Back when Shortpacked! ended, I had a online store coupon sale thingy going. Input the code SOGGIES into your transaction and you get $10 off any purchase of three or more Book items! Uh, I just discovered that code never expired, so, like, I figured I’d let you folks know that’s still a thing.
Remember, SOGGIES gives you $10 off your order of any three items in the Book category of the online store. The Dumbing of Age book combos are considered one item each, so keep that in mind.
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“huh, I thought I heard someone talking… ah who cares”
*goes home to Other Jacob*
And her smile remains the same…
You mean Sarah made it through the entire conversation with Jacob without horrible awkwardness ensuing?
She’s truly had a breakthrough!
I’m glad you put in the “horrible” qualifier, because there was certainly awkwardness on several levels, but probably not quite rising to “horrible”.
Moderate awkwardness is perfectly natural around Jacob. I’m sure he’s used to that.
“I’m trying to study, but all these women (and a fair few men too, apparently) keep throwing themselves at me and lusting over my Michelangelo-sculpted body. This is rather awkward.”
Michelangelo would have been too busy drooling and staring to sculpt
Pretty sure he’d ask if he could “get a better feeling of just how your body was sculpted, Jacob”.
It would be pretty awkward.
Honestly, was there any artist of the Italian Renaissance that wouldn’t ask Jacob a variant of that question?
If there was, that would be very awkward, I think.
Morton’s calipers?
Well, said artists would certainly refer to Jacob using the N-word. And consider him literally sub-human.
Silly Name: Not necessarily… Or rather, some of them quite possibly would*, but not as many as one might think. Italy (as in, the loose coalition of feudal states that would eventually become Italy) had a fair bit of actual trade going on with both African and Asian countries, and as such, they got cultural influences from those places. Sure, they probably considered themselves superior the way pretty much all societies do, but it might well have been less racist than a fair amount of US states are today.
And the biggest rise of systematic racism came when Africans were started taken as slaves to American. Referring to dark-skinned people as sub-human was a perverted defense mechanism against considering just how damn evil it was to do something like that to fellow humans. And while I’m sure there were Italian merchants and sea captains joining in on this, they were not the driving force behind this by far; that “prize” would go to mainly Spain and Portugal at first; with the English, French and Dutch catching up (and in England’s case surpassing) later on.
And while I have no real evidence one way or the other, I must admit I find it a bit difficult to imagine that f.ex. Leonardo da Vinci —a man with such great respect for life in general, he’d buy caged birds just so he could set them free, and also a strong believer in humanistic— would consider Jacob subhuman.
*Or at least use the contemporary Italian version, since the n-word as we know it started out in the late 18th century; and mainly in English-speaking countries at that.
especially with Leonardo, who might want to do an autopsy
He might have asked Jacob for access to his body after Jacob dies.
That would be finally reach the level of being horribly awkward.
Sorry, Joyce, Sarah’s too busy staring at that fine ass to listen to you right now.
Why does it always have to be about butts with you?
Gee, I don’t know, let me think…
Excuse me for butting in, BUTT – sorry, I meant BUT that time – Sly!Joyce in panel 4…:
a) Cute, or
b) Cuter? ¬.¬
her gaze is a bit high for that. Perhaps she’s staring at his rippling shoulder and arm muscles? Are those sexy things? By the time a guy gets attractive enough for me to notice, I’m too much in the “humina-humina…” state to really puzzle out what I found attractive exactly?
Name a body part. Someone is attracted to it, and there are probably online communities glorifying it.
Shoulder and arm muscles are definitely among those fetishized, but given that Jacob’s gotten some distance I’m disinclined to write off any possibility of bum-ogling. Her stare’s consistence makes me kinda wonder if she’s just zoned out daydreaming about eyefuls she got earlier, though.
considering recent panels, who knows.
But what I was asking was if shoulder and back muscles are -widely- admired. I know that with a sample of over 6 billion, you can find any fetish, but I want to know if it’s up there in the top ten most attractive parts
Since we are talking about Jacob’s ass here, I think that we need to jump past the humdrum adjective “fine” and venture into the realm of Bowie – i.e., “God-given”
Panel 4 has some real good Joyce-face.
Your gravatar also has some real good Joyce-face.
Your -mom- has some real good Joyce face!
Wait, that’s not what we’re doing, is it?
FAAACE!
Stop the Faces!
Needs more nickles.
I’m trying to imagine your gravatar with that face instead…
If anyone has image editing software better than MS Paint, I implore them to composite today’s Joyce face onto that one.
Though I’m pretty sure that one is an edit compositing Roz headgear onto Joyce in the first place…
It was…
…
never thought I’d see her look that crafty
It’s surprisingly badass! She’s come so far!
if only the road were not so rough.
joyce has come over to the dark side. it might have been because of the cookies.
as a connoisseur of baked goods, I can still say that no cookies are worth this shit. Heck, it wouldn’t be worth it even if the dark side had unlimited amounts of sweet potato cheesecake
Looks like an Anti-Joyce face.
Faaaaaaaaaaace
Needs more goatee.
It is a truly glorious Joyceface
Jamiroquai – love fool.
*reprises “Walk, Don’t Run”*
Just think of it in terms of lunch that she owes you! It’s an investment! ^_^
It took us a couple of hours to operate that smile off the patient…
In that case, I shudder to think about how long triangle grin removal would take…
Come to think of it, whatever happened to Dumbing of Triangle?
Don’t worry, it’ll resurface the when you least expect it.
Yea, don’t turn this into some kind of Spanish inquisition.
“Did you just eat seventy-five McNuggets?”
“…hrm.”
“What?”
“It could’ve been an even hundred.”
Exactly 5 nuggets per minute seems reasonable. Trying to eat 6.666….667 nuggets per minute, less so.
It’s not about getting 6 2/3 nuggets in every minute, it’s about maintaining a 25 nuggets per quarter hour speed.
Ooooohhhh. -Now- I see what you did.
Excuse me, did you just Math all over that word problem?
In in front of others? Have you told your family, you know, … that you Math in public?
No Walky. You don’t have to wait 15 minutes to meet Sarah. All you have to do is synch up your hoodie and run away quickly while casually tripping over people and head butting trees.
Nuggets eaten by Reginald, Duke of Thingley don’t count.
That sounds like a wonderful diet plan.
I made you a cookie, but Reginald, Duke of Thingle, ated it *kitty eyes*
I read that, then pictured Becky turning into an orange kitten the way Beast boy did in the cartoon.
Young Becky: “I wish I was a cat. Cats can leave the house whenever they wish.” *eyes window* “Hmmmm, wait a minute…”
You’re never going to let Walky live that down, are you, Bluewind?
Also, are you feeling better today? Do you need hugs, butts, butthugs, hugbutts? Should I stop before I embarrass myself?
(Last question is a trick question. I have no shame whatsoever.)
Seconded.
strange. An emperor should have impeccable manners. Norton the First did
(I’m screwing with you. Hail Discordia!)
Our manners are impeccable! Nobody ever says otherwise… At least not twice.
Unless they manage to say it twice before We throw them into Our acid lava pool filled with laser sharks.
Those poor sharks! Acid lava is both irritating to their skin and melts their food before they can reach it! I would think you would treat your laser sharks better MISTER Norton. For shame!
Look, the acid-lava-resistant fusion cannon orcas were a bit out of my budget, OK? It’s really expensive to build and maintain an Imperial Dungeon as it is.
Then why not replace the acid lava with a less expensive scalding water? The people suffer longer, it’s closer to the natural habitat of laser sharks, it costs less to keep hot, and you can do fun economic stuff you can’t have with acid lava. Some broken glass of various shapes and sizes at the bottom is always a great edition as the sharks scratch their hides with and it will also slice open the feet of people who try to push off the floor of the tank sending the laser sharks into a frenzy.
…
…
…
…
You are now my new favourite commenter.
Does that mean I lose my title? 8-({
You’re using Cute Dora as your avatar, Button. How could I ever strip you out of your title?
[Hides the Sly Joyce avatar he was just working on.]
You could always be like Mongoose and use a rotating roster of avatars.
I mean, I rarely dust off any of my massive selection for fear of seeming indecisive or appearing to mimic Plasma Mongoose, but it’s always an option.
That said, I definitely have to second the recommendation of scalding water in place of acid lava. By all means add some corrosives, but the laser sharks’ ranged capabilities have got to be severely impaired by the reduced translucency of the lava.
you, good sir (and to quote my mother, I use that word in the loosest of meanings), are an entirely unworthy successor to your great ancestor. He would never treat sharks like that. It would just be a pit full of starving cannibalistic disgraced congresspeople
… starving
cannibalistic disgracedcongresspeople …[edited to remove redundancy]
It’s not fun work for the sharks, but I hear they get paid enough they they’ll let it skate. I’ve never heard anyone nurse a grudge or whale about working conditions when they get that kind of hourly ray-te.
The hourly rate is not that great per sea, but the overtime adds up so they really salt it away in their mutual fund that they started with their pooled income.
Those puns are terrible, you people are so naughti-cal.
Of course I will! Doesn’t mean I would ever stop teasing him about it 😉
Glad you stopped short of giving me a headbutt and a butt plug XD
I’m okay. No reason one idiot should ruin my day in perpetuity. 🙂
I did however get my tooth filled today which is sucky in a different way. And of course the dentist had an emergency which stretched me sitting in the chair from about 1 hour to a total of 3.5 hours of waiting/drilling. Missed lunch and was bored as my phone died 1.5 hrs in and I don’t take the gas. And I had already gotten numbed before the emergency to boot! When I got home, Dad had cooked super but had chosen to ignore me telling him I was having dental work done as it was stuff I couldn’t eat (thick chewy food doesn’t work with a sore tooth, numb mouth, and sore jaw).
Yeah, I’m not Scottish, so headbutts are out of the question. And I have a very strict rule to never give anyone butt plugs before a second date. I’m old-fashioned that way.
Ouch. Stupid teeth. Pity we’re not sharks; almost all of them simply regrow teeth for life.
Scottish, Irish, British Isles, and Native American. I’ve been head butting people since I was a toddler. Not even kidding. We are a hard headed lot but never knew it had anything to do with ancestry XD
Stupid teeth is right. God awful expensive mess.
Sure, lots of people all over the world headbutt. But a culture that refers to it as a kiss is probably taking it one step further, you know.
(Just in case anyone actually doesn’t know what I’m talking about: The Glasgow Kiss)
That anti-Joyce smirk tho
Hm? Was that what she did in the Walkyverse for this anti-joyce I periodically hear about?
I think that it’s more that a teasing smirk with mocking quirked eyebrow isn’t entirely in-character for the Joyce we know; it makes long-term readers think of Anti-Joyce.
One of my favorite things about Joyce is that every now and then, just when you’re not expecting it, she brings the sass.
Oh good, it’s not just me seeing that…
smiling sarah is kind of creepy
Seriously tho, I sometimes only have half an hour between lectures. If somebody wasted my time between two of them for 15 minutes, I would also be pissed.
Joyce and Walky have an hour between math and gender studies. This leaves them 45 minutes to eat and get to class.
A non-scary Sarah smile…
debatable
I sort of want to change my name to Emperor Norton I or Emperor Norton III with a similar, but not the same gravatar, haven’t decided which would be better yet.
We are flattered, but We think that the level of confusion would rise to absolutely hilarious levels.
Wait, now We are not so sure this is a bad thing…
Listen to me, smartass, when you’re Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, you’ve got better things to do than go around all day remembering your bloody number!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on-FTnxjxaU
Show of hands. Who wants to see Panel 4 as the reference for a future slipshine panel in a time when Joyce has worked out her intimacy issues?
I don’t visit slipshine (don’t want to make an account/subscription) but I’ll lend all of you my support.
*raises hand as high as possible*
same here. I would love to, but it’s prohibitively expensive. Can I just fund his patreon to get access to his stuff at least?
Per his Slipshine FAQ, no. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/blog/walky-performs-a-sex/
darn. Back to reading lemons again I guess.
“It’s time… to do some laundry.”
do I detect a clothes-swapping fetish piece? :3
Unfortunately, no. It was more a hint to how a slightly unbalanced washing machine (and this is a dorm, so we’re guaranteed to have one of those) will vibrate in manners that, when sat upon, can provide certain stimuli…
I’m all for anything that results in more smug Joyce and/or more RAGE Joyce.
I’d have figured Walky would have perfected his speed eating skills by high school. Lord knows I had to. Long lines coupled with a crap teacher that wouldn’t let us leave for lunch until we were all quiet and sitting down meant we only had like 10-15 to eat our lunch.
With teachers like that, we learned to stealth out when their back was turned.
Or just eat under the desk, because if we’re being held in on account of the jokers inflaming the instructor’s sense of order, then those responsible for our being held in late are also holding enough attention that it’s not difficult to sneak bites and chew them aboveboard.
Unfortunately our class was pretty far from the cafeteria and it was on the second floor. Plus the teacher would stand by the door so we couldn’t sneak out. God we hated her. I don’t even think we learned anything in that world economics class.
It’s a good thing Jacob lifts, because I suspect he was carrying that whole conversation with Sarah.
I figure odds are low, but anyone think Sarah’s thirst is going to cost her another midterm and she’s going to blame Becky?
(Nah, class isn’t /that/ important as long as you can get your fingers to take real notes and not talk about how you wanna rip that hottie’s shirt off and lick him)
….Presumably they weren’t talking in class. They had a few minutes before it began when we saw them talk. As much as Sarah likes him, I find it hard to believe she’d let it distract her from actual class. Especially enough to cost her a midterm.
It was a joke, ye. But tbf I would be more surprised if he didn’t distract her heavily during class. It feels weird that she just turns it off entirely. But probably not enough to cost her anything. You just need to be able to take coherent notes.
Ohhhhh I see. Reading fail. My bad!
Let’s face it, Sarah is in her happy place right now. I’m not sure that she’s even fully consciously aware of the people around her.
I was pretty sure she just agreed with everything Jacob said ye
Oh Joyce, you sly fox.
“These are them!” is some wonderfully inspired Tina Fey-ish dialogue.
That panel four smirk is slightly terrifying, as if Joyce has been briefly been replaced by some sort of villain of the “evil chancellor puppet master” variety.
Spoiler of Walky’s World coming up.
The Walkyverse characters that carried over to DoA are different in most ways, but many of them carry their base characteristics over to DoA.
Joyce was also vulnerable in Walkyverse, and went thru a lot of changes.
At one point she got ‘duplicated’ by the Head Alien. The Duplicator made your clone as your opposite: in Joyce’s case she was good, so her clone was bad…very bad. And very sexy.
The clone pushed Joyce to the point where she ended up shooting her right in the face. Ending her problem permanently.
I think Joyce in all universes is a good person: with a very strong streak of steel in her spine.
She really does the puppeteer role well. The upright and just characters with a self-sacrificing streak and apparent innocence tend to.
Dominic Deegan and Princess Celestia spring to mind.
“It’s Walky”
Jacob, what have you done?! Now The Cheese will attack the university!
Nah. This university is in another universe, and while The Cheese could certainly cross universities, he couldn’t cross universes.
Although there was at least another universe with its own Cheese, so perhaps the Cheese is an universal constant. Maybe some university will conduct a cross-universe study to learn more.
Starting with this strip, I am going to honor my guitar-playing tanuki Gravatar by putting related song lyrics in my comments.
Here’s a bit of Owl City’s “The Bird and the Worm”
You and I left our troubles far behind…
But I still have just one more question on my mind.
For all my pals who live in the oceans and the seeeeas…
With friends like these, well…
Who needs enemies?
I’ve said it before, I’ll probably say it again: Joyce is good people. Either she spontaneously told Sarah ‘we waited for you because we love you’ which is something Sarah needs to hear, unused as she is to having friends, or she noticed Jacob and then called out overenthusiastic proof positive that Sarah DOES TOO have friends who love her in order to help Jacob believe Sarah’s not crazy.
Either way, a kind thing to do even if the second is on the sneaky side. (For the record, I kind of believe both ways are true.)
My personal opinion of Joyce is that despite all the horrible things she’s been taught, she is, at her core, a better person than I am. Far better, sometimes.
Joyce is a better person than a lot of people, but that’s part of what makes her great – in a lot of ways, her stubborn optimism and refusal to give up is an inspiring example.
Here is the actual turning point for Sarah, I think.
Sure, last night (comic book time) she was all “let’s make it better”, but lots of people make proclamations like that and then they don’t follow through. Or they follow through but things don’t really change, and they give up.
Sarah is already receiving the payout for trying to be better, though. Now she can talk to Jacob again. He treats her normally again. They can even talk together without having the subject be about Joyce.
This feeling that Sarah has now is not just a renewed (and huuuuuuge) crush on Jacob, it’s that things are in fact getting better. She is in fact capable of feeling joy now. Sure, she still has some way to go, but now she can see the new path clearly, and that’s the important part.
P.S. Joyce’s “Ooooh, look at my roomie staring at the one I’m shipping her so damn hard with” expression is marvelous, simply marvelous
Oh, hey! That reminds me that I was trying to find the right time to hack that muzak thing to play “Dog Days are Over” for this Sarah-centric storyline!
*Tries to shove a phone with youtube on into a tapedeck.*
Lil’ sis has EARNED that smug smile.
Damn straight.
One of my favorite strips. I love seeing Sarah happy.
I think Joyce (and ‘friends’) did a good thing here.
Since Dorothy is busy, and Becky and Dina are having girlfriends time, it’s possible that today’s lunch group will be Sarah, Joyce, Mike, and Walky. That is, we might have a lunch that consists of the three people that know about Walky’s math/studying issues plus Sarah.
I would be up for a storyline in which Sarah helps Walky figure out his life, just to see an unusual character interaction for a little while.
I have friends, I definitely have friends.
Objectively you can say that I have all the friends.
I’m the best at having friends. Nobody knows how to have friends like me. I have a yuge number of friends.
People come up to me in the street. They do. They come up to me and – this is true -.they tell me ”Sarah, you have so many friends. So amazing”
“Okay, Sarah, you can stop smiling.”
“I’m trying!”
“Wait, what?”
“I forgot how to turn it off! Call an ambulance!”
Be quiet, Walky! Sarah is in her happy place and doesn’t want to be distracted by the noises dribbling from your mouth! 😉
I just loved how Willis drew Joyce’s slyly teasing look in this strip. The cosmetic simplicity of his art style is deceptive sometimes because he really can put very elaborate expressions on his characters’ faces. I suppose that it also reminds us just how quickly and easily Joyce feels able to treat people like they were kin.
The alt-text raises a flag to me, what is the real limit on nugget consumption? Is Walky bound by time, quantity, stomach capacity, or some combination thereof?
Time and quantity. Stomach capacity is high enough that by the time the nuggets would be approaching it, the first ones to have been devoured would have been long digested.
Reconfigure maths as a set of nuggets and I think Walkie would walk it.
It certainly worked on an Emperor, so why not a Duke?
It’s so unusual to see Sarah smile this much that I almost missed that smirk on Joyce’s face.
You know, as much as this is a happy strip, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for Sarah. The realisation that she can have friends and actually needs friends just seems to have been such a huge paradigm shift for her! I doubt that her life will ever be the same ever again!
I spy, with my little eye
A gravatar in panel 4
Walky, you had all morning to eat nuggets. Not like you had class or anything.
At this point my immediate response to 90% of the words out of Walky’s mouth is “Shut up Walky.”
When will book 5 be in the store? Are we on book 6 or 7 now?
Probably in about a month. We are currently in the first storyline of Book 7. Book 6 will be Kickstarted in the spring.
What is this thing happening on Sarah’s face? It’s almost looks like some kind of not-pessimism. That can’t be right.
Oh man, that smirk. It’s nice to remember that sometimes I like Joyce.
Bueller? . . . Bueller?
I think Sarah is stuck, it is going to take more than a slight nudge to reboot her.
Jacob is perfect click
is perfect click
is perfect click
is perfect click
Thunk!
Thank You!
That Anti-Joyce smirk though.
What, no one switched over the hacked muzak to play Sara(h) Smile ??
Dat Joyce Face.
Wicked Joyce makes me feel… strange…?