360

Real learning
Posted on December 10, 2021 by David M Willis

360 thoughts on “Real learning”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    haha not for nothing, but I remembered the one church lady who said when she was five she was convinced she knew ALL there was to being an adult

    (and this was before internet, so idk where she learned THAT, if she really did)

    anyway RIP IN PEACE JOYCE WE NEVER GOT TO SEE YOUR COMIC PUBLISHED (in-comic)

    1. Decidedly Orthogonal

      I see you alt-text Willis and hear your pain. Since Joyce is your corollary in-comic, clearly this means five months ago during the comic bi-erasure comment debates, you’re telling us the bi’s don’t really exist and should figure out their lane and stay in it. Not sarcasm, satire, parody or exageration can change what you so obviously mean. Even Dorothy agrees it makes sence for Joyce to end things here.

      Truly a powerful finish to the comic. Bravo!

      1. Clif

        The light of masterful sarcasm, it burns!

  2. Nono

    Remember when Leslie said ‘all these people here, and how can you say you have nothing left to learn?’

    Also that’s right Dorothy, at this point just let her dig her own grave.

    1. Z

      Watching Ruth rip out her femurs for bi-erasure sounds like a damn good reality check.

      1. Z

        Awww yisss perfect avatar for this moment haha.

        Ugh I remember being 20 and stupid and thinking I had it allll figured out. This’ll be a moment Joyce will look back on and either laugh or cringe.

        1. Decidedly Orthogonal

          I remember kinda proudly telling people my awareness of what I didn’t know. It really was very little, since I’d figured out so much already.

          Hmmm? What’s that? What little else did I not already know?

          “Most of it.”

          Fortunately, since then I’ve learned even more and know much less. Hopefully I can live to a ripe enough old age and can learn enough that this will end soon.

        2. Clif

          I believe it ends with the realization you know nothing.

        3. Common Sense

          And once you have figured most things out and actually want to help people they will all dismiss your advices or every wisdom you gained over the years with simple phrases ,since they believe they already know better and everything.

        4. Psychie

          Yeah! Everyone knows it takes at LEAST twenty FIVE years to figure everything out!

        5. TheCatCameBack

          I’m 20 right now and I’m terrified of what I could possibly have left to learn.

        6. frothierlemming

          “Okay, so what else do I have left to learn?”
          “Yes”

  3. The Wellerman

    For those of you who don’t wanna touch this one…….

    *looks frantically around room for a conspicuous conversation piece*

    When’s the last time you’ve eaten mustard?

    1. The Wellerman

      I tried folks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        Batman, could you pass the mustard?

        1. JBento

          Of course he could, Batman has trained to the best at passing the mustard.

        2. Decidedly Orthogonal

          Don’t put mustard on the Bat¡

        3. JBento

          See, that sounds like a “obviously not, stupid” thing, until you remember that microwaves come with specific warnings about you using them to dry your pets, peanut packages contain extra warnings about them containing peanuts, and chainsaw operating manuals say “don’t stop with your genitals”.

    2. Thag Simmons

      I was not expecting to have this hard a time answering this question. Definitely been a while

    3. Sara Hysaro

      Mustard’s definitely in my top three condiments, so I don’t think a week goes by without me having it on a sandwich or something. Not a big fan of ketchup on anything but burgers, however.

      1. Sara Hysaro

        Oh, apparently not capitalizing gives me Malaya.

        1. plasticwrap

          Wtf?! You get two different avatars? Not fair!

        2. Delicious Taffy

          Gee, Bill

        3. Sara Hysaro

          Play around with the capitalization of your email – you’ll get different options too. 🙂

        4. Decidedly Orthogonal

          For your elucidation: Grav Roulette

        5. MacareuxMoine

          I didn’t know, this was documented in walkypedia.
          (This is mostly an excuse to check my alternate grav)

        6. MacareuxMoine

          Nope – definitely sticking with Becky

    4. RassilonTDavros

      About six hours ago.

    5. Doongus

      July 24th, 2007. I was ten. I distinctly remember this because it was my younger brother’s birthday party. It was also the first time I ate mustard. I felt colossally betrayed because I was expecting it to add a deliciously cheesy taste to my hotdog. I have still never forgiven mustard to this day.

      1. Clif

        Well there’s your problem. Your mustard didn’t have enough cheese in it.

    6. Yotomoe

      God it’s probably been years. The reason being that I hate mustard. It’s too sour and I don’t want that shit on my meat products.

      1. cbwroses

        Even honey mustard? I’ve only recently starting eating mustard in the past year, and having it be sweet was definitely the way to go for me.

        1. The Wellerman

          Hey Amber, you like honey mustard SAUCE? Yeah ya do! ?

        2. Deanatay

          Not sure Joyce could deal with honey and mustard touching like that.

        3. The Wellerman

          Ironically it’s not even real honey most of the time, just fructose syrup. Given it’s also a homogeneous paste, maybe it’s not too much of a problem for her?

        4. Yotomoe

          Honey Mustard is like my favorite condiment ever. I know I know it’s quite a paradox.

        5. Dara

          on pretzels SO GOOD

      2. khn0

        Well you better not eat andouille then…

    7. alongcameaspider

      I had a double quarter pounder from McDonalds for lunch today, I’m pretty sure that has mustard on it

      1. Decidedly Orthogonal

        yes

    8. Agemegos

      I used some to make mayonnaise for the chicken salad I made for dinner on Tuesday.

      1. cbwroses

        That doesn’t seem like mayonnaise. But I don’t eat mayonnaise, so what do I know?

        1. The Wellerman

          Mayonnaise is typically made with vinegar or lemon juice, but sometimes even mustard is used to add a little flavor.

        2. Agemegos

          Mustard is a standard ingredient of classic mayonnaise. It helps to stabilised the emulsion.

        3. Agemegos

          My recipe id one egg-yolk, 30 ml cider vinegar, 30 ml water, 7 ml Dijon mustard, one pinch each of salt, pepper, and tarragon, and 300 ml of light olive oil. I assure you that that is pretty conventional.

        4. The Wellerman

          Yeah that sounds pretty classic. The only mayonnaise ever use is store bought, and I really only use a little bit in egg fried rice. Sometimes the Japanese kind made with rice vinegar.

    9. StClair

      Last Tuesday, in a cheeseburger I got for lunch.

    10. Clif

      Last time I had a burger. So last month sometime.

    11. Sporky

      Probably the last time I got a burger. Usually I’ll just have a specialty burger if I’m getting fast food, but if I’m picking the toppings individually I like mustard and pickles on burgers.

    12. Robbie

      I think I had mustard on Monday on a hot dog.

      1. Clif

        For you it was a hot dog. For me, it was an opportunity to have mustard.

    13. Dara

      I used some mustard in a pasta sauce on Tuesday, so – then.

      Unless you count the mustard in mayonnaise, which I used a bit of in a dressing tonight.

    14. Needfuldoer

      Couple weeks ago, last time I made burgers. I’ll load them up with mustard and onions, even if the patties already have chopped onion in them.

      In my younger days I’d load up on ketchup, but I don’t use nearly as much as I used to. This stuff is amazing, though! It’s just horseradish-y enough, I just wish it was thicker.

      1. khn0

        If it’s horseradish, it’s not mustard, no?
        Asking for linguistic reasons, living in an area where we got both horseradish and mustard sauces, both sweet or not, but we call horseradish either condiment, horseradish, or last week’s thursday

        1. khn0

          sorry messed the link (or you can scroll up a bit)

        2. Needfuldoer

          Mustard and onions, with just a little horseradish. It’s good.

    15. JediMB

      I had oven fries with mustard yesterday. Twice.

      Presumably I’ll have burger and fries today, and both with mustard.

    16. wwwhhattt

      Just had some with my tea. Don’t eat so much of it these days, because you can’t get decent cheese around these parts.

    17. Katherine

      made a really good potato salad a couple weeks ago, put a ton of dijonnaise on it 😀

    18. Keulen

      Probably a few days ago with the hotdogs I ate back then.

    19. Hampsterpig

      Last week was finals for me so I ate a lot of takeout. Wawa sandwiches are good and I like putting on mustard.

  4. Thag Simmons

    And that’s when Joyce Brown was murdered.

    1. Diner Kinetic

      Cause of death: failing to google “bisexuality”

      1. motorfirebox

        I googled bisexuality and as far as I can tell it has nothing to do with femurs in general, much less specifically being beaten to death with very specifically your own.

        1. Deviant

          I googled “Bisexuality femur” and found some study about bone density and sexual orientation.

        2. King Daniel

          Well?? Don’t leave us hanging!

        3. Clif

          Most people with a sexual orientation have bones. Some of them are denser than others.

        4. Rainhat

          and so are their bones!

    2. Tim

      Millions of years from now there will be a comic strip about this and being beaten to death with your own femurs will be called Joyc-omizing after the late Joyce Brown

      1. Sporky

        And then scientists will complain that Joyces coexisting with Ruths in the same era isn’t scientifically accurate

      2. Ed Callahan

        You can never have enough Far Side references.

  5. Kyrik Michalowski

    Oh Joyce, how you confound and confuse all around you. Also, you really need to listen to Dorothy, she’s trying to help you understand that atheism isn’t a change that will make you nonstupid forever.

    Bonus points if we can get her to understand bisexuality.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Bonus bonus points if understanding bisexuality causes her to realize that just because she is attracted to men, it does not follow that she isn’t also attracted to Dorothy.

    2. Rocket Relm

      Definitely. One thing I’ve learned over the years when it comes to people making content debunking other people/religions/etc (especially, but not exclusively, regarding the skeptic community), is that “poking holes in something very very dumb and wrong is not a high bar to clear”, and that one can absolutely be dumb as hell in a lot of ways that are utterly disconnected to how smart they are in others.

    3. Agemegos

      Yes, Joyce! Become a better friend of Dorothy!

    4. Needfuldoer

      But she was fooled for eighteen years! Now she sees right through to the truth! How could she NOT be smart now?!

      /s

  6. Cattleprod

    At first glance I thought Joyce had both feet on the table in the last panel and she was crouched like Spider-Man.

    1. Azhrei Vep

      until I read this comment and scrolled back up to check for an embarassingly long time, so did I.

  7. RassilonTDavros

    …oh fuck Joyce is suicidal isn’t she.

    I don’t mean attempting to lecture Ruth on her own sexuality is suicidal, I mean she’s outright calling the present moment the end of her life.

    …I am very worried.

    1. Thag Simmons

      I think she’s just speaking imprecisely about becoming an adult and not needing to grow or learn anymore.

      1. alongcameaspider

        Yeah that’s how this reads to me

        That doesn’t mean she’s not having some kind of troubling thoughts, she’s been through a lot of trauma in a relatively short amount of time, but I haven’t seen anything that indicates that Joyce is an active danger to herself

        other then her imminent actions in this comic of course

      2. StClair

        See also “the end of history”.

        1. Clif

          Doesn’t count. History is continually ending and the future is continually shrinking.

        2. Thag Simmons

          builds builds builds the past, the future narrows narrows narrows

        3. Jamie

          “The End of History” is an article written about how “history” is a project for discovering the ideal political system and, now that humanity has figured out the answer is “liberal democracy”, everything is just cleanup. Just gotta bring democracy to the primitives and call it a day.

          Fukuyama somewhat regrets having written that, now.

          … this is the same guy who wrote a short book titled “State-building” in 2004. Y’know. After America invaded Iraq/Afghanistan under, um, *checks notes* Operation Enduring Freedom and slogged to a halt trying to explain why elections are magical democracy pills.

        4. Agemegos

          It sometimes occurs to me that the USA’s foundation myth is that the Founding Fathers built Democracy de novo directly on the ruins of mediæval royal absolutism (itself a myth), and that this obscures the difficult and protracted process of development, in England from 1265, of the institutions of representative government and independent courts. Some American policy folk who ought to know better then expect representative democracy to be much easier to establish than it really is. If the Framers could figure it all out in five years and get it running in a year, how hard can it be?

        5. thejeff

          Also on a smaller scale on the development of local town meeting government within the American colonies, especially in the North.

        6. Agemegos

          Good point.

      3. Needfuldoer

        That was how I read it too, Thag.

    2. Sporky

      I think she’s intending it to be more along the lines of “the end of history”, but yeah the subtext is DEFINITELY there.

    3. Rowan

      I don’t think she’s there yet but it seems likely she’ll get there. Her entire reason for coming to colleve was to get a Good Christian Husband and learn education so she can homeschool her children as good Christians. All of that is gone now, so she has no idea what she wants out of life, or what her motivations or morals are. That purposelessness will hit her hard.

      I would really like to see Dorothy or someone sit her down and confront her for those concerns, give her some space to be heartfelt and sincere about everything she’s lost.

      1. Spencer

        Joe’s done that a whole bunch now!

  8. Doongus

    I spent a lot of time wishing I knew fewer Christians like Joyce. Now I’m spending a lot of time wishing I knew fewer atheists like Joyce. Yet I like Joyce. Cuh-razy, huh?

    1. Jamie

      It’s mostly because you’ve seen inside her head.

      People are complicated.

      1. Mollyscribbles

        also not having to deal with face-to-face conversations with her helps.

    2. Sporky

      Well, unlike real people, Joyce’s empathy always wins out in the end

      1. thejeff

        Or did when she was Christian. We haven’t really seen that happen yet since she came out as atheist.

        I mean, I still expect her to, but it would be nice to see the evidence.

        1. Spencer

          Her atheism started taking root when she defied everyone she ever knew, her every institution, and the actual God in Heaven to protect Becky.

        2. thejeff

          Sure, which is why I said “came out as atheist”.

        3. Spencer

          Coming out as an atheist happened yesterday in the worst way possible where all she’s got at the moment is the insistence she’s right with the big pile of nothing that used to be the inerrant facts of the universe, and she has to insist she’s right because Becky and Sarah are making her defend things she barely understands. We only found out she no longer believed in God a year ago now, where she still couldn’t call herself an atheist.

          She’s still been Joyce the whole time. When corrected by Walky on Booster’s gender she asserted she had no idea what she was talking about, ergo Booster was the expert and she should follow their lead. She effortlessly slid back into being Joe’s friend upon reuniting in bio class and meeting him after the timeskip had her push him to take care of Amber and assert he cared despite his denial. She was scared as hell to approach Becky on Bonnie’s birthday and still pushed through because she had to be there for Becky and somehow make up for what she saw as past transgressions for being lied to about her mom’s death. It took until yesterday for her to stop being an endless source of jubilant sunshine in the face of Sarah being Sarah.

          Maybe the audience can make a reasonable assumption that Joyce is gonna come to terms with her newfound bitterness brought from being raised in a death cult and be friends with Becky again, and we’re currently in a story of Joyce feeling her way through a confusing new reality where she barely knows who she is anymore when the reality is that whatever bullshit she believed, she was real and she mattered. Give her a few more years to catch up to her previous status quo and maybe she’ll have another car chase or two.

    3. Romanticide

      Her being fictional makes some nice distance.

    4. Keulen

      I still think Joyce is better as an atheist than she was as a Christian. Though obviously she’s got plenty more to learn.

      1. thejeff

        Better as an early atheist than in her early days in the strip as a Christian and I expect she’ll be in a better place in the end.

        But for now she’s lost that “But I’ve learned I’m usually wrong” awareness that was the saving grace of her latter days as a Christian (as a still closeted atheist when she actually said it, but the attitude goes further back.)

      2. Spencer

        It’s a simple formula for me.

        Has Atheist Joyce ever dated a gay dude so he could force himself to be straight?

        If No: she’s better than she used to be.

  9. ADLegend21

    END HER Ruth. END. HER.

  10. Stephen Bierce

    *plays Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” on the hacked Muzak*

    1. Joe Moose

      How dare you steal my actions.

  11. Jamie

    I have popcorn this time!

  12. John Smith

    That’s… the opposite of what you want.
    Being a scientist means you never get to be ‘done’ learning.

    1. Yotomoe

      It’s part of why I hate neil DeGrass Tyson. He has such a no-nonsense “nope this is how it works and nothing else is possible” approach to his discussions. And it’s like…There’s nothing more uninteresting than an inflexible scientist.

      1. John Smith

        I don’t follow NDT closely enough to know what you mean about him, specifically. And while I agree with you in a general sense that you should be flexible and open to changing your mind…

        We know a lot of things to a high degree of accuracy. Evolution, for example. It might be boring, but it’s hard to be flexible about it because people will try and bend you around to positions that are just not compatible with the things we do know.

        1. Needfuldoer

          He’s no Carl Sagan, that’s for sure. A good presenter, but he can be a walking, talking “um ACKSUALLY” meme.

      2. Agemegos

        When you are a scientist (I imagine) it must get pretty exasperating to deal with the people who won’t let you get on with learning new things because they insist that you keep learning the same old things over and over.

        Hint for Karl Popper, #1: “some swans are black” is a scientific statement, verifiable, and true. When some early ornithologist discovered that it is true, that was a scientific discovery.

        Hint for Karl Popper, #2: the word “prove” has multiple senses. Unlike a theorem in mathematics, a proposition in the empirical domain doesn’t have to be proven to the level of philosophical certainty (including e.g. falsifying solipsism) to be proven beyond any reasonable doubt.

    2. Jamie

      Joyce doesn’t claim to be a scientist. She claims to be an atheist.

  13. Wraithy2773

    The problem here remains that, while Joyce has plenty of understandable reasons for acting like an asshole, and that carefully measured support by her friends would help her to stop acting like an asshole before she starts going into super-mega-asshole territory…

    …she’s still just acting like an asshole here, and there’s a limit to how much friends should be expected to tolerate a friend acting like an asshole around them, and while final-panel-shenanigans might be responsible for a bit there, she’s jumping well over the Asshole Event Horizon right there.

  14. NinjaNick

    Don’t jump to conclusions, Joyce.

  15. Yotomoe

    “I’m 18 and that’s it. I know all the things.”

    1. Clif

      What? It took you 18 years?

      Laughs and points.

      Looks around for Mike.

  16. Nathan

    My response to pretty much every DOA comic continues to be:

    YOU POOR STUPID BABIES

    1. brute

      i think this is generally the only correct reaction.

  17. Kavonde

    Well, Joyce is finally going to learn that bisexuality exists.

    If she survives.

  18. BBCC

    Well, Dorothy, your point is about to be QUICKLY proven. Enjoy!

  19. Cheshrin

    Well, Joyce, it was nice knowing you while it lasted.

  20. brumagem

    Remember kids “Bisexual” is just a fancy word with two meanings:

    1. Gay but in denial.
    2. Straight but desperate for attention.
    3. An actual human who’s attrations are less limited by gender and who’s days are constantly filled with exasperation for those who only read the first two definitions written by non-bi people.

    1. plasticwrap

      I found people are cooler about bisexuality in Europe. Go figure.

      1. thejeff

        Only if England doesn’t count as Europe.

        Or I may just have been following the terf wars too closely.

        1. milu

          how does bisexuality come up in terf discourse?

        2. thejeff

          Horribly, of course.

          Most directly in accusations that women who call themselves lesbians but date trans women are “really” bisexual, but the purity approach spills over into more general bisexual exclusion as well.

        3. milu

          Oh right. They’re so smart.

    2. Segnosaur

      4. Someone who wants ti double the number of people available to date

      1. Meagan

        except it doesn’t really double it, especially when moving from hetero to bi, because then only queer people of the same sex are available, which isn’t a huge percentage of the population.

        I guess when moving from homosexual to bi it could increase it more as that includes straight and bi people of the other sex, but that’s only if they’re open to dating a queer person. I guess a lot of women aren’t into bi guys, which confounds me. As a queer female, I’d rather date bi guys than straight guys.

        1. RacingTurtle

          But I do get potentially double the number of people to have a crush on! Which is great for watching TV and movies

        2. thejeff

          There’s a decent amount of biphobia in the gay and lesbian communities as well as plenty among the straights, so coming out as bi might well drop the number of potential partners.

  21. Yotomoe

    Joyce’s outfit in this arc is cute though.

    1. plasticwrap

      I agree. Cute boots.

    2. The Wellerman

      Eh, I kinda liked her pink jacket better.

    3. Sporky

      Yeah, but Joyce’s outfit in every arc is cute.

      1. Agemegos

        They are all shaped like Joyce?

        1. Sporky

          Clothes shaped like people sounds horrifying actually

        2. King Daniel

          What are clothes supposed to be shaped like then?

        3. Sporky

          Parts of people, like the torso, the arms, the legs, etc.

        4. King Daniel

          Counterpoint: onesies with hoods.

        5. The Wellerman

          I take it that full-body swimsuits and jumpsuits must be your worse fear, then.

        6. Sporky

          They scwary 🙁

        7. King Daniel

          Also spacesuits.

        8. Needfuldoer

          Nobody tell Sporky about Morphsuits (and their generic clones).

    4. Schpoonman

      The white vest on black shirt and pants is great.

    5. Amós Batista

      I agree, but is looks like she went in a office.
      …
      Or a rodeo, I don’t know.

    6. zee

      I wasn’t into it until i saw the boots. I’ve been getting really into the star wars universe lately and the boots with the rest of the outfit feel kinda star wars-y for some reason, it’s making that part of my brain happy

  22. King Daniel

    Joyce is right, though. You can’t like boys and girls, is there even a word for that?

    1. King Daniel

      Whoa, I somehow managed two links at once without getting automodded??

      1. RassilonTDavros

        I believe two is okay, three gets automodded. That’s the best I can work out, anyway.

        …I think two external links can also prompt an automod, though.

    2. The Wellerman

      Hmm… Given Becky’s still pretty much in the black about Grey-Ace and Demisexuality (no pun intended) you think she could still be clueless about bisexuality too?

      1. Thag Simmons

        I think she’d have to have picked up on it’s existence by now, but honestly who knows, characters in this comic can be remarkably dense

        Still not entirely sure if Jennifer knows Sal isn’t Amazi-Girl despite being flat out told the truth at least three times

      2. Needfuldoer

        She was all for Ruth and Billiefer, but she’ll probably just shrug at Ruth and Jason. Worst case, she’ll do what Joyce is gearing up to do here.

        1. King Daniel

          She was saying it in a deliberate attempt to get a rise out of Ruth and Jennifer (and so ensure they’d never get back together), but she did tell them post-timeskip that “girl/girl is way more enticingly transgressive […]r dumb boyfriends […] been saddled with…”

        2. Needfuldoer

          Yeah, when it comes to non-lesbian relationships, Becky is indifferent at best.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/objectively/

          How much of that is genuine rather than part of her act is yet to be seen.

      3. King Daniel

        As for the question of whether Becky knows of bisexuality/pansexuality: she at least knows it’s “a thing”, though we’ve heard nothing from her on the subject since then, and she may currently have some less-than-ideal attitudes toward it.

        1. milu

          also means Joyce wasn’t paying attention when Becky said that. Which isn’t surprising, that conversation was a lot for her ^^

  23. plasticwrap

    Haven’t learned about bisexuals yet apparently…

    1. Yotomoe

      It’s chapter 2 in “God’s not real and that makes you smart” Kate Thee Hest. Chapter 3 is about which holidays to start hating.

      1. Thag Simmons

        the correct answer is all of them except maybe halloween

      2. Needfuldoer

        Joyce read chapter 1, then thumb-flipped through the rest of the book. She knows everything, why should she read it all the way to the end?

  24. drs

    Is Joyce just leaning back against Dorothy’s arm? Aww, cuddly!

  25. Yotomoe

    I think one of my favorite features about the human race is the realization that people, in general, suck. Insomuch that people don’t change their nature, they just change sides. It’s not about self actualization or realizing nuance in life, it’s not about respect, it’s not about love. It’s about knowing which side is the right one to be on so that all your toxic behavior can be seen as righteous because you’re doing it for the right causes. I find it quite tiresome.

    People aren’t good but they want to try to be good. But that would involve having to not deal with other people.

    1. The Wellerman

      I’m with ya bruh. You have no idea. ?

    2. newlland(Henryvolt)

      I…don’t know how to comment on this, I myself are in the camp where I’m trying not to go down the path where I view myself as some saint when I’m trying to do good but I’m still trying to atleast do some good in the world because world needs it considering it has enough evil in it already.

      But I always feel like there are still parts of me that are prideful, selfish, maybe vindictive at times and it will always be there no matter how much I think I’ve change.

      I don’t know if any of this makes sense because I might have went off the rails a bit. But that’s how I look at it I guess.

    3. Agemegos

      Yes, there is a huge amount of that around. The most vocal proponents and most vigorous enforcers of even the most virtuous causes are often primarily motivated to enhance their own prestige, at others’ expense if possible.

      1. Agemegos

        #NotAllGoodPeople, though.

        1. Sporky

          #I’veSeenAllGoodPeople turn their heads each day

        2. hof1991

          Yes. Saw them perform that song back when I was Joyce’s age.

    4. Meagan

      Yep. The whole changing sides and feeling righteous about whatever your current side is, is something that has made me curious and disturbed about humans for a long time.

      1. The Wellerman

        They’re all just self-sustaining piles of protein and sugar. What do you expect?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        1. Clif

          Better?

          The self-sustaining piles of protein are important and all, but it’s the software that runs on them that we hope can improve.

    5. Spencer

      It’s about knowing which side is the right one to be on so that all your toxic behavior can be seen as righteous because you’re doing it for the right causes. I find it quite tiresome.

      Yep. Being right feels good, but it can’t be all there is to an argument and it’s all anyone wants in a world of trained helplessness. I can’t just go “let’s get rid of tipping!” without considering how to protect the livelihoods of service industry workers who need tips to survive, but that takes effort. It’s easier to jump to the solution I want and complain that life hasn’t caught up.

      Talking about anything isn’t a discussion anymore, really. It’s an argument. I have to prove I’m right in all things, and I do that by being a smug, posturing nerdlinger because the person I’m talking to is a formless blob of nothing but whatever value I want to ascribe to them, meaning however I treat them is immediately and forever justified.

      In an age of instant communication where we can peer into the lives of anyone who speaks it at any point, it is easier than ever to dehumanize them, and we do this to our fellow man because he said Legend of Zelda sucked.

    6. Azhrei Vep

      Hey now. Some of us are perfectly fine just being bad people.

      1. milu

        i had this hilarious exchange with an older guy on the bus once who for basically no reason started pontificating to me about how there were three sorts of people in the world: good, bad, and medium. I said, “oh, which are you?” he was like, “well i’m good of course!”, then i said “i’m medium” and he gave me this look, and stopped talking to me. he was so serious, it was adorable.

    7. The Wellerman

      ” All that is solid melts into air;
      all that is holy is deconsecrated,
      and the human is at last compelled to face the reality of their condition,
      of their relationship with other ​organisms,
      under sober circumstances. “

  26. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Ever heard of “Plato’s allegory of the cave?” Ome person spends most of their life confined in a with a small group of people until one day they leave the cave and go on a journey where they experience the outside world for the first time? Then when they returns to the cave they try to share tell their experience to their old friends in the cave but they don’t believe them and refuse to go and see for themselves and right then and their person who left the cave can no longer relate to their old friends either so they leave all together.

    Now this right here makes me wonder what would happen if said person who lived in the cave found some other people who spent most of their time outside of it and tried to lecture them about the world despite still being the less experienced one.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      Kind of funny given the allegory is often used for religious revelations on the true nature of reality.

      See Neo and the Matrix.

    2. Romanticide

      twitter looks like the scenario you are imagining sometimes… but yes you got Joyce quite right there.

  27. DarkoNeko

    J-Joyce ?!

  28. Angel

    I desperately need Booster to appear out of thin air and recommend this girl a decent psychologist.

    1. Dara

      A Booster shot for Joyce’s mental health, then.

  29. MugiwaraNoPancakes

    The positioning of the word bubble on the last page makes it look like Dorothy is writing on an adorable pair of tiny pants and I love it

    1. King Daniel

      Cannot unsee now.

  30. C.T. Phipps

    Yes, Joyce, you need to discover a post-religious philosophy like Star Trek utopianism (unless it’s Deep Space Nine) or anime’s Neon Genesis Evangelion.

    1. Clif

      Joyce would make a fine Militant Discordian.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        Joyce reads Alan Moore and discovers Chaos Wizardry.

        “I worship a snake god who lives in my head!”

        Also weed!

        “No, that would be wrong.”

      2. Jamie

        I’ve never met an actual Discordian in real life. The Principia Discordia is a delightful read, though. The Law of Fives is a particular favorite.

        1. thejeff

          Then you must not have been doing enough evangelizing. You’re liable to be turned into a precious Mao button and distributed to the poor in the Region of Thud.

        2. Rainhat

          Somebody declared me a Discordian Pope (something anyone can apparently do). So, hi?

    2. Needfuldoer

      DS9 is the most ‘realistic’ Trek ever got. If only they introduced Federation splinter groups like the Maquis earlier, it would have been a better cross-section of human behavior.

      (The whole TNG/DS9/VOY/LDS era is still my favorite sci-fi fictional universe.)

  31. AeromechanicalAce

    You know what’d be REALLY good for knocking Joyce out of her obnoxious “I now know everything” phase?

    Her sister coming out to her. If Joyce still has trouble figuring out the concept of Bisexual, Someone being Trans will fry her brain, and it will be HILARIOUS to watch.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      I predict a triple word score brainfry if Jocelyn remains religious.

      1. Sporky

        That would be funny, but Jocelyne has the same mom as Joyce, so I think it’s pretty safe to say that she’s yeeted Christianity into the stratosphere

        Yeah I know Becky’s dad is horrible and abusive too and etc etc but I think there’s just something about Carol’s specific flavor of awful that makes Christianity hard to untangle from it.

        1. BBCC

          Well, she’s probably yeeted CAROL’s Christianity in any case. Whether she’s found a flavour of her own is yet to be seen.

        2. Regalli

          Yeah, a large part of Joyce’s inability to separate Christianity from the cult is that she was always a very all-or-nothing thinker (the other part is that she never felt God when she prayed, she just feared going to Hell so she would be The Best Christian.) Jocelyne might well be more flexible on that front. Or she might have felt a God when she prayed and still be working through her feelings about hypocrisy and their upbringing versus the idea of God in the abstract. Plenty of options.

        3. John Smith

          This is your daily reminder that the ‘Cult’ interpretation of Christianity is shared by about 40% of Americans and we have no idea what Joyce ‘felt’ or thought she felt as she prayed.

          This was a PSA funded by the No-true-Scotts-or-Christians association.

        4. thejeff

          We don’t know what Joyce felt, but we do know that she stopped feeling God or maybe realized she never did, because she told us that.

        5. Regalli

          Yes. I also use the word ‘cult’ since A: It’s what Willis uses to describe his own upbringing these days, and B: It’s not just the literalism that was the problem. It was the forbidding Disney movies because they suggested parental judgment was not infallible. It was the ‘all signs of mysticism are Satanic.’ From Willis’s upbringing, the ‘you can’t sing The Greatest Love of All because the greatest love of all is Jesus’s’ letter to his elementary school. The restrictions and isolation of these kids that went beyond any sense of religious dogma and into, well… cult territory. It’s not that they’re not true Christians – I know there is in fact a dedicated subsect of Christianity that are essentially a death cult, and a significant one at that. It’s that I’ve met multiple people who, after being raised in that environment and escaping and having space to unpack that shit, proceeded to describe it as a cult using fundamentalist evangelical Christianity as the base and getting even MORE restrictive from there. It’s still a very much Christian-flavored cult, but it being a form of Christianity does not preclude it also being a cult upbringing.

        6. John Smith

          She recontextualized what she’d felt. That’s not unusual for people losing religion. Saying she “never felt god” because of that is just a dodge.

        7. Regalli

          The thing is, we’ve seen phrasing to that effect more than once. There’s the ‘don’t feel God’ alongside ‘I don’t hear God’s voice anymore, or maybe I never did’ from the Rich Mullins dream, but there’s also the Booster psychoanalysis strip and ‘you’re worried that you’re not actually becoming someone new, but always were this person deep down’ (which Joyce’s reaction to makes clear, is more than a little accurate). The implication is that it’s not just recontextualizing, it’s Joyce reassessing everything with the realization she believed in the structure of the church more than she believed in God as a concept.

        8. Spencer

          Nah, John, that’s just an actual part of Joyce’s character. God was Rules, Authority and Obedience, those were her real faith. Joyce never felt God like a faithful person does, so she clung to the text.

          Becky has faith, Joyce had rules.

        9. thejeff

          @John Smith: I’m quoting what she said. That’s not a dodge. That’s what we know.
          But I don’t hear God’s voice anymore. Or maybe I never did.

          Maybe she used to and now she doesn’t and she’s projecting that backwards. Maybe she still does, but is too traumatized to realize it.
          Maybe she never did.
          Or maybe she used and now she doesn’t.
          Maybe it’s all a trick of the key change.

          What we know about it comes from what she said and that’s it. We can theorize more about what it really means, but to say we have no idea goes too far. We’ve been told. As much as we know anything about any of these characters, we know this.

    2. King Daniel

      Yeah, I think this probably puts to rest the theory about Joyce already knowing Carla’s deal, let alone her sister’s.

      1. Thag Simmons

        Which makes sense, this story is about Joyce’s growth and that’s a decently important moment that probably should be shown.

        Also probably a “no comment section for a few strips” moment, unfortunately

    3. Spencer

      I mean, the obvious conclusion to that seems to be “well my SISTER is telling me she is my sister, and the only thing I have to fall back is my parents telling me that isn’t real, ergo I have a big sister and that’s rad.”

  32. Rocket Relm

    I like where the whole plotline re: Ruth hooking up with the bartender(male) because it’s in part meant to make a statement about bi erasure, tackling toxic notions, and the like.

    At the same time, there is a significant part of my brain that cannot conceive of a real life person saying and doing what Joyce is doing right now. Obviously people do truly think in ways like Joyce is both in earlier panels and in that last one, it just feels like it’s phrased as a completely-self-aware person would phrase something they know to be silly.

    (Which is true, because Willis is being self aware about the past notions he had to get over.)

    1. Sporky

      Ruth going out with Jason is shitty for plenty of legitimate reasons besides biphobia. Come to think of it that kind of sums up her relationship with Jennifer too. Ruth’s toxic relationship trainwrecks are progressive ONLY

      1. Segnosaur

        Really? I thought Ruth/Jason was a fairly decent couple.

        Neither has any sort of power/authority over the other, both are non-american (so they share a certain perspective), jason does not have the problem with alcohol that billie did, and seems genuinely interested in academics (i.e. the reason they are at university).

        Jason is imperfect, but i don’t think he is unredeemable, and his big mistake (a relationship with Sal) would not impact ruth.

    2. Mollyscribbles

      closest I can come to figuring out her mindset
      * Grow up in a love the sinner/hate the sin atmosphere that teaches you gay and lesbian people can be “fixed” so they’re straight.
      * Get into the real world, realize gay and lesbian people are who they are and trying to make them pretend they’re straight will just go badly for everyone
      * thus end up with the impression that a girl who has previously been in a relationship with a girl, who is now dating a boy, is attempting to pretend they’re straight due to internalized or external issues.

    3. Thag Simmons

      The thing about this comic is that sometimes it is absurd and unrealistic on purpose for comedic purposes. Accept that, and you’ll have a much better time

    4. Spencer

      I for one could never believe some overreaching nerd would ever conclude that a bi person is doing something wrong by dating a person of a different gender.

      Completely alien.

      1. milu

        i mean, “i gotta let her know she’s backsliding!” while literally leaping onto the table does sound a bit artificial.

        i think that was Rocket’s point.

        (i agree with Thag though, this is comedic exaggeration for the purpose of a pithy punchline, and it’s fine.)

        1. Spencer

          Maybe the exact words, but the feelings Joyce is expressing ain’t the slightest bit exaggerated for how bi folks get treated in these circumstances.

    5. zee

      I mean it’s a punchline panel, i wouldn’t read too much into the realism of it

  33. Robbie

    Deconverting did feel like the end of *a* life. I feel like I have a whole new life now. I mean, I am able to see where i’ve always been me. That even with all the mandated repression, the real me was there, in the before times, and i’m just unearthing me. But there’s also a sharp divide where one day I walked out of church and never went back, and another day a half a year later where I walked away from the entire belief system and my family of origin for good. I felt unmade. It’s been 9 years now, since I walked out of church forever. I am still remaking myself.

    (Childhood abuse so bad I have PTSD has made the remaking very complicated…. I was never safe so there’s not a before abuse version of me I can return to…. My identity is sort of… Just fragments. )

    1. BarerMender

      It’s hard and it can take a long time. I quit believing when I was 14. I was 35 when I had my last nightmare of hell. I’m 72 and still acting out abusive relationships. Nevertheless, I’m so, so much better than I was at 14.

      1. hof1991

        Hello fellow kid. Bet the comments section would be amazed at how many senior citizens are regulars.

  34. Clif

    Briefly wonders where we were in the story 5 months ago. Decides to be too lazy to figure it out.

    1. King Daniel

      I think it was the end of the “most evolved organism” plotline?

  35. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Also someone needs to tell Joyce to sit her ass down and let people live their lives if their not making any harmful mistakes…especially if doesn’t seem that much of a mistake Jason might be good for her.

  36. Agemegos

    Good old authoritarian Joyce! Still dictating sexual propriety!

  37. Regalli

    RIP to Joyce, 1997-2021. She will be missed. Guess the comic’s about Danny again.

    1. Regalli

      On a completely unrelated note, since I know there are fellow Sonic fans… IAN FLYNN IS WRITING AN ACTUAL SONIC GAME FUCK YEAH HE DID IT!

      I am genuinely SO excited. Sure, he’s still going to have the same limitations he has writing the comics (Shadow as Boring Vegeta, Knuckles can’t just hang out for an adventure, the inherent limitations of a game as a storytelling mechanism as opposed to an ongoing comics series, whatever the fuck is with Silver’s timeline,) but like. IAN FLYNN GETS TO WRITE A SONIC GAME! … Now please let them not have fucked up the gameplay so profoundly the game tanks like Sonic Boom.

      1. Romanticide

        hope it’s amazing 😀

      2. Thag Simmons

        This is the game that looks like Sega finally hired that man, right?

      3. Yotomoe

        I care less about Flynn getting to write one as I do that Pontac and Graff are NOT writing one.

        1. Spencer

          I liked when in the comic, Sonic dropped the “Baldy McNosehair” line and Eggman just screams “that’s not funny! It’s never been funny! It’s never going to be funny!”

        2. Regalli

          Even if he isn’t really directing the plot as such the banter will be SO much better, thank god.

      4. The Wellerman

        “inherent limitations of a game as a storytelling mechanism”

        I wasn’t aware there were any. Especially games like Undertale and Super Paper Mario!

        1. Spencer

          It’s less “limitations” and more approaching interactive storytelling in a way that’s enriched by the format then acting against it.

          This is why the best stories get real clever about it like Yakuza: Like a Dragon, wherein the RPG battle system is contextualized as protagonist Ichiban Kasuga hallucinating his pitched street battles and criminal ne’er do wells as a game of Dragon Quest where the baseball bat he pulled out of the ground has lightning powers.

        2. Beau Kirin Maysey

          Weird way to find a fellow fan of both these comfort games to me but hello!

        3. Spencer

          Every Mario game: Bowser is up to his old tricks, go stop him!

          Super Paper Mario: Mario is murdered by and sent to Hell by a mad clown, and Luigi is the Anti-Christ.

        4. Regalli

          What Spencer said, yeah, and which a writer is likely to have less ability to dictate all told when he’s probably not a key part of the design process. The other issue, and I didn’t phrase this well, is that there is an inherent limitation in writing in a long-running video game FRANCHISE, rather than a standalone game. It is much harder for main recurring characters to get the kind of arcs in which they grow and change permanently, because when Mario’s a 35-year-old character you kind of have to eventually return him to the platonic ideal of Mario, which is why even the RPGs don’t really try by keeping him friendly but basically mute. The characters with arcs there are Peach and Bowser (to limited extents, we can’t change them so much they’d need referencing later,) and the characters invented for those games since they will never be seen again once it’s done. Continuity can only last so long, because especially in a kids’ game it’s a big ask for someone to track down a game that was last released on fifteen-year-old platforms because it’s continuity-vital. (Kind of a similar limitation to writing, say, a superhero comic, but once a physical copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths is released, it’s going to he readable so long as it’s not damaged. Not so with video games. Characterization varies as soon as it changes writers, but at least it is consistently possible to buy and read a new copy of an old storyline.) Letting Sonic have a genuine personality sets him apart from the crowd, but it’s really hard to balance the expectation this character is affected and maybe changed by the experience of the game eith the reality that he really can’t be too much, because next game we still need him to be recognizably Sonic the Hedgehog, and we don’t expect as heavy continuity from games except in direct sequels, whereas a comic arc can still call back to last volume without batting an eye. (Sora of Kingdom Hearts also has this issue to some extent. Yeah, he’s had some character development, but he can’t really move too far past his default Goofy Happy Kid for long. And Kingdom Hearts is NOTORIOUS for its sprawling continuity over something like fourteen games and a ridiculous number of platforms.)

        5. The Wellerman

          Yeah I get the gyst of it.

          Yet again there are ways to sort of cheat these rules so to speak, like spinoffs with Corpse Party series (a mostly narrarive-driven game, and the only one I could think of), or whatever Rick and Morty did with Pocket Mortys (a show that pays incredible attention to continuity).

      5. Amós Batista

        Sonic is a thing I can’t play Since Sonic 3&K. But I wasn’t expecting this news, for real…

      6. RassilonTDavros

        I’m so happy for him

        And simultaneously so happy that Penders never got tapped to write one, because I don’t even want to imagine what that would have looked like

        1. Regalli

          How many terrible parental figures would we get, I wonder. It’d almost be worth it just to see the fit he would have thrown when Sega turned one of his ideas down.

  38. Wendy

    Well, for all Joyce’s flaws, you can’t say she’s not uhhhh brave, that’s for sure!

  39. Ereb

    While, I don’t mind the general direction this Joyce storyline takes… and we’re getting a comic strip per day of free, as mostly very solid and thoughtful entertainment, to put it into perspective…

    I can’t help but lol, at this pretty cringey writing. It doesn’t feel like something Joyce would say – it’s more like a soap opera character who summarizes what they are meant to represent instead of talking like a person would.

    It’s weird because we already had the same message of Joyce being a righteous Atheist TM conveyed in several scenes before, in a more “show, don’t tell” way.

    I mean, how did their convo even get from the Dotty hug last time to this?

  40. Romanticide

    Nice to see Jason and Ruth seem to be enjoying being together.

    1. Amós Batista

      They are a serious couple, aren’t they?
      Not like, ‘hey, let’s marry’, but they didn’t give any laugh or smile together …

    2. hof1991

      He’s not in handcuffs so there’s that.

  41. Bagge

    If you want to learn things, Joyce, you could always try doing your school work?

  42. Rikunda

    So today she finds out about bisexuals! How long till she finds out she has a sister.

  43. Segnosaur

    I am actually surprised that the issue of Bisexuality did not come up in leslie’s class. Seemed like it would be a topic worth at least mentioning.

    1. JBento

      This was literally my first thought. “Woman, you’re one and something semesters into a class called Gender Studies, how in the unheavenly fuck has bisexuality not been mentioned yet?”

    2. Axel_Grease

      Leslie mentioned that some of the curriculum was cut because of all the random distractions that kept popping up.

    3. BBCC

      A lot of gender studies intro classes don’t talk much about various sexual orientations, especially more discussion based classes. They tend to focus on basic gender relations stuff, and some intersections with race and class. Sexual orientation probably CAME UP, but it wouldn’t shock me if it was primarily about lesbians or general LGBT stuff. So it may have come up but not as anything in depth that Joyce would recall at the drop of a hat.

  44. Moon

    Joybce about to climb on the table and run at them on all fours like an ape

    1. bemisawa

      Well, she did evolve from them, after all.

      1. Segnosaur

        Not exactly correct…

        In one sense we ARE apes… Or at lease members of the great ape primate branch.

        And even if you think we are somehow different than the other apes, we did not evolve from them… Rather we had a common ancestor.

        End nitpick.

        1. StClair

          “East African Plains Ape” is something I’ve heard tossed around, as an alternative to the breathtakingly smug “Wisest Wise Man” that is the species’ official classification.

        2. King Daniel

          So you’re saying that humans aren’t the wisest humans? 😛

        3. JBento

          I’ve met humans, and I agree with that statement.

        4. King Daniel

          Who are the wisest humans, if not humans?

        5. Eldritchy

          Ook

        6. JBento

          None of them.

        7. King Daniel

          Au contraire; if no humans are the wisest humans…than all humans are the wisest humans. 😛

    2. AGV

      She’s in a whole other level of backsliding

  45. ValdVin

    I appreciate how even in the depths of winter, with two tops on, I still get to see Dorothy’s freckled collarbones.

    1. AGV

      They’re what keep the world rolling tbh

  46. Reltzik

    Okay, I WANT to say that a bi woman dating a guy isn’t backsliding, but then I thought about Jennifer and I’m not so sure about that.

    1. Needfuldoer

      Her case is less about dating a guy in general than it is dating Asher in particular.

      1. Reltzik

        It’s also about saying her relationship with a woman was just a phase.

        … I think. Dammit, I’m pretty sure I remember her saying something like that some time since the timeskip….

        *dives into archives, never to be seen again*

        1. King Daniel

          NOT LIKE THE MOON!

          Man, my linking game is something else today. XD

        2. Eldritchy

          Honestly Billie is backsliding on all fronts, she associates her relationship with Ruth with being The Loser. She wants to re-imagine and rebuild herself into the confident, upstanding and cool woman that she thinks she used to be and there is no room for “abnormalities” in that image. At least that’s how I see her behaviour.

        3. C.T. Phipps

          I think part of the problem is the relationship was built on faulty assumptions.

          Ruth: Believed that the “lesbian suicide pact” was because she couldn’t do better.

          Billie: Did not WANT to do better.

          So Ruth getting better made them fail.

        4. thejeff

          Billie: Believed she was toxic and dangerous to be with and she’d found somebody she wouldn’t be able to hurt.
          Ruth getting better made her work on getting better too. Stopped drinking, went to therapy.

          Currently, I’d guess Ruth’s worse off than Jennifer is. We’ve seen Ruth drinking again. Jennifer might be, but we haven’t seen any evidence.

          Hmmm, I wonder if Asher’s “bad boy” image puts him into “I won’t be able to poison this one” status.

        5. Spencer

          If I had to guess, Asher’s a reformed bad boy, or someone who used to get up to trouble until he settled down and grew up, and that’s probably catnip to Billie as a concept, because “I walked up to this badass and got them totally wrapped around my finger” is how she thought of her relationship with Ruth (or at least how she sold it to her new dorm), and Asher also taps into Billie “taming” him because she’s cool and strong and trustworthy.

          She did, in fact, want the European backpacking and manicures with Ruth.

    2. Regalli

      Jennifer’s not backsliding because she’s dating a guy, so much as that she’s using dating a guy as a way to dismiss her genuine attractions to women (which she has to downplay in an effort to conform to her idea of ‘perfectly normal cool girl’,) and is otherwise backsliding because she used therapy as an excuse for the same new social group total reinvention (including ditching her old friends) thing she did in high school, and starting college, and moving dorms, and it has yet to end well that we’ve seen. I think she and Asher are fueling each other’s ability to deny that their pasts/family will come back to haunt them, so in that respect it is a backslide due to dating a specific guy, but really I think it’s all Jennifer’s bad decisionmaking that’s fueling the bad habit, and Asher at best reinforcing it.

      It’s not that I think they’re a terribly unhealthy couple, I just think they’re doomed because Jennifer’s ‘Well that didn’t end well but I’m a totally successful normal girl THIS TIME!’ is an unhealthy INDIVIDUAL decision, and Asher knows on some level he’s not as out of the mob as he claims to be (and I genuinely think he’s in denial as to how deep this goes, not deceiving Jennifer with the intent to do risky stuff that could put people he cares about in the line of fire,) which is also unhealthy on an individual level. Plus the mob will inevitably show up to cause problems.

  47. AGV

    These people need to learn about things beyond gay and straight

    1. Deviant

      Yeah, its like they forgot about Billie.

      1. RacingTurtle

        BILLIE is trying to forget about Billie, so I’d bet she sees these people approximately never these days

        1. Rabid Rabbit

          Good god, I just realized why she started using the name “Jennifer” again. She doesn’t want anyone to remember she BIllie.

        2. King Daniel

          Maybe subconsciously, but even before the timeskip she didn’t think “bisexuality” existed so

        3. Spencer

          Yeah, she has to go by her full name now.

          Jennifer Straightillingsworth.

        4. milu

          Please. Heterofer Straightlingsworth

      2. King Daniel

        Jennifer’s not bisexual, though. She just had a phase where she liked girls sometimes! It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but bisexuality only exists in porn!

        /s so very much

  48. Rabisch

    I like how Joyce is ready to fight. But at the same time, “Joyce STOP!”. Not only because Ruth will kill you, just stop!

  49. Reaver

    Who’s ready for a bad joke?

    1. The Wellerman

      Ooo! Ooo! Me!

      1. Reaver

        Whats the best type of Mexican food to have at a Carnival?

        Carni-asada!

        1. The Wellerman

          ? ?

          Gee bruh, your latest jokes have been making me hungry!

  50. Sombrero

    I would be suicidal too if I just had discovered the truth about McDonald’s onions… hey, that’s why the strip wasn’t used five months ago! It would spoil the real reason behind Joyce’s recent behavior!! How cunning.

    1. Jamie

      Next you’ll find out that chicken nuggets are made from the parts of the chicken that rich people don’t like.

      1. AGV

        Already knew this and it wasn’t until I read this that I felt gross about them

        1. Thag Simmons

          If you’re going to kill and eat the bird, use the whole bird

        2. milu

          tell that to my cat

  51. Amós Batista

    Joyce, you had made Ethan BACKSLIDING his sexuality!!

    1. AGV

      True that

    2. Axel_Grease

      Where do you think this is coming from? She thinks she’s learned better and it’s now her business to get involved.

      1. milu

        Ooh, very good point.

        “No Jennifer! You know this isn’t you! You know you’re gay! There’s nothing wrong with that! embrace it!”

        Jennifer: “I’m not gay! I just had the same thing for Ruth that you have for Dorothy ok??”

        Joyce: HEAD A SPLODE

  52. Amós Batista

    Aside Joyce, Ruth and Jason looks like a grumpy and not-funny couple, but I kind wished to be in a couple like this.

    1. Schpoonman

      They might get a Zuko/Mai thing going on.

  53. Amelie Wikström

    Yesterday I was just reading about how in the Victorian era some scientists thought they had reached the end of all knowledge. At least one patent office worker in 1899 resigned because he believed everything that could possibly be invented had been done. This trend of thought was based around the discovery of Ether, that simple element that explained everything (except for the little wrinkle where it did not actually exist). Very reminisent of Joyce and the Atheism.

    1. milu

      what for real? It’s silly enough to believe that total scientific knowledge has been achieved, but to draw the further conclusion that engineering is now over sounds like a psychotic break.

      anyway, meanwhile Albert Einstein kept his patent office job ^^

    2. Rainhat

      Joyce and the Atheism could open for Florence and the Machine.

  54. Spencer

    In tonight’s strip, the role of Joyce Brown is played by the Dumbing of Age comments section.

    1. JBento

      Do you mean this the other way around?

      1. Spencer

        I’ve never found a more reliable source of not knowing Ruth is bisexual.

        1. thejeff

          There’s a big difference between forgetting a character is bisexual (as indicated in only a handful of strips over more than a decade before this thing with Jason) and accusing her of backsliding when she dates a guy.

          Which is something I don’t remember seeing at all here.

          Though we have seen it a lot with Jennifer.

        2. Spencer

          Yeah and I’m gonna give y’all a little shit for forgetting, and a lot more shit for just deciding that she had to be a lesbian because she’s macking on a girl. If there exists multiple sexual identities involving same-sex romances, then perhaps being involved in one shouldn’t lead to the ironclad conclusion of “she’s a lesbian” and perennial finger wringing over being corrected on this.

          ‘Cause like, I was attracted to men in High School, but I sure as fuck didn’t have the words for it. I wasn’t gay, I couldn’t be gay, because I was still attracted to women too. It took until I was 20 to admit to myself and a whole new year to actually come out, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have taken that long if the entire spectrum of queer sexuality wasn’t constantly dominated by Gay and Or Else.

        3. Regalli

          There were also people actively being reminded of her relationship with Ciaran, and saying ‘well it could be she hadn’t figured it out yet.’ And, yeah, there’s certainly gay people who didn’t realize they were gay and dated someone they ultimately weren’t attracted to, especially as teens. That would be Ethan and Amber’s backstory. But given the specific way that her first boyfriend from Canada was brought up, where Sir is dismissive of him and how Jennifer will forget Ruth just like he did, and Ruth defiantly says ‘his name was Ciaran. And her name is Billie.’? Yeah, that’s explicitly saying this relationship was meaningful to her, and IS still meaningful to her, as meaningful as her current relationship. Add in her distinct lack of angst about her sexuality compared to the other bisexuals who realized in the course of this strip, just a ‘being attracted to Jennifer surprised me,’ and it sure does seem like she has genuinely been attracted to multiple genders!

          The erasure there was not fun.

        4. thejeff

          Absolutely. While just forgetting the couple of mentions of Ciaran isn’t surprising, the denial once it’s pointed out is more serious.

          Even Ciaran isn’t absolute proof, since it’s possible in theory that she just hadn’t figured it out yet, but there are no hints in the comic that’s the case and the meta of IW! Ruth to counter it.

          Her lack of angsting about bisexuality likely does mean she’s more comfortable with it, though it might also just be that she’s got bigger things to angst about. However, it also means it comes up less often so we don’t get the reinforcement.

        5. Spencer

          I’m saying you don’t need the reinforcement. I’m saying maybe stop going “well it’s gay until proven otherwise.” You don’t need absolute proof when the absolute proof is Ruth’s ex-boyfriend from Canada being mentioned in the same breath as someone she hasn’t forgotten about, much the same way she won’t forget Billie!

          Stop putting so much fucking effort into justifying, every single fucking step, why y’all get shit wrong about bisexuals.

        6. BBCC

          People said it when she and Jason were just starting out. It was not a fun time. It wasn’t as prominent as it was with Jennifer but it was there.

  55. Buli-Buli

    As a fellow midwesterner, it is inconceivable to me that so many of these characters don’t know what bisexuality is. It’s not like it’s a new word either!

    1. Spencer

      Decades of cultural erasure and fetishization is a helluva drug.

      1. alongcameaspider

        To be entirely fair to Joyce she grew up in a cult that almost certainly kept these things from her

        She still has catching up to do

  56. Reaver

    Joyce no X.x

  57. Mr. Random

    Ah yes Bi people don’t exist.
    How could someone like both apples AND oranges?

    1. Spencer

      In Joyce’s defense, she literally does not know of bisexuality. She’s on a level lower than Billie, an actual bisexual, who insisted it’s just something everything did when they got curious enough and the name is from porn.

      1. Axel_Grease

        Well I’m in favor of her learning about bisexuality now!

      2. King Daniel

        Becky once told Joyce to her face that liking both “is apparently a thing”, but it seems Joyce wasn’t paying attention. 😛

        1. Spencer

          Correction: she heard of it, vaguely, for one panel.

          I remain completely unconvinced of Becky having any good intentions in regards to bisexuality and pansexuality.

        2. King Daniel

          Oh yeah, some of Becky’s comments in that regard have definitely left me wondering as to her thoughts there myself.

      3. thejeff

        Jennifer was in denial because she wanted the cheerleader status package. It’s not clear where she is now.

        Even if Joyce doesn’t know the word or any details, just knowing Billie should be enough to know that’s it’s a real thing, even if it’s in awkward terms like “likes girls sometimes”.

        1. Spencer

          If this strip is any indication, she thought Billie was a lesbian.

          Or she just didn’t have the words for it. This is new to her.

        2. thejeff

          But she’s seen Jennifer with Asher

        3. Spencer

          And has yet to say anything. As if there was SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED, PERHAPS MAJOR, that’s suddenly made her extremely insistent on being right about things she obviously knows about.

          Who knows! Maybe this strip here got written in response to the kind of comment that floods these strips every time Ruth is on-panel!

    2. milu

      Oranges are not the only fruit?

      1. JBento

        Of course not, there’s also tomatos.

        1. milu

          tomato, tomato

  58. TallPacked

    At this point, Leslie and Danny are the only sane people in this comic. Maybe Ruth too, but she likes the Leafs soooo

  59. JBento

    Hey, I’ve seen that last panel Joyce before… oh, yeah, twitter.

  60. Proto

    Wait what happened 5 months ago? I can’t write remember and I’m at work so I don’t have time to read a month’s worth of comics to get the joke

    1. Axel_Grease

      When some of the new couples started forming, there was a lot of bi erasure and disappointment that Willis was “correcting” the gay characters by giving them heterosexual love interests.

      1. Buli-Buli

        Really? I must have been skipping the comment section in those days. Most often I hear the opposite I hear the opposite complaint, where bi-characters in fiction aren’t allowed to have monogamous, heterosexual relationships.

        1. Spencer

          You hear that complaint from me, specifically.

          (that’s comedic exaggeration)

          The reality is that bi characters in fiction, without this meaning to sound like the condemnation or judgment of quality it might come off as, tend to go the route of Dora from Questionable Content: her relationship with Marten was troubled and chaotic, her neuroses kept acting up to the point of ending it altogether. Then she gets with Tai and they’re in love and married. I think, it’s been yonks since I read QC, but the point I’m trying to get at is that the path for bi characters is Troubled Straight Romance -> Happy Queer Romance. Faye got it too: Sven and Angus don’t work out, she’s sure as hell never breaking up with Bubbles (unless she has in the last… two years? Gosh, it’s been a while).

          Mind, this is a perception I have because I read a lot of queer-positive media. In the Before Times, bisexuals in fiction were jokes. They were big sluts and who cheated and fucked around until they found affirming heteronormative monogamy and lived happily ever after. Bisexual? I used to be, but now I’m monogamous. In part, I feel this is being done to say “hey, shitheads, they’re normal, it’s okay to date girls and then guys. Get the fuck over it,” because this lasted so long that there’s a driving need to make that statement, that same-sex relationships are healthy and, specifically, that bisexuals can have them and to judge them, either as Just A Phase or a prelude to cheating, is wrong.

          I reiterate this is not a condemnation or even any kind of complaint of the actual stories that do this, the existence of meaningfully bi characters in fiction is at such a point that having them is a leap far ahead of where we used to be. My only real gripe is that it tends to be the only kind of narrative for bi characters in monogamous romances in that small pool of representation we have (and to the surprise of no one: Danny has been a lovely panacea to this perception of mine and just one side of why he’s been such a big freakin’ deal to me), but I still get it from a writing perspective: if you’re including bi characters it’s because you want to write bi characters, and when romance factors into things there’s this expectation, I think mostly from the audience that then bleeds into the authors, where you have to prove they’re actually bisexual (well hello there, today’s strip, you’re looking particularly relevant to this conversation), and so bi characters start falling into specific structures to prove they aren’t queerbaiting, when “queerbaiting” is a term with pretty specific applications that then gets abused by the absolute worst people. But then if a bi girl starts dating a dude, well that’s just been queerbaiting all along, even though Ruth’s never been indicated not to be into men, and Billie is extremely desperate to pretend she’s not into girls.

        2. zee

          This is why I love the bi rep in Crazy Ex Girlfriend
          Uh, spoilers ahead

          You have Daryl, a middle aged single father who discovers later in life than most that he’s bisexual! He has a whole song about it! And he starts a loving and healthy relationship with a younger man. Things go great until they break things off mutually and amicably because Daryl wants to get married and have another child while his boyfriend is okay with filling the role of step father, but doesn’t believe in marriage and doesn’t want to have a baby/child of his own. Darryl eventually falls in love with a single mother he has much in common with, and no one gives him shit for “backsliding” or “going straight”.

    2. RacingTurtle

      There’s a lot of good discussion here on serious subjects, but it would be funny to me if the answer to your question is “something to do with McDonald’s onions.”

  61. J. Gawain

    So, my mind subconscious rejected all the more plausible ways this could go to give me the following first thought: Joyce is going to walk up to Ruth in a tizzy about her “regressing,” and Ruth is just going to plant one on her to shut her up.

    1. Beau Kirin Maysey

      Just as amber is coming in and she blinks and screams, “OH MY GOD NOW THEY’RE MANIFESTING IN REAL LIFE”

  62. milu

    5 months ago… is that maybe when 9CL’s infamous degaying of Seth storyline began? And McEldowney was like “um i guess he’s bisexual, shut up”? and Willis was like “you clearly have no idea what a respectful portrayal of bisexuality even looks like”?

    i’m not sure how this specific strip would’ve helped, but eh, that’s as close as i can guess

  63. Mr.Morningstar

    Joyce no

  64. Beau Kirin Maysey

    yes joyce you…you’ve completed your journey now take my hand lets get you over to the farm where you can lay down in retirement and pass in peace and not meet a brutal, brutal end at the hands of Ruth…

  65. anonymsly

    Yes, Joyce is being a pill still, but more importantly: are Ruth and Jason holding hands? Show me more! I like that they genuinely like each other.

  66. zee

    Commenters who refuse to acknowledge Ruth’s bisexuality be like

    1. Spencer

      It’s a magical feeling I have right now.

      1. zee

        Rereading DOA has given me a massive appreciation for when Willis directly calls out commenters for being ignorant both in text and in the comments. He was fighting for every black girl’s life under the sal’s hair mini arc strips

  67. Zaxares

    Joyce, NO. >:( Don’t you see? You’ve become exactly what you hate, just from the opposite direction! You’re STILL telling people who they can and can’t love!

  68. King Daniel

    Also to note: Chapter 4 of this book is titled “Don’t Stop Billie-ving“. Wonder what that could portent.

    1. Sombrero

      Long live Jennifer?

  69. Brighter Side

    So is Joyce going to meet Mike in heaven or no?
    I mean, I’d read that comic arc. Then they can get some Dragon Balls and have a touching reunion with the rest of the cast as they try to catch up on incomplete classes.

    1. thejeff

      Nah, they’re all just going to hang out in Amber’s head.

    2. Sombrero

      Sure as hell this is going in the direction of Joyce and Mike being endgame.

      1. chuckroast

        Who’d have thought?

  70. Brian

    Knowing that Joyce = Willis, it takes a while to fine-tune and tweak your new worldview after discarding the one you were spoon-fed your whole life. The insufferable phase is required growing pains, along with all of its consequences. XD

  71. Opus the Poet

    Another case of bi-erasure from a DoA cast member!

    1. ninja_jesus

      Joyce is still learning, we don’t have to tolerate her behavior but at least keep this in context for understanding purposes.

  72. Harmony

    I would like to apologize to the world in general for when I was in this phase.

  73. Kazuma Taichi

    Well Joyce, you did indeed discover that gay people are okay. Now you just need to repeat the process with bi people. That shouldn’t be too…..*glances at real life*….difficult

    We might be here for a bit

  74. Thulcandran

    Yeah, you give me a heads up when you’re ready to consider some friggin’ nuance.

    1. alongcameaspider

      She’s not quite there yet but I’m sure after Ruth takes her femurs Jason will be willing to explain bisexuality to Joyce

    2. Wraithy2773

      And the funny thing is that’s Joyce being a whole lot more nuanced than she is right now, sheesh.

  75. PB

    Panel 2: Joyce, are you familiar with the saying: “If you see the Buddha ok the road, kill him”?

    1. King Daniel

      What if the Buddha doesn’t ok the road?

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