eh, honestly could have done without the “cheating bi” stereotype in particular, but okay XD
[insert rest of rant here, had a long appointment with social security, right after which my shark week decided to START start, and I am just TIRED (-_-) X-X]
idk i feel like harping on the “cheating bi” stereotype in this plotline is weird what with this comic being stuffed to the brim with bi characters! like, it feels weird and bad-faith toward a queer author who does a pretty good job writing queerness imo!
god forbid joynk and dorpy get a bit sillay with it
“Cheating” in a 12 day relationship no less. 1 bi character out of many didn’t go through all the proper protocols when ending a romantic relationship that was younger than most of her homework assignments.
Is it ideal behavior? No. Does it turn this comic into some sort of anti-bisexual thesis? Absolutely not.
It’s not some thesis but, like, she STILL hasn’t gone through the proper protocols… And her best friend who is super hurt by it needs help too. And oh yeah let’s not forget that they dumped Walky in a super crappy way too.
Both characters are still examples of “how not to do things.”
She absolutely did go through the proper protocols. She dumped Joe; Joe is dumped. His poly proposal does not act as a veto on the dumping. Becky needs help, but Joyce is the worst possible person to try to provide that help. Becky needs a Joyce break for now. I’ll give you Walky.
Again, She broke up with him. He offered a counter proposal that she has not responded to yet. If somebody asks me out, and I promise to think about it, we’re not *in a relationship*, I’m deciding if I *want to be* in a relationship.
Yeah, like if you want to be stringent about your definition, then “kissed somebody before formally breaking things off with your partner of under two weeks. Had a difficult conversation with him the next day” and “Was porking the maid behind your spouse’s back for 8 years” can both be considered cheating.
But all cheating is not made equal. This is overall a pretty mild transgression from one out of many bisexual characters, in a comic where the entire premise is that young people are acting stupid and getting caught up in romantic drama.
Agreed. This is a mild trangression that could be addressed and forgotten, if maybe not forgiven, with a little bit of time.
Instead both boys are basically ignoring the cheating. Walky’s just depressed that Dorothy’s dumped him again. Joe’s willing to forgive anything just for the chance to salvage something of his relationship.
I do hold out a little hope for Walky, but I think the odds are against it.
Again, I get that it’s not the same as “Was porking the maid behind your spouse’s back for 8 years”, but I’d still expect at least on of them to have some reaction to the cheating. And the “under two weeks” doesn’t really salvage anything, because they’re both clearly invested in the relationship. It’s not like they don’t care about it.
They’re not “addressing” it because it’s literally a non-issue. What, do you expect it to factor into the divorce proceedings? Joe gets custody of the children because Joyce cheated?
Not any anti-bisexual thesis, just a lazy application of an uncomfortable stereotype. But let’s be honest, it’s more the fact that 12 days in this comic may take more than a calendar year. The pacing is the real elephant in the room.
and yeah although this may be just a pet peeve of mine, it seems lot of problems with the flow of the narrative stem from the rate of time passing in the comic, which as Yoto put it
“seems to move both too fast and too slow at the same time”
It would be a lazy application of an uncomfortable stereotype if the comic wasn’t filled to the brim with bisexual characters who have never cheated, not even on a mere 12 day relationship.
Flagrantly, within the text, this is not a bisexual problem, just a Joyce problem.
– two people who come out via cheating on their partners
– a right wing politician who denies it happening
– a formerly alcoholic teenager who’s STILL heavily in the closet and denial
– an RA who’s actually some pretty nuanced good representation (well, at least after she became not-an-abuser)
I know this is Dumbing of Age and pretty much everyone in the cast has their flaws, but come on XD
but all in all?
IMO the net result in terms of queer rep in this comic is actually pretty good!
(just honestly wish I weren’t so goddamn confused on whether or not I’m supposed to like or hate Joyce X Dorothy (per the author’s intention),
and even if we’re supposed to celebrate them being together, are we necessarily doing so for the right reasons?
should we go “yay they’re together and it’s cute!” or “yay they’re together so they’ve effectively quarantined the collateral damage of their inevitable growing pains from the rest of the cast”?
plus I dunno what Willis be cookin, hopefully some other folk in the comic will come out as bi, imma be eager to see where all this goes either way as usual haha
I think Willis’ intention for any characters/situations that we’re not very obviously supposed to hate is that we should draw our own conclusions about what we like and what we don’t. Like, Toedad was pretty unambiguously meant to be hated, for example, but I don’t think Willis has a specific agenda vis a vis loving or hating this relationship. I think the intention is “this is how things went down, it’s a mess, but so are most things in this comic, do with that what you will”
Personally, I want to like it and be happy for them, but the way they handled it just taints it for me. I’ll probably be less bitter about it when Joe and Becky have had time to heal and start to bounce back from it, assuming this becomes the new status quo and there isn’t a shake up that’s going to wreck this new relationship too.
I dunno if I’d hold my breath, given the title of the next storyline is literally the last thing she said to Dina before they broke up — “I’m the problem, it’s me”
and honestly? even before Joyce X Dorothy started sailing, Becky has been her own volatile mountain of unresolved issues which was gonna abruptly surface eventually o3o
I like the couple, and want to see more of what they get up to, I just don’t like how they got there. Also, I’m really disappointed in Becky. She coulda had a good thing with Dina had she fully committed to the relationship.
Genuinely I’m really sick of this trope existing meaning we can never have a story with infidelity wirh bi characters involved. That’s patently silly in a cast fulla queer folks, and it reminds me of hearing people complaining about “bury your gays” in The Magnus Archives.
Honestly the bi part isn’t even an issue for me because of the way their sexuality has kinda just been breezed past. Neither of them were into women a week ago and I guess they’re both cool with it now. You could have replaced Dorothy with a genderbent version and nothing really changes.
I could dig up more examples but I don’t want to be here all night. The point is that Joyce has been showing attraction to women for nearly the entire length of the comic. She’s also had blatant crushes on Dorothy, Sal, and Billie for just as long. This did not come out of nowhere.
Now Dorothy hasn’t shown any attraction to women in general, but she has been pretty attached to Joyce for a long time. However, if you replaced Dorothy with Theodore, then you would have an ostensibly gay man who found out he’s attracted to his female best friend, which I would not consider a trivial change.
Joyce being “straight” was the crux of her rejecting Becky though.
It’s hard to really say how much of her “attraction” was subconscious and how much of it was just played for laughs. I don’t think most of those were crushes though, mostly admiration. Joyce didn’t have many older female figures to look up to growing up other than her mom. Sal even calls it out as objectification/hero worship. And that also tracks with Jennifer; Joyce thought she was cool and confident for “standing up” to Ruth.
No. Her not being attracted to Becky was the reason for her rejecting Becky. She just believed at the time that not being attracted to women is the only reason she wouldn’t be attracted to her
No, Joyce rejected Becky because she wasn’t attracted to her, and to the extent that she gave a reason, it’s because she sees Becky as a sister, not because she’s straight.
In addition to this, Joyce’s behaviour towards her girl crushes is significantly and notably different from her behaviour towards her sisters. Joyce obsesses over Dorothy, Sal, and Billie, and expresses a desire for physical intimacy, but she does not act in this way towards Sarah, Becky, and Joycelene. Her fangirling on women she idolizes is not explainable as her wanting a big sister when she has big sisters in Sarah and Joycelene but doesn’t behave towards them the same way.
But the jump from that to ‘yeah I have no issues with admitting I’m in love with Dorothy’ just… happened. She was all “I’m STRAIGHT” and “Yeah maybe I could be into her… if I ignored everything below the waist” to just casually going down on Dorothy with no reservations.
Not saying it doesn’t or can’t happen. She just had shown zero physical attraction to Dorothy, so it just seemed like she reciprocated those feelings so readily.
Joyce literally admitting (while drunk mind you) that she’s considered the idea of watching Walky and Dorothy have sex particularly making sure she covers the Walky part of the coitus. She’s otherwise spent the whole comic length gushing about how wonderful and amazing Dorothy is. She’s definitely been into Dorothy for a long time.
Joyce’s inner romantic took over once she and Dorothy kissed. She had been looking for a Hallmark love story since her first day of college, and since the kiss Joyce has re-contextualized her personal narrative so she was ALWAYS in love with Dorothy since the moment she laid eyes on her and is destined to marry her. Like Becky, who convinced herself she was going to marry Dina since they had sex, Joyce seems to have gone right to picking out china patterns and considering adopting Dotty’s last name because she wants this Hallmark romance to be fully realized ASAP… although this may not be what her heart TRULY wants, as with Becky, who shouldn’t be this heartbroken if she truly was in love with Dina that she would marry her…
Joyce may have rejected her religion, but the conservative “the person I first have sex with is the person I marry” idea is still running STRONG in her head.
@eh whatever: I’d say wanting to watch Dorothy have sex with Walky would count as being sexually into her. Straight women wouldn’t want to watch another woman have sex, particularly with the focus on the woman over the man.
The rest of this I completely disagree with – there had long been hints of Joyce’s bisexuality and interest in Dorothy in particular, but I was surprised that she didn’t seem to have any conflict or hesitation about consciously realizing that she was into women.
@Nono: that statement coming at around the same time her sex dream about Ethan involved telling him to put his thing on her tummy, and he took out a wand like a PlayStation Move controller, fully detached from his body, to literally wave over her tummy?
Yeah, I don’t think she was, at that point, actually okay with anything below ANYbody’s neck.
But the jump from that to ‘yeah I have no issues with admitting I’m in love with Dorothy’ just… happened. She was all “I’m STRAIGHT” and “Yeah maybe I could be into her… if I ignored everything below the waist” to just casually going down on Dorothy with no reservations.
There’s a five month gap between then and now, during which Joyce went through significant changes including dumping her entire worldview. In addition to that, she was at the time not ready to deal with anybody’s below the neck. This is evidenced by how bizarre her sex dreams involving Ethan are, which show that she can’t even be heterosexual in the safety of her own dreams. She wants to have sex with Sal, but her hangups are getting in the way of her even fantasizing about it.
Moreover, Joyce being into Dorothy has been so obvious that Walky’s been joking about it for nearly the entirety of the comic’s span. Hell, Becky noticed it immediately and concluded that Joyce was into girls, and as it turns out she was right! It’s just that Joyce being into girls doesn’t mean that she’s into Becky.
Gotta remember that at that point in time, Joyce was still drinking the fundie flavor-aid. She was very repressed in general, and I doubt she’d considered that not being straight was a possibility for herself. I think it was Becky’s coming out that prompted Joyce to even admit ex-gaying Ethan was a bad idea?
Joyce changed and learned a lot in the time between then and now. It also happens that when bi folks grow up without knowing it’s a thing, some of us round ourselves up to “straight” and try to rationalize the same gender crushes as being platonic. Everyone gets those, right? Oh.
Agreed, the whole point of the Becky and Joyce convo about ‘lesbian sex’ was that Joyce’s brain still imagined sex as only “penis in vagina”. And agreed, I definitely remember growing up and having lil crushes on other girls but not realizing it was a crush. Lots of “wow, she’s so pretty and cool, I just admire her a lot is all”.
Honestly at the time I didn’t see it/believed Joyce’s rejections of the possibility (in fact got annoyed at commenters’ smug attititudes like “god Joyce just accept it already”). But I accept that people change and discover new things about themselves (and that I too am bad at subtext, though I still think calling it pre-emptively was jumping to conclusions because friendships can be intimate without developong into romance). Characters develop, it’s Dumbing of Age, not Already Dumbed of Age
Raspberry leaf tea, mint tea, ginger tea, bitter dark chocolate, yogurt, and plenty of iron-rich foods (taken with orange juice or vitamin C) may help.
I know a lot of my fellow bi and pan sexuals really hate being depicted as hypersexual and unfaithful, but I revel in it. The depraved bisexuals is just straight up one of my favourite character archetypes. Positive and healthy representation is boring, I want my bi pride to be gloriously evil, charmingly manipulative, openly wanton, shamelessly perverse. Make a character bi, sexy, and evil and I will fangirl forever.
big same “good representation” bores me to tears thats why I believe in broad representation there is not one perfect way to represent everyone for example I really do not like heatstopper I think its great for queer teens but something about its “wholesome pure” vibe really rubs me the wrong way they are teenagers let them be jerks sometimes. It also reaks of respectibility politics like if queer people “behave badly” we deserve our oppression.
“Good representation” is why for years a woman in a group in a tv show or movie had to be the “sensible one” whilst the boys all got to be fun and quirky.
Well, yeah. Men get to be boys 24/7 under all circumstances. Women only get to be girls when a man wants to fuck them. It’s a totally normal, fully hinged system that doesn’t have any lopsided features, we promise.
Well that too, but I mostly meant “one woman” who therefore has to stand in for “women” as a group, but multiple boys who could thus each be distinct and even portrayed negatively.
Heartstopper’s kinda a good example of how I feel about all this, in that I like it for what it is but I’d probably like it less if it had more “teens are jerks sometimes”, in almost exactly the same way I’m kinda waiting for another shoe to drop on these two because right now they’re in a very “look we are so cute any interruptions last a panel or two until right back to cute” place and it’s as jarring here in DoA as Mike would be in Heartstopper.
(re: me being a 40s cis man who’s read Heartstopper — when your aro-ace (and maybe lesbian-ace?) identified teen hands you a book and says its really good, you read it.)
I hate when people say “good representation” when they mean “positive representation”. Depicting a bisexual as a terrible person in a setting with multiple queer folks, and it’s not some moralistic bs, is still good representation because it’s accurately depicting the range of experiences people can have, and not glossing over people’s flaws just because they’re a minority. It’s good, it’s just not positive. You’re bored of positive representation. Something that glosses over the potential flaws of queer people and has them be perfect widdle angels is positive rep, but it’s bad. It’s dehumanizing and setting up a possible standard. Steven universe and She-ra (the new one, obv) are some easy accessible examples of good negative rep. Both Rose and Catra committed, just…horrific war crimes. Straight up evil acts. In catras case her gayness was directly tied up in her cruel deeds, her confusing love and resentment and unhealthy attachment to Adora pushed her to go more and more extreme, to the point of straight up global annihilation. Catra is also my favorite character, she’s one of my favorite queer characters of all time and I adore Rose Quartz. They’re fantastic examples of good but negative rep. Good and bad refer to the quality of the rep, not the nature of the characters. Bad rep is still just rep that’s harmful, in whatever direction.
Also @Lys ik “Griffith” did nothing wrong is a meme but Casca’s my bongo and Guts is my goat (as imo, the most comforting CSA victim rep of all time) so I think legally we gotta throw down. Like seriously Casca is the thing stopping that from being a funny meme imo
It’s respectability politics, yeah? The way we have to put on a nice, polite, respectable image so the straights will like and respect us!
Except the straights will never respect us. Never, ever, ever. Never ever. Ever. They will never let us have anything we didn’t have to fight for. Can’t even have a queer comic without someone crying about how straight men can’t have anything. Why even try to appease them?
So yeah, queer rights cool, but I fully support queer wrongs too.
I can understand having a distaste for it but I don’t see this as that trope, at least not in the “harmful stereotype” sense. There are so many other bi (and related orientations) characters that it’s statistically a small portion of the pool of candidates, compared to if it was the token bi character being a cheater.
Also, is it fair to presume monogamy if it wasn’t specified by anyone involved? I don’t recall it happening.
I don’t think, especially in light of the above, that the bi characters have to be cookie-cutter perfection. Normies in fiction often get to be complete characters that represent complete people, including mistakes, while differents often end up flattened into cardboard stand-ins, supposedly in the name of representation. Representation, to me, is seeing characters that I can identify with so I can get the message that it’s not weird to be like me, and that it’s not weird to be non-standard (since obviously not every piece is going to have characters exactly like me, nor a perfect distribution of demographics). If these characters are flattened out into setpieces or made into “model citizens” for me to compare myself to (and fail to live up to), I don’t relate in the same way as if they had real human problems and imperfections to deal with, like I do. Maybe they have problems I don’t understand or they do things I dislike, but those are things I have to deal with in real life as well, including within myself.
So yeah, with regard to my opinion on the story, I like that Dorothy and Joyce screwed up a little. Be imperfect, bongos!
queers getting to be flawed, nuanced characters in their representation? this is good!
… in general
but, of all ways to be flawed, having Joyce X Dorothy be flawed in a (very fronted) way which just so happens to be one of The Biggest Harmful Stereotype about bisexual people?
:/
intentions be good, but yeah this is a good, sobering reminder when creating believable, relatable characters, to be cautious of your blind spots
I really appreciate you saying this, NGPZ, as a bi woman woman uncomfortable with the portrayal of bi women in this comic (despite knowing Willis has good intentions).
I really wish more of the community (and nominal nominal progressives at large) to know that constructive criticisms are a thing which are possible that don’t HAVE to turn into making the author out to be a milkshake duck
and attitudes like “straights will never respect us anyway, might as well go that far the other direction out of spite”?
I find them a bit cynical, and if we’re being real here, they’re just thinly veiled acceptance?
that’s still living ruled by however the straights react
that’s still letting the straights dictate how you act
Thanks for your thoughts and those are valid points. I guess at this point I have conflicting thoughts on the matter, I won’t go into all of them so know I’m not as a whole in disagreement, in case it sounds that way.
A counterpoint is that I don’t think queer creators should be put in the position of having to make up for the representation shortcomings of straight media, beyond making work that is within itself good representation. By this I mean, if for example mainstream and straight media has 100% of their bi characters be cheaters, then that shouldn’t put the demand on queer media to have 0%. For one thing, I don’t think that would actually work because most people who mainline mainstream culture aren’t also consuming their RDA of queer culture to balance it out. I think if a work has a (quantitatively speaking) good representation of bi characters, then asking for 0% incidence of the trope (which wouldn’t be a realistic picture of IRL cheating prevalence) is a restriction that directly resulted from the failures of mainstream media. Certainly, though, it wouldn’t hurt to be careful about it.
As I wrote that, I realized that Eric was another incident of Cheating Bi (I understand being on the DL means he might not identify as bi but, as far as I understand, it would be fair to put it within the bisexual spectrum). If we look at the statistical side, this fact moght lend more weight to there being too much of this trope in this story. Another view is that the contrast between the two situations, where Eric is a serial philanderer while Joyce and Dorothy are more like late in breaking up with their previous partners, makes the latter look less like the trope in perspective.
With Joyothy, the mosr relevant cheating trope I see is Normalizing/Romanticizing Cheating as a Relationship Transition. Meaning, you’re with one person and cheat, but it’s OK because the new partner is your twue wuv, (like Joyce hoped Jacob would do for her last semester, essentially). But that’s a trope I’m sensitive to because it seems common in romance media and some romance fans take it as guidance on how relationships are supposed to work.
Also, yes it’s fair to say they were monogamous even without that being specified up front – mostly because they’ve referred to it as cheating multiple times without anyone ever suggesting they weren’t monogamous.
They’ve never been this much the main characters for so long before. It’s an ensemble cast, not the lead, their girlfriend and some extras.
We’ve barely seen anyone else except interacting with these two or reacting to them for a couple of chapters now.
They’re the two characters mentioned in the plot synopsis since the very beginning. Christian homeschooled girl and her atheist best friend. Joyce and Dorothy have always been the only two main characters to this strip
The plot jumps around. At one point, Joyce didn’t show up for around two months while Sal and Amber hashed out their shit. Sorry you hate it, but this too shall pass.
“Keen” in the sense of making high-pitched long-duration sounds from high-intensity long-duration orgasmic sensations…yeah, Keenspot. “The button” you gotta flick, lick, or schlick just right.
The “betrayal” that they’re both neurotic enough to actually believe they are guilty of is having feelings for each other. That’s the only sin they committed against Becky. So are you saying Joyce should have been obligated to never explore this aspect of her sexuality because it might hurt the feelings of someone who was in love with her in high school? Are you saying that Becky would have been magically completely okay with the situation if Joyce had dutifully broke up with Joe two weeks before beginning to date Dorothy?
Becky’s had a hard life and has earned her complicated feelings on the matter. But at a certain point, the onus is on her to work through and overcome those feelings, not on others to tiptoe around them.
Sirksome has been saying every day “Don’t trust [different thing here every day]” and is making a joke about not having to do that today because the characters themselves are talking about betraying someone.
“Are you saying–” No. Sirksome wasn’t saying that. If they were, it’d probably be in the text there.
After doing this bit for so long I thought it was very obvious at this point but it continues to surprise me that it’s taken seriously. I appreciate it honestly.
Yeah that’s the wild part of Dorothy saying this. Becky, as upset as she is, is one of the people the two of them haven’t actually wronged. Walky and Joe are the victims of their actions, and in speaking up for Joe, Sarah’s on the other side of this right now. But Becky’s only aggressor is her own unmet desires and her inability to cope with them. Joyce not being attracted to Becky is not an attack, nor is her finally realizing she can be attracted to women because of Dorothy. And Dorothy getting with Becky’s lifelong crush when Becky is already in a committed relationship she never shuts up about how great it is to be in certainly isn’t a betrayal.
Especially Walky who was not yet on track for a serious committed relationship. They hooked up once after they were broken up. That’s nothing.
My biggest regret for Joe-Joyce is that we don’t get to see how that would have played out. It was interesting & now it goes nowhere.
I’m not outraged on behalf of the characters. Sure, I do understand how this is painful for Becky, Joe & yes, Walky. But they’re characters in a story. The story is about how they will behave & what feelings they will have in realistic situations like this. Dumbing of Age is not about perfect characters making sensible decisions.
Joyce clearly does not think about problems until they’re either front page news or staring her in the face after hiding in the shadows of her room to confront her. This is consistent at this point.
joyce used to be ‘fraid of god, and now she isn’t. that was it, that was her entire moral center. that’s what all her prior day-to-day behavior ran through.
without the constant thrumming fear, now she doesn’t proactively recognize when she’s gonna do something that will actually make her feel guilty, or that otherwise she’ll regret. she went pretty quickly from having a hair-trigger Sin Alarm blinking openly in her head at all times, to a paradigm where the concept of Sin is ridiculous to her.
so basically, yes; she currently just doesn’t start to accept any possibility that she might have ignored her own morals, up until the exact moment that someone or something is right in front of her, confronting her with it, making her feel emotionally bad about it. and, she’s also shown, she will do just about anything to quickly escape those situations, and kick the can of actually feeling bad down the road for Future Joyce to ostensibly deal with.
There is a distinct lack of object permanence feel to Joyce in this storyline. She only thinks about or considers people when they are in her field of view. It is weird.
One of the things that could redeem the storyline as a whole somewhat would be Joyce having some kind of crashout from being confronted with everyone else’s feelings about her actions in a way that actually sticks for more than two panels.
It’s like I said yesterday. Dorothy is Joyce’s best friend. Not because you can’t have more than one best friend but because Joyce actually doesn’t really care about Becky anymore.
Cue the gif of Andy dropping Woody but it’s Becky’s crying face falling towards the camera.
Much like how Joe doesn’t seem to exist to Joyce until his dick is in her line of sight, Becky’s feelings won’t be real to Joyce until she sees her haunted stare tomorrow.
As much as I would like to keep up the frustration because frustration is, at least, a tangible emotional reaction I can examine and analyze in relationship to the comic, the haterade has officially run dry and ceded way to a flowing stream of stagnant boredom-water.
Conveniently, being stagnant even while in motion is also a great way to describe this couple!
Also, of all the possible clothing options Joyce could have requested to see her partner in post-coitus, she picks a sweater vest, ie something that Dorothy also has worn on a semi-regular basis to the point where them going somewhere in nearly-identical sweatervest was a punchline at one point?
Joyce, babygirl, just because you’re relationship is milquetoast doesn’t mean you have to be. Get creative. Put her in your hoodie dress. Put her in that pink button-up that you got Sal to wear one time to double up on your long-running latent sapphic thirst.
Yeah, I’m just so thoroughly bored at this point that I’m probably going to refrain from leaving any further comments until we have some actual plot development again.
Genuinely dont even know why I’m checking the comic daily still at this point, very similar i just feel absolutely nothing reading panels between these 2
I’m curious where the pair sits on popularity rankings if one was to be done right now. I don’t think they’re irredeemable or anything but I feel like they crashed a bit for me. Joyce more than Dorothy, since she still hasn’t brought up the Joe thing while Dorothy is in her mind following all the proper procedures and at least feels guilty about Becky.
I guess top 5 for me right now would be… Sarah, Joe, Tony… Danny? Sure. And then Asher because I guess I just like him.
Joyce went from Top 3 to like… bottom 5 of the ones still living lol. Dorothy is still just outside my top 5 though, she can do basically anything and as long as she desperately clings to the good person label she’ll remain interesting to me. My top 5 are Joe, Booster, Amazigirl, Amber, Asher.
Dunno about them AS a pair, but Joyce has dropped significantly for me (from “identified with her second-most of all the cast” to “man, I have never been THIS lost in my own sauce, wtf”) and Dorothy has always kinda been in that “yes, you are a college archetype I recognize, and serving that function in the story well” bin where she’s competently done but I don’t really feel anything about her, which hasn’t changed much.
I hate the existence of the hater containment thread more than I ever hated anything happening in the comic. It’s a statement that there’s a right and wrong view on this. Or, to put it another way, why aren’t the people who think Dorothy & Joyce couple stuff is sweet even though Dorothy is still being lied to about Joe, Sal didn’t mind when she caught them cheating on her brother, etc ever the ones who relegated to a containment thread?
I’ve got to wonder if toxic positivity is more damaging to a fanbase than just letting people be angry and disappointed about something until the emotions run their course. People who just want to talk about something that bothers them being, essentially, quarantined and strawmanned and shoved out the door is such a weird thing, especially when the author of the media is obviously writing something designed to show character flaws and stoke at least SOME of that negative sentiment towards them.
“LET PEOPLE ENJOY THINGS” seems to be the idea behind toxic positivity, and it’ll never not be bizarre to me. Why would someone need the comments to all be in lockstep about how much they love what’s happening in order to be able to enjoy the story?
I’m really enjoying the thread. it’s easy to find comments that commiserate with me, which at this point is the only entertainment in my nightly refresh ritual. I don’t get why other people are enjoying this, but I see no reason to yuck their yum. People enjoying bad writing doesn’t really hurt anyone. I’ve shipped much worse when I was a teen.
I’d hesitate to dilute toxic positivity, which is about conformity, self blame, brain washing, and coercion, by applying it to people complaining it a thread. People can be polite without it being reality altering
Coming back to this after discussing it with Big Z below, and while I’m definitely annoyed that the legitimate use for the term is so far off of what I was using it for, I do have to thank you for letting me know.
And now I’m left wondering whether I made it up as a term at some point without realizing it already existed for something else, or just saw it years ago and took it to mean something else.
I used to really enjoy this comment section. I didn’t post very often, but I liked reading it. But now it seems dominated by a small number of people who i find boring and tedious and who are being shitty to everyone around them. It’s making me not enjoy the comment section very much these days. So I’m going to endlessly whine up and down the comment section every day for months about how much I hate the comments now. And it is absurd to me to think that maybe I shouldn’t do that.
I used to really enjoy this comment section. I didn’t post very often, but I liked reading it. But now it seems dominated by a small number of people who i find boring and tedious and who are being shitty to everyone around them.
That’s how EVERYONE seems to feel, regardless of their positions on any given issue.
“Toxic positivity” means “you have to maintain a positive mindset no matter how bad the situation is”, not “you have to pretend to like things you don’t”.
Like if there’s any “toxic positivity” in this fanbase at all, it’s in the very limited subset of “let Willis cook, you’re not allowed to be disappointed in this storyline until it finishes”, which is something maybe two people have said.
If you have a term that better fits the way people are exaggerating and strawmanning negative reception of character actions that are supposed to provoke SOME disapproval, in order to attempt to invalidate it or shame folks into shutting up, I’m all ears.
That’s not even what you said in your first comment, though, where you were complaining about “let people enjoy things”, which… is not yelling at anybody that they have to like the thing, it’s yelling “hey! Don’t be mean to other people for liking the thing you, personally, hate!” …and any further reading into that that you’re doing is entirely your own.
Don’t confuse “this isn’t the right place for you to air your grievances, I don’t want to hear it” with “you’re not allowed to have grievances”? They’re two very different things…
I said it seems to be the idea behind it, mostly because that exact phrase was what was being said repeatedly in my first interactions with this kind of behavior on a completely different site something like ten plus years ago now. But it wasn’t the last time or the only other place I’ve watched this happen. Whenever something is controversial for whatever reason – when negative reception of something is large enough to be noticeable but not large enough to be the clear majority sentiment – the positive reception of the thing gets paired with a sentiment of “people being upset about this is completely ruining interaction with other fans”. This then inevitably leads into people insistently trying to delegitimize people’s issues with the thing.
I think it was just in the comments of the previous strip that people were coming up with speculation that the real issue people actually had with Dorothy and Joyce is homophobia, and making up reasons why this homophobia wouldn’t have been such a problem before in what is a very, very queer-friendly comic. And this is WITH the “hate containment thread” established as a thing now. That’s unhinged as shit.
All I can do is flash back to all those times that I saw folks cry “let people enjoy things” when I see this insanely defensive response to a controversial piece of media. I *cannot* see it as anything else.
> Don’t confuse “this isn’t the right place for you to air your grievances, I don’t want to hear it” with “you’re not allowed to have grievances”? They’re two very different things…
There is ONE comment section. This isn’t a forum or a subreddit with separate topics that clearly define what the subject of conversation will be. There is zero validity to the idea that “this is not the place for your grievances”, so there’s little distinction between that and “you’re not allowed to have grievances”, especially when what I mistakenly called “toxic positivity” is still popping up even in spite of a negativity containment thread.
“This is not the place to air your grievances” is usually what “let people enjoy things” means, though.
I haven’t seen a lot of it in this comment section, either? But if I said that specific phrase here, what I would mean by it is:
“There’s no need to publish your essay about why Joyce/Dorothy suck as a direct reply to someone else saying they like the ship. There are lots of other comments you could post it as a reply to instead, and you could also make it its own top-level comment!”
It’s not about not letting you express your disappointment or whatever else, it’s just about leaving some space for other people to feel positively about it, too.
Side note: I picked very specific words with great intent above. If someone says “I love Joyce/Dorothy, how can anyone feel differently?!” — I think that’s actually an open invitation to post your essay as a direct reply!
And there’s a difference between posting an essay about why Joyce/Dorothy sucks in reply and just saying “I wish I could see this ship the way you do!”
And there’s ALSO a difference between posting one essay about them sucking in response to ONE person’s pro-Joyce/Dorothy comment, and posting like twelve mini-essays in response to all twelve pro-Joyce/Dorothy comments.
Which is not, to be clear, what any one person has been doing? But like. There’s a reason why Yotomoe felt the need to make a “positivity thread” for Joyce/Dorothy like a week ago, despite not liking the ship at all.
Anyway, none of this is a hard and fast rule, and it’s just as polite for those of us who like the ship not to go hounding the “haters” and to leave those folks space for how they feel! The comment section belongs to all of us. 🙂
(Well. It technically belongs to Willis, but they’ve made it equally available to all of us.)
Yeah, this feeling mostly stems from the whole “why does there need to be a hater containment thread” idea. I have to agree with Lee about how it feels like it’s a statement on how there’s a right and wrong view on this. And in my past experience with “let people enjoy things”, it’s been WAY more of an issue with people making isolated comments within comment sections than it has with people aggressively replying to other folks’ comments.
Maybe things were different here before the Hater Containment Thread was put into action? I wasn’t checking the comments all that much before that point. But in my past experience in multiple different places, people struggle even to tolerate being ADJACENT to negative reception of something. Even in comment sections that can be (and by default, are) sorted by “Top” “Best” etc and so they literally have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the negativity.
The Not Always Right site is particularly bad for this whenever someone expresses doubt of the legitimacy of a story. I’ve seen folks launch right into personal insults against isolated, 0-likes comments.
You’re not “relegated” to anything. This isn’t Willis dictating you have to post in this threat. Dot is just… trying to be polite. The haters have dominated the comment section for like a month plus, that’s all.
I understand that using this thread isn’t a requirement. That part is very much tangential to my point, which is that differing opinions about a storyline aren’t *im*polite (or that if one is, it’s not “I have issues with this storyline”, it’s “you’re an anti-LGBTQ bigot if you have issues with this storyline”).
Like I said: the haters have been dominating the comment section for the last month or so. Dot has been making an effort to lessen the domination a little. That’s literally all this is. It seems kind of silly to treat that like any kind of “you’re not allowed to complain” rule.
Maybe she could call it “the cool kids’ table”. I imagine it’s also helpful for folks to find other people who are also not enjoying the story to have productive conversation with and generally avoid getting a lot of “no the story is fine” pushback? Idk.
It’s really just a matter of “shippers should be allowed to enjoy these two being cute without having critics crawl down their throat, and critics deserve the equivalent consideration.” It’s been helpful to enforce informal intracommunity boundaries.
i’ve been appreciating it. every time those two are in the strip i scroll down to your profile pic and wallow in commiseration for a bit before moving on. Not sure if i’d pick through the comments at this point otherwise
But also I’ve obviously also found some things in here to reply to, usually more productively?! Heh. I think it’s kind of useful overall to have a “lane” for comments of a given type, and I do wish we could collapse and expand threads — I think if we could, more topics like this would be opened up.
i don’t really get where the idea that hating this couple could be anti-lgbtq. like, they aren’t the only queer couple in the comic. I personally ship ruth and billy/jennifer but they have a bunch of red flags. If they got back together and people were like “wtf they clearly tried this and it didn’t work” i wouldn’t think they’re bigots, i’d just look for a different section of the comments to squee in
I know it’s a comedy comic, so the jokes or at least the attempts to include jokes, even in serious situations, is kind of inherent, but I’m really not digging that there’s a Becky joke AND a teargas joke. The Becky one because, once again Dorothy has tried to at least nominally think of other people for a split second, and Joyce has trampled over it with abject glee. At least when it was Walky, Joyce isn’t supposed to like Walky. Now, Joyce has speedrun through some guity-ish sad expressions when she sees how hurt Becky is, and she’s over it. Yay, Dorothy wrestling with guilt over Becky’s heartbreak is a GREAT excuse of Dorothy to move in. To the room she shares with Sarah. Other people, WHAT other people? I’m interested, but not really hopeful for drama, to see when she remembers the whole Joe situation from what feels like eons ago.
And the teargas joke just because it harkens back to “let’s make a protest with police violence into a wedding moment for two white girls who don’t care about the protest,” which wasn’t a great look the first time and still isn’t amusing or sweet or entertaining in call-back form.
It is pretty consistent with Joyce’s character though. When she believes someone is her soul mate or match? Misgivings, reality, and consequence can go fuck itself.
True, but still unlikable. Just because it’s in-character for Joyce to be callous about everyone and everything when she’s “in love,’ doesn’t make it a good character trait or a funny thing to read. Especially when this scene and relationship is at least currently being presented as something fulfilling and good, while Joyce happily turns basically everyone else in their social circle into collateral damage. Dorothy has as well, but again, at least has pretended to feel bad about it. Sometimes. When she isn’t making Walky the butt of a “nah, I went back to being straight” joke for the Slipshine.
The tear gas really should’ve had more effect on them than it appears to have. You don’t just stand in or walk through that stuff and be fine a few hours later.
Oh. Right. This whole thing feels weird because it’s an extension of the “how seriously are we supposed to take which cartoon moments in the context of today’s specific strip” thing.
The worst part is that they’re not really “jokes”, they’re kinda the bones of jokes that don’t go anywhere because we’re too busy with Joyce screaming about “moving in”.
And then we get a halfway joke about clothing swaps. And whatever Dorothy’s implying about stretching things out that almost sounds like a sex joke.
I think Dorothy is just pointing out that Joyce’s chest and general frame is bigger than hers and they both wear form-fitting clothing so that would stretch Dorothy’s clothing out.
I don’t think that part was meant to be any kind of joke. I’ve had women I dated stretch my things out by borrowing them. Just a fact of life.
Actually yknow what I have one more strong kvetch to let out.
I fucking hate that Becky has become the sole focus of their worry in dating each other. Not the two dudes they blew this all up in the faces of who both claim to still like, the childhood friend that one of you literally only met like 6 months ago who literally has no connection to your relationship and was in her own happy and healthy one.
Why give Becky a doom spiral? It just makes no sense to me, I would’ve though she’d been happily moved on but eh whatever.
Lets quarter ass the breaks ups and just shove all the drama onto Becky cause fuck consistency amiright
I do think it makes sense that this is going to be a major hit to Becky’s self-worth, since she’s obviously got deep insecurities that she constantly tries to put on a brave face for. She was already feeling very insecure about Dorothy stepping up as Joyce’s new best friend, and the hammer blow of “you weren’t good enough for Joyce to fall in love with, but Dorothy was” is going to HURT.
And while that’s a mostly emotional, irrational response on its own… watching the two of them actively ignore her to act all lovey-dovey with each other even when they both show awareness that this is a painful issue for her? That’s not. That makes it crystal clear that she’s not even worthy of their consideration right now.
She’s already shown concern that something is going to happen to cause her relationship with Dina to become unsalvageable. Which, duh, she’s basically watched her entire life crumble away beneath her feet and lost everyone she once cared for besides Joyce and Hank.
This isn’t just about still holding a torch for Joyce. (I’m not even sure if she really does, at this point. It’s felt more like Joyce has been the last pillar of her life that she still has.) It’s about the unceasing barrage of just not being good enough for the people who matter to her.
I just still don’t get the ship. I don’t really want to complain about it, and definitely wouldn’t stop reading because if it (and every piece of media probably has at least one ship I dislike, canon or not), but I feel like pretty much every other ship has at least made me smile at some point*, and I just kind of feel nothing about them together. I do understand a lot of the bits people like about the dynamic, but they just don’t click into actual enjoyment for me.
Okay, see, this is a problem. Joyce naked getting in Dorothy’s personal space saying “Move in! Move in! Move in!” is really adorable, but the frame cuts off. Adorable isn’t sexy, but can that be on the other Pateon? 🙂
(Also, no, Joyce, you two just started dating. Don’t move in together. Dina and Becky just broke up, no one is safe.)
Huh.
I wonder if Willis is going to start doing meta Halloween relationship stuff like he does with Valentines Day since Halloween in story saw the end of two romantic relationships (maybe 3 depending on when Mary and Peter ended).
The tear gas did make Amazi-girl’s and Joyce’s eyes very red as well as weepy (their noses too) so I’d say just because the comic didn’t stop to have Joyce say “wow this tear gas hurts me eyes” doesn’t mean it wasn’t effective. Also, since Raidah commented that said residue ‘smelled like shit’, it probably doesn’t smell good.
Suddenly the laundry machine’s not looking so bad huh? You all laughed at the laundry machine, claimed it wasn’t really sex and that David Walkerton could outperform it! Well who needs laundry machine now!? Hubris thy name is Dorothy Keener and Joyce Brown to a lesser degree! If I weren’t a convenient side by side washer/dryer I’d be closed for the night and force them to sleep in their shame or freeze.
Bonus: Dorothy might also get the opportunity, depending on how things shake out, which I don’t think she’s had before, since Danny and Walky are both much closer to her size than Joe, and my vague sense is that that’s been her “type” inasmuch as she’s demonstrably got one so far.
The obvious solution is for Dorothy to buy a shirt that’s too big, specifically so Joyce can wear it after they fuck. Then Joyce can also do that thing with the PJ shirt, the one that shows off the person’s figure.
She actually pretends that she doesn’t know them before Becky says them; the first day Dorothy met a lesbian, she spent 11 panicked hours that same night, learning every basic cultural touchstone of lesbianism.
That’s a good one. I was just thinking Joyce demanding the Dorothy put on a sweater vest at this moment seemed rather…..odd. Maybe I’m missing the joke, but it came across to me as controlling more than anything.
Wonder how long before somebody completes panel 3? I KNOW there have been people painting off the clothes, so there is SOMEBODY who is going to “finish” panel 3
Is this the consequences people have been asking for? Messy bedding that needs laundered?
(I tease gently and with love. I am sorry that some of you are not having a good time with this, at least to the most of you who have been normal(ish) about it)
I guess Joyce is banking on Sarah being okay with Dorothy around all the time or thinks she’ll be hanging with Tony more. I gotta say I’ve mostly been mute on the hate of these two but this just reeks of cowardice which does turn me off. Ya’ll made this decision and I can stand by that but don’t punk out! You go back to your room now and stare Becky in the eye (maybe not tonight cause Becky’s kinda crashing hard) but I hope these two have some fucking guts and own this shit. I don’t wanna see shame and half assed sorries and avoidance. Take credit for the fire you started! Burn it down Seth Rollins circa 2019 style!
Joyce often ignored possible logistics of her plan, she’s very much ‘act first, figure out later’.
This is actually consistent with her character. She harboured Becky until Sarah reminded her that it just wasn’t feasible long term, she was angry at everyone until Joycelyne reminded that sometimes you need to temper your anger to keep access to resources, etc.
I mean, they very much tried to avoid Becky confrontation as much as they could, Dorothy specifically didn’t want to go check on amber because Becky might br in Dina room. It’s been pretty established that at least Dorothy doesn’t want the actual clashes that comes from this.
So Dorothy has been to see Amber, admittedly before knowing she was wounded. I’m kinda not surprised they haven’t gone to check on her again since Dina’s tone kinda suggested to me that guests were not especially welcome as Amber needs her rest more than anything else right now.
Honestly, it kinda read to me as “Oh don’t *you* worry about a thing. While *you* were busy playing grab ass with Joyce, *Sal and I* were busy making sure our friend didn’t *bleed out*. So you can go make yourself feel useful somewhere else.”
You know, this is a stance I actually agree with all the way.
Too many people in stories make some devastating decision and then either throw a pity party or try to avoid things in some way or another. Blameshifting, excuses, whatever. And I think that’s the most annoying part.
Like, man up or woman the fuck up in this case and accept that you did something that negatively impacted others and LIVE with it.
As much as I am happy these two have finally done the horizontal tango; I hope they will eventually try to repair some of the damage their relationship has done.
As always they’re young, and dumb, but they’re also capable of improving. While I don’t see Becky, Joe, Walky, or Dina being in a forgiving mood anytime soon; I hope this doesn’t permanently ruin any chance of friendship with any of them, and doesn’t end the Becky/Dina train especially.
I hope this permanently ruins the chance of friendship for at least some of them. Maybe not all of them but at least one….Walky. It should be Walky. He should live up to his name and just walk away from this group. None of them were really his friends to begin with.
I want a blow-up of the fellowship. I want friendship destruction. I want Dorothy and Joyce to have a very successful relationship, yes the reality is this should destabilize any and all hopes of friendships for comfort.
“Hey, you’re taking this class too this semester? We should stu—“
Now, it would be a genuinely interesting arc should Joyce and Dorothy ONLY meaningfully interact with each other for a good long while, doing their allegedly ‘cute’ thing, while other storylines and the rest of the cast goes on without them, wholly disconnecting them. Maybe stick a small timeskip in there too.
That way, when they suddenly remember ‘oh shit other people’, it’s been weeks, they have no idea what’s going on and no one trusts them to stick around (or cares) enough to catch them up. If we’re going to drag everything out hella long, let’s actually see the long hard work of rebuilding bridges burned by the stupid.
Well, we know Sarah is upset at them, and we can reasonably assume Danny would be mad about it based on his last conversation with Dorothy. Sal would presumably be in Walky’s corner, Becky is spiraling and doesn’t want to be around them, Dina already disliked Joyce and probably doesn’t have a higher view of her now…
So that leaves, what? Amber and Billie? Neither of whom particularly cares about Dorothy and Joyce to begin with. I won’t say I’m expecting a big blow-up or fallout, but I also don’t see anyone besides those two really being fine with them.
I would be pretty surprised if Dina felt like she was owed an apology by these two. She tends to be more practical and straightforward than that. “You hooking up with the girl who my girlfriend had a lifelong crush on has set off a bomb in our relationship” doesn’t really seem like the kind of assignment of blame she’d perform. She might not be enthusiastic about interacting with them but I dunno if she’d go that far.
I don’t think Dina would be mad at Dorothy (although I can absolutely see others such as Walky, Sal, and Danny not wanting to be around her for a good long while), but she already dislikes Joyce for a variety of reasons, and I can easily see this exacerbating that dislike.
… yes Joyce the proper response to Dorothy expressing her concerns about betraying the trust your extremely close childhood friend who is undergoing a manic episode is to go “who cares?! Let’s move in together!”
I really hope the drama train of reality knocks some sense into this girl soon
The proper response to “Dorothy expressing her concerns about betraying the trust your extremely close childhood friend” is to point out they didn’t betray Becky at all.
They did not betray her or wronged her in any way. But they did hurt her, and it is normal to have feelings about that, since both of them care about Becky.
I guess people just think it is kind of weird that Joyce just blows past that, while Dorothy seems to feel guilty.
Only Joyce is technically cheating now. Joyce made Dorothy’s breakup with Walky painfully clear, but she hasn’t officially broken up with Joe, and Dotty doesn’t know that, sooo…
She did make it clear however that she’d be dating Dorothy going forward. The only question is whether there’s room for Joe or not. She’s in the clear as far as cheating on Joe goes.
How Dorothy will react to the poly suggestion is more interesting.
Other than wanting them to fuck off with that nonsense about “betraying” Becky when she isn’t even the one they betrayed, I guess I’ll ask a question.
What other relationships in this comic do you still really like?
We haven’t seen them for awhile, but I adore Danny and Sal. I also generally like Ethan with Asher, so hopefully the crime stuff doesn’t scuttle that and send Ethan spiraling again.
I did like Dina and Becky, but I’m not even really sure if they’re going to be staying together at this point.
Danny/Sal are great. I think Ethan/Asher could be fun to watch, but we haven’t seen enough of those two for me to make a final determination. Sierra/Mandy/Grace, too.
Danny and Sal definitely crept up on me, and with Joe/Joyce on the way out, they’re probably my favorite m/f relationship in the comic right now. I’m also hoping for a Walky and Amber reunion at some point in the near future, since I love their dynamic too. Dina and Becky are good, and whether or not they patch things up I’m excited to see what does happen between them going forward. Beyond that, I think Sarah and Tony are cute? I’d like more exploration of that dynamic, and what Tony is like as a person.
And I’m still holding out hope for Billie and Ruth to get back together, because nothing could ever make me stop rooting for them.
Is it just me or has Joyce’s inner romantic completely taken over? Dorothy makes it clear that their actions may still have some consequences involving their friend group, but Joyce seems to be near to proposing to Dorothy because she got her storybook love story that she wanted since the first day of college. I seem to remember that Joyce didn’t really care what major fit her the best, she just wanted that MRS degree. And, though she rejected the religion that says that’s what college is for to women, she’s still ready to be Mrs. Keener right this minute.
I was assuming Dorothy’s hyper-possessiveness and her negative feelings for Joe might be the bump needed to get the girls to take off their rose colored glasses but Joyce’s romantic narrative and disregard for the collateral damage might be the oncoming storm gathering for this ship…
This has always been Joyce to a degree. She thought she could “ungay” Ethan in so many words…She thought she and Jacob (at Sara’s urging) would be meant to be and was ready to displace Raidah just on vibes alone, including forcing Jacob to lie to his brother. She was all in on the Joe train, regardless of of Sara and Dorothy’s urging.
Joyce handles relationships with the same single-minded determination that her mom handles religion. I don’t think she realizes it though. Yet.
I understand their reasoning (she’s not going to be happy, let’s not rub this in her face by having Dotty hang out in her room, etc), but yeah in a way I find this more disrespectful than not. Mostly in a “you don’t even respect me enough to face me?” way, but also like, give Becky the chance to refuse or kick Dotty out. I don’t think she’d enjoy it at this point, like she would have a few days ago, but it would give some control back. Also I feel like this lends to Becky thinking “they’re too busy being in love/also fucking for Dorothy to even set foot in here tonight” and feel maybe even more abandoned.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to think that Dorothy and Joyce would consider all these angles, mind. I just kinda wish they did.
(and the whole suicide risk thing, of course, but they probably assume that she’s safely with Dina, having probably not thought through that this would (did) probably put Dina and Becky in a bad place as a couple, and also having had the last several months of not having to worry about Becky being alone, since she has Dina and knows the friend group now)
(feel like I’m getting too specific but also feel like without overexplaining someone might think either that I’m accusing them of purposefully not caring)
They already faced her. They had a big confrontation in Joyce’s room. It didn’t go well. Giving Becky a day to deal with her feelings is the best possible thing they can do for her right now.
they only faced her by accident though. I just feel like there should be a middle step before continuing to avoid her for as long as possible.
I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong though; I think there are a lot of ways to look at the situation and that basically nothing will be completely ideal at this point because it’s all following stuff that clearly already wasn’t a great approach to things. Becky DOES deserve to have space and not be constantly reminded of it only hours after finding out and having the confrontation.
It’s very frustrating to see Joyce being so one-note.
Like, contrast when she was with Joe. She would sometimes get distracted about doing the horizontal mambo with him, but she still was able to give brainspace to other concepts that weren’t him with some regularity.
But here, even in the throes of “post-nut clarity”, she’s only able to contemplate her situation in terms of her relationship with Dorothy.
The counterargument to what I’m kvetching about is that Joyce has always had something of an obsessive personality. Which is true. But it hits really different when she’s disregarding the words Dorothy is saying in her drive to make things all about them smooshing booties.
Previously Joyce was a lot more self-reflective, and I think that’s one of the reasons she’s getting so much hate.
Yeah, it’s definitely at least a trope for that configuration!
But other types of orgasm are less intense and focused, and also similarly have a less clear delineation between orgasm / non-orgasm, as well as not having the same type of very clear refractory period.
I’m not sure there’s a comprehensive enough body of literature on the mechanics of post-nut clarity, which is very much a colloquial notion, to make such definitive statements.
Joyce’s main reason for going to college in the first place was to get her MRS degree. She also seems to innately believe that the person who takes her virginity is the person she marries. She may have rejected her religion, but that belief is still fully ingrained into her, as well as Becky, since she declared she was going to marry Dina after they had sex. I think Joyce is so wrapped up in the glee of having sex with her best friend that she wants to just speed run the relationship right into being Mrs. Keener before the winter semester ends. Ohhh, I can totally see her proposing to Dorothy on Valentine’s Day, which is like what, 15 or 16 days away at this point?
@thejeff- Yep, you’re right. They kissed, confessed their undying love to each other, introduced themselves as a couple to Joyce’s father, who more or less gave his approval, and now have had sex… all within two days. With this romantic narrative on speedrun, the MRS Degree should be obtained within the end of the week.
I find it interesting that people take a very much non-specific comment of Dina, followed by her leaving, as confirmation that she broke up with Becky. I’d be on board with almost any other character, but Dina is very big on things being explicit. It feels weird she’d be implicit and leave it at that for something so important.
I’m not at all sure she meant it that way, but Becky definitely took it that way.
The comment on that last page by itself maybe not, but following Becky saying, “If you’re gonna leave me, just do it” in the previous strip, it’s a lot harder to find alternatives.
Yeah I think this is less about Dina breaking up with Becky and much more about Becky letting Dina leave. This is really on Becky to prove she wants Dina at this point. The longer Becky spirals instead of trying to talk to Dina the more likely it will be a true breakup in my opinion.
Does Joyce not have other clothes-? I thought they changed. I’m confused why Dorothy brought up the tear gas.
Speaking of which, if anyone does get that shit on you, IF and only IF, it’s a small amount, please clean it in the wash, separately from everything else. Multiple washes if possible. Or otherwise toss it out in a plastic bag to prevent further contamination
Added advice: most “tear gas” is a particulate agent IIRC, not a aerosol, so you’re gonna want to use surfactants to trap it. I seem to recall that an alkaline solution to neutralize it also helps (which is why folks recommend using Maalox as part of immediate treatment) but don’t quote me on that.
Like I like slice of life comedies, I just binged City the Animation with some pals and enjoyed every second, but Dumbing of Age is a drama-comedy. It always has been.
It’s fine! I’m not entitled to social interaction with anyone in this community, and I’ve asked people I don’t get along with not to interact with me in the past so I don’t mind respecting the boundaries of others in kind.
Andi, sorry for replying to your comment chain again but I don’t want you to catch flak for establishing boundaries. Won’t happen again!
You’re fine. Replying to someone down thread from me isn’t ever going to bother me. I do think it’s worth clarifying for anyone else looking that I do, in fact, respect and appreciate you for your valiant attempt to establish some civility in the comments. Frankly, I think you’re pretty neat for that. That’s why I hope we can peacefully avoid each other.
Their idyllic night is followed by mundane issues like how do they continue to live with their roommates. They’re not adults with jobs and apartments. They’re 19 year olds with small, shared dorm rooms. And laundry to do.
I’m now actively wondering if this whole story arc isn’t just Willis doing a bit where he riffs on his own critique in social media of whatever-that-other-comic-strip-was where two parents just ignore everything to be horny at each other.
There are multiple different ways to put on bras, and it depends on the individual person and the individual bra.
For example: some bras are actually front-closing.
The “best for the bra” way to put them on is what Dorothy appears to have done here, where you kinda slip it over your shoulders from the front and then clasp it behind your back.
The “easiest” way to put them on is to flip the bra around (so that the cups are on your back), fasten it in front, then wiggle it around and pull it into place. This is extra bad for the bra if it involves fully flipping it (starting with the cups as upside-down triangles with the “points” aimed at the floor). This is bad for the bra because of the extra stress it puts on the bra’s elastic.
But like. Not everyone has the dexterity or strength to put bras on the “””best””” way.
Admittedly, I’ve only got experience taking them off. I’ve seen my girlfriend doing some of the techniques you’re talking about though, since she’s had a variety over the years.
The “upside-down on my back, twist it around forward and flip it up” technique is also not UNIVERSALLY harmful, there are plenty of like, bras with less structure where it’s at least much less problematic to do that to them. 🤔
Also: I’ve definitely seen other bra-wearers express surprise and dismay af techniques that differ from their own. I think it’s one of those things where it’s easy to assume everyone does it like you do, haha, unless you actually talk about it or witness other techniques.
I don’t have the exact pages onhand, but she has worn sweater vests before. There was a whole strip focused on them accidentally wearing extremely similar sweater vests at the same time, to Dorothy’s chagrin.
It actually makes complete sense that Dorothy would say “Becky, who we’ve betrayed”, rather than being similarly out-loud worried about Walky or Joe.
First: because Becky is the only one of the three who has actually been visibly distressed where Dorothy can see it. She wasn’t present for Joyce’s conversation with Joe, and Walky hasn’t even let his guard down with Jennifer yet.
(Dorothy has also always underestimated Walky’s capacity for angst. I don’t think out of a lack of caring about him, personally, though other readings are valid.
But it’s kind of a problem they’ve both had with each other for a long time: Walky saw Dorothy as capable of anything to the point where he couldn’t imagine her crashing out (am I using that right, kids), and Dorothy likewise keeps assuming he’s more emotionally resilient than he is. Both of them have had moments of visibly telling themselves, if not each other, “oh, [he/she] will be fine!” They’re also both, not coincidentally, people who don’t really value themselves very highly, and who mostly think of themselves as someone no one could possibly be THAT devastated over losing.)
Second: Dorothy lives with Becky: meanwhile, she doesn’t even seem to have any classes with Joe or Walky anymore, so it would be easy to discreetly avoid the two of them, and whereas Becky is more of an inevitable confrontation.
(The more “aw jeez” character in this strip for me is definitely Joyce, who seems to be operating on a distinct “that emotional fallout sounds like a problem for Tomorrow Joyce” level right now. I hope we’re about to see her relentless good cheer fall apart once she actually has to face other people, for the sake of the comment section being *ever readable again* if nothing else.)
Even if they could switch up, there’s no easy way to shuffle those pairs into anything acceptable. Dina & Joe seems like a good fit, but that leaves Joyce & Becky. Guess it would have to Dina & Joyce, which will still be awkward, but not complete breakdown material.
There’s also an element, perhaps, of displacement — if they focus on Becky’s woes, when she’s the person they are possibly LEAST ethically responsible for causing distress to, then they can (consciously or not) avoid thinking further of the ramifications to Joe and Walky.
I just keep turning things over in my head, thinking about what we’ve seen as the audience versus what various characters have seen, and I think Dorothy really thinks Walky is kind of bulletproof emotionally. She shouldn’t, but it’s been a while (understandably!) since he was emotionally vulnerable with her.
I think that’s certainly something she tries to convince herself of, but she also often has moments where she bemoans how unfair she’s been to him, and it strikes me moreso as a way to avoid needing to confront and change her behavior towards him.
I’ve got an alternate theory to Dot’s comment that boils down to “Dorothy’s relationship with Walky was defined by a constant unacknowledged tension between what she ACTUALLY wants (comfortable, friendly, shared interests, great sex) and what she CLAIMS to have wanted (pushes her to new heights, worthy of being the First Gentleman, can take out in public without checking for ketchup stains) and what she wants herself to be (caring girlfriend, goal-focused)” which mostly manifests as her treating him both as disposable AND irresistible.
It’s meanwhile clear that Walky’s perception of Dorothy was largely “she’s far, far too good for me” a lot of the time.
I will say: I think Dorothy specifically wasn’t consciously looking for someone “worthy of being First Gentleman”, so much as she was just really actively turned off by Danny’s specific version of romanticism back then involving “besides who knows maybe you’ll change your mind about going to Yale and stay here with me”.
Which I think sounds fine the first time, but does, eventually, wear on you if someone keeps saying it, which is what I think was meant to be happening between them, but oops Willis only showed us a tiny slice of their relationship so who can say.
I also think Danny was Dorothy’s first serious boyfriend and he informed a lot of her expectations for Boyfriend Behavior even though she was actively looking for something different. Danny and Walky’s first times with Dorothy were probably fairly similar, but I bet if you told Danny there was ketchup on his shirt, you wouldn’t even need to ask him to change — he’d be going “oh NO” and changing his shirt before you could even frown about it.
So like yeah, absolutely there were elements with Walky and Dorothy of Dorothy approaching Walky kind of like a sitcom girlfriend, nagging about stained clothing, wanting him to wear “””real””” pants (something which Lucy then echoed later — oops??), but also I think her approach with Walky shows echoes of her previous dynamic with Danny, where in respects like “not wearing stained t-shirts” and “writing thank-you notes”, Dorothy and Danny were very much on the same page, and Dorothy expected that same thing without consciously realizing it.
(I’m kind of on the fence about “is this kind of thing good or bad in a partner”, I think like everything else it kind of depends. I think it can be super useful to have a friend or romantic partner who has higher standards for us than we have for ourselves — I think we’ve all probably benefitted at one point or another in our lives from having someone go, “wait, no, you can’t wear THAT to a job interview.”
But I tend to think that unless these are changes we’re deeply interested in making on a LIFESTYLE level, it’s more of a “good wake up call to have at some point” than “the kind of thing you want in a long-term roommate, much less romantic partner”.
Better to cohabitate with someone you have a somewhat similar level of mess tolerance with, for example, so that neither of you wind up feeling like you’re always the one who badgers the other into cleaning, and neither of you wind up feeling like you’re living in a pigsty.
But still! Kind of a useful experience to have at least once in your life.)
Yeah, I’m kinda waxing a bit melodramatic with my depiction of Dorothy’s (likely mostly subconscious, despite my use of active verbs like CLAIMS) internal conflict over what she actually wants, but my point is assuredly her treatment of Walky is very reminiscent of her internal conflicts in general.
To kinda drag this back into relevance, and again quote myself saying something nasty but 100% fair, I honestly wonder if this thing with Joyce and sexuality will shake loose some of Dorothy’s internal conflicts, or if she will end up treating Joyce much the same way she treated Danny/Walky (in the sense of “depending on what my internal compass is pointing at in that hour, I might be all in or kinda stand offish”) .
There certainly are some open questions in GENERAL with Dorothy, like…
— what are the sources of her crash out?
There was a lot of arguing against Shippy interpretations of Dorothy’s depression, with folks saying “come on be reasonable this isn’t someone who’s sad about repressed sapphic feelings, it’s someone who’s sad about losing her direction in life” — and I think that turned out to be a bit of an oversimplification.
We’ve SORT OF addressed the second part already — Dorothy told JOYCE she wasn’t planning on going to Yale and eventually admitted it was at least partly to stay with Joyce, and Dorothy had a bit of a political awakening at the protest… but the question of what she’s going to do with all of that is still up in the air, and of course, the Keeners don’t yet know that she’s so drastically changed her life plans.
(Not going to Yale after being accepted is pretty drastic, for most parents.)
— how much of Dorothy being a bad partner is narratively intentional?
I’m extremely in Dorothy’s corner when it comes to her relationship with Danny. I give more credence to the idea that she was specifically a bad girlfriend for Walky, though I personally attribute less blame to her there.
(I think they’ve been good for each other and bad for each other by turns. I think it’s easier for readers to recognize Walky as flailing around, not knowing what the heck he’s doing, and trying his best, than it seems to be for readers to see the same things in Dorothy, so folks tend to apply more agency and deliberateness to her actions, which makes her more at fault.
I tend to think their relationship just fell apart, with both of them clumsily hurting each other in the process, rather than Dorothy specifically treating Walky like trash.
But also: you know who else doesn’t know the first thing about relationships? Joyce. And I doubt Dorothy is going to be LESS of a flailing disaster in her first effort to date a girl, either.
Soooooooo, in terms of “this is gonna go poorly, once the honeymoon is over”? I think I’m more or less on the same page anyway!)
*”I personally attribute less blame to her there” = I don’t attribute as much blame to Dorothy for her relationship with Walky Being Ultimately Pretty Bad as some readers.
I don’t blame Walky more than Dorothy, that’s for sure, I just think they both messed up a lot, rather than thinking of their bad relationship as a thing Dorothy did “to” Walky, if that makes sense!
The hater containment thread would be a lot more effective if it was possible to collapse/hide threads. Instead it’s just a big chunk of negativity in one place I need to scroll past, often near the top of the comments.
Hater containment thread hater containment thread, containing haters of the hater containment thread. Sees itself on activation, allowing infinite combo.
There’s a collapse/hide function. You just have to hope enough other people click “Report comment” so you can all righteously punish those who dislike something to any degree. You fucking hussy.
Simple method, on your computer at least: Position your mouse over the picture of the person starting the containment thread. Scroll downward until your mouse pointer covers another picture. You have now avoided the containment thread. Now the only problem is all the people who don’t want to use the containment thread, but that’s a separate issue.
You know, I don’t mind seeing Joyce and Dorothy being cute together, but… It’s distracting. We have deep and important conversations that are being hinted at – Joe and Sarah working through his feelings about what happened and Joe getting going on his new path, Becky’s dealing with all the emotions stirred up by recent events and what that means for her relationship with Dina – heck, Asma working through her feelings of loneliness and making a connection with someone else in the dorms shows rather a lot of promise for an interesting arc. All of these promise to take things in new and interesting directions, and let us see sides of the characters we haven’t seen before, taking risks and finding interesting ways of looking at things.
But with Dorothy and Joyce? It feels safe. We pretty well know where their arc is going in the short term, and there’s not really any new revelations to be found there. On its own, it’s fine – and would be quite enjoyable in its own right if we didn’t have these cutaways to other things going on – but compared to the other stories we’ve had teased, this one is just… boring. Safe. No real risks to go through or stakes to worry about – just seeing two characters being cute together. It would make for a great intermission story to break up the tension of what’s going on with Joe (and would be a great way to lead into Becky’s story contrasting the joy that Joyce and Dorothy are going through with the darkness that Becky is dealing with) – but as it is, it just feels like the focus is too scattered to really enjoy any of the stories that we’ve seen over the last few weeks.
I don’t think we’re going to see any of those conversations play out if they’re happening beyond what we’ve already seen. We’re basically at the end of this storyline, so it’s pretty likely there’s going to be a cut to the next morning coming up.
Some of them will probably come up again later, hopefully when we don’t need to be cutting back to Joyce and Dorothy every few strips.
This story has basically ended with Dorothy getting everything she ever wanted- her best friend is now her girlfriend, and Joyce’s dream of an ultra romantic and passionate relationship that ends in marriage is coming true. They win… and right now all the collateral damage they’ve done to everyone else, including Amber, who ENCOURAGED the pairing, is irrelevant. True Love Wins. Everyone else loses.
If I were a comic artist (and I most certainly am not), I think I’d forego the whole comments section bit.
So much of it is so repetitive (Yes I am probably repeating that it’s repetitive), and also, so little of it is about the art. Imagine spending hours making gnarly art decisions and most of the comments are about how other people view/want/would do the narrative. I can *write* a passable narrative. I can’t art. So I’m here admiring the work of those who can art.
People do comment one particular facet of the art with some regularity: facial expressions. Willis is pretty good at making very expressive characters, which tends to get acknowledged with some regularity in the comments.
Willis has basically said that the rare occasion when someone catches an issue with how they’re portraying characters with experiences different from theirs + the really important valuable conversations we’ve sometimes had amongst ourselves make it worth keeping the comments open to them.
(“Rare” not in the sense of like, trying to butter Willis up, but rare in the sense that there’s a LOOOOOT of comments and a fairly small percent of them address that specific topic.)
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eh, honestly could have done without the “cheating bi” stereotype in particular, but okay XD
[insert rest of rant here, had a long appointment with social security, right after which my shark week decided to START start, and I am just TIRED (-_-) X-X]
idk i feel like harping on the “cheating bi” stereotype in this plotline is weird what with this comic being stuffed to the brim with bi characters! like, it feels weird and bad-faith toward a queer author who does a pretty good job writing queerness imo!
god forbid joynk and dorpy get a bit sillay with it
“Cheating” in a 12 day relationship no less. 1 bi character out of many didn’t go through all the proper protocols when ending a romantic relationship that was younger than most of her homework assignments.
Is it ideal behavior? No. Does it turn this comic into some sort of anti-bisexual thesis? Absolutely not.
It’s not some thesis but, like, she STILL hasn’t gone through the proper protocols… And her best friend who is super hurt by it needs help too. And oh yeah let’s not forget that they dumped Walky in a super crappy way too.
Both characters are still examples of “how not to do things.”
She absolutely did go through the proper protocols. She dumped Joe; Joe is dumped. His poly proposal does not act as a veto on the dumping. Becky needs help, but Joyce is the worst possible person to try to provide that help. Becky needs a Joyce break for now. I’ll give you Walky.
This is <a href="https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/everyones/"absolutely not true; whether Joyce broke up with Joe has been <a href="https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/splash/"left deliberately open-ended. It’s a surprise tool to help us
generate more dramalater!aw goddammit, been a while since i fucked up the html
What with all the other fucking going on, maybe the html was feeling left out!
Again, She broke up with him. He offered a counter proposal that she has not responded to yet. If somebody asks me out, and I promise to think about it, we’re not *in a relationship*, I’m deciding if I *want to be* in a relationship.
THANK YOU. I’m not saying any type of cheating is okay, but lets not pretend Joe and Joyce were engaged.
Yeah, like if you want to be stringent about your definition, then “kissed somebody before formally breaking things off with your partner of under two weeks. Had a difficult conversation with him the next day” and “Was porking the maid behind your spouse’s back for 8 years” can both be considered cheating.
But all cheating is not made equal. This is overall a pretty mild transgression from one out of many bisexual characters, in a comic where the entire premise is that young people are acting stupid and getting caught up in romantic drama.
Agreed. This is a mild trangression that could be addressed and forgotten, if maybe not forgiven, with a little bit of time.
Instead both boys are basically ignoring the cheating. Walky’s just depressed that Dorothy’s dumped him again. Joe’s willing to forgive anything just for the chance to salvage something of his relationship.
I do hold out a little hope for Walky, but I think the odds are against it.
Again, I get that it’s not the same as “Was porking the maid behind your spouse’s back for 8 years”, but I’d still expect at least on of them to have some reaction to the cheating. And the “under two weeks” doesn’t really salvage anything, because they’re both clearly invested in the relationship. It’s not like they don’t care about it.
They’re not “addressing” it because it’s literally a non-issue. What, do you expect it to factor into the divorce proceedings? Joe gets custody of the children because Joyce cheated?
Not any anti-bisexual thesis, just a lazy application of an uncomfortable stereotype. But let’s be honest, it’s more the fact that 12 days in this comic may take more than a calendar year. The pacing is the real elephant in the room.
this!
and yeah although this may be just a pet peeve of mine, it seems lot of problems with the flow of the narrative stem from the rate of time passing in the comic, which as Yoto put it
“seems to move both too fast and too slow at the same time”
It would be a lazy application of an uncomfortable stereotype if the comic wasn’t filled to the brim with bisexual characters who have never cheated, not even on a mere 12 day relationship.
Flagrantly, within the text, this is not a bisexual problem, just a Joyce problem.
“stuffed to the brim with bi characters”
who include (but may not be limited to for long):
– two people who come out via cheating on their partners
– a right wing politician who denies it happening
– a formerly alcoholic teenager who’s STILL heavily in the closet and denial
– an RA who’s actually some pretty nuanced good representation (well, at least after she became not-an-abuser)
I know this is Dumbing of Age and pretty much everyone in the cast has their flaws, but come on XD
but all in all?
IMO the net result in terms of queer rep in this comic is actually pretty good!
(just honestly wish I weren’t so goddamn confused on whether or not I’m supposed to like or hate Joyce X Dorothy (per the author’s intention),
and even if we’re supposed to celebrate them being together, are we necessarily doing so for the right reasons?
should we go “yay they’re together and it’s cute!” or “yay they’re together so they’ve effectively quarantined the collateral damage of their inevitable growing pains from the rest of the cast”?
XD
I think your list of bi characters left out Danny.
hence “not limited to” :p
plus I dunno what Willis be cookin, hopefully some other folk in the comic will come out as bi, imma be eager to see where all this goes either way as usual haha
I think Willis’ intention for any characters/situations that we’re not very obviously supposed to hate is that we should draw our own conclusions about what we like and what we don’t. Like, Toedad was pretty unambiguously meant to be hated, for example, but I don’t think Willis has a specific agenda vis a vis loving or hating this relationship. I think the intention is “this is how things went down, it’s a mess, but so are most things in this comic, do with that what you will”
Personally, I want to like it and be happy for them, but the way they handled it just taints it for me. I’ll probably be less bitter about it when Joe and Becky have had time to heal and start to bounce back from it, assuming this becomes the new status quo and there isn’t a shake up that’s going to wreck this new relationship too.
re: Becky healing,
I dunno if I’d hold my breath, given the title of the next storyline is literally the last thing she said to Dina before they broke up — “I’m the problem, it’s me”
and honestly? even before Joyce X Dorothy started sailing, Becky has been her own volatile mountain of unresolved issues which was gonna abruptly surface eventually o3o
I like the couple, and want to see more of what they get up to, I just don’t like how they got there. Also, I’m really disappointed in Becky. She coulda had a good thing with Dina had she fully committed to the relationship.
Genuinely I’m really sick of this trope existing meaning we can never have a story with infidelity wirh bi characters involved. That’s patently silly in a cast fulla queer folks, and it reminds me of hearing people complaining about “bury your gays” in The Magnus Archives.
Honestly the bi part isn’t even an issue for me because of the way their sexuality has kinda just been breezed past. Neither of them were into women a week ago and I guess they’re both cool with it now. You could have replaced Dorothy with a genderbent version and nothing really changes.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/curiosity/
In this strip and the one that follows it, Joyce is shown appreciatively checking out multiple women while blushing.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/sorted-2/
In this one she is struggling with her sapphic feelings, which she then buries under her attraction to Ethan.
I could dig up more examples but I don’t want to be here all night. The point is that Joyce has been showing attraction to women for nearly the entire length of the comic. She’s also had blatant crushes on Dorothy, Sal, and Billie for just as long. This did not come out of nowhere.
Now Dorothy hasn’t shown any attraction to women in general, but she has been pretty attached to Joyce for a long time. However, if you replaced Dorothy with Theodore, then you would have an ostensibly gay man who found out he’s attracted to his female best friend, which I would not consider a trivial change.
Joyce being “straight” was the crux of her rejecting Becky though.
It’s hard to really say how much of her “attraction” was subconscious and how much of it was just played for laughs. I don’t think most of those were crushes though, mostly admiration. Joyce didn’t have many older female figures to look up to growing up other than her mom. Sal even calls it out as objectification/hero worship. And that also tracks with Jennifer; Joyce thought she was cool and confident for “standing up” to Ruth.
Joyce wanted an older sister for ages.
No. Her not being attracted to Becky was the reason for her rejecting Becky. She just believed at the time that not being attracted to women is the only reason she wouldn’t be attracted to her
No, Joyce rejected Becky because she wasn’t attracted to her, and to the extent that she gave a reason, it’s because she sees Becky as a sister, not because she’s straight.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/hindsight/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/forever/
In addition to this, Joyce’s behaviour towards her girl crushes is significantly and notably different from her behaviour towards her sisters. Joyce obsesses over Dorothy, Sal, and Billie, and expresses a desire for physical intimacy, but she does not act in this way towards Sarah, Becky, and Joycelene. Her fangirling on women she idolizes is not explainable as her wanting a big sister when she has big sisters in Sarah and Joycelene but doesn’t behave towards them the same way.
But the jump from that to ‘yeah I have no issues with admitting I’m in love with Dorothy’ just… happened. She was all “I’m STRAIGHT” and “Yeah maybe I could be into her… if I ignored everything below the waist” to just casually going down on Dorothy with no reservations.
Not saying it doesn’t or can’t happen. She just had shown zero physical attraction to Dorothy, so it just seemed like she reciprocated those feelings so readily.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/03-trystin-in-the-wind/observe-2/
Joyce literally admitting (while drunk mind you) that she’s considered the idea of watching Walky and Dorothy have sex particularly making sure she covers the Walky part of the coitus. She’s otherwise spent the whole comic length gushing about how wonderful and amazing Dorothy is. She’s definitely been into Dorothy for a long time.
Below the neck even.
Yes, but sexually?
Joyce’s inner romantic took over once she and Dorothy kissed. She had been looking for a Hallmark love story since her first day of college, and since the kiss Joyce has re-contextualized her personal narrative so she was ALWAYS in love with Dorothy since the moment she laid eyes on her and is destined to marry her. Like Becky, who convinced herself she was going to marry Dina since they had sex, Joyce seems to have gone right to picking out china patterns and considering adopting Dotty’s last name because she wants this Hallmark romance to be fully realized ASAP… although this may not be what her heart TRULY wants, as with Becky, who shouldn’t be this heartbroken if she truly was in love with Dina that she would marry her…
Joyce may have rejected her religion, but the conservative “the person I first have sex with is the person I marry” idea is still running STRONG in her head.
@eh whatever: I’d say wanting to watch Dorothy have sex with Walky would count as being sexually into her. Straight women wouldn’t want to watch another woman have sex, particularly with the focus on the woman over the man.
The rest of this I completely disagree with – there had long been hints of Joyce’s bisexuality and interest in Dorothy in particular, but I was surprised that she didn’t seem to have any conflict or hesitation about consciously realizing that she was into women.
@Nono: that statement coming at around the same time her sex dream about Ethan involved telling him to put his thing on her tummy, and he took out a wand like a PlayStation Move controller, fully detached from his body, to literally wave over her tummy?
Yeah, I don’t think she was, at that point, actually okay with anything below ANYbody’s neck.
You are referring to this strip: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/foranybody/
There’s a five month gap between then and now, during which Joyce went through significant changes including dumping her entire worldview. In addition to that, she was at the time not ready to deal with anybody’s below the neck. This is evidenced by how bizarre her sex dreams involving Ethan are, which show that she can’t even be heterosexual in the safety of her own dreams. She wants to have sex with Sal, but her hangups are getting in the way of her even fantasizing about it.
Moreover, Joyce being into Dorothy has been so obvious that Walky’s been joking about it for nearly the entirety of the comic’s span. Hell, Becky noticed it immediately and concluded that Joyce was into girls, and as it turns out she was right! It’s just that Joyce being into girls doesn’t mean that she’s into Becky.
Jocelyne.
There is no Joyce in Jocelyne.
Theiy’re
This is going to be annoying to remember, but I will try. Thanks for the correction.
Gotta remember that at that point in time, Joyce was still drinking the fundie flavor-aid. She was very repressed in general, and I doubt she’d considered that not being straight was a possibility for herself. I think it was Becky’s coming out that prompted Joyce to even admit ex-gaying Ethan was a bad idea?
Joyce changed and learned a lot in the time between then and now. It also happens that when bi folks grow up without knowing it’s a thing, some of us round ourselves up to “straight” and try to rationalize the same gender crushes as being platonic. Everyone gets those, right? Oh.
Agreed, the whole point of the Becky and Joyce convo about ‘lesbian sex’ was that Joyce’s brain still imagined sex as only “penis in vagina”. And agreed, I definitely remember growing up and having lil crushes on other girls but not realizing it was a crush. Lots of “wow, she’s so pretty and cool, I just admire her a lot is all”.
Joyce/Dorothy has been foreshadowed for *years*. I don’t understand why so many people are saying it just popped up out of nowhere.
Some people (like me) are bad at noticing queer subtext. But I also know that so I usually just assume it was there and I missed it.
Honestly at the time I didn’t see it/believed Joyce’s rejections of the possibility (in fact got annoyed at commenters’ smug attititudes like “god Joyce just accept it already”). But I accept that people change and discover new things about themselves (and that I too am bad at subtext, though I still think calling it pre-emptively was jumping to conclusions because friendships can be intimate without developong into romance). Characters develop, it’s Dumbing of Age, not Already Dumbed of Age
Safe and warm forever.
Naw, Joyce in particular has DEFINITELY from practically day one shown signs of bisexual attraction. This is the least “out of nowhere” plot twist.
I really hope the SSA appointment goes super well!!! 🤞✊️🗽🍀🧧🔮🎋💸
oh, I already had the appointment, it did go super well, thank you!
apparently the SSA has all the info they need now and should get back to me as soon as this year, with me luck! <3
Best of luck with it all!!! 🗽
These 2 sites may help:
https://www.disabilitysecrets.com/
https://www.calable.ca.gov/
This one, also, in case you find yourself having to appeal:
https://apps.calbar.ca.gov/attorney/LicenseeSearch/AdvancedSearch?LastNameOption=b&LastName=&FirstNameOption=b&FirstName=&MiddleNameOption=b&MiddleName=&FirmNameOption=b&FirmName=&CityOption=b&City=&State=&Zip=&District=&County=&LegalSpecialty=112&LanguageSpoken=&PracticeArea=
(Assuming you’re still in Cali, IIRC)
Hmm, looks like my comments are getting blocked for some reason. If they do come back somehow, these 2 sites may complement them for Shark Week:
https://livewellzone.com/nettle-leaf-for-period/
(Nettle leaf tea or soup to replace minerals)
https://summerstirs.com/how-much-parsley-tea-to-drink-to-induce-period/
(Parsley is more to *induce* contractions and flow than to mediate it, but every so often that can be of use too.)
Hmm, my shark week condolences keep getting blocked. Odd!
Generally, if you make more than a single link it automatically awaits moderation. Or so I believe. Try a single link per post and see if that works.
Thank you!
More than two, I think. Any time I’ve posted a comment with one or two links, it’s gone through right away.
Raspberry leaf tea, mint tea, ginger tea, bitter dark chocolate, yogurt, and plenty of iron-rich foods (taken with orange juice or vitamin C) may help.
…I hope *this* comment makes it through!
mmmm, well at least I have an excuse for dark chocolate (which I love), to go with this pain, so that good, thanks :’)
also Ethan avatar now! yay! ^^
Wait, does the site autocorrect period to shark week, or is this a new euphemism I’m just not familiar with?
I guess it’s the latter.
Ooooh, I thought they were talking about actual shark week.
… Damn, that’s a fun euphemism. I’m definitely tucking that one in the language pocket for later.
I’m personally partial to “blood ritual”
Shark week is a euphemism for periods, it’s one I heard a lot followed closely behind by Aunt Flo (as in “Aunt Flo is visiting”) and ‘on the rag’.
Posts get automatically flagged for approval if they contain more than two URLs, even if they’re all for this very website.
Thanx, folx!
I know a lot of my fellow bi and pan sexuals really hate being depicted as hypersexual and unfaithful, but I revel in it. The depraved bisexuals is just straight up one of my favourite character archetypes. Positive and healthy representation is boring, I want my bi pride to be gloriously evil, charmingly manipulative, openly wanton, shamelessly perverse. Make a character bi, sexy, and evil and I will fangirl forever.
BTW – Griffith did nothing wrong.
big same “good representation” bores me to tears thats why I believe in broad representation there is not one perfect way to represent everyone for example I really do not like heatstopper I think its great for queer teens but something about its “wholesome pure” vibe really rubs me the wrong way they are teenagers let them be jerks sometimes. It also reaks of respectibility politics like if queer people “behave badly” we deserve our oppression.
I had to look up “heatstopper.” It seems to be “Heartstopper,” a movie about a sweet young gay couple. Boooring.
Oh I was thinking headstabbers from Wondermark
“Good representation” is why for years a woman in a group in a tv show or movie had to be the “sensible one” whilst the boys all got to be fun and quirky.
But the reason that was necessary is subtly hinted at in your comment: “a women” vs “the boys”.
Well, yeah. Men get to be boys 24/7 under all circumstances. Women only get to be girls when a man wants to fuck them. It’s a totally normal, fully hinged system that doesn’t have any lopsided features, we promise.
Well that too, but I mostly meant “one woman” who therefore has to stand in for “women” as a group, but multiple boys who could thus each be distinct and even portrayed negatively.
Heartstopper’s kinda a good example of how I feel about all this, in that I like it for what it is but I’d probably like it less if it had more “teens are jerks sometimes”, in almost exactly the same way I’m kinda waiting for another shoe to drop on these two because right now they’re in a very “look we are so cute any interruptions last a panel or two until right back to cute” place and it’s as jarring here in DoA as Mike would be in Heartstopper.
(re: me being a 40s cis man who’s read Heartstopper — when your aro-ace (and maybe lesbian-ace?) identified teen hands you a book and says its really good, you read it.)
I hate when people say “good representation” when they mean “positive representation”. Depicting a bisexual as a terrible person in a setting with multiple queer folks, and it’s not some moralistic bs, is still good representation because it’s accurately depicting the range of experiences people can have, and not glossing over people’s flaws just because they’re a minority. It’s good, it’s just not positive. You’re bored of positive representation. Something that glosses over the potential flaws of queer people and has them be perfect widdle angels is positive rep, but it’s bad. It’s dehumanizing and setting up a possible standard. Steven universe and She-ra (the new one, obv) are some easy accessible examples of good negative rep. Both Rose and Catra committed, just…horrific war crimes. Straight up evil acts. In catras case her gayness was directly tied up in her cruel deeds, her confusing love and resentment and unhealthy attachment to Adora pushed her to go more and more extreme, to the point of straight up global annihilation. Catra is also my favorite character, she’s one of my favorite queer characters of all time and I adore Rose Quartz. They’re fantastic examples of good but negative rep. Good and bad refer to the quality of the rep, not the nature of the characters. Bad rep is still just rep that’s harmful, in whatever direction.
Also @Lys ik “Griffith” did nothing wrong is a meme but Casca’s my bongo and Guts is my goat (as imo, the most comforting CSA victim rep of all time) so I think legally we gotta throw down. Like seriously Casca is the thing stopping that from being a funny meme imo
Berserk +1
It’s respectability politics, yeah? The way we have to put on a nice, polite, respectable image so the straights will like and respect us!
Except the straights will never respect us. Never, ever, ever. Never ever. Ever. They will never let us have anything we didn’t have to fight for. Can’t even have a queer comic without someone crying about how straight men can’t have anything. Why even try to appease them?
So yeah, queer rights cool, but I fully support queer wrongs too.
My personal issue is less with the straights thinking this and more with fellow community members thinking it, but I like your perspective.
Meh.
I’m tired of the “bi people have to be monogamous” bullcrap narrative that’s being pushed now. I have no intention of being monogamous.
I can understand having a distaste for it but I don’t see this as that trope, at least not in the “harmful stereotype” sense. There are so many other bi (and related orientations) characters that it’s statistically a small portion of the pool of candidates, compared to if it was the token bi character being a cheater.
Also, is it fair to presume monogamy if it wasn’t specified by anyone involved? I don’t recall it happening.
I don’t think, especially in light of the above, that the bi characters have to be cookie-cutter perfection. Normies in fiction often get to be complete characters that represent complete people, including mistakes, while differents often end up flattened into cardboard stand-ins, supposedly in the name of representation. Representation, to me, is seeing characters that I can identify with so I can get the message that it’s not weird to be like me, and that it’s not weird to be non-standard (since obviously not every piece is going to have characters exactly like me, nor a perfect distribution of demographics). If these characters are flattened out into setpieces or made into “model citizens” for me to compare myself to (and fail to live up to), I don’t relate in the same way as if they had real human problems and imperfections to deal with, like I do. Maybe they have problems I don’t understand or they do things I dislike, but those are things I have to deal with in real life as well, including within myself.
So yeah, with regard to my opinion on the story, I like that Dorothy and Joyce screwed up a little. Be imperfect, bongos!
I agree with all this, and like
queers getting to be flawed, nuanced characters in their representation? this is good!
… in general
but, of all ways to be flawed, having Joyce X Dorothy be flawed in a (very fronted) way which just so happens to be one of The Biggest Harmful Stereotype about bisexual people?
:/
intentions be good, but yeah this is a good, sobering reminder when creating believable, relatable characters, to be cautious of your blind spots
I really appreciate you saying this, NGPZ, as a bi woman woman uncomfortable with the portrayal of bi women in this comic (despite knowing Willis has good intentions).
yeah like
I really wish more of the community (and nominal nominal progressives at large) to know that constructive criticisms are a thing which are possible that don’t HAVE to turn into making the author out to be a milkshake duck
and attitudes like “straights will never respect us anyway, might as well go that far the other direction out of spite”?
I find them a bit cynical, and if we’re being real here, they’re just thinly veiled acceptance?
that’s still living ruled by however the straights react
that’s still letting the straights dictate how you act
two wrongs don’t make a right
Thanks for your thoughts and those are valid points. I guess at this point I have conflicting thoughts on the matter, I won’t go into all of them so know I’m not as a whole in disagreement, in case it sounds that way.
A counterpoint is that I don’t think queer creators should be put in the position of having to make up for the representation shortcomings of straight media, beyond making work that is within itself good representation. By this I mean, if for example mainstream and straight media has 100% of their bi characters be cheaters, then that shouldn’t put the demand on queer media to have 0%. For one thing, I don’t think that would actually work because most people who mainline mainstream culture aren’t also consuming their RDA of queer culture to balance it out. I think if a work has a (quantitatively speaking) good representation of bi characters, then asking for 0% incidence of the trope (which wouldn’t be a realistic picture of IRL cheating prevalence) is a restriction that directly resulted from the failures of mainstream media. Certainly, though, it wouldn’t hurt to be careful about it.
As I wrote that, I realized that Eric was another incident of Cheating Bi (I understand being on the DL means he might not identify as bi but, as far as I understand, it would be fair to put it within the bisexual spectrum). If we look at the statistical side, this fact moght lend more weight to there being too much of this trope in this story. Another view is that the contrast between the two situations, where Eric is a serial philanderer while Joyce and Dorothy are more like late in breaking up with their previous partners, makes the latter look less like the trope in perspective.
With Joyothy, the mosr relevant cheating trope I see is Normalizing/Romanticizing Cheating as a Relationship Transition. Meaning, you’re with one person and cheat, but it’s OK because the new partner is your twue wuv, (like Joyce hoped Jacob would do for her last semester, essentially). But that’s a trope I’m sensitive to because it seems common in romance media and some romance fans take it as guidance on how relationships are supposed to work.
Also, yes it’s fair to say they were monogamous even without that being specified up front – mostly because they’ve referred to it as cheating multiple times without anyone ever suggesting they weren’t monogamous.
Also, Joyce did once explicitly state that she was in a monogamous relationship with Joe. (Though I certainly agree monoamory should not have to be assumed by default!)
Oh no! I must have closed the tags improperly. My apologies.
Thanks for the reference!
Next strip: Joyce and Dorothy wander around the room, bumping into things.
Strip after that: “Okay, swapping glasses was not a viable alternative, clearly we’re on different prescriptions.”
Next week, more Joyce and Dorothy inanity while we ignore every other character in the strip.
Next week, the main characters continue to be the main characters
They’ve never been this much the main characters for so long before. It’s an ensemble cast, not the lead, their girlfriend and some extras.
We’ve barely seen anyone else except interacting with these two or reacting to them for a couple of chapters now.
Don’t worry! We’ll get back to everyone else no later than March ’26.
+1
They’re the two characters mentioned in the plot synopsis since the very beginning. Christian homeschooled girl and her atheist best friend. Joyce and Dorothy have always been the only two main characters to this strip
The plot jumps around. At one point, Joyce didn’t show up for around two months while Sal and Amber hashed out their shit. Sorry you hate it, but this too shall pass.
There’s a containment thread RIGHT THERE, use it.
Ire cannot be contained!
Look at the time stamps, buddy. I don’t have a TARDIS or a DeLorean.
But even if you did, I doubt you’d use it for something so inane. You’d have TIME TRAVEL you got PLACES TO BE!
Times to be, you mean.
That post-sex stank.
Joyce, your enthusiasm is adorable… but please wear something other than tear gas stained clothes, gurl.
Oops, meant to have this be independent.
mixed with tear gas stank, not a winning combination.
They washed that off tbf
eh, *shrugs*
*continues playing “Bustin” by Neil Cicierega on hacked muzak*
XD
The real reason Joyce hasn’t broken up properly with Joe: giant weighted blanket with an oversized wardrobe she could peruse.
Dorothy subtly pointing out Joyce has bigger boobs.
“Wait, why am I ‘Jugs?'”
“You’ve GOT to know.”
Carla explains here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/jesuschrist/
There simply MUST be the sequel Slipshine titled “Joyce’s Jugs”. In which we see all four. (’cause shower.)
They’d save a lot of time.
Joyce is definitely the dom in this sitch. She’ll definitely ask Dorothy again.
They’ll definitely not save a lot of time.
They are joynking and dorpying so hard right now
Love is…agreeing to sleep on the wet spot.
Joynking it
And by “it”
We mean her Keener
Wait, is this what “Keenspot” meant all along??
“Keen” in the sense of making high-pitched long-duration sounds from high-intensity long-duration orgasmic sensations…yeah, Keenspot. “The button” you gotta flick, lick, or schlick just right.
I mean Dorothy just admitted they’ve betrayed someone. The antithesis of trust. My work’s been done for me. Let that be a lesson.
Don’t trust Becky
Don’t trust tear gas?
I mean, of course you shouldn’t trust it.
It makes you cry.
It’s in the freakin’ name!
Rick Astley (sp) would never!
Is a betrayal that you know is coming trustworthy though?
Yeah but she said they betrayed Becky who they absolutely did not.
The “betrayal” that they’re both neurotic enough to actually believe they are guilty of is having feelings for each other. That’s the only sin they committed against Becky. So are you saying Joyce should have been obligated to never explore this aspect of her sexuality because it might hurt the feelings of someone who was in love with her in high school? Are you saying that Becky would have been magically completely okay with the situation if Joyce had dutifully broke up with Joe two weeks before beginning to date Dorothy?
Becky’s had a hard life and has earned her complicated feelings on the matter. But at a certain point, the onus is on her to work through and overcome those feelings, not on others to tiptoe around them.
You’re doing so much here.
Sirksome has been saying every day “Don’t trust [different thing here every day]” and is making a joke about not having to do that today because the characters themselves are talking about betraying someone.
“Are you saying–” No. Sirksome wasn’t saying that. If they were, it’d probably be in the text there.
After doing this bit for so long I thought it was very obvious at this point but it continues to surprise me that it’s taken seriously. I appreciate it honestly.
Never trust Sirksome.
Which is weird because they have betrayed people, but Becky isn’t one of them. Her heartbreak isn’t really anyone’s fault.
It can be her father’s fault. He’s not gonna protest.
Not so much weird as ironic.
Yeah that’s the wild part of Dorothy saying this. Becky, as upset as she is, is one of the people the two of them haven’t actually wronged. Walky and Joe are the victims of their actions, and in speaking up for Joe, Sarah’s on the other side of this right now. But Becky’s only aggressor is her own unmet desires and her inability to cope with them. Joyce not being attracted to Becky is not an attack, nor is her finally realizing she can be attracted to women because of Dorothy. And Dorothy getting with Becky’s lifelong crush when Becky is already in a committed relationship she never shuts up about how great it is to be in certainly isn’t a betrayal.
“Victims” is a strong word. Sometimes lovers fall for someone else and you get dumped. That isn’t being a victim; that’s having bad luck.
Especially Walky who was not yet on track for a serious committed relationship. They hooked up once after they were broken up. That’s nothing.
My biggest regret for Joe-Joyce is that we don’t get to see how that would have played out. It was interesting & now it goes nowhere.
I’m not outraged on behalf of the characters. Sure, I do understand how this is painful for Becky, Joe & yes, Walky. But they’re characters in a story. The story is about how they will behave & what feelings they will have in realistic situations like this. Dumbing of Age is not about perfect characters making sensible decisions.
Probably especially used because just a day or so ago Joe and Joyce did some finger action up there too.
Hater containment thread, you know the deal
WE GET IT THEYRE CUTE
at this point i’d take a faz arc
The great Faz has been mentioned twice over the past many days? Truly his popularity must be trending, according to his latest graph
Are you certain? Couldn’t you use a 100 more comics of them being cute just to be double-plus sure? I could. You know, for science.
*gently escorts you out of the hate containment thread with a pushbroom*
I think Lys was being sarcastic, just for the record. 😉
Heh, the pushbroom is also sarcastic, I have a tranquilizer gun and nets for the actual violators. 😉
Pff! Okay. 🙂
Joyce breezing past Dorothy saying they’ve betrayed Becky is either choosing to ignore the problem or still stewing in post-sex afterglow?
Yeah she’s weirdly blasé about it!
I mean, for what I’d expect. “Dororthy has concerns, Joyce wants to barrel on through” is standard operating procedure for these two at this point.
Joyce clearly does not think about problems until they’re either front page news or staring her in the face after hiding in the shadows of her room to confront her. This is consistent at this point.
joyce used to be ‘fraid of god, and now she isn’t. that was it, that was her entire moral center. that’s what all her prior day-to-day behavior ran through.
without the constant thrumming fear, now she doesn’t proactively recognize when she’s gonna do something that will actually make her feel guilty, or that otherwise she’ll regret. she went pretty quickly from having a hair-trigger Sin Alarm blinking openly in her head at all times, to a paradigm where the concept of Sin is ridiculous to her.
so basically, yes; she currently just doesn’t start to accept any possibility that she might have ignored her own morals, up until the exact moment that someone or something is right in front of her, confronting her with it, making her feel emotionally bad about it. and, she’s also shown, she will do just about anything to quickly escape those situations, and kick the can of actually feeling bad down the road for Future Joyce to ostensibly deal with.
There is a distinct lack of object permanence feel to Joyce in this storyline. She only thinks about or considers people when they are in her field of view. It is weird.
One of the things that could redeem the storyline as a whole somewhat would be Joyce having some kind of crashout from being confronted with everyone else’s feelings about her actions in a way that actually sticks for more than two panels.
Kind of like a more metaphysical form of the “Evil Joyce” Archaeological from Its Walky!
…that should say “storyline”, no idea where Archaeological came from
autocomplete from “arc”?
It’s like I said yesterday. Dorothy is Joyce’s best friend. Not because you can’t have more than one best friend but because Joyce actually doesn’t really care about Becky anymore.
Cue the gif of Andy dropping Woody but it’s Becky’s crying face falling towards the camera.
Yeah she forgot somebody already lives in the room with her.
Much like how Joe doesn’t seem to exist to Joyce until his dick is in her line of sight, Becky’s feelings won’t be real to Joyce until she sees her haunted stare tomorrow.
Anyone else excited for Biology class?
As much as I would like to keep up the frustration because frustration is, at least, a tangible emotional reaction I can examine and analyze in relationship to the comic, the haterade has officially run dry and ceded way to a flowing stream of stagnant boredom-water.
Conveniently, being stagnant even while in motion is also a great way to describe this couple!
See? You had more haterade left than you thought.
Also, of all the possible clothing options Joyce could have requested to see her partner in post-coitus, she picks a sweater vest, ie something that Dorothy also has worn on a semi-regular basis to the point where them going somewhere in nearly-identical sweatervest was a punchline at one point?
Joyce, babygirl, just because you’re relationship is milquetoast doesn’t mean you have to be. Get creative. Put her in your hoodie dress. Put her in that pink button-up that you got Sal to wear one time to double up on your long-running latent sapphic thirst.
Hilarity option: put her in the yellow dress she wore to her ‘date’ with Joe.
Yeah, I’m just so thoroughly bored at this point that I’m probably going to refrain from leaving any further comments until we have some actual plot development again.
Yeah… the flames have pretty much died on my end.
I’d just like to read about literally anyone else right about now.
Genuinely dont even know why I’m checking the comic daily still at this point, very similar i just feel absolutely nothing reading panels between these 2
I’m curious where the pair sits on popularity rankings if one was to be done right now. I don’t think they’re irredeemable or anything but I feel like they crashed a bit for me. Joyce more than Dorothy, since she still hasn’t brought up the Joe thing while Dorothy is in her mind following all the proper procedures and at least feels guilty about Becky.
I guess top 5 for me right now would be… Sarah, Joe, Tony… Danny? Sure. And then Asher because I guess I just like him.
Joyce went from Top 3 to like… bottom 5 of the ones still living lol. Dorothy is still just outside my top 5 though, she can do basically anything and as long as she desperately clings to the good person label she’ll remain interesting to me. My top 5 are Joe, Booster, Amazigirl, Amber, Asher.
Genuinely these 2 have drained all joy I’ve gotten from opening the strip and seeing what should be the 2 char i should be most hype to see.
We need Mike
Same. I check the comic out of habit now, not of ancipation or expectation.
Dunno about them AS a pair, but Joyce has dropped significantly for me (from “identified with her second-most of all the cast” to “man, I have never been THIS lost in my own sauce, wtf”) and Dorothy has always kinda been in that “yes, you are a college archetype I recognize, and serving that function in the story well” bin where she’s competently done but I don’t really feel anything about her, which hasn’t changed much.
I hate the existence of the hater containment thread more than I ever hated anything happening in the comic. It’s a statement that there’s a right and wrong view on this. Or, to put it another way, why aren’t the people who think Dorothy & Joyce couple stuff is sweet even though Dorothy is still being lied to about Joe, Sal didn’t mind when she caught them cheating on her brother, etc ever the ones who relegated to a containment thread?
I’ve got to wonder if toxic positivity is more damaging to a fanbase than just letting people be angry and disappointed about something until the emotions run their course. People who just want to talk about something that bothers them being, essentially, quarantined and strawmanned and shoved out the door is such a weird thing, especially when the author of the media is obviously writing something designed to show character flaws and stoke at least SOME of that negative sentiment towards them.
“LET PEOPLE ENJOY THINGS” seems to be the idea behind toxic positivity, and it’ll never not be bizarre to me. Why would someone need the comments to all be in lockstep about how much they love what’s happening in order to be able to enjoy the story?
I’m really enjoying the thread. it’s easy to find comments that commiserate with me, which at this point is the only entertainment in my nightly refresh ritual. I don’t get why other people are enjoying this, but I see no reason to yuck their yum. People enjoying bad writing doesn’t really hurt anyone. I’ve shipped much worse when I was a teen.
I’d hesitate to dilute toxic positivity, which is about conformity, self blame, brain washing, and coercion, by applying it to people complaining it a thread. People can be polite without it being reality altering
Respectfully: that is not at all what toxic positivity means.
+1
Coming back to this after discussing it with Big Z below, and while I’m definitely annoyed that the legitimate use for the term is so far off of what I was using it for, I do have to thank you for letting me know.
And now I’m left wondering whether I made it up as a term at some point without realizing it already existed for something else, or just saw it years ago and took it to mean something else.
Heh, you’re welcome. 🙂
I used to really enjoy this comment section. I didn’t post very often, but I liked reading it. But now it seems dominated by a small number of people who i find boring and tedious and who are being shitty to everyone around them. It’s making me not enjoy the comment section very much these days. So I’m going to endlessly whine up and down the comment section every day for months about how much I hate the comments now. And it is absurd to me to think that maybe I shouldn’t do that.
I used to really enjoy this comment section. I didn’t post very often, but I liked reading it. But now it seems dominated by a small number of people who i find boring and tedious and who are being shitty to everyone around them.
That’s how EVERYONE seems to feel, regardless of their positions on any given issue.
Expanded from Li’s objection:
“Toxic positivity” means “you have to maintain a positive mindset no matter how bad the situation is”, not “you have to pretend to like things you don’t”.
Like if there’s any “toxic positivity” in this fanbase at all, it’s in the very limited subset of “let Willis cook, you’re not allowed to be disappointed in this storyline until it finishes”, which is something maybe two people have said.
If you have a term that better fits the way people are exaggerating and strawmanning negative reception of character actions that are supposed to provoke SOME disapproval, in order to attempt to invalidate it or shame folks into shutting up, I’m all ears.
As you just said. Not everything is going to have a pithy word or single phrase to describe it.
Ugh. You’re right, of course, but I’m displeased that this is the case.
That’s not even what you said in your first comment, though, where you were complaining about “let people enjoy things”, which… is not yelling at anybody that they have to like the thing, it’s yelling “hey! Don’t be mean to other people for liking the thing you, personally, hate!” …and any further reading into that that you’re doing is entirely your own.
Don’t confuse “this isn’t the right place for you to air your grievances, I don’t want to hear it” with “you’re not allowed to have grievances”? They’re two very different things…
I said it seems to be the idea behind it, mostly because that exact phrase was what was being said repeatedly in my first interactions with this kind of behavior on a completely different site something like ten plus years ago now. But it wasn’t the last time or the only other place I’ve watched this happen. Whenever something is controversial for whatever reason – when negative reception of something is large enough to be noticeable but not large enough to be the clear majority sentiment – the positive reception of the thing gets paired with a sentiment of “people being upset about this is completely ruining interaction with other fans”. This then inevitably leads into people insistently trying to delegitimize people’s issues with the thing.
I think it was just in the comments of the previous strip that people were coming up with speculation that the real issue people actually had with Dorothy and Joyce is homophobia, and making up reasons why this homophobia wouldn’t have been such a problem before in what is a very, very queer-friendly comic. And this is WITH the “hate containment thread” established as a thing now. That’s unhinged as shit.
All I can do is flash back to all those times that I saw folks cry “let people enjoy things” when I see this insanely defensive response to a controversial piece of media. I *cannot* see it as anything else.
> Don’t confuse “this isn’t the right place for you to air your grievances, I don’t want to hear it” with “you’re not allowed to have grievances”? They’re two very different things…
There is ONE comment section. This isn’t a forum or a subreddit with separate topics that clearly define what the subject of conversation will be. There is zero validity to the idea that “this is not the place for your grievances”, so there’s little distinction between that and “you’re not allowed to have grievances”, especially when what I mistakenly called “toxic positivity” is still popping up even in spite of a negativity containment thread.
“This is not the place to air your grievances” is usually what “let people enjoy things” means, though.
I haven’t seen a lot of it in this comment section, either? But if I said that specific phrase here, what I would mean by it is:
“There’s no need to publish your essay about why Joyce/Dorothy suck as a direct reply to someone else saying they like the ship. There are lots of other comments you could post it as a reply to instead, and you could also make it its own top-level comment!”
It’s not about not letting you express your disappointment or whatever else, it’s just about leaving some space for other people to feel positively about it, too.
Side note: I picked very specific words with great intent above. If someone says “I love Joyce/Dorothy, how can anyone feel differently?!” — I think that’s actually an open invitation to post your essay as a direct reply!
And there’s a difference between posting an essay about why Joyce/Dorothy sucks in reply and just saying “I wish I could see this ship the way you do!”
And there’s ALSO a difference between posting one essay about them sucking in response to ONE person’s pro-Joyce/Dorothy comment, and posting like twelve mini-essays in response to all twelve pro-Joyce/Dorothy comments.
Which is not, to be clear, what any one person has been doing? But like. There’s a reason why Yotomoe felt the need to make a “positivity thread” for Joyce/Dorothy like a week ago, despite not liking the ship at all.
Anyway, none of this is a hard and fast rule, and it’s just as polite for those of us who like the ship not to go hounding the “haters” and to leave those folks space for how they feel! The comment section belongs to all of us. 🙂
(Well. It technically belongs to Willis, but they’ve made it equally available to all of us.)
Yeah, this feeling mostly stems from the whole “why does there need to be a hater containment thread” idea. I have to agree with Lee about how it feels like it’s a statement on how there’s a right and wrong view on this. And in my past experience with “let people enjoy things”, it’s been WAY more of an issue with people making isolated comments within comment sections than it has with people aggressively replying to other folks’ comments.
Maybe things were different here before the Hater Containment Thread was put into action? I wasn’t checking the comments all that much before that point. But in my past experience in multiple different places, people struggle even to tolerate being ADJACENT to negative reception of something. Even in comment sections that can be (and by default, are) sorted by “Top” “Best” etc and so they literally have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the negativity.
The Not Always Right site is particularly bad for this whenever someone expresses doubt of the legitimacy of a story. I’ve seen folks launch right into personal insults against isolated, 0-likes comments.
That’s why I just ignore the “containment thread”.
You’re not “relegated” to anything. This isn’t Willis dictating you have to post in this threat. Dot is just… trying to be polite. The haters have dominated the comment section for like a month plus, that’s all.
I understand that using this thread isn’t a requirement. That part is very much tangential to my point, which is that differing opinions about a storyline aren’t *im*polite (or that if one is, it’s not “I have issues with this storyline”, it’s “you’re an anti-LGBTQ bigot if you have issues with this storyline”).
Like I said: the haters have been dominating the comment section for the last month or so. Dot has been making an effort to lessen the domination a little. That’s literally all this is. It seems kind of silly to treat that like any kind of “you’re not allowed to complain” rule.
Maybe she could call it “the cool kids’ table”. I imagine it’s also helpful for folks to find other people who are also not enjoying the story to have productive conversation with and generally avoid getting a lot of “no the story is fine” pushback? Idk.
It’s really just a matter of “shippers should be allowed to enjoy these two being cute without having critics crawl down their throat, and critics deserve the equivalent consideration.” It’s been helpful to enforce informal intracommunity boundaries.
i’ve been appreciating it. every time those two are in the strip i scroll down to your profile pic and wallow in commiseration for a bit before moving on. Not sure if i’d pick through the comments at this point otherwise
Wanna second what flake said from the other side.
But also I’ve obviously also found some things in here to reply to, usually more productively?! Heh. I think it’s kind of useful overall to have a “lane” for comments of a given type, and I do wish we could collapse and expand threads — I think if we could, more topics like this would be opened up.
i don’t really get where the idea that hating this couple could be anti-lgbtq. like, they aren’t the only queer couple in the comic. I personally ship ruth and billy/jennifer but they have a bunch of red flags. If they got back together and people were like “wtf they clearly tried this and it didn’t work” i wouldn’t think they’re bigots, i’d just look for a different section of the comments to squee in
Oh I’m gonna be the biggest hypocrite in the world when Billie and Ruth get back together I’m gonna be over the fucking moon
i wouldn’t even call it hypocrisy. People have different tastes in fiction¯\_(ツ)_/¯
100% agreed
I know it’s a comedy comic, so the jokes or at least the attempts to include jokes, even in serious situations, is kind of inherent, but I’m really not digging that there’s a Becky joke AND a teargas joke. The Becky one because, once again Dorothy has tried to at least nominally think of other people for a split second, and Joyce has trampled over it with abject glee. At least when it was Walky, Joyce isn’t supposed to like Walky. Now, Joyce has speedrun through some guity-ish sad expressions when she sees how hurt Becky is, and she’s over it. Yay, Dorothy wrestling with guilt over Becky’s heartbreak is a GREAT excuse of Dorothy to move in. To the room she shares with Sarah. Other people, WHAT other people? I’m interested, but not really hopeful for drama, to see when she remembers the whole Joe situation from what feels like eons ago.
And the teargas joke just because it harkens back to “let’s make a protest with police violence into a wedding moment for two white girls who don’t care about the protest,” which wasn’t a great look the first time and still isn’t amusing or sweet or entertaining in call-back form.
It is pretty consistent with Joyce’s character though. When she believes someone is her soul mate or match? Misgivings, reality, and consequence can go fuck itself.
Ethan, Jacob, Joe, and now Dorothy.
It does give her character depth if nothing else.
True, but still unlikable. Just because it’s in-character for Joyce to be callous about everyone and everything when she’s “in love,’ doesn’t make it a good character trait or a funny thing to read. Especially when this scene and relationship is at least currently being presented as something fulfilling and good, while Joyce happily turns basically everyone else in their social circle into collateral damage. Dorothy has as well, but again, at least has pretended to feel bad about it. Sometimes. When she isn’t making Walky the butt of a “nah, I went back to being straight” joke for the Slipshine.
…That happened in the Slipshine?
I mean why am I that surprised, Dorothy made him the butt of a few jokes on the road here.
The tear gas really should’ve had more effect on them than it appears to have. You don’t just stand in or walk through that stuff and be fine a few hours later.
Oh. Right. This whole thing feels weird because it’s an extension of the “how seriously are we supposed to take which cartoon moments in the context of today’s specific strip” thing.
Teargas joke?
Teargas is mentioned, but where’s the joke about it?
The worst part is that they’re not really “jokes”, they’re kinda the bones of jokes that don’t go anywhere because we’re too busy with Joyce screaming about “moving in”.
And then we get a halfway joke about clothing swaps. And whatever Dorothy’s implying about stretching things out that almost sounds like a sex joke.
I think Dorothy is just pointing out that Joyce’s chest and general frame is bigger than hers and they both wear form-fitting clothing so that would stretch Dorothy’s clothing out.
I don’t think that part was meant to be any kind of joke. I’ve had women I dated stretch my things out by borrowing them. Just a fact of life.
I think the “more than you already have” is definitely about fingers in her cooter.
Okay, I’m glad that my own terminally hornt brain wasn’t the only one seeing THAT possible interpretation.
Ahhh I definitely didn’t read that part the first run through.
🫡
This is actuslly turning into the most garbage reptitive arc of the story
Actually yknow what I have one more strong kvetch to let out.
I fucking hate that Becky has become the sole focus of their worry in dating each other. Not the two dudes they blew this all up in the faces of who both claim to still like, the childhood friend that one of you literally only met like 6 months ago who literally has no connection to your relationship and was in her own happy and healthy one.
Why give Becky a doom spiral? It just makes no sense to me, I would’ve though she’d been happily moved on but eh whatever.
Lets quarter ass the breaks ups and just shove all the drama onto Becky cause fuck consistency amiright
I do think it makes sense that this is going to be a major hit to Becky’s self-worth, since she’s obviously got deep insecurities that she constantly tries to put on a brave face for. She was already feeling very insecure about Dorothy stepping up as Joyce’s new best friend, and the hammer blow of “you weren’t good enough for Joyce to fall in love with, but Dorothy was” is going to HURT.
And while that’s a mostly emotional, irrational response on its own… watching the two of them actively ignore her to act all lovey-dovey with each other even when they both show awareness that this is a painful issue for her? That’s not. That makes it crystal clear that she’s not even worthy of their consideration right now.
She’s already shown concern that something is going to happen to cause her relationship with Dina to become unsalvageable. Which, duh, she’s basically watched her entire life crumble away beneath her feet and lost everyone she once cared for besides Joyce and Hank.
This isn’t just about still holding a torch for Joyce. (I’m not even sure if she really does, at this point. It’s felt more like Joyce has been the last pillar of her life that she still has.) It’s about the unceasing barrage of just not being good enough for the people who matter to her.
I just still don’t get the ship. I don’t really want to complain about it, and definitely wouldn’t stop reading because if it (and every piece of media probably has at least one ship I dislike, canon or not), but I feel like pretty much every other ship has at least made me smile at some point*, and I just kind of feel nothing about them together. I do understand a lot of the bits people like about the dynamic, but they just don’t click into actual enjoyment for me.
*…maybe not Jason/Sal
Okay, see, this is a problem. Joyce naked getting in Dorothy’s personal space saying “Move in! Move in! Move in!” is really adorable, but the frame cuts off. Adorable isn’t sexy, but can that be on the other Pateon? 🙂
(Also, no, Joyce, you two just started dating. Don’t move in together. Dina and Becky just broke up, no one is safe.)
🎶 5 More Days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween 5 More days to Halloween, Silver Shamrock 🎶
Huh.
I wonder if Willis is going to start doing meta Halloween relationship stuff like he does with Valentines Day since Halloween in story saw the end of two romantic relationships (maybe 3 depending on when Mary and Peter ended).
I’m confused who the third is here, because I’ve clearly forgotten something:
Walky/Amber split
Mary/Peter split (maybe)
Third Couple?
Ruth/Billie.
Oh riiiight, I totally forgot. Ty for reminder!
Ruth/Billie, I think? Wasn’t it at that time that Ruth broke up with Billie and barricaded herself in her room or something?
Ty for reminder!
*blasts God Module*
I approve of this message.
Would the tear gas residue matter when the tear gas didn’t seem to do anything to anyone?
This joke was made at the time, but it wasn’t tear gas the PD mistakenly used 1960s experimental gay bombs.
Well that explains Asma suddenly getting thirsty at Alice…
I think Asma having just met Alice explains the suddenness more.
The tear gas did make Amazi-girl’s and Joyce’s eyes very red as well as weepy (their noses too) so I’d say just because the comic didn’t stop to have Joyce say “wow this tear gas hurts me eyes” doesn’t mean it wasn’t effective. Also, since Raidah commented that said residue ‘smelled like shit’, it probably doesn’t smell good.
Suddenly the laundry machine’s not looking so bad huh? You all laughed at the laundry machine, claimed it wasn’t really sex and that David Walkerton could outperform it! Well who needs laundry machine now!? Hubris thy name is Dorothy Keener and Joyce Brown to a lesser degree! If I weren’t a convenient side by side washer/dryer I’d be closed for the night and force them to sleep in their shame or freeze.
I’m confused, what are they doing now that’s supposed to be unethical?
Washing clothes in the laundry machine.
It’s unnatural!
Joyce if you really want to wear a partner’s oversized clothes after sex there is an offer on the table you may wish to pick up
Is that option: Buy Dorothy some oversized clo–
OH YOU MEAN THE POLYAMORY!
Yes. Joyce please select the polyamory option and you can have so many oversized things.
Bonus: Dorothy might also get the opportunity, depending on how things shake out, which I don’t think she’s had before, since Danny and Walky are both much closer to her size than Joe, and my vague sense is that that’s been her “type” inasmuch as she’s demonstrably got one so far.
The obvious solution is for Dorothy to buy a shirt that’s too big, specifically so Joyce can wear it after they fuck. Then Joyce can also do that thing with the PJ shirt, the one that shows off the person’s figure.
Surprised Dorothy knows lesbian stereotypes well enough to know about the moving in with someone you just met joke
Either that or its more well know than I think and I’m having an inverse of xkcd 2501 right now with regards to queerness
Why wouldn’t she? She’s well-read, she rooms with Becky of all people, and also like 75% of their dorm is sapphic to some degree.
I mean.
She rooms with Becky.
If she hasn’t heard all the sapphic in-jokes by now, I’d be surprised.
And her former roommate is currently in a trio with Mandy and Grace.
She actually pretends that she doesn’t know them before Becky says them; the first day Dorothy met a lesbian, she spent 11 panicked hours that same night, learning every basic cultural touchstone of lesbianism.
you know. to be an ally.
I’m a cishet white guy, and I know about that stereotype.
Anyone remember this joke?
Q. “Which team won the Gays vs. Lesbians cross-country race?”
A. “The Gay team. They were going 69 the whole way, while the Lesbians were still packing the U-Haul.”
A2. “Nah. It was the Lesbian team. *They* were going 69 the whole way, while they Gays stayed behind, packing their sh*t.”
…Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! 🫣
honestly i kinda love the joke can scan equally with two different endings
U-hauling is like the most basic lesbian stereotype. Everyone knows that one.
Sometime in the future, Dorothy is going to realize this was the moment of the first red flag.
Oh, there were previous ones.
Is the red flag in the room with us now?
Dorothy being concerned about the perceived betrayal of Becky, and Joyce ignoring those words outright.
That’s a good one. I was just thinking Joyce demanding the Dorothy put on a sweater vest at this moment seemed rather…..odd. Maybe I’m missing the joke, but it came across to me as controlling more than anything.
Wonder how long before somebody completes panel 3? I KNOW there have been people painting off the clothes, so there is SOMEBODY who is going to “finish” panel 3
I would love to see Dorothy move in, but I have a feeling Sarah would object strenuously.
Get in the sweater vest, Dorothy!
“It puts on the sweater vest or it gets the hose again”.
Is this the consequences people have been asking for? Messy bedding that needs laundered?
(I tease gently and with love. I am sorry that some of you are not having a good time with this, at least to the most of you who have been normal(ish) about it)
I guess Joyce is banking on Sarah being okay with Dorothy around all the time or thinks she’ll be hanging with Tony more. I gotta say I’ve mostly been mute on the hate of these two but this just reeks of cowardice which does turn me off. Ya’ll made this decision and I can stand by that but don’t punk out! You go back to your room now and stare Becky in the eye (maybe not tonight cause Becky’s kinda crashing hard) but I hope these two have some fucking guts and own this shit. I don’t wanna see shame and half assed sorries and avoidance. Take credit for the fire you started! Burn it down Seth Rollins circa 2019 style!
Joyce often ignored possible logistics of her plan, she’s very much ‘act first, figure out later’.
This is actually consistent with her character. She harboured Becky until Sarah reminded her that it just wasn’t feasible long term, she was angry at everyone until Joycelyne reminded that sometimes you need to temper your anger to keep access to resources, etc.
I mean, they very much tried to avoid Becky confrontation as much as they could, Dorothy specifically didn’t want to go check on amber because Becky might br in Dina room. It’s been pretty established that at least Dorothy doesn’t want the actual clashes that comes from this.
They still haven’t checked on Amber. But now they would have to face Dina.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/paraphernalia/
So Dorothy has been to see Amber, admittedly before knowing she was wounded. I’m kinda not surprised they haven’t gone to check on her again since Dina’s tone kinda suggested to me that guests were not especially welcome as Amber needs her rest more than anything else right now.
Honestly, it kinda read to me as “Oh don’t *you* worry about a thing. While *you* were busy playing grab ass with Joyce, *Sal and I* were busy making sure our friend didn’t *bleed out*. So you can go make yourself feel useful somewhere else.”
You know, this is a stance I actually agree with all the way.
Too many people in stories make some devastating decision and then either throw a pity party or try to avoid things in some way or another. Blameshifting, excuses, whatever. And I think that’s the most annoying part.
Like, man up or woman the fuck up in this case and accept that you did something that negatively impacted others and LIVE with it.
That would be pretty insensitive to Becky, wouldn’t it? The last thing she needs is more of Joyce and/or Dorothy right now.
As much as I am happy these two have finally done the horizontal tango; I hope they will eventually try to repair some of the damage their relationship has done.
As always they’re young, and dumb, but they’re also capable of improving. While I don’t see Becky, Joe, Walky, or Dina being in a forgiving mood anytime soon; I hope this doesn’t permanently ruin any chance of friendship with any of them, and doesn’t end the Becky/Dina train especially.
I hope this permanently ruins the chance of friendship for at least some of them. Maybe not all of them but at least one….Walky. It should be Walky. He should live up to his name and just walk away from this group. None of them were really his friends to begin with.
Same.
I want a blow-up of the fellowship. I want friendship destruction. I want Dorothy and Joyce to have a very successful relationship, yes the reality is this should destabilize any and all hopes of friendships for comfort.
“Hey, you’re taking this class too this semester? We should stu—“
“No.”
Now, it would be a genuinely interesting arc should Joyce and Dorothy ONLY meaningfully interact with each other for a good long while, doing their allegedly ‘cute’ thing, while other storylines and the rest of the cast goes on without them, wholly disconnecting them. Maybe stick a small timeskip in there too.
That way, when they suddenly remember ‘oh shit other people’, it’s been weeks, they have no idea what’s going on and no one trusts them to stick around (or cares) enough to catch them up. If we’re going to drag everything out hella long, let’s actually see the long hard work of rebuilding bridges burned by the stupid.
Well, we know Sarah is upset at them, and we can reasonably assume Danny would be mad about it based on his last conversation with Dorothy. Sal would presumably be in Walky’s corner, Becky is spiraling and doesn’t want to be around them, Dina already disliked Joyce and probably doesn’t have a higher view of her now…
So that leaves, what? Amber and Billie? Neither of whom particularly cares about Dorothy and Joyce to begin with. I won’t say I’m expecting a big blow-up or fallout, but I also don’t see anyone besides those two really being fine with them.
I would be pretty surprised if Dina felt like she was owed an apology by these two. She tends to be more practical and straightforward than that. “You hooking up with the girl who my girlfriend had a lifelong crush on has set off a bomb in our relationship” doesn’t really seem like the kind of assignment of blame she’d perform. She might not be enthusiastic about interacting with them but I dunno if she’d go that far.
I don’t think Dina would be mad at Dorothy (although I can absolutely see others such as Walky, Sal, and Danny not wanting to be around her for a good long while), but she already dislikes Joyce for a variety of reasons, and I can easily see this exacerbating that dislike.
I’m confused. The only person who has hurt Dina in this situation is Becky.
They’ve done nothing to becky and dina?? There’s nothing to forgive.
“And, only the sweater vest.”
Dorothy, talking like that is just gonna feed into Becky’s Persecution Complex.
… yes Joyce the proper response to Dorothy expressing her concerns about betraying the trust your extremely close childhood friend who is undergoing a manic episode is to go “who cares?! Let’s move in together!”
I really hope the drama train of reality knocks some sense into this girl soon
Becky’s not undergoing a manic episode, if anything she’s undergoing a depressive episode. Joyce meanwhile is riding high on post-sex happy hormones.
The proper response to “Dorothy expressing her concerns about betraying the trust your extremely close childhood friend” is to point out they didn’t betray Becky at all.
They did not betray her or wronged her in any way. But they did hurt her, and it is normal to have feelings about that, since both of them care about Becky.
I guess people just think it is kind of weird that Joyce just blows past that, while Dorothy seems to feel guilty.
I’m not going to try to say how Joyce should react to Dorothy’s concerns… but she should probably at least react in some way to them.
There’s really nothing they can do about Becky. They can’t make anything better for her, and seeing them is just going to be painful.
That’s true, but it’d probably better form for Joyce to actually say that instead of just shouting at Dorothy to move in.
But what is Ruth up to?
About 5’7″
That’s a sexy height.
Honestly, cutting away to Steve eating cereal for a week would be an improvement…
unironically, i have been dying for a steve arc for years
She was outside the door saying a sock would be enough i assume she went down the hall to get some water. Beacuse humans need water.
Damn I am learning so much today
Also people die when they are killed.
Their bed is just full of cheating stains!!!
BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Only Joyce is technically cheating now. Joyce made Dorothy’s breakup with Walky painfully clear, but she hasn’t officially broken up with Joe, and Dotty doesn’t know that, sooo…
She did break up with Joe. Joe doesn’t get a veto on that.
She quite literally hasn’t committed one way or the other yet and was in fact notably hesitant when Dorothy brought it up earlier
She did make it clear however that she’d be dating Dorothy going forward. The only question is whether there’s room for Joe or not. She’s in the clear as far as cheating on Joe goes.
How Dorothy will react to the poly suggestion is more interesting.
Skipping past the comments section being, well, the comments section, to note that I appreciate the It’s Walky! callback.
https://www.itswalky.com/comic/i-spose-thisll-do-for-a-while/
Other than wanting them to fuck off with that nonsense about “betraying” Becky when she isn’t even the one they betrayed, I guess I’ll ask a question.
What other relationships in this comic do you still really like?
We haven’t seen them for awhile, but I adore Danny and Sal. I also generally like Ethan with Asher, so hopefully the crime stuff doesn’t scuttle that and send Ethan spiraling again.
I did like Dina and Becky, but I’m not even really sure if they’re going to be staying together at this point.
For the rest I’m mostly indifferent.
Danny/Sal are great. I think Ethan/Asher could be fun to watch, but we haven’t seen enough of those two for me to make a final determination. Sierra/Mandy/Grace, too.
Honestly, I can’t think of another relationship in this comic I haven’t either loved or loved to hate.
Danny and Sal definitely crept up on me, and with Joe/Joyce on the way out, they’re probably my favorite m/f relationship in the comic right now. I’m also hoping for a Walky and Amber reunion at some point in the near future, since I love their dynamic too. Dina and Becky are good, and whether or not they patch things up I’m excited to see what does happen between them going forward. Beyond that, I think Sarah and Tony are cute? I’d like more exploration of that dynamic, and what Tony is like as a person.
And I’m still holding out hope for Billie and Ruth to get back together, because nothing could ever make me stop rooting for them.
Technically, Becky is the person you have *not* betrayed, but I see what you mean, Dorothy.
I initially read “one of my hanky-panky partners” and assumed it was about Joe’s clothes.
Is it just me or has Joyce’s inner romantic completely taken over? Dorothy makes it clear that their actions may still have some consequences involving their friend group, but Joyce seems to be near to proposing to Dorothy because she got her storybook love story that she wanted since the first day of college. I seem to remember that Joyce didn’t really care what major fit her the best, she just wanted that MRS degree. And, though she rejected the religion that says that’s what college is for to women, she’s still ready to be Mrs. Keener right this minute.
I was assuming Dorothy’s hyper-possessiveness and her negative feelings for Joe might be the bump needed to get the girls to take off their rose colored glasses but Joyce’s romantic narrative and disregard for the collateral damage might be the oncoming storm gathering for this ship…
*sips* you just readint that now?
This has always been Joyce to a degree. She thought she could “ungay” Ethan in so many words…She thought she and Jacob (at Sara’s urging) would be meant to be and was ready to displace Raidah just on vibes alone, including forcing Jacob to lie to his brother. She was all in on the Joe train, regardless of of Sara and Dorothy’s urging.
Joyce handles relationships with the same single-minded determination that her mom handles religion. I don’t think she realizes it though. Yet.
Joyce didn’t force Jacob to lie to his brother. He did that on his own, and he insisted on continuing to do so when she offered to confess.
You know what?
You’re right. It’s not like she had a gun to his head.
also sure. Leave Becky all alone <_<
Yes, that’s what these two specifically should be doinhg right now.
I understand their reasoning (she’s not going to be happy, let’s not rub this in her face by having Dotty hang out in her room, etc), but yeah in a way I find this more disrespectful than not. Mostly in a “you don’t even respect me enough to face me?” way, but also like, give Becky the chance to refuse or kick Dotty out. I don’t think she’d enjoy it at this point, like she would have a few days ago, but it would give some control back. Also I feel like this lends to Becky thinking “they’re too busy being in love/also fucking for Dorothy to even set foot in here tonight” and feel maybe even more abandoned.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to think that Dorothy and Joyce would consider all these angles, mind. I just kinda wish they did.
(and the whole suicide risk thing, of course, but they probably assume that she’s safely with Dina, having probably not thought through that this would (did) probably put Dina and Becky in a bad place as a couple, and also having had the last several months of not having to worry about Becky being alone, since she has Dina and knows the friend group now)
(feel like I’m getting too specific but also feel like without overexplaining someone might think either that I’m accusing them of purposefully not caring)
They already faced her. They had a big confrontation in Joyce’s room. It didn’t go well. Giving Becky a day to deal with her feelings is the best possible thing they can do for her right now.
they only faced her by accident though. I just feel like there should be a middle step before continuing to avoid her for as long as possible.
I don’t think you’re necessarily wrong though; I think there are a lot of ways to look at the situation and that basically nothing will be completely ideal at this point because it’s all following stuff that clearly already wasn’t a great approach to things. Becky DOES deserve to have space and not be constantly reminded of it only hours after finding out and having the confrontation.
Dumbing of Age Book 16: “Let’s be Stereotypes.”
It’s very frustrating to see Joyce being so one-note.
Like, contrast when she was with Joe. She would sometimes get distracted about doing the horizontal mambo with him, but she still was able to give brainspace to other concepts that weren’t him with some regularity.
But here, even in the throes of “post-nut clarity”, she’s only able to contemplate her situation in terms of her relationship with Dorothy.
The counterargument to what I’m kvetching about is that Joyce has always had something of an obsessive personality. Which is true. But it hits really different when she’s disregarding the words Dorothy is saying in her drive to make things all about them smooshing booties.
Previously Joyce was a lot more self-reflective, and I think that’s one of the reasons she’s getting so much hate.
Post-nut clarity isn’t really a thing for people with bodies like Joyce and Dorothy.
I mean, I’ll be honest, as a Cis AMAB, I haven’t really experienced it either, but I don’t think I’m the first person to bring it up as a trope.
Yeah, it’s definitely at least a trope for that configuration!
But other types of orgasm are less intense and focused, and also similarly have a less clear delineation between orgasm / non-orgasm, as well as not having the same type of very clear refractory period.
I’m not sure there’s a comprehensive enough body of literature on the mechanics of post-nut clarity, which is very much a colloquial notion, to make such definitive statements.
That’s fair! Also FWIW “isn’t really a thing”, in my mind at least, leaves room for outliers.
I could have done even better in that direction by saying “isn’t as much of a thing”.
Joyce’s main reason for going to college in the first place was to get her MRS degree. She also seems to innately believe that the person who takes her virginity is the person she marries. She may have rejected her religion, but that belief is still fully ingrained into her, as well as Becky, since she declared she was going to marry Dina after they had sex. I think Joyce is so wrapped up in the glee of having sex with her best friend that she wants to just speed run the relationship right into being Mrs. Keener before the winter semester ends. Ohhh, I can totally see her proposing to Dorothy on Valentine’s Day, which is like what, 15 or 16 days away at this point?
She called her “wife” already a few strips (weeks?) back.
@thejeff- Yep, you’re right. They kissed, confessed their undying love to each other, introduced themselves as a couple to Joyce’s father, who more or less gave his approval, and now have had sex… all within two days. With this romantic narrative on speedrun, the MRS Degree should be obtained within the end of the week.
I find it interesting that people take a very much non-specific comment of Dina, followed by her leaving, as confirmation that she broke up with Becky. I’d be on board with almost any other character, but Dina is very big on things being explicit. It feels weird she’d be implicit and leave it at that for something so important.
I’m not at all sure she meant it that way, but Becky definitely took it that way.
The comment on that last page by itself maybe not, but following Becky saying, “If you’re gonna leave me, just do it” in the previous strip, it’s a lot harder to find alternatives.
Yeah I think this is less about Dina breaking up with Becky and much more about Becky letting Dina leave. This is really on Becky to prove she wants Dina at this point. The longer Becky spirals instead of trying to talk to Dina the more likely it will be a true breakup in my opinion.
That may be how Dina’s thinking about it, but on Becky’s side it’s got nothing to do with her wanting Dina or not.
Of course Dina’s leaving her. Everyone leaves her. She’s not worth enough to anyone for they to stay.
Maybe now sex is over we can get plot advancement again finally?
Going to become old-fashioned U-Haul lesbians like Lydia Tár
theyre not gonna sleep in their nasty sex sheets? i thought they were romantic
Joyce, if you wanted to wear your partner’s way-too-big-for-you shirt, you could’ve.
Yup, and still can in the future. I hope all this saccharine stuff is a misdirect.
I still feel nothing for this, sad to say :/
K
and you’d expect to, but this is definitely a monkey paw outcome where the cost is way too high.
Panel 3 Dorothy, you agreed to it! That makes you common law lesbians.
So I now pronounce you Stereo and Type.
You may kiss the bride (again).
Does Joyce not have other clothes-? I thought they changed. I’m confused why Dorothy brought up the tear gas.
Speaking of which, if anyone does get that shit on you, IF and only IF, it’s a small amount, please clean it in the wash, separately from everything else. Multiple washes if possible. Or otherwise toss it out in a plastic bag to prevent further contamination
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Added advice: most “tear gas” is a particulate agent IIRC, not a aerosol, so you’re gonna want to use surfactants to trap it. I seem to recall that an alkaline solution to neutralize it also helps (which is why folks recommend using Maalox as part of immediate treatment) but don’t quote me on that.
👉🏻👈🏻 is anyone else bored?
Come join us in the hater containment thread, where this is in fact the dominant emotion as far as I can tell.
Nope, never been less bored in my life. 🙂
No because I actually enjoy cute slice-of-life comedies where we don’t need constant drama and conflict to feel entertained.
That is not what Dumbing of Age has ever been.
Like I like slice of life comedies, I just binged City the Animation with some pals and enjoyed every second, but Dumbing of Age is a drama-comedy. It always has been.
Dot, I appreciate what you’re doing with he containment thread, but if you never speak to me again, I’d appreciate you more.
Fair enough! Consider me vanished.
Wtf
It’s fine! I’m not entitled to social interaction with anyone in this community, and I’ve asked people I don’t get along with not to interact with me in the past so I don’t mind respecting the boundaries of others in kind.
Andi, sorry for replying to your comment chain again but I don’t want you to catch flak for establishing boundaries. Won’t happen again!
You’re fine. Replying to someone down thread from me isn’t ever going to bother me. I do think it’s worth clarifying for anyone else looking that I do, in fact, respect and appreciate you for your valiant attempt to establish some civility in the comments. Frankly, I think you’re pretty neat for that. That’s why I hope we can peacefully avoid each other.
Their idyllic night is followed by mundane issues like how do they continue to live with their roommates. They’re not adults with jobs and apartments. They’re 19 year olds with small, shared dorm rooms. And laundry to do.
I’m now actively wondering if this whole story arc isn’t just Willis doing a bit where he riffs on his own critique in social media of whatever-that-other-comic-strip-was where two parents just ignore everything to be horny at each other.
There aren’t enough anatomical disasters in this for it to be a 9CL bit.
There’s a webcomic that mimics Doughy’s parents from Morel Orel?
dotty puts her bra on backwards…
I’m no expert, but that looks forward to me. The cups being on her boobs is a dead giveaway.
There are multiple different ways to put on bras, and it depends on the individual person and the individual bra.
For example: some bras are actually front-closing.
The “best for the bra” way to put them on is what Dorothy appears to have done here, where you kinda slip it over your shoulders from the front and then clasp it behind your back.
The “easiest” way to put them on is to flip the bra around (so that the cups are on your back), fasten it in front, then wiggle it around and pull it into place. This is extra bad for the bra if it involves fully flipping it (starting with the cups as upside-down triangles with the “points” aimed at the floor). This is bad for the bra because of the extra stress it puts on the bra’s elastic.
But like. Not everyone has the dexterity or strength to put bras on the “””best””” way.
Admittedly, I’ve only got experience taking them off. I’ve seen my girlfriend doing some of the techniques you’re talking about though, since she’s had a variety over the years.
The “upside-down on my back, twist it around forward and flip it up” technique is also not UNIVERSALLY harmful, there are plenty of like, bras with less structure where it’s at least much less problematic to do that to them. 🤔
Also: I’ve definitely seen other bra-wearers express surprise and dismay af techniques that differ from their own. I think it’s one of those things where it’s easy to assume everyone does it like you do, haha, unless you actually talk about it or witness other techniques.
My favorite bra technique that my mother taught me was how to put my bra on/take it off with my shirt still on.
I actually would like to see dotty in a sweater vest.
Although, thinking about it, that’d probably just make Joyce horny again
You can see it here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/sierra/
And in monochromatic but improved art flashback here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/avestedinterest/
And by the time my comment posted, someone with the exact sama gravatar beat me to the punch lmao
I don’t have the exact pages onhand, but she has worn sweater vests before. There was a whole strip focused on them accidentally wearing extremely similar sweater vests at the same time, to Dorothy’s chagrin.
Seeing Dotty in just a sweater vest, and nothing else, would be kinda hot; good choice, Joyce, I approve.
Hot(????) take:
It actually makes complete sense that Dorothy would say “Becky, who we’ve betrayed”, rather than being similarly out-loud worried about Walky or Joe.
First: because Becky is the only one of the three who has actually been visibly distressed where Dorothy can see it. She wasn’t present for Joyce’s conversation with Joe, and Walky hasn’t even let his guard down with Jennifer yet.
(Dorothy has also always underestimated Walky’s capacity for angst. I don’t think out of a lack of caring about him, personally, though other readings are valid.
But it’s kind of a problem they’ve both had with each other for a long time: Walky saw Dorothy as capable of anything to the point where he couldn’t imagine her crashing out (am I using that right, kids), and Dorothy likewise keeps assuming he’s more emotionally resilient than he is. Both of them have had moments of visibly telling themselves, if not each other, “oh, [he/she] will be fine!” They’re also both, not coincidentally, people who don’t really value themselves very highly, and who mostly think of themselves as someone no one could possibly be THAT devastated over losing.)
Second: Dorothy lives with Becky: meanwhile, she doesn’t even seem to have any classes with Joe or Walky anymore, so it would be easy to discreetly avoid the two of them, and whereas Becky is more of an inevitable confrontation.
(The more “aw jeez” character in this strip for me is definitely Joyce, who seems to be operating on a distinct “that emotional fallout sounds like a problem for Tomorrow Joyce” level right now. I hope we’re about to see her relentless good cheer fall apart once she actually has to face other people, for the sake of the comment section being *ever readable again* if nothing else.)
Speaking of classes, can’t wait for next Biology class, where the workpairs are Dina/Becky and Joe/Joyce.
Pairs which Professor Doc implied were permanent, I might add
Ooooo
0-0
… OH NO
Never shit where you eat!
Even if they could switch up, there’s no easy way to shuffle those pairs into anything acceptable. Dina & Joe seems like a good fit, but that leaves Joyce & Becky. Guess it would have to Dina & Joyce, which will still be awkward, but not complete breakdown material.
There’s also an element, perhaps, of displacement — if they focus on Becky’s woes, when she’s the person they are possibly LEAST ethically responsible for causing distress to, then they can (consciously or not) avoid thinking further of the ramifications to Joe and Walky.
This is certainly also possible!
I just keep turning things over in my head, thinking about what we’ve seen as the audience versus what various characters have seen, and I think Dorothy really thinks Walky is kind of bulletproof emotionally. She shouldn’t, but it’s been a while (understandably!) since he was emotionally vulnerable with her.
I think that’s certainly something she tries to convince herself of, but she also often has moments where she bemoans how unfair she’s been to him, and it strikes me moreso as a way to avoid needing to confront and change her behavior towards him.
That to me just reads as generalized anxiety, both about her being a bad person and about whether or not her friends/ex-boyfriend(s) need her.
But as I keep saying other reads are also valid 🙂
I’ve got an alternate theory to Dot’s comment that boils down to “Dorothy’s relationship with Walky was defined by a constant unacknowledged tension between what she ACTUALLY wants (comfortable, friendly, shared interests, great sex) and what she CLAIMS to have wanted (pushes her to new heights, worthy of being the First Gentleman, can take out in public without checking for ketchup stains) and what she wants herself to be (caring girlfriend, goal-focused)” which mostly manifests as her treating him both as disposable AND irresistible.
It’s meanwhile clear that Walky’s perception of Dorothy was largely “she’s far, far too good for me” a lot of the time.
“disposable AND irresistible
Holy fuck, she treated him like a bubble tea at the mall
I will say: I think Dorothy specifically wasn’t consciously looking for someone “worthy of being First Gentleman”, so much as she was just really actively turned off by Danny’s specific version of romanticism back then involving “besides who knows maybe you’ll change your mind about going to Yale and stay here with me”.
Which I think sounds fine the first time, but does, eventually, wear on you if someone keeps saying it, which is what I think was meant to be happening between them, but oops Willis only showed us a tiny slice of their relationship so who can say.
I also think Danny was Dorothy’s first serious boyfriend and he informed a lot of her expectations for Boyfriend Behavior even though she was actively looking for something different. Danny and Walky’s first times with Dorothy were probably fairly similar, but I bet if you told Danny there was ketchup on his shirt, you wouldn’t even need to ask him to change — he’d be going “oh NO” and changing his shirt before you could even frown about it.
So like yeah, absolutely there were elements with Walky and Dorothy of Dorothy approaching Walky kind of like a sitcom girlfriend, nagging about stained clothing, wanting him to wear “””real””” pants (something which Lucy then echoed later — oops??), but also I think her approach with Walky shows echoes of her previous dynamic with Danny, where in respects like “not wearing stained t-shirts” and “writing thank-you notes”, Dorothy and Danny were very much on the same page, and Dorothy expected that same thing without consciously realizing it.
(I’m kind of on the fence about “is this kind of thing good or bad in a partner”, I think like everything else it kind of depends. I think it can be super useful to have a friend or romantic partner who has higher standards for us than we have for ourselves — I think we’ve all probably benefitted at one point or another in our lives from having someone go, “wait, no, you can’t wear THAT to a job interview.”
But I tend to think that unless these are changes we’re deeply interested in making on a LIFESTYLE level, it’s more of a “good wake up call to have at some point” than “the kind of thing you want in a long-term roommate, much less romantic partner”.
Better to cohabitate with someone you have a somewhat similar level of mess tolerance with, for example, so that neither of you wind up feeling like you’re always the one who badgers the other into cleaning, and neither of you wind up feeling like you’re living in a pigsty.
But still! Kind of a useful experience to have at least once in your life.)
Yeah, I’m kinda waxing a bit melodramatic with my depiction of Dorothy’s (likely mostly subconscious, despite my use of active verbs like CLAIMS) internal conflict over what she actually wants, but my point is assuredly her treatment of Walky is very reminiscent of her internal conflicts in general.
To kinda drag this back into relevance, and again quote myself saying something nasty but 100% fair, I honestly wonder if this thing with Joyce and sexuality will shake loose some of Dorothy’s internal conflicts, or if she will end up treating Joyce much the same way she treated Danny/Walky (in the sense of “depending on what my internal compass is pointing at in that hour, I might be all in or kinda stand offish”) .
There certainly are some open questions in GENERAL with Dorothy, like…
— what are the sources of her crash out?
There was a lot of arguing against Shippy interpretations of Dorothy’s depression, with folks saying “come on be reasonable this isn’t someone who’s sad about repressed sapphic feelings, it’s someone who’s sad about losing her direction in life” — and I think that turned out to be a bit of an oversimplification.
We’ve SORT OF addressed the second part already — Dorothy told JOYCE she wasn’t planning on going to Yale and eventually admitted it was at least partly to stay with Joyce, and Dorothy had a bit of a political awakening at the protest… but the question of what she’s going to do with all of that is still up in the air, and of course, the Keeners don’t yet know that she’s so drastically changed her life plans.
(Not going to Yale after being accepted is pretty drastic, for most parents.)
— how much of Dorothy being a bad partner is narratively intentional?
I’m extremely in Dorothy’s corner when it comes to her relationship with Danny. I give more credence to the idea that she was specifically a bad girlfriend for Walky, though I personally attribute less blame to her there.
(I think they’ve been good for each other and bad for each other by turns. I think it’s easier for readers to recognize Walky as flailing around, not knowing what the heck he’s doing, and trying his best, than it seems to be for readers to see the same things in Dorothy, so folks tend to apply more agency and deliberateness to her actions, which makes her more at fault.
I tend to think their relationship just fell apart, with both of them clumsily hurting each other in the process, rather than Dorothy specifically treating Walky like trash.
But also: you know who else doesn’t know the first thing about relationships? Joyce. And I doubt Dorothy is going to be LESS of a flailing disaster in her first effort to date a girl, either.
Soooooooo, in terms of “this is gonna go poorly, once the honeymoon is over”? I think I’m more or less on the same page anyway!)
*”I personally attribute less blame to her there” = I don’t attribute as much blame to Dorothy for her relationship with Walky Being Ultimately Pretty Bad as some readers.
I don’t blame Walky more than Dorothy, that’s for sure, I just think they both messed up a lot, rather than thinking of their bad relationship as a thing Dorothy did “to” Walky, if that makes sense!
You know, I hadn’t even thought about this, but yeah, this completely tracks-
The hater containment thread would be a lot more effective if it was possible to collapse/hide threads. Instead it’s just a big chunk of negativity in one place I need to scroll past, often near the top of the comments.
Hater containment thread for haters of the hater containment thread
Hater containment thread hater containment thread, containing haters of the hater containment thread. Sees itself on activation, allowing infinite combo.
Hater-Containment-Thread-Hater Containment Thread
This thread itself comes to develop haters, so it will become necessary to add, you guessed it, a hater containment thread for it as well.
There’s a collapse/hide function. You just have to hope enough other people click “Report comment” so you can all righteously punish those who dislike something to any degree. You fucking hussy.
If the hater thread gets collapsed by report-bombing, I am coming after you with a pool noodle dipped in green paint.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
What, you want me to threaten you with a bad time? Okay, I’ll dip it in fire ants instead.
Let ’em put the number. We will just pass throught 😉
*Let ’em pump the numbers
Simple method, on your computer at least: Position your mouse over the picture of the person starting the containment thread. Scroll downward until your mouse pointer covers another picture. You have now avoided the containment thread. Now the only problem is all the people who don’t want to use the containment thread, but that’s a separate issue.
Squeeee!!!!
Nigth was good.
the need to do laundry ironically portraying one of the many things I am jealous of the other genital variation for
Doing iron(ic)ing of laundry.
An other genital variation?
You know, I don’t mind seeing Joyce and Dorothy being cute together, but… It’s distracting. We have deep and important conversations that are being hinted at – Joe and Sarah working through his feelings about what happened and Joe getting going on his new path, Becky’s dealing with all the emotions stirred up by recent events and what that means for her relationship with Dina – heck, Asma working through her feelings of loneliness and making a connection with someone else in the dorms shows rather a lot of promise for an interesting arc. All of these promise to take things in new and interesting directions, and let us see sides of the characters we haven’t seen before, taking risks and finding interesting ways of looking at things.
But with Dorothy and Joyce? It feels safe. We pretty well know where their arc is going in the short term, and there’s not really any new revelations to be found there. On its own, it’s fine – and would be quite enjoyable in its own right if we didn’t have these cutaways to other things going on – but compared to the other stories we’ve had teased, this one is just… boring. Safe. No real risks to go through or stakes to worry about – just seeing two characters being cute together. It would make for a great intermission story to break up the tension of what’s going on with Joe (and would be a great way to lead into Becky’s story contrasting the joy that Joyce and Dorothy are going through with the darkness that Becky is dealing with) – but as it is, it just feels like the focus is too scattered to really enjoy any of the stories that we’ve seen over the last few weeks.
I don’t think we’re going to see any of those conversations play out if they’re happening beyond what we’ve already seen. We’re basically at the end of this storyline, so it’s pretty likely there’s going to be a cut to the next morning coming up.
Some of them will probably come up again later, hopefully when we don’t need to be cutting back to Joyce and Dorothy every few strips.
This story has basically ended with Dorothy getting everything she ever wanted- her best friend is now her girlfriend, and Joyce’s dream of an ultra romantic and passionate relationship that ends in marriage is coming true. They win… and right now all the collateral damage they’ve done to everyone else, including Amber, who ENCOURAGED the pairing, is irrelevant. True Love Wins. Everyone else loses.
This IS what Dorothy truly wanted… right?
What did they do to Amber?
If I were a comic artist (and I most certainly am not), I think I’d forego the whole comments section bit.
So much of it is so repetitive (Yes I am probably repeating that it’s repetitive), and also, so little of it is about the art. Imagine spending hours making gnarly art decisions and most of the comments are about how other people view/want/would do the narrative. I can *write* a passable narrative. I can’t art. So I’m here admiring the work of those who can art.
People do comment one particular facet of the art with some regularity: facial expressions. Willis is pretty good at making very expressive characters, which tends to get acknowledged with some regularity in the comments.
Willis has basically said that the rare occasion when someone catches an issue with how they’re portraying characters with experiences different from theirs + the really important valuable conversations we’ve sometimes had amongst ourselves make it worth keeping the comments open to them.
(“Rare” not in the sense of like, trying to butter Willis up, but rare in the sense that there’s a LOOOOOT of comments and a fairly small percent of them address that specific topic.)
i wonder how hard/easy it is to wash away tear gas if doing a load of laundry wouldn’t ‘spread it’ to other clothes