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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
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mccloud
I love how hard Joe is trying.
Trying to do what tho
My guess is that he doesn’t trust his drunk self to treat Joyce with respect. So he’s holding himself from drinking to try to be a gentleman.
We haven’t really seen Joe drunk before though. He might not be a drinker at all. Possibly because of his dads lecherous history, though thats pure speculation.
If that’s the case, why doesn’t he just say “I don’t drink?”
People always ask why. I don’t drink, and that’s my business why. Not “just one drink” or “awww why not”, fuck you.
/not at all a pet peeve
People get weirdly offended when you don’t want to do the thing they’re doing.
Ugh, don’t even get me started about my endless arguments with spontaneous combusters.
Those guys get really hot under the collar. Zero to white-hot fury in a flash.
i hate the normality of drinking culture and how people (esp drunk people) refuse to understand that you just don’t want to (for whatever reasons). I don’t drink. I don’t like it. I don’t like being around drunk people. A situation is not more fun for me by drinking. Drinking at a party feels volatile.
It has nothing to do with alcohol. If you don’t believe me, go out for lunch with a bunch of friends, and when you look over the menu, just go “You know what, Im not feeling hungry, I’ll just have water”. See what happens.
I go with “I don’t drink much”, which as a less absolute statement doesn’t invite as much prying IME.
“I never drink … wine.”
It used to be a pet peeve of mine too because I don’t drink. Not because I have anything against it or anything like that…I just developed a genetic blood thing earlier than most people in my family do where we have a platelet count that hovers right around the low end of where you want it to be. About the worst thing you can do for a platelet count is drink alcohol so I just don’t. I’m lucky that most of my friends know that and don’t bug me too much about it when they are imbibing.
I don’t like most bottled stuff versus custom made cocktails but i wonder how ppl would react to ppl being like “well, i get nosy when i get drunk i’ll probably go through your things and try to take your valuables” or so
Tho , thinking on it, while it is a douchey move, depending on how big a party/house is i’m surprised more ppl don’t get their stuff stolen while hosting a party if it’s casual acquaintances invited versus actual friends
A friend of mine doesn’t drink for medical reasons, and people are awful to her about it, especially men she goes on dates with. I find it kind of skeevy how often guys she’s on like a first or second date with try to insist on her having a drink and then get angry at her when she says she doesn’t drink.
Jim Gaffigan has a great bit about that, as alcohol is about the only thing people will ask “Why?” with.
“Oh, you don’t like mayonnaise, why? Are you allergic to mayonnaise? Are you addicted to mayonnaise?”
if you aren’t pregnant or a designated driver, most people will take “i don’t drink” as a challenge. since joe can’t use either of those excuses, he may as well resort to ~acting~
People get really weird when you say you don’t drink.
Really weird.
At least we have better options than O’Douls to shut them up now.
Top Comment Thread: “People get weird when you say you don’t drink.” and “People always ask why.”
Every other Comment Thread: “Why is Joe not drinking? Let’s analyze him to figure out why!”
**tips imaginary hat to Marisa Mockery and Shade for calling it so hard**
There are some really good 100% alcohol free IPA’s these days. Used to it was just Odoul’s which isn’t even 100% alcohol free. I was pretty impressed the last time I had a non-alcoholic 0.0% (not even .5% abv) IPA.
I’ve been trying different NA beers over the last year or so, here’s my take:
I haven’t liked a single IPA. They all taste like bitter grass clippings. Guess I just don’t like hops?
My current favorites are Partake Hefeweizen and Athletic Upside Dawn.
Corona NA is good. Coors Edge is good but tastes like liquid saltine crackers. Busch NA has become my go-to fridge filler shitty beer. Heineken 0.0 tastes almost the same as Busch NA but at twice the price.
Blue Moon is good citrus-y, Sam Adams Just the Haze is bad citrus-y. (It tastes like someone made tea with orange Juicy Juice.)
Guinness 0 was disgusting. The whole time my brain was going “you shouldn’t be drinking this it’s rotten you shouldn’t be drinking this it’s rotten“. I haven’t tried Kaliber yet because I haven’t been able to find any.
Disclaimer: I never drank the regular versions of any of these, so I can’t tell you how they compare.
Oddly enough, I like Bud Zero. I don’t like regular leaded Budweiser or Bud Light but Bud Zero has an OK taste for your “Pee Water” level of beers.
Joyce has seen him hungover.
I’d combo that with him knowing his reputation with this group, and being VERY aware that eyes are on him because of it. Here’s hoping that it helps the group see him in a better light moving forward!
I think it’s also that Joe doesn’t want his “firsts” with Joyce to happen while drunk
Feed an infant strained peas, if panel 3 is any indication.
The past several comics he’s been in, he’s had a face like he’s been offended by stuff Joyce has said, and I think he’s just trying not to be the way he was, but still doesn’t like how he’s being treated…
okay fine
be cute then
dammit
Joe is proof that people can change and grow.
So is Joyce.
Now I know how to compliment the next cocktail my friends mix for me.
It’s very good! My sinuses burn!
He’s not drunk. He’s two sobers in a trenchcoat!
Nice.
Joe has been put on self-designated ‘partner babysitter’ duty, and I respect him for that.
Joe is rethinking his life choices.
Sure, if you read a totally different comic than this adorable strip above.
Well, I read him as very uncomfortable in this situation, and not liking this “new Joyce” character as much as he liked “old Joyce”. (To be fair, *I* am uncomfortable around drunks (and parties in general) so I might be reading more into it)
I’m getting the same vibe.
I don’t think the issue is “the new Joyce” but that he simply don’t trust himself to not screw this up.
Here’s my take:
Joyce knows being drunk lowers her inhibitions, and she wants to leverage that.
Joe knows that this can actually sometimes make someone go WAY further than they’d normally be comfortable with. He wants to make sure he’s sober enough to keep how “sober Joyce” might feel about what they do together in perspective.
And that’s where he feels lost. He feels like he can’t accurately estimate where the good compromise is: letting Joyce do a LITTLE BIT of lowered inhibitions stuff without going so fast that she (or her friends) will feel like it’s too far, either now or tomorrow.
I think he built up for himself that to be “good enough” for this relationship he’d have to be ready to go super slow, and now that Joyce wants to maybe start going faster things have changed. The thing is, he’s putting it all on himself, he thinks he has to be the one to perfectly guess the correct answer (without going over) when in reality this is probably going to have to be a conversation both of them have when both of them are sober.
i way prefer the way you explained it to how i did elsewhere
This exactly it. Thanks you for putting it so clearly.
Problem is, while they need to have that conversation when they’re both sober, they also need to have it now and she’s already drunk.
Yeah I thought we all were on this page (no shade at you, I appreciate you articulating it). But apparently not, since there are still other explanations flying around.
Yes, very good explanation. Joe is really trying hard to be a worthy boyfriend and for Joyce to continue to like him and esteem him. He’s playing the long game, as he basically told someone (Jacob?) Joyce will be a great woman to be married to for a long lifetime.
Nah, I think you’re dead on. I think Joe is trying to be a better person for Joyce, but at the same time he’s watching her become a worse person and doesn’t like it. Okay, maybe “worse” isn’t the right way to say it (since everything’s subjective after all) but he’s seeing her pivot hard into this personality/behaviors that seem to just all stem from her just wanting to be the opposite of her old self (an Anti-Joyce, if you will
). Joyce never swore, so now New Joyce is gonna swear like a sailor; Joyce would never drink or think about sex but now New Joyce wants to get smashed and make out.
He’s watching her rapidly change her personality and it all comes right after they started officially dating. So from his POV, it might seem like she’s doing all this for him, or that somehow he’s responsible for these changes which (I think it’s pretty clear) he doesn’t like.
I think it’s more nuanced than old-Joyce-new-Joyce. He also delights in some new-Joyce attributes (like how she’s letting go of harmful beliefs). My interpretation is that he’s just worried for her safety, because right now, she’s throwing herself into unknown and potentially harmful situations she might be too inexperienced to judge well (in this case, just the alcohol and its effects. she’s otherwise safe because she’s home with her friends (and we know those are actually friends, not some shady people she thinks are friends). way less dangerous than going to a bar and being picked up by someone like Ryan.)
I think he’s uncomfortable but it’s not because of “new Joyce”. Did y’all forget the speech he gave Jacob about how Joyce is constantly changing and that’s what he loves about her (paraphrasing)? It’d be mad out of character for him to say “I don’t like this new Joyce who’s finally getting comfortable with things most people her age are, I want the old repressed and anxious Joyce back :(“
Sorry I’m just not paranoid enough to see what you see in his goofy smile that reads as discomfort.
It always feels like half the comments section is ready to find the worst interpretation of every situation and I’m just not interested in joining. They seem happy, this strip is adorable, the thing Joe liked most about Joyce was that she could change.
Also, it’d be pretty fucking hypocritical if Joyce wasn’t allowed to change while Joe is undergoing massive shifts of his own.
I genuinely am so sick of this pearl clutching.
Joe is fine with Joyce as she is. He loves her, actually! He just doesn’t wanna fuck things up. He’s being extra responsible, because Joyce is inexperienced, and he is very very experienced. There’s a difference of power due to this, and he is trying his best to take precautions against any possible abuse of that power. Meanwhile Joyce is as happy as can be, and that’s all he wants for her right now.
Tbf he’s been rethinking his life choices since he started liking Joyce (in a good way!)
I don’t think he’s not liking Joyce so much as being slightly uncomfortable with drunk Joyce because she seems to be a super affectionate drunk which either means he has to navigate returning affection mindfully because consent.
I don’t think “consent” is really the right framework for his thinking here, To legalistic and rape centric.
He’s afraid that Joyce will push herself to do something she’s not really ready for any will regret afterwards, especially if she’s drunk, but maybe even if she’s not. And he’s got recent experience with Liz “almost ruining herself forever” that’s probably running through his mind.
Indeed, one problem with using [whatever] to lower one’s inhibitions is that, when [whatever] wears off, the inhibitions come back, saying “now look what you’ve done.”
It depends. Sometimes you just need to get over the hump to something that you already wanted to do sober.
Joe and Sarah share goals for a happy Joyce
Here’s a question: is Joe not drinking because he doesn’t like alcohol, because he wants to be sober in case of a situation, or because he doesn’t trust himself?
Probably a mix of the last two
My money is answer C, but he may use answer B as an initial excuse. Either that or a complete mix of the two reasons.
Most likely not the first one; we’ve seen him be hungover in the strip before (something about “if I’m old enough to go to war I should be old enough to get sloshed” and “it really facilitates the threesomes”)
Here’s a question for that. Was that maybe a lie? Because we know Joe was at least a little performative in his former toxic masculinity. The whole facilitating threesomes feels like a bluff in hindsight and anyone can say they’re hungover. I don’t know if we’ve ever seen Joe drunk.
He LOOKED pretty terrible and he only said he was after he was being told he looked rough.
Joe later did admit that he had never been in a threesome.
Since I went to the trouble of digging up that strip, here it is:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/hungover/
It doesn’t seem like he was lying about being hungover– in his previous strips, there wasn’t something that, like, maybe he was doing/going to do instead that left him in rough shape. We do know that the threesome part was posturing, so I think it’s possible he got drunk and had a bad time.
Did we? We saw him tell Joyce he was hungover. When she said he wasn’t old enough to drink he said her voice was so annoying it replicated the experience.
I’m leaning towards C, personally.
Last time he had sex was with Sarah’s sister, who was at first very enthusiastic before getting scared and deciding not to have sex after all. Joe is definitely scared of something similar happening with Joyce. Either that they’ll both be drunk and if Joyce says no during he will not hear (due to being drunk) OR if they both do go through with it, he’s scared she’ll wake up the next morning and be filled with regret that her first time was while drunk.
Yeah, from Joe’s perspective, he literally dodged the bullet of raping a girl. If she hadn’t withdrawn consent, whether anything came of it or not, most people would ultimately see Joe as a rapist in that situation. Hell, it’s pretty clear, he’d see himself as one, too. It’s a barrier he hadn’t considered himself capable of crossing, and he probably wonders if any of the myriad hook-ups from his past who may have been intoxicated, felt any serious regret as a result of his loose coercion into coitus. It’s just extremely important to Joe, to never even come close to being that guy, ever again. Especially not with the woman who he clearly hopes could someday be his wife.
Aaaw, Joe and Joyce hubby and wife… they do make for a very cute couple. But, absolutely agreed!
I don’t think he thinks of that as dodging the bullet of rape. (Or really that most people would see it that way – other than probably Sarah.)
It’s worse than that in some ways. He saw that just because there is consent and it’s not rape, that doesn’t mean it won’t mess someone up afterwards. He’s worried about Joyce, like Liz, pushing herself to do something she’s not really ready for and feeling afterwards that she’s ruined herself.
Jesus Christ, that word gets thrown out so easily. Under what nonsense framework would Joe and Liz consensually banging, suddenly be called rape? Both were sober, she was enthusiastic (if anything, Joe was the apprehensive one), it was completely mutual, and the absolute second she asked to stop, Joe agreed to stop. If she’d decided to push herself through the religious shame (which seems like it would have been an internal thing, not said out loud) and they’d fucked, that’s just called having sex. Maybe weird and awkward sex, since it would be her first time, but can we not be busting out the Big Guns for that? Nobody with a lick of sense in their head would look at that situation and say “Yeah, he definitely forced her or took advantage of her”.
The dodging the bullet part is referring to what would have happened if Joe did not accept her request to stop. That kind of situation is how some people may wind up committing rape without them like, obviously being a serial rapist.
It goes like this; a guy and a girl are both sober. Both enthusiastic. Both have verbally stated they want to have sex. As they get started, however, the girl suddenly becomes apprehensive and says “wait, stop, I don’t want to do this anymore”. Joe did the right thing and STOPPED. Not everybody DOES do that though. For instance, what if Joe said “but you literally told me you had sex five minutes ago”. Or, guilted her by saying “C’mon, you revved me up for nothing?”. That is how the wheel starts turning where, whether the other person truly intends it or NOT, they’re beginning to turn a consensual encounter into a nonconsensual one. Throwatron isn’t saying Joe is a rapist. I think they’re saying that’s the closest Joe’s ever come to being in a sexual encounter where consent was revoked and although he did the right thing, he understands that it would have been very easy to do the wrong thing. I’d think that’d shake someone a little.
*told me you wanted sex, not told me you had sex
That’s not “dodging a bullet”, that’s “not raping”.
I could see old Joe trying to talk her into continuing, but even if successful, that still wouldn’t be rape. Maybe shitty, but still not rape.
As I said earlier, I do think he dodged a bullet there and it has him wary now, but it wasn’t rape or anything to do with consent: It’s thinking of Liz going through with it and only feeling afterwards that it had ruined her forever and he’s now worried that’ll happen with Joyce if she moves too fast.
Okay, so thejeff is right and that’s not “dodging a bullet”. What a weird scenario to invent anyway. “Whew, am I ever glad I didn’t willingly rape somebody. I’d sure have been upset to do that. I really dodged a bullet, not doing that. I can only hope I’m so lucky next time.” It’s not even valuable to talk about that “But what if he did” world, because we don’t live in it. He didn’t.
He literally didn’t. This comments section is fucking deranged sometimes.
Seriously, like what the fuck are we even talking about, here?
He didn’t have sex with her.
I don’t think he’s actually had sex in the comic with anybody but Roz and Malaya.
That’s true, that was a misuse of words on my end. What I really had meant was “last girl he attempted to have sex with”. And also true! Roz and Malaya are the only confirmed and named characters we know he’s had sex with. Everyone else is just “true me bro”.
gdi I did it again, I meant ‘trust me bro’.
It was also pretty well confirmed with Penny.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/dangerous/
In that scene with Liz, Danny does say that he’s still getting sexiled regularly. I think we can safely conclude that not all of Joe’s reputation is fake, even if he was exaggerating things like threesomes.
Joe’s cup surely runneth over XD
honestly, taking a look I’m starting to wonder if his cup wasn’t empty to begin with
Doesnt trust himself
I can’t tell if Joe is grimacing or smiling-ish in the last panel. Cuz Joyce is cute, but he’s also uncomfortable rn.
Yeah, he’s very conflicted about it.
If this was my situation, my thought would be “i really DO want to make out with you, all this would feels SO right IF ONLY YOU WERE SOBER“
The “Numnumnum” killed me dead sdlkgjsdlkgj They’re disgustingly sweet, help. Joyce looking that delighted is a thing of beauty and I so so very hope this dude feels more reassured of… Everything, truly. He’s come so far.
Also: Spiderman kisses are kind of their thing, isn’t it?
Joyce and Joe’s faces are a crossover event??
JoeJoycers Assemble!
oh yeah, this IS a Joe-Joy strip. Why not? XD
*plays “Walk Like An Egyptian” on hacked muzak*
Come to think of it, have we ever seen Joe drink at any point in DoA history? I wonder if there might be other reasons beyond choosing to be the designated sober boyfriend?
We have; see my above comment
Looks like we haven’t seen him drink but we have seen the morning-after results, self-described as hung over, so his having drunk is a reasonable inference.
Oh no
It might just be me and my feelings about people being drunk but I kinda find this situation *insanely* uncomfortable.
Yeah, same here!
Third! Drunk people take my “social anxiety feels” and multiply them by a thousand.
Joe seems to be in the same boat. Past Joe would’ve loved this situation, but present Joe really doesn’t enjoy this.
Him and Joyce are both trying to change, but in opposite directions. Joe is deliberately trying to move on from the loose playboy lifestyle into a slower, more serious relationship. Meanwhile Joyce is moving on from her previous inhibitions by actively trying to go against all her former taboos, including the ones Joe is currently trying to respect.
I love these two dorks.
Same.
Yep, it’ll be a challenge for Joe to fake that, but he better stay sober, because who knows what kind of crazy thing Joyce is going to do when she’s drunk.
I’m not understanding the alt-text. Thoughts?
Also, Joe’s response reminds me of the “21st birthday” episode of Community, where a fellow sci-fi fan is chatting Abed up in a bar, and asking why Abed hasn’t touched the beer bought for him. Abed touches the bottle to his pursed (and sealed) lips, pretending to drink, then sets it down and says, “Ahhh” as if refreshed.
Man, that episode was heartbreaking, when Abed actually did give in and start drinking. Stay strong, Joe!
It’s a meme from around the time of infinity war with the format of:
Marvel: Infinity War is the most ambitious crossover event in history
Me: [an image of some other crossover thing that the poster likes and which is funny to contrast with the big production – for instance the power rangers/TMNT crossover]
In this case the other crossover is Joyce and Joes faces
Thank you, Vegetalssfour!
…Or worse. Intoxication can make consent all fuzzy…
Oops! Meant that to be a reply to Doopyboop. Sorry!
Agreed!
I can’t tell; what emotion is Joe showing in that final panel?
I think it’s him trying not to laugh, myself. Joyce rolling on him and demanding affection is cute and silly.
Emotion 1: joy from interacting with Joyce
Emotion 2: shame from the fact he is hiding his lack of drunkenness
Emotion 3: fear that if he WERE to get drunk, he might do something to violate Joyce’s boundaries, or otherwise give others a reason to say “oh of course he’s taking advantage of Joyce, it’s Joe we’re talking about” but that one might be more due to my interpretation of his reactions and mannerisms this in-comic day
He isn’t showing any emotion. Joyce has got hold of his cheeks
These two are cute as hell, but I do wonder when he’ll come clean.
Never. 30 years from this moment when they’re married and there 3rd child has went off to educate themselves at this very university, in one of their quiet moments, when the years of commitment and the choices not made weigh on her mind, Joyce will ask him “Were you really drunk at that keg party?” And that’s when the downfall starts. Next thing you know she’s bailing Becky out of jail so she can work with Amber to kidnap their kids and a bunch of their friends!
Joe will say “that wasn’t a keg”
They need to have a real talk about this, but not until Joyce sobers up.
People have a lot of takes about “Joe is scared he’s too horny and he’s gonna defile Joyce” and it’s just, like, I don’t get how the take is that extreme.
It’s not that deep. He had a traumatic incident, that he doesn’t want to re-live in this particular relationship, because he really cares about Joyce, and doesn’t want to fuck this up for him or for her. Literally the last time he hooked up, he took home one girl who was consenting because she was drunk, and before anything happened, she freaked out because she wasn’t actually ready to have sex, and it was clearly really traumatic for her.
Joyce also has her own sexual trauma, and a known habit of pushing herself way too deep into things she’s not ready for out of an impulse to grow and be more mature, and recently got into alcohol for the purpose of suppressing her deep-seated issues with giving up control over herself, and has a life-long predilection for completely avoiding something forever, if she tried it once, and didn’t like it. I’m sure there are many different foods Joyce tried once, and then never, ever gave a second chance to, for the rest of her life, after one bad experience.
Joe is privy to literally all these data points. The ones about Joyce’s tendencies, and the ones about her experiences, and most of these events are extremely fresh in his mind. He just doesn’t want to hurt Joyce, and doesn’t want to lose Joyce, and so he’s really feeling uncomfortable with the idea of breaking through the barrier of sexual intimacy with Joyce, while she’s disinhibited and willfully not in full control of herself.
He’s actually right about not wanting to do this with her right now, if he’s not comfortable with it. His only mistake, is letting himself be too scared to have a straight conversation with Joyce about it. He’s scared of making her feel rejected, as well as scared of hurting her if he doesn’t choose to reject her. But, obviously, the longer Joe takes to actually bring this up, the more rejected Joyce is going to feel, and the more likely one of them is going to end up having a bad experience.
I don’t think Liz was drunk.
Yeah, she was definitely sober. At most Joe went along with her request to give her another “edible” and she mindtricked herself into thinking she was high when she wasn’t.
Those male vitamins man, they send you to Mars!
THAT was the explanation for that, thanks lol
Lucy wasn’t actually drunk or high though. Like Joyce at the time she’d been faking it as I recall out of shame at her good little church girl image from school.
Liz was not drunk
But Liz thought she was high on edibles. Even though they were just vitamins.
Joe does not accept consent from drunken persons. Here’s a manifestation of his principles from 2012 our time: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/casualbang/
FAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
It’s always a struggle to maintain the mask when you aren’t certain if it comes off what’s actually underneath it. (at least that’s how I’m parsing Joe’s reticence – this is the same reason I tend not to drink or do any drugs; I don’t want to find out what lies beneath the hard way, nor have anyone else find out that way)
Meanwhile, suspiscious sounds keeps coming from the dino plushie
They managed to burrow inside the thing, like a tauntaun.
I did not know that tauntauns were burrowing animals.
It’s like a turducken, but with freezing Jedi.
The Force was with him, but he was not a Jedi yet.
That’s not an important detail for the joke.
Man, I don’t even know. This one seems fine. He’s a little nervous and playing it safe in a room full of other people, it’s honestly not that deep.
Right? This is just basic “SOMEONE here has to be sober, and my new girlfriend who’s going through some major changes in what she wants is blitzed, I’d better be that guy.” energy, which I expect from someone who treats consent the way Joe does anyway.
You seem to have a very different idea than I have about how Joe treats consent, but that’s not worth re-litigating for a hundredth time.
This. Thank you.
Awwww…. It’s so right that Joyce is one of the rare cases of person that become happier and adorable (I mean, even more happy and more adorable) when they’re drunk. I wonder if she will kiss Joe, then Dorothy, then Sal, then Walky or just Joe.
She’s kind of being a jerk to Joe and making him incredibly uncomfortable.
I know she’s new to even acknowledging these urges, but she’ll have to find a happy medium soon or things are going to turn bad.
Women playfully kissing their partners at a party is “being a jerk” to them. Gotcha gotcha.
No, but it’s more that, at least to me, she’s not getting all/any of the signals Joe is sending about how he’s uncomfortable.
Women initiating isn’t an issue. But when you initiate, you bear responsibility for interpreting and accounting for the signals you recieve in turn.
I.e. Joyce is ignoring Joe’s discomfort and is therefore acting slightly jerkish by abadoning the “Initiator’s Responsibility”.
Slightly. That’s the key word here. She’s being about as much of a jerk as someone who walks past you in the hallway and accidentally brushed against you without noticing.
I disagree that Joe is uncomfortable, and I disagree that not mind-reading makes you a jerk.
Joyce is autistic. Autistic people require clear communication, not vague signals.
Joe’s just in a weird place where Joyce has said repeatedly that she is planning sex in the near future and he’s scared of damaging her by taking her drunken state as consent in case she has misgivings. So he has to walk a careful line — it’s not that he doesn’t trust her to consent for herself, he just really wants to be sure he doesn’t cross a line even accidentally.
if anything i half expect a scene where he just suddenly gets ED/can’t actually get aroused
Joyce is trying really hard to use liquor to dull the pain of facing her own sense of shame. She pretty explicitly wants to have sex with Joe, but I think is hoping to use X X to push away a lifetime of opposing values long enough to cross that threshold.
This is… possibly setting up a really bad pattern of behavior, even if nothing particularly bad happens tonight. The ol’ “liquid courage” operation can become a bad crutch for people that lack the inner strength and courage to simply follow through on their own unmedicated decisions.
Well said.
Exactly. I hope this isn’t what is being depicted. Using alcohol as a way to get over anxiety, and give yourself a freedom from responsibility is a dangerous road.
I know people who couldn’t enjoy a party and company without alcohol, and I at least know of people who would never have sex while sober.
I think maybe 25% of what you’re saying is close to what’s happening in this comic.
Edited Version:
Joyce is trying to use liquor. She pretty explicitly wants to have sex with Joe.
This is… nothing particularly bad. simply follow through
———————————
Original: 97 words
With Edits: 25 words
Percentage Correct in Original Statement: 25.8%
———————————
I’m honestly surprised it worked out almost perfectly. Good call, Taffy.
For other side, if it works, good for her. She was sober when she finally was able to say “fuck”.
First time commenter despite reading for years because good golly gosh I feel like I’ve got something to say that isn’t being said.
A lot of the consensus on Joe’s attitude here is either that he is “trying to change for Joyce and isn’t sure what to do now” or that he’s just uncomfortable with dubious consent(we do know he’s not cool with dubious consent) or that he wants to be the “designated sober” for his girlfriend, to protect her.
Y’all have definitely missed context clues on this one. Joe is facing his feelings. He is thinking about who he wants to be. He’s been doing that since before Liz, even- that’s why the encounter he had with Liz was as traumatic for him as it was. And what he *doesn’t* want to be is the sex monster that Sarah and Dorothy have always seen him as.
So dating Joyce. He’s tried at every opportunity to move in directions that are non-sexual and look for more early-relationship stuff, because he’s not ready for that next step- *especially* not when Joyce is trying to just inhibit herself to make it happen, *especially* not given Joyce’s history and trauma.
But Joyce- so many of the comics in the past couple of months have made it pretty devastatingly clear that she doesn’t see him ‘all that differently’ from how Dorothy or Sarah does. The difference is that she’s much much hornier, and also has a real emotional connection with him since they’ve talked so much. Every time she sees a remote chance to bring it up, she tries to push the idea that he needs to sex her and sex her good and sex her soon and has pretty aggressively pressured him. Why? Because she still thinks that’s pretty normal for him, because she doesn’t see him trying to change.
They really needed to sit down and talk about this days ago. I feel really bad for Joe here, and would not be surprised if this is how they break up, despite rooting for the Joeyce ship myself.
That’s my perception on events. Don’t do to people what Joyce is doing to Joe here. I don’t disagree with people saying this is adorable or funny but I think that can be true alongside it being kinda sinister.
Today I learned – A woman expressing sexual interest in a partner (among all the other kinds of interest she expresses in him) and wanting to kiss him is SINISTER.
And here I thought she was just flirting.
Yes, I’m so worried that Joyce doesn’t seem to be understanding Joe’s needs more… Hope these cuties talk more soon…
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/coat-2/ comes to mind as well
That was supposed to be a reply to banchuh
Man, sure are a lot of people named Joe nope-ing the fuck out lately
No, there’s only one character in this comic named Joe. That’s one away from nobody being named Joe, it’s hardly “a lot”.
have you seen how big he is?
Context for internet historians: This was pretty obviously a joke about Joe Biden cancelling his re-election bid this morning
It’s only “pretty obvious” if you had that information to begin with.
I get all my news from the morning paper, no spoilers please.
Honestly, though. Some of have significant others who work closing shifts and we wait until they get home to catch up on our media. It’s disrespectful.
Comic: Joyce laying her head in her partner’s lap and smiling, playfully demanding kisses, she’s had exactly one drink tonight.
Comments: Definitely not blowing that out of proportion at all. Being very normal about it.
She’s had one drink, but she’s got boozles. so it’s obviously affecting her. (Luckily in the world of comics, drunkenness is visible. This would be very useful in the real world.)
And Joe seems concerned about it as well, though it’s not quite clear why, so it’s not like the commentariat is pulling this out of nowhere.
If you say so!
Do you expect anything different from the comments?
I expect nothing, and I’m still let down.
Just speculating here, but maybe Joe is making himself the “Designated Driver” here because Joyce had a really bad, traumatic experience being drugged by a rapist at a party once; and once drove the point home to him that all actions, even “fun skin-deep actions” have consequences.
He’s watching her to make sure she stays safe and ok, and I’m not certain he’s emotionally capable of expressing it in a way he’s certain won’t hurt her feelings.
Cuuuute