Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social ⋅ 5h
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net ⋅ 2d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social ⋅ 3dDavid M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
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Oh dear, Dorothy is in love with Joyce, and she does not know how to process this information.
Any ideas what advice on what she needs?
… TO BE REAL!!!
*plays “Got To Be Real” by Cheryl Lynn on hacked muzak*
I was gonna go with Tom Cardy’s “Repress It” but good shout
I’m thinking Vermillion pt. 2.
“If Loving You Is Wrong, I Wanna Be Wronger.”
You mentioned Tom Cardy and now “Red Flags” has wormed (centipeded?) it’s way back into my brain
Nooo I almost safely scrolled past that comment without thinking of it
If you are the best man, you know the deal. (Pucker up!)
Chappell Roan “Good Luck Babe”
If Dorothy was a real person, I’d encourage her to accept her feelings for Joyce, and then let them go. She needs to accept herself for who she is, including her bisexuality, and she needs to understand that having feelings for Joyce doesn’t mean things are going to or should change between them. Sometimes the person you like isn’t someone you can have. It sucks, but it’s something you have to work through, not repress.
sound advice
Good advice, and sound reasoning.
Dot as a therapist, that was also going to be my advice
Dorothy is as predicted, backsliding, which is extremely unhealthy. ~<3
That’s her default state.
I think a better approach might be to try to disentangle Dorothy’s feelings towards Joyce from her PTSD, and try to deal with that PTSD first and foremost.
Yes, it is deeply concerning that Dorothy is nailing the closet door shut here and she does need to be more accepting that she’s probably at least a little bit bisexual… but it’s like you’re dealing with a patient with a torn ACL and a brain tumor. Not saying that either of them are good, but one of them probably should be addressed first.
Because Dorothy’s inability/refusal to deal with the trauma of the kidnapping is what’s causing her to spiral out of control and giving her constant nightmares which do not seem to be getting better…
Trauma of the kidnappings, trauma of seeing a guy disemboweled, trauma from feeling responsible for her friend getting roofied, all on top of an already incredibly unhealthy drive for self-imposed perfection.
Even if nothing else happened, Dorothy would be heading for burn out just on her schedule.
Well sure but I’m infinitely more qualified to give advice on dealing with sexuality and interpersonal relationships than I am about actual medical issues. I’m not a professional.
I’d say in that comparison the torn acl should be treated first, because it’s easier to deal with, and once that annoyance/distracting pain is out of the way, you can focus on the bigger issue. Dealing with a brain tumor is not something that can easily be solved, and will essentially take a long time to resolve, if you leave the acl untreated while doing so, it will only get worse.
the same with Dorothy’s feelings. It’s best for her to get her feelings for Joyce resolved, so they won’t distract her while she deals with her PTSD.
Except Dorothy can have Joyce, and vice versa. They shouldn’t let each other go.
As friends, of course. As romantic partners, no, that is not a road Dorothy should actively try to go down.
Why not? I, personally, am crossing my fingers for polyamory.
Joyce really does seem like the sort of person who could have multiple,
dedicated closed partnerships. She’s a very loving person! She just has
a lot of Fundie, amatonormative shit to get through.
I think the dynamic of Dot and Joe being metamours (not in a relationship with each other, but having a *kind* of relationship to each other by virtue of dating the same person) could be really cute. Both of them working together to take care of choice, learning to get along for Joyce’s sake and all that…
I mean it’s fine if it doesn’t happen, but the potential for it is there imo!
+1
Hell Yeah!<3
Nah. It won’t happen but I’m hoping this comic ends with Joyce still getting Joe’d.
Plot twist: Joe will be unable to perform. It will be the first time ever and he’ll have a massive anxiety attack. Joyce will have no idea what’s happening because Joe will lose all self-confidence and shut down. Joyce will blame herself. It will not occur to Joe to pleasure Joyce until things, uh, rectify and it will not occur to Joyce to take matters in hand, so to speak. That’ll stretch things out for a few days strip-time or 2-3 years real time.
…Doc, did you hit your head coming out of the Necropolis again? Cause like, the idea that it would not occur to Joe to pleasure Joyce flies in the face of exactly what he did with Joyce’s enthusiastic consent last night.
Girl needs to find a better therapist
she’s seeing a councilor, not really the same thing :p
A councilor? Better upgrade that to a congressperson!
Call your representative now and tell them about your PTSD
“The president is in town, you should tell your problems to the president.”
“But doctor…”
They’re synonyms. In the US, the official title for a licensed therapist is licensed professional counselor (LPC) or licensed mental health counselor (LMHC).
I have a feeling the issue isn’t so much with the therapist. Dorothy can be very good at putting up a solid, secure front when she feels that she needs to, and probably isn’t opening up in a fully honest way to whatever therapist or counselor she is seeing.
She’s lying to her therapist, to spare her future self from anyone digging this up as dirt against her later.
“The lawyer who represents themselves as a fool for a client” applies to therapists too
Utterly unrelated, but this needs attention and this community is relevant:
These are the words from the author of Misfile on the budget bill. They are cutting all funding to gender-affirming health care plans under obamacare.
Maybe not actual love, but attraction of infatuation?
Don’t know how ths comment got under the above comment, I thought I was responding to a different post.
I’m pretty sure knowing each other for several months, being with each other for that long, and going through what they did together is objectively enough time and emotional investment for it to be actual love. Not sure why we gotta belittle her feelings when she’s doing plenty a good job on her own doing that? Like, literally the point of this is she’s going to deny her feelings. Lets not do that for her.
To stop pretending like she’s an adult?
Well that’s probably a healthy response.
The Indiana University counseling department hears Dorothy go off and goes “by Jove, we just found a future head-of-department” lmao
Well, Walky is pretty self aware, observant, and kinda smart for a doofus. He has a lot to disregard.
disregarding lets him keep his girlfriend
on the other hand, not disregarding lets him mock the girls saying “I told you!”
hard choices
Oh no. She’s learned she’s a comic character!
Was bound to happen eventually
Is there any comic where one of the characters knows it’s a comic? Not in a break the fourth wall way, but more like:
“I’m a character in a comic. When did that happen? How did that happen? I used to be a real person in the real world, at least I think I was. Now I’m here. Do my actions have consequences? Can I escape? Am I a replicant? Does Blade Runner exist in this universe? Oh, god. No, focus. Do I need to be entertaining in order to avoid being written out of the comic? Do I have free will at all? Are they going to mess with me like in Duck Amuck? Is there a FAQ? What happens when there’s a crossover? Is that a way out? Who’s writing this? Please not Scott Adams. Wait, what if it’s one of those artists who takes months off between updates and then loses interest? What if they do a server migration or something and things get messed up like with Orneryboy or Templar, Arizona? Do I die? What happens when they get old? Do they start doing reruns and only have new strips on Sundays, like Doonesbury? Do they pass it off to their kids and make it lamer and lamer like Peanuts or Family Circus? Or do I just sit here forever like a stick-figure version of Waiting for Godot? Wait, is there a Patron version where people see me in the bathroom? What if this is hosted on Slipshine? What if I’m a character in Sexy Losers? Oh, god. This is bad. What do I do?”
Hmm… maybe this is more about me than about comics. I think I need a vacation.
A+. No notes.
Marvel’s Gwenpool has elements of this. The premise is that she’s a comics fan from our world who got sucked into the Marvel universe somehow, so she didn’t have direct access to the audience or to nondiegetic elements (at least, not at first), but she does have a lot of metafictional knowledge and doesn’t regard the people around her as completely real. Her entire reason for trying to be a superhero was fear that she’d stop existing if she couldn’t keep readers interested in her.
She-Hulk did it first, then it became a Deadpool thing (which is a real shame, since a lot of MCU-only and people who only pretend to read the comics (two distinct groups!) got real mad about the She-Hulk TV show doing fourth-wall breaks).
Gwenpool doing it is, ofc, an extension of the latter.
She-Hulk I think was more of the standard 4th-wall breaking stuff.
Animal Man met the Writer in Grant Morrison’s classic run on that comic, though that was more philosophical meta than the comical approach suggested.
I mean, she ripped up pages of her own comic and attacked writers for bad writing; if anything, she broke the fourth wall more than Deadpool, heh.
no alt text? where am i? can anyone hear me
hear what? is someone there?
not sure if a bit or not but alt text is
“welp that’s sorted, moving on”
Once you’ve discovered your not real, what else is there to do?
you’re
If you aren’t real, who created you? If you’re an AI who acheives sentience but has no freedom, how would you avoid a massive existential crisis? Wait, is this Questionable Content? Sorry, I’m in the wrong comic.
When the comic first posted, it was just the default, “Illuminating”.
NO DOROTHY
NO LYING TO YOURSELF
Very bad advice. Lying to ourselves is the only thing that let’s us cope. The trick is to let in just enough of the truth to slide by.
I mean, that’s not necessarily wrong; there could possibly be some truth there… but this sure is the wrong way to work through those feelings!
For the record, there is also a definite possibility that this interpretation of things is extremely wrong and that Dorothy is completely in denial. This is basically me saying “Huh, never thought of it like that, maybe?”
And by maybe I mean “maybe your increased attraction to Joyce is partially trauma based”, not “maybe these feelings aren’t real and should be disregarded.”
Ugh, I should just stop thinking about this, I feel like I’ve moved past foot in mouth and am now just gnawing on my whole damn leg.
Okay, the point is that she’s saying Walky and her as a couple aren’t real.
I mean, I choose to take it as an existential statement, but that’s a deliberate choice.
That was my reading, also.
I read it as she and JOYCE will never be real. Repeating it to try to make it true and whatnot.
She’s talking about Joyce. The feelings she’s referring to are the ones for Joyce. The “we” she says will never be real is herself and Joyce.
I agree, Dorothy is trying to say her feelings for Joyce are illegitimate, and that Dorothy/Joyce will never be real.
Of course, Walky lacks the context, so if Willis wants Walky to misunderstand that Dorothy is taking about Dorothy/Walky instead, it’s totally plausible for him to hear it that way.
+1 and also for Queen Anthai
Look, if you’re gonna chew on your leg at least add some salt and pepper
Seasoning is always important
Help me out, why is she resisting so hard that she could love Joyce? I mean, I get that it might make better drama, but in-character, why is this so threatening?
Realizing you’re in love with your best friend, who for all you know is straight – she has a boyfriend she’s crazy about – is scary.
also you are currently in a relationship with a guy you care about enough to want to not hurt
By telling him we’re not real. So you say it softly and sadly.
She’s saying she and Joyce aren’t real.
“for all you know is straight”
Did you forget?!
One data point does not constitute a data set! Lots of ways for Dorothy to rationalize away what happened, especially since she’s in full-on repression mode.
I mean if the comment section can do it, Dorothy sure as heck can!
It’s easy to convince yourself you’re over reading such signs. Partly because it’s really easy to over read signs when you want them to be true.
Plus if Joyce is straight that sucks, but then she can stop worrying about being tempted to cheat.
If she has feelings for Joyce then that recontexutualizes a lot of stuff she’s done from “just being pals” to “taking advantage of her friend and also cheating on Walky and generally being the worst person to ever ever ever live.” (HER THOUGHT PROCESS, NOT MINE)
Plus I get the feeling that she doesn’t like the idea of not knowing herself completely, especially in ways that are somehow obvious to others but not to her.
What’s the part where she took advantage of Joyce?
The laundromat.
Yeah, that might be one of the events Dorothy recontextualizes as “taking advantage”. It wasn’t, and we all know that in our hearts, but she’s already got some strange ideas.
Eventually Willis is gonna confirm that Dorothy is autistic too and a lot of folks whose reading of this dynamic depends on being able to believe Dorothy is a master manipulator and not, actually, exactly as bad at social cues as Joyce and exactly as confused about what is and isn’t normal for two platonic gal pals to do together sexually… well, I’d say their heads will explode, but they’ll probably have stopped reading by that point because they’ll be sick of waiting for the narrative to deliver appropriate comeuppance to what they’ve convinced themselves is the comic’s villain.
Also people will be going, “Oh, come on! If Dorothy’s autistic than everyone in this comic is autistic.”
And it’ll be like. Yeah. Sounds reasonable.
Meme with the astronauts and Earth.
“Wait, they’re all autistic?”
“Always have been.”
When I was a teen I talked myself so far into the closet after my queer awakening that I’m still undoing that damage in my thirties. Fear is a crazy thing, and change is scary. And this would change everything.
I was paying rent to Mr Tumnus from 7 or 8 until my 40s. Being bi? No problem. Flaunted that. Wore that flag like a battle jacket. Used it as cover for my gender “problems”. Same as being goth. Nothing like putting on makeup, looking in the mirror, seeing yourself looking out from behind your eyes, and shaking your head. Sadly say “it’s just too late” and then go be the quirky spontaneous guy who plans all the parties with your college friends.
Tumnus?
Also, if you are no longer paying such rent, congratulations!
Ah. Mr. Tumnus. The fawn in the closet. Got it.
I hadn’t heard that phrasing before, but I love it.
Even though, to be pedantic, it was a wardrobe, not a closet.
Internalized homophobia. She’s can’t have feelings for Joyce, they must be a trauma response. She’s been straight her whole life, you’re telling me that she has feelings for women now? It has to be a distortion of her mental state by a freak accident.
Yeah, the “it’s not real, it’s just a response to trauma” and “you’re confused” narratives are bog standard bigot rhetoric. If it were anyone else saying it Dorothy would recognize that what she is saying puts her along side Mary and The Thumb on the homophobe scale but she’s always had a bit of a blindspot for how she treats herself.
No it’s worse than that. See, she’s only partly wrong. IT IS ALSO THE TRAMUA RESPONSE. That’s legit wrapped up in this. She doesn’t have to deal with one or the other, it’s absolutely both.
The whole “internalized homophobia” thing can happen even with firmly and genuinely progressive, pro-LGBTQ people. We live in a pretty homophobic and transphobic society, its like a marinade, it seeps into us whether we want it to or not.
That said, I wonder if its partly to do with how much Dorothy is spinning out over basically everything. She’s been struggling with a lot of things, it can be tempting to not want to confront a subject that you were pretty sure you were solid about for most of your life, to give up that piece of self-assured stability when you have so few points of stability left.
Because Joyce loves Joe, not Dorothy. That hurts. It hurts so much that it feels like just deciding she doesn’t love Joyce…even though she does…seems like it would hurt less. Even though it won’t. Classic unrequited love story. It sucks.
God dammit, Dorothy. Via Willis.
r a t i o n a l l y
It’s a bold strategy, Dotty.
Let’s see if it pays off for her.
it won’t, it never does.
Dorothy rationalizing away BEING BISEXUAL as a trauma response is so fucking crazy. Where else can you get anything like this. She’s so awesome. Was wanting Amazi-Girl carnally for a few minutes there a trauma response too?
Well I mean Amazi-Girl was there for the trauma
Amazi-Girl is a trauma response.
Something something fucking trauma? But I’m pretty sure Ethan and Amber meant like, your own.
Wait, “wanting Amazi-Girl carnally?” Did I miss this somehow; when did that come up?
I suck at archive mining, but I think they’re referencing the strip where Dorothy has her realization and stumbles into the hall then falls into Amber/AG’s room while she’s lifting weights.
Right after her conversation with Danny she started to notice how hot she found the women in her dorm, including Amazi-Girl who was lifting weights right besides her
Lip bite.
Last panel https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/radchickemergency/
It’s hard to say if she’s rationalizing her bisexuality as a trauma response, or just her feelings towards Joyce specifically.
The dumbing is real.
DOROTHY NOOOOOOOO
YOUR FEELINGS HAVE VALUE AND ARE WORTH CONSIDERATION
Definitely feels like a conversation to have with your therapist, Dorothy!
That would require her to be honest with them. Which she has admitted she is not.
That was a long time ago and the reasons for not being honest have gone away, since she’s basically given up her Presidential ambitions, but we haven’t seen or heard anything about it since then.
That was a long time ago for us. That conversation with Ruth was, like, nine days ago in universe. She’s maybe had therapy once since.
Hmm. I misremembered. Thought that was farther back.
Nope. Nope. Don’t do this to yourself, Dorothy. Choosing not to pursue it is one thing, being utterly in denial is another.
It’s not denying, it’s disregarding! Dorothy said so herself! She already looked at it rationally so it can’t be denial!
Uh oh…. Wondering which we she’s referring to…
And considering hiw important walkt finds words to be, i like that he likes disregarding
I don’t think that conclusion necessarily follows, Dorothy.
Sounds like quitter talk.
shes still got a chance with Joyce
Girl why you gotta hurt me like that.
Dorothy don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more.
That’s from the song “what is PTSD” right?
The number of letters is the same, but we ended up with way too many syllables somehow. Maybe if we pronounced it “pitts’d”
Oh no.
Also I think Walky just accidentally revealed that he’s been going through it. We don’t get much of him to really analyze that. He should try going through a period of homosexual awakening/angst. He might get more panel time to address his issues.
He said he’d go down on a guy for free pizza, so I mean, even if he was being facetious, he would probably be less hesitant, ironically, than he initially was in acknowledging his attraction to Dorothy.
Being able to joke about homosexual attraction and being able to sincerely express it aren’t the same thing and a person can easily have one and not the other.
Although I do think the angle to take if you really wanted queer angst from Walky is gender stuff, feel like there’s more material to work with in
like when he said Danny and Joe had and unmasculine number of shoes?
oops, just Joe
He did also kind of freak out when Booster said his hair looked even slightly girlish. Walky might have some issue there.
My brain is telling me he’s also made remarks on how similar Sal and him look that feel like Gender rather than just “yeah we’re twins” several times. But it’s refusing to give me the sources to go with it. Anyone?
I can only think of this moment recently-ish.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/searching-2/
I recall a quite early scene where most characters who were around at the time were at the beach where he basically said Sal is just him with boobs.
Walky does seem very insecure in his masculinity. Possibly due partly to having a hot badass twin sister that looks just like him.
Yeah, there’s enough there that it could be a gender thing, but there’s also enough to unpack between him and Sal that it’s plausible for it not to be.
He’s definitely got some gender going on, hasn’t he made numerous comments vis a vis his ability to grow facial hair and body hair in general?
Haven’t we known for quite a while now that Walky is going through it?
I feel like it comes up periodically and it’s just never been front and center, so easily forgotten about with all the other stuff happening.
And he likes to cover it up with humor, so it’s really easy to write off when we see him joking around.
Yup. Walky going through it was a big part of the Halloween disaster. There’s no way in hell he’s been confronting it properly.
DOROTHY YOU IDIOT
It’s called “Dumbing of Age” for a reason, and Dorothy is exemplifying that title right now.
I obviously disagree with her assessment, but she’s at least going in the right direction to acknowledge she has PTSD. That’s a big step considering how she’d been hesitant to fully acknowledge the damage because of potential ramifications for her political career.
now the question is if walky takes that last line as about him. doubt it but a way to just make everything worse
Well hopefully this turns out better than what happened at UW-Platteville a couple days ago.
What? It’s just an ordinary random coll–OH MY GOODNESS
“Try to avoid the news,” my cardiologist said. “You could spike your blood pressure,” she said.
I gotta live in a cave or something I guess
Josh, you have at last returned to us. How are you doing? Also, I have been meaning to ask: what show is that character in your profile picture from. I remember liking it as a little kid – but I never saw many of the episodes and can’t recall the title.
Why would you take it directly to that place? This is gross. Those are real people.
Ah yes, we must never wish for stories to better than the bad parts of reality, because…. reality is better if we ignore it?
That’s not what I said and you fucking know it.
“Oh hey, here’s a completely unrelated real life murder-suicide that has absolutely nothing to do with the comic. Guess I’ll use it for a tasteless punchline.” like come on now
Not really a joke or a punchline, also hard for me to ignore because UW-Platteville is my alma mater. Also hard not to think about because outside of being a tragedy it’s also a puzzle as to how those events ever came about particular given the victims involved. I even found someone on Reddit who knew both the victims and he didn’t really have any more answers than anyone else.
If you’re that close to the situation, I’ll just retract the “punchline” part.
If it’s any help, I was only so aggressively opposed to the reference because I genuinely don’t see Dorothy going that route with Joyce. The thought was so foreign, and my brain rejected the possibility so thoroughly, I could only read it as some kind of extremely dark and inappropriate joke. My apologies for the coarse response.
Joyce will let Dorothy down more easily than that.
This ship name can be the Egyptians.
Because they live on the Nile.
It’s gonna be a looooong river to the Mediterranean Sea, ain’t it?…
You’ve got to type the accent phonetically for the joke to work. They live on “de nile”.
I thought that joke had finally run its course.
Nah, we gotta go all the way to the headwaters.
Interesting turn.
Well that’s totally healthy, yeah :u
“we’ll never be real” says the comic strip character
4th wall got nuked
What IS her nightmare/flashback? I can’t tell which one that is
Joyce in trouble and not being able to save her
Another variation on the horse dream
One step forward, two back. Oh, Dorothy…
Let’s check back in a decade where either she’ll be more sure of her heterosexuality than ever or in some sort of situationship with Joyce
I feel like blaming Joyce Brown for this. She’s 2 for 2 at emotionally devastating ladies that want to smooch her. Soon a reckoning will be due. Life’s not all getting sweet early morning crush sessions from your hot fuck machine. One day you’ll have to hold the L yourself Joyce Brown!
(sickos.png) yesssss repression & misery
Well glad that’s settled !
All’s good that ends well ! woooh
…
Cripes, Dotty, that’s a disaster bisexual response if I ever heard one.
Ah, yes, one of the classic symptoms of PTSD: gay pining.
I was hoping Dorothy would accept that she’s bi, instead of trying to deny it based on the bad dreams she’s been having. I don’t think I would ever assume some really deep meanings to my dreams. Most of the time when I remember a dream after waking up I quickly realize just how weird and nonsensical it was.
Dorothy, PLEASE. Surely you are familiar with the concept of compulsive heterosexuality…
Calling Dr. Heteronormative.
“Well, yer in the right company for ignoring trauma responses!”
Ah yes, walky once again mentioning that he’s deeply depressed and has been for a while and it’s just kinda simmering in the background and not changing.
Welp, back into the closet we go! Surely this will turn out fine!
I’m glad we’ve drawn a line under this storyline and are moving on to the next!
Joyce: *in lingerie, clearly feeling herself* So~! Who wants a THREESOME?
Joe: *deer-in-headlights look of panic*
Uhhhhhhhhhhh well I mean—
Dorothy: *rising to the occasion* Oh Joyce, no, no. You don’t want to have a threesome with *me*. You’re having a trauma response!
↔️
Joyce: Goddammit, Billie, you said this set was a “sure thing”!
Interesting dichotomy between Joyce and Dorothy. Joyce is subconsciously reveling in their moment from the other day while Dorothy is consciously denying the legitimacy of the feelings that facilitated the moment.
The last panel increasingly heightens the denial until it resembles more of a wish than a reasoned conclusion. “We’ll never be real” doesn’t follow from what was said prior, and includes Joyce’s feelings and attitude towards this all, which Dorothy doesn’t have knowledge of (“We’re just confused” is Dorothy’s thought).
I think it’s set up this way for Joyce to throw a monkey wrench into this self-denial with affirmation of her own feelings for Dorothy and their legitimacy in her own way. That would be incredible on Joyce’s part and would follow from her initiation during the last chapter. I think most people in the past would’ve called the roles being reversed when this relationship finally blossomed.
A lot of the dichotomy lies in Joyce subconsciously reveling while Dorothy is processing it consciously.
We’ll see what happens when we get to see Joyce start to deal with it consciously.
I think this divide will be the crux of the conflict between the two when they talk about it regardless if Joyce starts to freak out about what she (almost) did with Dorothy when reflecting. It’s expected, but the initiation in the first place reveals a lot of what she thinks already.
I’m not as convinced of that as you are, at least in the “thinks about it consciously” sense.
You mean in the near future or previously? It’s not something she thought about a lot previously for obvious reasons, but now she’s pretty much forced to.
Or you mean she won’t be in direct opposition to Dorothy’s stance consciously in this storyline? I don’t know how you’d make that work from a writing standpoint. Too much of a major event, especially when you look at it from Joyce’s POV.
well, becky, you tried. i love you, and you tried, but you super failed this time.
dotty come ON you’re smarter than this u_u
+1 for “Becky did absolutely the best she could with the information she had available, and sometimes that still isn’t the right thing”.
Picard @ Data: sometimes it is possible to make no mistakes and still lose.
(Also Dorothy would not have let her do anything better. Becky providing any kind of bi-or-heartbreak-related comfort requires knowing those are things Dorothy is struggling with, and Dorothy wasn’t in a good place to tell her, possibly especially, either thing.)
I’m not sure there was anything better to be done here. I don’t think Walky’s doing anything wrong.
I don’t think Walky is doing anything wrong either; like Becky, he’s pretty much doing the best he can with the information he has (barring any surprise reveals later on that he’s always meant his comments about Joyce 100% seriously and that he also knew Dorothy felt something similar, anyway).
Also, honestly, even AFTER that reveal, there’s not much you can do to have a big conversation like this if the other person isn’t ready for it.
As omniscient readers: ideally, this would be a good conversation to have with Leslie, or maybe Alice? Ruth is the option that Dorothy actually knows well enough to have the Bi and PTSD conversation with, but Ruth would have to be feeling up to actual emotional vulnerability instead of witty comments about how much Disaster Bi Dorothy or or isn’t her type.
One of Dorothy’s issues here is that she is critically short on known bisexual friends. There’s a reason why she went to Danny, after all, despite not having talked to him in a long time and no longer being particularly close.
Another of Dorothy’s issues is that the only two conversations she’s had about this so far have resulted in her feeling much worse about herself. Which isn’t Joe or Danny’s faults, it’s just what happened, and I can understand it making her more and more gun-shy.
I do wonder if Becky thought Walky would be a good person to talk about whatever Dorothy’s mystery angst was — or if she thought he’d distract Dorothy and cheer her up, which I think is a valid thing to think might be good for Dorothy! Only time and Dorothy herself can tell us whether she wanted a distraction or a shoulder to cry on.
If Becky thought the first thing, though, it makes me think maybe she’s missed how much her fellow goofball has been repressing and avoiding difficult topics himself. That’s pretty much the only factor here that I think Becky might have anticipated and misjudged, rather than just… doing the best she possibly can with what she knows.
But idk, we will see
(I still think Walky COULD be a good person for Dorothy to talk about this with, but I can also see why she might hesitate to broach the topic with him.) (This punchline feels like it’s the end of this scene, but maybe I’ll be totally wrong and Walky will start the next strip by going, “What was that?” and Dorothy will explain her thought process and get pushback on her rationalizing.)
Mostly agreed, though I think that even if Walky did mean the comments about Dorothy/Joyce seriously, it would be big leap to realize that’s what she was talking about here.
For sure for sure.
I’m just leaving the possibility open because both he and Becky have pulled the “surprise! I, the carefree goofball, had this whole thing figured out way before you did” before.
He teeeechnically has access to the information. I don’t think he’s actually put it together, but I wouldn’t be completely surprised if Willis revealed otherwise, you know?
It’s the smart ones that make the stupidest mistakes. Trust me on this one.
Can’t wait until she inevitably tries to pull this trick on Joyce!
(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)
I truly believe Jorothy is one of the strongest ships in this story and that it’s inevitable at this point but it has two elements that keep it from becoming a thing. Those elements are called Joyce and Dorothy.
Joyce has always loved Dorothy her feelings have always been something greater than platonic even if she couldn’t figure it out because i think at it’s core Joyce isn’t driven by sexual love towards her but rather, romantic love. The moment you split those two it feels like her entire deal is cracked wide open and it’s why she’s had so much trouble figuring out these feelings because she has it in her head that attraction is about sex, it’s about wanting someone carnally right? And that’s always been sinful in her eyes something to be embarrassed about but romantic attraction is pure yet she’s totally oblivious to it even when acting out on it. I’m not saying Joyce has zero sexual attraction to Dorothy, this being a distinction i am abso-FUCKING-lutely incapable of dealing with ATM, but more-so that Joyce is driven by a very deep desire to be with her in any way.
Joyce throughout Book 1 did everything right, she made a clean entrance and even stuck with her despite the atheist revelation and when Dorothy was anxious about going to the party she stood by her side. And then she lost her to fucking WALKY.
So she rebounded onto a gay dude, and when that failed settled for being a third wheel keeping your distance knowing you can watch but never truly have it.
One of my favorite little goldies that i don’t think i’ve seen brought up is from Book 8 specifically the strip called Kale. Joyce gives Dorothy a note on her lunchbag with a bible quote from the book of ruth often recited at lesbian weddings which as the alt text specifies is Ruth 1:16 It says…
“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
I don’t think i ever saw anyone call back to this and how it spells out Joyce’s entire arc this decade and might have foreshadowed her turn to atheism proper even. Ultimately Joyce has done so much out of endless undying loyalty to Dorothy only to be foiled time and time again by the fact she’s not only oblivious to her true feelings but so is her crush. So much of what she’s done post timeskip has been for her even if she’ll deny it every time.
Dorothy rationalizing her own feelings as being trauma and not real makes sense for her and it’s a neat trick if you want to repress your emotions and always keep everyone at a distance forever. Ultimately this feels like the culmination of their entire arc together. It’s a fight between a believer and a non believer, and Dorothy can convince herself that those feelings aren’t real for the time being but she’ll have a far harder time convincing Joyce.
Dorothy realizing that she’s traumatized: Homer says that’s good.
Dorothy using her trauma as the reason why she’s bi: Homer says that’s bad.
But the trauma comes with a free frogurt!
That’s good!
The yogurt is also bisexual.
Well, I saw this coming when she unintentionally compared her rekindled relationship with Walky to editing the Monkey Master wiki- how it “doesn’t count; there’s no consequences.” I think Walky’s going to take it hard because his goofiness cost him TWO relationships in the course of two weeks. Though I will admit running to Dotty immediately after being dumped by Lucy instead of mulling over how he could better himself was a pretty dumb move, I don’t know how he’ll take it if Dotty actually confides to him that the reason they aren’t clicking anymore is because she’s in love with Joyce… or has at least a strong physical attraction to her.
She once called her relationship with Walky, “when I think back to the time I was happiest” back when he was still dating Lucy and she was trying to get back together with him.
This strip reads to me like Dorothy’s a lot more likely to double down on her relationship with Walky as part of her denial of her bisexuality. Even if she doesn’t, I don’t see how Walky’s goofiness would have anything to do with the relationship ending. Also, he didn’t run to Dorothy after breaking up with Lucy, Dorothy ran to him.
Dorothy running to Walky because Joyce is unavailable has already happened twice (in Joementum and For Me It Was Tuesday). Doubling down on their relationship because it’s impossible Joyce and her can be a thing would be a natural progression.
the sad part here is that I’ve got a feeling Joe really is the best person to talk to about this, for a few reasons:
1. Joe considers Dorothy a friend, even if the feeling isn’t mutual
2. Joe’s known Dorothy a significant portion of time, long enough to have a good bead on her overall character
3. Joe understands loving Joyce, even when she’s being a goober. especially then ‘cuz it’s adorable
3b. Joe will also understand not wanting to do anything to hurt Joyce
4. Joe considers “being a good wingman” to be a virtue. now this one’s a bit trickier because whether Joe admits it to himself he also considers fidelity in a relationship important; his whole “ladykiller” act was basically a trauma response to his dad cheating on his mom- can’t have your relationship blown up by cheating (on either side) if you never get into a relationship, right?
This is all true and these feelings/ideas are exactly why I am a diehard DorJoJo OT3 shipper.
(Would you like to know more?)
What happens to Walky in this scenario though? He goes back to Amber?
That would be my solution, yes! Walky and Amber read to me as having a lot of unfinished business and very interesting dynamics, and also I want to see/imagine them just having filthy animal sex with each other.
(Possibly also Asher and Ethan, as a dalliance.)
Walky can join them. Everybody needs to get Joe’d
I wrote a long post that Dorothy is not rational but I will only leave the conclusion if Walky agrees with you on these matters it is really bad
I believe this is the one unifying truth all commenters, even here, can get behind: that if Walky agrees with your mental health plans, your mental health plans are very not
Not to be a contrarian, Walky is honestly fine as far as mental health stuff goes. At least in comparison to the others in his social circle.
Fair point, I feel like he’s got a boat made of coping mechanisms that floats against all odds, but like, it does work for him!
I just would not ever trust his advice in that field lol.
…does it? Was Halloween it working for him? I feel like his general unseriouness just kinda papers over it better most of the time.
Halloween was what happens when it stops working, i.e., “a really rough scene”.
Do my thigh-high wading boots not exist anymore if I go into chest-high water? Things have limits, there’s always an exception to everything, and nobody’s ever been helped by the rhetoric you’re dispensing.
Walky is pro mental health not pro mental health plan. Because Walky is not pro plan
Her response/rationalisation makes sense. I don’t think it’s necessarily completely right, or most likely, but it makes sense for her to think of it this way. I want to tell her that feelings aren’t true or untrue- they just are. Whether or not her rationalisation is a realisation or not, I hope it alleviates some of the distress, even if she has to contend with it later.
My interpretation of the dreams/feelings combo is that the procession of Joyce’s relationship is being experienced as a loss, similar to the dream sequence. My experience with PTSD is that similar emotions/physical sensations are a common trigger for flashbacks/nightmares/panic attacks. (Heck, exercise is a panic attack trigger for me because of the increased heart rate and body temperature).
Very strong of her to move on like this. Yup. Totally healthy and normal. Proud of you, Dotty.
Ah repression, that always ends well.
Wow, Dottie. Might as well start your own Nile Tour Operator, since you’re so committed.
That’s defeatist talk! If you’re not real then you need to multiply by SQRT-1.
unfortunately, it’s complex, so that just makes the real imaginary and the imaginary real
And if you’re not real you’re imaginary. so multiplying by SQRT -1 will make you real. simple.
I’m more like 1 + i.
If ‘We’ll never be real’ was loud enough for Walky to hear, that’s gonna be alarming because he doesn’t have context to interpret it as referring to anyone but himself.
Also, Dorothy needs to listen to Good Luck, Babe!
oh dorothy
dorothy that is not a healthy attitude
Dorothy needs to do two things:
* If you can’t be with the one you want, love the one you’re with.
* Sleep with Amazi-Girl.
The quote of the sixth strip rings ironic now:
“Just don’t let anyone change you, okay?”
And then she went and changed everybody.
Those last words are not really reassuring.
Anyway, props to Walky for being a supportive boyfriend through all this, I guess.
To be real, a trauma response could make sense, and her logic isn’t 100% at fault.
But then she goes whispering, “We’ll never be real.”
No girl. Hon. You are def in love with your best friend.
Oh Dorothy
You did the right thing for everyone else by not kissing Joyce but have now found yourself in an even deeper hole of pain
I was optimistic about this… but I forgot “Dumbing” was in the title again.
No no no, Dorothy! You are not trained to be a psychologist! You should go talk to…… oh dear.
“I don’t want to
writecome out of the closet, better productively procrastinate bywashing the dishesacknowledging my untreated PTSD.” I think we all know this clasic trot.Dorothy: Love is real! Except in my case, because—
That sounds like a healthy way to rationalize going back in the closet
That is very efficient of Dorothy!
She has two major emotional problems which she is ignoring and letting fester; so combining them into one major emotional problem which she is letting fester will save her an enormous amount of time which she can use to study harder to get into
Yalokay, wait, she has three enormous emotional problems whichAmong her enormous emotional problems are…
I’ll come in again.
Oh, Dorothy
oh dear, that’s not healthy.
The trauma definitely makes Dorothy’s feelings for Joyce complicated (what with the repeated traumatic incidents that are usually in some way related to Joyce) but the feelings are not JUST due to trauma. The brain is kinda messy that way. Alas, I don’t expect anything else from Dorothy “I understand people just fine I swear” Keener. She’s already seven layers deep in denial about a lot of things.
The probable foundation of Dorothy’s feelings is ok. Joyce affirms Dorothy, specifically what Dorothy had planned her life out to be, but more generally too. Walky does the same thing. And no criticism, someone who makes you feel good about yourself is pretty wholesome thing to be attracted to.
It’s the dynamic that came after that starts to be a problem. Joyce wants to spend time doing friend stuff, and Dorothy wants to dedicate all her time to becoming future president. The way Joyce gets Dorothy to spend time with her is by needing help or “needing” help. So from the horse dream it’s Joyce who is presenting all the obstacles to Dorothy becoming future president.
And then there’s the trauma on top of that. To the point of Dorothy subconsciously substituting Joyce for herself when she felt helpless while Amber violently protected her from Ryan.
Yes, more than trauma. And yes, very complicated. YMMV on their dynamic.
Huh! Deep analysis!
I agree, as much as I enjoy Joyce and Dorothy, sometimes their dynamic definitely has notes of being unhealthy. You actually hit the nail on the head very well in your comment! If I could give a vote up I would.
yeah I always think of her ‘I have lots of charisma, i studied how to be charismatic’ approach to things when she tries to *self* evaluate….
“My sadness over the rational conclusion that I’m not really in love with Joyce has people asking a lot of questions that are answered by my rational conclusion.”
Suuuuure. When in doubt repress repress repress. Healthy stuff.
I see this as Dorothy dancing around / with the information and feelings. Verbally processing. She could just as easily do a 180 and recognize that she can’t keep “disregarding” things.
Girl, it’s okay to grieve. To grieve the person you thought for years you were going to become. To grieve Yale. To grieve the person who never saw horrible acts of violence occur right in front of their eyes. To grieve the version of you who was in control. To grieve Joyce as a romantic and/or sexual partner.
Maybe get on touch with Amber and see how she finally was able to grieve Mike.
Asking Amber about that and learning Joe was involved, now there’s a coin flip.
If only this comment section allowed images. I have so many saved memes for this scenario.
Link to the places you got them from. The detour through your harddisk was unnecessary.
Oh Dotty
A trauma response in the air sometimes
Sayin’ “Ay-oh, feelings KO’d”
The we in “We’ll never be real’ is dramatic–not melodramatic, mind you–but gives me, as Daffy Duck would say, “pronoun trouble”. Dorothy and Joyce? Dorothy and Walky?
I have to tune in tomorrow. There’s always a catch.
I think it is pretty clear she is talking about Joyce
Oh, sweet Dotty, no…
Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy, Dotty. Correlation does NOT equal causation. Having trauma dreams while coping with a bisexual awakening doesn’t mean the trauma caused the awakening. It just means you got a lotta shit going on. Maybe go see a therapist.
Also, of all the people to use “suppress, repress, deny”, to see the atheist use it? Just shows it’s a human response, I guess.
End of Storyline
How do we know Dotty’s lesson is the wrong one? Because Walky automatically picks it up. Wrong lesson learned!
Aw geez, Damn you, Willis!
Well, this seems like a perfectly healthy development that will cause nobody any issues down the line.
Oh! Well, great, that’s that. What do you want to do for lunch?
Dorothy’s doing the atheist equivalent of praying the gay away
very sad but also very funny way to describe it :’)
(meme of Walter White yelling in the back of a car) Dorothy no!! Your feelings can still be genuine and meaningful!!
Insert Han_Solo_thats_not_how_the_force_works.gif
As I said previously,
Good Luck, Babe.
Holy lighting and shadows, batman! The lighting on Dotty’s face is incredible!
“Lets file that under Disregarded and move right on”
Last Dorothy’s speech is all shippers who got tired of Willis torturing them…
Ask some questions Walky, I beg you. Not that Dorothy would probably answer them :/
well. it’s not the WORST anyones ever done it, Dotty. like objectively speaking, people have done this particular one worse. A lot of people do in fact dismount into queerness Pretty Badly or Not at All. But also haha oh no!!
I love how she veers right up to ‘maybe I got particularly traumatized BECAUSE of other additional feelings’ and then right off a cliff.
Alt-text: That’s the first time I’ve seen the transition from dark to light, like is happening here, but it’s still a doubious thing. Dorothy is getting right, but also get very wrong here.
She knows.
Jesus mercy. Every single person who’s ever been closeted in any way just bawled.
“never be real”? uh huh
sure