immediately.
Since this strip would be on the second page of the chapter I’d guess it’ll be on the page before the chapter starts either on the chapter name page or a separate one before/after it.
Oof, so it’s like, the way Ross got hit in the head with a hammer along with the way that Ryan got hit with the knife, those dreams are all just combining together.
haha i’m almost sad that ridiculous subthread got composted (“therapy sux” was the inciting piece of clownassery, followed by a pile-up of more-or-less eloquent stfu’s. if you’re wondering)
i did just catch your last comment @yumi though ^^
but what a silly hill to die on seriously. just say “yeah yeah ur right, i was just venting” and move on 🙄
I’m sympathetic to those who have had bad experiences with therapy. I’ve had some myself, and it sucks to turn to someone for help only to feel like they then go, “Well, what if we made things worse?” But I’ve also had really good experiences with therapy that have helped me a lot in various ways and are probably why I’m still alive.
Basically, I just object to such broad statements on therapy, and I recognize that stigma around it still exists (even if that stigma’s not big in my social groups, I interact with enough other people to know that there’s still a lot of negative associations with it). People are often reluctant to try therapy, sometimes from the belief that it flat out “won’t work” (heard this several times when I volunteered on crisis lines). And I could go on a whole tangent about the societal need to create further supports, but I don’t think we get there by maligning the ones there are.
Okay, now I wish EVEN MORE that Dotty’s subconscious had instead had all the Joyces make out with each other, like I was hoping for (but not actually expecting) yesterday.
Woke up from a nightmare last night, decided to read DoA at 2am to calm down, ended up staying awake another hour. Channeled my inner Dotty, 10/10 experience, thanks Willis.
I did not process the mustache at first, and so the black hair made me think of Ethan and I was like “Whoa, what?! Since when do we not like Ethan? He does not deserve this at all!”
So I refrained from commenting last night because my laptop was glitching the fuck out, but _jesus fuck._
This is what I get for wanting to see Mike again via dream sequence. Interesting that Dorothy seems to see herself as responsible for Mike’s and Ross’s deaths.
Dorothy is responsible for EVERYTHING.
It’s a relatively common brain-glitch for highly competent people. ‘I can do so much, and I see balls get dropped by other people, so I will pick that ball up and now it is my responsibility, i will not drop this ball, i must not drop this ball.’
The presidency is a red herring, at her core she needs to realize that, as well as her innermost desire to help as many people as she can
The hoops ya gotta jump through for presidency are for moderates who wanna REFORM systematic bigotry. Real activism is for those who are actually trying to END it, and clearly what Dorothy would more be into.
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wow, that’s a graphic, uh, toe injury
Alternate strip title: Stubbed.
Toetally! Ross is even more toe-ish.
I wonder if that injury is identical to the one actual toedad had. That can’t be good to dream about something like that, even if it was someone you hate.
Trauma flashbacks. hooray
(;_;)
I think we can agree it was. In the pertinent comics (which ran from story arc (which ran April 24 and 25, 2020) we see Blaine threatening Toedad with a hammer, then a bloody hammer. Then, when Toedad comes back into the fight, Blaine comments that “your skull’s just that thick”.
So yeah – it would appear that Toedad was killed in the basement, by Blaine, with the hammer to the head.
Disagree. It was Colonel Mustard, in the study, with the candlestick!
Toe nail?
Don’t worry. It’ll drop off by itself.
when all you have a hammer, every Toe looks like a Toe nail
Bruh, that’s FUCKED.
Imagine if this was the first DoA strip you ever saw. O_O
“Did I tell you this was a sitcom? NO. It’s a fucking horror movie.”
For reals tho, Dorothy, you’re scarred for life, take a break, I’M BEGGING YOU!!! 😖😖😖😭😭😭
*plays “Rain” by The Seat Belts on Dotty’s phone*
Yeah, I’m in the middle of reading about all sides’ WWII atrocities. This is comparatively light. And still dark and heavy for all that. 🙁
Haha I was just telling my daughter about the invasion China over dinner
Bear in mind that this is the start of a new book, so there’s a non-zero chance that somewhere in the future, at some bookshop or con, this will be someone’s THIRD DoA strip.
IKR! I wanna recommend the comic to others but I wasn’t happy with the idea of them starting on whatever that day’s comic is with no context (because they’d just be way less invested in the characters), and while some people might do what I did (read the entire thing over 3 days, for like 8 hours a day, when I had some time off) …most people ain’t doing that :’D
so I made a list of suggested jumping off points! ^_^ to future readers, if this is your third ever DoA strip, maybe try one of these starting places instead!
Book 1-1: Moving In Day. Just reading the whole dang thing 😀 Fair warning the art is simpler & less polished, and there’s quite a bit of casual ableism and fatphobia that is mostly gone by chapter 2. Also since Joyce is coming out of a very White Evangelical bubble, you might find her very cringe inducing at first – people do be like that when first stepping out of such a bubble, so trust me that she’ll get better with time but if ya can’t handle it then try one of the next suggestions.
Book 1-6: Yesterday was Thursday, specifically “Continue” (25/8/2011). Good cold open to quickly clue you in on who’s who, and ya get good context for the DeSantos, two ships and a significant story point
Book 2-6: Strange Beerfellows. The art has improved, and ya get context for two ships
Book 3-2: Guess Who’s Coming To Galasso’s. The art has improved, context for three ships, and it builds nicely into 3-4 which is a very significant chapter story-wise. 3-2 is also when hovertext starts getting added, and much of it is delightfully funny or provides more context and it all adds greatly to the comic 🙂
Book 5-1: When Somebody Loved Me, if you’re really short on time Boundaries (26/10/2014) is where the story shifts. I’d recommend the whole chapter as you get backstory, and context for three ships, but if ya low on time, Boundaries marks a point where the story shifts significantly for Joyce specifically.
Book 10-4: Is a Song Forever, very specifically “Transformative” (September 5th 2020). Starting here will mean you miss out on so much context for *major* story moments, ships & character growth. But I’d say this represents currently the latest place I think I can recommend you jumping in and still being able to get thoroughly invested, plus that specific comic (“Transformative”) has a very very nice group-shot, followed by some simply *gorgeous* art that represents a time-skip of a few months. You will however encounter spoilers for previous books in joining this late in the series.
More awkward when becky wakes up and asks dorothy what’s wrong too
Like “yeah i kinda just saw your dad’s head split open in my dreams”
Yeah…so, about that sleep I needed tonight that I’m no longer going to get.
After the kidnapping incident, we got two most traumatized colleagues from the entire gang: Ethan e, now, Dorothy. I understood Ethan’s pain, but my heart sank for her. She’s already doing therapy, right? How could she be the most devastated one?
She’s deliberately hiding things from her therapist so she isn’t prescribed medication, which she thought would sabotage her political career
Because it unfortunately might harm her politically. Like, look at how John Fetterman has been treated.
I’m old so I think of how Dukakis was treated for getting psychotherapy
The supersized part of that whole episode is it was MRS. Dukakis who’d been receiving treatment for depression, not even the Dukakis that was actually running for office.
You youth! I can remember Eagleton.
I’ll see your Eagleton and raise you a Daniel Ellsberg. Not exactly the same since he wasn’t running for office and the info wasn’t actually used against him. Still, the Plumbers did break into his psychiatrist’s office to look for potentially compromising information.
Also: Dorothy has a healthy dose of ableism.
Nothing about ableism is healthy. I assume by that you mean the dosage that’s baseline for white folks who’ve long known bigotry as exclusive to the domains of deliberate cruelty and interpersonal violence.
I assume that was a slightly sarcastic “healthy” as in “a large amount” rather than “the amount you should have to live a good life”.
That’s my read.
think of “a healthy dose” in this context more as healthy for the “dose” than the recipient – as in Dorothy’s share of ableism is robust enough to remain viable under many conditions.
“A healthy dose” is sometimes used tongue in cheek to mean “excessively large” – it’s not always in a negative context (for example, while needing comfort I will say I need a healthy dose of comfort) but can b, such as in this context.
I don’t know him very much, like he got lot of health issues. Is there chance of information leak? Or did I miss the real issue?
He had a stroke, so that got a lot of people angry even after he was cleared. But then he suffered from depression and chose to pursue treatment, and that made a lot of people even MORE angry. For some reason. For some reason being able to ask for help is a weakness to some people.
Meanwhile, the turtle had a seizure live on TV, then brushed it off, and they think that’s just fine and dandy.
Seeing asking for help as a sign of weakness is the biggest sign of weakness I’ve ever seen. I’d hope those people get better but untreated wounds rarely do anything but fester.
For us Olds, there is the directly on-point example of Thomas Eagleton
Did she actually say that? Genuinely asking because I don’t remember. That’s really stupid though—you can just tell your therapist you don’t *want* medication, it’s not like suggestions that you go on X drug go on your “permanent record” or anything.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/03-joementum/inwithyou/ I think she’s less worried about the medication and more worried about a diagnosis following her. Like, “this just in, Dorothy who is running for president was once diagnosed with PTSD/depression, do we really want a woman in charge, let alone one with PTSD OR DEPRESSION?”
though rereading this strip there is also concern about medicine too.
Indeed, Hillary Clinton slightly misremembered some incident with a helicopter, and got dragged endlessly for it.
“Slightly misremembered”? She claimed she landed under sniper fire. She was actually met by… a little girl “armed” with a bouquet of flowers. Face it, she has all of her husband’s honesty and none of his charm.
yes here:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/03-joementum/inwithyou/
I think she is also worried about the therapist herself…
Ptsd isn’t always treated with medications. While they can help, psychotherapy is normally the first type of treatment used. Also it wouldn’t be surprised for it to have reoccurances during moments of stress or pressure. In general, I think that any type of treatment would take time and could have setbacks. Therapy is normally training yourself in how to deal with your problems and fears, which means it doesn’t exactly eliminate them but reduces the impact that they have in your life (make you less scared of them, etc). I am not sure that any type of treatment fully gets rid of all ptsd symptoms, flashbacks, or memories. Dorothy has also been through more than one event that could have caused ptsd within a very short amount of time. I find a lot of people think that if they take medications, all their problems will go away, and I don’t think it works like that. Not that meds can’t make someone’s life extremely better, it just isn’t a guarantee and sometimes takes going through several medications until you find one that helps.
Doonesbury’s been pushing RTM (“Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories”) pretty hard as a type of “silver bullet” therapy for PTSD. (See, e.g., https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2023/08/13) I’ve heard similar praise for EMDR, but never experienced it myself.
RTM seems to be available only for veterans, from what I’ve seen.
Now if only there were a therapy or treatment available for TBI…
(suggestions welcome!)
“Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”
From what the people I know who offer EMDR say, it can be an effective means to recalibrate if you are stabilized enough to try.
Problem ist, PTSD comes with a load of epigenitic gene changes, so your body is physically wired to create more stress hormones and receptors for those, and getting the body to change the epigenetics again has no one-size-fits-all solution. Few things do. Especially where hormones are involved.
(There also seems to be a study that suggest that emergency contraception with estrogen after a sexual assault reduces the probability of getting PTSD, but as it’s only one study, don’t take it as gospel.)
Readers added context they thought people might want to know:
the study in question was conducted by U-Cal neurobiology and behavior researchers Nicole Kirin Ferree et al. in the US in 2012 on a sample of 111 subjects. It was funded by a federal grant (the NIMH specifically).
The subjects were contacted through a law-enforcement-affiliated private company (“Forensic Nurse Specialists Inc”) providing support and collecting data on sexual assault victims in the Los Angeles and Orange counties of California. They were contacted 6 month after the assault. So, though this isn’t specified in the paper it appears that only victims who reported the assault to the police were considered.
Of the 187 selected subjects meeting the study’s critera (excluded were, among others, developmentally-disabled persons, victims of domestic violence, and people with irregular menstrual cycles) and having a valid phone number, 55 did not respond to multiple sollicitations and 21 declined, quit or were uncooperative. so that’s up to 40% of contacted individuals who for one or another reason did not comply with a study asking them for a short interview about their 6-months-old sexual assault, hormonal treatment history and PTSD-associated symptoms. i think the several filters that produced the final study sample are really interesting.
as a french person, i also find it fascinating that this study provides its sample’s ethnic breakdown but not its socio-professional breakdown. Presumably, the one is assumed to be a good enough proxy for the other? In France it’s the other way around. Racial profiling is considered unethical. but that’s a whole tangent
Weirdly the authors failed to specify that (or even whether) the sexual assault survivors they were interviewing were limited to those where a pregnancy risk from the assault existed. Maybe there’s a forensic or medical reason for that, like are first-responders instructed not to ask or wait for details and just offer emergency contraception regardless? that seems reasonable. But this aspect is not discussed.
Even more weirdly, the authors fail to discuss the possibility that the likelihood/severity of the person’s PTSD was reduced because one of the potential consequences of being raped (pregnancy) was eliminated. Instead, they frame their results purely in terms of the potential effects of the specific molecules (“exogenous hormone administration”, “endogenous sex hormone levels”) on the subjects. is that bizarre? no? just me?
The one interesting result afaict is less PTSD-associated symptoms for survivors who took an estrogen-based emergency contraceptive as opposed to the purely progesteron-based option. (There is no difference in their efficiency as contraceptives.)
the researchers cautiously advance this conclusion but mostly insist on the limitations of their study and call for further research. One point they mention that i found salient is that a lot of PTSD models are based on studies of war veterans, while sexual assault survivors are still understudied.
(now to cross my fingers that i didn’t mess up the HTML tags)
Wow! Thank you for this important insight, milu!
Wow. Thanks. The study was mentioned in the book I’m reading but I hadn’t got around to looking up the details.
From how it’s cited, the (I think German) author of the book was more on a rant about the implication that rape survivors are denied emergency contraceptives. She did say it was one small study and more research was required..
“She did say it was one small study and more research was required..”
and to your credit you said as much too! i do find when i have the time that digging into the actual paper is revealing. at the very least, in such cases, wondering about the sample size, as well as the publishing process (i didn’t mention, it is peer-reviewed) should become automatic. 111 is not a lot, but it’s not the worst a study can get away with. the issue is unless you dig up the paper, or at least the abstract (which may itself be misleading in various ways) you can’t even begin to make an independent opinion on a study, especially around politically charged issues, because the pressure to publish a certain type of result can become intense and mainstream headlines start to matter.
“rape survivors are denied emergency contraceptives”
i did a double take on that because the study itself says the offer of emergency contraception post-sexual assault is “routine”. but that may only be true in some states/counties.
…(and may obviously differ across countries)
I did EDMR for some truama that happened to me. I was sobbing on my therapists couch but once it was over it was… gone. The feelings had evaporated. I felt physically lighter.
Still having to process and adjust behaviors that truama left me with, but as silly as EDMR seems to people who havent experienced it, it fucking works.
Wow! Thank you, Suzi!
Intriguing!
Fascinating… thank you! Much to learn…
Because she has to work the hardest at pretending everything’s all right–for this future she thought she had a mission to achieve for the sake of everybody else.
Trauma hits everyone differently. My brother and I went through the same events in our childhood, but I ended up with PTSD and he didn’t. (Just explaining, not trying to be glib)
Same with my sister and i
Despite its status as basically an internet meme, therapy is not actually a magic bullet that fixes you overnight.
True that. I’m on a long-ass waiting list, and have no idea where to start when I finally do get there.
And it’s not a one-size-fits-all deal. Many people have to try multiple therapists/methods before finding a combination that works for them.
Probably because she won’t own what happened to them as a traumatic event for herself. Dorothy has suggested to Becky that she doesn’t feel like she has a right to “use” what happened as “her” story because everything was so much worse for other people (like Becky), and I imagine that extends to the trauma she feels over it too—she’s suppressing her feelings about witnessing someone die because she doesn’t feel like it’s “right” for her to be having these feelings when people who grew up with him, who knew him as “dad,” went through the same thing.
It’s an interesting arc, but I’m genuinely terrified that her rejection of Yale will stick because, dammit, she doesn’t deserve to lose out on the doors Yale would open for her.
I feel like the fact that this is the *second* time she’s seen someone violently assaulted or murdered in front of her- cue the door- is also making her trauma a lot worse, unbeknownst to her.
I’m honestly surprised that there isn’t an irrational part of her that secretly hates Amber. Maybe we just haven’t seen an opportunity for it to come out.
She definitely seems to, at least subconsciously, link those assaults with Joyce in some way.
If so, possibly going back to the party and Joyce getting drugged. Iirc Dorothy internalised blame for that. Her and Joyce being together there was more connected to what happened than the other times violence occurred around Dorothy- she was literally the reason Joyce was there and I’m pretty sure she actually said she shouldn’t have left her alone?- so that’s my guess.
Whereas I genuinely believe Yale is a terrible idea for Dorothy, and will only exacerbate her need to do it all with little to no support, without having a safety net to offer her when it turns out that doesn’t work. https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/12/09/yale-negotiates-settlement-in-mental-health-lawsuit/
Yeah, I also don’t think Yale would be god for Dorothy. But I want her to see it as a choice *she* makes for *herself,* not because she needs to take care of everyone else.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/03-joementum/inwithyou/ She has been leaving things out of her therapy appointments.
NOoooooo
I can’t help but feel like that was Ross’s actual expression and the kind of thing that got permanently burnt into Dorothy’s mind.
That was my first thought
I just realized that of all the points of that storyline that were fucking crazy, I literally don’t remember exactly how and when Toedied.
No, Ross’s head and expression weren’t nearly that grotesque when he died.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/breathing-2/
We didn’t actually see his face when he died, nor the first time he got hit. That’s after they had a chance to clean him up a little for Becky to see him.
Yeah, but it’s still a far cry from the hammer being embedded half way down his head with his eyes bulging out and screaming. He dies a few strips later and Dorothy doesn’t see him again at that point. There’s literally no way to go from the face depicted in Dorothy’s dream to the face depicted in the previous strip.
He looks like this in Dorothy’s dream not because this is what he actually looked like, but because the grotesque visage is closer to how it made her feel.
Human memory is a surprisingly malleable thing. I’ll agree that the sight of a man literally getting his head bashed in did leave her with some serious trauma. But there’s a good chance her memories aren’t a literal representation of what she saw. If anything, her memories might be worse than what she actually saw, especially if she’s holding back from her therapist and actively refusing to deal with the issue.
HAHAHAHA WHAT A FUN CRAZY DREAM RIGHT GUYS?
Well, what can you expect from a horse?
Actually, I’m so happy to get a Mike cameo that I don’t care.
Dorothy needs to talk to someone about this; you don’t have dreams like this without something being wrong.
I have horrible dreams/nightmares as well, but I’m on meds for them.
Wait, is Dorothy avoiding medication? Not refusing to take meds, but avoiding things with her doctor so she doesn’t get prescribed anything.
Yup. She’s not telling her therapist she’s traumatized.
well, wasn’t she given bad advice? or at the very least “i’m using it as an opportunity”/grist for the mill or so
Yes, but that’s because she hasn’t told her therapist how bad she’s doing. She’s trying to avoid being diagnosed with anything.
I dunno about that. Seems pretty normal to me. The only weird part is that she woke up on her own without being killed first. Usually that requires some kind of outside stimulus, like an alarm.
Or some bastard firing up the lawn mower when you’ve only been asleep for two hours. Not that I’m bitter about yesterday or anything…
Not at all. Waking up before the worst happens is not uncommon. If sleep paralysis is still in action, it’s really horrible.
I can sometimes recognize that I’m dreaming. Over the years I’ve learned to will myself awake from a bad dream. Too bad it doesn’t always work.
yeah the stress is getting to her now.
and trauma. she def needs a new therapist
She’s apparently been holding back a lot from her therapist. Until she’s willing to open up a little more and actually confront the issue I don’t think any therapist is going to be able to help much.
ok i understand why the disclaimer is there. damn that’s a nasty hangnail
Toedad jumpscare
Seriously though is this the most graphic comic to date?
I think so, it has been a while but I don’t remember anything worse than this. Willis has never needed a disclaimer at the top of the comic before now.
I recall a disclaimer being used for the strip where it was revealed that Becky’s mom committed suicide, and Becky found her? But it wasn’t a warning for gore, so that’s new.
holy shit
it’s not even the gore that’s getting me. that’s whatever. but the look on his face is HAUNTING. dear lord
This is very effective art
Wow, I know Dorothy was worried about using her kid napping and those of her friends to get a leg up in college applications to Yale, but she is truly traumatized. I if she is in that much pain, I don’t think her friends would be grudge her at least getting her dream school out of it (I know her concerns were probably about the general morality of the situation regardless of her friends consent).
I’m not sure that going to her dream school is worth distancing herself from the support network she has here. Sure, everyone else is just as messed up, but here she has people who know her and care about her. Going to Yale would mean starting from zero as far as in person connections go.
I think Dorothy would begrudge it of herself, though. Frankly, I would hate myself forever if I’d even sent the application in with that essay.
I think that if she wants to be President, she’s going to have to deal with a lot of violence and questions of it. That essay will say, “I know what it is like to deal with religious fundamentalism and organized crime.”
I think I might be pleased with myself for having required a tragedy to yield up something good.
Yeah, none of her friends would hold it against her for spinning something positive out of a traumatic event that happened to all of them. That being said, I think moving away from her friends and taking on a much more intense course load at Yale right now would be a teeeeerrible choice for Dorothy.
OTOH, so is giving up on her dreams for them. Even if the goals might be unrealistic or even harmful for her, giving up on them for others will just lead to more stress and resentment.
I wonder if that notion isn’t just her excuse for having doubts about her long-ago-chosen path.
Nah, I believe she’s sincere, and has just internalized “I have to be perfect” in the worst possible way(s).
I wonder, now that we see this, how much her concerns were just the trauma manifesting, rather than more rational considerations of morality.
It would be great if we got this 3 dream sequence without bubbles. The art is great.
you could probably nmessage him on tumblr for one
Never thought she’d dream up Thumb headed dad Atomos.
Atomos?
A recurring spell from the Final Fantasy games that this kinda looks like.
Ah. Much appreciated, Bruno!
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Atomos_(creature)
This dreamboat.
Wow!
Whose in the background there? I see Walky, Amazi-girl, Mike, Danny, and what looks like a drunk Dorothy giving a thumbs up (maybe some sort of manifestation of guilt over using this horror to boost her college app?). Who else is there?
I think the thumb’s up is post-masturbation orgasm Joyce.
The thumb up one looks like Joyce, after orgasm.
Oh, wow, yes, that’s it!
I think Dorothy also changed to her “laundry” outfit
Good catch. I didn’t notice that.
From the tags, there’s also Joe. He’s behind thumbs-up, who I think is another Joyce, with a walky grin. They’re all in freefall, so her hair is covering Joe’s face.
Or maybe thumbs-up is the person who is in the single next to Dorothy. They’ve never appeared in the comic, but perhaps they talk a lot off panel, and this is how we get a new character.
The Return of the Toe!
No PTSD here. Nope.
Seriously, have any of these kids had any therapy after that night?
Dorothy has, but she might be hiding things from her doctor. I don’t know about anyone else; Joyce might have, but I’m not certain.
She has been stated to be hiding things from her therapist, yes. But it’s also been mentioned that mental health services (or at the very least therapists) in the immediate area are… not optimal.
Walky once off accidentally implied he had but simultaneously denied it, while meeting booster.
Wow this is actually terrifying. Poor Dottie 😞 Go hug your friends, girl!!
OK, I’m having a little trouble locating all the characters tagged here.
Little help?
amazi-girl:
Panel 2, right behind Walky.
dorothy:
Panels 1, 2, 3, and 6
joyce:
Panels 1, 3, 4, and 5
mike:
Panel 2, rear left, 11-o’clock from Dorothy
walky:
Panel 2, left, 10-o’clock from Dorothy
ross:
Panels 3, 4, and 5
joe: ??
danny: ??
I see three to four people behind Dorothy and to her right in Panel 2 (about midnight to two-o’clock from her) but I have no idea who they are.
Mystery 1-o’clock person looks somehow stoned (or maybe just sleepy and frazzled) and appears to be hitchhiking or giving a thumbs-up.
Ideas?
Danny is right, next to Dorothy in the second panel. He just missing his hat.
By process of deduction that means Joe is being obscured by the speech bubble in the top-right corner.
Thanks, NG!
OK, so, per above, mystery one-o’clock person is apparently Joyce.
Mystery two-o’clock person is… Danny?
Mystery midnight person is… Joe?
And that dark cylinder behind Amazi-girl’s head is… the hammer?
her cape. They’re all falling. Danny, Walky, Mike, and second-joyce-probably, their hair looks weird because of the falling too.
Ah. Yes, that makes sense. Ta, HueSatLight!
I’m not sure the mystery person is Joyce … this person appears to be wearing glasses, and Joyce didn’t get hers until second semester. I thought for a moment it might be Jennifer/Billie, but she wasn’t one of the kidnapees.
Then I remembered that we had multiple Joyces in yesterday’s installment of the dream, so why couldn’t this be a second Dorothy, giving “in-control Dorothy” a thumbs-up?
Ooh, good idea!
I wouldn’t have picked it out, but someone else mentioned it and then it was clear. It’s post-laundry room Joyce. Same thumbs-up and you can see her ponytail behind her.
No, it’s just post laundry Joyce.
Ah, maybe that’s Danny from back when they were dating, that’s why he looks a bit different.
Hmm, very true!
The other two are definitely Joe and Danny though I definitely didn’t recognize Danny with his bangs blowing upwards LOL
Thank you, Doopyboop!
Welcome! <3
Oh yeah she sure did see a whole-ass man get killed huh.
….Which also means if she accepted that road into her Dream School it would have been on the back of, probably, the most* traumatic night of her life. It doesn’t matter if she was cool and collected and worked a plan out. Trauma is Trauma.
*there was also Stabby Face Gets Moreso’d, which I notice she’s rolling in here, but. Given everything.
This is gonna sound bizarre, but I’m still gonna make a game out of this dream, but only the first two frames!!! The good stuff!!!
Because frankly, Dorothy deserves a game. 😔🎮🐴🌈
A game where you run her around campus, where her clubs, her faculty advisors, and her 8+ classes are all waypoints, and the score at the end is out of 100, and there’s art for getting a 100, and its in a screenshot, it’s literally impossible to get a 100, try again.
And when you lose, you get today’s sequence as the bad ending.
Holy shit.
Dorothy’s really going through it.
Good: she needs to. “There’s no way out but through.”
This calls for applause. I’m not disturbed by cartoon gore on its own, but combined with the terror of the nightmare and that *face* made this strip actually really harrowing.
Oh. Oh right. Ross was bludgeoned to death right in front of her. Yeah that’d stick with someone.
Lordy that’s a well drawn nightmare face.
What is happening
Very difficult to reconcile, “you’re very mature, you could be in charge of everyone” that she internalized at 12ish in a safe and supportive environment, with watching an aggravated self-defense and a killing in situations she failed to take charge in.
Or… took charge… in a way she might now regret.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/polite/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/moralentropy/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/terrified/
I mean, she did what had to be done. But she must have felt as though she was a bit more than a bystander to what happened between Blaine and Ross.
Re-reading this, Dorothy crumbling after Raidah’s sniping makes even more sense now. If Dorothy could get someone killed by accident just as student, how much violence could she she be responsible for as president…even if it’s just by accident or collateral damage? And Dorothy’s been living with Becky, all the while blaming herself for her Dad’s death. That has to have been hard.
At one point, we might have thought Dorothy was working hard with Joyce to make sure she’d be alright when Dorothy left for Yale. This has me worrying that Dorothy’s been dealing with darker thoughts concerning death.
So, she’s afraid of what she does when she exherts power.
yes. failed when taking charge (to the degree the abductees were able to), not failed to take charge.
As a good old friend once told me, “Faut pas regarder trop a ce coin la.”
“Best not to look to long in that corner over there.”
*too long
So after this strip I got curious how much exposure Dorothy had to Ross’ dead body and at least on-screen we don’t see her seeing his dead body… but she absolutely saw him getting bludgeoned until he fell to the floor… which might even be worse because as we see in this dream, sometimes our imaginations are worse than reality…
Oh sweetie. This is gonna be rough.
I wonder if this is totally about ToeDad or also about the stabbing Dorothy witnessed with Amazi-Slasher.
The door Joyce is behind is drawn to be very like the door Dorothy was locked behind when witnessing Amber’s act of violence (I think it was Amber?) whereas the Joyce she tries- and fails- to save is wearing the outfit she was at the party when she was drugged.
It’s definitely about trauma over multiple events.
And guilt about those multiple events, too. Joyce would not have been at the party had Dorothy not decided to go, nor would she have had that encounter with Ryan if Dorothy had kept track of her. Ryan wouldn’t have been eviscerated (or whatever) had Dorothy not had her Amazi-Girl articles published where he could read them. She’s obvously also feeling guilty about ToeDad’s death.
So trauma, guilt, and maybe realizing that her ambitions had caused a lot of people a lot of grief since September.
“One – Nothing wrong with me
Two – Nothing wrong with me
Three – Nothing wrong with me
Four – Nothing wrong with me”
…Not too early for a game, right?
Here’s the game:
If anybody reading this and thinking about stuff of their own, would like a warm, supportive hug; a blanket; a friendly puppy or kitteh; some soft music; or a cup of hot cocoa; they can find one in the replies to this comment.
Here’s the Question:
What would you like to bring to a soft, fluffy nest, full of comforting things?
Yarn with knitting/crocheting. Nothing to me is more comforting than knitting with a fluffy ball of yarn, a cuppa coffee near me, and Ella singing.
OOH, lovely lovely!
I can go:
I’ll bring a powerful snow fort. No “bad guys” allowed!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/emiline220/4379451099
And the obligatory helplines, of course:
findahelpline.com
warmline.org
mhanational.org/get-help
samaritans.org
As always, caveat emptor, let the caller beware, call at your own risk, make your own cost-benefit ratio determination, etc.
A Windows XP machine and a whole crate full of classic casual PC games like Peggle Deluxe and Pajama Sam and ClueFinders
A mini-TV and the entire Land Before Time DVD collection
muffins, chocolate milk, cannabis edibles, tea,
dinosaur toys, alien toys
Ooh, sounds like a perfect evening or morning, NG!
I’d wanna be a bat and cuddle up with my fellow bat friends.
No seriously, we rarely get to see it, but these little guys are so fluffy and sweet and supportive of each other.
Plus, imagine getting a hug from a wing wrapping all around you.
Awwŵ… comfort bats!
Lovely bat-love:
https://www.batcon.org/about-bats/
mmmmmmmm….. listen i’m currently reading Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway and i can’t shut up about it.
so, i would bring that book, i mean, i bring it everywhere i go anyway =P
it’s hardly “comforting” or “fluffy” but… it’s so exciting. and i think it works as escapism too, because it gets quite involved and abstract at times. Although, to be fair, even in the most convoluted passages i keep having insights and illuminations. damn that book is good.
…ok it’s not escapist frankly. i’ll take a lesbian YA romance novel ^^
Ooh, wow, cool! I’ll have to check that one out! Thanks, milu! Great idea!
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=H41WUfTU2CMC
It’s on a half price sale right now, anyone wants to try it.
it’s also avb second-hand
not to mention, *whispers* anna’s archive
Great, thanks!
A mug of sweet hot tea.
The treatment for shock. Perfect. Thank you, Mark.
Oops, no, I mean, not literally. Sorry — I meant, the home remedy for emotional shock.
Someone goes into circulatory shock, there’s a different protocol, which starts with calling the paramedics: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/24055-shock-first-aid-treatment
Sorry, Mark: your nest-offering is still perfect. I just misspoke by using the word “shock” and “treatment” with inexactitude. D’oh!
Sorry! I spoke imprecisely.
‘s okay. I’m glad that there are people who remember how to be precise.
Thank you for understanding!
something pleasant smelling. like mulled wine, not even to drink, just the aroma.
Oh, that sounds just perfect right about now.
Yessss….she is certainly a horse…
……..with a cart full of horrible trauma behind her.
Called it.
Sheesh
And then everyone made out!
There goes her trauma being a grist for her mill… and some of ours.
ABSOLUTE CINEMA
Remember when Willis said ‘well nobody is gonna die in this comic, people would be mourning them for years and it would just be a drag’.
And then Mike died and people were all ‘well it’s fine, not that many people liked him’.
And then Ross died and people were all ‘well it’s fine, nobody’s gonna get traumatized over him.’
And now we have a depressed Ethan and a PTSD Dorothy.
Willis wasn’t here to torture their characters, except then they realized that they absolutely were here to torture their characters.
Have you read the Walkyverse? Willis had that revelation a long time ago.
I haven’t but I specifically meant that Willis wasn’t *here*, in the DOA universe, to torture their characters. Except then they were.
Willis said that at like, the start of DOA right?
lots of things happened since then. Willis lost their mom, for instance.
also, the world got scary in novel ways, so maybe trauma and grief seem to grow in relevance as the first massive effects of global warming hit even affluent, temperate areas, as Covid keeps claiming lives, and the liberal democracy, with its failed promise of steady progress, seems on the verge of extinction too…
we’re 13 years older now. Maybe at age 30 you’re thinking “grief is a bummer, no one wants to read about that, i’ll just pretend my characters live forever” but by age 40 you’re having these conversations pretty often and you actually want to explore them in your writing as well?
i’m rereading my own comments, like a dork.
i’m not satisfied with “liberal democracy and its promise of steady progress”.
liberalism made different promises at different times, but i’d say the ones that are the most in crisis at the moment are not so much progress as tolerance and rationality.
All those deaths also occurred right before the time skip. Or rather the time skip was used right after those deaths so that he could jump over the period when the reaction would be overwhelming.
Which would have been years at this comic’s pace.
Wow, Horse really needs some therapy.
I stubbed my toe on the corner of a wall one time and it didn’t look as nasty as that.
Oh my god. I thought he died from a bullet?!!
Dorothy’s dream makes it look like he got stabbed by a lead pipe but actually, Ross was beaten by a metal hammer https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/moment-2/
You might be thinking of Blaine, who got shot in the hospital.
I appreciate the warning at the top.
That’s it.
aww I missed Ross, glad to see him back
There’s one thing you can’t trust the guardians of hell to do, and that’s for Dorothy’s earthling brain sack to turn Ross into PETA’s version of a cake meme.
Aaaaaaaaaaand yup it seems I’ve tuned into Walky’s brainwaves. Perfect. ✌️😎🛰️
Ngl, horny/post laundry Joyce being one of the background faces applying pressure on Dorothy is interesting. Most of the background faces have connection to the kidnapping (not Danny though), and that is a much more recent version of Joyce than the one beneath the door…
Oh thats right, Dorothy thinks shes why Ross is dead.
Why Ross is dead, why Blaine is dead, and likely some twisted reasoning why Mike is also dead. She’s responsible for Ryan getting injured (twice!) and for trying to keep Joe and Joyce apart. She’s toyed with the affections of at least two of the guys there, and one of the gals.
From her POV that panel is populated by people she’s wronged and should feel guilt about wronging. No wonder she’s been doubting her past decisions and ambitions.
That’s from what I figure to be her POV, not mine. Just to be clear.
Mmm. Good twist.
Now that’s a nightmare to… nightmare about. <.<
But the horse isn’t the last panel… so was it actually a dream inside a dream and the horse is still asleep and dreaming it is Dorothy????
The Dumbiverse is just the daydream of an Autistic horse playing with a snow globe.
(It’s a St. Elsewhere reference.)
I really wish that warning had been a lot more noticeable, because this caught me off guard and it’s well done but its also honestly horrifying and upsetting. Because well done but still that is a lot to see right before bed
Yeah, that’s one of the worst executed content warnings I’ve seen. The content is moved down slightly but is still on screen and draws the eye, it just looks like the website hiccupped and loaded the image in the wrong place. I didn’t notice the tiny content warning until after seeing the full strip.
It’s also not formatted great on mobile.
Did Willis edit it? Bc I think being a whole strip sized gap above the comic is pretty good. Then again I read by zooming in on the first panel before I can process the rest so they can be a surprise. So if you’re not zooming in when the page loads up maybe it’s not as effective?
The dead guy was the very first thing I noticed when I loaded the site, since it’s bright red. My phone juggles the strips around a lot anyway, for some reason, so I also figured it was a hiccup for it to be down so low.
Damn good art, though.
Is Joyce like… melting in there?
It’s okay, Ross’s mouth is just full of Daleks.
That would explain why he is so full of shit.
Good ol’ ptsd nightmares! Do any of y’all wake up screaming? The only sounds I make are maybe like, a gasp. Although it has been reported that I yell in my sleep. Mostly just teeth grinding tho
I’ve woken up screaming from a nightmare or five, yeah. And then felt like whatever I saw in the dream was lurking right in my periphery for about 20-100 minutes afterward.
Nah. I just have panic attacks when somebody acts like the psycho fuck face who threatened to wait at the foot of my bed and wait for me to wake up before killing me and who had turned all my friends in that friend group against me
Now comes the awkward part — her scream of “NO!” would have awakened Becky, who will now ask what’s wrong.
“I just had a dream about your dead Dad swallowing Joyce”
Yeah, nothing will go wrong THERE…
Oh, you think she’s going to be honest? Especially when there’s a good chance Becky will say something like, “just realized you got a single question wrong on a pop quiz, huh?”, and Dorothy will go, “yep, you got it, that is totally the only thing that could horrify me that badly; let’s keep the conversation moving.”
Maybe Becky is our best hope. She’s sworn not to miss the signs of depression again.
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Everything is fine.”
😬
PTSD, I know these nightmares well, they get to a point where you can’t fall asleep anymore because your body becomes afraid of sleep, so any time you enter the first stage of sleep you get a surge of adrenaline and your heartbeat is suddenly 180+ BPM
I really love the detail of the two Joyces there. Not only can you still see one behind Dorothy, she’s smiling and giving a thumbs up. This one is also the most recent incarnation with the glasses, whereas the one falling into toedad is missing them.
I feel like Dorothy knows on some level Joyce will be ok and can handle herself, but she just can’t stop seeing the girl who was nearly murdered by the cult she escaped.
Falling!Joyce lost her glasses when she fell off of Horse.
She’s wearing the orange sweater, too. That has some significance…
“Depiction of cartoonish dream gore, but not on anybody you like”?
The Joyce disappearing into Toedead’s mouth looks like she’s getting skeletonized…
Smiling thumbs-up Joyce is post-orgasm laundry room Joyce. That’s the Joyce she successfully helped.
Dude theres not enough of a space, you can still see the gore without scrolling down
If anything, it’s actually easier to see, because instead of being way at the top of my screen, it’s close to the middle, where my eye naturally gravitates.
It’s not easy to anticipate the screen resolution of every visitor, even with a dynamic site template. Many sites use a blur overlay with a clickable warning.
In the past this site has given warnings at the beginning of a storyline. There’s no perfect way to do it.
I don’t care if it’s “not easy,” if he was really concerned about censoring the gore he could have tried harder. Put in a little extra space to ensure it’ll be hidden in any screen resolution.
Or just find a way to get the message across that doesn’t involve an image of someone being impaled through the head.
I never understand these remarks that amount to “shouldn’t have drawn this in the first place”.
It’s kind of unavoidable on mobile, but on my laptop screen the comic is cut off at the top of panel 1 Joyce’s speech bubble.
Yeah, on my laptop last night it worked fine space-wise, but on my phone and desktop, it doesn’t really do anything. The blur overlay would be ideal, if it were possible.
If that’s not possible, I also think it’d help if the text at least had a different color background behind it, to help it be more noticeable immediately.
Yeah, I can tell this might have been a last minute effort on Willis’s behalf, but hey, it shows he cares and I love that 🥲
GodDamn Willis, that is one for the books. And not just one of the comic series either – books on comic art, or on PTSD. Bravo!
Alright, how is the content warning going to be handled for the physical book, though?
Since this strip would be on the second page of the chapter I’d guess it’ll be on the page before the chapter starts either on the chapter name page or a separate one before/after it.
Dorothy may -think- she’s done with Yale, but Yale is not done with her.
… … is Dorothy still thinking about Joyce having sex with Joe, isn’t she?
I think the dazed and happy Joyce behind her in panel 2 is post-laundry.
Yes, she is, but why did she appears here? Behind Dorothy?
Oof, so it’s like, the way Ross got hit in the head with a hammer along with the way that Ryan got hit with the knife, those dreams are all just combining together.
Go to her, Dotty. Go to your woman.
It was the horse’s dream all along, I knew it! Also man that is a messed-up dream, and I kinda missed the content warning holy crap.
Oh fuck that is just cool. I want a print of those two panels
Seriously, this sequence just looks fantastic.
bloody fantastic, you might say! tom tom kick crash cymbal
haha i’m almost sad that ridiculous subthread got composted (“therapy sux” was the inciting piece of clownassery, followed by a pile-up of more-or-less eloquent stfu’s. if you’re wondering)
i did just catch your last comment @yumi though ^^
but what a silly hill to die on seriously. just say “yeah yeah ur right, i was just venting” and move on 🙄
I’m sympathetic to those who have had bad experiences with therapy. I’ve had some myself, and it sucks to turn to someone for help only to feel like they then go, “Well, what if we made things worse?” But I’ve also had really good experiences with therapy that have helped me a lot in various ways and are probably why I’m still alive.
Basically, I just object to such broad statements on therapy, and I recognize that stigma around it still exists (even if that stigma’s not big in my social groups, I interact with enough other people to know that there’s still a lot of negative associations with it). People are often reluctant to try therapy, sometimes from the belief that it flat out “won’t work” (heard this several times when I volunteered on crisis lines). And I could go on a whole tangent about the societal need to create further supports, but I don’t think we get there by maligning the ones there are.
Okay, now I wish EVEN MORE that Dotty’s subconscious had instead had all the Joyces make out with each other, like I was hoping for (but not actually expecting) yesterday.
Woke up from a nightmare last night, decided to read DoA at 2am to calm down, ended up staying awake another hour. Channeled my inner Dotty, 10/10 experience, thanks Willis.
Jesus that’s brutal
I did not process the mustache at first, and so the black hair made me think of Ethan and I was like “Whoa, what?! Since when do we not like Ethan? He does not deserve this at all!”
So I refrained from commenting last night because my laptop was glitching the fuck out, but _jesus fuck._
This is what I get for wanting to see Mike again via dream sequence. Interesting that Dorothy seems to see herself as responsible for Mike’s and Ross’s deaths.
Dorothy is responsible for EVERYTHING.
It’s a relatively common brain-glitch for highly competent people. ‘I can do so much, and I see balls get dropped by other people, so I will pick that ball up and now it is my responsibility, i will not drop this ball, i must not drop this ball.’
So uh
Dorothy
You should get that PTSD checked
“But they don’t let people like that be Pres–”
Dorothy you know as well as I do the only way to get that approval is to be a Christian Everyman™.
As knee-jerky as it makes you, the oh so consecrated Electoral College is unfortunately a part of systematic bigotry.
She’s
mostlyvery sure she can overcome that if she just works hard enough and wants it bad enough.she be framin her desires too tightly
The presidency is a red herring, at her core she needs to realize that, as well as her innermost desire to help as many people as she can
The hoops ya gotta jump through for presidency are for moderates who wanna REFORM systematic bigotry. Real activism is for those who are actually trying to END it, and clearly what Dorothy would more be into.
Now I am imagining Dorothy’s story ending in Dorothy snapping and taking out multiple government officials and getting away with it
this was a really surprisingly intense and effective depiction of violence
And the ads continue to be weird. Now they’re trying to sell me vending machines and giant inflatable football helmets.
oh no look at Joe right at the back of the Grecian chorus of people she’s let down