When you sit on a story hook for a few years, you have a lot of time to think of what changes you'd make when you eventually return to it. And at one point, I'd decided to use this second sequence in the strip to establish a longer history between Joe and Dorothy. I dunno, interesting, right? well okay a few logistical issues
1) saying that joe had been pestering dorothy about being a lesbian starting in hebrew school means that he started when he was in like first grade, and that's a little much even for joe
2) we know dorothy was raised irreligiously, so her going to hebrew school would probably be a bigger retcon than the joe/dorothy history lengthening
3) also there's a bonus strip where we see the very moment joe hits puberty and suddenly gets a horny expression, and it definitely would've been after all this would've had to've happened
SO WHATEVER. First attempt at changes to the original take were made, then discarded.
so i reverted back to the original "well, it still isn't" response, which is better anyway, and then... look, I don't even know what this was about. It was probably me just fooling around. It's a very Walky punchline and not a Joe one.
But I did change the original's "when I was sixteen" to "when I was fifteen," which does give them another year of knowing each other.
So I sat back, tried to get some perspective, and then decided, okay, let's remember what's actually going on in the strip, and center this in the now, on the facts on the ground, rather than what I'd brainstormed about over the past few years. It's two Dorothy Face strips in a row, but I think it still worked:
Harold
2025-03-14 15:07:22 +0000 UTCMaya
2025-03-14 14:47:47 +0000 UTCJoseph
2025-03-09 00:46:00 +0000 UTC