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Guilded Age
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Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Dumbing of Age
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Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Hemlock
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A witch accidentally marries a monster, and now she and her familiar has to navigate life around her monstrous husband and her even more terrifying in-laws.
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“Je ne peux pas manger mon pamplemousse a la bibliotheque.”
That’s about all I remember from twelve years of compulsory French education (in a bilingual country); to be fair, I know I left out some accents there, but I can’t be arsed digging up the windozALT codes to put the proper ASCII characters in their appropriate places…
@Vlademir
It only seems bad german to me, the type of german I see everyday in my classes. So I could probably translate it if it wasn’t also Pythonische Sprache.
I wonder sometimes about Joe. He’s supposed to be a big slut with the ladies. But we never see him with any girl at all except those we know are not dating or sleeping with him. Is he really a huge horndog or just a poseur?
I am fairly certain that along with the ultra-religious upbringing comes a hearty dose of at least veiled racism. Her mother would probably go off the wall if she announced she was dating a black man. And renew her insistence that Joyce go to some all white ultra-conservative religious school. Her father would probably only care if the relationship interfered with her grades or was in some other way not a good thing for her.
Or if the black man were also from a similarly conservative background, there’d likely be some approval, but a lot of cringe-inducing lines about “you’re one of the good ones.”
Carol’s reaction on meeting Sarah was “You’ve made an African-American friend! I can’t wait to tell everyone on our street that our daughter isn’t racist!” Carol might be okay with it, or she might not (a friend and a boyfriend are very different things), but the huge awkwardness would be guaranteed.
I get the feeling that Joe is more invested in it, seeing Jacob as some fulfillment of some “bro” ideal and Jacob is good-natured and gets along with pretty much everyone so he puts up with it, because why not, it’s company and conversation.
That is…probably the sweetest and most charitable possible interpretation of that relationship. Jacob is the real perfect cinnamon roll (too good for this world, too pure) here.
Oh dear, I think two unhealthy mindsets are about to feed each other…
Now, just to be clear, Joyce has made a perfectly valid lifestyle choice, and Jacob is clearly dealing with a problem, but I think the way they’re going about it might not be the best for their mental health. Namely, that Jacob is choosing to avoid his problem rather than confront it, while Joyce has tremendously unrealistic expectations of romantic relationships. I hope these two work it out…
He’s not “just avoiding the problem” any more than alcoholics who don’t drink are.
And Joyce’s expectations don’t seem unrealistic at all. What she had with Ethan (other than him not being attracted to her) seemed like it was just what she was looking for. All she needs to do is find that with someone who’s attracted to women.
Yeah, he has an addictive personality and recognizes an activity he doesn’t trust himself not to abuse. Plus, he’s also taking law classes and likely really doesn’t want to derail his studies.
Him being overly cautious about this makes a lot of sense in that context.
I don’t know, that explanation sounded much more like celibacy than any flavour of asexuality. As a grey-ace myself, I don’t see sex as overwhelming and distracting at all. In fact it’s pretty much the opposite, which is what tends to cause trouble in my relationships. Maybe he’s demisexual, but it still seems to me that his view of sex as this dominant force is too personal to be a purely intellectual understanding of the feeling.
I agree. Celibacy is a real thing. I think it’s speaks a lot to the way that sex is constantly shoved in our faces by media and pop culture that when a character comes a long who’s like, “sex isn’t on my list of daily priorities right now” people assume either there is something wrong with that character, or that they must be a certain orientation. Not as a dig at anyone here, just something I’ve noticed in general. You can be any orientation and be celibate. Or maybe you’re not celibate, maybe you just don’t want a sexual relationship right now or just haven’t been in one for a while and its not bothersome to you cause you’re busy with other things in your life. It seems to me like Jacob is just celibate.
Yeah as much as I love seeing asexual representation, it’s really nice to see someone with a healthy take on celibacy (as opposed to Joyce’s very unhealthy one.)
I was celebate before I started dating my husband. I mean, I had a decent sex drive and was tempted some of the time in my youth, but I didn’t want to have sex until I dated someone I truly trusted. I have all respect for those who are vibrant in their sexuality, but it wasn’t for me.
Sex to me is the ultimate act of trust and I am careful about who I trust. Me and my husband were close friends for years before we started dating so I knew that he was someone I could trust when I was at my most vulnerable.
I’m not asexual, I just wanted to wait until I was with someone I trusted.
Celebicy is an option, if that is your choice.
I don’t know. Demisexual here, and I basically have zero sex drive at all.
Until I do.
Then it’s……well, Jacob summed it up perfectly, I think.
I wasn’t prepared for it and it basically overrode any common sense I had and freaked me the fuck out. There were other problems with the relationship and things never *actually* went anywhere, in any sense.
It’s kind of hard to explain, but basically for that short period of time in that particular relationship, I’m fairly certain that’s about the only time I’ve had any sex drive at all.
And when it kicked in, it kicked down the door, did donuts on my carpet, drove up the walls and roared around my apartment’s ceiling, screaming at me to pay attention to it as it blasted the radio and let off an air horn inches from my ear.
But that sense of complete loss of control when I’m used to having a generally decent grasp on my emotions kinda terrified me.
I sympathize with Jacob, as someone who deals with addiction, myself. But, avoidance is a temporary measure, while long-term healing only comes when you confront the issue head-on and take control of it, rather than be ruled by it. I get that he’s not there yet, I just hope he *does* get there eventually.
This is assuming, of course, DoA Jacob has a problem to avoid. Walkyverse!Jacob had sex addiction to a life-ruining extent, but DoA Jacob’s problems mostly seem to be “I want a serious relationship but I’m so comedically sexy people keep wanting to have one night stands with me”. There’s never been any indication that he has trouble dealing with his own sexual desires.
“A relationship is more important to me than smashing unfortunates” is a mindset shared by an unfortunately small percentage of college students. It’s a lot more common a few years later though!
I don’t want to be your sex object
Show some feeling and respect
I don’t want to be your sex object
I’ve had enough and that’s a fact
I don’t want to be your sex object
You play your tricks they’re just perfect
I don’t want to be your sex object
You turn me on then you forget
*smacks Jacob upside the head* Don’t encourage her! While that may have been part of the reason Joyce was pursuing it, because of her near-rape experience and resulting fear, Ethan was doing it because he was trying to reject a part of himself. And she was complicit in this because of her religious upbringing. Yes — relationships not focused on sex can be respectful, but there was a lot more to it than that.
Yeah, Jacob! How dare you have thoughts informed by a perspective that isn’t dependent on the central character! Don’t you know that your entire existence is supposed to be a way to teach Joyce a lesson!?
I really love that, because things like objectification get made into just a “woman thing” and it erases other places where objectification happens and especially the objectification that frequently happens to men of color.
Yeah, if you spend any amount of time on mainstream porn sites the dehumanization of men of color as lust crazed beasts with huge penises is pretty blatant. And while a lot porn is rife with all of the worst aspects of society, it holds a mirror to our long history of fear that men of color are just waiting for any chance to rape our precious, delicate white women.
I didn’t hear him say that either. But I think this is just another case of everyone reading their own private comic strip that occasionally is different from the one everybody else reads. There used to be a lot of them with Danny, and the one I read seems to have a different Amber than the one many others read.
Jacob didn’t say that, though. He described his own situation, but he didn’t say that it wasn’t something they could understand, nor did he even imply that.
I… really do not see that. I don’t understand how you could come to that conclusion in this specific context.
If he said, like, “you don’t know how hard it is!” or something I could get it. But he’s just relating a painful anecdote. He’s never once implied that women never go through it.
He’s not even relating a painful anecdote, he’s poor-me-ing about how sexy he is to a woman who got roofied by a rapist. It’s not that it’s wrong for him to feel uncomfortable here, but the difference in experience between him and the person he’s talking to is so vast.
It’s like if a dude complains to a woman that he feels uncomfortable walking through the seedy alley they both have to go through every day because it’s full of perverts. It’s not that his experiences are wrong or invalid, but him saying it to her kind of indicates a bit of blindness, right?
I get that, in the DoA timeline, most of Jacob’s appearances are either a “I won’t be tempted by sex oh shit random shirtless Jacob” running gag or Sarah wanting to bone him, so his line is a bit of a meta-reference to his own treatment in the comic thus far. I get that the “black men as a sexual predator” thing is a real and massive problem in the real world (though I don’t think that’s what Jacob’s referring to here; I think he’s referring to have women keep wanting to bang him), but, like…..
It’s not what he’s saying, it’s what he’s not saying, if that makes sense
I mean, I think that there are problems that women face that, plainly, don’t happen as much to men, but I don’t think it’s wrong for Jacob to talk about it with Joyce (I understand that Jacob hasn’t, and most likely will never, be subject to an attempted rape, but it’s not his fault he wasn’t primed on Joyce’s traumas) or that he’s at all “poor-me-ing.” Dudes have problems too, and it’s okay to talk about them (just not, like, in a way that’s “dudes have problems too so women should shut up”).
It’s not about being So Hot It’s A Curse. He’s bothered that people see him as an unstoppable sex engine useful only for his massive genitals, prowess in basketball, and ability to infuriate their white suburban dads. It’d be like Amber talking about how annoying it is that people see a quiet nerd girl and instantly deduce that she’s a repressed horny animal in bed.
> He’s bothered that people see him as an unstoppable sex engine useful only for his massive genitals, prowess in basketball, and ability to infuriate their white suburban dads.
Not to imply black people don’t face racism and sexualized racism, but the subtext of this strip is the Jacob/Sarah/Raidah love triangle (and, to a lesser extent, how many strips end with the “look at how sexy Jacob is!” running gag), so I don’t think Jacob’s talking about that at all in this strip.
The entire reason Sarah even payed him attention at first was because she wanted to screw him a couple times, and she’s only now starting to accept that a friendship can at all exist. He’s experienced enough that Roz inviting him to her party was enough for him to figure out that Roz wanted something different than what he wanted.
Sarah certainly isn’t some kind of scoundrel for thinking Jacob is hot, but it’s that Jacob is upset that this is everything about him to some people. Like even with Roz, she isn’t really considerate of him and drops all interest in him as a person when she finds out he’s taken. What’s that to say to Jacob when someone’s interest in him amounts to a booty call?
And I really disagree with your interpretation about this being about a love triangle, or even that there’s a love triangle at all tbh. Jacob likes Raidah and views Sarah as a friend, and Sarah has the hots for him and it’ll probably never go anywhere because what Sarah wants is diametrically opposed to what Jacob wants.
I don’t think it’s similar to, say, Emily from QC getting mad that people treat her like wacky comic relief when she literally is nothing but wacky comic relief, and has no drive or existence outside of being that wacky comic relief.
Explaining something is also a common reaction when you make a statement and the general reaction is WTF from the group your talking to. Which happened to Jacob. He could tell his audience in the last strip wasn’t getting it.
You’re over-generalizing what he thinks they don’t know. Obviously, if he thought they knew this was something he’d experienced, he wouldn’t tell them.
That in no way requires him to assume that they will not or even have not had similar experiences. Even if they have and he was aware, the experience he’s talking about gives context to what he’s trying to tell Joyce: That it’s okay to want a relationship without sex.
Jacob is relating his personal opinion clearly based on personal experience, and relating it as a general observation of the human condition. He never says anything about gender or even comes close to anything like “you women will never understand”.
It sounds like you’re over-hunting for “mansplaining”.
He’s not. Check the dialogue he’s talking about himself and his experience. He’s just explaining why he feels the way he does about Joyce and Ethan’s relationship.
…I recently lost an otherwise intelligent friend of a friend on Facebook because once an argument started every explanation became mansplaining.
Just because one class of people gets the worst of something doesn’t mean other classes can’t voice their own experiences on the subject to those who’ve had it worse. It’s not a contest of who’s the biggest victim.
It’s a man condescendingly explaining something to a woman – usually something she already knows, often something about sexism, but it also gets used for things like a layman explaining some scientific topic to a female expert in that field because she’s a woman and wouldn’t know it.
It would have been far, far more offensive if he turned to one of the women and said “Look at YOU, you may never be more than a sex object to some people.”
He is talking about what he knows, from experience he has. Just because there is details about some of the other characters lives that means they can empathize with his point (details he doesn’t know, like Joyce’s experience at the party) does not mean he’s wrong to have his own experiences and talk about them.
No, this is… this is the exact opposite of that. Note how at no point does Jacob assume that other people don’t know what he’s talking about or haven’t thought about it themselves. In fact, he’s expressing it as support for Joyce, and IT IS WORKING. The way he describes sex 100% hits the nail on the head for what it has been to Joyce, and it’s the first time she’s ever heard it validated. NOTE THE BIG STARRY EYES AND THE TEARFUL ‘THANK YOU’. Jacob is doing the exact opposite of what you’re describing…
Called it last strip. He was talking about himself more than Ethan. Aw, Raidah-you better be treating him right.
People seem to think this is a problem, but in reality Jacob isn’t feeling too different from someone who is actually searching for a connection.
I mean if you’re a girl we pretty much feel like this already. The stares, cat calls, rude honking and comments-it gets frustrating. It’s very refreshing for a male character to reflect this issue.
…. okay, on the one hand. I can totally see Jacob as legitimately thinking and feeling all this stuff just like he’s saying it.
…. and on the other hand, I am imagining him being secretly bi and having gone through some sort of religious “therapy” to completely compartmentalize his sexuality.
Based on previous comics, it sounds like Raidah is on the same page as Jacob on this stuff and definitely has shown her much more interested in Jacob’s kindness and mind rather than just his hot body.
I think they might be really healthy for each other, which must be torturous for Sarah. Because she wants to hate Raidah and break this up, but she can’t. It’s too healthy for the guy she has a crush on and what she wants with him wouldn’t be.
I thought so too! I wasn’t sure why he was reflecting on it though. It was possibly because he was struggling with Raidah.
But it’s more likely that it’s because the subject just happen to pop up. He doesn’t seem passive-aggressive enough to do so because Sarah’s there. Though it would serve her right!
The honking is bad until they slow down and try to say anything “smooth” to me. That’s even worse because if I’m just walking home I can’t really feel like I can escape. I usually pretend to talk on my phone and glare at them when it happens.
Headphones are one of the greatest inventions for me. It’s doesn’t prevent all advances, but most people do stay away. I’m lucky to not have encountered men who won’t too often in my life. Part of why I want to get fit again is so I can be strong/run very fast without having to warm up for it.
Actually, he kind of nailed Joyce’s specific situation with his description? Her sex drive is powerful and much more prominent than she’s comfortable with from her fundie upbringing, but because of the scarred piece of shit she is fucking TERRIFIED of it at the same time. There’s a reason Joyce is giving that smile there. He’s validating her feelings without even knowing how right he is.
Like, no, that was not the only reason Joyce hooked up with Ethan, and the other half was pretty icky, but that’s been discussed so many times, and this is the first time someone talks to Joyce about the part where she felt SAFE in that relationship and how much comfort and joy that brought her.
THE ISSUE IS NOT THAT A SEXLESS RELATIONSHIP IS A BAD THING.
THE ISSUE IS THAT A GAY MAN WAS BEING ENCOURAGED TO ENTER A HETEROROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP.
As for Jacob’s thing? I can get that kind of issue. I mean, not PERSONALLY, but yeah, people assuming one thing looking at you and you wanting something completely different? Totally a legit thing.
I just don’t think Jacob should be pushing that on others with completely different issues…
He came to a conclusion that he felt was reasonable, based on the information he had at the time and filtered through his own beliefs and biases. The only thing he’s guilty of is not knowing something he couldn’t reasonably be expected to know in the first place. People do this all the time, it’s how we go through life and how we think.
I’m about to do it myself.
Based on what I’ve seen of Jacob’s character thus far, if he were informed of the specifics of Joyce and Ethan’s relationship I think he would revise his opinion, and maybe apologize for the aforementioned assumption. Jacob seems to be the kind of person who just wants people to be happy and decent to one another, and will readily admit when and if he is at fault.
In other words, his argument is still completely valid. He just unknowingly used a bad example.
Again, I’m not saying that Jacob’s a bad person… but I do think he made a big mistake here.
He seems to know that Ethan is gay. He certainly doesn’t seem surprised to hear it in the last strip, at least. And while we don’t know exactly what advice he gave, it seems more than “Sure, you’re a gay guy, she’s a straight lady, of course you can be friends”.
*insert Gay Best Friend joke here*
The reason it’s leaving me frowny is because he was giving a thumbs up to a gay man engaging in a heteroromantic non-sexual relationship. While we don’t know for 100% certain, every impression I’ve seen of Ethan points him to being homosexual and homoromantic. Recommending that sort of relationship is pushing on someone struggling with whether or not to go back into the closet.
That’s the problematic part. If Jacob just said “…hell, I don’t know… is it working for you? It is? Awesome.”, that’d be one thing. But this… seems more like active advice, which is where the problems come from.
He’s not saying that. He’s not commenting on the fact of a gay man dating a straight woman. He’s commenting on the fact that the relationship was based on personality and emotional compatibility, with sexual compatibility a non-factor. He doesn’t place as much emphasis on physicality in his relationships (though he has expressed an eventual desire for it), and he admired the two for seemingly conquering a hurdle he expresses at least past trouble clearing.
1. It’s obvious that Jacob knows about Ethan and Joyce’s relationship, and as you say, Jacob seems to know that Ethan is gay (though you could be wrong about that and either doesn’t care what Ethan’s orientation is or didn’t consider it relevant to the overall point he was about to make). The question is, how did he learn about this, and how much does he know? Did he just see them apparently being in a relationship, and learned about the sexless aspect second hand (therefore drawing his conclusions off of potentially flawed information), or was all this from a conversation he had with Ethan himself, them being roommates and all? (If this has been previously established, then I’ve apparently forgotten)
The conversation that had been referenced in the previous page was Joe learning about Ethan and Joyce from Jacob.
2. What has he said and done following learning everything he does about their relationship?
To me personally, it doesn’t feel like Jacob was suggesting or implying that a gay man being in a (supposedly) romantic, albeit sexless relationship was a good idea. To me it just felt like a segue into a new conversation topic (the idea that a relationship doesn’t require sex to be healthy or successful). The only time he has at all mentioned Ethan and Joyce’s relationship was at the very beginning of his argument, in which he clarified what specifically told Joe. He hasn’t really said anything about how he feels about Joyce temporarily being Ethan’s beard.
For that reason, I’m gonna wait and see if Jacob is done talking.
“Jacob seems to know that Ethan is gay (though you could be wrong about that and either doesn’t care what Ethan’s orientation is or didn’t consider it relevant to the overall point he was about to make)”
Danny and Ethan once almost boned (not really) in front of Jacob, and then Ethan was like, “I think we both just came out to my roommate.” So Jacob knows that Ethan likes dudes, and perhaps knows that he’s gay specifically. (The prom incident was mentioned, so I think he accidentally revealed he was gay? Can’t remember for sure.)
My bad, he goes back to them at the end. But the way he says it feels open to interpretation. Is he talking about their former relationship, or the friendship that has resulted from said relationship? To me, it feels like he’s talking about the latter at the end.
Correct me if I am wrong, but your point seems to be this:
You feel that Jacob’s argument could be improved with the addition of something along the lines of “I like your idea, but your execution of it could use some work”.
We don’t know much about what Jabob and Ethan said, but the impression I’m getting is that Jacob heard about Ethan and Joyce, two people with incompatible sexual and romantic orientations, dating and said “that’s a really smart idea”.
Which it very much isn’t. It’s a relationship that’s doomed for disaster, because while Joyce seems totally intent, committed and willing to wait for marriage for sex, that doesn’t mean that she’s not going to want sex when they get married, and Ethan will never want to have sex with her.
That doesn’t make Jacob a bad person. That makes him a guy who’s letting the issues he’s still struggling with impact the advice he gives to others… like most people, particularly most young people, do. Good people still screw up on occasion.
I think only two. Joyce is feeling validated in her belief that sex doesn’t HAVE to be an important factor in forming a relationship, and is happy to find someone (stable and mature) who has similar beliefs on the subject as herself (which is very helpful to someone going through paradigm shift like she is). Sarah seems to be feeling guilty over the selfish way she’s been pursuing Jacob (looking for a largely physical relationship and to mess with Raidah).
Joe just seems to be confused, and can’t imagine not having sex if you’re in a relationship with someone.
As a guy who doesn’t get that sort of attention very often, I wish I had Jacob’s problem. At least he knows he’s handsome or attractive enough that some people may view him as a sex object. I get that sort of attention so rarely that I have no idea if I’m handsome or not. It would be nice to know one way or the other.
I know folks who aren’t used to positive sexual attention might think “any attention is good”, but there’s a vast difference between people saying you’re cute on occasion and the way your skin crawls when you’re being sized up as some inhuman chunk of meat.
And it doesn’t make you feel pretty or handsome. It makes you feel unsafe and makes it hard to be out places on your own.
As a bisexual male, I don’t mind being viewed as a sex object. The difference I think is that so far I have been able to control the degree of interaction ie. I get to say yes or no to stuffing your holes or having my holes stuffed. I’ve never felt unsafe all this while. People in general have been fairly respectful.
Because of cultural factors and plain old sexual dimorphism, most men are not familiar with the feeling that someone’s else’s sexual attraction to them has a potential, implicit, threatened loss of control or vulnerability. From what I have read and conversations I have had, someone else’s attraction can be a double-edged sword for some women, in a way that’s far less likely for men.
(This is not to say that every man is making that threat to any woman his eyes even unintentionally linger on for an extra moment… though I’ve read claims that such is true, they rank down there with “all sex is rape” in the terrible and silly at the same time category. This isn’t about what’s happening every time, it’s about what could happen one time.)
It wouldn’t really be a problem in your case, then. That’s the point. Jacob’s bothered that people reduce him to Big Brawny Slab of Man Meat with no thoughts or opinions.
Him talking about his joy in his relationship with Raidah because he’s talking about feelings and learning about the Muslim faith while Sarah fantasizes about getting drilled in class is kinda the encapsulation of that.
Especially because she frequently tunes out things that are important to him to fantasize him as a hot sex machine.
Like, she doesn’t actually care about the stuff he cares about, she just thinks he’s hot and wants to bang him.
And that can be enough for some. Casual sex can be fun for those that are inclined for that, but it’s definitely not what Jacob is interested in in the slightest.
I am in my early thirties, and it was only recently brought to my attention that I’m apparently quite handsome, and not boring and plain looking as I had always assumed since I so rarely get complements on it.
A lot of interactions which had been confusing at the time are suddenly making a lot more sense. It also seems I’ve been totally oblivious to most flirting. I know this (now) because a more recent friend has, on multiple occasions now, had to basically pull me aside and tell me.
So yes, the absence of that kind of attention is not a good indicator of whether or not people find you attractive.
I suppose it could be possible that I’m really oblivious to flirting, but at this point in my life I have no way of knowing if it’s that or I’m just ugly.
if you were ugly, you’d probably have been told so, many times, by lots of people. american society, at least, looooves to ridicule people who are ugly. or at least, that’s the impression i’ve gotten.
if you’ve never been told what an ugly (slur) you are, then you’re probably at least within ‘acceptably plain’ range.
By societal standards, I’m really not what would be considered attractive, but I’ve still been subject to objectification on various occasions. It was not fun and if anything made me feel worse about myself and not better. Most of the time I’m read as female, so I may be more likely to be viewed as a sex object, regardless of (un)attractiveness, but… yeah. Basically my point is, objectification =/= attractiveness, fun.
That would… fuck, that would actually be a pretty awesome relationship, though I worry that Joyce’s fantasies might make her quickly realize that she doesn’t actually want the chaste relationship she claims to want.
And yeah, we’ve seen a few hints of Joyce’s home church and their views on race, but that would force things out into the open in a big way.
That’s kind of the crux, isn’t it? Joyce wants the pre-marital hanky panky but shames and guilts herself for it*. Sex was looming over Joyce’s feelings in her relationship with Ethan, if only through Joyce wanting it a whole bunch.
Jacob presumably has an interest in sex, he’s just unconcerned with exploring that. It’s a distant thing that happens way later on down the line once way more important things have been established. Kinda like Danny.
*To be perfectly clear on this, I don’t believe that Joyce abstaining from sex for any reason, religious or otherwise, is somehow a character flaw. Joyce can hanky panky at her leisure.
And honestly, that’s the piece that makes me want to headcanon Jacob as some flavor of ace. Cause, celibate people frequently are constantly battling their desires like Joyce because they want it just as much, but Jacob seems genuinely non-plussed and even happy at the thought of a relationship that either never got physical or only ever had a very little amount of physical element.
Which would seem to suggest at the very least, a low-level of sexual attraction or interest in sex.
I doubt Jacob would be UNHAPPY about the other party finding him sexually attractive or wanting to have sex with him. I think he has his own values in celibacy or wanting to wait. He can have a normal sex drive and still place those values over having sex.
What he’s likely happy about is finding someone who sees him as more than just physically attractive, but emotionally/mentally as well. If anything, Jacob seems more like an old-school romantic who wants things to be serious before moving into anything physical.
Jacob….is looking at this through his own lens. It’s an understandable and reasonable lens to look at it through, and the only one with which he has personal experience, but there is a few layers of misunderstanding here. This is probably a fairly personal wonk, but as someone who grew up in an extremely repressive catholic household, I can get frustrated when hearing people talk about non-sexual romantic relationships (or even just friendships) in such a beatific way, even if there’s no inherent judgement to the statements. Particularly frustrating to me is when people speak as though a relationship being platonic automatically makes it better and more important than sexual relationships. Yes, the other is a message jammed down our throats way too much as a culture, but that doesn’t magically make the former always correct. And it definitely doesn’t help that he clearly doesn’t understand just what an unhealthy, repressive thing that was for both of them. There’s no real reason he should know those things, but he speaks as though he’s knowledgeable about all the details anyway.
tl;dr: sexuality (or lack thereof) is vast and complicated and has a metric fuckton of baggage in our society, not to mention the individual baggage we each approach it with. These baggages all get mixed up at the emotional baggage claim, tags get tangled, and basically that’s why even people who are queer and who want to be sexually open (like me) can occasionally be total shitheads about legitimate sexual choices and orientations, particularly those surrounding a lack of sexuality (also like me.)
And it’s often frustrating because those tend to be the folks fastest to shit on ace couples who never want sex, because to them, the suffering and denial of one’s self is the point.
It’s also worth remembering that Jacob knew about the relationship (and the non-sexual nature of it) long before he knew Ethan was gay. I believe they’d broken up before he found out.
He likely formed his impression of the relationship as something he admired based on his mistaken assumption about Ethan and didn’t fully reconsider it in light of the new information.
I am more than a little bit uncomfortable with Joyce’s smile in this strip.
I’ve had it explained to me that it can also be that Joyce is finding validation in someone else agreeing with her desire for a relationship where sex isn’t an absolute necessity, and while I think that’s a perfectly valid and probably true interpretation of this strip, I’m nonetheless skeeved out a bit at the suggestion that any aspect of Joyce and Ethan’s relationship had a positive impact, let alone on Ethan.
I don’t think the comic is saying that Joyce and Ethan ended up being The Right Thing. It’s just weird to me that Joyce can happily smile at being told about how wonderful that relationship was when it was so damaging to Ethan, and even to herself. I feel it’d be more fitting if she, like, erred her gaze away or something, because what Jacob is describing isn’t what her relationship was about.
That’s a good point. I was vaguely bothered by Joyce’s smile and yeah, that definitely hits home why.
She knows it was toxic, that it was harmful, that it was part of this horrible tradition and only something he wanted because of anti-gay bigotry. Yeah, it’s nice to hear an affirming statement, but it does have the feel of her being “let off the hook” for her previous bad actions by a straight guy misinterpreting the relationship.
Like, I think Joyce will be strong to still remember what was toxic, but yeah, it definitely sends some wrong messages and allows her a convenient excuse to let herself off for what really was an awful action.
I feel like it has nothing to do with what Jacob is saying about their relatinoship, and everything to do with what he’s saying about sex. Joyce has been caught in a very powerful mental trap which includes feeling like she can’t talk about it with anyone. If she’s scared of being raped, why does she have erotic dreams? If she has erotic dreams, why do they tend to turn into nightmares? Jacob just described the approach she has never heard before, one that leaves her neither a ‘prude’ nor a ‘slut’ nor ‘broken’. Of course she’d have a smile!
To me, the smile looks a little pained and uncomfortable — like, she’s happy someone found something good in that relationship and a big part of her wants to take comfort in that fact, but there’s that pesky other voice she’s just found reminding her it really was not a good relationship for them. Look at the way her bottom eye lines are drawn.
Basically, it looks like a very conflicted smile to me. One that could easily be mistaken for pure relief. She really wants to believe this but can’t quite.
To me, that looks more like a “so happy I could cry” smile, perhaps because she’s found someone a kindred spirit of sorts when it comes to her evaluation of what’s important in a relationship.
I mean, to be fair, neither Joyce nor Ethan had bad intentions. For Ethan it was about wanting to feel freer to be himself and for Joyce it was about wanting to feel safe. It was still colossally fucked up, because it wasn’t fair or truly validating for either of them. But, it’s not like they were wanting to hurt each other or themselves, even though they were doing so unintentionally. So, I hoping that the smile is Joyce feeling like, ‘hey, maybe the feelings that I was having then don’t make me a totally horrible person.’ Because Joyce has also been having a bit of self-hate happening, where she’s really angry with herself now that she’s come to realization on some issues. And she might find it easier to move forward if she doesn’t have to hate herself as much for where she was.
I said this elsewhere, but I think my issue with viewing this strip like that is that I don’t think Joyce would ever get hassle from anyone other than Joe over wanting a relationship that had no emphasis on sex. I can’t imagine a scenario in which Joyce would feel guilty over wanting that kind of relationship, because that’s what she’s wanted since day one, and why Ethan was such a tantalizing partner for her, because he was incapable of ever stepping up to that.
I think I feel like this because Joyce never really got any blowback for dating Ethan and furthering his excavation deeper into the closet.
I mean, she had some personal blowback from herself, not so much from other people. Well, she did get blowback from Amber, actually, though that resolved itself. I tend to feel like it’s more important for a character to recognize their faults than to be punished for them. After she figured out that what she was doing was hurting Ethan, she did make efforts to be supportive in the right way though, like encouraging him to go to the LGBT+ event. She can’t undo what she did that was bad, but she can acknowledge it, which she did, and do her best to do better, which she does.
The thing is, Joyce doesn’t want a relationship without sex, it’s that she feels guilty for wanting one with sex and having sexual desires. We have seen her having some struggles with this, her breakdown with Dorothy and being attracted to Ethan, even though she was specifically dating him to have a no sex relationship. It’s then complicated by her trauma from the roofie incident. So, I definitely not saying her relationship with Ethan was a good thing, because it definitely wasn’t, just that desire is kind of a tricky issue for her. So it might be reaffirming for her to hear someone else say that sexual intimacy can be scary.
Joyce would absolutely “get hassle” for wanting a relationship without sex from people other than Joe. Cerberus has illustrated why many times in the comments, and Joyce’s encounter with Ryan…? Was definitely her “getting hassle” for not wanting to have sex on a “date”.
Except that with Ryan there was no date, there was no attempt to seduce or otherwise ask for sex. She was not even offered the chance to agree.
The plan, from the start, was to isolate and drug her.
You’re not necessarily wrong about other cases, but Ryan was something else entirely.
That is also true. In much of fundie world (and large parts of the rest of the world) she would be blamed for leading him on, even though this is perhaps the most blatant example of there being no possibility of that.
This is why I love reading Willis’s work – the characters feel so real. Jacob is going off on his own thing and viewing Joyce and Ethan’s relationship through his own point of view, highlighting what he thought is important and ignoring or minimising the not-so-great aspects of it. It’s a thing people do, and the way it’s done here is perfect. It doesn’t feel faked or forced; when done wrong it usually feels like the character lacks self-awareness, is being preachy (on behalf of the writer), or is just plain dumb.
Here’s some French and joual for you Joe: Va te faire foutre, salaud. Maudit de osti de tabarnak de calice. Go look it up if you’re unsure what I said, morceau de merde. That was really honest, nice off, and probably hard for Jacob to say, even if he didn’t know the particulars of what led to him saying it. And it’s good thing for Joyce and Sarah to hear. So, “Vouz avez plein de merde,” as my grandmother likes to say.
Had a whole different write-up before I caught Willis’s old post about Jacob above.
Panel 1: So I initially read this as an addictive personality thing because of the arc in Shortpacked, but given Willis’s comments, I’m now much more heavily leaning in to this potentially being a hint that Jacob might be gray-ace.
Cause yeah, he’s acknowledging that sex can be powerful and distracting, but he’s rarely shown struggling with that attraction and the rest of the comic is about being put on the spot, objectified, and expected to sexually perform and…
Fuck if that isn’t a very ace struggle. Feeling boxed in, feeling uncomfortable being sexually active, feeling pressured from all sides and not sure how to respond. Like, it might just be he’s like Joyce and has a lot of sexual feelings but is terrified of it, but I dunno, he seems much happier when thinking about a relationship where sex isn’t just delayed but completely taken out of the running entirely.
I dunno, this first panel implies enough sexual attraction for me to be hesitant headcanoning him as ace, but I sure as fuck am headcanoning him as gray-ace at least for the time being.
Panel 2: Aww, Joyce’s face here is adorable. And well, why wouldn’t it be. She makes a lot of noise about the beliefs she was raised in about pre-marital hanky-panky, but the truth she’s admitted to both Dorothy and Sarah is that she’s terrified. She’s terrified that all her relatives will see her in the afterlife getting freaky and judge her for it. She’s terrified by all the messages she’s received growing up that that’s the sin that stains you forever. And she’s scared that she may have denied herself a lot of pleasure for what will turn out to be a lie.
And she’s had literal nightmares about her sexual desires that have mixed in her trauma from her near rape.
This is the first person who’s said to her, yeah, I’m in a similar place. I’m also scared by how overwhelming and intense sexual thoughts feel. I’m also scared of having sex.
It’s an affirmation she hasn’t realized she’s desperately needed. And I think she needed to hear it from someone who wasn’t just doing it for the bog standard religious reason, but because he shares a similar fear about the acts on their own.
And I think hearing that is going to go a long way to getting her to a place where she can accept pleasure into her life on her terms and at her own pace.
Panel 3-4: Oh Sarah… *shake head*. Note also this is the first time she’s been shown to not be looking in the complete opposite direction. And that thirsty look. No, girl, this is not a well that is safe to drink from.
Panel 5: I love that it’s Jacob who makes this comment. Because yeah, objectification is not just a “girl thing” and men of color definitely get it a lot as well. And I like how he comments a bit about what can make objectification so skeezy. Because, it’s not just attraction, it is being viewed as an object, no more meaningful than a vibrator or a fleshlight. And that… is often scary as fuck.
To know you are not being seen as you but as a piece of anatomy someone wants to get with and that your consent might not matter one way or another to that end. I’ve been on the end of those and it doesn’t make one feel good. It mostly makes one feel creeped the fuck out. And his face conveys that amazingly well.
And it can make sex excrutiating. Like I can’t speak for sexuals, but I know for myself, I can’t get to a sexually performative headspace in the same evening I’ve been creeped on by an objectifying piece of shit or a chaser. I just feel… off, so yeah, if he’s not ace spectrum, regularly dealing with that could be more than enough of a reason for him to not really be feeling a rush into physical stuff.
Panel 6: Oh hello, guilt, how are you?
But seriously, I think it’s starting to sink in more and more for Sarah that this fantasy is best left a fantasy. That Jacob and her would be disastrous and that Raidah, as much as she hates her, is turning out to be the type of partner Jacob wants and needs right now. That that dynamic is proving to be genuinely healthy for him in a really refreshing way.
And hopefully that lesson is going double for Joyce. That even though she likes Sarah, Sarah and Jacob would not work together, because Sarah’s interest is the exact type that makes him uncomfortable and sad and is partially responsible for making sex scary for him.
Panel 7: Though unfortunately, it looks like Joyce might just be feeling starstruck by being validated instead.
And yeah, he’s seeing in that relationship an ideal for himself. One where he knows for sure there won’t be any sexual pressure or expectations, where sex is taken off the table entirely and he can just enjoy the romantic aspects of a relationship without them (oh hello ace analogue).
But in doing so, he is willfully ignoring what was so toxic about Joyce and Ethan. The fact that it was a form of reparative therapy by two people terrified of admitting what they actually want.
And there’s a cold irony in that, that Jacob is finding strength and inspiration in a relationship model he sees as freeing him from objectification and expectations of sexual performance where he could be himself by whitewashing a relationship model that was all about unhealthy denials of what they want and the active running away from the models that would make them happiest.
Panel 8: Oh Joe, you acephobe.
But seriously, it’s shit like this that makes him so untrustworthy. That he views things like boundaries, fears, ace models, a desire to be free of objectification, as something he needs to overemphasize viewing as foreign.
And well… there’s no way he’s not encountering lots of folks with boundaries, with desires not to be objectified by him, that are scared of pregnancy in what is quickly becoming a time when birth control and abortion may no longer be easily accessible for poor students, that feel uncomfortable being pressured. And this not just dismissal, but open hostility and mockery of the concepts from someone he actually respects makes me way less likely to believe he reacts at all possibly when it’s coming from the meat he’s hunting.
And well, having been targeted by creeps like him, who act like being ace is some foreign confusing thing that’s just a “challenge” to overcome, I’m not overly inclined to be overly gracious in interpreting his actions and responses and viewing them in their most charitable interpretation.
Okay, as a SWCM who only just now saw the term “Gray Ace” and realizes that Wikipedia isn’t exactly a super-awesome source…
Gray-Ace (…and forgive me, but the cynical ass in me is thinking the term was termed that because it’s a near homophone for “Grace”) is basically a mostly asexual person that occasionally wouldn’t mind getting some? Like how Robin is kinda portrayed regarding Leslie, or how a lot of guys are straight almost all the time, but then a picture of a ripped Brad Pitt comes up and they’re going… yeah…
That rambling made sense, at least? >_>
As for Joe…
There’s a line between “Dumbass” and “Jackass”. I went to college as a SWCM, and while I didn’t even get a bloody fraction of the action that Joe got (…comp-sci major), I recognize some of Joe’s shit here as being more on the “Dumbass” end of things than the “Jackass”.
This comic especially. He’s not actively insulting Jacob or anything, he honestly just doesn’t seem to get it. It’s really, really easy for us SWCM’s to be blind to so much crap in the world, not out of active malice, but just because… we’re not looking because we didn’t get that there was stuff to look for.
It’s why I’m wondering if Willis is going somewhere with Joe. Maybe he’s just a secondary character for the more interesting one to bounce off of (a story can only have so many major chars, after all), but I can totally see a story arc around Joe burning bridges or accidentally hurting people…
Gray-Ace is a broad category but usually means that someone experiences very intermittent or infrequent sexual attraction or only sexual attraction under very specific circumstances.
It’s basically a catch-all term for those who exist in the gray area between sexual and asexual.
My fiancee is actually gray-ace and has occasional periods of high sexual attraction and long periods of feeling absolutely no sexual attraction whatsoever.
Sorry I keep asking these questions, “Serious sources” tend to be precise and exact practically to the point of being nigh-incomprehensible.
It does definitely sound like Jacob is still feeling out his sexual identity, though. I mean… how many people have heard of “Asexual” or anything on that spectrum by the age of 20? Straight/Gay/Bi/Trans, it’s safe to say that most people have heard of that. Ace? I was definitely into my 20’s when that was a concept I become even generally aware of, and I went to college in California. Jacob’s 18-19 in Indiana…
No worries, I’m usually up for answering questions on this stuff.
And yeah, definitely. It’s a little easier for kids to find these terms earlier thanks to things like tumblr, but growing up, I didn’t find the term asexual until I was 19.
Don’t feel bad. I’m in my 40’s, and though I’ve known about the concept of asexuality for some time, the colloquial terms have escaped me until this week, reading the comments.
Until this week, “Ace” to me was either a playing card or something my Yorkshire (UK) friend said as a synonym for “cool”.
The comments this week have been very enlightening.
Whether he’s still feeling it out or not, given that the author has stated everyone’s is ultimately the same as it is in Shortpacked, and IIRC he’s kind of most definitely not, there, wouldn’t that be an implicit failure to acknowledge it as a real identity?
Part of the reason I’m so bitterly aggressive with my comment above is for most of the reasons here, especially because my full time job means I have to interact with a lot of Joes, often when they’re drunk. While I’m a part time history teacher substitute at a private high school, my full time job is actually as a bouncer at a bar from a half hour before happy hour until last call. And damn but the Joes come out in force sometimes. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to kick out a Joe who had had far too much or was clearly ignoring the lady’s body language. I may have a hard time expressing myself due to Aspergers, but I made damn sure to learn how to properly read body language as part of an attempt to make sure I don’t make people uncomfortable. Thankfully the owner isn’t sleazy and is fully behind my kicking out Joes. But tonight I actually got let off early because a Joe broke my nose when I tried to inform him that he needed to leave. The asshole was going after this one lady hard, even though she was clearly creeped out and uncomfortable. He also looked like he’d had a few too many drinks. I politely yet firmly told him that he needed to leave and that I would call him a cab. He refused. I again politely but firmly told him that needed to leave, saying that he had had to much to drink and was making things unpleasant for the other customers, and that I would call a cab so that he would get home safely. Then I tried to gently take him aside and he swung at me. I’m still standing, so he tries another swing. At this point I’m pissed, the lady is clearly afraid and one of the bartenders is coming to help me. So reflexes take over, I grab his fist with one hand and slowly say with as much ice as possible, “Sir, you need to leave or I will make you leave.” At this point he suddenly realized that he had just punched a 5’11” 240 lbs late twenties man in the face and said man hadn’t flinched despite a bleeding nose, and he finally got the message. Boss told me to take the rest of the night off to get my nose looked at while marking me down as having worked a full shift, the lady thanked me as I left (which was honestly real nice of her and I don’t think she needed to) and now I find out I’ve gotta sub a class tomorrow and explain to a bunch of sophomores why I have a broken nose. So I wanted to make an indepth analysis tonight as well, but I’m a little pissed with all patience for things Joe gone at the moment. Also, sorry about putting this here Cerberus, but I needed a place to type off some steam, I tend to agree with your analyses and views a lot, and your comment threads are generally very safe places. Or at least I perceive them to be anyways.
I want to thank you for helping make the comments a safe place that I feel comfortable, like I said I have a hard time expressing myself because of asperbers, so it’s nice to actually have that. Plus, you’ve put yourself out there about the sheer amount of hell you’ve been through and that makes you one brave lady. So I guess me sharing my crap is my way of trying to return the favor and make you feel more comfortable, like let you know that there are people who are part of the socially privileged majority that aren’t complete crap. I mean, lord knows I have issues, but I feel like if there’s something I can do for someone who is less socially privileged than the least I can do is do it to let them know that there are decent human beings out there. Especially with this four year shit show starting up. Crap. I don’t think I did a good job of explaining at all, but that’s the best way I could put it.
I hope you tell your students the truth.
Might do them some good… some of them could know there are people that defend against such actions, some of them could be less likely to become Joe.
I did. Surprisingly it made me simultaneously less intimidating and more impressive to the students, as I had a couple “That’s cool” responses, and a couple students that aren’t doing so well asked me about possible tutoring, which I’ve been hoping from them for months, they’re smart kids but they seem to be having trouble with some of the more recent material. Although apparently a couple think that I’m covering up secret involvement in a fight club. Rumors start like wild fire on a Jesuit campus.
I think that I have to lay down my marker here. I do understand that you have been through hell Cerberus and, when you’ve been through hell, you naturally want to see the warning signs in advance so that you never go through it again. However, what Joyce did was not ‘reparative therapy’. What it was was an ignorant girl trying to help a nice boy achieve a goal that was unhealthy for him in the ignorant illusion that it was both what he really needed and was good for him. It had none of the deliberate structure of malice of ‘reparative therapy’.
I do understand why you hate the idea Cerberus but you really need to stop imposing upon Joyce that level of structured malice that was never there.
BenRG, I agree Joyce was too innocent to be deliberately be trying reparative therapy.
HOWEVER – her actions were programmed by people who were not at all innocent. The structure of malice was quite present, even though Joyce personally was not malicious.
If a 3 year old grows up in a racist household and repeats hurtful language without understanding, they are personally innocent, but the structure of malice is real, and the hurt is real. Joyce’s action seems comparable to this example.
Also goes back to Roz (wrongly) telling Joyce “You are your church, you’re not getting off with one little epiphany after telling gay men like Ethan he’s bad for being what he is, for eighteen years.”
Joyce is 18 but her agency isn’t. So much of Joyce has changed in the 2 months in college, and she still says “I love them all” about kinds of people she never met before and her upbringing has taught her to pigeonhole.
Joyce’s agency is so new she’s not even fully aware she has it yet.
The other thing is: People don’t have to intend malice to do some really terrible things. A lot of the folks working on old-school ABA programs* think that what they’re doing is Good and Helpful and Necessary.
Like, people who want to abuse and/or kill me are scary – but scarier are the ones who think they’re “helping”. Joyce, the way she was before, was really fucking scary. People who think they know what’s best for you more than you do will do all manner of horrible things to you, all the while firmly convinced that it’s for your own good.
At least someone who wants to kill me is self-aware about their hatred and therefore transparent about it. Someone who’s so wrapped up in poisonous ideology they think hate is love? Those folks are the ones who blind-side you.
Occurs to me that like 99.9% of allistics don’t know what’s problematic about ABA so two sentence explanation: You’ve heard of the feminine boy project? The guy who did that (Ivar Lovaas) also used autistic kids as lab rats using the exact same techniques, and ABA is the result except if you’re autistic it’s not considered abuse, it’s “therapy.”
I’ve heard of only two “conversion therapies”, gay conversion therapy and now autism conversion therapy. It’s starting to sound like a phrase with nothing but bad connotations.
It’s pretty much always a case of “here is the hole that we have decided is Normal, and we’re gonna hammer everyone into it… and if the edges that don’t fit get all torn up, or the whole thing just breaks, oh well too bad.”
They had the same goals as reparative therapy – “Fix Ethan’s Gender identity” and turn him into a “straight man”, and Joyce would have known about and supported reparative therapy when she was dating him – a lot of the language she used in that relationship was based in the reparative therapy jargon formed in fundamentalist Christian culture.
Sure, she didn’t engage in some of the outright torturous practices that actual reparative therapy camps engage in, and she didn’t do what she did out of malice, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t, at least on some level, reparative therapy.
Intent is everything; I dislike people trying to portray Joyce as a villain when she had no malice and certainly no desire to force Ethan to do anything.
Intent is not everything, actions matter. And you can do the wrong thing for good and kind reasons. And you can justify monstrous actions through the lens of doing something good or kind (we saw that with Toedad)*.
What Joyce did, as Scarves and Celery noted, had an end goal and came from a culture and was only too happy to fulfill Ethan’s stated desire at the time, which was to resist his attraction to men and try and force himself to be straight for his mom and reinforced that.
It’s the nicest, most gentle form I have ever seen, but it was still not okay and could have done real damage if allowed to continue much longer.
*It’s like with the election. If someone voted for Trump, they voted to massively increase the chance I will die. And I don’t really care if they convinced themselves it was for non-bigoted reasons or not, because the end result is that I’m going to lose a lot of friends in the next few years and may be lost myself depending on how bad it gets.
This is nowhere near a comparable case. Joyce acted mostly out of ignorance. Calling her behaviour ‘shitty’ when she had no personal framework by which to judge its ethical basis is demanding the impossible and then blaming her for not achieving it.
You have to educate first and only then judge. It is to Joyce’s credit that, now she knows better, she wouldn’t consider doing this and feels guilty for trying. That is what defines her and how we should behaviour, not what she did in ignorance.
Intent is not magic. If you accidentally step on somebody’s foot, you say sorry because you know it hurt just as much as it would have if you’d done it on purpose. You don’t spend twenty minutes explaining that it was an accident, so they can’t possibly blame you, and also shouldn’t have been hurt that badly.
I considered it an EXTREMELY generous comparison, considering that trying to “save” a gay person from sin is a much more deliberate act than stepping on someone’s foot by accident, but sure.
As Cerberus is trying to explain, a bad action doesn’t make one an irredeemably bad person, but nor do good intentions (which, frankly, it is hard to even stomach calling this, but certainly Joyce didn’t mean to do harm) make the action Not Bad.
See above about ABA folks thinking they are doing good.
At some point a person has the responsibility to examine their beliefs critically and to look into the consequences of what they plan to do to another human. That Joyce harmed Ethan unintentionally does not negate the fact that she harmed him.
Even in law, negligence does not absolve a person entirely. It lessens the severity of the offense.
No, labeling the action as shitty is important, because the action is not shitty. Joyce is not shitty. She shows that by growing and abandoning that shitty action. That doesn’t make the action not shitty in the first place, it makes Joyce able to improve beyond that shitty action.
Like, people need to get over this black or white view of shittiness. That one is either a worthless person or a pure paragon and thus no shitty action can ever be really shitty in the hands of a “good person”. “Good” people can do awful things and awful people can be good at being kind to people they respect while being absolutely horrendous to folks they don’t.
And everyone can change, though no one is obligated to forgive one the damage they do from before they changed.
I think there is an important distinction to be made, and it’s right there in your phrasing: the behavior was bad, though the actor and intent may not have been (and, in this case, weren’t).
For me what bugs me is we often talk about the damage of what Joyce did but we don’t often talk about Ethan’s actions.
Joyce once the facts of what she doing got through to her acted decisively. She acknowledge and corrected it. It was a shitty, damaging action.
The thing is Ethan went into this relationship in a very calculated way. He had no intention of telling Joyce he was gay, that he wanted someone to hide behind and not a relationship. If wasn’t for outside intervention he wouldn’t have said a thing. The first Joyce would of known of it was when she found Ethan stepping out with another guy. (All of these behaviors were in play before Joyce knew the truth).
Manipulation like this hurts, and the longer it goes on the deeper the scars.
Plus Ethan was doing some really obvious flirtation whenever an object of his lust was in the room. Not only did that threaten the tissue thin facade of being straight but was also intensely disrespectful.
I’ve always wondered what Jocelyn thought about Ethan using her little sister as a beard.
I wonder what Jocelyn thought about him acting as her sister’s boyfriend? Especially since Ethan’s was making eyes at her throughout the whole visit.
Ethan has been great helping others out with there problems. He’s often been at his worst when dealing with his own issues.
I think all the focus on Joyce’s bad action has often allowed the shittiness of Ethan’s actions towards Joyce to fade into the background. It’s one of the reason’s I’m little hesitant about Danny/Ethan.
Sorry, this is kinda out of place but it’s been bugging me.
That is actually a really good point that we’ve overlooked. I don’t believe Ethan would do that to Danny, since he’s now at least somewhat more confident in his sexuality, but he did absolutely lie to Joyce and only came clean after Amber’s prompting, and he flirted with Jocelyne pretty hard even while he was “totally committed.”
That said, I think it’s possible that Danny will end up facing the same problems he had with Amber, where he wants to be openly dating and affectionate with Ethan, but he doesn’t because he’s worried about what other people will think.
The problem with intent is that even if you have good intentions, you can still make things worse if you don’t know what you’re doing when trying to express that intent. Even if a person supports a just cause, a clumsily articulated argument can completely ruin the day of the people they are trying to help. Whether it’s because a person gives the impression of condemning the people they support or because by their own ignorance on the subject, they inadvertently trivialise their struggles or remind them of how little average awareness there is about their situation.
And that’s just when expressing an opinion in a manner that can be directly observed by the people affected by it. A person with a group of friends with bigoted opinions can also do damage indirectly by not correcting their friends, even if there are nobody nearby to be offended by their casual remarks. However hypocritical it is, some people who easily dismiss the complaints of a persecuted minority as hyperboly or a thing of the past are more willing to reconsider their assumptions if challenged by a person they trust.
One could argue that good intent is everything to an extent, in that someone with good intentions will be more willing to improve if confronted with the possibility that the way they’re behaving is harmful.
I also just realized that Joyce’s punchline comment from yesterday may have been a veiled threat to Joe–and a callback to his pummeling at the hands of Joyce and Mike.
Non, David Willis, tu n’es pas un fromage ! … Et c’est en écrivant en anglais que je viens de comprendre la référence au Walkyverse.
(Il doit y avoir un commentaire quelque part où les lecteurs et lectrices francophones se repèrent les uns les autres. Je vais remonter, tiens.)
/////
No, David Willis, you are not the cheese ! … Now writing this I get the Walkyverse reference.
(There must be a commentary somewhere where the french-speaking readers spot each other. I’m gonna check.)
IIRC correctly, the Cheese was an alternate universe future version of Walky. Yes, Walky with the power of a petty god; this is not something that makes me feel safe.
Jacob will never know how much he made poor Sarah feel like a disgusting monster with so few words. However, if he succeeds in breaking her crush on the sexual fantasy of Jacob, it might make her ultimately have a far more healthy relationship with him.
To be honest, I’m not sure whether Jacob actually knows what happened between Ethan and Joyce in full detail. However (and I know that this might sound odd), it’s beginning to sound to me that this is what Ethan has told Jacob what happened between them. I think that we can allow Ethan the respect of deciding for himself how he feels about that.
Joyce’s homophobic indoctrination lining up with Ethan’s desire to escape homophobia is not all there was to their relationship, and both of them actually got good things out of it while it lasted. Yes, Ethan was fucking himself up in the process, but it was not Joyce’s fault! It was his choice! She jumped on the chance to ~help save poor gay~ that’s true… but like, if I had a gay male friend who asked me to date him so everyone thinks he’s straight, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
And Joyce’s personal fantasies about how he’ll be fixed and want to have sex with her eventually, while fucked up, never actually went anywhere and never had the chance to hurt Ethan – I don’t even think she shared them with him, did she? @ archive divers pls help me out here
I feel like a lot of people really don’t like him, but he never actually does anything horrible. His mouth just says a bunch of stuff that’s often contextually inappropriate.
Oh he has some issues to work out but I get the feeling that because he’s a straight, white male he gets more stick then is really deserved or rather that if a situation can be interpreted a couple of different ways then you can bet the majority of posters will interpret his actions in a negative way.
Kind of like how Danny had some really bad things said about him right up until the point he discovered he was Bi and then suddenly he gets less bad things said about him.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing of course because we all filter what we see through our own experiences.
My take on Joe, in this situation, is that his world view has been altered considerably and now he has to come to terms with it and based on his take down of Walky (over the whole men and shoes thing) I’m sure he’ll process it and come to terms with it in his own time.
See I always felt sorry for Danny, he always tried to do what he thought was best based on his limited world view and while he did get things wrong it was mainly based on being a bit naïve and unworldly with no malice (bit like Joyce in that respect)
It almost seemed like picking on Danny was like kicking a puppy yet Danny still tries to help where he can
He’s like the Sarah before she started trying. Everything he says is either obliviously callous or straight-up meanhearted. Knowing his other iterations, I’m sure there’s a drop of compassion in there somewhere, but he’s so insistent on being better than everyone else in the room that I almost don’t want to see it.
Oh yeah he’s got some issues alright, I mean I don’t know how much his parents divorce has had an effect on him (or his Fathers behaviour) but to me he seems more immature and self-centred in his outlook then outright malicious (yet can be quite mature when he chooses to be)
I’m hoping to see an arc where he starts to lose some of the rougher edges of his personality (which will probably come with age) while still retaining his essential Joe-ness
If Jacob isn’t ace, then I bet he probably had bad experiences in high school. Namely some ladies that just wanted a screw and another notch on their belt. In which case, all my sympathy for Jacob! I know I was a little uncomfortable with Sarah’s fantasy while she was talking to Jacob in class, though I also chalked that up to my being incredibly ace. Like “oh. uh. maybe this is normal when you have a sex drive? A bit disrespectful tho…”.
Intrusive thoughts or images are pretty much normal when you have a sex drive, I suppose. Personally I tend to start wondering what it would be like to kiss the person I’m talking to. It’s not under conscious control, so I’m not sure if “disrespectful” applies, so long as it stays in the privacy of one’s own head.
Not paying attention to what the other person is saying, now there I can agree with you, that can really come across as disrespectful, regardless of the cause.
For me its more like wondering what shes wearing under her clothes…for some reason I don’t tend to focus on the physical side of things with people I interact with
This might be the first time he’s been confronted with the fact that a man can feel sexually objectified. At least from someone he’s not as much a dick towards that he gives enough of a damn to actually try to listen to them.
Yeah. The trick here is that Jacob doesn’t know the circumstances – it’s at least in theory possible to have a healthy close, interpersonal relationship between a straight woman and a gay man, but not if the point of the relationship is to mask the guy’s orientation/help him fool himself or for the woman to “convert” him.
TBH I’d say “the point of the relationship is to mask the guy’s orientaiton” kind of thing can still be very healthy and helpful. Staying in the closet and putting armed guards near the door is a fair choice in our society as it is, and helping someone with it has 0 negative connotations.
Now, the part where she expected to ‘convert’ him is nasty, even if it came from a place of naive ignorance rather than wilful malice. That much is true. It’s just not the same thing as being a beard.
I mean, Joyce and Ethan’s relationship wasn’t really just him being a beard but still acknowledging himself as gay; Ethan was genuinely trying to repress his sexuality through Joyce, and Joyce was encouraging in the hopes of weening him off the liking girls thing so they could have god sanctioned post-marital hanky panky.
Yeah! I was just replying to the blanket assertion of ” it’s at least in theory possible to have a healthy close, interpersonal relationship between a straight woman and a gay man, but not if the point of the relationship is to mask the guy’s orientation
1. jacob clearly is lacking some important info on the whole “shoving ethan back into the closet until it all falls apart” section of what joyce and ethan had, but that ignorance aside, this is pretty sweet.
2. casually starts to ship joyce/jacob. yes i know he’s dating someone else rn, shhhh
“Sex can be scary”. I strongly suspect that Joyce thinks of different things than Jacob when she considers that pithy phrase but it is, nonetheless, very true for her.
I’ve never heard of the term “gray ace” before today, and I still don’t know if Jacob necessarily is one. He doesn’t have to be, since I feel like I can identify with him perfectly even though my life is probably much different from his.
I really like his take on things here. It’s ultimately up to Joyce to figure out how to accept her own sexual desires as normal, and he’s not forcing her to to think any certain way. For once, she hears someone who talks about sex in its very real, very terrifying, entirety. Sex CAN be scary. It can be an emotional and invasive ordeal for all parties involved, whether they admit it or not. (Not everyone or most people, just a lot of people.) It’s one of those vices that’s culturally reinforced as necessary to proper functioning, but in a complicated fashion in reality. Joyce has recently been grappling with this as well as her own upbringing and sexual trauma. So Jacob’s opinion is a comforting, friendly voice to support her through these dark times.
Yeah… my observation is that, culturally, “dudes” aren’t supposed to see sex and physical intimacy as things that require vulnerability, loss of privacy, emotional risk, potential loss of dignity, etc. It’s supposed to be all enthusiasm and virility, like the boner version of a kid running to jump into the deep end of the pool. Some parts of the culture expect moral restraint, most parts demand (rightfully) consent of the other person, but in terms of how “a guy” feels about sex, the expectation is WOOOOO!
And yet, despite being a “SWCM” (or whatever the vaguely derogatory and demeaning term is this week), that’s certainly not how I feel about an “intimate encounter” with a woman. For me, anything more than a fairly aesthetic appreciation requires that I know, and understand, and trust the other person. The idea of just jumping into bed with a woman “because she’s hot and willing” fills me with more apprehension and anxiety than any sort of anticipation. The “hit it and quit it” fantasy that so many guys seem to express (whether genuinely or because it’s expected of them) is a mystery to me.
Yeah, the way guys are expected to perform a very specific way about sex and never show vulnerability or desires to value romantic moments over sexual ones, and to be constantly sexually active are really harmful and I really resented those expectations back when I thought I was a dude.
And it really makes it hard for guys to talk about things they need to talk about. Fears about sex, what actually they really want in relationships and in sexual encounters, bad experiences like sexual assault (especially sexual assault by coercion), or even things like domestic abuse or PTSD triggers.
And it often encourages a very toxic means of presenting manhood (coughs in Joe’s direction) and does so by heavily punishing guys like Jacob who admit their fears and vulnerabilities about sex or who want something outside that expectation.
And it’s so pervasive that often a major part of any guy’s coming of age is their responses to and growing out of those toxic messages that are thrown at them and enforced with violence and threats.
Also, minor point, but straight white cis male isn’t really a derogatory or demeaning term, it’s really about as neutral as you can get while describing things. Believe me as someone who gets called many “lovely” things on the regular because of how I am.
Yeah, that’s fair… maybe I’m flinching from it because sometimes there’s this undertone of “you wouldn’t get it, you’re a straight white dude” or “it’s the white folks fault” that I’m picking up. I just heard an interview on the radio yesterday in which someone made snide comments about “white folks did this” and “white folks ruined that” about half a dozen times… *and* an interview about the women’s march against The Donald this weekend where someone involved questioned if men or “conservative women” should even be involved. In both cases, part of the response was this “they just wouldn’t understand” and “they don’t really belong here” attitude.
I mean, it’s true that that there are certain things that not being part of a minority group means you won’t fully grasp.
Like, don’t take “oh straight/white/cis/dudes ruin everything” as some kind of personal attack, or that you, specifically, are responsible for every piece of suffering in the world. It’s more about a marginalized group being angry at the majority that elected a cheeto-covered orangutan into the highest office in the country.
And yeah, speaking for myself, I’m very very angry at the folks that elected Piss Hitler cause the very specific people who did that gambled my health, my life, my safety and found my death an acceptable price or even the point of them being able to fulfill their terrifying bigotry.
I try to be specific about that, but sometimes I can despair.
Well, there is some truth to it in a historical context, but it’s not that being straight/white/cis/dudes means they’re more likely to ruin things because they are straight/white/cis/dudes, but because after a long period of time with conflicts and coincidences the cultures of caucasian ethnicities with strict heteronormative norms came out on top and spread their influence more than other cultures and so the consequences that arose as a result of that had more geographical reach and longevity.
As such, the reason I might ‘just not get it’ when I am a straight (mostly), white (definitely) cis-gendered (definitely), dude (this is the only word I might perceive some negativity towards) is that I happen to belong to the group that have the least deviations from the social norms that have shaped our current society and any deviations I might have aren’t distinct enough on the spectrum of heteronormativity that I suffer for them. As a result, I am going to be oblivious to a lot of the things that other people struggle with until I am confronted with them.
That’s not to say I have never come across people who hold it against me or use the fact that I am a straight (mostly), white (definitely), cis-gendered male against me and use it as an insult, but in every case where I have encountered this it’s been because they’ve had a cathartic need to vent the frustration they’ve accumulated from being marginalised and I’ve just happened to be there when they can’t hold it in anymore.
This is all what I like about this comic…and the comments section. As a small town, formerly religious guy who was at one time so utterly naive about sex (I get the sex is scary thing), I find all the comments, especially those about other orientations to be highly educational. Opens up my understanding and the lightbulb dings for things I’ve seen and not understood in others.
This strip might as well be called “we beat Sarah with an epiphany until she got it.”
On other stuff, for any of you that will be going on the upcoming marches to protest Trump starting… eh, tomorrow? The day after? I dunno, timezones – go strong and stay safe.
Yeah, Sarah’s heard that he doesn’t want sex (which is part of why she backed off initially, in my reading) but she’s never really considered the whys or how he might feel about her fantasizing over him. “Ooh, he has a cute butt” is very different from “I’m just gonna imagine fucking you to the exclusion of all else”
And yeah, go strong, everyone! And to those boycotting on tv, keep in mind that ratings work by measuring how many people watching tv are watching a thing, so watching something else works better to lower the percentage of viewers watching than just not watching tv. Fire up netflix or a channel without the inauguration on.
Jacob is talking from his own limited perspective, as do so many other characters. Becky was unaware the bi was a thing. Billie is sure everyone is basically bi. Joyce has trouble imagining non-Christians. Dorothy is sure that a rational approach can convince people of the truth. Joe is sure everyone is a horndog at heart. Sarah thinks people are terrible and may just have found evidence that it applies to her too.
tl:dr People consider their actions and beliefs the yardstick to measure others by. And that doesn’t always work well.
I am so happy that the system always auto assigns me Jacob now. He’s a really awesome dude. (we haven’t gotten a lot of chances to really see him open up, he did try of course but that came with a few issues)
Panel seven, to me, is why this such good writing in that they’re (Jacob and Joyce) both right and both wrong all at the same time and its completely understandable
Panel One: That is all very true. Western culture has sex everywhere, and if you don’t want to partake, either because you’re ace or just don’t want to, it can be SHIT. And yeah, sex can be scary. It gets built up a lot as this big be all, end all thing. And sure, it doesn’t have to be. But it is built a lot and that is terrifying. It’s also very vulnerable and a lot of people are uncomfortable with that.
Panel Two: And that is something that resonates with Joyce hard as hell, because she wants sex SO BADLY but is so afraid of sinning and going to hell. It’s heartbreaking and her trauma over Ryan did not improve it. Now she has trust issues AND fear of sin. Goody. So hearing Jacob support her, even when it’s missing the huge helping of homophobia that went into the specific situation he’s supporting her about, is affirming for her.
Panel Three: Yuuuuuup. Boys get told ‘boys want sex, all the time, forever. There are no men who don’t want it or they aren’t real men’. And of course you get objectification that people of colour get. Women of colour aren’t allowed sexual agency, just being the hot object men (especially white men) need to act on. Men of colour get innumerable stereotypes about dick size, objectification and deal with the stereotype of ‘evil poc’ out to rape white women that’s gotten so many of them killed. Particularly black men being lynched.
Panel Four: And yeah, Sarah’s crushing heavy, so I’m not surprised the thing that finally got her to turn to the others and engage was Jacob asking to be looked at.
Panel Five: Awwww, Jacob. That is sad and true. How many times have we seen people tune out of a conversation because ‘ooh, hot guy’ with Jacob or immediately focus on how pretty he was? Not just Sarah, Ethan and Amber have done so too at times. Amber’s first reaction to him was to write sexy fanfic for him and Ethan in her head, for crying out loud.
Panel Six: And yeah, Sarah’s been guilty of this. I do believe she cares about Jacob, but it’s also true she tunes out what he’s saying all the time to ogle and fantasize about him. This has been happening even when he’s talking about how fascinated he is by other religions and family events. Sure, Jacob might think people should be allowed to enjoy butts without shame, but he also believes it shouldn’t be the only thing to the exclusion of what people think and feel and say. That’s the part Sarah’s been having problems with.
Panel Seven: JOYCE’S FACE. My heart melted. Her smile could be used as an alternate energy source I swear to god. Also, Ruth’s spite, but Ruth ain’t here right now. JOYCE <333333
On that note, NO. That is not what she and Ethan had. Part of it was Joyce wanting to avoid the pressure to have sex and sin, but part of it was Ethan trying to throw himself in the closet because he hated himself and Joyce thought she'd try to 'save' him. It was horrible, awful, and reminiscent of reparative therapy. Joyce was 10000000% wrong there.
I'm assuming Jacob is ignorant in this though.
Panel Eight: Oh, up your's, Joe! Just because you don't understand how not wanting to fuck every woman works doesn't mean others don't. Jackass. Wanting to fuck women is fine, but being a disrespectful knob is not. Asshole.
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Sarah: “but I can still look tho?”
Joe: “no wait French would be make-outs with heavy body odor, this must be Klingon or some nerd language like that”
mychelle ma belle son lay mo key vont tray bien ensemble
Michelle, ma belle. Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble.
Translated: Michelle, my lovely. These are words that go together well.
i think you misspelled “i am the walrus” there buddy
Except that there is no Aramaic word for walrus so it literally says “I am the bearded cow-like sea beast.”
Ce que j’ai fais, ce soir la. Ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir la. Realisant mon espoir.
Je me lance, vers la gloire.
Can’t seem to face up to the facts…
We are all cheese.
*the cheese?
Gosh, French is weird.
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer?
Ja! .. Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Yup, they have different words for everything!
“Je ne peux pas manger mon pamplemousse a la bibliotheque.”
That’s about all I remember from twelve years of compulsory French education (in a bilingual country); to be fair, I know I left out some accents there, but I can’t be arsed digging up the windozALT codes to put the proper ASCII characters in their appropriate places…
@N0083rP00F
Ich kann Sie nicht ganz verstehen. Google kann Sie auch nicht ganz verstehen. Welche Sprache sprechen Sie hier?
My German is far from fluent, but Google not fully being able to translate that suggests it may be another language in the same group to me.
@Vlademir
It only seems bad german to me, the type of german I see everyday in my classes. So I could probably translate it if it wasn’t also Pythonische Sprache.
Qu’Est-ce que c’est?
C’est l’allemand, n’est-ce pas? L’allemand est la langue que j’utilise en écrivant ce phrase. C’est la veritée
die reine verdammte Wahreit, pardon my french
Far Far Far Far, Far Far Far Far better.
Run run run run away.
Tense and nervous? Can’t relax?
I’m upset the EWJ deliberate mistransliteration is unfindable
“Someday monkey won’t play piano song.”
Omelette du fromage!
Omelette, du fromage.
Joe would say, if he were also Billie
No, Klingon would be fistfights and heavy body odor.
I love how they’re all basically making the same face, but they all mean completely different things.
I too, am the cheese.
Le fromage est seul
Et le fromage se tient seul.
Omelette du fromage?
Maurice Chevalier Effeil Tower
“If the nightingales could sing like you, they’d sing much better than you do.” – Marx
I read “nightmares” instead of “nightingales” and now I’m a little frightened…
Hmm.
Now isn’t that odd, So did I !
Groucho, or Karl, or Zvi, or some other Marx that I haven’t heard of?
Groucho et al, “Monkey Business” (1931) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Business_(1931_film)#Songs
“Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho.”
@Jay Eff “Oui, Marie – baguette bon soir!”
Heywood Banks be open today?
That’s all you can say~ That’s all you can say~
Mon aeroglisseur est plein d’anguilles.
It’s CHEESE!
All the way down. melted over the turtles.
Wait wait wait wait. I thought that was the youth pastor.
Do you stand alone?
But can you be the walrus master monkey tennis?
Ceci n’est pas un fromage!
No, you’re a Stegosaurus that doesn’t look at all like a Stegosaurus
Dammit Joe
Joe Joe’s it up.
Joe Joe’s bizarre adventures
Sarah’s having some internal conflict right now, and not the sexy kind.
If this turns into a love square, with Raidah, Sarah, and Joyce ALL fighting for Jacob, then yay.
Makes it even better when he ends up with Joe.
Joe would be the cast member I’d least expect to go bi (along with Joyce).
Just you wait until Sal lets her brush her hair, then we’ll see 18 years of ultra-conservative upbringing dissolve like graham crackers in milk.
Not to mention, her reaction to Billy’s tits.
I dunno, after his threesome answer, he’s near the top of my list for “turns out they’re bi”.
He was at the top of mine as well, but then we got Danny instead.
I’d put him in the ‘comfortable enough with his sexuality that they don’t really care if gay dudes find him attractive’ camp for now.
I mean, it could be like The Todd and he realizes how much wider his dating pool is if he turns out to be bi.
Bi five?
I wonder sometimes about Joe. He’s supposed to be a big slut with the ladies. But we never see him with any girl at all except those we know are not dating or sleeping with him. Is he really a huge horndog or just a poseur?
And that’s how DoA Jacob got his sex addiction
I’d rather it not be a love square-if Joyce crushes on him, fine, but please don’t let it be a huge thing, Willis!!!
I am fairly certain that along with the ultra-religious upbringing comes a hearty dose of at least veiled racism. Her mother would probably go off the wall if she announced she was dating a black man. And renew her insistence that Joyce go to some all white ultra-conservative religious school. Her father would probably only care if the relationship interfered with her grades or was in some other way not a good thing for her.
Or if the black man were also from a similarly conservative background, there’d likely be some approval, but a lot of cringe-inducing lines about “you’re one of the good ones.”
Carol’s reaction on meeting Sarah was “You’ve made an African-American friend! I can’t wait to tell everyone on our street that our daughter isn’t racist!” Carol might be okay with it, or she might not (a friend and a boyfriend are very different things), but the huge awkwardness would be guaranteed.
Goddamit Joe…
Ah, ninjaed.
Wait, why are Joe and Jacob friends?
Joe’s thought process:
A) Do I hate this person? No
B) Do I want to have sex with this person? No.
C) Must be a…what’s that word? Danny. No, friend. It’s a friend.
Pretty sure in Joe’s checklist “do I want to have sex with this person” is question A.
And probably also questions B through G.
Really, it’s ‘E’ but not ‘S’ or ‘X’?
I get the feeling that Joe is more invested in it, seeing Jacob as some fulfillment of some “bro” ideal and Jacob is good-natured and gets along with pretty much everyone so he puts up with it, because why not, it’s company and conversation.
Joe has friends on campus, as Danny has mentioned. They were talking back when the fire alarm for the dorm rang.
Entirely possible they’re workout buddies. That’s how I made a few of my friends at undergrad.
That is…probably the sweetest and most charitable possible interpretation of that relationship. Jacob is the real perfect cinnamon roll (too good for this world, too pure) here.
…has my gravatar disappeared for some reason?
No?
Weird, I’m seeing one of the minor characters whose name I can’t recall instead of my usual Sal and AG one.
Yeah, some of the custom grave disappeared yesterday.
Boooo. Any idea how I get it back? I tried swapping icons and then swapping back at the gravatar link.
yeah i don’t see sal and AG either, i guess it did disappear?
Weird, I’m seeing it fine.
Now it’s back for me too. Wordpreeeeeeess, y u so buggy?
Looks normal to me.
also let’s talk about how that first panel is basically about Jacob in Shortpacked!
Let’s talk about butts.
We see none in the current strip. Except possibly in the last panel.
Oh dear, I think two unhealthy mindsets are about to feed each other…
Now, just to be clear, Joyce has made a perfectly valid lifestyle choice, and Jacob is clearly dealing with a problem, but I think the way they’re going about it might not be the best for their mental health. Namely, that Jacob is choosing to avoid his problem rather than confront it, while Joyce has tremendously unrealistic expectations of romantic relationships. I hope these two work it out…
He’s not “just avoiding the problem” any more than alcoholics who don’t drink are.
And Joyce’s expectations don’t seem unrealistic at all. What she had with Ethan (other than him not being attracted to her) seemed like it was just what she was looking for. All she needs to do is find that with someone who’s attracted to women.
Yeah, he has an addictive personality and recognizes an activity he doesn’t trust himself not to abuse. Plus, he’s also taking law classes and likely really doesn’t want to derail his studies.
Him being overly cautious about this makes a lot of sense in that context.
no sex addiction
You sir, have made my day!
Gray-ace headcanon back the fuck on!
I don’t know, that explanation sounded much more like celibacy than any flavour of asexuality. As a grey-ace myself, I don’t see sex as overwhelming and distracting at all. In fact it’s pretty much the opposite, which is what tends to cause trouble in my relationships. Maybe he’s demisexual, but it still seems to me that his view of sex as this dominant force is too personal to be a purely intellectual understanding of the feeling.
I agree. Celibacy is a real thing. I think it’s speaks a lot to the way that sex is constantly shoved in our faces by media and pop culture that when a character comes a long who’s like, “sex isn’t on my list of daily priorities right now” people assume either there is something wrong with that character, or that they must be a certain orientation. Not as a dig at anyone here, just something I’ve noticed in general. You can be any orientation and be celibate. Or maybe you’re not celibate, maybe you just don’t want a sexual relationship right now or just haven’t been in one for a while and its not bothersome to you cause you’re busy with other things in your life. It seems to me like Jacob is just celibate.
Yeah as much as I love seeing asexual representation, it’s really nice to see someone with a healthy take on celibacy (as opposed to Joyce’s very unhealthy one.)
I was celebate before I started dating my husband. I mean, I had a decent sex drive and was tempted some of the time in my youth, but I didn’t want to have sex until I dated someone I truly trusted. I have all respect for those who are vibrant in their sexuality, but it wasn’t for me.
Sex to me is the ultimate act of trust and I am careful about who I trust. Me and my husband were close friends for years before we started dating so I knew that he was someone I could trust when I was at my most vulnerable.
I’m not asexual, I just wanted to wait until I was with someone I trusted.
Celebicy is an option, if that is your choice.
Yeah, probably…
Still kinda want to ace headcanon him, though.
It’s okay, Cerb. You’re allowed to ship, here. We all do it, from time to time.
I don’t know. Demisexual here, and I basically have zero sex drive at all.
Until I do.
Then it’s……well, Jacob summed it up perfectly, I think.
I wasn’t prepared for it and it basically overrode any common sense I had and freaked me the fuck out. There were other problems with the relationship and things never *actually* went anywhere, in any sense.
It’s kind of hard to explain, but basically for that short period of time in that particular relationship, I’m fairly certain that’s about the only time I’ve had any sex drive at all.
And when it kicked in, it kicked down the door, did donuts on my carpet, drove up the walls and roared around my apartment’s ceiling, screaming at me to pay attention to it as it blasted the radio and let off an air horn inches from my ear.
But that sense of complete loss of control when I’m used to having a generally decent grasp on my emotions kinda terrified me.
I’m in the Jacob as a demisexual camp.
My fiancee has described their moments of intense sexual attraction (they’re grey-ace) in similar fashion.
And *fellow ace spectrum high five*
kinda had that moment yesterday reading your comments, but–yay
*fellow ace spectrum high five*
Your experience is 100% valid but you should also be aware that some aces DO find sex to be overwhelming. *raises hand* so it could still be possible.
I sympathize with Jacob, as someone who deals with addiction, myself. But, avoidance is a temporary measure, while long-term healing only comes when you confront the issue head-on and take control of it, rather than be ruled by it. I get that he’s not there yet, I just hope he *does* get there eventually.
Ah. Somehow missed the link above. Disregard, then! ^_^
This is assuming, of course, DoA Jacob has a problem to avoid. Walkyverse!Jacob had sex addiction to a life-ruining extent, but DoA Jacob’s problems mostly seem to be “I want a serious relationship but I’m so comedically sexy people keep wanting to have one night stands with me”. There’s never been any indication that he has trouble dealing with his own sexual desires.
“A relationship is more important to me than smashing unfortunates” is a mindset shared by an unfortunately small percentage of college students. It’s a lot more common a few years later though!
The discussion about ace-ness reminded me of this beautiful song:
http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/SPKHANDS.HTML
…Specifically, the discussion yesterday about how labels can be important to a person understanding their own identity.
:_0 *massive happy hugs*
JOE: “The only French I know is French Kissing, amirite?? Yeah, I’ll be here all night! Tip your waitress.”
I don’t want to be your sex object
Show some feeling and respect
I don’t want to be your sex object
I’ve had enough and that’s a fact
I don’t want to be your sex object
You play your tricks they’re just perfect
I don’t want to be your sex object
You turn me on then you forget
Wait, Joe mentioned “French” and didn’t turn it into a dirty joke?
Check under the table for pods, stat!
Especially surprising given that it was a final panel to boot!
Yeah, I was expecting an offhand “well, not the LANGUAGE…” joke at the end
*smacks Jacob upside the head* Don’t encourage her! While that may have been part of the reason Joyce was pursuing it, because of her near-rape experience and resulting fear, Ethan was doing it because he was trying to reject a part of himself. And she was complicit in this because of her religious upbringing. Yes — relationships not focused on sex can be respectful, but there was a lot more to it than that.
Yeah, Jacob! How dare you have thoughts informed by a perspective that isn’t dependent on the central character! Don’t you know that your entire existence is supposed to be a way to teach Joyce a lesson!?
Or at least setting her up as a punchline.
Yeah, I can’t see Joyce and Ethan’s relationship as anything other than wildly unhealthy and I kinda dislike the attempted positive spin on it.
I love how that line came from a character who happened to be male. Makes it more powerful when you look at it.
I really love that, because things like objectification get made into just a “woman thing” and it erases other places where objectification happens and especially the objectification that frequently happens to men of color.
Yeah, if you spend any amount of time on mainstream porn sites the dehumanization of men of color as lust crazed beasts with huge penises is pretty blatant. And while a lot porn is rife with all of the worst aspects of society, it holds a mirror to our long history of fear that men of color are just waiting for any chance to rape our precious, delicate white women.
There’s something slightly off about a dude telling women that they’ll never know what it’s like to be sexualized, the way he does.
He definitely does not say that.
I didn’t hear him say that either. But I think this is just another case of everyone reading their own private comic strip that occasionally is different from the one everybody else reads. There used to be a lot of them with Danny, and the one I read seems to have a different Amber than the one many others read.
Do you think the author just writes different versions of the comic, and which one shows up depends on your IP address?
Jacob didn’t say that, though. He described his own situation, but he didn’t say that it wasn’t something they could understand, nor did he even imply that.
I don’t see where he’s doing that? He only shared his own experience. He never said they’ll never experience it.
He never says or even implies that these women “will never know what it’s like to be sexualized the way he does”.
Also. Men of color, especially black men, have historically often been victims of some very ugly, dehumanizing sexualization.
I think, generally, if you’re explaining something to someone, you’re implying they don’t know it.
I… really do not see that. I don’t understand how you could come to that conclusion in this specific context.
If he said, like, “you don’t know how hard it is!” or something I could get it. But he’s just relating a painful anecdote. He’s never once implied that women never go through it.
He’s not even relating a painful anecdote, he’s poor-me-ing about how sexy he is to a woman who got roofied by a rapist. It’s not that it’s wrong for him to feel uncomfortable here, but the difference in experience between him and the person he’s talking to is so vast.
It’s like if a dude complains to a woman that he feels uncomfortable walking through the seedy alley they both have to go through every day because it’s full of perverts. It’s not that his experiences are wrong or invalid, but him saying it to her kind of indicates a bit of blindness, right?
I get that, in the DoA timeline, most of Jacob’s appearances are either a “I won’t be tempted by sex oh shit random shirtless Jacob” running gag or Sarah wanting to bone him, so his line is a bit of a meta-reference to his own treatment in the comic thus far. I get that the “black men as a sexual predator” thing is a real and massive problem in the real world (though I don’t think that’s what Jacob’s referring to here; I think he’s referring to have women keep wanting to bang him), but, like…..
It’s not what he’s saying, it’s what he’s not saying, if that makes sense
I mean, I think that there are problems that women face that, plainly, don’t happen as much to men, but I don’t think it’s wrong for Jacob to talk about it with Joyce (I understand that Jacob hasn’t, and most likely will never, be subject to an attempted rape, but it’s not his fault he wasn’t primed on Joyce’s traumas) or that he’s at all “poor-me-ing.” Dudes have problems too, and it’s okay to talk about them (just not, like, in a way that’s “dudes have problems too so women should shut up”).
It’s not about being So Hot It’s A Curse. He’s bothered that people see him as an unstoppable sex engine useful only for his massive genitals, prowess in basketball, and ability to infuriate their white suburban dads. It’d be like Amber talking about how annoying it is that people see a quiet nerd girl and instantly deduce that she’s a repressed horny animal in bed.
> He’s bothered that people see him as an unstoppable sex engine useful only for his massive genitals, prowess in basketball, and ability to infuriate their white suburban dads.
Not to imply black people don’t face racism and sexualized racism, but the subtext of this strip is the Jacob/Sarah/Raidah love triangle (and, to a lesser extent, how many strips end with the “look at how sexy Jacob is!” running gag), so I don’t think Jacob’s talking about that at all in this strip.
The entire reason Sarah even payed him attention at first was because she wanted to screw him a couple times, and she’s only now starting to accept that a friendship can at all exist. He’s experienced enough that Roz inviting him to her party was enough for him to figure out that Roz wanted something different than what he wanted.
Sarah certainly isn’t some kind of scoundrel for thinking Jacob is hot, but it’s that Jacob is upset that this is everything about him to some people. Like even with Roz, she isn’t really considerate of him and drops all interest in him as a person when she finds out he’s taken. What’s that to say to Jacob when someone’s interest in him amounts to a booty call?
And I really disagree with your interpretation about this being about a love triangle, or even that there’s a love triangle at all tbh. Jacob likes Raidah and views Sarah as a friend, and Sarah has the hots for him and it’ll probably never go anywhere because what Sarah wants is diametrically opposed to what Jacob wants.
I don’t think it’s similar to, say, Emily from QC getting mad that people treat her like wacky comic relief when she literally is nothing but wacky comic relief, and has no drive or existence outside of being that wacky comic relief.
That metaphor would probably work better with someone who doesn’t do it on a grappling line.
dangit
But it wasn’t in a bed, so they’d be wrong.
Explaining something is also a common reaction when you make a statement and the general reaction is WTF from the group your talking to. Which happened to Jacob. He could tell his audience in the last strip wasn’t getting it.
You’re over-generalizing what he thinks they don’t know. Obviously, if he thought they knew this was something he’d experienced, he wouldn’t tell them.
That in no way requires him to assume that they will not or even have not had similar experiences. Even if they have and he was aware, the experience he’s talking about gives context to what he’s trying to tell Joyce: That it’s okay to want a relationship without sex.
Uh… no.
Jacob is relating his personal opinion clearly based on personal experience, and relating it as a general observation of the human condition. He never says anything about gender or even comes close to anything like “you women will never understand”.
It sounds like you’re over-hunting for “mansplaining”.
I don’t think this is that kind of case… I don’t see it as him explaining because SHE doesn’t understand it. He’s just explaining how HE does.
He’s not. Check the dialogue he’s talking about himself and his experience. He’s just explaining why he feels the way he does about Joyce and Ethan’s relationship.
…I recently lost an otherwise intelligent friend of a friend on Facebook because once an argument started every explanation became mansplaining.
Just because one class of people gets the worst of something doesn’t mean other classes can’t voice their own experiences on the subject to those who’ve had it worse. It’s not a contest of who’s the biggest victim.
>once an argument started every explanation became mansplaining.
Well, actually…
Eh, why not.
[Insert Mansplaining Diatride To ESM Here]
*pushes glasses up*
that’s diatribe.
I’m aware, I noticed the spelling error right when I hit post. Though I am glad it took over five minutes for someone to point it out.
snrk
MANSPLAAAAAAAAAINN
ALL MY PROBLEMS BACK TO ME
SAVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEE
ALL OF YOUR “UM ACTUALLY”S
(Stolen from Jeph’s Twitter feed some time ago)
*meanwhile, is sitting here staring blankly at the entire thread cause she still doesn’t know what in the name of cheesecakes “mansplaining” is*
It’s a man condescendingly explaining something to a woman – usually something she already knows, often something about sexism, but it also gets used for things like a layman explaining some scientific topic to a female expert in that field because she’s a woman and wouldn’t know it.
Unfortunately, as is usually the case, we see concern over a legitimate thing, transformed into a catchall that gets grossly over-applied.
Slash and burn linguistics.
True. And I would agree it doesn’t apply in this case.
OTOH, it’s also something routinely denied by people who do it and others who don’t recognize it, so it’s not as grossly over-applied as some claim.
It would have been far, far more offensive if he turned to one of the women and said “Look at YOU, you may never be more than a sex object to some people.”
He is talking about what he knows, from experience he has. Just because there is details about some of the other characters lives that means they can empathize with his point (details he doesn’t know, like Joyce’s experience at the party) does not mean he’s wrong to have his own experiences and talk about them.
No, this is… this is the exact opposite of that. Note how at no point does Jacob assume that other people don’t know what he’s talking about or haven’t thought about it themselves. In fact, he’s expressing it as support for Joyce, and IT IS WORKING. The way he describes sex 100% hits the nail on the head for what it has been to Joyce, and it’s the first time she’s ever heard it validated. NOTE THE BIG STARRY EYES AND THE TEARFUL ‘THANK YOU’. Jacob is doing the exact opposite of what you’re describing…
“Heh. I’m the Cheese and I can kick your butt.”
No, Joe. Just no.
He said “sex” twice and “sexual” once and I damn well know that you damn well know those words.
Could still be french.
Sexuel. Sexuellllllllle.
French, the language of love.
Not lust.
Well played Joe, well played.
I sure hope Joyce doesn’t take all that as a sign-off on getting back together with Ethan. He wouldn’t dare re-closet himself.
I don’t think she would. Especially now that she’s seen how happy Dina and Becky have been.
I think her mind is just blown from discovering another person exists who both seems interested in sex and finds it a bit scary
Yeah, she’s already expressed sadness that everyone else seems to find it so easy to slip into sexual relationships while she’s still so terrified.
No, I think she should take it as a sign-off to get together with Jacob.
I mean other than him dating someone and her roommate having a crush on him, I think they’d be good for each other.
Called it last strip. He was talking about himself more than Ethan. Aw, Raidah-you better be treating him right.
People seem to think this is a problem, but in reality Jacob isn’t feeling too different from someone who is actually searching for a connection.
I mean if you’re a girl we pretty much feel like this already. The stares, cat calls, rude honking and comments-it gets frustrating. It’s very refreshing for a male character to reflect this issue.
….
…. okay, on the one hand. I can totally see Jacob as legitimately thinking and feeling all this stuff just like he’s saying it.
…. and on the other hand, I am imagining him being secretly bi and having gone through some sort of religious “therapy” to completely compartmentalize his sexuality.
….. that wasn’t supposed to be a reply. WTH, ComicPress?
Based on previous comics, it sounds like Raidah is on the same page as Jacob on this stuff and definitely has shown her much more interested in Jacob’s kindness and mind rather than just his hot body.
I think they might be really healthy for each other, which must be torturous for Sarah. Because she wants to hate Raidah and break this up, but she can’t. It’s too healthy for the guy she has a crush on and what she wants with him wouldn’t be.
I thought so too! I wasn’t sure why he was reflecting on it though. It was possibly because he was struggling with Raidah.
But it’s more likely that it’s because the subject just happen to pop up. He doesn’t seem passive-aggressive enough to do so because Sarah’s there. Though it would serve her right!
Ugh, the car honking… that’s not just irritating, it’s alarming, especially from an object with that much mass moving past you at high speed.
The honking is bad until they slow down and try to say anything “smooth” to me. That’s even worse because if I’m just walking home I can’t really feel like I can escape. I usually pretend to talk on my phone and glare at them when it happens.
It’s why biking is the better option.
Headphones are one of the greatest inventions for me. It’s doesn’t prevent all advances, but most people do stay away. I’m lucky to not have encountered men who won’t too often in my life. Part of why I want to get fit again is so I can be strong/run very fast without having to warm up for it.
Sometimes it seems like a huge percentage of the human race are jerks.
My inner-Amber wants to follow along with a bazooka to shoot out their tires when they do that.
My inner-Danny wants to give you a supportive hug.
My iner-Mike wants you to know that my inner-Joe wants pictures of you so that he can understand your problem better.
And Joyce now has a new fixation and no longer wants to hook up Sarah and Jacob.
I think Joyce may actually double down, because she’s impressed, but Sarah doesn’t want to because Jacob’s words are hitting home.
I read this as “And Joyce now has a new fixation and no longer wants to hook up with Sarah and Jacob”
There is something slightly disturbing with how Jacob is so utterly right in general, yet also so utterly wrong about Joyce’s specific situation.
Also, his face in panel five… He looks like he’s just seen the picture of Li’l Brudder.
YES. /back to lurking
Actually, he kind of nailed Joyce’s specific situation with his description? Her sex drive is powerful and much more prominent than she’s comfortable with from her fundie upbringing, but because of the scarred piece of shit she is fucking TERRIFIED of it at the same time. There’s a reason Joyce is giving that smile there. He’s validating her feelings without even knowing how right he is.
Like, no, that was not the only reason Joyce hooked up with Ethan, and the other half was pretty icky, but that’s been discussed so many times, and this is the first time someone talks to Joyce about the part where she felt SAFE in that relationship and how much comfort and joy that brought her.
THE ISSUE IS NOT THAT A SEXLESS RELATIONSHIP IS A BAD THING.
THE ISSUE IS THAT A GAY MAN WAS BEING ENCOURAGED TO ENTER A HETEROROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP.
As for Jacob’s thing? I can get that kind of issue. I mean, not PERSONALLY, but yeah, people assuming one thing looking at you and you wanting something completely different? Totally a legit thing.
I just don’t think Jacob should be pushing that on others with completely different issues…
Jacob doesn’t know the context of their relationship. He just assumed they both longed for companionship without sex looming over it.
Yup. Assumed.
There’s a jokey saying about that.
And I’m not saying he’s a dick or anything. He clearly had the best of intentions in mind.
Really bad shit can be done with the best of intentions…
He came to a conclusion that he felt was reasonable, based on the information he had at the time and filtered through his own beliefs and biases. The only thing he’s guilty of is not knowing something he couldn’t reasonably be expected to know in the first place. People do this all the time, it’s how we go through life and how we think.
I’m about to do it myself.
Based on what I’ve seen of Jacob’s character thus far, if he were informed of the specifics of Joyce and Ethan’s relationship I think he would revise his opinion, and maybe apologize for the aforementioned assumption. Jacob seems to be the kind of person who just wants people to be happy and decent to one another, and will readily admit when and if he is at fault.
In other words, his argument is still completely valid. He just unknowingly used a bad example.
Again, I’m not saying that Jacob’s a bad person… but I do think he made a big mistake here.
He seems to know that Ethan is gay. He certainly doesn’t seem surprised to hear it in the last strip, at least. And while we don’t know exactly what advice he gave, it seems more than “Sure, you’re a gay guy, she’s a straight lady, of course you can be friends”.
*insert Gay Best Friend joke here*
The reason it’s leaving me frowny is because he was giving a thumbs up to a gay man engaging in a heteroromantic non-sexual relationship. While we don’t know for 100% certain, every impression I’ve seen of Ethan points him to being homosexual and homoromantic. Recommending that sort of relationship is pushing on someone struggling with whether or not to go back into the closet.
That’s the problematic part. If Jacob just said “…hell, I don’t know… is it working for you? It is? Awesome.”, that’d be one thing. But this… seems more like active advice, which is where the problems come from.
He’s not saying that. He’s not commenting on the fact of a gay man dating a straight woman. He’s commenting on the fact that the relationship was based on personality and emotional compatibility, with sexual compatibility a non-factor. He doesn’t place as much emphasis on physicality in his relationships (though he has expressed an eventual desire for it), and he admired the two for seemingly conquering a hurdle he expresses at least past trouble clearing.
Okay, I think I see the problem here.
1. It’s obvious that Jacob knows about Ethan and Joyce’s relationship, and as you say, Jacob seems to know that Ethan is gay (though you could be wrong about that and either doesn’t care what Ethan’s orientation is or didn’t consider it relevant to the overall point he was about to make). The question is, how did he learn about this, and how much does he know? Did he just see them apparently being in a relationship, and learned about the sexless aspect second hand (therefore drawing his conclusions off of potentially flawed information), or was all this from a conversation he had with Ethan himself, them being roommates and all? (If this has been previously established, then I’ve apparently forgotten)
The conversation that had been referenced in the previous page was Joe learning about Ethan and Joyce from Jacob.
2. What has he said and done following learning everything he does about their relationship?
To me personally, it doesn’t feel like Jacob was suggesting or implying that a gay man being in a (supposedly) romantic, albeit sexless relationship was a good idea. To me it just felt like a segue into a new conversation topic (the idea that a relationship doesn’t require sex to be healthy or successful). The only time he has at all mentioned Ethan and Joyce’s relationship was at the very beginning of his argument, in which he clarified what specifically told Joe. He hasn’t really said anything about how he feels about Joyce temporarily being Ethan’s beard.
For that reason, I’m gonna wait and see if Jacob is done talking.
“Jacob seems to know that Ethan is gay (though you could be wrong about that and either doesn’t care what Ethan’s orientation is or didn’t consider it relevant to the overall point he was about to make)”
Danny and Ethan once almost boned (not really) in front of Jacob, and then Ethan was like, “I think we both just came out to my roommate.” So Jacob knows that Ethan likes dudes, and perhaps knows that he’s gay specifically. (The prom incident was mentioned, so I think he accidentally revealed he was gay? Can’t remember for sure.)
My bad, he goes back to them at the end. But the way he says it feels open to interpretation. Is he talking about their former relationship, or the friendship that has resulted from said relationship? To me, it feels like he’s talking about the latter at the end.
Correct me if I am wrong, but your point seems to be this:
You feel that Jacob’s argument could be improved with the addition of something along the lines of “I like your idea, but your execution of it could use some work”.
We don’t know much about what Jabob and Ethan said, but the impression I’m getting is that Jacob heard about Ethan and Joyce, two people with incompatible sexual and romantic orientations, dating and said “that’s a really smart idea”.
Which it very much isn’t. It’s a relationship that’s doomed for disaster, because while Joyce seems totally intent, committed and willing to wait for marriage for sex, that doesn’t mean that she’s not going to want sex when they get married, and Ethan will never want to have sex with her.
That doesn’t make Jacob a bad person. That makes him a guy who’s letting the issues he’s still struggling with impact the advice he gives to others… like most people, particularly most young people, do. Good people still screw up on occasion.
Did…Jacob just singlehandedly help spur three character development arcs ahead?
Looks like it
I think only two. Joyce is feeling validated in her belief that sex doesn’t HAVE to be an important factor in forming a relationship, and is happy to find someone (stable and mature) who has similar beliefs on the subject as herself (which is very helpful to someone going through paradigm shift like she is). Sarah seems to be feeling guilty over the selfish way she’s been pursuing Jacob (looking for a largely physical relationship and to mess with Raidah).
Joe just seems to be confused, and can’t imagine not having sex if you’re in a relationship with someone.
As a guy who doesn’t get that sort of attention very often, I wish I had Jacob’s problem. At least he knows he’s handsome or attractive enough that some people may view him as a sex object. I get that sort of attention so rarely that I have no idea if I’m handsome or not. It would be nice to know one way or the other.
Objectification is not… pleasant.
I know folks who aren’t used to positive sexual attention might think “any attention is good”, but there’s a vast difference between people saying you’re cute on occasion and the way your skin crawls when you’re being sized up as some inhuman chunk of meat.
And it doesn’t make you feel pretty or handsome. It makes you feel unsafe and makes it hard to be out places on your own.
As a bisexual male, I don’t mind being viewed as a sex object. The difference I think is that so far I have been able to control the degree of interaction ie. I get to say yes or no to stuffing your holes or having my holes stuffed. I’ve never felt unsafe all this while. People in general have been fairly respectful.
The control factor is part of it.
Because of cultural factors and plain old sexual dimorphism, most men are not familiar with the feeling that someone’s else’s sexual attraction to them has a potential, implicit, threatened loss of control or vulnerability. From what I have read and conversations I have had, someone else’s attraction can be a double-edged sword for some women, in a way that’s far less likely for men.
(This is not to say that every man is making that threat to any woman his eyes even unintentionally linger on for an extra moment… though I’ve read claims that such is true, they rank down there with “all sex is rape” in the terrible and silly at the same time category. This isn’t about what’s happening every time, it’s about what could happen one time.)
It wouldn’t really be a problem in your case, then. That’s the point. Jacob’s bothered that people reduce him to Big Brawny Slab of Man Meat with no thoughts or opinions.
Him talking about his joy in his relationship with Raidah because he’s talking about feelings and learning about the Muslim faith while Sarah fantasizes about getting drilled in class is kinda the encapsulation of that.
Especially because she frequently tunes out things that are important to him to fantasize him as a hot sex machine.
Like, she doesn’t actually care about the stuff he cares about, she just thinks he’s hot and wants to bang him.
And that can be enough for some. Casual sex can be fun for those that are inclined for that, but it’s definitely not what Jacob is interested in in the slightest.
Like in the fourth panel…
I am in my early thirties, and it was only recently brought to my attention that I’m apparently quite handsome, and not boring and plain looking as I had always assumed since I so rarely get complements on it.
A lot of interactions which had been confusing at the time are suddenly making a lot more sense. It also seems I’ve been totally oblivious to most flirting. I know this (now) because a more recent friend has, on multiple occasions now, had to basically pull me aside and tell me.
So yes, the absence of that kind of attention is not a good indicator of whether or not people find you attractive.
To my understanding, I rate myself a 4-5, but to others I’m a few of points higher. It’s weird hearing it.
I suppose it could be possible that I’m really oblivious to flirting, but at this point in my life I have no way of knowing if it’s that or I’m just ugly.
if you were ugly, you’d probably have been told so, many times, by lots of people. american society, at least, looooves to ridicule people who are ugly. or at least, that’s the impression i’ve gotten.
if you’ve never been told what an ugly (slur) you are, then you’re probably at least within ‘acceptably plain’ range.
That’s a good point. People tend to be MUCH less shy about telling people they’re ugly.
By societal standards, I’m really not what would be considered attractive, but I’ve still been subject to objectification on various occasions. It was not fun and if anything made me feel worse about myself and not better. Most of the time I’m read as female, so I may be more likely to be viewed as a sex object, regardless of (un)attractiveness, but… yeah. Basically my point is, objectification =/= attractiveness, fun.
Well they are mental oposites in love matter.
Jacob is awesome.
The Cheese? WHERE?
Joe, stop making it weird.
Joyce, keep smiling. It’s the best.
Sarah, stop eye-fucking Jacob.
Jacob, keep on truckin’, brother.
I wonder whether… if Jacob and Raidah eventually break up… is it possible that Jacob and Joyce could end up together?
…And then we might learn about how fundamentalist conservatism sometimes comes with a big side helping of racism.
That would… fuck, that would actually be a pretty awesome relationship, though I worry that Joyce’s fantasies might make her quickly realize that she doesn’t actually want the chaste relationship she claims to want.
And yeah, we’ve seen a few hints of Joyce’s home church and their views on race, but that would force things out into the open in a big way.
That’s kind of the crux, isn’t it? Joyce wants the pre-marital hanky panky but shames and guilts herself for it*. Sex was looming over Joyce’s feelings in her relationship with Ethan, if only through Joyce wanting it a whole bunch.
Jacob presumably has an interest in sex, he’s just unconcerned with exploring that. It’s a distant thing that happens way later on down the line once way more important things have been established. Kinda like Danny.
*To be perfectly clear on this, I don’t believe that Joyce abstaining from sex for any reason, religious or otherwise, is somehow a character flaw. Joyce can hanky panky at her leisure.
Yup.
And honestly, that’s the piece that makes me want to headcanon Jacob as some flavor of ace. Cause, celibate people frequently are constantly battling their desires like Joyce because they want it just as much, but Jacob seems genuinely non-plussed and even happy at the thought of a relationship that either never got physical or only ever had a very little amount of physical element.
Which would seem to suggest at the very least, a low-level of sexual attraction or interest in sex.
I doubt Jacob would be UNHAPPY about the other party finding him sexually attractive or wanting to have sex with him. I think he has his own values in celibacy or wanting to wait. He can have a normal sex drive and still place those values over having sex.
What he’s likely happy about is finding someone who sees him as more than just physically attractive, but emotionally/mentally as well. If anything, Jacob seems more like an old-school romantic who wants things to be serious before moving into anything physical.
Leeeet’s not use the word “normal” for sex drives. But he also literally called sex scary, it doesn’t sound like a values issue per se.
I know Jacob’s comments definitely got MY can opener senses tingling
‘what’s that i hear? possible ace representation??!?’ *comes running*
can’t believe this is the first chapter to be titled sex
The chapter is “Everything You’ve Ever Wanted Floats Above.” This is the first page titled “Sex.”
To quote the late, great George Michael:
“HUAAAAH, SEX!”
Jacob….is looking at this through his own lens. It’s an understandable and reasonable lens to look at it through, and the only one with which he has personal experience, but there is a few layers of misunderstanding here. This is probably a fairly personal wonk, but as someone who grew up in an extremely repressive catholic household, I can get frustrated when hearing people talk about non-sexual romantic relationships (or even just friendships) in such a beatific way, even if there’s no inherent judgement to the statements. Particularly frustrating to me is when people speak as though a relationship being platonic automatically makes it better and more important than sexual relationships. Yes, the other is a message jammed down our throats way too much as a culture, but that doesn’t magically make the former always correct. And it definitely doesn’t help that he clearly doesn’t understand just what an unhealthy, repressive thing that was for both of them. There’s no real reason he should know those things, but he speaks as though he’s knowledgeable about all the details anyway.
tl;dr: sexuality (or lack thereof) is vast and complicated and has a metric fuckton of baggage in our society, not to mention the individual baggage we each approach it with. These baggages all get mixed up at the emotional baggage claim, tags get tangled, and basically that’s why even people who are queer and who want to be sexually open (like me) can occasionally be total shitheads about legitimate sexual choices and orientations, particularly those surrounding a lack of sexuality (also like me.)
Nah, I share that antipathy.
And it’s often frustrating because those tend to be the folks fastest to shit on ace couples who never want sex, because to them, the suffering and denial of one’s self is the point.
Emotional baggage is one of the most cliche metaphors out there and you just made it feel fresh and alive for me. Thank you.
either Jacob doesn’t know all the details or he has some really bad ideas of how healthy forcing yourself back into the closet is…
It’s also worth remembering that Jacob knew about the relationship (and the non-sexual nature of it) long before he knew Ethan was gay. I believe they’d broken up before he found out.
He likely formed his impression of the relationship as something he admired based on his mistaken assumption about Ethan and didn’t fully reconsider it in light of the new information.
I am more than a little bit uncomfortable with Joyce’s smile in this strip.
I’ve had it explained to me that it can also be that Joyce is finding validation in someone else agreeing with her desire for a relationship where sex isn’t an absolute necessity, and while I think that’s a perfectly valid and probably true interpretation of this strip, I’m nonetheless skeeved out a bit at the suggestion that any aspect of Joyce and Ethan’s relationship had a positive impact, let alone on Ethan.
To clear this up:
I don’t think the comic is saying that Joyce and Ethan ended up being The Right Thing. It’s just weird to me that Joyce can happily smile at being told about how wonderful that relationship was when it was so damaging to Ethan, and even to herself. I feel it’d be more fitting if she, like, erred her gaze away or something, because what Jacob is describing isn’t what her relationship was about.
That’s a good point. I was vaguely bothered by Joyce’s smile and yeah, that definitely hits home why.
She knows it was toxic, that it was harmful, that it was part of this horrible tradition and only something he wanted because of anti-gay bigotry. Yeah, it’s nice to hear an affirming statement, but it does have the feel of her being “let off the hook” for her previous bad actions by a straight guy misinterpreting the relationship.
Like, I think Joyce will be strong to still remember what was toxic, but yeah, it definitely sends some wrong messages and allows her a convenient excuse to let herself off for what really was an awful action.
I feel like it has nothing to do with what Jacob is saying about their relatinoship, and everything to do with what he’s saying about sex. Joyce has been caught in a very powerful mental trap which includes feeling like she can’t talk about it with anyone. If she’s scared of being raped, why does she have erotic dreams? If she has erotic dreams, why do they tend to turn into nightmares? Jacob just described the approach she has never heard before, one that leaves her neither a ‘prude’ nor a ‘slut’ nor ‘broken’. Of course she’d have a smile!
To me, the smile looks a little pained and uncomfortable — like, she’s happy someone found something good in that relationship and a big part of her wants to take comfort in that fact, but there’s that pesky other voice she’s just found reminding her it really was not a good relationship for them. Look at the way her bottom eye lines are drawn.
Basically, it looks like a very conflicted smile to me. One that could easily be mistaken for pure relief. She really wants to believe this but can’t quite.
To me, that looks more like a “so happy I could cry” smile, perhaps because she’s found someone a kindred spirit of sorts when it comes to her evaluation of what’s important in a relationship.
I mean, to be fair, neither Joyce nor Ethan had bad intentions. For Ethan it was about wanting to feel freer to be himself and for Joyce it was about wanting to feel safe. It was still colossally fucked up, because it wasn’t fair or truly validating for either of them. But, it’s not like they were wanting to hurt each other or themselves, even though they were doing so unintentionally. So, I hoping that the smile is Joyce feeling like, ‘hey, maybe the feelings that I was having then don’t make me a totally horrible person.’ Because Joyce has also been having a bit of self-hate happening, where she’s really angry with herself now that she’s come to realization on some issues. And she might find it easier to move forward if she doesn’t have to hate herself as much for where she was.
I said this elsewhere, but I think my issue with viewing this strip like that is that I don’t think Joyce would ever get hassle from anyone other than Joe over wanting a relationship that had no emphasis on sex. I can’t imagine a scenario in which Joyce would feel guilty over wanting that kind of relationship, because that’s what she’s wanted since day one, and why Ethan was such a tantalizing partner for her, because he was incapable of ever stepping up to that.
I think I feel like this because Joyce never really got any blowback for dating Ethan and furthering his excavation deeper into the closet.
I mean, she had some personal blowback from herself, not so much from other people. Well, she did get blowback from Amber, actually, though that resolved itself. I tend to feel like it’s more important for a character to recognize their faults than to be punished for them. After she figured out that what she was doing was hurting Ethan, she did make efforts to be supportive in the right way though, like encouraging him to go to the LGBT+ event. She can’t undo what she did that was bad, but she can acknowledge it, which she did, and do her best to do better, which she does.
The thing is, Joyce doesn’t want a relationship without sex, it’s that she feels guilty for wanting one with sex and having sexual desires. We have seen her having some struggles with this, her breakdown with Dorothy and being attracted to Ethan, even though she was specifically dating him to have a no sex relationship. It’s then complicated by her trauma from the roofie incident. So, I definitely not saying her relationship with Ethan was a good thing, because it definitely wasn’t, just that desire is kind of a tricky issue for her. So it might be reaffirming for her to hear someone else say that sexual intimacy can be scary.
That’s a great way of looking at it.
Joyce would absolutely “get hassle” for wanting a relationship without sex from people other than Joe. Cerberus has illustrated why many times in the comments, and Joyce’s encounter with Ryan…? Was definitely her “getting hassle” for not wanting to have sex on a “date”.
Except that with Ryan there was no date, there was no attempt to seduce or otherwise ask for sex. She was not even offered the chance to agree.
The plan, from the start, was to isolate and drug her.
You’re not necessarily wrong about other cases, but Ryan was something else entirely.
Just because you are right doesn’t mean Joyce realizes that…
That is also true. In much of fundie world (and large parts of the rest of the world) she would be blamed for leading him on, even though this is perhaps the most blatant example of there being no possibility of that.
Meant to add:
And she has likely internalized that.
And even if Joyce realizes that, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still affect her emotional reactions.
I mean he literally screamed at her for “””leading him on””” when she tried to avoid his trap in the bathroom.
I put date in quotes for a reason.
This is why I love reading Willis’s work – the characters feel so real. Jacob is going off on his own thing and viewing Joyce and Ethan’s relationship through his own point of view, highlighting what he thought is important and ignoring or minimising the not-so-great aspects of it. It’s a thing people do, and the way it’s done here is perfect. It doesn’t feel faked or forced; when done wrong it usually feels like the character lacks self-awareness, is being preachy (on behalf of the writer), or is just plain dumb.
Here’s some French and joual for you Joe: Va te faire foutre, salaud. Maudit de osti de tabarnak de calice. Go look it up if you’re unsure what I said, morceau de merde. That was really honest, nice off, and probably hard for Jacob to say, even if he didn’t know the particulars of what led to him saying it. And it’s good thing for Joyce and Sarah to hear. So, “Vouz avez plein de merde,” as my grandmother likes to say.
Je suis le fromage!
Je suis le meilleur personnage du programme!
Je suis mieux que le salami et la bologne combinés!
“Omelette au fromage!”
Comic Reactions:
Had a whole different write-up before I caught Willis’s old post about Jacob above.
Panel 1: So I initially read this as an addictive personality thing because of the arc in Shortpacked, but given Willis’s comments, I’m now much more heavily leaning in to this potentially being a hint that Jacob might be gray-ace.
Cause yeah, he’s acknowledging that sex can be powerful and distracting, but he’s rarely shown struggling with that attraction and the rest of the comic is about being put on the spot, objectified, and expected to sexually perform and…
Fuck if that isn’t a very ace struggle. Feeling boxed in, feeling uncomfortable being sexually active, feeling pressured from all sides and not sure how to respond. Like, it might just be he’s like Joyce and has a lot of sexual feelings but is terrified of it, but I dunno, he seems much happier when thinking about a relationship where sex isn’t just delayed but completely taken out of the running entirely.
I dunno, this first panel implies enough sexual attraction for me to be hesitant headcanoning him as ace, but I sure as fuck am headcanoning him as gray-ace at least for the time being.
Panel 2: Aww, Joyce’s face here is adorable. And well, why wouldn’t it be. She makes a lot of noise about the beliefs she was raised in about pre-marital hanky-panky, but the truth she’s admitted to both Dorothy and Sarah is that she’s terrified. She’s terrified that all her relatives will see her in the afterlife getting freaky and judge her for it. She’s terrified by all the messages she’s received growing up that that’s the sin that stains you forever. And she’s scared that she may have denied herself a lot of pleasure for what will turn out to be a lie.
And she’s had literal nightmares about her sexual desires that have mixed in her trauma from her near rape.
This is the first person who’s said to her, yeah, I’m in a similar place. I’m also scared by how overwhelming and intense sexual thoughts feel. I’m also scared of having sex.
It’s an affirmation she hasn’t realized she’s desperately needed. And I think she needed to hear it from someone who wasn’t just doing it for the bog standard religious reason, but because he shares a similar fear about the acts on their own.
And I think hearing that is going to go a long way to getting her to a place where she can accept pleasure into her life on her terms and at her own pace.
Panel 3-4: Oh Sarah… *shake head*. Note also this is the first time she’s been shown to not be looking in the complete opposite direction. And that thirsty look. No, girl, this is not a well that is safe to drink from.
^^^ all of that
man im just. so happy for joyce there
Panel 5: I love that it’s Jacob who makes this comment. Because yeah, objectification is not just a “girl thing” and men of color definitely get it a lot as well. And I like how he comments a bit about what can make objectification so skeezy. Because, it’s not just attraction, it is being viewed as an object, no more meaningful than a vibrator or a fleshlight. And that… is often scary as fuck.
To know you are not being seen as you but as a piece of anatomy someone wants to get with and that your consent might not matter one way or another to that end. I’ve been on the end of those and it doesn’t make one feel good. It mostly makes one feel creeped the fuck out. And his face conveys that amazingly well.
And it can make sex excrutiating. Like I can’t speak for sexuals, but I know for myself, I can’t get to a sexually performative headspace in the same evening I’ve been creeped on by an objectifying piece of shit or a chaser. I just feel… off, so yeah, if he’s not ace spectrum, regularly dealing with that could be more than enough of a reason for him to not really be feeling a rush into physical stuff.
Panel 6: Oh hello, guilt, how are you?
But seriously, I think it’s starting to sink in more and more for Sarah that this fantasy is best left a fantasy. That Jacob and her would be disastrous and that Raidah, as much as she hates her, is turning out to be the type of partner Jacob wants and needs right now. That that dynamic is proving to be genuinely healthy for him in a really refreshing way.
And hopefully that lesson is going double for Joyce. That even though she likes Sarah, Sarah and Jacob would not work together, because Sarah’s interest is the exact type that makes him uncomfortable and sad and is partially responsible for making sex scary for him.
Panel 7: Though unfortunately, it looks like Joyce might just be feeling starstruck by being validated instead.
And yeah, he’s seeing in that relationship an ideal for himself. One where he knows for sure there won’t be any sexual pressure or expectations, where sex is taken off the table entirely and he can just enjoy the romantic aspects of a relationship without them (oh hello ace analogue).
But in doing so, he is willfully ignoring what was so toxic about Joyce and Ethan. The fact that it was a form of reparative therapy by two people terrified of admitting what they actually want.
And there’s a cold irony in that, that Jacob is finding strength and inspiration in a relationship model he sees as freeing him from objectification and expectations of sexual performance where he could be himself by whitewashing a relationship model that was all about unhealthy denials of what they want and the active running away from the models that would make them happiest.
Panel 8: Oh Joe, you acephobe.
But seriously, it’s shit like this that makes him so untrustworthy. That he views things like boundaries, fears, ace models, a desire to be free of objectification, as something he needs to overemphasize viewing as foreign.
And well… there’s no way he’s not encountering lots of folks with boundaries, with desires not to be objectified by him, that are scared of pregnancy in what is quickly becoming a time when birth control and abortion may no longer be easily accessible for poor students, that feel uncomfortable being pressured. And this not just dismissal, but open hostility and mockery of the concepts from someone he actually respects makes me way less likely to believe he reacts at all possibly when it’s coming from the meat he’s hunting.
And well, having been targeted by creeps like him, who act like being ace is some foreign confusing thing that’s just a “challenge” to overcome, I’m not overly inclined to be overly gracious in interpreting his actions and responses and viewing them in their most charitable interpretation.
Okay, as a SWCM who only just now saw the term “Gray Ace” and realizes that Wikipedia isn’t exactly a super-awesome source…
Gray-Ace (…and forgive me, but the cynical ass in me is thinking the term was termed that because it’s a near homophone for “Grace”) is basically a mostly asexual person that occasionally wouldn’t mind getting some? Like how Robin is kinda portrayed regarding Leslie, or how a lot of guys are straight almost all the time, but then a picture of a ripped Brad Pitt comes up and they’re going… yeah…
That rambling made sense, at least? >_>
As for Joe…
There’s a line between “Dumbass” and “Jackass”. I went to college as a SWCM, and while I didn’t even get a bloody fraction of the action that Joe got (…comp-sci major), I recognize some of Joe’s shit here as being more on the “Dumbass” end of things than the “Jackass”.
This comic especially. He’s not actively insulting Jacob or anything, he honestly just doesn’t seem to get it. It’s really, really easy for us SWCM’s to be blind to so much crap in the world, not out of active malice, but just because… we’re not looking because we didn’t get that there was stuff to look for.
It’s why I’m wondering if Willis is going somewhere with Joe. Maybe he’s just a secondary character for the more interesting one to bounce off of (a story can only have so many major chars, after all), but I can totally see a story arc around Joe burning bridges or accidentally hurting people…
Gray-Ace is a broad category but usually means that someone experiences very intermittent or infrequent sexual attraction or only sexual attraction under very specific circumstances.
It’s basically a catch-all term for those who exist in the gray area between sexual and asexual.
My fiancee is actually gray-ace and has occasional periods of high sexual attraction and long periods of feeling absolutely no sexual attraction whatsoever.
Thanks!
Sorry I keep asking these questions, “Serious sources” tend to be precise and exact practically to the point of being nigh-incomprehensible.
It does definitely sound like Jacob is still feeling out his sexual identity, though. I mean… how many people have heard of “Asexual” or anything on that spectrum by the age of 20? Straight/Gay/Bi/Trans, it’s safe to say that most people have heard of that. Ace? I was definitely into my 20’s when that was a concept I become even generally aware of, and I went to college in California. Jacob’s 18-19 in Indiana…
No worries, I’m usually up for answering questions on this stuff.
And yeah, definitely. It’s a little easier for kids to find these terms earlier thanks to things like tumblr, but growing up, I didn’t find the term asexual until I was 19.
Don’t feel bad. I’m in my 40’s, and though I’ve known about the concept of asexuality for some time, the colloquial terms have escaped me until this week, reading the comments.
Until this week, “Ace” to me was either a playing card or something my Yorkshire (UK) friend said as a synonym for “cool”.
The comments this week have been very enlightening.
Whether he’s still feeling it out or not, given that the author has stated everyone’s is ultimately the same as it is in Shortpacked, and IIRC he’s kind of most definitely not, there, wouldn’t that be an implicit failure to acknowledge it as a real identity?
Asexuality! = no libido.
That was meant to be !=
I looked up SWCM, and came up with Single White Christian Male, but given context, I suspect you mean Straight White Cis Male. Am I correct?
Correct, I’m agnostic :).
Part of the reason I’m so bitterly aggressive with my comment above is for most of the reasons here, especially because my full time job means I have to interact with a lot of Joes, often when they’re drunk. While I’m a part time history teacher substitute at a private high school, my full time job is actually as a bouncer at a bar from a half hour before happy hour until last call. And damn but the Joes come out in force sometimes. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to kick out a Joe who had had far too much or was clearly ignoring the lady’s body language. I may have a hard time expressing myself due to Aspergers, but I made damn sure to learn how to properly read body language as part of an attempt to make sure I don’t make people uncomfortable. Thankfully the owner isn’t sleazy and is fully behind my kicking out Joes. But tonight I actually got let off early because a Joe broke my nose when I tried to inform him that he needed to leave. The asshole was going after this one lady hard, even though she was clearly creeped out and uncomfortable. He also looked like he’d had a few too many drinks. I politely yet firmly told him that he needed to leave and that I would call him a cab. He refused. I again politely but firmly told him that needed to leave, saying that he had had to much to drink and was making things unpleasant for the other customers, and that I would call a cab so that he would get home safely. Then I tried to gently take him aside and he swung at me. I’m still standing, so he tries another swing. At this point I’m pissed, the lady is clearly afraid and one of the bartenders is coming to help me. So reflexes take over, I grab his fist with one hand and slowly say with as much ice as possible, “Sir, you need to leave or I will make you leave.” At this point he suddenly realized that he had just punched a 5’11” 240 lbs late twenties man in the face and said man hadn’t flinched despite a bleeding nose, and he finally got the message. Boss told me to take the rest of the night off to get my nose looked at while marking me down as having worked a full shift, the lady thanked me as I left (which was honestly real nice of her and I don’t think she needed to) and now I find out I’ve gotta sub a class tomorrow and explain to a bunch of sophomores why I have a broken nose. So I wanted to make an indepth analysis tonight as well, but I’m a little pissed with all patience for things Joe gone at the moment. Also, sorry about putting this here Cerberus, but I needed a place to type off some steam, I tend to agree with your analyses and views a lot, and your comment threads are generally very safe places. Or at least I perceive them to be anyways.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that, but I’m glad you’re able to do your part to make your bar a safer place for folks.
I’m really glad you felt comfortable enough to share that. *All the supportive hugs offered* and here’s hoping the damage to your nose isn’t that bad.
I want to thank you for helping make the comments a safe place that I feel comfortable, like I said I have a hard time expressing myself because of asperbers, so it’s nice to actually have that. Plus, you’ve put yourself out there about the sheer amount of hell you’ve been through and that makes you one brave lady. So I guess me sharing my crap is my way of trying to return the favor and make you feel more comfortable, like let you know that there are people who are part of the socially privileged majority that aren’t complete crap. I mean, lord knows I have issues, but I feel like if there’s something I can do for someone who is less socially privileged than the least I can do is do it to let them know that there are decent human beings out there. Especially with this four year shit show starting up. Crap. I don’t think I did a good job of explaining at all, but that’s the best way I could put it.
I appreciate it.
*hugs offered*
I hope you tell your students the truth.
Might do them some good… some of them could know there are people that defend against such actions, some of them could be less likely to become Joe.
I did. Surprisingly it made me simultaneously less intimidating and more impressive to the students, as I had a couple “That’s cool” responses, and a couple students that aren’t doing so well asked me about possible tutoring, which I’ve been hoping from them for months, they’re smart kids but they seem to be having trouble with some of the more recent material. Although apparently a couple think that I’m covering up secret involvement in a fight club. Rumors start like wild fire on a Jesuit campus.
I think that I have to lay down my marker here. I do understand that you have been through hell Cerberus and, when you’ve been through hell, you naturally want to see the warning signs in advance so that you never go through it again. However, what Joyce did was not ‘reparative therapy’. What it was was an ignorant girl trying to help a nice boy achieve a goal that was unhealthy for him in the ignorant illusion that it was both what he really needed and was good for him. It had none of the deliberate structure of malice of ‘reparative therapy’.
I do understand why you hate the idea Cerberus but you really need to stop imposing upon Joyce that level of structured malice that was never there.
BenRG, I agree Joyce was too innocent to be deliberately be trying reparative therapy.
HOWEVER – her actions were programmed by people who were not at all innocent. The structure of malice was quite present, even though Joyce personally was not malicious.
If a 3 year old grows up in a racist household and repeats hurtful language without understanding, they are personally innocent, but the structure of malice is real, and the hurt is real. Joyce’s action seems comparable to this example.
That However clause seems spot on to me.
Also goes back to Roz (wrongly) telling Joyce “You are your church, you’re not getting off with one little epiphany after telling gay men like Ethan he’s bad for being what he is, for eighteen years.”
Joyce is 18 but her agency isn’t. So much of Joyce has changed in the 2 months in college, and she still says “I love them all” about kinds of people she never met before and her upbringing has taught her to pigeonhole.
And she is still visibly working on her progress.
Joyce’s agency is so new she’s not even fully aware she has it yet.
The other thing is: People don’t have to intend malice to do some really terrible things. A lot of the folks working on old-school ABA programs* think that what they’re doing is Good and Helpful and Necessary.
Like, people who want to abuse and/or kill me are scary – but scarier are the ones who think they’re “helping”. Joyce, the way she was before, was really fucking scary. People who think they know what’s best for you more than you do will do all manner of horrible things to you, all the while firmly convinced that it’s for your own good.
At least someone who wants to kill me is self-aware about their hatred and therefore transparent about it. Someone who’s so wrapped up in poisonous ideology they think hate is love? Those folks are the ones who blind-side you.
Occurs to me that like 99.9% of allistics don’t know what’s problematic about ABA so two sentence explanation: You’ve heard of the feminine boy project? The guy who did that (Ivar Lovaas) also used autistic kids as lab rats using the exact same techniques, and ABA is the result except if you’re autistic it’s not considered abuse, it’s “therapy.”
More info here. And an account of a former ABA therapist’s perspective here.
Ugh; I’m sorry to have to ask, but what is (old-school ABA programs)?
I literally don’t know any acronym but the American Bar Ass’n.
Basically, it’s conversion therapy for autistic people. It’s about as creepy and horrible as you’d expect.
Thanks much for the explanation.
I’ve heard of only two “conversion therapies”, gay conversion therapy and now autism conversion therapy. It’s starting to sound like a phrase with nothing but bad connotations.
It’s pretty much always a case of “here is the hole that we have decided is Normal, and we’re gonna hammer everyone into it… and if the edges that don’t fit get all torn up, or the whole thing just breaks, oh well too bad.”
They had the same goals as reparative therapy – “Fix Ethan’s Gender identity” and turn him into a “straight man”, and Joyce would have known about and supported reparative therapy when she was dating him – a lot of the language she used in that relationship was based in the reparative therapy jargon formed in fundamentalist Christian culture.
Sure, she didn’t engage in some of the outright torturous practices that actual reparative therapy camps engage in, and she didn’t do what she did out of malice, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t, at least on some level, reparative therapy.
Intent is everything; I dislike people trying to portray Joyce as a villain when she had no malice and certainly no desire to force Ethan to do anything.
Intent is not everything, actions matter. And you can do the wrong thing for good and kind reasons. And you can justify monstrous actions through the lens of doing something good or kind (we saw that with Toedad)*.
What Joyce did, as Scarves and Celery noted, had an end goal and came from a culture and was only too happy to fulfill Ethan’s stated desire at the time, which was to resist his attraction to men and try and force himself to be straight for his mom and reinforced that.
It’s the nicest, most gentle form I have ever seen, but it was still not okay and could have done real damage if allowed to continue much longer.
*It’s like with the election. If someone voted for Trump, they voted to massively increase the chance I will die. And I don’t really care if they convinced themselves it was for non-bigoted reasons or not, because the end result is that I’m going to lose a lot of friends in the next few years and may be lost myself depending on how bad it gets.
This is nowhere near a comparable case. Joyce acted mostly out of ignorance. Calling her behaviour ‘shitty’ when she had no personal framework by which to judge its ethical basis is demanding the impossible and then blaming her for not achieving it.
You have to educate first and only then judge. It is to Joyce’s credit that, now she knows better, she wouldn’t consider doing this and feels guilty for trying. That is what defines her and how we should behaviour, not what she did in ignorance.
Intent is not magic. If you accidentally step on somebody’s foot, you say sorry because you know it hurt just as much as it would have if you’d done it on purpose. You don’t spend twenty minutes explaining that it was an accident, so they can’t possibly blame you, and also shouldn’t have been hurt that badly.
Like. C’mon.
Yeah… Again a non-comparable case.
I considered it an EXTREMELY generous comparison, considering that trying to “save” a gay person from sin is a much more deliberate act than stepping on someone’s foot by accident, but sure.
As Cerberus is trying to explain, a bad action doesn’t make one an irredeemably bad person, but nor do good intentions (which, frankly, it is hard to even stomach calling this, but certainly Joyce didn’t mean to do harm) make the action Not Bad.
See above about ABA folks thinking they are doing good.
At some point a person has the responsibility to examine their beliefs critically and to look into the consequences of what they plan to do to another human. That Joyce harmed Ethan unintentionally does not negate the fact that she harmed him.
Even in law, negligence does not absolve a person entirely. It lessens the severity of the offense.
No, labeling the action as shitty is important, because the action is not shitty. Joyce is not shitty. She shows that by growing and abandoning that shitty action. That doesn’t make the action not shitty in the first place, it makes Joyce able to improve beyond that shitty action.
Like, people need to get over this black or white view of shittiness. That one is either a worthless person or a pure paragon and thus no shitty action can ever be really shitty in the hands of a “good person”. “Good” people can do awful things and awful people can be good at being kind to people they respect while being absolutely horrendous to folks they don’t.
And everyone can change, though no one is obligated to forgive one the damage they do from before they changed.
That should read “because the action is shitty” in that first line there.
Damn extra nots.
I think there is an important distinction to be made, and it’s right there in your phrasing: the behavior was bad, though the actor and intent may not have been (and, in this case, weren’t).
Just my own 2p added to everyone else’s.
For me what bugs me is we often talk about the damage of what Joyce did but we don’t often talk about Ethan’s actions.
Joyce once the facts of what she doing got through to her acted decisively. She acknowledge and corrected it. It was a shitty, damaging action.
The thing is Ethan went into this relationship in a very calculated way. He had no intention of telling Joyce he was gay, that he wanted someone to hide behind and not a relationship. If wasn’t for outside intervention he wouldn’t have said a thing. The first Joyce would of known of it was when she found Ethan stepping out with another guy. (All of these behaviors were in play before Joyce knew the truth).
Manipulation like this hurts, and the longer it goes on the deeper the scars.
Plus Ethan was doing some really obvious flirtation whenever an object of his lust was in the room. Not only did that threaten the tissue thin facade of being straight but was also intensely disrespectful.
I’ve always wondered what Jocelyn thought about Ethan using her little sister as a beard.
I wonder what Jocelyn thought about him acting as her sister’s boyfriend? Especially since Ethan’s was making eyes at her throughout the whole visit.
Ethan has been great helping others out with there problems. He’s often been at his worst when dealing with his own issues.
I think all the focus on Joyce’s bad action has often allowed the shittiness of Ethan’s actions towards Joyce to fade into the background. It’s one of the reason’s I’m little hesitant about Danny/Ethan.
Sorry, this is kinda out of place but it’s been bugging me.
That is actually a really good point that we’ve overlooked. I don’t believe Ethan would do that to Danny, since he’s now at least somewhat more confident in his sexuality, but he did absolutely lie to Joyce and only came clean after Amber’s prompting, and he flirted with Jocelyne pretty hard even while he was “totally committed.”
That said, I think it’s possible that Danny will end up facing the same problems he had with Amber, where he wants to be openly dating and affectionate with Ethan, but he doesn’t because he’s worried about what other people will think.
I doubt he’d behave the same way with Danny, because he’s actually attracted to Danny. Danny wouldn’t just be a fake relationship.
The problem with intent is that even if you have good intentions, you can still make things worse if you don’t know what you’re doing when trying to express that intent. Even if a person supports a just cause, a clumsily articulated argument can completely ruin the day of the people they are trying to help. Whether it’s because a person gives the impression of condemning the people they support or because by their own ignorance on the subject, they inadvertently trivialise their struggles or remind them of how little average awareness there is about their situation.
And that’s just when expressing an opinion in a manner that can be directly observed by the people affected by it. A person with a group of friends with bigoted opinions can also do damage indirectly by not correcting their friends, even if there are nobody nearby to be offended by their casual remarks. However hypocritical it is, some people who easily dismiss the complaints of a persecuted minority as hyperboly or a thing of the past are more willing to reconsider their assumptions if challenged by a person they trust.
One could argue that good intent is everything to an extent, in that someone with good intentions will be more willing to improve if confronted with the possibility that the way they’re behaving is harmful.
For a take on end and means, try Strong Female Portagonist, which is the middle of an arc on that.
http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-6/page-111-2/
joe, you complete dipstick
Yeah, a Sarah and Jacob relationship isn’t looking very plausible. Too different of interests.
Also, Joe, chill, you were almost looking not like a douche, you’re ruining it.
JoJo is dead.
All hail Joycob.
Say, Jacob, would you mind saying that in swahili?
Dammit, Joe. You’re hard to love, but you’re harder to hate!
……you did NOT say “hoarder to hate!”
damn. I need those new glasses.
like now.
I beg to differ. Haven’t had any problems hating him yet.
Omelette du fromage.
Damn Joe, you should be writing that down. That speech could probably get you a threesome.
……..gross.
I also just realized that Joyce’s punchline comment from yesterday may have been a veiled threat to Joe–and a callback to his pummeling at the hands of Joyce and Mike.
…..is there a Joe/Joyce/Mike ship yet?
Non, David Willis, tu n’es pas un fromage ! … Et c’est en écrivant en anglais que je viens de comprendre la référence au Walkyverse.
(Il doit y avoir un commentaire quelque part où les lecteurs et lectrices francophones se repèrent les uns les autres. Je vais remonter, tiens.)
/////
No, David Willis, you are not the cheese ! … Now writing this I get the Walkyverse reference.
(There must be a commentary somewhere where the french-speaking readers spot each other. I’m gonna check.)
Repérée!
IIRC correctly, the Cheese was an alternate universe future version of Walky. Yes, Walky with the power of a petty god; this is not something that makes me feel safe.
I’m pretty sure the Cheese was Linda Walkerton’s ex-boyfriend, unless that changed later on in Joyce and Walky
Indeed. The Cheese was David, and Linda named Walky after him.
Fun fact, Pastor Powers from a while back is the DoA version of that guy.
Jacob will never know how much he made poor Sarah feel like a disgusting monster with so few words. However, if he succeeds in breaking her crush on the sexual fantasy of Jacob, it might make her ultimately have a far more healthy relationship with him.
To be honest, I’m not sure whether Jacob actually knows what happened between Ethan and Joyce in full detail. However (and I know that this might sound odd), it’s beginning to sound to me that this is what Ethan has told Jacob what happened between them. I think that we can allow Ethan the respect of deciding for himself how he feels about that.
^^^ this.
Joyce’s homophobic indoctrination lining up with Ethan’s desire to escape homophobia is not all there was to their relationship, and both of them actually got good things out of it while it lasted. Yes, Ethan was fucking himself up in the process, but it was not Joyce’s fault! It was his choice! She jumped on the chance to ~help save poor gay~ that’s true… but like, if I had a gay male friend who asked me to date him so everyone thinks he’s straight, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
And Joyce’s personal fantasies about how he’ll be fixed and want to have sex with her eventually, while fucked up, never actually went anywhere and never had the chance to hurt Ethan – I don’t even think she shared them with him, did she? @ archive divers pls help me out here
She jumped on the chance to ~help save poor gay~ that’s true…
Holy crap nooooooo
I’m starting to wonder if Joes main purpose in this comic is to act some sort of cathartic release for posters
I feel like a lot of people really don’t like him, but he never actually does anything horrible. His mouth just says a bunch of stuff that’s often contextually inappropriate.
Oh he has some issues to work out but I get the feeling that because he’s a straight, white male he gets more stick then is really deserved or rather that if a situation can be interpreted a couple of different ways then you can bet the majority of posters will interpret his actions in a negative way.
Kind of like how Danny had some really bad things said about him right up until the point he discovered he was Bi and then suddenly he gets less bad things said about him.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing of course because we all filter what we see through our own experiences.
My take on Joe, in this situation, is that his world view has been altered considerably and now he has to come to terms with it and based on his take down of Walky (over the whole men and shoes thing) I’m sure he’ll process it and come to terms with it in his own time.
That’s a funny example. I hate Danny even though I don’t think he’s actually evil or anything, so I guess it all makes sense.
See I always felt sorry for Danny, he always tried to do what he thought was best based on his limited world view and while he did get things wrong it was mainly based on being a bit naïve and unworldly with no malice (bit like Joyce in that respect)
It almost seemed like picking on Danny was like kicking a puppy yet Danny still tries to help where he can
He’s like the Sarah before she started trying. Everything he says is either obliviously callous or straight-up meanhearted. Knowing his other iterations, I’m sure there’s a drop of compassion in there somewhere, but he’s so insistent on being better than everyone else in the room that I almost don’t want to see it.
Oh yeah he’s got some issues alright, I mean I don’t know how much his parents divorce has had an effect on him (or his Fathers behaviour) but to me he seems more immature and self-centred in his outlook then outright malicious (yet can be quite mature when he chooses to be)
I’m hoping to see an arc where he starts to lose some of the rougher edges of his personality (which will probably come with age) while still retaining his essential Joe-ness
Well, he basically is his father and his father’s creepy as all hell.
Maybe Joe will change, but just growing out of it isn’t inevitable.
Yeah its a tough one, I mean he does has the same mannerisms but the Father is a fully grown adult whereas Joe is (I think) 18 or 19
Its not inevitable but based on some of Joes interactions I think he will or at least certainly won’t end up being as full on as Richard is
Dammit, the perils of posting at work…that should read as:
Its not inevitable but based on some of Joes interactions I don’t think he’ll end up being as full on as Richard is, I see potential for Joe
He’s strong enough to reject clichés, he’s intelligent and can be empathetic, he just needs to bring that out more
It’s not french. I’m french and nothing he said made any sense to me.
French is a bizarre language for Joe to choose when discussing choosing not to have sex and it being scary.
German or Russian probably would have better choices. At least those sound scary.
Jacob is right. Sex is scary. Some of the machines are loud.
Also, Mike should be RA. I know it’s not relevant to this comic, but come on.
If Jacob isn’t ace, then I bet he probably had bad experiences in high school. Namely some ladies that just wanted a screw and another notch on their belt. In which case, all my sympathy for Jacob! I know I was a little uncomfortable with Sarah’s fantasy while she was talking to Jacob in class, though I also chalked that up to my being incredibly ace. Like “oh. uh. maybe this is normal when you have a sex drive? A bit disrespectful tho…”.
Intrusive thoughts or images are pretty much normal when you have a sex drive, I suppose. Personally I tend to start wondering what it would be like to kiss the person I’m talking to. It’s not under conscious control, so I’m not sure if “disrespectful” applies, so long as it stays in the privacy of one’s own head.
Not paying attention to what the other person is saying, now there I can agree with you, that can really come across as disrespectful, regardless of the cause.
For me its more like wondering what shes wearing under her clothes…for some reason I don’t tend to focus on the physical side of things with people I interact with
JE SUIS LE GRANDE FROMAGE!
This might be the first time he’s been confronted with the fact that a man can feel sexually objectified. At least from someone he’s not as much a dick towards that he gives enough of a damn to actually try to listen to them.
Joe should be glad that it didn’t fry his little brain with a paradox…
Quelle fromage!
What she and Ethan carved out for themselves was maladaptive.
Yeah. The trick here is that Jacob doesn’t know the circumstances – it’s at least in theory possible to have a healthy close, interpersonal relationship between a straight woman and a gay man, but not if the point of the relationship is to mask the guy’s orientation/help him fool himself or for the woman to “convert” him.
TBH I’d say “the point of the relationship is to mask the guy’s orientaiton” kind of thing can still be very healthy and helpful. Staying in the closet and putting armed guards near the door is a fair choice in our society as it is, and helping someone with it has 0 negative connotations.
Now, the part where she expected to ‘convert’ him is nasty, even if it came from a place of naive ignorance rather than wilful malice. That much is true. It’s just not the same thing as being a beard.
I mean, Joyce and Ethan’s relationship wasn’t really just him being a beard but still acknowledging himself as gay; Ethan was genuinely trying to repress his sexuality through Joyce, and Joyce was encouraging in the hopes of weening him off the liking girls thing so they could have god sanctioned post-marital hanky panky.
Yeah! I was just replying to the blanket assertion of ” it’s at least in theory possible to have a healthy close, interpersonal relationship between a straight woman and a gay man, but not if the point of the relationship is to mask the guy’s orientation
From Joyce!Dot-eyes to Joyce!BigBlue-eyes in six panels. Jagcob is doing good.
1. jacob clearly is lacking some important info on the whole “shoving ethan back into the closet until it all falls apart” section of what joyce and ethan had, but that ignorance aside, this is pretty sweet.
2. casually starts to ship joyce/jacob. yes i know he’s dating someone else rn, shhhh
“I mean, look at me.”
I’m on a horse
With this speech, I basically like Jacob as a character even more. He pretty much has the same views as I do when it comes to sex.
Don’t worry Joe, I didn’t understand either. [/french]
“Sex can be scary”. I strongly suspect that Joyce thinks of different things than Jacob when she considers that pithy phrase but it is, nonetheless, very true for her.
Please let Jacob be ace!! Please please please! We need more representation!
He was… uh. not. in Shortpacked.
I’ve never heard of the term “gray ace” before today, and I still don’t know if Jacob necessarily is one. He doesn’t have to be, since I feel like I can identify with him perfectly even though my life is probably much different from his.
I really like his take on things here. It’s ultimately up to Joyce to figure out how to accept her own sexual desires as normal, and he’s not forcing her to to think any certain way. For once, she hears someone who talks about sex in its very real, very terrifying, entirety. Sex CAN be scary. It can be an emotional and invasive ordeal for all parties involved, whether they admit it or not. (Not everyone or most people, just a lot of people.) It’s one of those vices that’s culturally reinforced as necessary to proper functioning, but in a complicated fashion in reality. Joyce has recently been grappling with this as well as her own upbringing and sexual trauma. So Jacob’s opinion is a comforting, friendly voice to support her through these dark times.
Yeah… my observation is that, culturally, “dudes” aren’t supposed to see sex and physical intimacy as things that require vulnerability, loss of privacy, emotional risk, potential loss of dignity, etc. It’s supposed to be all enthusiasm and virility, like the boner version of a kid running to jump into the deep end of the pool. Some parts of the culture expect moral restraint, most parts demand (rightfully) consent of the other person, but in terms of how “a guy” feels about sex, the expectation is WOOOOO!
And yet, despite being a “SWCM” (or whatever the vaguely derogatory and demeaning term is this week), that’s certainly not how I feel about an “intimate encounter” with a woman. For me, anything more than a fairly aesthetic appreciation requires that I know, and understand, and trust the other person. The idea of just jumping into bed with a woman “because she’s hot and willing” fills me with more apprehension and anxiety than any sort of anticipation. The “hit it and quit it” fantasy that so many guys seem to express (whether genuinely or because it’s expected of them) is a mystery to me.
Yeah, the way guys are expected to perform a very specific way about sex and never show vulnerability or desires to value romantic moments over sexual ones, and to be constantly sexually active are really harmful and I really resented those expectations back when I thought I was a dude.
And it really makes it hard for guys to talk about things they need to talk about. Fears about sex, what actually they really want in relationships and in sexual encounters, bad experiences like sexual assault (especially sexual assault by coercion), or even things like domestic abuse or PTSD triggers.
And it often encourages a very toxic means of presenting manhood (coughs in Joe’s direction) and does so by heavily punishing guys like Jacob who admit their fears and vulnerabilities about sex or who want something outside that expectation.
And it’s so pervasive that often a major part of any guy’s coming of age is their responses to and growing out of those toxic messages that are thrown at them and enforced with violence and threats.
Also, minor point, but straight white cis male isn’t really a derogatory or demeaning term, it’s really about as neutral as you can get while describing things. Believe me as someone who gets called many “lovely” things on the regular because of how I am.
Yeah, that’s fair… maybe I’m flinching from it because sometimes there’s this undertone of “you wouldn’t get it, you’re a straight white dude” or “it’s the white folks fault” that I’m picking up. I just heard an interview on the radio yesterday in which someone made snide comments about “white folks did this” and “white folks ruined that” about half a dozen times… *and* an interview about the women’s march against The Donald this weekend where someone involved questioned if men or “conservative women” should even be involved. In both cases, part of the response was this “they just wouldn’t understand” and “they don’t really belong here” attitude.
I mean, it’s true that that there are certain things that not being part of a minority group means you won’t fully grasp.
Like, don’t take “oh straight/white/cis/dudes ruin everything” as some kind of personal attack, or that you, specifically, are responsible for every piece of suffering in the world. It’s more about a marginalized group being angry at the majority that elected a cheeto-covered orangutan into the highest office in the country.
What Spencer said.
And yeah, speaking for myself, I’m very very angry at the folks that elected Piss Hitler cause the very specific people who did that gambled my health, my life, my safety and found my death an acceptable price or even the point of them being able to fulfill their terrifying bigotry.
I try to be specific about that, but sometimes I can despair.
Well, there is some truth to it in a historical context, but it’s not that being straight/white/cis/dudes means they’re more likely to ruin things because they are straight/white/cis/dudes, but because after a long period of time with conflicts and coincidences the cultures of caucasian ethnicities with strict heteronormative norms came out on top and spread their influence more than other cultures and so the consequences that arose as a result of that had more geographical reach and longevity.
As such, the reason I might ‘just not get it’ when I am a straight (mostly), white (definitely) cis-gendered (definitely), dude (this is the only word I might perceive some negativity towards) is that I happen to belong to the group that have the least deviations from the social norms that have shaped our current society and any deviations I might have aren’t distinct enough on the spectrum of heteronormativity that I suffer for them. As a result, I am going to be oblivious to a lot of the things that other people struggle with until I am confronted with them.
That’s not to say I have never come across people who hold it against me or use the fact that I am a straight (mostly), white (definitely), cis-gendered male against me and use it as an insult, but in every case where I have encountered this it’s been because they’ve had a cathartic need to vent the frustration they’ve accumulated from being marginalised and I’ve just happened to be there when they can’t hold it in anymore.
Same here, the whole thing.
Very succinctly put.
This is all what I like about this comic…and the comments section. As a small town, formerly religious guy who was at one time so utterly naive about sex (I get the sex is scary thing), I find all the comments, especially those about other orientations to be highly educational. Opens up my understanding and the lightbulb dings for things I’ve seen and not understood in others.
This strip might as well be called “we beat Sarah with an epiphany until she got it.”
On other stuff, for any of you that will be going on the upcoming marches to protest Trump starting… eh, tomorrow? The day after? I dunno, timezones – go strong and stay safe.
Yeah, Sarah’s heard that he doesn’t want sex (which is part of why she backed off initially, in my reading) but she’s never really considered the whys or how he might feel about her fantasizing over him. “Ooh, he has a cute butt” is very different from “I’m just gonna imagine fucking you to the exclusion of all else”
And yeah, go strong, everyone! And to those boycotting on tv, keep in mind that ratings work by measuring how many people watching tv are watching a thing, so watching something else works better to lower the percentage of viewers watching than just not watching tv. Fire up netflix or a channel without the inauguration on.
Ooooh, flashback to when she fantasised while she was talking to him. Yeah, that was bad.
Now look at this Jacob that I just found!
Ok, sorry for that
It actually feels abd for him
Then Joe is just being Joe
Jacob is talking from his own limited perspective, as do so many other characters. Becky was unaware the bi was a thing. Billie is sure everyone is basically bi. Joyce has trouble imagining non-Christians. Dorothy is sure that a rational approach can convince people of the truth. Joe is sure everyone is a horndog at heart. Sarah thinks people are terrible and may just have found evidence that it applies to her too.
tl:dr People consider their actions and beliefs the yardstick to measure others by. And that doesn’t always work well.
Well done DYW.
Sarah’s always included herself in ‘everybody’s terrible’.
I am so happy that the system always auto assigns me Jacob now. He’s a really awesome dude. (we haven’t gotten a lot of chances to really see him open up, he did try of course but that came with a few issues)
Panel seven, to me, is why this such good writing in that they’re (Jacob and Joyce) both right and both wrong all at the same time and its completely understandable
First: Cute Joyceface is cute.
Second: My condolences in advance for Pissface McButtmouth. The world is fucking stupid.
Is Joyce suddenly crushing on Jacob no this is not right don’t derail my perfect JoJo ship
The mighty battleship Joycob crushes JoJo.
I’m reading the second-to-last volume of Transformers MTMTE and I’ve realized that Cyclonus is a big purple robot version of Ruth.
…. ROBERRRRRTS!
I guess it kinda gets weird when Robot Ruth is dating Robot Dina.
I just finished the last trade and now I’m really sad.
Camarades anglophones, il faudra m’expliquer un jour d’où vous vient cette obsession pour le fromage. Vraiment. J’y tiens!
Two days late but idc.
Panel One: That is all very true. Western culture has sex everywhere, and if you don’t want to partake, either because you’re ace or just don’t want to, it can be SHIT. And yeah, sex can be scary. It gets built up a lot as this big be all, end all thing. And sure, it doesn’t have to be. But it is built a lot and that is terrifying. It’s also very vulnerable and a lot of people are uncomfortable with that.
Panel Two: And that is something that resonates with Joyce hard as hell, because she wants sex SO BADLY but is so afraid of sinning and going to hell. It’s heartbreaking and her trauma over Ryan did not improve it. Now she has trust issues AND fear of sin. Goody. So hearing Jacob support her, even when it’s missing the huge helping of homophobia that went into the specific situation he’s supporting her about, is affirming for her.
Panel Three: Yuuuuuup. Boys get told ‘boys want sex, all the time, forever. There are no men who don’t want it or they aren’t real men’. And of course you get objectification that people of colour get. Women of colour aren’t allowed sexual agency, just being the hot object men (especially white men) need to act on. Men of colour get innumerable stereotypes about dick size, objectification and deal with the stereotype of ‘evil poc’ out to rape white women that’s gotten so many of them killed. Particularly black men being lynched.
Panel Four: And yeah, Sarah’s crushing heavy, so I’m not surprised the thing that finally got her to turn to the others and engage was Jacob asking to be looked at.
Panel Five: Awwww, Jacob. That is sad and true. How many times have we seen people tune out of a conversation because ‘ooh, hot guy’ with Jacob or immediately focus on how pretty he was? Not just Sarah, Ethan and Amber have done so too at times. Amber’s first reaction to him was to write sexy fanfic for him and Ethan in her head, for crying out loud.
Panel Six: And yeah, Sarah’s been guilty of this. I do believe she cares about Jacob, but it’s also true she tunes out what he’s saying all the time to ogle and fantasize about him. This has been happening even when he’s talking about how fascinated he is by other religions and family events. Sure, Jacob might think people should be allowed to enjoy butts without shame, but he also believes it shouldn’t be the only thing to the exclusion of what people think and feel and say. That’s the part Sarah’s been having problems with.
Panel Seven: JOYCE’S FACE. My heart melted. Her smile could be used as an alternate energy source I swear to god. Also, Ruth’s spite, but Ruth ain’t here right now. JOYCE <333333
On that note, NO. That is not what she and Ethan had. Part of it was Joyce wanting to avoid the pressure to have sex and sin, but part of it was Ethan trying to throw himself in the closet because he hated himself and Joyce thought she'd try to 'save' him. It was horrible, awful, and reminiscent of reparative therapy. Joyce was 10000000% wrong there.
I'm assuming Jacob is ignorant in this though.
Panel Eight: Oh, up your's, Joe! Just because you don't understand how not wanting to fuck every woman works doesn't mean others don't. Jackass. Wanting to fuck women is fine, but being a disrespectful knob is not. Asshole.
#teamjacob