Original strips/pencils for July 10-14, 2025

Some stuff changed! Some stuff didn't. The Amazi-girl strip above is essentially the same as published, though I wrote it after the next few others in the sequence. (but before inking/coloring them)

Amazi-Girl showing up and kneeing a cop in the face is a cool moment! It's also... a moment that changes things very very quickly for Amazi-Girl going forward. You can't just do that and still do the same Amazi-Girl things you were doing before in the same way. So that was a huge investment. But her presence solves some other things later (like getting out) and also provides a strip where we see the tear gas starting to be thrown, so Joyce just doesn't suddenly emerge out of some later.

also i wanted to close the loop on amazi-girl's earlier desire to not be such a cop anymore

The next day's was mostly the same, minus some slightly different wording and a different line in place of the "a better decision than wanting to be PRESIDENT." Dorothy has talked before in the strip about being provisionally white -- whether she's WASPy or Jewish depends on context, and so earlier I had a line about how she was putting her visibly white body on the line here. But it seemed martyry in a too-long-of-a-callback way (she has not talked about her dual ethnic identity in a while), and the identity crisis about wanting to be President was more pertinent. Do I use both lines? No, I didn't want to cover up the sign in the composition, the hands defiantly grasping the sign is why she's here, I had to choose.

Pencils for the big panoramic panel! The biggest visual difference is Joyce standing instead of marching. The cop in the background is launching the gas canister from a firearm, as is ... well, how they do it, rather than throwing it.

But then I realized, oh, this is a wedding. Joyce is pledging herself and her life to Dorothy here in no uncertain terms. Joyce needs her verse from the Book of Ruth she wrote on the lunch bag years earlier. I needed an aisle. I needed an arch over Dorothy. I already have my witness.

So she marches now. The cop is throwing the tear gas in a more rounded arch instead of firing it. Streams of gas on either side of Joyce form an aisle. Joyce recites her wedding scripture. I... I think this is happening now.

There's a scene in the second Evangelion Rebuild movie where Shinji pushes himself, like, bodily, through some sort of event horizon to get to Rei, buried within an Eva, his skin flaking off as he becomes spectral, as he's screaming terribly. And he does it, he pulls Rei out, saves her (sort of). I'd workshopped different kinds of Joyce/Dorothy getting together moments, and something where Joyce, like, bodily forces herself through some kind of similar barrier to get to Dorothy, to save her, to be with her, that kind of vibe was always on my mind. And maybe that happens in some way later. Years later. Maybe a pre-timeskip moment the next time I do one of those, like for the strip's 20th anniversary.

and whoops as i put things together, i realized it was happening here, now

almost in time for the strip's 15th

I titled this storyline "The Only Exception" because that was a Joe song. It's about cautiously finding love despite thinking it's a fake idea because of your divorced parents. Probably in the original version of this story, Joyce/Dorothy smooch a bit, they apologize, and then they go home and apologize to their boyfriends, and Joe and Joyce finally... do the thing that would probably make me a lot of money on Slipshine and the Other Patreon.

but oh no joyce is marrying herself to dorothy right now

"Dorothy. You have always, ALWAYS had me."

.... sorry joe

And the original kiss pencils. That's Jocelyne in the final panel, saying heeeeeeeeey guyyyyys this is great but

that's better

anyway i blew up my strip, and i had no idea what was going to happen next

let's find out, or don't, if you're mad about joe and/or the genocide protest framing