Soulhood
Posted on June 19, 2024 by David M Willis

164 thoughts on “Soulhood”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    yo, Edgelordlady Joyce comin’ through

    1. Disastroid

      If she’s an edgelady, why is she comin’?

      1. Taellosse

        Fingerguns.emoji

    2. Michael Steamweed

      Slipshine: Joyce does an edge on Joe.

  2. Nathan

    Just sitting in biology class with a giant jug of hobo moonshine on the desk.

    1. True Survivor

      It’s just ethanol for organic chemistry, I sear! You can’t expel me for science!

      1. Michael Steamweed

        Professor Brock probably would ask, “Did you bring enough for the class?” While that jug is big, I wonder if it’s enough for everyone.

        1. jflb96

          It’s spirits, they can do shots

      2. ValdVin

        And disinfecting the beakers, test tubes, and pipettes.

    2. James

      It’s only got two X’s, so it’s probably not that strong.

      1. Needfuldoer

        If it had three X’s, they couldn’t bring it to work.

        1. Taellosse

          Fingerguns.emoji, EyebrowWaggle.gif

  3. shadowcell

    Dumbing of Age Book 14: Please Keep Sending Me Missives Telling Me I’m Mistaken. This is the Only Way I Achieve Laughter.

    1. Pergola

      “I’m basically a badass now”

  4. IntangibleMatter

    Joyce is now ready to listen to Nine Inch Nails

    Actually no she probably isn’t

    Therefore someone really should play some for her

    1. ktbear

      Closer would be a good start.

      1. Freezer

        I would predict many trips to the laundry after that.

      2. Michael Steamweed

        Closer (uncensored) would be an _excellent_ start.

  5. NGPZ

    Up to TEN now! Somebody update the counter!

    1. Dana

      Heh. Accidentally reported you. Sorry/Sorry Willis.

      1. NGPZ

        hey no worries.

        think it needs like 30 or something flags before it automatically yeets itself

        1. Clif

          We should organize some kind of scientific experiment to determine the exact number.

          By we, I mean somebody else.

        2. zee

          Pretty sure Willis said 5 when it debuted

  6. Yumi

    Just getting the tingle from your first unrequited love saying “fucking,” it’s all good.

    1. Decidedly Orthogonal

      Well… there’s the tingle around where we feel anxiety, a.k.a. thrill-excitement, then there’s the much lower tingle where we feel like smashing our waves against some rocky shores, a.k.a. The Raging Hornies. I think this one was the former for The Beckster. She’s always up for shenanigans. But it could be the latter.

      ¿Por que no los dos?

  7. TrueVCU

    Joyce is going to get to do more cursing than the comments

    1. Clif

      Please tell me that isn’t a challenge.

    2. Michael Steamweed

      The fuck she is! :O

    3. John Campbell

      I think I may have said “fuck” more times talking about her saying “fuck” than she’s actually said “fuck”.

      If I hadn’t before, I’m pretty sure I have now.

      Someone should start a meta-F-bomb counter to count how many times people have said “fuck” talking about the characters saying “fuck”.

  8. Cattleprod

    RIP Mister Falcon.

  9. C.T. Phipps

    Pfft, there’s particles far smaller than chemical reactions and quanta may be actual information. Which actually is the best argument for a simulation.

    1. Chris Phoenix

      IMO the best argument for simulation is a combination of 1) Planck length and Planck time; 2) The information in a volume is mappable to its surrounding surface. I mean, if that’s not a cellular automaton, what is?

      1. Chris Phoenix

        …But is that a simulation or an emulation? Or maybe that’s just how the universe’s physics works, without any programmer at all.

        1. Clif

          The fact that we’re conscious is a big clue that we are simulated and not real.

        2. C.T. Phipps

          Consciousness is such a weird thing! What’s it good for? Absolutely nothing!

          🙂

        3. Felgraf

          Eh, I’d argue that being simulated doesn’t mean we’re ‘not real’. This is still OUR reality, after all. What we experience is still real to us!

          To me, the only thing simulation theory *really* changes is “TIME TO LOOK FOR BUFFER OVERFLOWS”

        4. deliverything

          That raises a thought; speedrunners are pretty good at finding tricks and exploits that break the “rules” of certain games. We should get them working on our universe to see if they can Backwards Long Jump us to FTL travel or something.

        5. Taellosse

          I mean, isn’t that basically what the (admittedly still only theoretical) Alcubierre Drive is? Or, at least, will be, if it can ever be made into a functional reality, rather than the hypothetical corollaey of some wacky mathematical projections.

        6. Proxiehunter

          And other exploitable glitches and possibly cheat codes.

  10. Proxiehunter

    There are too many monkey fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane.

    1. HueSatLight

      slug in a ditch

    2. brionl

      This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!

      1. Kavonde

        I know Dragonball Z Abridged was just quoting terrible censorship from TV-edited movie, but I’m hearing all of these lines in TeamFourStar’s voices.

    3. Kitschensyngk

      Shut the front door

    4. Reltzik

      … I know those words were substitutions for the actual quote, but now I want to see that sequel.

  11. Animedingo

    Dont let dina see you getting tingles for someone else

  12. NGPZ

    re: Alt-text,

    YIPPEEEEEE!!!!

    *^-^*

  13. HueSatLight

    preview panel lied to us. The glass even had more complicated highlights/shadows.

  14. Radiance

    Huh. Now I’m wondering how common it is that people assume, from context, that the word “keg” means “a large amount of alcohol” and not “a barrel (probably one used to contain a large amount of alcohol)”.

    1. True Survivor

      I don’t know, but I could cask around.

      1. Needfuldoer

        You’ll get a tun of different answers.

        1. Clif

          Ether is fine.

        2. Daibhid C

          If they insist on it even when you tell them what it actually means, they’re hog-headed. Firkin’ idiots.

        3. Daibhid C

          (Oh, fun fact on the “aversion to cursin'” front; I can type“firkin” in a pun-on-f-word context, but it’s close enough I don’t think I could say it.)

        4. Michael Steamweed

          I’m glad that y’all aren’t bottling up your responses.

        5. Roborat

          I am barrely getting these piuns.

        6. Roborat

          aargh, *puns*, hit enter before proofreading.

  15. Yeet

    it’s probably more than big enough for the inexperienced drinkers let’s be real

    1. Bash

      Also I think it might be something stronger than beer.

  16. Zor

    re: Alt-text

    That was a fun DuckTales episode

    1. keithcurtis

      Agreed. I was hoping someone else got the reference. 😀

  17. Suet

    If Becky wants to see a real keg, she might as well watch That 70’s Show first.

    Revisiting all quotes would send her to the top of the charts

    1. John Campbell

      Only 73 to go!

    2. zee

      I was just thinking to myself about how that was what introduced me to the concept of a keg

  18. Francoinblanco

    Yippee Ki‐Yay motherpankier

  19. NGPZ

    Very fitting strip for a day all about freedom.

    Happy Juneteenth! ^-^

    1. Laura

      Happy Juneteenth to you, too!

  20. BBCC

    Truly the greatest part of this achievement!

  21. Chaucer59

    Wait, I thought it was “yippee-ky-yay, monkey-plucker.”

    1. shoopdawhoop

      I thought it was melon farmer

  22. JessWitt

    Anyone else imagining Prof Brock’s dialogue in Werner Herzog’s voice?

    1. Cholma

      OMG yes! I just realized that is who I was hearing in my head! LOL!

  23. Yumi

    I had a friend who didn’t swear and was uncomfortable around swearing through the end of high school. I wonder if she swears now. It’s weird to imagine.

    (One time, we were in a car that another friend was driving, and we were almost in an accident, and while it was happening/right after, I was like, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!… Sorry, Emily!”

    1. Zero

      One time I won a car in a raffle and I posted “Holy fuck I just won a car in a raffle” on social media, and my ex-boyfriend called me to make sure I was okay.

      He’d only made it to the second word before panicking, because he’d never seen or heard me swear before. He didn’t finish reading the sentence.

      1. Tan

        Then-ex, or then-current-now-ex?

        1. Zero

          Then ex.

    2. zee

      In 8th grade I was friends with a megafundie Christian who was basically Joyce with a touch of melanin and none of the sweetness (her name even sounded like Joyce). She didnt like swearing and started hitting me with a ruler whenever i swore around her. Which esp sucked bc I had such a sailor mouth back then my ex friends told me they missed hearing me cuss up a storm

      I really hope not-Joyce has character developed. For her own sake as much as everyone else’s. It can’t be fun or safe to live in a world where you stop talking to your friends for being chill with gay people and national geographic, and worship your parents as next to god

  24. Dday

    I love how the liquor has actual “X”s on it, like it was stolen from some ol’ timey prospector throwing his hat on the ground and yelling dagnabbit and jumping on the hat

    1. Needfuldoer

      Some good, old fashioned, authentic frontier gibberish.

      1. Roborat

        I knew exactly what you were going to link.

  25. Adj

    I feel like I would never stop trying to physically tickle Professor Brock. “I can’t help it; I have no agency over my chemical reactions!”

    1. Nymph

      Yikes

  26. NinjaNick

    I kinda like edgy Joyce.

    1. Mark

      “There’s no saint like a reformed sinner.” Wait….

      1. Yumi

        No sinner like a rebeling saint?

  27. Masha

    So how long until Joe loses interest in new Joyce and company?

    1. zee

      Bout the heat death of the universe id say

      1. Needfuldoer

        That soon?

  28. Newlland(Henryvolt)

    We need to astablish a conical voice for Joyce so we can use a ai simulator to have her say certain movie lines.

    The first one will be Samuel Jackson in “snakes on a plane.”

    1. Kavonde

      I’d like to suggest Charlie from Hazbin Hotel as a potential Joyce Voyce.

    2. Mark

      Okay, apologies in advance, but…is a conical voice the one you use when speaking through a megaphone?

      1. Taellosse

        No. It is a voice speaking with the Conehead “accent” from OG Saturday Night Live.

    3. Taffy

      Better yet, locate the alleged voice actor on Cameo or something and have them say the line for real.

      1. Yumi

        Hold auditions in the comment section and select a voice actor to record the lines?

        1. Taffy

          Couldn’t hurt, honestly. Then again, how many people have microphones?

        2. Proxiehunter

          These days the vast majority of people are going to have mics that are at least good enough for phone calls. They come pre-installed on your mobile device and if you have a laptop or desktop most headphones and ear buds come with mics good enough for phone calls/online gaming.

        3. Taffy

          Yes, but a phone call or game chat isn’t exactly the level of quality people expect from voiceover, is it?

    4. CardinalFan

      Enough is enough! I’m tired of these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!

    5. Needfuldoer

      I always figured Joyce sounds a bit like Kristen Bell.

      Other voices I’ve mentally cast to characters:

      Jacob – Earl Alexander (Louis, Left 4 Dead)
      Dina – Anndi McAfee (Phoebe Heyerdahl, Hey Arnold!)
      Carol – Kathy Najimy (Peggy Hill, King of the Hill)
      Sydney – Cree Summer (she’s been in friggin’ everything)
      Galasso – Maurice LaMarche (Calculon’s voice with Lrrr’s delivery, Futurama)
      Sarah – Karyn Parsons (Hillary Banks, The Fresh Price of Bel-Air)
      Robin – Nicholle Tom (Maggie Sheffield, The Nanny)
      Becky – Melissa Rauch (Abby Stone, Night Court reboot)

  29. Freemage

    My personal TV Edit was for The Breakfast Club–in the climactic showdown between Bender and the Principle, the latter is supposed to walk off, thinking he’s won the argument, and then, just as the door starts to swing shut behind him, Bender bellows out a rage-filled “FUCK YOU!” This causes the principle to slink off, because he realizes he has no way to actually instill respect.

    So of course the TV version was dubbed to “FEEL YOU!” It did not have the same impact, though it definitely struck me as kind of kinky.

    (Second favorite TV-Edit was Porky’s. I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to try to air that particular film on network TV, but the unintentional hilarity was mind-boggling.)

    1. morleuca

      I always get a kick out of Kevin Bacon tepeayed use of “Judas Priest!” In the tv edit of Tremors

      1. Proxiehunter

        At least unlike a lot of TV edits that’s a thing actual people say.

  30. JR

    Aw, Joe putting his jacket on Joyce without mentioning it.

  31. Dara

    It may not be relevant to this particular strip, but I feel Willis and the assembled readership need to know about this home-built Internet of Things-ready pie-throwing machine.

    1. Amós Batista

      Carla: *heavy breathing*

  32. Chris Phoenix

    And non-Disney Adventures in Babysitting. Somehow “Don’t fool with the babysitter” just doesn’t have quite the same impact.

  33. Zero

    Chemical reactions don’t have delusions, professor.

    …are they doing all this in the middle of class?

    1. the cars that ate paris

      The strip opens with “class dismissed”

      1. Zero

        …are they doing all this in the middle of the classroom?

        (Although I was including the previous strips’ dialogue in “all this”)

  34. Chronos

    In less than two weeks, she’s gone from not on the list of people that say “fuck” to 9th place, tied with Becky and Joe.

    1. ValdVin

      Number nine with a mudderfudging bullet.

  35. Queezle

    looks big to me

  36. darkoneko

    Becky, you don’t even know is that thing taste good

    1. thejeff

      If your rotgut has an “XX” on it, taste isn’t the point.

      Mix it with something sweet and get it down the hatch.

      1. Proxiehunter

        I bought a fifth of $3 whiskey once. Took one drink and realized that shit was absolutely undrinkable. Made some home made sour mix and had whiskey sours with the rest and they were fine.

        1. Schpoonman

          I learned that my preferred method of alcoholic intake was shots with chasers riiiiight after I turned 21.

  37. Nicoleandmaggie

    Getting middle school flashbacks. Guess homeschoolers miss that phase.

  38. Schpoonman

    I’ve always found “We’re ongoing chemical reactions, like tiny tiny stars,” to be freeing and fulfilling. It’s also a wonderful gotcha for “Your feelings don’t matter, they’re just chemicals,” because they’re empirically real. You can physically and (theoretically) precisely measure how happy or stressed or confused someone is by the chemicals in their body.

    That’s the most real thing in the fucking world.

    1. superglucose

      unfortunately for this analogy, stars are not chemical reactions they’re *nuclear* reactions

      1. Proxiehunter

        So are some feelings I’ve had.

      2. Schpoonman

        I almost pointed that out, but I think the fact that it’s an insert-scientific-field-or-what-have-you reaction saves the analogy. Next time I cook this bit up I’ll make the distinction, but I’m gonna get a “star stuff” line in.

    2. Laura

      …Been having a hard time with brain chemistry, past two weeks.
      Pdoc says I can’t get any ADHD treatment without testing, and he’ll never authorize testing because I have TBI. So even if I meet all ADHD-I criteria, I can never get treatment. But they also don’t treat TBI.

      …So I’m forked.

      If anyone has any spare encouragement to share, I could REALLY use some. Trying to focus on ANYTHING at work has been kicking my tail.

      Thank youse!

      Laura plays “ADHD Relief Music” on the hacked neurotransmitter-induced musical hallucination, for them as wants it:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG2IK8oRZNA

      ‘Preciate it much.

  39. thumb

    The censored version of Die Hard I got to see on TV said “Yippee ki yeah, m****rfucker.” One of the few censors that makes a line better.

    1. superglucose

      why is “mother” the half of that you bleeped?

      1. Taffy

        Cuz that’s what they bleeped on the TV in the anecdote, possibly.

        1. thejeff

          Which only pushes my puzzlement back a step.

        2. Taffy

          I like it. Reminds me of when TV would censor “goddamn it” to “[bleep]damn it”, which I assume doesn’t happen anymore. It always made me imagine an even worse swear, like “fuck damn it”.

          Idk, I have streaming and DVDs, so the only time I see actual broadcast TV now is in the hospital.

        3. Schpoonman

          I was thinking of Punk’d and “ass****”, I’m not sure I’ve heard “***dammit”.

        4. bemisawa

          Welp, I guess I need to start using the phrase “fuckdamn it” now.

  40. Michael Steamweed

    Apropos of nothing, I want to see Joyce quote from “Every sperm is sacred.”

    1. thejeff

      Early Joyce would have been so conflicted by that sketch, if she’d been allowed to watch it.
      All her ideas about birth control would agree with the Catholic pov in the song, but she would have been outraged by them being Catholic. And, iirc, in the sketch, there’s a bit about Protestants being able to use birth control.

      It’s kind of a fascinating time capsule of how at least some strains of Protestantism have adopted views once strongly attached to Catholicism.

      1. Segnosaur

        Was the Joyce brown household against birth control?

        I know they were against pre-marital hanky panky, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they would be against birth control, when used by a married couple who dutifully pray to jebus and donate to their church.

        1. thejeff

          We had a whole arc about Joyce and birth control. Sure, you could kind of squint and say it was only because she wasn’t married and I’m not sure it was ever explicitly stated, but it’s become a big thing on the culty evangelical right.

        2. Proxiehunter

          If married couples aren’t having kids then how are the fundies going to out breed “THEM“?

          Them being everyone who’s not the exact right kind of Christian (Fundamentalists of different sects are also the wrong kind of Christian) and depending on the fundamentalist you’re talking to anyone who’s not white.

  41. Owlmirror

    Were home-schooled Becky and Joyce even allowed to watch television Die Hard?

    How did home-schooled kids who presumably only interact with other home-schooled kids find out that original movie Die Hard differed from the television version?

    1. Segnosaur

      Remember, religion can really mess people up.

      It’s possible that Joyce’s parents allowed her to watch “violent” movies like die hard unsupervised because “at least there are no naked boobies in it”.

    2. John Campbell

      It doesn’t promote Eastern religion or anything. Just good patriotic American gun violence, Bruce Willis represents the oppressed Christians fighting back against the Islamoatheist oppressors to save Christmas! Yippee-ki-yay monkeybutter!

      1. Taffy

        Mmmm, buttered monkey

  42. Amós Batista

    Joe smirking. He knows some way more huge kegs.

  43. Segnosaur

    I am not necessarily complaining about the professor Brock character. But does it seem like he spends a lot of time talking about stuff that is more philosophical (or at least advanced biology) than you would expect in an entry-level biology class? Questions about whether we are “conscious” or not seen like they are out of scope.

    (Granted we only see little segments of his teaching, so it’s possible that 99.99% is about the basics)

    1. CaravanShaker

      I had a geometry professor early in college who had a PhD in Philosophy, and had him for a philosophy course a couple semesters later, maybe Doc is multidisciplined

    2. Mark

      A friend of mine complained that a number of her prof.s did this sort of thing. The topic varied from one to the next; the total irrelevance to the course material did not.

    3. anon

      i guess he just seems bitter and jaded. imagine him coming across like book one joyce with all her proselytizing

  44. Max

    Is it just me or has the webpage been loading really slowly the past week? It took multiple attempts and reloads. I am in Taiwan on Firefox. My phone was also slow to load it. All the other webpages seem to be working normally.

  45. Taffy

    I appreciate Joyce having enough practical experience to know that a biggish jug isn’t really a lot of you’re involving other people. Pretty sure she drank that much on her own, at the bar.

    1. Adept

      er, that’s moonshine, isn’t it? It’s a lot more alcohol by volume than a keg of beer.

      1. Taffy

        Nobody has mentioned what variety of booze it is, and it’s in a generic cartoon jug, so it could be anything.

        1. Adept

          Shouldn’t the XX mean double distilled, so it’s at least a spirit?

  46. DailyBrad

    “Yeah, it’s fucking not” has the same energy as “I don’t want any damn vegetables” from Todd Flanders.

    1. NGPZ

      “Yeah, an’ it’s unsettlin’, like hearin’ Dora The Explorer or Elmo swear.”

  47. WAhydrohead

    Joyce is no longer altered to fit our screens 😀

  48. BorkBorkBork

    Professor Brock has big “My wife left me for someone who doesn’t make everyone miserable every time they open their mouth” vibes. He’s the kind of professor I’d always be wondering if statements like this are really cries for help and if I’ll be regretting it the rest of my life if I didn’t say something now.

    1. anon

      i wonder if we’ll see some 20 year ago flashback of him first starting out as a teacher and instantly getting jaded within 2 years lol

      i mean, im sure someone would ask ‘what’s your damage’ to him or so at some point, but you’d just be a student, although even as a ‘colleague’/coworker, it’s not your responsibility to help out with someone else’s hangups/issues unless it’s also affecting the work performance too

  49. Leadsynth

    It’s v cute how Joyce is dropping F-bombs but Becky still says “dang.” Also, Professor Brock’s dialogue is great.

    1. Needfuldoer

      She rocketed up to a three-way tie with Becky and Joe on the f-bomb counter.

  50. Makkabee

    Now they can watch Die Hard and argue about whether it’s a Christmas movie or a Hanukkah movie!

  51. anon

    lol other than some youthful freshman or someone uptight that’d enjoy ‘debating’ i wonder if anyone would bother fighting back/arguing versus just ignoring/tuning out all the nihilistic? stuff he says about life lol

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