As insane as measuring rotations in 360 degree segments is, measuring rotations in terms of distance is even crazier and means pi pops up in all kinds of places it has no real business being. A 1/2 rotation is much more straightforward than 180 degrees or pi radiations. This becomes particularly true when you get to complex exponents. If we adopted the simpler system of defaulting to rotations instead of radians then it’s easy to see that when taking something to an imaginary power, only the fractions count. Its easy to see that x to the i power = x, x to the 1/2 i power = -x, x to the 1/4 i power = ix, and so forth. Computationally, having to take imaginary powers mod 2 pi, when pi is irrational is just nuts. For that matter, approximating trig functions on digital computers for useful intervals as the ratio of two power series is slightly simpler and slightly more accurate when using rotations instead of radians. It’s too late to change it now, but incorporating radians into our mathematical notation was a bad move. /End of rant.
It also helps to be fully awake when ranting. That should be to the power of 1+i, 1+ 1/2 i, and 1 +1/4 i. As written, x to the power of 1/2 i would be -1 using rotations instead of radians, etc.
That would get rid of pi in some cases, but it certainly wouldn’t fix everything. There is another perspective that helps clean up a bunch of other inconsistencies though:
Oh. There’s also a good reason why circles are measured in degrees (aside from the coincidence of being close to 365.24…) 360 is a superior highly composite number. It breaks up into a LOT of whole fractions nicely and also plays nicely with our primitive fixation on decimal numbers.
“Becky, you can’t seriously be claiming that the ENTIRE main cast is queer in some way?! Your gaydar MUST be malfunctioning…”
“I’m telling you, it’s true! Every single one of them! One day, everyone’ll come out of the closet, and then you’ll see…you’ll ALL see!”
*20 years later*
“MUAHAHAHAHA! I WAS RIGHT! I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG! EAT IT, LOSERS!”
Possibly it could just be Becky doing her usual, which is to make a comment about being a lesbian with every encounter with every person. Might be a coincidence. Maybe.
That strip always rankled me because so many people cite the Kinsey scale and act like citing his work is a good thing, but rarely do they know about how wildly skewed Kinsey’s research by the types of people interviewed, the methods used for data gathering, and his own sexuality getting way too involved in the studies to consider his findings scientificly objective
Those are fair critiques. Although, for a time it has been understandably wielded as a way to explain things to people in a way that might make sense to them, more or less—albeit on a surface level.
Personally, I can say that learning about the Kinsey scale as a teenager helped give me the tools and words to measure and make sense of things I was going through. Past a certain point, I found it too flawed and reductive to be useful anymore… but I am still grateful that it helped me at one time.
I’d love to see more well-rounded and ethical research become popularized, all that being said. I think it’s important to examine the kinds of errors and inethicalities that tend to plague such important academic works, that we might later down the line be able to find them a little bit more deserving of being lauded as the landmarks of social progress that they are.
Educate more, berate less.
Also, self-reported position on the Kinsey scale doesn’t have any of those problems. It doesn’t use his methods, only interviews one person, and the only sexuality involved is theirs.
Well, for starters, she has deliberately avoided being honest with her therapist even though she suspects she might benefit from medication (like an antidepressant).
Becky, you probably didn’t know the psychological gunshot wound you just inflicted upon Dorothy, but if you did then I cannot give you enough respect for overhearing this conversation and deciding to make it worse.
I can absolutely picture Becky standing outside of a room, psyching herself up, and then kicking the door open to scream at the top of her lungs “I LOVE WOMEEEEEENNNNNNNNN!!!!” at whomever may be inside.
Tbh, the fact that she’s roomed with Becky for this long and is only just having this discovery of orientation is pretty impressive. You *know* Becky is constantly showing her pictures of attractive women
1. Dorothy might be more straight than she is gay. She’s considerably gayer than she thought, but that doesn’t mean she’s equally attracted to both ends of the spectrum.
2. People like Joe calling her a Lesbian might have caused her to put her walls up about her being anything remotely queer, so she has some existing mental barriers that didn’t break down until it became absolutely undeniable.
It seems likely Dorothy’s female attraction is of a more Demi bent. Pictures of pretty ladies might not do anything for her… until they’re pictures of pretty ladies she has a deep emotional attachment to
As someone who is lesbian but thought they were bi first because they were also demi for guys it really is different parts of my brain that cause those feelings. Just anecdotal evidence but demi hasn’t really been studied that well. So…. Like…. I get what you are saying but I personally don’t like bi as the immediate assumption here because this stuff gets way more nuanced. Like people rightly complain about bi-erasure all the time in queer media and I feel like this is sort of the same impulse. She’ll figure it out, she’s literally predestined to by the all mighty Willis.
This is Dorothy we’re talking about here. Once she looks into it, she’s gonna research the bugfuckery out of the topic, exhausting all known current studies, creating her own multi-dimensional human sexuality scale, and developing a hyperlinked white paper and presentation about it. Professor Leslie will be so impressed, she’ll try to recruit Dorothy into grad school right on the spot. Forward ten years to the foundation of the Keener Institute for Human Sexuality Studies. Ten years after that, the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is folded into the KIHSS.
It’s genuinely so fun and sweet when you spend a lot of time with someone and notice your vocabulary has rubbed off on them, and/or vice versa. There’s so many things I say now that I originally got from someone I love, and so many things they say that I’m pretty sure they stole from me. Humans are so neat when we do that
Why I always notice regional terms more than accents. Not everyone has an accent, but most people do use terms that are similar to whomever they are with.
there are some words /phrases that stuck with me from ppl no longer in my life or even someone i can’t even remember anymore, but it’s still a part of me, so that’s comforting in a way
When flustered and/or frustrated in a certain way, there’s this list of swears I recite in a specific order.
My bestie later informed me that she’d started reciting the exact same list of swears in the exact same order. In her own native language, which isn’t English.
Sorry, but until someone fixes the saturation of the purple to match the other colours the pansexual flag reigns supreme. Although I personally favour the labrys lesbian flag (c’mon, it has an axe on it!!)
I wish I had a cool butch lesbian roomy. Instead I had three heterosexuals. A cool butch lesbian roomy definitely woulda helped me figure out my orientation sooner…
I mean, if I strongly dislike how something fundamental to it is handled, I will simply stop reading instead of making my unhappiness everyone else’s problem, but some of us are built different.
I don’t know that I ever had a conscious lightbulb “oh… im gay?” moment like I always see in fiction, it was just a slow evolution of “im deffo straight” to “oh acearo is a thing? maybe that” to “eh, some flavor of queer” to finally id-ing as a lesbian at some point in high school. and now gender things as well now but that aside…. maybe its just a thing that happens when you didn’t grow up around openly queer people from a young age? Can anyone actually pinpoint their realization like that?
I can see Dorothy as aro for women, but not so for men.
Dorothy is going through so many changes right now, but with all the caretaking she does, she has gotten an affection and concern and care from Joyce that has to be really new and beautiful and could lead to other feelings.
(Sorry. Not queer, but have been thinking about this.)
Someone a while back floated the idea of queerplatonic Dorothy/Joyce, and it’s been rattling around in my brain ever since. Idk if I trust Willis to write that, given how he’s handled his characters’ asexuality* in the past, but I think it’s an interesting concept. Like, I can absolutely see them as two women in otherwise hetero relationships who have their own deep, complex bond built on mutual commitment and caring which exists outside the binary of platonic/romantic. And it would resolve Joyce’s polyamory foreshadowing in a really unique and interesting way.
*Ultra Car & Dina both ending up on the non-sex-repulsed side of things is a little squicky as a pattern for our only ace rep. I’m not saying those things can’t happen, just that it’s a little allonormative as a pattern in a story written by an allosexual. Even with the understanding that Becky/Dina is a really good romance story and I don’t want it changed. We’ll see how Carla/Charlie goes, that’s looking like a much more asexual romance.
Ultra Car was sex-repulsed. She was only okay with getting Malaya off on the condition that she got to use a third arm so she could be in another room and not have to look at it. She was happy she could use how fast she could finish and how happy Malaya was as a brag, but she says that she’s incapable of responding to sex the way Malaya does.
And Willis has refused to put Carla in pin ups or Slipshines on the grounds she’s sex repulsed.
Adding to BBCC, Dina is a kinky asexual, of which there’s tons. She doesn’t respond to Becky’s attraction in the same way Becky does, and she’s only interested in sex if erotic scenarios wherein Becky is her owned test subject are involved. Her own expertise in subduing a partner through their body is also part of the appeal.
Like. She wasn’t propositioning Joe when she bluntly stated what what being a partner with her would entail, come on.
I agree that for me it was a slow evolution, the closest to a lightbulb is more of a first step on the stairs, in that I had a dream when I was a teen and the figure I was romancing in my dream was androgynous. It had me lowkey freaking out all day. “Was I kissing a man or a woman? Would I be okay kissing a woman? What does this mean??”. I identified as ‘bi-curious’ after that, and after trial and error, experiences and relationships, I’ve solidly settled on biromantic asexual!
I still haven’t decided. Sex is meh to icky, cis and trans ladies are rad, men are pretty to look at but I wouldn’t date one again, nonbinary I haven’t dated yet but I’m sure they’re rad too….but I’m 38 and “I’m cis and queer in some way” is about as good as I’ve got.
Not really. I mean, I’m still young, and there’s been a couple of lightbulb moments. But none as definitive as this. I’ve identified as NB a while now, and had sudden realisation that I am definitely not transmasc. But otherwise, no. And I definitely grew up around openly queer people, so it’s not that. Maybe it is like that for some people, but I’m not one of them.
I’ve known I’ve loved women all my life. Then one day in college, on a night much like tonight, I had a very intimate dream about my best friend. I literally woke up with a start and went “Oh shit, I’m bisexual now?” If that’s not a lightbulb moment, idk what is.
I never really had the “unable to find men attractive” thing. I just never really connected the dots into “Would” until, oddly enough, watching Mike Rowe singing opera while making chocolates by hand.
Apparently I have a thing for blue eyes, stubble, callused hands and musical theater.
I never had the BSOD though. it was more of a “Huh… Neat.” kind of reaction.
I’m bi and didn’t realize until it was pointed out to me during college, haha. Luckily that was a much cozier conversation with my bestie (who also came out bi.) In hindsight, I never did discriminate when it came to crushes. I just assumed I was straight since I liked the expected gender, and that everyone had “platonic” same-sex crushes. (And didn’t think about what it might be like to touch them.) Elder millennial, grew up gay ally, didn”t know bisexuality was a “real” orientation. Thanks for the biphobia, media.
I had a lightbulb moment at a very young age. I was raised churchy as hell with parents who happily used slurs for people like me, and I was watching a vampire show of some kind (I was pretty young idk which one). There was a scene with two women, one of them a vampire and the other one getting bit, and I remember being completely and totally afraid of how I felt about it. Like genuine panic that God or my parents would notice that I was gay and kill me on the spot.
Then I had a lot of time between that moment and actually accepting that there really, truly, wasn’t a way to un-gay myself.
Oh, I did. I was 13, and I remember I was questioning for couple weeks beforehand, but then I was out on a bike ride and thinking of going to see the girl I maybe-liked, then I called her and she wasn’t at home but we talked a little, then I went to stare at the side of a building (the bricks reminded me of oatmeal raisin cookies) and process. “Okay, I definitely have a crush,” I thought. “I guess I’m…bisexual?”
And then I had flashbacks to earlier moments in my life that suddenly made more sense and went, “Oooh. Ohhh. Yeah, that was not heterosexual of me. Okay.”
Now, my idea of my identity evolved since then, but that was a pretty notable moment in it.
The whiplash of re-contextualizing previous actions is way too real though. Really makes the ‘how was I that oblivious’ trope a lot more relatable more than anything.
When I was six, I told my friends in secret (dragged them into my garage to whisper) that I was mean to the teen girl babysitting us because I liked her. And then I was thirteen staring at that oatmeal raisin building going, “Whelp.”
I sure hung out around queer people a lot before I realized exactly what I was. I realized I was empathizing with their stories in ways that I wasn’t sure was ‘normal’. An article by a butch woman hit me particularly hard and when I asked one of my friends who I knew was pretty comfortable with queer people if they had the same type of empathetic feeling they said not really just sympathy. That was in fact my ‘lightbulb’ moment.
Yeah. I knew I was bi before I knew that bisexuality was a thing. Like, at a young age people tried to teach me to hate gay people and my brain just refused like “But love is love and God loves love?” Thorne from Scooby Doo was my first crush lol. I always wrote LGB couples into my stories and drawings (I didn’t fully grasp the other parts of it, didn’t learn about most until later). My mom had girlfriends sometimes, my sister had a girlfriend and a husband. It wasn’t a shocking thing.
Like, in middle school someone explained that bi meant liking men and women and I was like “Oh, that’s what it’s called. Yeah, I’m that.” It took a few years before I realized literally everyone in my family was bi except for the one dude born into it. We’re basically the strongest element for there being a genetic component, there is not one straight woman in my family of almost exclusively women.
Realizing you’re trans is maybe not the same as realizing your orientation, but I definitely had a light bulb moment on that. I spent a lot of time wishing I was a woman, but since I “knew” that trans people always know they’re trans from childhood, it never crossed my mind I might be trans. Then one day, I read an article by a trans woman who only realized she was trans in her 30s, and it was like reading a narration of my life. I literally felt like something broke in my head, and it felt like my whole life up til then snapped into focus.
(BTW, absolutely love Becky’s smile in the last panel.)
Both experiences are common and valid. Some of us always knew, some of us figure it out gradually, and some of us get smacked in the face with the full force of it one day.
Dorothy is exactly the sort of person to have a lightbulb moment, precisely because she’s lived such an organized — one might even say compartmentalized — life. It’s very very easy to notice you’re attracted to boys, immediately determine that you don’t feel the EXACT same way about girls, and decide you’re straight.
Heteronormative society means it’s less common to do it the other way around (where you first notice being attracted to other girls), but it can still happen.
And, yeah, I am talking specifically about the experience as a young bi girl, because the common plumbing makes sexual attraction fuzzier and harder to suss out.
Mine was less a lightbulb, and more a “I keep writing characters who are x” –> “am I x???” –> “I guess I’m x” –> “wait, no, what if I’m y?” A lot of times, I’ll stumble onto something, go “…wait, nah,” only to circle back around to it again later, and sometimes never figure it out for sure. (Am I ace and sex-favorable or demi? Am I gay or bi? What exactly is my stupid, fluctuating gender? I love being able to categorize things into neat boxes, so not being able to is frustrating.)
I know people who “always knew,” I know people who had the “lightbulb moment,” I know people who slowly realized and people who haven’t quite figured everything out and maybe never will. It’s complicated. But yeah, we do see a lot of lightbulb moments or people who always knew in fiction compared to the more gradual kind I feel like. (It’s not a bad thing to portray those, ofc, but it’s interesting. I guess bc lightbulbs are “more interesting” to read about, maybe?)
I was very comphet in ways very upsetting to a nerdy hella undiagnosed girl who sublimated rampant teenage hornyness through being a fujoshi. I had my “shit am i bisexual” moment when my best male friend started dated my best female friend and it sent me for a spin of jealousy I couldn’t make heads or tails of.
I’ve gone through like. Bi – Lesbian – ??? – oh no please not ace D: – Ace? – Lesbian – shit should I get gender involved here??? – welp ace and that’s neat tbh – oh hell I should get gender involved – ????? and, ah. I’ve gotten comfortable with the idea that my gender at whatever the moment is does have a say, but not enough to put a tag on it. I’m on my mid 30’s and I wish I could pin it down lmaooo love being Queer tho, whatever I am it’s gonna be fruity and trans.
Yeah, MTV stopped showing music videos, waaayyy back in the day, our time. More or less when in-universe Dorothy, Joyce, Walky, et al, were still in their Senior year.
I relate so much to believing that something is good and okay, and thinking that you don’t judge other people for something. But then you discover that YOU might be this thing that, again, you’ve been saying is good and okay, and suddenly you discover that you were looking down on all the other people for being this thing, and you thought that you were better than other people for not being this thing, even though, again, this thing is good and okay. And now you have to work through a ton of anger and assumptions and bigotries that you didn’t even know you had. It sucks. (Oddly, my experience with this has been in how I don’t allow my creative projects to not be perfect, even though I tell other people that the only way to get better at things is to do it over and over again even though it sucks. Still haven’t had this experience in terms of my sexuality. …yet, I guess. lol Though, maybe Dorothy’s going through what I experienced a little more than she realizes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhZIikh-z7g&ab_channel=WriteOutLoud )
I suspect it’s less that Dorothy doesn’t really think being queer is okay, and more that it’s yet another item on a long list of things she’s always known would make it more difficult to become president.
Also, like. She lives in the USA. She lives in a red state in the USA. There are very real things to be afraid of as a queer person, even if they’re somewhat mitigated by being (presumably) cis and white. And Dorothy’s also Jewish on one side. So that whiteness will always be somewhat conditional.
TL;DR: you don’t have to be queerphobic to be afraid of queerphobia. It would be awesome if being queer was a truly neutral trait, but it is not. It makes your life harder, and it’s reasonable to fear that.
The existence of mob mentality and cults of personality (in this case the cultists assimilating each other rather than mimicking the one they worship) make it sound a little uncomfortably plausible
The counterpoint I have to that is that “every group of people I’m in tends to diagnose me as being more similar to the group than I am” — my neurodivergent friends constantly see signs of neurodivergence in others, even those of us who have been evaluated for ADHD/autism/etc, my queer friends have labeled me 100% obviously queer even though I’m cishet-but-my-spouse-is-NB-now-and-I-stayed, etc.
it’s called love, simple as that, i have known folk who after 3 kids dad transitioned, 15 years later they are still together. mom had never had feeling for women but the person they loved became a woman,and you know what, she was like i love this person and want to share in their life and pleasure, their happiness makes me happy and horny and if that isnt just the most beautiful thing i don’tknow what is. love is love folks, and sometimes that means exceptions to rules are made.
honestly the only language with more exceptions to the rules than english is the language of love (and i don;t mean the orgy of pansexual love that is the tenses of the french language {we dont need 15 ways to describe something that haddened in the pat damnit!})
love is love and there is nothing wr3ong with that!
Both autistic AND queer people tend to seek out people in those groups even before realizing they are a people-in-those-groups. Shared interests/experiences make friends rather than the other way around, I think.
The mimicking thing would be pretty autistic of her.
But yeah, what Nymph said. My three closest friends in middle school and I all turned out to be queer, even though we stopped being friends before anyone came out. When I was wondering if I was autistic as an adult, I realized I had no close neurotypical friends to compare experiences with.
Oh… I’m gonna be real, for some reason I had memories of Dorothy being confirmed bi long ago. Maybe my mind was putting her into the comic where we first learned Jennifer was? Even though I also remembered her being there? I don’t know, but now some things are starting to make more sense.
Dorothy/Joyce/Joe is the relationship I didn’t know I needed until today. Partly because it would be cute, and partly because it would be a big shock for Becky, and I’m curious how she’ll react.
I don’t think it’s the rainbow bridge that makes the Norse pantheon queer though, I think it’s Loki being Loki, Odin being Odin, and that story where Thor puts on a wedding dress to pass for Freya in order to reclaim Mjolnir which was very much a phallic symbol, that make the Norse pantheon queer.
Like we have tragically little surviving written myth there, but just like the Greek pantheon, there’s plenty of what we’d now call queer stuff going on.
Literally I was scrolling past this and didn’t even click on anything. I didn’t even click Reply. Suddenly it says “Thank you for your feedback. We will look into it.” So apparently I reported this comment and didn’t know it?
Has anybody ever actually used the Report Comment link on purpose??
Not enough people talking about panel 2. It’s brilliant. The way Joe greets Becky with that low five and the way Becky instantly hits it tells me this is routine for them and I absolutely love that.
As a straight dude whose best friend is a lesbian this dynamic gives me life. Hell, me and the friend in question literally became friends by bonding over our shared taste in women, so I relate to that brief interaction between Joe and Becky so much.
well, being demi is valid but that makes me think of the old school yaoi/yuri manga that’s like “i’m not gay, (love interest’s name) is just the exception), but hopefully things have evolved now to where it won’t matter, tho given dorothy’s goals and future consideration even if she was like “i might like girls overall not just joyce” doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be thinking of future dates
tho be quite the serendipitous(?) timing if walky started questioning/coming out as trans too lol
Don’t knock those stories. First of all because they’re accurate to a LOT of people’s initial experiences with coming out (it often feels like an exception, and sometimes it even IS an exception), but second of all because the pioneers who wrote those stories were really brave.
Another country’s history with queer lit doesn’t have to look like yours for it to be valid.
Dorothy’s life is about to turn into that one .gif of the woman walking down the street seeing “gay” things and getting more and more panicked. You know the one.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew by being in the next room over, listening in through the wall, heard the conversation was winding down, and came over to troll.
(Or really just happened to be anywhere in the wing. Dorothy got kind of screamy-shouty during a lot of that and it’s not like the door was closed.)
lol even if she had an impulse to ‘test’ it i would not expect her to kiss becky sober, but joyce aside i wouldn’t think they’d be eachothers types , but i wonder how their dynamic would be if becky wasn’t jealous and postured a ‘play-hating’ rapport
I’ve known people who have defined their orientation as “essentially straight/gay, with exception for one or two specific people.”
Unlike Joyce, who clearly has an unconscious thing for Sal, probably an unconscious thing for Dorothy, and maybe even an unconscious thing for Jennifer, Dorothy’s been pretty straight, aside from Joyce. I have a feeling that this might be mostly because of the relationship they’ve developed together, and that this doesn’t suddenly mean she’s eyeing up all the single ladies.
Dotty might collapse on herself like a dying star. First she sends titty picks to Joyce who has a boyfriend, now tries to kiss a girl who has a girlfriend. She is Such an Evil Homewrecker XD
Do you really think there will be any nudging from Becky? When the woman Dorothy has feels for is exactly the woman Becky loved for eighteen and only accepted the loss of because women weren’t on the table? When Becky already regularly subjects Dorothy to petty cruelties because she’s so close to Joyce?
I don’t. I think Becky can only make this entire thing worse and even harder than Dorothy’s already going through.
…When was the last time we saw thought bubbles in this comic? I can’t say for sure but I feel like those are super rare in DOA, and most internal speech is just done with regular speech bubbles like the character is talking to themselves.
And Becky is preeeeeetty close to the worst person for this to happen near, between her consistent hostility towards Dorothy in general and her jealousy over Joyce. I don’t know that even her low-grade contempt for heterosexuality in women would make her reaction positive, though it might temper the jealous shitstorm of petty cruelty Dorothy could be about to face.
It’s not homophobic to realize something about yourself and suddenly feel intense discomfort, confusion, and bewilderment about the world around you with your newfound vision. No one going through a realization crisis works through things calmly and mechanically.
Also Dorothy has been in a very fragile state for a while now.
Even if being queer were a fully neutral identity (instead of a highly fraught highly politicized one, god it is fuckin scary right now), it could easily be the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of Dorothy’s total lack of anchor right now.
She’s lost her career ambition as well as her academic ambition. “What am I even doing here” is probably an undercurrent of her thoughts. Especially given how expensive college is. Even if her parents had a college fund for her or she got a lot of academic scholarship money, that’s still something she might feel guilty about consuming right now when she doesn’t have a clear degree in mind.
Yep. Dorothy has defined herself for the 15 years of this comic as an avatar of knowing who she is and what she wants. She lost her academic and career goals over the last five or so, and now throwing it on top of that she’s realizing the way she acts around women is not, in fact, how everyone thinks of their same gender.
It’s not that different from what Billie is going through, it’s just that Billie is terrified of being ‘the weird one’ and Dorothy simply places higher expectations on herself, which then makes her twice as stubborn when it comes to doubting it.
I actually REALLY want to know what’s going on in Jennifer’s head, and what HAS been going on in there since Halloween. I think what we’ve been seeing is that Jennifer tends to pick identifiers and throw herself into them wholeheartedly (whether they are “straight cheerleader” or “garbage fire lesbian”), and that Raidah has pretty successfully exploited that with her own tendency to tell other people who and what they are (during her lunch with Walky and Lucy, where she declared that “we choose to be better than [spreading gossip]”, even though Jennifer, Asher, and Carl had all just readily demonstrated that they were eager to spread gossip) (or her penchant for renaming people). Like, Jennifer has always seemed a bit weak to that.
She’s like… mid-third-season-of-Buffy Cordelia. Jennifer wasn’t just a cheerleader, she was HEAD cheerleader, and Alice thought she walked on water. You might think a person in that position would own their power to shepherd the flock rather than being one of the sheep. But Jennifer has always been pretty quick to conform herself to someone else’s flock instead.
Here’s hoping she eventually learns to sublimate that need fully into kink (iirc, she was a bratty sub for Ruth), because spending your whole life being willing to do anything for anyone who will call you a good girl is… dangerous.
Jennifer is fake, and all the people who notice and realize she’s fake slowly get sick of her pretending to be someone she isn’t, and the more alarming part of it is how Jennifer isn’t fully aware of how fake she actually is.
Did this new confirmation that their orientations are theoretically compatible, combined with her longstanding not-entirely-what-it-seems hostility towards Dorothy, suddenly move BECKY, of all people, into the role of tsundere?
I definitely think Becky’s first reaction is going to be anxiety. Even SARAH has said “we all know” that Joyce would be with Dorothy in a second if she thought it were an option, and I feel like Becky has repeatedly taken noticeable psychic refuge in Joyce’s attraction to boys (Jacob and Joe).
And yes, she’s very much in love with Dina, and I don’t think she would leave Dina now even if Joyce suddenly came onto her — but it’s been like, five months since she got her heart broken in comic time.
From what I understand bisexuality is WAY more common than the average person thinks, but since most people end up in monogamous relationships they are often just mistaken for gay or straight.
Exactly! According to research, completely straight and completely gay people are both rare compared to pan and bi people. Most people on some level feel something for the same sex or gender.
No no, don’t worry dorothy. I’m sure something like. Say. Wanting to be president,
which you were so legit about you actively and explicitly avoided being diagnosed with anything that would require psychiatric medication, not to mention scrutinized even casual level sexytimes with men.
Would never have made you ignore the HELL attraction you could have for women. Definitely no motivation here to totally sublimate any romantic or sexual desires for women. Or nonstandard genders. No motive here.
Since she was A Literal Child, and we know she’s been taking it SERIOUSLY this whole damn time, which would mean She Can’t Like Anyone But Men! And would even be kind of pressured to have some kind of acceptably neutral husband type dude in her life in the future.
extremely funny seeing dorothy go through BOTH of the life crises i went thru my freshman year of college (realizing an attraction to women and also my career goals were unrealistic and against my core beliefs). hopefully she comes out of them the same way too, realizing life is fluid and its never too late to change your priorities !!! especially when youre just barely 19 lmaooo
Okay, I can buy that Becky clocked Dorothy’s feelings for Joyce from day 1. Or that she’s a broken clock stuck on “Everybody Loves Joyce”. But does she actually know Dorothy’s vocalised it for the first time? HOW?
Does… does she have Carla’s powers of perfect ridiculous timing?
Although that /is/ possible in theory (some people really do have just the one exception, so there /are/ women who are straight-except-also-this-one-lady-is-hot), I think there’s a more likely explanation.
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You know what’s rad?
Radians.
You know what makes you tan? sin/cos
Ironically, it seems like you two are using your degrees.
THIS FUCKING PUN
Gosh, it’s great, isn’t it?
I found it a little obtuse, to be honest.
Acutely funny!
Definitely gradian-A humor.
Absolutely radian…t
Haha, awesome
Best pun in years.
As insane as measuring rotations in 360 degree segments is, measuring rotations in terms of distance is even crazier and means pi pops up in all kinds of places it has no real business being. A 1/2 rotation is much more straightforward than 180 degrees or pi radiations. This becomes particularly true when you get to complex exponents. If we adopted the simpler system of defaulting to rotations instead of radians then it’s easy to see that when taking something to an imaginary power, only the fractions count. Its easy to see that x to the i power = x, x to the 1/2 i power = -x, x to the 1/4 i power = ix, and so forth. Computationally, having to take imaginary powers mod 2 pi, when pi is irrational is just nuts. For that matter, approximating trig functions on digital computers for useful intervals as the ratio of two power series is slightly simpler and slightly more accurate when using rotations instead of radians. It’s too late to change it now, but incorporating radians into our mathematical notation was a bad move. /End of rant.
Ah! pi radiations should be pi radians. Insert rant on autocorrect and the lack of edit functionality.
It also helps to be fully awake when ranting. That should be to the power of 1+i, 1+ 1/2 i, and 1 +1/4 i. As written, x to the power of 1/2 i would be -1 using rotations instead of radians, etc.
That would get rid of pi in some cases, but it certainly wouldn’t fix everything. There is another perspective that helps clean up a bunch of other inconsistencies though:
https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto
Oh. There’s also a good reason why circles are measured in degrees (aside from the coincidence of being close to 365.24…) 360 is a superior highly composite number. It breaks up into a LOT of whole fractions nicely and also plays nicely with our primitive fixation on decimal numbers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_(number)
What about radishes?
Found the Fraggle.
c’mon Nappa no ones gonna get that reference
i understood that reference
Also: 0.01 sieverts.
🙂
Looking for obscure math puns?
Secant ye shall find.
Oh, mang… I NEVER, EVER did learn Trig. Got thru 2 full years of Calculus without ever having actually learned trig.
Or much of geometry…
Gaydar going CRAZY
I mean, Becky’s gaydar has a history of being a little wonky.
OR HAS IT?
“Becky, you can’t seriously be claiming that the ENTIRE main cast is queer in some way?! Your gaydar MUST be malfunctioning…”
“I’m telling you, it’s true! Every single one of them! One day, everyone’ll come out of the closet, and then you’ll see…you’ll ALL see!”
*20 years later*
“MUAHAHAHAHA! I WAS RIGHT! I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG! EAT IT, LOSERS!”
20 years later our time? so end of freshman year for them
Nope, 20 years later THEIR time… by which point, our grandkids will be reading this comic which will still be in production by Willis-bot 3000. xD
The straights still have Sarah, Joe, probably Jacob, and probably Lucy! And I guess Roz and Mary, but they’re not exactly tier 1.
Only until Becks upgrades her GayDAR to a GaySER.
Huh?
Possibly it could just be Becky doing her usual, which is to make a comment about being a lesbian with every encounter with every person. Might be a coincidence. Maybe.
*squints side-eye at Becky
yee, gay-diation at least 200x the background level
brace yaself, it gonna get HOT B)
*plays “Dead Fingers Talking” on hacked muzak*
In which two characters are allowed an internal monologue!
It’s pretty funny to go back to that story now. It’s still rare but a bunch of characters have had thought bubbles and it’s not a big deal at all
lesbian senses tingling
Imagine some new arc where Becky gets a whiff of Dorothy’s feelings and immediately tries to go set her up with literally any other girl lol
(sorry i ,meant to hit reply not report, ifi tshows up in any mod’s inboxes)
Becky would stage an elaborate dating game show before she let Dorothy date Joyce.
“Bachelorette Number 3, what’s your favorite hobby?”
“I keep telling you I’m not involved in this, please take this game out of the lobby.”
Asma does not appreciate being dragged into spontaneous freshmen game show hijinks.
So head of the newspaper that just gave her the Amazigirl article and is DESPERATE for any WLW action then?
“Zero, best I can tell. I guess that estimate could change.” 👀
I dont understand what this means or who is supposed to be saying it/replying to it
This.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/kinsey/
This also seems relevant: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/upended/
That strip always rankled me because so many people cite the Kinsey scale and act like citing his work is a good thing, but rarely do they know about how wildly skewed Kinsey’s research by the types of people interviewed, the methods used for data gathering, and his own sexuality getting way too involved in the studies to consider his findings scientificly objective
Those are fair critiques. Although, for a time it has been understandably wielded as a way to explain things to people in a way that might make sense to them, more or less—albeit on a surface level.
Personally, I can say that learning about the Kinsey scale as a teenager helped give me the tools and words to measure and make sense of things I was going through. Past a certain point, I found it too flawed and reductive to be useful anymore… but I am still grateful that it helped me at one time.
I’d love to see more well-rounded and ethical research become popularized, all that being said. I think it’s important to examine the kinds of errors and inethicalities that tend to plague such important academic works, that we might later down the line be able to find them a little bit more deserving of being lauded as the landmarks of social progress that they are.
Educate more, berate less.
Also, self-reported position on the Kinsey scale doesn’t have any of those problems. It doesn’t use his methods, only interviews one person, and the only sexuality involved is theirs.
+1
I’m referencing the strip titled “Kinsey” published on May 1, 2015. Dorothy’s words in panel 3, as slightly paraphrased by me.
… I’ve got a sharp memory, wow. I made a reference to a strip published 10 years ago.
Wow. Exactly 10 years later!
This strip comes to mind almost any time Dottie interacts with any other female.
Yup. Sarah from EGS is similarly one that frequently comes to mind.
Incidents don’t count. They’re all incidental.
Becky is correcky.
That Gravitar out here doing not-the-lord-because-there-is-no-lord-just-nothing’s work
doing the nothing’s work.
My Gravatar is really gonna fuck up Fantastica.
Gravar is perfectly on point. Well done.
Oof yeah figuring out you’re queer is just like that sometimes.
Also doesn’t help when you’ve disguised the repression of all of your character growth as “having a goal”.
Damn that rings true. How much damage has she done to herself just by thinking, “presidents aren’t allowed to ____.”
Well, for starters, she has deliberately avoided being honest with her therapist even though she suspects she might benefit from medication (like an antidepressant).
This seems suspicious, but it’s actually just how Becky starts every conversation.
Becky, you probably didn’t know the psychological gunshot wound you just inflicted upon Dorothy, but if you did then I cannot give you enough respect for overhearing this conversation and deciding to make it worse.
From the second panel she almost certainly didn’t, unless she doubled back in order to avoid suspicion.
Yeah I think this is Becky’s usual schtick of coming into a room and going “HEY HAVE I MENTIONED IM A LESBIAN TODAY?”
That’s how I’m seeing it. Occam’s Razor (which he really wants back) says it’s just Becky saying the usual Becky things.
I can absolutely picture Becky standing outside of a room, psyching herself up, and then kicking the door open to scream at the top of her lungs “I LOVE WOMEEEEEENNNNNNNNN!!!!” at whomever may be inside.
She might get some of those freebie business cards made, with some imprint like “I AM A LESBIAN AND I LOVE WOMEN!”
It was the best of timing, it was the worst of timing…
I’m just gonna say, this is the best comment
… it is the worst comment…
A+
Why you writing like that? You getting paid by the word or what?
<3
Always remind people of this about Dickens
Always! Former ELAR teacher. So, yeah. 🙂
How can there be two timings? Because Dorothy has arrived at the horrible realization that she’s on the verge of two-timing!
I was so hyped for the potential polycule that I entirely forgot how funny it would be for Becky to find out about this
Becky is in a VERY good mood if she’s giving Joe low fives.
alright Dina what was in that package
she got along well enough with joe to where it didn’t seem particularly odd versus her shrugging him off
I like chicks too. They’re so tiny and cute and their high pitched noises are strangely soothing.
So they’re Tribbles?
Yes, but don’t say that aloud to the short ones. They bite.
(unless you’re into that)
yeah, but then they grow up and stop being adorable fluffballs.
at least some kittens stay that way when they become cats.
Chickens ARE adorable fluffballs, what is this heresy?
Tbh, the fact that she’s roomed with Becky for this long and is only just having this discovery of orientation is pretty impressive. You *know* Becky is constantly showing her pictures of attractive women
(I know it hasn’t been *that* long in the grand scheme of things, but tbh, longer than a week is still impressive)
I would say that they could have different preferences but they both like/liked Joyce. Maybe Dorothy is more into personalities than looks?
1. Dorothy might be more straight than she is gay. She’s considerably gayer than she thought, but that doesn’t mean she’s equally attracted to both ends of the spectrum.
2. People like Joe calling her a Lesbian might have caused her to put her walls up about her being anything remotely queer, so she has some existing mental barriers that didn’t break down until it became absolutely undeniable.
Her stance on being Joyce’s “Responsible friend” doesn’t help in her coming to terms with her attraction either.
Also Becky’s “rivalry” with being the number one Joyce appreciator might have added to the tangled weed wacker line of her sexual orientation.
Maybe, but the Beckster’s constant feed of “I’m Lesbian Rawr!” might also constantly nudge Dorothy to keep up her “I’m not queer for Joyce” defenses.
It seems likely Dorothy’s female attraction is of a more Demi bent. Pictures of pretty ladies might not do anything for her… until they’re pictures of pretty ladies she has a deep emotional attachment to
Baby chickens are pretty cool.
Dorothy there’s a word for “straight with one exception”
Bisexual
Alternatively: ~whatever you wanna call yourself when you’re ready~
I honestly think it’s more likely Dorothy is demisexual, which would explain why she hadn’t realized she could be attracted to women yet.
As someone who is lesbian but thought they were bi first because they were also demi for guys it really is different parts of my brain that cause those feelings. Just anecdotal evidence but demi hasn’t really been studied that well. So…. Like…. I get what you are saying but I personally don’t like bi as the immediate assumption here because this stuff gets way more nuanced. Like people rightly complain about bi-erasure all the time in queer media and I feel like this is sort of the same impulse. She’ll figure it out, she’s literally predestined to by the all mighty Willis.
This is Dorothy we’re talking about here. Once she looks into it, she’s gonna research the bugfuckery out of the topic, exhausting all known current studies, creating her own multi-dimensional human sexuality scale, and developing a hyperlinked white paper and presentation about it. Professor Leslie will be so impressed, she’ll try to recruit Dorothy into grad school right on the spot. Forward ten years to the foundation of the Keener Institute for Human Sexuality Studies. Ten years after that, the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is folded into the KIHSS.
Oh.
Oh no.
Becky, look at her bu-, er not that
Right now, she’s well positioned to look at Dorothy’s freckles. And imminent blush.
“Oh, maybe it’s not just Joyce. “
Dina just explained radio-carbon dating to Becky, didn’t she?
time for her and dina to help dorothy with scientific experiments 8D;
One of the first things they ever discussed. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/radiometric/
That is a great memory (and comic strip) you have.
Dorothy must put on a pink latex outfit with the bisexual symbol.
That’s the only healthy way to deal with her newfound feelings.
Oh and fight Joe on a rooftop.
Dorothy fighting Joe, on the Garbage Roof, dueling for the heart and hand (and hopefully the rest of her!) of Joyce.
Yeah, probably already at least a few fanfics / slashfics out there, starting like that.
It’s genuinely so fun and sweet when you spend a lot of time with someone and notice your vocabulary has rubbed off on them, and/or vice versa. There’s so many things I say now that I originally got from someone I love, and so many things they say that I’m pretty sure they stole from me. Humans are so neat when we do that
Why I always notice regional terms more than accents. Not everyone has an accent, but most people do use terms that are similar to whomever they are with.
So… I started using words I learned here. So far nobody has called me out on it!
Everyone has an accent. Except of course those who speak exactly like you, or whatever the local sociolinguistic ideal is.
there are some words /phrases that stuck with me from ppl no longer in my life or even someone i can’t even remember anymore, but it’s still a part of me, so that’s comforting in a way
Same here! Some phrases I can trace back to the source, others not, but in most cases, I’m stuck with them.
When flustered and/or frustrated in a certain way, there’s this list of swears I recite in a specific order.
My bestie later informed me that she’d started reciting the exact same list of swears in the exact same order. In her own native language, which isn’t English.
I am a bad influence.
Dumbing of Age Book Fifteen: Y’Know What’s Rad? Chicks.
(seriously that last panel is gold)
Welcome to bisexuality! We have the best flag.
I am a sucker for the lemon bars cut into frog shapes myself.
Sorry, but until someone fixes the saturation of the purple to match the other colours the pansexual flag reigns supreme. Although I personally favour the labrys lesbian flag (c’mon, it has an axe on it!!)
Ain’t lesbian-ish myself, but I gotta admit, the labrys is the best, most rad, symbol of human sexuality we’ve yet devised.
She knows, Becky. She knows.
“You know what’s rad?”
“Radiation?”
“I mean, yes.”
Yes, Becky, yes they are.
I wish I had a cool butch lesbian roomy. Instead I had three heterosexuals. A cool butch lesbian roomy definitely woulda helped me figure out my orientation sooner…
Join the club, Dorothy. Us bisexuals have a pretty awesome pride flag since it looks like Berry Skittles.
We’re gonna have to re-evaluate some stuff.
She’s awfully chipper for not realizing yet that it’s the same “chick”.
🐥 🐥
I love that this plot thread is being developed after all these years. Poor Becky.
They will bond over Joyce rejecting them both. The *comments* will never recover though…
The comments will be fine after a day or two if that happens.
I mean, if I strongly dislike how something fundamental to it is handled, I will simply stop reading instead of making my unhappiness everyone else’s problem, but some of us are built different.
gonna borrow a line from early George Carlin and say they’re “moderately neato”
also OH MAN
I can see the appeal, but I’m not sure they’re for me.
I mean…she’s not wrong.
Appropriate gravatar.
She can smell it.
Sapphic summons.
Also, just because this needs a meme…
Becky: Wow, she’s bisexual! I didn’t know that!
Dorothy: By the way I’m bisexual–
Eyyy, Riders dub.
I feel like it’s so underrated.
I don’t know that I ever had a conscious lightbulb “oh… im gay?” moment like I always see in fiction, it was just a slow evolution of “im deffo straight” to “oh acearo is a thing? maybe that” to “eh, some flavor of queer” to finally id-ing as a lesbian at some point in high school. and now gender things as well now but that aside…. maybe its just a thing that happens when you didn’t grow up around openly queer people from a young age? Can anyone actually pinpoint their realization like that?
Idk. Other queer adults weigh in???
I can see Dorothy as aro for women, but not so for men.
Dorothy is going through so many changes right now, but with all the caretaking she does, she has gotten an affection and concern and care from Joyce that has to be really new and beautiful and could lead to other feelings.
(Sorry. Not queer, but have been thinking about this.)
Someone a while back floated the idea of queerplatonic Dorothy/Joyce, and it’s been rattling around in my brain ever since. Idk if I trust Willis to write that, given how he’s handled his characters’ asexuality* in the past, but I think it’s an interesting concept. Like, I can absolutely see them as two women in otherwise hetero relationships who have their own deep, complex bond built on mutual commitment and caring which exists outside the binary of platonic/romantic. And it would resolve Joyce’s polyamory foreshadowing in a really unique and interesting way.
*Ultra Car & Dina both ending up on the non-sex-repulsed side of things is a little squicky as a pattern for our only ace rep. I’m not saying those things can’t happen, just that it’s a little allonormative as a pattern in a story written by an allosexual. Even with the understanding that Becky/Dina is a really good romance story and I don’t want it changed. We’ll see how Carla/Charlie goes, that’s looking like a much more asexual romance.
Ultra Car was sex-repulsed. She was only okay with getting Malaya off on the condition that she got to use a third arm so she could be in another room and not have to look at it. She was happy she could use how fast she could finish and how happy Malaya was as a brag, but she says that she’s incapable of responding to sex the way Malaya does.
And Willis has refused to put Carla in pin ups or Slipshines on the grounds she’s sex repulsed.
Adding to BBCC, Dina is a kinky asexual, of which there’s tons. She doesn’t respond to Becky’s attraction in the same way Becky does, and she’s only interested in sex if erotic scenarios wherein Becky is her owned test subject are involved. Her own expertise in subduing a partner through their body is also part of the appeal.
Like. She wasn’t propositioning Joe when she bluntly stated what what being a partner with her would entail, come on.
I agree that for me it was a slow evolution, the closest to a lightbulb is more of a first step on the stairs, in that I had a dream when I was a teen and the figure I was romancing in my dream was androgynous. It had me lowkey freaking out all day. “Was I kissing a man or a woman? Would I be okay kissing a woman? What does this mean??”. I identified as ‘bi-curious’ after that, and after trial and error, experiences and relationships, I’ve solidly settled on biromantic asexual!
I still haven’t decided. Sex is meh to icky, cis and trans ladies are rad, men are pretty to look at but I wouldn’t date one again, nonbinary I haven’t dated yet but I’m sure they’re rad too….but I’m 38 and “I’m cis and queer in some way” is about as good as I’ve got.
Not really. I mean, I’m still young, and there’s been a couple of lightbulb moments. But none as definitive as this. I’ve identified as NB a while now, and had sudden realisation that I am definitely not transmasc. But otherwise, no. And I definitely grew up around openly queer people, so it’s not that. Maybe it is like that for some people, but I’m not one of them.
I’ve known I’ve loved women all my life. Then one day in college, on a night much like tonight, I had a very intimate dream about my best friend. I literally woke up with a start and went “Oh shit, I’m bisexual now?” If that’s not a lightbulb moment, idk what is.
I never really had the “unable to find men attractive” thing. I just never really connected the dots into “Would” until, oddly enough, watching Mike Rowe singing opera while making chocolates by hand.
Apparently I have a thing for blue eyes, stubble, callused hands and musical theater.
I never had the BSOD though. it was more of a “Huh… Neat.” kind of reaction.
I’m bi and didn’t realize until it was pointed out to me during college, haha. Luckily that was a much cozier conversation with my bestie (who also came out bi.) In hindsight, I never did discriminate when it came to crushes. I just assumed I was straight since I liked the expected gender, and that everyone had “platonic” same-sex crushes. (And didn’t think about what it might be like to touch them.) Elder millennial, grew up gay ally, didn”t know bisexuality was a “real” orientation. Thanks for the biphobia, media.
I had a lightbulb moment at a very young age. I was raised churchy as hell with parents who happily used slurs for people like me, and I was watching a vampire show of some kind (I was pretty young idk which one). There was a scene with two women, one of them a vampire and the other one getting bit, and I remember being completely and totally afraid of how I felt about it. Like genuine panic that God or my parents would notice that I was gay and kill me on the spot.
Then I had a lot of time between that moment and actually accepting that there really, truly, wasn’t a way to un-gay myself.
Them vampires, dude. Gets ’em every time. 🤘
Oh, I did. I was 13, and I remember I was questioning for couple weeks beforehand, but then I was out on a bike ride and thinking of going to see the girl I maybe-liked, then I called her and she wasn’t at home but we talked a little, then I went to stare at the side of a building (the bricks reminded me of oatmeal raisin cookies) and process. “Okay, I definitely have a crush,” I thought. “I guess I’m…bisexual?”
And then I had flashbacks to earlier moments in my life that suddenly made more sense and went, “Oooh. Ohhh. Yeah, that was not heterosexual of me. Okay.”
Now, my idea of my identity evolved since then, but that was a pretty notable moment in it.
The whiplash of re-contextualizing previous actions is way too real though. Really makes the ‘how was I that oblivious’ trope a lot more relatable more than anything.
When I was six, I told my friends in secret (dragged them into my garage to whisper) that I was mean to the teen girl babysitting us because I liked her. And then I was thirteen staring at that oatmeal raisin building going, “Whelp.”
I sure hung out around queer people a lot before I realized exactly what I was. I realized I was empathizing with their stories in ways that I wasn’t sure was ‘normal’. An article by a butch woman hit me particularly hard and when I asked one of my friends who I knew was pretty comfortable with queer people if they had the same type of empathetic feeling they said not really just sympathy. That was in fact my ‘lightbulb’ moment.
Yeah. I knew I was bi before I knew that bisexuality was a thing. Like, at a young age people tried to teach me to hate gay people and my brain just refused like “But love is love and God loves love?” Thorne from Scooby Doo was my first crush lol. I always wrote LGB couples into my stories and drawings (I didn’t fully grasp the other parts of it, didn’t learn about most until later). My mom had girlfriends sometimes, my sister had a girlfriend and a husband. It wasn’t a shocking thing.
Like, in middle school someone explained that bi meant liking men and women and I was like “Oh, that’s what it’s called. Yeah, I’m that.” It took a few years before I realized literally everyone in my family was bi except for the one dude born into it. We’re basically the strongest element for there being a genetic component, there is not one straight woman in my family of almost exclusively women.
Realizing you’re trans is maybe not the same as realizing your orientation, but I definitely had a light bulb moment on that. I spent a lot of time wishing I was a woman, but since I “knew” that trans people always know they’re trans from childhood, it never crossed my mind I might be trans. Then one day, I read an article by a trans woman who only realized she was trans in her 30s, and it was like reading a narration of my life. I literally felt like something broke in my head, and it felt like my whole life up til then snapped into focus.
(BTW, absolutely love Becky’s smile in the last panel.)
Both experiences are common and valid. Some of us always knew, some of us figure it out gradually, and some of us get smacked in the face with the full force of it one day.
Dorothy is exactly the sort of person to have a lightbulb moment, precisely because she’s lived such an organized — one might even say compartmentalized — life. It’s very very easy to notice you’re attracted to boys, immediately determine that you don’t feel the EXACT same way about girls, and decide you’re straight.
Heteronormative society means it’s less common to do it the other way around (where you first notice being attracted to other girls), but it can still happen.
And, yeah, I am talking specifically about the experience as a young bi girl, because the common plumbing makes sexual attraction fuzzier and harder to suss out.
Mine was less a lightbulb, and more a “I keep writing characters who are x” –> “am I x???” –> “I guess I’m x” –> “wait, no, what if I’m y?” A lot of times, I’ll stumble onto something, go “…wait, nah,” only to circle back around to it again later, and sometimes never figure it out for sure. (Am I ace and sex-favorable or demi? Am I gay or bi? What exactly is my stupid, fluctuating gender? I love being able to categorize things into neat boxes, so not being able to is frustrating.)
I know people who “always knew,” I know people who had the “lightbulb moment,” I know people who slowly realized and people who haven’t quite figured everything out and maybe never will. It’s complicated. But yeah, we do see a lot of lightbulb moments or people who always knew in fiction compared to the more gradual kind I feel like. (It’s not a bad thing to portray those, ofc, but it’s interesting. I guess bc lightbulbs are “more interesting” to read about, maybe?)
I was very comphet in ways very upsetting to a nerdy hella undiagnosed girl who sublimated rampant teenage hornyness through being a fujoshi. I had my “shit am i bisexual” moment when my best male friend started dated my best female friend and it sent me for a spin of jealousy I couldn’t make heads or tails of.
I’ve gone through like. Bi – Lesbian – ??? – oh no please not ace D: – Ace? – Lesbian – shit should I get gender involved here??? – welp ace and that’s neat tbh – oh hell I should get gender involved – ????? and, ah. I’ve gotten comfortable with the idea that my gender at whatever the moment is does have a say, but not enough to put a tag on it. I’m on my mid 30’s and I wish I could pin it down lmaooo love being Queer tho, whatever I am it’s gonna be fruity and trans.
I prefer money for nothing, but chicks for free are my second favorite
That’s the way you do it
That ain’t working.
But you can’t see it anymore on MTV.
Yeah, MTV stopped showing music videos, waaayyy back in the day, our time. More or less when in-universe Dorothy, Joyce, Walky, et al, were still in their Senior year.
I relate so much to believing that something is good and okay, and thinking that you don’t judge other people for something. But then you discover that YOU might be this thing that, again, you’ve been saying is good and okay, and suddenly you discover that you were looking down on all the other people for being this thing, and you thought that you were better than other people for not being this thing, even though, again, this thing is good and okay. And now you have to work through a ton of anger and assumptions and bigotries that you didn’t even know you had. It sucks. (Oddly, my experience with this has been in how I don’t allow my creative projects to not be perfect, even though I tell other people that the only way to get better at things is to do it over and over again even though it sucks. Still haven’t had this experience in terms of my sexuality. …yet, I guess. lol Though, maybe Dorothy’s going through what I experienced a little more than she realizes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhZIikh-z7g&ab_channel=WriteOutLoud )
I suspect it’s less that Dorothy doesn’t really think being queer is okay, and more that it’s yet another item on a long list of things she’s always known would make it more difficult to become president.
Also, like. She lives in the USA. She lives in a red state in the USA. There are very real things to be afraid of as a queer person, even if they’re somewhat mitigated by being (presumably) cis and white. And Dorothy’s also Jewish on one side. So that whiteness will always be somewhat conditional.
TL;DR: you don’t have to be queerphobic to be afraid of queerphobia. It would be awesome if being queer was a truly neutral trait, but it is not. It makes your life harder, and it’s reasonable to fear that.
I do think its the fact she shut down any queer feelings because Joe used it as an insult early on.
I am sure that didn’t help. I’ve definitely heard other people say that similar treatment made it a lot harder to come out to themselves.
Indeed, Betty. Indeed.
y’know, sometimes autocorrect makes things funnier in hindsight.
lol ‘betty’ does seem like a ship name of becky/dotty XD;
Dorothy realising she’s into Becky too
I mean, if this storyline ends with Becky in a pile of ladies, I don’t think she’ll complain.
Becky senses the birth of a new lesbian and hastens unto them
Autism and lesbianism? Dotty discovering things about herself, or is she just mimicking people she’s with most of the time?
I have heard the idea that any given person is the average of the five people they are around the most.
As an anti-social introvert, that is one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever read.
…Wouldn’t that collapse into everyone being the same?
Sure, if humans were good at math.
The existence of mob mentality and cults of personality (in this case the cultists assimilating each other rather than mimicking the one they worship) make it sound a little uncomfortably plausible
The counterpoint I have to that is that “every group of people I’m in tends to diagnose me as being more similar to the group than I am” — my neurodivergent friends constantly see signs of neurodivergence in others, even those of us who have been evaluated for ADHD/autism/etc, my queer friends have labeled me 100% obviously queer even though I’m cishet-but-my-spouse-is-NB-now-and-I-stayed, etc.
it’s called love, simple as that, i have known folk who after 3 kids dad transitioned, 15 years later they are still together. mom had never had feeling for women but the person they loved became a woman,and you know what, she was like i love this person and want to share in their life and pleasure, their happiness makes me happy and horny and if that isnt just the most beautiful thing i don’tknow what is. love is love folks, and sometimes that means exceptions to rules are made.
honestly the only language with more exceptions to the rules than english is the language of love (and i don;t mean the orgy of pansexual love that is the tenses of the french language {we dont need 15 ways to describe something that haddened in the pat damnit!})
love is love and there is nothing wr3ong with that!
damn it * PAST * not pat
Both autistic AND queer people tend to seek out people in those groups even before realizing they are a people-in-those-groups. Shared interests/experiences make friends rather than the other way around, I think.
Almost like being able to understand and be understood by friends is helpful or something.
The mimicking thing would be pretty autistic of her.
But yeah, what Nymph said. My three closest friends in middle school and I all turned out to be queer, even though we stopped being friends before anyone came out. When I was wondering if I was autistic as an adult, I realized I had no close neurotypical friends to compare experiences with.
Oh… I’m gonna be real, for some reason I had memories of Dorothy being confirmed bi long ago. Maybe my mind was putting her into the comic where we first learned Jennifer was? Even though I also remembered her being there? I don’t know, but now some things are starting to make more sense.
._.
Okay Dorothy but what if Becky
Dina DOES have two hands… and there’s far less potential garbage fire this way!
ykw i’d be down. that could be fun lol
Oh dear, I really hope she’s not about to assume Joe outed her/told Becky about their conversation just now, resulting in drama/chaos.
Ah, yep, there it is. There’s the panic.
Ohhh this is so good, the best development, I am giggling like a goblin
I do feel that we trash goblins are getting our full RDA in this Chilis tonight 😀
Yes yes YESSSSS! A good feast!
Dorothy/Joyce/Joe is the relationship I didn’t know I needed until today. Partly because it would be cute, and partly because it would be a big shock for Becky, and I’m curious how she’ll react.
I enjoy Dorothy/Walky, but I would be fine with Walky being single if it means the ship comes true.
Willis you devious bastard….
Does Dotty even like Dinosaurs though?
There are people who don’t like dinosaurs? :O
“C:”
Becky could sense that Dorothy’s Jennifer was showing and wasn’t about to put up with that in her roommate.
Dorothy, cross the bi-frost bridge~
Holy crap it’s even a rainbow!
It is expressly a rainbow, because thunder god.
I don’t think it’s the rainbow bridge that makes the Norse pantheon queer though, I think it’s Loki being Loki, Odin being Odin, and that story where Thor puts on a wedding dress to pass for Freya in order to reclaim Mjolnir which was very much a phallic symbol, that make the Norse pantheon queer.
Like we have tragically little surviving written myth there, but just like the Greek pantheon, there’s plenty of what we’d now call queer stuff going on.
Because humans are humans and queerness has always been a part of us, regardless of how a given society felt about it.
Literally I was scrolling past this and didn’t even click on anything. I didn’t even click Reply. Suddenly it says “Thank you for your feedback. We will look into it.” So apparently I reported this comment and didn’t know it?
Has anybody ever actually used the Report Comment link on purpose??
Yes
Rarely. But Willis has the threshold set to like 10 for reports before it does anything, so don’t worry.
My hot take is that Dotty’s gonna end up dating Alice for a while (she needs to verify if she’s actually interested in non-Joyce women, okay?)
Not enough people talking about panel 2. It’s brilliant. The way Joe greets Becky with that low five and the way Becky instantly hits it tells me this is routine for them and I absolutely love that.
As a straight dude whose best friend is a lesbian this dynamic gives me life. Hell, me and the friend in question literally became friends by bonding over our shared taste in women, so I relate to that brief interaction between Joe and Becky so much.
You know you agree, Dorothy.
she’s giving walkyverse Robin vibes
But if Joyce is cis het, this is all nothing? Just Joyce, eh?
well, being demi is valid but that makes me think of the old school yaoi/yuri manga that’s like “i’m not gay, (love interest’s name) is just the exception), but hopefully things have evolved now to where it won’t matter, tho given dorothy’s goals and future consideration even if she was like “i might like girls overall not just joyce” doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be thinking of future dates
tho be quite the serendipitous(?) timing if walky started questioning/coming out as trans too lol
Don’t knock those stories. First of all because they’re accurate to a LOT of people’s initial experiences with coming out (it often feels like an exception, and sometimes it even IS an exception), but second of all because the pioneers who wrote those stories were really brave.
Another country’s history with queer lit doesn’t have to look like yours for it to be valid.
Assuming here that Joyce is strictly het.
Dorothy’s life is about to turn into that one .gif of the woman walking down the street seeing “gay” things and getting more and more panicked. You know the one.
my thought was that one family guy thing of tom cruise running away from his gay thoughts XD
Can’t tell if this is the perfect person for Dorothy to talk to right now, or the absolute worst.
Somehow both
XD Becky is always relevant.
I guess this is what they call bisexual panic
bisexual panic would be a great band name or makeup look xD
I have to agree with Becky, girls are rad. Extremely rad. Although I do prefer women over girls.
I know what you were going for with this comment, but it comes off creepy as hell.
Especially because Becky didn’t say “girls” so you brought that in on your own.
give the woman some time to breath and simmer jesus xd
Does Dorothy talk in her sleep?
Somebody tell me that Dorothy’s a common sleep-talker.
“Joe does an empathy”
Worst.
Slipshine.
Ever!
Huh. Dorothy was not a character I’d have expected to panic over discovering she was into girls.
She’s not panicking because she’s into girls, she’s panicking because… ugh.
Click back a page or two, reread.
Dunno? It kinda looks like that is what’s happening.
And then she is, the person you need when you are just having a crisis over your sexual identity. 🤣
The moment Becky finds out (which couldn’t possibly be too long) she’ll NEVER let Dorothy live it down.
Oh, Becky has always known. Her gaydar is *that* strong.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew by being in the next room over, listening in through the wall, heard the conversation was winding down, and came over to troll.
(Or really just happened to be anywhere in the wing. Dorothy got kind of screamy-shouty during a lot of that and it’s not like the door was closed.)
Perfect choice of words, Becky. Now I wonder how she would react if Dorothy suddenly tried to kiss her.
lol even if she had an impulse to ‘test’ it i would not expect her to kiss becky sober, but joyce aside i wouldn’t think they’d be eachothers types , but i wonder how their dynamic would be if becky wasn’t jealous and postured a ‘play-hating’ rapport
I’ve known people who have defined their orientation as “essentially straight/gay, with exception for one or two specific people.”
Unlike Joyce, who clearly has an unconscious thing for Sal, probably an unconscious thing for Dorothy, and maybe even an unconscious thing for Jennifer, Dorothy’s been pretty straight, aside from Joyce. I have a feeling that this might be mostly because of the relationship they’ve developed together, and that this doesn’t suddenly mean she’s eyeing up all the single ladies.
Dotty might collapse on herself like a dying star. First she sends titty picks to Joyce who has a boyfriend, now tries to kiss a girl who has a girlfriend. She is Such an Evil Homewrecker XD
The multiversal constants remain.
Don’t forget when Walky was still with Lucy! Dorothy has to feel really, really bad already
oh. Oh. OH!
It’s magic?
Becky will always be there to nudge Dorothy towards the loving of ladies. And Danny can support her as a veteran of a bisis.
Do you really think there will be any nudging from Becky? When the woman Dorothy has feels for is exactly the woman Becky loved for eighteen and only accepted the loss of because women weren’t on the table? When Becky already regularly subjects Dorothy to petty cruelties because she’s so close to Joyce?
I don’t. I think Becky can only make this entire thing worse and even harder than Dorothy’s already going through.
On Dorothy’s shoulders
Angel Joe: ‘It’s ok if you like women, or just Joyce, and we can talk if you need to.’
Devil Becky: ‘Chicks! Chicks! Chicks!’
If Dorothy suddenly now kisses Becky… that will lead into such drama, that will keep us going for the whole next decade. 😛
There are two wolves in side of you. And both of them are lesbians.
That would explain why I get distracted so easily
I just noticed Dorothy’s hoodie has sleeves that only go halfway down her arms. I didn’t know hoodies like that existed. I hate this knowledge.
And so begins the From Enemies to Lovers Arc!
The National Association of Joyce-Likers is hazing Dorothy
…When was the last time we saw thought bubbles in this comic? I can’t say for sure but I feel like those are super rare in DOA, and most internal speech is just done with regular speech bubbles like the character is talking to themselves.
Becky smells blood in the water. Or she’s just being Becky and has no idea Dorothy just got hit with a bisexuality crisis.
Becky’s gaydar has activated!
So many Slipshine possibilities running through my head right now.
All *very* out of character.
The best part is that I don’t think Becky has any clue as to what transpired here, and now Dorothy might be about to explode.
And Becky is preeeeeetty close to the worst person for this to happen near, between her consistent hostility towards Dorothy in general and her jealousy over Joyce. I don’t know that even her low-grade contempt for heterosexuality in women would make her reaction positive, though it might temper the jealous shitstorm of petty cruelty Dorothy could be about to face.
Isn’t what are you looking for, Joe? What’s the matter?
Oh boy. Somehow I thought Dotty would be better prepared for this. She’s not any kind of phobic, so why is this such a hurdle?
I think it’s messing with her understanding of her self-identity.
realizing something about yourself, even something positive or morally neutral, that you didn’t conciously acknowledge before can be kinda jarring
It’s not homophobic to realize something about yourself and suddenly feel intense discomfort, confusion, and bewilderment about the world around you with your newfound vision. No one going through a realization crisis works through things calmly and mechanically.
Uh, well, okay Dina doesn’t count.
Also Dorothy has been in a very fragile state for a while now.
Even if being queer were a fully neutral identity (instead of a highly fraught highly politicized one, god it is fuckin scary right now), it could easily be the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of Dorothy’s total lack of anchor right now.
She’s lost her career ambition as well as her academic ambition. “What am I even doing here” is probably an undercurrent of her thoughts. Especially given how expensive college is. Even if her parents had a college fund for her or she got a lot of academic scholarship money, that’s still something she might feel guilty about consuming right now when she doesn’t have a clear degree in mind.
Yep. Dorothy has defined herself for the 15 years of this comic as an avatar of knowing who she is and what she wants. She lost her academic and career goals over the last five or so, and now throwing it on top of that she’s realizing the way she acts around women is not, in fact, how everyone thinks of their same gender.
It’s not that different from what Billie is going through, it’s just that Billie is terrified of being ‘the weird one’ and Dorothy simply places higher expectations on herself, which then makes her twice as stubborn when it comes to doubting it.
Mm.
I actually REALLY want to know what’s going on in Jennifer’s head, and what HAS been going on in there since Halloween. I think what we’ve been seeing is that Jennifer tends to pick identifiers and throw herself into them wholeheartedly (whether they are “straight cheerleader” or “garbage fire lesbian”), and that Raidah has pretty successfully exploited that with her own tendency to tell other people who and what they are (during her lunch with Walky and Lucy, where she declared that “we choose to be better than [spreading gossip]”, even though Jennifer, Asher, and Carl had all just readily demonstrated that they were eager to spread gossip) (or her penchant for renaming people). Like, Jennifer has always seemed a bit weak to that.
She’s like… mid-third-season-of-Buffy Cordelia. Jennifer wasn’t just a cheerleader, she was HEAD cheerleader, and Alice thought she walked on water. You might think a person in that position would own their power to shepherd the flock rather than being one of the sheep. But Jennifer has always been pretty quick to conform herself to someone else’s flock instead.
Here’s hoping she eventually learns to sublimate that need fully into kink (iirc, she was a bratty sub for Ruth), because spending your whole life being willing to do anything for anyone who will call you a good girl is… dangerous.
Jennifer is fake, and all the people who notice and realize she’s fake slowly get sick of her pretending to be someone she isn’t, and the more alarming part of it is how Jennifer isn’t fully aware of how fake she actually is.
…. wait.
Did this new confirmation that their orientations are theoretically compatible, combined with her longstanding not-entirely-what-it-seems hostility towards Dorothy, suddenly move BECKY, of all people, into the role of tsundere?
Becky doesn’t know that
Well, no, it hasn’t changed Becky’s attitude (yet), but it might give US cause to re-categorize her existing attitude.
I definitely think Becky’s first reaction is going to be anxiety. Even SARAH has said “we all know” that Joyce would be with Dorothy in a second if she thought it were an option, and I feel like Becky has repeatedly taken noticeable psychic refuge in Joyce’s attraction to boys (Jacob and Joe).
And yes, she’s very much in love with Dina, and I don’t think she would leave Dina now even if Joyce suddenly came onto her — but it’s been like, five months since she got her heart broken in comic time.
Becky makes a good point.
I mean, I like ‘em.
Ahhh, the lovely college experience of “what do you mean I’m not straight? Doesn’t EVERYONE love boobs?”
Jennifer?
From what I understand bisexuality is WAY more common than the average person thinks, but since most people end up in monogamous relationships they are often just mistaken for gay or straight.
Exactly! According to research, completely straight and completely gay people are both rare compared to pan and bi people. Most people on some level feel something for the same sex or gender.
“On some level”, that might be true, as long as “some level” includes Kinsey 1.
Every study I’ve seen suggests that large majorities are at least far more interested in the opposite sex than the same sex.
No no, don’t worry dorothy. I’m sure something like. Say. Wanting to be president,
which you were so legit about you actively and explicitly avoided being diagnosed with anything that would require psychiatric medication, not to mention scrutinized even casual level sexytimes with men.
Would never have made you ignore the HELL attraction you could have for women. Definitely no motivation here to totally sublimate any romantic or sexual desires for women. Or nonstandard genders. No motive here.
Oh god, that’s it isn’t it.
It turns out the villain was political comphet all along
Since she was A Literal Child, and we know she’s been taking it SERIOUSLY this whole damn time, which would mean She Can’t Like Anyone But Men! And would even be kind of pressured to have some kind of acceptably neutral husband type dude in her life in the future.
Dammit Becky, you’re not helping!
yes she is, just not dottie
Becky is always helping.
new ship about to drop: dottie x joss
See, people had been saying this already but now? It feels like the probability just increased at least 50%.
Joss also saying she’s been enjoying girls more ever since getting on E lately feels like another hint
extremely funny seeing dorothy go through BOTH of the life crises i went thru my freshman year of college (realizing an attraction to women and also my career goals were unrealistic and against my core beliefs). hopefully she comes out of them the same way too, realizing life is fluid and its never too late to change your priorities !!! especially when youre just barely 19 lmaooo
Lmao Dottie was so afraid of herself changing that change snuck up on her and swung a fat bat called “realization”
excuse me y’all I gotta go to the hospital… I just bust a gut. ~<3
“Okay, maybe I’m a Kinsey-1, but it’s not like I go any higher on the scale…”
“You know what’s rad? Chicks.”
“Irrefutable argument. Okay, maybe I’m a Kinsey-3, but I still like guys too…”
Okay, I can buy that Becky clocked Dorothy’s feelings for Joyce from day 1. Or that she’s a broken clock stuck on “Everybody Loves Joyce”. But does she actually know Dorothy’s vocalised it for the first time? HOW?
Does… does she have Carla’s powers of perfect ridiculous timing?
She… doesn’t? This is just how Becky enters rooms.
this is just how becky exists
Imagine how great it’s gonna be if Dotty and Joyce do get together. Becky will explode with jealousy.
Although that /is/ possible in theory (some people really do have just the one exception, so there /are/ women who are straight-except-also-this-one-lady-is-hot), I think there’s a more likely explanation.