213

A vested interest
Posted on April 24, 2025 by David M Willis

213 thoughts on “A vested interest”

  1. Li

    B’aww, Dorothy.

    1. Li

      Congrats on the eight-month-buffer, Willis-of-the-past!

      I will personally resist the urge to request a tier for “redraw all the best strips from the last 15 years”, but seriously every one we DO get to see is a privilege. Look at those faces.

      1. Steamweed

        Huh. Coulda sweared Willis was at a full year buffer…

        1. Yumi

          They are now! (or even a little over) That means they kicked it up from the time when today’s strip was created.

        2. Steamweed

          Ahh, I see now. Got multiple timelines going!

        3. Li

          And in all of them, more and more previously presumed-straight-and-cis characters are coming out. /nods sagely

        4. Steamweed

          The list gets shorter. The polycule’s bonds grow more numerous. The fullerene-esque structure emerges toward clarity.

        5. Poppakat

          They really need to have likes for comments. Cause that was awesome.

        6. Steamweed

          Thankyouthankyou. My comments are FOSS (free open source sagacity). Please spread around for your own purposes as needed.

        7. Qube

          man this time shit’ll fry your brain like an egg

        8. Clif

          Okay, I assumed the alt text referred to the original strip that this strip references.

        9. Steamweed

          Ya knows, that’s not a bad interpretation. I’d believe it.

        10. the Solemn Bard

          He is (see the buffer watch on the left side of the page). But 8 months ago when he drew this one he was at 8 months.

        11. Steamweed

          And now he’s at 12 months. Willis at 24 months by November? 🙂

        12. MacareuxMoine

          Please No. Doubling his workload to creating 3 strips per day would not be healthy.

      2. Laserbeaks Fury

        Here’s the million dollar question: How far ahead will they be when this strip is flashed back to and updated?

      3. uze

        Why don’t we give in to the urge of requesting DOUBLE UPDATES per day? We may even get to see the second year before the heat death of the universe!

        1. Taffy

          Double updates? I think the comments section would need to be disabled, it’d become so unusable.

        2. Leadsynth

          I know Willis has said in the past that he has no intention of continuing DoA into sophomore year. But maybe that could change.

        3. Wereg

          Gotta remember that we’re only a few months into Freshman year with a bit of that being a timeskip. At the current rate, we’d be reading DoA for another thirty years or so before we even get to Summer break.

        4. thejeff

          Well, thanks to the timeskip, we’re more than halfway through the freshman year.
          We covered almost 7 weeks of the first semester before the timeskip and nearly 3 weeks of the second since. We’d really need another timeskip to get to the summer. Or maybe even Spring Break.

  2. NGPZ

    *plays “Puttin’ on the Ritz” by Taco on hacked muzak*

    1. Doctor_Who

      More like Puttin on the Rizz, amirite?

  3. Steamweed

    Dotty, ya gonna dress Joyce for Joe…or for you?

    1. Freezer

      Yes.

    2. Taigan

      I worry that she is dressing Joyce so that Joyce will be thinking about her tonight

      1. Wisdom

        I don’t think it’s that calculated. Dorothy likes this vest because it reminds her of a moment together with Joyce.

  4. Joe Moose

    Now that is cute.

  5. ScienceOfFantasy

    She has found it, the One Sweater

    1. Risky

      The real virgin killer.

  6. Rectilinear Propagation

    Nah, you gotta go with the diamonds if you want her to look seductive!

    1. AK

      I thought it might be entertaining to go looking for the character reference art that had Joyce wearing each of these and while it is not in fact a sweatervest I definitely came to the same conclusion about the grey diamonds hoodie vest being the sexiest vest she has. The really short black one is also really cute but doesn’t really bring the same energy.

  7. Suet

    yeah it was

    conflicted by the passage of time here, Willis

    1. Steamweed

      I appreciate Willis re-drawing those flashback panels to match the current style.

      1. Amós Batista

        I confess I got confused on this flashbacks.

    2. CrazyJ

      On another note we need more Sierra, we haven’t seen her in over three years.

      1. Steamweed

        *nods

  8. jeffepp

    Nothing but the sweater vest… the sexiest sweater vest.

  9. Sirksome

    Which is the sexiest tho?

    1. Nono

      The orange one since it’s bathed in the blood of her enemies.

      1. Yumi

        Blood of one’s enemies is a solid look, but because of the nature of what led to the blood, I wouldn’t call the orange one “sexy.”

      2. Axel

        that was unfortunately a sweater, not a sweatervest, and thus is completely inappropriate for tonight

    2. Yumi

      This one, clearly.

    3. Hacksaw

      Whichever looks best hastily flung on the floor.

  10. DailyBrad

    Heh, I remember this strip. I guess that gives this one the edge, the association.

    1. peng

      u were first commenter on the original strip… do u think its awesome yet

      1. peng

        wait no u werent -_-

        1. Longshot97

          BETRAYAL MOST FOUL

        2. Steamweed

          No comment here from mkvenner. The circle is broken. 🙁

  11. darkoneko

    Don’t make Walky sad, you.

    1. Puppeteer Nessus

      He did call it

    2. Steamweed

      Dotty can haz a boyfren _and_ grrlfren. And eat them too. Walky is supportive!

      1. Sirksome

        Literally eat them. This is how we learn Dorothy is into vore.

  12. RassilonTDavros

    At first I thought the redrawn flashback here might have been “cheating” Dorothy’s expression slightly but nope, it really did look like she was staring at Joyce’s chest in the original scene too. Not sure if that was what 2011-Willis was goin’ for but it sure as hell is what they actually drew.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Also lol, eight month buffer. What is that, a buffer for ants?

    2. Li

      All we know so far is that Willis knew Dorothy was bi before the timeskip. 🙂 That’s a lotta free real estate for speculation!

    3. Envy

      I mean, she’s staring at Joyce’s sweatervest that is *on* her chest, so kinda, yeah

    4. 3oranges

      …Ok, but where else would she be looking? It’s not like the sweater vest goes up to Joyce’s face.

    5. Reltzik

      It made sense because her focus was on the matching sweater vest. Obviously nothing else at all she was staring at. Obviously nothing.

    6. Regina phalange

      Sure, but I’m not sure how else Dorothy would be drawn to be looking at Joyce’s sweater vest? She literally has to be looking at either Joyce’s chest or her stomach to see what she’s wearing, and the way Joyce is drawn, her chest is going to get in the way even if Dorothy’s instinct would be to look at her stomach. Like, I don’t think there is a way to draw Dorothy looking at Joyce’s outfit without it looking like she’s looking at her chest. But I guess I’ll eat my words tomorrow if Dorothy starts daydreaming about Joyce’s chest or something.

    7. Taffy

      Erm ackshually, did you know that clothes are worn on the human body??? Making a small, harmless remark about something looking a certain way cannot go uncorrected and must be treated with the utmost literality.

      1. Nymph

        Thank you, Taffy. For a second I worried this remark would go un-remarked-upon and then what would we have done with our collective spare five minutes?

        1. Taffy

          I guess we could try drinking water and touching grass. Those are fun.

      2. 3oranges

        Oh great, an opinion about which comments are worthwhile, that’s always worth hearing.

        1. Taffy

          Oof ouch the sass

    8. Imogen

      Honestly, I read it as her noticing how matching vests exposed their chest size difference? Maybe that’s just me.

      1. eh, whatever

        That’s just you – for understandable reasons!

    9. Thag Simmons

      Joyce is the one who got the revised pose-expression instead!

    10. Marisa Mockery

      Wait did I miss something? Is Willis nonbinary? Seeing a lot of theys here, I thought Willis was he/him? Gotta get my pronouns right lol

      1. Yumi

        Willis uses he/they pronouns. Has for a while now. You’re not wrong if you refer to them as him.

  13. Deanatay

    Dorothy lets Nostalgia decide!

    1. Taffy

      She remembers it so we don’t have to.

  14. Sapphic Endgame

    oh. oh no. its time to have violent emotions about her without her even being in the room. oh this is going to hurt so good

    1. Steamweed

      But what _is_ the sapphic endgame here? _Is_ there a sapphic endgame?
      *grabs popcorn
      **doesn’t like popcorn
      ***grabs popcorn nonetheless

      1. mindbleach

        Need something to throw when this all goes to hell.

        1. Steamweed

          Yes! I like how you think!
          *grabs popcorn with sharp, spiky candy covering

        2. clif

          Do they make that and why?

        3. Taffy

          It’s called caramel corn and I assume it’s made for people who legitimately hate themselves.

  15. True Survivor

    I like how Joyce’s closet has all of her Head Alien and Monkey Master plushies. That is a fun detail.

  16. Pocky

    wear that again, and Carla is going to have an even harder time picking you two apart.

  17. BBCC

    Do we have a winner?

  18. Morhek

    “It is what I would choose, therefore it is clearly the best.”

  19. HueSatLight

    The bag of stuffed animals!

    1. Hacksaw

      That’s some top tier continuity.

    2. RassilonTDavros

      Dang, well-spotted.

  20. Taffy

    For those who have trouble remembering things from two days ago, I wanna point out that Joyce explicitly asked Dorothy to do this, in no uncertain terms. You can hit the “Previous” button no more than twice and see it.

    1. HueSatLight

      I hope she tries on all Joyce’s clothes. It would remind me of my old roommates.

      1. Yumi

        I hope she puts on everything Joyce owns at once, like Joey in that one episode of Friends, only she’ll be doing it for no reason.

        1. Taffy

          “Joyce, I’ve decided that the sexiest sweater vest you could wear tonight is the one I’ve excluded from my own body.”
          “But you’re wearing all of them. None are excluded.”
          “Yes.?”

      2. GholaHalleck

        SO I NOTICED THAT DISTINCTIVE BI FLAG SWEATER VEST THAT FOR SOME REASON MATCHES THE ONE FROM THE FLASHBACK.

        NOT THAT I’M DRAWING ATTENTION TO THAT, OR THAT THEY ARE SIMILAR BUILDS SO DOTTIE COULD WEAR THE BISEXUAL SWEATER VEST AT A LATER TIME TO COME OUT TO JOYCE WHILE NOT TRYING TO RAIL HER BEFORE JOYCE’S DATE WITH JOE.

    2. Li

      I read this comment and I hope you’ve managed to ward off that horrible future you predicted, full of wild accusations.

      1. Taffy

        6 hours from now, we’re gonna see “Dorothy is about to put Joyce’s clothes on and steal her identity” or something in that tri-county area.

        1. Thag Simmons

          Carla at least probably wouldn’t notice

    3. Doopyboop

      I can’t believe Dorothy, in her unhinged attempts to become Joyce’s true dommy mommy, is now invading her closet and has christened herself to be the one deciding what Joyce wears on her date. Dorothy is the Devil!

      1. Li

        Prayer circle for no more “Dorothy is LITERALLY Joyce’s mom, so if you think they’d be cute together, you’re gross” comments.

        1. Doopyboop

          Oh I will absolutely join that prayer circle. Please Willis, no more “of these two 18 year olds, one is slightly less sheltered than the other and therefore she is a motherly figure, making her attraction to Joyce problematic” comments.

        2. Li

          I have been wondering whether “Dorothy is actually ALSO autistic, obviously” would make anyone’s heads explode, because it REALLY increased in volume and frequency after the strip basically confirmed Joyce was.

        3. Doopyboop

          oh it would absolutely make heads explode

        4. Nymph

          I missed those comments and THANK GOODNESS for that. I don’t join prayer circles anymore but I’ll set up snacks on the side table for ya’ll.

        5. Li

          Oh let me be very clear I’m at most agnostic, this is a nonreligious “pleeeeeaaaase I’m so tired” circle haha, but snacks are always appreciated.

          It started with “mom friend” and then it just got. more and more literal, and weirder and weirder. It wasn’t enough for some folks to just say “they have a power imbalance [citation needed], so it’s wrong”; they had to escalate all the way into “Joyce sees Dorothy as a MOM [citation extremely needed], so it’s extra wrong”.

        6. Li

          “Power imbalance” claims are especially funny these days because at least here and here, if not in fact all the way back when Joyce said “I can make Dorothy angry? […] I feel bad, but also like I’ve been given immense power”, it’s been really obvious to me that… if we’ve gotta pick a “dom” and a “sub” here, Joyce is the one who runs this show, l m a o .

        7. Taffy

          Great, now I’m thinking about Dorothy and Joyce, all cards on the table, no relevant information unknown, All-Access Pass granted by their boyfriends for a one-night show, having a fully consensual hands-on sex ed tutorial with a focus on safe domme/sub dynamics.

        8. Li

          You’re welcome. 🙂

        9. Taffy

          That whole shitshow was especially offensive to me, because Dorothy’s not even 20 yet. She’s still barely even half too young for MILF energy (you need to be at least 40, sorry). Motherfuckers wanna skip steps, it’s genuinely fucked up how impatient they are.

        10. Li

          Right?

          She, like the rest of the freshman cast, is younger than Dina (19). She’s not old enough to be anyone’s mom. She’s a Mom Friend, sure, but that just means she makes sure everybody’s, like, hydrated on day trips. It doesn’t mean she’s actually in any sort of position of power.

        11. Li

          I guess I shouldn’t say “the rest of the freshman cast”. It’s at least all the girls who were present for the reveal of Dina’s age, though, because that was part of the point.

          And now we know Dina had to repeat a grade. 🙁 So it’s not just a matter of birthday timing.

        12. Doopyboop

          Dina repeating a grade reminds me that I was almost held back during kindergarten. For me, I was an only child who didn’t have much contact with other kids prior to kindergarten. All my cousins were like 5 states away, and there were like 3 kids in my neighborhood that I knew and played with. So going from that to a classroom of over twenty other kids was a huge change of pace. I was very quiet and didn’t raise my hand to answer questions.

          That lead to my teacher assuming I didn’t know the material. She had a meeting with my parents and suggested holding me back a year, which stunned my parents. They sat with me during homework and were able to see I was understanding the material. My mom suggested that I was quiet because I didn’t want to say the wrong thing (which was true!) so she suggested the teacher call on me randomly instead. It worked, and I was never at risk for being held back again, but it’s a shame Dina didn’t have that chance.

        13. Li

          🙁

          Teachers need to be better at their jobs, among many other things.

        14. Taffy

          Watch out, she’s got a fanny pack
          With sunscreen and granola bars
          She’ll help to UV-shield your back
          And play nice music in your car

        15. Li

          Haha ?

    4. Steamweed

      Click a button? Twice?? So much work!!!

  21. IntangibleMatter

    Re: Title text:

    The buffer is insane, it’s 368 days now.

  22. HMRC4EVR

    Hitting an 8 month buffer??

    Hope it didn’t hurt!

    1. Taffy

      Do you think it’s August right now?

      1. Nymph

        For whatever reason, this gave me strong Scrubs “Where do you think we are right now?” vibes.

        1. Taffy

          One day, I’ll watch an episode of Scrubs on a TV that’s already playing it. One of the characters will say one of the things that gets noticed here as a Scrubs quote and I’ll get the joke.

  23. Opus the Poet

    Can’t deny, that peach colored number is the best in the closet.

  24. Ty34er

    Should have brought back the yellow dress

    1. AeromechanicalAce

      Especially with the effect it had on Joe the first time.

    2. eh, whatever

      Isn’t it simply too cold for that right now?

      1. Nymph

        Rookie talk, if you wear skirts in the cold often enough your legs grow a transparent shell that keeps you warm.

    3. Li

      Well, she’d have to wear a sweater vest OVER it, because she’s committed now to a sexy sweatervest.

  25. Warmth

    Not sure if this pushes things towards the positive or the negative/awkward outcome…

    1. Steamweed

      Yes

  26. Icalasari

    I really need to pop some popcorn

  27. Throwatron

    OH GOSH WHATEVER HAPPENS THIS IS PAINFULLY ADORABLE AND I AM HERE FOR IT

  28. Segnosaur

    Ok, weird question… What exactly is Dorothy doing in panel 1. She has her hand up against the door. But is she closing it? If a, it’s a rather awkward way to push a door shut.

    1. Sharizard

      Clearly after Joyce left the room Dorothy took a minute to pursue her passion for flamenco dancing, as she always does whenever she is in a room by herself.

      1. Segnosaur

        I thought she might be re-creating the Tom Mason scenes from Plan 9 from Outer Space.

        (In that movie, one of the stars, Bela Lugosi, died in the middle of production. They completed his scenes with a stand in (Tom Mason), but Mason didn’t really look like Legosi. So every scene he was in he had his face covered with a cape.)

    2. Steamweed

      She’s caressing the legally-mandatory fire escape diagram. It’s a pinnacle of efficient communication regarding disaster preparation. She’s one of six people on-campus who have actually ever read the thing.

      1. morleuca

        People don’t read those?

        1. Taffy

          Not only do people not read that kind of sign, they’ll often act as if you’re doing something strange and potentially dangerous if they see you reading one.

        2. morleuca

          but I always read them. What if there’s an emergency?

        3. Taffy

          I guess the expectation is that you’ll join them in their violent panic, clog up the one door everyone is heading for, and die in the fire? That’s all I can figure.

        4. Steamweed

          Don’t let neurotyps see you reading those. They might put you on the registry. :O

        5. Taffy

          They’re so afraid of knowledge and forethought. It’d be cute if it didn’t become violent so quickly.

        6. Steamweed

          Those last 7 words are what worries me.

        7. Taffy

          Yeah, it’s like actually frightening to be “caught” knowing things sometimes. You can see the light leave their beady little neurotypical eyes, the smile STOPS and their entire face just sorta hangs loose. They reflexively move their hand to protect their vital organs (watch it move to their chest or stomach, I’m dead serious about this) and they start looking around for escape routes and/or backup, preferably someone with a walkie-talkie or weapon. If you’re not very careful, they will get the cops on your ass, with a warning that you’re to be treated as someone armed and dangerous.

          This is all lived experience, for the record. Sometimes I’ll have somebody question how my autistic ass can read that body language so well and so quickly, when I have so much trouble with it under most circumstances. It’s because I’ve had to explain why I knew basic things under a microscope or risk physical harm. I’ve made up entire family members from other towns on the fly, just to keep somebody from freaking the fuck out because I knew how to get someplace, after they asked me for directions.

          Maybe things are different in more populated areas, but Little Egypt is no fuckin’ joke for a curious person.

        8. Nadamás

          That is absolutely deranged behavior.

        9. Taffy

          On which end? I assume the neurotypicals’ end.

      2. HueSatLight

        It has Joyce’s room as 4th from the end. Even if there’s zero rooms in the variable length between Sal’s room and Dina’s, Joyce’s room would be 5th from the end, because of the singles by the stairs.
        It’s a fraudulent fire escape map. This strip is probably foreshadowing a major plotline involving a fire department investigator, in the upcoming chapter “Ashes to Asher”

    3. Yumi

      It is odd, and now I keep looking at it. Like, if she was standing further over and her hand was closer to the edge of the door, that’d seem normal. But upper center is a weird place to close a door from. Maybe it’s meant to be awkward ’cause girl’s feeling hella awkward right now.

      1. HueSatLight

        The wood’s grain is slightly raised, but smoothed. The diagram is glossy paper, to prevent fading. It’s all cool to the touch, but marginally dusty. Sometimes a person has a kind of headiness where their hands just feel more, and they let them.

        1. Yumi

          I do like anything that could support reading Dorothy as autistic. (This would be similar to something I might do, in a very autistic way.)

    4. Taffy

      She’s getting ready to Duel.

      1. NGPZ

        Is that Dorothy with a Duel Disk??? Damn nice!!! ^^

      2. Sharizard

        I want you to know i appreciate you taking the time to make that gravatar.

  29. Matrix

    This will not end well lol

  30. Dorjojoe

    oh damn man oh heck oh darn oh dang man it’s on now baby

  31. Kyulen

    I really hope Dorothy doesn’t think that is sexiest sweatervest Joyce has. Still not convinced sweatervests are sexy, at least not the way Joyce usually wears them.

    1. Taffy

      Right, but Joe is the target for convincing, so his in-story opinion is the one we should focus on.

    2. HueSatLight

      What’s important is that Joyce feels it’s her sexiest sweater vest, for confidence reasons. And Dorothy’s opinion will influence what Joyce thinks. Unless she says the blue/gray one, meh.

  32. Yak

    Alright, I’m calling it. Nothing bad is going to happen and the only train getting wrecked tonight is Joyce.

    1. Nadamás

      Her caboose gonna get off the rail.

    2. mindbleach

      If Dorothy successfully does nothing, she’ll still be a Gordian knot of conflicting motives. An emotional wreck.

      1. yak

        I don’t think she’ll do nothing, but I think it’ll turn out ok.

  33. Thing2

    It doesn’t matter two titties what Joyce wears, Joe gunna take it off anyway, hanky panky.

    1. Nadamás

      Boooo

    2. Steamweed

      I must disagree! Two titties matter _very_ much. For exhibit A, I present Joe’s imminent reaction.

    3. Tesset

      I think Joyce has been on E long enough that she doesn’t have the kinda titties you can take off anymore

      1. yak

        Does… does *anybody* have titties you can take off?

        1. Yumi

          Yes. Since Tesset mentioned E, I’m assuming they’re referring to the silicone (or similar) breast forms that people might use, specifically trans women/trans femme people. (Not sure if Tesset meant Jocelyne, which would make since, or was meant to say Joyce here in a joking way.)

        2. yak

          Oh I was thinking of the actual lumps of fat that lie above the pectoral muscles.

        3. Yumi

          You can take those off too, but then you can’t put them back on. The same ones, anyway. (/j)

  34. OlMonsterFace

    Then she got an idea!

    A SEXY idea!

    The Dot got a WONDERFUL, SEXY IDEA!!!

  35. AGV/Ruby

    I think that Dorothy is going on a trip down memory lane, so she’ll either just help Joyce and tell her that she has to confess her something the next day or she’ll want to confess to Joyce now to rip out the bandaid ASAP. Mostly because she wants to do right by her and because she’s expecting to be thoroughly rejected.

    1. Jeff K!

      This very much feels like the beginning of a “clip show episode” where Dorothy remembers Joyce being adorable and kind and supportive and sexy – one scene for every single one of these sweater vests.

  36. Rabisch

    It’s hard to understand if Dorothy is just remembering something pleasant or found what she thinks it’s the right clothe for the occasion.

    1. Arianod

      I guess we’ll find out tomorrow!

      1. Taffy

        What does this mean,? Are you insinuating there may be another comic after this one, and the current comic may not be the final one?

        1. HueSatLight

          It will just be Dorothy and her memories, because she’s wearing all the sweaters so she alone survives the heat death of the universe.

  37. Martin Smith

    Oh god, alt-text Willis is still in August 2024. There’s so many horrors he’s yet to encounter. If only we could save him.

    1. Nymph

      I remember August 2024, when I confidently told my friends there was no way we’d vote that man in again when the alternative was such a great option.

      Good times…

      1. Steamweed

        Yeah…

      2. morleuca

        I was hoping this would be the case while also starting to stockpile estrogen

      3. Vulcanodon

        I am not convinced we did vote that man in again

        1. Taffy

          I sure didn’t, but unfortunately not enough people on my side actually voted. My name night group chat is still full of idle despair, but maybe three of us actually voted at all.

        2. Steamweed

          Approx 77 million voted the rump. So approx 31% of all registered voters voted the rump. Approx 69% (nice) did _not_ vote the rump.

        3. thejeff

          Unfortunately, a slightly larger number also didn’t vote for Harris.

          It was certainly close and it certainly wasn’t the mandate he claims, but it was a pretty clear victory.

        4. RassilonTDavros

          The part of me that has lingering faith in humanity wants to believe that the people of our country didn’t actually vote him in.

          The part of me that recognizes how utterly incompetent he and his goons actually are, however, thinks they weren’t capable of pulling this kind of mass vote tampering off.

        5. thejeff

          That’s an important point that doesn’t get mentioned often when this comes up.

          Obviously the long running GOP vote suppression operations were in play, but if vote counts were hacked in this election, it was by far a smoother operation than anything else Trump has ever touched. (Or Musk, for that matter.)

        6. Icalasari

          Yeah, if it was a hack, there had to be Russian interference with them learning from past attempts. Musk would have let it slip several times by now as he loves to brag

        7. Li

          I mean, he and Trump have both literally said things at rallies. Trump said Musk “knows those vote counting machines” and that that’s what won them PA. Trump told people not to bother voting because “we have the votes” before the election. If they did it, they have in fact let it slip several times.

        8. Li

          Like I’m not saying they did do anything. We don’t have any proof of that.

          But I am saying they’ve VERY much been talking exactly as if they did, in fact, do something.

        9. Steamweed

          Too much attention to safely get away with imperfect voting tampering. Better to get into massive sociological engineering. Fire up the angry under-educated and under-employed males (focus on whites, of course); fatigue down most everyone else. This election had both Dem and Gop parties see fewer voters than 8 years ago. Just that Dems had more decrease than Gops did. 🙁

        10. elebenty

          We didn’t. The biggest lie they told was that people stayed home.
          Before the elections states were purging voter rolls. Plus some states allow individuals to mass challenge voter registrations. TX company “True the Vote” sent targeted lists to conservative groups. One of mtg’s staff had 32k Georgians kicked off the rolls, another guy had 4k Ft Benning soldiers removed. In WI it was Black men in Milwaukee and students in Madison. In IN students and women were targeted.
          After the election, North Carolina’s bs.

          But even with that, they still wouldn’t have won. There are irregularities in some ballot tabulation machines across several states. Groups like Election Truth Alliance (Nathan Taylor is their spokesperson) have been documenting the differences. For example, in NV’s Clark County there were only irregularities in the early voting, not in mail-in or day-of results. PA doesn’t have early voting. Their mail-in was still fine, but their day-of shows the same irregularities:

          Russian tails (instead of each candidate’s votes having a normal bell distribution, chunks under the curve of one candidate mirror chunks added above the curve of the other),

          Drop-off (compared to the down-ballot votes, the presidential candidates perform the same, better, or worse — in affected machines the gop candidate never did worse), and

          Vote Share (arrange most election results by precinct size and the vote share varies, but stays relatively parallel to the opponent — in the irregular results, the GOP vote share migrates toward a 60% win, even though it starts out on the bottom).

          If it isn’t addressed, the more we vote, the more they win.
          Tabulation machines are what that orange guy was calling “Vote-counting computers” when he claimed his tech guy knew all about them. Jan 19, 2025 “winning Pennsylvania like, in like, a landslide.”

          There’s a reason no one believed he won.
          They can’t win without cheating.

        11. Dorjojoe

          This is getting into conspiracy theory territory, man.

          Occam’s Razor would say wartime fear and economic hardship led a lot of otherwise normal people into the arms of a right-wing demagogue who plays up false promises and stokes hatred amongst neighbors, as has frequently happened throughout history. And what little Left exists in this country either stayed home or voted third party for equally obvious reasons.

          Humans act rashly when frightened. We lost. Not that complicated.

        12. Taffy

          Can you explain this again, but without the colander on your head?

        13. HueSatLight

          Blueanon. Ya, the GOP does voter suppression. That’s not why the Democrats lost.

          The Democratic candidates didn’t offer an alternative, just GOP lite. Forever chasing the “persuadable centrist” further and further right. Great, they’re the party of Liz Cheney, anti-immigrant and anti-refugee, pro-crypto, rolling over to the christian nationalist judicial movement, promising to follow all the anti-trans laws the conservatives pass, but won’t follow the Leahy law against funding and arming crimes against humanity. When there’s a protest calling for police accountability, and reigning in their bloated budgets, followed by a nationwide police riot, their solution is to give the cops more money. We’ve already seen their climate solutions, and it includes more drilling and letting corporations do pretend offsets and lining the pockets of Elon Musk.

          A sham primary four years after implying Biden only intended to serve four years as a caretaker. Saying out of one side of their face they were protecting democracy from fascism, but still talking how they think bipartisanship is the ultimate virtue.

          The so-called project 2025 has been around 40-50 years. If Harris had won, it would just be project 2027 instead. The democratic party lost because it is ideologically bankrupt, it’s selling point is a half-true “we’re not the other team”.

          We lost 5 years ago when Joe Biden was nominated.

        14. Yumi

          It makes sense to be suspicious– this is the group that spent years talking about how the last election had been stolen, going, “Look at all these ways results could be manipulated! Foreign governments have the ability to tamper with our system!” So yeah, when they go on to win, it might be eyebrow raising. And I think it was fair to want it looked into shortly after the election– but I really think if there was something there, it would have come out. Competence isn’t a strong suit here; getting their supporters not to care about things like competence and morals is.

      4. Wereg

        I was entirely convinced that there was no way we’d get a second term, and for the first time in YEARS I wasn’t super worried about politics.

        Being wrong hurt so bad.

    2. yak

      If you looked at polling it was pretty obvious that the election was going to be a toss-up, even back in August.

      1. Li

        I will continue to have difficulty actually trusting polls as meaning anything, as long as they continue to conduct polls by cold-calling people and sending out sketchy looking links in text messages.

        1. Yumi

          Yeah, after 2016, I’m probably never trusting a poll again.

        2. yak

          Pollsters have to at least try to reduce bias in their sample. Any means of doing that it going to have to involve cold approaching in some sense, because when you let people sign up to take part in a poll, you open yourself up to more self-selection.

          The best way would be to set up polling stations in several uniformly distributed locations and physically soliciting people, but that’s usually cost-prohibitive, and it might introduce more bias than it reduces.

          They’re always going to be samples and therefore the best you can get is confidence intervals. For instance, in the 2016 presidential election, fivethirtyeight gave Trump a 29% chance of winning. That’s more likely than flipping a fair coin twice and getting tails twice, something that, sure, is kind of unlikely, but if it happened you would not distrust the fairness of the coin.

        3. Li

          I don’t think they’re introducing bias on purpose. I also don’t have a lot of alternative suggestions. I just think millennials, alpha, and Z are all extremely unlikely to respond to the polls we’ve got.

          Also, god, don’t mention fivethirtyeight around me, I will start ranting about what a useless idiot Nate Silver is lol.

        4. Li

          So. Not “distrusting the coin”, whatever that would mean in this scenario.

          Just fully discarding the value of anyone currently trying to tell me how likely a heads or a tails is, because their methodology is critically flawed.

        5. yak

          My point is that an event happening which was predicted to be unlikely is not enough to substantiate a claim of flawed methodology.

          Also, this prompted me to look in to it more, and it seems that because phone survey response rates are so low across all age groups, a lot of pollsters have moved towards companies like Ipsos or Pew research that maintain survey panels, meaning huge pools of people that were randomly sent invites in the mail and agreed to be selected as survey participants. Pew has an interesting article comparing this method with what they call ‘benchmark’ surveys (large federal surveys) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/09/21/does-public-opinion-polling-about-issues-still-work/

        6. thejeff

          Election polling is a lot harder then general opinion polling, because the biggest key to it and the hardest to predict is the “likely voter” screen. You can’t just go off people’s opinions of the candidates because some groups don’t vote as reliably and if one candidate isn’t as popular overall but is stronger with groups that are more likely to vote, you’ll be off.
          But which groups vote in each election changes, so weighting that is as much an art as a science.

    3. Martin Smith

      I don’t know why you’re all assuming I meant Trump, I was talking about Birmingham City winning the league.

  38. ValdVin

    The Sprites are there. Does this show every sweater vest we’ve seen Joyce in?

    1. HueSatLight

      It’s missing the one she was wearing when Joe asked her out the first time. And the one she just took off. I haven’t thought of any others to check.

  39. Van Jealous

    It’s The “Mirror Scene” in The Marx Bros.’s “Duck Soup”!

    1. Needfuldoer

      That time Lucille Ball did the mirror bit with Harpo was incredible.

  40. PrincessofRavens

    Ahh, sweet memories.

  41. Plaaaaaa

    This sweater will look great crumpled on the floor!

  42. PokeyPuppy

    The panic over one’s identity possibly being different and having to FIGURE IT OUT is so real. I thought I was done with that once I became an adult, but then round two happened in my 30s, and DANG IT WAS THE SAME ANNOYING INTERNAL PANIC ALL OVER AGAIN.

  43. Victor Riley

    At this rate, with your constantly-growing buffer, the day you retire, no one is going to know it for 2 1/2 years…

  44. MissKellie

    Deciding to update the redraws has got to be one of my favourite things. Great little game of spot the differences each time.

    On a separate note, I wonder if we’re ever gonna get unreliable narrator flashbacks/memories. I love a good lie.

    1. mindbleach

      If anything, we’ve had flashbacks check people on their bullshit. Jennifer got called out as if narrated by Ron Howard.

      1. Schpoonman

        “I’m a great judge of character,” immediately being flashbacked was some of the hardest I’d laughed in months.

  45. Tessea

    Awwwwwww

    I wonder if Dorothy will ever be able to say something. It’s not like she’s going to actively try to sabotage Joyce and Joe.

    1. Rotunda

      Keeping quiet about her attraction is one of the choices available for Dorothy to make, keeping Joyce’s interests in mind as well as her own.

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