Nathan Kalman-Lamb ("Marxist-Islamist") @nkalamb.bsky.social ⋅ 8h
Kendra, regular version @kendrawcandraw.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
www.comicsbeat.com/pride-interv...
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net ⋅ 3d
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They also have a similar taste in bony point dexters
well, alice is skinnier than jen but idk if she’s particularly ‘bony’ tho i suppose it’s hard to tell with those clothes/art style
They probably meant Ruthless.
Maybe this is a stretch, but I interpreted “point dexters” as an intentional finger/fingering joke. Again, might be a stretch.
I got that one, too. Index fingers.
Or right index, I got my etymologies confused.
Just so you know, It’s ‘poindexter’. I havent heard that one in a long time…. God, I’m old.
I was wondering what the derivation of that is, and whether it’s related to “point” (or the various shades of meaning of “dexter”) so I looked it up, and apparently it’s originally the name of a scientist character on Felix the Cat. I think if I ever knew that, I assumed he was called Poindexter because he was a poindexter, but no, it’s the other way round.
Thank you because I did not know.
And both will VEHEMENTLY DENY any sexual interest in a young Mr. Walkerton.
re: alt-text,
it seems Dina Sensei has taught her well ^-^
Is Willis going to start Mandela Effect-ing us by editing Charlie into the background of past strips?
read em and weep
i wish there was a like button +2
Dumbing of Age Book 15 – With a BOY
I think you mean Dumbing of Age Book 15: Totally Normal Now
Dumbing of Age Book 15: According to other definitions.
I see you read the alt text.
One of the alt texts. Some thing that I saw on the home page but not on this page.Dumbing of Age 15: She’s Normalled Up a Bit
The two group leaders! They must fight! There can be only one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7QaN0NpGws
Wonder if Charlie being here to hear this is gonna come back to bite Joyce.
I’m sure Charlie will notice something.
I both doubt that Charlie is paying attention and doubt that she’d snitch.
My concern’s that a) she could be more observant than you’d expect and b) she’s in the dark regarding social cues too much to know she’s snitching. She mentions it to Dina not comprehending that it’s sensitive, Dina tells Becky. Becky puts 2 and 2 together. Drama bomb waiting to go off.
… OH.
Yeah, particularly given that Joyce said “my best friend” which is a title that Becky still sometimes claims.
Many and varied misunderstandings might well ensue.
Eh…I don’t think its likely that Charlie will bite Joyce.
Chekov’s Charlie?
This makes me want the two meteors to collide and Joyce/Billie to aggressively make out while both insisting it’s “normal heterosexual friend behavior”
i mean as long as it only happens once, it is
That’s what reading the comic has taught me.
And reading Pixie Trix Comics has told me it’s perfectly normal for two dudes who are friends to “bro out” once in a while. It’s all Perfectly Normal.
and if there’s one thing Jennifer prides herself on being, it’s “normal”.
… I mean it is perfectly normal. No quotes required.
Best friends make the best life partners.
Interested to see the dynamic between Alice and Billifer without dramatic, outright antagonism.
I’m kind of still trying to get a read on what Alice is normally like.
Most of her previous appearances are like painful reunions and car crashes, which can tell you a lot about someone but aren’t going to give you a sense of the baseline.
She did call Walky “Wally” that one time, so either she didn’t think much of him in high school or Jennifer was that insistent on keeping her friendship with him separate from her cheerleader life.
And Charlie was there, spacing out in the background
And Dina is on the opposite side. Both are unobserved. Excellent intel gatherers. CIA has nothin’ on either of them.
The order of information-gathering effectiveness goes Charlie, the CIA, Dina, the NSA, and Apple/Google
A WEEK?! Masturbating didn’t keep Joyce away from sex for long!
Given the usual pacing of this comic I’m surprised it’s been that long. I’m not some republic serial villain, the laundry room scene with Dorothy was 35 minutes ago.
I understood that reference!
hahahha how ironic >:D
Ten days, actually. It’s Saturday morning. Dorothy taught Joyce to do laundry on Wednesday of last week.
Going by storylines, I think it was ten days ago, but close enough. (With, I guess, the note that being ten days ago means it was before she started dating Joe, as opposed to having just started dating him… otherwise, close enough.)
Joyce and Joe have only been dating a week?! Haven’t even made it longer than Walky x Lucy?!
To Lucy’s chagrin no, bit they did last longer than Lucy’s current toy boy. Lucy had him in like a few hours.
starting to think maybe Dorothy‘s kind of full of crap sometimes.
She can be but the masturbation wasn’t to keep Joyce away from sex it was to keep Joyce away from Joe which also didn’t work.
I wish my neurodivergence flavor was the kind that would now go make a thorough list of all important plot events and character developments in th time between laundry and now, but alas, I would probably get distracted and bored doing that by end of day two of that week.
What about “best friend” and Becky’s feelings? Because “sister” also hadn’t been taken (iirc) when Jocelyn popped into Joyce’s comprehension.
Of course Joyce loves Becky regardless of what label is ascribed, but Becky herself hasn’t always been as sure.
Mark my words… Charlie is definitely picking up on everything being said right now. I say this as a fellow ADHD haver who has sensitivities to sounds and has eavesdropped on many a convo by accident I’m so sorry everybody around me I cannot control my ears I can hear across the building but if you’re talking to me face to face your words are garbled
Is that a form of sensory integration disorder?
speaking as someone with ADHD and autism including sensory integration, is very much a thing, yes
Pretty much! I’ve heard it called sensory processing disorder, and it happens with other neurodivergences. When I was a kid I called it ‘dyslexia of the ear’ because unless I am concentrating VERY HARD, there’s many times where someone is speaking face to face to me and the words are unfortunately just processed either with a delay, or very hashed up. I love captions on the tv for this reason.
It also makes it very stressful when more than one person tries to talk to me at once, or when people try to talk to me while I’m doing a task. In loud environments I’ll usually get overwhelmed because there’s just too much sound that I cannot focus on or filter out correctly.
I really feel this, at this point i practically LIVE in a pair of noise-canceling headphones T^T
I feel that, there are definitely some days where I gotta pop in my ear buds and block the world out for a bit!
Oh, yeah, I hear ya! I’ve basically gotta get everything captioned. If there’s a TV or a radio playing in the background, I literally cannot hear the things being said in the room. Makes it impossible when my S.O. tries to ask me questions about things going on, in a TV show or movie. (Snugglebuddy cannot follow a plot or distinguish between characters to save hir life…) I literally cannot hear what my hunny is saying, if he’s said it while I’m watching TV and reading the captions.
Actually, I was reading recently that ACEs can contribute to the development of sensory processing challenges. Fascinating study. I’m trying to find the citation but can’t seem to locate it now.
Even phone calls and meetings were captioned.
When I was younger, I was serving as an interpreter for a multilingual family with little in the way of common language. (Mom spoke Peul and some French, Dad spoke Wolof and some French, kiddos both spoke babble.) The baby and kiddo were having language developmental delays, so the county sent developmental specialists to their home to for play therapy intervention with the little ones. I was there to interpret in French between the therapists and the Mama.
To teach the kids English, as the parents could not do so, the mom had Sesame Street and other children’s educational programming on the TV, constantly. I was listening for the 3 languages at play (French, English, and any intelligible words that might be made out of the kiddos’ babble) and trying to interpret, while the TV was playing in English in the background. Just about impossible! I had to tell them I had to have the TV off; I couldn’t hear with it on. It wasn’t even loud. Just the fact that it was there.
…Sorry… bit of a tangent… tales of auditory processing…
I appreciate the tangent! makes me feel better about my own! I have captions on many things as well. It actually started because my mother was hard of hearing, and I found that I really enjoyed growing up with captions on the tv. Now I used it on streaming as well! That also made for funny situations similar to your’s because my mom would usually depend on me to help her hear things. Sometimes I was very helpful! Other times… not so much. I did also appreciate that my mom did try to accommodate; when I was around the age of having chores to do. She would list them off to me the night before, like “tomorrow after school I need you to do x, y, and z”. Fast forward to the next day, I completely blank on what those things are. Instead of getting mad, my mom began to write them down on a note on the fridge for me to check off and it was a LOT easier for me.
I wouldn’t be surprised; honestly a big part of accepting that I’m neurodivergent is also accepting that there’s a chance I am neurodivergent due to certain ACEs that occurred when I was a kid. It makes for a muddy cocktail, similar to Joyce’s struggles, but in the end I be who I be!
ACEs?
I can’t say for sure what Laura was referring to but I googled ACEs and the results I saw where ‘adverse childhood experiences’ and I think that’s what Laura was referring to. But, I don’t mind being corrected in case I’m wrong!
Thanks, Doopyboop. Sorry, my comment below was meant to be a reply to yours here. Thar’s the phrase I meant.
Couple other typos:
*extreme, not “eztreme”
*is, not “us”
Yes, that was the acronym I meant. Thanks for the story, too, Doopyboop!
I’ve been reading up a lot abut developmental trauma, these past 8-9 months (just came off the tail end of an 8-month flare-up) and I came across a fascinating diagram showing areas of the brain that could potentially grow in different ways as adaptations to eztreme early sensory exposure. Unfortunately, for the life of me, now I can no longer find the study it was illustrating…
Not to imply that there us any particular “cause” behind learning differences and neurodevelopmental conditions, of course! Just it would be fascinating if the brain developed certain self-protective “calluses” to reduce or increase sensitivity in response to stressors in the sensory environment.
…Sorry, sorry, I know this is a hot-button topic! No offense whatsoever intended to anyone by raising such a sensitive subject…
I wouldn’t sweat too much about the “cause” thing. Sometimes stuff happens and something contributed to it happening in some way, we can all admit that. Adding extra layers and analogies to our description won’t change the result, and everything you ever experience contributes to something else in your life in at least a tiny way, so all we really need to do is avoid pointing to one singular thing and saying “This always causes that in all cases.” Any finer detail is just the gravy of politeness on the meatloaf of situational tact.
I love that metaphor. Thanks, Taffy!
This is one reason I prefer pirated television. Subtitles work best for me when they’re delayed by about 0.7 seconds (so that if I’m struggling with processing towards the end of a line I still have time to read it), which with VLC is easily done with one button, whereas Netflix, Disney+ etc doesn’t support that feature at all. You pay more for less accessibility.
I often wonder how much Charlie is aware of what’s going on around her, because she looks more like she’s spacing out to me. And in multiple previous strips when we’ve seen her standing somewhere while people are talking near her or even talking directly to her, she only seemed to realize there were people around after they had walked away.
I always say that my brain and ears are working at 2 different speeds
Tangentially, I used to work with a college student with multiple neurodivergent issues, including Asperger’s and adhd. Part of my job was teaching him how to ride the ciry bus. One day, he was having q lot more trouble than usual with focusing, so I gently reminded him of his task to pay at least a bit more attention. He muttered something about not being in a good mood and something about being a martyr and not doing it on purpose. I didn’t hear what he waid at all, being on a bus with a lot of people talking. So i asked him, astonished, if he saidhe was eating gargoyles with honey on porpoise. He burst out laughing, told me what he had really said, and it broke up the bad mood totally. For years after, we each used part of what I heard as an in joke and to break up bad moods.
One time my mom told me to “put away the utensils” and I swear to God, what I heard was “go fuck a monkey” and I gave her the most incredulous look. It became an in-joke as well, and one we’d frequently laugh about whenever putting dishes away.
I thought it was Danny that suffered from saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud syndrome?
It’s Dumbing of Age, I think everyone suffers from everything
Especially O’Brien, and the succotash.
What the hell is Charlie looking at? Her eyes are all over the place. Is she looking beyond the veil or something? She grows to powerful.
She’s looking through the other side of the panel, watching a giant stylus bring her into being
she’s just vibing/hanging out lol
or she’s just accidentally eavesdropping on like 3 diff convos at the same time
She watches us.
Tomorrow she makes unbroken eye contact with the camera for the entire strip.
Charlie is watching Carla’s funny offscreen event. tying together the shoelaces of at least three people.
Heyoooo
Also, sorry Becky.
That was only a week ago? Her sex life certainly escalated quickly.
So what’s everybody think Charlie is thinking about as she stands there in the background? My bet is on giraffes
see i was gonna say giraffes
Well you know what they say about great minds
Named Meg
she’s prolly thinking about how many ppls shoelacse she can tie in the whole room before the hours up 8D
I was thinking the reproductive cycle of the whelk
Please explain this in as much detail as you would like.
She’s already tied everyone’s shoelaces together, and is now thinking about dark matter. She knows what it is, but she keeps forgetting that everyone else doesn’t.
Tomorrow’s strip shows Alice, Jennifer, and Joyce all falling down, with their shoelaces all tied together.
maybe it’s easier to list what they don’t have in common at this point
can’t say that Joyce being a different-flavored Jennifer isn’t giving me a massive existential crisis
Maybe after a couple more whiskey flights.
Think of it this way: Jennifer and Joyce are like Elohaba and Glinda wait shit no that’s just my shipfic hold on I dropped some papers
She also rised in a cult, called “being rich” that things messes up your brain.
She’s just standing there. Menacingly!
Damnit. Sniped.
It’s rare that I’m brought to cackling. 10/10 response, Alice
Also, Jennifer’s face in the last frame.
Yessss! Gravatar!
I love Jennifer and Joyce’s friendship.
And yeah, I’m sure Jennifer will have thoughts on this.
i’m sure joyce will bring up the “So how many besties have you fucked once platonically?” or so XD
“You’re allowed to bang a bestie once. But what about the non-besties? Once each, also?”
She’s just standing there…MENACINGLY
i’m sure carla will rise back up and somehow be more compeititive between them on a thriving relationship (tho i imagine she and charlie are a bit more ace coded/leaning and not rushing into sex)
of course, Carla is very sex repulsed, probably never will happen
1. Joyce, it wasn’t an accident.
2. Alice, everyone!
3. Alice, it wasn’t an accident. (Not talking about THE accident. )
It kind of by definition was an accident with Joyce? Her intention was never to have sex, at least not in the moment.
the dryer incident was a week ago???
I was making the mistake of drinking a beverage while reading the update, and almost inhaled and choked getting slapped by that hilarious bit of comic book time too
wonder how long ppl expected it to be, a week makes sense versus liek, next2-3 days of her ‘having sex’ the seoncd time lol
A week ago was last year
Dumbing of Age, Book 17: A Week Ago, By Accident, With My Best Friend
Colonel Mustard, in the Library, with the Candlestick.
Alongside Mrs. Peacock and Miss Scarlet!
*gasp* The Cook!
Dr Scott! (wait, wrong movie where people shout names for a scene)
“Rocky!”
“Bullwinkle!”
“…Sonic the Hedgehog.”
“What, we’re just ominously sayin’ names, right?”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/rendezvous/
“MOOSE!!!”
“SQUIRREL!!”
“SPOOOOOOONN!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“GAZPACHO SOUUUUUUUUUUP!”
(–Red Dwarf)
“KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!”
(—Star Trek)
Pavitr: But gazpacho means soup! It’s like you’re saying soup soup. Which is the same as saying chai tea!
Spot: Ooh, I love chai tea!
Pavitr: NOOO!!
I see Joyce has got her colors on for Pride Month.
Hey but if a random question, but one I’ve had in the back of my mind for years, if you’ll humor me. What’s your profile picture from?
It’s the Selkie Daddy from John Allison’s amazing Bad Machinery.
Many thanks!
Just realized that John Allison’s last name is, in fact, Allison, and you are a different John
That’s actually part of the reason I’ve gone to using my full name in webcomics comment sections. Reduces confusion in the Solver and Bad Machinery comments. I still had to tell people several times in the GoComics Bad Machinery comments that I was not, in fact, the creator, just a fan who’d been reading since early in Bobbins.
Part of it is also that over on the Roomies! reruns, which had fewer random avatars, I had a hash collision with another John, so we both had Sarah for avatar.
Not sure if you’ll get a reply from him, but I’m pretty certain it is … something … drawn by John Allison.
It might be a the the father of a couple of selkies from a long ago story line, or a custom avatar based on that?
Well worth checking out IMO …
Waiter! Waiter! The cartoonist appears to have put more planning and setup into a punchline than most authors put into fictional wars yet again!
That is to say, compliments to the chef.
Charlie’s glasses ‘lens flare’ in panel 3 is the only footage of her Quantum Pranking caught on film.
somehow, she’s tied all of their laces together while they were talking
By that we everyone in the campus.
I used to be able to tie laces with my toes… not sure about “without looking” tho!!
*DED*
Extremely underrated roast by Alice here. Damn girl, way to drag your ex.
That last pose on Alice. Yes, I would like some more of that please and thank you.
Also Bravo Willis for putting BOTH the Bi and the lesbian flag colors on Joyce. Delicious.
Is Alice the best friend with whom Jennifer had accidental sex (according to some definitions)?
Yes.
idk how ‘accidental’ it’d be other than a shorter fling from before i’d assume they would’ve hooked up after jen publically called out that prom king/date guy to where they would’ve done something together afterwards. unless they were both drunk or so and then made out or so before the accident
I would absolutely assume they were doing non-platonic things well before prom, it seems to have been a long-term affair and I doubt Alice had too many hangups about cheating on the creep who roofied her.
Billie/Jennifer’s acknowledged it happened before, though she seems to sort of treat it as an experiment, and Alice put more weight into it. It was known enough by Walky that he made a joke about being a “drama hurricane” must be sexually transmitted, after Alice’s outburst in her first appearances. Whether Walky knew about it due to Billie or because it was common knowledge, I couldn’t say.
Teensy correction, Jennifer doesn’t have any qualms about calling what she and Alice did sex, she just thinks it doesn’t necessarily mean they have romantic feelings for each other, because best friends are allowed to make out and “bang” once, maybe twice.
Jennifer going on about who’s weird/normal is giving me vibes of her old statis-reinforcement-police behavior. That won’t go well with Alice for long.
No sweater vest AND cleavage! She has changed!
Charlie still waiting?
Ooops, missed that Willis’ comment drew attention to that.
The orange stripes did, in fact, fool me.
Joyce and dotty’s special laundry day was only a week ago? That’s insane. I was only a few years older than these kids when this comic started. They’re on track to graduate just after the sun engulfs the earth.
“laundry day is a very dangerous day” XD
kids these days, eh?
Alice bringing incredible levels of shade to the party. A+
I kinda wonder what Billifer means by saying that Joyce has “normalled up” since they first met and became friends. Because while she’s changed a bunch since early DoA, I’m not convinced Joyce is that normal. And that’s not a bad thing, I tend to prefer weird people over what most people in the US consider “normal”, probably because as an autistic person I’ve never really been normal myself.
For one thing, Joyce isn’t pestering people with Bible nonsense anymore.
I’m quite prepared to be wrong here, but did she ever really do that? She was never Mary. I recall Original Flavour Joyce as someone who’d bring up Bible nonsense when explaining why she wasn’t comfortable with something, but never forced her values on other people (even when she was dating Ethan, she seemed to accept that his reasons for not wanting to be gay had nothing to do with being “saved”). BICB(AUA)W.
When Dorothy agreed to hang out with Joyce for the first time, she asked Joyce not to try to convert her. Joyce responded by dumping Chick Tracts (designed for exactly that purpose) out of her purse:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tracts/
Her pre-date quiz for Joe involved asking if he’d accepted Jesus Christ as his lord and savior, and she was somewhat stymied with both him and Ethan by the fact that they’re Jewish, which she — like her parents at the time — clearly viewed as being sorta halfway there but needing a different tactic than other non-Christians.
She was mega anxious when Dorothy first told her she’s an atheist (which is why Dorothy then felt the need to ask her not to try to convert her).
She was super duper uncomfortable around the girls who believe even slightly different flavors of Christianity on their floor, and she was especially bad at hiding her nerves when Agatha told her she’s a Mormon, and then stage-whispered to Dorothy that at least Agatha wasn’t a Catholic…….
Early Joyce was definitely weird about Christianity, to put it nicely.
Jennifer has a very simple definition of normal. It’s her. She’s normal, and the more like her other people are, the more normal that makes them.
Yeah, I’m with Taffy. I think the “normalled up” is a nice way of saying “is no longer actively trying to recruit those around her into the cult she grew up in” more than anything else.
Six months ago Joyce couldn’t even say the word sex and would freak out at the concept of anything sexual while also holding very problematic ideas of purity and sin. Now she’s casually talking about sex with her friends. I don’t like defining things as “normal” but she’s definitely less high strung about sex and sexual topics. She’s also in general less sheltered than she was and better capable of addressing different life experiences than her own. I think the more accurate description of Joyce is she’s more open minded than she was but normal is a more common generalization.
(talking about sex) (with her friends) and also (talking about (sex with her friends)).
Joyce has always been pretty open-minded. She just had to empty out some of the garbage that her cult poured in there. That’s the difference between her and Mary. Mary has the same garbage in there, but she’s kept the lid tightly closed.
it was mentioned Mary is also a born again christian and now, despite being technically raised christian i didn’t pay attention to any of that shit (i only went to church as a kid because it was the only way i could interact with my old school friends) but i’ve always gotten the read that Mary got into Christianity later in life adopting it when it became fashionable as opposed to Joyce who was born and raised christian her entire life. I could be entirely wrong though but Mary really reminds me of a lot of dipshit bigots who flopped from being athiests or agnostic to full on Christians when traditionalist bullshit became the go-to for fascists. Actually forgot we got Tristian back in book 14 who’s an even better example of the exact kind of person i’m referring to with starting out pretty lax before backsliding into full right-wing christian trad asshole.
I’m curious about how Mary became who she is. Apparently her parents are decent people I think? I can’t confirm but I vaguely remember conversations on her popping up and comments mentioning Willis stated she didn’t get her detestable personality and beliefs from her parents. If that’s true then why is she so awful? Although it dawns on me in the recent decade or so of the US socio-political climate Mary would be fairly popular with many people. It might just be bad luck for her that she lives in a very liberal and gay hall of campus.
Yeah if she went on TikTok there would actually be a pretty big audience for her, she might even make bank if she call a child a racial slur on camera.
Brilliant strip, bravo
Oh, was that only a week ago??? Uuhhh…
It was “last week” which isn’t necessarily a week ago (it can be almost two weeks ago!) and in this case is about ten days.
Which is still time dilation, but I wanted to be specific.
They are about to have a perfectly normal meal. Nothing weird at all.
No, Jennifer, you’re the weird one.
Those people…tsc tsc tsc ¬¬
“When did I have sex for the first time? Who knows?! I exist in a superposition of first time sexified/non-sexified at all times!”
This is one of the few comics you have done that made me laugh so hard I snorted.
That seems like a perfect setup for an embarrassing call-back.
Joyce is pressured into explaining by Bilifer and, hearing it, Carla says:
“Oh, so that’s what happened!”
Beat panel
“Then what the fuck did you do yesterday?”
The alt-text:
Wait a sec, if Charlie is “always in the background”, what about comic strips where she is a central character? Are there actually 2 Charlies then (one in the background one as the main character)? Or is she like Schrodinger’s cat, appearing in 2 places at once?
It’s interesting that there are two, unrelated, jokes about superposition in this comment section today (that I’ve seen so far).
I think, for those of us raised without comprehensive sex ed or frank discussions of boundaries and consent, many physical situations or activities or forms of contact may have seemed more “accidental” than planned.
Just stumbled across this resource, kind of a “planning guide” so to speak, so that one can make decisions in advance. Looks good. I’m glad universities offer it.
https://www.colorado.edu/oiec/sites/default/files/attached-files/sex_workbook_id_v2.pdf
As the (nurse midwife?) lamented in Something Positive, 1937:
“I have to explain how babies are made to more and more already pregnant girls every year.”
(Pity, the archives of that storyline appear to have gone offline.)
I keep interpreting the hand in front of Billie in panel 2 as Alice’s and going, “Aw, cute, she has her arm around her,” then realizing it’s just Billie’s and being sad.
charlie overhearing this surely wont cause any problems in the future
Got’em Alice! Beautiful roast.
She seems unbothered by the fact that she had sex with Dorothy, which at least promises we’re getting a full integration of the “it’s okay if you do it once or twice with your friends, it doesn’t mean you’re like, *gay* gay.”
My agenda progresses
So does that mean youre adding Charlie’s tag to all comics?
The archivists would just cry.
I’ve lost track. Did Jennifer and Alice ever actually sleep together? I know Jennifer has said in the past that you get ‘one or two with a friend’ but then i remember we also have the prom night car crash where nothing happened and went downhill from there, which gave me the impression that romance was about to blossom and then didn’t.
I’m not sure if they’ve just had drunk makeouts, or have explicitly gone further than that.