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(he/him)
⚧
Joe subtlely changes his name to Blake
it is *12:09* SERVER
(also, alt-text, there is an Aerospace Studies for Air Force ROTC? idk)
They took the blue from the skies
And a pretty girl’s eyes
And a touch of Old Glory’s hue,
And gave it to the men who proudly wear
The U. S. Air Force Blue…
That’s just the default class that all Air Force ROTC cadets have to take, along with ‘Leadership Lab’. It’s more of a “how to do things the Air Force way” class. There might be a bit of the basics of how airplanes work, but it’s nowhere close to majoring in aerospace engineering.
True, but Julia Gray’s a pilot not an engineer, so it still works.
Joe becomes ever more endearing.
I see Joe is an avid reader and fan
“She’s seriously out of my league, Dan! I need to make big changes! I need to become…a space vampire!”
Isn’t the Joe character a Werewolf?
I thought there was only a Jacob expy, I don’t remember a Joe. I’m behind on my Julia Grey deep lore. D:
Moe RothenbergJOB ROSENTHABJoe, I only feel like I have enough time in my day to help you with one of those 2 things.
“Dirtybag playboy”
haha ouch
well, that is how a lot of ppl see him but ‘being himself’ outside of the horniness part seems to work well so far and he only needs that when joyce is ready
As a writer and aspiring comic artist, this is precious and I would be so won over by just that last panel alone. Joe and Joyce are my favorite and I live in constant fear for them.
Same.
You know what, I now ship Julia Gray with Josh Boyfriend, the self-insert from Thundercracker’s screenplay.
Does the quality Joe and Danny time I crave start here? I hope so!
Joe is asking the right person for advice, anyway. Danny’s a good egg.
Yeah I like Danny. Except when he’s telling people it’s a good thing their mean friends died.
He wasn’t wrong; he just had poor timing.
And he kinda said the quiet part out loud mostly by accident out of frustration.
Uh…naw there’s not a good time to say what he said.
I suppose that is true. I can’t imagine how long they would have to know each other before Ethan would let that comment slide, if ever.
And he’s giving Joe genuinely good advice. But then, I’d expect no less from the guy who essentially became Sal’s boyfriend by accident.
I love the role reversal of nervous, unsure Joe and relatively smooth and confident Danny.
This. This is beautiful.
I think Danny’s point in panel two might hold a little more if he emphasized the “for somebody else” part. I think seeking change in oneself is fine– great, even!– but I often think it’s best when you do it for you.
That said, sometimes we do change ourselves for others! And sometimes that is also fine!
At least if you can be Batman.
Check with your parents before deciding to become Batman, they may not be okay with certain prerequisite factors.
What if you wanna change for yourself because you want other people to like you. Like you don’t like yourself cuz nobody likes you. And as a human you don’t live in a vacuum. All of your choices end up filtered by how everyone view you.
I can understand the impulse but I’d say be careful what you change and how. Not liking yourself because you’re not being yourself won’t help either.
In this case, I think Joe has realized that there are things about himself that he doesn’t like very much. Trying to change those things strikes me as a perfectly legit goal. Maybe he can be a little more comfortable with himself, and if other people like him more that’s just a bonus.
Yeah, like… in my opinion, this doesn’t help self-esteem wise. You can say, “Nobody likes who I am. I will change myself so that people like me.” But like BBCC said, it depends on the change and how you go about it. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of acting a certain way or curating a certain persona to get people to like you, but it doesn’t feel authentic to you. So then you can still end up thinking something like, “They don’t actually like me; they like the person I pretend to be. I am still unlikeable.”
I think that’s still very much changing yourself for other people, and it’s not a very effective practice. It’d be filtering yourself through 3 filters: how you think you present yourself to others, how other people perceive how you present yourself, and how you think/perceive other people perceive how you think you present yourself. (Fingers crossed that makes sense). There’s a lot you’re assuming and a lot of room for error. Like, you might think you present yourself as shy and that people don’t like you because they think you’re unsociable and boring, so that’s what you think you want to change, but they might not like you because they’re homophobic twats or they don’t vibe with your interests. Or maybe they do like you and have resting bongo face.
Like, I sometimes think people don’t like me because I come across as a know-it-all and can’t judge the appropriate time to speak in a conversation. Turns out a lot of people do like that I have a lot to say on certain subjects and feel challenged to think about things differently. I still try to change how/when I speak so that I can benefit from others’ perspectives and because it’s important to me to be considerate, but that change is for me.
“What other people think of me is none of my business”
@Yoto: sure, why not, of course you will only be able to change if you yourself enjoy the process of changing.
Also, our self-worth is impacted by others, sure, but it’s dangerous and brittle if it’s only dependent on others. You also need you to like you. Practice self-love. For many of us it’s a struggle, but i can’t describe the relief, the lightness of no longer hating yourself all day, everyday. It makes life easier.
I would say that everyone has attractive and unattractive characteristics. Maybe the first question to answer is, “what do I like about myself?” Because there must be someone else who likes that too. Then you have an idea for how to become more yourself. It’s hard to become someone else, and exhausting to maintain that, but to play to your strengths and bolster your weaknesses should be easier to start and to grow into.
as long as it’s for teh better, but i think relationships change a lot of ppl unintentionally but at least there’ll hopefully be compromising as opposed to one person stubbornly refusing to adapt
well, we can’t expect his joementum to change unless acted on by an outside force
with out that, a joe at rest would tend to remain at rest
That’s physics, as everyone knows!
Of course, there’s also the issue that change is hard. Especially for Joe. It’s a reasonable question about whether or not he actually is truly capable of change when faced with temptation, at least right now.
Is that the first time Joe’s worn a shirt with a collar?
Looking at your Gravatar, I think the answer is no.
IIRC the shirt in that gravatar is a hoodie.
You are right. But here is a case of a Joe in collared shirt:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/02-ill-leave-you-a-phantom/objects/
Yup, plus the purple shirt he wore to the art class also has a collar.
…yes. This is going to be my favorite new plotline going forward, isn’t it.
I love Danny and Joe as friends. I’ve loved it since Roomies. The truest friendship that’s lasted longer than I’ve been alive.
we all need a danny in ourli ves
If you liked Roomies, you’ll love Joe’s flashback “wandering (not what it sounds like) (seriously, you couldn’t be more wrong) eyes” in panel six.
Clever, Joe. Very clever.
I think I love this more than any strip before it. Not only is Dan being his delightfully oblivious self, but Joe shows us he has taken enough of an interest in Joyce’s comic to come up with that reply. I don’t think I can survive such adorableness.
“Hey, I dunno what her major is, she just said she was taking a thermodynamics class. So…mechanical engineering?”
Fun fact, I passed up a mech engineering major because I was working for a painter at the time who suggested it was full of intricate formulas and codes, and civil engineering was easier to wrap your head around. So I did civil instead.
And then I found myself two months into my first full-time civil-eng. job diddling around on a “practice” drainage project, having no instructions or input beyond “You doing okay over there?” And still getting paid day in and day out. Then one day the boss calls me on the office phone to say “You not moving as fast as we expected :/”
I HAD NOTHING ELSE TO DO
Anyway aeronautics sounds neat
Awwwwww, Joe’s being super adorable here. Danny’s pretty good to ask for advice these days.
Oo ooo okay here’s a thought: Danny is hanging out with Sal later and saying stuff like Joe really wants to change himself and become a better person for a girl, I can’t believe it. Sal’s all dismissive, sounds like a trap. Dan’s like no no I think he’s being sincere. I gotta meet the girl who did this. Do you know a Julia Gray? And Sal flashbacks to Halloween and goes aw hell no. Cue shenanigans.
depends on how much time they have to talk about roommate updates compared to what they were planning to do on a date/choir practice or so
Sal doesn’t need to flash all the way back to Halloween, just to yesterday morning, when Joyce was all “Look at my semi-autobiographical comic strip, because I am a published author!” and she said that if a character based on her showed up, Joyce wasn’t allowed to do the accent.
What I’m getting at here is that the strip is out and most people in the group know about it, so “My crush is Joyce’s self-insert character” is nowhere near the cunning ruse Joe seems to think.
This is so dang cute. I’m ready for the Joementum
Samesies, just in time for spring!
Me: when is the joe plotline coming up in the joementum storyline
Also me: *is genuinely and pleasantly surprised when a joe plot is revealed*
Dorothy will DESTROY Joe for this.
i mean, seems like it’d be a good thing as opposed to ‘doubling down’ on his ‘horndog’ persona like, “i banged 20 ppl in a week to ‘get it out of my system’/be my least horny self”
Any progress he makes toward being better will be met with Dorothy skepticism.
Which is fair. She’s got no reason to trust him and lots of reasons not to.
Short answer: IU doesn’t, but Purdue does! I am so dismissing them this March Madness!
“Sounds familiar”? This arc might be why.
Weeeee!:D
So, what pride flag is joe wearing ? ;P /j
boyfriend pride flag
Ha! Excellent!
I am saying this to every person I see wearing coloured stripes from now on
I only just now realized that Joyce specifically gave her self-insert OC protagonist a ‘neutral color’ surname to match her own.
LOL color surnames are interesting, I wonder if Walky’s “equivalent” is like named “Jogger” or so lol
As a person with a colour surname myself, the number of OTHER colours that have been used as nicknames is surprisingly high.
joe you’ve literally never been cuter
SAY HER NAME!!!
Oh no! This is adorable
I love this, a lot.
I wonder to a degree why he won’t tell Danny who the girl is, but Joe’s bashful about matters of the heart, so…
Also, not bad advice from Danny. I guess he’s also got more experience at boyfriending than anyone else in the comic, really, so he’s the dude to ask.
Loving his shirt, by the way.
Also, I wonder if Joe already thinks he’s Joyce’s boyfriend, or if it’s more that he wants to prepare for that. I guess both are not invalid, even if Joyce has seemingly been intentionally vague with him.
I think it’s a case similar to ‘dress for the job you want to have, not the one you do have.’ He wants to present as a good boyfriend option so that Joyce will take him up on it and so he’ll be ready for it.
Oh my god how cute is this
EXTREMELY
I have a documented hatred of Joe, he’s everything I wanted to be when I was younger but he’s also a douchebag, but I’m very interested in this development. Can he change? I honestly don’t know but I have some kind of hope.
Clarifying to say I no longer want to be like him and haven’t for a long time, but he reminds me of the kind of person I had looked up to and tried to act like as a teen and young adult.
To be fair, he doesn’t want to be the kind of person he wanted to be when he was younger anymore, either.
Yeah, the story with him was him thinking he could not change, but seeing Joyce change has given him more faith in it being possible for people to change.
I feel like Rocky in Rocky IV saying change this much.
“AND IF JOE CAN CHANGE, AND JOYCE CAN CHANGE-!”
envy, I won’t deny I have some of him, too
In two years real time, Danny’s going to read Joyce’s comic and do a Shocked Pikachu Face.
Actually asking this to himself, and to another person, is a step in the right direction itself. September Joe loathed talking to Danny about emotions and relationships.
Danny should be genuine and help Joe out. He’s actually a decent bloke, so he could be a good influence here.
You don’t want to change for someone else, but you should change for yourself.
Danny, the relevant advice for Joe isn’t to not punch anyone in the face, it’s to not do anything that gets him punched in the face. Surely you know this.
“Julia…Gray…?”
OH JOE YES
Gigglesnort at mentioning Joyce’s alter ego in her stories.
Also aeronautics is a specialty in Mechanical Engineering, so that’s what her major would be.
JOYCE MAKES JOE BELIEVE IN HIS OWN CAPACITY FOR CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS ROMANCE!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
I mean she already told you, Joe: see her as a person.
You know what, this is actually fucking cute, hell.
“In an alternate universe she and I are already married and saving the world from aliens!”
Joe is really paying attention in gender studies, huh? i don’t often read “themself” singular from cis straight men.