180

Advance
Posted on October 20, 2021 by David M Willis

180 thoughts on “Advance”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    huh, Daisy has some valuable insight beyond chest windows? who’da thunk it

    1. Thag Simmons

      Daisy is actually very good at her job when she’s thinking with her brain and not her legs.

      1. Doctor_Who

        I mean, there’s no reason she can’t have both valuable insights AND demand some chest windows.

        Walky would totally add chest windows to his comic if it got him picked.

        1. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

          On Mike? Walky would draw chest windows on Mike so his comic gets picked? Yes.

      2. TheLurkerAbove

        Yea, I mean, I assume she is editor on merit. She just needs to release some, err, steam.

    2. A Red Balloon

      A valuable insight, yes, but a rather common and much overlooked one.

      College isn’t just somewhere you go to get the education you’ll need for a job or whatever.

      It’s a whole package that’s supposed to be a very personal and transformative life experience.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Night school’s where you go to get the education you’ll need for a job or whatever.

    3. Yotomoe

      You can never have enough chest windows, to be fair.
      Fun Fact: Amanda Conner’s run of Powergirl is what inspired my Super character. Specifically Conner. Love her art.

      1. The Wellerman

        Who’s your Super character?

        Sorry, I was a little confused by your post.

        1. Yotomoe

          Her name’s Super. A lazy teenager with super powers. I don’t call her a “super hero” cuz she’s not much of a hero. Just a lazy teenager who’s the strongest person in Dupre City.

        2. Yotomoe

          https://imgur.com/a/2Zkw6ce
          Forgot link.

        3. The Wellerman

          Woah this looks pretty lit!

          She actually kinda looks like Joyce in that first pick!

        4. FaerwenOfValenwood

          Yo, this is cool as heck.

        5. Ferret

          That’s some good character design right there.

        6. Mr.Morningstar

          Yo I love it

        7. Deanatay

          Wow, it looks great! You could really turn this into something – no wait, lazy. I get that.

          Still, great stuff.

        8. powerpowerpow

          This hasn’t happened to me in a very long time but I’m instantly in love with the character. Love the concept, love the design, love everything, I need more of this!

        9. Leorale

          Would read the *heck* out of this.
          (Double heck if she’s gay)

    4. AbacusWizard

      Are we certain that Joyce’s comic doesn’t involve any chest windows?

      1. Dean

        The pencil is so Daisy can draw some in.

      2. Wizard

        Who says a flight suit can’t have a chest window?

        1. Thag Simmons

          G-forces

      3. Thag Simmons

        It seems unlikely, but unintentional lesbian subtext may be a passable substitute

    5. Reltzik

      I think Daisy WISHES she has sight that could extend beyond che- *vaudeville hook*

    6. Neeks

      You know, say what you will about Power Girl’s chest window and the straight male gaze and all that, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but honestly breasts could use the extra ventilation when you have a physically active lifestyle and, uh, Vast Tracts of Land.

      This reply is brought to you by almost a decade of being a curvy gal working in a warehouse. In Arizona. Even on night shift it’s 90 degrees at 2am during the summer.

      1. zee

        Yeah, no, true. Agreed with by a curvy gal living in the tropics, sweating at 8 am
        Power girl also has the best cape in all comics so that makes up for all the weird male gazeiness in her design for me

      2. Ana Chronistic

        Chest Underboob Vents

  2. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Joyce: Try me.

    1. Decidedly Orthogonal

      Joe: “Don’t tempt me Frodo!”

  3. ThunderNight

    I wonder how much of Joyce’s comic will parallel Roomies.

    1. powerpowerpow

      I mean, I assume if Julia Gray is to be a Space Force pilot someday, the topic of aliens is unavoidable.

      1. Thag Simmons

        Yeah, it seems like Julia Gray is sort of a composite Walky/Danny in terms of plot significance.

      2. Needfuldoer

        She’ll have to come up with her own alien design though, Head Alien already exists as an intellectual property in her reality.

        “I’m not Dexter, I’m my own original character, Blexter!”

        1. Reltzik

          She didn’t come up with original designs for any of her other characters…

        2. Needfuldoer

          But they’re all just based on her friends and acquaintances, like Danny, Ninja Rick, and Alex were in the Walkyverse (and partially here). They might get upset about their portrayal, but they don’t have the power of an international multimedia, theme park, and communications conglomerate to bring the hammer down on copyright infringement.

        3. Reltzik

          True. Joyce doing something like that would be dumb. So very dumb.

          … which doesn’t mean she won’t do it.

          … though okay, Daisy would probably put the brakes on if she did.

        4. Azhrei Vep

          He’s not Dexter, he’s Sinist-oooooh…. that’s not gonna work..

        5. Opus the Poet

          Underdog has you beat by several decades with Simon bar Sinister.

    2. RassilonTDavros

      Probably a lot.

      Julia Gray isn’t straight-up the role Danny played in Roomies! though, since we know she goes on to be a government fighter pilot, while Danny never really had a fighting bone in his body.

      1. Regalli

        Yeah, but Danny was originally meant to go have adventures with Ultra Car fighting Monkey Master – she just decided to go work at a toy store instead.

    3. Zatar

      The big thing that will probobly seperate this is that Joyce is already an Athiest.

  4. misanthropope

    AHA dyw giving away his endgame, here. the plan is to make the buffer so big that EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT. he will cringe at his younger and dumber self. “that’ll teach me, the bastard” he was heard to mutter.

    1. Wizard

      Damn me, Willis!

    2. Moonie

      The real reason it’s called Dumbing of Age

      This was the secret all along

  5. Shorduie

    I like this new Joyce. I dont like how she handled things with Becky, but this is a nice new Joyce

    1. Wendy

      Agreed. Joyce is such a dynamic character, I love how she’s written, how she grows and develops.

  6. Lion

    Pretty sure this confirmed a theory I had about the comic

  7. Yotomoe

    It’s always what I worry about with making my own comic. By the time anything happens I’ll be a different person. But I’m lazy.

    1. Agemegos

      By that time you will be a different person in any case. Do you want to be a different person who has drawn a comic or a different person who has not drawn a comic?

    2. The Wellerman

      Why not just make it a plotless daily gag comic, like Nerf Now! or Extra Ordinary?

    3. thejeff

      Or something with shorter defined plot arcs, to give you room to change and grow. In much good writing, characters will take to places you didn’t expect anyways.

      And of course you can always just recycle your characters into a new universe after the first decade. 🙂

    4. Ana Chronistic

      Luckily, I’ve taken over TEN YEARS to finish my one book, so I’ve already gotten the change out of the way!

      …

      *still doesn’t have a finished book*

      dangit

  8. Kravis

    Yeah, by the time you graduate you will have had pre-marital hanky-panky with Joe at least once.

    1. PirateTawnee

      Dorothy doesn’t have a J in it. Or an E.

      1. heliska

        Joerothy

      2. Ana Chronistic

        Dot the r, and um… There we go!

        Doṛothee

    2. Mr.Morningstar

      Probably!!

  9. Thag Simmons

    Man it’d suck if Joyce gets the rug pulled out from under her here.

  10. Stephen Bierce

    Ch-ch-ch-changes! (Turn and face the strange) Ch-ch-changes!
    Look out all you rock-n-rollers!
    Ch-ch-ch-changes! (Turn and face the strange) Ch-ch-changes!
    Pretty soon now you’re gonna get older!
    Time may change me…but I can’t waste time    …

  11. BBCC

    I know I’m not Daisy, but I promise, Joyce. I promise.

  12. P!enapple

    Love her smile in the last panel 🙂 <3

  13. RassilonTDavros

    Interesting. She hesitates at first at the thought of becoming a different person, but then changes her mind and thinks it’s the best possibility.

    I wonder what it is about who she is currently that she dislikes so strongly. Is it that she hopes to get over her crippling fear of her own sexuality? Is it second thoughts over her argument with Becky? Both? Neither? Something else entirely? Just a general knowledge that she hasn’t fully recovered from her upbringing, and the desire to get as far away from it as possible?

    1. alongcameaspider

      I think that last point is dead on

      Also thus far she’s associated herself changing with her becoming a better person and for the most part she’s right

    2. justin8448

      The last one, I’m guessing.

      Unless someone is very brave and very self-aware, the ways they acknowledge wanting to change usually don’t involve digging into their deepest issues.

      But maybe I’m not giving Joyce enough credit.

  14. Endplanets

    ‘Like this Mary character here. Will she be the hero the whole time?”

    1. Some1

      Not gonna lie, I’m still hoping for a Mary redemption arc.

      1. Jamie

        I’d be fine without one.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Same. She fits the story well as the comic relief busybody heel.

      2. Reltzik

        If it involved her eating a WHOLE lot of crow and actually realizing how awful she’s been, I’d want to see that.

        Not holding my breath, though.

      3. Thag Simmons

        I think the odds of that happening are genuinely lower than the Head Alien invading

      4. Keulen

        I’d settle for just not seeing Mary again for a very long time.

      5. thejeff

        I want to see Mary and Malaya interact more. The few glimpses we got were fun.

        1. Regalli

          Agreed! One-sided rivalry on Mary’s part and Malaya not even deigning to notice her is a really fun dynamic.

      6. RassilonTDavros

        I feel like the main reason a Mary redemption wouldn’t work is that the sheer amount of awfulness that would need to be redeemed– blackmailing Ruth into a suicide attempt so that she could get away with misgendering Carla is easily the worst thing any of the regular cast has done in this series– is vastly out of proportion to her overall importance within the narrative. I feel like the amount of panel time it would take to redeem Mary is more panel time than she deserves.

        Plus, Willis already tried to redeem her once 20 years ago and it didn’t take that time either. And that Mary’s already probably less bad than this one.

        1. Spencer

          Yeah.

          She’s best as a heel because regardless of how inherently and deeply immoral her actions towards Ruth and Carla were (and in the former’s case it was so over the top evil when Mary had a pretty sensible reason to hate Ruth like “she slapped me so hard she left the imprint of a cock on my face” she just never commented on), she’s so utterly pathetic that she can’t actually affect any victory against any of them. Ruth and Billie just do whatever they want and instead of Mary leveraging that blackmail she just, like, doesn’t. For no reason. She’s such a bad villain she doesn’t even know how to blackmail properly and you could make a convincing argument that she was so bad at blackmailing it got Ruth into therapy and on medication and let her keep her job and Billie.

          Now she either annoys everyone by trying to get one over someone and so it’s funny when Dina aggressively hompfks her to death, or the cast is doing something weird that Mary would normally be the sympathetic straight man towards, say that time Joyce had Fuckface on her head, and when she said it was weird she and Dorothy started roasting the hell out of her for being a lame, boring jerk and all Mary could do is incredulously reply “you have an iguana on her head” and then sulk to Ruth that Joyce called her a tattler.

          You can actually have Mary draw art for Joyce and be paid in exposure, the most violent transgression you could commit onto an artist, and it’s still funny because it’s Mary and Mary reacts in a way that makes her suffering straddle a perfect line between seeing a smug jerk get owned and being so low consequence for someone who couldn’t enact any kind of consequence if she tried because she’s as threatening as Peridot that we don’t suddenly start sympathizing with her in the event or even wanting anyone to be nice to her, because now she’s perfectly doled out to maximize the amount of comedic suffering she receives without ever really needing to worry about her humanity.

          She just shows up, tries to say something mean, an anvil bonks her on the head, her teeth turn into piano keys and then she slinks off as her torso pops up and down making accordion noises.

          It’s the best.

        2. Some1

          The thing is, Mary can be redeemed and still have those comedic moments happen. Just because she redeems herself doesn’t mean the characters or audience have to forgive her. Besides, I imagine if Mary has an arc then Carla will likely be heavily involved, and who doesn’t want more Carla?

        3. Spencer

          It wouldn’t be funny if Mary ran off a cliff and kept herself in midair until she noticed and only then does she start falling if she was even nominally sympathetic or likable.

          It’s a specific line that makes the best use of her character: She sucks and no one likes her, and she’s incapable of causing meaningful harm to anyone without taking her out of that funny failure villain role, so that’s where she stays. Reality will come up with the most absurd punishment it can for Mary’s slightest hubris and her ego is so ironclad she can’t even consider that it’s a sign.

          And Carla definitely does not need to be involved in a Mary redemption story. She can show up at the end of it where Mary openly acknowledges being a horrible bastard person and sincerely apologizes and hopes there’s some way she can make amends, and then Carla can just deal with that however she wants and go on with her day.

        4. Regalli

          In fairness, Ruth never actually attempted. She was too depressed to even work up the energy and make an active plan.

          That’s not BETTER by any means, but it does slightly change the tenor of Mary’s crimes just enough that the hall could be convinced not to tell the R.M. about what she did. I think if Ruth had attempted, Jennifer’s counter-blackmail wouldn’t have worked because Rachel or someone would have decided ‘fuck no, I’m reporting her.’

  15. neriractor

    The newspaper behind is a real seller. “Where is amazi-girl, what is her phone number? Is she single?

    1. King Daniel

      Daisy at it again.

    2. Thag Simmons

      I like that it’s one of the newspaper’s she liked enough to frame and hang on her wall. She’s proud of that one.

    3. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

      The newspaper articles might not even be very closely related to those titles. After all, the editor picks the headlines.

    4. Jamie

      I mean, the answer to #3 is yes.

  16. plasticwrap

    Now that’s a good attitude.

  17. Yotomoe

    I never got around to starting a comic…in high school or in college. Or even now. I regret it. But it’s just so hard to get the motivation to start y’know. I’ve got ideas. How I’ll start it. All the plot details. How it ends. The epilogue. Everything has been fleshed out for years and I just can’t pull the trigger. I wish I had a team of helpers like a mangaka.

    1. AGV

      Maybe you can start with a script. And if it holds up, continue fleshing it out.

    2. Chris Phoenix

      When I have trouble starting an article, I start writing a very stilted stupid self-aware first paragraph that has nothing to do with the article, except it describes the intended topic… by the time I get to the end of the paragraph, I’m writing the article, and then I go back and write the first paragraph, which is easy by then.

      I suspect a comics equivalent might be deliberately bad stick-figure parodies of your characters (worse than xkcd) doing riffs on the intended story? If you grab a roll of paper towels and a dry-erase marker, and start doing the worst comics you can, you might find after a dozen strips it’s starting to mutate into something you like.

      1. Decidedly Orthogonal

        “worse than xkcd”

        Woah. Those are some quality stick figures yer denigratin’ there good soul. You keep this up an’ were gon’ have us a problem.

    3. Needfuldoer

      Don’t feel bad. I have character designs bouncing around in my head, but lack the artistic skill to put them to (digital) paper. (I messed around with Flash back in the early aughts, but that was all manipulated vectors. I can’t draw freehand.) That and the unshakeable feeling of shame and embarrassment at putting out original content put the kibosh on my early dreams of being a cartoonist.

      You’re already way ahead of me on both fronts!

    4. eh, whatever

      Start now.

      Like… literally right fucking now. Don’t even scroll down first.

      Of course you won’t be able to finish it all in one sitting, but once you’ve started, that hurdle is taken, and everything else is easier.

    5. Amós Batista

      Me too, I got a great idea, but it got hard, and I gave up.
      It’s sad, because I’de joined a comic course that was expensive. Such a waist..

    6. Spencer

      Hey that’s me and writing.

      Dabbled on and off, mostly off, for like seven years because wanting to do it inevitably led to a wave of self-doubt and criticism and being hyper aware of every flaw I could make eventually destroyed any ability to enjoy myself (and more selfishly, how I could do this for fun but “it’s not like it’ll be my job”).

      Now I’m trying to get back on the saddle with a brain that’s less cripplingly depressed and sort of glued together and can focus long enough to do things.

      The advice I’ve been told about motivation is never rely on it. You get hooked on the feeling of “I must create my art now, while it is with me!” and whenever you don’t create it right there and then you don’t just have a normal reaction to “not immediately creating a perfect piece of art right there and then”, you feel like you’ve betrayed your motivation for sending your brain some happy juice and you just squandered it and better luck next time.

      If you want to be consistent, just set goals. X amount of time per day.

    7. mrnoidea

      I had the same issue when I tried making my own comic. It took me a whole month to make one page—granted, I tried being as detailed as possible without any prior art school. Just learning as I went

    8. Opus the Poet

      I was a poet for about 10 years and 3000 poems when the truck hit me, and I lost the ability to create poetry to my TBI, along with my foreign languages, programming skills, ability to remember people’s names. Carpe diem, you never know when truck-kun will come knocking on your head.

  18. Regalli

    Joyce, by the time you graduate a character you invented to fill a scene is going to evolve into one of the ones you love most and become endgame with Julia, and then in like twenty years following a reboot of your universe and a soft reboot of that strip after it ran for ten years already you’re going to make her completely insufferable over the time skip and your readership desperately await her Very Mature facade crashing down so that she can be the petty disaster we all know and love.

    Also you’ll keep playing around with Julia/Whatshisface original love interest in the rebooted universe, just, having fun playing them off each other, and you realize in hindsight their original pairing had some serious problems and was probably always a little doomed but in this new universe, twenty-some years down the line with a completely different dynamic, you decide to make them canon this time and get a chance to seriously explore them in a way the first universe never had room for because Bennifer Shillingsworth short-circuited your original plans where they were endgame so they just broke up and didn’t get back together, ultimately.

    1. Regalli

      Also, you’ll reboot a comic you did for exactly five strips involving an asshole and a lawyer, but you’ll turn it from a gag strip involving assholes and farce into a symbol of unprocessed and complicated grief.

    2. Jon

      Could I ask for a cast list on your post? I *THINK* I’m remembering the Walkyverse properly but some of your references don’t compute.

      1. Regalli

        Billie was never intended to be a major character – she started out as a background character and became the endgame love interest for Danny. (Using ‘Billie’ for the Walkyverse version because she kept it through to the end.) Julia here being a Danny-equivalent (especially obvious as Doris’s suggested difference from Julia was ‘sex obsessed,’ making her clearly Joe,) her current planned love interest – I think a Jacob expy, but in Roomies it was Sal – would therefore be free for shipping with various other characters but never really got to a point where they could end up with someone as endgame. And then, again, twenty years after Joyce and Walky ended we get Sal/Danny canon for real again, but Sal no longer feels she has to pretend to be cheery for Danny’s idea of her and Danny is way more likable.

        Lawsome as pre-Shortpacked, post-It’s Walky strip included Mike (pre-Shortpacked character development that made him a bit more of a character and not an asshole force of asshole nature) and Bart O’Ryan, Asshole Lawyer Dude No One Liked Who Served To Make The Protagonists’ Lives Harder.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Does Not-Jacob still exist in the Grayverse, or did Joyce write him out after that whole debacle?

        2. Regalli

          She mentioned Lord Jakkar in the strip discussing her plans, so, presumably.

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

          Now, whether or not he still looks like Jacob or has been hastily redesigned to look like someone else, different question.

  19. DailyBrad

    That’s honestly a pretty cute punchline. I love this.

  20. Beau Kirin Maysey

    I’m sure there’s no meta-ness or projection here at all… : )

  21. Nick Piers

    Aww. That’s a cute, wholesome ending.

    …oh God, something horrible is going to happen soon, isn’t it?

    1. alongcameaspider

      We’re still waiting on the inevitable unintended fallout of Joyce’s and Becky’s argument

    2. Delicious Taffy

      Daisy has a gun. When Walky arrives, she’s gonna hand the gun to Joyce and demand she shoot him with it. The gun is fake and shoots bubbles.

      1. Regalli

        … Maybe it’s just because Walkyverse versions is on my mind in this strip but ‘Daisy’ and ‘gun’ gave me a VERY different mental image.

        1. King Daniel

          Guns is going to appear in Dumbing of Age next strip?

        2. Thag Simmons

          I hope not, I don’t have a replacement avatar lined up yet.

        3. Needfuldoer

          Beef happens to walk by the newspaper office at that moment. Her eyes well up. Her hands start shaking but she steels herself.

        4. Regalli

          And that’s how we discover Beef and Daisy are cross-dimensional travelers, finally kicking off the Return of Head Alien arc!

        5. NickG

          Well, Daisy should remember how to deal with Beef; empty the clip.

      2. mrnoidea

        “I like you, kid.”

    3. Jamie

      I mean, yes. Horribleness is guaranteed.

  22. Bryy

    We’re not getting to the Halloween arc until I’m 50, aren’t we?

    1. Thag Simmons

      Next chapter is called “I’ll leave you a Phantom”

    2. King Daniel

      I mean, we already time-skipped over Halloween years ago…

      1. justin8448

        There have been hints that Willis will bless us with a Haloween flashback eventually.

      2. Deanatay

        *obsessively sharpens his “How Dare You Skip Halloween, Willis” rusty dagger*

    3. Opus the Poet

      I hope not I’m already over 60, and immortal or not I don’t think I can wait that long. The asshole who made me immortal didn’t include “eternal youth” so I keep getting worse. And yes asshole is the politest way I could put it.

    4. Decidedly Orthogonal

      You’re in your 20’s I assume?

  23. V

    The alt text… what does it mean Willis… what does it mean…

    1. Thag Simmons

      I mean most of his original endgame couples are decidedly not currently endgame in Dumbing of Age.

    2. Jamie

      Will Julia Gray still be “friends” with President Doris?

      1. Bicycle Bill

        Plays “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” by War on the hacked Muzak.

    3. powerpowerpow

      I recently went back and started reading Roomies for the first time. Willis, in his commentary in several posts, said that in retrospect, Joyce and Joe had way better chemistry than anyone else and be wished he’d explored that pairing more. Guess we’re gonna see how that goes over the course of the next 9 years.

  24. Bagge

    Maybe even a person who eats food that touches other food.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Woah, slow down, Maurice!

    2. Reltzik

      See, this is why we needed Mike. He’d tell her that food is already touching other food… inside her intestines…. RIGHT NOW.

      1. Decidedly Orthogonal

        Not if she eats slow enough.

    3. Keulen

      That’s a bit too extreme.

    4. Phyrexian_Rogue

      Are you describing a person, or a monster? How dare you even contemplate such heinousness!

  25. Jbluewind

    God! If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was a callback to this strip from move in day. O_O
    https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/forget/

    1. Mr.Morningstar

      Ohoooo good catch

  26. Chris Phoenix

    You might even become an Internet pornlord…

  27. Rabisch

    That can or can not be, Leslie. I always try to be positive, but some problems and feelings are here forever. Or at least for your next decade.

  28. Brumagem

    You will evolve from wanting a Rei waifu to wanting an Asuka waifu. Someday you might even desire a god-tier Ritsuko waifu

    1. Opus the Poet

      Not going to lie I just wanted Rei to have a long and happy life, she deserved it after the abuse she lived through.

      1. Buli-Buli

        Depends. Which Rei are we talking about? Cause we have multiple timelines, most with multiple Reis.

  29. BarerMender

    Joyce has met Daisy. Will my ship come in?

  30. acher4

    I love her smile/face at the last panel, and all that what it entails.

  31. ADLegend21

    Please let that be what gets Walky the comics job instead of Joyce.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Why would it be?

      1. Harmony

        When the choice of randomly generated avatar completely changes the tone of the comment…

        1. Needfuldoer

          “Randomly generated”?

          That avatar was hand-forged in a crucible of nightmares, and quenched in the tears of the feeble.

        2. King Daniel

          Ash grav durbatulûk, ash grav gimbatul, ash grav thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

    2. Thag Simmons

      I don’t think LAWsome can support a long running subplot in the way Julia Grey can. LAWsome has a flawless format, but it can’t be bent without breaking it, while Julia Grey is very narrative driven and closer to the author’s real life experience.

      1. thejeff

        Willis starts showing the occasional Julia Gray strip as the actual strip for the day, and over time it gradually replaces the entire DoA storyline.

        Or worse, we get good compelling Julia Gray strips, but we get them once per DoA day, so plot arcs take decades to play out.

    3. pararell spade

      They both get the part because Daisy needs to fill pages now that Amazi girl is out of busines

  32. pararell spade

    uh, that face joyce is making looks a lot like Jennifer’s, that is a bit scary.

  33. Florence

    For all of Joyce’s current problems, that smile indicates she’s much healthier in at least one way: she no longer fears change in herself. I mean she still might but responding to being different this way at least shows one kind of healthy development. I assume Joyce is ecstatic that someone told her casually “you are not your past” considering how frustrated she seems about the boxes everyone (but especially Dorothy and Becky) have put her in, for this person outside her fiend group to say “yea, your gonna change” is like hearing what you want from a source that has no incentive to make you happy and thus won’t lie.

    Hopefully being happy about changing will allow her to stop being so uncompromising about Becky’s belief(or maybe understand that Becky doesn’t view it as science but as a matter of faith).

    1. Daibhid C

      I agree with most of this, except the part about Dorothy and (maybe) Becky keeping Joyce in a box. All Dorothy has said is that she’s disappointed in Joyce for saying stuff that upset Becky, and all Becky has said is that this stuff upset her. You can accept that someone’s going to change, and still pefer it if what they change into isn’t an asshole.

      (And yes, I realise that Dorothy, like myself, has no idea what it’s like to transition to atheism from a fundie background, and maybe if she did, she’d understand why Joyce needed to vent.)

      Honestly, I think the person who most puts Joyce in boxes is Joyce. The box used to be “cheerful fundie kid”, and now it’s “New Atheist edgelord who thinks non-atheists are superstious idiots”. Her hopeful “promise?” reads to me as not just relief that someone accepts she’s changed, but an idea that she will continue to change, and escape that box as well.

      (Sorry, I’m even more pissed off by these people than I was when we last saw Joyce, because Twitter has spent the last week sharing the most racist parts of Steven Pinker’s book about how being Rational(TM) means you’re always right about everything.)

      1. Florence

        I mean yea, fuck new atheism and all it’s assholness. Sorry you’ve had to deal with all it’s awfulness more explicitly.

        But I do think they have an idea of Joyce they hold on to, Dorothy viewing Joyce as nice but naive(which is accurate sometimes but also kind of dismissive. Like Dorothy is the same age as Joyce so that’s kind of rude) and Becky assuming Joyce can compartmentalise the faith they grew up with (I will say that part of this is Joyce being terrified of telling people that she’s going through anything for fear of being revealed as either a failure or bad) I also think Joyce does similar types of controlling to Becky and Dorothy so it’s not like Joyce is innocent in that area either.

        I assume it’s cause she’s got heavy feelings for Dorothy that she can’t fully understand so Dorothy is just this perfect person without any flaws that she’s going to be friends with and never consider why Dorothy is the person she wants to be alone on an island with, and Becky must surely view faith as either all being true facts or none of it, can’t possibly be that Becky has faith and Joyce doesn’t.

        I’ll agree that Joyce does it to herself as well, all that pressure must really hurt

        1. thejeff

          To some extent, everyone does that.

          And really it’s hard to blame Dorothy: what is Joyce except “nice but naive”? Dorothy can take it too far in her momming, but on the other hand she has helped Joyce through a bunch of her changes that way.

          And yeah, fuck new atheism. I hadn’t seen the Pinker stuff, but I can imagine.

        2. Florence

          That’s a really point, to Dorothy all Joyce presents is one part of herself and Dorothy responds. I think that’s what makes all this recent stuff hurt so much. It’s all so understandable and even hard to find anything wrong in those moments of kindness.

          Although I focus mostly on analysis, emotionally I am feeling a lot of these conflicts between the characters. I’ve had my own troubles with friendship groups that seemed great but had inherent issues no one could see until it was too late.

        3. Florence

          *a really GOOD point

  34. JediMB

    Hugs for Joyce! Hugs for Joyce for a thousand years!

  35. Mr.Morningstar

    Yeah that’s fair, and a much better reaction than she wouldve had before

  36. Spencer

    I know the really loaded last panel is what to focus on but I can’t deal with a strip where Daisy is competent, professional, and knowing.

    It’s freaking me out.

    1. Throwatron

      I think Joyce just exudes a strong enough aura of “I am not available” that she can’t get distracted by horny.

      1. Spencer

        Daisy: The one person in DoA who does not immediately pick up on Joyce’s oblivious sapphic energy.

        1. Nobonesforever

          You spoke too soon Spencer! Spoke too soon!

  37. Amós Batista

    Plot twist: Joyce lose the opportunity to Walky. Willis changes her character description, calling Joyce a semi autobiographic one. Chaos reigns.

    1. Opus the Poet

      Well there already is one difference, and if you can’t tell you are more genderblind than Tedd Verres.

  38. Keulen

    I’m kinda hoping that somehow both Joyce and Walky get the job, and both their comics end up in the college newspaper.

    1. Eldritchy

      Daisy watching them bicker and one up each other, does the Gendo pose, smiles and murmurs “Perfect.”

      1. Florence

        Yesss!!! Give me mastermind daisy!! ????

  39. Alex

    Ooooh I love Joyce in that final panel. She’s growing into someone new.

  40. bcb

    And you’ll realize you’re not entirely cis!

    1. Throwatron

      Eh, it’s 2021, who is?

  41. Chokfi

    damn this plot line is so meta

  42. Harmony

    That is so me when I left Christianity:

    “You’re changing so much, I barely recognize you.”
    “I’ve only just begun.”

  43. Spencer

    The Saga of Captain Julia Gray takes a dark turn when Julia’s friend Betty returns from the dead as a zombie after being run over by a car filled with mountain lions that were in the process of being struck by lightning.

    1. Alex

      The best part is that while this is completely ridiculous it’s incredibly in character.

  44. Jinx

    This strip really made me smile.

  45. thumb

    Willis talking well loud in here

    1. Bemisawa

      Yeah, I don’t know why (since most of DYW’s avatars that I’ve seen are scowling), but that seemed like a very DYW smile.

  46. Deviant

    I’d say Joyce has changed quite a lot in the few months she’s been there already.

  47. Marrow

    Joyce, I love you.

  48. DarkoNeko

    that last panel tho

  49. DarkoNeko

    -looks at 5 months long buffer- “oh”

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