I’ve always said that my biggest worry against the Dorothy/Joyce ship was that it would absolutely DESTROY Becky, because Joyce’s reason at the time for turning down Becky was simply “I don’t swing that way.” So now she does have feelings for Dorothy, which to Becky will seem like a “Oh, so you’ll be gay for Dorothy but not for ME? Your bestest friend since childhood?” Becky’s handled things very well given everything that’s occurred, but she very clearly still carries a torch for Joyce and this news will be devastating for her, I’m sure.
Joyce’s reason at the time was simply ‘I really don’t feel the same way about you’, not ‘I don’t swing that way’. That’s mostly a pedantic, point, though, because no matter what Joyce said, Becky heard ‘I’m not into girls’
Notably Joyce is still not saying she’s not into girls there. Becky makes that assumption and uses that as framing for her question about Dorothy, but Joyce only really answers the “why were you hiding her” question without engaging with the “not into girls” bit.
But at that point of the strip, Joyce was straight. Willis was following his original route guideline that sexual orientation of characters didn’t change from the previous strips. Still, Willis designed his characters carefully enough that when he decided to drop that particular guideline it didn’t seem arbitrary when Joyce’s girl crush on Dorothy turned into physical love/romance. But I’m going to miss Joe/Joyce.
And Dexter/Monkey Master.
Joyce has never been straight. (Well, maybe back in the beginning when she was being written by Baby Fundie Willis…) She was just making use of her bisexual invisibility powers because her designated OTP in the Walkyverse was a dude. But Anti-Joyce didn’t come out of nowhere…
I’m like 90% sure Willis has said that readers should feel free to interpret Anti-Joyce’s interest in women, from back in IW, as evidence that she’s bi.
It wasn’t intended that way when they wrote the original story, but like? I could swear there was commentary on the strips NOW to that effect, on the IW site.
Willis said “oh god oh god i’m so sorry becky i’ll make joyce gay if it makes you stop crying oh god please stop don’t be sad” so since he made Joyce gay Becky better not cry.
Another Gay couple cant get together because it would hurt the feelings of 3rd person who has sexual entitlement ? Very Tired Trope. already done to death with Danny Ethan.
Becky is the most stably partnered person in the entire strip. Shes planning on getting married. It will be fine. shes had 7+ years of comics to accept this.
Being Gay doesnt mean you will automatically have attraction and sex with every person who asks. ( Some people , experimenting straights seem to think this is how it works. )
“it would absolutely DESTROY Becky” Like Joyce becoming Atheist ?
“because Joyce’s reason at the time for turning down” Nobody needs a reason. Thats incel logic.
“So now she does have feelings for Dorothy”, ( YES )
“which to Becky will seem like a “Oh, so you’ll be gay for Dorothy but not for ME? ” ( the answer to that is yes )
“Your bestest friend since childhood?” and sister is a GOOD Reason not have sex with someone. Backed up by science. Incest taboo is real.
Most people naughys bits dont light up for childhood chums. Jocelyne adopting her as a “real ass sister” should have put a stake thru this ship.
“Becky’s handled things very well” has she tho? She hasnt given Joyce room to change.
You think her acceptance of Joyce is based on Incel and Friendzone Logic, or entitlement to sex ?
Shes been a toxic roommate to Dorothy despite Dorothy getting kidnapped by her father and sharing that trauma. Her continued passive aggression to Dorothy suggest otherwise.
Plus it turns out Becky was right, and Joyce might have same sex feelings. and she would probably never get there without dating men and loosening up about sex ( which both Joe and Dorothy helped her ).
‘My crush likes someone else’ is something everyone has to learn sooner or later. The Truth is she would feel worse if Joyce dated her then suddenly dumped her with no warning for Dorothy.
I think Becky will be upset for a day. But more annoyed Dorothy swooped in and interfered with Joyce getting with Joe, a project she has spearheaded to help Joyce get over her sexual inhibitions purity culture training. or for Walky who she is also friends with. But then be Thrilled she can share being girl loving with Joyce. She lost pastime as a hobby. besides Becky has a Much better chance NOT being the girl Joyce experimented with, and. Unfortunately its Dina, Joe and walky wil be the ones getting hurt.
I’m genuinely worried about Joe. He’s been trying so hard to be better, and he’s done such a good job. He’s either going to be completely devastated or be weirdly okay with it if Joyce decides on both…
Hot take–I actually think Becky will be fine with this. Like, yeah, it’s an emotional gut punch, but she’s got a thing going with Dina that she’s very into now
Joe, on the other hand, is going to be absolutely wrecked, while pretending he’s not
Especially when you realize they’ve been out without their cell phones for hours. Odds are there’s gonna be like everybody relevant waiting for them altogether. Sarah, Becky, Walky, Dina, Joe. Maybe even ruth or Billie as well. (Ruth’s first reaction might be to try to dump walky on Dorothy’s behalf and finally get the chance she’s been waiting for).
Aha! So it has occurred to them that Becky is going to be upset.
I feel like this is going to strain Becky’s and Dina’s relationship a bit when Becky finds out Joyce is into ladies, and Dina feels like she’s just Becky’s second choice.
I feel like Becky will react well immediately unless they try to hide it, then she’ll be hurt. Tbh I can even see her just being happy to support sapphics, Becky is absolutely a hype woman.
At whatever point she has to think it over and make the connection between lifelong sexuality being fluid, she’ll react very poorly.
very true, even if Becky is a little bit “are you fucking serious” she’s also going to be very much “it’s ok if we had been together I wouldn’t have met Dina and the universe would be wrong” ~<3
I think that’s definitely an interesting take. It makes sense that she might actually be more upset having to so directly confront the reality of fluid sexuality than any of the other aspects of this.
I visualize Becky saying, “I have the best dinosaur girl in the world, and we have a little two-person pool on when you two would give in and admit your love. Bone whom you please.” Except Becky wouldn’t say “whom.”
Dina and Joe have a solid friendship, and him getting hosed by these two specifically (Dotty’s fumbling the book smarts and babying Joyce during the autism, and Joyce herself for being diagnosed so easily) ALONG with them hurting Becky?
I’m not remembering Dina and Joe’s friendship and might now have to teach myself how to do the thing where you look up strips that two specific characters are in…someone explained it a while back but I never actually did it…
They have a very simple but I think very deep friendship where Joe gets on Dinas level of communication and doesn’t talk down to her or make her feel less than because of how she communicates.
I mean I think that would probably be good sex for Joe, but I don’t recall if Dina is actually bisexual. But, we’ve seen the evidence that Dina tends to know what she wants and how she wants it, sexually speaking, and Joe would really benefit from some sex with someone who’s secure like that.
I think Becky might be hugely upset to find out Dorothy “is gay now” (Becky doesn’t know about bisexuality) even before she finds out who Dorothy’s gay now with.
Honestly, for me, I keep calling them lesbians, because their relationship slow-burn has been, from my perspective, tons and tons and tons of lesbian romance tropes as I understand them. The rapid platonic codependency, the not being able to tell they have feelings for one another, all that stuff is usually specifically lesbian-coded.
I think it is more likely that both of them are bi, and that it’s a bi girl relationship. But, every single named character in the strip has been clocking that their friendship scans extremely lesbian, since longer than I can possibly remember. That doesn’t mean they are lesbians, but it is why I (and I assume other people) keep invoking that kind of language.
Like I’m pretty goddamned bi, I don’t think I’m erasing anything when I point out that the two bi girls are speedrunning every lesbian romance trope from tumblr in lieu of retaining their own individual personalities.
I was under the impression that even if both women involved are actually bisexual, the *relationship* would still be a lesbian relationship even though neither of the participants are actually lesbians. Like, I would expect you’d need at least three involved parties for the relationship to be bisexual.
Like a descriptor applied to the relationship just describes the relationship, not necessarily the participants.
As opposed to all the bi WLW romance tropes? lol yes that is the nature of the erasure. You don’t have to pull out your bisexual card to uno reverse the sin you’ve been accused of. It’s not personal, it’s systemic, and what you describe is the nature and mechanics of relevant system.
@Psychie So, by that standard a bisexual woman in a relationship with another woman is in a lesbian relationship while a bisexual woman in a relationship with a man is in a heterosexual relationship. Meaning that the only way to be in a bisexual relationship is to be part of a triad.
Yeah, that sort of denial of a person’s bisexuality is exactly the bi-erasure I was pointing out. A bisexual person in a relationship is in a bisexual relationship. It’s one thing to look at two women in a relationship and assume it’s a lesbian relationship when you don’t know the women. But it’s been pretty clear for a while now that Joyce and Dorothy are bi not lesbian.
How is it denial of a person’s bisexuality or erasure to refer to a relationship dynamic as distinct from the labels of the individuals? Is a relationship between two women that are bisexual any different from a relationship between two women that are lesbians, what would we call it if one woman was bi and the other a lesbian? Or a man/woman relationship, how is that different from a relationship between two straight people, is it different if the man is straight and the woman is bi, is the reverse configuration different from that? If I, a straight man, got a bisexual girlfriend, does that make our relationship bisexual, or straight, and if the former, does that mean I am no longer straight even though I am still a Kinsey 0 and therefore exclusively attracted to women?
If someone with a marketing degree gets a marketing job doing marketing work for an engineering company, do they suddenly become an engineer? Or does the company suddenly become a marketing company? What if an engineer with an engineering degree gets an engineering job doing engineering work for a marketing company, do they suddenly become a marketer? Or does the company suddenly become an engineering company?
Or can we accept that a descriptor applied to a group does not necessarily apply to every individual member of that group? Like, I think it’s just as ridiculous to say that a bisexual in a lesbian relationship is not a bisexual anymore as it is to say that a marketer working at an engineering firm is not a marketer anymore.
Optics wise, it doesn’t matter what someone’s actual orientation is. It’ll appear as a lesbian relationship purely because it would be tagged as f/f by Amber, and we all know that slash ficcers are the ones who make the rules.
This strip made me realize that Joyce and Joe where not on the same pace regarding their relationship at all. Joe loves Joyce, he really does. He is doing his best to do Right by her, he is taking this relationship extremely serious.
Joyce though? I think she is just having fun. She is overcoming her sexual hangups by casually dating a friendly manwhore. This is probably the first time she ever even considered a relationship that doesn’t have marriage as the ultimate goal. I think she figured they would eventually break up later and that would be fine. So, for her, cheating on him is not that much of a Big Deal. She knows it is wrong, but I doubt she considered it would actually hurt him for real. She probably figured they would break up, bicker for a couple and then go back to being friends.
In other words, I don’t think Joye loves Joe and that makes their relationship very uneven. This, to me, is a big indication that polyamory would be a bad idea even if Joe was up to it.
I’ve said something along these lines a few times now. I definitely don’t think Joyce would call Joe that specific word, or anything insulting. But I do think on some level she and Liz may have had a similar view of him…?
Idk. She’s also said he’s “trying to be good” for her — what does that mean? Does she think he’ll be relieved to not have to “try” anymore? What does “be good” mean in that sentence?
I read their sentence as (be) (good for her) rather than as (be good) (for her), so an emphasis on supporting Joyce as she begins exploring sexually more, showing her tenderness, and acting in ways that benefit her by helping to allay her anxieties.
There’s definitely also the possibility of “oh shit, I got caught up in impulsive decisions and now I gotta face the music” — I could accept a Joyce who started thinking with her bits rather than her brain and ended up making bad choices.
That’s also possible. Joyce’s sex drive is VERY strong, in a way I’m frankly not used to seeing for female characters. She might well just be in a cloud of hormones.
I just think she and Joe have had more than one SORT OF conversation about this, which in retrospect could have resulted in misunderstandings… I’m handwringing about what possible story threads could come back here!
It really is kinda sad for me that Word of Willis seems to preclude “Joyce apologises to Joe, who understands, and breaks it off with Dorothy due to having a morality crisis about ‘cheating'” now, because frankly that still seems like the juiciest possible story.
Sudden thought that amuses me a little, in a sad way:
Willis has been shown to be very very vanilla in various ways before, so what if my fellow sicko breathern have just been… WAY more hardcore in what we’ve been imagining “messy cheating storyline” to mean. What if this, where they go straight from here to tell their boyfriends and get everything above board, IS actually the extent of it.
That would be such a deflation of the drama on all sides. I’m not sure if it would be okay or not, not having read this imaginary series of pages yet, but I have been operating for the last 24 hours on “can it really be messy enough for Willis to have explored cheating if they don’t sneak around for a while, the exact thing I want the least???” and just now remembered that this might still be, relatively, a baby step from an author who’s never let themself write anything this close to cheating before orz
Yeah, I never really got the vibe that Joyce loved Joe. Just that she was attracted to him. He was the one who was super in love.
Although as someone replied to me here, when she was trying to get him to be better in the past, she was much more passionate about him. It’s so weird!
I’m not saying this is it, but your phrasing there reminds me that….. well, Christians are never happier or more impassioned than when they think they’re saving someone else’s soul.
And that’s one of the parts that takes the longest to deprogram when you leave the church.
I think Joyce still conflates lust with love on some level. I think if you asked her how she felt about Joe before this thing with Dorothy, while I’m not sure she would immediately jump to love or forever, if only because she’s been learning that there’s a lot more to relationships between here and there, I don’t think she would speak in temporary terms either. She wants Joe, Joe makes her happy, and she wants it to work out with him. Or at least she did a few hours ago.
I do think you are correct that her feelings for him are much more lust-based than love-based, but I don’t think she is really consciously aware of that. I do think she is aware of how Joe feels about her, but I think *she* thinks she feels more or less the same about him.
I don’t think she thought of their relationship as casual or temporary because I don’t think that’s really how Joyce operates, at least not consciously.
This…really isn’t my read on them at all. *Especially* with Joyce turning to Joe for support when her mom showed up unexpectedly. Joe is definitely into Joyce more than she was into him, but not anywhere close to the degree we saw with Lucy and Walky. Which makes sense- this was the first time Joe ever caught feels for anyone, while Joyce crushed on Tristan, then Ethan, then Jacob before Joe.
I’m really thinking/hoping it isn’t, and that, given an opportunity, she would explain why. She hasn’t talked about him in a while, but she does think a lot about him.
Not that it excuse anything…
Yes! I love that Joyce just now caught up with the comments section of, like, a month ago. And Dorothy… it’s not clear if she thought of this in this moment, or if she’s known of it already and just hasn’t had a chance to mention it yet.
That whole scene is a big part of why I think she might be more relieved than anything when they tell her. She likes Dotty more than she’s ever let on, and I think she’s more over Joyce than people think.
What I hope and picture is that Becky will say she’s grateful Joyce wasn’t interested because if she had been, Becky would have missed out on Dina. That’s what makes sense to me…but I know real feelings are not necessarily that simple.
I think she’ll probably get to this point but it might take her a minute if it brings up unresolved old feelings (which might be the case – it’s hung over her and Dina’s relationship before as a point of insecurity).
If this had happened three months ago, yeah, I think that would have been likely to strain Becky/Dina. Now, though? I think Beckysaurus is secure in its own right.
50/50 odds Becky just crows a bit about how she HADN’T been imagining Joyce’s gayness after all.
Not necessarily. Coming from my own autistic perspective, I think Dina might be more upset on Becky’s behalf – however inadvertently it may have been, Joyce will be hurting the woman Dina loves.
Honestly, this is a big part of why I haven’t been enjoying this storyline, there was such a big deal made about how Joyce isn’t into women and there was a big hullaballoo about Becky getting over her and all that, and after all the friendship drama/conflict between them, I just really don’t want what I expect the fallout of this be, and frankly if the fallout isn’t what I expect it to be, it wouldn’t feel earned to me.
The fact that they both have boyfriends just makes it even worse, especially with all of the growth Joe has been having recently.
Like, I understand that this is “Dumbing of Age” and all that, but I am not looking forward to months (at minimum) of fallout for this, and I don’t like that several characters I like are going to be severely hurt by this. Things were going so well for so long and now it’s all just going to implode. And if it doesn’t, well that would frankly just beggar belief and probably be just as bad for my enjoyment of this comic.
There is more than one reason one person could not be interested in another. The biggest reason why Joyce rejected Becky is most likely because she was more like a sister to her.
Outside of that, Joyce doesn’t even need a “good justification”, and yes, Becky needed to get over it. I’m here with you hoping she did, so that nothing bad happens, but that part is not on Joyce or Dorothy.
And at the time, Joyce was still very Christian, so how much in denial she was probably makes what she said about it dubious, even if true until proven otherwise (so until about last storyline).
What other characters said about her shouldn’t matter.
Did Willis say something about it? If yes, are we sure it wasn’t a joke? Even if it wasn’t, he has every right to change his mind.
Willis has never said Joyce was straight. At least, not in this universe.
IIRC they did once specifically invite people to take anti-Joyce’s (performative at the time) interest in women as being indicative that Joyce could be bi, but I might be misremembering.
I’m pretty sure not even Joyce has said Joyce is straight on page, although until recently she probably thought so. Even when she rejected Becky she stammered a lot of incomplete sentences, but to my recollection none of what came out of her mouth included “I’m straight” or “I don’t like girls” or “I’m not a lesbian”.
She’s gotten upset at people who suggested otherwise in the past, especially when they brought up Dorothy, but off the top of my head I can’t recall her actually “correcting” them. Corrected them on the fact that they weren’t dating (because their behavior led people to think they were), but not on her sexuality. Unless I’m misrecalling. There’s a lot of comic to recall.
So, there are two things I think come the closest to Joyce, in-universe, saying she doesn’t like girls.
I think a lot of people, Becky probably included, interpreted her fourth panel here to be saying she was straight. And the alt text (“i’ll make joyce gay if it makes you stop crying”) could also be interpreted that way!
Then, of course, there’s this, where she claims to have “sorted” out the difference between platonic and lustful feelings.
Buuuuuuuut. (I’m going to reply again, because three links seems to be too much and trigger moderation.)
The second link here goes to today’s strip. And that fourth panel can be read as saying she’s straight if you stretch it, but all she said is that she “doesn’t feel the same way”. Which only says that she doesn’t feel the same way about Becky as Becky feels about her. Straightness is not required for that to be true.
But also yes, I agree. Completely. Sorry that that got lost! I think her actual statement in the strip is very much not “I’m straight”, but that Becky might have interpreted it that way, and that lots of readers did. Also Willis’s alt text, which also doesn’t actually say Joyce is straight, just implies she isn’t gay, and could easily be interpreted as “Willis meant they’d make Joyce gay for Becky specifically”, etc etc.
Drew lampshaded that second comic back in 2019, because yeah, not being able to tell whether you’re feeling admiration or attraction IS, in fact, classic Bi Behavior, and in particular, lots and lots and loooots of bi afab people specifically have talked about how their attraction to women felt different enough from their attraction to men that they didn’t recognize it as such.
I wasn’t complaining that Joyce’s sexuality changed or evolved or whatever, maybe she was always intended to be bi, maybe Willis made that decision later, that’s irrelevant though because that’s not the issue I’m having here.
Kind of funny how everybody latched onto one singular line out of three entire paragraphs and completely ignores my actual POINT. Which was that I’m not looking forward to the fallout this is going to cause amongst the cast of the comic. Becky thinks Joyce is straight, and she thinks that’s why Joyce rejected her, even if she’s happy with Dina now and is mostly cool with Dorothy, there’s no chance this *doesn’t* cause a major crashout for her. On top of BOTH of them cheating on their boyfriends, and all of the progress Joe has made in trying to be better, and considering how much that progress was motivated by him wanting to become someone “worthy” of Joyce.
I literally don’t care whether it was stated in comic or from the author that Joyce was straight because that was literally never my point. I don’t like where this storyline is going, because I can see the trainwreck coming, I’m not looking forward to the crash, and that feeling gets worse the closer we get to it. Joyce’s canon sexuality being foreshadowed or whatever has zero impact on the problem I’m having.
I mean, technically I am criticizing the writing, insofar as I don’t like the decisions Willis made for the plot, but the execution isn’t really my issue, nor is the handling of Joyce’s sexuality, to me it did feel kind of like it came as a result of the audience shipping them rather than having been planned as far back as some are claiming, but I don’t actually especially care about that, I just wish if Willis was gonna do this, he would have done it while Joyce and Dorothy were single and had Becky be further along in her character growth, because as-is it just seems like this arc is designed specifically to cause as much drama as possible amongst the cast purely for the sake of manufacturing needless extra drama. I don’t like drama bombs designed to implode the main cast, if there’s gonna be a bunch of drama, I’d rather it involve antagonistic characters against the main cast rather than the main cast against itself.
Yeah, this is the other thing I feel like people are forgetting. It sounds like everybody expects most of the cast to have their big blow-up when the reveal actually happens…that seems unlikely to me, at this point. At least one of the three people they have to tell, will act outwardly okay at first, but will actually be spiraling, and Dorothy and Joyce will stay oblivious to it until it’s too late.
…goodness, am I the only one who thinks one brief moment of enjoying the mental image of telling Walky about this doesn’t actually mean Joyce would enjoy breaking his heart by actually saying whatever she’s imagining?
Walky subjected her to, like, months of crude “jokes” about how much she wanted to eat out Dorothy and proooobably made it harder for her to face up to her feelings, the girl is entitled to a lil smirk here where he can’t even see it.
Maybe save the pitchforks until she actually breaks the news to Walky while making this same face?
man I guess there’s probably also gonna be a contingent of people for whom Anti-Joyce foreshadowed Joyce’s turn as a villain, the same way Dorothy getting possessed by the Head Alien foreshadowed her turn as a villain?
I get not liking the idea of her actually doing it, and I even get feeling like we know so little about what’s going on in her head right now that maybe all her previous character traits are out the window, but. Yeah. I doubt it, you know?
She was thinking about Joe here, hence her saying his name. It was Becky that she was not thinking about.
That being said, of course she would be more worried about her life long friend then her couple week (maybe a month) long boyfriend. Becky has always been her most important person aside from Dorothy, then there is Sarah, and then Joe in 4th and that was only recently.
Becky is 50/50 on whether or not she will Freak the Fuck Out over this, where in Joe is 80% chance going to take this on the chin and back down for the sake of her happiness, even if he is hurt by it.
Walky will probably be fine, he still has a thing for Amber if I remember correctly.
Mike never truly died. He simply abandoned his mortal form, to reside where he could best pull the strings from the shadows…wait, does this make Mike a Sith?
Pretty much, yeah. Problem is, we can’t hear tone of voice in word balloons, so those predisposed to think that all of this has been carefully thought through by Joyce before she ran into the fray and smooched Dorothy are then free to see it as “dismissive”.
Not to mention all this insistence that a few smooches, in the face of other relationships that are less than a week old, are “cheating” and “infidelity”. I’d never have expected purity culture to have such a foothold in the DoA fandom.
Yeah, no, it’s not purity culture to say either of the following:
1) the most common relationship style for college students in the US in the 2020s is “monogamy/serial monogamy”, not “dating around”.
2) most people, in the US in the 2020s in a monogamous relationship of any duration, would consider “kissing someone else romantically” as cheating/infidelity.
Jon has elsewhere expressed that this wouldn’t be cheating in his(?) own relationships, which is fine!
@Jon: while I do think that there’s some purity culture at play here, Joyce did say in the past that she thought of her relationship with Joe as monogamous, and Willis has said they’re definitely cheating as-of the kiss, at least.
Let’s not die on a silly hill! Whether or not it would be cheating by most people’s standards, it seems to be cheating by Joyce and Dorothy’s standards, so it’s just simpler to call it that.
I was absolutely hedging on “common cultural expectations around dating” due to not knowing Word of Willis, although I’ll also point out that Joyce has in-strip indicated that she’d probably think of this as cheating herself.
Ye, that’s what I meant. Between calling their relationship monogamous, recontextualizing what she and Dorothy did pre-Joe as sex, and then deciding to go “do laundry” together again, I think they very much crossed Joyce’s own (seeming) boundary.
I just also think there might have been some tragic miscommunications here, orz. We’ll see, of course. I’ll have a lot of egg on my face if indeed Joyce is just Too Hornt to Function here, I have such a hard time imagining that she would do this if she didn’t somehow, for some reason believe it wouldn’t hurt Joe.
I’m 100% coming at that from I think the opposite angle as you, in that I’m sort of the polar opposite of aro/ace, was raised in a highly religious no-sex-allowed environment then turned agnostic in college, and I’ve frankly never once been Too Hornt to Function as Joyce (despite making MANY other bad decisions due to Horny in college and, embarrassingly, into my 30s. Mostly they just hurt me, not anyone else.)
ugh, missed the entire thesis sentence: “So it’s hard for me to accept Joyce being in that boat, because in my experience she’s well past where most Too Horny folks would have stopped anyway, but at the same time I’d be really disappointed if she was CONSCIOUSLY just tossing Joe aside.”
I hope you’re doing okay! That sounds like a potentially rough upbringing, but I don’t want to assume orz
That said, yeah, I don’t really empathize with “Too Horny” as an explanation, I’m also too ace for it by half, so it’s kind of like I’m… humming a bar from a song I’ve heard other people sing?? But have never heard live, heh.
Really, what it comes down to me for, with Joyce, is: I can’t believe she knows what she’s doing will hurt him and is consciously choosing to do it anyway.
So either she doesn’t think it will hurt him (which she might be right or wrong about), or…? She’s somehow not thinking clearly enough to conceptualize what she’s doing as potentially harmful. And that, I guess, is where the vague Too Horny to Function comes in.
It actually wasn’t THAT bad an upbringing, aside from finding out in my 30s that one of the priests who occasionally subbed in at my hometown church ended up on the attorney general’s little list while I was still a practicing altar boy, if you take my apparent-near-miss meaning.
i kinda feel like becky will have mostly moved on by now, walky will take it in stride, but joe…he’s trying so hard to change himself and his entire worldview and he’s going to be crushed
My favorite part of this hypothetical solution for many love triangles is the part where the rivals’ until-then antagonistic tension goes in a Different Direction.
(Doesn’t apply in this situation for me, but I can understand why some people might want Dorothy’s antagonism for Joe to be transmuted in the same way.)
Now that they’ve speculated in-comic that it will go horribly with Becky, I’m thinking it will go pretty okay. I’d like for it to go sideways, where it’s rough but not in a way they’d expect.
I think you might be right. Still plenty of room for it to instead boil over her anxiety about sexual fluidity, since Joyce and Dorothy both thought they were straight.
OR, if some commenters are right and Joe is upset and hurt in a very obvious way, and Dina is upset on his behalf — or just upset by Joyce’s actions in and of themselves (she and Joyce don’t have the best friendship)… then that, too, might cause arguments and tension with Becky, similar to how Charlie nudging Carla is causing some potential lingering tension there…
Like I said, plenty of avenues for tension and drama even if Becky isn’t specifically brokenhearted.
Look it’s one thing when Joyce has this rivalry with Walky and you can play it as a joke about how he’s taking her best friend or whatever. Smirking about being the person his girlfriend just cheated on him with? That’s a level of callous Joyce has never displayed prior to now.
It’s genuinely unpleasant. To say nothing of their relationship in the Walkyverse, of which I seem to be the only person still fond, their relationship in the Dumbiverse has been bickering siblings up until now. I really don’t like Joyce acting like this about Walky. I really don’t. It feels gross.
Yeah, I just wrote my own comment about Joyce feeling out of character to me – moreso for not being more concerned for Joe or displaying any apparent ambivalence about the situation – but this too.
I mean – *I* displayed that kind of callousness as a teenager at times. There were a few people I was interested in that, when they broke up with their girlfriends, I celebrated because I thought that made them “available” to me. I imagine I internalized this from somewhere and it IS a thing some people do – but it doesn’t feel like Joyce to me.
Yeah the lack of concern for Joe is also something that is upsetting to me. It just makes none of what Joyce was experiencing for Joe feel real in my opinion. I’m not saying people’s feelings can’t change but like two days ago in comic time she was all over him and now he’s barely an afterthought? If someone in real life acted like that, most people would be concerned about their mental state.
I’m not seeing a lack of concern? The punchline of the comic is the dread about telling Becky. She literally mentions Joe as someone who would be hurt MORE THAN Walky by the reveal.
Yeah. She clearly genuinely loved him and had a lot of hots for him in many, many previous strips. I also get the “afterthought” vibes here. I read someone else’s comment-theory in the past week or two that this whole arc is Willis basically getting back at some other comic that had an arc where a man in a gay relationship cheated on his male partner with a woman by doing the same plot with the sexual orientations switched…obviously this is how rumors get started but if that is so, what a reason to run long-developed characters into the ground.
If anyone can cite the “tweet storm” that commenter mentioned I’d appreciate it…especially if I don’t actually have to log in to Twitter. I don’t do that.
On Patreon Willis said that Joyce and Dorothy were not intended to get together in this storyline, hence why there was still a lot of build up for Joe/Joyce stuff.
I have the basic level of Patreon but don’t check it a lot, except to look at the bonus comics. Is this a comment I would be able to find somewhere? Or is it on the Other Patreon?
Huh. I don’t really agree with some of those decisions, but I really like seeing the behind the scenes and reasoning for it. I hate the protest setting but really like the idea behind the wedding motif? (Also the OG version of the kiss where Joycelyne points out the tear gas lol.)
Yeah, I think none of this would have happened if they hadn’t held back the kiss page from their sensitivity reader orz. They were checking all the other details of the protest, but that part entirely slipped past them.
Which. I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t understand, also being a White in my early 40s. I can imagine getting caught up in constructing the “wedding” and completely failing to take into account how the specific subject of the protest would make everything look. Sob.
A side note, off a bit from the rest of this more relevant discussion–Held off referencing this the other day bc I didn’t know it was publicly accessible, but. This post is the thing that feels like the strongest indicator that poly is not going to happen. I don’t really read the way Joe is talked about here as a thing that suggests the writer is thinking about polyamory.
Unfortunately I think this one is just sinking both my favorite platonic and romantic dynamics at once.
And Willis, if you happen to read this, I fear you may indeed have impulsively blown up your webcomic for me. The transition is too jarring.
I understand a lot of the big arcs co-exist for the author who knows what is going on behind the scenes, but this flip from being over the moon for Joe, and dropping him without a backwards glance for self-destructing Dorothy is, IMO just bad.
These events made both Dorothy and Joyce feel a whole lot less real to me, so my investment in the characters and the comic is way down. I suspect I’ll stop reading soon, which I didn’t see coming.
Or they’d be aware that the people involved are late teens and in college. Joyce and Joe have only been together for like a week, and right before they got together, Joyce and Dorothy “had sex” in quotes because Joyce categorizes it that way.
It’s messy, it’s not particularly kind, but it’s not a sign of any issues with their mental state. It’s just a thing that happens sometimes.
Before they were dating, Joe and Joyce were friends. Like she could talk to him about things she couldn’t with other people. He accepted she was changing, fairly unique among her friends. It’s not just Joyce cheating on someone she’s been dating less than two weeks, it appears Joyce is casually betraying a friend.
This is a huge sore spot with me too, iwgaf if they weren’t friends, it’s why I don’t particularly feel that same “wtf bro” towards Dorothy (Walky has always been a distraction for her, it is his curse). Joyce has just consistently been a good friend and this is her suddenly being a very, very, very bad friend.
It’s the ”casually” betraying that burns the character, and possibly the whole strip for me. Dumbing of Age is no longer fun or interesting to read for me now, and I was super invested a few weeks back.
I don’t have share your feelings on this exact topic, but I did have an experience a while back of finding some parts of the comic making it no longer enjoyable for me. I want to read webcomics for entertainment, so I figured I could stop reading or I could try to change the way I was reading it.
Changing the way I was reading it– sort of my mindset going in, I guess?– worked for me, and I’ve been able to enjoy it. It doesn’t feel the same as how I used to enjoy it, but… it was never going to.
And honestly, my feelings toward the comic have changed at other points too. I had the opportunity to meet Willis once at TCAF, and it didn’t go great. And events like that are often very draining for creators, and I don’t hold it against Willis, but it did change some of my feelings around the comic.
So, I guess the basic message is, you could see if there’s a lens through which you could continue to enjoy the comic. Or you could stop reading, even if that kinda sucks, because you don’t need to do something like reading a webcomic if it’s not enjoyable.
this happened to me when mike died, and i just stopped checking the comic for a long time. just tune back in on occasion, and my investment being dead for so long makes it easier for it to just be entertaining
Bedovian, it’s the same for me. All the stuff we saw Joyce express about (and to) Joe seems to have disappeared. Does she have no object permanence? Only those in her immediate vision are real to her at any given moment?
In character or not, it’s not improving my opinion of Joyce in this situation. Like you said, having a rivalry with someone doesn’t make smirking at the idea of emotionally hurting them [after cheating with their parter] not a callous shitty thing to do. And Joyce’s apparent slow memory about Joe is also, in character or not, very jarring. This has gone beyond “we were caught up in the moment!” to Joyce just…not seeming to care very much that this will implode things, until Becky is mentioned? And even then, it’s a reaction more of comedic fear than self reflection?
The fact that Dorothy has been having mental anguish over this does not make her behavior better. But at least we’ve seen that she has thought about the repercussions of her actions and cares that they will be negative. I need to see that realization from Joyce in a way that goes beyond “Oh no, we’re gonna get in trouble….can I break Walky’s heart?”
I’m with you on most of this, including being jarred by Joyce’s apparent disregard for Joe. It remains to be seen exactly how this will play out, but the vibe I’m getting is that she’s ready to toss Joe to the wind for Dorothy. Very disturbing after so much build up for their relationship. Someone said that Willis said on Patreon that J/D weren’t mean to get together in this storyline and that makes total sense to me.
Yeah, Willis said that Dorothy and Joyce were originally going to get together in like ….5ish more years but once they both learned they had feelings for each other, it was over and it didn’t feel in character for it to drag on. The characters got away from him and well. We got a symbolic Joyce/Dorothy wedding! To quote the Willis – “Sorry, Joe”
not in character? See, this is why im starting to agree with the dumbing of age reddit Willis is loosing some of his story writing ability. For years Joyce has been on a character development track learning how to communicate her feelings and how to express her self. This scene was 100% out of character and I feel Willis just did it cause it’s his favorite ship.
The point is articulated fine, we just think it’s wrong. Joyce was always defined by, above everything else, caring about people. Not wanting to hurt them, either through her actions or her inaction. That didn’t mean that she never hurt people, but that when she did she acknowledged it and was suitably apologetic about it. She tried to make it right any way she could.
She and Dorothy were running around for HOURS after the protest (going by it being night when the protest was at noon) and she just NOW thought about the fact that she cheated on her boyfriend? She’s relishing hurting Walky while being the one who his girlfriend cheated on him with?
This isn’t Joyce. At least not any Joyce I recognize.
Before all this happened, I tried it, but Joyce’s development didn’t quite convince me, and now she has this cowardly desire to rub this in Walky’s face… well.
And yes, at least Dorothy is aware that this was the biggest mistake she’s ever made. I said I was afraid my perception would change because of this. Do I officially hate her? No, but I’ve decided to remain neutral toward her.
Walky and Dorothy… a ship that displayed great naturalness and dynamism for both of them, now at high risk of being destroyed in the cruelest way. How I wish it could truly be saved… dreaming is free.
Maybe Joyce has been an immoral person all along and the fear of God and Hell was all that was keeping her in line. But now that she’s an atheist…all bets are off
Well, no, Joyce can have as many things in her polycule as she wants. They just all have to be only exclusive with her, and only exclusive with other folks. No gross food touching each other! Threesomes are out. It’s all about the Solo Fuck Rotation.
Yeah I agree with this, that it has a high chance of pushing the fluidity-worries button. And Dot is not wrong that there may be a lot of confusing things mixed up together.
How fragile Becky is depends on what fault line you hit. Not sure “Joyce is into girls, she’s just not into me” is as big a fault line as it would have been before she fell hard for Dina but there are other factors about this (like her kissing Dorothy while both of them are dating other people, or someone close to her changing how they define their sexuality) that might rock her world and hit fault lines we weren’t expecting and there are some things that Becky is very fragile about. The thing I mentioned about how sexual identity and preferences can change having been shown to be one of them.
Yeah, the issues here, in descending order of concern for Becky:
1. The idea that sexuality is fluid and can change (even for other people, even if hers doesn’t) is terrifying to her.
2. There are interpersonal implications including the fact that several of Becky’s other friends are going to be hurt by this.
3. Becky is a devout Christian and infidelity is a sin.
4. Becky has lingering anxiety about being replaced by Dorothy even if she’s mostly over it and concerned for Dorothy’s wellbeing.
5. Becky was deeply in love with Joyce for most of her life until a few months ago, and even though she’s immensely happy with Dina there is still some baggage from that.
Actually I think this idea is more interesting to me than Becky being hurt by Joyce. I think there’s been some scene-setting for that being her big anxiety right now, and while Dina soothed it temporarily, it might still be in there. This could trip that switch.
Oh hey it’s them realizing they’re not being super ethical about this and choosing to tell the people who need to know. It’s almost like people throwing tantrums in the comments over the past several strips just needed to let the story play out before making a federal case about it.
i know what you meant but “i’ll keep throwing my tantrum til it’s over” is kind of a raw fucking sentiment if you read it as “i’ll wail at the heavens until my voice has died”
The conversation yesterday was kind of ambiguous. I didn’t read it that way until directly prompted, but I get why people did. As I said yesterday, it was totally possible that this strip would start with Dorothy and Joyce running after Sal in a panic (once the punchline had passed) to try to convince her she didn’t see anything gay (umbrella term).
Idk Joyce has always disliked Wally it’s just usually been played for laughs. This ain’t out of character, its just a slightly more vindictive twist in an already established disdain she has for him
I do agree Joyce’s vibe is super weird. Heretofore, she’s exhibited tons of anxiety about hurting people, about shifts in perspective, etc. I know she’s been going through changes, but it does feel like she’s flippant and calm about all this, which seems out of character. I don’t know if she’s just riding the high, in shock, or what. I had thought maybe the people speculating she’d already talked it through with Joe were right, but this strip dispelled that.
I mean… Joyce has 100% torpedoed a relationship because love trumps all. I feel like people love to forget how she approached the Jacob an Raidah situation. A lot of things are out if character if you disregard the characterization they’ve received.
So I know the rivalry that Joyce had with Walky was played as comedy for a long time. But considering the deal with Dorothy and Joyce was also played for comedy only to reveal itself to be a plot twist a lot the anime Bleach and the 4th Captain…
I’m really not sure I’m liking this version of Joyce. The implication that she wants to basically rub it in his face is just… does he really deserve that?
Maybe people aren’t off based about his Villain arc being forthcoming after all.
Let’s be honest, Walky has been antagonistic to Joyce since the moment he met her, and has frequently enjoyed rubbing stuff in her face/mocking her beliefs. It’s not a surprise that Joyce doesn’t like him.
is it necessary to rub stealing his woman in his face? No
DO I want to see this because this is fiction, doesn’t have real world consequences and would possibly be funny?
Joyce does like Walky or at least his presence in her life. When everything was shitty in La Porte right after the shooting, he was one of the people she wanted.
She might not consciously be aware of that; it could be because she actually wants to be friends, and doesn’t realize it, or she only includes him because he makes(made) Dorothy happy.
I’m actually glad somebody said this. Joyce and Dorothy and Walky spent many a night curled up with one another in the same bed, hanging out, and watching cartoons until they all passed out. They actually do get along quite well in most situations, bantering aside.
In short, I don’t think that Joyce hates Walky as much as Joyce thinks she does. She’s literally just been jealous of Walky the entire time, because she’s literally a sheltered baby, and could not comprehend the obvious reality, that Walky was dating the girl Joyce wanted to be fucking. And, hell…most of Walky’s side of the bantering, despite its content, also has a lot to do with the fact that, for the entire time he’s known her, Joyce has been, more or less, trying to fuck/steal his girlfriend.
Joyce has no reason to actually hate Walky, besides a sucking pit of jealousy that’s been burning inside her from the moment she met The Perfect Woman Of Her Dreams (and that dumb stinky boycreature who always hangs around her). She’s just only ever contextualized all those feelings, from the perspective of Dorothy being her bestie-roommate-galpal.
Now that she can admit to herself that she’s been feral-grade jealous this whole time, and she’s feeling her possessiveness and codependency for Dorothy at full blast, she seems to be almost giving herself permission to be as awful as possible, because now she admits to herself that there was actually a competition all along…which Walky always knew there was, while Joyce was absurdly blind to it.
Joe’s going to be heartbroken and probably blame himself for “corrupting” Joyce is kind of a gross way but ultimately get over that and come out stronger for it. There’s been plenty of thematic setup for “Joe needs to lose Joyce to prove to himself his character arc is real”.
I think Walky’s been in a bad mental place the whole timeskip and this is finally going to break him to the point that Nightguy becomes a supervillain and maybe even gets a little friendly with Incelerator who he couldn’t deal with earlier. Probably not for long before he recovers, and he won’t do anything so serious it ruins his chances at being back in the group, but we’ll have at least one Joyce vs. Walky storyline. It’s too fun to pass up on when we have the chance, PLUS he can rebound with Amazi-Girl in a Batman/Catwoman dynamic much to Amber’s distress to maximize the insanity.
Becky will not take this well, but the real drama will be Dina realizing how much of a rebound she is, as the drama tag cascades through the cast.
Well, if he falls in with he Incelerator, thankfully all that will need to happen is for Sarah to tell Sal and she’ll put him in a head lock until he agrees to stop being an idiot.
What a shock. They’re planning to fess up. Who could have possibly predicted this startling and unexpected development when they were only up to step two of their plan.
This ship only proves one thing…the possessive side Joyce always showed toward Dorothy and his enmity toward Walky.
I know it’s not right to say it in these circumstances, but the fact that Dorothy is reproaching Joyce for her intentions…at least, it still shows that she is truly aware of the mistake she made.
It is genuinely really funny how, leading up to this, everybody was blaming Dorothy way more for both of their behavior, but now that they’re actually doing something wrong, Dorothy clearly has a conscience, while Joyce is doing an Exhaust All Audience Goodwill Speedrun on her way to Maytag Alley.
Before all this chaos, many people were throwing unfair hatred at Dorothy. Yes, now she made a mistake to justify it. However, everyone is paying more attention to Joyce’s comment… a comment that is already shaking the perspective that many had of her.
This stands out to me too! I got so worn out from defending Dorothy in comments, that I resigned myself to seeing her blamed/credited for Joyce’s agency again.
Hurray, the characters are morally complex and no one is perfect, and I LOVE that for them (and the rest of us)!!
I always feared this ship would change my perception of Dorothy…yes, I saw that infamous kiss, and she could have pushed Joyce away, but she decided to submit.
Now…do I officially hate her?
No, but I’ve decided to remain neutral with her, because the fact that she’s aware of the damage done to Walky and her anger at Joyce’s intentions…at least there, I can give her the benefit of the doubt.
Dorothy was always the one who was plagued by her conscience, with the “we can’ts” and the fit of depression, because she was not allowed to act on her feelings ever, and did not intend to.
Joyce was very much the active one in making this happen here.
But doesn’t that perspective take away Joyce’s agency here and assign it all to Dorothy? Joyce ran after and kissed Dorothy, but you only mention on Dorothy “submitting”. Do you already feel this way about Joyce and just expected more of Dorothy? I ask because sometimes in comments, some folks take the stance that whatever Joyce does, it’s because someone else made/let her do it. Usually Dorothy. Happened when Joyce invited Dorothy to do laundry the second time, and before that when she made moves on Dorothy right before her sex night with Joe too.
There’s been so many comments lately, I forget who’s said what, so if you have also called Joyce out in other places, please disregard. I’m just trying to make sense of a trend that’s been setting off some alarms for me!
On a second read you did mention Joyce’s intentions, I’m sorry. I understood that part differently on my first read before I drank my tra. So it does sound like you’re not excluding her from this!
My opinion on Dorothy hasn’t really changed, but I’m with you on Joyce. She’s lost a lot of favor in my eyes. I always liked that she endeavored to be a well intentioned and thoughtful person despite not knowing to how navigate her worse intentions, but watching her give into her worse intents and being tickled pink on being a cheater, and it being her second offense in this regard without much care in the matter is hard to root for. Especially because the main crux of her mentality seems to be that they deserve it for not being ‘good’ enough for the other person.
It’s genuinely hilarious that, in the previous strip’s comments section, multiple people were looking at Dotty going “let’s take stock of who already knows” and were going “OMG DOTTY’S PLANNING TO KEEP THIS A SECRET AND KEEP IT ULTRA-CONTAINED” and then literally the next sentence out of her mouth is basically “…So that we can tell our boyfriends FIRST before they find out from the people who already know”.
I think it’s more likely that Becky does a lot of inadvertent Dina-hurting. If anybody is getting her wrath, its her actual partner. Joyce and Dina have an agreed armistice, even! Dina will see nothing wrong with Joyce getting down with an available lady, it’s just going to be a case of how well she can cope with her girlfriend turning into an irrational mess, and unintentionally lashing out hurtfully while she’s trying to express herself.
It’s generally easy for people to ignore and/or minimize because, since Joyce isn’t hateful enough to do anything MORE than snark at Walky, people can very easily pass it off as banter. Also, I’m given to understand they were closer friends in some other webcomic?
It’s kinda bleak and funny that for all they snark at each other, this makes Joyce officially 2-0 against Walky. Took the comic strip job he wanted, and now broke up a rebound relationship with the person he’s been most attached to.
It’s a shame, since if memory serves Walky once bailed Joyce out of an awkward and tense conversation with her parents after Mike yelled “Hail Satan” into Joyce’s phone at them at a time when Joyce was trying to keep a low profile and protect Becky from Toedad.
They’ve had the odd moments like that where it feels like they could get along.
To be fair, despite their mutual enmity for each other, Walky was one of the people Joyce felt safe enough around to avoid panic attacks walking to class.
Intellectually, I understand she can both hate him and feel safe around him, but it leaves an emotional impression of their relationship that conflicts with reality.
I really don’t know what’s left for Joyce to feel for Walky now that she has thrashed him so entirely. She hated relying on him for help apparently—which doesn’t surprise me but what’s left. Joyce reveled in them breaking up because he monopolized Dorothy’s attention, she probably would have realized her sexuality sooner if it meant keeping them apart. She, not him was a great deal of reason Dorothy didn’t go off to Yale.
It has more or less always been about Dorothy and now that Joyce “won” (which is kinda fucked up, it’s not like Dotty is an object or thing to be won) it’d be like hating a tree stump because you chopped the tree it once was for wood.
It feels weird to me that she doesn’t like him much, since as far as I can remember he’s never done anything to intentionally hurt her so far. And that’s ignoring their relationship in the other comic universe.
Back when she was religious he made fun of her for that quite a lot. And there was the time Sal had to physically pull him away and tell him to stop harassing her.
Also, I just want to point out that the lead-up to this moment has so many juicy little potential drama points:
– Becky knows that Dorothy was spookily up at night with something she couldn’t tell Becky specifically
– Joe spent days being told he was going to get banged, and then Joyce got cold feet (which she’s allowed to do, no shade).
– Dorothy asked Danny what he felt about cheating.
– Walky was basically confessed to about Dorothy’s feelings once already.
There are just a lot of little things floating around to suggest they’ve been cheating longer than they actually have. I wonder if people are going to assume it was more than a dozen kisses.
i’m really jealous of everybody whose memory is this details-oriented for a serial strip, IDK how y’all be pulling up exact strips as citations, but it’s always appreciated
Personally, I’ve read the comic several times from start to finish (due for a re-read tbh, but Rain is dominating that slot right now), and I’ve even got the first 10 print volumes complete with signature and doodle. I still have some gaps in my memory though, so when I’m not sure about a detail, I’ll just browse through the most relevant character tags for a couple of minutes (especially easy if I can combine two for speed) until I find the strip in question, or at least one close enough to it that I can easily navigate a few pages to find it. I also have plenty of them saved to my phone and other devices, since I have a tendency to make new Gravatars out of panels I particularly like, so the extra time spent on editing a given strip helps with retention. In short, lots of interaction with nearly every strip.
IDK how others do it, aside from steel trap memories.
Which Willis has now basically confirmed was Joe thinking about Joyce/Dorothy as a possibility, by including it in a list of strips about hints.
He doesn’t look happy, but I think he expects this.
I’m also increasingly wondering if the conversation these two had about masturbation went tragically awry, with Joyce thinking Joe was telling her that masturbating with Dorothy again would be fine with him, and Joe thinking that he was being told that Joyce would prefer he not masturbate from now on???
It depends on whether his shower strip was him trying to avoid that or not, really, which only occurred to me as a possibility yesterday fff.
It’s SUCH sad wording! I’ve mentioned that most of the times I talked about it but not today apparently orz. Like Joe honey, feelings aren’t something you’re allowed or not allowed — they’re not something you deserve or don’t deserve! If you feel jealous, that’s okay. It might or might not be rational to be jealous, and it might or might not manifest in a way that’s not fair… but the feeling itself is just a feeling. Humans can’t control feelings.
Isn’t “a list of people who need to know” the thing you come with after you’ve decided you’re actually a couple? Weren’t they talking about figuring that part out just a couple of strips ago?
I mean, they’ve been doing relationship things for ages now, without being in a relationship.
Heck, the pharmacist when Dorothy took Joyce to get her birth control medicine assumed they were dating!
They’re kind of recontextualizing their previous actions with new information, and that’s going to change some things.
Yeah, when you get right down to it, the two of them are already codependent to a degree that you see almost exclusively in full-blown life partners. There’s some credence to the reading that, like…they’ve been dating for a long time, actually, it’s just that only now are the two of them waking up to that reality, even though everybody else saw it from the bleachers, a year or more ago.
The important part in context here is that they’re not “going steady” with their respective boyfriends anymore, so they need to be informed, even they weren’t yet sure about what they were going to do themselves.
Well, we don’t know exactly what they’re planning on telling people. We can guess of course, but in theory they could be planning to tell that they kissed in the heat of the moment, but they won’t do it any more.
Whether or not they’ve decided they’re a couple, they still should probably tell their boyfriends before someone else tells them they’ve been kissing.
Okay, that is a story point.
I was wondering how Becky would react to this situation. Joyce is the person Becky came out to/for and the feelings were not returned. That has to feel like rejection no matter how well you are set in a current relationship.
Has anyone experienced anything like this? Watching someone you were deeply into deny you for some reason only to watch them date somebody who has that trait they supposedly rejected?
I had it when an ex of mine dated my brother. But heterosexual drama in a hetronormative world has to sting a lot less.
I said it in the Patreon but I just wanna mention it here as well.
I’m getting the vibes of Joyce being really dismissive of Joe here and I really REALLY don’t like that.
Like…Even more than the cheating.
Like, cheat away but at least acknowledge that what you’ve done is a breach of trust and potentially an emotionally damaging move given Joes history with cheating and not just….brush it off to freak out about your lesbo bestie who I have a feeling is going to react terribly to this news but for reasons they’re thinking.
Gonna make a sticker for the physical release of this, and it’s gonna say “‘Cheat away’ – Jay”, with a layout that makes it look like an enthusiastic endorsement.
Now maybe it’s just my reading tone wrong but the way she says his name here gives me a very “What about him?” Vibes in a sorta condescending manner and given the fact that this is literally the only time she has even acknowledged he exists during this whole situation is just giving me that vibe.
Again, maybe I’m just misreading the entire thing because we don’t have Joyces inner monologue here but that’s just the vibes I’m getting.
I can see where you’d get dismissive, but because it’s a response to Dorothy talking about who’s really going to get hurt, I read it as Joyce being confused that Dorothy was concerned about Joe rather than Joyce being indifferent.
Her face in that panel says worry to me. I think some of how I imagine her saying it is also with some uncertainty that this is who Dorothy means, who she worries about betraying the most, considering that Dorothy historically has really disliked Joe.
So the tone I’m reading from Joyce here is “Clearly the other person who would be hurt is Joe, but it doesn’t make sense why *Dorothy* would be more concerned about him than about Walky, but I still don’t have any other guess.”
Joyce isn’t that rational. The reaction I expect from her when she thought of Joe is more “Oh no, I cheated on Joe. I betrayed him. I’m an awful person.” Maybe not in those words, but certainly a facial expression representing those thoughts.
That’s starting to really stick in my craw too. Yeah, they cheated, that’s bad, but teens and drama and big feelings. It’s not their best moment, but I can still understand the heady emotions in the moment.
I don’t like that Dorothy seems to be the only one of the two of them to actually consider the negative repercussions FOR OTHER PEOPLE so far. EVery time she tries to bring it up in the last 3 strips, Joyce has pulled a face with her but also brushed it off somehow. With a pun and another kiss. Or a jab at Walky. And you could argue that she’s just happy, still full of hormones from the makeout, she just does’t like Walky…still not great, but explains why she’s not fazed by Walky being unhappy.
But she IS supposed to like Joe. Whether she “chose” or “chooses” Dorothy instead, she likes Joe, at least. And she’s built a relationship with him. She was happy, to at least some degree, with him, and excited to have a good relationship with him. And in this strip, she not only barely mentions him after Dorothy prompts her, but she hasn’t considered him otherwise AT ALL. That is weird. Maybe it’s building up to her having a big huge “Oh crap!!” moment in the next strip or two, but it’s still callous NOW.
No, I haven’t liked how Joyce has talked about Joe for aaaages now, but I only started bringing it up very recently because… well… a lot of people were really enjoying their relationship and thought it was really cute and I know I don’t have the best Het Goggles for seeing this stuff, and… I both didn’t want to rain on the parade and wasn’t confident of my own reading.
But I feel like there are perhaps parallels with Liz, in how Joyce talks about Joe: like she isn’t taking him fully seriously, like she’s enjoying Having A Hot Boyfriend Who Thinks She’s Hot instead of enjoying being with Joe specifically. Like there was a boyfriend-shaped hole in her life before him, and now she’s slotted him into place and expects… certain functions?
She expects him to get drunk with her, thinking she doesn’t need to ask how he feels about that first. She expects him to “hanky-pinky” her and relief her of her pesky virginity, something that she — like Liz — sees as an annoying vestige of her previous life as a fundie… and she STILL hasn’t actually asked him if that’s something he’s comfortable doing.
I don’t think she’s being deliberately callous. I don’t think she would do anything to hurt him on purpose. But I do think that, despite how in love with her he clearly is, she just…
…still, on some level, sees herself the same way she saw herself when she contributed to the slapstick violence on their first date: incapable of hurting such a big strong man, because she’s just a little girl.
In this case, “little girl” is more self-deprecating — it ties back to the way she talked about herself when Dorothy suggested pretending to be a couple for the pharmacist, where she said she was a goddamned MESS and was incredulous that anyone would actually feel lucky to be dating her.
Just one theory, though. Other possibilities remain.
“I don’t think she’s being deliberately callous. I don’t think she would do anything to hurt him on purpose. But I do think that, despite how in love with her he clearly is, she just…
…still, on some level, sees herself the same way she saw herself when she contributed to the slapstick violence on their first date: incapable of hurting such a big strong man, because she’s just a little girl.”
I am curious whether this particular perspective will come up for her. I get this nagging sense that Joyce just does not yet grasp the concept that secular people still have ethical responsibilities. She used to be ethically obsessed because she was parlaying every mistake against eternal damnation, and now that she is finally more or less over that all-consuming fear…she has a much shittier barometer for when she’s doing the wrong thing, and no sense of scale about how back different bad things are, relative to one another.
She went from “every mistake will doom me eternally” to “literally nothing matters” with all of the grace of the average nineteen year old. She’s not gonna learn until the consequences start actually affecting her.
I mean considering that the previous morality system had her encouraging Ethan to repress his sexuality, I don’t think this is actually shittier than that? Perspective.
I also don’t think wrongly thinking Joe won’t be hurt here is the same thing as not thinking secular people have ethical responsibilities. I know Joyce put it in those terms herself after the Jacob fiasco, but I don’t think she was being fair or accurate — I think she worried that she was doing the wrong thing pretty much the whole time she and Jacob were on their doomed “fake” date, she’d just let herself believe things were going to work out for a bit.
I’m not sure how clear Joe’s love is from Joyce’s perspective – partly due to her just not picking up on the signs (not having the experience, and also perhaps not reading social cues through autism), but also because all Joe’s having it real bad that we’ve seen has been in conversations with other people, gestures or looks that she isn’t seeing, and so on.
Joe has been too insecure and scared to open up to her about how vulnerable he is to her, and the result is she doesn’t know.
Yeah. It didn’t really occur to me before, but Joyce probably just doesn’t realize how much Joe loves her. Like, she obviously knows he is trying to be a good boyfriend and be in an actual relationship for the first time in his life. But I don’t think she is quite aware how Important this is to him. How Important she is to him
I’ve been thinking that this story arch is very similar to the anti-Joyce arch from the OG comic. She’s peak anti-Joyce here, in a much less cartoony way than the other comic. I think you’re on the right track. After rejecting her old moral framework, she is failed to build a new one.
Pulling out of being anti-Joyce, I expect her to find some middle ground. I’m curious to see how her path through it might be similar or different than before.
There might be a parallel there for Joyce’s development. What’s very different is that here it’s also being shown narratively as this big romantic moment, which seems like it’s going to be played straight as the pairing the whole comic has been building towards.
Oh when I said further up the page that before long someone was going to take anti-Joyce as foreshadowing, I didn’t realize they already had.
I really doubt this. Because anti-Joyce came from Willis processing their own Christian programming. I don’t really see her coming back in a way where Willis says “actually, those anxieties about how having literally any interest in sex made me a horrible monster were onto something”. There’s a reason why anti-Joyce was a one-strip joke reference made by an anxious Joyce.
Like. Any reading that depends on the idea that atheists really do lack a moral foundation, just as Willis was repeatedly told as a child, seem… unlikely to me. I think it’s much more likely that Joyce thinks only she, the biggest square still dealing with fundie hangups about sex that everyone has teased her for, was actually worried about monogamy — than that Joyce just thinks “oh, it’s okay to hurt other people, because there are no longer consequences for my actions.”
Those two thought processes can lead to similar actions re: fidelity to Joe, but they are not at all the same.
Joe’s going to be heartbroken and probably blame himself for “corrupting” Joyce is kind of a gross way but ultimately get over that and come out stronger for it. There’s been plenty of thematic setup for “Joe needs to lose Joyce to prove to himself his character arc is real”.
I think Walky’s been in a bad mental place the whole timeskip and this is finally going to break him to the point that Nightguy becomes a supervillain and maybe even gets a little friendly with Incelerator (who he couldn’t deal with earlier). Probably not for long before he recovers, and he won’t do anything so serious it makes him irredeemably evil, but we’ll have at least one Joyce vs. Walky storyline. It’s too fun to pass up on when we have the chance, PLUS he can rebound with Amazi-Girl in a Batman/Catwoman dynamic much to Amber’s distress to maximize the insanity.
Becky will not take this well, but the real drama will be Dina realizing how much of a rebound she is, as the drama tag cascades through the cast.
Walky’s breakdown will likely be played for comedy silliness where he kind of presents as an alt-right incel but his heart ultimately isn’t in it and he gives up, but Dina’s will be the real sad stuff.
I would be very surprised if things turned out really badly for Dina and Becky, if only because of how absolutely bulletproof they’ve been for years. I kind of get the sense that they’ve been written as having paid their quota of suffering in full. Maybe this is when that authorial mercy runs out, but I don’t know.
I’d also be kind of surprised if Walky went heel because of this.
Yeah, I don’t think Walky has a big enough ego for that. Dude has a history of low self worth, and a lot of his character development has revolved around trying to power through his anxiety and be less of a doormat when it comes to anything serious. Pulling the plug on a relationship that’s never been entirely equal is probably better for his mental health in the long run.
It’s gonna be interesting to see them face the consequences of their actions. Hopefully Walky, Joe, and Becky don’t take it too badly, but I’m not optimistic.
I think the one thing I do really like about the situation, from a story standpoint, is that we kind of feel certain that one’s going to go unusually well, one’s going to go about as expected, and one is going to combust beyond repair…but we can’t know which of the three is which, until it finally happens.
Honestly, as I get over the immediate ship sinking reaction (for both ships IMO), I am increasingly on board with this as a narrative choice. It’s a big swing and I think it’s still possible to botch the followthrough, but the potential is definitely there
Look at how the seams are spaced. If it were genuine pas, they’d be further apart, because the pas company uses wider bolts than the imitators can typically get their hands on. And even if the seams were the right size, you can see the pattern is going in completely the wrong direction. Aside from a brief stint in 1982, all genuine pas has the pattern flowing vertically, and the ’82 product is so rare nowadays (poor sales plus it didn’t match the accessories), you’re not gonna find it for that low of a price. Those are the two easiest tells, anyway, and this pas has both on display, so it’s definitely a faux pas.
Not as bad as the w word, but bad, yeah. Indigenous people have been pretty clear on “don’t use those words, our spiritual beliefs are closed, and ugh, stop making them into monsters, you don’t even understand the concepts you’re offensively stealing”.
I don’t know enough about the history of the word to know if it was a slur back in 1482. I know the character of Esmeralda doesn’t treat it like one, but it’s hard to know whether that’s, you know, historically accurate, or Victor Hugo being racist at the time, or “it’s not even widely known as a slur now, much less back in 1996 when the Disney movie came out”, which for the record would not be an excuse for Disney not doing their research.
Pocahontas had SO MANY PROBLEMS, but it still managed not to, like, help normalize a slur for Indigenous people. -_-
The slur comes from the impression that Romani descend from Egypt (for the record, they descend from Northern India). Given it’s Disney, I’m willing to bet that it’s probably general ignorance about Romani, never mind it not being widely known as a slur, especially in the 90s. I’ve seen some Romani bloggers I follow saying that there ARE languages where the g-slur is …not the preferred term, but the least derogatory one (there are some languages where there are no non derogatory words for Romani and the other terms generally derive from words for ‘slave’ because of a long history of Romani being enslaved) but English is not one of them.
Yeah, THAT I don’t doubt, more that I was wondering about the 1480s.
My understanding, not having read the book, but uh having watched Lindsay Ellis talk about it, is that the original book was at least somewhat sympathetic to Esmeralda and the other Romani characters, but mostly focused on the greatness of the book itself, and only while making an adaptation of his own book for the stage did Hugo start to add in legit themes of injustice and oppression…
…or, I guess, in other words: was the word offensive in France at the time? And if yes, was Hugo using it out of ignorance, not realizing it was offensive, or because he himself was also casually racist?
It doesn’t ultimately make any difference for Disney’s adaptation in 1996, or for Sora saying the word in 2012. I just realized while typing that I wasn’t sure if this was a case of “it’s always been awful” or “it’s never been great, but it wasn’t always as deeply offensive as it is now”.
Given your note on the etymology of the word, I’m guessing we’re at least in the same territory as Christopher Columbus’s racist idiot ass wildly misjudging which continent he was on and a few hundred years of white people generally not bothering to adjust their language.
What about Jacob finding out? He’s not going to say it, but he’s going to think “I told you so” at Joe so hard everyone will be wondering if they just developed psychic powers.
Mainly that I don’t think Joyce x Dorothy will set their friend group on fire like it seems. Dorothy and Joyce maybe overestimate how much they affect their friend group. Most already know of their attraction. Joe definitely does.
I think Joe will be hurt the most but also that it will sting less because Dorothy already confessed to him. He must see this coming already. He likely doesn’t even think he’s good enough for Joyce in a bit of irony because she’s proven she was the dangerous bad girl (relatively speaking).
I think Walky is not as in to Dorothy as he was before. The signs are there if you look. He was hesitant to get back with her in the first place and heir sex was initiated as stress relief that morphed into getting back together because it was comfortable. But Walky doesn’t know what he wants in any part of his life. He likes the sex, but would prefer a more chill relationship. Like what Amber offers. He also really missed Lucy’s companionship and felt inadequate when she “upgraded” to a perceived better male specimen in Jacob. This is all in his own head by the way. Walky has some toxic assumptions about masculinity. Anyway this all adds to him staying with Dorothy basically just to feel better about himself but it ain’t the vibe this time. They were doomed even if Dorothy weren’t tongue deep in Joyce today.
Becky should be over it. Admittedly I’m less confident on her because she’s still been consistently jealous and possessive of Joyce. But like she’s seen Joyce and Dorothy all over each other these days and Dina has been so solid and supportive through Becky’s insecurities in her sexuality and perceived attractiveness. They’re pre-engaged. I just feel like Becky should be over Joyce. I also just don’t think Becky is dumb. She’s very emotionally intelligent and I think she understands Joyce saw her as a sister first. She also knows Dorothy has been going through it. I think we’re understestimating Becky’s mental toughness.
So yeah. I don’t think this will be that painful. I think a lot of fallout from Joyce and Dorothy was planted a long time ago and them hooking up is just hastening the inevitable. These dumb kids can handle it.
Becky literally admitted recently that her jealous rivalry with Dotty is a bit. I think she’s going to have a crisis of identity over this, but not because of her crush on Joyce, but because she’s literally *already* having a crisis from the idea that she might some day possibly have a slightly different sexual preference from what she has currently, and Joyce going for Dotty plays directly into that fear.
I think you can only arrive to the conclusion Walky wouldn’t care if you already didn’t like him. Like the dude who has already shown to have self worth issues will lose the girl he holds on a pedestal a second time snd will not care? Come on.
Nah, I like him well enough, but I also think this will be less of a thing for him than Dorothy is afraid it will. Dotty was a rebound from Lucy, who he realized right at the last minute was *perfect* right before he lost her. Honestly, he’ll probably be relieved that her freakout the other night wasn’t anything more serious than “Oh, she finally realized she was crushing on Joyce.”
I really feel like people are ignoring the signs that neither Walky or Dorothy have been in to them as a couple again. Walky has said things like being with Dorothy makes everything “something” when he just wants to chill. Dorothy was clearly suppressing feelings for Joyce. Even mentioning her in bed with him. They’re just not in the same spaces they were in the first time and haven’t really talked about it.
I’m not running down Walky here but I actually think he’s been forced into a couple of relationships by peer pressure and kind of resents it. I think this included.
Y’know, Joyce, cheating aside I think *delighting in the idea of* twisting the knife in someone is actually a much worse side of you. Like, I always knew she didn’t like Walky, but this seems like a sudden escalation of negative feelings towards him (I feel like they had a light rivalry, but it was almost sibling-esque). This is genuine Mean Girls behavior. Really messed up.
I do appreciate Dorothy not being super enthused with her saying that though. I like Dorothy because she often does bad things but tries really hard to stick to her moral compass, she’s just often really bad at it. Joyce… kind of seems like she may have tossed the moral compass at some point? I don’t know. A few months ago I said she was being unusually callous and that maybe wasn’t the right word since she had no clue that Dorothy had followed her into the hallway, but I feel like callous is definitely the right word here.
If this is Joyce’s new norm and it’s not something that’s gonna be addressed and ironed out, not really looking forward to it.
I hate the sibling rivalry excuse for Walky’s bad behavior. His and Joyce’s relationship is a mutual pattern of disrespect. We just saw him undercutting Joyce’s attraction to Dorothy at Joyce’s expense. Yeah Joyce wanting to torment Walky is a bad side to her, but he has one too. He would revel in doing the same to her easy.
This is also very in character for Joyce. She’s been willing to get mean and messy since back during the breakup Jake and Raidah times.
I’ve definitely said before that Dorothy and Joyce feed into the worse aspects of each other and while I’ve never shipped them, I thought they needed more time to work through some of their codependent and possessive/over-controlling behaviors before going into a proper relationship with each other. I was originally a Joe/Joyce shipper and still liked them, but I also realized that Joe and Joyce do that to each other too, unfortunately.
The dynamism of Walky and Dorothy is the reason I love the ship. Yes, I do. I’m aware of the obvious repercussions, and yet, I maintain a little faith. It falters, but it’s there. Dreaming is free.
The one thing I think is relevant to remember is, Joyce’s entire reason for hating Walky is her latent proto-bisexual jealousy she has from Walky dating the girl that it took her a full 18 months to comprehend she wanted to date. Like, I’m not saying it makes it any more endearing, but every aspect of rivalry that exists between the two, is purely related to possessiveness of Dorothy, and always has been.
Once again, it doesn’t make it better. But it’s very clearly the only reason any such animosity exists, in the first place.
Eh, I’m fairly certain she’s mostly kidding anyway. I doubt she’d actually relish in taunting Walky over taking Dotty from him. She’s just acting it up as a bit. She is *Becky’s* best friend, after all, they have honed their senses of humor together for years.
I realize that a webcomic sometimes plays things for laughs and we shouldn’t necessarily take every joke as “cannon”, but Joyce being vindictive about breaking Walky’s heart is not cute.
I’m over her hating him. All he’s done to her IIRC was get overheard describing her as “hella indoctrinated” a semester and a half ago–something which she has long since decided he was *right* about, so much so that she got so angry about said indoctrination that it caused a rift with Becky. It’s time for her to get over it.
I’ve taken it to be “one of those jokes that exists only because of the broader Willis canon, that’s meant to be taken with a grain of salt and is implied to always be exaggerated,” which is a very common thing I find, as someone who has only read DoA and nothing else.
That said, I’m not saying you’re wrong, either. At some point, enough grains of salt is a heap, and what you’re describing is akin to some kind of fucked-up salt avalanche.
Becky can get over it, if she even does have an issue. The possibility exists that she’s happy with Dina and over Joyce and doesn’t care whether Joyce rejected her due to being straight, or simply not interested.
I feel like Joyce’s joke about Walky, her afterthought-vibes WRT Joe, and in general how fast she was willing to move this new relationship with Dorothy while the latter was the only one expressing any reluctance…
It’s in character.
Remember how she acted with Jacob? And this exact dynamic with her and Dorothy right now was on display back then, with Dorothy judging her for wanting to incite cheating and break up a couple. While Joyce said something like “it’ll be fine if he cheats on Raidah because with me it’ll be true love, unlike with her!”
She has a lackadaisical view of infidelity, probably from lack of romantic experience. While I do seem to remember her chiding someone for thinking unfaithful thoughts at one point, her actions have spoken louder than words. Could create some interesting conflict when Joe is really hurt and she basically doesn’t take it that serious until he reacts. Same deal with her being snide toward Walky — for her, it’s true love, so it can’t be wrong. Everyone will come around eventually.
I dunno when it happened, considering at first she was all wanting a permanent husband from the first day of school… but I think Joyce just doesn’t care about being a cheater or a homewrecker. She doesn’t feel bad about it, or if she does, it’s very secondary compared to her getting what she wants.
The dismissiveness toward Joe backs this theory of mine up, while also furthering another one — I’ve never seen Joyce actually “love” Joe. From the very beginning, it seemed like she just wanted to jump his bones, and was fine with the cuddling and romance being a part of it, but never really felt the same way about him that he does about her. It’s always Joe who’s really “working hard” and expressing his feelings, whereas Joyce is just 😀 and letting it happen.
I dunno. I could be wrong, or I could be proven wrong in the future (storyline plans seem to be as fluid as the characters’ sexuality, so maybe I’m right now but will be wrong later). But that is my take — Joyce just doesn’t really care about being unfaithful or a homewrecker, at least when she does it. This is like Jacob 2.0, and Jacob has even been compared to Dorothy.
I just hope they get iced out by people in the dorms and aren’t quickly forgiven for everything. Hell, I don’t really like that Sal dismissed the whole thing when she just watched her brother’s girlfriend cheating on him.
“I’ve never seen Joyce actually “love” Joe. From the very beginning, it seemed like she just wanted to jump his bones, and was fine with the cuddling and romance being a part of it, but never really felt the same way about him that he does about her. ”
The funny thing is, now that you mention it, it kinda feels like Joyce loved Joe more before they were dating. Lately, she’s literally only been a horny hornball hormone goblin horning it up hornily. She learned what an orgasm was, and then made it her entire personality.
So like, I don’t think she necessarily doesn’t love Joe…I think she’s hyper-fixated on this new cool thing, that is only tangentially related to relationships, and is way too obsessed with it because it’s new and exciting. I feel like she may come to regret this later…but I don’t know how long it’s going to take for the Joyce Brown Bisexual Fugue State to return to equilibrium with normality.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the whole “Joe you can be better” arc with her. Weird that she seemed more passionate about him back then, and even during their “courtship” to some extent, but once he admitted his feelings she became almost coy or distant… Like in all the post-them-getting-together comics, Joe was very emotionally honest with her, and she was kinda just like “smoosh me”? I dunno.
I will be shook if Joyce is actually Fraysexual rep. I have a character that’s midkey fraysexual, and she’s the only example I’ve ever seen in media. That would be wild.
I completely agree. Joyce has zero consideration for fidelity. At least in regards to her own behavior (we haven’t seen her in the victim’s role).
And it makes sense.
1st off, just because someone leaves a belief system, it doesn’t mean they stop using the underlying principles.
(See Ayn Rand’s heroes and their allies only finding purpose and self-actualization in their labor and dedicating themselves to serving their social betters).
American Christian Nationalism is all about Predestination and Vibes.
Good and Evil are determined by “tribe”, not behavior.
This makes me feel bad = God dissaproves
This makes me feel good = God approves
Even if Joyce is aggressively rejecting religion now, she’s still fundamentally operating on the same morale framework.
The one part I’m hung up on is saying that Joyce was treating her relationship with Joe as a purely physical thing…and…like…no.
This mostly hangs on Joe being the one she turned to when her mom showed up. One of the key emotional connections JoJo has is him providing her with insight and experience when it comes to dealing with parents divorcing.
Joyce obviously wasn’t so into Joe that she wouldn’t cheat on him. But I really, really don’t see how they didn’t have a solid emotional connection to each other rather than this being a “fling”.
Joyce talked a bit about this back in the Jacob arc. She’s not a cheater or a homewrecker. She’s a romantic. If it’s True Love, then it’s obviously right and any false relationship anyone was in is just an obstacle to be swept aside. This fits perfectly with her looking for a husband when she first got to campus – that would be True Love and thus there’d be no need to worry about her cheating afterwards. This comes from both her religious upbringing and her “watched too many romcoms” side.
I thought she’d shaken more of that attitude, but there definitely seem to be echoes of it here.
You know what I could go for right now? Some Sal/Danny happy couple moments. Hell as much as I hate Malaya I wouldn’t mind seeing her, and Marcie have some happy couple moments.
Everything might be moments away from exploding in Joyce’s, and Dorothy’s world, but there are other happy relationships going on that would be nice to see. Fingers crossed we cut away tomorrow to one of those, leaving this on a cliffhanger for a week or two.
When you really think about it, Malaya IS the real victim in this storyline.
Were Joyce and Dorothy faking being boring all this time, only to secretly be freaks whose idea of a fun date is crashing a protest?
Or is what they’re doing now fakey, pretending to cheat on their boyfriends to get attention?
This is a life altering revelation for her and no one is talking about it.
Joyce is weirding me out so bad. The only time we’ve seen her be this passive and just ‘go with the flow’ is when she’s putting on a front and pretending to be okay. The fact that she initiated this with Dorothy when she did feels like… maybe she was getting in over her head with Joe and is sabotaging things subconsciously? Not that her feelings for Dotty aren’t real! I just literally can’t see the Joyce from 20 strips ago doing this to Joe so carelessly. There has to be something going on under the surface.
I mean, Joyce made that “first move” in bed by touching Dorothy’s face. After the whole thing with her and Jacob, I just kinda get the vibe she doesn’t really think all that hard about the repercussions of cheating. Like as long as it’s “true love” everything will work out and everyone will be happy. She doesn’t really have any experience with romance so it makes sense in a way. Not to say she’s a monster, just that she doesn’t feel a lot of guilt.
To be honest, there have been a few times when she was flippant/insensitive about things. Like when Becky heard her making fun of Christians and Joyce was kinda just like “ah well, Liz says sorry, guess we’re strangers”. Or even with her treatment of Dina sometimes. Like she realizes she’s done something wrong, but she doesn’t really feel bad about it.
But then she’s super serious when it comes to protecting people from physical danger. So I dunno what to make of her behavior sometimes
At this point people just want the worst to happen in this comic. It feels like folks are going to be mad if things turn out to be ok and no one implodes from this.
I’m expecting calls for domestic violence any day now. Somebody’s gonna say something that’s tilted directly toward “Joe would be well within his rights to hit Joyce for cheating on him” and it’s not gonna be long before that happens.
Right, but I’m “not saying it”, y’know? I’m accusing someone, we don’t know who, of probably gonna be saying it and meaning it, at some point. It’s a mystery about who’s it gonna be, but they’re gonna, and they’ll mean it on purpose.
In Taffy’s defense, they have seen some Paladins absolutely spiraling out over the last couple of weeks of strips. Myself included. Though thankfully never to the degree of wishing physical harm on anyone. Closest I’ve come is the dark humor behind remembering there is a sniper watching the lesbian wedding go down.
There’ve been some going pretty wild on the Sicko side as well. Someone I was interacting with yesterday talking about how gross and controlling Monos were for even having the concept of cheating.
I do wonder if someone will go there, after at least one person said that the girls were going to “make” Joe and/or Wally revert to wild beast villains by their actions. Okay maybe they didn’t use those words but y’know, basically.
I’ve seen a number of people suggesting this is going to make Walky turn into an incel. Real life incels are known for violence against women, especially murder.
Yeah, I just kind of assume if someone says “He’s gonna become an incel”, it automatically comes with the worst parts of that ideology. There’s no sense in giving even the lowest-level incel the benefit of the doubt, because that’s how you end up harmed.
Some folks will be disappointed if nothing bad happens because that’s less dramatic, others will be disappointed and, I suspect, angry if nothing bad happens, because they’ll take it as the narrative endorsing cheating.
(A third faction will also be disappointed if nothing bad happens because they’ll see it as unrealistic! This group is definitely distinct from the second group above.)
I had a petty little moment yesterday of almost hoping for no consequences specifically to spite the loudest paladins, and it felt icky.
I do kind of think no consequences would make for a great comedy beat, but it wouldn’t be worth all the folks who’d be upset, and it would also just be very strange at this point, given all that Willis has been saying.
I think Becky will probably be less upset now, for the same reason Yumi did higher up on the page — but also after last night, I think she too might just be too relieved that Dorothy wasn’t spiraling in a different way to access jealousy.
(The anxiety about the concept of people being fluid, though? That’s definitely something that might blow up again.)
Joe, though. 😞 Even though I think he expects it. “Sorry, Joe” indeed.
Personally, “No consequences” or “they just drop seamlessly into a poly relationship” both strike me as the kind of outcomes that’d make more sense in a more overtly-comedy strip as opposed to the mostly-realistic-dramedy we have here.
At this point I’m about 50/50 on Becky being “upset at the idea Joyce’s sexuality changed” vs “naw, I figured out some shit about the world and myself since I kissed Joyce, I’m good”.
I’m about 150% on Joe having a hard time with it, but in the “moping about it because he had really high hopes” sense rather than some kind of heel turn.
And I’m rooting, somehow, for Walky to take it especially hard and heel-turn so bad that Nightguy ends up joining forces with Incelerator, because someone else suggested that as a possibility and I honestly think it’s the single most hilarious theorized outcome I’ve seen.
If I were to make a “realistic” prediction, I would suspect based on the comment section here that this will cause a good portion of the friend group to have some kind of “what the HELL, Joyce/Dorothy, why would you do this to Joe/Walky” reactions of varying stripes, but it’s hard to predict how Willis will have any given character react.
Hey, I said it would make for a great comedy beat! Not that it would be a sensible resolution. But admittedly while I was babbling about the rest of it, I entirely forgot to finish the thought with: “also while it would be funny for a moment, in a ‘completely subverted expectations’ way, like Amber turning out to be all for Danny/Ethan instead of destroyed by it, I don’t think it would be satisfying in the long term.”
Other thoughts… I might put in a top-level cuz they’re long, heh.
No consequences would be a fun comedy beat, buy I wouldn’t actually want it not even for the people who’d be upset or how strange it would be, but because it wouldn’t feel sustaining. Like, I could see being delighted by it for a couple days, but then it would be like… okay, now what. Having Consequences could keep going for much longer.
I’d rather these two face some negative consequences for their cheating, than everything somehow be fine for everyone involved. Because I think cheating is morally wrong, and I tend to prefer that people who do morally wrong things do not just get away with it. That happens way too much in real life already.
I’m not sure why anyone would think “everything fine for everyone” is even on the menu. From the second Joyce and Dorothy finished their First Kiss™, they immediately realized the implications, and they’re visibly/audibly (audiovisibly?) fretting about it in no uncertain terms. Past strips have especially leaned toward Dorothy’s end of the group (her ex and her roommate) having explicit opinions on the matter and worries about her acting strangely, and Joe even gently confronted Dorothy about it in no uncertain terms. It’s all baked in, and I’d be genuinely speechless if none of that paid off in a comic where things are constantly paying off.
I really genuinely think this is a case of the time dilation making them seem worse than they are.
It’s been a LOT of strips… but those strips are covering a handful of moments. Now that they’re coming down from several emotional highs, they’re thinking (again, in Dorothy’s case) about consequences, and people who will be hurt.
I still think Joyce’s glancing mention of Joe here indicates that she (wrongly) thinks he’s going to be okay with all of this, for one of a variety of reasons you can see I’ve illustrated on this giant cork board covered with red string…
(No but I’ve really spun a few different theories over the last month, from “off panel conversation?!” to “tragic miscommunication during the masturbation and post-#dranks conversations”. Joyce did say she’s “been faithful” since she and Joe started to date, but because she said it in the context of masturbation, he told her that was unnecessary. And I genuinely wonder if Joyce doesn’t have some sort of “real Secular Girls are too cool for monogamy, Joe probably expects me to be uncool but would like me better if I were cool” thought process going on.
Or… maybe she knows Joe thinks they’re exclusive and prefers that, but she has drastically underestimated how much he likes her, and thinks he’s going to react to all of this with, “Oh! Okay. See you in math class,” instead of any actual pain.
Only time will tell! But the one thing I don’t think we’re seeing is a Joyce who knows Joe is going to be hurt and doesn’t care.)
You have my sincerest sympathies. I will be quietly bummed as heck if Joe and Joyce break up, and that does seem more likely after reading Willis’s posts. I hope he and Joyce are able to be friends at least….?
But goodness knows we can’t all get what we want here, some folks will only be satisfied if these two get fully ostracized from their whole friend group.
Joe doesn’t deserve this shit and I think Joyce has lost all rights to his friendship.
Literally the first woman he was willing to put his anxieties around cheating aside to be in a relationship with has cheated on him
INB4 “oh it’s just kissing” sorry I didn’t realize you could make out with whoever you wanted while in a committed relationship with no prior conversation with your partner and it was fine
I think the time dilation is working the other way too. Because Joyce’s date with Joe was… two nights ago? Less? And if you binge the chapter it feels very rushed to go from that to this.
I am just reading Joyce very differently right now, and the Joyce I’m reading doesn’t deserve those things, so I’m hoping for a different outcome where everyone’s (eventually) okay.
But I might be totally wrong about my reading of her! And again, we can’t all get what we want.
Is it a “bottom” reaction to be vaguely embarrassed and/or turned on when a cute smaller person of your preferred gender who is currently climbing on you expresses a hypothetical wherein she is sufficiently determined to find out how sex with you works that she ruins the entire concept for you?
Because I honestly think the majority of non-ace people would be “bottoms” if that were the case. =P
This isn’t them at their best, and to be fair this has been building for a while, but neither of them realized just how strongly they both feel for each other.
Does that make it right to cheat on your partner? Absolutely not. Should they apologize to Joe, and Walky? Yes. Should they feel guilty forever, and not date each other? No.
They’re not perfect, but they’re not *that* bad. Also keep in mind these a freshmen in college, and there are still a lot of hormones still being dealt with, and them figuring out what they want in life.
I’m definitely exaggerating on the “always” it’s moreso only in the aftermath of Joyce becoming atheist. She hasn’t actually needed nor benefitted from being mommied by Dorothy anymore, but has still regularly been the recipient of her (sometimes unwanted) mommy-ing anyway. I think that’s where it started affecting them both negatively, imo. The birth control arc showed a lot of that strain on their dynamic.
Nonono. Wraithy’s betting themself AS lunch. Probably the main course, maybe an appetizer if it’s a dragon’s lunch. It’s the most logical interpretation possible.
Classic case of “Dragon who can transform into a human but gets very hungry and so separates the human form into an individual person via magic spell and then eats that person immediately afterward”. It shows up in a lot of YA fiction.
I was about to raise that question myself. So much discussion here about how Joe/walky/becky/dina will react, but nothing really about what Dorothy/Joyce want to happen (which may affect how the other characters handle things.
Will they say to the boys “we are breaking up you so we can be a lesbian couple”?
Or will it be “we are attracted to each other but want to continue our existing relationships”? (Which admittedly is more of a “sexual fantasy” thing that something I would expect in real life.)
Aye… but also, what if Dorothy goes for the “we want to continue our existing relationships and sorry for the whole making out thing shit was going down things got out of control”…
…and Joyce is expecting “we’re totes in love and going to be totally together and we’ll figure everything else out here because True Love!!!1!”?
I can 100% believe that Joyce is assuming that Joe will be totally 100% okay with all of this especially the whole “his girlfriend is making out with another woman”, and I think Dorothy knows Joe well enough to know that he won’t be.
i’m pretty sure dorothy wants to actually be with joyce in some capacity, given that she only said no more romantic stuff until they’ve “sorted things”, which kind of implies that after things are sorted, they’ll be able to do romantic stuff again
Mmm, true. But still, that’d assume that Dorothy’s version of the outcome (such as her and Joyce together, Walky and Joe out of luck) and Joyce’s version (potentially Dorothy and Joyce together, Joe and Joyce together, Walky can do whatever) line up well.
Joyce’s view of “If its ‘true love’, everything is fine!” hasn’t exactly been challenged thus far, and could be a pretty sizeable sticking point.
She did say to Walky something like “I’ve gotta stop dating virgins”, which implies Danny was one when they started going out but she wasn’t one. I’ve been assuming she fucked some nameless schmoe before she dated Danny.
I guess it’s more that it can imply that, more than it has to/universally does, but that’s the vibe I get reading it in-context. It gets me thinking maybe Danny was equally bashful about touching her boobs, and if she was already experienced at the time, I can see it being amusing and/or exasperating for her both times.
I don’t think that really changes if Danny was first or second. With one of those partners, Dorothy also had no experience.
Consider this scenario. At some point, Dorothy breaks up with Danny, but is either too diplomatic and it’s not clear or Danny is too obtuse and it doesn’t register (or both). Those “three years” are from Danny’s counting, from Dorothy’s perspective, she dated Danny for a while, then fooled around with Tuxedo Mask for little while, then Danny again. But never told Danny because it’d be more trouble than it’s worth. I’m thinking a summer boyfriend situation, either early on in her relationship with Danny. Or after she’d already checked out.
I guess those scenarios aren’t necessarily her cheating on Danny, depending on how the ambiguous breakup would have gone.
So she DID cheat on Danny then lol. Because if the mysterious third dude wasn’t before Danny, and it couldn’t have been after Danny, it must have been during Danny.
This is like watching those two conspiracy dudes find evidence of an extra shooter at the grassy knoll just because someone suggested there might have been one, and they’re looking at reflections and shadows and claiming they could totally be someone’s face and hat.
There’s no evidence that Dorothy has fucked any “mysterious third dude”. Noting that the guys she’s dated were virgins does not imply that she wasn’t one, and I don’t even see how it could, because no matter how many dudes you add, she was a virgin for at least the first one. (Assuming Joyce is her first girl and/or non-dude, which seems pretty certain.)
I can see the vision, actually. We don’t know jack nor dick about the mystery third person Dorothy seems to have fucked other than Danny and Walky, so he could be anywhere on the timeline of her relationship with Danny. I assume “he”, since she’s been very adamant until basically yesterday about being straight for men.
Note the consistent use of speculative language in my comment. “We don’t know”, “seems to have”, “could be”, none of it is concrete. It’s not that I’m saying “This suggests that and that is that”, more like “It’s a possibility, given the blank void of information surrounding that guy”.
I don’t have a specific opinion on “did” or “didn’t “, but I do see how HueSatLight could get there.
I’d say the time frame. If she’s had three partners and was with Danny for 3 years, they got together when she was 15. Doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to have a partner before him, especially since that’s really young to be active. Not like, uncommonly so (members of my family were at that age, I refused to be because I was scared to mess up my future), but it is pretty young. And we saw that Walky was immediately after Danny.
I feel like the age thing and the third dude was just a throwaway and not fully thought out, but it would be wild if Dorothy did cheat on Danny too.
I can only really comment with my own experiences, but I had a boyfriend from the time that I was 12 to 13 and uh… well, we never really GOT far but not for lack of trying on his part. So if Dorothy was more receptive than I was and she had a boyfriend who was just as… well, eager, then I can easily see her having had sex at least once by the age of 15. It’s a bit young, but also not that outside the realm of possibility honestly.
I don’t care as much about Walky/Dorothy as Joe/Joyce. And that’s mostly because we’ve seen and explored a lot of W/D. There’s been years of it the first time. But J/J, there’s been a lot of buildup, and then they finally got together, and now it feels like its over before it really begun. I wanted to see more of their relationship before it ended, explore it more. Now that can’t happen.
This happened in the walky comics too iirc… my poor star-crossed ship… doomed to have their relationship end before it can begin across multiple comicverses 🥲
IW mentioned!!! JoeJoyce is my Willis Cinematic Universe OTP, and my personal favorite iteration of JoeJoyce was in IW. DOA JJ is great— it’s very different from It’s Walky, just like all of the other carry-overs have been— my reservations basically amounted to it feeling too… perfect? For a ship that was predicated on being together during so much intense growth. Great fanservice for us but wow Joe’s a natural at being a perfect partner. The simultaneous messy buildup of (apparently one-sided) Joyrothy felt much more grounded to me.
Then the more grounded ship got canonized in the middle of a protest with tear gas yuri sakura and likely signals the end of Perfect Ship. I can’t get this experience anywhere but DOA
Walky/Dorothy redux has definitely felt like it’s missing the spark they had the first go around. It’s a rebound for both of them and I wouldn’t be super sad to see it ending.
Joe/Joyce definitely had more gas in the tank so it would hurt more to see it cut short, which is probably a good thing.
It definitely feels like Joe/Joyce was cut short before giving it time to deal with its own issues and in a sense I think there was more to explore with Walky/Dorothy as well, since they were getting back together in very different places than the first go around.
All of which fits with the comments on Patreon about this not being intended to come to a head quite yet.
I still suspect that Becky is more over Joyce than many commenters seem to think. I forsee this revelation actually causing a three-layered reaction.
Layer 1) Oh, good, Dotty *isn’t* going to kill herself like my mom did.
Layer 2) Oh, good, they *finally* realized it.
Layer 3) Wait, so sexuality IS malleableaaaaAAAAAAANONONO
I think this is going to play way more into her insecurities about her own sexual identity than it plays into her crush on Joyce.
On a more serious note, I really dislike the maliciousness from Joyce towards Walky here. I get it’s supposed go be comedic, but any time they bicker I always have her “boy from the jungle book” comment in the back of my mind. Walky’s jabs at her have largely been about her obvious crush on Dot or her former fanatical beliefs. But Joyce’s jabs generally skew more personal (him being beneath dotty, not good enough, etc) and at times racial and I really wish that was something that was interrogated more in-story. Especially when those comments are made directly to his partner.
Oops you’re right- that specific line was boy!Joyce. The rest stands for me, though. It’s always been a much more personal beef about Walky’s value/worthiness/inferiority from her end.
It would absolutely fuck Joyce’s mind/deflate her instantly if sometime after this Walky is like “Oh yeah, I was totally never good enough. Pretty much no one but nuggets should give me the time of day.”
Jeez people really do have some opinions about all this.
And like I get it, it’s a touchy subject. But I’ll remind everyone here that we all did stupid shit around that age. I don’t even know if it’s been a full in universe year at this point.
So They’re both like 18-19 maybe 20. Who amongst us hasn’t made some questionable decisions?
I still think that Joyce x Dorothy has had a ton of build up the entire comic, but I’m also not saying that makes cheating okay. I’m just understanding that when I was that age, I was also kind of a dumbass about impulse decisions.
They’re definitely not all 18 (even when you exclude teachers, RAs, and [ex-]TAs). For one thing, Sarah is a sophomore. For another, Sarah and Dina had a shared birthday party back in October just before the timeskip (book 10 vol. 01: “Birthday Pursuit”), so Sarah is 20 and Dina is 19. I don’t think we’ve seen other cast members’ birthdays, but it’s thoroughly possible that someone had a birthday over the timeskip.
(This is assuming “all” refers to more than Joyce and Dorothy. Maybe you meant “both”? I think it was implied at one point that all the guests at the party were 18, so it is fairly likely that Dorothy and Joyce are both 18, although I’m not sure if their birthdays have been established.)
I just meant the freshman kids, yeah. Dina’s birthday party established that she was older than any of the other main-character-freshman (multiple characters commented to that effect, saying they keep forgetting she’s older than them, etc), at least, and we later learned that she got held back a year.
Oh, right, I forgot that she repeated third grade. I guess they’re PROBABLY eighteen, then, but again I wouldn’t be surprised if a few freshmen in the main cast turned 19 over the winter break.
(It just felt to me like your original response was implying “of course they’re 18: they’re in their second semester of freshman year!” idk. Hard to read vibes over the internet sometimes, though)
That’s fair! I’ve been seeing a lot of people assume they were 20 because they think more time has passed than has passed, so that’s why I’m saying both things. It IS possible we missed a birthday, but I’d be surprised if we missed Dorothy or Joyce’s birthdays specifically, just because it seems likely those would be events Willis would want to cover. You know?
How many people actually trust the author of the comic? I mean, I get the idea of funny (or serious) flights of fancy about what is going to/could/might happen, but… These characters live in Willis’ head. In ours too because Willis draws and enlivens them, and lets us see. But they are Willis’ characters, and I enjoy that fact. I enjoy it unrolling. Yeah, speculation is fun. But for me, ultimately, Willis is in charge, cannot be ‘wrong’ (unless they themself say so!).
Honestly, from reading these comments sections, you could almost believe some people don’t even conceptualize Willis as being real, and think they’re just commenting on a weirdly slow feed of real people’s lives.
But more seriously, WAY LESS PEOPLE TRUST THE AUTHOR THAN YOU’D THINK.
I mean, after reading that unlocked Patreon post about unexpectedly blowing up his own comic and the passive aggressive remark about staying or leaving to find out what happens next, I feel kinda validated on not trusting the author.
Passive-aggressive??? Come on, that was obviously sincere. Stick around to find out what happens next — or don’t, if you don’t want to, or you’re not enjoying this, or [on and on]. It certainly wasn’t “stick around if you’re brave, leave if you’re a wuss” or whatever else would make it passive-aggressive.
To me it read like someone who was tired of how divisive the decision has been and was ready to just put it to bed by reminding people that leaving is an option if you don’t like it. But to your credit that could very, very easily be my bias coloring it. The classic internet problem of the tone of the message being lost upon hitting Send.
Yeah… I get that. I don’t think so, legitimately, because Willis has almost always talked about reader reception with anxiety rather than exasperation or indifference.
They’ve been cavalier about some of the reactions, but “people complaining that Joyce can’t possibly be bi” is a different kettle of fish than “people who don’t want Joe and Joyce to break up” (they’ve been apologetic every time they’ve talked about that that I’ve seen), or “people upset about the way the protest went down” (they seem mortified about that, and they’ve been reworking their strip to get Asma back in, at the very least).
I think they’re probably genuinely sorry for folks who are upset about the cheating or who didn’t want these two together for non-queerphobic reasons, even though they’re also mostly very committed to the story they wrote a year ago.
yeah, I would interpret it as sincere; Willis seems like a good dude, and I don’t think he would make plot choices just to spite the readers. He just understands that people might be sad about it, particularly given that Joe has been through a lot of character development to get to this point. I did like Joe x Joyce, and I think it’s unfortunate (especially for Joe!) that their relationship might be coming to an abrupt end, but I don’t begrudge Willis for making that decision.
Kind of a side note, but I’m amused at people talking about how weird it is not to trust the author on a story where that author is talking about how they screwed up one aspect of it.
tbf I think there’s different kinds of trusting an author. Trusting them to be going somewhere interesting with a storyline, for example, isn’t the same thing as believing they’re flawless people who will never make a mistake!
I don’t think speculation necessarily belies a lack of trust in the author? Almost the opposite even, you need some trust to be sincerely invested enough to speculate.
I will say that I think unconditional trust is rare. There aren’t many storytellers where I have complete faith that I’ll like everything about their work, and that’s normal?
I know Willis can write stuff I don’t like, and if this plotline ultimately settles into something I don’t enjoy I can live with that. I do trust that I’ll still be able to enjoy the comic overall even if that happens.
Speculation doesn’t. But the number of people who seem absolutely furious because they’re speculating that they won’t like how the arc goes and are sure that’s the way it’s going despite all the clues to the contrary sure does.
I probably agree that the author can’t be “wrong”, but people care about the comic and can perfectly reasonably think (an aspect of) it is/has become “bad”.
For myself, the very limited times I have felt like that have resolved themselves as a storyline has progressed, especially with a reread binge, where you see the whole thing. So while aspects of current storyline make me… uneasy, to go back to your post, I trust the author to produce a good and coherent storyline overall
I’m not even sure what that means. Yeah, authors can’t be “wrong” about what happens in their stories, but authors can certainly write bad stories. Authors can even write their characters acting out of character.
I’ve got a lot of trust in Willis specifically, but they’re not perfect. They can still screw up.
I mean, “Damn You, Willis” is a trope — there’s ALWAYS been a lot of flailing about decisions made in this comic even if we have all been here for over a decade.
I’ve been following Willis’ work since I’ve been in middle school, and I’ve learned to be able to put trust in them to produce stories that are at least narratively satisfying and interesting, absent a few whiffs here and there. But this? The way they’re talking about this pairing like it’s going to be a core endgame relationship, about how this is Joyce’s final form? I really don’t see this resolving in a way I’ll find satisfying. I’ll just have to go on not liking one of the core couples in the strip. Oh well! Maybe they’ll get interesting as a couple eventually. Hope springs eternal.
Yeah Dot, reading Willis’ blog posts about how this came about made me trust his handling of this much less. I really don’t like where this is going, or his apparent big character arc here. Maybe it would have worked over the 5 year delivery he intended, but not like this.
It would have worked fine over a five year timetable, but this is too abrupt, and they should have had the good sense to rein in his characters and course correct when they started getting away from them.
I didn’t start reading his stuff until Dumbing of Age, and I came to that relatively late so maybe I missed the whole “Damn you, Willis!” starting from a different place, but I’ve always seen it used jokingly usually when he pulls the drama cord and rips readers hearts out rather than for writing decisions considered sub par.
I mean, I see that as a different kind of “not trusting the author”, personally — “Damn you, Willis, why’d you write a plot that makes me sad/upset for these characters” isn’t THAT far off from “writing decisions considered sub-par”, IMHO.
Except it’s usually far closer, in the situations I’ve seen it used, to “Who’s cutting onions in here?” or “It got awful dusty in here all of a sudden.”
Oh hey, lookit that. they’re both immediately thinking over the consequences of what’s going on, and the people they need to tell to be responsible about what’s happening.
And some people are still pitching an absolute fit because “JOE JOE JOE WHAT ABOUT JOE WHY ARE YOU ENDING THIS STRIP IN A COMEDY WEBCOMIC WITH A JOKE ABOUT BECKY WHEN WE SHOULD BE SPENDING TWENTY PARAGRAPHS ON JOE”
I mean, the fit in this specific strip is about “Joyce is slightly gleeful that she gets to tell Walky she’s with Dorothy now,” and “Joyce’s boyfriend, who she has basically been over the moon for since the relationship started, was quickly reduced to an afterthought.”
Meanwhile the Becky thing is just gonna be “yawn, what? You thought I was still into you? You’re so full of yourself, I’m with Dina now”
Yeah that’s totally what will happen with Becky. She’s totally going to be absolutely fine that the girl she had a thing for her whole life, who she let go of because that girl told her she wasn’t into girls, is now suddenly into girls. And more so with the person you “teasingly” declared your rival because she was worried about being replaced in that girl’s life by this rival.
Becky’s engaged, more preoccupied with Dorothy’s mental health, and the fear of her sexuality ever changing. She’ll have issues with this, but I doubt any of them will involve the candle she’s held for Joyce.
Look, I don’t smoke pot, I eat it in candy and occasionally vape it. And it’s not a crime here, it’s legal enough that we’ve had like 5 stores just for pot open up in the last 2-3 years.
I mean, Joyce has never exactly made a secret of the fact that she thinks Dorothy could (and should) do much better than Walky. Joyce and Walky are friends who hang out, but not usually on their own, and they’re usually both ribbing at each other in equal measure when they do spend time together. I don’t think Joyce being a little smug about getting to take Dorothy from him is intended to be cruel so much as her trying to lighten the mood a little, even if it comes off as more callous than that. I think she’s going to meet the brick wall of reality a little more once the negative social consequences actually happen – right now she’s still in the euphoric daze where the rest of the world only vaguely matters, while Dorothy came back down to Earth much faster because that’s what Dorothy does.
Joyce has historically tended to lean towards the “this is probably a bad idea that could hurt someone, but hey, what if things work out perfectly and everyone’s fine and I get what I want?” flavor of denial, and she still has a lot of growth left to do in that area as well. This is still the part of her character arc where she’s in her Reckless Atheist era, where she’s acting out and rebelling because if God’s fake and magic and everything about religion is wrong, then she should do whatever she wants to distance herself from it, like drinking and doing laundry and having hanky-panky with a big man and kissing girls. She’s exploring herself after almost two decades of sheltered repression and hasn’t had much of a chance to learn how to dial things back now that she’s “allowed” to have the freedom to make bad choices for herself – even with her friends occasionally telling her she’s going overboard, this is hard-won freedom for her, and she’s still revelling in that. I’ve been wondering when the pendulum would swing back to hit her in the face, though, and I’m curious if this might be it, because no one in the group could really judge her too harshly for drinking in college or getting a boyfriend who is a known sex-haver, but there well might be some cutting of ties or at least genuine disapproval of her cheating on Joe, especially if she doesn’t reel in the pettiness and smugness. I’d like to say I don’t think she’d be a little smug to his face about it, but the thing is, that is exactly what I think is in character for her at this stage. She’s been well established to not be great at social cues and when to express what, and while I genuinely don’t think she intends it in a cruel way, I very much think she feels like she’s “won” her rivalry against Walky, and she’s not a very gracious winner.
If it’s not clear, I actually very much enjoy this for her. It’s good writing and Willis is excellent at writing flawed characters who change and grow without becoming boring. As someone who’s very aware that I need to work harder on letting my own stories contain more consequences from character flaws as growth-catalysts and less everything just working out too well for everyone all the time, I’m always really impressed by how consistently these characters feel real because they make bad choices and do questionable things, however incensed the comments may be about how dare they do something that’s possibly indicative of not being quite perfect yet.
The only issue I have with this approach is that it’s kind of in contrast with the narrative arc here. Any of Joyce’s flaws (or Dorothy’s for that matter) seem to be tied to details of how she’s navigating it, but the overall arc is still portraying this as the great romance that the story has been building to. The first cheating kiss is a grand romantic climax scene. It’s not shown as a flaw or a bad choice, but as true love.
I could be completely wrong about how this is going to play out, but I don’t really see how these bad decisions lead to any real consequences – beyond breaking up with the boyfriends that they would have needed to do anyway. In which case, do those really seem like flaws or bad choices? It all worked out.
Agreed. The kiss scene is clearly meant to read as a triumphant moment. It’s framed as a metaphorical wedding. Tear gas is used to evoke sakura imagery from yuri anime. Jocelyne, a tremendously likable character, is smiling in approval. The audience is obviously meant to be cheering it on.
I think it can be both, as a matter of fact! It’s a triumphant moment for them as queer people/characters, who are finally coming out of the closets and accepting themselves. The fact that they are also in other relationships, though, means there will still be consequences. Cheating is the bad decision/flaw part of it, but it doesn’t negate that it came from a place of love and good intentions. That love and those good intentions just happen to be a negative for others. A lot of dilemmas ride on that kind of dichotomy, not least in stories; do you hold yourself back and live in a status quo that’s sort of fine but not what you truly want or who you truly are, or do you chase what you truly want and who you want to be, even at the cost of the consequences that will follow? There isn’t one right answer, but most storytellers will err towards resolving for the latter. In real life, sometimes the consequences scare people off, but even staying in the status quo has its own consequences if it’s at the cost of getting to be fully yourself.
I don’t have to agree with cheating or consider it something to celebrate in itself, but I respect that Willis is able to move out of the comfort zone of having the characters always resolve things neatly with therapy talk and backing down from what they want for the sake of everyone else getting to stay where they’re comfortable, like Danny and Ethan solemnly agreeing not to pursue their mutual attraction just because it could potentially be weird for Amber. They’ve already admitted on their social media that that’s an opportunity missed and a ship that’s sailed.
I think it’s absolutely far too early to say “it all worked out” until we see how everyone else actually takes it. Maybe some people will pull a Sal and shrug and go “oh, so you two finally figured it out”, but I absolutely expect there to be more of a fallout in their friend group besides Joe and Walky both going “oh, I see, that sure sucks for us but I’m glad you’re both happy, I guess”. Danny’s already made it clear he absolutely disapproves of cheating regardless of sexuality reasons and I suspect that he won’t be the only one.
I’m sure some people with disapprove. I assume it’ll at least blow up their relationships with Joe and Walky. I have no problems with characters doing bad things – making mistakes, being messy, etc. This isn’t about “staying in the status quo”.
Compare this with Joyce’s other “cheating” arc though: with Jacob it ended with a nice clear rejection, because of her approach and was framed throughout as Joyce making bad decisions. That was a deconstruction of a lot of rom-com tropes. Here, the narrative is framing this as the grand romance. The cheating side is a rom-com trope, played straight.
Again, I may be wrong and this may blow up in their faces in unexpected ways, but the way it’s been set up and the comments Willis has made about the story don’t make me expect that.
Look, they’re not planning on hiding it. They’re not keeping it on the DL and slipping off to the laundry room together. They’re obviously planning on starting a ‘more than friends’ relationship but it’s one that’s new to them too. While they’re apprehensive about telling the people who are impacted by that, it doesn’t sound at all like they’re planning on carrying on an affair.
They’ve realized their feelings for each other, and now they have to lay it out for the people whose hearts could be broken by that.
It’s definitely been a hard to gauge storyline without the benefit of inner monologues, but looking back at the proximate catalyst… Joyce had sex with Joe. But in talking about it with Becky she realized she had a sexual encounter with Dorothy before. Everything’s been snowballing off Dorothy coming to terms with her feelings for Joyce, and Joyce’s realization that she had “sex” (by the definition she arrived at) with Dot before Joe, and how that makes her feel. Certainly not a typical bi awakening story but this has all been over a very short window of comic time.
One thing i find myself wondering recently was when Joyce clicked on her feelings for Dorothy. Joyce is usually such an open book with her feelings that it’s a non-issue, but it’s hard to be certain when it comes to her feelings for Dorothy.
In my head, it’s that moment on the bed when she’s preparing for her night with Joe, but i could see others disagreeing.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think she actually realized it until after. Maybe thinking about it the next morning – along with her “I’ve had sex with Dorothy” idea.
The feelings were definitely there in the pre-date cuddle with Dorothy and she was acting on them, but I don’t think she’d acknowledged them to herself.
Very hard to say, given how little we’ve seen of what Joyce was thinking in this sequence.
I don’t know of someone has already made this point, but this whole.storyline makes much more sense and stops being so upsetting when you remember that they are like 18/19 in their first year at uni. That is messy as gets, and the context makes this situation basically unremarkable. Which does not mean I condone! Just that I remember what this life chapter was like, and a lot of the time it was like this
So here’s what I think is the most interesting path story wise
Firstly, I’d way prefer this to be revealed. Not for moral reasons but cause the fallout of this is so much more juicy than Joyce and Dorothy doing this secretly
Joe – I think he’d react calmly and politely before breaking down alone. Rachel finds him and they have a convo where both grow to understand each other. Joe ultimately sticking to his character growth despite his pain
Walky – I find Walky so boring lately, just a stagnant character at the moment. So honestly I’d like to see him be mean about it and then go down a bad path, start hanging around a bad crowd. Just give me something, anything
Dorothy – I kind of was hoping that Joyce and Dorothy would decide not to go for it after a kiss because then Dorothy could explore her sexuality with other women. I guess I’m hoping this experiences leads her to work with Asma and figure out a politics she believes in. Relationship wise still not sure but that’s cause
Joyce – I really want to know what’s going on in her head, how she feels about this. Much as I wanted the kiss of chaos I was still hoping Joyce and Joe would keep happening. Much like Dorothy, just not sure cause no idea what’s going on with Joyce
Becky – I am so hoping Becky struggles with this the most out of anyone, to a completely unreasonable degree. And she has no reason to be personally hurt. Sure she cares for Walky and Joe but also, that can only mean so much. The idea that the person who you made a big move that didn’t reciprocate isn’t because she’s straight but because she’s just not into you? Perfect! And it gives Dina something to consider, a real challenge for their relationship that requires confronting their differences as people. Dina gets to have a story with real teeth.
Also deeply funny for Becky to get the thing she theoretically wants (two of her close friends being gay) but they’re A) atheist and B) gay in a way that she didn’t want
Your last paragraph brought to mind the phrase “left lesbian with none Becky”. Also, I second all of this. The most interesting thing Walky has done lately was slowly, badly processing his grief over Mike, and it’s been a minute on that.
On Walky:
Ever since Lucy broke up with him, Walky’s mostly just been around for Dorothy to worry about. We went straight into the Dorothy/Joyce plotline without doing anything with Dorothy/Walky (Walky’s only currently in 31 strips in Book/Year 15).
On top of that, so far I think we could have done this storyline without Dorothy/Walky having got back together and I don’t think it would be that different (just focusing on Dorothy potentially destroying Joe/Joyce).
So I’m really hoping we get something big with Walky in the fallout, and not just him ending up with Amber and being relatively fine (especially if Amber is injured/arrested/tells Walky she encouraged Dorothy to go after Joyce).
I want to see him kick over that pedestal he still has Dorothy on. Unrelated, I want to see him get a “guy friend” and for them to be safely obnoxious at each other, and take the edge off for everyone else. And I want them to be Malaya.
I almost want Willis to commit to the idea of doing an actual cheating storyline. This feels like it’s just dipping a toe in the water: They figured out they love each other, they kissed, which is technically cheating, then went to tell their boyfriends and moved on a new non-cheating couple. (Presuming that’s what happens, which is looking likely now.)
But really, if you want to do a cheating storyline, lean into it. Let them hide it for a few weeks. Have sex. Sneak around. Lie to the boys. Eventually get caught. Because that’s where the real pain and damage of cheating happens, not in getting the first kiss and the breakup in the wrong order.
It’s probably out of character, though I can think of ways to justify it, and would also probably kill all sympathy for both of them, so it makes sense not to go that far, but at the same time it kind of feels like a half-hearted arc as a cheating story goes.
Nah you’re good. I’m kind of with you anyway. I’d have preferred more buildup but if we’re skipping that to get to the meat, let’s get to the meat already.
I’ve got split opinions. I think Dorothy’s part of the story doesn’t make me feel less sympathetic towards her, maybe more sympathetic. Sicko for Dorothy. Real sicko, not “sicko but then everything works out with no hurt feelings”. Dorothy acting like is her staying in character, but kicking it up a notch. then learning something about herself and potentially growing from it. She’s not extraordinary, I don’t think that’s sunk in yet. Dorothy maturing in a messy way, I could feel sympathetic to that.
For Joyce, I definitely feel less sympathetic, but not in an antipathy way. I don’t know where this is going, but it kind of feels like she’s being set up to be cheating but not knowing it. Like she has to retain some sort of innocence. Or maybe she’d be inexplicably cruel in the most casual manner.
The next chapter is called “not so smooth criminals”, so I’m not expecting them to immediately tell their boyfriends in tomorrow’s strip. Not sure there is an ideal pacing, though.
My assumption is that the next storyline is going to be about a photo of them kissing blowing up on social media or the newspaper and becoming the focal point of the school’s gossip, wrecking any chance they might have of keeping things lowkey and slowly rolling it out. Also it’ll probably out Jocelyne since she’ll also be in frame.
Id there anyone here who share my fellings of jjst, not having any kind of moral felling about this storyline whatsoever? I just don’t care wherever this is good behavior or not.
Right, but you can have other strong feelings! I don’t think Nadamás means they(?) don’t care about the comic at all, just that they specifically don’t care whether the characters’ choices are morally correct or not.
I thought it might be he/him! I thought I maybe remembered you saying something that indicated as much once. But my level of certainty was like 10%. Thank you for clarifying! I do care. I kinda wish the comment section had a visible pronoun field, tbh.
I’m less fussed about people getting my pronouns right than I am about getting other people’s right tbh, so just me doing it wouldn’t help much. I guess I could start a trend? Heh.
I don’t like these characters I’ve basically grown up with doing this thing that is morally objectionable and cruel to their partners, so that’s an element of it for me, but now that it’s happened I’m much more concerned with how sloppily this has all been written, which by all indications is a result of the characters getting away from the cartoonist.
what i thought this would accomplish: figuring out how the upsetness breaks down so i can forge a path towards greater understanding
what it actually accomplished: making me feel so hated and shamed and deep-in-the-skin wrong as a person that i wanted to yank my guts out through my throat
and i only got like 200 responses and only like 110 of them said some real jugdey mean stuff! willis gets like at least twice that per day and i do not understand how they are still alive
While that’s not surprising, I am deeply sorry you had to deal with that. The people who answered that survey (myself included) don’t know who you are, and their opinions on you are based more in their own rage about a daily cartoon than in anything you could have said or done.
I was personally very excited for the results, but I do not think it’s worth it if you’re sacrificing your mental health to even read them.
Also, to whoever responded to a survey ABOUT A COMIC?!?! with PRETEND PEOPLE IN IT by lobbing hateful shit at a real human being who was just trying to do something fun? Seriously consider talking to someone. You have issues and it’s causing you to hurt real people for the sake of pretend ones.
Again, unbelievable, but sadly not surprising. I hope you get yourself something nice today! A hot bath, a cold ice cream, something you deserve.
To be clear: When I say “Myself Included” I’m saying I answered the survey. Not that I included a shitty comment. Should be obvious given the rest of this comment, but I want to be sure <3
That’s horrible, I’m so sorry that’s the response you got. I thought the survey was a great idea and a way to really analyze the nuance in the community’s reaction to this storyline, and it really sucks that folks turned it into something nasty instead.
i feel like i should clarify: it’s not even people harassing me! it’s just the sheer volume of, like, being told this comic i like is bad, being told the creator is acting in bad faith, being told there was a problem with the way the survey was constructed–even when people are being polite about it, even when people were agreeing with me and shitting on the anti-cheating crowd, the sheer VOLUME of negativity just completely fucked the signal to noise ratio and made it hard for me to think about myself or the comic rationally.
I’m sorry, Wack’d. It’s awful when negativity is overwhelming and I’m sorry for making a comment on the construction of the survey. It’s not easy to make a survey for something like this because it’s basically impossible to cover all the possibilities and that’s not a reflection of you. Take care of yourself.
It’s actually ridiculous the way some people don’t seem to remember we’re all actually, y’know, people, out here on the internet.
I had been planning on adding a comment in the “Anything else” box that boiled down to “Thank you for seemingly going out of your way to make sure a broad combination of viewpoints got represented here” but ended up leaving it blank, so I hope one saying it here instead helps a little.
I’m very sorry that you were exposed to a response like that, though I can’t say that I’m particularly surprised. I knew that if this ship ever did become canon, it was going to be treated to two barrels of virulent misogyny and lesbo/biphobia however it shook out, and there has been a really nasty undercurrent of both in the comments as of late.
I mean it’s a multiple choice test. For the most part you can just post the multiple choice results without delving into the comments made. And I feel like it is useful data if a lotta people ARE saying they don’t enjoy this story direction, even if it may be upsetting to know not everyone is into this direction.
honestly it was pretty 50/50. not a lot statistically remarkable. and i should point out that even the pro-cheating crowd had, frankly, some pretty nasty stuff to say, so
like, what upset me was not any individual opinion, what upset me was not even folks not being into it. what was upsetting was the sheer QUANTITY of it. when every single comment is something negative the actual nuances of a given person’s opinions just stopped registering in my brain and turn into a solid wall of bad. the human brain is not designed to process a solid day’s worth of two hundred distinct people complaining at you about ANYTHING!
i would really, genuinely encourage anyone who comments here, or is in any fandom with a contentious subject, to build a similar survey and force yourself to look at the results over the course of a day. powerful empathy builder. i broke after like 28 hours and willis does this to themself every day, forever
See as someone who has worked on a webcomic and written several books, I feel and fear that in my bones. I’m sorry people were awful in the survey :(.
I comment a lot and I can be critical, especially of this current storyline or get weirded out/frazzled by a bunch of viewpoints I don’t understand (or irritated when a comment I thought was innocuous is taken 100% as heated and face value), but I do genuinely still like Dumbing of Age and it seems so weird that so many people read that just don’t. I dropped regularly reading QC because it became too boring/weird to read (VTuber arc). If I ever stopped liking DOA or Willis, y’all’d never know because I’d disappear as a commenter entirely.
Walky will get over it, just as he did with Lucy dumping him. I guess he’ll take a crack at Amber again to repeat the pattern of going back to his exes in order to not deal with the emotional pain.
Joe… I honestly think he’ll be crushed and revert back to “Old Joe,” proving Rachel right in that he can’t change. Unless, I think, Amber actually acts as a sister and points out how much Joe has changed for the better, which will then get him to continue to improve for his own sake, not to impress Joyce.
Becky, though… Becky has shown jealousy when Joyce and Dotty went on a platonic bender and, now that she’s seriously been proven right that Dorothy was out to steal the person she loved the most (yeah, Dina exists, but you never really get over your first love) I think this might put Becky into a downward spiral as she’ll believe now that Joyce was gay all along but just wasn’t into Becky. I see hands being thrown.
Most of the gay relationships I’ve seen in both the Walkyverse and this series I can get behind (although Asher/Ethan is a bit wobbly given Asher is responsible for Blaine kidnapping half the cast) but I honestly don’t think Dorothy and Joyce belong together. Dorothy is really NOT in her right mind right now, and Joyce’s feeling in the moment are so intense it could be perceived as “true love,” but once the intensity dies down I really do think Joyce would find out that she and Dorothy, while great as friends, aren’t compatible as romantic partners.
I was really hoping for a “Graduate” ending where they don’t discuss the consequences but realize without words just what they threw away for the sake of intense passion. And Becky casually walking by, not noticing them, would trigger one of Joyce’s patented “Oh my God” shocked expressions.
A polycule appears, but it’s Asher-Ethan-Walky-Joe instead. Joe cooks delicious healthy food for the group, Ethan talks about transformers a lot, Asher is upbeat and kinda hot about liking what a mess everyone is, and Walky is the goofball of the group who brings the mood up once he’s done grieving.
We’re doing crack ships now? Here’s a topical one. Joyce goes to tell Walky thinking she’s going to enjoy dropping this on him. Walky starts crying. Joyce goes to comfort him and they wind up kissing. Now Joyce is pannicing that she has to tell Dorothy she cheated on her with Walky once she’s done telling Joe that she cheated on him with Dorothy.
Not likely but oddly fitting with the mix of drama and comedy in the strip.
Also, as I pointed out the other day out of the four characters currently involved in this mess Walky has so far been the only one to actually propose polyamory to anyone he was dating. And as I said then, Walky said it as a joke but he’s known to say things he means seriously and pass them off as jokes.
If Joe is being sincere about hos growth, he doesn’t need Joyce or any girl to be a better person. I believe he will not reverse to Old Joe.
He can look what he dealt with Sarah at the gym and to think: Yeah, it worths it.
That meme that’s like “The myth of ‘consensual’ sex” but the couple is Dorothy and Joyce and replace Jesus with Becky
“Isn’t there someone you forgot to ask?”
You know what, however Joe reacts to this, he’s right.
Dorothy sent Joyce nudes while he was dating Joyce.
Dorothy told him that he didn’t think he was good enough for Joyce and that she was afraid he’d hurt Joyce.
And now Dorothy is just like “who cares about Joe’s feelings, Becky exists.”
Agree to disagree. Cheating on two people is doing much less harm than the hurt and stress Joe caused a whole pile of women by being who he was. Joe was allowed to make mistakes, so is Dorothy.
Nope! Hurting one person (Joe) is not worse than hurting dozens of people (Joe literally ran out of apology donuts).
You’re also just entirely mentally skipping the long phase where Joe acted liked the aggrieved party about his list having been “leaked”, or when Rachel didn’t appreciate being rated an 11, or heck any time Danny expressed any type of feeling that Joe didn’t want to have to listen to.
You are literally comparing Joe years after the completion of his character arc to Dorothy in the middle of hers and saying he’s better — even if I agreed with everything you were saying about her, it would still be silly.
That last paragraph really is the salient point in this sub-thread, IMHO: Joe’s had a fairly complete arc, from “comic-exaggerated but sadly typical college sins” to “realize/acknowledge he fucked up” to “steady improvement” (with a lovely side note of “how does one even make up for that kind of diffuse but actual harm” wherein “apology donuts” is a woefully incomplete answer.).
As much as I hate the current implementation of it, “can you stick to those principles even when you have been metaphorically kicked in the teeth” is a reasonable next step on that arc.
Dorothy’s current arc is clearly not done — whether or not we agree on any harms she might be currently doing in this “comic-exaggerated but sadly typical college sins” part of her story, she’s not even reached the “realization” phase, let alone the “try to improve” phase.
Agreed with all of this. I’m less distraught that Joe might be tested in this way, but I am still sad he and Joyce are probably over, because I would so much rather have messy-but-eventually-happy poly.
But yeah, it’s just a biiiiit silly to compare Dorothy to Joe right now, when you’re comparing chocolate chip cookies to not just uncooked cookie dough, but dough that hasn’t yet had chocolate chips or sugar added to it, and then going, “these are both cookies, but one of them is a much worse cookie.”
I’m also not really sure where the “continually lied, manipulated and acted like the aggrieved party” comes from. My read is that she was mostly lying to herself about not being attracted. And I really don’t see any manipulation. If anything Dorothy’s been the one pushing back, saying “we can’t …” even if she’s not actually strong enough to resist the temptation.
I guess I can see it in a broad sense? The first laundry session can be read as a manipulation tactic insofar as it was explicitly intended to get Joyce’s hands in her pants and release a pressure valve so she’d stop trying to get with Joyce.
That’s not an argument I’d make, though, I think Dorothy was dealing with a lot of things including her own possessiveness and desire for Joyce but obviously she wasn’t conscious of a lot of it.
Joe was a bad person, but he got called out on it and is actively trying to better himself for the person he believes is his moral center. Dorothy’s trauma of seeing Joyce get hauled off by Blaine has caused her to spiral and make bad decision after bad decision. And the moral center who called Joe out for his behavior is now ENCOURAGING Dorothy’s behavior. I think Dotty can course correct, but someone is really going to have to QUITE LITERALLY slap her in the face, especially if Joyce dumps Joe for her. (Which I firmly believe will happen.) The obvious person to do this is Becky, but Amber could be the surprising voice of reason since she saw the two of them kiss and is making an effort to be more sisterly to Joe.
Let’s all face it: Joyce is attracted to Joe, but she didn’t LOVE him, after all. It happens, and this enlightenment it can happen in any moment, with anyone.
As lot of people can forgive Joe for what he did in the past, I can forgive these two.
I’m sorry, but I can’t see this as anything but retconning.
Joe and Joyce were previously portrayed as having a deep emotional connection *in addition* to them being hornt. Joe’s been her emotional support when it comes to dealing with her parents even when she still thought he was a sex pest.
Was she so deeply in love with him that the thought of cheating was anathema? Clearly not. But come on, it was *not* written as a fling.
Well. For what it’s worth, you are describing part of the comic that I thought depicted a really good, important friendship. Which didn’t read as romantic to me at the time.
If it wasn’t meant to be romantic, maybe it’s not a retcon.
If I was only talking about their texting during the first semester, I’d concede the point. But I’m not. I’m also talking specifically about when Carol showed up to tell Joyce she sold her house. Joe and Joyce were dating then. And she turned to him instantly for support. Going through the papers Carol dumped on Joyce even led to their first real makeout session if I remember properly.
If Joyce decides that her relationship with Joe is less of a priority to her than her relationship with Dorothy, that’s one thing. It’s another to retroactively declare “she was never serious about Joe in the first place”.
Well, you said “Joe’s been her emotional support when it comes to dealing with her parents even when she still thought he was a sex pest“, so yeah, I did think you meant the pre-dating stuff that I didn’t read as romantic. My mistake!
I would believe in retconning if there was not any clue of attraction between Joyce and Dorothy in all DoA, what is not the case.
The amount of effort for Joyce to have any sexual contact with Joe kinda of made me expected she would choose another person. Maybe Willis could explain this rejection better, instead using Rich Mullins to show her how she was refraining for his body.
Also, about the cheating, I agree that Joyce was so worried about not cheating on Joe, but Joyce also cheated on Raidah.
Also, going to add that this is the *second time* we’ve seen Joyce just barrel on over another person’s relationship because she wanted something. She looks so smug talking about hurting Walky’s feelings in that panel that I almost can’t stand it. Kinda hope she finally learns something that sticks this time around.
There are many different types of love and Joe and Joyce is different than Dotty and Joyce. I believe what was in the moment of nearly being arrested caused Joyce’s empathy for her best friend to turn into blind passion. But passion wears off. And I’m sure whatever they currently have will be ruined by a snarky comment by Dorothy at Joe’s expense. Remember, Ethan and Danny had giant crushes on each other but Danny ruined a potential relationship by telling Ethan that he was better off without Mike. It’s very possible Dorothy could say the same thing since she NEVER liked Joe.
It’s going to be painful waiting to see if there is any remorse for any of this. Or at the very least for Walky or Joe to be rightfully angry. So many people are certain they are both gonna get over it and man, fuck that, I want to see at least one of them cut them out of their lives. Anything less is just so narratively convenient that I can’t buy it.
I think at minimum we should see Walky be no longer comfortable hanging out at lunch with the girl who broke his heart twice and the girl who was subconsciously trying to steal his girlfriend from day 1 and finally got what she wanted
And that’s so much of his group that I can’t imagine him sticking with it. And… that’s rough. Not going to hang out with Lucy. Sal’s too cool for him. Asher is still too evil for him to join that group. Amber’s getting shot right now. So, what’s left?
I think if Walky distanced himself from the group Sal would be there for him over Joyce amd Dorothy. Especially if Joyce does chose to be an a$$ to him.
Asher is too… evil?? Like, from an abstract perspective for the narrative or from walky’s perspective? Walky likes the guy a lot, and from the narrative perspective, Asher is a good person with a dark past that he regrets. Hes like as close to an archetypal anti-hero you can get while still being about college kids.
I mean there is the sword of Damocles that Walky’s currently unaware of which is that Asher was an accomplice to him getting kidnapped (and more indirectly his roommate being murdered).
yeah and that isn’t at all a reason for him to not start hanging out with asher compared to other people. It’s a great reason narrativley, and it obviously won’t stop walky because he doesn’t know about it
three times even! plus setting him up with Lucy for her own purposes, then trying to get him to dump her. I forget if it was just in a rejected strip, but it resolved too neatly; Walky taking 100% of the blame for ruining his main friendship at the time.
Dorothy uses people, especially Walky. Sure, it’s because she’s immature, but I want him to be clear eyed and angry about it finally.
This latest rebound between them has so transparently and clear-cut been Dorothy using Walky that I really hope he finally gets at least a little angry about it.
It was obvious that he was hurt when she referred to their relationship as “consequence-free fun,” so I can see him being furious when Dorothy dumps him and reminds him that what they had was “consequence-free fun.”
Then she has some growing up to do. I’m not saying she can’t be hurt or a little sad that the rejection she experienced was more complete than she knew at the time, BUT she’s got a girlfriend, a better life now, and Joyce is still her best friend. If she is “broken” about Joyce figuring herself out instead of supportive? It’ll be a good bump in the road for her to hit because she needs to get a dose of maturity about it.
That said, I’m looking forward to watching them all navigate it!
So….odds of someone taking a photo of their first kiss amidst the chaos and it travelling around the world at the speed of internet to land squarely in front of Joyce’s mom are…….
Oh boy, that’d be good drama. The kiss among the tear gas being the defining moment of the protest, held up by both the Anti-War side as “Love Wins” and the Pro-War side as “They Don’t Even Care About Their Own Cause.” Then we get a full page spread of every character waking up the next morning seeing the headline on papers/websites.
Except Billie, she slept in, content that there was nothing interesting in store at the protest.
I don’t think the anti-genocide side would hold it up as “Love wins”. I think it would be frustrating to try to get an anti-genocide and pro-divestment message across, just for some randos to stroll in at the last moment and get the whole thing turned into about them making out.
You might get some liberals who are ok with the genocide, but don’t want to say that out loud, say “Love Wins”.
Why on earth would “love wins” be the message from the anti-war side? That wasn’t what the protest was about! Much more likely the anti-war protestors are gonna be pissed off about a couple of white girls becoming the face of the movement.
Can someone clarify one thing: How long has it been since Joe and Joyce actually established their relationship? Not just flirting, not just dating, but a mutally-agreed-upon relationship. Comic timelines are messy, but in my head it’s been like a week or so. And Walky/Dorothy is even newer, and even less likely to been explicitly discussed.
Point being this: Romantically kissing someone you’re attracted to while in a monogamous relationship is cheating, and cheating is bad. But I feel like a lot of people are being *very* harsh towards two barely-20-year-olds who have been rocked by an enormous personal realization over a very short period of time, all because they didn’t dot every i and cross every t with their weeks-or-days-long partners beforehand. And now they’re having a frank discussion about the next, hard steps to take, and people are getting madder because it’s taking a few hours to hash it out.
At my age, I know plenty of good people who have happy, monogamous relationships that have lasted decades. And I was also there for the messy beginnings of some of those relationships. I don’t believe in the idea of “the one”, but I do believe in “one of very few”, and life isn’t always so kind to present you with one of those opportunities at the maximally-convenient time.
The literal amount of time for the relationships is short but there’s been a fair amount of screen time for Joe and Joyce. I feel like looking at this story with the literal framing of the amount of time doesn’t really make sense.
It’s like looking at a movie with a romance that develops in it rapidly over the confined time space of the movie and thinking “well clearly it doesn’t really make sense for them to be that close, it’s only been a week.”
Like, we are in comic book time. After a certain point it becomes useless to think in terms of “it’s only been a couple weeks” because in reality those weeks have been years.
They’re 18, not 20. We are in the second semester of their first year, and the only one who’s 19 among the main cast of freshmen is Dina, who we later learned got held back a grade due to her neurodivergence.
There’s a tangential side point here to the “duration” argument, too.
Joe and Joyce had been building a friendship for a while here. And then they started dating.
If he’d just met Joyce, I’d be somewhat sympathetic to “people are overreacting, it’s just a kiss, they can follow their mess”, but they’ve been friends for (IIRC) at least half a semester and presumably have some halfway decent idea where each other’s relationship boundaries are — and, plausibly, that Joe is especially sensitive to cheating.
The timeskip messes with some of this, granted, in terms of knowing how much Joyce and Joe were “friends” vs. “acquaintances” prior to dating now, but they’ve been talking at least since pre-timeskip (Danny even gripes about Joe opening up to Joyce faster than he opened up to Danny as early as mid-late Book 9.)
But Joyce and Dorothy have been close much longer than Joyce and Joe, both in-universe and real-world. So if Joyce and Joe’s friendship warrants their relationship being given more weight than its mere length would otherwise warrant, wouldn’t that apply doubly or triply so to Joyce and Dorothy’s?
And that’s ignoring the whole “someone who assumed they were one orientation suddenly discovers they are a different orientation” angle. And as much as I agree with Danny that being bi or pan doesn’t excuse cheating, I do think that if the person you’ve been platonically in love since the moment you first met suddenly and unexpectedly becomes a viable romantic and sexual option, I do think that should be taken into account.
This is the sentiment I don’t get. “Why are people getting so heated about this strip dealing with emotionally fraught and extremely charged topics?” Well you just answered your own question!
I think I need to just stop reading any of the comments for the next few months, if not just take a break entirely and come back to the comment later. It’s earnestly become really exhausting and draining reading the arguing here and I don’t think it’s worthwhile for me to put this much emotional energy here when there’s more important shit.
I’ve been in Becky’s position (sorta), where a close friend from scouts made it clear she wasn’t sapphic or interested in girls, only to end up dating a girl a couple years later. Hopefully Joyce is better at handling it than her, miss “Yeah I date girls but I thought it was clear it would never be someone like YOU” wooooof
Really big fan of seeing Joyce be messier and meaner. She’s always been this way, (even back in its walky, although I maintain that shouldnt really have a bearing on this comic neccesarily) but for most of dumbing of age shes been so reigned in by fear of… kinda everything?
Fear of god, fear of the people around her leaving her because she’s too different, etc. It’s nice that now that she has the confidence to not be afraid, shes using it in ways that are both good and bad because she has no idea how to be a person yet.
She doesn’t want to repress all of her feelings and wants, but hasn’t learned how to do it in a way that doesn’t hurt others.
TV Tropes has a lot to answer for, heh, but I think a lot of people would call it character derailment instead.
Personally, I reserve that for when I think a development is annoying AND doesn’t make sense AND doesn’t wind up going anywhere interesting, but I’m sure people use it to describe any development they don’t enjoy, too.
It’s obvious to me how this is a betrayal of Joe and Walky, but how is this a betrayal of Becky?
I get why Becky might feel a bit of betrayal from it, and maybe a bit of more generic hurt and slight and the like, but in what way is this actually a betrayal? What sort of obligation or commitment or moral standard to Becky would Theocracy (yes, that’s the ship name) be breaching?
And yes, I know, the point isn’t about it being a betrayal PER SE but instead about the sense of hurt Becky might feel. See above sentence about me being a pedant.
Okay, here’s my own spin on POTENTIAL negative reactions to this from other characters, assuming Joe and Walky are visibly distraught about all of this.
While a LOT of characters are likely to have negative reactions in more of an abstract “ew, you had boyfriends? Cheating’s not cool” sort of way, Danny is Joe’s lifelong best friend, and he and Dorothy haven’t even interacted in any significant way since she borrowed his shoes on Walky’s behalf. He barley even knows Joyce in this universe! So he has no reason to even feel mixed here, and he could easily turn his previous comment to Dorothy up to 11.
At most, Danny might have a brief, reflexive “oh man Joe what did you do now?” reaction, for which he’ll then probably apologize.
Next up: Jacob. He seemed to have gotten past his and Joyce’s mistake by the time they met up again in the gym a while back, but I doubt he still considers her a good friend, either, and he barely knows Dorothy. I agree with the idea that he’s likely to at least feel like he told Joe so, even if he doesn’t say it out loud, but I’m sure he’ll still be ultimately sympathetic.
Lucy, I think, might have some mixed feelings — it depends on whether she still has any lingering bad feelings about Walky/Dorothy — but in the absence of strong loyalty to anyone on either side, I imagine she’ll be inclined to stick with her still-new boyfriend. Plus, as much as she’s been a people-pleaser in the past, I think Lucy would still be confrontational enough to at least mutter a very audible, “Cheating is never okay,” into an otherwise awkward silence.
Alternately, I guess she might take this newest development to Raidah? As proof that Raidah was right all along about Joyce and Sarah’s whole friend-group being crappy people.
Dina is another character who likes Joe, as well as… not really liking Joyce all that much! And not really knowing Dorothy all that well! How outwardly angry she’s likely to get depends, I think, on how the situation is presented to her. I’m not foreseeing any type of violence, personally? Dina’s violence has been 99% comedic slapstick stuff. I currently think she might be more upset than Becky, though, just because this strip presented the idea of telling Becky in the way it did — and also because Becky isn’t really friends with Joe or Walky, so she’s more in the camp of “general abstract displeasure”, rather than being upset for either boy.
Sarah… is one of the characters I think will be most conflicted. Even if she hears the worst possible version of this story (which, given both social awkwardness and guilt, Dorothy might just deliver herself!), she loves Joyce like a little sister and actually tried to get Dorothy to cockblock Joe. And she was only just starting to come around on Joe!
Buuuuut. There’s also the matter of her actual little sister, Liz, with whom she has a more fraught relationship at least in part because she felt like Liz was constantly stealing the boys she liked. This might push that same button.
Well. Does Sal actually know what she saw was incriminating? It’s hard to be sure. She might be aware he and Dorothy are nominally dating again, but it wasn’t that long ago that she was apologizing to Dorothy for bringing Walky to her bottoming-out karaoke party, and I kind of think she’s the type of person where her default reaction to ANY kind of relationship drama is “not my business”. I bet she’ll at least wait until Walky’s reacted before stating any kind of opinion one way or the other.
We know she’s something of a secret romantic, given how she’s been interacting with Danny, but I think she’s also expressed plenty of cynical opinions about humanity at large, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she sees cheating as one of many shitty things that just happen in life, including perhaps a thing that’s happened to her in the past, and that rather than being angry, she just encourages Walky to drop Dorothy and move on with his life.
An opinion that Jennifer is almost certain to share, unless she sticks with her earlier proffered advice of “best friends are allowed to bang, like, once and still be regular best friends”, in which case she might not actually consider this cheating??? And, if she said that out loud, it might torpedo things with Alice!
Amber and Amazi-Girl might have split opinions on this one. Amber, as we know, was maybe kinda subconsciously encouraging Dorothy to cheat on Walky in hopes of freeing Walky up to date herself, and it’s entirely possible that she feels so guilty over that that she refuses to judge anyone in this situation at all? But otherwise I imagine she would be supportive of Walky, whom she cares about, over Dorothy and Joyce, two people she only tangentially knows.
Amazi-Girl, meanwhile… might be similarly stymied, actually? She kept whatever opinions she had of their kiss to herself while urging them to get out of dodge. But we know she’s been trying to be “less of a cop”, which might very well land her in a bit of a “moral relativism” spot for a while on matters less cut-and-dry than “genocide bad, police brutality also bad”. Plus, she might feel some responsibility for not stopping Amber from escalating this situation. We’ll see!
I doubt either of them would be neutral on cheating at any other point in time, but they’re both in a weird spot right now.
And finally: Booster, who, unlike Amber, might still be in a guilt-free mental space of “trash goblin craving mess”? But who I do think likes Walky, and probably wouldn’t actually enjoy any real suffering or sadness from him.
Yeah. He’s… one of the people in Joyce’s orbit who I don’t think has a lot of friends. I’d think “maybe I’m wrong, maybe he’s got off-panel friends in his wing”, except for how hard Mike’s death hit him. It just seemed like he really didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, at all. I imagine he’s on somewhat cordial terms with most of the guys in his wing (more minor characters, like Ken or Arthur), but not even to the point where I’d assume they even know he and Dorothy got back together. You know?
It made me sad while I was writing it out, and was indeed ALMOST my very first sentence about Sal — “not even his sister seems to be on Team Walky” — before I decided that we couldn’t really be sure she’d even interpreted what she saw as Dorothy and Joyce being actually for-real intimate, and then I got lost in further introspection on how she might feel about cheating in general.
(I think, even odds that she either gets VERY cynical about it and treats it like something that “just happens” and Walky being hurt as another indication that he’s lived a softer, kinder life than her — OR she gets very upset, actually, and we learn that even though she literally had a friend call the cops on her once, she’s never been cheated on, and she can’t believe Dorothy or Joyce would do something so awful.
Like, I vacillate. The way she “distressingly” turned out to be the type of girl who likes getting flowers — it makes me think maybe Danny’s the first time she’s ever had a boyfriend, rather than just, like, one-night stands, or otherwise very casual hookups outside of a relationship…
…but it’s hard to say.)
I do think Jennifer would take his side over Dorothy and Joyce eventually, but she’s got a stronger bond with Joyce than any of the people I put on Team Joe, so she might also be kind of torn. Joyce helped her get Alice back into her life extremely recently. And even though I think her pseudo sibling would ultimately win out…
Also, if it turns out her ridiculous comment to Joyce was in any way part of why Joyce went forward with this, Jennifer might wind up feeling guilty, which might in turn manifest as defensiveness, which might in turn start a fight between her and Walky…
The TL;DR on this is: Walky definitely needs more friends. Like, STAT.
Reading your analysis made me think of the time Sal and Jennifer secretly agreed that Walky can be a good brother sometimes, and pretty all around cool. (I forgot who immediately threatened to tell him that the other said this). I have to believe that Sal and Jennifer would eventually come to talk to Walky.
Booster—I think Booster would harass Walky about it up until the point where they realize that Walky is not okay. For a lot of guff Booster gives and feels towards Walky (telling Dorothy she could do better than him), something that sticks out to me is Booster looking genuinely sad that Walky believes he should never try to have nice things he wants. Even saying to Walky “You don’t really mean that, do you?”
I do actually wonder though if this will paint Dorothy in a different light for Lucy. Yes, Walky hurt Lucy—did not stand up for Lucy, but Dorothy nudged Walky in Lucy’s direction, then more or less snatched him back before they even had a chance of reconciliation or proper talk—then began something with Joyce.
I feel like even Lucy, whatever she and Walky needed to resolve would look at the chain of events like “hold on a second.”
Inasmuch as Lucy is aware of Dorothy as a person I think these events are likely to mark her down in Lucy’s mind as “someone who uses people.” She can be pretty judgemental. And to be fair Dorothy is someone who uses people. Even if she feels bad about it sometimes.
Because yeah, I agree that Lucy might very well view this as, shall we say, Sus. Walky was very defensive of Dorothy last time, arguing to Lucy that Dorothy tried to keep them together and was the reason he asked her out in the first place… but, of course, he might not be inclined to defend her in the same way, sooooo…
NOTE: all of this is very, very contingent on Walky and Joe being VISIBLY SAD, which I’m not sure we’re going to get: even if Walky is both surprised and upset, he’s known to sublimate those feelings into increased jerky goofballery — and Joe, I think is likely kind of resigned to this outcome, and might try to put on a brave face for Joyce, or even agree to a poly setup despite not wanting it.
I’ll definitely co-sign “I expect Joe to put on a brave face” but I think it’ll be less “accept a poly setup” and more “refuse to let this cause backsliding”.
Hot take: I think he might actually be a LITTLE pointed with Joyce — “After the moralizing you gave me last semester about the list, which I deserved, this is how you’re gonna carry on in your dating life? Good. Luck.”
I think most satisfying scenario is Joyce assuming Joe will be alright and he most decidedly is not. I think she needs a little cold water splashed in her face.
One of my conspiracy theor— err, ideas about what’s going on here is an earnest misunderstanding between the two of them, in which case I wouldn’t think she deserved that, necessarily.
But another of them is that once she slotted that Joe Peg into the Boyfriend Hole in her life, she kind of stopped thinking of him as a person who’d told her about his parents’ divorce, and who at least strongly implied, directly to her, some of what the commentariat has been saying about his relationship trauma… and started just seeing him as a Big Tall Handsome Accessory, whose strong feelings for her she’s enjoyed feeling flattered by, but hasn’t really taken very seriously.
And that Joyce would certainly deserve the cold water!
Sadly, perhaps, this is the first thesis (we are NOT calling it “Boyfriend Hole Theory”) that actually rings true for me as to why Joyce seems to be in a bit of inconsistent feelings about cheating whiplash.
The other one is her interpreting Joe’s line about she should get what she wants entirely too broadly for how he likely meant it — frankly, given the mood, when I went back and you could tilt your head and decide it’s almost like he’s asking her to bail out right then if she’d rather be with Dorothy.
This isn’t what I was archive-diving for, but all the people who like to pretend that this came out of nowhere should probably look at this strip from 2014 and the two that follow it.
Hi yes I adored both seasons and am making my way through the light novels now 🫶 It reminds me of Fruits Basket in a bizarre kind of way and I looove Maomao as a main character. Great stuff!!
I’ve been purchasing them one volume at a time, so I don’t really know! If buying isn’t an option there are definitely other websites that post their own translations… best bet is probably doing some reddit sleuthing lol.
I’m on episode five and it is SO COOL! The only problem is I watch it with my boyfriend so I have to wait to go to his house to watch it and he works afternoons to 11 this week so PHOOEY.
Honestly? I hope it turns out horribly for these two. Seriously. Two people are gonna be devastated here. At the least. *Shrug* at this point, I am remaining here watching with interest.
Just the fact it’s been called out makes me think Becky already knew this was bound to happen, has worked her feelings through it, but will still play it up for a bit to make them sweat some more.
That would be extremely boring IMO, as would basically all the scenarios anyone is predicting of any character just having worked through all their issues with the situation offscreen. Why would that be interesting to read about?
Obviously so that in the last panel of the arc Willis can reveal that actually nobody has worked through their feelings on it and everybody is very sad in a 2 strip montage, one showing the happy couples in 3 panels (Lucy/Jacob, Joyce/Dorothy, Danny/Sal, maybe get Ethan and Asher in on this too) and the other showing the broken up ones (Walky, Joe, Sarah, Billie).
It would be more interesting than Becky *still* being hung up on Joyce after all this time.
Seriously, look at where the story is. Becky’s current crisis is about the mutability of sexuality. While there *is* definitely going to be some drama for her about this, I don’t think it’s because she’s *still hung up on Joyce.”
Again, I will point out that if they were photographed, *that shit has already gone viral,* they do not need to wait for a *newspaper* like it’s the 1940s.
In a sense, he’s not her problem. Although honestly she’s probably more worried about him than Joyce is, because I don’t think Joyce realizes *how* in love he is, but Dotty knows.
…. Oh. Oh I forgot about that angle. While Becky will be irritated that Joyce isn’t just broad spectrum into girls, she’s into ONE SPECIFIC girl… well there is the slight bit of melodramatics of “WHYYYYY COULDNT IT HAVE BEEN MEEEE”
but then there’s the 100% Becky-driven “rivalry” with Dotty… stemming from both jealousy and a jaded sense of how smart Dotty is and on certain topics how smart she is NOT but still THINKS she’s got it 100% handled but.
Well I got it in my head it’s just hard to explain.
… I mean I think Joe will be pretty upset, I was already thinking this all week. He’s really mellowed out after the List incident and all that sort of thing, but there IS GONNA be a certain amount of “But I EARNED this, why does she have to have these doubts NOW? Is it ME am I STILL not good enough? Am I doomed to live the player life perpetually with surface level company, but essentially alone?”
Or will he actually be okay with an all parties disclosed polyamory thing, if it’s Dorothy, whom he’s seemed to be good friends with, friends enough to see through her self delusions to help her process.
I think he is sort of aware already that Dorothy is IN LOVE capital letters, with Joyce, and he was already trying to get her to see that the problem exists.
Hm. It may be that Joe decides to love her completely and selflessly and sort of… release her, to explore this side of herself with no shame from his corner, and he will wait for either final word they aren’t gonna happen or that she wants him back for good.
… I dunno why I’m so surprised but this entire plot line has become RIVETING.
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… OH NO.
OH YES
Becky is going to feel really betrayed, after threatening Dorothy most of the semester.
I’ve always said that my biggest worry against the Dorothy/Joyce ship was that it would absolutely DESTROY Becky, because Joyce’s reason at the time for turning down Becky was simply “I don’t swing that way.” So now she does have feelings for Dorothy, which to Becky will seem like a “Oh, so you’ll be gay for Dorothy but not for ME? Your bestest friend since childhood?” Becky’s handled things very well given everything that’s occurred, but she very clearly still carries a torch for Joyce and this news will be devastating for her, I’m sure.
Joyce’s reason at the time was simply ‘I really don’t feel the same way about you’, not ‘I don’t swing that way’. That’s mostly a pedantic, point, though, because no matter what Joyce said, Becky heard ‘I’m not into girls’
Side note, but boy how Becky has changed since her earlier appearances.
But yeah, 100% that some part of Becky’s mind thinks that if Joyce was gay they’d be together.
This new favourite couple better not destroy my actual favourite couple.
Emotionally that could be what she heard.
But she also heard this, like, two minutes later:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/forever/
Notably Joyce is still not saying she’s not into girls there. Becky makes that assumption and uses that as framing for her question about Dorothy, but Joyce only really answers the “why were you hiding her” question without engaging with the “not into girls” bit.
But at that point of the strip, Joyce was straight. Willis was following his original route guideline that sexual orientation of characters didn’t change from the previous strips. Still, Willis designed his characters carefully enough that when he decided to drop that particular guideline it didn’t seem arbitrary when Joyce’s girl crush on Dorothy turned into physical love/romance. But I’m going to miss Joe/Joyce.
And Dexter/Monkey Master.
Joyce has never been straight. (Well, maybe back in the beginning when she was being written by Baby Fundie Willis…) She was just making use of her bisexual invisibility powers because her designated OTP in the Walkyverse was a dude. But Anti-Joyce didn’t come out of nowhere…
I’m like 90% sure Willis has said that readers should feel free to interpret Anti-Joyce’s interest in women, from back in IW, as evidence that she’s bi.
It wasn’t intended that way when they wrote the original story, but like? I could swear there was commentary on the strips NOW to that effect, on the IW site.
which is to say that Becky’s always seen this coming
like her friendly animosity with Dotty hasn’t been purely for show
Willis said “oh god oh god i’m so sorry becky i’ll make joyce gay if it makes you stop crying oh god please stop don’t be sad” so since he made Joyce gay Becky better not cry.
10 and a half years…
my bones… 👴
Delicious, delicious drama!
Another Gay couple cant get together because it would hurt the feelings of 3rd person who has sexual entitlement ? Very Tired Trope. already done to death with Danny Ethan.
Becky is the most stably partnered person in the entire strip. Shes planning on getting married. It will be fine. shes had 7+ years of comics to accept this.
Being Gay doesnt mean you will automatically have attraction and sex with every person who asks. ( Some people , experimenting straights seem to think this is how it works. )
“it would absolutely DESTROY Becky” Like Joyce becoming Atheist ?
“because Joyce’s reason at the time for turning down” Nobody needs a reason. Thats incel logic.
“So now she does have feelings for Dorothy”, ( YES )
“which to Becky will seem like a “Oh, so you’ll be gay for Dorothy but not for ME? ” ( the answer to that is yes )
“Your bestest friend since childhood?” and sister is a GOOD Reason not have sex with someone. Backed up by science. Incest taboo is real.
Most people naughys bits dont light up for childhood chums. Jocelyne adopting her as a “real ass sister” should have put a stake thru this ship.
“Becky’s handled things very well” has she tho? She hasnt given Joyce room to change.
You think her acceptance of Joyce is based on Incel and Friendzone Logic, or entitlement to sex ?
Shes been a toxic roommate to Dorothy despite Dorothy getting kidnapped by her father and sharing that trauma. Her continued passive aggression to Dorothy suggest otherwise.
Plus it turns out Becky was right, and Joyce might have same sex feelings. and she would probably never get there without dating men and loosening up about sex ( which both Joe and Dorothy helped her ).
‘My crush likes someone else’ is something everyone has to learn sooner or later. The Truth is she would feel worse if Joyce dated her then suddenly dumped her with no warning for Dorothy.
I think Becky will be upset for a day. But more annoyed Dorothy swooped in and interfered with Joyce getting with Joe, a project she has spearheaded to help Joyce get over her sexual inhibitions purity culture training. or for Walky who she is also friends with. But then be Thrilled she can share being girl loving with Joyce. She lost pastime as a hobby. besides Becky has a Much better chance NOT being the girl Joyce experimented with, and. Unfortunately its Dina, Joe and walky wil be the ones getting hurt.
I’m genuinely worried about Joe. He’s been trying so hard to be better, and he’s done such a good job. He’s either going to be completely devastated or be weirdly okay with it if Joyce decides on both…
Hot take–I actually think Becky will be fine with this. Like, yeah, it’s an emotional gut punch, but she’s got a thing going with Dina that she’s very into now
Joe, on the other hand, is going to be absolutely wrecked, while pretending he’s not
OH MAYBE
You win.
They’ve created to worst timeline. Now they have to get back, back to the past. Samurai … Joyce?
Joyce the Barbarian.
Especially when you realize they’ve been out without their cell phones for hours. Odds are there’s gonna be like everybody relevant waiting for them altogether. Sarah, Becky, Walky, Dina, Joe. Maybe even ruth or Billie as well. (Ruth’s first reaction might be to try to dump walky on Dorothy’s behalf and finally get the chance she’s been waiting for).
720+ comments?!?!??!!
HOLY SHIT
Nah it’s chill. Everyone knew it would happen eventually. The pool is just on how long it would take.
The faces. My god, the faces. I want them in the banner.
That snarky raised eyebrow Joyce going “no,” that entire expression gives me life.
The smug Joyce faces are too good.
gives off Eurythmics album energy
Aha! So it has occurred to them that Becky is going to be upset.
I feel like this is going to strain Becky’s and Dina’s relationship a bit when Becky finds out Joyce is into ladies, and Dina feels like she’s just Becky’s second choice.
How badly do we think Becky is going to react?
It’s not a matter of *if* she gets upset it’s a matter of how upset she gets.
I would love for Becky to have a complete non-reaction like Sal.
I feel like Becky will react well immediately unless they try to hide it, then she’ll be hurt. Tbh I can even see her just being happy to support sapphics, Becky is absolutely a hype woman.
At whatever point she has to think it over and make the connection between lifelong sexuality being fluid, she’ll react very poorly.
very true, even if Becky is a little bit “are you fucking serious” she’s also going to be very much “it’s ok if we had been together I wouldn’t have met Dina and the universe would be wrong” ~<3
I think that’s definitely an interesting take. It makes sense that she might actually be more upset having to so directly confront the reality of fluid sexuality than any of the other aspects of this.
I visualize Becky saying, “I have the best dinosaur girl in the world, and we have a little two-person pool on when you two would give in and admit your love. Bone whom you please.” Except Becky wouldn’t say “whom.”
Yeah, she’d say “whomsoever”.
I think Becky is going to absolutely melt down. Remember how she freaked out when Joyce and Dorothy were hugging to prove touch can be non-sexual?
She’ll be crushed. Then she’ll be enraged.
I hope Becky will be like, well I have a really good girlfriend now that I love and not ruin all of that
It’s quite possible that Becky has seen this coming, though. Dottie having that midnight episode, and all.
I feel like Dorothy being into Joyce wouldn’t phase her much. It’s the other way around that’ll send her spiraling
Becky has seen this coming:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/forever/
Well the alt-text a little further back did suggest making Joyce gay, but only if it made Becky *not* cry so uhhhhh xwx;
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/hindsight/
Also Joyce hurting Joe is going to set Dina off.
Dina and Joe have a solid friendship, and him getting hosed by these two specifically (Dotty’s fumbling the book smarts and babying Joyce during the autism, and Joyce herself for being diagnosed so easily) ALONG with them hurting Becky?
I’m not remembering Dina and Joe’s friendship and might now have to teach myself how to do the thing where you look up strips that two specific characters are in…someone explained it a while back but I never actually did it…
It’s super easy! Click on a character tag and add a “+othercharactername”.
Thank you.
You type in the character’s tag you wanna search and then do “+’additionalcharacter'” (no spaces)
They have a very simple but I think very deep friendship where Joe gets on Dinas level of communication and doesn’t talk down to her or make her feel less than because of how she communicates.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/dina+joe
It’s around https://www.dumbingofage.com/simulation, page 4 of their appearances together. Joe’d gotten along with Dina pretty well before that.
Uh-oh. Now I’m imagining Becky going clear off the deep end and Dina and Joe rebounding together.
I mean I think that would probably be good sex for Joe, but I don’t recall if Dina is actually bisexual. But, we’ve seen the evidence that Dina tends to know what she wants and how she wants it, sexually speaking, and Joe would really benefit from some sex with someone who’s secure like that.
Dina told Becky when they first got to dating that gender/expression doesn’t matter to her
More specifically:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/item/
At the time, she didn’t have any male subjects she was interested in testing that hypothesis with.
Putting this here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/02-ill-leave-you-a-phantom/tedium/
I do not think Joe is Dina’s type
I don’t know, she did sugest doing some rather memorable things to him in the name of figuring out what leads to pants feelings for her.
On the other hand, she touched his butt and reported no reaction.
@Astariel Yeah, I think I mixed up that scene with the scene where Dina said the hottest thing any character has ever said on panel.
Dina is good friends with very few people, and Joe is one of them, I expect Dina teeth coming out. ~<3
Yeah this plays into two of Becky’s big anxieties
1: that Dorothy is going to take her place in Joyce’s life (she’s gotten more chill about this one but this bring it back for a bit)
And 2: sexuality is not necessarily fixed and can change over time (I suspect this will be the bigger sticking point as its the more recent anxiety)
And thats without even touching any lingering feelings she might still have for Joyce or feelings on the cheating
I think Becky might be hugely upset to find out Dorothy “is gay now” (Becky doesn’t know about bisexuality) even before she finds out who Dorothy’s gay now with.
Becky does know about Bisexuality, she mentioned it when calming Joyce down when she freaked out about Ruth dating a guy
Yeah, Dorothy/Joyce being “gay now” is mostly coming from the comment section.
*Stage whisper* It’s the Biphobia inherit in the system.
Honestly, for me, I keep calling them lesbians, because their relationship slow-burn has been, from my perspective, tons and tons and tons of lesbian romance tropes as I understand them. The rapid platonic codependency, the not being able to tell they have feelings for one another, all that stuff is usually specifically lesbian-coded.
I think it is more likely that both of them are bi, and that it’s a bi girl relationship. But, every single named character in the strip has been clocking that their friendship scans extremely lesbian, since longer than I can possibly remember. That doesn’t mean they are lesbians, but it is why I (and I assume other people) keep invoking that kind of language.
Like I’m pretty goddamned bi, I don’t think I’m erasing anything when I point out that the two bi girls are speedrunning every lesbian romance trope from tumblr in lieu of retaining their own individual personalities.
I was under the impression that even if both women involved are actually bisexual, the *relationship* would still be a lesbian relationship even though neither of the participants are actually lesbians. Like, I would expect you’d need at least three involved parties for the relationship to be bisexual.
Like a descriptor applied to the relationship just describes the relationship, not necessarily the participants.
Throwatron put a finger on it. It does feel like Joyce and Dorothy are speedrunning tropes rather than being themselves. It’s jarring to me.
As opposed to all the bi WLW romance tropes? lol yes that is the nature of the erasure. You don’t have to pull out your bisexual card to uno reverse the sin you’ve been accused of. It’s not personal, it’s systemic, and what you describe is the nature and mechanics of relevant system.
@Psychie So, by that standard a bisexual woman in a relationship with another woman is in a lesbian relationship while a bisexual woman in a relationship with a man is in a heterosexual relationship. Meaning that the only way to be in a bisexual relationship is to be part of a triad.
Yeah, that sort of denial of a person’s bisexuality is exactly the bi-erasure I was pointing out. A bisexual person in a relationship is in a bisexual relationship. It’s one thing to look at two women in a relationship and assume it’s a lesbian relationship when you don’t know the women. But it’s been pretty clear for a while now that Joyce and Dorothy are bi not lesbian.
@Proxiehunter
How is it denial of a person’s bisexuality or erasure to refer to a relationship dynamic as distinct from the labels of the individuals? Is a relationship between two women that are bisexual any different from a relationship between two women that are lesbians, what would we call it if one woman was bi and the other a lesbian? Or a man/woman relationship, how is that different from a relationship between two straight people, is it different if the man is straight and the woman is bi, is the reverse configuration different from that? If I, a straight man, got a bisexual girlfriend, does that make our relationship bisexual, or straight, and if the former, does that mean I am no longer straight even though I am still a Kinsey 0 and therefore exclusively attracted to women?
If someone with a marketing degree gets a marketing job doing marketing work for an engineering company, do they suddenly become an engineer? Or does the company suddenly become a marketing company? What if an engineer with an engineering degree gets an engineering job doing engineering work for a marketing company, do they suddenly become a marketer? Or does the company suddenly become an engineering company?
Or can we accept that a descriptor applied to a group does not necessarily apply to every individual member of that group? Like, I think it’s just as ridiculous to say that a bisexual in a lesbian relationship is not a bisexual anymore as it is to say that a marketer working at an engineering firm is not a marketer anymore.
Optics wise, it doesn’t matter what someone’s actual orientation is. It’ll appear as a lesbian relationship purely because it would be tagged as f/f by Amber, and we all know that slash ficcers are the ones who make the rules.
This strip made me realize that Joyce and Joe where not on the same pace regarding their relationship at all. Joe loves Joyce, he really does. He is doing his best to do Right by her, he is taking this relationship extremely serious.
Joyce though? I think she is just having fun. She is overcoming her sexual hangups by casually dating a friendly manwhore. This is probably the first time she ever even considered a relationship that doesn’t have marriage as the ultimate goal. I think she figured they would eventually break up later and that would be fine. So, for her, cheating on him is not that much of a Big Deal. She knows it is wrong, but I doubt she considered it would actually hurt him for real. She probably figured they would break up, bicker for a couple and then go back to being friends.
In other words, I don’t think Joye loves Joe and that makes their relationship very uneven. This, to me, is a big indication that polyamory would be a bad idea even if Joe was up to it.
Oh, shit, I made that a reply somehow, by accident.
I’ve said something along these lines a few times now. I definitely don’t think Joyce would call Joe that specific word, or anything insulting. But I do think on some level she and Liz may have had a similar view of him…?
Idk. She’s also said he’s “trying to be good” for her — what does that mean? Does she think he’ll be relieved to not have to “try” anymore? What does “be good” mean in that sentence?
I read their sentence as (be) (good for her) rather than as (be good) (for her), so an emphasis on supporting Joyce as she begins exploring sexually more, showing her tenderness, and acting in ways that benefit her by helping to allay her anxieties.
That would make sense to me!
Yeah, I don’t think Joyce meant anything bad. She does like Joe a lot.
Agreed. I think she must either think this will be okay with him, or be deeply underestimating how important she is to him, possibly both!
There’s definitely also the possibility of “oh shit, I got caught up in impulsive decisions and now I gotta face the music” — I could accept a Joyce who started thinking with her bits rather than her brain and ended up making bad choices.
That’s also possible. Joyce’s sex drive is VERY strong, in a way I’m frankly not used to seeing for female characters. She might well just be in a cloud of hormones.
I just think she and Joe have had more than one SORT OF conversation about this, which in retrospect could have resulted in misunderstandings… I’m handwringing about what possible story threads could come back here!
It really is kinda sad for me that Word of Willis seems to preclude “Joyce apologises to Joe, who understands, and breaks it off with Dorothy due to having a morality crisis about ‘cheating'” now, because frankly that still seems like the juiciest possible story.
Sudden thought that amuses me a little, in a sad way:
Willis has been shown to be very very vanilla in various ways before, so what if my fellow sicko breathern have just been… WAY more hardcore in what we’ve been imagining “messy cheating storyline” to mean. What if this, where they go straight from here to tell their boyfriends and get everything above board, IS actually the extent of it.
That would be such a deflation of the drama on all sides. I’m not sure if it would be okay or not, not having read this imaginary series of pages yet, but I have been operating for the last 24 hours on “can it really be messy enough for Willis to have explored cheating if they don’t sneak around for a while, the exact thing I want the least???” and just now remembered that this might still be, relatively, a baby step from an author who’s never let themself write anything this close to cheating before orz
Yeah, I never really got the vibe that Joyce loved Joe. Just that she was attracted to him. He was the one who was super in love.
Although as someone replied to me here, when she was trying to get him to be better in the past, she was much more passionate about him. It’s so weird!
I’m not saying this is it, but your phrasing there reminds me that….. well, Christians are never happier or more impassioned than when they think they’re saving someone else’s soul.
And that’s one of the parts that takes the longest to deprogram when you leave the church.
Someone else made me think it in a post down below, but Joyce genuinely seemed more lovey-dovey with Joe back before they started dating.
I think Joyce still conflates lust with love on some level. I think if you asked her how she felt about Joe before this thing with Dorothy, while I’m not sure she would immediately jump to love or forever, if only because she’s been learning that there’s a lot more to relationships between here and there, I don’t think she would speak in temporary terms either. She wants Joe, Joe makes her happy, and she wants it to work out with him. Or at least she did a few hours ago.
I do think you are correct that her feelings for him are much more lust-based than love-based, but I don’t think she is really consciously aware of that. I do think she is aware of how Joe feels about her, but I think *she* thinks she feels more or less the same about him.
I don’t think she thought of their relationship as casual or temporary because I don’t think that’s really how Joyce operates, at least not consciously.
This…really isn’t my read on them at all. *Especially* with Joyce turning to Joe for support when her mom showed up unexpectedly. Joe is definitely into Joyce more than she was into him, but not anywhere close to the degree we saw with Lucy and Walky. Which makes sense- this was the first time Joe ever caught feels for anyone, while Joyce crushed on Tristan, then Ethan, then Jacob before Joe.
I really hate how Joe is just an afterthought to her here. I’ve honestly never been more disgusted with her.
I’m really thinking/hoping it isn’t, and that, given an opportunity, she would explain why. She hasn’t talked about him in a while, but she does think a lot about him.
Not that it excuse anything…
Yes! I love that Joyce just now caught up with the comments section of, like, a month ago. And Dorothy… it’s not clear if she thought of this in this moment, or if she’s known of it already and just hasn’t had a chance to mention it yet.
Oh she knew
That whole scene is a big part of why I think she might be more relieved than anything when they tell her. She likes Dotty more than she’s ever let on, and I think she’s more over Joyce than people think.
What I hope and picture is that Becky will say she’s grateful Joyce wasn’t interested because if she had been, Becky would have missed out on Dina. That’s what makes sense to me…but I know real feelings are not necessarily that simple.
I think she’ll probably get to this point but it might take her a minute if it brings up unresolved old feelings (which might be the case – it’s hung over her and Dina’s relationship before as a point of insecurity).
If this had happened three months ago, yeah, I think that would have been likely to strain Becky/Dina. Now, though? I think Beckysaurus is secure in its own right.
50/50 odds Becky just crows a bit about how she HADN’T been imagining Joyce’s gayness after all.
Not necessarily. Coming from my own autistic perspective, I think Dina might be more upset on Becky’s behalf – however inadvertently it may have been, Joyce will be hurting the woman Dina loves.
I am fully of the mind that between Becky and Joe, Dina’s opinion on Joyce will lower immensely…And was already only somewhat propped up by those two.
I have learned not to bet against Dina and Becky as a stable couple
Honestly, this is a big part of why I haven’t been enjoying this storyline, there was such a big deal made about how Joyce isn’t into women and there was a big hullaballoo about Becky getting over her and all that, and after all the friendship drama/conflict between them, I just really don’t want what I expect the fallout of this be, and frankly if the fallout isn’t what I expect it to be, it wouldn’t feel earned to me.
The fact that they both have boyfriends just makes it even worse, especially with all of the growth Joe has been having recently.
Like, I understand that this is “Dumbing of Age” and all that, but I am not looking forward to months (at minimum) of fallout for this, and I don’t like that several characters I like are going to be severely hurt by this. Things were going so well for so long and now it’s all just going to implode. And if it doesn’t, well that would frankly just beggar belief and probably be just as bad for my enjoyment of this comic.
There is more than one reason one person could not be interested in another. The biggest reason why Joyce rejected Becky is most likely because she was more like a sister to her.
Outside of that, Joyce doesn’t even need a “good justification”, and yes, Becky needed to get over it. I’m here with you hoping she did, so that nothing bad happens, but that part is not on Joyce or Dorothy.
And at the time, Joyce was still very Christian, so how much in denial she was probably makes what she said about it dubious, even if true until proven otherwise (so until about last storyline).
What other characters said about her shouldn’t matter.
Did Willis say something about it? If yes, are we sure it wasn’t a joke? Even if it wasn’t, he has every right to change his mind.
Willis has never said Joyce was straight. At least, not in this universe.
IIRC they did once specifically invite people to take anti-Joyce’s (performative at the time) interest in women as being indicative that Joyce could be bi, but I might be misremembering.
I’m pretty sure not even Joyce has said Joyce is straight on page, although until recently she probably thought so. Even when she rejected Becky she stammered a lot of incomplete sentences, but to my recollection none of what came out of her mouth included “I’m straight” or “I don’t like girls” or “I’m not a lesbian”.
She’s gotten upset at people who suggested otherwise in the past, especially when they brought up Dorothy, but off the top of my head I can’t recall her actually “correcting” them. Corrected them on the fact that they weren’t dating (because their behavior led people to think they were), but not on her sexuality. Unless I’m misrecalling. There’s a lot of comic to recall.
So, there are two things I think come the closest to Joyce, in-universe, saying she doesn’t like girls.
I think a lot of people, Becky probably included, interpreted her fourth panel here to be saying she was straight. And the alt text (“i’ll make joyce gay if it makes you stop crying”) could also be interpreted that way!
Then, of course, there’s this, where she claims to have “sorted” out the difference between platonic and lustful feelings.
Buuuuuuuut. (I’m going to reply again, because three links seems to be too much and trigger moderation.)
The second link here goes to today’s strip. And that fourth panel can be read as saying she’s straight if you stretch it, but all she said is that she “doesn’t feel the same way”. Which only says that she doesn’t feel the same way about Becky as Becky feels about her. Straightness is not required for that to be true.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/sorted-2/
Ugh! I must have deleted too much. There it is.
But also yes, I agree. Completely. Sorry that that got lost! I think her actual statement in the strip is very much not “I’m straight”, but that Becky might have interpreted it that way, and that lots of readers did. Also Willis’s alt text, which also doesn’t actually say Joyce is straight, just implies she isn’t gay, and could easily be interpreted as “Willis meant they’d make Joyce gay for Becky specifically”, etc etc.
Drew lampshaded that second comic back in 2019, because yeah, not being able to tell whether you’re feeling admiration or attraction IS, in fact, classic Bi Behavior, and in particular, lots and lots and loooots of bi afab people specifically have talked about how their attraction to women felt different enough from their attraction to men that they didn’t recognize it as such.
Finally, of course, Joyce lampshaded the sentiment herself, last year.
She said so there, but was still both very Christian and very upset by her inability to ease Becky’s triple pain.
I wasn’t complaining that Joyce’s sexuality changed or evolved or whatever, maybe she was always intended to be bi, maybe Willis made that decision later, that’s irrelevant though because that’s not the issue I’m having here.
Kind of funny how everybody latched onto one singular line out of three entire paragraphs and completely ignores my actual POINT. Which was that I’m not looking forward to the fallout this is going to cause amongst the cast of the comic. Becky thinks Joyce is straight, and she thinks that’s why Joyce rejected her, even if she’s happy with Dina now and is mostly cool with Dorothy, there’s no chance this *doesn’t* cause a major crashout for her. On top of BOTH of them cheating on their boyfriends, and all of the progress Joe has made in trying to be better, and considering how much that progress was motivated by him wanting to become someone “worthy” of Joyce.
I literally don’t care whether it was stated in comic or from the author that Joyce was straight because that was literally never my point. I don’t like where this storyline is going, because I can see the trainwreck coming, I’m not looking forward to the crash, and that feeling gets worse the closer we get to it. Joyce’s canon sexuality being foreshadowed or whatever has zero impact on the problem I’m having.
Well, ok, sorry. It just felt like a criticism of the writing (of which there is plenty here), so I took it as such…
I get your discomfort, sorry again.
I mean, technically I am criticizing the writing, insofar as I don’t like the decisions Willis made for the plot, but the execution isn’t really my issue, nor is the handling of Joyce’s sexuality, to me it did feel kind of like it came as a result of the audience shipping them rather than having been planned as far back as some are claiming, but I don’t actually especially care about that, I just wish if Willis was gonna do this, he would have done it while Joyce and Dorothy were single and had Becky be further along in her character growth, because as-is it just seems like this arc is designed specifically to cause as much drama as possible amongst the cast purely for the sake of manufacturing needless extra drama. I don’t like drama bombs designed to implode the main cast, if there’s gonna be a bunch of drama, I’d rather it involve antagonistic characters against the main cast rather than the main cast against itself.
Speak of the deva… here she is now!
…So Becky’s absolutely going to be the most chill and normal about it. Just to lower their guard for the surprise freak out later.
She’ll be perfectly cool with it in public, then collapse the second she’s alone
Yeah, this is the other thing I feel like people are forgetting. It sounds like everybody expects most of the cast to have their big blow-up when the reveal actually happens…that seems unlikely to me, at this point. At least one of the three people they have to tell, will act outwardly okay at first, but will actually be spiraling, and Dorothy and Joyce will stay oblivious to it until it’s too late.
Yeah, it’s definitely going to hit Joe the hardest.
Good girls. A little late! But I am genuinely relieved you’re not planning on hiding it.
(I could’ve made the Maximum Badness version work, as a Sicko, but I contain multitudes, etc.)
…goodness, am I the only one who thinks one brief moment of enjoying the mental image of telling Walky about this doesn’t actually mean Joyce would enjoy breaking his heart by actually saying whatever she’s imagining?
Walky subjected her to, like, months of crude “jokes” about how much she wanted to eat out Dorothy and proooobably made it harder for her to face up to her feelings, the girl is entitled to a lil smirk here where he can’t even see it.
Maybe save the pitchforks until she actually breaks the news to Walky while making this same face?
But didn’t you know that people always want to do every single thing they imagine?
man I guess there’s probably also gonna be a contingent of people for whom Anti-Joyce foreshadowed Joyce’s turn as a villain, the same way Dorothy getting possessed by the Head Alien foreshadowed her turn as a villain?
Yeah, somehow I doubt Joyce will ACTUALLY be all smirky and gloating when she’s actually face to face with hurting Walky.
I get not liking the idea of her actually doing it, and I even get feeling like we know so little about what’s going on in her head right now that maybe all her previous character traits are out the window, but. Yeah. I doubt it, you know?
Wow I’m sure all those people yesterday who thought they were going to try to keep it a secret feel pretty silly right about now
I though there might at last be silence about cheating. But no. It is still the main obsession!
I mean, Dottie’s second line is *literally* about them being caught cheating. So yeah.
Yes, because being caught before they come clean would be worse for everyone involved. Absolute worst way for Walky and/or Joe to find out.
I’m reminded that there was a single comic during the Protest Scenes where Walky was tagged, even though he wasn’t visible.
Wondering if that’s going to come up.
Disregard, I must have been imagining it.
he was tagged originally but it was removed later so it was prob just a mistake
Nah, they’re still complaining that Joyce & Dorothy haven’t been publicly flogged and forced to recant yet.
you’re not even thinking about joe at all!! and he’ll hurt way worse than anyone!! (but also i love this sweet torture thank you willis)
They thought about Joe for a second. Even said his name!
I do love that doubt in Joyce’s face when she said “…Joe?” though. really sells it.
THANK YOU!
LIKE SHE’S SO DISMISSIVE OF JOE HERE, IT FEELS LIKE SHE’S BARELY EVEN THINKING ABOUT HIM OR HOW HE’LL FEEL ABOUT ALL THIS.
She was thinking about Joe here, hence her saying his name. It was Becky that she was not thinking about.
That being said, of course she would be more worried about her life long friend then her couple week (maybe a month) long boyfriend. Becky has always been her most important person aside from Dorothy, then there is Sarah, and then Joe in 4th and that was only recently.
Becky is 50/50 on whether or not she will Freak the Fuck Out over this, where in Joe is 80% chance going to take this on the chin and back down for the sake of her happiness, even if he is hurt by it.
Walky will probably be fine, he still has a thing for Amber if I remember correctly.
Pretty sure it’s one week or less.
All is proceeding as the Mike part of Amber’s brain has foreseen.
Mike never truly died. He simply abandoned his mortal form, to reside where he could best pull the strings from the shadows…wait, does this make Mike a Sith?
Somehow, Mike has returned.
I really miss mike right now.
Willis why’d you have to kill him off 😭 he’d be so useful right now
I didn’t read it as “dismissive of Joe”, I read it as “confused that Dorothy is NOT dismissive of Joe”, in context.
Pretty much, yeah. Problem is, we can’t hear tone of voice in word balloons, so those predisposed to think that all of this has been carefully thought through by Joyce before she ran into the fray and smooched Dorothy are then free to see it as “dismissive”.
Not to mention all this insistence that a few smooches, in the face of other relationships that are less than a week old, are “cheating” and “infidelity”. I’d never have expected purity culture to have such a foothold in the DoA fandom.
I actually don’t think Joyce has thought of it at all.
Which is the problem.
Also it’s not Purity culture to say cheating is cheating it doesn’t matter how “new” a relationship is it’s still a betrayal of trust
Yeah, no, it’s not purity culture to say either of the following:
1) the most common relationship style for college students in the US in the 2020s is “monogamy/serial monogamy”, not “dating around”.
2) most people, in the US in the 2020s in a monogamous relationship of any duration, would consider “kissing someone else romantically” as cheating/infidelity.
Jon has elsewhere expressed that this wouldn’t be cheating in his(?) own relationships, which is fine!
@Jon: while I do think that there’s some purity culture at play here, Joyce did say in the past that she thought of her relationship with Joe as monogamous, and Willis has said they’re definitely cheating as-of the kiss, at least.
Let’s not die on a silly hill! Whether or not it would be cheating by most people’s standards, it seems to be cheating by Joyce and Dorothy’s standards, so it’s just simpler to call it that.
I was absolutely hedging on “common cultural expectations around dating” due to not knowing Word of Willis, although I’ll also point out that Joyce has in-strip indicated that she’d probably think of this as cheating herself.
Ye, that’s what I meant. Between calling their relationship monogamous, recontextualizing what she and Dorothy did pre-Joe as sex, and then deciding to go “do laundry” together again, I think they very much crossed Joyce’s own (seeming) boundary.
I just also think there might have been some tragic miscommunications here, orz. We’ll see, of course. I’ll have a lot of egg on my face if indeed Joyce is just Too Hornt to Function here, I have such a hard time imagining that she would do this if she didn’t somehow, for some reason believe it wouldn’t hurt Joe.
I’m 100% coming at that from I think the opposite angle as you, in that I’m sort of the polar opposite of aro/ace, was raised in a highly religious no-sex-allowed environment then turned agnostic in college, and I’ve frankly never once been Too Hornt to Function as Joyce (despite making MANY other bad decisions due to Horny in college and, embarrassingly, into my 30s. Mostly they just hurt me, not anyone else.)
ugh, missed the entire thesis sentence: “So it’s hard for me to accept Joyce being in that boat, because in my experience she’s well past where most Too Horny folks would have stopped anyway, but at the same time I’d be really disappointed if she was CONSCIOUSLY just tossing Joe aside.”
I hope you’re doing okay! That sounds like a potentially rough upbringing, but I don’t want to assume orz
That said, yeah, I don’t really empathize with “Too Horny” as an explanation, I’m also too ace for it by half, so it’s kind of like I’m… humming a bar from a song I’ve heard other people sing?? But have never heard live, heh.
Really, what it comes down to me for, with Joyce, is: I can’t believe she knows what she’s doing will hurt him and is consciously choosing to do it anyway.
So either she doesn’t think it will hurt him (which she might be right or wrong about), or…? She’s somehow not thinking clearly enough to conceptualize what she’s doing as potentially harmful. And that, I guess, is where the vague Too Horny to Function comes in.
It actually wasn’t THAT bad an upbringing, aside from finding out in my 30s that one of the priests who occasionally subbed in at my hometown church ended up on the attorney general’s little list while I was still a practicing altar boy, if you take my apparent-near-miss meaning.
i kinda feel like becky will have mostly moved on by now, walky will take it in stride, but joe…he’s trying so hard to change himself and his entire worldview and he’s going to be crushed
ProZD showing the favored-by-many polycule solution:
https://youtube.com/shorts/4V_5zMSyjUQ?si=p2HrxEq6Xltp3Q8P
That was great lol; thank you for sharing. 🙂
A True Classic
My favorite part of this hypothetical solution for many love triangles is the part where the rivals’ until-then antagonistic tension goes in a Different Direction.
(Doesn’t apply in this situation for me, but I can understand why some people might want Dorothy’s antagonism for Joe to be transmuted in the same way.)
Now that they’ve speculated in-comic that it will go horribly with Becky, I’m thinking it will go pretty okay. I’d like for it to go sideways, where it’s rough but not in a way they’d expect.
Becky is aware of it, after all.
I think you might be right. Still plenty of room for it to instead boil over her anxiety about sexual fluidity, since Joyce and Dorothy both thought they were straight.
OR, if some commenters are right and Joe is upset and hurt in a very obvious way, and Dina is upset on his behalf — or just upset by Joyce’s actions in and of themselves (she and Joyce don’t have the best friendship)… then that, too, might cause arguments and tension with Becky, similar to how Charlie nudging Carla is causing some potential lingering tension there…
Like I said, plenty of avenues for tension and drama even if Becky isn’t specifically brokenhearted.
Becks acts completely fine but Dina is fucking furious they upset her.
Becky is a perfectly cromulent word autocorrect.
But I think she’d also support you calling her Becks.
I think Dina is furious but not because of Becks but because of Joe
Dina likes Joe. She loves Becky.
Yes but I think Becky will genuinely have the chillest response which will not cause Dina to be upset at all.
Look it’s one thing when Joyce has this rivalry with Walky and you can play it as a joke about how he’s taking her best friend or whatever. Smirking about being the person his girlfriend just cheated on him with? That’s a level of callous Joyce has never displayed prior to now.
It’s genuinely unpleasant. To say nothing of their relationship in the Walkyverse, of which I seem to be the only person still fond, their relationship in the Dumbiverse has been bickering siblings up until now. I really don’t like Joyce acting like this about Walky. I really don’t. It feels gross.
Hey just wanted to say same
Yeah, I just wrote my own comment about Joyce feeling out of character to me – moreso for not being more concerned for Joe or displaying any apparent ambivalence about the situation – but this too.
I mean – *I* displayed that kind of callousness as a teenager at times. There were a few people I was interested in that, when they broke up with their girlfriends, I celebrated because I thought that made them “available” to me. I imagine I internalized this from somewhere and it IS a thing some people do – but it doesn’t feel like Joyce to me.
Yeah the lack of concern for Joe is also something that is upsetting to me. It just makes none of what Joyce was experiencing for Joe feel real in my opinion. I’m not saying people’s feelings can’t change but like two days ago in comic time she was all over him and now he’s barely an afterthought? If someone in real life acted like that, most people would be concerned about their mental state.
I’m not seeing a lack of concern? The punchline of the comic is the dread about telling Becky. She literally mentions Joe as someone who would be hurt MORE THAN Walky by the reveal.
Literally the only time she even mentions him is as an afterthought here.
Yeah. She clearly genuinely loved him and had a lot of hots for him in many, many previous strips. I also get the “afterthought” vibes here. I read someone else’s comment-theory in the past week or two that this whole arc is Willis basically getting back at some other comic that had an arc where a man in a gay relationship cheated on his male partner with a woman by doing the same plot with the sexual orientations switched…obviously this is how rumors get started but if that is so, what a reason to run long-developed characters into the ground.
If anyone can cite the “tweet storm” that commenter mentioned I’d appreciate it…especially if I don’t actually have to log in to Twitter. I don’t do that.
On Patreon Willis said that Joyce and Dorothy were not intended to get together in this storyline, hence why there was still a lot of build up for Joe/Joyce stuff.
I have the basic level of Patreon but don’t check it a lot, except to look at the bonus comics. Is this a comment I would be able to find somewhere? Or is it on the Other Patreon?
I think it was in one of his ‘behind the scenes’ posts where he posts unused/draft strips.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/134187315
They’re not private, but you do get to see them earlier if you’re paying.
(I’m not anymore, so I know this is public.)
Huh. I don’t really agree with some of those decisions, but I really like seeing the behind the scenes and reasoning for it. I hate the protest setting but really like the idea behind the wedding motif? (Also the OG version of the kiss where Joycelyne points out the tear gas lol.)
That’s very interesting and cute.
Yeah, I think none of this would have happened if they hadn’t held back the kiss page from their sensitivity reader orz. They were checking all the other details of the protest, but that part entirely slipped past them.
Which. I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t understand, also being a White in my early 40s. I can imagine getting caught up in constructing the “wedding” and completely failing to take into account how the specific subject of the protest would make everything look. Sob.
Thank you for the link, by the way. I had no idea these existed.
A side note, off a bit from the rest of this more relevant discussion–Held off referencing this the other day bc I didn’t know it was publicly accessible, but. This post is the thing that feels like the strongest indicator that poly is not going to happen. I don’t really read the way Joe is talked about here as a thing that suggests the writer is thinking about polyamory.
Unfortunately I think this one is just sinking both my favorite platonic and romantic dynamics at once.
Thanks Li.
And Willis, if you happen to read this, I fear you may indeed have impulsively blown up your webcomic for me. The transition is too jarring.
I understand a lot of the big arcs co-exist for the author who knows what is going on behind the scenes, but this flip from being over the moon for Joe, and dropping him without a backwards glance for self-destructing Dorothy is, IMO just bad.
These events made both Dorothy and Joyce feel a whole lot less real to me, so my investment in the characters and the comic is way down. I suspect I’ll stop reading soon, which I didn’t see coming.
Or they’d be aware that the people involved are late teens and in college. Joyce and Joe have only been together for like a week, and right before they got together, Joyce and Dorothy “had sex” in quotes because Joyce categorizes it that way.
It’s messy, it’s not particularly kind, but it’s not a sign of any issues with their mental state. It’s just a thing that happens sometimes.
Though, yes, Dorothy has lots of OTHER signs there’s something wrong with her mental state right now and I hope she gets help.
Before they were dating, Joe and Joyce were friends. Like she could talk to him about things she couldn’t with other people. He accepted she was changing, fairly unique among her friends. It’s not just Joyce cheating on someone she’s been dating less than two weeks, it appears Joyce is casually betraying a friend.
This is a huge sore spot with me too, iwgaf if they weren’t friends, it’s why I don’t particularly feel that same “wtf bro” towards Dorothy (Walky has always been a distraction for her, it is his curse). Joyce has just consistently been a good friend and this is her suddenly being a very, very, very bad friend.
It’s the ”casually” betraying that burns the character, and possibly the whole strip for me. Dumbing of Age is no longer fun or interesting to read for me now, and I was super invested a few weeks back.
I don’t have share your feelings on this exact topic, but I did have an experience a while back of finding some parts of the comic making it no longer enjoyable for me. I want to read webcomics for entertainment, so I figured I could stop reading or I could try to change the way I was reading it.
Changing the way I was reading it– sort of my mindset going in, I guess?– worked for me, and I’ve been able to enjoy it. It doesn’t feel the same as how I used to enjoy it, but… it was never going to.
And honestly, my feelings toward the comic have changed at other points too. I had the opportunity to meet Willis once at TCAF, and it didn’t go great. And events like that are often very draining for creators, and I don’t hold it against Willis, but it did change some of my feelings around the comic.
So, I guess the basic message is, you could see if there’s a lens through which you could continue to enjoy the comic. Or you could stop reading, even if that kinda sucks, because you don’t need to do something like reading a webcomic if it’s not enjoyable.
this happened to me when mike died, and i just stopped checking the comic for a long time. just tune back in on occasion, and my investment being dead for so long makes it easier for it to just be entertaining
Bedovian, it’s the same for me. All the stuff we saw Joyce express about (and to) Joe seems to have disappeared. Does she have no object permanence? Only those in her immediate vision are real to her at any given moment?
She woke up THIS MORNING spooning with him!
In character or not, it’s not improving my opinion of Joyce in this situation. Like you said, having a rivalry with someone doesn’t make smirking at the idea of emotionally hurting them [after cheating with their parter] not a callous shitty thing to do. And Joyce’s apparent slow memory about Joe is also, in character or not, very jarring. This has gone beyond “we were caught up in the moment!” to Joyce just…not seeming to care very much that this will implode things, until Becky is mentioned? And even then, it’s a reaction more of comedic fear than self reflection?
The fact that Dorothy has been having mental anguish over this does not make her behavior better. But at least we’ve seen that she has thought about the repercussions of her actions and cares that they will be negative. I need to see that realization from Joyce in a way that goes beyond “Oh no, we’re gonna get in trouble….can I break Walky’s heart?”
I’m with you on most of this, including being jarred by Joyce’s apparent disregard for Joe. It remains to be seen exactly how this will play out, but the vibe I’m getting is that she’s ready to toss Joe to the wind for Dorothy. Very disturbing after so much build up for their relationship. Someone said that Willis said on Patreon that J/D weren’t mean to get together in this storyline and that makes total sense to me.
Yeah, Willis said that Dorothy and Joyce were originally going to get together in like ….5ish more years but once they both learned they had feelings for each other, it was over and it didn’t feel in character for it to drag on. The characters got away from him and well. We got a symbolic Joyce/Dorothy wedding! To quote the Willis – “Sorry, Joe”
not in character? See, this is why im starting to agree with the dumbing of age reddit Willis is loosing some of his story writing ability. For years Joyce has been on a character development track learning how to communicate her feelings and how to express her self. This scene was 100% out of character and I feel Willis just did it cause it’s his favorite ship.
I really recommend reading the above linked post, I didn’t articulate it as well as he does.
The point is articulated fine, we just think it’s wrong. Joyce was always defined by, above everything else, caring about people. Not wanting to hurt them, either through her actions or her inaction. That didn’t mean that she never hurt people, but that when she did she acknowledged it and was suitably apologetic about it. She tried to make it right any way she could.
She and Dorothy were running around for HOURS after the protest (going by it being night when the protest was at noon) and she just NOW thought about the fact that she cheated on her boyfriend? She’s relishing hurting Walky while being the one who his girlfriend cheated on him with?
This isn’t Joyce. At least not any Joyce I recognize.
Before all this happened, I tried it, but Joyce’s development didn’t quite convince me, and now she has this cowardly desire to rub this in Walky’s face… well.
And yes, at least Dorothy is aware that this was the biggest mistake she’s ever made. I said I was afraid my perception would change because of this. Do I officially hate her? No, but I’ve decided to remain neutral toward her.
Walky and Dorothy… a ship that displayed great naturalness and dynamism for both of them, now at high risk of being destroyed in the cruelest way. How I wish it could truly be saved… dreaming is free.
Maybe Joyce has been an immoral person all along and the fear of God and Hell was all that was keeping her in line. But now that she’s an atheist…all bets are off
She kind of has when she was trying to break-up Jacob and Raidah, so it’s not out of character. Certainly not flattering though
Becky. The one with essentially a fiancé is who they’re most worried about. Girl is not that fragile.
Right? I think she’s past the point where this is going to bother her. Honestly, she probably saw it coming.
I think it’ll bother her but it’ll be more about her recent anxieties regarding sexuality than any lingering feelings towards Joyce
I think it’s going to be a lot of things mixed up into a soup that are not cleanly separable.
Joyce’s least favorite kind of soup, in other words.
Y’know, that’s probably another argument against a polycule right there.
Well, no, Joyce can have as many things in her polycule as she wants. They just all have to be only exclusive with her, and only exclusive with other folks. No gross food touching each other! Threesomes are out. It’s all about the Solo Fuck Rotation.
Yeah I agree with this, that it has a high chance of pushing the fluidity-worries button. And Dot is not wrong that there may be a lot of confusing things mixed up together.
How fragile Becky is depends on what fault line you hit. Not sure “Joyce is into girls, she’s just not into me” is as big a fault line as it would have been before she fell hard for Dina but there are other factors about this (like her kissing Dorothy while both of them are dating other people, or someone close to her changing how they define their sexuality) that might rock her world and hit fault lines we weren’t expecting and there are some things that Becky is very fragile about. The thing I mentioned about how sexual identity and preferences can change having been shown to be one of them.
Oo, yeah, excited to see how this ties in with wherever Becky’s at with the idea that identities can change!
Yeah, the issues here, in descending order of concern for Becky:
1. The idea that sexuality is fluid and can change (even for other people, even if hers doesn’t) is terrifying to her.
2. There are interpersonal implications including the fact that several of Becky’s other friends are going to be hurt by this.
3. Becky is a devout Christian and infidelity is a sin.
4. Becky has lingering anxiety about being replaced by Dorothy even if she’s mostly over it and concerned for Dorothy’s wellbeing.
5. Becky was deeply in love with Joyce for most of her life until a few months ago, and even though she’s immensely happy with Dina there is still some baggage from that.
Actually I think this idea is more interesting to me than Becky being hurt by Joyce. I think there’s been some scene-setting for that being her big anxiety right now, and while Dina soothed it temporarily, it might still be in there. This could trip that switch.
Oh hey it’s them realizing they’re not being super ethical about this and choosing to tell the people who need to know. It’s almost like people throwing tantrums in the comments over the past several strips just needed to let the story play out before making a federal case about it.
You know there’s only ever been one strip that’s ever existed, and it’s whatever the latest one is.
You’ll hear from my federal lawyer about this.
I will keep throwing my tantrum till it’s over
I can respect that.
i know what you meant but “i’ll keep throwing my tantrum til it’s over” is kind of a raw fucking sentiment if you read it as “i’ll wail at the heavens until my voice has died”
The conversation yesterday was kind of ambiguous. I didn’t read it that way until directly prompted, but I get why people did. As I said yesterday, it was totally possible that this strip would start with Dorothy and Joyce running after Sal in a panic (once the punchline had passed) to try to convince her she didn’t see anything gay (umbrella term).
The tantrums will continue until the public flogging takes place.
I’m so confused by what’s going on here. A lot of it feels out of character, mainly Joyce.
Idk Joyce has always disliked Wally it’s just usually been played for laughs. This ain’t out of character, its just a slightly more vindictive twist in an already established disdain she has for him
Walky.
I do agree Joyce’s vibe is super weird. Heretofore, she’s exhibited tons of anxiety about hurting people, about shifts in perspective, etc. I know she’s been going through changes, but it does feel like she’s flippant and calm about all this, which seems out of character. I don’t know if she’s just riding the high, in shock, or what. I had thought maybe the people speculating she’d already talked it through with Joe were right, but this strip dispelled that.
I mean… Joyce has 100% torpedoed a relationship because love trumps all. I feel like people love to forget how she approached the Jacob an Raidah situation. A lot of things are out if character if you disregard the characterization they’ve received.
So I know the rivalry that Joyce had with Walky was played as comedy for a long time. But considering the deal with Dorothy and Joyce was also played for comedy only to reveal itself to be a plot twist a lot the anime Bleach and the 4th Captain…
I’m really not sure I’m liking this version of Joyce. The implication that she wants to basically rub it in his face is just… does he really deserve that?
Maybe people aren’t off based about his Villain arc being forthcoming after all.
Let’s be honest, Walky has been antagonistic to Joyce since the moment he met her, and has frequently enjoyed rubbing stuff in her face/mocking her beliefs. It’s not a surprise that Joyce doesn’t like him.
is it necessary to rub stealing his woman in his face? No
DO I want to see this because this is fiction, doesn’t have real world consequences and would possibly be funny?
Yes
Joyce does like Walky or at least his presence in her life. When everything was shitty in La Porte right after the shooting, he was one of the people she wanted.
She might not consciously be aware of that; it could be because she actually wants to be friends, and doesn’t realize it, or she only includes him because he makes(made) Dorothy happy.
I’m actually glad somebody said this. Joyce and Dorothy and Walky spent many a night curled up with one another in the same bed, hanging out, and watching cartoons until they all passed out. They actually do get along quite well in most situations, bantering aside.
In short, I don’t think that Joyce hates Walky as much as Joyce thinks she does. She’s literally just been jealous of Walky the entire time, because she’s literally a sheltered baby, and could not comprehend the obvious reality, that Walky was dating the girl Joyce wanted to be fucking. And, hell…most of Walky’s side of the bantering, despite its content, also has a lot to do with the fact that, for the entire time he’s known her, Joyce has been, more or less, trying to fuck/steal his girlfriend.
Joyce has no reason to actually hate Walky, besides a sucking pit of jealousy that’s been burning inside her from the moment she met The Perfect Woman Of Her Dreams (and that dumb stinky boycreature who always hangs around her). She’s just only ever contextualized all those feelings, from the perspective of Dorothy being her bestie-roommate-galpal.
Now that she can admit to herself that she’s been feral-grade jealous this whole time, and she’s feeling her possessiveness and codependency for Dorothy at full blast, she seems to be almost giving herself permission to be as awful as possible, because now she admits to herself that there was actually a competition all along…which Walky always knew there was, while Joyce was absurdly blind to it.
Yeah, this.
It’s not a good look for Joyce.
“Oh wow. It turns out I was entered in the contest the whole time and I did beat you after all. Neat.”
Huh. I guess they do care what Becky thinks after all.
Yeaahhhh these are gonna be some painful conversations.
This really isn’t about Becky at all and I think she’ll realize that and get over it eventually.
I think Joe’s going to be heartbroken. How long that lasts and how well it resolves are anybody’s guess.
Walky? I think he’ll be pissed at the feeling he’s been used. Now this is Walky so that could manifest in a variety of ways but that’s what I think.
Joe’s going to be heartbroken and probably blame himself for “corrupting” Joyce is kind of a gross way but ultimately get over that and come out stronger for it. There’s been plenty of thematic setup for “Joe needs to lose Joyce to prove to himself his character arc is real”.
I think Walky’s been in a bad mental place the whole timeskip and this is finally going to break him to the point that Nightguy becomes a supervillain and maybe even gets a little friendly with Incelerator who he couldn’t deal with earlier. Probably not for long before he recovers, and he won’t do anything so serious it ruins his chances at being back in the group, but we’ll have at least one Joyce vs. Walky storyline. It’s too fun to pass up on when we have the chance, PLUS he can rebound with Amazi-Girl in a Batman/Catwoman dynamic much to Amber’s distress to maximize the insanity.
Becky will not take this well, but the real drama will be Dina realizing how much of a rebound she is, as the drama tag cascades through the cast.
Well, if he falls in with he Incelerator, thankfully all that will need to happen is for Sarah to tell Sal and she’ll put him in a head lock until he agrees to stop being an idiot.
Why would Sarah tell Sal that about Nightguy, who is *clearly* unrelated to anyone she knows?
Ah yes, very true. 😉
You know what, I’m not grouching about wild speculation this time. I think this one is refreshing compared to the topics lately!
For some reason the faces and the dialogue in that last panel gives me Sailor Moon vibes.
Usagi got a 30 on another test she told her mom she studied for.
Typical fascist Sailor Moon, lying to her mom.
We got rid of fascist Sailor Moon a while back. Haven’t seen her since she was called on linking to off brand kiwi farms.
What a shock. They’re planning to fess up. Who could have possibly predicted this startling and unexpected development when they were only up to step two of their plan.
Basically nobody could have seen it coming.
I really really don’t like Joyce reveling in an opportunity to be outright cruel to Walky.
This ship only proves one thing…the possessive side Joyce always showed toward Dorothy and his enmity toward Walky.
I know it’s not right to say it in these circumstances, but the fact that Dorothy is reproaching Joyce for her intentions…at least, it still shows that she is truly aware of the mistake she made.
*Two things.
It is genuinely really funny how, leading up to this, everybody was blaming Dorothy way more for both of their behavior, but now that they’re actually doing something wrong, Dorothy clearly has a conscience, while Joyce is doing an Exhaust All Audience Goodwill Speedrun on her way to Maytag Alley.
Before all this chaos, many people were throwing unfair hatred at Dorothy. Yes, now she made a mistake to justify it. However, everyone is paying more attention to Joyce’s comment… a comment that is already shaking the perspective that many had of her.
This stands out to me too! I got so worn out from defending Dorothy in comments, that I resigned myself to seeing her blamed/credited for Joyce’s agency again.
Hurray, the characters are morally complex and no one is perfect, and I LOVE that for them (and the rest of us)!!
Same, I don’t like it either. This story arc has really lowered my views of both Joyce and Dorothy a lot.
I always feared this ship would change my perception of Dorothy…yes, I saw that infamous kiss, and she could have pushed Joyce away, but she decided to submit.
Now…do I officially hate her?
No, but I’ve decided to remain neutral with her, because the fact that she’s aware of the damage done to Walky and her anger at Joyce’s intentions…at least there, I can give her the benefit of the doubt.
Dorothy was always the one who was plagued by her conscience, with the “we can’ts” and the fit of depression, because she was not allowed to act on her feelings ever, and did not intend to.
Joyce was very much the active one in making this happen here.
But doesn’t that perspective take away Joyce’s agency here and assign it all to Dorothy? Joyce ran after and kissed Dorothy, but you only mention on Dorothy “submitting”. Do you already feel this way about Joyce and just expected more of Dorothy? I ask because sometimes in comments, some folks take the stance that whatever Joyce does, it’s because someone else made/let her do it. Usually Dorothy. Happened when Joyce invited Dorothy to do laundry the second time, and before that when she made moves on Dorothy right before her sex night with Joe too.
There’s been so many comments lately, I forget who’s said what, so if you have also called Joyce out in other places, please disregard. I’m just trying to make sense of a trend that’s been setting off some alarms for me!
On a second read you did mention Joyce’s intentions, I’m sorry. I understood that part differently on my first read before I drank my tra. So it does sound like you’re not excluding her from this!
Tea…not tra… my queerdom for an edit feature
Maybe you need more tea? I do the same thing, only involving coffee.
My opinion on Dorothy hasn’t really changed, but I’m with you on Joyce. She’s lost a lot of favor in my eyes. I always liked that she endeavored to be a well intentioned and thoughtful person despite not knowing to how navigate her worse intentions, but watching her give into her worse intents and being tickled pink on being a cheater, and it being her second offense in this regard without much care in the matter is hard to root for. Especially because the main crux of her mentality seems to be that they deserve it for not being ‘good’ enough for the other person.
It’s genuinely hilarious that, in the previous strip’s comments section, multiple people were looking at Dotty going “let’s take stock of who already knows” and were going “OMG DOTTY’S PLANNING TO KEEP THIS A SECRET AND KEEP IT ULTRA-CONTAINED” and then literally the next sentence out of her mouth is basically “…So that we can tell our boyfriends FIRST before they find out from the people who already know”.
Becky’s gonna suck, but whatever Dina will do to you when she sees how much you’ve hurt Becky will be even worse.
Uh oh.
I think it’s more likely that Becky does a lot of inadvertent Dina-hurting. If anybody is getting her wrath, its her actual partner. Joyce and Dina have an agreed armistice, even! Dina will see nothing wrong with Joyce getting down with an available lady, it’s just going to be a case of how well she can cope with her girlfriend turning into an irrational mess, and unintentionally lashing out hurtfully while she’s trying to express herself.
I feel like people are forgetting that Joyce just doesnt like Walky, at all, she puts up with him because others in the social group do
It’s generally easy for people to ignore and/or minimize because, since Joyce isn’t hateful enough to do anything MORE than snark at Walky, people can very easily pass it off as banter. Also, I’m given to understand they were closer friends in some other webcomic?
inb4 20 people say they got married and had kids
So you’re saying they were really close friends.
Roommates even
You’re telling me Walky and Joyce were gal pals?
Walky being trans is a fairly common meme around here.
some might say they were work buddies
Besties.
oh they were working all right
It’s kinda bleak and funny that for all they snark at each other, this makes Joyce officially 2-0 against Walky. Took the comic strip job he wanted, and now broke up a rebound relationship with the person he’s been most attached to.
It’s a shame, since if memory serves Walky once bailed Joyce out of an awkward and tense conversation with her parents after Mike yelled “Hail Satan” into Joyce’s phone at them at a time when Joyce was trying to keep a low profile and protect Becky from Toedad.
They’ve had the odd moments like that where it feels like they could get along.
To be fair, despite their mutual enmity for each other, Walky was one of the people Joyce felt safe enough around to avoid panic attacks walking to class.
Intellectually, I understand she can both hate him and feel safe around him, but it leaves an emotional impression of their relationship that conflicts with reality.
There’s a strip that mentions she *hated* having to rely on him for that.
I really don’t know what’s left for Joyce to feel for Walky now that she has thrashed him so entirely. She hated relying on him for help apparently—which doesn’t surprise me but what’s left. Joyce reveled in them breaking up because he monopolized Dorothy’s attention, she probably would have realized her sexuality sooner if it meant keeping them apart. She, not him was a great deal of reason Dorothy didn’t go off to Yale.
It has more or less always been about Dorothy and now that Joyce “won” (which is kinda fucked up, it’s not like Dotty is an object or thing to be won) it’d be like hating a tree stump because you chopped the tree it once was for wood.
It feels weird to me that she doesn’t like him much, since as far as I can remember he’s never done anything to intentionally hurt her so far. And that’s ignoring their relationship in the other comic universe.
Sometimes people just dont get along, there doesnt have to be any particular reason
Envy over his relationship with Dorothy seems like the big one
Back when she was religious he made fun of her for that quite a lot. And there was the time Sal had to physically pull him away and tell him to stop harassing her.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/foranybody/
I haven’t forgotten that, I just never shared that head canon.
oh no
they’ve been reading the comments
lol yep, Willis making his interpretation of the dynamic very clear here
Damn, how can they DO that without a time machine?
Also, I just want to point out that the lead-up to this moment has so many juicy little potential drama points:
– Becky knows that Dorothy was spookily up at night with something she couldn’t tell Becky specifically
– Joe spent days being told he was going to get banged, and then Joyce got cold feet (which she’s allowed to do, no shade).
– Dorothy asked Danny what he felt about cheating.
– Walky was basically confessed to about Dorothy’s feelings once already.
There are just a lot of little things floating around to suggest they’ve been cheating longer than they actually have. I wonder if people are going to assume it was more than a dozen kisses.
Let’s not forget when Joyce insinuated to Jennifer that she’s had sex with Dorothy, which was then relayed to Walky via Alice
I actually did forget that, thank you for the reminder!
They’ve been unknowingly planting landmines to make this a much bigger mess for a while
i’m really jealous of everybody whose memory is this details-oriented for a serial strip, IDK how y’all be pulling up exact strips as citations, but it’s always appreciated
Personally, I’ve read the comic several times from start to finish (due for a re-read tbh, but Rain is dominating that slot right now), and I’ve even got the first 10 print volumes complete with signature and doodle. I still have some gaps in my memory though, so when I’m not sure about a detail, I’ll just browse through the most relevant character tags for a couple of minutes (especially easy if I can combine two for speed) until I find the strip in question, or at least one close enough to it that I can easily navigate a few pages to find it. I also have plenty of them saved to my phone and other devices, since I have a tendency to make new Gravatars out of panels I particularly like, so the extra time spent on editing a given strip helps with retention. In short, lots of interaction with nearly every strip.
IDK how others do it, aside from steel trap memories.
And the whole boob pic saga, with Amber and Jennifer involved and Joe talking to Dorothy about her feelings for Joyce directly.
….Oh dang. I like the way you think.
Adding in this lovely point Proxiehunter reminded me of:
-Becky has been having some *feelings* about the idea of identities changing
— Joe’s also well-aware of Dorothy’s crush, and he said this to Joyce:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/flush/
Which Willis has now basically confirmed was Joe thinking about Joyce/Dorothy as a possibility, by including it in a list of strips about hints.
He doesn’t look happy, but I think he expects this.
I’m also increasingly wondering if the conversation these two had about masturbation went tragically awry, with Joyce thinking Joe was telling her that masturbating with Dorothy again would be fine with him, and Joe thinking that he was being told that Joyce would prefer he not masturbate from now on???
It depends on whether his shower strip was him trying to avoid that or not, really, which only occurred to me as a possibility yesterday fff.
Oh, man, I had forgotten the exact wording. “I don’t think I get to be jealous” is not a healthy mentality to have.
Joe will likely be hurt by it and then blame himself for feeling hurt.
It’s SUCH sad wording! I’ve mentioned that most of the times I talked about it but not today apparently orz. Like Joe honey, feelings aren’t something you’re allowed or not allowed — they’re not something you deserve or don’t deserve! If you feel jealous, that’s okay. It might or might not be rational to be jealous, and it might or might not manifest in a way that’s not fair… but the feeling itself is just a feeling. Humans can’t control feelings.
Isn’t “a list of people who need to know” the thing you come with after you’ve decided you’re actually a couple? Weren’t they talking about figuring that part out just a couple of strips ago?
Yeah they seem to be acting as if they’re going steady which is really odd
I mean, they’ve been doing relationship things for ages now, without being in a relationship.
Heck, the pharmacist when Dorothy took Joyce to get her birth control medicine assumed they were dating!
They’re kind of recontextualizing their previous actions with new information, and that’s going to change some things.
Yeah, when you get right down to it, the two of them are already codependent to a degree that you see almost exclusively in full-blown life partners. There’s some credence to the reading that, like…they’ve been dating for a long time, actually, it’s just that only now are the two of them waking up to that reality, even though everybody else saw it from the bleachers, a year or more ago.
Yeah they seem to be acting as if they’re going steady which is really odd
The important part in context here is that they’re not “going steady” with their respective boyfriends anymore, so they need to be informed, even they weren’t yet sure about what they were going to do themselves.
It’s Dorothy and Joyce. Planning comes now. Figuring it out can wait until never.
Well, we don’t know exactly what they’re planning on telling people. We can guess of course, but in theory they could be planning to tell that they kissed in the heat of the moment, but they won’t do it any more.
Whether or not they’ve decided they’re a couple, they still should probably tell their boyfriends before someone else tells them they’ve been kissing.
Perfect opportunity here is to just disappear and let the cops take the fall for arresting them and then erasing the records.
Just running, hand in hand, thru different counties, as life at college continues…. As someone commented earlier…
Okay, that is a story point.
I was wondering how Becky would react to this situation. Joyce is the person Becky came out to/for and the feelings were not returned. That has to feel like rejection no matter how well you are set in a current relationship.
Has anyone experienced anything like this? Watching someone you were deeply into deny you for some reason only to watch them date somebody who has that trait they supposedly rejected?
I had it when an ex of mine dated my brother. But heterosexual drama in a hetronormative world has to sting a lot less.
I said it in the Patreon but I just wanna mention it here as well.
I’m getting the vibes of Joyce being really dismissive of Joe here and I really REALLY don’t like that.
Like…Even more than the cheating.
Like, cheat away but at least acknowledge that what you’ve done is a breach of trust and potentially an emotionally damaging move given Joes history with cheating and not just….brush it off to freak out about your lesbo bestie who I have a feeling is going to react terribly to this news but for reasons they’re thinking.
Gonna make a sticker for the physical release of this, and it’s gonna say “‘Cheat away’ – Jay”, with a layout that makes it look like an enthusiastic endorsement.
I support this decision so I can buy that sticker
Use this to your heart’s content.
Where from this are you getting lack of concern for Joe?
Now maybe it’s just my reading tone wrong but the way she says his name here gives me a very “What about him?” Vibes in a sorta condescending manner and given the fact that this is literally the only time she has even acknowledged he exists during this whole situation is just giving me that vibe.
Again, maybe I’m just misreading the entire thing because we don’t have Joyces inner monologue here but that’s just the vibes I’m getting.
Gives me vibes that Joe’s an afterthought in this whole situation which I don’t like
Feels more like denial to me. “I can keep putting it off, honest,” which never goes wrong ever.
I can see where you’d get dismissive, but because it’s a response to Dorothy talking about who’s really going to get hurt, I read it as Joyce being confused that Dorothy was concerned about Joe rather than Joyce being indifferent.
Like I’m getting dismissive not worry from this
Her face in that panel says worry to me. I think some of how I imagine her saying it is also with some uncertainty that this is who Dorothy means, who she worries about betraying the most, considering that Dorothy historically has really disliked Joe.
So the tone I’m reading from Joyce here is “Clearly the other person who would be hurt is Joe, but it doesn’t make sense why *Dorothy* would be more concerned about him than about Walky, but I still don’t have any other guess.”
Joyce isn’t that rational. The reaction I expect from her when she thought of Joe is more “Oh no, I cheated on Joe. I betrayed him. I’m an awful person.” Maybe not in those words, but certainly a facial expression representing those thoughts.
That’s starting to really stick in my craw too. Yeah, they cheated, that’s bad, but teens and drama and big feelings. It’s not their best moment, but I can still understand the heady emotions in the moment.
I don’t like that Dorothy seems to be the only one of the two of them to actually consider the negative repercussions FOR OTHER PEOPLE so far. EVery time she tries to bring it up in the last 3 strips, Joyce has pulled a face with her but also brushed it off somehow. With a pun and another kiss. Or a jab at Walky. And you could argue that she’s just happy, still full of hormones from the makeout, she just does’t like Walky…still not great, but explains why she’s not fazed by Walky being unhappy.
But she IS supposed to like Joe. Whether she “chose” or “chooses” Dorothy instead, she likes Joe, at least. And she’s built a relationship with him. She was happy, to at least some degree, with him, and excited to have a good relationship with him. And in this strip, she not only barely mentions him after Dorothy prompts her, but she hasn’t considered him otherwise AT ALL. That is weird. Maybe it’s building up to her having a big huge “Oh crap!!” moment in the next strip or two, but it’s still callous NOW.
I’ve felt like I’m going crazy the past day being one of like two people to bring it up.
I’M NOT CRAZY
I’m glad I saw someone who did, I don’t seem to see anyone else who noticed what an afterthought Joe is here.
Joe’s been the one I’ve been the most worried about out this entire arc.
She’s gone full Bongo here.
No, I haven’t liked how Joyce has talked about Joe for aaaages now, but I only started bringing it up very recently because… well… a lot of people were really enjoying their relationship and thought it was really cute and I know I don’t have the best Het Goggles for seeing this stuff, and… I both didn’t want to rain on the parade and wasn’t confident of my own reading.
But I feel like there are perhaps parallels with Liz, in how Joyce talks about Joe: like she isn’t taking him fully seriously, like she’s enjoying Having A Hot Boyfriend Who Thinks She’s Hot instead of enjoying being with Joe specifically. Like there was a boyfriend-shaped hole in her life before him, and now she’s slotted him into place and expects… certain functions?
She expects him to get drunk with her, thinking she doesn’t need to ask how he feels about that first. She expects him to “hanky-pinky” her and relief her of her pesky virginity, something that she — like Liz — sees as an annoying vestige of her previous life as a fundie… and she STILL hasn’t actually asked him if that’s something he’s comfortable doing.
I don’t think she’s being deliberately callous. I don’t think she would do anything to hurt him on purpose. But I do think that, despite how in love with her he clearly is, she just…
…still, on some level, sees herself the same way she saw herself when she contributed to the slapstick violence on their first date: incapable of hurting such a big strong man, because she’s just a little girl.
In this case, “little girl” is more self-deprecating — it ties back to the way she talked about herself when Dorothy suggested pretending to be a couple for the pharmacist, where she said she was a goddamned MESS and was incredulous that anyone would actually feel lucky to be dating her.
Just one theory, though. Other possibilities remain.
“I don’t think she’s being deliberately callous. I don’t think she would do anything to hurt him on purpose. But I do think that, despite how in love with her he clearly is, she just…
…still, on some level, sees herself the same way she saw herself when she contributed to the slapstick violence on their first date: incapable of hurting such a big strong man, because she’s just a little girl.”
I am curious whether this particular perspective will come up for her. I get this nagging sense that Joyce just does not yet grasp the concept that secular people still have ethical responsibilities. She used to be ethically obsessed because she was parlaying every mistake against eternal damnation, and now that she is finally more or less over that all-consuming fear…she has a much shittier barometer for when she’s doing the wrong thing, and no sense of scale about how back different bad things are, relative to one another.
She went from “every mistake will doom me eternally” to “literally nothing matters” with all of the grace of the average nineteen year old. She’s not gonna learn until the consequences start actually affecting her.
I mean considering that the previous morality system had her encouraging Ethan to repress his sexuality, I don’t think this is actually shittier than that? Perspective.
I also don’t think wrongly thinking Joe won’t be hurt here is the same thing as not thinking secular people have ethical responsibilities. I know Joyce put it in those terms herself after the Jacob fiasco, but I don’t think she was being fair or accurate — I think she worried that she was doing the wrong thing pretty much the whole time she and Jacob were on their doomed “fake” date, she’d just let herself believe things were going to work out for a bit.
I’m not sure how clear Joe’s love is from Joyce’s perspective – partly due to her just not picking up on the signs (not having the experience, and also perhaps not reading social cues through autism), but also because all Joe’s having it real bad that we’ve seen has been in conversations with other people, gestures or looks that she isn’t seeing, and so on.
Joe has been too insecure and scared to open up to her about how vulnerable he is to her, and the result is she doesn’t know.
Yeah. It didn’t really occur to me before, but Joyce probably just doesn’t realize how much Joe loves her. Like, she obviously knows he is trying to be a good boyfriend and be in an actual relationship for the first time in his life. But I don’t think she is quite aware how Important this is to him. How Important she is to him
Oh good lord he’s going to tell her he loves her right before they have to break up
The relationship started with Joe saying, flat out, that Joyce was his vulnerability in that art class.
I’ve been thinking that this story arch is very similar to the anti-Joyce arch from the OG comic. She’s peak anti-Joyce here, in a much less cartoony way than the other comic. I think you’re on the right track. After rejecting her old moral framework, she is failed to build a new one.
Pulling out of being anti-Joyce, I expect her to find some middle ground. I’m curious to see how her path through it might be similar or different than before.
There might be a parallel there for Joyce’s development. What’s very different is that here it’s also being shown narratively as this big romantic moment, which seems like it’s going to be played straight as the pairing the whole comic has been building towards.
Oh when I said further up the page that before long someone was going to take anti-Joyce as foreshadowing, I didn’t realize they already had.
I really doubt this. Because anti-Joyce came from Willis processing their own Christian programming. I don’t really see her coming back in a way where Willis says “actually, those anxieties about how having literally any interest in sex made me a horrible monster were onto something”. There’s a reason why anti-Joyce was a one-strip joke reference made by an anxious Joyce.
Like. Any reading that depends on the idea that atheists really do lack a moral foundation, just as Willis was repeatedly told as a child, seem… unlikely to me. I think it’s much more likely that Joyce thinks only she, the biggest square still dealing with fundie hangups about sex that everyone has teased her for, was actually worried about monogamy — than that Joyce just thinks “oh, it’s okay to hurt other people, because there are no longer consequences for my actions.”
Those two thought processes can lead to similar actions re: fidelity to Joe, but they are not at all the same.
She’s already done that bit and learned that even without God, “other people still have feelings and you still care about them”.
Becky.
I was wondering when this was going to occur to them.
Predictions:
Joe’s going to be heartbroken and probably blame himself for “corrupting” Joyce is kind of a gross way but ultimately get over that and come out stronger for it. There’s been plenty of thematic setup for “Joe needs to lose Joyce to prove to himself his character arc is real”.
I think Walky’s been in a bad mental place the whole timeskip and this is finally going to break him to the point that Nightguy becomes a supervillain and maybe even gets a little friendly with Incelerator (who he couldn’t deal with earlier). Probably not for long before he recovers, and he won’t do anything so serious it makes him irredeemably evil, but we’ll have at least one Joyce vs. Walky storyline. It’s too fun to pass up on when we have the chance, PLUS he can rebound with Amazi-Girl in a Batman/Catwoman dynamic much to Amber’s distress to maximize the insanity.
Becky will not take this well, but the real drama will be Dina realizing how much of a rebound she is, as the drama tag cascades through the cast.
Walky’s breakdown will likely be played for comedy silliness where he kind of presents as an alt-right incel but his heart ultimately isn’t in it and he gives up, but Dina’s will be the real sad stuff.
“Becky will not take this well, but the real drama will be Dina realizing how much of a rebound she is, as the drama tag cascades through the cast. ”
Yeah, that is what worries me the most. The worst Becky reacts, the more it will hurt Dina.
I would be very surprised if things turned out really badly for Dina and Becky, if only because of how absolutely bulletproof they’ve been for years. I kind of get the sense that they’ve been written as having paid their quota of suffering in full. Maybe this is when that authorial mercy runs out, but I don’t know.
I’d also be kind of surprised if Walky went heel because of this.
Yeah, I don’t think Walky has a big enough ego for that. Dude has a history of low self worth, and a lot of his character development has revolved around trying to power through his anxiety and be less of a doormat when it comes to anything serious. Pulling the plug on a relationship that’s never been entirely equal is probably better for his mental health in the long run.
It’s gonna be interesting to see them face the consequences of their actions. Hopefully Walky, Joe, and Becky don’t take it too badly, but I’m not optimistic.
I’m thinking one will get over it quickly, one will be more hurt and one is gonna be PISSED.
Im thinking Joe and Walky might have a bonding experience from this, maybe they’ll get drunk together?
And kiss.
I think the one thing I do really like about the situation, from a story standpoint, is that we kind of feel certain that one’s going to go unusually well, one’s going to go about as expected, and one is going to combust beyond repair…but we can’t know which of the three is which, until it finally happens.
Honestly, as I get over the immediate ship sinking reaction (for both ships IMO), I am increasingly on board with this as a narrative choice. It’s a big swing and I think it’s still possible to botch the followthrough, but the potential is definitely there
I really hope this doesn’t derail Joe’s character growth. Watching him become a better person has been among my favorite recent aspects of this comic
I’ve also been enjoying Joe’s character growth, and I hope he doesn’t reverse all that as a result of this.
Same. It’s been hard rooting for Doyce when the potential for Joe’s undoing has been at the back of my mind.
Well that, and being cheated on for him and Walky. And now Becky, for being initially rejected by Joyce.
It feels like his brief relationship with Joyce has just been turned into a test to show if his character growth is real.
Who is this skinwalker that’s wearing a Joyce bodysuit and when can we get the real Joyce back?
https://walkypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-Joyce
Isn’t that one of those terms we’re not even supposed to talk about?
Yes. It’s a faux pas.
How do we know it isn’t a genuine pas?
Look at how the seams are spaced. If it were genuine pas, they’d be further apart, because the pas company uses wider bolts than the imitators can typically get their hands on. And even if the seams were the right size, you can see the pattern is going in completely the wrong direction. Aside from a brief stint in 1982, all genuine pas has the pattern flowing vertically, and the ’82 product is so rare nowadays (poor sales plus it didn’t match the accessories), you’re not gonna find it for that low of a price. Those are the two easiest tells, anyway, and this pas has both on display, so it’s definitely a faux pas.
Not as bad as the w word, but bad, yeah. Indigenous people have been pretty clear on “don’t use those words, our spiritual beliefs are closed, and ugh, stop making them into monsters, you don’t even understand the concepts you’re offensively stealing”.
If this is the first time you’ve heard of this — welcome to the rest of your life! It’s okay that you didn’t know before.
By “the w word”, are you talking about the title of Supernatural Season 1 Episode 2?
Almost certainly. It, like the g-slur for Romani people, is reaaaaally bandied about in pop culture.
/checks Wikipedia…
YEP, that’s the word.
Wild that even our Lord and Savior, Sora F. Kingdomhearts, has said that particular slur. Granted, he didn’t know what it meant at the time, but damn.
orz
I don’t know enough about the history of the word to know if it was a slur back in 1482. I know the character of Esmeralda doesn’t treat it like one, but it’s hard to know whether that’s, you know, historically accurate, or Victor Hugo being racist at the time, or “it’s not even widely known as a slur now, much less back in 1996 when the Disney movie came out”, which for the record would not be an excuse for Disney not doing their research.
Pocahontas had SO MANY PROBLEMS, but it still managed not to, like, help normalize a slur for Indigenous people. -_-
The slur comes from the impression that Romani descend from Egypt (for the record, they descend from Northern India). Given it’s Disney, I’m willing to bet that it’s probably general ignorance about Romani, never mind it not being widely known as a slur, especially in the 90s. I’ve seen some Romani bloggers I follow saying that there ARE languages where the g-slur is …not the preferred term, but the least derogatory one (there are some languages where there are no non derogatory words for Romani and the other terms generally derive from words for ‘slave’ because of a long history of Romani being enslaved) but English is not one of them.
Yeah, THAT I don’t doubt, more that I was wondering about the 1480s.
My understanding, not having read the book, but uh having watched Lindsay Ellis talk about it, is that the original book was at least somewhat sympathetic to Esmeralda and the other Romani characters, but mostly focused on the greatness of the book itself, and only while making an adaptation of his own book for the stage did Hugo start to add in legit themes of injustice and oppression…
…or, I guess, in other words: was the word offensive in France at the time? And if yes, was Hugo using it out of ignorance, not realizing it was offensive, or because he himself was also casually racist?
It doesn’t ultimately make any difference for Disney’s adaptation in 1996, or for Sora saying the word in 2012. I just realized while typing that I wasn’t sure if this was a case of “it’s always been awful” or “it’s never been great, but it wasn’t always as deeply offensive as it is now”.
Given your note on the etymology of the word, I’m guessing we’re at least in the same territory as Christopher Columbus’s racist idiot ass wildly misjudging which continent he was on and a few hundred years of white people generally not bothering to adjust their language.
*on the greatness of the CATHEDRAL itself, not of the book itself, orz
Oh crap, I forgot about Becky.
Dorothy: You’ve lived for this day, haven’t you.
Joyce: No!
Narrator: Joyce had, in fact, lived for this day.
I mean at this point, solid plan Joyce. You already have the cover story ready
What about Jacob finding out? He’s not going to say it, but he’s going to think “I told you so” at Joe so hard everyone will be wondering if they just developed psychic powers.
“I never thought the sweet girl I’ve been putting on a pedestal would put ME in a situation!”
I got a few thoughts.
Mainly that I don’t think Joyce x Dorothy will set their friend group on fire like it seems. Dorothy and Joyce maybe overestimate how much they affect their friend group. Most already know of their attraction. Joe definitely does.
I think Joe will be hurt the most but also that it will sting less because Dorothy already confessed to him. He must see this coming already. He likely doesn’t even think he’s good enough for Joyce in a bit of irony because she’s proven she was the dangerous bad girl (relatively speaking).
I think Walky is not as in to Dorothy as he was before. The signs are there if you look. He was hesitant to get back with her in the first place and heir sex was initiated as stress relief that morphed into getting back together because it was comfortable. But Walky doesn’t know what he wants in any part of his life. He likes the sex, but would prefer a more chill relationship. Like what Amber offers. He also really missed Lucy’s companionship and felt inadequate when she “upgraded” to a perceived better male specimen in Jacob. This is all in his own head by the way. Walky has some toxic assumptions about masculinity. Anyway this all adds to him staying with Dorothy basically just to feel better about himself but it ain’t the vibe this time. They were doomed even if Dorothy weren’t tongue deep in Joyce today.
Becky should be over it. Admittedly I’m less confident on her because she’s still been consistently jealous and possessive of Joyce. But like she’s seen Joyce and Dorothy all over each other these days and Dina has been so solid and supportive through Becky’s insecurities in her sexuality and perceived attractiveness. They’re pre-engaged. I just feel like Becky should be over Joyce. I also just don’t think Becky is dumb. She’s very emotionally intelligent and I think she understands Joyce saw her as a sister first. She also knows Dorothy has been going through it. I think we’re understestimating Becky’s mental toughness.
So yeah. I don’t think this will be that painful. I think a lot of fallout from Joyce and Dorothy was planted a long time ago and them hooking up is just hastening the inevitable. These dumb kids can handle it.
Becky literally admitted recently that her jealous rivalry with Dotty is a bit. I think she’s going to have a crisis of identity over this, but not because of her crush on Joyce, but because she’s literally *already* having a crisis from the idea that she might some day possibly have a slightly different sexual preference from what she has currently, and Joyce going for Dotty plays directly into that fear.
Walky will barely care.
Dude can pinball to one of his other girlfriends.
Dorothy has dumped him before.
Joe will be devastated.
I think you can only arrive to the conclusion Walky wouldn’t care if you already didn’t like him. Like the dude who has already shown to have self worth issues will lose the girl he holds on a pedestal a second time snd will not care? Come on.
Nah, I like him well enough, but I also think this will be less of a thing for him than Dorothy is afraid it will. Dotty was a rebound from Lucy, who he realized right at the last minute was *perfect* right before he lost her. Honestly, he’ll probably be relieved that her freakout the other night wasn’t anything more serious than “Oh, she finally realized she was crushing on Joyce.”
I really feel like people are ignoring the signs that neither Walky or Dorothy have been in to them as a couple again. Walky has said things like being with Dorothy makes everything “something” when he just wants to chill. Dorothy was clearly suppressing feelings for Joyce. Even mentioning her in bed with him. They’re just not in the same spaces they were in the first time and haven’t really talked about it.
I’m not running down Walky here but I actually think he’s been forced into a couple of relationships by peer pressure and kind of resents it. I think this included.
Y’know, Joyce, cheating aside I think *delighting in the idea of* twisting the knife in someone is actually a much worse side of you. Like, I always knew she didn’t like Walky, but this seems like a sudden escalation of negative feelings towards him (I feel like they had a light rivalry, but it was almost sibling-esque). This is genuine Mean Girls behavior. Really messed up.
I do appreciate Dorothy not being super enthused with her saying that though. I like Dorothy because she often does bad things but tries really hard to stick to her moral compass, she’s just often really bad at it. Joyce… kind of seems like she may have tossed the moral compass at some point? I don’t know. A few months ago I said she was being unusually callous and that maybe wasn’t the right word since she had no clue that Dorothy had followed her into the hallway, but I feel like callous is definitely the right word here.
If this is Joyce’s new norm and it’s not something that’s gonna be addressed and ironed out, not really looking forward to it.
I hate the sibling rivalry excuse for Walky’s bad behavior. His and Joyce’s relationship is a mutual pattern of disrespect. We just saw him undercutting Joyce’s attraction to Dorothy at Joyce’s expense. Yeah Joyce wanting to torment Walky is a bad side to her, but he has one too. He would revel in doing the same to her easy.
This is also very in character for Joyce. She’s been willing to get mean and messy since back during the breakup Jake and Raidah times.
I’m sorry, but I’ll say it, no matter how shippable they may seem, no matter how high expectations you may have for them… it’s quite the opposite.
This ship has only made Dorothy worse; however, as you mention, there’s still morality, so I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
And as for Joyce, this ship only revealed a cruel side that was most likely well hidden.
I’ve definitely said before that Dorothy and Joyce feed into the worse aspects of each other and while I’ve never shipped them, I thought they needed more time to work through some of their codependent and possessive/over-controlling behaviors before going into a proper relationship with each other. I was originally a Joe/Joyce shipper and still liked them, but I also realized that Joe and Joyce do that to each other too, unfortunately.
The dynamism of Walky and Dorothy is the reason I love the ship. Yes, I do. I’m aware of the obvious repercussions, and yet, I maintain a little faith. It falters, but it’s there. Dreaming is free.
The one thing I think is relevant to remember is, Joyce’s entire reason for hating Walky is her latent proto-bisexual jealousy she has from Walky dating the girl that it took her a full 18 months to comprehend she wanted to date. Like, I’m not saying it makes it any more endearing, but every aspect of rivalry that exists between the two, is purely related to possessiveness of Dorothy, and always has been.
Once again, it doesn’t make it better. But it’s very clearly the only reason any such animosity exists, in the first place.
She’s known Dorothy for 5 months, not 18.
But she spent all five of those months in the hyperbolic emotion chamber so it’s equal to at least 18 months.
Eh, I’m fairly certain she’s mostly kidding anyway. I doubt she’d actually relish in taunting Walky over taking Dotty from him. She’s just acting it up as a bit. She is *Becky’s* best friend, after all, they have honed their senses of humor together for years.
I realize that a webcomic sometimes plays things for laughs and we shouldn’t necessarily take every joke as “cannon”, but Joyce being vindictive about breaking Walky’s heart is not cute.
I’m over her hating him. All he’s done to her IIRC was get overheard describing her as “hella indoctrinated” a semester and a half ago–something which she has long since decided he was *right* about, so much so that she got so angry about said indoctrination that it caused a rift with Becky. It’s time for her to get over it.
And that’s coming from someone who doesn’t even *like* Walky. But my reason is that he’s an emotionally stunted doofus who’s just coasting on a good looks (see and any of the reasons Lucy gave for dumping his sorry ass). At least Joe is *trying* to move past being an emotionally stunted doofus who’s just coasting on his good looks, man.
I was trying to say “see (that recent strip) AND the Lucy stuff”, but I didn’t get the markup quite right.
I’ve taken it to be “one of those jokes that exists only because of the broader Willis canon, that’s meant to be taken with a grain of salt and is implied to always be exaggerated,” which is a very common thing I find, as someone who has only read DoA and nothing else.
That said, I’m not saying you’re wrong, either. At some point, enough grains of salt is a heap, and what you’re describing is akin to some kind of fucked-up salt avalanche.
Becky can get over it, if she even does have an issue. The possibility exists that she’s happy with Dina and over Joyce and doesn’t care whether Joyce rejected her due to being straight, or simply not interested.
I feel like Joyce’s joke about Walky, her afterthought-vibes WRT Joe, and in general how fast she was willing to move this new relationship with Dorothy while the latter was the only one expressing any reluctance…
It’s in character.
Remember how she acted with Jacob? And this exact dynamic with her and Dorothy right now was on display back then, with Dorothy judging her for wanting to incite cheating and break up a couple. While Joyce said something like “it’ll be fine if he cheats on Raidah because with me it’ll be true love, unlike with her!”
She has a lackadaisical view of infidelity, probably from lack of romantic experience. While I do seem to remember her chiding someone for thinking unfaithful thoughts at one point, her actions have spoken louder than words. Could create some interesting conflict when Joe is really hurt and she basically doesn’t take it that serious until he reacts. Same deal with her being snide toward Walky — for her, it’s true love, so it can’t be wrong. Everyone will come around eventually.
I dunno when it happened, considering at first she was all wanting a permanent husband from the first day of school… but I think Joyce just doesn’t care about being a cheater or a homewrecker. She doesn’t feel bad about it, or if she does, it’s very secondary compared to her getting what she wants.
The dismissiveness toward Joe backs this theory of mine up, while also furthering another one — I’ve never seen Joyce actually “love” Joe. From the very beginning, it seemed like she just wanted to jump his bones, and was fine with the cuddling and romance being a part of it, but never really felt the same way about him that he does about her. It’s always Joe who’s really “working hard” and expressing his feelings, whereas Joyce is just 😀 and letting it happen.
I dunno. I could be wrong, or I could be proven wrong in the future (storyline plans seem to be as fluid as the characters’ sexuality, so maybe I’m right now but will be wrong later). But that is my take — Joyce just doesn’t really care about being unfaithful or a homewrecker, at least when she does it. This is like Jacob 2.0, and Jacob has even been compared to Dorothy.
I just hope they get iced out by people in the dorms and aren’t quickly forgiven for everything. Hell, I don’t really like that Sal dismissed the whole thing when she just watched her brother’s girlfriend cheating on him.
Anything can happen, however, I don’t think Sal would be too indifferent to not tell his brother
What?
Joe has a brother, and Sal knows him well enough to feel inclined to share sensitive info like that?
I believe they meant “her brother.”
I also believe that, but the fanfic potential is just high enough to put it out in the air.
Joe’s brother looks exactly like Joe but with a soul patch.
Those Rosenthal genes are PERSISTENT.
transmasc sal transmasc sal transmasc sal
Can we crack Danny’s egg too to make it t4t
“I’ve never seen Joyce actually “love” Joe. From the very beginning, it seemed like she just wanted to jump his bones, and was fine with the cuddling and romance being a part of it, but never really felt the same way about him that he does about her. ”
The funny thing is, now that you mention it, it kinda feels like Joyce loved Joe more before they were dating. Lately, she’s literally only been a horny hornball hormone goblin horning it up hornily. She learned what an orgasm was, and then made it her entire personality.
So like, I don’t think she necessarily doesn’t love Joe…I think she’s hyper-fixated on this new cool thing, that is only tangentially related to relationships, and is way too obsessed with it because it’s new and exciting. I feel like she may come to regret this later…but I don’t know how long it’s going to take for the Joyce Brown Bisexual Fugue State to return to equilibrium with normality.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the whole “Joe you can be better” arc with her. Weird that she seemed more passionate about him back then, and even during their “courtship” to some extent, but once he admitted his feelings she became almost coy or distant… Like in all the post-them-getting-together comics, Joe was very emotionally honest with her, and she was kinda just like “smoosh me”? I dunno.
I will be shook if Joyce is actually Fraysexual rep. I have a character that’s midkey fraysexual, and she’s the only example I’ve ever seen in media. That would be wild.
I completely agree. Joyce has zero consideration for fidelity. At least in regards to her own behavior (we haven’t seen her in the victim’s role).
And it makes sense.
1st off, just because someone leaves a belief system, it doesn’t mean they stop using the underlying principles.
(See Ayn Rand’s heroes and their allies only finding purpose and self-actualization in their labor and dedicating themselves to serving their social betters).
American Christian Nationalism is all about Predestination and Vibes.
Good and Evil are determined by “tribe”, not behavior.
This makes me feel bad = God dissaproves
This makes me feel good = God approves
Even if Joyce is aggressively rejecting religion now, she’s still fundamentally operating on the same morale framework.
The one part I’m hung up on is saying that Joyce was treating her relationship with Joe as a purely physical thing…and…like…no.
This mostly hangs on Joe being the one she turned to when her mom showed up. One of the key emotional connections JoJo has is him providing her with insight and experience when it comes to dealing with parents divorcing.
Joyce obviously wasn’t so into Joe that she wouldn’t cheat on him. But I really, really don’t see how they didn’t have a solid emotional connection to each other rather than this being a “fling”.
Joyce talked a bit about this back in the Jacob arc. She’s not a cheater or a homewrecker. She’s a romantic. If it’s True Love, then it’s obviously right and any false relationship anyone was in is just an obstacle to be swept aside. This fits perfectly with her looking for a husband when she first got to campus – that would be True Love and thus there’d be no need to worry about her cheating afterwards. This comes from both her religious upbringing and her “watched too many romcoms” side.
I thought she’d shaken more of that attitude, but there definitely seem to be echoes of it here.
I love Joyce’s ongoing feud with Walky, and how unbelievably petty she is even when she’s maybe joking. It’s so cute.
She makes the cutest faces when she’s being a brat and I love it
You know what I could go for right now? Some Sal/Danny happy couple moments. Hell as much as I hate Malaya I wouldn’t mind seeing her, and Marcie have some happy couple moments.
Everything might be moments away from exploding in Joyce’s, and Dorothy’s world, but there are other happy relationships going on that would be nice to see. Fingers crossed we cut away tomorrow to one of those, leaving this on a cliffhanger for a week or two.
You’re right, there’s a lot of anxiety, but it’s true that we need a break from this and to process things well and not make assumptions too quickly.
I was just thinking that we needed to check in on those two, myself, as a palate cleanser.
When you really think about it, Malaya IS the real victim in this storyline.
Were Joyce and Dorothy faking being boring all this time, only to secretly be freaks whose idea of a fun date is crashing a protest?
Or is what they’re doing now fakey, pretending to cheat on their boyfriends to get attention?
This is a life altering revelation for her and no one is talking about it.
NO. WE NEED ZERO CUTS FROM THIS STORY.
I NEED RESOLUTION I’M GOING INSANE
Joyce is weirding me out so bad. The only time we’ve seen her be this passive and just ‘go with the flow’ is when she’s putting on a front and pretending to be okay. The fact that she initiated this with Dorothy when she did feels like… maybe she was getting in over her head with Joe and is sabotaging things subconsciously? Not that her feelings for Dotty aren’t real! I just literally can’t see the Joyce from 20 strips ago doing this to Joe so carelessly. There has to be something going on under the surface.
I mean, Joyce made that “first move” in bed by touching Dorothy’s face. After the whole thing with her and Jacob, I just kinda get the vibe she doesn’t really think all that hard about the repercussions of cheating. Like as long as it’s “true love” everything will work out and everyone will be happy. She doesn’t really have any experience with romance so it makes sense in a way. Not to say she’s a monster, just that she doesn’t feel a lot of guilt.
To be honest, there have been a few times when she was flippant/insensitive about things. Like when Becky heard her making fun of Christians and Joyce was kinda just like “ah well, Liz says sorry, guess we’re strangers”. Or even with her treatment of Dina sometimes. Like she realizes she’s done something wrong, but she doesn’t really feel bad about it.
But then she’s super serious when it comes to protecting people from physical danger. So I dunno what to make of her behavior sometimes
People are complicated and usually not just one thing.
Being in physical danger is something she understands, something she can empathize with.
At this point people just want the worst to happen in this comic. It feels like folks are going to be mad if things turn out to be ok and no one implodes from this.
Some people are sickos for romance drama, some people are sickos for repercussions.
feels like the “sickos” poll was poorly presented if “sicko” meant “everything turns out to be ok”
What could be sicker than that?
people really really need to make sure that justice is served to fictional entities that literally don’t exist
I’m expecting calls for domestic violence any day now. Somebody’s gonna say something that’s tilted directly toward “Joe would be well within his rights to hit Joyce for cheating on him” and it’s not gonna be long before that happens.
i mean… you’re the one saying it. and honestly, yeah, it’s a pretty odd thing to say.
Right, but I’m “not saying it”, y’know? I’m accusing someone, we don’t know who, of probably gonna be saying it and meaning it, at some point. It’s a mystery about who’s it gonna be, but they’re gonna, and they’ll mean it on purpose.
Or no one will and it was just you who was thinking it lol
In Taffy’s defense, they have seen some Paladins absolutely spiraling out over the last couple of weeks of strips. Myself included. Though thankfully never to the degree of wishing physical harm on anyone. Closest I’ve come is the dark humor behind remembering there is a sniper watching the lesbian wedding go down.
There’ve been some going pretty wild on the Sicko side as well. Someone I was interacting with yesterday talking about how gross and controlling Monos were for even having the concept of cheating.
I’d love to be wrong. I just don’t trust some of y’all not to go there.
I do wonder if someone will go there, after at least one person said that the girls were going to “make” Joe and/or Wally revert to wild beast villains by their actions. Okay maybe they didn’t use those words but y’know, basically.
I’ve seen a number of people suggesting this is going to make Walky turn into an incel. Real life incels are known for violence against women, especially murder.
Yeah, I just kind of assume if someone says “He’s gonna become an incel”, it automatically comes with the worst parts of that ideology. There’s no sense in giving even the lowest-level incel the benefit of the doubt, because that’s how you end up harmed.
Some folks will be disappointed if nothing bad happens because that’s less dramatic, others will be disappointed and, I suspect, angry if nothing bad happens, because they’ll take it as the narrative endorsing cheating.
(A third faction will also be disappointed if nothing bad happens because they’ll see it as unrealistic! This group is definitely distinct from the second group above.)
Definitely checking in on the “I want (at least somewhat) realistic consequences for this behavior” team.
I see you and you are especially valid!
I had a petty little moment yesterday of almost hoping for no consequences specifically to spite the loudest paladins, and it felt icky.
I do kind of think no consequences would make for a great comedy beat, but it wouldn’t be worth all the folks who’d be upset, and it would also just be very strange at this point, given all that Willis has been saying.
I think Becky will probably be less upset now, for the same reason Yumi did higher up on the page — but also after last night, I think she too might just be too relieved that Dorothy wasn’t spiraling in a different way to access jealousy.
(The anxiety about the concept of people being fluid, though? That’s definitely something that might blow up again.)
Joe, though. 😞 Even though I think he expects it. “Sorry, Joe” indeed.
Personally, “No consequences” or “they just drop seamlessly into a poly relationship” both strike me as the kind of outcomes that’d make more sense in a more overtly-comedy strip as opposed to the mostly-realistic-dramedy we have here.
At this point I’m about 50/50 on Becky being “upset at the idea Joyce’s sexuality changed” vs “naw, I figured out some shit about the world and myself since I kissed Joyce, I’m good”.
I’m about 150% on Joe having a hard time with it, but in the “moping about it because he had really high hopes” sense rather than some kind of heel turn.
And I’m rooting, somehow, for Walky to take it especially hard and heel-turn so bad that Nightguy ends up joining forces with Incelerator, because someone else suggested that as a possibility and I honestly think it’s the single most hilarious theorized outcome I’ve seen.
If I were to make a “realistic” prediction, I would suspect based on the comment section here that this will cause a good portion of the friend group to have some kind of “what the HELL, Joyce/Dorothy, why would you do this to Joe/Walky” reactions of varying stripes, but it’s hard to predict how Willis will have any given character react.
Hey, I said it would make for a great comedy beat! Not that it would be a sensible resolution. But admittedly while I was babbling about the rest of it, I entirely forgot to finish the thought with: “also while it would be funny for a moment, in a ‘completely subverted expectations’ way, like Amber turning out to be all for Danny/Ethan instead of destroyed by it, I don’t think it would be satisfying in the long term.”
Other thoughts… I might put in a top-level cuz they’re long, heh.
Oh, sorry, internet tone again — I was trying to agree with you re the comedy beat.
❤️ Gotcha! No worries, my tone ALSO clearly didn’t come across very well, I wasn’t upset with your reply. 🙂
Our Joe and Danny avatars are doing some work in this thread. 😀
Haha. 🙂
No consequences would be a fun comedy beat, buy I wouldn’t actually want it not even for the people who’d be upset or how strange it would be, but because it wouldn’t feel sustaining. Like, I could see being delighted by it for a couple days, but then it would be like… okay, now what. Having Consequences could keep going for much longer.
Pretty much exactly this.
I actually very much want everyone to eventually be happy, but like. That part is usually about when the story ends, you know?
Genuinely I don’t see the point of taking a swing this big if you aren’t going to go big on the consequences.
I’d rather these two face some negative consequences for their cheating, than everything somehow be fine for everyone involved. Because I think cheating is morally wrong, and I tend to prefer that people who do morally wrong things do not just get away with it. That happens way too much in real life already.
I’m not sure why anyone would think “everything fine for everyone” is even on the menu. From the second Joyce and Dorothy finished their First Kiss™, they immediately realized the implications, and they’re visibly/audibly (audiovisibly?) fretting about it in no uncertain terms. Past strips have especially leaned toward Dorothy’s end of the group (her ex and her roommate) having explicit opinions on the matter and worries about her acting strangely, and Joe even gently confronted Dorothy about it in no uncertain terms. It’s all baked in, and I’d be genuinely speechless if none of that paid off in a comic where things are constantly paying off.
This is literally the second page either of them have acted like they even care slightly
I really genuinely think this is a case of the time dilation making them seem worse than they are.
It’s been a LOT of strips… but those strips are covering a handful of moments. Now that they’re coming down from several emotional highs, they’re thinking (again, in Dorothy’s case) about consequences, and people who will be hurt.
I still think Joyce’s glancing mention of Joe here indicates that she (wrongly) thinks he’s going to be okay with all of this, for one of a variety of reasons you can see I’ve illustrated on this giant cork board covered with red string…
(No but I’ve really spun a few different theories over the last month, from “off panel conversation?!” to “tragic miscommunication during the masturbation and post-#dranks conversations”. Joyce did say she’s “been faithful” since she and Joe started to date, but because she said it in the context of masturbation, he told her that was unnecessary. And I genuinely wonder if Joyce doesn’t have some sort of “real Secular Girls are too cool for monogamy, Joe probably expects me to be uncool but would like me better if I were cool” thought process going on.
Or… maybe she knows Joe thinks they’re exclusive and prefers that, but she has drastically underestimated how much he likes her, and thinks he’s going to react to all of this with, “Oh! Okay. See you in math class,” instead of any actual pain.
Only time will tell! But the one thing I don’t think we’re seeing is a Joyce who knows Joe is going to be hurt and doesn’t care.)
I will concede time dilation is making this arc much more annoying than usual. I needz like, the next month of pages xD
You have my sincerest sympathies. I will be quietly bummed as heck if Joe and Joyce break up, and that does seem more likely after reading Willis’s posts. I hope he and Joyce are able to be friends at least….?
But goodness knows we can’t all get what we want here, some folks will only be satisfied if these two get fully ostracized from their whole friend group.
Oh I need them to break up now.
Joe doesn’t deserve this shit and I think Joyce has lost all rights to his friendship.
Literally the first woman he was willing to put his anxieties around cheating aside to be in a relationship with has cheated on him
INB4 “oh it’s just kissing” sorry I didn’t realize you could make out with whoever you wanted while in a committed relationship with no prior conversation with your partner and it was fine
I think the time dilation is working the other way too. Because Joyce’s date with Joe was… two nights ago? Less? And if you binge the chapter it feels very rushed to go from that to this.
Well, I didn’t say any of that.
I am just reading Joyce very differently right now, and the Joyce I’m reading doesn’t deserve those things, so I’m hoping for a different outcome where everyone’s (eventually) okay.
But I might be totally wrong about my reading of her! And again, we can’t all get what we want.
@GholaHalleck
I’m 99% sure it was literally today (In that they were out at midnight and then went back to the dorm for canoodling)
That’s real life, when people doesn’t allow mistakes (unless you’re privileged)
Why doesn’t one romantic rival simply eat the other one?!
in another life, they do!
I mean Dina would if she thought Becky liked Joyce more.
The biggest friend should eat the others!
Joe’s gonna come out on top in the end…
I don’t know. His reaction to Dina that one time sugests he might be a bottom.
Dohoho…~!
Is it a “bottom” reaction to be vaguely embarrassed and/or turned on when a cute smaller person of your preferred gender who is currently climbing on you expresses a hypothetical wherein she is sufficiently determined to find out how sex with you works that she ruins the entire concept for you?
Because I honestly think the majority of non-ace people would be “bottoms” if that were the case. =P
Eventually Jacob and Joe are going to have to kaiju battle this one out after consuming their respective friend circles.
dang, I missed the vore convo
Then Galasso consumes them both and rules over the comic as supreme lord and master, as is his due.
it’s like they say, doopyboop is from omicron persei 7, joyrothy are from omicron persei 9
I said this to a friend a while ago but Joyce and Dorothy really deserve each other (derogatory)
Joyce and Dorothy really deserve each other (complimentary)
Joyce and Dorothy really deserve each other (WR ANY%)
This isn’t them at their best, and to be fair this has been building for a while, but neither of them realized just how strongly they both feel for each other.
Does that make it right to cheat on your partner? Absolutely not. Should they apologize to Joe, and Walky? Yes. Should they feel guilty forever, and not date each other? No.
They’re not perfect, but they’re not *that* bad. Also keep in mind these a freshmen in college, and there are still a lot of hormones still being dealt with, and them figuring out what they want in life.
and also this is frequently what coming out of the closet looks like for people. but better to cheat and come out than stay faithful and closeted.
They’ve always fed the worst parts of each other unfortunately
I don’t know that I think “always” is true here, but they do have a tendency to get into positive feedback loops whether the outcome is good or bad.
I’m definitely exaggerating on the “always” it’s moreso only in the aftermath of Joyce becoming atheist. She hasn’t actually needed nor benefitted from being mommied by Dorothy anymore, but has still regularly been the recipient of her (sometimes unwanted) mommy-ing anyway. I think that’s where it started affecting them both negatively, imo. The birth control arc showed a lot of that strain on their dynamic.
Two immediate questions are coming to mind for me right now:
What does Dorothy think they’re going to be saying?
And what does Joyce think they’re going to be saying?
Because I would bet myself lunch that those two things aren’t going to fully align…
If they align, are you just not gonna eat lunch?
Nonono. Wraithy’s betting themself AS lunch. Probably the main course, maybe an appetizer if it’s a dragon’s lunch. It’s the most logical interpretation possible.
But if he’s betting himself lunch, does that mean Wraithy s a dragon?
Classic case of “Dragon who can transform into a human but gets very hungry and so separates the human form into an individual person via magic spell and then eats that person immediately afterward”. It shows up in a lot of YA fiction.
another vore conversation right below the other one? it’s not even 8/8
Obviously, if I win then I’ll buy myself lunch, and if I don’t win, then I’ll have to buy myself lunch. Simple! 😀
Holy shit, the perfect con.
I was about to raise that question myself. So much discussion here about how Joe/walky/becky/dina will react, but nothing really about what Dorothy/Joyce want to happen (which may affect how the other characters handle things.
Will they say to the boys “we are breaking up you so we can be a lesbian couple”?
Or will it be “we are attracted to each other but want to continue our existing relationships”? (Which admittedly is more of a “sexual fantasy” thing that something I would expect in real life.)
Aye… but also, what if Dorothy goes for the “we want to continue our existing relationships and sorry for the whole making out thing shit was going down things got out of control”…
…and Joyce is expecting “we’re totes in love and going to be totally together and we’ll figure everything else out here because True Love!!!1!”?
I can 100% believe that Joyce is assuming that Joe will be totally 100% okay with all of this especially the whole “his girlfriend is making out with another woman”, and I think Dorothy knows Joe well enough to know that he won’t be.
i’m pretty sure dorothy wants to actually be with joyce in some capacity, given that she only said no more romantic stuff until they’ve “sorted things”, which kind of implies that after things are sorted, they’ll be able to do romantic stuff again
Mmm, true. But still, that’d assume that Dorothy’s version of the outcome (such as her and Joyce together, Walky and Joe out of luck) and Joyce’s version (potentially Dorothy and Joyce together, Joe and Joyce together, Walky can do whatever) line up well.
Joyce’s view of “If its ‘true love’, everything is fine!” hasn’t exactly been challenged thus far, and could be a pretty sizeable sticking point.
Hey, you folks think Dorothy cheated on Danny in the approximately three years they dated? I’ve been leaning “no”, but reconsidering now.
She did say to Walky something like “I’ve gotta stop dating virgins”, which implies Danny was one when they started going out but she wasn’t one. I’ve been assuming she fucked some nameless schmoe before she dated Danny.
Aha. “One of these days I’m gonna date a non-virgin.” I was close enough.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/04-time-keeps-on-slippin/touch-2/
I don’t see how that statement implies anything about if she was or was not at the time.
I guess it’s more that it can imply that, more than it has to/universally does, but that’s the vibe I get reading it in-context. It gets me thinking maybe Danny was equally bashful about touching her boobs, and if she was already experienced at the time, I can see it being amusing and/or exasperating for her both times.
I don’t think that really changes if Danny was first or second. With one of those partners, Dorothy also had no experience.
Consider this scenario. At some point, Dorothy breaks up with Danny, but is either too diplomatic and it’s not clear or Danny is too obtuse and it doesn’t register (or both). Those “three years” are from Danny’s counting, from Dorothy’s perspective, she dated Danny for a while, then fooled around with Tuxedo Mask for little while, then Danny again. But never told Danny because it’d be more trouble than it’s worth. I’m thinking a summer boyfriend situation, either early on in her relationship with Danny. Or after she’d already checked out.
I guess those scenarios aren’t necessarily her cheating on Danny, depending on how the ambiguous breakup would have gone.
that doesn’t really say anything about whether she’d cheat though
No, but it wasn’t directly meant to, either. More of a potentially related thought to discuss and explore.
I think if Dorothy hadn’t also been a virgin, she would have moved a lot faster with Danny, as she did with Walky.
So she DID cheat on Danny then lol. Because if the mysterious third dude wasn’t before Danny, and it couldn’t have been after Danny, it must have been during Danny.
(Again, assuming that wasn’t a throwaway line)
This is like watching those two conspiracy dudes find evidence of an extra shooter at the grassy knoll just because someone suggested there might have been one, and they’re looking at reflections and shadows and claiming they could totally be someone’s face and hat.
There’s no evidence that Dorothy has fucked any “mysterious third dude”. Noting that the guys she’s dated were virgins does not imply that she wasn’t one, and I don’t even see how it could, because no matter how many dudes you add, she was a virgin for at least the first one. (Assuming Joyce is her first girl and/or non-dude, which seems pretty certain.)
Dorothy did date at least one guy before Danny: Tyler. I don’t think she fucked him in middle school, but she did hock a loogie into his mouth.
based on what?
I can see the vision, actually. We don’t know jack nor dick about the mystery third person Dorothy seems to have fucked other than Danny and Walky, so he could be anywhere on the timeline of her relationship with Danny. I assume “he”, since she’s been very adamant until basically yesterday about being straight for men.
how does the fact that dorothy slept with someone other than danny or walky at some point suggest that she cheated on him?
Note the consistent use of speculative language in my comment. “We don’t know”, “seems to have”, “could be”, none of it is concrete. It’s not that I’m saying “This suggests that and that is that”, more like “It’s a possibility, given the blank void of information surrounding that guy”.
I don’t have a specific opinion on “did” or “didn’t “, but I do see how HueSatLight could get there.
I’d say the time frame. If she’s had three partners and was with Danny for 3 years, they got together when she was 15. Doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to have a partner before him, especially since that’s really young to be active. Not like, uncommonly so (members of my family were at that age, I refused to be because I was scared to mess up my future), but it is pretty young. And we saw that Walky was immediately after Danny.
I feel like the age thing and the third dude was just a throwaway and not fully thought out, but it would be wild if Dorothy did cheat on Danny too.
I can only really comment with my own experiences, but I had a boyfriend from the time that I was 12 to 13 and uh… well, we never really GOT far but not for lack of trying on his part. So if Dorothy was more receptive than I was and she had a boyfriend who was just as… well, eager, then I can easily see her having had sex at least once by the age of 15. It’s a bit young, but also not that outside the realm of possibility honestly.
I would still lean No, this feels like a first for her
I doubt it. Dotty was at her most idealistic and rules abiding at the beginning of the comic, when her self image and morals had yet to be challenged.
(Re: dating virgins- even if Walky was only her second partner, she could still say “virgins” at that point. Two is plural.)
I just realized some irony. If Dorothy does actually start dating Joyce, that puts her at three for three with dating only virgins so far.
Yes but don’t worry, this time they can both be equally fumbly!
She’s wayyy too panicky for this not to be her first time.
She cheated on him with her desires to be a president
Last panel is truly hillarious.
But… it’s true, Becky will be the most heartbroken one for sure.
🙁
Okay yes, this is good, go tell them
This has been brewing from basically the begininng of DoA.
I don’t care as much about Walky/Dorothy as Joe/Joyce. And that’s mostly because we’ve seen and explored a lot of W/D. There’s been years of it the first time. But J/J, there’s been a lot of buildup, and then they finally got together, and now it feels like its over before it really begun. I wanted to see more of their relationship before it ended, explore it more. Now that can’t happen.
This happened in the walky comics too iirc… my poor star-crossed ship… doomed to have their relationship end before it can begin across multiple comicverses 🥲
IW mentioned!!! JoeJoyce is my Willis Cinematic Universe OTP, and my personal favorite iteration of JoeJoyce was in IW. DOA JJ is great— it’s very different from It’s Walky, just like all of the other carry-overs have been— my reservations basically amounted to it feeling too… perfect? For a ship that was predicated on being together during so much intense growth. Great fanservice for us but wow Joe’s a natural at being a perfect partner. The simultaneous messy buildup of (apparently one-sided) Joyrothy felt much more grounded to me.
Then the more grounded ship got canonized in the middle of a protest with tear gas yuri sakura and likely signals the end of Perfect Ship. I can’t get this experience anywhere but DOA
Walky/Dorothy redux has definitely felt like it’s missing the spark they had the first go around. It’s a rebound for both of them and I wouldn’t be super sad to see it ending.
Joe/Joyce definitely had more gas in the tank so it would hurt more to see it cut short, which is probably a good thing.
It definitely feels like Joe/Joyce was cut short before giving it time to deal with its own issues and in a sense I think there was more to explore with Walky/Dorothy as well, since they were getting back together in very different places than the first go around.
All of which fits with the comments on Patreon about this not being intended to come to a head quite yet.
It’s kind of crazy that the main character hasn’t been appearing at all in these last few storylines… I miss you, Joyce… come home…
I still suspect that Becky is more over Joyce than many commenters seem to think. I forsee this revelation actually causing a three-layered reaction.
Layer 1) Oh, good, Dotty *isn’t* going to kill herself like my mom did.
Layer 2) Oh, good, they *finally* realized it.
Layer 3) Wait, so sexuality IS malleableaaaaAAAAAAANONONO
I think this is going to play way more into her insecurities about her own sexual identity than it plays into her crush on Joyce.
Well, at least she said “fake.” So things haven’t gotten too desperate yet
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3luoa7teeck2h
“I finally done it, I created the anoral lust machine!”
“I want to fuck you but first we should donate to a charity to feed hungry children”
“Damn it all another failure!”
(I will stop linking Willis Post when they stop being so funny)
You know what that typo is intentional now fuck you.
On a more serious note, I really dislike the maliciousness from Joyce towards Walky here. I get it’s supposed go be comedic, but any time they bicker I always have her “boy from the jungle book” comment in the back of my mind. Walky’s jabs at her have largely been about her obvious crush on Dot or her former fanatical beliefs. But Joyce’s jabs generally skew more personal (him being beneath dotty, not good enough, etc) and at times racial and I really wish that was something that was interrogated more in-story. Especially when those comments are made directly to his partner.
Wasn’t it Danny who called him Mowgli?
Oops you’re right- that specific line was boy!Joyce. The rest stands for me, though. It’s always been a much more personal beef about Walky’s value/worthiness/inferiority from her end.
It would absolutely fuck Joyce’s mind/deflate her instantly if sometime after this Walky is like “Oh yeah, I was totally never good enough. Pretty much no one but nuggets should give me the time of day.”
Yep, and he was literally never called on it.
Jealousy seems to bring out the worst in Joyce since it all seems to come from him dating Dotty.
Oh those are some Grade A+ traumatized faces right there XD
Jeez people really do have some opinions about all this.
And like I get it, it’s a touchy subject. But I’ll remind everyone here that we all did stupid shit around that age. I don’t even know if it’s been a full in universe year at this point.
So They’re both like 18-19 maybe 20. Who amongst us hasn’t made some questionable decisions?
I still think that Joyce x Dorothy has had a ton of build up the entire comic, but I’m also not saying that makes cheating okay. I’m just understanding that when I was that age, I was also kind of a dumbass about impulse decisions.
They’re all 18. They are in the second semester of freshman year.
They’re definitely not all 18 (even when you exclude teachers, RAs, and [ex-]TAs). For one thing, Sarah is a sophomore. For another, Sarah and Dina had a shared birthday party back in October just before the timeskip (book 10 vol. 01: “Birthday Pursuit”), so Sarah is 20 and Dina is 19. I don’t think we’ve seen other cast members’ birthdays, but it’s thoroughly possible that someone had a birthday over the timeskip.
(This is assuming “all” refers to more than Joyce and Dorothy. Maybe you meant “both”? I think it was implied at one point that all the guests at the party were 18, so it is fairly likely that Dorothy and Joyce are both 18, although I’m not sure if their birthdays have been established.)
(as a winter baby myself, I wouldn’t be confident in assuming their ages 😛 )
I just meant the freshman kids, yeah. Dina’s birthday party established that she was older than any of the other main-character-freshman (multiple characters commented to that effect, saying they keep forgetting she’s older than them, etc), at least, and we later learned that she got held back a year.
Oh, right, I forgot that she repeated third grade. I guess they’re PROBABLY eighteen, then, but again I wouldn’t be surprised if a few freshmen in the main cast turned 19 over the winter break.
(It just felt to me like your original response was implying “of course they’re 18: they’re in their second semester of freshman year!” idk. Hard to read vibes over the internet sometimes, though)
That’s fair! I’ve been seeing a lot of people assume they were 20 because they think more time has passed than has passed, so that’s why I’m saying both things. It IS possible we missed a birthday, but I’d be surprised if we missed Dorothy or Joyce’s birthdays specifically, just because it seems likely those would be events Willis would want to cover. You know?
“before they catch us? what the fuck, Dorothy?
Hate Joyce’s stupid-ass face
How many people actually trust the author of the comic? I mean, I get the idea of funny (or serious) flights of fancy about what is going to/could/might happen, but… These characters live in Willis’ head. In ours too because Willis draws and enlivens them, and lets us see. But they are Willis’ characters, and I enjoy that fact. I enjoy it unrolling. Yeah, speculation is fun. But for me, ultimately, Willis is in charge, cannot be ‘wrong’ (unless they themself say so!).
Honestly, from reading these comments sections, you could almost believe some people don’t even conceptualize Willis as being real, and think they’re just commenting on a weirdly slow feed of real people’s lives.
But more seriously, WAY LESS PEOPLE TRUST THE AUTHOR THAN YOU’D THINK.
I mean, after reading that unlocked Patreon post about unexpectedly blowing up his own comic and the passive aggressive remark about staying or leaving to find out what happens next, I feel kinda validated on not trusting the author.
Passive-aggressive??? Come on, that was obviously sincere. Stick around to find out what happens next — or don’t, if you don’t want to, or you’re not enjoying this, or [on and on]. It certainly wasn’t “stick around if you’re brave, leave if you’re a wuss” or whatever else would make it passive-aggressive.
To me it read like someone who was tired of how divisive the decision has been and was ready to just put it to bed by reminding people that leaving is an option if you don’t like it. But to your credit that could very, very easily be my bias coloring it. The classic internet problem of the tone of the message being lost upon hitting Send.
Yeah… I get that. I don’t think so, legitimately, because Willis has almost always talked about reader reception with anxiety rather than exasperation or indifference.
They’ve been cavalier about some of the reactions, but “people complaining that Joyce can’t possibly be bi” is a different kettle of fish than “people who don’t want Joe and Joyce to break up” (they’ve been apologetic every time they’ve talked about that that I’ve seen), or “people upset about the way the protest went down” (they seem mortified about that, and they’ve been reworking their strip to get Asma back in, at the very least).
I think they’re probably genuinely sorry for folks who are upset about the cheating or who didn’t want these two together for non-queerphobic reasons, even though they’re also mostly very committed to the story they wrote a year ago.
yeah, I would interpret it as sincere; Willis seems like a good dude, and I don’t think he would make plot choices just to spite the readers. He just understands that people might be sad about it, particularly given that Joe has been through a lot of character development to get to this point. I did like Joe x Joyce, and I think it’s unfortunate (especially for Joe!) that their relationship might be coming to an abrupt end, but I don’t begrudge Willis for making that decision.
Kind of a side note, but I’m amused at people talking about how weird it is not to trust the author on a story where that author is talking about how they screwed up one aspect of it.
tbf I think there’s different kinds of trusting an author. Trusting them to be going somewhere interesting with a storyline, for example, isn’t the same thing as believing they’re flawless people who will never make a mistake!
Wouldn’t have made that OP myself tho, for sure.
I don’t think speculation necessarily belies a lack of trust in the author? Almost the opposite even, you need some trust to be sincerely invested enough to speculate.
I will say that I think unconditional trust is rare. There aren’t many storytellers where I have complete faith that I’ll like everything about their work, and that’s normal?
I know Willis can write stuff I don’t like, and if this plotline ultimately settles into something I don’t enjoy I can live with that. I do trust that I’ll still be able to enjoy the comic overall even if that happens.
Speculation doesn’t. But the number of people who seem absolutely furious because they’re speculating that they won’t like how the arc goes and are sure that’s the way it’s going despite all the clues to the contrary sure does.
I probably agree that the author can’t be “wrong”, but people care about the comic and can perfectly reasonably think (an aspect of) it is/has become “bad”.
For myself, the very limited times I have felt like that have resolved themselves as a storyline has progressed, especially with a reread binge, where you see the whole thing. So while aspects of current storyline make me… uneasy, to go back to your post, I trust the author to produce a good and coherent storyline overall
I’m not even sure what that means. Yeah, authors can’t be “wrong” about what happens in their stories, but authors can certainly write bad stories. Authors can even write their characters acting out of character.
I’ve got a lot of trust in Willis specifically, but they’re not perfect. They can still screw up.
I mean, “Damn You, Willis” is a trope — there’s ALWAYS been a lot of flailing about decisions made in this comic even if we have all been here for over a decade.
I’ve been following Willis’ work since I’ve been in middle school, and I’ve learned to be able to put trust in them to produce stories that are at least narratively satisfying and interesting, absent a few whiffs here and there. But this? The way they’re talking about this pairing like it’s going to be a core endgame relationship, about how this is Joyce’s final form? I really don’t see this resolving in a way I’ll find satisfying. I’ll just have to go on not liking one of the core couples in the strip. Oh well! Maybe they’ll get interesting as a couple eventually. Hope springs eternal.
Yeah Dot, reading Willis’ blog posts about how this came about made me trust his handling of this much less. I really don’t like where this is going, or his apparent big character arc here. Maybe it would have worked over the 5 year delivery he intended, but not like this.
It would have worked fine over a five year timetable, but this is too abrupt, and they should have had the good sense to rein in his characters and course correct when they started getting away from them.
I didn’t start reading his stuff until Dumbing of Age, and I came to that relatively late so maybe I missed the whole “Damn you, Willis!” starting from a different place, but I’ve always seen it used jokingly usually when he pulls the drama cord and rips readers hearts out rather than for writing decisions considered sub par.
^same here
I mean, I see that as a different kind of “not trusting the author”, personally — “Damn you, Willis, why’d you write a plot that makes me sad/upset for these characters” isn’t THAT far off from “writing decisions considered sub-par”, IMHO.
Except it’s usually far closer, in the situations I’ve seen it used, to “Who’s cutting onions in here?” or “It got awful dusty in here all of a sudden.”
I don’t trust any author lol.
Even the greats have beats where they fumbled the ball and willis has fumbled in the past imo. I’m going to be on edge until we get out resolution
Oh hey, lookit that. they’re both immediately thinking over the consequences of what’s going on, and the people they need to tell to be responsible about what’s happening.
And some people are still pitching an absolute fit because “JOE JOE JOE WHAT ABOUT JOE WHY ARE YOU ENDING THIS STRIP IN A COMEDY WEBCOMIC WITH A JOKE ABOUT BECKY WHEN WE SHOULD BE SPENDING TWENTY PARAGRAPHS ON JOE”
I mean, the fit in this specific strip is about “Joyce is slightly gleeful that she gets to tell Walky she’s with Dorothy now,” and “Joyce’s boyfriend, who she has basically been over the moon for since the relationship started, was quickly reduced to an afterthought.”
Meanwhile the Becky thing is just gonna be “yawn, what? You thought I was still into you? You’re so full of yourself, I’m with Dina now”
Yeah that’s totally what will happen with Becky. She’s totally going to be absolutely fine that the girl she had a thing for her whole life, who she let go of because that girl told her she wasn’t into girls, is now suddenly into girls. And more so with the person you “teasingly” declared your rival because she was worried about being replaced in that girl’s life by this rival.
yeah no, totally gonna be fine.
Becky’s engaged, more preoccupied with Dorothy’s mental health, and the fear of her sexuality ever changing. She’ll have issues with this, but I doubt any of them will involve the candle she’s held for Joyce.
You should see in Reddit. It’s like Joe was assassinated. Or Willis getting caught doing some crime, like smoking pot.
Look, I don’t smoke pot, I eat it in candy and occasionally vape it. And it’s not a crime here, it’s legal enough that we’ve had like 5 stores just for pot open up in the last 2-3 years.
Shhh, Don’t forget that you are actually NOT Willis’ sock-puppet!!
I mean, Joyce has never exactly made a secret of the fact that she thinks Dorothy could (and should) do much better than Walky. Joyce and Walky are friends who hang out, but not usually on their own, and they’re usually both ribbing at each other in equal measure when they do spend time together. I don’t think Joyce being a little smug about getting to take Dorothy from him is intended to be cruel so much as her trying to lighten the mood a little, even if it comes off as more callous than that. I think she’s going to meet the brick wall of reality a little more once the negative social consequences actually happen – right now she’s still in the euphoric daze where the rest of the world only vaguely matters, while Dorothy came back down to Earth much faster because that’s what Dorothy does.
Joyce has historically tended to lean towards the “this is probably a bad idea that could hurt someone, but hey, what if things work out perfectly and everyone’s fine and I get what I want?” flavor of denial, and she still has a lot of growth left to do in that area as well. This is still the part of her character arc where she’s in her Reckless Atheist era, where she’s acting out and rebelling because if God’s fake and magic and everything about religion is wrong, then she should do whatever she wants to distance herself from it, like drinking and doing laundry and having hanky-panky with a big man and kissing girls. She’s exploring herself after almost two decades of sheltered repression and hasn’t had much of a chance to learn how to dial things back now that she’s “allowed” to have the freedom to make bad choices for herself – even with her friends occasionally telling her she’s going overboard, this is hard-won freedom for her, and she’s still revelling in that. I’ve been wondering when the pendulum would swing back to hit her in the face, though, and I’m curious if this might be it, because no one in the group could really judge her too harshly for drinking in college or getting a boyfriend who is a known sex-haver, but there well might be some cutting of ties or at least genuine disapproval of her cheating on Joe, especially if she doesn’t reel in the pettiness and smugness. I’d like to say I don’t think she’d be a little smug to his face about it, but the thing is, that is exactly what I think is in character for her at this stage. She’s been well established to not be great at social cues and when to express what, and while I genuinely don’t think she intends it in a cruel way, I very much think she feels like she’s “won” her rivalry against Walky, and she’s not a very gracious winner.
If it’s not clear, I actually very much enjoy this for her. It’s good writing and Willis is excellent at writing flawed characters who change and grow without becoming boring. As someone who’s very aware that I need to work harder on letting my own stories contain more consequences from character flaws as growth-catalysts and less everything just working out too well for everyone all the time, I’m always really impressed by how consistently these characters feel real because they make bad choices and do questionable things, however incensed the comments may be about how dare they do something that’s possibly indicative of not being quite perfect yet.
I agree, it’s great for Joyce to have flaws. She’s a human being, and a teenager at that.
If she didn’t have flaws, the characterisation might get Mary Sue accusations instead.
THIS. People are never satisfied when it’s a woman character
The only issue I have with this approach is that it’s kind of in contrast with the narrative arc here. Any of Joyce’s flaws (or Dorothy’s for that matter) seem to be tied to details of how she’s navigating it, but the overall arc is still portraying this as the great romance that the story has been building to. The first cheating kiss is a grand romantic climax scene. It’s not shown as a flaw or a bad choice, but as true love.
I could be completely wrong about how this is going to play out, but I don’t really see how these bad decisions lead to any real consequences – beyond breaking up with the boyfriends that they would have needed to do anyway. In which case, do those really seem like flaws or bad choices? It all worked out.
Agreed. The kiss scene is clearly meant to read as a triumphant moment. It’s framed as a metaphorical wedding. Tear gas is used to evoke sakura imagery from yuri anime. Jocelyne, a tremendously likable character, is smiling in approval. The audience is obviously meant to be cheering it on.
I think it can be both, as a matter of fact! It’s a triumphant moment for them as queer people/characters, who are finally coming out of the closets and accepting themselves. The fact that they are also in other relationships, though, means there will still be consequences. Cheating is the bad decision/flaw part of it, but it doesn’t negate that it came from a place of love and good intentions. That love and those good intentions just happen to be a negative for others. A lot of dilemmas ride on that kind of dichotomy, not least in stories; do you hold yourself back and live in a status quo that’s sort of fine but not what you truly want or who you truly are, or do you chase what you truly want and who you want to be, even at the cost of the consequences that will follow? There isn’t one right answer, but most storytellers will err towards resolving for the latter. In real life, sometimes the consequences scare people off, but even staying in the status quo has its own consequences if it’s at the cost of getting to be fully yourself.
I don’t have to agree with cheating or consider it something to celebrate in itself, but I respect that Willis is able to move out of the comfort zone of having the characters always resolve things neatly with therapy talk and backing down from what they want for the sake of everyone else getting to stay where they’re comfortable, like Danny and Ethan solemnly agreeing not to pursue their mutual attraction just because it could potentially be weird for Amber. They’ve already admitted on their social media that that’s an opportunity missed and a ship that’s sailed.
I think it’s absolutely far too early to say “it all worked out” until we see how everyone else actually takes it. Maybe some people will pull a Sal and shrug and go “oh, so you two finally figured it out”, but I absolutely expect there to be more of a fallout in their friend group besides Joe and Walky both going “oh, I see, that sure sucks for us but I’m glad you’re both happy, I guess”. Danny’s already made it clear he absolutely disapproves of cheating regardless of sexuality reasons and I suspect that he won’t be the only one.
I’m sure some people with disapprove. I assume it’ll at least blow up their relationships with Joe and Walky. I have no problems with characters doing bad things – making mistakes, being messy, etc. This isn’t about “staying in the status quo”.
Compare this with Joyce’s other “cheating” arc though: with Jacob it ended with a nice clear rejection, because of her approach and was framed throughout as Joyce making bad decisions. That was a deconstruction of a lot of rom-com tropes. Here, the narrative is framing this as the grand romance. The cheating side is a rom-com trope, played straight.
Again, I may be wrong and this may blow up in their faces in unexpected ways, but the way it’s been set up and the comments Willis has made about the story don’t make me expect that.
“And that was how we decided we should both transfer to Yale. Preferrably last week.”
Still not liking their attitude. Joyce is super flippant, where I feel 48 hours earlier she would have been super conflicted.
I dunno, this storyline just seems off.
Look, they’re not planning on hiding it. They’re not keeping it on the DL and slipping off to the laundry room together. They’re obviously planning on starting a ‘more than friends’ relationship but it’s one that’s new to them too. While they’re apprehensive about telling the people who are impacted by that, it doesn’t sound at all like they’re planning on carrying on an affair.
They’ve realized their feelings for each other, and now they have to lay it out for the people whose hearts could be broken by that.
It’s definitely been a hard to gauge storyline without the benefit of inner monologues, but looking back at the proximate catalyst… Joyce had sex with Joe. But in talking about it with Becky she realized she had a sexual encounter with Dorothy before. Everything’s been snowballing off Dorothy coming to terms with her feelings for Joyce, and Joyce’s realization that she had “sex” (by the definition she arrived at) with Dot before Joe, and how that makes her feel. Certainly not a typical bi awakening story but this has all been over a very short window of comic time.
The barely not a lack of consideration for Joe genuinely hurt my heart. 😭
Somehow i completely forgot about her. I can’t tell if this is going to be hilarious or horrific
So who do we think is most likely to wind up raging at God in the rain this time?
One thing i find myself wondering recently was when Joyce clicked on her feelings for Dorothy. Joyce is usually such an open book with her feelings that it’s a non-issue, but it’s hard to be certain when it comes to her feelings for Dorothy.
In my head, it’s that moment on the bed when she’s preparing for her night with Joe, but i could see others disagreeing.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think she actually realized it until after. Maybe thinking about it the next morning – along with her “I’ve had sex with Dorothy” idea.
The feelings were definitely there in the pre-date cuddle with Dorothy and she was acting on them, but I don’t think she’d acknowledged them to herself.
Very hard to say, given how little we’ve seen of what Joyce was thinking in this sequence.
I don’t know of someone has already made this point, but this whole.storyline makes much more sense and stops being so upsetting when you remember that they are like 18/19 in their first year at uni. That is messy as gets, and the context makes this situation basically unremarkable. Which does not mean I condone! Just that I remember what this life chapter was like, and a lot of the time it was like this
So here’s what I think is the most interesting path story wise
Firstly, I’d way prefer this to be revealed. Not for moral reasons but cause the fallout of this is so much more juicy than Joyce and Dorothy doing this secretly
Joe – I think he’d react calmly and politely before breaking down alone. Rachel finds him and they have a convo where both grow to understand each other. Joe ultimately sticking to his character growth despite his pain
Walky – I find Walky so boring lately, just a stagnant character at the moment. So honestly I’d like to see him be mean about it and then go down a bad path, start hanging around a bad crowd. Just give me something, anything
Dorothy – I kind of was hoping that Joyce and Dorothy would decide not to go for it after a kiss because then Dorothy could explore her sexuality with other women. I guess I’m hoping this experiences leads her to work with Asma and figure out a politics she believes in. Relationship wise still not sure but that’s cause
Joyce – I really want to know what’s going on in her head, how she feels about this. Much as I wanted the kiss of chaos I was still hoping Joyce and Joe would keep happening. Much like Dorothy, just not sure cause no idea what’s going on with Joyce
Becky – I am so hoping Becky struggles with this the most out of anyone, to a completely unreasonable degree. And she has no reason to be personally hurt. Sure she cares for Walky and Joe but also, that can only mean so much. The idea that the person who you made a big move that didn’t reciprocate isn’t because she’s straight but because she’s just not into you? Perfect! And it gives Dina something to consider, a real challenge for their relationship that requires confronting their differences as people. Dina gets to have a story with real teeth.
Also deeply funny for Becky to get the thing she theoretically wants (two of her close friends being gay) but they’re A) atheist and B) gay in a way that she didn’t want
Your last paragraph brought to mind the phrase “left lesbian with none Becky”. Also, I second all of this. The most interesting thing Walky has done lately was slowly, badly processing his grief over Mike, and it’s been a minute on that.
The worst situation for Becky!
And yea, I just want Walky to do something. He’s reverted into his shell and not even in an interesting way
On Walky:
Ever since Lucy broke up with him, Walky’s mostly just been around for Dorothy to worry about. We went straight into the Dorothy/Joyce plotline without doing anything with Dorothy/Walky (Walky’s only currently in 31 strips in Book/Year 15).
On top of that, so far I think we could have done this storyline without Dorothy/Walky having got back together and I don’t think it would be that different (just focusing on Dorothy potentially destroying Joe/Joyce).
So I’m really hoping we get something big with Walky in the fallout, and not just him ending up with Amber and being relatively fine (especially if Amber is injured/arrested/tells Walky she encouraged Dorothy to go after Joyce).
A change would be nice, a new path
I want to see him kick over that pedestal he still has Dorothy on. Unrelated, I want to see him get a “guy friend” and for them to be safely obnoxious at each other, and take the edge off for everyone else. And I want them to be Malaya.
As long it motivates him to make choices that are interesting instead of stuck at this same pace I’ll be happy
I almost want Willis to commit to the idea of doing an actual cheating storyline. This feels like it’s just dipping a toe in the water: They figured out they love each other, they kissed, which is technically cheating, then went to tell their boyfriends and moved on a new non-cheating couple. (Presuming that’s what happens, which is looking likely now.)
But really, if you want to do a cheating storyline, lean into it. Let them hide it for a few weeks. Have sex. Sneak around. Lie to the boys. Eventually get caught. Because that’s where the real pain and damage of cheating happens, not in getting the first kiss and the breakup in the wrong order.
It’s probably out of character, though I can think of ways to justify it, and would also probably kill all sympathy for both of them, so it makes sense not to go that far, but at the same time it kind of feels like a half-hearted arc as a cheating story goes.
You’re right about that and the artist in me agrees if you’re going to commit, commit dammit
But also I feel like we’ve been in this space for so long, and I just want to get to the reactions, fallout
Gosh gosh I don’t know. You’ve broken my brain a little thejeff
This storyline has in general moved way too fast from Dorothy first realizing her feelings for Joyce to this point.
Nooooo! Stop making good points! The fallout! I long for the fallout!
(Joking voice)
(My paranoia of being misunderstood got to me)
(💜)
Nah you’re good. I’m kind of with you anyway. I’d have preferred more buildup but if we’re skipping that to get to the meat, let’s get to the meat already.
I’ve got split opinions. I think Dorothy’s part of the story doesn’t make me feel less sympathetic towards her, maybe more sympathetic. Sicko for Dorothy. Real sicko, not “sicko but then everything works out with no hurt feelings”. Dorothy acting like is her staying in character, but kicking it up a notch. then learning something about herself and potentially growing from it. She’s not extraordinary, I don’t think that’s sunk in yet. Dorothy maturing in a messy way, I could feel sympathetic to that.
For Joyce, I definitely feel less sympathetic, but not in an antipathy way. I don’t know where this is going, but it kind of feels like she’s being set up to be cheating but not knowing it. Like she has to retain some sort of innocence. Or maybe she’d be inexplicably cruel in the most casual manner.
The next chapter is called “not so smooth criminals”, so I’m not expecting them to immediately tell their boyfriends in tomorrow’s strip. Not sure there is an ideal pacing, though.
My assumption is that the next storyline is going to be about a photo of them kissing blowing up on social media or the newspaper and becoming the focal point of the school’s gossip, wrecking any chance they might have of keeping things lowkey and slowly rolling it out. Also it’ll probably out Jocelyne since she’ll also be in frame.
Id there anyone here who share my fellings of jjst, not having any kind of moral felling about this storyline whatsoever? I just don’t care wherever this is good behavior or not.
I don’t come to this comic for moral feelings, I come to read this comic so I can throw rocks at the characters and yell “gaaaaaay”
It’s rare for people without string feelings either way to care enough to comment, let alone debate the matter. Doesn’t mean you are alone!
“not having any kind of moral feeling” (emphasis mine) is not the same as not having any feelings at all.
Moral outrage is a strong feeling in my mind, hence my slightly different phrasing. It was a bit broader but included moral feelings in it. 🙂
Right, but you can have other strong feelings! I don’t think Nadamás means they(?) don’t care about the comic at all, just that they specifically don’t care whether the characters’ choices are morally correct or not.
Thanks and is he/him if you were curious. (You probably weren’t)
I thought it might be he/him! I thought I maybe remembered you saying something that indicated as much once. But my level of certainty was like 10%. Thank you for clarifying! I do care. I kinda wish the comment section had a visible pronoun field, tbh.
Include it in the name?
I’m less fussed about people getting my pronouns right than I am about getting other people’s right tbh, so just me doing it wouldn’t help much. I guess I could start a trend? Heh.
A consequence of things basically having not changed since 2011 sadly.
I don’t much care about the morals of the situation, my complaint has *always* been that I think this is badly written.
I don’t like these characters I’ve basically grown up with doing this thing that is morally objectionable and cruel to their partners, so that’s an element of it for me, but now that it’s happened I’m much more concerned with how sloppily this has all been written, which by all indications is a result of the characters getting away from the cartoonist.
hey folks! i put together a survey about how folks are feeling about joyce/dorothy stuff. you can take that survey here
(side note: this is specifically about cheating! i’m very negative on the palestine stuff and am not interested in responses about it)
okay survey is turned off
what i thought this would accomplish: figuring out how the upsetness breaks down so i can forge a path towards greater understanding
what it actually accomplished: making me feel so hated and shamed and deep-in-the-skin wrong as a person that i wanted to yank my guts out through my throat
and i only got like 200 responses and only like 110 of them said some real jugdey mean stuff! willis gets like at least twice that per day and i do not understand how they are still alive
Wow.
While that’s not surprising, I am deeply sorry you had to deal with that. The people who answered that survey (myself included) don’t know who you are, and their opinions on you are based more in their own rage about a daily cartoon than in anything you could have said or done.
I was personally very excited for the results, but I do not think it’s worth it if you’re sacrificing your mental health to even read them.
Also, to whoever responded to a survey ABOUT A COMIC?!?! with PRETEND PEOPLE IN IT by lobbing hateful shit at a real human being who was just trying to do something fun? Seriously consider talking to someone. You have issues and it’s causing you to hurt real people for the sake of pretend ones.
Again, unbelievable, but sadly not surprising. I hope you get yourself something nice today! A hot bath, a cold ice cream, something you deserve.
To be clear: When I say “Myself Included” I’m saying I answered the survey. Not that I included a shitty comment. Should be obvious given the rest of this comment, but I want to be sure <3
That’s horrible, I’m so sorry that’s the response you got. I thought the survey was a great idea and a way to really analyze the nuance in the community’s reaction to this storyline, and it really sucks that folks turned it into something nasty instead.
i feel like i should clarify: it’s not even people harassing me! it’s just the sheer volume of, like, being told this comic i like is bad, being told the creator is acting in bad faith, being told there was a problem with the way the survey was constructed–even when people are being polite about it, even when people were agreeing with me and shitting on the anti-cheating crowd, the sheer VOLUME of negativity just completely fucked the signal to noise ratio and made it hard for me to think about myself or the comic rationally.
:< Jeez that really sucks, I'm sorry. I'm also sorry for contributing to it on the "how the survey was constructed" bit!! Ugh.
Yeah, I think give yourself a break and some space to breathe about it. I’m sorry it was so rough.
I’m sorry, Wack’d. It’s awful when negativity is overwhelming and I’m sorry for making a comment on the construction of the survey. It’s not easy to make a survey for something like this because it’s basically impossible to cover all the possibilities and that’s not a reflection of you. Take care of yourself.
It’s actually ridiculous the way some people don’t seem to remember we’re all actually, y’know, people, out here on the internet.
I had been planning on adding a comment in the “Anything else” box that boiled down to “Thank you for seemingly going out of your way to make sure a broad combination of viewpoints got represented here” but ended up leaving it blank, so I hope one saying it here instead helps a little.
I’m very sorry that you were exposed to a response like that, though I can’t say that I’m particularly surprised. I knew that if this ship ever did become canon, it was going to be treated to two barrels of virulent misogyny and lesbo/biphobia however it shook out, and there has been a really nasty undercurrent of both in the comments as of late.
Any possibility we can still see the survey results after a much needed mental break? I was pretty curious for what the results looked like.
I’d be skeptical they’d provide anything useful if >50% of the comments were unpalatable in some way, as the reported numbers seem to indicate.
I mean it’s a multiple choice test. For the most part you can just post the multiple choice results without delving into the comments made. And I feel like it is useful data if a lotta people ARE saying they don’t enjoy this story direction, even if it may be upsetting to know not everyone is into this direction.
honestly it was pretty 50/50. not a lot statistically remarkable. and i should point out that even the pro-cheating crowd had, frankly, some pretty nasty stuff to say, so
like, what upset me was not any individual opinion, what upset me was not even folks not being into it. what was upsetting was the sheer QUANTITY of it. when every single comment is something negative the actual nuances of a given person’s opinions just stopped registering in my brain and turn into a solid wall of bad. the human brain is not designed to process a solid day’s worth of two hundred distinct people complaining at you about ANYTHING!
i would really, genuinely encourage anyone who comments here, or is in any fandom with a contentious subject, to build a similar survey and force yourself to look at the results over the course of a day. powerful empathy builder. i broke after like 28 hours and willis does this to themself every day, forever
See as someone who has worked on a webcomic and written several books, I feel and fear that in my bones. I’m sorry people were awful in the survey :(.
I comment a lot and I can be critical, especially of this current storyline or get weirded out/frazzled by a bunch of viewpoints I don’t understand (or irritated when a comment I thought was innocuous is taken 100% as heated and face value), but I do genuinely still like Dumbing of Age and it seems so weird that so many people read that just don’t. I dropped regularly reading QC because it became too boring/weird to read (VTuber arc). If I ever stopped liking DOA or Willis, y’all’d never know because I’d disappear as a commenter entirely.
Walky will get over it, just as he did with Lucy dumping him. I guess he’ll take a crack at Amber again to repeat the pattern of going back to his exes in order to not deal with the emotional pain.
Joe… I honestly think he’ll be crushed and revert back to “Old Joe,” proving Rachel right in that he can’t change. Unless, I think, Amber actually acts as a sister and points out how much Joe has changed for the better, which will then get him to continue to improve for his own sake, not to impress Joyce.
Becky, though… Becky has shown jealousy when Joyce and Dotty went on a platonic bender and, now that she’s seriously been proven right that Dorothy was out to steal the person she loved the most (yeah, Dina exists, but you never really get over your first love) I think this might put Becky into a downward spiral as she’ll believe now that Joyce was gay all along but just wasn’t into Becky. I see hands being thrown.
Most of the gay relationships I’ve seen in both the Walkyverse and this series I can get behind (although Asher/Ethan is a bit wobbly given Asher is responsible for Blaine kidnapping half the cast) but I honestly don’t think Dorothy and Joyce belong together. Dorothy is really NOT in her right mind right now, and Joyce’s feeling in the moment are so intense it could be perceived as “true love,” but once the intensity dies down I really do think Joyce would find out that she and Dorothy, while great as friends, aren’t compatible as romantic partners.
I was really hoping for a “Graduate” ending where they don’t discuss the consequences but realize without words just what they threw away for the sake of intense passion. And Becky casually walking by, not noticing them, would trigger one of Joyce’s patented “Oh my God” shocked expressions.
Surprise consequence: Walky crashing out badly catches the eye of Ethan, who is attracted to misery, and Asher is becoming far too happy right now.
(I don’t really think this will happen, but it’s fun to enter things in the crack theories raffle).
Oh we’re crackshipping? Here I go:
A polycule appears, but it’s Asher-Ethan-Walky-Joe instead. Joe cooks delicious healthy food for the group, Ethan talks about transformers a lot, Asher is upbeat and kinda hot about liking what a mess everyone is, and Walky is the goofball of the group who brings the mood up once he’s done grieving.
I’d watch that sitcom
(if I were a teenager again, or just someone who watches tele at all)
We’re doing crack ships now? Here’s a topical one. Joyce goes to tell Walky thinking she’s going to enjoy dropping this on him. Walky starts crying. Joyce goes to comfort him and they wind up kissing. Now Joyce is pannicing that she has to tell Dorothy she cheated on her with Walky once she’s done telling Joe that she cheated on him with Dorothy.
Not likely but oddly fitting with the mix of drama and comedy in the strip.
Also, as I pointed out the other day out of the four characters currently involved in this mess Walky has so far been the only one to actually propose polyamory to anyone he was dating. And as I said then, Walky said it as a joke but he’s known to say things he means seriously and pass them off as jokes.
If Joe is being sincere about hos growth, he doesn’t need Joyce or any girl to be a better person. I believe he will not reverse to Old Joe.
He can look what he dealt with Sarah at the gym and to think: Yeah, it worths it.
*his growth
I also believe he will not go back to Old Joe. But it’s a shame he’ll probably lose the friend he confided in the most.
Its still going to kick him in the teeth that the first time he tried to be in a serious relationship he got cheated on.
Poor Joe.
One of his worst fears seems to be coming true.
Oh, good Grodd in Gorilla City, I hadn’t even thought about Becky… !
The mess I crave
All this talk of cheating in the comments and no one is talking about the real victim…Becky
A lot of people are talking about her, already.
This is a really good joke lmao ty
That meme that’s like “The myth of ‘consensual’ sex” but the couple is Dorothy and Joyce and replace Jesus with Becky
“Isn’t there someone you forgot to ask?”
You know what, however Joe reacts to this, he’s right.
Dorothy sent Joyce nudes while he was dating Joyce.
Dorothy told him that he didn’t think he was good enough for Joyce and that she was afraid he’d hurt Joyce.
And now Dorothy is just like “who cares about Joe’s feelings, Becky exists.”
Joe should justifiably hate her.
Obviously “however Joe reacts” doesn’t include abuse or violence as he’s right.
But a hearty “You’re trash, Dorothy; never speak to me again or feel you havw any right to judge anyone from a moral perspective” is highly in order.
If nothing else, I hope Joe brings it up every time Dorothy tries to take a patronizing tone with anyone.
“I might be like you, Joe.”
“You are a much worse person than me.”
Agree to disagree. Cheating on two people is doing much less harm than the hurt and stress Joe caused a whole pile of women by being who he was. Joe was allowed to make mistakes, so is Dorothy.
Dorothy continually lied, manipulated, and acted like the aggrieved party when doing it.
Joe has done his best to make atonement.
Which yes, makes Dorothy worse.
Joe did a LOT of awful things. I’ve outlined them before.
I disagree with you, it wasn’t a failure to understand your viewpoint <3 I just don't think hurting two people is worse than hurting dozens.
Nope! Hurting one person (Joe) is not worse than hurting dozens of people (Joe literally ran out of apology donuts).
You’re also just entirely mentally skipping the long phase where Joe acted liked the aggrieved party about his list having been “leaked”, or when Rachel didn’t appreciate being rated an 11, or heck any time Danny expressed any type of feeling that Joe didn’t want to have to listen to.
You are literally comparing Joe years after the completion of his character arc to Dorothy in the middle of hers and saying he’s better — even if I agreed with everything you were saying about her, it would still be silly.
That last paragraph really is the salient point in this sub-thread, IMHO: Joe’s had a fairly complete arc, from “comic-exaggerated but sadly typical college sins” to “realize/acknowledge he fucked up” to “steady improvement” (with a lovely side note of “how does one even make up for that kind of diffuse but actual harm” wherein “apology donuts” is a woefully incomplete answer.).
As much as I hate the current implementation of it, “can you stick to those principles even when you have been metaphorically kicked in the teeth” is a reasonable next step on that arc.
Dorothy’s current arc is clearly not done — whether or not we agree on any harms she might be currently doing in this “comic-exaggerated but sadly typical college sins” part of her story, she’s not even reached the “realization” phase, let alone the “try to improve” phase.
Agreed with all of this. I’m less distraught that Joe might be tested in this way, but I am still sad he and Joyce are probably over, because I would so much rather have messy-but-eventually-happy poly.
But yeah, it’s just a biiiiit silly to compare Dorothy to Joe right now, when you’re comparing chocolate chip cookies to not just uncooked cookie dough, but dough that hasn’t yet had chocolate chips or sugar added to it, and then going, “these are both cookies, but one of them is a much worse cookie.”
I’m also not really sure where the “continually lied, manipulated and acted like the aggrieved party” comes from. My read is that she was mostly lying to herself about not being attracted. And I really don’t see any manipulation. If anything Dorothy’s been the one pushing back, saying “we can’t …” even if she’s not actually strong enough to resist the temptation.
I guess I can see it in a broad sense? The first laundry session can be read as a manipulation tactic insofar as it was explicitly intended to get Joyce’s hands in her pants and release a pressure valve so she’d stop trying to get with Joyce.
That’s not an argument I’d make, though, I think Dorothy was dealing with a lot of things including her own possessiveness and desire for Joyce but obviously she wasn’t conscious of a lot of it.
Joe was a bad person, but he got called out on it and is actively trying to better himself for the person he believes is his moral center. Dorothy’s trauma of seeing Joyce get hauled off by Blaine has caused her to spiral and make bad decision after bad decision. And the moral center who called Joe out for his behavior is now ENCOURAGING Dorothy’s behavior. I think Dotty can course correct, but someone is really going to have to QUITE LITERALLY slap her in the face, especially if Joyce dumps Joe for her. (Which I firmly believe will happen.) The obvious person to do this is Becky, but Amber could be the surprising voice of reason since she saw the two of them kiss and is making an effort to be more sisterly to Joe.
Let’s all face it: Joyce is attracted to Joe, but she didn’t LOVE him, after all. It happens, and this enlightenment it can happen in any moment, with anyone.
As lot of people can forgive Joe for what he did in the past, I can forgive these two.
This is a really nice comment, and you’re right it just happens sometimes!
Yee, plus one to both of ya!!! 🥲
I’m sorry, but I can’t see this as anything but retconning.
Joe and Joyce were previously portrayed as having a deep emotional connection *in addition* to them being hornt. Joe’s been her emotional support when it comes to dealing with her parents even when she still thought he was a sex pest.
Was she so deeply in love with him that the thought of cheating was anathema? Clearly not. But come on, it was *not* written as a fling.
Right? So sick of the “these things happen in real life” angle. This isn’t real life! It’s a story!
Well. For what it’s worth, you are describing part of the comic that I thought depicted a really good, important friendship. Which didn’t read as romantic to me at the time.
If it wasn’t meant to be romantic, maybe it’s not a retcon.
If I was only talking about their texting during the first semester, I’d concede the point. But I’m not. I’m also talking specifically about when Carol showed up to tell Joyce she sold her house. Joe and Joyce were dating then. And she turned to him instantly for support. Going through the papers Carol dumped on Joyce even led to their first real makeout session if I remember properly.
If Joyce decides that her relationship with Joe is less of a priority to her than her relationship with Dorothy, that’s one thing. It’s another to retroactively declare “she was never serious about Joe in the first place”.
Well, you said “Joe’s been her emotional support when it comes to dealing with her parents even when she still thought he was a sex pest“, so yeah, I did think you meant the pre-dating stuff that I didn’t read as romantic. My mistake!
I would believe in retconning if there was not any clue of attraction between Joyce and Dorothy in all DoA, what is not the case.
The amount of effort for Joyce to have any sexual contact with Joe kinda of made me expected she would choose another person. Maybe Willis could explain this rejection better, instead using Rich Mullins to show her how she was refraining for his body.
Also, about the cheating, I agree that Joyce was so worried about not cheating on Joe, but Joyce also cheated on Raidah.
Not what I mean.
I took your comment as “Joyce realized she never had a deep emotional connection to Joe, he’s just hot and she wanted his body”.
Which is directly at odds with how many aspects of their relationship were portrayed.
Also, going to add that this is the *second time* we’ve seen Joyce just barrel on over another person’s relationship because she wanted something. She looks so smug talking about hurting Walky’s feelings in that panel that I almost can’t stand it. Kinda hope she finally learns something that sticks this time around.
have you met joyce, this has been joyce’s whole entire deal since 1997
There are many different types of love and Joe and Joyce is different than Dotty and Joyce. I believe what was in the moment of nearly being arrested caused Joyce’s empathy for her best friend to turn into blind passion. But passion wears off. And I’m sure whatever they currently have will be ruined by a snarky comment by Dorothy at Joe’s expense. Remember, Ethan and Danny had giant crushes on each other but Danny ruined a potential relationship by telling Ethan that he was better off without Mike. It’s very possible Dorothy could say the same thing since she NEVER liked Joe.
It’s going to be painful waiting to see if there is any remorse for any of this. Or at the very least for Walky or Joe to be rightfully angry. So many people are certain they are both gonna get over it and man, fuck that, I want to see at least one of them cut them out of their lives. Anything less is just so narratively convenient that I can’t buy it.
I think at minimum we should see Walky be no longer comfortable hanging out at lunch with the girl who broke his heart twice and the girl who was subconsciously trying to steal his girlfriend from day 1 and finally got what she wanted
And that’s so much of his group that I can’t imagine him sticking with it. And… that’s rough. Not going to hang out with Lucy. Sal’s too cool for him. Asher is still too evil for him to join that group. Amber’s getting shot right now. So, what’s left?
Billie and Alice!
I think if Walky distanced himself from the group Sal would be there for him over Joyce amd Dorothy. Especially if Joyce does chose to be an a$$ to him.
Asher is too… evil?? Like, from an abstract perspective for the narrative or from walky’s perspective? Walky likes the guy a lot, and from the narrative perspective, Asher is a good person with a dark past that he regrets. Hes like as close to an archetypal anti-hero you can get while still being about college kids.
I mean there is the sword of Damocles that Walky’s currently unaware of which is that Asher was an accomplice to him getting kidnapped (and more indirectly his roommate being murdered).
yeah and that isn’t at all a reason for him to not start hanging out with asher compared to other people. It’s a great reason narrativley, and it obviously won’t stop walky because he doesn’t know about it
Not disagreeing! Just means that when the thread holding up that sword snaps, it’ll be yet another pie in Walky’s face.
three times even! plus setting him up with Lucy for her own purposes, then trying to get him to dump her. I forget if it was just in a rejected strip, but it resolved too neatly; Walky taking 100% of the blame for ruining his main friendship at the time.
Dorothy uses people, especially Walky. Sure, it’s because she’s immature, but I want him to be clear eyed and angry about it finally.
This latest rebound between them has so transparently and clear-cut been Dorothy using Walky that I really hope he finally gets at least a little angry about it.
It was obvious that he was hurt when she referred to their relationship as “consequence-free fun,” so I can see him being furious when Dorothy dumps him and reminds him that what they had was “consequence-free fun.”
Maybe she has a future in politics after all!
What about Naomi?
That used to confuse the hell out of me watching The Electric Company.
I mean, what about Becky? As said above, this will break her. Hard, really hard.
Then she has some growing up to do. I’m not saying she can’t be hurt or a little sad that the rejection she experienced was more complete than she knew at the time, BUT she’s got a girlfriend, a better life now, and Joyce is still her best friend. If she is “broken” about Joyce figuring herself out instead of supportive? It’ll be a good bump in the road for her to hit because she needs to get a dose of maturity about it.
That said, I’m looking forward to watching them all navigate it!
So….odds of someone taking a photo of their first kiss amidst the chaos and it travelling around the world at the speed of internet to land squarely in front of Joyce’s mom are…….
Oh boy, that’d be good drama. The kiss among the tear gas being the defining moment of the protest, held up by both the Anti-War side as “Love Wins” and the Pro-War side as “They Don’t Even Care About Their Own Cause.” Then we get a full page spread of every character waking up the next morning seeing the headline on papers/websites.
Except Billie, she slept in, content that there was nothing interesting in store at the protest.
I don’t think the anti-genocide side would hold it up as “Love wins”. I think it would be frustrating to try to get an anti-genocide and pro-divestment message across, just for some randos to stroll in at the last moment and get the whole thing turned into about them making out.
You might get some liberals who are ok with the genocide, but don’t want to say that out loud, say “Love Wins”.
Why on earth would “love wins” be the message from the anti-war side? That wasn’t what the protest was about! Much more likely the anti-war protestors are gonna be pissed off about a couple of white girls becoming the face of the movement.
College kids protesting something something. Boring. Two girls kissing as tear gas blossoms around them — HOT
Does Joyce’s mom even use the internet? There’s a whole lot of ungodly stuff on there, so I hear.
Is anyone else spending like an hour plus revisiting comments here? I have to start setting myself a timer 😅
I have been finding myself refreshing this more often lately, for sure.
I love to see people interacting with me.
Only an hour? I come back constantly to check up on the comments
And it’s almost never worth it
🙁
same
Joyce lives in a romcom. True love conquers everything. People who are barriers to true love become npcs. But not her sidekick, Becky.
Really sucks for Becky BUT Dina is perfect for her. Hopefully this doesn’t cause any cracks between them. I think they can deal with it accordingly
I think by confronting this part of Becky their relationship is more likely to be rock solid
Joyce does not care about destroy or hurt Walky. I’m expecting this exactly cat-fight between both. Hahahah
Can someone clarify one thing: How long has it been since Joe and Joyce actually established their relationship? Not just flirting, not just dating, but a mutally-agreed-upon relationship. Comic timelines are messy, but in my head it’s been like a week or so. And Walky/Dorothy is even newer, and even less likely to been explicitly discussed.
Point being this: Romantically kissing someone you’re attracted to while in a monogamous relationship is cheating, and cheating is bad. But I feel like a lot of people are being *very* harsh towards two barely-20-year-olds who have been rocked by an enormous personal realization over a very short period of time, all because they didn’t dot every i and cross every t with their weeks-or-days-long partners beforehand. And now they’re having a frank discussion about the next, hard steps to take, and people are getting madder because it’s taking a few hours to hash it out.
At my age, I know plenty of good people who have happy, monogamous relationships that have lasted decades. And I was also there for the messy beginnings of some of those relationships. I don’t believe in the idea of “the one”, but I do believe in “one of very few”, and life isn’t always so kind to present you with one of those opportunities at the maximally-convenient time.
The literal amount of time for the relationships is short but there’s been a fair amount of screen time for Joe and Joyce. I feel like looking at this story with the literal framing of the amount of time doesn’t really make sense.
It’s like looking at a movie with a romance that develops in it rapidly over the confined time space of the movie and thinking “well clearly it doesn’t really make sense for them to be that close, it’s only been a week.”
Like, we are in comic book time. After a certain point it becomes useless to think in terms of “it’s only been a couple weeks” because in reality those weeks have been years.
They’re 18, not 20. We are in the second semester of their first year, and the only one who’s 19 among the main cast of freshmen is Dina, who we later learned got held back a grade due to her neurodivergence.
There’s a tangential side point here to the “duration” argument, too.
Joe and Joyce had been building a friendship for a while here. And then they started dating.
If he’d just met Joyce, I’d be somewhat sympathetic to “people are overreacting, it’s just a kiss, they can follow their mess”, but they’ve been friends for (IIRC) at least half a semester and presumably have some halfway decent idea where each other’s relationship boundaries are — and, plausibly, that Joe is especially sensitive to cheating.
The timeskip messes with some of this, granted, in terms of knowing how much Joyce and Joe were “friends” vs. “acquaintances” prior to dating now, but they’ve been talking at least since pre-timeskip (Danny even gripes about Joe opening up to Joyce faster than he opened up to Danny as early as mid-late Book 9.)
But Joyce and Dorothy have been close much longer than Joyce and Joe, both in-universe and real-world. So if Joyce and Joe’s friendship warrants their relationship being given more weight than its mere length would otherwise warrant, wouldn’t that apply doubly or triply so to Joyce and Dorothy’s?
And that’s ignoring the whole “someone who assumed they were one orientation suddenly discovers they are a different orientation” angle. And as much as I agree with Danny that being bi or pan doesn’t excuse cheating, I do think that if the person you’ve been platonically in love since the moment you first met suddenly and unexpectedly becomes a viable romantic and sexual option, I do think that should be taken into account.
They’ve been together for 10 days in-comic, (since the Joementum chapter of Book 13), and a bit more than 2 years real time.
the sheer moral fury have about this plotline is buckwild. y’all need to go stand in a brook and look up at the sun through the trees, i swear
I don’t have any brooks near me god damnit
This is the sentiment I don’t get. “Why are people getting so heated about this strip dealing with emotionally fraught and extremely charged topics?” Well you just answered your own question!
i did not ask a question and i do not consider this particular storyline to be particularly emotionally fraught OR extremely charged
Bully for you!
I think I need to just stop reading any of the comments for the next few months, if not just take a break entirely and come back to the comment later. It’s earnestly become really exhausting and draining reading the arguing here and I don’t think it’s worthwhile for me to put this much emotional energy here when there’s more important shit.
honestly wise
Good on you wish we all had in us to do the same.
I’ve been in Becky’s position (sorta), where a close friend from scouts made it clear she wasn’t sapphic or interested in girls, only to end up dating a girl a couple years later. Hopefully Joyce is better at handling it than her, miss “Yeah I date girls but I thought it was clear it would never be someone like YOU” wooooof
Really big fan of seeing Joyce be messier and meaner. She’s always been this way, (even back in its walky, although I maintain that shouldnt really have a bearing on this comic neccesarily) but for most of dumbing of age shes been so reigned in by fear of… kinda everything?
Fear of god, fear of the people around her leaving her because she’s too different, etc. It’s nice that now that she has the confidence to not be afraid, shes using it in ways that are both good and bad because she has no idea how to be a person yet.
She doesn’t want to repress all of her feelings and wants, but hasn’t learned how to do it in a way that doesn’t hurt others.
Thanks you. This isn’t out of character. It’s character development, which isn’t always positive.
TV Tropes has a lot to answer for, heh, but I think a lot of people would call it character derailment instead.
Personally, I reserve that for when I think a development is annoying AND doesn’t make sense AND doesn’t wind up going anywhere interesting, but I’m sure people use it to describe any development they don’t enjoy, too.
so wait they’re together together? Are we not getting a love square of Joe-Joyce-Dorothy-Walky?
Your mom is a love square.
Okay, the pedant in me is asking.
It’s obvious to me how this is a betrayal of Joe and Walky, but how is this a betrayal of Becky?
I get why Becky might feel a bit of betrayal from it, and maybe a bit of more generic hurt and slight and the like, but in what way is this actually a betrayal? What sort of obligation or commitment or moral standard to Becky would Theocracy (yes, that’s the ship name) be breaching?
And yes, I know, the point isn’t about it being a betrayal PER SE but instead about the sense of hurt Becky might feel. See above sentence about me being a pedant.
I mean you are already answered your own question i don’t know ehat else can be said about it.
Okay, here’s my own spin on POTENTIAL negative reactions to this from other characters, assuming Joe and Walky are visibly distraught about all of this.
TEAM JOE
At the top of the list, I’m gonna put Danny.
While a LOT of characters are likely to have negative reactions in more of an abstract “ew, you had boyfriends? Cheating’s not cool” sort of way, Danny is Joe’s lifelong best friend, and he and Dorothy haven’t even interacted in any significant way since she borrowed his shoes on Walky’s behalf. He barley even knows Joyce in this universe! So he has no reason to even feel mixed here, and he could easily turn his previous comment to Dorothy up to 11.
At most, Danny might have a brief, reflexive “oh man Joe what did you do now?” reaction, for which he’ll then probably apologize.
Next up: Jacob. He seemed to have gotten past his and Joyce’s mistake by the time they met up again in the gym a while back, but I doubt he still considers her a good friend, either, and he barely knows Dorothy. I agree with the idea that he’s likely to at least feel like he told Joe so, even if he doesn’t say it out loud, but I’m sure he’ll still be ultimately sympathetic.
Lucy, I think, might have some mixed feelings — it depends on whether she still has any lingering bad feelings about Walky/Dorothy — but in the absence of strong loyalty to anyone on either side, I imagine she’ll be inclined to stick with her still-new boyfriend. Plus, as much as she’s been a people-pleaser in the past, I think Lucy would still be confrontational enough to at least mutter a very audible, “Cheating is never okay,” into an otherwise awkward silence.
Alternately, I guess she might take this newest development to Raidah? As proof that Raidah was right all along about Joyce and Sarah’s whole friend-group being crappy people.
Dina is another character who likes Joe, as well as… not really liking Joyce all that much! And not really knowing Dorothy all that well! How outwardly angry she’s likely to get depends, I think, on how the situation is presented to her. I’m not foreseeing any type of violence, personally? Dina’s violence has been 99% comedic slapstick stuff. I currently think she might be more upset than Becky, though, just because this strip presented the idea of telling Becky in the way it did — and also because Becky isn’t really friends with Joe or Walky, so she’s more in the camp of “general abstract displeasure”, rather than being upset for either boy.
Sarah… is one of the characters I think will be most conflicted. Even if she hears the worst possible version of this story (which, given both social awkwardness and guilt, Dorothy might just deliver herself!), she loves Joyce like a little sister and actually tried to get Dorothy to cockblock Joe. And she was only just starting to come around on Joe!
Buuuuut. There’s also the matter of her actual little sister, Liz, with whom she has a more fraught relationship at least in part because she felt like Liz was constantly stealing the boys she liked. This might push that same button.
Meanwhile, for TEAM WALKY………
Well. Does Sal actually know what she saw was incriminating? It’s hard to be sure. She might be aware he and Dorothy are nominally dating again, but it wasn’t that long ago that she was apologizing to Dorothy for bringing Walky to her bottoming-out karaoke party, and I kind of think she’s the type of person where her default reaction to ANY kind of relationship drama is “not my business”. I bet she’ll at least wait until Walky’s reacted before stating any kind of opinion one way or the other.
We know she’s something of a secret romantic, given how she’s been interacting with Danny, but I think she’s also expressed plenty of cynical opinions about humanity at large, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she sees cheating as one of many shitty things that just happen in life, including perhaps a thing that’s happened to her in the past, and that rather than being angry, she just encourages Walky to drop Dorothy and move on with his life.
An opinion that Jennifer is almost certain to share, unless she sticks with her earlier proffered advice of “best friends are allowed to bang, like, once and still be regular best friends”, in which case she might not actually consider this cheating??? And, if she said that out loud, it might torpedo things with Alice!
Amber and Amazi-Girl might have split opinions on this one. Amber, as we know, was maybe kinda subconsciously encouraging Dorothy to cheat on Walky in hopes of freeing Walky up to date herself, and it’s entirely possible that she feels so guilty over that that she refuses to judge anyone in this situation at all? But otherwise I imagine she would be supportive of Walky, whom she cares about, over Dorothy and Joyce, two people she only tangentially knows.
Amazi-Girl, meanwhile… might be similarly stymied, actually? She kept whatever opinions she had of their kiss to herself while urging them to get out of dodge. But we know she’s been trying to be “less of a cop”, which might very well land her in a bit of a “moral relativism” spot for a while on matters less cut-and-dry than “genocide bad, police brutality also bad”. Plus, she might feel some responsibility for not stopping Amber from escalating this situation. We’ll see!
I doubt either of them would be neutral on cheating at any other point in time, but they’re both in a weird spot right now.
And finally: Booster, who, unlike Amber, might still be in a guilt-free mental space of “trash goblin craving mess”? But who I do think likes Walky, and probably wouldn’t actually enjoy any real suffering or sadness from him.
Kind of sucks for Walky that neither his biological nor de facto sisters seem the type to be unconditionally be in his corner about this.
Yeah. He’s… one of the people in Joyce’s orbit who I don’t think has a lot of friends. I’d think “maybe I’m wrong, maybe he’s got off-panel friends in his wing”, except for how hard Mike’s death hit him. It just seemed like he really didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, at all. I imagine he’s on somewhat cordial terms with most of the guys in his wing (more minor characters, like Ken or Arthur), but not even to the point where I’d assume they even know he and Dorothy got back together. You know?
It made me sad while I was writing it out, and was indeed ALMOST my very first sentence about Sal — “not even his sister seems to be on Team Walky” — before I decided that we couldn’t really be sure she’d even interpreted what she saw as Dorothy and Joyce being actually for-real intimate, and then I got lost in further introspection on how she might feel about cheating in general.
(I think, even odds that she either gets VERY cynical about it and treats it like something that “just happens” and Walky being hurt as another indication that he’s lived a softer, kinder life than her — OR she gets very upset, actually, and we learn that even though she literally had a friend call the cops on her once, she’s never been cheated on, and she can’t believe Dorothy or Joyce would do something so awful.
Like, I vacillate. The way she “distressingly” turned out to be the type of girl who likes getting flowers — it makes me think maybe Danny’s the first time she’s ever had a boyfriend, rather than just, like, one-night stands, or otherwise very casual hookups outside of a relationship…
…but it’s hard to say.)
I do think Jennifer would take his side over Dorothy and Joyce eventually, but she’s got a stronger bond with Joyce than any of the people I put on Team Joe, so she might also be kind of torn. Joyce helped her get Alice back into her life extremely recently. And even though I think her pseudo sibling would ultimately win out…
Also, if it turns out her ridiculous comment to Joyce was in any way part of why Joyce went forward with this, Jennifer might wind up feeling guilty, which might in turn manifest as defensiveness, which might in turn start a fight between her and Walky…
The TL;DR on this is: Walky definitely needs more friends. Like, STAT.
Reading your analysis made me think of the time Sal and Jennifer secretly agreed that Walky can be a good brother sometimes, and pretty all around cool. (I forgot who immediately threatened to tell him that the other said this). I have to believe that Sal and Jennifer would eventually come to talk to Walky.
Booster—I think Booster would harass Walky about it up until the point where they realize that Walky is not okay. For a lot of guff Booster gives and feels towards Walky (telling Dorothy she could do better than him), something that sticks out to me is Booster looking genuinely sad that Walky believes he should never try to have nice things he wants. Even saying to Walky “You don’t really mean that, do you?”
I do actually wonder though if this will paint Dorothy in a different light for Lucy. Yes, Walky hurt Lucy—did not stand up for Lucy, but Dorothy nudged Walky in Lucy’s direction, then more or less snatched him back before they even had a chance of reconciliation or proper talk—then began something with Joyce.
I feel like even Lucy, whatever she and Walky needed to resolve would look at the chain of events like “hold on a second.”
Inasmuch as Lucy is aware of Dorothy as a person I think these events are likely to mark her down in Lucy’s mind as “someone who uses people.” She can be pretty judgemental. And to be fair Dorothy is someone who uses people. Even if she feels bad about it sometimes.
Hence my thought about her maybe going to Raidah with it.
Because yeah, I agree that Lucy might very well view this as, shall we say, Sus. Walky was very defensive of Dorothy last time, arguing to Lucy that Dorothy tried to keep them together and was the reason he asked her out in the first place… but, of course, he might not be inclined to defend her in the same way, sooooo…
NOTE: all of this is very, very contingent on Walky and Joe being VISIBLY SAD, which I’m not sure we’re going to get: even if Walky is both surprised and upset, he’s known to sublimate those feelings into increased jerky goofballery — and Joe, I think is likely kind of resigned to this outcome, and might try to put on a brave face for Joyce, or even agree to a poly setup despite not wanting it.
We will, ofc, see.
I’ll definitely co-sign “I expect Joe to put on a brave face” but I think it’ll be less “accept a poly setup” and more “refuse to let this cause backsliding”.
Hot take: I think he might actually be a LITTLE pointed with Joyce — “After the moralizing you gave me last semester about the list, which I deserved, this is how you’re gonna carry on in your dating life? Good. Luck.”
I think that would be VERY satisfying for a lot of the readers. I’m just not sure!! /gesticulates wildly at my cork board covered in red string again
I have so many theories for why Joyce might think this is going to be okay with Joe. I both anticipate and dread finding out which, if any, are right.
I think most satisfying scenario is Joyce assuming Joe will be alright and he most decidedly is not. I think she needs a little cold water splashed in her face.
You are very entitled to those feelings!
One of my conspiracy theor— err, ideas about what’s going on here is an earnest misunderstanding between the two of them, in which case I wouldn’t think she deserved that, necessarily.
But another of them is that once she slotted that Joe Peg into the Boyfriend Hole in her life, she kind of stopped thinking of him as a person who’d told her about his parents’ divorce, and who at least strongly implied, directly to her, some of what the commentariat has been saying about his relationship trauma… and started just seeing him as a Big Tall Handsome Accessory, whose strong feelings for her she’s enjoyed feeling flattered by, but hasn’t really taken very seriously.
And that Joyce would certainly deserve the cold water!
So. I vacillate.
Sadly, perhaps, this is the first thesis (we are NOT calling it “Boyfriend Hole Theory”) that actually rings true for me as to why Joyce seems to be in a bit of inconsistent feelings about cheating whiplash.
The other one is her interpreting Joe’s line about she should get what she wants entirely too broadly for how he likely meant it — frankly, given the mood, when I went back and you could tilt your head and decide it’s almost like he’s asking her to bail out right then if she’d rather be with Dorothy.
Can we call it Pegging Boyfriend Theory instead?
Absolutely the heck not.
I’m so glad you’re both enjoying my wording ❤️
Joe’s hole theory it is then.
OUR THEORIES CONTAIN MULTITUDES.
YES.
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3luq37ogqqc2v
Like come on.
all this talk about how the boyfriends and friends are gonna react not one thought for how jordan’s gonna react
Jordan’s not even a character.
He is! He has a character tag!
I guess I just have a slightly narrower idea of what constitutes a “character”.
Michael Jordan?
This isn’t what I was archive-diving for, but all the people who like to pretend that this came out of nowhere should probably look at this strip from 2014 and the two that follow it.
Random subject change! Who here had watched the apothecary diaries? I just finished season 1 and it was a great show.
My friend swears by it but getting back into comic books has kind of taken up a lot of my spare time for entertainment.
Hi yes I adored both seasons and am making my way through the light novels now 🫶 It reminds me of Fruits Basket in a bizarre kind of way and I looove Maomao as a main character. Great stuff!!
Could you tell where you read it? I might do the samd after finishing season 2.
I’ve been purchasing them one volume at a time, so I don’t really know! If buying isn’t an option there are definitely other websites that post their own translations… best bet is probably doing some reddit sleuthing lol.
I’m on episode five and it is SO COOL! The only problem is I watch it with my boyfriend so I have to wait to go to his house to watch it and he works afternoons to 11 this week so PHOOEY.
I absolutely love it, been watching it every week with some friends and we’re just about to watch the last ep of season 2!
Honestly? I hope it turns out horribly for these two. Seriously. Two people are gonna be devastated here. At the least. *Shrug* at this point, I am remaining here watching with interest.
Just the fact it’s been called out makes me think Becky already knew this was bound to happen, has worked her feelings through it, but will still play it up for a bit to make them sweat some more.
That would be extremely boring IMO, as would basically all the scenarios anyone is predicting of any character just having worked through all their issues with the situation offscreen. Why would that be interesting to read about?
Obviously so that in the last panel of the arc Willis can reveal that actually nobody has worked through their feelings on it and everybody is very sad in a 2 strip montage, one showing the happy couples in 3 panels (Lucy/Jacob, Joyce/Dorothy, Danny/Sal, maybe get Ethan and Asher in on this too) and the other showing the broken up ones (Walky, Joe, Sarah, Billie).
Wait, why is Sarah in there? Sarah’s doing *great*.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/practice/
It would be more interesting than Becky *still* being hung up on Joyce after all this time.
Seriously, look at where the story is. Becky’s current crisis is about the mutability of sexuality. While there *is* definitely going to be some drama for her about this, I don’t think it’s because she’s *still hung up on Joyce.”
I look forward to the cover of the school paper tomorrow being Dorothy and Joyce making out, before anyone is told…
Again, I will point out that if they were photographed, *that shit has already gone viral,* they do not need to wait for a *newspaper* like it’s the 1940s.
Joe isn’t something that Dorothy ever worries about.
In a sense, he’s not her problem. Although honestly she’s probably more worried about him than Joyce is, because I don’t think Joyce realizes *how* in love he is, but Dotty knows.
I’m excited to see who’s found out and why 🙂
…. Oh. Oh I forgot about that angle. While Becky will be irritated that Joyce isn’t just broad spectrum into girls, she’s into ONE SPECIFIC girl… well there is the slight bit of melodramatics of “WHYYYYY COULDNT IT HAVE BEEN MEEEE”
but then there’s the 100% Becky-driven “rivalry” with Dotty… stemming from both jealousy and a jaded sense of how smart Dotty is and on certain topics how smart she is NOT but still THINKS she’s got it 100% handled but.
Well I got it in my head it’s just hard to explain.
… I mean I think Joe will be pretty upset, I was already thinking this all week. He’s really mellowed out after the List incident and all that sort of thing, but there IS GONNA be a certain amount of “But I EARNED this, why does she have to have these doubts NOW? Is it ME am I STILL not good enough? Am I doomed to live the player life perpetually with surface level company, but essentially alone?”
Or will he actually be okay with an all parties disclosed polyamory thing, if it’s Dorothy, whom he’s seemed to be good friends with, friends enough to see through her self delusions to help her process.
I think he is sort of aware already that Dorothy is IN LOVE capital letters, with Joyce, and he was already trying to get her to see that the problem exists.
Hm. It may be that Joe decides to love her completely and selflessly and sort of… release her, to explore this side of herself with no shame from his corner, and he will wait for either final word they aren’t gonna happen or that she wants him back for good.
… I dunno why I’m so surprised but this entire plot line has become RIVETING.
Delicious. The destruction of Walky can begin!
At least you’ve decided to be shitty to a non-existent person. Good for you. Enjoy the sadness.
just testing the html system here lol
ok nope uh how about now
I love this storyline so much,