Becky is great. Though sometimes I wonder why she seems to have an accent and Joyce does not, if they were raised in the same community from a young age. Does Becky have an more southern style-accent? If so it is not to the degree Sal does, so it is hard to tell.
My impression is that Joyce is very careful about her pronunciation, just as Joyce is very careful about everything she does.
Laura
Becky may be affecting a bit more of a “country” (or “relaxed” or “informal”) pronunciation as a semantic signifier of her affected “carefree” persona.
I know my Southern twang comes in, when I’m trying to appear personable and welcoming. As well as intentional colloquialisms, when I’m trying to appear not too stuck up. Not too formal. It helps me to appear more “honest” and “plainspoken”. Not a bad attribute for a professional persuader.
…But that’s just me. I’m a compulsive dialect- and accent-copier. It’s habit. Happens all the time.
V
That’s the impression I got too. That Becky was putting on a shtick. As part of her lovable orphan lesbian ambassador personality. Sort of a survival mechanism.
Dr. T
Yeah, Becky’s definitely laying it on thick. I’m from Southern IN in the rural part and even the hicks don’t sound completely like it appears that Becky does. Having said that, it’s not that uncommon to occasionally play up like Becky does. I still sometimes ask my wife if she wants to watch “one of them movin’ pictures”.
Steamweed
My brother, sister, and I grew up in the same house with the same parents, each of us there for our entire childhoods. I speak with a federated or general American English dialect, my brother has a East Texas dialect, and my sister has a Southern American English dialect. I guess it’s who we chose to be.
Rölli
Just poking in to say I found the combination of “compulsive dialect and accent copier” and the Booster Gravatar funny. Just seems about right to me!
I keep imagining her as having the voice of Sam, that one southern girl Chris thought was a boy initially in an early episode of Family Guy. So like I was imagining her with that accent from like day 1, even before she came out even. So I don’t think I realized that she has one that fluctuated until now.
It can be part of neurodivergence. I’ve always had an odd accent and nobody in the family knows where it came from. In recent years it’s leaned more southern, but I still get the odd rando asking if I’m British from time to time, which I’ve never understood as I’ve never been to the UK. It’s even happened with people from former Commonwealth countries. I absolutely don’t sound British imo, I don’t get it.
Joyce might have something similar going on (albeit not with whatever weirdness people hear in my voice, she might just be over-enunciating her words). Walky and a few other members of the cast seem to have more subdued but similar pronunciations to Becky, so I’m assuming hers sounds more like the accent up there. Idk though, I’ve never been to Indiana.
Wizard
Plenty of Hoosiers, especially in rural areas, do speak with a twangy, vaguely southern-sounding accent. (Indiana basically is a southern state in most senses other than the purely geographic.) Most others speak with a very flat, neutral accent, even if raised and schooled in the same town. A big reason many businesses have located their call centers to the Midwest is that almost any English speaker can understand us.
Daibhid C
Up until I was in my twenties, people kept asking me what part of England I was from and when I moved up here. Apparently, when I was very young, my English accent was so pronnounced that a playschool teacher asked my mother when she moved up here, and she couldn’t have sounded more Invernesian. Apparently, I sound more Invernesian now, but I can’t really tell the difference myself.
At the time, we blamed the BBC, but neurodivergence is probably a factor as well, since my sister watched as much TV as I did, and she sounds perfectly Scottish (although exactly where in Scotland varies; she spent a lot of time in Aberdeen and Glasgow, and picked up elements of the local accents).
Yumi
I get asked where I’m from quite often (actually, this seems to happen less often lately, though it did just come up the other day), with most people who ask assuming England. For me, it’s a speech impediment, but there could be some neurodivergent slant that sort of convergence it into sounding like an accent.
Strain of Thought
I had a friend in high school who had an experience like what you described, people often said he talked like he was British, and his family attributed it to a story they would tell about him getting a terrible ear infection as a very young child and they claimed he started talking funny after he recovered from it. Did you have anything like that, a disruptive event as a small child to your language acquisition?
tbh, I’ve lived in the Bible Belt my whole life and don’t really have the accent at all. like people ask if I’m from the northern US all the time. sometimes accents are weird (and I didn’t realize that it could be neurodivergence, but come to think of it, my also-autistic dad and sibling are also like that)
AlexanderHammil
i can’t speak for indiana, but accents in washington where i grew up frequently ran up against each other in the same community. some of the folks i went to school with had much twangier accents than i did. feel like you get outside of the major cities and you’re a lot more likely to run into a distinct transregional redneck accent
Shadowsnail
In rural Washington (state), no one had a twangy southern accent, but huntin’ and fishin’ roll right off my tongue, and I occasionally catch myself saying something like “I’ve got a meetin’ after lunch.”
And specifically stop asking me about having sex with Dorothy! I already told you I don’t want to talk about all my questions which I don’t have about how that works!
Yup Joyce is gonna fumble her way upwards isn’t she Dorothy can’t stop this nobody can she’s gonna somehow kool-aid man her way through Dorothy’s new second better than the last closet.
Feel it is worth noting that Joyce’s closet she has constructed is more like a cardboard box she found behind a dumpster and it remains to be seen how powerful the rule of comedy is with how long she can get away with this and if everyone figures it out right away and plays along with the bit.
Hmm, I’m curious where Joyce is taking this, and whether it is a good idea or not. Becky is definitely going to find out, and things will be less than great when she does.
So how is this going to play out? Joyce walking in on Dorothy and Walky? Dorothy’s continued denial of her bisexuality?
I’m worried that Becky might relapse into her feelings for Joyce if she finds out she’s bi. She could lose the beautiful relationship she’s worked for with Dina just because the crush she’s had since she before she knew what love is has such a big stranglehold on her.
But maybe Becky will finally consciously acknowledge that she and Dina have something very special that’s better than any dream she used to have about a made-up version of Joyce. (Sorry, I can’t see half the page here, it’s always like this.)
(darn ads, sometimes I’ll see “But maybe Becky” and the entire rest of the screen is covered by an ad and I can’t do anything to change it. Not that you said your issue was specifically ad related)
Clif
Becky is fluent in Joyce and she just heard Joyce talk about not-Dorothy-sex-stuff with not-Dorothy. So if she doesn’t know going forward, it’s semi-willful.
Laura
Maybe try Adblock? I like UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger (from EFF).
Barring that, Mozilla and Brave (Opera too, perhaps?) sometimes have ad blockers and pop-up blockers built in to the browser settings. If you use Chrome, you can disable pop-ups and auto-play and Javascript, in the settings, and that helps considerably.
I honestly think that Becky is going to handle this better. She’s already accepted that she’s not dating Joyce and she has Dina. I’d be more worried if she didn’t have Dina, then she would have a reason to seek out Joyce. Which might happen in the far future (well, I hope it doesn’t).
What is all this tops and bottoms stuff? Having disposed of an unhelpful gender binary, is there now an urge to have an unhelpful sexual behaviour binary?
It’s not an unhelpful sexual behavior; you can be a top, or a bottom, or a switch, or like certain aspects of either one while not liking others. Some people like to have a dom/sub relationship, but being a top, or bottom is not mutually exclusive.
You could have a relationship with one person where you are a bottom, but later have a relationship where you are a top, or go back and forth with it, and that’s perfectly ok.
StClair
You’re making that up! People can only ever be one thing, and one thing only! Also they can’t touch without enthusiastic consent and a safeword.
/s
ZombieKyrik
+1 for excellent sarcasm.
Li
+1
Like all other labels, if they don’t apply to you, they don’t apply, but they’re useful for lots of people. Top/bottom/verse and dom/sub/switch are in fact not just like… made up for porn lol. Plenty of people do in fact have strong preferences for a variety of reasons.
It’s a little annoying when someone goes super ham on bottom=sub=femme in fandom portrayals, sure, but like. That’s almost certainly a new writer who’s gonna grow out of that anyway. Let fourteen-year-olds be cringe.
“Top form” has nothing to do with Becky preferring to have sex/behave sexually as a “bottom”! Juxtaposition! Come on now!
(Also what are you talking about, “urge to have an unhelpful binary”? What is that? Do you look at any mild categorization of two things and go OH LOOK, ANOTHER BINARY? Please touch grass.)
Plain Marie
Well, I liked your wordplay plus joke. The “mauled by raptors” was a nice touch. Gives “polite interrupting cow” vibes.
184 thoughts on “Dinaless”
NGPZ
…Dina-less T^T
Needfuldoer
Only momentarily.
Abel Undercity
And only as far as we can tell. She could appear at any moment.
Steamweed
She could be here already without us seeing her.
NGPZ
Willis said we’re getting 0.5 Dina appearances this storyline ;-;
The 25th
Yeah, because you are here to talk about Dorothy near make out stuff.
bwooom
Nice to see that both ends of this mess are doing poorly!
Anna Grant
It’s like watching a train wreck also, somehow, fall down 12 flights of stairs
Doctor_Who
Onto a pile of banana peels.
Dante
Careening into another trainwreck
Aquila
In an oil refinery.
Steamweed
The oil refinery is connected to a hydrogen fuel cell manufacturing facility.
Casi
Which is inexplicably next to dry cask storage for nuclear waste
NGPZ
Thomas the Tank Unhinged ain’t got nothin on this one >:D
Laura
Ahhhh.
Maze.
Zing.
AMAZING.
That video was a roller coaster ride. I got vertigo!
Thank you for sharing something so fully engrossing!
NGPZ
hahhaha I’m glad! ^-^
Anna
I’m sure there should also be a giant grand piano in there somewhere, falling on top of everything.
Dread Pirate Robin
Oh good, I was worried things might get awkward after last night.
DJTsurugi
no way, these are some stable adults doing stable adult stuff. ~<3
Steamweed
So consistent. So mature. So stable.
DailyBrad
I know people get heated about her sometimes, but Becky got a laugh out of me with the last panel.
True Survivor
Becky is great. Though sometimes I wonder why she seems to have an accent and Joyce does not, if they were raised in the same community from a young age. Does Becky have an more southern style-accent? If so it is not to the degree Sal does, so it is hard to tell.
Laura
My impression is that Joyce is very careful about her pronunciation, just as Joyce is very careful about everything she does.
Laura
Becky may be affecting a bit more of a “country” (or “relaxed” or “informal”) pronunciation as a semantic signifier of her affected “carefree” persona.
I know my Southern twang comes in, when I’m trying to appear personable and welcoming. As well as intentional colloquialisms, when I’m trying to appear not too stuck up. Not too formal. It helps me to appear more “honest” and “plainspoken”. Not a bad attribute for a professional persuader.
…But that’s just me. I’m a compulsive dialect- and accent-copier. It’s habit. Happens all the time.
V
That’s the impression I got too. That Becky was putting on a shtick. As part of her lovable orphan lesbian ambassador personality. Sort of a survival mechanism.
Dr. T
Yeah, Becky’s definitely laying it on thick. I’m from Southern IN in the rural part and even the hicks don’t sound completely like it appears that Becky does. Having said that, it’s not that uncommon to occasionally play up like Becky does. I still sometimes ask my wife if she wants to watch “one of them movin’ pictures”.
Steamweed
My brother, sister, and I grew up in the same house with the same parents, each of us there for our entire childhoods. I speak with a federated or general American English dialect, my brother has a East Texas dialect, and my sister has a Southern American English dialect. I guess it’s who we chose to be.
Rölli
Just poking in to say I found the combination of “compulsive dialect and accent copier” and the Booster Gravatar funny. Just seems about right to me!
Erik
Except Dorothy…
Ninjinister
I keep imagining her as having the voice of Sam, that one southern girl Chris thought was a boy initially in an early episode of Family Guy. So like I was imagining her with that accent from like day 1, even before she came out even. So I don’t think I realized that she has one that fluctuated until now.
Bittersweet
It can be part of neurodivergence. I’ve always had an odd accent and nobody in the family knows where it came from. In recent years it’s leaned more southern, but I still get the odd rando asking if I’m British from time to time, which I’ve never understood as I’ve never been to the UK. It’s even happened with people from former Commonwealth countries. I absolutely don’t sound British imo, I don’t get it.
Joyce might have something similar going on (albeit not with whatever weirdness people hear in my voice, she might just be over-enunciating her words). Walky and a few other members of the cast seem to have more subdued but similar pronunciations to Becky, so I’m assuming hers sounds more like the accent up there. Idk though, I’ve never been to Indiana.
Wizard
Plenty of Hoosiers, especially in rural areas, do speak with a twangy, vaguely southern-sounding accent. (Indiana basically is a southern state in most senses other than the purely geographic.) Most others speak with a very flat, neutral accent, even if raised and schooled in the same town. A big reason many businesses have located their call centers to the Midwest is that almost any English speaker can understand us.
Daibhid C
Up until I was in my twenties, people kept asking me what part of England I was from and when I moved up here. Apparently, when I was very young, my English accent was so pronnounced that a playschool teacher asked my mother when she moved up here, and she couldn’t have sounded more Invernesian. Apparently, I sound more Invernesian now, but I can’t really tell the difference myself.
At the time, we blamed the BBC, but neurodivergence is probably a factor as well, since my sister watched as much TV as I did, and she sounds perfectly Scottish (although exactly where in Scotland varies; she spent a lot of time in Aberdeen and Glasgow, and picked up elements of the local accents).
Yumi
I get asked where I’m from quite often (actually, this seems to happen less often lately, though it did just come up the other day), with most people who ask assuming England. For me, it’s a speech impediment, but there could be some neurodivergent slant that sort of convergence it into sounding like an accent.
Strain of Thought
I had a friend in high school who had an experience like what you described, people often said he talked like he was British, and his family attributed it to a story they would tell about him getting a terrible ear infection as a very young child and they claimed he started talking funny after he recovered from it. Did you have anything like that, a disruptive event as a small child to your language acquisition?
ian livs
tbh, I’ve lived in the Bible Belt my whole life and don’t really have the accent at all. like people ask if I’m from the northern US all the time. sometimes accents are weird (and I didn’t realize that it could be neurodivergence, but come to think of it, my also-autistic dad and sibling are also like that)
AlexanderHammil
i can’t speak for indiana, but accents in washington where i grew up frequently ran up against each other in the same community. some of the folks i went to school with had much twangier accents than i did. feel like you get outside of the major cities and you’re a lot more likely to run into a distinct transregional redneck accent
Shadowsnail
In rural Washington (state), no one had a twangy southern accent, but huntin’ and fishin’ roll right off my tongue, and I occasionally catch myself saying something like “I’ve got a meetin’ after lunch.”
Al
I’m scared to ask what it is that makes folks “heated” about her, I’ve been reading for a while but maybe not long enough lol
Thag Simmons
Becky is A Lot but Becky is Good
Taffy
Stop asking me about Dorothy, already!
Steamweed
And specifically stop asking me about having sex with Dorothy! I already told you I don’t want to talk about all my questions which I don’t have about how that works!
Deanatay
Not that Dorothy is on my mind! Nor am I thinking about rubbing my tongue against her tongue! For example!
TheFungus
Yup Joyce is gonna fumble her way upwards isn’t she Dorothy can’t stop this nobody can she’s gonna somehow kool-aid man her way through Dorothy’s new second better than the last closet.
TheFungus
Feel it is worth noting that Joyce’s closet she has constructed is more like a cardboard box she found behind a dumpster and it remains to be seen how powerful the rule of comedy is with how long she can get away with this and if everyone figures it out right away and plays along with the bit.
ZombieKyrik
Hmm, I’m curious where Joyce is taking this, and whether it is a good idea or not. Becky is definitely going to find out, and things will be less than great when she does.
So how is this going to play out? Joyce walking in on Dorothy and Walky? Dorothy’s continued denial of her bisexuality?
Dread Pirate Robin
I’m worried that Becky might relapse into her feelings for Joyce if she finds out she’s bi. She could lose the beautiful relationship she’s worked for with Dina just because the crush she’s had since she before she knew what love is has such a big stranglehold on her.
Laura
This.
Exactly.
*Facepalm.*
*SMDH*.
V
But maybe Becky will finally consciously acknowledge that she and Dina have something very special that’s better than any dream she used to have about a made-up version of Joyce. (Sorry, I can’t see half the page here, it’s always like this.)
Risky
(darn ads, sometimes I’ll see “But maybe Becky” and the entire rest of the screen is covered by an ad and I can’t do anything to change it. Not that you said your issue was specifically ad related)
Clif
Becky is fluent in Joyce and she just heard Joyce talk about not-Dorothy-sex-stuff with not-Dorothy. So if she doesn’t know going forward, it’s semi-willful.
Laura
Maybe try Adblock? I like UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger (from EFF).
Barring that, Mozilla and Brave (Opera too, perhaps?) sometimes have ad blockers and pop-up blockers built in to the browser settings. If you use Chrome, you can disable pop-ups and auto-play and Javascript, in the settings, and that helps considerably.
Good luck!
AGV/Ruby
I honestly think that Becky is going to handle this better. She’s already accepted that she’s not dating Joyce and she has Dina. I’d be more worried if she didn’t have Dina, then she would have a reason to seek out Joyce. Which might happen in the far future (well, I hope it doesn’t).
Suet
at what point does plausible deniability become implausible deniability
like, sure, you’re talking about not-that
Sajuuk-Khar
Becky is really in top form here!
Which is ironic, given that she’s absolutely a botto—*MAULED BY RAPTORS*
jeffepp
Yeah, but she’s into that.
Thing2
What is all this tops and bottoms stuff? Having disposed of an unhelpful gender binary, is there now an urge to have an unhelpful sexual behaviour binary?
Risky
They are just part of a spectrum, and each is its own separate spectrum. It’s all spectrum.
BYM!
It’s spectrums all the way down…
Disastroid
…to the bottom.
Sajuuk-Khar
HEYOOOOOOO
Steamweed
All a normal part of the ought-istic spectrum. As in, you ought to try all of it to find out what best fits you.
ZombieKyrik
It’s not an unhelpful sexual behavior; you can be a top, or a bottom, or a switch, or like certain aspects of either one while not liking others. Some people like to have a dom/sub relationship, but being a top, or bottom is not mutually exclusive.
You could have a relationship with one person where you are a bottom, but later have a relationship where you are a top, or go back and forth with it, and that’s perfectly ok.
StClair
You’re making that up! People can only ever be one thing, and one thing only! Also they can’t touch
without enthusiastic consent and a safeword./s
ZombieKyrik
+1 for excellent sarcasm.
Li
+1
Like all other labels, if they don’t apply to you, they don’t apply, but they’re useful for lots of people. Top/bottom/verse and dom/sub/switch are in fact not just like… made up for porn lol. Plenty of people do in fact have strong preferences for a variety of reasons.
It’s a little annoying when someone goes super ham on bottom=sub=femme in fandom portrayals, sure, but like. That’s almost certainly a new writer who’s gonna grow out of that anyway. Let fourteen-year-olds be cringe.
Sajuuk-Khar
Y’ALL IT WAS A JOKE WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL
IT WAS A WORDPLAY JOKE D:
“Top form” has nothing to do with Becky preferring to have sex/behave sexually as a “bottom”! Juxtaposition! Come on now!
(Also what are you talking about, “urge to have an unhelpful binary”? What is that? Do you look at any mild categorization of two things and go OH LOOK, ANOTHER BINARY? Please touch grass.)
Plain Marie
Well, I liked your wordplay plus joke. The “mauled by raptors” was a nice touch. Gives “polite interrupting cow” vibes.
jeffepp
That’s right, don’t let on to Becky that you’re thinking about sexy times with a woman whi isn’t her.
Steamweed
I’m pretty sure Beckster already knows about Joyce’s interest in Dotty’s body.
Proxiehunter
The only people who haven’t been aware of it until now were Dorothy and Joyce.
Dedlok