I know. With his comic having dialogue like that, his contribution to this strip is way more interesting than the fact that Dorothy just standing in the background. I mean what is that comic?!? Have we seen it before. Is that line a jest or serious? So many questions!
Leather Jackets, as such, would not, in itself, be a violation of intellectual property. Now if Sal had trademarked and copyrighted her image, it’s possible things could be different. Wearing the leather jacket could be part of her trade dress for trademark purposes. But to prevail, she would need to show that the similarities could reasonably produced confusion in their customers. Joyce’s only customer is the school paper, and it’s unlikely it could be shown they thought they were buying Sal’s comic. Copyright would be the stronger claim, but it would depend on how similar the total look and feel was to Sal’s copyrighted images. A leather jacket worn by a dark skinned young woman would not be sufficient. Even if the similarities were significant, there are fair use provisions for satire, though if they would apply or not is the kind of thing that makes lawyers rich. — I am not a lawyer nor do I play one in virtual reality.
Incidently, life rights are not a thing that actually exist as something protected under the law, but buying them anyway protects you from lawsuits based on defamation, invasion of privacy and the right to publicity. But since not-Walky would actually be a completely different person, that wouldn’t apply anyway. To be safe, a box with fine print, “All characters in this comic are fictional and any resemblance to any individual, living or dead, is completely coincidental,” would not be amiss.
Oh, that is totally a conversation that will absolutely happen on screen.
The real question is whether Joyce starts the conversation, or if Becky finds out from loose lips, say Joe saying something assuming Becky already knew.
@Thag Simmons
I think ‘context’ might be too strong a term for… whatever all that was.
Miri
I used to read that comic… Kinda got bored with them and the Pibgorn ones because it is kinda repetitive and his obsession with the female form interferes with his ability to tell a story. Didn’t realise that first ran during pride month!
I hadn’t remembered Seth willing himself to sleep and dream every chance he got but this isn’t his first lady-crush. Apparently there was also a 70 year old cellist IIRC. And at one point he tells Edda he wishes he was straight so he and her could make all the babies… I think he’s like a Kinsey 5.9? So practically exclusively gay, but with occasional blips that confuse the hell out of him. But given the artist was too busy focussing on family-friendly syndicatable make-outs and cat gags to actually go into emotions in much depth, and in-comic the person he would logically confide in is a shallow, immature, loudmouth who’s both terrified of commitment and also deeply committed to her childhood best friend/mutual crush with virtually no experience of relationships otherwise – weird and off-putting is probably the best outcome we could have hoped for?
Miri
Wait… Mother of twin toddlers?!! OK so he’s returned to his Fernanda crush long after it first occurred…
I was never fond of the Kinsey scale, because it excludes enbys like me ?
— during pride month?!?! If that isn’t solid proof this author’s a tool, I don’t know what is.
Rose by Any Other Name
I mean, the Kinsey scale is about where one’s interests lie, so it makes sense that lacking interest would exclude one from that scale.
That’s why we need multiple scales and terms.
Also, as someone who has a higher-than-average sex drive, the fact that a lot of sex-drive scales go from ace to ‘normal’ and either don’t have a category for ‘above normal’ or call it an addiction like enjoying 2+ orgasms per day is a destructive habit akin to alcoholism is a pet peeve of mine.
Just sayin – no scale is perfect. They are merely tools that are good at some things and not at others.
Rose by Any Other Name
Fuck. Brain fart. I somehow read enby as AroAce.
Rose by Any Other Name
To amend the above – Kinsey works okay for Trans, but it does kinda go weird for fluid or other flavors of enby.
That said, as I stated before, some tools work better for some things than others. The main thing is to not rely exclusively on it. Like the Bechtel test.
Leorale
Yeah it’s one of those stepping-stone types of concepts.
It was historically essential — when Kinsey was studying and writing, people literally thought that bisexuality didn’t exist. The whole idea of a spectrum of anything in sex or identity, and the idea that people should be studying these things, this was all rather revolutionary.
The Kinsey Scale is still a useful shorthand for binary people with binary attractions. But moreover, it was super great in opening up the field of study for everything that came after it.
Now people can stand on Kinsey’s shoulders (and the shoulders of many other cool thought-pioneers), to make other words and spectrums and models that apply to more kinds of people.
Taffy
So, basically, the Kinsey Scale is the Ocarina of Time of queer culture?
Yumi
@Rose: I’m sure you meant no offense, but a pet peeve of mine is when people contrast “trans” with “enby.” Not everyone who identifies as nonbinary identifies as trans, but many do, as it does fall under the trans umbrella.
I am nonbinary. I am transgender. They go together in my identity.
If you need to distinguish groups for what you’re saying (such as you might in this case), you can always say “binary trans people.”
Those, and incomprehensible pseudo-philosophical (… I think?) dream sequences and debates about the relative dream sequence-ness of interactions, which were made all the harder by the fact that everything took place in a featureless void unless they were going to fuck in a bath tub – which, I’m pretty sure if my brain has NOT successfully purged all this psychic bullshit, was actually in a dream sequence!
Also a lot of claiming dresses were beautiful when they were the dullest shit ever conceived. All with the boat-loads of ten dollar words and tired homophobic propaganda, obviously.
The strip that line is part of is a parody of 9 Chickweed Lane, a newspaper comic that recently had a plot which can basically be summed up by that line.
God, I’m just imagining the gag potential now. In an early arc, Captain Gray accidentally scratches an additional line at the bottom of the “F” with the wing of her plane. Later, during the “Summation” arc, President Doris draws it in Julia’s blood during their fight atop a Venusian airship in a moment of symbolism.
Trolley Problem time! A Tesla is about to run over and kill a person. By throwing a switch, you can reprogram the artificial intelligence running the Tesla, causing it to run over and destroy Twitter. No people actually die, but a huge social media empire that people rely on for communication, community, publications, notifications, public service announcements, etc might get totally destroyed. (But bad stuff also happens there.) Do you divert the intelligence running Tesla to destroy Twitter?
The Tesla still runs the person over anyway, but nobody talks about it because they’re distracted by Twitter shenanigans.
Gingercake
While I was in my Tesla it ran over my wife and children and then drove into the Twitter server room and somehow caused a major data breach resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Tbh it’s probably my fault. Still a huge Tesla fan!
Which person is that? That’s important information.
Taffy
Reginald Ullarman, age 47, father of 2. A mechanic by trade, he also plays rhythm guitar in a local ska band. Leans leftish politically, though he’s a little conservative about gun rights and has a slight prejudice against people from Taiwan, which he does acknowledge is his problem and not theirs. Never married, but lives with his kids and girlfriend in a 2-bedroom apartment near downtown. His oldest son is trans, which Reg doesn’t really understand, but he still does his best to support the kid and keep him safe. Received a distinctive scar on his left arm that looks like a duck, back in high school. He was out shopping today when he was suddenly grabbed by two large men in blue jumpsuits, who tied him down to the trolley track.
Cerusee
Reading this from the bottom instead of the top made this an especially interesting comment thread, I must say.
At first, I didn’t make the Absolutely Correct Life Choice of reading the dialogue bubble from the strip below Julia’s.
Fortunately, I corrected that quickly. Thanks for reminding me again of what was somehow NOT the most cursed 9 Chickweed Lane storyline of 2021.
(… I’m here counting the “sexually charged toddlers” stuff as a storyline in its own right, but also, now I’m not sure how one counts the WWII bullshit. Objectively, it should only be counted as one storyline, but given the lengthy prose interludes in which to drop Historically Accurate And Totally Necessary Slurs*, the meandering plot, the incomprehensible double-crosses, the slowest plane chases ever… it felt like twelve, and all of them were terrible.)
Yeah, she picked me up in the mornin’, and she paid all my tickets
Then she screamed in the car/Left me out in the thicket
Well I never woulda’ dreamed/That her heart was so wicked
Yeah, but I keep comin’ back/’Cause it’s so hard to kick it–Tom Petty
As someone who is not biologically female, just curious: does getting on birth control really solve cramps that quickly? Because that is a miraculous mood turnaround for Joyce.
That’s what I thought as well (that she should be on the placebo pills taken _during_ the period. Does this mean that the horrible cramping is all really in her head?
Taffy
It does not mean that.
BBCC
No, it means she didn’t get horrible cramping every day of her horrible period.
TMI but I have pretty shitty ones, but my cramps typically don’t last the whole time either.
168 thoughts on “Semi”
Ana Chronistic
to be fair, Sal appropriated it from Tennessee first
Ana Chronistic
no tag for Pat McHoarney?
True Survivor
I know. With his comic having dialogue like that, his contribution to this strip is way more interesting than the fact that Dorothy just standing in the background. I mean what is that comic?!? Have we seen it before. Is that line a jest or serious? So many questions!
deliverything
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/toog/ may help. Somewhat.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Makes sense Pat didn’t get tagged. LOSS wasn’t tagged in the previous one featuring comics either.
darkoneko
appropriate my foot
Doctor_Who
Tomorrow’s strip, Sal gets a new tattoo: ©
Joyce’s plan is foiled.
Sirksome
Is leather jackets an intellectual property? I think Sal has rights to sue.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
She has to get in line behind the cow.
BowlerHatGuy
Unless the cow is from the restaurant at the end of the universe.
Clif
Leather Jackets, as such, would not, in itself, be a violation of intellectual property. Now if Sal had trademarked and copyrighted her image, it’s possible things could be different. Wearing the leather jacket could be part of her trade dress for trademark purposes. But to prevail, she would need to show that the similarities could reasonably produced confusion in their customers. Joyce’s only customer is the school paper, and it’s unlikely it could be shown they thought they were buying Sal’s comic. Copyright would be the stronger claim, but it would depend on how similar the total look and feel was to Sal’s copyrighted images. A leather jacket worn by a dark skinned young woman would not be sufficient. Even if the similarities were significant, there are fair use provisions for satire, though if they would apply or not is the kind of thing that makes lawyers rich. — I am not a lawyer nor do I play one in virtual reality.
Clif
Incidently, life rights are not a thing that actually exist as something protected under the law, but buying them anyway protects you from lawsuits based on defamation, invasion of privacy and the right to publicity. But since not-Walky would actually be a completely different person, that wouldn’t apply anyway. To be safe, a box with fine print, “All characters in this comic are fictional and any resemblance to any individual, living or dead, is completely coincidental,” would not be amiss.
Still do not play a lawyer in virtual reality.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
“Purchasing Life Rights” sounds like something from a dystopian SciFi movie…
The Wellerman
Huh. Looks like that conversation between Joyce and Becky didn’t happen after all?
Needfuldoer
Or it happened off-screen. We’ll find out!
Yoder of Kansas
Oh, that is totally a conversation that will absolutely happen on screen.
The real question is whether Joyce starts the conversation, or if Becky finds out from loose lips, say Joe saying something assuming Becky already knew.
Thag Simmons
So does Pat McHoarney go to the school or is his comic just cheap to syndicate?
Matthew Davis
Yes.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Why would legs that don’t match cure homosexuality?
Thag Simmons
Context for the horror
Rose by Any Other Name
@Thag Simmons
I think ‘context’ might be too strong a term for… whatever all that was.
Miri
I used to read that comic… Kinda got bored with them and the Pibgorn ones because it is kinda repetitive and his obsession with the female form interferes with his ability to tell a story. Didn’t realise that first ran during pride month!
I hadn’t remembered Seth willing himself to sleep and dream every chance he got but this isn’t his first lady-crush. Apparently there was also a 70 year old cellist IIRC. And at one point he tells Edda he wishes he was straight so he and her could make all the babies… I think he’s like a Kinsey 5.9? So practically exclusively gay, but with occasional blips that confuse the hell out of him. But given the artist was too busy focussing on family-friendly syndicatable make-outs and cat gags to actually go into emotions in much depth, and in-comic the person he would logically confide in is a shallow, immature, loudmouth who’s both terrified of commitment and also deeply committed to her childhood best friend/mutual crush with virtually no experience of relationships otherwise – weird and off-putting is probably the best outcome we could have hoped for?
Miri
Wait… Mother of twin toddlers?!! OK so he’s returned to his Fernanda crush long after it first occurred…
The Wellerman
I was never fond of the Kinsey scale, because it excludes enbys like me ?
— during pride month?!?! If that isn’t solid proof this author’s a tool, I don’t know what is.
Rose by Any Other Name
I mean, the Kinsey scale is about where one’s interests lie, so it makes sense that lacking interest would exclude one from that scale.
That’s why we need multiple scales and terms.
Also, as someone who has a higher-than-average sex drive, the fact that a lot of sex-drive scales go from ace to ‘normal’ and either don’t have a category for ‘above normal’ or call it an addiction like enjoying 2+ orgasms per day is a destructive habit akin to alcoholism is a pet peeve of mine.
Just sayin – no scale is perfect. They are merely tools that are good at some things and not at others.
Rose by Any Other Name
Fuck. Brain fart. I somehow read enby as AroAce.
Rose by Any Other Name
To amend the above – Kinsey works okay for Trans, but it does kinda go weird for fluid or other flavors of enby.
That said, as I stated before, some tools work better for some things than others. The main thing is to not rely exclusively on it. Like the Bechtel test.
Leorale
Yeah it’s one of those stepping-stone types of concepts.
It was historically essential — when Kinsey was studying and writing, people literally thought that bisexuality didn’t exist. The whole idea of a spectrum of anything in sex or identity, and the idea that people should be studying these things, this was all rather revolutionary.
The Kinsey Scale is still a useful shorthand for binary people with binary attractions. But moreover, it was super great in opening up the field of study for everything that came after it.
Now people can stand on Kinsey’s shoulders (and the shoulders of many other cool thought-pioneers), to make other words and spectrums and models that apply to more kinds of people.
Taffy
So, basically, the Kinsey Scale is the Ocarina of Time of queer culture?
Yumi
@Rose: I’m sure you meant no offense, but a pet peeve of mine is when people contrast “trans” with “enby.” Not everyone who identifies as nonbinary identifies as trans, but many do, as it does fall under the trans umbrella.
I am nonbinary. I am transgender. They go together in my identity.
If you need to distinguish groups for what you’re saying (such as you might in this case), you can always say “binary trans people.”
Doctor_Who
You’d think it would be the opposite. Just imagine trying to go straight if your legs didn’t match!
Clif
I think they are really trying to say that the legs in question are peerless.
On account of the legs not having eyes to peer with.
The Wellerman
The explanation is nothing more than right-wing propaganda masked with a boat-load of ten-dollar words. ?
Regalli
Those, and incomprehensible pseudo-philosophical (… I think?) dream sequences and debates about the relative dream sequence-ness of interactions, which were made all the harder by the fact that everything took place in a featureless void unless they were going to fuck in a bath tub – which, I’m pretty sure if my brain has NOT successfully purged all this psychic bullshit, was actually in a dream sequence!
Also a lot of claiming dresses were beautiful when they were the dullest shit ever conceived. All with the boat-loads of ten dollar words and tired homophobic propaganda, obviously.
The Wellerman
Fuck. I can’t believe McEldowney still has fans that eat this crap. ?
RassilonTDavros
The strip that line is part of is a parody of 9 Chickweed Lane, a newspaper comic that recently had a plot which can basically be summed up by that line.
Nono
Apparently that was… last year?
Suet
*sharply inhales* Being run above McHoarney feels like a bigger pain in the meow meow
Screw making fun of the Leafs, I have the Habs to make fun of now!
RassilonTDavros
Oh shit I totally missed that line on first read.
I love that Willis making fun of 9CL has spread beyond Twitter into the actual comic itself now.
Thag Simmons
Not the first time either. I’m pretty sure Pat even got a bonus strip.
Regalli
Yes, we all voted to make Willis suffer that month.
Suet
The bonus strip came later? Feels more like a fire sparked under him upon lampooning 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd once again.
Nono
He’s also added references to Mary Worth.
Needfuldoer
So does that make 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd the legs?
RassilonTDavros
It’s only semi-autobiographical for the first few years, after that it’s SEMME-autobiographical.
RedComet
Pretty good
Reltzik
And The Mean RA’s final installment is semi-auto-biographical.
Needfuldoer
I really hope the alien-fighting agency in the Grayverse is SEMMF.
RassilonTDavros
God, I’m just imagining the gag potential now. In an early arc, Captain Gray accidentally scratches an additional line at the bottom of the “F” with the wing of her plane. Later, during the “Summation” arc, President Doris draws it in Julia’s blood during their fight atop a Venusian airship in a moment of symbolism.
StClair
everyone will feel real bad (for a little while) in a couple of years when The Mean RA throws herself in front of a Tesla.
Reltzik
Trolley Problem time! A Tesla is about to run over and kill a person. By throwing a switch, you can reprogram the artificial intelligence running the Tesla, causing it to run over and destroy Twitter. No people actually die, but a huge social media empire that people rely on for communication, community, publications, notifications, public service announcements, etc might get totally destroyed. (But bad stuff also happens there.) Do you divert the intelligence running Tesla to destroy Twitter?
…. purely hypothetical.
Needfuldoer
The Tesla still runs the person over anyway, but nobody talks about it because they’re distracted by Twitter shenanigans.
Gingercake
While I was in my Tesla it ran over my wife and children and then drove into the Twitter server room and somehow caused a major data breach resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Tbh it’s probably my fault. Still a huge Tesla fan!
JBento
Which person is that? That’s important information.
Taffy
Reginald Ullarman, age 47, father of 2. A mechanic by trade, he also plays rhythm guitar in a local ska band. Leans leftish politically, though he’s a little conservative about gun rights and has a slight prejudice against people from Taiwan, which he does acknowledge is his problem and not theirs. Never married, but lives with his kids and girlfriend in a 2-bedroom apartment near downtown. His oldest son is trans, which Reg doesn’t really understand, but he still does his best to support the kid and keep him safe. Received a distinctive scar on his left arm that looks like a duck, back in high school. He was out shopping today when he was suddenly grabbed by two large men in blue jumpsuits, who tied him down to the trolley track.
Cerusee
Reading this from the bottom instead of the top made this an especially interesting comment thread, I must say.
Regalli
At first, I didn’t make the Absolutely Correct Life Choice of reading the dialogue bubble from the strip below Julia’s.
Fortunately, I corrected that quickly. Thanks for reminding me again of what was somehow NOT the most cursed 9 Chickweed Lane storyline of 2021.
(… I’m here counting the “sexually charged toddlers” stuff as a storyline in its own right, but also, now I’m not sure how one counts the WWII bullshit. Objectively, it should only be counted as one storyline, but given the lengthy prose interludes in which to drop Historically Accurate And Totally Necessary Slurs*, the meandering plot, the incomprehensible double-crosses, the slowest plane chases ever… it felt like twelve, and all of them were terrible.)
* DEEP sarcasm about the necessity there.
Needfuldoer
Wasn’t that the arc that finally got the strip pulled from a bunch of papers?
Stephen Bierce
Yeah, she picked me up in the mornin’, and she paid all my tickets
Then she screamed in the car/Left me out in the thicket
Well I never woulda’ dreamed/That her heart was so wicked
Yeah, but I keep comin’ back/’Cause it’s so hard to kick it–Tom Petty
UrsulaDavina
If the Toronto Maple Leafs still exist in the future were space travel is a thing then the future is doomed.
Stephen Bierce
They Came From PLANET Toronto
Nono
As someone who is not biologically female, just curious: does getting on birth control really solve cramps that quickly? Because that is a miraculous mood turnaround for Joyce.
EpochFlame
she should still be on placebo
poofdepoof
She’s living on two liters of soda and loooooove
Needfuldoer
Don’t forget the children’s ibuprofen.
Chris (The other one)
That’s what I thought as well (that she should be on the placebo pills taken _during_ the period. Does this mean that the horrible cramping is all really in her head?
Taffy
It does not mean that.
BBCC
No, it means she didn’t get horrible cramping every day of her horrible period.
TMI but I have pretty shitty ones, but my cramps typically don’t last the whole time either.
BBCC
Depends on the medication. I was told to start with the actual meds on mine.
Regalli