260

Jerkiest
Posted on October 24, 2021 by David M Willis

260 thoughts on “Jerkiest”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    yeah that’s kinda why I always half-assed any of my past efforts to earn money for my independent creative work, this abnormal fear of taxes and the fear of UNCLE SAM’S FIST should I do them the slightest bit wrong idk

    1. Ana Chronistic

      *trying to imagine Roomies! run in completely random order*

      =|

      1. King Daniel

        https://www.itswalky.com/?random&nocache=1

        1. RassilonTDavros

          First strip: “comic/eyugh/”

          Second strip: “comic/i-dont-have-time-for-this/”

          Third strip: “comic/surprise/”

          Fourth strip: “comic/so-i-was-all-like/”

          Fifth strip: “comic/newshipments/”

          For some reason, all of these were from It’s Walky! proper, not any from Roomies! or Joyce and Walky! Not sure what the odds of that are.

        2. John Campbell

          -snrk.- I just tried this and got:

          DEXTER: It’s true. Instead of merely messing with time, the cannon I created jumbles with the fabric of the universe. The localized overuse has turned the cannon’s results completely random.

      2. Doctor_Who

        First strip: “I’m sad because Ruth died”

        Second strip: “Joe, come back in that window!”

        Third strip: “Aliens?!”

        Fourth strip: “I made a flying scooter!”

        1. A Red Balloon

          1st strip) “Her name is Joyce”

          2nd strip) “Hey, Twerp!”

          3rd strip) “I’m not a monster.”

          4th strip) “Divorce is awesome!”

      3. Endplanets

        Out of order?

        Like the greatest series ever: Clerks! Let’s put the flashback episode BEFORE said flash-backed episodes.
        And the Star Wars Clone Wars CGI cartoon. Let’s develop pathos for this dude. AFTER we killed him.

    2. A Red Balloon

      “Nothing is certain in this life except death and taxes.”

      — Ben Franklin

      1. Felix

        Death, taxes and bathroom breaks. You can try and resist, but it will only lead to a wet pair of trousers. I swear!

        1. Delicious Taffy

          If Jeff Bezos gets its way, bathroom breaks are gonna be illegal soon.

        2. Thag Simmons

          piss in the bottle so i can pretend i went to space

        3. Thag Simmons

          Wait no branson is the one pretending to go to space, bezos technically did go to space.

          My bad

        4. milu

          Amazon recruitment ad campaign idea:
          *picture of Jeff Bezos in space, looking inspired*
          “Do you think I said “please can we stop, I need to go potty?” No. I peed in a bottle. Because here at Amazon, this is what we do. We go all the way. We don’t stop. We all pee in bottles.
          Join the team.”

        5. Needfuldoer

          I’m convinced Blue Origin is only a thing so that rich people can get a ride and say they went to space. Not that Musk is any better, but at least SpaceX is actually performing missions and accomplishing things.

        6. Casi

          Blue Origin going to space is like saying you went to Paris because you had a layover at Charles de Gaulle airport. Like sure, technically Blue Origin has gone to space, but they barely break the karmin line and its just a straight Up and Down flight, i’d be more impressed if Blue Origin could put someone into an orbital trajectory

        7. Pilgrim

          Why not? He’s already figured out how to avoid taxes.

    3. Clif

      Ana, there’s a lot to be said for self publishing in this day and age. Pay taxes on the probably small income and report it as hobby income. Minimizes record keeping and chances of being audited.

      1. Needfuldoer

        I use PayPal, which is tied to its own separate checking account that gets its own statement. That made keeping track of things a lot easier.

      2. Ana Chronistic

        The second problem is actually doing the work to make money
        – promotion
        – marketable merch
        – actually meeting people probably

        1. Ana Chronistic

          I just remembered the other anecdote I was going to share, now that it’s far enough down that no one will see this ?

          I actually applied for a comic position, although it was for drawing for a script rather than whatever we felt like. It apparently was down to me and another person I knew, and while it wasn’t quite Joyce vs. Walky levels of difference, I’m p sure if you replaced “level of world building” with “willingness to draw backgrounds” then the comparison is spot on ?

          but I don’t begrudge “my” Joyce for getting the part, since I learned I really can’t draw to somebody else’s guidelines unless I REALLY want to do it

  2. Agemegos

    Not even close.

  3. Regalli

    Tax paperwork for five dollars a strip.

    Seriously Walky dodged a bullet there.

    1. Diner Kinetic

      I would do it, but I’d also be petty about not having to do it

    2. Delicious Taffy

      With the size of that stack, I estimate a whopping TWO pages of boxes to fill out.

      1. Clif

        Yeah, I’ve never had to fill out more than a few pages. Maybe it just seems like a stack that large.

        1. milu

          Maybe Daisy could see Walky wasn’t quite undeterred and she thought this might be just the thing to see him off.

        2. a/snow/mous/e

          /tag/oversized-comedy-prop/

      2. Deanatay

        Yeah, most of that is reading.

      3. davidbreslin101

        With the UK equivelant, it took me while to learn that there were whole blocks of questions I didn’t have to answer because I don’t own half of Hertfordshire.

  4. Sirksome

    Tax forms?! Where’s the taxable income at 5$ a strip?!

    1. Agemegos

      I did US tax paperwork for some articles I wrote for a gaming magazine. My payments ended up not even covering the fees that it cost to cash in Australia a cheque in US dollars drawn on a parochial US bank.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        Did you bring that up? Like, would it have been possible to get paid once over an extended period and pay the cheque fee once, vs. per check and get nothing?

    2. Delicious Taffy

      The $5, obviously. That’s gonna run her about $29.76 a pop, in this economy.
      (The joke is that the lower your income is, the more you’re punished for having one)

      1. A Red Balloon

        Welfare programs as they are now make things even worse, as they basically systematically trap people in low income.

        UBI FTW!!!

        1. bemisawa

          Amen to that. A national UBI would help reduce so much of the cruelty in the US’s exploitative system.

          Actually, as I recall: Alaska, of all places, actually has a very minimal version of this, which is to say a $1000/year payout to all citizens based on oil profits. I’d love to see the actual carbon-neutral green energy industry start promoting itself through getting involved in funding a UBI (or, if that’s not feasible, other smaller benefits to the populace), and see how rapidly the public fervor goes (even more) wildly in its favor.

        2. Pilgrim

          Red staters in general and Alaskans in particular are hysterical: They think of themselves as rugged individualists despite being the most governmentally subsidized people in the US. They wouldn’t have roads, water, telephones or electricity without massive federal subsidies paid for the the blue states. Yet a state with a population smaller than a New York city neighborhood gets two senators. They say beggars can’t be choosers but our government is dominated by choosy beggars.

        3. thejeff

          While I’m all for at least experimenting with UBI and I agree that there are problems with how welfare programs get cut off as you start making a little more money, the idea that they make things worse is nonsense.

          They’re not enough, but they’re still vital to many people, who would be far worse off without them.
          Welfare being a poverty trap is largely a right wing frame, that some well meaning people buy into. There’s little evidence it has any such large scale effect.

        4. Ana Chronistic

          Husband’s coworker goes off on welfare/UBI and Hub retorts, “You don’t get the big house and nice car on government assistance! You gotta work for those!”

          and then crickets

        5. A Red Balloon

          Yeah, maybe I should start taking kurzgesagt videos with a little more salt…..

      2. Rose by Any Other Name

        Aint that the truth.

        Medicaid: You have lot income so you can have free healthcare.
        Me: Great!
        Medicaid: “Wait, you are earning an extra thousand dollars per year? Well fuck you – you don’t need free healthcare. Go pay $12,000 per year for healthcare.
        Me: “… that’s more than my entire paycheck for the year. I would be better off quitting my job and staying on medicaid.”
        Medicaid: **shrug .jpg**

        1. seregiel

          This truth hurts so much. My husband couldn’t accept a job until he found one with good benefits because of his TBI and my immune disorder. I alone “cost” 65K a year for just my maintenance treatments (which would have NEVER been my actual out of pocket cost, this estimate is just how insurance companies and the medical system justify their billings of one another to cement their importance… in reality one of my medications that they said would have been the majority of that bill has a $5 copay through the manufacturer and a $35 office fee out of pocket because it is just an injection. The only reason you have to pay the office fee is that certain insurance companies don’t like mailing it to you (it is temperature sensitive so I KINDA get it). You can get in the manufacturer’s program if you make less than $100K a year… so bite me, insurance adjusters. It wouldn’t even cost that much if you made under 100K and just declared out of pocket for everything. Stop making me feel like I am too expensive too live (not now, but I did NOT take that end-of-year “benefits given” reading too well… particularly since I paid MORE that year for LESS coverage than the previous one.)

    3. Clif

      Let them withhold what they want. Keep a record of everything you spend (with receipts as feasible) that might have been for producing the comic (as far as anyone knows). All pens and pencils and paper you purchase. Copying machine costs. Cost of visits you were going to make anyway to locations that you use in comic. If you buy a new phone with a camera, it’s for taking reference photos. Then report as big a loss as you can support with paperwork and get it on record. You get whatever they withheld back. And then, your first real year earning something, income average and all those losses (negative incomes) in the records will subtract off your earnings. Plan ahead.

      Is it actually worth the hassle. Probably not.

    4. monkyvirus

      I used to tutor for £15 an hour here in the UK. I made less than £500 from it in a tax year. Even so you have to declare all income and fill out tax forms (at which point they usually charge you a bunch of money incorrectly and then you have to point out there own mistake, which takes many weeks). It was very stressful and I quit after the first time I had to do it.

    5. Dara

      This bullshit is why when I was making $8k/year doing shit like this (and less interesting stuff) I had to file a full 1040, two or three Schedule Cs, and a… Schedule SE? I forget. Another form. And I remember a form I had to file to show I didn’t have to fill out a form, that was hilarious.

      1. anonymsly

        Sole proprietorship! It’s a bugger and a half, I salute you. (Also yes, a schedule SE.)

    6. AbacusWizard

      Based on my own experience getting paid for small favors by colleges, it’s probably less about making sure the worker pays taxes on the earnings and more about making sure the college keeps track of its expenditures.

  5. BBCC

    Yeah, I’d hand those strips in one at a time, kid. Otherwise, maybe temper your expectations.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      Daisy: I’ve decided not to run any strips that don’t have the lesbian main couple. When do we get to them having sex?

      Joyce: :shocked pikachu face:

      1. Ana Chronistic

        Then Daisy forgets to run those strips bc she’s too busy… “reviewing” them

    2. Rainhat

      Gonna be honest- I have been to two colleges and lived at a third for several years with my spouse, and… if it’s realistic at all, Joyce is pretty much the main person who’s gonna care about this. I mean, in the sense that she won’t just have to remind people that the comic exists, she’ll have to remind people that the paper exists.

      1. seregiel

        Enough people knew about it to write about the DeSanto sex tape, interview about Amazigirl, have Ruth collect Billie’s writing, have the shooting in the paper etc. We don’t really see news delivered in any other way in the comic besides phones so, I think in-universe the newspaper is at least a thing people grab to wipe up spills if Lucy isn’t around. Most of the “main cast” has been featured IN or involved WITH the paper. Joe – paper, Danny – paper, Ambergirl – paper, Becky-Paper, Ruth – almost in paper, Daisy – runs paper, Dorothy – Writer, Billie – Writer, Walky – attempted comic artist, Lucy -attempted comic artist, Joyce – comic artist, pretty sure Leslie and Robin made paper.

  6. General Tekno

    Yeah, this sure reads as autobiographical.

  7. alongcameaspider

    As expected the minute it started being a job Walky loses interest

    1. alongcameaspider

      Also wtf tax forms at 5 dollars a strip

      1. Clif

        That $5. per strip may be on top of other income. So it’s got to be withheld. Uncle Sam wants his fair share.

        1. Wizard

          And now they’re trying to make banks snitch on their customers even more. If we want the 1% to pay their fair share, obviously we should snoop into any bank account with $600 going in or out annually.

        2. Clif

          Well, there’s a lot more of those small accounts, and almost all of the 1% are avoiding taxes using perfectly legal means. So since you can track it all on computers and automatically flag anything that doesn’t match, why not?

        3. Delicious Taffy

          Uncle Sam can fuck off and stay there.

      2. Heavensrun

        Honestly willing to bet that’s just a random stack of papers and Daisy was just trying to make Walky shut up and go away.

  8. RassilonTDavros

    Panel 1 may be one of the best panels in the entire comic out-of-context. The accusation based on an appeal to religion, the immediate response that that ain’t gonna work anymore, the Faz-like expression… chef’s kiss.

    Don’cha just hate it when the newspaper skips two strips, so you backdate the earliest strips by a couple of days on your website and then everyone celebrates the wrong day as the anniversary until you correct them

    1. John Smith

      Eh, it’s an appropriate response to some things but being an asshole to your friends is never a good call.

      1. Reaver

        I would really not call Walky and Joyce friends

      2. timemonkey

        What about being an asshole to someone whose never been your friend and has only ever been a dick to you?

    2. Thulcandran

      Oh my god, I missed the strong resemblance to Faz in panels 1-2, that is absolutely perfect.

    3. milu

      hehe! yup ^^
      i’m an atheist now! nanananah!

  9. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Taxes, always a good motivator to scare someone off from pursuing a new profession.

  10. DailyBrad

    Yeah, can’t say I blame Walky for losing interest on what quickly seems to be a white elephant job.

  11. Teddae

    haha yeah walky is a mood

  12. butts

    i wrote a comic for a newspaper in high school one time, and then the editor and illustrator went behind my back to change the joke to make it a complete non-sequitur

    never again

    1. A Red Balloon

      And to think that only happened in cartoons…….

      Was it even riskè at all?

      1. Thag Simmons

        Something that can happen is that people who weren’t originally involved in creating the thing can want to take some ownership of it by making their own modifications to it.

        The quality of the thing doesn’t matter, it often worked fine and the changes make it worse but that was never the point.

        1. Clif

          If you want to maintain creative control in work done for hire, you got to get it in writing up front.

      2. eh, whatever

        risqué

    2. Autogatos

      Yeah I did the comics for my high school paper and for some bizarre reason they decided to publish the April Fool’s strip NOT in the April Fool’s issue (swapped it with another one) so it made zero sense out of the context of that holiday, and I, an already socially unpopular nerd, got made fun of for my “comic that made no sense.” Fun times!

      The experience really soured me on doing the comic for the paper (I was a super insecure teen) and I think I stopped a couple strips later. :/

      1. Autogatos

        Also I think no matter how long you’ve been doing it, it never stops being stressful when your work gets edited badly. I’ve been in the art industry for over a decade now and it’s still unpleasant when I see a piece I worked hard on with some sort of terrible drop shadow or some other very bad edit done after I turned the work in. I’m just like…plz, if you wanted it changed, ask me? Don’t just have a non-artist with a basic understanding of photoshop toss a filter or layer effect on something because you didn’t want to take the time to have it done right.

  13. C.T. Phipps

    Joyce should pre-empt Willis by putting it online in proper order.

    1. Needfuldoer

      Seriously, the school paper revenue from two strips would pay for basic web hosting.

      Unless part of the deal is she signs over rights or exclusivity to the IDS.

  14. Kitschensyngk

    WHERE IS YOUR LACK OF GOD NOW

    1. Endplanets

      Right here.
      Laughing.

  15. Thag Simmons

    And Joyce gets the gig. Probably for the best.

  16. Amós Batista

    Scanning your comic: to pass pen over lines, clean everthing with eraser, set margin on equipment to full page because this shit crop A4, pass pen again because scanner brigthered your draw even more, and after this, pass the same amount of time resizing, fixing distortion and cleaning your draw because your erased badly the pen.

    Yes, Walky, you’ve dodged a bullet, big time, Matrix-like.

    1. milu

      how many 5$ strips does it take to buy the cheapest workable graphics tablet?

      1. JBento

        5$ MINUS TAXES strips

      2. Thag Simmons

        Well according to a quick search; a little over a week’s worth, assuming no other expenses

        1. milu

          huh! for real? second-hand? i didn’t do any research because i have no point of reference to tell a toy from an actual entry-level tool, but if it really goes for that cheap i might think about getting one. i haven’t been doing nearly as much drawing as i once did since i became addicted to the internet (hi my name is milu and i’m an addict), but if i can do it right here on my computer, that might just get me going again (and might compound the computer addiction, but at this point honestly…)

        2. Needfuldoer

          That’s probably for a basic one that isn’t a screen.

          The Wacom Cintiq 16 is $650, which would be almost 22 weeks’ worth of Julis Gray strips at $30 per week ($5 each for daily strips, no Sundays). Used Cintiqs are usually at least a couple hundred bucks.

        3. Sam

          A basic graphics tablet? You can definitely get a small or basic one for pretty cheap even new. A lot of people recommend wacom ones specifically but I don’t buy into their particular hype specifically.

    2. Keulen

      That plus the big stack of tax forms for a job that pays him 5 dollars a strip or whatever it was. Yeah, Walky definitely dodged a bullet.

      1. JBento

        Shit, I’m writing fanfic of a game for FREE, and I’d still not go through that stack of forms to get paid $5 a week.

  17. Endplanets

    Yesterday: “You get the job because you care more about your comic.”
    Today: “FYI, comic will be out of order.”

    1. milu

      “i never said i cared about your comic”

    2. Thag Simmons

      I mean even if you don’t care, it is obvious that one of the two wants the gig more and will probably put more effort in

      1. thejeff

        One of the two has more realistic expectations of what a campus paper comics gig will be likely.

        Surprisingly it’s the one who thinks he’ll be rolling money from it.

        1. BBCC

          I mean, if most of your expenses are snacks and fast food, $5 per strip isn’t bad.

  18. anonymsly

    There’s no way the pile of forms would be that big, not for a job that can’t possibly pay enough to even require Joyce to file taxes. At $5 per strip, six days per week, 52 weeks per year (which it isn’t because semester breaks), Joyce’s earned income would be $1560 gross at most, aka $11,440 below the threshold for required filing of federal taxes. Indiana state income tax is probably $20 at most at that income level, are there really that many forms for it? Even if IU treated Joyce like an independent contractor, all they really need is an address and her SSN to send her a 1099. Which seems like by far the easiest thing for them to do rather than collect and file ALL THAT for $20 to the state. (Yes, I’m in accounting, why do you ask?)

    And even assuming there are tax forms it’s just an I-9 and a W-4, which are one page each. At most she has forms to ‘voluntarily self-identify’ in various ways and agree to various school employee policies? How many of those are there?

    That pile of paperwork haunts me with its nonsense.

    1. Clif

      I’m going to say that the pile just seems that large.

      1. anonymsly

        it haunts me Clif

        1. Clif

          I wonder how much a tax exorcist makes.

        2. King Daniel

          Forget about the tax exorcists, I want to know a tax necromancer’s salary!

        3. anonymsly

          All tax accountants are masters of the dark arts anyway. Tax accounting is the David S Pumpkins of the accounting sphere.

    2. brionl

      I’m guessing damnyouwillis is exaggerating a tad, based on his actual tax filings.

      1. Clif

        Once you tip over the point where your self employment is actually enough to support you, the stack may not be such an exaggeration.

        1. anonymsly

          If it’s self-employment the stack might not be an exaggeration (receipts, multiple 1099s, etc – sole proprietorship is a bugger and a half) but it’s not one big stack of paperwork that an employer hands you to fill out and return. If Joyce is self-employed, then all IU owes her is a 1099, and she needs to fill out a (one page) w-2 for them. IIRC.

        2. anonymsly

          NOT A W 2. There are too many W forms. A W-9.

    3. Raen

      I thought the federal threshold for filing taxes was $10,000?

      1. anonymsly

        It probably used to be, but it’s 12k now. If I’m recalling my tax classes right (and I might not be) the threshold for filing tax is whatever the standard deductible is, since below that point you can’t possibly owe taxes. The second you go over the standard deductible for your filing status, you might owe, so you must file.

      2. Clif

        Well, yes, but that’s not the threshold for withholding. If she doesn’t want the amount back that they withheld, then she’s not required to file. The university has no way of knowing if she makes $100,000 in her other part time job, so it’s got to withhold. If she fills out the form right, they will take out next to nothing, but then if she winds up owing any significant money based on unexpected income, she could wind up filing quarterly till hell freezes over.

        1. anonymsly

          Which is why I said ‘w-4 and I-9’. Two pieces of paper, not a paperback copy of The Eye of the World. And when she files for the refund, that would also be one piece of paper, or 10ish minutes on a free site.

      3. Needfuldoer

        Technically the threshold for filing income taxes is $0.01.

        The standard tax deduction for a single filer is $12,000. That’s not a threshold where you start paying taxes, that means you can take $12,000 off of your tax liability for the year, no questions asked. (This is taken in lieu of itemizing your taxes and writing things off, like charitable donations.)

        If the $30/week income was her only taxable income for the year, Joyce would be in the bottom bracket and only owe 10% in taxes. She’ll gross $4.50 per Julia Gray.

        https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets

        (Note: I’m not a CPA, do not take this as financial advice.)

        1. Needfuldoer

          (Hit “Post Comment” too soon, grumble grumble.)

          The standard deduction basically covers your income tax liability if you make less than $74,000. Joyce will be well below that. If she makes $30/week off the comic, that’s only $1,560 gross for the year. Even if the school withholds that 10% for taxes, she’ll see it back in April as a check for $156.

          (Again, not financial advise. I’m not an accountant or tax expert.)

        2. thejeff

          Standard deduction doesn’t cover anywhere near $74K. In 2021, the standard deduction is $12,550. You deduct that from your income and then apply the tax charts. Since $1560 is much less than $12,550, she would owe nothing. Your $74000 example income would be reduced to $61, 450 and taxes paid based on that.
          Perhaps you were thinking the standard deduction was subtracted from the tax owed, rather than the income?

          And withholding accounts for the standard deduction and any other deductions you want to claim. Nothing will be withheld from her $5. It will be reported, in case she makes enough income elsewhere that she would need to pay.

        3. Needfuldoer

          See this is why I pay a CPA.

    4. Robert Thompson

      I suspect it’s not just the basic paperwork for receiving income, but because it’s a university she’s paying money to attend hiring her for a part-time job. Having been in that situation, it can be incredibly bureaucratic. It’s not just her taxes they need paperwork for, after all…

    5. Plain Marie

      Which would be funnier? A page or two of paperwork or a pile? Comic artists are allowed to exaggerate for the sake of the story, and that’s what’s happening here. Daisy uses paperwork to fend off Walky. It’s super effective.

      1. Spencer

        It’s like these folks have never seen a comically oversized mug of coffee or something.

        1. Needfuldoer

          XTREEEM mug!

          The Dumbiverse has oversize comedy props, even if they’re not tagged.

    6. ValdVin

      Upvoted. I remember how little paper–back in the pre-cellphone days–my gf (now wife) got for a part time job while in college while I had a grown-up (so to speak) career to file for. All that was nothing like this.

    7. Devin

      I continue to be flabbergasted at the number of folks who react to things that are portrayed in this humor comic that are absolutely designed for comedic effect as if they’re supposed to be literal representations of real life.

      Exaggeration is a standard comedy tool, and Willis is using it quite well here. If this haunts you, look within.

      1. milu

        i thought anonymsly’s “it haunts me Clif” was a competent example of comedic exaggeration itself =)

        1. Devin

          In the context of the original comment, it doesn’t read that way to me, because it’s not expanding anything beyond the original, and a numerical breakdown with a statement of this being their profession read to me like far too much like actual arguments. And their further replies to other folks read like a very serious breakdown of how much paperwork there would actually be.

        2. milu

          fair enough! i just went the other way, and re-interpreted their overly detailed breakdown as tongue-in-cheek based on that line which i somehow found hilarious..??

          but WHO KNOWS
          ok maybe they do, we’ll see what they say

      2. thejeff

        This works that way for me.

        Daisy’s words last strip don’t, though some people dismissed them as “comic exaggeration”.

      3. Geneseepaws

        OMG, I’m full of Stars!

  19. mrnoidea

    “Here’s a shitload of tax paperwork so you can get paid a few peanuts each week!”

    Yeah, I’m with you, Walky.

  20. Dr. T

    Tip for Joyce: have a strip ID # on each submission so that they’re more likely to be in order.

    Oh, and Walky’s kinda not wrong. He was excited to do a thing, you learned he actually was excited to actually work on something, and you actively sought to take it from him. You were a bad friend at that moment, Joyce.

    1. Clif

      Serves him right for monopolizing Dorothy’s time.

    2. Jenn

      Joyce has been a bit of a bad friend on a couple of occasions recently…

      1. Clif

        It’s debatable if Walky was ever actually a friend. More like a friendly rival.

        1. Nono

          Honestly, pretty unfriendly rival. Walky has been outright pushing it when he needles her at times, and Joyce has been outright hostile to him often. Aside from her needing him for lunch when she had agoraphobia, she’s never really cared for his presence.

    3. alongcameaspider

      She saw a chance to publish the comic she’s been working on for a while, why should she not go for something she wants because one of her friends wants it too?

    4. Spencer

      I don’t think creating the Saga of Captain Julia Gray in comic format from its original existing text stories was something Joyce has to worry about coming from Walky’s expense, who was excited for the job on the grounds that no one else would apply.

      Is Walky entitled to it because he was there first?

      1. Needfuldoer

        [The Office ‘THANK YOU!’ dot gif]

    5. timemonkey

      Hard to be a good friend when you’re not actually friends.

    6. Keulen

      I’m not sure they were actually friends, but Walky’s right that she stole it from him since Joyce wouldn’t have even heard about this college newspaper comic strip job if he hadn’t been so excited about it.

      1. Spencer

        That’s not stealing.

      2. alongcameaspider

        Again, why should Joyce not go for an opportunity she wants just because someone else wanted it first?

  21. Suet

    Not even digitally drawing can save Joyce, I don’t think she uses blue pencils too.

    One sheet at a time? Buffer (which I miss seeing here) solves.

  22. Jenn

    Why would it be hard for Daisy to publish comic strips in order?

    1. Clif

      The paper is put together by students. So probably at the last minute.

      1. Clif

        Seriously, how hard would it be for a network to run a TV series in order.
        See Firefly.

        1. june gloom

          Or UFO, which was famously aired out of order across the UK because stations didn’t know what to do with it, and so depending on region three different stations would broadcast three different episodes in the same time slot on the same day.

        2. Khyrin

          For those who don’t get the joke: Fox DELIBERATELY aired the episodes out of order, INCLUDING demanding an episode in such a time frame that the production had a week to get the episode in the can so it could air as The First Episode instead of just airing the pilot as The First Episode.

        3. Needfuldoer

          Clerks: The Animated Series was another example. The second episode was a pastiche of sitcom clip shows, but the joke was that it only had the first episode to draw clips from so it used the same ones over and over.

          Naturally, the network aired that one first.

      2. Gigafreak

        So wait, does that mean Tuesday’s paper may very well be assembled by someone who didn’t even look at which comic was printed in Monday’s, and might very well be high as a kite the entire time?

    2. Thag Simmons

      it’s a student newspaper, and the comics are very much not a priority.

    3. alongcameaspider

      Because she really does not give any shits about any aspect of this

      I kind of want Joyce and Walky to team up and try to set up a website where they can publish both of their comics

      1. Thag Simmons

        a lot of work for a man who deliberately designed a comic where he could re-use two-thirds of the art.

  23. ADLegend21

    Yeah Joyce knows she only wanted it cuz Walky wanted it and she doesn’t even care if he’s upset. Can’t wait for mopey “why does everyone hate me” Joyce.

    1. Thag Simmons

      She’s been writing Julia Grey stuff for a while now, so it’s clearly not just ‘I want this because Walky wants it’

      1. anonymsly

        Yeah, I think that Walky mentioning it was just the first she’d heard of such a thing.

    2. alongcameaspider

      Where do you get that? Her making Julia Grey comics has been a thing since long before this contest was even a thing in the story, is it so crazy that she might want to publish them some day?

      1. alongcameaspider

        Also I doubt Walky was going to hold a grudge over it long term even if he didn’t get over it immediately upon seeing the work aspects of it, that just doesn’t seem like it’d be in character for him

      2. Thag Simmons

        She wasn’t doing comics but she was drawing the characters and writing prose stories.

    3. Spencer

      “What? No one else is applying? I wanna do a comic for the newspaper!”

      “Hey! My chance of success was based on a zero-competition market!”

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/03-see-you-in-the-funny-page/paper/

    4. timemonkey

      Joyce doesn’t like Walky, why would she care if he’s upset?

      1. BBCC

        Nah, Joyce likes Walky. Their relationship is based around bickering like five year olds but I don’t think she’d spend time with him voluntarily if she didn’t. When the chips were down in La Port though, Walky was one of the people she wanted.

        1. Spencer

          I read it as that dislike of theirs has tapered off into their status quo. It’s about as nice as they can be with each other, and they don’t really need to be anymore, but it’s not hate.

        2. thejeff

          That’s how I read it too. The bickering is real, but there’s a level of friendship underneath it.

          So much of this whole comic happens under the surface.

  24. drs

    “jerkiest Christian I know”

    Harsh words since Walky knows Mary. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/operating-2/

    1. alongcameaspider

      To be fair has she done anything that’s affected him personally?

      1. Rainhat

        That bit where he demanded to know how the terrible voice in his head got into the girl in the scarf is still one of my favorite lines from this comic- he’d remember that conversation.

  25. MisterJinKC

    Everyone’s in the comments talking about taxes, and no one’s going to mention that not only Joyce openly atheist now, but she’s also using it as an excuse to be an asshole and not care about having betrayed one of her best friends.

    1. alongcameaspider

      Yeah how dare she want something her friend wants too, what a horrible person that Joyce is

      Seriously I think Becky and Joyce’s fight has made people interpret anything Joyce does in the worst possible light

      1. Autogatos

        I don’t think it’s necessarily a matter of interpreting anything she does in the worst possible light, but rather recognizing her behavior/attitude has been kind of shitty, which isn’t a judgement of her saying she’s a horrible person or anything. I very much recognize it as: she’s going through a massive change, she’s in emotional pain, everything she thought she believed was a lie, she’s trying to shed all these previous expectations and constraints and figure out who she is with this new worldview.

        This is complex, difficult stuff, and it’s VERY normal for people who go through stuff like this in college to hit a kind of low point in attitude and behavior (the “I’ve figured it all out and you’re all idiots for not seeing it” stuff combined with a lot of bitter misanthropy that’s kind of launched at everyone around you).

        So really my judgement of her is totally sympathetic and coming from a place of uncomfortable familiarity. She’s kind of being a jerk right now, but I understand why, and know (if this storyline is intended to mimic similar real-life arcs) it won’t last forever.

      2. Autogatos

        Also I could be wrong, but I assumed the “betrayal” MisterJinKC was referring to was Joyce’s behavior towards Becky, not her deciding to try out for the comic strip (Walky is a friend but I don’t know that he’s “one of her best friends”).
        Obviously there’s nothing wrong with her also wanting to try out for the comic strip. I think the only issue people have with her interaction with Walky here is the kind if “in your face, I won, you lost!” attitude she’s giving him when he’s clearly disappointed (though he is also being selfish in trying to “claim” this thing as only his…no one is perfect here and both of them have some justified frustrations…they are imperfect immature humans).

        1. alongcameaspider

          I mean I don’t see how she “betrayed” Becky either, was an asshole sure, but she doesn’t owe Becky continued faith or telling Becky about her newfound lack of faith

        2. Autogatos

          I’m not sure why so many people think the issue people have with Joyce’s behavior is that we think she “owes” Becky faith? That’s…very obviously not what anyone is saying.
          She implied her best friend was an idiot and didn’t apologize for it. If I had a friend and I overheard them calling people like me idiots when they thought I wasn’t listening, I’d feel pretty betrayed. She can disagree with Becky’s beliefs without turning it into an insult or attack on her intelligence.

        3. Daibhid C

          Yeah, I mean, I’m an atheist, but I have some views and opinions that kind of define me. And if I overheard someone I thought was a friend saying “Look at me, I’m so stupid I think a flat planet on a turtle is a good premise for a book series!” I’d be pretty annoyed even if I already knew and accepted they weren’t a fellow Discworld fan. If they then tried to apologise, while admitting that yes, they do think that, but that doesn’t mean they think I’m stupid, because they’re confident I’ll eventually realise they’re right… Yeesh.

        4. Autogatos

          Yup, like, I am not religious. There are beliefs I may think are completely nonsensical, but I also acknowledge I don’t have all the answers and wouldn’t call a friend an idiot or imply they’re being ignorant/dense for believing something I don’t.

          (The exception of course being when someone’s beliefs do actual harm, which ofc a lot of fundamentalist Christian beliefs do, and I think Joyce is having trouble grasping how not everyone views it all as a packaged deal, because for her it was: she was a literalist, and the second part of it stopped making sense, the whole house of cards came tumbling down. It’s an all or nothing thing for her.)

          I’m not judging Joyce for being angry or frustrated, but as someone who once felt the way she does now, I assume she will eventually realize she’s basically slipped into a new unwavering dogma and is once again judging people who don’t adhere to it. She hasn’t yet reached the place of “we don’t have to know exactly how it all works, it’s okay to not have all the answers.”

        5. Spencer

          Her best friend’s an idiot for continuing to cling onto a religion that no longer runs on Verifiable Facts like the sky sea and fire-breathing dinosaurs yeah.

          This is because Joyce had a rulebook, Becky had/started having faith, and then they never ever ever spoke about this or thought the other had a singular contradictory thought, so by the time everything came to light WHOOPS, all the drama.

          Or, Joyce thinks Becky is an idiot for the same reason Becky thinks Joyce is to blame for being godless, because actually Joyce was only ever a Christian so she could be better than other people (disregarding that meeting other people who were good and doomed to Hell, specifically Becky, is what caused her to throw it away).

        6. Autogatos

          I don’t think Joyce was a Christian just so she could feel better than other people. I think she was a Christian because she was never allowed to consider any other possibility. She grew up VERY sheltered and accepted that ehst the grownups in her life told her was true.

          Though one of the things those grownups did tell her was that non Christians were godless sinful heathens so, obviously she absorbed some of that, and while I think Becky is wrong about Joyce *wanting* to judge anyone (is that what she said? I don’t remember exactly), I think that dogmatic in group/out group, right beliefs/wrong beliefs framework continues to inform a lot of her behavior and decision making, even if now it’s in the context of *lack* of belief.

        7. Spencer

          Specifically, Joyce is reeling that she thinks the same stuff as Dina now, and then Becky tells her that maybe her faith shouldn’t have been based on being better than everyone else.

          Mind, this was in a conversation where neither of them was talking to the other, but the version of the other in their head who thought and acted exactly as they did.

          Also, you’re totally correct about Joyce having a strict binary of Right/Wrong, but that binary was based on objective facts like fire-breathing dinosaurs and the Earth being 6000 years old. Joyce never had faith to begin with, she had a rulebook the way you can be taught math.

          This may be too awkward a way to put it, but Becky “is an idiot” at the moment because she thinks the Earth is 6000 years old. Except Becky doesn’t think that, Joyce did, and Joyce thinks Becky thought like she did and vice versa. Becky’s an idiot in the same way I would be if I ate paint in front of you and laughed when you told me it was a bad idea, and Joyce is convinced that Becky is smart enough to stop buying into the lies, except to Joyce and how she was brought up they are actual, textual, factual lies and not parables that Becky shrugged off to focus on what actually mattered to her faith.

        8. Autogatos

          Er I think I was trying to say “accepts that everything” I dunno how that turned into “ehst” lol

        9. Autogatos

          Yeah I’m not sure Joyce has ever really thought much about the fact that there are different ways to have faith/different ways to be a Christian. And she is right that it is simply objectively Wrong that the earth is only 6000 years old and other clearly disprovable “Bible facts” so I do think her mockery of it is based on that realization. And she’s not quite grasping that not every Christian (such as Becky) literally believes that.

          I think you’re right that they’re kind of talking at each other/arguing with their interpretation of the other person’s beliefs. Becky feels like Joyce is calling all Christians idiots, and Joyce feels like Becky is being ignorant and contradictory for believing stuff that’s clearly scientifically incorrect despite her new interest in science and science-minded girlfriend. So they’re both offending/hurting/being mad at each other for things that are to some degree misunderstandings of each other’s viewpoints.

          Gonna take them sitting down and really talking this out and listening to each other to resolve this, the question ofc is either of them has the maturity to do that at this point (or is willing to rn in their current emotionally heated states).

        10. Spencer

          Also she told everyone else that Becky was smart enough to see the truth like Joyce did, as in she doesn’t think Becky’s an idiot, she thinks Becky is being lied to like Joyce was.

          I need to emphasize as much as possible that Joyce is saying these things because faith never factored into it for her. If I said these things it would be outrageously egotistical because my brief time going to church ran on casual childhood faith, and losing my faith was just something that happened because it was never anything I had reason to believe in.

          I had faith, Joyce had rules that all had to work at once or everything collapsed.

        11. Autogatos

          My point is: Joyce may not be intending to call Becky an idiot, but intentions do not excuse outcomes. Since Becky’s belief *is* based on faith, she unwittingly implied that Becky is an idiot for having that faith and continuing to have it. Neither friend is really trying to understand each other here well at all and obviously it’s causing hurt feelings on Becky’s part and frustration on Joyce’s part.

        12. thejeff

          @Autogatos: One thing that does keep throwing me in these comments is how many people seem to frame friendship and social relationships in terms what is or is not “owed”.

        13. Spencer

          What is or isn’t owed in a relationship becomes apropos when an argument happens revolving around what Joyce Brown Actually Believes.

        14. thejeff

          I don’t think it really does. I think that’s the wrong framing for talking about relationships. It’s convenient for us, since it lets us frame things in absolute terms and thus assign blame or absolve it, but people and social interactions are far messier and more complicated than that.

          Nor has it just come up in that particular complex. It was all over the Joyce/Jacob thing and came up a few times with Amber and Walky too.

        15. Spencer

          Well, yes and no, because it’s a lot of conversations at once.

          ‘Cause like, objectively (as in the smarmy and wrong way), Joyce Did Nothing Wrong with Jacob because there’s nothing saying that she can’t walk up and be a freak saying she’s Jacob’s girlfriend and it’s only a problem if Jacob gets mad. Except obviously that’s nonsense and there was a massive consequence to Jacob and Joyce’s friendship because of the Dreaded Feelings and you can’t actually do that to people on the grounds of, like, a societal-wide agreement that it’s weird to pretend to be someone’s girlfriend.

          The problem with talking about this with Joyce and Becky is that we just got the first inclination that their friendship wasn’t as perfect as we thought it was and those niggling weird feelings that cropped up weren’t funny quirks. Becky’s been wildly over-possessive of Joyce the entire series, is told as such and thinks it’s funny, and then that wild over-possessiveness has a major consequence for the first time in their whole lives, and then all at once we gotta use the same words to discuss:

          – Becky’s wild over-possessiveness of Joyce.

          – Where that wild over-possessiveness came from and how Joyce constantly fed it.

          – How Becky’s wild over-possessiveness of Joyce led to barging in on a private conversation.

          – How that private conversation was based on something of intimate importance to Joyce.

          – Joyce’s personal relationship with her faith and its radical changes.

          – How those changes affect Becky.

          – Whether those changes should affect Becky.

          – Whether those changes affecting Becky actually matters.

          And, more specifically, I do process “things that are in your head” as, like, actually something you are not owed, and I say “owed” even in this context because I can’t think of another word to use when discussing how someone you know needs to be privy to what’s going on in your head if you don’t want them to know for basically any reason, and especially when dealing with something as emotionally chaotic to Joyce as her newfound atheism that she can’t even call atheism and is more akin to a factory reset not just on her views of the origin of life but her morality and even her personality.

          So if you’ve got a more handy word than “owed”, I’ll start using it if only to be a more helpful participant in talking about this, because I can’t think of it otherwise here as a result of the specific minutiae of these two.

        16. milu

          i think the divide is not purely semantic Spencer. it’s a worldview thing and an aesthetic thing, at least for me.

          i don’t like the “owing” framing because i find it a) ugly and b) meaningless.

          and that’s because i don’t think we (outsiders) NEED to decide, or have anything to gain by deciding, whether for instance Becky in fact IS or ISN’T “over-possessive”.

          i don’t think “over-possessiveness” is an objective reality of a person or even of their behaviour. i think it’s a context-based construct, i think it’s a word that describes an emotional experience by a given person at a given stage in a relationship.

          If you accuse someone of being over-possessive, fundamentally what you are probably trying to tell them is “i need more space and autonomy”. But what if you didn’t need more space and autonomy? those needs vary from person to person, and from moment to moment. Then your friend wouldn’t be “wildly over-possessive”, they would be affectionate and demonstrative, perhaps eandearingly clingy.

          Within relationships, i think judgements are the expression of unmet needs. they are an invitation for the other person to do something about it. it’s a clumsy shorthand for it, but often that’s all we can manage.

          in the best case scenario, the other person understands that you are not trying to upset or attack them, but hinting at the are of your relationship you are unhappy with, and if they care for the relationship they can then try and fix the issue you’ve pointed at.

          …is why i disagree with that framing. in a nutshell.

          but if you find value in judging, from the outside, that Becky is over-possessive, i can’t stop you but i also can’t agree or disagree, really. because we’re filtering our lived experience through very different lenses.

        17. milu

          7th paragraph: *hinting at the area of your relationship

        18. Spencer

          Gonna try my best at this.

          I do think Becky is, textually as a fictional character, wildly over-possessive of Joyce. Even without that part where Dorothy says as much (she could be wrong after all), Becky takes it as something that makes her cool and badass, that she’s giving into a vice like a normal person. Even if Becky does not think of herself as over-possessive, and she does not, she views the label as something that, at least in the moment, is positive, if only because it makes her cooler than Dorothy.

          Where I’ve also been pretty insistent, as in it got a whole word pile during the Faith-Off, is that it’s not really a matter of Becky just ignorantly taking from Joyce, it’s that she does that because Joyce has never been able to tell her no, and she’s never been able to do that because Joyce encourages that behaviour as she’s never had a reason to ever think of it as anything but cool, admirable, funny, and rebellious of Becky, if Becky had walked in at any other time, as she has before, Joyce would think Becky is awesome because Joyce thinks Becky is the awesomest person ever.

          Plus I think there’s a side of “I can’t tell Becky things because Becky is fragile and has gone through enough and doesn’t need my bullshit” which I think is pretty relevant and totally false to the actual Becky considering learning about Ryan led her to recognize how kissing Joyce could have triggered her and pointedly did not emotionally crumble at that thought, she just apologized and went about supporting Joyce in her problem and made it better.

          Or, Joyce is an enabler and she can’t bring herself to say ‘no’ because she thinks, or has thought, she has to protect Becky from everything.

          You’re totally correct that not only do actual real life people not need commentary to this effect, but that even depicting a relationship with let’s go with “strange” boundaries doesn’t inherently mean it’s a toxic relationship. Billie/Ruth totally was, for example, regardless of how they sold it to themselves, while Danny/Amber was also Weird, but both of them were completely fine with it until, and this is the crucial part, someone else pointed out the problems they were having and Danny got real messed up about it and how he had been contributing.

          And I think something important about how my view of Becky and Joyce forms is that I’m really only starting to consider it this way because of how the first consequence of their behaviour went down. Joyce has been an “endearingly clingy” weirdo to Dorothy, but Dorothy can and has put her foot down when she’s wanted to, and I think the ability for Dorothy to put her foot down radically alters the context of Joyce being clingy to her, the way Ruth and Billie alternated between being the one trying to fix things and failed, the way Amber couldn’t cope with Danny breaking the narrative (kissing Amber and not Amazi-Girl, listening to Sal and being turned against her).

          If Joyce could ever say “Becky I need my space” in any point, even one that’s worse than what we’ve got, then that’d be a boundary, but Joyce and Becky are so ridiculously affectionate to the other that they can’t really consider the idea of being emotionally… apart? Like they need the other to know that they love and cherish and support them and betraying that is something they can’t handle, and that kind of relationship is one that’s doomed to explode into pieces that need to get picked up.

        19. milu

          okay, all good points to the best of what i remember from the various storylines.

          but what you’re saying now rings a bit different because it sounds to me like you’re acknoweldging that the blowup that was the, uh Faith-Off (nice ^^) was a collaborative result of both Becky and Joyce’s behaviour to one another.

          Becky acted like she owned Joyce’s time, Joyce thought she needed to shelter Becky from her own inner conflict. Both contributed to the crisis.

          Yes the story, and the specific way the shit hit the fan, serves to highlight some latent issues within J&B’s friendship. But Becky couldn’t *know* she was overstepping if Joyce didn’t tell her. And… Joyce still hasn’t told her that. it’s far from obvious that she thinks Becky is over-possessive. that is not the problem she has with Becky at the moment.

          So, it feels inaccurate to say that Becky was over-possessive all along if she didn’t have any feedback from Joyce that might have allowed her to choose to behave differently.

        20. milu

          anyway, i can see we’re also reading the comic differently. your take makes a whole lot of sense, really. i guess i just don’t enjoy second-guessing the narrative as much as you do =)

        21. Autogatos

          Yeah I think there’s this tendency in general, especially in online discussions, for people to (ironically) want everything to follow a clear set of rules, for things to either be right or wrong, good or bad. So criticize a characters behavior and people assume you are saying that character is inherently Bad/unforgivable or assume you’re taking sides (like Joyce vs Becky).

          When in reality life and humans are incredibly complex, things aren’t that black and white. Both Becky and Joyce have serious character flaws and good qualities at the same time. Both have justifications for their feelings as well as behavior that may be unreasonable or hurtful. And friendship isn’t merely a structured orderly exchange of feelings and behaviors. You can’t apply a universal “rule” to how either friend should behave or what one “owes” the other.

          Both these characters are a mess. All the characters in this comic are a mess. Because that’s what humans (especially teen/college age humans) are. We are an emotionally messy species that is constantly trying to figure out how to function. And college in particular tends to be a time where people are extra mess because they’re old enough to think they’ve got a lot figured out, but still young enough to not actually have it all figured out and to make tons of mistakes.

          I don’t like the idea of friendship being broken down into what people “owe” each other, but I’d say what makes friendship work is empathy. Trying to understand how the other person is feeling and where they’re coming from/what they’re dealing with, and thinking about how your actions affect them. It’s what makes a lot of human interaction work. If one or both people isn’t practicing empathy, conflict will follow/people will get hurt.

          Joyce and Becky, to keep being friends, are obviously going to have to grow their friendship together and both change their approach. They’ve been trying to maintain a friendship based on the same behaviors and assumptions they held when they were kids, when obviously they’re both very different people now who don’t know each other as well as they used to.

        22. Thag Simmons

          She was lying to Becky and mocking her behind her back.

        23. Spencer

          If we’re defining as lying “keeping a secret about your shattered worldview from the people whose opinion of you changing you fear the most, which you’re slowly dealing with on your own time” and mocking Becky as “Joyce lashing out at her old faith, of which Becky is part of, because Joyce thinks Becky thought and acted the exact same way she did” I suppose.

          Maybe Joyce getting to be vocally angry for the first time in her life, Becky finding out because she’s a wildly over-possessive nut who openly brags about that making her cool and awesome, the preceding coming about because Joyce and Becky have no idea how to say ‘no’ to the other which Joyce has fueled because she’s never had a reason to think it was ever not the coolest thing and constantly reinforced to Becky that it was okay, and then the realization that for all that they love each other they’ve never one talked about how their faith worked for them and assumed it works the same for the other to the point where this one fight has, seemingly and for the time being, broken their lifelong friendship?

          That might be a bigger deal than whether or not Joyce’s nose needs to get longer before she becomes a real boy.

          Painful human conversations don’t need afterschool special resolutions.

        24. alongcameaspider

          I wouldn’t call not telling someone about a fundamental shift in your worldview when Joyce herself has yet to fully unpack what it means for her “lying”

          The mocking is an asshole move sure but I wouldn’t call it a betrayal either

        25. MisterJinKC

          She’s not a liar for not proactively telling Becky she’s an atheist now. She’s a liar because she said Becky’s mom is in Heaven when she doesn’t believe in Heaven anymore and intentionally misleading Becky about a change such a major facet of their relationship that they’ve shared their entire life.

        26. Spencer

          Nothing could have possibly gone wrong if she told Becky on the anniversary of her mother’s last birthday that she doesn’t think she’ll ever see her again, she’s gone forever, and Becky’s last memory will be finding her body, when Joyce was trying to affirm to Becky that she cared for her and didn’t want to cause her pain by drudging up a painful memory and Joe told her it was more important that she be there for her.

          And then Joyce only ended up saying it out loud because Becky noticed she hesitated and declared she get that Joyce Nonsense out of her head right this instant.

        27. Autogatos

          Yeah I kind of side with Joyce on that one, because “no sorry I think your mom is actually just dead forever” isn’t exactly a tactful thing to say to a friend who is mourning the loss of their mother and believes in an afterlife. There’s such thing as *too* much honesty.

          The truth is none of us *know* with any kind of certainty what happens when we die, so trying to debate that point with someone who has lost someone feels more…cruel than honest.

          I also think it’s reasonable for Joyce to want to take time to process her feelings before she talks to her still-Christian friend about her new lack of belief. I imagine she was also afraid Becky wouldn’t understand or would reject her for not believing anymore.

          Really my only issue with Joyce’s behavior towards Becky was her implication of Becky’s ignorance, and while she couldn’t have known Becky would be listening, Becky’s not unreasonable to be offended by what she heard.

          I understand why Joyce said those things given what she’s processing emotionally right now, and wouldn’t expect her to suddenly be able to view people who still believe in this religion she feels lied to her her whole life with open-minded understanding. I wouldn’t expect her to just magically get over it and be able to be tactful and respectful, her reaction is completely normal. But at the same time, so is Becky’s. Sometimes one side isn’t inherently wrong and the other right. They both have valid frustrations/hurt here, and it’s something they were going to have to confront eventually.

    2. Rainhat

      Well… let’s see where this rides out to. I’m 100% sure we’re meant to notice the behavior. I’m waiting to see if the narrative rewards it before making any particular judgment about it.

      1. Autogatos

        Those of us who were once Joyce are definitely noticing it and assuming it’s intentional. She can be an atheist without being a snarky jerk to everyone around her about it, but for some reason, becoming an atheist in college often seems to require a snarky jerk phase before one mellows.

        I think it’s a combination of reactionary attitudes from feeling like she had to be “perfect” all the time before, and feeling like she has had this grand revelation that everyone else should get but being frustrated by the fact that not everyone does.

        And ofc I’m not saying it’s wrong for her to want the comic job just because walky wanted it “first,” it’s kinda jerkish of walky to assume it was “his” but I’m talking more about Joyce’s general misanthropic/snarky/“I don’t care what anyone thinks because everything is pointless” attitude.

        Tl;dr this is a very familiar and spot-on character arc. I keep cringing at how much it’s reminding me of one of my lowest points back when I was in college.

        1. Spencer

          Okay but can she be a snarky jerk for the first ten minutes?

          Does “my shattered view of reality permeating so deeply that I no longer know what my actual personality is anymore, because the institutions that taught me to behave this way are bullshit” factor in at all?

          When does Joyce get to be angry, if not in a private conversation that someone else barged in on, made wildly worse, and now that her best friend just bailed now Joyce is saying it out loud?

          She grew up in a death cult. Her religion, her entire culture, was something implanted into her that made her a worse person. Just because Becky rewrote it to focus on the important stuff that probably only became important after Joyce constantly rescued her and showed Becky that God’s miracles are working through doesn’t mean the violent rejection of all the stupid bullshit Joyce was taught, and I need to be as clear as possible that it was stupid bullshit because she was told that she was incapable of ever doing good and that it was always God working through her, and that fire-breathing dinosaurs existed, any less completely sensible.

        2. milu

          Joyce absolutely gets to be angry in your fanfiction that you post somewhere that doesn’t allow comments!!! =P

        3. Spencer

          Excuse me?

        4. milu

          i’m kidding! i thought that was a playful enough jab. i guess not then! sorry.

          what i meant, is that you’ve reiterated this line of argument countless times now, and so it almost sounds to me like you’re fighting windmills. plenty of people have a different take on Joyce, and the arguments you’ve had with people like Autogatos here haven’t seemed to change that substantially, as far as i can tell, nor do i feel like they’re likely to this time.

          but anyway, you probably enjoy the sparring actually, so i’ll keep out of your hair.

        5. Spencer

          No, no, I didn’t really read it as a jab, I just didn’t know how to process it.

          Eh I mean I’m fine with it as long as I don’t throw my own head into it, and then even further start getting really hostile because I’m taking it personally and thus feel like I need to defend myself.

          That… is a thing I have done here, much to my regret, and then I got real close to doing it again, if not outright crossed that line once more before checking myself.

          But arguing, or discussing to use a less pointed word, the actions and motivations of the cast is on the business card of being a fan of something. It’s not really something I can process as a negative until it starts pulling in the actual people involved.

        6. milu

          i mean, i’m fine with your longform analyses, more than fine, i love them, and i appreciate your willingness to involve yourself passionately in painstaking discussions of plot points and character motivations.

          But here, and i realize only now this is why i reacted (though i did try to keep it light-hearted), Autogatos insistently grounded their opinion of Joyce in the fact that they related strongly to her. my own gut feeling from your exchange is that your combative defense of Joyce’s behaviour is not really in tune with their fairly personal comment. you know?

          i don’t know, maybe i’m out of line here.

        7. Spencer

          Well you’re certainly not being out of line, and if you were, you’re stepping out of line as gently and politely as possible and constantly trying to validate the thoughts of who you talk to while encouraging them to be more considerate, so if my grading means anything I’m giving you an A+.

          I disagree with it being combative, in that I don’t think I’m really talking about myself and when I start doing that, that’s when I do get combative and it’s something I’m making a point to avoid. I do have strong feelings about the specifics of how The Great Disaster went down, and those are born from my own experiences, but I don’t think it’s impossible for me to draw from those feelings without getting totally wild through them.

          And, well, I do think it’s perfectly reasonable to disagree with an interpretation of a text, and the actual real life actions that mirror the text, that is filtered through personal feelings, just so long as I don’t go “and that’s why you, Actual Real Life Person, are wrong to think like this, your own experience lied to you.” I remember talking with another poster about a week+ ago I think now? And it was about them discussing how they had said something behind the back of someone they knew while venting about them. That prompted a response out of me on needing to be able to say things about other people in private to get your own feelings out, but I was pretty insistent on dissociating what I was saying from the experiences of that poster, that what I was talking about was the concept of “talking behind your back” without engaging with the actual humanity of anyone involved, because that would be a gross violation on my part; I would be taking ownership of their experiences to assert my own as correct and that there’s no room for error.

        8. milu

          thank you for your kind words.

          anyway, i’m not sure what to say now. i get the line you draw. i don’t think it’s a hard and fast line though, people taking things personal that weren’t meant that way happens all the time, and that’s why i think we should be as charitable and considerate as we can, when we can. meh.

        9. Autogatos

          I never said she’s not allowed to be angry? I was simply reflecting on how her current arc/behavior reminds me of something I went through in college and know many others have also gone through.

        10. Autogatos

          Also will repeat what I said in reply to another comment since some people seem to be taking my “Joyce is kind of being a jerk” opinion as “Joyce is not allowed to behave this way and should know better,” when that’s definitely not what I’m saying:

          I understand why Joyce said those things given what she’s processing emotionally right now, and wouldn’t expect her to suddenly be able to view people who still believe in this religion she feels lied to her her whole life with open-minded understanding. I wouldn’t expect her to just magically get over it and be able to be tactful and respectful, her reaction is completely normal. But at the same time, so is Becky’s.

          Joyce is totally within her rights to be frustrated and angry, but Becky is also totally within her rights to be hurt by Joyce’s comments that she overheard.
          Sometimes one side isn’t inherently wrong and the other right. They both have valid frustrations/hurt.

        11. Autogatos

          This is not a perfect analogy but it’s sort of like: say someone cooks a meal for you. They worked really hard on it and are proud of their effort. You think it tastes terrible. You don’t want to be rude but their choice of sauces or preparation method or whatever is just really not your thing.

          You can’t control how you feel/what your tastebuds are saying. You’re not wrong for thinking the meal tastes bad. But if your friend overhears you telling someone that you think that style of cooking totally sucks, they are also not wrong for being hurt by it.

    3. Agemegos

      He did present it to her that it was a contest.

    4. King Daniel

      The Great Becko-Joycean War has left the comments section a scarred wasteland pockmarked with shell-shocked survivors, only a scant few of whom still dare to poke their heads out from their foxholes. None but a handful still dare to openly take sides in this grim war.

    5. Spencer

      … Walky?

      Because nothing about Becky and Joyce’s first fight ever involved a betrayal, so I’m assuming you mean this strip and in which case…. Walky?

    6. timemonkey

      There’s no betrayal and Joyce and Walky never really became friends, let alone one of her best. She’s always looked down on him and only spent time with him because of Dorothy or because her trauma made her afraid to be alone.

  26. Rabisch

    NO! NOT IN RANDOM ORDER!!! Why they are unable to do such a simple thing!???

    1. Daibhid C

      Because it’s just a space filler and nobody cares except Joyce.

      (LThat’s why you want something with zero continuity, like LAWsome.)

  27. Raen

    …has Joyce never in over a semester had to scan anything for class?

    1. Autogatos

      Honest question but: do teens still scan stuff? I mean I did, constantly, but I went to college in the early 00s before smartphones were quite so ubiquitous. I feel like I see way more photos of things now rather than scans when gen a folks want to share images online.

      1. Raen

        I really wouldn’t know. But what I do know is that when I’ve gotten smartphone photos for work, they’ve broadly been illegible. I can’t imagine a professor putting up with it, especially if it were happening en masse, when there are perfectly good, free scanners in the library.

        1. Autogatos

          Oh yeah, scanning is definitely better when you need something high-res/good quality (I’m an artist so still use my scanner frequently). I’m just wondering if maybe it makes sense that someone Joyce’s age/generation might not have a scanner or use them often.

        2. Pearl

          I never had to scan anything for college when I went from 2013-2016. One time I brought in an assignment printed out and done by hand and the professor docked me points.

        3. Needfuldoer

          If she’s ever used a scanner, it was probably one of those fancy flatbed ones. She never had to stitch together 4″ wide strips scanned by a device that looks like an oversize computer mouse!

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGBuDOhkMRA&t=1270s

          On the other hand, the copy machines probably have a “scan to email” function.

      2. Daibhid C

        I don’t think I ever scanned anything for college, except when I took my HNC in Administrative and Information Technology. And even then, that was just because the lesson was “how to use a scanner in a business environment”, rather than because anything actually needed scanned.

        In my failed first year of a BSc, I photocopied stuff a lot, which IME is a lot simpler than scanning. But I don’t think I ever had a situation where I had a hardcopy of something that I needed a digital copy of.

        1. Daibhid C

          (Oh, should have said: the BSc was 1998-9, the HNC was 2013-4.)

        2. khn0

          I’m baffled there was a “how to use a scanner in a business environment” lesson. There must be mysteries hidden behind a scanner than us normies will then never know.

      3. RedCat

        I know artists do. A lot of artists do the linework per hand, and then scan everything to do the colours on photoshop. (example, Abby Howard’s work, like the game Scarlet Hollow! All the backgrounds are draw per pen then scanned, I believe)

    2. thejeff

      What would she need to scan for class? Granted I’m old and didn’t have most of this fancy stuff when I went to school, but what kind of things would she need to scan? Or take smartphone photos of, for that matter.

      1. Regalli

        A lot of assignments for class these days are submitted digitally, but usually that means they were composed digitally as well because, y’know, why write a paper and scan it in when a word processor’s right there.

        There are a few circumstances at college where you’ll have something handwritten and scan it, though – in particular, a known accommodation for disabilities is to have another student take notes and have them scanned and distributed. (Note: this is a paid job for the other student, and Disability Support Services is the one doing distribution of the notes so that the student who needs them can stay anonymous. But I believe it’s not uncommon for the notetaker to scan them in themselves because staffing for DSS tends to be… relatively low.)

        1. thejeff

          Exactly. I could see some art assignments, maybe? Though with most of those I’d think the professor would want to see the originals.

          There could easily be cases where you’d want to scan a source in to add to a paper you were writing or something, but cases where you’d need to scan something in that you’d done yourself would seem pretty rare. Especially in the classes we know Joyce has taken.

        2. BBCC

          In my school, those were sent to the Disability Support Service by email so it made more sense to just type up your notes and submit it that way.

  28. milu

    hey so a couple weeks ago i was saying how i missed a DM option on here, and decided to link to my email address in my username (it’s in my “website url” field—well, you do have to right-click and “copy link”).

    and i said i’d update people on how it’s like to have my email address publicly accessible on here and today i received my first unsollicited email, it’s very funny:

    “Hello,

    Just a quick note to let you know that dumbingofages.com is on sale, and since you own dumbingofage.com we thought you might want dumbingofages.com as well. If so, please let us know and we will get back to you with the details.

    If not, have a nice day!
    Winifred Candie”

    MUAHAHA I OWN DUMBINGOFAGE.COM WINIFRED CANDIE TOLD ME SO
    (PS Willis are you interested in dumbingofages.com, it’s cool i’ll let you have it)

  29. Needfuldoer

    Okay, so Joyce just came out to Walky re: atheism. We know he’s more perceptive than he lets on, so how many beat panels will it take him to go “wait, what did she just say?!”

    1. timemonkey

      But does Walky care?

      1. Spencer

        Walky’s spoken about Joyce’s faith the exact same way Joyce does now but it’s fine because Joyce made silly angry faces instead of sad Becky faces.

        1. thejeff

          It’s fine because they’re not best friends and Joyce always knew Walky didn’t believe. There was none of the “behind my back” aspect.

        2. Spencer

          “Behind the back” implies Becky is entitled to the knowledge of Joyce’s religious beliefs, in that Joyce’s thoughts on her upbringing/worldview/herself have to be passed through Becky once they cross into her head on the grounds that Becky is, by association, in that she existed in the same world as Joyce, a part of that commentary.

          Which even in the Smart People Always Do The Right Thing timeline, would lead to the fight with the imagined version of the other in their head.

        3. thejeff

          No, it doesn’t. Not at all.

          She’s “entitled”, if we must talk about friendships that way, to not have her friend make fun of her behind her back – which is absolutely what it looked like Joyce was doing and what Joyce made no attempt to claim she wasn’t.

          Walky, on the other hand, has also made fun of Joyce’s beliefs, but he’s done so up front to her face, so there is none of the sense of betrayal that comes with finding a friend making fun of you to others.

          Regardless of what we think about the Becky/Joyce fight, that is how Walky’s mockery is different from Joyce’s and at least some of why people’s reactions to it are different.

        4. Spencer

          Fair enough, I shouldn’t push this further since I think I’m coming at it on a more “whether or not Becky deserves to know X” way, but here you’re talking about the emotional reaction Becky had and how someone like Walky couldn’t provoke that because Walky and Joyce don’t care about each other.

        5. thejeff

          Not so much because they don’t care about each other, though it’s obviously less, but because it’s all upfront and open. Joyce doesn’t have to worry about Walky pretending to agree with her while laughing at her behind her back.

      2. Needfuldoer

        I think it’s more that the cat’s out of the bag now. He won’t shout it from the rooftops, but he might talk about it with Lucy and/or Sal.

        1. timemonkey

          Since Joyce was only really hiding from Becky and Becky already found out will Joyce care?

        2. alongcameaspider

          Every person who knows is another possibility that Joyce’s mom might inadvertently find out and that seems like a nightmare scenario even if Joyce doesn’t realize it is yet

        3. Sombrero

          DoA Book 12: Hey, Guess What, I’m An Atheist!

  30. Joe M.

    I think Daisy just waved a copy of Dune in front of Walky to scare him off. Mmmmmm… Shai-Hulud.

  31. Heather

    I’m kind of slow and didn’t notice before or perhaps mistaken but like didn’t Joyce’s glasses once match the light blue colours she was wearing when she got them? Now it looks like they match her green turtleneck. You get magic glasses to match every outfit girl?

    (Where can I get such things?)

    1. milu

      Optical illusion! the colour never changed.

      maybe it feels that way because Joyce has her eyes closed a lot in this strip, preventing the cheerful blue of her eyes from radiating outwards and infecting the rims of her glasses. perceptually speaking.

      1. Heather

        Fair enough!

  32. TheLurkerAbove

    Oh gods, this reminds me of some writing work I did once for some blog in the USA. I got paid, it wasn’t a lot but it wasn’t little either, and since they were based in the USA, I had to fill in a form from IRAS.

    Fuck me, USA tax forms are the worst. For something relatively simple, I had to do more work than my own country’s income tax. It was three pages and asked a fuck ton of questions and you can see there were edge cases and special exemptions built in for gods knows why (actually, I bet those were lobbied for or something).

  33. sdrainbow

    For the record, I would have been totally fine with “LAWsome is a better comic for a student newspaper bc continuity is not our strong suit” and Joyce getting rejected on those grounds.

    That said, man I am not shocked (nor are any of the million people who no doubt predicted it) that as soon as the comic became an ounce of work, Walky bailed.

    As someone who works in telecom, the last thing we need is MORE people who do the bare minimum to skate by. The whole system is already duct tape and glue.

    1. thejeff

      Well, that’s what he says anyway.

      It’s not like the job was offered to him and he refused it when he learned there was paperwork involved.

      Those grapes were probably sour anyway.

  34. Bagge

    Once again everything works out to Walky’s favor.

    1. JBento

      Everything’s coming up Walkerton!

  35. Wendy

    This whole reminds me of my boyfriend, who had a similar college-aged faith crisis, except in Mormonism. He wrote a whole novel about it called “The Door-to-Door Mormon Pest Control Salesman” (which is actually quite good haha).

    The book had what I imagine Joyce’s approach to faith in her comic will have, a kind of “oh God can you believe I believed this stupid shit” attitude. About a decade later, my boyfriend’s still an atheist, but he also believes he could have portrayed his young teenage self with more empathy in his writing. How Willis has been portraying Joyce reminds me of that. I wonder to what degree her comic-making adventures will be depicted moving forward.

  36. MrSmith

    This strip shows Joyce was the right choice.
    Joyce put in the hard yards with the amount of work she put into the strip.
    She actively fought for the position and she didn’t give up her position once she had it.
    Walky on the other hand does what Walky does best and gives up when he meets any form of resistance
    Could Walky maintain the discipline of producing a strip a day, unlikely as he’d probably get distracted, by a squirrel most likely

    1. thejeff

      Walky accepts the offered compromise, hoping to please everyone. Joyce stomps on him for it.

      There are many ways of reading it.

      1. JBento

        Guess Walky DID learn something from Dorothy.

      2. MrSmith

        I think it shows that Joyce was more into the idea.

        However I do find Daisy’s behaviour a tad…interesting the last couple of strip

  37. RowenMorland

    Then Joyce leaves over continuity and Walky won’t come back with those forms, and thus Daisy realises that she hasn’t Soloman’d them but dog and boned herself.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      The only thing I could find for “dog and bone” was some Cockney rhyming slang for “telephone”. She called herself?

      1. RowenMorland

        Ah, sorry Taffy I meant the fable of the dog and two bones. Dog steals a great bone and is super happy, it runs off into the night to avoid having to give it back to the butcher.

        Out in the night at the lake it seas a dog in the water with an equally nice bone. The dog barks to scare away its rival and get both only to have its bone fall from its mouth into the lake.

    2. Ana Chronistic

      As my Botober entries can attest, scanning is a shit ton better than having to resort to a camera phone

      1. Ana Chronistic

        Wtf that was supposed to be Shariku’s thread down from this one

  38. Shariku

    I can confirm that scanning comics in is the worst part of the whole process. Enjoy spending hours wondering why your perfectly-smooth-on-paper lines become jagged monstrosities once uploaded.

    1. Roborat

      Which probably explains why so many comics are drawing digitally now.

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