Just to the left of this comment, below the Hiveworks logo, there is a “Buffer Watch” box (which has been there for years) which tells you how in advance comics are loaded. As of this moment, it says “July 3, 2023”. So, the most probably answer to your question is “Yes” and “Yes”.
The buffer watch then was in fact today, January 15, 2023, six months later.
The buffer watch on July 15 was January 1. I suspect that Willis did not do 14 complete strips, from raw sketch to fully colored and shaded, in one day and night, but had that many in progress that were finalized and uploaded.
not sure how far dina thinks ahead compared to becky but i don’t think she especially had a reason to not be/might be ok with just staying ‘girlfriends’ but is ok with it/knows that it’s important to becky
now to spend the next 10-15 years properly saving up for a wedding/home if not a small ceremony (or robin makes it big again and just gives them both a million dollars or so lol)
Nah, for the full Chickweed experience you need to make it look like your reference for human dental anatomy was an unflattering shot of Shane McGowan’s teeth
Mammal paleontologists often classify remains by their teeth (partly because they happen to be especially diagnostic in mammals, partly because they are some of the hardest parts there are and therefore tend to preserve best as fossils).
I highly doubt they would conclude that the 9CL characters are primates, let alone members of the genus Homo.
I think it actually is slightly more disturbing than solid white because that’s so normalized in comics. I mean, look at their teeth in the panel before. Look at Becky’s teeth in yesterday’s strip. They didn’t even warrant comment.
given that it’s a daily webcomic even including weekends, i’m surprised more don’t have a months ahead buffer. versus those webtoons where a full chapter is like 20-40 pages long and updating once a week to a month instead ll
Joyce in panel 1 definitely kinda feels like she’s talking to the readers rather than Becky. Has she started to develop Deadpool fourth-wall breaking abilities?
I kinda sorta know that feeling. Right on my third date with my now-hubby, I promised him a lifetime of unlimited squeezes. That was kind of my way of telling him I wanted to marry him. We didn’t make it legal until 10 years after that, but sometimes marriage accretes to one’s hull like barnacles. Or grows like coral. One crusty bit and piece and doodad at a time.
My grandparents only dated for two weeks before getting married. As a kid, I thought that was super romantic. Now when I think about about it, I’m kinda like, “Hey, what?” But it worked out for them and they had a long and happy marriage.
Coral-adjacent trivia:
There’s a greek myth that Perseus, on his way back home after killing Medusa (best character, fuck Perseus), stopped on some island with medusa’s chopped head in a bag. He dropped the bag on the beach, and it yawned open just enough that medusa’s petrifying stare caught some algae in the water. And that’s where coral comes from!! (*shakes head in biology nerd*)
Barnacle trivia:
Barnacles are crustaceans!
They are super old, with confirmed ancestry going back to the Carboniferous, and debated fossils from the motherfucking Cambrian (that’s pretty much as old as it gets), but have really only radiated to their present (huge) diversity in the last 20 million years. Which feels like a good thing to remember about so-called “living fossils”: you never know when your time to shine is gonna come. It may take 500 million years. You only got to hang on. (Barnacle joke.)
One family of barnacles, Rhizocephala, parasitizes crabs and other crustaceans. The free-swimming larva will attach to a crab and then extend tendrils into its body, wrap around its organs, feed from its hepatopancreas, and manipulate its hormones to chemically sterilize the host and develop its own sexual organs inside it, even altering the behaviour of the host to dacilirare their reproduction. It’s incredible.
Also, the talk page for the wikipedia article for one such barnacle, Sacculina, contains the best pun I’ve read this year =D
Hey, say what you want about Medusa, but Perseus is one of the few legitimately-decent-all-around classical Greek heroes, I will not stand for this slander! 😛 Now if you’d said “fuck Theseus” on the other hand… /tangent
Back to barnacles, as a kid I always had a liking for goose barnacles from the moment I first found out about them. Something about how silly they looked/what a silly name they had, and of course the mythology behind them—they were supposedly the juvenile form of the barnacle goose and (literally grew on trees. XD
what the hell, i didn’t know about that goose barnacle myth. that’s hilarious =D
anyway, heya King D! good to see you, whereabouts hast thou been?
(Perseus is fine, i just have a soft spot for Medusa. She was unfairly turned into a monster, but also, that made her way cooler. Snakes for hair??? Yes please.)
Yumi
I like Medusa as well; I can still be okay with Perseus, though, because by that point, so many other figures had already screwed her over, and also someone was trying to screw over Perseus. Also, how much did he know about her history going in?
Schpoonman
“Elysium isn’t for the good, it’s for the great. Great kings and killers, oft one and the same.”
I’ve had a several friends tell me they knew really early on in the relationship/knowing their partner that they were with the person they were going to marry one day. I used to be skeptical but with my current partner I totally get it (it isn’t happening any time soon, but it definitely feels right)
While such stories always seem romantic, I wonder how much of a survivor bias there is in them.
We don’t tend to hear tales of couples who knew it was going to last forever a few weeks in, but then broke up a month or even a year later. No one wants to talk about that.
Yumi
This is true. We do hear a decent amount of stories of couples who got married fairly quickly and then got divorced, but even then they tend to be together longer beforehand than when some people first get their “together forever” feelings.
There are also people who get married thinking it won’t last. We (the general population) don’t hear much about them either, but I do because my mom’s a divorce lawyer, and she’s told me about several clients over the years who say things like, “Even before the wedding, I knew it wasn’t going to work out.” Which might also be a bias (I imagine there’s a term for this, but I can’t think of it) and is really interesting to think about.
In these cases, I do feel an initial judgment of, “Well, why did you get married then?” But everyone is in their own unique and complex situation, and the jump to this judgment is probably part of why people don’t share these stories about themselves more.
Wizard
The term is “sampling bias”, where the people you’re examining aren’t a good representation of the population at large.
Oh, and I find you theory highly plausible, thejeff.
Yumi
Um…no? To the “sampling bias” thing, because that’s not what I was talking about. It’s also not applicable to my comment in general.
Anyway, the what I was actually talking about was hindsight bias.
That’s such a sweet love story
My guy and i have been talking about getting married since we first got together. Right now mostly about how we’re walking down the aisle to an acoustic version of Guts’s theme and how much Bleach music we’re gonna wedge in our reception (first dance is Nube Negra, yes we’ll be learning tango, and we’re totally gonna wedge Number One in there somewhere).
172 thoughts on “Kinda-sorta”
Ana Chronistic
it’s her quirk!
Decidedly Orthogonal
Wait. So, did Willis hit the buffer 6 months ago, and we’re seeing it now, or is it being posted _today_ when they now has a six month buffer?
Cholma
Just to the left of this comment, below the Hiveworks logo, there is a “Buffer Watch” box (which has been there for years) which tells you how in advance comics are loaded. As of this moment, it says “July 3, 2023”. So, the most probably answer to your question is “Yes” and “Yes”.
milu
July 3 is less than 6 months away
Ymbrael
It’s 168 days away as of January 15th, divided by 30 that’s 5.6 months away. Personally, I’d count that as rounding up to 6.
Ymbrael
169* mb I think I miscounted one of the 31 day months, point still stands, it’s a heck of an impressive buffed period.
Harmony
A six-month buffer is super impressive. Can you imagine being able to take a six-month vacation, and nobody you work for even notices?
Shadowydreamer
Oh, we’d notice.. 😀
Reltzik
ANARCHY IN THE COMMENTS SECTION yeah okay no one would notice.
Owlmirror
And, as can be seen in the web archive of the page from July 16, 2022
https://web.archive.org/web/20220716073157/http://dumbingofage.com/
The buffer watch then was in fact today, January 15, 2023, six months later.
The buffer watch on July 15 was January 1. I suspect that Willis did not do 14 complete strips, from raw sketch to fully colored and shaded, in one day and night, but had that many in progress that were finalized and uploaded.
But what do I know? Maybe he is that fast.
Ana Chronistic
it’s his quirk!
Jon Rich
God, I love the HeroAca references.
The Wellerman
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/03-trial-and-sarah/fivesecond-2/
I guess that’s a confirmation of engagement? ?
Yotomoe
Man, unrelated but Naked with hats is QUITE the look.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Got to be modest and cover up the most erogenous zone of the body.
anon
not sure how far dina thinks ahead compared to becky but i don’t think she especially had a reason to not be/might be ok with just staying ‘girlfriends’ but is ok with it/knows that it’s important to becky
now to spend the next 10-15 years properly saving up for a wedding/home if not a small ceremony (or robin makes it big again and just gives them both a million dollars or so lol)
Tan
Not really confirmation of that so much as just referring back to that specific moment.
Karla Jean
I thought that was just my tinnitus.
Doctor_Who
Tinitus is caused by little Joyces in your ears having a squee.
Caro
awwww
William Leonard Reese Jr.
These may be my favorite faces in the comic of all time.
Dara
Panel 5 is a bit “I AM JOYCE, EATER OF WORLDS”
Schpoonman
I’d held on to my first gravatar for 7 years. This finally dethroned it.
Sporky
Not sure if I should go with “Praise the sun!” or “You heard about video games?”
Schpoonman
Y-pose to establish dominance.
Jess
Nothing like a good celebratory Y-pose.
shadowcell
going for some 9 Chickweed Lane teeth there, yikes
Thag Simmons
Nah, for the full Chickweed experience you need to make it look like your reference for human dental anatomy was an unflattering shot of Shane McGowan’s teeth
milu
Mammal paleontologists often classify remains by their teeth (partly because they happen to be especially diagnostic in mammals, partly because they are some of the hardest parts there are and therefore tend to preserve best as fossils).
I highly doubt they would conclude that the 9CL characters are primates, let alone members of the genus Homo.
The Wellerman
Human, your pun appears to have been executed successfully. Kudos. 🙂
milu
Pun what pun?
Amós Batista
As Nietzsche said before:…
Needfuldoer
You say that like it isn’t less disturbing than the solid white mass would have been in this situation…
Yumi
I think it actually is slightly more disturbing than solid white because that’s so normalized in comics. I mean, look at their teeth in the panel before. Look at Becky’s teeth in yesterday’s strip. They didn’t even warrant comment.
Thag Simmons
I don’t think very many newspaper comics have a buffer that long, and I can’t think of any other webcomic with even a comparable one. I’m impressed
anon
given that it’s a daily webcomic even including weekends, i’m surprised more don’t have a months ahead buffer. versus those webtoons where a full chapter is like 20-40 pages long and updating once a week to a month instead ll
Leorale
If Willis doesn’t write enough comics, they’ll explode!! Just like that bus in Speed.
milu
bad_photoshop_of_keanu_reeves_with_willis_face.jpg
Nono
Panel 1 almost made me think Joyce and Becky were talking to someone rather than each other.
Maybe they were talking to… the reader???
Slartibeast Button, BIA
DoA PSA
Jo_cubstar
I had that impression, too. It seemed like they were in a classroom, rather than on the the top bunk
Keulen
Joyce in panel 1 definitely kinda feels like she’s talking to the readers rather than Becky. Has she started to develop Deadpool fourth-wall breaking abilities?
Kyrik Michalowski
I always wondered if Joyce would be able to awaken the dog whistle within her. Clearly the answer is a resounding: Yes!
Needfuldoer
Given the environment she grew up in, I bet she’s accidentally awakened it more than a few times.
y3k
…Why are my ears bleeding.
Stephen Bierce
*plays Michael and Janet’s “Scream” on the hacked Muzak*
saltchocolate
Yes!!
thakoru
Imma start sending panels 4 and 5 to people without context. See how many people I can get to ask me if I’m okay.
Leorale
Are you okay?
I’m helping!
Laura
I kinda sorta know that feeling. Right on my third date with my now-hubby, I promised him a lifetime of unlimited squeezes. That was kind of my way of telling him I wanted to marry him. We didn’t make it legal until 10 years after that, but sometimes marriage accretes to one’s hull like barnacles. Or grows like coral. One crusty bit and piece and doodad at a time.
Yumi
My grandparents only dated for two weeks before getting married. As a kid, I thought that was super romantic. Now when I think about about it, I’m kinda like, “Hey, what?” But it worked out for them and they had a long and happy marriage.
milu
Coral-adjacent trivia:
There’s a greek myth that Perseus, on his way back home after killing Medusa (best character, fuck Perseus), stopped on some island with medusa’s chopped head in a bag. He dropped the bag on the beach, and it yawned open just enough that medusa’s petrifying stare caught some algae in the water. And that’s where coral comes from!! (*shakes head in biology nerd*)
Barnacle trivia:
Barnacles are crustaceans!
They are super old, with confirmed ancestry going back to the Carboniferous, and debated fossils from the motherfucking Cambrian (that’s pretty much as old as it gets), but have really only radiated to their present (huge) diversity in the last 20 million years. Which feels like a good thing to remember about so-called “living fossils”: you never know when your time to shine is gonna come. It may take 500 million years. You only got to hang on. (Barnacle joke.)
One family of barnacles, Rhizocephala, parasitizes crabs and other crustaceans. The free-swimming larva will attach to a crab and then extend tendrils into its body, wrap around its organs, feed from its hepatopancreas, and manipulate its hormones to chemically sterilize the host and develop its own sexual organs inside it, even altering the behaviour of the host to dacilirare their reproduction. It’s incredible.
Also, the talk page for the wikipedia article for one such barnacle, Sacculina, contains the best pun I’ve read this year =D
King Daniel
Hey, say what you want about Medusa, but Perseus is one of the few legitimately-decent-all-around classical Greek heroes, I will not stand for this slander! 😛 Now if you’d said “fuck Theseus” on the other hand… /tangent
Back to barnacles, as a kid I always had a liking for goose barnacles from the moment I first found out about them. Something about how silly they looked/what a silly name they had, and of course the mythology behind them—they were supposedly the juvenile form of the barnacle goose and (literally grew on trees. XD
milu
what the hell, i didn’t know about that goose barnacle myth. that’s hilarious =D
anyway, heya King D! good to see you, whereabouts hast thou been?
(Perseus is fine, i just have a soft spot for Medusa. She was unfairly turned into a monster, but also, that made her way cooler. Snakes for hair??? Yes please.)
Yumi
I like Medusa as well; I can still be okay with Perseus, though, because by that point, so many other figures had already screwed her over, and also someone was trying to screw over Perseus. Also, how much did he know about her history going in?
Schpoonman
“Elysium isn’t for the good, it’s for the great. Great kings and killers, oft one and the same.”
Lan
I’ve had a several friends tell me they knew really early on in the relationship/knowing their partner that they were with the person they were going to marry one day. I used to be skeptical but with my current partner I totally get it (it isn’t happening any time soon, but it definitely feels right)
thejeff
While such stories always seem romantic, I wonder how much of a survivor bias there is in them.
We don’t tend to hear tales of couples who knew it was going to last forever a few weeks in, but then broke up a month or even a year later. No one wants to talk about that.
Yumi
This is true. We do hear a decent amount of stories of couples who got married fairly quickly and then got divorced, but even then they tend to be together longer beforehand than when some people first get their “together forever” feelings.
There are also people who get married thinking it won’t last. We (the general population) don’t hear much about them either, but I do because my mom’s a divorce lawyer, and she’s told me about several clients over the years who say things like, “Even before the wedding, I knew it wasn’t going to work out.” Which might also be a bias (I imagine there’s a term for this, but I can’t think of it) and is really interesting to think about.
In these cases, I do feel an initial judgment of, “Well, why did you get married then?” But everyone is in their own unique and complex situation, and the jump to this judgment is probably part of why people don’t share these stories about themselves more.
Wizard
The term is “sampling bias”, where the people you’re examining aren’t a good representation of the population at large.
Oh, and I find you theory highly plausible, thejeff.
Yumi
Um…no? To the “sampling bias” thing, because that’s not what I was talking about. It’s also not applicable to my comment in general.
Anyway, the what I was actually talking about was hindsight bias.
zee
That’s such a sweet love story
My guy and i have been talking about getting married since we first got together. Right now mostly about how we’re walking down the aisle to an acoustic version of Guts’s theme and how much Bleach music we’re gonna wedge in our reception (first dance is Nube Negra, yes we’ll be learning tango, and we’re totally gonna wedge Number One in there somewhere).
cbwroses
Joyce is screaming at a pitch only dogs (and virgins) can hear.
Yotomoe
What, you can’t hear that?…oh.
Wayne Farmer
It’s two octaves above a SQUEE!
Mark
Middle SQUEE or high SQUEE?
milu
Bats all around campus suddenly start flying into walls.
raultsi
Nooooo
I hope they’re alright. I <3 bats
Amós Batista
Shit, it almost get me deaf, as it was so loud.
Wait
lia
oh thats scary
huesatlight