Unused strip for November 1, 2023 (Patreon)

This would've been from the Eating Mac And Cheese night from last year. Nothing specifically was wrong with it, but I just thought it... exceeded the rate limit for that particular storyline. Maybe it'd find a moment with a bit more oxygen for it later. And it did!

But back then, this strip replaced it, going in a slightly different direction.

One small issue with the unused strip was it needed to have Walky-in-relation-to-Dorothy mentioned so the moment was set up, and it does that very quickly, but it's... very quickly. One benefit of the "I could take that guy better'n Walky" punchline from today's (4/19) published strip is that it puts Walky into the discussion, vis-a-vis a relationship with Dorothy, so it's not so much of a scrambling trip to get to where we need to be in the next strip. Joyce is already thinking about Walky+Dorothy, so she doesn't have to assemble those pieces in one panel.

The original strip ending where it does, with Joyce's line, hits differently! It's a slightly different kind of punchline, and the published version ending instead with Dorothy's suggestion of drinking water makes it a marginally different joke. I'm not sure either is superior to the other in a vacuum, but the drinking water panel suits the overall narrative here better, so it's better in the moment, I think.

The final: