155

Convert
Posted on September 30, 2019 by David M Willis

155 thoughts on “Convert”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Dang, my husband and I met through my ex, too!

    …we didn’t manage to convert him, either

    …to metric

    1. LeslieBean4shizzle

      My wife and I didn’t meet through an Ex – rather we met through a mutual friend.

      However, we did go through several Exes each before we started dating. We were friends, and later best friends, for like three years before we started dating. This came in part because the only people I saw her dating were dudes, so I was a little worried to ask her out (having gotten burnt before trying to date straight girls). In the end, she asked me out.

      1. Clif

        I got to know my wife when she was dating a good friend. I’m not sure that should count though as we both married and unmarried other people before we reconnected.

        The friend failed to convert us to metric.

        1. Pylgrim

          BuT tHe BrO cOdE!!!!!!

        2. Ana Chronistic

          (I should prob clarify I’m using a different metric)

          [ha]

    2. Makkabee

      I *am* the ex in my best friend’s marriage.

  2. ValdVin

    “Wouldn’t give an inch”?

    Jacob has some untapped humor resources.

    1. ian livs

      Yeah, I’m embarrassed by how hard that made me laugh.

      1. Koms

        How hard… I’ll show myself out.

      2. DJTsurugi

        I’m not embarrassed, I am proud of waking up my roommate by laughing that hard. ~<3

    2. ValdVin

      Panel three and four: Jacob and Joyce are already conniving together.

    3. Plasma Mongoose

      “My ancestors are smiling at me for using imperial. Can you metric users say the same?”

      1. Clif

        Of course they’re smiling. Everybody loves a good joke.

        1. Charlie Spencer

          Jacob’s comment or the imperial system?

        2. ǝ snow ʍousɐ

          Pretty sure Clif means the imperial system.

      2. DaveM

        +1 (in lieu of a like button).

      3. Punaparta

        Seeing as Finland adopted the metric system in 1886, my ancestors have been using it for about 4 generations.

  3. Doctor_Who

    We don’t talk about the time someone tried to convert him from Transformers to Bionicles. Some of the body parts still haven’t been found.

    1. Emperor Norton II

      And the attempt to make him like GoBots…

      …I think that’s the only time FBI’s been called in to deal with someone being buried alive in gobot toys.

    2. David

      Maybe the body parts for converting transformers to bionicles have not been found yet because they were never produced? Have you considered that? It’s probably not as easy as recasting chocolate Santas into Easterbunnies.

  4. DailyBrad

    Jacob is a fucking gem. I like this guy.

    1. Schpoonman

      Joyce doesn’t deserve him right now.

  5. BBCC

    Okay, that was clever, Jacob.

    And dear god, no, Joyce, let’s not go over THAT travesty right now, I’m having a hard enough time remembering why I love you as it is.

    1. Emperor Norton II

      You love her because at her core, she’s a really good person. Really good. She wants her friends and those she considers family to be happy. She really does.

      What you hate is that her ideas of how to make other people happy got warped from a hideously bigoted upbringing.

      1. BBCC

        Well that and the upbringing that took her sense of boundaries out back and shot it, yeah. 😛

      2. Zee

        And her great capacity for love and change that’s lead her to become a much more accepting and understanding person than how she was raised to be, over the course of ~6 weeks? (At least that’s my favorite thing about her, talk about a character arch)

        Please don’t get me wrong, she’s being awful here amd were this real life I’d be disgusted. But here, I’m just munching on my popcorn while waiting to watch the Trainwreck

        1. Lexi

          I’m unconvinced that Jacob didn’t see this moment and go “Yeah. I’d rather be with Joyce.”

          Like, she shouldn’t have put him into that position, but he went with it, and honestly… I think he’s happy with it? I don’t know, he hasn’t been in enough panels yet, but he’s backing up Joyce like a champ.

  6. Andr3wtime

    You can take my inches, feet, and miles, but I’ll never give up my fahrenheit!

    1. abysswatcher1993

      All your fahnrenheit belongs to us. Now, embrace the internationa standard of scientific measuring.

    2. JessWitt

      I’d forfeit Fahrenheit before forgoing feet.

      Say that one five times fast.

      1. Lokitsu

        Thatonethatonethatonethatonethatone!

        Not so difficult…

        1. JessWitt

          lul

      2. Pylgrim

        -10 points for not saying ” ‘fore” to keep the alliteration going.

        1. ǝ snow ʍousɐ

          But then you’d still have two “for” sounds in a row…

        2. ǝ snow ʍousɐ

          Also it’d break the stress pattern… or should I say, the meter.

    3. RacingTurtle

      I really do prefer Fahrenheit for weather. I grew up somewhere warm, and it sounds much more meaningful to know that it’s hotter than balls when you’ve reached 100°, rather than when you’ve reached 40°. I might be more amenable to Celsius for weather if freezing weather had been a bigger deal. But then again, maybe not; °F’s other benefit is that they’re smaller, so you can fine-tune the range of human-livable temperatures a little more.

      Other than that, though, metric is superior. I’d like to see us adopt it in the US, but then do something ridiculous like measuring height in decimeters or some other fun nonsense.

      1. Schpoonman

        https://xkcd.com/1643/

      2. thejeff

        The freezing point being 0° is nice, but in general I agree that Fahrenheit works better for the normal human range of temperature. I feel the same about feet and inches – metric is clumsy for a lot things in normal usage. Meters are too big, centimeters too small.

        1. Emperor Norton II

          That’s why you have decimeters as well. Not used that often, but on occasion.

        2. thejeff

          Yeah, they’re still awkward – and as you say, no one bothers with them.

        3. Makkabee

          Since a liter is a cubic decimeter and we routinely use liters in soda bottles, you could argue that Americans use decimeters more than any other metric measurement.

        4. Sam

          As someone who has grown up with Celcius however, Fahrenheit doesn’t work at all and makes no sense to me. I can’t tell you if 100 degrees Fahrenheit is hot hot or just mildly warm. I can’t tell you if 70 degrees is cold. Which isn’t helped by the fact that all Americans argue with each other that X isn’t cold and Y isn’t hot and there is no clear line of this is hot and this is cold that is easy to identify from an outside perspective.

          With Celcius, even if you know nothing about it, you know that 0 degrees is cold because that is when water freezes so everything below it is colder than that.

          So part of the clumsiness for you might just be that you’re not used to it rather than because these things are actually worse or more clumsy than what you are already using.

        5. Elisto

          100 is just above human body temperature, which is average 98.6 deg F. So it’s pretty intuitive that that’s uncomfortably hot.

        6. thejeff

          None of it’s intuitive if you don’t know the system. Once you internalize it, it’s all “intuitive”.

    4. Lensipensi

      Arghhh. You can convert everything basically in your head to metric units. But not Fahrenheit. Oh no, no! You need a formula for this on. Makes baking U.S. recipes a bliss.

  7. Dara

    I was gonna say something about giving several inches to Mike but the alt-text kiiiinda beat me to it.

  8. Stephen Bierce

    Divide a meter by decimeters
    You’ll find that there are ten
    Divide a meter by a hundred
    You’ll have a hundred centimeters then…

    1. Bicycle Bill

      If one kilometer is a thousand meters, then why is one kilobyte 1024 bytes?

      1. Kinoko

        I’m so used to powers of two by this point, sometimes I get confused by nice round numbers like 1000. That’ll teach me to work in tech!

      2. ANeM

        A kilobyte is technically 1000 bytes.

        A kibibyte is 1024 bytes. The problem is that a Kilobyte used to be 1024 and still routinely gets used to describe a Kibibyte.

        1. Kamino Neko

          Neeeerd. >_>

        2. Makkabee

          And a chibibyte is also 1024 bytes, but cuter.

      3. Kamino Neko

        Because computer data uses powers of 2, not powers of 10 and the ‘nope, we’re not breaking the system’ binary prefixes never really caught on with the general public.

        Strictly speaking, a kilobyte is 1000 bytes, a ‘kilobyte’ as commonly defined is properly a kibibyte, or binary kilobyte. (It’s sort of like the standard nutritional calorie is actually a kilocalorie, but in this particular situation, the system gets broken because the public doesn’t want to learn a new word.)

  9. Jean Cabot

    Delighted giggle today.

  10. OnyxIdol

    I’m convinced!

  11. pienapp1e

    omygawwwwddddddssss! these two puns were sooooo baaad, i don’t even wanna try to add any!! thank you sooo much!! lmaoooo

    1. Jamie

      Two?

      1. Emperor Norton II

        Alt-text.

  12. Tacos

    “…wouldn’t give an inch.”?

    *narrows eyes*

  13. Miri

    I’m glad that Joyce recognises that attempting to convert her Jewish boyfriend to Christianity isn’t cool either (as the sister of a missionary she has come along way… Current crackplot notwithstanding. Hopefully Harrison’s questions will remind her of this soon and she’ll either fess up or apologise profusely to Jacob as soon as they’re away from him)

  14. Reltzik

    Smooth. Real smooth. Utterly flawless.

    1. foamy

      There is absolutely no way the person sitting directly across the table from them could have heard any of this!

  15. Tan

    I am hereby clenched for the next 24 hours waiting to see what Harrison has to say and how it might relate to getting close to someone who was dating someone else at the time……

  16. Nono

    Points for the pun Jacob, sigh for the continued lie.

    1. David

      When Raidah finally meets up, the truth will fall apart faster and a lot more thoroughly than the lie.

  17. FLUFFYWOLF

    HA, GOTEEM

  18. purblebirb

    Boooooooo that pun

  19. Mra

    PUNS!

  20. StClair

    That was actually really good, Jake.

  21. abysswatcher1993

    I won’t convert people to other religion or to abandon their sexual orientation, but I believe the international metric system is better than the English one. It’s easier to changes from centimeters to kilometers than to change from inches to yards. Americans are just too proud to embrace simple decimals exchanges.

    1. Opus the Poet

      When I build bicycles I work in Metric, but when I build hot rods I have to mix systems because my parts supplies are mixed. The parts based on 1930s Fords are SAE, but the front brakes are a mix of metric and SAE, while the rear brakes are entirely Metric aside from the hose fittings that were changed when the caliper was remanufactured, the transmission is Metric internally but SAE externally, the rear axle is mostly SAE, the steering is like the transmission SAE externally but Metric internally…

      1. Wizard

        And then there’s tires. Bicycle tires are typically sized in inches, despite everything else on the bike being metric. And automotive tires are usually described with the width in millimeters, but the wheel size in inches. I’m used to this, but it gets really confusing if you think about it too much.

        1. David

          Yeah, and most bicycles these days have 28″ tires. Which is a pity for large people since 27″ tires are larger. That’s not imperial, that is a royal expletive.

    2. insomniac

      The United States of America has roughly the land area of continental Europe, contains more than three hundred and twenty-seven million people, and composes about a quarter of the global economy. For the entire time we’ve been a country, we’ve had a single standardized system; most of the land area is divided into a grid system of square miles.

      The convenience of unit conversion is a minor benefit compared to the widespread cost and inefficiency that would go into converting everything into the new units of measurement, and frankly, the size, population, and economic power of the USA means that the standards of the rest of the world don’t have the pull to make it worthwhile. The disruption of internal business would be more expensive than any benefit from matching literally everyone else’s matches.

      We tried it in the seventies. It was a flop. It’s true that there were people complaining, but bluntly, if there was benefit to commerce or industry the change would’ve happened anyway. There wasn’t so it didn’t.

      1. Needfuldoer

        It’s too late now, we’d never convert the US to Metric today because SAE is so deeply entrenched. And politics being what they are, you know vocal minority would endlessly bleat about metricization being a commie plot to subvert measurements and that their car gets 12 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way they like it.

        But my car is a domestic brand, it was built in the last couple years, and every fastener on it is metric, so who really won that battle?
        ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        1. insomniac

          I mean, yeah, there’s people who think it’s a commie UN plot or whatever, that’s gonna be a thing.

          I just think they get brought up way too much in proportion to their influence, while the real reason is just cost (extreme)/benefit (minimal) with the position the USA is in.

          When metric is an actual benefit, we use it. Like, say, with your car.

        2. abysswatcher1993

          There’s benefit in converting to the metric system, but it’s a long term plan. Scaling gets easier, accidents are avoided, you dont need the mental gymnastics of all the weird british measures, ANYONE CAN FUCKING USE METRIC!

        3. insomniac

          Sorry, but… no.

          Scaling being easy is a neat party trick but not something actually worth making an effort to. If I counted the times in my life I’ve needed to know how many inches are in a mile, I could do it with zero hands because I’ve literally never had to do so.

          And as far as accidents being avoided, that’s after we go through the transition of converting literally every measurement in the country from American Standard to metric, introducing the chance for error and accident at every step. But hey, in a century or two, it might start paying dividends. Then we can be glad we’ve turned most of the land area from a mile grid to a 1.60934 km grid (divided further into 0.80467 km, and so on; that’s sure to make things simpler).

          And there really aren’t that many “mental gymnastics” involved. A pound has sixteen ounces, an foot has twelve inches. This isn’t quite the burden you seem to think it is.

          Again: we tried to convert in the seventies. It was a gigantic dud that went nowhere. We use metric when it’s actually useful (science, engineering, and hard drugs); otherwise, we have a perfectly functional system that’s built into the legal and physical infrastructure around us. The benefits to switching over aren’t enough to outweigh the costs.

          (And anyone writing about how we stick with a less-than-optimal system because it’s a workable standard and changing it is too much effort had better be writing it on something other than a QWERTY keyboard.)

        4. Deathjavu

          Here to say Civil Engineering is all in imperial, and it can all fuck right off. Converting MPH into ft/s, or anything in pcf, is dumb and stupid and a math problem for me basically every day.

        5. Derek

          you admit that metric is useful for science and engineering. Why not train the next generation of young people to use scientifically relevant units instead of nonsense that used to be based on the length of the current king’s foot?
          your whole argument boils down to “it would be to hard” but honestly it makes the USA look retrograde when the rest of the world is using Standard Units

        6. Elisto

          I don’t know about today, but I learned both systems in elementary school, and in high school science, we absolutely use metric. So what you’re saying we should do…we do, already.

        7. Sol Karas

          Canada converted to metric (both my parents used imperial in school, my mother was actually in high school during the switch) and it hasn’t taken “centuries” to pay off. Most things are metric, and it would be even MORE metric if it wasn’t for the huge influence that America, as our neighbours, has on our society and culture. It’s not the mountain you’re making it out to be…

        8. insomniac

          I have an acquaintance who does land surveying for a living. He does work in Canada, when he can’t avoid it.

          The most complimentary way he has of describing Canadian land survey work is “unmitigated disaster.” Constantly switching between metric and imperial units (between unconverted holdouts and official records predating the changeover) introduce a steady stream of errors at every step of the process. It introduces a material cost to literally everything he does there.

          And if we tried to do it Stateside, we’d need to convince fifty state governments to get on board. That would not happen at once. We’d have years–maybe decades–where crossing a state (or even county!) border would mean switching from mile markers to km. Instead of worrying about conversion errors in international dealings, we’d be introducing constant errors in projects and industry in our own borders.

          And the benefits are, again, minimal to the USA. I’m not trying to come across as a jingoistic “‘MURCA HELL YEAH” isolationist, but for a country as decentralized and economically powerful as the USA, “everyone else is doing it” just doesn’t have enough impact to make the change worth doing. We tried to get on board the metric train at the same time Canada did; it didn’t provide enough benefit to be worth the headache, so we quietly dropped it.

        9. Bicycle Bill

          “… that their car gets 12 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way they like it.”

          ‘Rods to the hogshead’.  I love it.  That ranks right up there with the oft-quoted “furlongs per fortnight” measurement of speed, and will definitely ny cited in my conversations given an appropriate opportunity.

      2. Dara

        Ounces are still the shittiest unit ever and should be abandoned at all costs. Is it weight? Is it volume? WHO THE FUCK EVEN KNOWS?

        Garbage unit. Get rid of it.

        1. Schpoonman

          I’m with you on that, actually. Or shit, rename one of them so we can stop the confusion or wonder if there was supposed to be a “fluid” in front.

        2. Bicycle Bill

          Or “troy” ….. (ducking for cover)

  22. JessWitt

    Have you heard about our Lord and Savior, Gabriel Mouton?

    …

    He’s a French vicar who invented the metric system.

  23. Huehuetotl

    Do they think Harrison can’t fathom what they’re saying?

    1. ShinyNeen

      Look, the lie can’t fail until plot demands it. So clearly that means they’ve got free rein until then!

      1. Needfuldoer

        It has to last at least long enough for Harrison to bring Jamie to the bathroom for a change, so Jacob can get some answers from Joyce out of his earshot.

      2. Clif

        Harrison isn’t dumb, but neither does he seem to be particularly judgy. He’s just happy that his little brother has a girlfriend with a cute caboose.

        1. Daibhid C

          Possibly. Whether correctly or not Jacob seems to have heard “Well done on not picking a girlfriend based on what you think I’d approve of” and heard “Now I”m being judged on whether I feel judged. What next-level Inception crap is this?”

        2. Daibhid C

          The second “heard” should be “thought”.

    2. Z

      Given what he knows of Joyce it may make him a bit more impressed that a month ago she was the worst kind of fundie and she put her support of her friend over a lifetime of brainwashing and has now so realized her recent actions were unacceptable.

    3. Huehuetotl

      Disappointed a ton that I forgot to use italics.

    4. insomniac

      Hopefully he’ll have an ounce of sympathy over Joyce having her foot in her mouth.

    5. jy3

      Fir kin, you have to put up with a bit of strangeness.

  24. Pocky

    Crap, I’m gonna need to use a converter app to follow this conversation.

  25. bon

    I mean… I may be remembering wrong, but didn’t Ethan date her to try and… convert himself? Like it’s not GOOD but it’s not like joyce picked him, asked him out and tried to force him to be straight.

    1. Z

      Yeah its not the best thing she ever did but it was fully consensual and Ethan went into it fully aware and even hopeful that she could convert him to heterosexuality.

      Joyce was also secretly dating him because her lifetime of sexual repression and recent near rape have caused her to feel totally unsafe around heterosexual men while Ethan made her feel safe. Which she won’t exactly be advertising but it pushes the scale a bit.

      Joyce never once sexually abused or harassed Ethan, which is what most people would expect, and she didn’t even really *do* anything to make him feel bad about his sexuality.

      1. Norah

        And when she realized how wrong she was, she released him from being her girlfriend. And was super happy for him when she heard that he might have a boyfriend (when he was having sex with Mike.)

      2. Fart Captor

        Yeah, Ethan participated in that self-harming sham of his own free will, but it’s still extremely shitty that Joyce enabled it

        It doesn’t matter that she could’ve done worse. It was still shitty. That’s why it’s good she recognized it and stopped

  26. ShinyNeen

    In too deep? Might as well pun away.

  27. Bagge

    Respect where respect is due.

    That was a great pun of Jacob.

  28. Chris Phoenix

    I just read last night’s comment section, and good grief people! You’re missing the forest for the trees!

    Jacob flat-out said “She is my girlfriend.”

    Jacob isn’t a liar, or a freak-out type, or the type to give Joyce false hope. He’s nervous about meeting his brother, but I don’t think that made him lose his mind.

    I think he was telling the truth in that moment, and knowingly making a commitment to Joyce.

    1) He saw an obvious misunderstanding. (He did not know Joyce was the cause.)
    2) He realized that he and Joyce both wanted Joyce to be his girlfriend.
    3) He realized that by saying it, he could make it so.
    4) He chose to do that.

    Now, he doesn’t necessarily want Harrison to know (at least not yet) that it only became true an hour ago. But the last few strips make a lot more sense if…

    1) He’s not mad at Joyce.
    2) He’s not lying about being Joyce’s girlfriend.

    So what about Raidah? Yeah, that person who
    1) Got him all insecure about meeting his own awesome brother
    2) Was pretty uncivil to a friend of Jacob’s over lunch (and Jacob missed the reason, but couldn’t have missed the actions)
    3) Was catty about Joyce behind her back, to the point Jacob rolled his eyes at her
    4) From what we’ve seen of her personality, Jacob has probably been seeing a lot of other issues off-panel

    I don’t think Jacob woke up this morning planning to dump Raidah. On the other hand, I don’t think it was a very difficult choice.

    1. Orangey

      I reallyyyy don’t think this is the case. I reckon Jacob has just found himself in this awkward situation and to make it less awkward for Joyce and his brother is just to go along with it. I’m not saying this is a good decision but this is dumbing of age

    2. Bagge

      Jup!

      although I’m not entirely sure Jacob has owned up to it to himself yet.

    3. Deadjolras

      Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I feel like Jacob should probably tell Raidah that she’s been dumped before dating someone else.

      1. Bagge

        Turns out Raidah deserved better all along.

        http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/storied/

        1. ValdVin

          It is nice to recollect Raidah at such a naturally funny and humanizing moment.

        2. Bagge

          I’m sure we soon will have reason to look back at that moment and say “moving on, my ass.”

        3. thejeff

          Yeah, the problem with that moment – which was my high point in Raidah approval, is that further evidence suggests it was basically bullshit all along.

          When she saw a threat from Joyce she didn’t handle it maturely. She didn’t move on. She didn’t talk to Jacob about it. She moved to subtly undermine Joyce and remove the threat.

    4. Norah

      I really hope it doesn’t happen this way. I don’t think Joyce should be rewarded for doing what she’s doing here. I do hope Jacob realizes eventually what kind of person Raidah really is, but I also hope he’s just as disgusted with Joyce.

    5. Heavensrun

      This is an exceptionally optimistic appraisal of this situation. I have no doubt that Joyce and Jacob would be a good fit, but she lied to his brother for no discernable reason. He has a complex about impressing his brother, who made an offhand comment about the -exact- kind of girl Raidah is. He’s there because he’s seeking his brother’s approval, not because of his feelings for Joyce.

    6. Bicycle Bill

      So how do you describe a person of the opposite gender with whom you are friends, but not necessarily romantically involved?

      I had that same problem.  Some time ago, I would occasionally meet up with and enjoy being in the company of a specific person of the female gender under various circumstances.  It never got to a romantic stage (if truth be known, I never got — or even tried to get — to second base with her), but I was in a quandary about how to describe her to others.  An acquaintance?  A friend?  Both true, but she was female…. so introducing her as “my friend” still equated to “my girlfriend” in the other person’s mind.

      Sometimes you just gotta roll with it.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        You call them a friend. It’s that easy. Other people’s elaborate mental shipfics are their own issue to manage.

      2. seregiel

        Reverse problem but I’m pan, so previous heteronormative relationships were an unintentional red herring: “I’m going to go see my girlfriend” got turned into “I’m going to see a female friend” by my generally open minded and parents for months one summer. Half a decade later I was casually talking about my relationships, and my parents were confused I had never come out to them before that moment… I was confused because in my mind I had never been in the closet. Retroactively it now makes sense why they were harping on me hanging out with male friends after school but not my staying the night at my girlfriend’s.

  29. Terry

    Ok, I’m really starting to enjoy this. I’m hoping that we get a little redemption by finding out that the reason Jacob went along with it is that he and Raidah broke up earlier and we just don’t know about it yet. Preferably over an argument in which he called her on insulting Joyce too much.

    1. David

      There is no way Raidah and Jacob broke up earlier: they both anticipated Harrison and clearly he was intended to be welcome by either. No, Jacob is just running along with the alternate history and finds it enjoyable.

      There will still be a train wreck later on, but now he has a fender.

      1. Z

        Not everyone calls their brother the second they break up. He may have wanted to tell him in person and don’t forget Jacob didn’t even tell Harrison her NAME.

        Either Jacob and Harrison aren’t close (and Harrison seems to really be trying to rectify that, honestly I think they’re close enough Jacob would tell him a serious girlfriend’s name) or Jacob was never that sure about raidah so kept her distant from his family (super understandable given her attitude).

        I can fully imagine that raidah got a little too intolerable about meeting Harrison and/or Joyce and Jacob ended it or at least said he needed a break and uninvited her. No surprise he didn’t text his brother the second it happened.

        Could go either way but it is odd for Jacob to go so far with this ruse if hes still committed to raidah.

        Why isn’t Jacob sweating that raidah should show up at any minute )and why didn’t he show up with raidah) if they’re still together?

        1. thejeff

          He didn’t show up with Raidah and he isn’t sweating that Raidah will show up because Harrison came early. Jacob’s supposed to be in class now. They were going to meet for lunch with Harrison later. There’s no reason for Raidah to show up now.

          As for the rest, let’s just say I find it too convenient.

    2. Norah

      Jacob is going along with this because he’s a very kind person, and he doesn’t want to embarrass Joyce, even though she deserves it.

  30. Keulen

    I don’t approve of Jacob and Joyce keeping going with this lie about them being a couple, but I love that they get along so well and I hope they get together for real later. Also I love Jacob’s pun in the last panel.

    1. Chris Phoenix

      From Jacob’s point of view, it would have looked like a misunderstanding, not a lie. Then he made it true by saying “She is my girlfriend” in front of her. They are now a real couple, as of half an hour ago.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Is that how it works, though? I guess Joyce did say “Yes” when asked about the subject, and Jacob did say the phrase “She’s my girlfriend”. So, at the very least, both of them have verbally confirmed that a girlfriend dynamic exists.

  31. He Who Abides

    Alt-Text – HEY-YOOOOOO!

  32. KaitouKidisBae

    Obviously, trying to force a gay dude straight is not a good thing, it’s definitely not as bad as Joyce thinks it sounds. Especially when you add in the whole “I mostly stayed with him because I was almost raped and afraid all the time” thing. Of course, that’s probably too heavy to just drop into first time meeting the family lunch. Still, if someone IRL told me a story similar to Joyce’s, I wouldn’t judge them, just be highly sympathetic.

    1. Z

      Yeah we didn’t see Joyce actually try converting him to anything in any meaningful way. No pray the gay away or electroshock therapy or “corrective rape” or any of the traumatic abuse associated with “converting to heterosexuality”.

      Its more accurate to say “Ethan told me he wanted to date women, but wasn’t really comfortable with it. I had had a traumatic experience and having a man close to me who didn’t want in my pants helped me feel safe. So we agreed to date each other non sexually.”

      Which is 100% accurate, their relationship was literally creat d based on a mutual aversion to heterosexual sex and shared desire to appear heteronormative.

      1. Norah

        Yes, this. And as soon as Joyce realized that there’s nothing wrong with being gay, she broke up with Ethan, in fact before Ethan really wanted to.

      2. TemperaryObsessor

        Joyce started dating a gay man because he asked her out and she assumed he was strait. When he told her he was gay she had had a bad experience and dating a guy who she knew wouldn’t pressure her for sex sounded ideal. Eventually she started to realize that she would want more eventually and it got awkward, but it was realising that he would eventually want more and not with her and continuing to lie to herself would eventually hurt them both that led her to break up with him
        This is a way to explain it without any of the icky bits.
        Or you could go the more honest route. She tried to help a gay man not to act on being gay because at the time she believed that acting on being gay was wrong the same way she believed acting on any sexual urge outside of marriage was wrong. He seemed to think it was a good idea. Of course she was also lying to herself and hoped that when she wanted sex he would stop being gay.

    2. Lexi

      It was a remarkably pure relationship, for what it was. Because she also wanted to date him because as a gay man, he would in no way, shape or form try to have sex with her, and she’s still desperately trying to ignore that she wants sex.

      No real way to easily express the desire in terms that don’t sound awful though.

  33. DarkoNeko

    wouldn’t give an inch, ha

  34. Nothri

    David Willis, I heard you are secretly planning to rip Andrew Yang’s heart out and eat it in front of his horrified family. Why’s it gotta be like that, Willy?

  35. Tealjoy Grove

    The damn hover text. Flawless.

  36. Rabisch

    I can’t even think about the possibility of living in a country without the metric system.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Eh, you get used to it.

  37. Drew

    This entire story arc was specifically written to lead up to this moment, wasn’t it?

  38. Heavensrun

    These two are so goddamned cute together, and it’s agonizing to see because if it doesn’t just outright explode before the brother takes off, as soon as he’s gone there’s gonna be a TALK and it’s probably going to hurt deeply.

  39. PB

    Jacob is being very patient right now.

  40. J. A. J.

    Tomorrow’s strip will show a live audience (which has been here the whole time somehow) laughing hysterically, followed by uproarious applause. For the next 7 strips we see the entire cast come on stage and take a bow, the curtains close, and Dumbing of Age is finished. The end.

  41. ADLegend21

    Nice save Jacob haha.

  42. Owlmirror

    Correct me if I misunderstand, but Jacob’s last panel line is actually a triple pun, right?

    1) Wouldn’t give an inch => refused to change his mind
    2) Wouldn’t give an inch => did not want to surrender the SAE/United States customary unit of the inch

    But there’s also:

    3) Wouldn’t give an inch => Refused to actually have sex with Joyce; did not use even an inch of his penis.

    Or do I just have a dirty mind?

    And given Jacob’s unhappiness with sexual objectification, would it be correct to say that the third meaning is unintended?

    /overanalysis

    And as long as I’m as overanalyzing — does the alt-text “pounds” mean “sex”, “gay sex”, “vigorous/rough sex”, or the latter two combined?

    1. Owlmirror

      Speaking of puns, isn’t “unit” one if the many slang terms for the penis?

      Ethan is Jewish, so he’s already had a unit conversion.

      1. Schpoonman

        I had mental spit-take there, good job.

      2. ǝ snow ʍousɐ

        bravo!
        and i think pounds means rough sex? but i don’t know all the gay lingo tbh

        1. ǝ snow ʍousɐ

          it’s possible that gay sex is also a connotation

    2. Lingo

      Triple pun: yes, definitely.
      Third meaning unintended by Jacob?: Hard to say, but I don’t think Jacob would be that averse to it.
      Pounds: Willis has used it in the past for vigorous heterosexual sex.
      Unit=penis: Yes

      1. ǝ snow ʍousɐ

        yeah i mean “pounding” somebody typically means, pardon my french, fucking them hard

        also for reference i’m a virgin

  43. JohnInCA

    Obvious lying is obvious.

    The question is what will he suspect they’re trying to hide?

  44. Dunamis

    To be fair, Jacob isn’t simply being nice… he doesn’t seem to WANT his brother to know he’s with Raidah. His brother seemed impressed by Joyce, and Jacob wants to impress his brother.

  45. Chris B

    I’m sorry, but “Mad Max” would never be the same in SI units with the Goose and Barry describing the Interceptor as “440 kilowatts”:

    https://youtu.be/EK2ijfxqlnY

  46. TemporalShrew

    This is the fifth subsequent comment featuring Joyce in which she experiences at least one Smile of Sudden Panic

    1. TemporalShrew

      Comic. Comic is the word that I meant. My comment is a comment. On this comic.

  47. TheWanderingMist

    Forcibly converting someone through threats is bad.
    Trying to convince them to convert through argumentation is not. The main point of most religions is trying to get people to join.
    Please stop treating these as one and the same.

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