What’s more, the girl on the poster could be either Carole’s daughter or a picture of Carole herself at a younger age. (The point being that the girl looks like Joyce with Carole’s nose.)
I am going to state without any irony that this is where Willis makes this a sci-fi comic again and the woman in question is, in fact, a time-traveling Joyce back from the future where she married Dorothy and has come here to stop herself from being embarrassed by the idea of heterosexual sex before marriage.
The biggest problem with this theory is that mystery woman has dot eyes, as opposed to Joyce’s signature giant blue eyeballs. I’d say she could be wearing contact lenses to disguise herself, but I’m pretty sure no amount of hypothetical future character development would ever get Joyce to wear contacts, so…
Seconded. I noticed this as well; time travel is the only logical theory. The time travel programto-be will be funded by President Dorothy and researched by Scientist Becky.
Unless she’s had plastic surgery to get a new chin, definitely not time traveling Joyce.
But pharmacist’s wife has got to look like an older version of Dorothy. I’m predicting her chin will look like the earlier Walkyverse strips with Dorothy (i.e. the pointier chin before the design change).
She can’t be future Joyce, that woman’s chin and nose are different shapes than Joyce’s. Unless Joyce has something happen to her in the future that causes her chin and nose to change shape.
On the right track, C.T. Phipps, but I think you need to take it a step further – this is Joyce and Joe’s daughter come back from the future after their inevitable divorce to set Joyce up to accept Dorothy as her true soulmate and, eventually, her wife and full life partner.
Also here to point out that because of floating webcomic time, Joyce is now ten years younger than me despite starting college before me and I now have feelings about that.
Not quite. I remember that (been following this strip since it began) and I’m not a 90s kid. I’m a relic from the decade of disco!
…which is why I still get a bit weirded out by things like my autocorrect deciding that when I typed ‘disco’, I really meant ‘discovery’. The age of discovery was long before even I was born…
Mary was apparently my age, once. She bears a distinct resemblance to my sister, who has also become legitimately enraged at her coincidental resemblance to Charlotte from Penny and Aggie. My sister is an atheist. (She finds Joyce’s navigation of her new lack of faith both interesting and amusing.)
Ours is a simple tale I young peasant her a woman of Noble birth caught up in whirlwind romance though it threatens the alliance, as she was fated to marry a foreign princess we persevere as we prepare for the invetiable war between the kingdom and the empire…
Pro tip from the family designated prescription picker upper: start a note in your phone using the notepad app. Carefully put everybody’s names in, in JUST THAT FORMAT – last, first, birthdate.
Alternatively, print it out and laminate it. Point to names as necessary.
This saves SO MUCH TIME in spelling and respelling and suddenly going “Oh, wait, no, that’s my birthday” or “Wrong kid, sorry, try this birthday instead”.
She seems to be describing Walky and Dorothy’s relationship, and she definitely doesn’t think Walky was in Dorothy’s league.
But she did just say she was a mess last strip, so it could be both.
Idk, I think, even discounting the hyper-religious upbringing instilling an incredible self-repulsion in her, Joyce’s self esteem is in absolute shambles, so it very much tracks that she doesn’t consider herself worthy of Dorothy. To your point though, I suspect nobody short of Jesus himself is in Dorothy’s league but he doesn’t exist anymore so Dorothy is doomed to presidential spinsterhood, I fear
Per the punchline last panel (are you sure [you’d be lucky to date me]? I’m a friggin’ mess!) yeah agreed, while I do think she’s describing Dorothy and Walky here, she does also think genuinely think Dorothy would be way out of her league. She idolizes her, and she is currently grappling with just a shitton of insecurities about her self-identity, her worth as a person, and her place in a universe that she no longer believes contains a loving God.
On kind of a side note, I do not love the constant refrain in the comments about how Joyce is so annoying that she doesn’t deserve her friends because like, fucking, if you wouldn’t want to be friends with this fictional character, okay, fine, but the sentiment that people struggling with their mental health don’t deserve help from the people in their life is…corrosive. People you love going through a health crisis deserve support even if they’re annoying about aspects of that health crisis, actually!
Yeah, im not loving that either. its made even cringier by the fact that while everyone else is presumably fictional, Joyce is fairly autobiographical (it says so in the “read before posting” rubric, so i think its fair to expect commenters to know that).
Like, be critical of the story all you want but maybe abstain from straight up insulting the author AND all of his loved ones?
It’s balanced out by the also constant refrain that her friends are awful to Joyce.
I think a lot of it is the time scale. From our point of view we get weeks of Joyce freaking out about getting birth control (or whichever crisis). Or weeks of them nagging her about it. That would get old really fast, but from their point of view it’s a couple of days, most of which aren’t spent focused on it.
I mean, I guess if you’re framing this in terms of “which characters are THE WORST” yeah there’s probably an equal amount of bitching, but that’s really not what I’m talking about. My feelings about whether, say, Sarah is taking a constructive approach to helping her frustrating and sometimes childishly stubborn roommate work through her issues (I certainly have thoughts, one of which is “ouch, she does have to live with this up close”) are entirely separate from my feelings about real people expressing some hellaciously ugly and ableist sentiments about who does or doesn’t deserve compassion and support during a crisis or even just generally during times of challenge and personal growth. Yeah yeah they’re all fictional characters and nothing we say or think about them can hurt them, but fiction is a means of communication and so is talking about fiction. I have been on both sides of “person struggling with health issues/mental health issues being a real pain in the ass about it” and I am very aware that the line of thought that goes “being sick/being the damaged person that I am is so awful no one wants to be around me/I’m only a burden on others/I don’t deserve to be helped” actively fucks you up SO MUCH WORSE. I’m not super jazzed to see so many people pretty much coming down on the side of “if a sick person can’t get better on their own, they’re weak” or “if you’re difficult or cranky or recalcitrant during your illness, fuck you, you don’t deserve to have people helping you”. These are shitty messages to be putting out into the world, and I do not think they are benign.
Well now I’m picturing Joyce as Jenny and Dorothy as Madame Vastra (which actually makes sense, aren’t all politicians basically lizard people?) and I’m ok with it.
I love Joyce, but she really needs to learn, like, anything about the secular world if she’s going to learn so hard into her edgelord atheism.
It’s cute that she thinks Dorothy is on this unobtainable level for her, just since, yeah, Dorothy’s cute and has a lot of attractive qualities, but Joyce has had Joe, Jacob, Walky (begrudgingly), etc, acknowledge she can be a real knockout. Joyce needs to give herself some credit.
She does, but I’m more talking about the over-arching hangup about birth control pills and that it will make people think she’s a hussy, etc. Like, she’s no longer a fundie Christian, but her misconceptions brought on by that upbringing still lingers powerfully with her.
I’m just assuming Willis came up with an alternate alt-text joke they liked better at the last minute. As for the Nicole thing, that was stated to be her middle name a few times back in the original continuity.
At a flea market, a woman was selling articles of women’s clothing. When asked about sizes and such, she said “oh no, I don’t know, it’s my wife’s stuff”. That gave me HOPE.
After she finally gets her Prescription she turns around to see her Father, Gay Brother, and Dorthy’s Parents, who become either confused or say Congratulates, saying they knew they were gay all along and are super happy for them. Joyce, being both super afraid of being caught in a Lie in public and by her family, decides to Double Down on the Lie and it gets super awkward, but because Dorthy loves Joyce as a friend and doesn’t want to humiliate Joyce, decides to just nod her head and go with it, planing to fake a break up later. But because Joyce’s awkward relationship with Lying and not wanting to sound Homophobic in ANY WAY, just keeps the lie going until she eventually finds out (or accepts) that she is Bisexual, Pan, or Dorthysexual, and actually falls in Love. Secretly Dorthy also falls in love with her but thinks Joyce is just continuing this to keep up the Lie. Eventually it all comes out and they live a happily ever after with each other in a SUPER GAY relationship as President and First Lady, demolishing the Power the Church has over the Government. Joyce, in a Panic over her past beliefs, almost tries to convince Dorthy to make Gay Marriage MANDATORY, but Dorthy talks her out of that thought. Eventually after Dorthy finishes her 8 years in office (because of course she would win both elections in a row), they spend the rest of their years with Joyce Publishing her story/Fanfiction, and Dorthy using her Money to Fund another 10 Seasons of her Favorite Cartoon, where she still invites Walky over to do Watch Parties every time a new Episode comes out.
Oh, upon looking it up, I misunderstood something. The character im talking about I guess is actually Jocelyne, but they are still Presenting as Male the last time we saw her around her family.
Only one correction on this. Joyce doesn’t have a gay brother we’ve seen (who knows what Jordan is?) but a trans sister named Jocelyne. Just important not to misgender the trans character.
She uses she/her pronouns, not they/them. I know it can feel inconsequential, and I’m assuming good faith, but a lot of people who don’t fully see trans women as women like to use “they/them” as a smokescreen.
I have never heard of it as a Smokescreen, more so it being a pronoun that works for every person, as it doesn’t denote gender in most uses of it. My trans-fem friend I play D&D with uses it to talk about their female character all the time, and me not being Trans myself (just a Asexual/Panromantic guy), I base my language of the topic on what I have learned from them and the Trans youtubers I watch.
Point being, I am fully accepting of all members of whatever gender they identify as, and will never purposefully misgender or deadname, however I am not omnipotent and will probably make mistakes, like the one I made a few minutes ago.
I’m gonna sound harsh here because I want to lay this out pretty crisply and I’m sleepy, but just a quick disclaimer that I’m not mad or trying to attack you, I just want to get this info out there:
Some trans women don’t mind “they/them”, and some do–especially when it’s used when “she/her” is readily available. Choosing to use “they/them” in place of “she/her” is still misgendering.
Additionally, “the gender they identify as” is… I don’t know how to say this nicely. It’s a bad phrase and I wish it would die in cis parlance. I don’t identify as a woman, I am a woman. Do you see how the two phrasings imply different things about that gender identity?
I’m not trying to jump on you, I’m genuinely just trying to do some good here and share some information. If I’m being unkind in conveying it, I apologize.
I apologize for using a phrase that is not correct, as I said I will probably make many mistakes, as im not perfect. I’m honestly always trying my best to say the correct thing but words are constantly getting jumbled in my head and I often say the wrong thing on accident, social stuff has never really been my expertise. I am sorry if I have at all offended you in my misunderstanding on a situation.
i’d assume she was walking up to the counter/coming back from a lunch break or so b/c we didn’t reallly see anyone waiting at the counter/cashier area to begin with?
Oh yeah I updated this btw. https://imgur.com/a/MRolX25 (NSFW)
I’m not posting them as I finish them btw. More like I’m always staying 3 or so pages behind. I still need to think about how I’m gonna typeset it and junk.
I talk a lot about shipping these two, but I want to be clear here and now: Barring major changes in how Dorothy’s and Joyce’s dynamic works, I don’t really ship-ship them. I starboard-ship them. I want Joyce’s heart to break and Dina’s and Becky’s relationship to be thrust into Joyce-Jealousy-Related-Turmoil because I love awful beautiful sapphic drama. 🙂
So am I the only one who noticed that Joyce’s description of her fictional relationship with Dorothy is basically her view of Dorothy and Walky’s relationship?
Just me? Ok.
Joyce and Walky are and have always been similar Their personalities are just tweaked enough in this universe that they only find the other very annoying, though, tolerating each other’s presence for Dorothy’s sake.
Okay, hot take time: I think it’s possible that Joyce’s pedestal-placing of Dorothy, her sense that she’s “not good enough”, has been probably in some small part encouraged by Dorothy’s unhealthy “I will put aside everything, even friend time, for the sake of the #grindset” habits? Like, it being made clear that Dorothy’s priority will always be her presidential dreams? Joyce truly believes in Dorothy, she believes Dorothy will make it, and by the same token she has come to believe that she isn’t more important to Dorothy than Dorothy’s impending greatness.
This isn’t me saying “oooh it’s Dorothy’s fault”, just, like, an incomplete analysis of Joyce’s hero worship for Dorothy.
Honestly as a kid growing up I thought middle names were a neat option to choose from if you didn’t like your first one. I thought that was their express purpose because my mum did that. I thought they gave both me and my sister two because they were being generous.
My brother-in-law’s middle name is his father’s first name. All of his brothers share said middle name.
His parents were FURIOUS when he got married and not only chose to hyphenate his last name with my sister’s (she also hyphenated), but dropped his middle name to save space. Like, a performative *audible gasp of horror* at the end of the ceremony when the minister introduced them by their new married names, even though he’d told them ahead of time he was changing his name.
does joyce not have some kinda state id on her? even if she’s not old enough to drink, i’d assume she’d have some paperwork if she was allowed to drive her dad’s car back home
This strip should be under the definition of awkward in the dictionary.
It’s a shame though ! I really thought Joyce was gonna ask Dorothy out or something …
I like to think that in panel 4, when Joyce is stammering, she’s trying to come up with a fake name and birthdate to go along with their story, entirely missing the point of why the pharmacist would need that.
Are we sure it’s not just her being awkward and forgetting all the information in her brain the second somebody asks her a question she wasn’t ready for?
I know we have the sliding timescale, which explains why Joyce’s remark covers the last two numerals of the year … but have we ever been told, as canon, that Joyce’s b’day is in May?
or do you feel that would make it sound all too “casual”. not marriage-adjacent enough.
like, “we’re a match made in heaven, it was love at first sight, well except, ok why would someone so together as her would be with a neurotic mess like me, i know you’re wondering. well i, uh, make her laugh?? (at me????) …why are you not laughing Dorothy”
She’s describing Walky and Dorothy’s relationship, and the beach is where Dorothy realized she found Walky attractive (she said something about him being sculpted from caramel).
I mean, they are..friends… Dorothy knows what Joyce is like, and she likes her anyway. Joyce has many sterling qualities and she’s a kind, generous, and fun friend; Dorothy accepts Joyce’s neuroses and insecurities as part of the package. If she didn’t, they would not have developed a close friendship to begin with.
Yeah, its not like Joyce ever hid her neuroses and hang-ups =)
Also Dorothy is a fixer. I’m sure part of her is gratified to be able to help Joyce, and within bounds that’s not unhealthy. Joyce is clearly working hard on herself to become a more autonomous person, which is pretty much the central theme of DoA.
Joyce’s relentless drive for self-improvement is one of her best qualities, honestly! She is always trying to be a better version of herself, even though (in her mind) she’s recently had all the rules for how to be a good person changed on her.
And I think you nailed it on Dorothy being a fixer. I have a friend like that, and it’s just…a basic personality trait. She gets a lot out of being that ultra-supportive person for her friends, and she’s also pretty good about keeping it in bounds, for her own sake, and other people’s. There’s a place in the world for that.
Really? I don’t feel like this is that big of a deal. I’d totally help one of my friends with something like this if they were like Joyce, perhaps with some gentle ribbing
I know how the last name, first name paradigm works with middle names. Clearly her first name is actually Comma and Joyce is her middle name. So Joyce made at least one good decision in her life and chose to go with her middle name, rather than that bully-magnet first name.
Well isn’t that odd. I can’t seem to make out the year of Joyce’s date of birth. How strange. Its almost as if someone, somehow wants to avoid giving us a firm date for when this is all taking place.
Still looking forwards to all of these kids reaching out to therapy. It’s a little sad to me that Ruth has gotten pills to become happier, but there wasn’t mention to my knowledge of her getting therapy alongside it like there usually would be in situations like her’s that involve suicide attempts. Granted the time skip opens the door to all the characters have gotten at least some kind of therapy during that period. Its possible therapy as a story plot is just hard to capture as a comic compared to using experiences like this series to show the character’s headspace working through their issues on their own.
I could see a funny gag where an alt-universe human head alien is their therapist. I feel like it would be ironic for the villain of It’s Walky to actually be really good at therapy due to his ability to keep track of everyone’s mental state and understand the problems everyone is currently going through;
Actual (good) therapy might lead to these characters becoming healthier, more educated and less stupid ignorant… which would eliminate most of what drives this comic.
As has been said many times before, it’s not called Smarting of Age.
Ruth did have therapy. Jennifer has said she went too. Dorothy sees one semi-regularly to try to keep on top of herself. Walky went, apparently and did not find the school therapists helpful. Sal actively dislikes therapists and would prefer to confide in friends. Joyce probably has some cultural hangups about secular therapists but still considers them authority figures. Sarah’s willing to at least recommend them to people, and Roz has cards for some sort of sexual assault support service which probably includes therapy. Not sure on anyone else.
Therapy is very helpful for some people and not helpful at all or actively harmful for others, like any other fucking medical treatment. There are positives and negatives and things that can go right and things that can go wrong. My best friend probably had her life saved by therapy and is not particularly interested in or in need of medication. My life has been greatly improved by access to psych meds (which is not “getting pills to become happier”) and I’ve only had useless or cartoonishly bad experiences with therapy. This is not a sad thing. This is happy! I identified a thing that helped me and a thing that hurt me and leaned into the former while backing out of the latter! Mental health is complicated and not everyone needs to manage their problems in the same fucking way!
Seconding this. Taylor Tomlinson’s bit on her bipolar medication and the line “They don’t care if you die, so maybe fuck those people,” in regards to anyone who disparages medication or whatever someone does to help themselves get better is going through my mind right now.
Seriously, this comment is extremely gross. When your friends take pain medication for a broken bone, do you give them grief for not “walking it off,” too? Or are you just ableist towards mentally ill people?
It’s now my head canon that Joyce is a time traveler and the pharmacist confirms this by having Joyce’s face just older and they do eventually figure out they like women and marry one
aaaawwweeee how sweet ?
I ship them becoming like her later on.
Artificute? Fabricute?
“so are you getting your drugs or not I’m not paid to do anything else”
Joyce: *locks up at the idea of an actual IRL lesbian marriage*
Oh no now Joyce and Dotty have a lesbimom
This will surely lead to shenanigans
Or it would if lesbimom got their own tag.
It could be their name is a spoiler to be deployed later.
It’s Carole.
What’s more, the girl on the poster could be either Carole’s daughter or a picture of Carole herself at a younger age. (The point being that the girl looks like Joyce with Carole’s nose.)
I must admit, I do like the theory that her name is also Joyce.
Their name is right there on their nametag, it’s ???
Leslie pouts with jealousy just off-camera.
Okay. Lesbigrandmom.
Every. Panel. a Delight.
I am going to state without any irony that this is where Willis makes this a sci-fi comic again and the woman in question is, in fact, a time-traveling Joyce back from the future where she married Dorothy and has come here to stop herself from being embarrassed by the idea of heterosexual sex before marriage.
Tell me I’m wrong!
Now that you mention it, Pharmacy Lady does kind of resemble Carol. In a non-awful way.
No, clearly this is Joyce’s mom from the nega-verse.
Mirror Universe Carol, not to be confused with Kelvin Timeline Carol.
I cannot tell you that, because my first thought was that she looked like an older Joyce. This surely confirms your theory with no room for doubt.
Eh, she doesn’t have the eyes. Does look a lot like Carol though.
Look, crazy stuff happens between Season 1 and Season 20 when you’re fighting Space Vampires.
Contacts exist.
Also my giant sausage fingers accidentally hit “flag” when I went to make this response, my apologies if that actually leads to anything
Unless you’re button mashing the flag like it’s Sonic Unleashed in here, you don’t need to worry about consequences.
You can’t even do that. Once you’ve flagged a comment once the button disappears
Maybe Carol’s cousin?
The biggest problem with this theory is that mystery woman has dot eyes, as opposed to Joyce’s signature giant blue eyeballs. I’d say she could be wearing contact lenses to disguise herself, but I’m pretty sure no amount of hypothetical future character development would ever get Joyce to wear contacts, so…
The Pharmacy Lady’s glasses disguise her actual eye shape and color. Future tech and all that.
the dot eyes represent a character’s inscrutability, so the necessary subterfuge of time travel forces them upon future Joyce
Only Joyce and Dorothy listed in the tags. Time travel confirmed.
Seconded. I noticed this as well; time travel is the only logical theory. The time travel programto-be will be funded by President Dorothy and researched by Scientist Becky.
Also, Joyce has had dot eyes before when they were talking about the space vampire’s rooms. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/forbidden/
Even her dot eyes are bright blue! I never noticed that.
Yeah, Dina will be the one to invent time travel and Joyce will call in a solid to do just that!
Unless she’s had plastic surgery to get a new chin, definitely not time traveling Joyce.
But pharmacist’s wife has got to look like an older version of Dorothy. I’m predicting her chin will look like the earlier Walkyverse strips with Dorothy (i.e. the pointier chin before the design change).
The only character tags are “dorothy” and “joyce”. Confirmed!
Maybe it is a baby made from both Joyce and Dorothy’s DNA from the future come back to the past to encourage her moms.
She can’t be future Joyce, that woman’s chin and nose are different shapes than Joyce’s. Unless Joyce has something happen to her in the future that causes her chin and nose to change shape.
On the right track, C.T. Phipps, but I think you need to take it a step further – this is Joyce and Joe’s daughter come back from the future after their inevitable divorce to set Joyce up to accept Dorothy as her true soulmate and, eventually, her wife and full life partner.
The censored birth year still makes the strip starting in 2010 anachronistic. Crazy slinging timeline.
no anachronisms in Comic Book Time
dumbing of age always takes place in the current year
ah yes
20XX
Can’t see the alt text, is it a Mega Man or Melee reference?
I don’t think either? ?
Nothing but a turn of phrase.
Like at least nobody’s asking these to prove they have gone past first base.
Alt text: “Or some sort of facsimile”.
I can’t read 20XX without my brain immediately going into that song Mega Ran did for Mighty No. 9.
“It’s 20XX! We’re living in the future now!”
That’s not fair, you can’t do this to me. I was was once a peer of Joyce!
https://tenor.com/search/you-cant-do-this-gifs
she started college a year after me; now I’m 31 and she’s still 18.
Hurts just a little bit.
Before DoA started, Walkyverse Joyce was probably older than me. Now I’m 33 and she’s still 18. Willis is making me feel old.
Yeah well in the year 2105 this panel will really have aged poorly!
wait no if its her birthdate itll take until like 2120…
very clever with the censoring of a birthyear. painful that she was born on Hikago Day
The pharmacist looks like Joyce’s great aunt
Its why I believe its FUTURE JOYCE.
Pharmacy Lady isn’t tagged, it just says Joyce and Dorothy. Who knows.
Also here to point out that because of floating webcomic time, Joyce is now ten years younger than me despite starting college before me and I now have feelings about that.
Walkyverse Joyce was born in 1979, since that timeline was pinned to specific dates.
… I know, sliding timescale and all, but it’s hard for me to grasp/accept that Joyce is no longer someone who was born in the 1990s.
Only real 90s kids remember Joyce being a real 90s kid.
Not quite. I remember that (been following this strip since it began) and I’m not a 90s kid. I’m a relic from the decade of disco!
…which is why I still get a bit weirded out by things like my autocorrect deciding that when I typed ‘disco’, I really meant ‘discovery’. The age of discovery was long before even I was born…
Hello, fellow relic!
Age of Disco = Fellow Relic?
You kids get off my lawn.
Could be Star Trek Discovery. In which case you’re a *checks date*… 2017 kid?
Mary was apparently my age, once. She bears a distinct resemblance to my sister, who has also become legitimately enraged at her coincidental resemblance to Charlotte from Penny and Aggie. My sister is an atheist. (She finds Joyce’s navigation of her new lack of faith both interesting and amusing.)
She finds her lack of faith amusing?
… well, that’s good then. No force-choking.
Ours is a simple tale I young peasant her a woman of Noble birth caught up in whirlwind romance though it threatens the alliance, as she was fated to marry a foreign princess we persevere as we prepare for the invetiable war between the kingdom and the empire…
Because of your Gravatar I couldn’t not read this in The Cybernetic Ghost Of Christmas Past From the Future’s voice, complete with echo, voiceover, and (somehow) smoke.
Pro tip from the family designated prescription picker upper: start a note in your phone using the notepad app. Carefully put everybody’s names in, in JUST THAT FORMAT – last, first, birthdate.
Alternatively, print it out and laminate it. Point to names as necessary.
This saves SO MUCH TIME in spelling and respelling and suddenly going “Oh, wait, no, that’s my birthday” or “Wrong kid, sorry, try this birthday instead”.
Can confirm that being able to just show someone something with the name clearly printed on it always makes the person behind the counter happy.
Joyce should stop putting Dorothy on a pedestal. Joyce is totally within her league dating wise.
She seems to be describing Walky and Dorothy’s relationship, and she definitely doesn’t think Walky was in Dorothy’s league.
But she did just say she was a mess last strip, so it could be both.
Idk, I think, even discounting the hyper-religious upbringing instilling an incredible self-repulsion in her, Joyce’s self esteem is in absolute shambles, so it very much tracks that she doesn’t consider herself worthy of Dorothy. To your point though, I suspect nobody short of Jesus himself is in Dorothy’s league but he doesn’t exist anymore so Dorothy is doomed to presidential spinsterhood, I fear
Per the punchline last panel (are you sure [you’d be lucky to date me]? I’m a friggin’ mess!) yeah agreed, while I do think she’s describing Dorothy and Walky here, she does also think genuinely think Dorothy would be way out of her league. She idolizes her, and she is currently grappling with just a shitton of insecurities about her self-identity, her worth as a person, and her place in a universe that she no longer believes contains a loving God.
On kind of a side note, I do not love the constant refrain in the comments about how Joyce is so annoying that she doesn’t deserve her friends because like, fucking, if you wouldn’t want to be friends with this fictional character, okay, fine, but the sentiment that people struggling with their mental health don’t deserve help from the people in their life is…corrosive. People you love going through a health crisis deserve support even if they’re annoying about aspects of that health crisis, actually!
Yeah, im not loving that either. its made even cringier by the fact that while everyone else is presumably fictional, Joyce is fairly autobiographical (it says so in the “read before posting” rubric, so i think its fair to expect commenters to know that).
Like, be critical of the story all you want but maybe abstain from straight up insulting the author AND all of his loved ones?
It’s balanced out by the also constant refrain that her friends are awful to Joyce.
I think a lot of it is the time scale. From our point of view we get weeks of Joyce freaking out about getting birth control (or whichever crisis). Or weeks of them nagging her about it. That would get old really fast, but from their point of view it’s a couple of days, most of which aren’t spent focused on it.
This birth control stuff literally began yesterday for them iirc.
I mean, I guess if you’re framing this in terms of “which characters are THE WORST” yeah there’s probably an equal amount of bitching, but that’s really not what I’m talking about. My feelings about whether, say, Sarah is taking a constructive approach to helping her frustrating and sometimes childishly stubborn roommate work through her issues (I certainly have thoughts, one of which is “ouch, she does have to live with this up close”) are entirely separate from my feelings about real people expressing some hellaciously ugly and ableist sentiments about who does or doesn’t deserve compassion and support during a crisis or even just generally during times of challenge and personal growth. Yeah yeah they’re all fictional characters and nothing we say or think about them can hurt them, but fiction is a means of communication and so is talking about fiction. I have been on both sides of “person struggling with health issues/mental health issues being a real pain in the ass about it” and I am very aware that the line of thought that goes “being sick/being the damaged person that I am is so awful no one wants to be around me/I’m only a burden on others/I don’t deserve to be helped” actively fucks you up SO MUCH WORSE. I’m not super jazzed to see so many people pretty much coming down on the side of “if a sick person can’t get better on their own, they’re weak” or “if you’re difficult or cranky or recalcitrant during your illness, fuck you, you don’t deserve to have people helping you”. These are shitty messages to be putting out into the world, and I do not think they are benign.
I agree completely, it’s not fun for me to read.
This is very cute and I hope that this moment does not suddenly come up again later and cause new drama. That is a reasonable hope, right?
And by “reasonable” I mean wildly misplaced hope.
I like that Joyce went full Victorian street urchin on this one
Well now I’m picturing Joyce as Jenny and Dorothy as Madame Vastra (which actually makes sense, aren’t all politicians basically lizard people?) and I’m ok with it.
Joyce is a Time Lady confirmed
*wonders why nothing is coming out of the speakers*
*opens an access panel*
*pulls out a burned up circuit*
I think I’ll have to order some new parts. Last time I did this it took six weeks.
?
slams a vintage boom box onto the table, and hits play.
(yes I know that’s better for her Sal crush but I already had it in the player)
Still her middle name? Yes? Maybe? Add in Yvette before Nicole, dunno…
Jeepers, there’s three of them! And I am not keen(er) enough to examine Joyce’s body languages! And future!
This woman doesn’t get a name despite looking like the lesbian version of Carol?
So many character models to choose from for the pharmacist, and Willis picks one that looks like Carol?
Hardly a coincidence if you ask me.
To make Joyce as nervous as though her mother is watching her, perhaps
I hope she’s called Carole.
She’s called Joyce. Quite a coincidence.
Joyce Jacqueline Jingleheimer Brown.
Imagine if she turns out to be Joyce’s estranged aunt
whoa Joyce has this fictional relationship all fanficced out already, doesn’t she?
It’s basically Walky and Dorothy’s relationship.
It’s Julian Grey and her president’s relationship.
Is that Carols long lost twin sister of something?
wow, look at her. it’s like joyce is looking into an old mirror
No way Joyce is a Taurus lol
Waiting to see if time skips will get her to graduation before she will have been born after 2100.
Next bonus strip vote: Pharmacist.
I love Joyce, but she really needs to learn, like, anything about the secular world if she’s going to learn so hard into her edgelord atheism.
It’s cute that she thinks Dorothy is on this unobtainable level for her, just since, yeah, Dorothy’s cute and has a lot of attractive qualities, but Joyce has had Joe, Jacob, Walky (begrudgingly), etc, acknowledge she can be a real knockout. Joyce needs to give herself some credit.
idk what that has to do with the secular world. she has body image issues. those exist everywhere, regardless of religion.
She does, but I’m more talking about the over-arching hangup about birth control pills and that it will make people think she’s a hussy, etc. Like, she’s no longer a fundie Christian, but her misconceptions brought on by that upbringing still lingers powerfully with her.
That kind of stuff doesn’t turn on a dime. It often takes years to break that kind of conditioning, if you ever do at all.
Why the sudden change in alt-text? What’s so wrong with Nicole?
Joyce’s middle name being Nicole i mean.
I’m just assuming Willis came up with an alternate alt-text joke they liked better at the last minute. As for the Nicole thing, that was stated to be her middle name a few times back in the original continuity.
What was the OG alt text?
“Don’t step on the momeraths”
Don’t want them to start outgrabing.
That’d be “outgribing”, would it not? “Outgrabe” is the past-tense, I think.
Dunno. I’ll have to ask my outgribologist.
The original alt text was something like “is her middle name even still nicole? who knows”, but that probably isn’t word-for-word
Shame if Joyce was born one day earlier she would be a Star Wars baby.
At a flea market, a woman was selling articles of women’s clothing. When asked about sizes and such, she said “oh no, I don’t know, it’s my wife’s stuff”. That gave me HOPE.
Joyce: I’m poor, she’s rich, but we dance together anyway even though society frowns upon us.
This strip is everything.
so she’s her silly rabbit?
Her right hand arm man?
After she finally gets her Prescription she turns around to see her Father, Gay Brother, and Dorthy’s Parents, who become either confused or say Congratulates, saying they knew they were gay all along and are super happy for them. Joyce, being both super afraid of being caught in a Lie in public and by her family, decides to Double Down on the Lie and it gets super awkward, but because Dorthy loves Joyce as a friend and doesn’t want to humiliate Joyce, decides to just nod her head and go with it, planing to fake a break up later. But because Joyce’s awkward relationship with Lying and not wanting to sound Homophobic in ANY WAY, just keeps the lie going until she eventually finds out (or accepts) that she is Bisexual, Pan, or Dorthysexual, and actually falls in Love. Secretly Dorthy also falls in love with her but thinks Joyce is just continuing this to keep up the Lie. Eventually it all comes out and they live a happily ever after with each other in a SUPER GAY relationship as President and First Lady, demolishing the Power the Church has over the Government. Joyce, in a Panic over her past beliefs, almost tries to convince Dorthy to make Gay Marriage MANDATORY, but Dorthy talks her out of that thought. Eventually after Dorthy finishes her 8 years in office (because of course she would win both elections in a row), they spend the rest of their years with Joyce Publishing her story/Fanfiction, and Dorthy using her Money to Fund another 10 Seasons of her Favorite Cartoon, where she still invites Walky over to do Watch Parties every time a new Episode comes out.
which gay brother would that be
Oh, upon looking it up, I misunderstood something. The character im talking about I guess is actually Jocelyne, but they are still Presenting as Male the last time we saw her around her family.
Only one correction on this. Joyce doesn’t have a gay brother we’ve seen (who knows what Jordan is?) but a trans sister named Jocelyne. Just important not to misgender the trans character.
^
Yeah, I looked it up again after I saw the first reply, its been a while since they appeared so I mixed things up.
She uses she/her pronouns, not they/them. I know it can feel inconsequential, and I’m assuming good faith, but a lot of people who don’t fully see trans women as women like to use “they/them” as a smokescreen.
I have never heard of it as a Smokescreen, more so it being a pronoun that works for every person, as it doesn’t denote gender in most uses of it. My trans-fem friend I play D&D with uses it to talk about their female character all the time, and me not being Trans myself (just a Asexual/Panromantic guy), I base my language of the topic on what I have learned from them and the Trans youtubers I watch.
Point being, I am fully accepting of all members of whatever gender they identify as, and will never purposefully misgender or deadname, however I am not omnipotent and will probably make mistakes, like the one I made a few minutes ago.
I’m gonna sound harsh here because I want to lay this out pretty crisply and I’m sleepy, but just a quick disclaimer that I’m not mad or trying to attack you, I just want to get this info out there:
Some trans women don’t mind “they/them”, and some do–especially when it’s used when “she/her” is readily available. Choosing to use “they/them” in place of “she/her” is still misgendering.
Additionally, “the gender they identify as” is… I don’t know how to say this nicely. It’s a bad phrase and I wish it would die in cis parlance. I don’t identify as a woman, I am a woman. Do you see how the two phrasings imply different things about that gender identity?
I’m not trying to jump on you, I’m genuinely just trying to do some good here and share some information. If I’m being unkind in conveying it, I apologize.
I apologize for using a phrase that is not correct, as I said I will probably make many mistakes, as im not perfect. I’m honestly always trying my best to say the correct thing but words are constantly getting jumbled in my head and I often say the wrong thing on accident, social stuff has never really been my expertise. I am sorry if I have at all offended you in my misunderstanding on a situation.
“They” does not work for every person. A specific person who uses a specific pronoun that is not they should not be referred to that way.
If the pharmacist didn’t look to be at least Joyce’s parents’ age, I’d speculate that she might be Jordan.
okay I know we’re all talking about the year stuff and the ship stuff but what kind of pharmacist steps out from behind the counter
i’d assume she was walking up to the counter/coming back from a lunch break or so b/c we didn’t reallly see anyone waiting at the counter/cashier area to begin with?
That’d make sense, given they don’t appear to be around two strips ago.
Got to stretch the ol’ walking sticks!
Oh yeah I updated this btw.
https://imgur.com/a/MRolX25 (NSFW)
I’m not posting them as I finish them btw. More like I’m always staying 3 or so pages behind. I still need to think about how I’m gonna typeset it and junk.
Totes alright Yoto, this looks amazing! ?
I am eagerly awaiting the polished project.
These are so expressive! I really like trying to infer the dialogue. I don’t normally comment on your comics but they’re always a huge treat!
Ooh, blanks! We can write our own dialogue!
Y’know what. I would love to see what people come up with. I’ll take y’all up on that offer :P.
Impressive!
Typo in last panel of the last strip you lettered, “my” should be “me”.
For “hand me my bra?” I think I wrote that right.
Strip before, I think. “Don’t you dare tell my off …”
Oh no, I did fuck up! It’s ok cuz I’ve always actually hated the wording there. I’m probably gonna change that entire line of dialogue.
I talk a lot about shipping these two, but I want to be clear here and now: Barring major changes in how Dorothy’s and Joyce’s dynamic works, I don’t really ship-ship them. I starboard-ship them. I want Joyce’s heart to break and Dina’s and Becky’s relationship to be thrust into Joyce-Jealousy-Related-Turmoil because I love awful beautiful sapphic drama. 🙂
This, all of this!
The idea that Joyce was into girls all along just not Becky is too good a twist to not happen.
She’s like a sister to me!
[popcorn munching intensifies]
So am I the only one who noticed that Joyce’s description of her fictional relationship with Dorothy is basically her view of Dorothy and Walky’s relationship?
Just me? Ok.
GOOD CATCH JESUS CHRIST
idk what that MEANS but I’m sure it means SOMETHING
Joyce and Walky are and have always been similar Their personalities are just tweaked enough in this universe that they only find the other very annoying, though, tolerating each other’s presence for Dorothy’s sake.
I mean NOW it seems obvious.
(Seriously, good catch!)
Oh dear. Dorothy is a godsend on this trip.
And yay, confirmation her birthday is the same!
Crazy to think these kids used to be born in the 90’s when this comic started.
…the pharmacist looks REALLY familiar for some reason.
Okay, hot take time: I think it’s possible that Joyce’s pedestal-placing of Dorothy, her sense that she’s “not good enough”, has been probably in some small part encouraged by Dorothy’s unhealthy “I will put aside everything, even friend time, for the sake of the #grindset” habits? Like, it being made clear that Dorothy’s priority will always be her presidential dreams? Joyce truly believes in Dorothy, she believes Dorothy will make it, and by the same token she has come to believe that she isn’t more important to Dorothy than Dorothy’s impending greatness.
This isn’t me saying “oooh it’s Dorothy’s fault”, just, like, an incomplete analysis of Joyce’s hero worship for Dorothy.
To be fair, I don’t think we’ve seen anyone Joyce does think is good enough for Dorothy.
It is a tall pedestal indeed that Dorothy has climbed in Joyce’s mind.
I assume that the pharmacist’s wife resembles Dorothy,but with blue eyes.
We don’t talk about the teleporter booth incident.
man sliding timescale when doa started she was a 19xx bby 0.0
In 2010 she was two months older than me. Mind you, I didn’t start reading until 2014, but it was a weird realization concerning the sliding timeline.
When the strip started gay marriage was illegal in Indiana.
Wives!
Tsk Dorothy. Not knowing Joyce’s middle name??
(Does Joyce have one?)
Honestly as a kid growing up I thought middle names were a neat option to choose from if you didn’t like your first one. I thought that was their express purpose because my mum did that. I thought they gave both me and my sister two because they were being generous.
Uh, yes. 😐 Different parents have different things in mind when they give middle names or don’t.
My brother-in-law’s middle name is his father’s first name. All of his brothers share said middle name.
His parents were FURIOUS when he got married and not only chose to hyphenate his last name with my sister’s (she also hyphenated), but dropped his middle name to save space. Like, a performative *audible gasp of horror* at the end of the ceremony when the minister introduced them by their new married names, even though he’d told them ahead of time he was changing his name.
This is a Joyce from a different universe here to guide Joyce to what makes her happy
This is now my headcannon ?
Yessssss, I wanted to say that as soon as she appeared!
My wife is basically in charge of me and it works much better that way.
OK, but why is the pharmacist lady Future Joyce????
We’re going to find out that this has been a slow-burn time travel story all along.
All stories are slow burn time travel stories, though most of them always travel in the same direction…
What characters do you think appear in the comic. Look at the tags.
oh lol
really fulfilling the heterosexual life-partners dream here
does joyce not have some kinda state id on her? even if she’s not old enough to drink, i’d assume she’d have some paperwork if she was allowed to drive her dad’s car back home
Your student ID is sufficient for voting, so it ought to work at the campus pharmacy.
2000 AND???? AND????????
20X6. That’s why she’s always ready for A CHALLENGE!
ah, those were the days….
Look, the haircut is similar, but her chin and nose are completely different.
This strip should be under the definition of awkward in the dictionary.
It’s a shame though ! I really thought Joyce was gonna ask Dorothy out or something …
This has to be one of the most overused jokes and it still made me laugh
comedic beats are templates; it’s all about the execution.
Every panel of today’s strip is wonderful
Old lady pharmacy Joyce knows what’s up
I really hope that meeting this kind pharmacist will be important for Joyce’s future. Especially for her awareness of her feelings for Dorothy.
whew, that pharmacist bought it, then. catastrophe* averted
(*being seen as a hussy by a complete stranger)
Went from “fake hussy” to “fake relationship”. To be fair, Joyce has way more experience playing up the latter.
May as well play to her strengths of lying about relationship stuff.
I like to think that in panel 4, when Joyce is stammering, she’s trying to come up with a fake name and birthdate to go along with their story, entirely missing the point of why the pharmacist would need that.
Are we sure it’s not just her being awkward and forgetting all the information in her brain the second somebody asks her a question she wasn’t ready for?
It’s definitely that, but the other thing is much funnier.
I know we have the sliding timescale, which explains why Joyce’s remark covers the last two numerals of the year … but have we ever been told, as canon, that Joyce’s b’day is in May?
God I love this
Me too :3
also, “we met on the beach” XD
“we live in the same dorm” was plausible, Joyce?
or do you feel that would make it sound all too “casual”. not marriage-adjacent enough.
like, “we’re a match made in heaven, it was love at first sight, well except, ok why would someone so together as her would be with a neurotic mess like me, i know you’re wondering. well i, uh, make her laugh?? (at me????) …why are you not laughing Dorothy”
She’s describing Walky and Dorothy’s relationship, and the beach is where Dorothy realized she found Walky attractive (she said something about him being sculpted from caramel).
Oh right i’d forgotten about that. Makes sense, thanks!
Dorothy has the patience of a saint, I swear to god. Lesser people would’ve left Joyce to her own neuroses and never look back.
I mean, they are..friends… Dorothy knows what Joyce is like, and she likes her anyway. Joyce has many sterling qualities and she’s a kind, generous, and fun friend; Dorothy accepts Joyce’s neuroses and insecurities as part of the package. If she didn’t, they would not have developed a close friendship to begin with.
Yeah, its not like Joyce ever hid her neuroses and hang-ups =)
Also Dorothy is a fixer. I’m sure part of her is gratified to be able to help Joyce, and within bounds that’s not unhealthy. Joyce is clearly working hard on herself to become a more autonomous person, which is pretty much the central theme of DoA.
Joyce’s relentless drive for self-improvement is one of her best qualities, honestly! She is always trying to be a better version of herself, even though (in her mind) she’s recently had all the rules for how to be a good person changed on her.
And I think you nailed it on Dorothy being a fixer. I have a friend like that, and it’s just…a basic personality trait. She gets a lot out of being that ultra-supportive person for her friends, and she’s also pretty good about keeping it in bounds, for her own sake, and other people’s. There’s a place in the world for that.
Really? I don’t feel like this is that big of a deal. I’d totally help one of my friends with something like this if they were like Joyce, perhaps with some gentle ribbing
I know the alt-text denies it, but in my head-canon I find it pretty interesting to me that Joyce was named after The Johannine Comma ^^
I know how the last name, first name paradigm works with middle names. Clearly her first name is actually Comma and Joyce is her middle name. So Joyce made at least one good decision in her life and chose to go with her middle name, rather than that bully-magnet first name.
Well isn’t that odd. I can’t seem to make out the year of Joyce’s date of birth. How strange. Its almost as if someone, somehow wants to avoid giving us a firm date for when this is all taking place.
Nah, probably just overthinking things.
Holy s*** when this comic started I was in college, and nobody there’s birthday started with 20**. Time is a b***
Still looking forwards to all of these kids reaching out to therapy. It’s a little sad to me that Ruth has gotten pills to become happier, but there wasn’t mention to my knowledge of her getting therapy alongside it like there usually would be in situations like her’s that involve suicide attempts. Granted the time skip opens the door to all the characters have gotten at least some kind of therapy during that period. Its possible therapy as a story plot is just hard to capture as a comic compared to using experiences like this series to show the character’s headspace working through their issues on their own.
I could see a funny gag where an alt-universe human head alien is their therapist. I feel like it would be ironic for the villain of It’s Walky to actually be really good at therapy due to his ability to keep track of everyone’s mental state and understand the problems everyone is currently going through;
“All I know is that the therapists here aren’t very good,” according to Walky. [Citation 1]
Also Jennifer canonically “got therapy,” and it improved her outlook on life and emotional stability! [Citation 2]
Actual (good) therapy might lead to these characters becoming healthier, more educated and less
stupidignorant… which would eliminate most of what drives this comic.As has been said many times before, it’s not called Smarting of Age.
Ruth did have therapy. Jennifer has said she went too. Dorothy sees one semi-regularly to try to keep on top of herself. Walky went, apparently and did not find the school therapists helpful. Sal actively dislikes therapists and would prefer to confide in friends. Joyce probably has some cultural hangups about secular therapists but still considers them authority figures. Sarah’s willing to at least recommend them to people, and Roz has cards for some sort of sexual assault support service which probably includes therapy. Not sure on anyone else.
Therapy is very helpful for some people and not helpful at all or actively harmful for others, like any other fucking medical treatment. There are positives and negatives and things that can go right and things that can go wrong. My best friend probably had her life saved by therapy and is not particularly interested in or in need of medication. My life has been greatly improved by access to psych meds (which is not “getting pills to become happier”) and I’ve only had useless or cartoonishly bad experiences with therapy. This is not a sad thing. This is happy! I identified a thing that helped me and a thing that hurt me and leaned into the former while backing out of the latter! Mental health is complicated and not everyone needs to manage their problems in the same fucking way!
Seconding this. Taylor Tomlinson’s bit on her bipolar medication and the line “They don’t care if you die, so maybe fuck those people,” in regards to anyone who disparages medication or whatever someone does to help themselves get better is going through my mind right now.
Seriously, this comment is extremely gross. When your friends take pain medication for a broken bone, do you give them grief for not “walking it off,” too? Or are you just ableist towards mentally ill people?
It’s now my head canon that Joyce is a time traveler and the pharmacist confirms this by having Joyce’s face just older and they do eventually figure out they like women and marry one
Unrelated to the comic itself but I’m loving those anniversary banners.
Oh, that’s cool! I never look at the banners, how long have these been a thing?
She looks a little like them so… daughter from the future coming to make sure the moms stay together? XD
Unless this actively gets contradicted somehow, I’m putting that in my personal canon
See Joyce? Lesbimom has the same haircut as you and thus is a literary shorthand to let you know that you’re at least bicurious
This is really cute.
I’ve been coming back and re-reading this strip all day today because it’s just so dang endearing all the way around.
Man, Willis is going to really regret showing that Joyce was born in this century once his buffer extends to 2153.
Kinda wishing I had thought of that comma thing when my kids were born, might have managed to get the wife to sign off on it.