Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Scape
Lauren
Sula has always preferred to forge her own path, but before she knows it, she is pulled into the middle of a civil war between man and monster!
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
The Forgotten Order
Christy
A young witch for whom every spell is a misfire finds solace and friendship in her new companion - a cursed doll.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Alexander, The Servant & The Water of Life
Reimena Yee
The 21st century retelling of the life and legends of Alexander the Great.
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
The Substitutes
Myisha Haynes
What happens when three roommates accidentally acquire otherworldly and powerful magic weapons destined for someone else?
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Quick$ilver
Crypto
The flirtatious, directionless, and ever disastrous Luci searches for excitement in a life of crime, and finds himself caught in a web of messy romance and bad blood.
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
Missing Monday
Elle Skinner
Two girls fall in love through a magic door connecting their worlds. When Monday suddenly goes missing, it's up to Foyle to find her. How she's going to navigate an entirely unfamiliar world is another matter.
The Last Diplomat
Cat Farris
Samma and Tark didn't ask to be stuck together, but now they're partners on the adventure of a lifetime.
This is Not Fiction
Nicole Mannino
What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
Ride or Die
Mars Heyward
Ride or Die is an LGBTQ webcomic about two street racers who team up with a demon-possessed muscle car in the search for a missing woman, while being hunted by a deadly religious cult.
Aquapunk
Lo
In an underwater world of unknown coordinates, inhabited by aliens, ghosts, and robots, a young member of a warrior underclass is framed for a crime and goes on the run. Little does he know he is part of a grand design that only gods and ancestors could choreograph.
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Gzhel Guardian
Atla Hrafney, nushanchel
The Railway World is a complex, mysterious network of trains, towns and mechanical monsters. Leo is a Guardian of one of these towns, and although their burn-out and depression has taken hold of them, they have one last job to finish.
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Within
Verena Loisel
A young hitman meanders between a reality that seems to happen without him, and his dreams where he is lost in an endless house. When he makes an accidental friend, his world is shaken up and he realizes there are things he can't remember about himself.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
How to be a Werewolf
Shawn Lenore
Malaya Walters was bitten by a werewolf as a child. After being raised by her human family, she faces the chance to learn what being a werewolf is really like as an adult.
Headless Bliss
Clover
A story about story-telling, and other metaphysical themes such as Nightmares! (Failed) Teamwork! Comedy! And more!
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Trying Human
IntroducingEmy
Two women separated by over half a century are brought together by an alien-filled conspiracy involving murder, mystery and romance!
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
BOOKMARK Click "Tag Page" to bookmark a page. When you return to the site, click "Goto Tag" to continue where you left off.
BUFFER WATCH
Comics are currently drawn and uploaded through:
Huh. I’m just thinking of the cataclysmic emotional roller-coaster that having a tattoo or even just a second pair of ear piercings would put Joyce through!
Probably because the summer holiday ended,teenagers and adults that read webcomics are going to school or work and don’t have time to see the strips only when they come back home.
Dina generates a lot of comments because she’s popular and we don’t entirely understand her thought processes. Also there’s all the Dina memes that have to be spouted like six times every time she appears.
DoA has slowed down a bit because there’s not much to discuss right now. Joyce and Sal are having a perfectly reasonable conversation and addressing the very things we would normally speculate about.
Yup. Honestly, I think Dorothy SHOULD apologize to Joyce and ask for forgiveness. Drinking at the room party was extremely rude, and Dorothy’s folks raised her better than that.
Sal’s response is about the best she could’ve given (also how she turns the questions around a little bit; ‘you want her to forgive you, but are you willing to do the same?’)
I’m also curious about where panel 5 is leading. Like, is it just Joyce realizing something else that might have gotten too deeply ingrained, or is there something else? (Especially since she was more than willing to be Queen of the Drunks, though the party situations were very different.)
Sounds right. I have a feeling that Dorothy is going to respond to Joyce’s apology or forgiveness or explanation or whatever the same way she responded to Becky “calling a truce” — slightly bewildered.
The party was Saturday night I think, and this is Monday (around lunchtime). And according to tags, no they haven’t interacted; last strip with both was at the party.
I think Joyce is upset with Dorothy because Joyce set a boundary for her party– no drinking– and Dorothy violated it. And Joyce is specifically unhappy with this because she had a certain kind of faith and trust in Dorothy… as well as some expectations… that her friend did not meet. It’s understandable, but it is something Joyce will have to come to terms and struggle with.
I think this is probably it. Just drinking a bit in of itself not really bothersome. Drinking at party which is supposed to be no alcohol, to make it an emotionally safe place for Joyce, would tend to hurt feelings.
She asked Dorothy to bring some pop and Ethan to bring snacks, but that’s it. Maybe every one should have assumed “no alcohol”, but Billie was invited and even Joyce had to know she’d likely be drinking.
Has Joyce even shown any problems with having alcohol around? Not drinking herself of course, but she was happy being Queen of the Drunks.
Things may have changed since the incident, but she’s been doing a remarkably good job of pretending she’s fine and nothing’s changed. Dorothy hasn’t noticed she’s traumatized because she’s doing her darndest to deny that it has.
Yeah, the whole thing is a bit of a clusterfuck because she so doesn’t want to think about the assault and her triggers surrounding it that she hasn’t communicated any of them to anyone actively or intentionally, besides Amazi-Girl who confronted her, until this conversation with Sal (remember Ethan saw the triggers manifest directly).
So even if alcohol was triggering and upsetting for her because it’s too reminiscent of the circumstances surrounding her assault, she’s not in a place where she’s going to actively tell others because then she’d have to be aware and focus on things she doesn’t want to focus on.
And there’s the additional tangle that her disappointment with Dorothy over the alcohol may not entirely be trigger based. That particular flavor of Christianity tends to have a lot of moralizing on the subject of alcohol consumption and so part of Joyce might be reacting to Dorothy making “an immoral decision” in her religious estimation (the reason she was not worried by the drunks at the party is that she had no moral expectations of any of them and it is not considered a cripplingly major moral violation in that religion) and having to grapple morally with the idea that occasional over-consumption of alcohol isn’t a bad thing as well and that holding others to her particular religious standards if she thinks well of them morally is not something she’s going to be able to sustain.
Probably also the reason she can’t fully figure out what she’s actually feeling here and why.
In addition, she’s still worried about fallout from Dorothy finding out about Ethan. Another reason not to risk talking to Dorothy.
I actually hadn’t realized that no one else realized she wasn’t able to be outside alone. I knew she was using Dorothy and Walky as escorts, along with Ethan, and I kind of assumed they realized it, even if they didn’t know the details or how bad it was.
But at the same time, and this may be why Joyce is waffling on the subject, did she ever explicitly say “no drinking”, or just assume that the blanket ban over the dorm would cover it?
I think the issue is that Joyce thought Dorothy of all people would understand that she would not want drinking at her party because of what happened at the last party. The entire point of the dorm party was to make it a controlled environment, and Dorothy was one of the first people to violate that control. If Dorothy is supposed to be Joyce’s best friend, that means one of two things, from Joyce’s perspective: Dorothy considered Joyce’s feelings on alcohol and the party, and violated that safe space anyway, or she never even considered Joyce’s feelings to begin with. Either way, Dorothy comes out as either inconsiderate or callous. That, or Joyce is left to think that maybe her discomfort itself isn’t worthy of attention. So either she condemns Dorothy or herself.
Or Joyce maybe makes the more mature realization that you have to express your desires if you want other people to consider them, even good friends. The alternative is expecting people to be mind-readers. And yeah, sometimes we can just about understand what other people close to us want or would prefer, but most of the time trying that results in misunderstandings on one side or another.
Which is probably why Joyce is so hurt about it: She puts Dorothy on a pedestal, so anytime Dorothy stops being the perfect amazing BFF, Joyce feels betrayed.
The blanket ban on alcohol in the dorm means that it’s flat-out rude to violate that ban without explicit permission from the occupants of the room–both of them, but especially the person playing host, in this case, Joyce.
Consider the possible ramifications if Ruth were actually as evil and assertive as she appeared to be in the original strips, and as strict as she claimed to be. Joyce could’ve gotten into serious trouble, at exactly the worst possible time for such a thing. Dorothy was being extremely selfish.
tl;dr: Sex isn’t the only part of a relationship, of any sort, where explicit consent matters.
At least this is, internally speaking, logical. Most strips happen immediately after the previous day’s.
When I was watching Pokémon as a kid, I always really enjoyed seeing the trio backpacking through the wilderness at episodes’ beginning or end; it was like the show was saying, “See, their lives are still going on in between episodes. Go live yours, and in a week they’ll have reached something for you to come watch.”
If we assume that every season of Pokémon, from good ol’ Indigo League to whichever one is running now, has happened within the space of a year, either that planet’s orbit is incredibly slow or it takes about as much time to navigate from town to town as it takes an expert to speedrun through the games. And if the latter, then there are a LOT of annual tournaments, not to mention constant zoological and geographical discoveries.
There is something very curious about Joyce’s behaviour. She’s either got a girl-crush on Sal or she’s looking for excuses not to interact with Dorothy. I’m not sure which it is but, previously, she never struck me as the sort who’d be afraid of confrontation and settling debts so that there could be peace. I’m beginning to wonder how much emotional experience her upbringing allowed her to have.
FWIW, I think that it wasn’t the drinking that was the issue. It was the fact that Dorothy found her party boring enough that she felt the need to drink. That would bother me too.
She’s afraid that her friendship with Dorothy got a crack and postpones the confrontation that will tell her for sure? It’s not THAT unusual behavior.
Also note how she is most unsure about her own feelings about the drinking. She might be afraid how she will react once she comes face to face with Dorothy.
I think it’s both–Joyce is using her girl crush on Sal as an excuse to avoid seeking out Dorothy to work stuff out. And a person with anxiety issues avoiding a conversation that may have unfavorable results doesn’t strike me as that unusual. Until they talk, Joyce can think of Dorothy as “probably still her friend”, but the possibility that the conversation would end with that changing to “not her friend anymore” is what is keeping Joyce from talking things out with Dorothy. Of course, the longer she puts it off, the harder it is to approach her hopefully-still-friend and broach the subject.
(I sort of speak from experience here, albeit my situation is more employment related than friendship related, but the principle is the same….and knowing that makes it no easier to make the phone calls I need to make)
I still can’t quite put my finger on it; Joyce’s behaviour is odd. Maybe she’s realised that she’s being a fangirl and is playing it up because she likes how Sal reacts to her doing it?
No, I think her girlcrush on sempai Sal is entirely earnest and not really examined. Joyce is being odd and avoidant for other reasons. (Bagge and neeks might have covered some of them, not sure.)
I agree with this. Joyce simultaneously has a major case of hero-worship of Sal owing to her depiction of cool and how she has intervened for her better, especially surrounding recovering from the assault and she expresses this very queerly owing to receiving a lot of her modeling on platonic friendships and hero-worship from a queer girl who didn’t realize she was queer and in love with her yet.
And she’s hung up on what Sarah said about Dorothy not accepting or approving of what she was doing with Ethan. She’s convinced that if Dorothy ever knew that she would reject her and become justifiably angry with her in much a similar way as Amber did and now that she knows she knows, she’s terrified to rip that band-aid off and receive that disappointment. As such, she’s actively trying to ignore and avoid the situation which is much the same way she’s handled other things that have felt too big to emotionally process.
She probably won’t. Sal is aware of Becky “HEY EVERYBODY I”M A LESBIAN!!!!” McIntyre.
That said, Sal, now aware that Ethan is free (at least from Joyce), may ask him out. After all, she goes for tall.
You don’t see a therapist for the talking. You see them to go away at the end of an hour.
Ok, that quote didn’t work quite as well as I was hoping. What I meant is that Sal could get her interaction with other humans in very defined amounts of time, and then be able to be done with it, while still helping.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious but isn’t this none of Dorothy’s damn business? She’s a white heterosexual girl who isn’t even one of Ethan’s friends and doesn’t know anything about their situation other than the basics. If she has a problem with it, wouldn’t she do better to ask Ethan about it before she started making judgements?
“making someone be straight” or ‘correcting someone’s gay behavior’ are absolutely a thing even heteros should be condemning. There’s no need for her to condemn Ethan (Though there’s plenty of room for say, Daisy to do so), but it was sort of Joyce’s idea to start with.
Yeah, I mean, the situation is pretty complex, but Joyce was at the least feeding into Ethan’s self loathing about his sexuality and at worst actively encouraging it. It’s not something Dorothy would have stood by and allowed to happen if she knew about it.
Except Joyce didn’t do ANY of that. She wanted Ethan to be her boyfriend because it required nothing in the way of sexual expectations because she was terrified of sex after the whole business with her assault. At best, she fed into Ethan’s desire to be closeted. Which is terrible but I think Joyce didn’t try to turn Ethan straight–it was a far more complex situation which poor Joyce really needs someone to talk to about. And not Dorothy.
I disagree. I don’t think she was really capable of understanding the full complexities of sexualities, but Joyce did talk about choices and avoiding temptation, and very much acted as though she saw homosexuality as being a decision based on lustful and therefor sinful feelings.
…Yes, like many people, Joyce had multiple motivations for her actions. She absolutely fed into his self-loathing and repeated harmful shit about gay people seriously. She carried an expectation of sexual reciprocation as well, just not an immediate one.
And she believes that she did badly by him and apologized and wouldnt further abet his attempts to stay closeted, I believe because she saw that as harmful.
Also, when we’re pointing out obvious things, Dorothy has actually not said anything on the subject yet. (Except “oh geez” under her breath). It is Sarah and Joyce who got the idea that Joyce relationship with Ethan would be a dealbreaker for her friendship with Dorothy. It remains to be seen what sort of judgement – if any – Dorothy will make.
In a (not so) shocking turn of events, Sal, the teenage hooligan who has been in jail and robbed a convenience store, gives better life advice than Sarah, the by the books “adult” who dislikes any rule breaking.
Ehhh, I don’t think that’s how I’d describe Sarah. There’s a very specific reason that she tends to be a stickler for some rules: her scholarship that she could easily lose and not be able to stay in school. She follows the rules because she’s very aware of what can happen if she doesn’t. But she’s also the person that smashed a dude’s face in with a bat to help her friend.
I know, and Amber and Ethan are entitled to hate her for the rest of their lives (and I mean, Amber stabbed her. It’s not like Sal came out of that some kind of victor), but Sal’s paid for it. She paid for it beforehand with years of parental neglect, then got sent to a boarding school for her entire adolescence so her parents could push their problem child as far away from themselves as possible, and even now they’re neglecting her. Of all people who should be giving her a chance, they’re falling short.
And, if it’s relevant, she seems to be on a pretty decent life course, from what we know (I know, in case I missed something). She’s doing school seriously, she’s doing proper b y Joyce in this arc, she shut her bro down when he went junior high on Joyce. She even tried to be a “nice girl” for her parents, which is more than they deserve and, I suppose reflects her need, but no one can say that she didn’t try.
Regardless of what’s happened and will happen between her and Amber, Sal’s been punished enough by her parents and by society. She doesn’t deserve to be judged for it anymore.
So I don’t have internet for two weeks and I come back, and the first thing I see is the DREAD on the poll o_O Way to worry me. I thought something had happened!
But then, if something had happened, it would be better than this suspense.
Why IS Joyce upset about Dorothy drinking at her party anyway? I’m no expert on the Bible, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t condemn the consumption of alcohol.
Loading ...
I’m pleasantly surprised at how this interaction with Sal has gone
Yes, she has seemed almost human, in the good sense of the phrase.
She isn’t, though. What Sal sees.
What? T-800s wear leather jackets and have ludicrous accents. This is canon.
Are you Joyce Conner?
If she was Joyce Reese, her line would be, “Pray wit me that you are gonig to live.”
But they don’t smoke. Although they are known to ,,smoke” other people.
It’s how she vents excess core buildup.
“or… I won’t be your friend anymore!”
“NUUUUUUU ANYTHING BUT THAT”
Ah! the old Briar Patch gambit…
Careful or Joyce will get “BFFs for lyfe” tattooed on her tush.
yes, a typo on her tush. cuz joyce wants to slowly drive herself mad
Like lust dreams/nightmares weren’t enough.
Huh. I’m just thinking of the cataclysmic emotional roller-coaster that having a tattoo or even just a second pair of ear piercings would put Joyce through!
I don’t think she even has one pair.
Sal: “I’m done with feeling things. Go away.”
“This is my nope face, Joyce.”
Ouch, harsh
You need to scrap that barnacle off as soon as you can Sal.
She’s gonna need a huge scrubber.
Sal has the perfect blend of exasperation and sincere desire to help… I’d be willing to watch this conversation for months.
good news! knowing joyce…
I feel the same way…I really adore their interactions here.
Just here to be one of the first, I had this funny feeling when I see the 0 comments
I was kinda surprised, too, I stared at the clock until I got briefly distracted and then it was already 12:03 but still at 0 when I posted
I’ve noticed a lot of comment sections slowing down, DoA among them. Not sure why.
Probably because the summer holiday ended,teenagers and adults that read webcomics are going to school or work and don’t have time to see the strips only when they come back home.
that’s actually backwards. traffic dips in the summer while school’s out.
It had an upswing with the Dina arc; now people are probably just less likely to comment while they’re waiting for Willis to get back to that.
Dina generates a lot of comments because she’s popular and we don’t entirely understand her thought processes. Also there’s all the Dina memes that have to be spouted like six times every time she appears.
Clever girl
(sorry, I need my daily fix)
DoA has slowed down a bit because there’s not much to discuss right now. Joyce and Sal are having a perfectly reasonable conversation and addressing the very things we would normally speculate about.
*plays The Mary Jane Girls’ version of “Walk Like A Man” on the hacked Muzak*
Joyce is going to like Sal even more if Sal keeps up all that talk about forgiveness!
Well, actually, that’s nigh impossible considering Joyce’s current regard for Sal.
I read that last, contraction-less, explicit-accent-less panel as sal’s diction tightening the hell up at the thought of having to babysit Joyce.
Aye. With a faint, semi-concealed undertone of horror.
I read it in Walter White’s voice.(I think i watched too much of that show)
Huh.
Walter White and Applejack have surprisingly combinable voices.
Yes Joyce, talk to Dorothy. Make up, she said she wanted to spend more time with you.
Hatecha’s gonna hate!
Hate, hate, hate, hate.
Get to talking Joyce so Dorothy can believe in people again!
gotta love how enlightened and clear-headed these freshmen are!
Right? Especially Sal’s comment about how Dorothy isn’t required to forgive Joyce. I guess Sal may be older than her years but damn.
Its always easier to sort out other peoples problems then it is your own
So, so true.
Yup. Honestly, I think Dorothy SHOULD apologize to Joyce and ask for forgiveness. Drinking at the room party was extremely rude, and Dorothy’s folks raised her better than that.
Sal’s response is about the best she could’ve given (also how she turns the questions around a little bit; ‘you want her to forgive you, but are you willing to do the same?’)
I’m also curious about where panel 5 is leading. Like, is it just Joyce realizing something else that might have gotten too deeply ingrained, or is there something else? (Especially since she was more than willing to be Queen of the Drunks, though the party situations were very different.)
Also, Joyce is really good at avoiding eye contact in spite of her ginormous eyes.
Have Joyce & Dorothy really had no interaction since the party? (How many days ago was that?)
I can remember one night happening since party night. so day before yesterday?
Sounds right. I have a feeling that Dorothy is going to respond to Joyce’s apology or forgiveness or explanation or whatever the same way she responded to Becky “calling a truce” — slightly bewildered.
Probably… it depends on if Dorothy realized how much the drinking bothered Joyce and how guilty she feels about it.
Either way, things are building up for another session of Dorothy trying to coax Joyce and Walky into telling her what is wrong.
The party was Saturday night I think, and this is Monday (around lunchtime). And according to tags, no they haven’t interacted; last strip with both was at the party.
In fact Dorothy’s only had one appearance since the party, probably just to show that she’s still alive.
Joyce tolerance level: Reached
eh we can squeeze a bit more out of her (pokes Joyce’s face)
no, joyce. youll get dorothy back and then sal will keep being your friend SEPARATELY.
I kind of feel like Sal should pursue a career as a therapist.
Or a verbal ass-kicker… Or just a general ass-kicker with a verbal option.
Well, now I know what my next Commander Sheperd is going to look like.
She ain’t got no patience fo that
I think Joyce is upset with Dorothy because Joyce set a boundary for her party– no drinking– and Dorothy violated it. And Joyce is specifically unhappy with this because she had a certain kind of faith and trust in Dorothy… as well as some expectations… that her friend did not meet. It’s understandable, but it is something Joyce will have to come to terms and struggle with.
I think this is probably it. Just drinking a bit in of itself not really bothersome. Drinking at party which is supposed to be no alcohol, to make it an emotionally safe place for Joyce, would tend to hurt feelings.
Did Joyce ever verbalize to her guests that she wanted it alcohol free or did she just assume?
I’m not sure but I think when Becky ran around doing the invites, she said ‘no alcohol’.
She didn’t. It didn’t come up.
She asked Dorothy to bring some pop and Ethan to bring snacks, but that’s it. Maybe every one should have assumed “no alcohol”, but Billie was invited and even Joyce had to know she’d likely be drinking.
Has Joyce even shown any problems with having alcohol around? Not drinking herself of course, but she was happy being Queen of the Drunks.
Things may have changed since the incident, but she’s been doing a remarkably good job of pretending she’s fine and nothing’s changed. Dorothy hasn’t noticed she’s traumatized because she’s doing her darndest to deny that it has.
Yeah, the whole thing is a bit of a clusterfuck because she so doesn’t want to think about the assault and her triggers surrounding it that she hasn’t communicated any of them to anyone actively or intentionally, besides Amazi-Girl who confronted her, until this conversation with Sal (remember Ethan saw the triggers manifest directly).
So even if alcohol was triggering and upsetting for her because it’s too reminiscent of the circumstances surrounding her assault, she’s not in a place where she’s going to actively tell others because then she’d have to be aware and focus on things she doesn’t want to focus on.
And there’s the additional tangle that her disappointment with Dorothy over the alcohol may not entirely be trigger based. That particular flavor of Christianity tends to have a lot of moralizing on the subject of alcohol consumption and so part of Joyce might be reacting to Dorothy making “an immoral decision” in her religious estimation (the reason she was not worried by the drunks at the party is that she had no moral expectations of any of them and it is not considered a cripplingly major moral violation in that religion) and having to grapple morally with the idea that occasional over-consumption of alcohol isn’t a bad thing as well and that holding others to her particular religious standards if she thinks well of them morally is not something she’s going to be able to sustain.
Probably also the reason she can’t fully figure out what she’s actually feeling here and why.
In addition, she’s still worried about fallout from Dorothy finding out about Ethan. Another reason not to risk talking to Dorothy.
I actually hadn’t realized that no one else realized she wasn’t able to be outside alone. I knew she was using Dorothy and Walky as escorts, along with Ethan, and I kind of assumed they realized it, even if they didn’t know the details or how bad it was.
But at the same time, and this may be why Joyce is waffling on the subject, did she ever explicitly say “no drinking”, or just assume that the blanket ban over the dorm would cover it?
I think the issue is that Joyce thought Dorothy of all people would understand that she would not want drinking at her party because of what happened at the last party. The entire point of the dorm party was to make it a controlled environment, and Dorothy was one of the first people to violate that control. If Dorothy is supposed to be Joyce’s best friend, that means one of two things, from Joyce’s perspective: Dorothy considered Joyce’s feelings on alcohol and the party, and violated that safe space anyway, or she never even considered Joyce’s feelings to begin with. Either way, Dorothy comes out as either inconsiderate or callous. That, or Joyce is left to think that maybe her discomfort itself isn’t worthy of attention. So either she condemns Dorothy or herself.
And we know which choice Joyce prefers (Hint: It’s the one that gives other people the benefit of the doubt)
Or Joyce maybe makes the more mature realization that you have to express your desires if you want other people to consider them, even good friends. The alternative is expecting people to be mind-readers. And yeah, sometimes we can just about understand what other people close to us want or would prefer, but most of the time trying that results in misunderstandings on one side or another.
Ask for what you want or accept what you get.
Which is probably why Joyce is so hurt about it: She puts Dorothy on a pedestal, so anytime Dorothy stops being the perfect amazing BFF, Joyce feels betrayed.
More like, she assumed Dorothy was a perfect rose model and that her poop smelled like rose.
The blanket ban on alcohol in the dorm means that it’s flat-out rude to violate that ban without explicit permission from the occupants of the room–both of them, but especially the person playing host, in this case, Joyce.
Consider the possible ramifications if Ruth were actually as evil and assertive as she appeared to be in the original strips, and as strict as she claimed to be. Joyce could’ve gotten into serious trouble, at exactly the worst possible time for such a thing. Dorothy was being extremely selfish.
tl;dr: Sex isn’t the only part of a relationship, of any sort, where explicit consent matters.
Dammit Sal this is why now you must go make friends with McPedro. No buts missy.
Sal in panel two: “How much plot did I miss?”
Sal seems normal throughout this entire conversation is that suppose to happen?!?!?!
They’ve been at this for six years. It’s still semester 1. Maybe a month into the school year, possibly two.
And I thought Ash Ketchum staying 10 was bad…
At least this is, internally speaking, logical. Most strips happen immediately after the previous day’s.
When I was watching Pokémon as a kid, I always really enjoyed seeing the trio backpacking through the wilderness at episodes’ beginning or end; it was like the show was saying, “See, their lives are still going on in between episodes. Go live yours, and in a week they’ll have reached something for you to come watch.”
If we assume that every season of Pokémon, from good ol’ Indigo League to whichever one is running now, has happened within the space of a year, either that planet’s orbit is incredibly slow or it takes about as much time to navigate from town to town as it takes an expert to speedrun through the games. And if the latter, then there are a LOT of annual tournaments, not to mention constant zoological and geographical discoveries.
There is something very curious about Joyce’s behaviour. She’s either got a girl-crush on Sal or she’s looking for excuses not to interact with Dorothy. I’m not sure which it is but, previously, she never struck me as the sort who’d be afraid of confrontation and settling debts so that there could be peace. I’m beginning to wonder how much emotional experience her upbringing allowed her to have.
FWIW, I think that it wasn’t the drinking that was the issue. It was the fact that Dorothy found her party boring enough that she felt the need to drink. That would bother me too.
She’s afraid that her friendship with Dorothy got a crack and postpones the confrontation that will tell her for sure? It’s not THAT unusual behavior.
Also note how she is most unsure about her own feelings about the drinking. She might be afraid how she will react once she comes face to face with Dorothy.
Especially given that she recently unthinkingly took a hammer to her friendship with Sarah.
I think it’s both–Joyce is using her girl crush on Sal as an excuse to avoid seeking out Dorothy to work stuff out. And a person with anxiety issues avoiding a conversation that may have unfavorable results doesn’t strike me as that unusual. Until they talk, Joyce can think of Dorothy as “probably still her friend”, but the possibility that the conversation would end with that changing to “not her friend anymore” is what is keeping Joyce from talking things out with Dorothy. Of course, the longer she puts it off, the harder it is to approach her hopefully-still-friend and broach the subject.
(I sort of speak from experience here, albeit my situation is more employment related than friendship related, but the principle is the same….and knowing that makes it no easier to make the phone calls I need to make)
I still can’t quite put my finger on it; Joyce’s behaviour is odd. Maybe she’s realised that she’s being a fangirl and is playing it up because she likes how Sal reacts to her doing it?
No, I think her girlcrush on
sempaiSal is entirely earnest and not really examined. Joyce is being odd and avoidant for other reasons. (Bagge and neeks might have covered some of them, not sure.)I read your comment and an image immediately popped into my head and I, uh, couldn’t help myself and made this.
Before I clicked that, I figured you had photoshopped Joyce’s face onto Yandere-chan. But good god is that picture you made cute.
Ahah thanks. ^^ Just hadta add a little anime blush here and eye sparkle there; Joyce’s original expression was just perfect for this. :3
I agree with this. Joyce simultaneously has a major case of hero-worship of Sal owing to her depiction of cool and how she has intervened for her better, especially surrounding recovering from the assault and she expresses this very queerly owing to receiving a lot of her modeling on platonic friendships and hero-worship from a queer girl who didn’t realize she was queer and in love with her yet.
And she’s hung up on what Sarah said about Dorothy not accepting or approving of what she was doing with Ethan. She’s convinced that if Dorothy ever knew that she would reject her and become justifiably angry with her in much a similar way as Amber did and now that she knows she knows, she’s terrified to rip that band-aid off and receive that disappointment. As such, she’s actively trying to ignore and avoid the situation which is much the same way she’s handled other things that have felt too big to emotionally process.
That behavior kind of sounds familiar, as if I know someone very close who … doh!
Joyce doesn’t know how to argue normally, she just goes straight to ten and lashes out when she gets mad.
The witch’s Dorothy?
Does anyone else feel like a tiny car could drive across Sam’s eyebrows in the last panel?
It’s good that Joyce is opening up to people! ^_^
It’s gonna be fun when Sal connects the “boyfriend” and the “gay friend” dots.
She probably won’t. Sal is aware of Becky “HEY EVERYBODY I”M A LESBIAN!!!!” McIntyre.
That said, Sal, now aware that Ethan is free (at least from Joyce), may ask him out. After all, she goes for tall.
That could be pretty interesting
And she’d remember him.
You don’t see a therapist for the talking. You see them to go away at the end of an hour.
Ok, that quote didn’t work quite as well as I was hoping. What I meant is that Sal could get her interaction with other humans in very defined amounts of time, and then be able to be done with it, while still helping.
The forgiveness is for your sake, Joyce, not Dorothy’s.
Dorothy is a Schrödinger’s friend. Joyce is afraid to check and see if she is still a friend or not.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious but isn’t this none of Dorothy’s damn business? She’s a white heterosexual girl who isn’t even one of Ethan’s friends and doesn’t know anything about their situation other than the basics. If she has a problem with it, wouldn’t she do better to ask Ethan about it before she started making judgements?
“making someone be straight” or ‘correcting someone’s gay behavior’ are absolutely a thing even heteros should be condemning. There’s no need for her to condemn Ethan (Though there’s plenty of room for say, Daisy to do so), but it was sort of Joyce’s idea to start with.
Yeah, I mean, the situation is pretty complex, but Joyce was at the least feeding into Ethan’s self loathing about his sexuality and at worst actively encouraging it. It’s not something Dorothy would have stood by and allowed to happen if she knew about it.
Except Joyce didn’t do ANY of that. She wanted Ethan to be her boyfriend because it required nothing in the way of sexual expectations because she was terrified of sex after the whole business with her assault. At best, she fed into Ethan’s desire to be closeted. Which is terrible but I think Joyce didn’t try to turn Ethan straight–it was a far more complex situation which poor Joyce really needs someone to talk to about. And not Dorothy.
Just my .02.
I disagree. I don’t think she was really capable of understanding the full complexities of sexualities, but Joyce did talk about choices and avoiding temptation, and very much acted as though she saw homosexuality as being a decision based on lustful and therefor sinful feelings.
…Yes, like many people, Joyce had multiple motivations for her actions. She absolutely fed into his self-loathing and repeated harmful shit about gay people seriously. She carried an expectation of sexual reciprocation as well, just not an immediate one.
And she believes that she did badly by him and apologized and wouldnt further abet his attempts to stay closeted, I believe because she saw that as harmful.
Also, when we’re pointing out obvious things, Dorothy has actually not said anything on the subject yet. (Except “oh geez” under her breath). It is Sarah and Joyce who got the idea that Joyce relationship with Ethan would be a dealbreaker for her friendship with Dorothy. It remains to be seen what sort of judgement – if any – Dorothy will make.
What Sal’s saying in Panel 4 is so true.
It’s hard knowing you fucked up and the person you wronged may never forgive you, no matter how badly you want them to.
In a (not so) shocking turn of events, Sal, the teenage hooligan who has been in jail and robbed a convenience store, gives better life advice than Sarah, the by the books “adult” who dislikes any rule breaking.
Ehhh, I don’t think that’s how I’d describe Sarah. There’s a very specific reason that she tends to be a stickler for some rules: her scholarship that she could easily lose and not be able to stay in school. She follows the rules because she’s very aware of what can happen if she doesn’t. But she’s also the person that smashed a dude’s face in with a bat to help her friend.
Sal is not a “hooligan”, and never went to jail for that matter.
Yeah she did something stupid when she was a kid but she doesn’t deserve to have that held over her head for the rest of her life.
She robbed a convenience store, and took a HOSTAGE.
I know, and Amber and Ethan are entitled to hate her for the rest of their lives (and I mean, Amber stabbed her. It’s not like Sal came out of that some kind of victor), but Sal’s paid for it. She paid for it beforehand with years of parental neglect, then got sent to a boarding school for her entire adolescence so her parents could push their problem child as far away from themselves as possible, and even now they’re neglecting her. Of all people who should be giving her a chance, they’re falling short.
And, if it’s relevant, she seems to be on a pretty decent life course, from what we know (I know, in case I missed something). She’s doing school seriously, she’s doing proper b y Joyce in this arc, she shut her bro down when he went junior high on Joyce. She even tried to be a “nice girl” for her parents, which is more than they deserve and, I suppose reflects her need, but no one can say that she didn’t try.
Pretty much.
Regardless of what’s happened and will happen between her and Amber, Sal’s been punished enough by her parents and by society. She doesn’t deserve to be judged for it anymore.
‘Dorothy! Dorothy, will ya come here and talk to this chick?’
“You to, Jim, she is getting awkward again.”
So I don’t have internet for two weeks and I come back, and the first thing I see is the DREAD on the poll o_O Way to worry me. I thought something had happened!
But then, if something had happened, it would be better than this suspense.
Why is everyone saying they’re so surprised at Sal acting normal? This all pretty much falls in line with what I’d expect from her…
Why IS Joyce upset about Dorothy drinking at her party anyway? I’m no expert on the Bible, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t condemn the consumption of alcohol.