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They don’t tell you during any of the orientation or preparation, because it might scare away potentially great students who just happen to have some cultural taboo against eating people.
“Never enough” or they’re the opposite of someone who loses interest once they get off, like they’d work a whole orgy like a stone until everyone was satisfied.
Yeah but the outro of the song ends with, ‘You got the touch. You got the power. Yeah!’ so ‘never enough’ more implies difficulty halfway through they’re finally able to reach the climax… of the song.
I love the technicalities. I’ve seen it argued that mutual masturbation (i.e. using hands on each other to achieve simultaneous orgasm) doesn’t count as intimate. That just seems crazy.
Well, how are we using “intimate”? Mutual masturbation (either form: what you described or each party masturbating themself) can be intimate and can be sex, but doesn’t have to be either. But saying that, I often don’t consider sex (for me) “intimate.”
If we’re not intimate, I don’t want anyone touching my junk, and I don’t want to touch theirs. I suppose a happy ending at a massage parlor might not be very intimate, but even that’s a minor stretch.
It’s only masturbation if Joyce is touching herself.
If Joe is fingering Joyce (as stated in the comic), then it is manual sex (or any of the other many synonyms suggested in thread).
According to the blood donation form, handjobs don’t count.
(When they ask if you are a man who has had sex with a man, or a woman who has had sex with a man who has had sex with a man, they clarify that “sex” means contact between mouth/genitals/anus.)
Yeah, unless the Red Cross (or whoever the fuck, idc) is sandpapering the skin off your cock and rubbing their equally sandpapered hands up and down it, I don’t see what value their input has.
Truth.
Also, that reminds me of an old favorite meme of mine. It depicts a woman with long, gloriously painted nails – except on the middle and ring fingers of her left hand and the middle and index fingers of her right hand, all which are cut short and filed down.
The right hand is labeled “precision” and the left hand is labeled “power”.
I think some ppl would count it as ‘foreplay’. at least between a man and a woman versus two lesbians/bi girls if they do that but no like strap ons or other toys?
Joe would have to do a lot more to get that “Best Boyfriend” title. That Title has to go to the Boyfriend from “The 100 Girlfriends who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You”, that dude has some insane talent at Boyfriending.
I’ve been in that scenario. Really after about 15 or 20, they all just kind of blur in together as “female” and telling one from the others becomes well-nigh impossible.
You’re gonna need a spreadsheet and database that work well together. Might want to look into facial recognition and camera glasses, too. If that’s too noticeable, check into voice recog.
In fairness to the rest of the population:
1. Rentarou’s Family is literally divinely-ordained. As long as he keeps trying, he will be their perfect boyfriend, assuming they don’t die from running out of luck before they accept him.
2. He has received at least one supernatural boost to his abilities, albeit accidentally on the part of the divinity.
3. the boy has been dedicated to loving his (eventual) girlfriend(s) since the age of 4, having saved his allowance since then in a piggy bank labeled ‘Girlfriend Joy Fund’. He is, as the narrator says, a dyed-in-the-wool Love Monster.
Joe has always been all about consent. He stopped immediately when Sarah’s sister told him to stop, didn’t get angry, didn’t do anything. He may be a horny bastard, but he isn’t an evil bastard.
Plus, I’d be willing to bet he aas expecting something like this to happen. He has always known Joyce had issues with sex that she was trying to overcome, but he also knew that meant he needed to have patience.
Besides, remember when he was panicking about ruining his relationship with her with sex? He’s thought about this a lot, and not just for wank bank material
i mean speaking for myself, when you do meet that person who consistently seems absolutely perfect to you, there really is a lot of motivation to get things right as much as you can. We all know Joyce Brown is Worth It and Joe knows that even harder than the rest of us.
* Called Dorothy a lesbian for not wanting to bang him.
* Told Danny off for not wanting to bang a woman because his reasons weren’t good enough.
* Did NOT stop when Sarah asked him to stop hitting on her.
* Published personal, sexual, and misogynistic information about women without telling them.
* Joked about getting women drunk so they’d have a threesome with him.
Sorry, no, Joe has not always been about consent. A character saying something is not the same as that thing being true.
That said, he has changed and thankfully grown as the comic continued.
While that comment was still horribly gross, I don’t think he was actually into her lack of experience. He was going to “upgrade her from a 4 to a 10”. Experience would make her better, in his system.
But he also wants to be the one giving that experience– went for Joyce rather than Sarah because Joyce “[needed] to be broken in,” because he’d be “helping her along” to “womanhood.”
I think it matters that the experience that would “upgrade her” would be with him. I think “she’ll be better for me having done this” fits with being part of being into her lack of experience.
Far be it for me to defend Early Joe, but point of order: he went for Joyce in front of Sarah because he was also trying to Wingman for Danny, who he was setting up with Sarah instead of Joyce on the premise that Danny needed the more experienced girl.
I think his specific logic was something like “you just got out of your first serious relationship, which was also with the girl to whom you lost your virginity; you need a quick one-night stand with an experienced older woman for your rebound”.
He’s also consistently been very into Sarah’s whole vibe, and we’ve also seen him attracted to and successful at hooking up with Malaya and Roz and, of course, Tall Rachel. I feel like our evidence mostly suggests that Joyce was more of a combo-breaker in terms of his pattern.
But of course. She was also the first girl we saw him hit on after Dorothy, so I doubt we weren’t supposed to draw conclusions from his approach with her. I doubt inexperience and “a challenge” were turn-offs, either.
Lost the comment I was typing, so short version: He gave reasoning for both himself and Danny, then put a lot more effort into his attempts with Joyce than trying to wingman Danny– I don’t think the wingmanning overrides what he was saying for himself (and the comments continued when he was no longer with Danny– “fix her with my penis” was said to Sarah). I never said he was only into inexperienced girls, so the other people he’s be interested in aren’t really relevant here.
I mean, not quite. He told Danny off for his claim that Billy didn’t know what he wanted, and pointed out that part of consent is accepting the other person’s stated feelings.
Danny assuming he knew what Billie wanted better than she did was wrong of him, but he did know that HE didn’t want to have sex with her (he “wanted to” in that he was aroused, but not in what he felt comfortable with); that he didn’t want to wasn’t accepted as reason enough.
This is actually going almost exactly how I predicted. It’s nice to see my best case scenario panning out for once. (For the record, my best case was that Joyce would get cold feet, Joe would be accepting, and it would likely increase her trust and leave the relationship stronger. Okay, I didn’t predict fingers.)
Old Joe was crude about his open sex life and rating women, but I don’t recall him ever showing a problem with consent. He was just annoyingly good at finding consenting partners (and lucky in finding ones who didn’t get attached and cause drama afterwards. Or maybe that’s what the crudeness protected him from.)
He’d also shown moments of emotional perceptiveness, especially with Danny; he just groused about it.
You can be crude about sex and still be a decent human being to your partner.
Now, he was treating the girls he rated as faceless female bodies, but by all accounts he has changed, apologized for past transgressions, and has ALWAYS been all about consent
I’m not so sure he’s “always been all about consent”. Like, I don’t think he’s crossed any lines he can’t uncross, but from the start of the comic it’s been more accurate to say he was all about the body count. He just wanted to fuck, wasn’t unusually picky, and moved on once he was done with the latest woman. Consent was a baseline level of human decency he was staying at, and if I wanna be really uncharitable I could suggest it was more of a useful tool to him than something he was “all about”.
His entire horn dog persona was created so that he doesn’t hurt anyone like his dad hurt his mom. It was a cover. He did a Dude Bro version of Bruce Wayne instead of a Himbo.
Because if everyone Already Knows he’s a horndog who sleeps around, *no one can get hurt if he does,* because they knew what he was when agreeing to the sex with Joe.
He jokes about the body count, but he has casual sex with ONE fully consenting woman. He joked about Joyce needing to loosen up with booze but then never makes the joke again after the roofies happened. The list was a dudebro antic that breached containment.
His biggest hater (Dottie) hates him because he was an idiot teenager and called her gay, and her dislike tainted everything because Dottie was/is the deuteragonist and the shippers are piranhas.
Dottie started out looking like the most “adult” of the group and is fast approaching a blow up because of her attraction to Joyce.
Joe started out looking like a stereotype jock asshole, but his true nature is being pulled out because of his attraction to Joyce.
There’s the obvious counterargument about the RSS feed, but for those who lean on that to say “no, he was always just a scummy asshole,” I don’t think that they understand how someone can compartamentalize certain parts of themself and not realize the damage until it’s too late. Willis made it pretty clear that the List was the first major moment when Joe seriously started changing, and it wasn’t because “crap, they all figured me out, and now nobody wants to sleep with me.” It was because he saw that he was *still harming people* when he kept this distance; and he was harming them BECAUSE he was keeping this very impersonal.
Joe had lots of space to fuck up and grow up from his starting point, while Dot as a pretty mature teen had farther to fall. Her blow up has been at least 50% burn out, which happens to a lot of competent, likely neurodivergent young women.
Joe has hetero privilege, and possibly neurotypical Dot’s attraction to Joyce comes with a huge revelation about her own sexuality, which means revising her whole understanding of her identity. While Joe is having his first experience with emotional vulnerability, he’s still way more in his comfort zone here than any queer person ever in their revelatory phase, esp an ND one in burnout.
To be clear I’m not a Dot/Joyce shipper. I’m willing to ship whatever Willis makes look adorable. If anything I lean Joe/Joyce because mutual feelings are established verbally on both sides, and that’s more comfy for me. I just feel uneasy when these threads treat these two as apples and apples, a woman’s “low standard” is often a man’s “high standard”, and doubly so for queer vs het folks or ND vs NT.
The worst thing he’s done is rate women on a fuck ability scale. But he’s always sought out enthusiastic sexual partners, and has shown to stop before when they get uncomfortable like with Sarah’s sister.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Joe being promiscuous. Yeah, he’s all about having sex, with the many “faceless women” he has had sex with. But he never led any of them on, nobody that has actually had sex with him has had something bad to say about it.
It really does seem like people hold Joe to a double standard because they think he is a creep for being promiscuous whereas they wouldn’t feel that way about other characters.
Unless you’re just as judgemental of Roz, the shoe would fit.
I mean, if we’re honest… Walky is probably the current reigning champion for casual sexual encounters out of the group. and no one gives him any real guff about being easy.
There’s way too much to untangle here. The fuck do you mean by “just as judgemental of Roz”? I’m not judging Joe for sleeping around, I’m admitting he did it and not sugar-coating his displayed attitude. You may as well accuse me of blue-shaming the sky.
See, the thing is, the issue is absolutely not having multiple sexual partners. That’s never been the issue with Joe; he had many other issues instead.
“Promiscuity” is a red herring. I don’t think anyone in DoA, or you either, Taffy, are really critical of Joe for having a large number of partners, or even for them being casual. That’s a false accusation that sucks people into arguing about whether or not we’re being hypocritical and unfair to the poor cis white hetero male.
The real argument is that Joe’s behavior is reminiscent of someone using manipulative tactics and trickery, and implying that when consent was given, it wasn’t *really* given because he was a manipulator. And that he was treating women as less than human beings, and more like things.
And I’d go so far as to say that your criticisms seem to highlight not the promiscuity, but the method and the lengths. You’ve got a lot of phrases there that have a lot of “predator/prey” connotations there. Phrases like “body count” and “moved on once he was done with” are not phrases I’d expect to hear said about Roz or Jennifer. Nor is “baseline level of human decency” or that consent was a “useful tool.”
And yeah, if you someone is starting from the position of “People are criticizing Joe for being promiscuous!” that sounds really hypocritical.
Because yeah, if I said “Roz is promiscuous, but she still sticks above the baseline level of human decency,” that implies that I’m saying that Roz just barely crests that point despite her sexuality, which is gross.
But that’s not it, because again, the promiscuity is a red herring. Nobody really cares that Joe has casual relationships. It’s about how he finds partners, and how he treats them.
The one thing that I hesitate on, is that I’m not sure if Willis ever really portrayed Joe as someone as a predator, but as someone who others would *perceive* to be a predator. DOA Joe, pre-list reveal, kind of reminds me of Roomies Joe – in that he thinks of himself as a ladies’ man, and expresses his sexuality openly, but rather than being manipulative, is just extremely open and obvious about what he’s all about to a cringeworthy degree.
Yes, Joe had the list, and yes, he rated women – but he also rated men, too. He flat up told Danny that he was a seven, and Danny was Joe’s best (and seemingly only) friend. That implies that this isn’t Joe’s view of women, but his view of sex and relationships. If Joe’s guilty of objectifying women, then he’s also guilty of objectifying men and objectifying himself. Because he had entries on LOTS of people, including (if I recall correctly) elderly folk.
So far, I don’t see any reference to anyone he’s manipulated into having sex. No angry exes, or humiliated past ‘conquests,’ just Joe having had been with Roz and Malaya and almost hooked up with Liz.
The fact that Joe has literally almost no guy friends, other than a kid he grew up with, and isn’t really part of any friend group, makes me suspect that this is actually just an expression of trauma from when he grew up. Joe is actually more socially isolated than Amber. You don’t get to a point where “I can’t ever matter to anyone because then I’ll hurt them” without trauma.
And we can see real remorse, real regret, real fear, when Joyce first told Joe about Gashface and how he tried to take advantage of her. And when she puts it on his lap, that his behavior actually matters and his list actually matters because there are OTHER people out there, who actually ARE predators, and follow his lead but don’t show his restraint, he’s horrified, but recognizes that she’s right.
And so that’s where there’s the one thing that I strongly disagree with you on. You say that Joe used consent like a tool, and that he only maintained consent because that’s the baseline of human decency, and I don’t think that’s ever really portrayed – in fact, I believe we see the exact opposite.
Joe distanced himself not because it was fun, but because he didn’t want to hurt anyone. That means that it’s very important for Joe to make sure his partner *knows* that their relationship is casual and that there’s nothing behind it. If someone sleeps with him thinking that he’s her boyfriend, then it’s exactly as bad as if he *was* their boyfriend. That’s why he told Dorothy that she was worse than him – because she was crossing the line that he swore to himself he’d never cross.
@Borkborkbork: I said a few days back, and I’m standing by, my theory that actually showing Joe stepping over the line (as opposed to just implying that he’s done it) was something Willis didn’t want to do…. and that there’s a good reason why Ryan’s assault on Joyce was stopped so early in the process, and that the other girls he was more… successful… with were off-panel.
I also don’t know whether I think it’s a problem, because. Folks were genuinely defending Ryan right up until Joyce glassed him in the face, so. I think Willis would have had to go REALLY REALLY far to get people to stop defending Joe’s behavior back then, to the point of making Joe a character it was no longer really feasible, within the time table of DoA, to redeem.
@Li – I know it’s now the next day and there’s almost no conversation that spans days, but this is interesting and I’m hoping you respond.
So, you’re saying that Willis intentionally didn’t include Joe’s “conquests” as being on screen, but *absolutely* happening, because he intended to later make him a sympathetic character and didn’t want to paint him early as a villain?
I don’t really remember what the comment section was like back then (and don’t have the time at present to read) but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see two different viewpoints. Just like how there are two different viewpoints even today. It’s the hallmark of good writing that people aren’t simply black and white, but levels of gray. Personally, I hope that we don’t ever see people “stop defending ___ character.”
I do agree with you that it does seem that when Willis has a villain in mind, he very much goes out of his way to make them irredeemable, and if he intends for characters to have a redemption arc, you see it from the beginning. Blaine, Ross, Mary, Clint, Carol, and Linda really haven’t ever been seen in a positive light, whereas Hank, Charles, Ruth, Faz, and Joe were all introduced as early antagonists but with some hope. There’s really only one character who I could say started out being painted 100% as a villain, and might now have some sort of redemption arc, and that’s Naiomi… and even then, I feel like her actions are the right actions, for the wrong reasons.
But I’m not sure that I can take that knowledge, and extend it to Joe, and say, “Well, he *must* have been terrible, because it was implied that he was terrible, and Willis must have done that because he can’t tell a story that has someone truly awful who also has a redemption arc.” Because he wrote Mike, after all; Mike who was honestly, *literally* awful, but (some) people feel was a sympathetic character, who still had good qualities, even though he was an absolute scumbag. And he wrote Mike as a protagonist at the same time that he was writing Joe as a protagonist. And even though many people believe that Mike didn’t redeem himself, that he was still an absolute villain at the end… it’s undeniable that the way that Willis intended Mike’s sendoff, that he intended for Mike to do some good and save the people that he loved and cared about. That’s why he had the whole ending with Amber, where Head Mike tells her she was worth it.
@Borkborkbork Sure! I’ll take this by quotes ‘cuz that should keep me more on topic >.>
So, you’re saying that Willis intentionally didn’t include Joe’s “conquests” as being on screen, but *absolutely* happening, because he intended to later make him a sympathetic character and didn’t want to paint him early as a villain?
+
But I’m not sure that I can take that knowledge, and extend it to Joe, and say, “Well, he *must* have been terrible, because it was implied that he was terrible, and Willis must have done that because he can’t tell a story that has someone truly awful who also has a redemption arc.”
So, kiiiind of yes, kind of no?
I went more in-depth on this in my previous much longer comment, but I wanna first stress my first paragraph again, because I genuinely think Willis also wouldn’t have ever wanted to show Joe actually stepping over a consent line on-panel the same way he didn’t want to show Ryan doing it unless Ryan was going to be immediately stopped and then beaten the crap out of (by Sarah, after Joyce glassed his face). I think showing Joe actually stepping over the line would’ve been potentially triggering for readers, as well as upsetting if not necessarily triggering for Willis themself. I think the catharsis of Ryan immediately getting beaten up was very necessary for that storyline to happen in Willis’s strip.
So, PARTLY because I don’t think he wanted Joe to be an irredeemable villain, but partly also because even for his irredeemable villains, we don’t see them successfully hurt anyone in this particular way. We see characters upset by misogynists all the time in DoA — but anything much darker than that stays off-panel, like Ryan’s other victims.
And ALSO there’s the third reason I suspect, which is — kiiiiind of a retcon? Not of Joe’s actions, but of Willis’s intent.
By which I mean: I kind of suspect 2010!Willis thought Joe was being better about consent, and more of an ethical horndog, than — say — 2016!Willis did (let alone 2025!Willis).
Which is the kind of thing that just happens sometimes when you’re writing such a long-running comic strip, and especially when the in-universe time is passing so slowly… you only have a couple of choices, as a writer.
If it’s just a little thing, you can just sweep it under the rug (which Willis has done once or twice, I think, most notably with Jennifer(????)’s casual use of the ableist r-slur — Willis has definitely just quietly deleted that from her vocabulary, but they lampshaded it by having one of Raidah’s awful friends use the same word a couple years later, and letting Raidah criticize her for it in an “even the bad guys have standards” moment)…
…or you can try to incorporate it into a character arc and make the issue something the CHARACTER has to deal with and overcome, which Willis first had Joe do with his casual misogyny (see: The Do-List, which was mainly about how it’s wrong to reduce women to numerical values), then with his simplistic view of consent (see: Liz), and most recently — well, the REAL reason why Carla wasn’t on Joe’s list in the early years is because she hadn’t yet become a DoA character, and Willis initially left it a tiny bit ambiguous whether she was on the list or not, but more recently, they’ve made it canonically the case that Joe didn’t have her on his list because of some level of transphobia, which I’d bet we aren’t completely done addressing just yet.
TL;DR: I think Joe’s “conquests” aren’t on-screen both because Willis doesn’t want to show that kind of thing without the character getting immediate comeuppence AND because Willis wasn’t planning on Joe being Ryan 2.0 AND because… Willis hadn’t originally intended Joe to be that bad, but eventually changed their mind and decided to address it in-comic.
I don’t really remember what the comment section was like back then (and don’t have the time at present to read) but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see two different viewpoints. Just like how there are two different viewpoints even today. It’s the hallmark of good writing that people aren’t simply black and white, but levels of gray. Personally, I hope that we don’t ever see people “stop defending ___ character.”
Oh, genuinely sorry, that’s not what I meant to imply at all. When I say “folks were defending [Ryan or Joe’s] behavior back then,” I absolutely mean it was a source of argument and debate, not that the comment section was united. Haha, this comment section has never been united about anything.
Something I also went into more depth on in my previous giant comment (god this one is gonna be giant too…) was that I think there’s ALSO an element of just, like, “is Linda actually racist” here, which is that there will always be a certain vocal segment of the comment section that insists a character can’t possibly have [literally any prejudice] until that character is a literal cartoon villain of the Sunday Morning variety. You know?
I’m not sure Willis has ever tried to make Joe unarguably awful, but even if that WERE a goal, I don’t think it’s a feasible one. Not without making Joe at least as bad as Ryan.
So it’s not only kind of a fruitless venture, for Willis as a creator, but also… well, it really narrows the kind of stories they can tell, if the only kinds of prejudice that they ever portray are the Sunday Morning Cartoon Villain kind.
Blaine, Ross, Mary, Clint, Carol, and Linda really haven’t ever been seen in a positive light, whereas Hank, Charles, Ruth, Faz, and Joe were all introduced as early antagonists but with some hope.
Ross, Mary, Clint, and Linda have all had vocal supporters over the years arguing that they weren’t really that bad, though.
Carol, Mary, and Ross all eventually crossed an event horizon into prompting passive-aggressive comments about how Willis doesn’t know how / isn’t interested in writing “real” Christians, only evil strawmen.
Lots of people have argued that Willis was obviously going to subvert our expectations by having Sal turn out to be wrong that her mom had ever even mistreated her, or at least wrong about why (loooooooots of people arguing that “obviously” Linda was just being misogynistic, not racist).
So…!
Even the most irredeemable villains have actually had to get really far into their villainy before people generally stopped arguing that they were obviously misunderstood; that Ross had good intentions, that Mary just probably didn’t actually mean to misgender Carla, that people were jumping the gun on Clint and should withold judgment until he was actually (?????? I don’t know what people were waiitng for here, I assume physical violence)………..
Honestly, if I were Willis, I’d be tired, haha, but they obviously appreciate the litmus test the comment section’s general temperature provides.
Because he wrote Mike, after all; Mike who was honestly, *literally* awful, but (some) people feel was a sympathetic character, who still had good qualities, even though he was an absolute scumbag. And he wrote Mike as a protagonist at the same time that he was writing Joe as a protagonist.
Mike is a weird case.
And by that I mean, I think Mike is a weird case for Willis, where he’s the first character they ever created, and the Edgelord Humor is so deeply embedded into his character. Willis has talked about how hard it was to make Mike less of a cartoon without making him no longer unrecognizable, and how difficult Mike was to fit into stories…
This is why Mike had to go, really.
I’d love to know if there was ever a point where “Of Mike and Men” might have ended differently — if, perhaps, Willis thought Mike might wake up from the coma, depending on how the readers responded to that story. Whether there were enough people who found it intriguing. Whether there were too many people who thought it was a cop-out and that redeeming Mike was impossible or — even offensive. At the very least, Willis certainly seems to have no regrets now.
And even though many people believe that Mike didn’t redeem himself, that he was still an absolute villain at the end… it’s undeniable that the way that Willis intended Mike’s sendoff, that he intended for Mike to do some good and save the people that he loved and cared about. That’s why he had the whole ending with Amber, where Head Mike tells her she was worth it.
Now, obviously I’m not Willis, so my guesses are no better than anyone else’s But I would venture to guess here that Willis meant for it to be more ambiguous than that. Mike dying for Amber’s sake probably felt like an appropriate send-off for a character who, in another continuity, was an unlikely superhero who had also died heroically. Head Mike telling Amber she was worth it lets Willis maintain some plausible deniability over whether that’s actually how Mike felt, or just how Amber would like to imagine he would’ve felt.
IDK. I just suspect Mike’s ending was supposed to straddle a certain line: provide closure for Willis, satisfy folks who did hope for a redemption, but not piss off folks who thought Mike didn’t deserve and shouldn’t get one.
(I wonder whether comments like this make Willis laugh. I’M SORRY I’M MAKING SUCH LENGTHY THEORYCRAFT-Y COMMENTS ABOUT YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS WHEN I COULD, LIKE, JUST SHOOT YOU A TUMBLR ASK…….)
Yeah, “all about constent” seems to be overstating it, but it depends what people mean. I’d say he was “all about” sex, and he understood constent to be a mandatory part of sex, and had an okay understanding of constent. I believe he always would have stopped if constent was withdrawn, but I’m not sure how his attitude would have been early in the comic. (The stuff with Sarah’s sister was pretty far into his character arc, not in the time frame I’m talking about here.)
Joe has, from early on, had good qualities, but also shitty things that he has changed.
Idk, I can’t see Joe reacting badly even early on. A big part of his character has always been “Does not want to be A Monster” with sex, which is why he had it so casually and without commitment. He made some very alarming and unfunny comments, but stopped them basically immediately if there was any pushback (iirc, but it’s been like literally a decade so I might be fuzzy), basically putting him on par with most douchey teenagers that wouldn’t actually do it. I could’ve sworn he had something to say about the whole Ryan thing that showed his strong disapproval, but that might’ve been way after the fact.
Basically, this is a lot to say that I think he’d always been a douchebag, I don’t think he’d ever been the sort of predator that would’ve ignored a communicated “We need to stop.” He might’ve been the sort of ass to complain about it to Danny after, but I think if he were the sort to get angry over a no with his partner, I feel like Roz would’ve picked up on that and not slept with him. Idk. There’s an ocean of difference in vibes and a tiny chasm of difference in behavior that I struggle to figure out why I feel that way.
That’s almost exactly what I was saying. “He always would have stopped,” but his attitude about it might have been more negative. Like being annoyed, or complaining about it to Danny after, not like assaulting a person.
I could see him being “jock annoyed” around Danny and if had any other jock friends, to keep his “cover” but I don’t see him showing that around the girl.
I legit think that Dottie bought his persona 100%, and never bothered to wonder WHY someone like Danny would be friends with someone like Joe.
@GholaHalleck: Because they’d been friends as kids and because Danny is (was?) a pushover?
During the whole list fiasco, Danny seemed pretty close to done with his shit.
can’t reply to the one above this for whatever reason, just gonna pop it on here and let it ride.
Roz’s sexual promiscuity is not the issue. Her loud and judgemental antics while informing the world of her sexual promiscuity was the issue. She was Joe with a “Free the nipple” Tshirt.
The weekend where Joyce is home, needs someone to talk to, and texts Joe. In the bonus strip where she starts, Joe says it’s fine for her to do so, because he doesn’t care about her. Meaning doesn’t care about her for sex. And he listens and never says, “can you text someone else about this instead?”
At the end of the first day, when readers got the reveal. I think that’s the seed of his change. To care about a woman, outside of the context of wanting to have sex with her.
Joe being a slimeball was always an act. He is deep down a very virtuous guy who is scared shitless of being like his father and destroying a home and hurting a woman like his dad did. You could see it all the times he dealt with women who push him away — Sarah and Liz — because the second they say “no” he drops it and goes “okay, absolutely.” Consent and the safety of women in his life is really, really important to him. Would not be surprised if he was really close to his mom.
All he really needed was an avenue to be sincere and direct with someone who could explain to him how he was hurting people with his persona and he immediately dropped it. He’s a diamond who needs to be shaped, but everything important is right there.
Liz yes, but that was a long way into his reform arc.
With Sarah? She had to get angry and yell at him to get him to back off and he still told her how much he liked her angry energy.
His intentions were virtuous in a way – in that his whole thing was about not cheating like his dad did by not forming any relationships solid enough for sex with someone else to count as cheating. Beyond that, he doesn’t seem to have given any consideration to how he made the women around him feel.
I think we’re on the same basic page for Joe. He was so wrapped up in the persona, he was telling himself he wasn’t hurting anyone, but once he’s made aware of how his actions can (and did!) still hurt people, he shifted.
His starting persona was not healthy or as foolproof as he thought, but once he’s shown the truth of that, he pivots, and doesn’t really try and retain that persona.
It wasn’t quite that fast and easy. He backslid quite a bit and shifted back into that persona, even though he wasn’t as aggressive about hitting on every girl in sight.
And no, we’re not on the same page:
“His biggest hater (Dottie) hates him because he was an idiot teenager and called her gay, and her dislike tainted everything because Dottie was/is the deuteragonist and the shippers are piranhas.”
She brought that up because she thought he was doing it again, not because it’s the only reason she dislikes him. And it wasn’t a one time thing when he was 15, like he tried to deflect it with. She says “habitually”, “since the first day I never showed interest in you.”
It’s fair to say he was never as bad as he seemed, but he seemed really bad. Nothing but red flags and you absolutely cannot blame any girls he interacts with for not trusting him. Or for not trusting that he’d reformed when he was mostly hiding that.
Because his being a disgusting misogynist was, literally, not that sincere. He grew up with a fucked-up complex about hurting women that came from his Dad, and seriously negative beliefs about himself as a man, and a fucked-up compulsion to play out a certain archetype of performative toxic masculinity.
These things were not so much Joe, in any sincerity; these were deliberate intimacy barriers. He set himself up so that women would find him shallow and disgusting, so he could guarantee that he’d get sex from women with absolute zero romantic implications. It led to other men his age seeing him as cool and sexually competent, which is big for young men, while “protecting” any of his female peers from seeing him as dateable.
The second he was forced into actually doing some unpacking as to how he was viewing women, and how it made people see him, he was actually extremely eager to change. His heart was never in being a disgusting piece of shit; it just felt like something he “had” to do, because in his mind, what he was doing was the less bad alternative to what he would be, if he actually got a woman invested in him, as anything more than a sexual object.
This is absolutely how I feel about this whole weird urge in the comments section to pretend Joe was always good secretly deep down inside of his heart.
Nah. He was a misogynist, and was NOT all about consent, and regardless of his reasoning, he treated women like objects that he could talk about whatever the fuck way he wanted.
He has grown and changed because he’s not a monster, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t suck to start with.
Turns out, his growing maturity is more impressive if we don’t downplay how bad he was to begin with. We can all be perfectly honest and get a better story out of it.
More like character dots, since he’s apparently always been this way and was never any other way. Ignore all previous appearances, Joe being a good boy today means he wasn’t a bad boy in the past.
Yes please thank you. As a person who was definitely shittier to people when I was younger, I think Joe would feel a lot like I do reading the comments here. He’d probably jump in and say, “Nope, that was douchebag behavior, I own that.” I’m grateful people like my partner saw the soft sweet fruit potential I had under my stinky thorny durian shell, butI was definitely stinky and thorny.
I suspect a lot of this is people having some kind of weird disconnect about what “misogynist” and “consent-focused” might mean in this context.
IMHO, it’s clear that he wasn’t a “I hate women” misogynist, he was a “women are not something I think about at all except in terms of what I want” misogynist — similarly, he’s not so much “consent-focused” as “what behaviors do I need to do to get the most sex I can get”-focused. The fact that all that just happens, in his time and place, to mostly line up with “pays attention to consent and to his partner’s pleasure”, is I think why he’s perceived as “not so bad” because SOME of the outcomes are not as horrible as the motives could have resulted in.
In this case, I’m thinking it’s almost the opposite of “Cool motive, still murder” — “What you wanted and how you thought about things COULD have gone really badly, you’re lucky you picked a path in which you didn’t murder anyone”.
I also want to raise a comparison here with Walky+Linda, where… like, I DO very much think Joe was always operating on a level of not wanting to hurt women, but I also think the way he spoke about consent in the early days is not at all dissimilar to how Walky spoke about the possibility of his mom being racist, which is to say…
“Rape? I’m not a monster!”
I think it was a stark binary in Joe’s head, the kind of thing that you CAN’T stumble into by accident or with good intentions.
Which… I don’t think is an uncommon attitude, especially among teenagers. I think it is, in fact, part of rape culture itself. That folks tend to assume there’s a much clearer, much starker line than there actually is.
Basically: I don’t think Joe ever set out to hurt anyone (and I believe him when he told Joyce that his horn dog persona was supposed to specifically keep him from ever mattering enough to anyone else to hurt them), but I think his early attitude is the kind of attitude people have when they don’t fully understand all the ins and outs of an issue, and haven’t yet done the work to actually confront themselves, examine their behavior, and really make sure they’re living up to their self-image…
…instead of assuming that only monsters would ever do the thing.
I see it as being all about consent in the sense that he wouldn’t actually do anything without consent, but consent was a goal to be achieved. A hoop to jump through to get the prize he was after.
Like with Liz, or even with Joyce here, early Joe wouldn’t have kept going when they said to stop, but he might have tried to get them to change their mind. To get consent back.
I think that’s also fair. I just… like, I don’t want to overstate it, I don’t think he intended to hurt anyone or was indifferent to anyone’s pain, but I do think he wasn’t thinking enough about it. I think he got a ‘yes’ (sometimes after kind of badgering in a pick-up-artist-y sort of way) and genuinely thought that was good enough. If he didn’t hurt someone, it was luck rather than because he actually did everything perfectly.
@Big Z: I think it’s almost inconceivable that Joe didn’t hurt someone. Not anything he’d see as rape of course, but real regrets.
We never saw him hitting on anyone who didn’t respond immediately and harshly – like Sarah or Rachel did. How would it have gone with someone less assertive? Or in scenario like his first date with Joyce, but without Mike to punch and with a girl who might have been both sexually and romantically interested and who didn’t realize he just wanted the first, since he certainly didn’t make it clear.
Again, we need to gate keep being a joe fan. If you deny this man his hard earned redemption arc by pretending he was always a sweet uwu bean, you are a fake fan!!!
It is driving me a little bit crazy how the same comment section that was able to see consent issues in Dorothy leading Joyce by the hand to the laundry machines is just. Completely incapable of imagining Joe could ever have been anything but perfect about consent, just because he once said he doesn’t “get his jollies” from sexually assaulting people.
It was always pretty obvious. I do hope it turns out to be more that than something about Dorothy.
I do like that they’re going to continue and “do something”. That was more my experience with starting out. Gradually doing more and more somethings rather than going straight to fucking.
Yeah, there’d be nothing wrong about Joyce having sex at this point, but she’s also just started to really accept/allow herself to have sexual desires; it’s perfectly normal that she’s still building toward being ready for some acts. And that’s true separate from stuff with Dorothy and even from her upbringing.
I suspect that Joyce wants to have had sex more than she wants to have it, if that makes sense. Part of her is legitimately horny, but I think she also sees having sex as part of her new, non-religious persona, something she needs to do to prove she’s overcome the parts of her upbringing that she’s trying to escape. The fact that all her close friends are sexually active and her boyfriend is infamous for his sexual history probably add some internal pressure as well.
I legit almost said nearly this exact same thing before re-reading Astariel’s comment and noticing “Part of her is legitimately horny”.
Cuz yeah, 100%, she is very horny. She definitely wants to have sex a LOT, and I’m glad for them both that they’ve found an exciting next-step that pushes boundaries in a gentler way. You know? Nudging a door further open instead of slamming it open all in one go, hee.
I was just doing laundry (no, literally) and musing on the issues with getting your sex ed in the laundry room. The usage information printed on the inside of my washing machine lid includes instructions to “JAM NUTS TIGHT”.
I think she’s part of it even if only in the most innocent sense, the “Dorothy encouraged Joyce to know what she wants” and “Dorothy told her she could trust Joe” and “Dorothy told her repeatedly that Joe would take care of her and not be disappointed or upset if Joyce doesn’t know how to do everything right away immediately”.
Y’know? That kind of factor, even if nothing else.
When my ‘daughter’ was about 6 she ‘invented’ counting in binary on her fingers. She especially liked ” look mummy FOUR” (USA) and “look mummy, SIX” (UK).
Aaaa I did not mean to report your comment sorry I was trying click reply >_<
I feel like this is specifically the kind of writing choice I admire Willis for. This is like. A real meaningful character beat for both of these people. But it didn't have to be catastrophic to be that. It just had to be human. And through this kind of character beat you find characters growing in nuance in ways that feel very like the way you build increasingly nuanced understandings of the world as you do grow up. I like it a lot every time it happens.
Just so you know you if you report someone the are not informed about it and nothing happens unless more that 10 people also report it. So wherever your report someone by accident it literally doesn’t matter and you don’t have to apologize for it. It is fine.
Definitely a mixture of relieved and disappointed. This relationship means a lot to him and he’s really scared of messing things up. As much as he’s extremely into her there’s still some trauma he’s working through right now.
I read it this way too. I feel like he’s been expecting this scenario to happen–see also, what happened with Sarah’s sister Liz–but he probably expected it to go *just* as badly as that did. The fact that Joyce isn’t fleeing from him in terror, and she’s making it clear that she does care about him/their relationship even if she doesn’t want to take this step right now–is where I’m seeing the relief coming from. While he’d like to go farther if she was up for it, I don’t think he genuinely thought it was going to happen tonght anyway.
On some level I think he’s playing it up to ensure that she doesn’t feel pressured to power through her misgivings — I have been there, this kind of expression of “no no, it’s really okay! Look at my smile! I’m totally fine with stopping!” is very familiar to me — but I do think he’s been very nervous about how aggressive she’s being about punching her V-card.
Liz is still hovering around his mind, he could on some level kind of tell that Joyce was kind of trying too hard to enthusiastically consent. This is probably validating his belief that she wasn’t quite ready and he was right to be suspicious.
When I’m starting a relationship (of any kind) I always feel relief when my partner says “actually I do not want to do this thing that you really want to do” because I know that I can trust them more with understanding their own emotions. I might still be bummed but I’d rather than than hurting them in some way. I still check in and whatnot but like as someone who (and this is not healthy and I’m working on it) is always trying to manage other people’s emotions it’s such a fucking relief that I don’t need to
It’s also nice from the other side. The first time you tell someone no to something they really wanted, and that’s okay, actually, and doesn’t result in pushback or manipulation…
I like this. I was expecting that this probably would not wind up being THE time, but I am glad that there wasn’t some sort of contrived thing to prevent it, or a blow up that didn’t really need to happen. This works, this works great.
Hey now, what’s all this frank and healthy communication between partners and clear establishment of consent and boundaries? I kept seeing people say that this was going to blow up horrendously in everyone’s face.
I guess the… veeeerrrry early morning is still young?
Don’t know why anyone would expect Joe would not be good at respecting Joyce’s withdrawn consent. He’s very good about sexual boundaries, as long as those boundaries don’t concern taping a webcam to his best friend’s foot in order to film a sex tape.
Just gonna copy my Patreon comment from last night:
I like this. She shuts down the sex, he agrees without condition, she offers something a little less all-in, he counters with his own offer, and we have a successful negotiation. A sexy, sexy negotiation.
Thanks, this gave me a really funny mental image of someone frantically trying to untie some ropes after their partner nopes out, like “I’m trying, I’m trying! Gimme a fuckin’ minute here!”.
Yes! And he sees her feeling like she owes it to him to “do something for him,” and instead he flips it around onto her, implicitly acknowledging that she doesn’t “owe” him anything. It’s such a good scene!
Joyce is minding her own boundaries (which Joe was always going to respect), but still willing to receive pleasure (which Joe is delighted to give), and going slow but not “all the way” might be just what they both needed!! ;ww;
Yeah, the worry I think was never that Joe wasn’t going to respect her boundaries, just that Joyce might not be willing or able to communicate them.
(It wasn’t a BIG worry, but I think it was one source of tension in the scene.)
Or that Joe wouldn’t be willing or able to communicate his own boundaries, which. The jury is still kind of out on, right now, since Joyce pumped the brakes.
(Was he still anxious from Liz and/or the less-than-reassuring answer Dina gave him earlier about Becky and shame-fueled sobbing?? I do hope we’ll get to find out.)
D’awwww! They’re so cute together! And I know there’s Dorothy subtext, but in all honesty taking things step by step is very, very good for any relationship, especially when that relationship involves someone who is very repressed. I like this.
Really kind of Joe to use her self deprecating “I’ll make it up to you but don’t fully understand yet that this isn’t something I should feel pressure to make up” as an opportunity to treat her
I love that they’re having this conversation so calmly and maturaly. That Joyce speaks up when she isn’t ready, that Joe hears her offer to make it up to him and turns it around on her. I love how far they’ve both come to make it to this. But also: Joyce basically making the pleading emoji face in the third panel is too cute to be allowed, someone stop her
(Like, genuinely, speaking up when you change your mind in the middle of something you said you wanted can be really damn difficult. Even when you’ve been in a relationship for way longer and are way older than Joyce is now. Even when you *know* the person won’t get mad at you. Mad respect for my girl here <3 )
Nah, but same though. I blame the imported TV shows and internet comedians I grew up watching. Those Brits know how to twist the language to its breaking point, dubbed anime is frequently an acid trip, and Dom Fera has infected my vocabulary like a big-toed tadpole tainted by the tides of a dawn since past.
Aaaa this is so adorable. ^^ I definitely agree that Dorothy’s “Know what you want” comment definitely contributed heavily toward Joyce not going all the way tonight; without it, Joyce might have pushed herself into something she was trying to convince herself she was ready for. I suspect when this does happen for real it’ll be a little more spontaneous. Joe’s response here is perfect, helping to further establish the relationship as a safe space for Joyce.
I was just rereading Joementum, so you’d think this would be a natural segue and extra rewarding, but for some reason, I’m not feeling it. Must be my mood.
This is almost 100% how it went the night I almost lost my virginity. Ended up taking another five months to feel ready, and the guy was just as kind and patient as Joe here.
He and I are still great friends over a quarter-century later, so I feel like this bodes well for Joe and Joyce down the road.
is this actually the optimal outcome?
So many were expecting Joe to Wig Out, for good reason, but this is High Quality Evidence that he can trust Joyce to have boundaries, know what they are, and communicate them. That’s gotta make him feel safer.
And Joyce is being rewarded for her boundaries! bless
Obligatory “Wish I could thumbs up/heart/whatever this comment” but it IS a good note to make about how this could help Joe not walk on egg shells around Joyce and the bedroom
On one hand, I look at this and think about how this is such a beautiful moment of care, concern, and love, that could -never- have happened with where both of these characters were in the beginning. This moment of hesitation, admission, apology, reassurance, and reconnection, very much shows how healthy of a dynamic they have.
On the other hand. Literally half the cast has now been told by Joyce that Joe would be sticking his dingaling in her whoopsiepoodle tonight, so this is going to lead into tons of hilariously awkward conversations and explanations that go into WAY too much detail.
The alt text said it before I could. So I guess I’ll say I’m glad Joe has improved since the start of this comic and that him and Joyce are happy together so far.
I don’t know how on earth you’ve done it, man, but this is one of the very few love triangles I’ve ever read in which there isn’t one clear preferred relationship over the other. I want Joe and Joyce to work. I want Joyce and Dorothy to work. The fact that I can’t look at either Joe or Dorothy and think that one is better than the other, or more selfish than the other, or less caring or self-sacrificing than the other, and yet both feel *real,* is amazing.
Of the few stories that I’ve read / seen that managed to straddle this line, *most* of them made the mistake of letting it go too long without resolution. Because the longer that you have both sides be the perfect, caring, considerate, giving person who denies their own wants and desires for their partner’s happiness, the longer it’s apparent that the main character is not reciprocating.
Right now, Dorothy knows how Joyce and Joe feel about each other, and she has mixed messages for how Joyce feels about her. And Joe understands how Joyce feels about him and how Dorothy feels about Joyce, but not how Joyce feels about Dorothy. There’s an elephant in the room here. Everyone is not on the level.
Now, Joyce didn’t NEED to start this date by saying, “before we begin, know that I have serious unresolved feelings for Dorothy and was minutes away from fucking her, but I still want to fuck you.” But if that’s still the case, and Joyce is going this far with Joe, with Joe believing they’re in a monogamous relationship (which has been reinforced in the storyline) and Joyce dipping a toe into poly… well, the date is certainly under some false pretenses, and the longer it goes on, the more it’s going to feel like certain individuals are being taken advantage of.
Right now, it certainly feels like the only reason that it’s Joe’s fingers and not Dorothy’s is because Joe made the appointment, and not because one relationship was decided over the other.
I don’t think touching someone’s cheek is “minutes away from fucking” unless I’ve been doing things very incorrectly. Minutes away from smooching maybe.
If I touch my friend’s cheek and say “You know, I think I love you, and I’ve always loved you, you are beautiful and I want to get to know you better,” we’re probably minutes away from smooching.
If I am laying in my bed with my friend, and touch my friend’s cheek – the friend who held my hand when she taught me to masturbate – the night I’ve been telling everyone that I’m going to be de-virginified, and say, “I don’t know if I feel comfortable with my first time being with him. It would be so much easier if I had my first time with you,” and if my friend bites her lip and says, “Look, just know what you want, OK?” we are possibly minutes away from fucking.
Context is everything. The cheek is literally the least important thing.
That makes perfect sense, but please keep in mind that Joyce is possibly-autistic, and speaking as someone who was only excluded from the diagnosis on account of having a high IQ… It’s entirely possible that Joyce would’ve been surprised if Dorothy started trying to have sex with her. I think she might’ve wanted it but might have been surprised if Dorothy figured it out that she wanted it, because she didn’t literally say that she wanted to have sex with Dorothy, just that hypothetically it would be easier. (Like, seriously.) (I say this because I’m… like this… myself…)
(I’ve literally experienced what amounted to sexual assault because I didn’t realize that the person I was on a date with wanted to have sex with me out in public. He said it but I didn’t know what that slang meant at the time, and didn’t infer from context.) (I was thinking maybe we would kiss after spending some time together. It was a first date.) (It’s, like, hey, extra consent checks are necessary if you’re the kind of neurodivergent that I am, he was surprised that I was surprised when he was… y’know doing things to me. I literally shoved him and that’s how he found out I wasn’t aware that he was intending to do things.) (…at a park, though? ugh.) (I… guess it was a misunderstanding, but I needed therapy.)
I mean think about it, that’s why she was confused and then disregarded it when Dorothy said, “we’re just confused.” I think that Joyce literally wasn’t aware of the subtext. (I wasn’t either until I read the comments section!)
I have a ‘grandson’ who tells me not to “eat-a-finger bones” when we have chicken. I crunch them up anyway tho.
But perhaps that is not what is meant by chicken fingers…
This is so sweet! But I have to admit that the first think that come to my mind is a moment in Luann and Quill’s relationship. Sure, there the boy was the first to stop and they have a heart to heart talk during five strips while here it’s much more poetic and Joyce and Joe do it all in one strip. But it seems like an inspiration. Or I just wish it was because I love “Luann”.
To be fair, it’s only the third most frequently talked about newspaper comic there. [The second is Mary Worth. The first, I shall not speak the name of.]
Poor Joe, he’s going to have blue balls the size of Neptune.
Yet, somehow, I don’t think he’ll mind all that much. He’s handling this like a champ, and smoothly dealt with her not entirely unexpected hesitation, reinforcing that it’s perfectly fine. Nothing good comes from stressing or rushing someone’s first time.
Gotta take it at a pace they’re comfortable with, and given how little actual intimacy they’ve had time for, going from her giving him a handy once, directly to full-on intercourse, and it being her first time, too… A bit rushed.
Reciprocity! You love to see it. It may not be exactly what Joyce envisioned, but hey, she can still overshare about being a sex-haver if she wants.
Shout out to Joe’s rizz here. He’s flexible, aims to satisfy, and is good with negotiating. It’s sexy as hell, and explains how he was able to find so many past partners. He may have had a slutty reputation, but you get the sense it was also a reputation for being a good time. (Until word of The List got around.)
It’s interesting what Joyce was initially stressing out about before the date (the load taken off by Dorothy) isn’t much of a factor in why she got cold feet; it’s a question of desire to do the act itself. Dorothy is partially to do with it, but I also think some part of her displayed enthusiasm is performative in a sense – she considers sex to be one of the last remaining obstacles to “real” adulthood and an upcoming part of the “new and improved super cool Joyce” after major life changes.
It goes without saying “old Joyce” is still present like her initial reaction to Amazi-Girl on the roof just showcased, which has been troubling her for a bit.
An acceleration to get to that point in her first real relationship before she’s mentally ready. It’s not like Joe is in a rush but Joyce has been vocally building up the eventual coitus for at least three days. I’m thinking part of it is fulfilling a role for the sake of this new identity and ideas she’s carried around for years about relationships/adulthood. Knowing what you truly want in the moment is important.
Joe’s attitudes when it comes to Joyce, or to women, sex, and relationships in general, continue to impress me. The dude’s genuinely matured over the course of the comic. And I really want this relationship to succeed and go the distance, because these two are awesome together. Sorry to the Joyce/Dorothy shippers.
Maybe a hot take (and this might get buried cause late), but i’m really glad this is with Joe and not Dorothy.
I think that with Dorothys inner turmoil, I dont think she would be able to be as solid as Joe is being right now. Joe seems to be wholly Dorothy-focused, trying to make this as easy for her as possible. No demands, no disappointment, no complaints, just gently staying in her comfort zone and focusing on making sure shes comfortable and consenting every step of the way.
I think a tryst with Dorothy would be more passionate for sure, but would leave Joyce all twisted up after and unsure and I doubt that will happen with this scenario.
And that’s why I ship Joyrothy~ Neuroses, possessiveness, characters doing dangerous and dramatic things out of strong feelings they barely understand.
…I miss Ruth and Billie being a thing, can you tell?
In all seriousness: very sweet, excellent communication, and I think Joe picked a good alternative. I think oral might risk ALSO being too much, where essentially returning Joyce’s handjob earlier is much lower impact and also neatly symmetrical.
Everyone is like “I hope she says Dorothy’s name!” and like the way my heart would break omg. Like that would be so sad poor Joe. But the people saying that hate Joe lmao personally I hope she gets a nice orgasm and then they cuddle and kiss and then later that day Dorothy admits to her that she loves her and there’s a moment of “who do I go with???”
Nah, it wasn’t because I hate Joe, it was because I was expecting this to go horribly for them and that was the *least* harmful option of them all (as the other options were Trauma PTSD moment related)
I am pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t a breakdown and VERY happy this is the result
I mean, it would be AMAZING (terrible) and the trash goblin part of me would love it and I definitely don’t hate Joe or want him to get his heart broken! And the part of me that just wants Joyce to be happy definitely doesn’t want it to happen, heh.
I have to say, I feel like (NOT YOU SPECIFICALLY, you’re fine!!) there’s been a lot of assuming people’s motives that don’t really follow, like.
“If you think something’s gonna go wrong here, you MUST be anti-Joe/Joyce”
“If you ship Joyce/Dorothy, you MUST be pro-cheating and/or really mad right now that Joe and Joyce are having a nice time”
etc
But no, fan contains multitudes. Plenty of folks ship both Joe/Joyce and Joyce/Dorothy; plenty of people who only ship Joyce/Dorothy were horrified and anxious about potential cheating; plenty of folks who wanted Joyce and Dorothy to kiss still cared about Walky and Joe’s feelings…
Plenty of us simultaneously want something really messy to happen here (like said moan) but also don’t want it to happen, like when you’re… well I keep making the scary movie analogy, but I think it’s a good one. You can like a character and NOT want the monster to kill that character, but also be kind of excited about a possible monster attack when the character goes off alone to check a shed late at night.
(Also if you’re excited for slasher movie deaths, you almost certainly aren’t pro-murder in real life, which I feel like most of us understand, so I’m not sure where the “pro fictional cheating = pro real life cheating probably” faction is coming from at all, heh.)
Are you specifically referencing movies because of that one brainless dipshit from a few days ago who basically called everyone here an immoral piece of shit?
It WILL be hard to ever fully get that string of comments out of my head lol. But no, the mixture of “oooo” and “nooooo” that I think is fairly common to feel while watching scary movies is something I’ve been trying to use to explain why I can be both excited about the idea of a Terrible Decision and also not completely want it to happen ever since Joyce joined Dorothy on the bed.
I should probably give up because it’s not like I actually think there’s anything wrong with legitimately 100% wanting Joyce and Dorothy to cheat with each other on their partners?? They’re all paper dolls, they don’t have real feelings, it’s fine. I just dislike misunderstandings, orz.
SOMEONE BETTER PICK UP THAT PHONE
BECAUSE I FUCKING CALLED IT
granted it’s just because she didn’t want to and not some unknown outside force but it still counts
This is almost exactly what I expected to happen; that one of them isn’t as dtf as they thought they were but there still wasn’t a meltdown or total drama. Because both of them have matured a little more than some of us give them credit for. This is sweet.
Also, fingers are definitely good.
Yeah, it *did* concern me that Joyce wants to go 0 to 100 in a second.
Because of her assumption that PIV is 100.
Fingers are an AMAZING way to go to what i consider 100 – to explore your sexuality together.
Most likely, PIV would not achieve 100 on that scale right away because there’s a general skill to *all of sex* and a sex-negative upbringing makes PIV so loaded that many vagina-equipped people experience discomfort or pain. I learned that Vaginismus is disproportionately common in women who grew up mormon….
Go for fingers and do whatever feels good from there. Feeling good is the end goal, not putting the penis inside you. You can do that later when you feel like that *would* be a way to feel good!
Someone is citing the MA constitutional provision explicitly allowing the state to impede federal marshals enforcing the fugitive slave act, DAMN the average citizen is radicalized
you’re laughing. the largest antebellum plantation house burned down & there are brides who will not get to spiritually absorb the poisoned spectral energy of the land for their big day, & you’re laughing.
Me if I ever see Tony Hawk: Hey you’re Tony Hawk the famous skateboarder. That’s right I recognise you. Won’t be able to get any content out of this will you, you piece of shit
How to read all 28 issues of my Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane run on Marvel Unlimited:
1: The first four issues were published as the miniseries "Mary Jane."
www.marvel.com/comics/serie...
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
Hot Toys Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith 1/6 Scale Darth Vader Deluxe ($495) & Standard ($315) is up for preorder at Sideshow - shrsl.com/4wcx6 #ad
If you preorder make sure to hit the Exclusive versions since they include a commemorative plaque and cost the same.
btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 2d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
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fingers are good
I know they’re called “fingers” but I’ve never seen them “fing”
…..oh wait there they go
Excellent reference.
Stolen for later use.
Now we can cut away to Dina and Dorothy eating cereal.
if it was QC it wuld be Steve
Why would Dina and Dorothy be eating Steve?
Ritualistic cannibalism is a big part of liberal higher education.
They don’t tell you during any of the orientation or preparation, because it might scare away potentially great students who just happen to have some cultural taboo against eating people.
They wipe your memory afterwards for legal reasons.
In education post-grad degrees, you have to sign an NDA.
Cereal probably tastes better than Steve
Unless it’s Grapenuts.
Dina and Beckster eating cereal. (Get Steve here for the crossover.) I think Dorothy is not feeling hungry right now.
Yeah, lately it’s seemed more like she’s been feeling thirsty.
fingers crossed. ~<3
That would be an amazing cross over. 4th panel of both comics on the same day, identical panel, the three of them eating cereal.
Doesn’t even really matter what else is going on.
Joe is being a good boyfriend.
Fingers let her imagine it’s Dorothy.
harssh but fair
Given the respective size of those fingers, that may take a lot of imagination.
🥹🥹🥹
*plays “The Touch” by Stan Bush on hacked muzak*
You know, putting the lyrics to that song in this context is wild.
“You got the moves, you know the street…Break the rules, take the heat”
“When all hell’s breaking loose you’ll be riding the eye of the storm”
Although “You’ve been put to the test, but it’s never enough” suggests a disappointing outcome.
“Never enough” or they’re the opposite of someone who loses interest once they get off, like they’d work a whole orgy like a stone until everyone was satisfied.
Yeah but the outro of the song ends with, ‘You got the touch. You got the power. Yeah!’ so ‘never enough’ more implies difficulty halfway through they’re finally able to reach the climax… of the song.
He’s got the Power?
What power?
The power of voodoo!
Hoodoo!
doo wa?
okay FINE I’ll play it XD
*plays “Magic Dance” by David Bowie on hacked muzak*
Remind me of the babe!
(though what this song has to do with Babe Ruth, no one’s ever told me)
What babe?
Babe Ruth. Steamweed just said.
You do.
The power of voodoo
The. Power.
…shit, that’s good. Filing that one away for “future reference”.
hey don’t look now but
Joe fingering Joyce is on the NSFW Patreon RIGHT NOW!!!!
🥹
Everybody ready your wallets!!! This is not a drill!!!!
*plays “Dreams Come True” from Sailor Moon CD on hacked muzak*
DoA Book 15: Fingers Are Good
DoA Book 15: How Do You Feel About Fingers?
“Especially chicken fingers. Plain ones. I don’t trust any of those sauces.”
Crap, I should have read the alt text first…
No worries; just shows ya great minds think alike.
it’s Joyce, “I like chicken fingers” has been a running joke for the entire comic. It’s *right* there.
fingering still counts as sex, but it makes sense she would count penis-in-vagina as the Main Event
Technically it counts as masturbation, even if someone else does it for you
(But yeah it’s manual sex lol)
If you use a fuck machine, does that make it automatic sex?
(Car joke (I think))
You got one with an automatic transmission?? Man, I’ve only ever seen the stick shifts.
Wait until she experiences double-clutching!!
That’s a question for Beepatrice, really. After all, she is a professional
j/k Does manual sex imply the existence of automatic sex?
Nah manual sex is when you read one of those Kama Sutra type things
That’s analogue.
Are you sure? I mean, they’ve got to have an e-book version by now.
… hah! Digital! Get it?
Fingering is quite literally digital sex.
“digital” from Latin “digitus” = “finger”, the corresponding Latin adjective being “digitalis”
Successfully made a joke ouroboros, good work everyone.
RTFM!
That implies a more literal meaning for the F.
The _original_ subject of “RTFM”.
I love the technicalities. I’ve seen it argued that mutual masturbation (i.e. using hands on each other to achieve simultaneous orgasm) doesn’t count as intimate. That just seems crazy.
Well, how are we using “intimate”? Mutual masturbation (either form: what you described or each party masturbating themself) can be intimate and can be sex, but doesn’t have to be either. But saying that, I often don’t consider sex (for me) “intimate.”
If we’re not intimate, I don’t want anyone touching my junk, and I don’t want to touch theirs. I suppose a happy ending at a massage parlor might not be very intimate, but even that’s a minor stretch.
It’s only masturbation if Joyce is touching herself.
If Joe is fingering Joyce (as stated in the comic), then it is manual sex (or any of the other many synonyms suggested in thread).
Take it from a lesbian – fingers count.
Just remember to trim your finger nails.
(This was a reply to Skyeribbon specifically)
According to the blood donation form, handjobs don’t count.
(When they ask if you are a man who has had sex with a man, or a woman who has had sex with a man who has had sex with a man, they clarify that “sex” means contact between mouth/genitals/anus.)
@Searcher
… so?
That’s a check for blood borne diseases. It has nothing to do with the intimacy of the act.
Yeah, unless the Red Cross (or whoever the fuck, idc) is sandpapering the skin off your cock and rubbing their equally sandpapered hands up and down it, I don’t see what value their input has.
Trim and file! Trim and file.
Trim your nails AND FILE THEM SO THEY ARE SMOOTH/BLUNT, sincerely: the victim of sharp, freshly clipped nails.
Truth.
Also, that reminds me of an old favorite meme of mine. It depicts a woman with long, gloriously painted nails – except on the middle and ring fingers of her left hand and the middle and index fingers of her right hand, all which are cut short and filed down.
The right hand is labeled “precision” and the left hand is labeled “power”.
I think some ppl would count it as ‘foreplay’. at least between a man and a woman versus two lesbians/bi girls if they do that but no like strap ons or other toys?
So what I’m learning here is that tacos are a sandwich.
How did Joe go from… Joe… to literally the best boyfriend, seriously
Well if he teaches her about receiving oral sex, THEN he might be the best boyfriend.
Joe would have to do a lot more to get that “Best Boyfriend” title. That Title has to go to the Boyfriend from “The 100 Girlfriends who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You”, that dude has some insane talent at Boyfriending.
Ah a person of culture. Yes Rentaro is certainly a boyfriend among boyfriends.
I’ve been in that scenario. Really after about 15 or 20, they all just kind of blur in together as “female” and telling one from the others becomes well-nigh impossible.
Skill issue.
You’re gonna need a spreadsheet and database that work well together. Might want to look into facial recognition and camera glasses, too. If that’s too noticeable, check into voice recog.
“Jarvis, which girlfriend is this?”
If I had the technology that would be great.
In fairness to the rest of the population:
1. Rentarou’s Family is literally divinely-ordained. As long as he keeps trying, he will be their perfect boyfriend, assuming they don’t die from running out of luck before they accept him.
2. He has received at least one supernatural boost to his abilities, albeit accidentally on the part of the divinity.
3. the boy has been dedicated to loving his (eventual) girlfriend(s) since the age of 4, having saved his allowance since then in a piggy bank labeled ‘Girlfriend Joy Fund’. He is, as the narrator says, a dyed-in-the-wool Love Monster.
Peak was mentioned, I have been summoned to pay my respects
Joe has always been all about consent. He stopped immediately when Sarah’s sister told him to stop, didn’t get angry, didn’t do anything. He may be a horny bastard, but he isn’t an evil bastard.
Plus, I’d be willing to bet he aas expecting something like this to happen. He has always known Joyce had issues with sex that she was trying to overcome, but he also knew that meant he needed to have patience.
Besides, remember when he was panicking about ruining his relationship with her with sex? He’s thought about this a lot, and not just for wank bank material
He’s really pushing himself to be the opposite of his former disreputable self.
i mean speaking for myself, when you do meet that person who consistently seems absolutely perfect to you, there really is a lot of motivation to get things right as much as you can. We all know Joyce Brown is Worth It and Joe knows that even harder than the rest of us.
Absolutely!
… no? Joe has a reputation for sleeping around, yes, but that has nothing to do with being nonconsensual.
Joe “Always About Consent Rosenthal”:
* Called Dorothy a lesbian for not wanting to bang him.
* Told Danny off for not wanting to bang a woman because his reasons weren’t good enough.
* Did NOT stop when Sarah asked him to stop hitting on her.
* Published personal, sexual, and misogynistic information about women without telling them.
* Joked about getting women drunk so they’d have a threesome with him.
Sorry, no, Joe has not always been about consent. A character saying something is not the same as that thing being true.
That said, he has changed and thankfully grown as the comic continued.
*Wanted to “fix” Joyce with his penis, apparently being into her lack of experience and thinking he’d sway her from her beliefs at the time
While that comment was still horribly gross, I don’t think he was actually into her lack of experience. He was going to “upgrade her from a 4 to a 10”. Experience would make her better, in his system.
But he also wants to be the one giving that experience– went for Joyce rather than Sarah because Joyce “[needed] to be broken in,” because he’d be “helping her along” to “womanhood.”
I think it matters that the experience that would “upgrade her” would be with him. I think “she’ll be better for me having done this” fits with being part of being into her lack of experience.
Far be it for me to defend Early Joe, but point of order: he went for Joyce in front of Sarah because he was also trying to Wingman for Danny, who he was setting up with Sarah instead of Joyce on the premise that Danny needed the more experienced girl.
I think his specific logic was something like “you just got out of your first serious relationship, which was also with the girl to whom you lost your virginity; you need a quick one-night stand with an experienced older woman for your rebound”.
He’s also consistently been very into Sarah’s whole vibe, and we’ve also seen him attracted to and successful at hooking up with Malaya and Roz and, of course, Tall Rachel. I feel like our evidence mostly suggests that Joyce was more of a combo-breaker in terms of his pattern.
But of course. She was also the first girl we saw him hit on after Dorothy, so I doubt we weren’t supposed to draw conclusions from his approach with her. I doubt inexperience and “a challenge” were turn-offs, either.
Lost the comment I was typing, so short version: He gave reasoning for both himself and Danny, then put a lot more effort into his attempts with Joyce than trying to wingman Danny– I don’t think the wingmanning overrides what he was saying for himself (and the comments continued when he was no longer with Danny– “fix her with my penis” was said to Sarah). I never said he was only into inexperienced girls, so the other people he’s be interested in aren’t really relevant here.
All good points
“He said ‘Jeez I’m not gonna [r-word] [Joyce], that’s not how I get my jollies!”… how much better about consent can a man be?”
—a certain segment of the commentariat, steadily digging a hole beneath the bar for straight cis guys so that it can be even lower
I mean, not quite. He told Danny off for his claim that Billy didn’t know what he wanted, and pointed out that part of consent is accepting the other person’s stated feelings.
Joe is a sleazebag, but he’s not a predaotr
He didn’t accept DANNY’S reasons for not having to have sex. The rest happens after Danny had said he didn’t want to have sex with Billie and Joe got angry at him. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/dickdeep/
Danny assuming he knew what Billie wanted better than she did was wrong of him, but he did know that HE didn’t want to have sex with her (he “wanted to” in that he was aroused, but not in what he felt comfortable with); that he didn’t want to wasn’t accepted as reason enough.
This is actually going almost exactly how I predicted. It’s nice to see my best case scenario panning out for once. (For the record, my best case was that Joyce would get cold feet, Joe would be accepting, and it would likely increase her trust and leave the relationship stronger. Okay, I didn’t predict fingers.)
Old Joe was crude about his open sex life and rating women, but I don’t recall him ever showing a problem with consent. He was just annoyingly good at finding consenting partners (and lucky in finding ones who didn’t get attached and cause drama afterwards. Or maybe that’s what the crudeness protected him from.)
He’d also shown moments of emotional perceptiveness, especially with Danny; he just groused about it.
You can be crude about sex and still be a decent human being to your partner.
Now, he was treating the girls he rated as faceless female bodies, but by all accounts he has changed, apologized for past transgressions, and has ALWAYS been all about consent
I’m not so sure he’s “always been all about consent”. Like, I don’t think he’s crossed any lines he can’t uncross, but from the start of the comic it’s been more accurate to say he was all about the body count. He just wanted to fuck, wasn’t unusually picky, and moved on once he was done with the latest woman. Consent was a baseline level of human decency he was staying at, and if I wanna be really uncharitable I could suggest it was more of a useful tool to him than something he was “all about”.
His entire horn dog persona was created so that he doesn’t hurt anyone like his dad hurt his mom. It was a cover. He did a Dude Bro version of Bruce Wayne instead of a Himbo.
Because if everyone Already Knows he’s a horndog who sleeps around, *no one can get hurt if he does,* because they knew what he was when agreeing to the sex with Joe.
He jokes about the body count, but he has casual sex with ONE fully consenting woman. He joked about Joyce needing to loosen up with booze but then never makes the joke again after the roofies happened. The list was a dudebro antic that breached containment.
His biggest hater (Dottie) hates him because he was an idiot teenager and called her gay, and her dislike tainted everything because Dottie was/is the deuteragonist and the shippers are piranhas.
Dottie started out looking like the most “adult” of the group and is fast approaching a blow up because of her attraction to Joyce.
Joe started out looking like a stereotype jock asshole, but his true nature is being pulled out because of his attraction to Joyce.
Well said. Couldn’t have said it better.
There’s the obvious counterargument about the RSS feed, but for those who lean on that to say “no, he was always just a scummy asshole,” I don’t think that they understand how someone can compartamentalize certain parts of themself and not realize the damage until it’s too late. Willis made it pretty clear that the List was the first major moment when Joe seriously started changing, and it wasn’t because “crap, they all figured me out, and now nobody wants to sleep with me.” It was because he saw that he was *still harming people* when he kept this distance; and he was harming them BECAUSE he was keeping this very impersonal.
To address just one specific thing here:
Joe had lots of space to fuck up and grow up from his starting point, while Dot as a pretty mature teen had farther to fall. Her blow up has been at least 50% burn out, which happens to a lot of competent, likely neurodivergent young women.
Joe has hetero privilege, and possibly neurotypical Dot’s attraction to Joyce comes with a huge revelation about her own sexuality, which means revising her whole understanding of her identity. While Joe is having his first experience with emotional vulnerability, he’s still way more in his comfort zone here than any queer person ever in their revelatory phase, esp an ND one in burnout.
To be clear I’m not a Dot/Joyce shipper. I’m willing to ship whatever Willis makes look adorable. If anything I lean Joe/Joyce because mutual feelings are established verbally on both sides, and that’s more comfy for me. I just feel uneasy when these threads treat these two as apples and apples, a woman’s “low standard” is often a man’s “high standard”, and doubly so for queer vs het folks or ND vs NT.
The worst thing he’s done is rate women on a fuck ability scale. But he’s always sought out enthusiastic sexual partners, and has shown to stop before when they get uncomfortable like with Sarah’s sister.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Joe being promiscuous. Yeah, he’s all about having sex, with the many “faceless women” he has had sex with. But he never led any of them on, nobody that has actually had sex with him has had something bad to say about it.
It really does seem like people hold Joe to a double standard because they think he is a creep for being promiscuous whereas they wouldn’t feel that way about other characters.
Is this your incredibly subtle way of suggesting I’m slut shaming Joe?
Unless you’re just as judgemental of Roz, the shoe would fit.
I mean, if we’re honest… Walky is probably the current reigning champion for casual sexual encounters out of the group. and no one gives him any real guff about being easy.
There’s way too much to untangle here. The fuck do you mean by “just as judgemental of Roz”? I’m not judging Joe for sleeping around, I’m admitting he did it and not sugar-coating his displayed attitude. You may as well accuse me of blue-shaming the sky.
See, the thing is, the issue is absolutely not having multiple sexual partners. That’s never been the issue with Joe; he had many other issues instead.
Exactly, Yumi. I said outright what those issues were, but I guess that was inconvenient to people’s hallucinations.
Admit it. You’d slut shame Joe in a second if it were funny.
Sure, in a playful way that made it obvious I was joking.
“Promiscuity” is a red herring. I don’t think anyone in DoA, or you either, Taffy, are really critical of Joe for having a large number of partners, or even for them being casual. That’s a false accusation that sucks people into arguing about whether or not we’re being hypocritical and unfair to the poor cis white hetero male.
The real argument is that Joe’s behavior is reminiscent of someone using manipulative tactics and trickery, and implying that when consent was given, it wasn’t *really* given because he was a manipulator. And that he was treating women as less than human beings, and more like things.
And I’d go so far as to say that your criticisms seem to highlight not the promiscuity, but the method and the lengths. You’ve got a lot of phrases there that have a lot of “predator/prey” connotations there. Phrases like “body count” and “moved on once he was done with” are not phrases I’d expect to hear said about Roz or Jennifer. Nor is “baseline level of human decency” or that consent was a “useful tool.”
And yeah, if you someone is starting from the position of “People are criticizing Joe for being promiscuous!” that sounds really hypocritical.
Because yeah, if I said “Roz is promiscuous, but she still sticks above the baseline level of human decency,” that implies that I’m saying that Roz just barely crests that point despite her sexuality, which is gross.
But that’s not it, because again, the promiscuity is a red herring. Nobody really cares that Joe has casual relationships. It’s about how he finds partners, and how he treats them.
The one thing that I hesitate on, is that I’m not sure if Willis ever really portrayed Joe as someone as a predator, but as someone who others would *perceive* to be a predator. DOA Joe, pre-list reveal, kind of reminds me of Roomies Joe – in that he thinks of himself as a ladies’ man, and expresses his sexuality openly, but rather than being manipulative, is just extremely open and obvious about what he’s all about to a cringeworthy degree.
Yes, Joe had the list, and yes, he rated women – but he also rated men, too. He flat up told Danny that he was a seven, and Danny was Joe’s best (and seemingly only) friend. That implies that this isn’t Joe’s view of women, but his view of sex and relationships. If Joe’s guilty of objectifying women, then he’s also guilty of objectifying men and objectifying himself. Because he had entries on LOTS of people, including (if I recall correctly) elderly folk.
So far, I don’t see any reference to anyone he’s manipulated into having sex. No angry exes, or humiliated past ‘conquests,’ just Joe having had been with Roz and Malaya and almost hooked up with Liz.
The fact that Joe has literally almost no guy friends, other than a kid he grew up with, and isn’t really part of any friend group, makes me suspect that this is actually just an expression of trauma from when he grew up. Joe is actually more socially isolated than Amber. You don’t get to a point where “I can’t ever matter to anyone because then I’ll hurt them” without trauma.
And we can see real remorse, real regret, real fear, when Joyce first told Joe about Gashface and how he tried to take advantage of her. And when she puts it on his lap, that his behavior actually matters and his list actually matters because there are OTHER people out there, who actually ARE predators, and follow his lead but don’t show his restraint, he’s horrified, but recognizes that she’s right.
And so that’s where there’s the one thing that I strongly disagree with you on. You say that Joe used consent like a tool, and that he only maintained consent because that’s the baseline of human decency, and I don’t think that’s ever really portrayed – in fact, I believe we see the exact opposite.
Joe distanced himself not because it was fun, but because he didn’t want to hurt anyone. That means that it’s very important for Joe to make sure his partner *knows* that their relationship is casual and that there’s nothing behind it. If someone sleeps with him thinking that he’s her boyfriend, then it’s exactly as bad as if he *was* their boyfriend. That’s why he told Dorothy that she was worse than him – because she was crossing the line that he swore to himself he’d never cross.
@Borkborkbork: I said a few days back, and I’m standing by, my theory that actually showing Joe stepping over the line (as opposed to just implying that he’s done it) was something Willis didn’t want to do…. and that there’s a good reason why Ryan’s assault on Joyce was stopped so early in the process, and that the other girls he was more… successful… with were off-panel.
I also don’t know whether I think it’s a problem, because. Folks were genuinely defending Ryan right up until Joyce glassed him in the face, so. I think Willis would have had to go REALLY REALLY far to get people to stop defending Joe’s behavior back then, to the point of making Joe a character it was no longer really feasible, within the time table of DoA, to redeem.
@Li – I know it’s now the next day and there’s almost no conversation that spans days, but this is interesting and I’m hoping you respond.
So, you’re saying that Willis intentionally didn’t include Joe’s “conquests” as being on screen, but *absolutely* happening, because he intended to later make him a sympathetic character and didn’t want to paint him early as a villain?
I don’t really remember what the comment section was like back then (and don’t have the time at present to read) but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see two different viewpoints. Just like how there are two different viewpoints even today. It’s the hallmark of good writing that people aren’t simply black and white, but levels of gray. Personally, I hope that we don’t ever see people “stop defending ___ character.”
I do agree with you that it does seem that when Willis has a villain in mind, he very much goes out of his way to make them irredeemable, and if he intends for characters to have a redemption arc, you see it from the beginning. Blaine, Ross, Mary, Clint, Carol, and Linda really haven’t ever been seen in a positive light, whereas Hank, Charles, Ruth, Faz, and Joe were all introduced as early antagonists but with some hope. There’s really only one character who I could say started out being painted 100% as a villain, and might now have some sort of redemption arc, and that’s Naiomi… and even then, I feel like her actions are the right actions, for the wrong reasons.
But I’m not sure that I can take that knowledge, and extend it to Joe, and say, “Well, he *must* have been terrible, because it was implied that he was terrible, and Willis must have done that because he can’t tell a story that has someone truly awful who also has a redemption arc.” Because he wrote Mike, after all; Mike who was honestly, *literally* awful, but (some) people feel was a sympathetic character, who still had good qualities, even though he was an absolute scumbag. And he wrote Mike as a protagonist at the same time that he was writing Joe as a protagonist. And even though many people believe that Mike didn’t redeem himself, that he was still an absolute villain at the end… it’s undeniable that the way that Willis intended Mike’s sendoff, that he intended for Mike to do some good and save the people that he loved and cared about. That’s why he had the whole ending with Amber, where Head Mike tells her she was worth it.
@Borkborkbork
Sure! I’ll take this by quotes ‘cuz that should keep me more on topic >.>
So, you’re saying that Willis intentionally didn’t include Joe’s “conquests” as being on screen, but *absolutely* happening, because he intended to later make him a sympathetic character and didn’t want to paint him early as a villain?
+
But I’m not sure that I can take that knowledge, and extend it to Joe, and say, “Well, he *must* have been terrible, because it was implied that he was terrible, and Willis must have done that because he can’t tell a story that has someone truly awful who also has a redemption arc.”
So, kiiiind of yes, kind of no?
I went more in-depth on this in my previous much longer comment, but I wanna first stress my first paragraph again, because I genuinely think Willis also wouldn’t have ever wanted to show Joe actually stepping over a consent line on-panel the same way he didn’t want to show Ryan doing it unless Ryan was going to be immediately stopped and then beaten the crap out of (by Sarah, after Joyce glassed his face). I think showing Joe actually stepping over the line would’ve been potentially triggering for readers, as well as upsetting if not necessarily triggering for Willis themself. I think the catharsis of Ryan immediately getting beaten up was very necessary for that storyline to happen in Willis’s strip.
So, PARTLY because I don’t think he wanted Joe to be an irredeemable villain, but partly also because even for his irredeemable villains, we don’t see them successfully hurt anyone in this particular way. We see characters upset by misogynists all the time in DoA — but anything much darker than that stays off-panel, like Ryan’s other victims.
And ALSO there’s the third reason I suspect, which is — kiiiiind of a retcon? Not of Joe’s actions, but of Willis’s intent.
By which I mean: I kind of suspect 2010!Willis thought Joe was being better about consent, and more of an ethical horndog, than — say — 2016!Willis did (let alone 2025!Willis).
Which is the kind of thing that just happens sometimes when you’re writing such a long-running comic strip, and especially when the in-universe time is passing so slowly… you only have a couple of choices, as a writer.
If it’s just a little thing, you can just sweep it under the rug (which Willis has done once or twice, I think, most notably with Jennifer(????)’s casual use of the ableist r-slur — Willis has definitely just quietly deleted that from her vocabulary, but they lampshaded it by having one of Raidah’s awful friends use the same word a couple years later, and letting Raidah criticize her for it in an “even the bad guys have standards” moment)…
…or you can try to incorporate it into a character arc and make the issue something the CHARACTER has to deal with and overcome, which Willis first had Joe do with his casual misogyny (see: The Do-List, which was mainly about how it’s wrong to reduce women to numerical values), then with his simplistic view of consent (see: Liz), and most recently — well, the REAL reason why Carla wasn’t on Joe’s list in the early years is because she hadn’t yet become a DoA character, and Willis initially left it a tiny bit ambiguous whether she was on the list or not, but more recently, they’ve made it canonically the case that Joe didn’t have her on his list because of some level of transphobia, which I’d bet we aren’t completely done addressing just yet.
TL;DR: I think Joe’s “conquests” aren’t on-screen both because Willis doesn’t want to show that kind of thing without the character getting immediate comeuppence AND because Willis wasn’t planning on Joe being Ryan 2.0 AND because… Willis hadn’t originally intended Joe to be that bad, but eventually changed their mind and decided to address it in-comic.
I don’t really remember what the comment section was like back then (and don’t have the time at present to read) but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see two different viewpoints. Just like how there are two different viewpoints even today. It’s the hallmark of good writing that people aren’t simply black and white, but levels of gray. Personally, I hope that we don’t ever see people “stop defending ___ character.”
Oh, genuinely sorry, that’s not what I meant to imply at all.
When I say “folks were defending [Ryan or Joe’s] behavior back then,” I absolutely mean it was a source of argument and debate, not that the comment section was united. Haha, this comment section has never been united about anything.
Something I also went into more depth on in my previous giant comment (god this one is gonna be giant too…) was that I think there’s ALSO an element of just, like, “is Linda actually racist” here, which is that there will always be a certain vocal segment of the comment section that insists a character can’t possibly have [literally any prejudice] until that character is a literal cartoon villain of the Sunday Morning variety. You know?
I’m not sure Willis has ever tried to make Joe unarguably awful, but even if that WERE a goal, I don’t think it’s a feasible one. Not without making Joe at least as bad as Ryan.
So it’s not only kind of a fruitless venture, for Willis as a creator, but also… well, it really narrows the kind of stories they can tell, if the only kinds of prejudice that they ever portray are the Sunday Morning Cartoon Villain kind.
Blaine, Ross, Mary, Clint, Carol, and Linda really haven’t ever been seen in a positive light, whereas Hank, Charles, Ruth, Faz, and Joe were all introduced as early antagonists but with some hope.
Ross, Mary, Clint, and Linda have all had vocal supporters over the years arguing that they weren’t really that bad, though.
Carol, Mary, and Ross all eventually crossed an event horizon into prompting passive-aggressive comments about how Willis doesn’t know how / isn’t interested in writing “real” Christians, only evil strawmen.
Lots of people have argued that Willis was obviously going to subvert our expectations by having Sal turn out to be wrong that her mom had ever even mistreated her, or at least wrong about why (loooooooots of people arguing that “obviously” Linda was just being misogynistic, not racist).
So…!
Even the most irredeemable villains have actually had to get really far into their villainy before people generally stopped arguing that they were obviously misunderstood; that Ross had good intentions, that Mary just probably didn’t actually mean to misgender Carla, that people were jumping the gun on Clint and should withold judgment until he was actually (?????? I don’t know what people were waiitng for here, I assume physical violence)………..
Honestly, if I were Willis, I’d be tired, haha, but they obviously appreciate the litmus test the comment section’s general temperature provides.
Because he wrote Mike, after all; Mike who was honestly, *literally* awful, but (some) people feel was a sympathetic character, who still had good qualities, even though he was an absolute scumbag. And he wrote Mike as a protagonist at the same time that he was writing Joe as a protagonist.
Mike is a weird case.
And by that I mean, I think Mike is a weird case for Willis, where he’s the first character they ever created, and the Edgelord Humor is so deeply embedded into his character. Willis has talked about how hard it was to make Mike less of a cartoon without making him no longer unrecognizable, and how difficult Mike was to fit into stories…
This is why Mike had to go, really.
I’d love to know if there was ever a point where “Of Mike and Men” might have ended differently — if, perhaps, Willis thought Mike might wake up from the coma, depending on how the readers responded to that story. Whether there were enough people who found it intriguing. Whether there were too many people who thought it was a cop-out and that redeeming Mike was impossible or — even offensive. At the very least, Willis certainly seems to have no regrets now.
And even though many people believe that Mike didn’t redeem himself, that he was still an absolute villain at the end… it’s undeniable that the way that Willis intended Mike’s sendoff, that he intended for Mike to do some good and save the people that he loved and cared about. That’s why he had the whole ending with Amber, where Head Mike tells her she was worth it.
Now, obviously I’m not Willis, so my guesses are no better than anyone else’s
But I would venture to guess here that Willis meant for it to be more ambiguous than that. Mike dying for Amber’s sake probably felt like an appropriate send-off for a character who, in another continuity, was an unlikely superhero who had also died heroically. Head Mike telling Amber she was worth it lets Willis maintain some plausible deniability over whether that’s actually how Mike felt, or just how Amber would like to imagine he would’ve felt.
IDK. I just suspect Mike’s ending was supposed to straddle a certain line: provide closure for Willis, satisfy folks who did hope for a redemption, but not piss off folks who thought Mike didn’t deserve and shouldn’t get one.
(I wonder whether comments like this make Willis laugh. I’M SORRY I’M MAKING SUCH LENGTHY THEORYCRAFT-Y COMMENTS ABOUT YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS WHEN I COULD, LIKE, JUST SHOOT YOU A TUMBLR ASK…….)
Yeah, “all about constent” seems to be overstating it, but it depends what people mean. I’d say he was “all about” sex, and he understood constent to be a mandatory part of sex, and had an okay understanding of constent. I believe he always would have stopped if constent was withdrawn, but I’m not sure how his attitude would have been early in the comic. (The stuff with Sarah’s sister was pretty far into his character arc, not in the time frame I’m talking about here.)
Joe has, from early on, had good qualities, but also shitty things that he has changed.
Idk, I can’t see Joe reacting badly even early on. A big part of his character has always been “Does not want to be A Monster” with sex, which is why he had it so casually and without commitment. He made some very alarming and unfunny comments, but stopped them basically immediately if there was any pushback (iirc, but it’s been like literally a decade so I might be fuzzy), basically putting him on par with most douchey teenagers that wouldn’t actually do it. I could’ve sworn he had something to say about the whole Ryan thing that showed his strong disapproval, but that might’ve been way after the fact.
Basically, this is a lot to say that I think he’d always been a douchebag, I don’t think he’d ever been the sort of predator that would’ve ignored a communicated “We need to stop.” He might’ve been the sort of ass to complain about it to Danny after, but I think if he were the sort to get angry over a no with his partner, I feel like Roz would’ve picked up on that and not slept with him. Idk. There’s an ocean of difference in vibes and a tiny chasm of difference in behavior that I struggle to figure out why I feel that way.
That’s almost exactly what I was saying. “He always would have stopped,” but his attitude about it might have been more negative. Like being annoyed, or complaining about it to Danny after, not like assaulting a person.
I could see him being “jock annoyed” around Danny and if had any other jock friends, to keep his “cover” but I don’t see him showing that around the girl.
I legit think that Dottie bought his persona 100%, and never bothered to wonder WHY someone like Danny would be friends with someone like Joe.
Or tried to persuade them to keep going, instead of being supportive of them stopping.
Which again, isn’t actually rape, but it’s not great either.
@GholaHalleck: Because they’d been friends as kids and because Danny is (was?) a pushover?
During the whole list fiasco, Danny seemed pretty close to done with his shit.
It was a simplistic understanding of consent too.
I mean he wasn’t a rapist but refusing to stop hitting on someone when they say no isn’t great respect for consent
That’s weird, I guess I missed the panel where he TFs into Danny.
can’t reply to the one above this for whatever reason, just gonna pop it on here and let it ride.
Roz’s sexual promiscuity is not the issue. Her loud and judgemental antics while informing the world of her sexual promiscuity was the issue. She was Joe with a “Free the nipple” Tshirt.
I’m not entertaining this. It has nothing to do with anything I said prior.
I’ve got issues with Roz, but I don’t see the parallel here. When did anyone have to yell at Roz to get her to stop hitting on them?
I think you’re really missing the issues people had with old Joe.
There were shades of it before, but personally I think Joe’s transformation really began here.
My own thought is This One is the point of Joe-Change.
Joe’s face in the 5th panel of that strip is the precise moment for me.
Agreed.
(“Watch this, Lis. You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half.”)
The weekend where Joyce is home, needs someone to talk to, and texts Joe. In the bonus strip where she starts, Joe says it’s fine for her to do so, because he doesn’t care about her. Meaning doesn’t care about her for sex. And he listens and never says, “can you text someone else about this instead?”
At the end of the first day, when readers got the reveal. I think that’s the seed of his change. To care about a woman, outside of the context of wanting to have sex with her.
Joe being a slimeball was always an act. He is deep down a very virtuous guy who is scared shitless of being like his father and destroying a home and hurting a woman like his dad did. You could see it all the times he dealt with women who push him away — Sarah and Liz — because the second they say “no” he drops it and goes “okay, absolutely.” Consent and the safety of women in his life is really, really important to him. Would not be surprised if he was really close to his mom.
All he really needed was an avenue to be sincere and direct with someone who could explain to him how he was hurting people with his persona and he immediately dropped it. He’s a diamond who needs to be shaped, but everything important is right there.
Liz yes, but that was a long way into his reform arc.
With Sarah? She had to get angry and yell at him to get him to back off and he still told her how much he liked her angry energy.
His intentions were virtuous in a way – in that his whole thing was about not cheating like his dad did by not forming any relationships solid enough for sex with someone else to count as cheating. Beyond that, he doesn’t seem to have given any consideration to how he made the women around him feel.
Let Joe have his growth. Don’t pretend he wasn’t harmful at the start.
I think we’re on the same basic page for Joe. He was so wrapped up in the persona, he was telling himself he wasn’t hurting anyone, but once he’s made aware of how his actions can (and did!) still hurt people, he shifted.
His starting persona was not healthy or as foolproof as he thought, but once he’s shown the truth of that, he pivots, and doesn’t really try and retain that persona.
It wasn’t quite that fast and easy. He backslid quite a bit and shifted back into that persona, even though he wasn’t as aggressive about hitting on every girl in sight.
And no, we’re not on the same page:
“His biggest hater (Dottie) hates him because he was an idiot teenager and called her gay, and her dislike tainted everything because Dottie was/is the deuteragonist and the shippers are piranhas.”
She brought that up because she thought he was doing it again, not because it’s the only reason she dislikes him. And it wasn’t a one time thing when he was 15, like he tried to deflect it with. She says “habitually”, “since the first day I never showed interest in you.”
It’s fair to say he was never as bad as he seemed, but he seemed really bad. Nothing but red flags and you absolutely cannot blame any girls he interacts with for not trusting him. Or for not trusting that he’d reformed when he was mostly hiding that.
Rachel literally had to scream at him to get him to back off. He did not accept rejection, he just knew the basics of sexual consent
Remember how he kept bringing up sex with Sarah after she’d repeatedly told him to fuck off? We call that badgering.
I mean that’s been his arc since the beginning of the comic. Figuring out what parts of his … method? … are appropriate and what parts aren’t.
Because his being a disgusting misogynist was, literally, not that sincere. He grew up with a fucked-up complex about hurting women that came from his Dad, and seriously negative beliefs about himself as a man, and a fucked-up compulsion to play out a certain archetype of performative toxic masculinity.
These things were not so much Joe, in any sincerity; these were deliberate intimacy barriers. He set himself up so that women would find him shallow and disgusting, so he could guarantee that he’d get sex from women with absolute zero romantic implications. It led to other men his age seeing him as cool and sexually competent, which is big for young men, while “protecting” any of his female peers from seeing him as dateable.
The second he was forced into actually doing some unpacking as to how he was viewing women, and how it made people see him, he was actually extremely eager to change. His heart was never in being a disgusting piece of shit; it just felt like something he “had” to do, because in his mind, what he was doing was the less bad alternative to what he would be, if he actually got a woman invested in him, as anything more than a sexual object.
We’re in “cool motive, still murder” territory at this point.
This is absolutely how I feel about this whole weird urge in the comments section to pretend Joe was always good secretly deep down inside of his heart.
Nah. He was a misogynist, and was NOT all about consent, and regardless of his reasoning, he treated women like objects that he could talk about whatever the fuck way he wanted.
He has grown and changed because he’s not a monster, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t suck to start with.
Turns out, his growing maturity is more impressive if we don’t downplay how bad he was to begin with. We can all be perfectly honest and get a better story out of it.
Exactly! Character arcs, not character straight lines.
More like character dots, since he’s apparently always been this way and was never any other way. Ignore all previous appearances, Joe being a good boy today means he wasn’t a bad boy in the past.
Yes please thank you. As a person who was definitely shittier to people when I was younger, I think Joe would feel a lot like I do reading the comments here. He’d probably jump in and say, “Nope, that was douchebag behavior, I own that.” I’m grateful people like my partner saw the soft sweet fruit potential I had under my stinky thorny durian shell, butI was definitely stinky and thorny.
I suspect a lot of this is people having some kind of weird disconnect about what “misogynist” and “consent-focused” might mean in this context.
IMHO, it’s clear that he wasn’t a “I hate women” misogynist, he was a “women are not something I think about at all except in terms of what I want” misogynist — similarly, he’s not so much “consent-focused” as “what behaviors do I need to do to get the most sex I can get”-focused. The fact that all that just happens, in his time and place, to mostly line up with “pays attention to consent and to his partner’s pleasure”, is I think why he’s perceived as “not so bad” because SOME of the outcomes are not as horrible as the motives could have resulted in.
In this case, I’m thinking it’s almost the opposite of “Cool motive, still murder” — “What you wanted and how you thought about things COULD have gone really badly, you’re lucky you picked a path in which you didn’t murder anyone”.
So attempted murder?
I think this is a very apt description of Joe.
I also want to raise a comparison here with Walky+Linda, where… like, I DO very much think Joe was always operating on a level of not wanting to hurt women, but I also think the way he spoke about consent in the early days is not at all dissimilar to how Walky spoke about the possibility of his mom being racist, which is to say…
“Rape? I’m not a monster!”
I think it was a stark binary in Joe’s head, the kind of thing that you CAN’T stumble into by accident or with good intentions.
Which… I don’t think is an uncommon attitude, especially among teenagers. I think it is, in fact, part of rape culture itself. That folks tend to assume there’s a much clearer, much starker line than there actually is.
Basically: I don’t think Joe ever set out to hurt anyone (and I believe him when he told Joyce that his horn dog persona was supposed to specifically keep him from ever mattering enough to anyone else to hurt them), but I think his early attitude is the kind of attitude people have when they don’t fully understand all the ins and outs of an issue, and haven’t yet done the work to actually confront themselves, examine their behavior, and really make sure they’re living up to their self-image…
…instead of assuming that only monsters would ever do the thing.
I see it as being all about consent in the sense that he wouldn’t actually do anything without consent, but consent was a goal to be achieved. A hoop to jump through to get the prize he was after.
Like with Liz, or even with Joyce here, early Joe wouldn’t have kept going when they said to stop, but he might have tried to get them to change their mind. To get consent back.
I think that’s also fair. I just… like, I don’t want to overstate it, I don’t think he intended to hurt anyone or was indifferent to anyone’s pain, but I do think he wasn’t thinking enough about it. I think he got a ‘yes’ (sometimes after kind of badgering in a pick-up-artist-y sort of way) and genuinely thought that was good enough. If he didn’t hurt someone, it was luck rather than because he actually did everything perfectly.
@Big Z: I think it’s almost inconceivable that Joe didn’t hurt someone. Not anything he’d see as rape of course, but real regrets.
We never saw him hitting on anyone who didn’t respond immediately and harshly – like Sarah or Rachel did. How would it have gone with someone less assertive? Or in scenario like his first date with Joyce, but without Mike to punch and with a girl who might have been both sexually and romantically interested and who didn’t realize he just wanted the first, since he certainly didn’t make it clear.
Again, we need to gate keep being a joe fan. If you deny this man his hard earned redemption arc by pretending he was always a sweet uwu bean, you are a fake fan!!!
If nothing else, it’s lazy reading.
It is driving me a little bit crazy how the same comment section that was able to see consent issues in Dorothy leading Joyce by the hand to the laundry machines is just. Completely incapable of imagining Joe could ever have been anything but perfect about consent, just because he once said he doesn’t “get his jollies” from sexually assaulting people.
I can’t believe Joyce is about to cannibalize Joe’s fingers and dip them in ketchup. Speaking seriously, though, good for them.
Well they’re about to get dipped into _some_ kind of sauce, yeah.
Gosh dangit, Willis.
I like to think of Willis reading the comments with his hands tented going MWA HA HA HA.
reflective glasses too.
imagine if dorothy was there like silently 4 feet away too lol
Weird to say I’m actually kinda relieved Joyce has SOME reservations.
Anyway time to see how Joe stacks up against laundry.
Is Joe better than a dryer? The world may never know.
In hindsight, Joyce was trying WAY too hard to convince the world (and herself) she was DTF.
It was always pretty obvious. I do hope it turns out to be more that than something about Dorothy.
I do like that they’re going to continue and “do something”. That was more my experience with starting out. Gradually doing more and more somethings rather than going straight to fucking.
Yeah, there’d be nothing wrong about Joyce having sex at this point, but she’s also just started to really accept/allow herself to have sexual desires; it’s perfectly normal that she’s still building toward being ready for some acts. And that’s true separate from stuff with Dorothy and even from her upbringing.
I suspect that Joyce wants to have had sex more than she wants to have it, if that makes sense. Part of her is legitimately horny, but I think she also sees having sex as part of her new, non-religious persona, something she needs to do to prove she’s overcome the parts of her upbringing that she’s trying to escape. The fact that all her close friends are sexually active and her boyfriend is infamous for his sexual history probably add some internal pressure as well.
+1
Also, relatable. There’s a lot of things I, as an ND introvert, would much rather have done than do.
There’s probably some of that. A performative push away from her upbringing. (That was definitely a lot of what was going on with Liz.)
But Joyce is also legitimately very horny. For Joe. So I think a lot of it is that combination of “excited, but scared”.
I legit almost said nearly this exact same thing before re-reading Astariel’s comment and noticing “Part of her is legitimately horny”.
Cuz yeah, 100%, she is very horny. She definitely wants to have sex a LOT, and I’m glad for them both that they’ve found an exciting next-step that pushes boundaries in a gentler way. You know? Nudging a door further open instead of slamming it open all in one go, hee.
Joe “Maytag” Rosenthal.
In my experience… someone else’s fingers >>> one’s own
Kinds expected Her to call it off but this is better than Joyce freaking out.
“Fingers are ok, but do you have a washing machine?”
w o w
Joyce getting massively turned on by the washboard solo Dottie snuck into the playlist.
I was just doing laundry (no, literally) and musing on the issues with getting your sex ed in the laundry room. The usage information printed on the inside of my washing machine lid includes instructions to “JAM NUTS TIGHT”.
Though I dunno, maybe Joe’s into that.
:pained falsetto: “it’s okay it it’s you”
(Also, “MAKE SURE HOSE IS INSERTED FIRMLY INTO RECEPTACLE”.)
I’ll be in my bunk.
Have to say, I was expecting the opposite to happen… For Joyce to be eager but Joe to want to stop/have reservations (because he still feels unworthy)
Joyce still has events from earlier in the day on her mind
Honestly, I don’t think Dorothy has factored into this. Garden-variety “I’m not ready,” methinks.
Besides, I think she’d be just as likely to have hit the brakes earlier had Dorothy not done so.
Also think if it was a Dorothy thing, she wouldn’t be up for doing something. That sounds more like cold feet about what she sees as actual sex.
I’d be tempted to agree if it weren’t for you chapter title. I doubt Dorothy’s the whole reason, but she’s almost certainly a part of it.
I think she’s part of it even if only in the most innocent sense, the “Dorothy encouraged Joyce to know what she wants” and “Dorothy told her she could trust Joe” and “Dorothy told her repeatedly that Joe would take care of her and not be disappointed or upset if Joyce doesn’t know how to do everything right away immediately”.
Y’know? That kind of factor, even if nothing else.
That had crossed my mind too, honestly. Don’t think I was expecting it, but it was definitely on the radar.
Same. Joe’s encounter with Liz has to come back into play at some point!
Finger Prints
I foud Prince!
No no no, finger prints!
….I don’t think so
Dot was just crestfallen.
A classic for our time.
Goodnight, everybody!
“Oh…I don’t think so.”
Absolutely love that Joe interrupted Dorothy, and now Dorothy is interrupting Joe
…..Is Dorothy still in the room?
Metaphorically.
Probably not physically, but we can pretend.
Joyce DID pull up Dottie’s playlist
Fingers are good. Do things to me that I can close my eyes and convince myself they are being done by Dorothy. She has fingers.
ffff
I definitely don’t think that’s it, but I giggled.
I can count on my fingers in binary, it’s very useful
You can go up to 1,024 that way. Now if only your toes were as flexible.
Up to 31 on one hand, and 1023 with two!
Well, you don’t usually need to count up to zero.
My ring finger won’t extend by itself, so 8-11 don’t work on my hand :/
When my ‘daughter’ was about 6 she ‘invented’ counting in binary on her fingers. She especially liked ” look mummy FOUR” (USA) and “look mummy, SIX” (UK).
You have to count past four awfully fast if you do it that way.
Yay for both of them respecting boundaries, and for joe wanting to giver her an orgasm!
This certainly brings back memories… Memories I didn’t even knew I had until tonight… DAMN YOU WILLLIS!
Wait, things aren’t going horribly wrong? Everybody is respecting boundaries and not having ptsd flashbacks or mental breakdowns?
I… I was not prepared for this
Aaaa I did not mean to report your comment sorry I was trying click reply >_<
I feel like this is specifically the kind of writing choice I admire Willis for. This is like. A real meaningful character beat for both of these people. But it didn't have to be catastrophic to be that. It just had to be human. And through this kind of character beat you find characters growing in nuance in ways that feel very like the way you build increasingly nuanced understandings of the world as you do grow up. I like it a lot every time it happens.
Just so you know you if you report someone the are not informed about it and nothing happens unless more that 10 people also report it. So wherever your report someone by accident it literally doesn’t matter and you don’t have to apologize for it. It is fine.
Out of curiosity, where did the 10 figure come from. Did I miss something?
Willis has said ten is the threshold before.
Enthusiastic consent? It must be that damned Amazigirl Condom. Clearly it’s radiating responsible behavior.
anyone else think he actually looks a little relieved in panel 3?
Definitely a mixture of relieved and disappointed. This relationship means a lot to him and he’s really scared of messing things up. As much as he’s extremely into her there’s still some trauma he’s working through right now.
I read it this way too. I feel like he’s been expecting this scenario to happen–see also, what happened with Sarah’s sister Liz–but he probably expected it to go *just* as badly as that did. The fact that Joyce isn’t fleeing from him in terror, and she’s making it clear that she does care about him/their relationship even if she doesn’t want to take this step right now–is where I’m seeing the relief coming from. While he’d like to go farther if she was up for it, I don’t think he genuinely thought it was going to happen tonght anyway.
Exactly.
On some level I think he’s playing it up to ensure that she doesn’t feel pressured to power through her misgivings — I have been there, this kind of expression of “no no, it’s really okay! Look at my smile! I’m totally fine with stopping!” is very familiar to me — but I do think he’s been very nervous about how aggressive she’s being about punching her V-card.
Liz is still hovering around his mind, he could on some level kind of tell that Joyce was kind of trying too hard to enthusiastically consent. This is probably validating his belief that she wasn’t quite ready and he was right to be suspicious.
When I’m starting a relationship (of any kind) I always feel relief when my partner says “actually I do not want to do this thing that you really want to do” because I know that I can trust them more with understanding their own emotions. I might still be bummed but I’d rather than than hurting them in some way. I still check in and whatnot but like as someone who (and this is not healthy and I’m working on it) is always trying to manage other people’s emotions it’s such a fucking relief that I don’t need to
+1
It’s also nice from the other side. The first time you tell someone no to something they really wanted, and that’s okay, actually, and doesn’t result in pushback or manipulation…
All green flags.
Man, that alt-text takes my mind to MULTIPLE hilarious places
I like this. I was expecting that this probably would not wind up being THE time, but I am glad that there wasn’t some sort of contrived thing to prevent it, or a blow up that didn’t really need to happen. This works, this works great.
Hey now, what’s all this frank and healthy communication between partners and clear establishment of consent and boundaries? I kept seeing people say that this was going to blow up horrendously in everyone’s face.
I guess the… veeeerrrry early morning is still young?
Yeah, nobody’s traumatizing anybody, like I was promised.
Yeah, we want our money back.
Oh, wait.
I mean this is wholesome, but I don’t think there’s a comment that can beat the title text today. 10/10
“This is even better than Dorothy’s washing machine!”
“wait what”
“oh oops did I say that out loud”
Don’t know why anyone would expect Joe would not be good at respecting Joyce’s withdrawn consent. He’s very good about sexual boundaries, as long as those boundaries don’t concern taping a webcam to his best friend’s foot in order to film a sex tape.
Just gonna copy my Patreon comment from last night:
I like this. She shuts down the sex, he agrees without condition, she offers something a little less all-in, he counters with his own offer, and we have a successful negotiation. A sexy, sexy negotiation.
As a rope guy this is textbook sexy. And you can withdraw consent at any time, urgently or otherwise. If it’s urgent I have scissors.
Thanks, this gave me a really funny mental image of someone frantically trying to untie some ropes after their partner nopes out, like “I’m trying, I’m trying! Gimme a fuckin’ minute here!”.
Lesson learned the hard way: Don’t get ropes wet. Makes ’em harder to untie.
Yes! And he sees her feeling like she owes it to him to “do something for him,” and instead he flips it around onto her, implicitly acknowledging that she doesn’t “owe” him anything. It’s such a good scene!
I’m gonna steal that “Negosexation” joke form the Patreon comments
This is super cute.
Joyce is minding her own boundaries (which Joe was always going to respect), but still willing to receive pleasure (which Joe is delighted to give), and going slow but not “all the way” might be just what they both needed!! ;ww;
Yeah, the worry I think was never that Joe wasn’t going to respect her boundaries, just that Joyce might not be willing or able to communicate them.
(It wasn’t a BIG worry, but I think it was one source of tension in the scene.)
Or that Joe wouldn’t be willing or able to communicate his own boundaries, which. The jury is still kind of out on, right now, since Joyce pumped the brakes.
(Was he still anxious from Liz and/or the less-than-reassuring answer Dina gave him earlier about Becky and shame-fueled sobbing?? I do hope we’ll get to find out.)
It’s still gonna be a good night!
D’awwww! They’re so cute together! And I know there’s Dorothy subtext, but in all honesty taking things step by step is very, very good for any relationship, especially when that relationship involves someone who is very repressed. I like this.
Really kind of Joe to use her self deprecating “I’ll make it up to you but don’t fully understand yet that this isn’t something I should feel pressure to make up” as an opportunity to treat her
Both growing together
Lovely pair
I love her adorable little “Oh darn, what do we do now?” expression.
Joe’s still following Dotty’s advice from the start of the book… Surely this means nothing and will lead to nothing!
Now we’re super in business
I love that they’re having this conversation so calmly and maturaly. That Joyce speaks up when she isn’t ready, that Joe hears her offer to make it up to him and turns it around on her. I love how far they’ve both come to make it to this. But also: Joyce basically making the pleading emoji face in the third panel is too cute to be allowed, someone stop her
(Like, genuinely, speaking up when you change your mind in the middle of something you said you wanted can be really damn difficult. Even when you’ve been in a relationship for way longer and are way older than Joyce is now. Even when you *know* the person won’t get mad at you. Mad respect for my girl here <3 )
that “don’t get mad” at first i thought she was going to say she needed Dorothy to hold her hand
This might honestly be the best way that this could have gone. They still get to do something new and make progress without it feeling too scary.
Dang I am glad Joyce can talk about that, and directly, instead of suppressing it. And darn good on Joe for patience and slowness.
Yeah, we all know that Joyce loves chi-
*reads alt-text*
DAMN YOU WILLIS!
Wherever your filthy or jokey mind can go, there is The Willis, already one step ahead of you.
Communication, yay! I stand corrected. I thought they would both undercommunicate.
It’s probably not a good idea to shove chicken fingers in someone’s Carolina caravan.
How about playing chicken with their Oregon Trail?
(sometimes i just come up with stuff and i’m like whatthehell you mean, and my brain’s like dunno man i just work here.)
Nah, but same though. I blame the imported TV shows and internet comedians I grew up watching. Those Brits know how to twist the language to its breaking point, dubbed anime is frequently an acid trip, and Dom Fera has infected my vocabulary like a big-toed tadpole tainted by the tides of a dawn since past.
Your mom is a Carolina caravan.
What was the point in saying that? Who benefits?
Me, because I think is funny. I am of the firm opinion that your mom jokes only are good if they don’t make any god damn sense.
The Carolina Tourism Board benefits, Nadamás is a secret travel agent.
You understand that I cannot leave you go alive now, don’t you? The state of Carolina sent it’s regard.
Reported for actionable death threats.
You can’t report the entire state of Carolina.
It would take too long.
I mean I’d you are willing to pay my plane ticket from Argentina I guess it could actionable
Aaaa this is so adorable. ^^ I definitely agree that Dorothy’s “Know what you want” comment definitely contributed heavily toward Joyce not going all the way tonight; without it, Joyce might have pushed herself into something she was trying to convince herself she was ready for. I suspect when this does happen for real it’ll be a little more spontaneous. Joe’s response here is perfect, helping to further establish the relationship as a safe space for Joyce.
Not if the Joyorthy Shippers have anything to say about it.
I don’t have anything to say about it. Carry on.
They can say whatever they want, it won’t change the story.
This shipper is still hoping that Joyce can have her Joe cake and eat Dorothy too.
Are there just, like… hundreds of rabid Joyce/Dorothy comments every day that get deleted before I can see them?
Yes. They are all generated inside my head and none of them would get past moderation.
Oh dang
I apologize, then! We’ve been awful!
I was just rereading Joementum, so you’d think this would be a natural segue and extra rewarding, but for some reason, I’m not feeling it. Must be my mood.
perfectly happy with this outcome
This is almost 100% how it went the night I almost lost my virginity. Ended up taking another five months to feel ready, and the guy was just as kind and patient as Joe here.
He and I are still great friends over a quarter-century later, so I feel like this bodes well for Joe and Joyce down the road.
This is adorable; consent is sexy and these two are really good for each other.
is this actually the optimal outcome?
So many were expecting Joe to Wig Out, for good reason, but this is High Quality Evidence that he can trust Joyce to have boundaries, know what they are, and communicate them. That’s gotta make him feel safer.
And Joyce is being rewarded for her boundaries! bless
hilarious grav thank
Obligatory “Wish I could thumbs up/heart/whatever this comment” but it IS a good note to make about how this could help Joe not walk on egg shells around Joyce and the bedroom
On one hand, I look at this and think about how this is such a beautiful moment of care, concern, and love, that could -never- have happened with where both of these characters were in the beginning. This moment of hesitation, admission, apology, reassurance, and reconnection, very much shows how healthy of a dynamic they have.
On the other hand. Literally half the cast has now been told by Joyce that Joe would be sticking his dingaling in her whoopsiepoodle tonight, so this is going to lead into tons of hilariously awkward conversations and explanations that go into WAY too much detail.
The alt text said it before I could. So I guess I’ll say I’m glad Joe has improved since the start of this comic and that him and Joyce are happy together so far.
Also – a message to Willis.
I don’t know how on earth you’ve done it, man, but this is one of the very few love triangles I’ve ever read in which there isn’t one clear preferred relationship over the other. I want Joe and Joyce to work. I want Joyce and Dorothy to work. The fact that I can’t look at either Joe or Dorothy and think that one is better than the other, or more selfish than the other, or less caring or self-sacrificing than the other, and yet both feel *real,* is amazing.
Of the few stories that I’ve read / seen that managed to straddle this line, *most* of them made the mistake of letting it go too long without resolution. Because the longer that you have both sides be the perfect, caring, considerate, giving person who denies their own wants and desires for their partner’s happiness, the longer it’s apparent that the main character is not reciprocating.
Right now, Dorothy knows how Joyce and Joe feel about each other, and she has mixed messages for how Joyce feels about her. And Joe understands how Joyce feels about him and how Dorothy feels about Joyce, but not how Joyce feels about Dorothy. There’s an elephant in the room here. Everyone is not on the level.
Now, Joyce didn’t NEED to start this date by saying, “before we begin, know that I have serious unresolved feelings for Dorothy and was minutes away from fucking her, but I still want to fuck you.” But if that’s still the case, and Joyce is going this far with Joe, with Joe believing they’re in a monogamous relationship (which has been reinforced in the storyline) and Joyce dipping a toe into poly… well, the date is certainly under some false pretenses, and the longer it goes on, the more it’s going to feel like certain individuals are being taken advantage of.
Right now, it certainly feels like the only reason that it’s Joe’s fingers and not Dorothy’s is because Joe made the appointment, and not because one relationship was decided over the other.
Plot twist! Joe ends up with Dorothy.
That would be both cruel and hilarious.
I could see it happening if Joyce tried to make the poly triangle happen. Or at least some really neat hate-sex.
I don’t think touching someone’s cheek is “minutes away from fucking” unless I’ve been doing things very incorrectly. Minutes away from smooching maybe.
Yes, I was going to say.
Things proceed at their own pace.
If I touch my friend’s cheek and say “You know, I think I love you, and I’ve always loved you, you are beautiful and I want to get to know you better,” we’re probably minutes away from smooching.
If I am laying in my bed with my friend, and touch my friend’s cheek – the friend who held my hand when she taught me to masturbate – the night I’ve been telling everyone that I’m going to be de-virginified, and say, “I don’t know if I feel comfortable with my first time being with him. It would be so much easier if I had my first time with you,” and if my friend bites her lip and says, “Look, just know what you want, OK?” we are possibly minutes away from fucking.
Context is everything. The cheek is literally the least important thing.
That makes perfect sense, but please keep in mind that Joyce is possibly-autistic, and speaking as someone who was only excluded from the diagnosis on account of having a high IQ… It’s entirely possible that Joyce would’ve been surprised if Dorothy started trying to have sex with her. I think she might’ve wanted it but might have been surprised if Dorothy figured it out that she wanted it, because she didn’t literally say that she wanted to have sex with Dorothy, just that hypothetically it would be easier. (Like, seriously.) (I say this because I’m… like this… myself…)
(I’ve literally experienced what amounted to sexual assault because I didn’t realize that the person I was on a date with wanted to have sex with me out in public. He said it but I didn’t know what that slang meant at the time, and didn’t infer from context.) (I was thinking maybe we would kiss after spending some time together. It was a first date.) (It’s, like, hey, extra consent checks are necessary if you’re the kind of neurodivergent that I am, he was surprised that I was surprised when he was… y’know doing things to me. I literally shoved him and that’s how he found out I wasn’t aware that he was intending to do things.) (…at a park, though? ugh.) (I… guess it was a misunderstanding, but I needed therapy.)
I mean think about it, that’s why she was confused and then disregarded it when Dorothy said, “we’re just confused.” I think that Joyce literally wasn’t aware of the subtext. (I wasn’t either until I read the comments section!)
We love communication and respect for consent in this house!
I have a ‘grandson’ who tells me not to “eat-a-finger bones” when we have chicken. I crunch them up anyway tho.
But perhaps that is not what is meant by chicken fingers…
Just because your grandson is chicken is no reason to crunch their fingers.
On the other hand if you are crunching actual chicken fingers, you may be preparing the chicken wrong.
Joe has gone from “Like, my hands?” to…
I don’t have a follow-up. Something something “catch these hands” something. I don’t know. I’m in a throe of sleep madness right now.
Ok, can I say that they are just so adorable together?
Cause they are.
Woohoo! Healthy consent, we live to see it
Well played, Willis.
Now he gets to advertise the finger-bang for the Patreon, but hold back a full Horizontal Tango for a later Slipshine…
….She’s going to think of Dorothy isn’t she.
Dorothy has fingers too. That’s all I’m saying.
There is no evidence to support this claim.
We have evidence that Arianod has said other things.
This is so sweet! But I have to admit that the first think that come to my mind is a moment in Luann and Quill’s relationship. Sure, there the boy was the first to stop and they have a heart to heart talk during five strips while here it’s much more poetic and Joyce and Joe do it all in one strip. But it seems like an inspiration. Or I just wish it was because I love “Luann”.
The heck you talking about?
I think Luann, the widely syndicated newspaper comic strip.
The one Willis talks about frequently on Bluesky? Which is often visible on the sidebar?
I just skip those post so j never seen it’s name.
Yeah I’ve never heard of it either. I don’t look at anything right of the strip other than occasionally the poll
To be fair, it’s only the third most frequently talked about newspaper comic there. [The second is Mary Worth. The first, I shall not speak the name of.]
Aw, sweet. Joyce still has things to work out, but this is still good.
*gasp gasp mooooan* “oh Dorothy!”
Poor Joe, he’s going to have blue balls the size of Neptune.
Yet, somehow, I don’t think he’ll mind all that much. He’s handling this like a champ, and smoothly dealt with her not entirely unexpected hesitation, reinforcing that it’s perfectly fine. Nothing good comes from stressing or rushing someone’s first time.
Gotta take it at a pace they’re comfortable with, and given how little actual intimacy they’ve had time for, going from her giving him a handy once, directly to full-on intercourse, and it being her first time, too… A bit rushed.
I like this interaction. Bless you, Willis.
Reciprocity! You love to see it. It may not be exactly what Joyce envisioned, but hey, she can still overshare about being a sex-haver if she wants.
Shout out to Joe’s rizz here. He’s flexible, aims to satisfy, and is good with negotiating. It’s sexy as hell, and explains how he was able to find so many past partners. He may have had a slutty reputation, but you get the sense it was also a reputation for being a good time. (Until word of The List got around.)
It’s interesting what Joyce was initially stressing out about before the date (the load taken off by Dorothy) isn’t much of a factor in why she got cold feet; it’s a question of desire to do the act itself. Dorothy is partially to do with it, but I also think some part of her displayed enthusiasm is performative in a sense – she considers sex to be one of the last remaining obstacles to “real” adulthood and an upcoming part of the “new and improved super cool Joyce” after major life changes.
It goes without saying “old Joyce” is still present like her initial reaction to Amazi-Girl on the roof just showcased, which has been troubling her for a bit.
An acceleration to get to that point in her first real relationship before she’s mentally ready. It’s not like Joe is in a rush but Joyce has been vocally building up the eventual coitus for at least three days. I’m thinking part of it is fulfilling a role for the sake of this new identity and ideas she’s carried around for years about relationships/adulthood. Knowing what you truly want in the moment is important.
Joe’s attitudes when it comes to Joyce, or to women, sex, and relationships in general, continue to impress me. The dude’s genuinely matured over the course of the comic. And I really want this relationship to succeed and go the distance, because these two are awesome together. Sorry to the Joyce/Dorothy shippers.
Don’t know why fell sorry, Joyce has two hands.
5 minutes later : “GO IN DEEP AND MAKE ME YOUR MEAT PUPPET!!!” lmao
Maybe a hot take (and this might get buried cause late), but i’m really glad this is with Joe and not Dorothy.
I think that with Dorothys inner turmoil, I dont think she would be able to be as solid as Joe is being right now. Joe seems to be wholly Dorothy-focused, trying to make this as easy for her as possible. No demands, no disappointment, no complaints, just gently staying in her comfort zone and focusing on making sure shes comfortable and consenting every step of the way.
I think a tryst with Dorothy would be more passionate for sure, but would leave Joyce all twisted up after and unsure and I doubt that will happen with this scenario.
God dammit i meant hes joyce focused. Not dorothy focused.
He can be Dorothy-focused, that’s fine with me.
And that’s why I ship Joyrothy~ Neuroses, possessiveness, characters doing dangerous and dramatic things out of strong feelings they barely understand.
…I miss Ruth and Billie being a thing, can you tell?
If you can’t call them digits, then you’re not ready.
Fucklanges.
Please please please please please have Joyce call out Dorothy while he’s fingering her that would be amazing
Agree to disagree. I think it would re-cast a lot of the date in a rather unhappy light.
“How do you feel about fingers?” “I feel them all the time, you?”
chickens don’t even have fingers! chicken fingers are just chicken tenders with a diff name~
American chickens don’t have fingers??
Next comic is Joe with a panicked expression on his face running out of Joyce’s Dorm.
Final panel is a feral Joyce standing in the doorway with red eyes screaming
“CHICKEN STRIIIIIIPS”
Wait I missed my opportunity!
It’s finger shlickin’ good.
In all seriousness: very sweet, excellent communication, and I think Joe picked a good alternative. I think oral might risk ALSO being too much, where essentially returning Joyce’s handjob earlier is much lower impact and also neatly symmetrical.
Leave it to Willis to crack jokes during a sensual situation.
And make me hungry, too. Damn you, Willis!
Way to go Joyce with stating her change in want and way to go Joe on respecting it! Also good on both of them in coming to a fair compromise
We love to see a consensual negotiation.
Everyone is like “I hope she says Dorothy’s name!” and like the way my heart would break omg. Like that would be so sad poor Joe. But the people saying that hate Joe lmao personally I hope she gets a nice orgasm and then they cuddle and kiss and then later that day Dorothy admits to her that she loves her and there’s a moment of “who do I go with???”
…You definitely don’t have to hate Joe for that.
Nah, it wasn’t because I hate Joe, it was because I was expecting this to go horribly for them and that was the *least* harmful option of them all (as the other options were Trauma PTSD moment related)
I am pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t a breakdown and VERY happy this is the result
I mean, it would be AMAZING (terrible) and the trash goblin part of me would love it and I definitely don’t hate Joe or want him to get his heart broken! And the part of me that just wants Joyce to be happy definitely doesn’t want it to happen, heh.
My vote here is still for happy poly eventually.
I have to say, I feel like (NOT YOU SPECIFICALLY, you’re fine!!) there’s been a lot of assuming people’s motives that don’t really follow, like.
“If you think something’s gonna go wrong here, you MUST be anti-Joe/Joyce”
“If you ship Joyce/Dorothy, you MUST be pro-cheating and/or really mad right now that Joe and Joyce are having a nice time”
etc
But no, fan contains multitudes. Plenty of folks ship both Joe/Joyce and Joyce/Dorothy; plenty of people who only ship Joyce/Dorothy were horrified and anxious about potential cheating; plenty of folks who wanted Joyce and Dorothy to kiss still cared about Walky and Joe’s feelings…
Plenty of us simultaneously want something really messy to happen here (like said moan) but also don’t want it to happen, like when you’re… well I keep making the scary movie analogy, but I think it’s a good one. You can like a character and NOT want the monster to kill that character, but also be kind of excited about a possible monster attack when the character goes off alone to check a shed late at night.
(Also if you’re excited for slasher movie deaths, you almost certainly aren’t pro-murder in real life, which I feel like most of us understand, so I’m not sure where the “pro fictional cheating = pro real life cheating probably” faction is coming from at all, heh.)
Are you specifically referencing movies because of that one brainless dipshit from a few days ago who basically called everyone here an immoral piece of shit?
It WILL be hard to ever fully get that string of comments out of my head lol. But no, the mixture of “oooo” and “nooooo” that I think is fairly common to feel while watching scary movies is something I’ve been trying to use to explain why I can be both excited about the idea of a Terrible Decision and also not completely want it to happen ever since Joyce joined Dorothy on the bed.
I should probably give up because it’s not like I actually think there’s anything wrong with legitimately 100% wanting Joyce and Dorothy to cheat with each other on their partners?? They’re all paper dolls, they don’t have real feelings, it’s fine. I just dislike misunderstandings, orz.
SOMEONE BETTER PICK UP THAT PHONE
BECAUSE I FUCKING CALLED IT
granted it’s just because she didn’t want to and not some unknown outside force but it still counts
damn you Willis
now I want chicken fingers ugh
10 years ago (real time) Joe was explicitly *not* invited.
This is almost exactly what I expected to happen; that one of them isn’t as dtf as they thought they were but there still wasn’t a meltdown or total drama. Because both of them have matured a little more than some of us give them credit for. This is sweet.
Also, fingers are definitely good.
Omg I am so incredibly proud of them for this wonderful interaction!!! She feels safe, he IS safe and just. . . awwwww.
Joyce is such a MOOD….
Yeah, it *did* concern me that Joyce wants to go 0 to 100 in a second.
Because of her assumption that PIV is 100.
Fingers are an AMAZING way to go to what i consider 100 – to explore your sexuality together.
Most likely, PIV would not achieve 100 on that scale right away because there’s a general skill to *all of sex* and a sex-negative upbringing makes PIV so loaded that many vagina-equipped people experience discomfort or pain. I learned that Vaginismus is disproportionately common in women who grew up mormon….
Go for fingers and do whatever feels good from there. Feeling good is the end goal, not putting the penis inside you. You can do that later when you feel like that *would* be a way to feel good!