This sentence at the end of the article is blowing my mind a little:
“It’s the end of the year, we’re all broken and trying to just get to 2020 (which … why? It’s just going to be the same kind of stuff), and if we want to laugh at a meme that started by giving cats pieces of salami, as a treat? Well, that’s what we deserve after whatever kind of year 2019 ended up being.”
my internal monologue when i read the line “having x as a little treat” is always a female voice i cannot place, but my feeling is it either comes from one of the Philly creamcheese adds of the late 90s early aughts, or a sex and the city style show (i have a female voice saying something along the lines of “it’s nice to treat yourself to a little treat!” or “some times (something related to dating/one night stands) is nice as a little treat” i
It is on KYM after all, with some information the article from The MarySue lacks: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cats-can-have-little-a-salami
The lack of the frequently-added “as a treat” may have made it harder to find? Searching for “little a salami”, as kancil said, helped.
Oh! First time commenting because I have the autistic need to pop in with Helpful Information!
It’s actually probably related to the “cats can have little a salami” meme (frequently reproduced with “as a treat” at the end). I personally saw it morph and evolve in real time, when people started saying things like “X can have a little Y, as a treat”—some maintained the “little a” configuration at first, but it largely dropped off over time as it became more distanced from its source material. I don’t know if there are any convergent evolution lines in play, but the cat meme is definitely one directly traceable source.
Unless maybe whichever adult faculty member who oversees the paper said “Why are you not running this article about the protest? Lead with that!” and unwittingly pushed this photo for the lead article. xD
So, this is a tricky one, because it’s true but I’m not sure it was Willis’s original intent.
Joe DID defend his list to Joyce by specifically saying that “that way, no one really gets hurt” [1], but in context? This strip came directly after Joyce told him she liked her rating because it was the only one based on how he felt about her as a human being, and he was defending not thinking of other people as human beings.
Joyce then challenges him on this notion directly, and the next time he says anything about his list, he’s telling Rachel he “thought [he] was being funny, but [he] wasn’t, so [he’s] stopping” [2], and then we later see him approach Amber specifically to “make friends” and to “learn how to talk to people as people” [3] (go back one comic for the previous line).
At the same time, Joe’s feelings about his parents’ divorce have evolved. Way back in 2013 when Richard first appeared, Joe was kind of blase about his dad’s behavior (“I wish I could say he was like this only after the divorce” [4]), whereas when Richard first tried to tell him that he and Stacy were an item, Joe was much more hostile: “No, Dad. Because you won’t be faithful to her. You will cheat on her and you will hurt her” [5].
I actually don’t think Joe has ever directly connected these two dots, though it does of course make sense that they would be related.
(I also think the fact that Richard has so far stayed faithful to Stacy might ALSO be part of why Joe asked Joyce out: if there’s hope for his dad, then maybe…
But that’s even more headcanon, heh.)
Bonus: Joe has, more than once, talked about himself as being ruinous in a not-quite defined fashion [6][7]. It reminds me of how Joyce sometimes talks about herself, actually, Dorothy, too, has gone on similar little rants about what a bad person she is. In this potential polycule: left side anxiety, none self-esteem.
Historical note that might be of interest to someone: The first time I heard “dude” used to mean “man” or “guy” was in 1967, in Middletown, O. I thought it was weird usage, because, up to then, “dude” was a western term for a well-dressed city slicker from back east. Wikipedia says the modern usage goes back to California surfer culture in the early ’60s.
Heh, I came out as a trans woman at work months before I planned because one manager, who didn’t know any better, kept calling me dude in a conversation. I knew that he didn’t know, but it bothered me so much that I came out the next day. xD
Dude is 100% an intensifier. A milder version of “My Brother in Christ” as in “My Brother in Christ, why is there a pizza in the oven with a timer set for two hours?”
I spent an insane amount of money in life to not be called dude, and i certainly don’t look like one now lol. Even still i mostly just roll my eyes when someone addresses me like that. Not really worth the effort of correcting them unless i know them personally. It’s just kinda annoying is all.
My best friend had to break his habit of calling everyone dude when he started working at a school with a shall we say highly unusual proportion of trans and nonbinary kids to cis ones, because while some embrace dude, you never know which ones will be offended, so better not to do it at all. He switched to saying human (as in “What’s shakin’, my humans?”), which comes out just pleasantly weird enough to not bother anyone so far.
Yeah, you have to keep in mind that even if you think a word like Dude ought to be unisex, we live in a world where it isn’t and people aren’t always going to interpret it like you do.
Agreed. But I think this is one of those situations where one also needs to analyze intent. For example, back in Australia it’s fairly common for “c*nt” to be used as an insult for an a-hole, regardless of the person’s actual gender. In some circles (often considered as people coming from a lower-class background), it’s even thrown around so casually that it’s lost its pejorative impact and has become just another slang. It would also be unrealistic to expect an entire culture to change in a short time to fit a universal ideal. (It would be NICE, mind you, but I’m being realistic here. These sorts of changes take time, often generations.)
Fun fact, the c-word is the English pronunciation of “cunnis” which is the latin term for vulva (weirdly, the word vulva is latin for the womb). As such, it is actually the correct word for the labia and other outer structures whereas vagina specifically means the internal canal.
Personally, I’ve been trying to reclaim it as a replacement for p—y since I find the later term both demeaning and gross.
Oh, I’ve been doing the same in my writing. I couldn’t find a different term for that general anatomy that I liked- everything is either too clinical, or it’s that one word that I associate with just /so/ much bad writing at this point. This one’s good- short and snappy and matches up well with the various terms for the, ah, other type of frequently-involved-in-smut anatomy.
@eh, whatever
I don’t actually know latin, I just do a lot of research, so I relied on google translate for the proper spelling. Fuckin google.
@S.R. I know right? Both four letters, both punchy, both start with a C. They’re well matched.
I’m also a fan of “phallus” for male anatomy because it’s fun to say. “Phallus!”
I have this feeling that the ninja turtles may ave helped prepare the gender neutrality ot the term as “dude” and Dudette” were both in early cartoon mikes primary slang, but i seem to remember as the srries went on that he hust shortened to calling the whole group as dude/dudes especially after black haired glasses girl (aprils’ ….. assistant i think its been 30 years) became a part of the regular cast
I wonder (honestly my adhd brains filing system is like using Mbasic to compine python) where the line “My dudes, dudettes, duderinos and duderitas” is coming from in my head
Ladies, gentleman, fluids, and nonbinaries. Answer this question for me. Is “dude” a unisex/universal term now? Cause I use it pretty universally to address anyone but I’ve also been corrected a few times conversationally so I’m not 100% sure. Maybe it’s a generational thing?
So much this. Do jerkwads realize how much time and effort they could save by NOT going out of their way to be complete bongos to people, often complete strangers?
I recall a comedian explaining that depending on tone, “Dude” can mean anything from “Congrats on the Nobel” (Duuude!!!) to “stop setting fire to my dog” (Dude….) to “Are you in the closet with a knife” (….Duude???)
Some people are okay with it, others aren’t. Pretty much like most opinions. Personally I don’t use it universally because I’d rather err on the side of caution.
How it is used is dependent on the speaker and to whom they are speaking. In particular, there can be different connotations from a guy calling another guy dude from a guy calling a gal dude. A guy may use it more casually with other guys, as a subconscious recognition of masculinity. But the same guy might only call a lady “dude” to show acceptance into a closer circle.
I read something that explained all that better, but can’t find a link.
I think it was this or something very much like it but more recent. Figure 2 shows relative rates of “Use of dude by Gender of Speaker and Addressee for People under 30 Years of Age”.
I expect the values of the chart have changed since 2004, but the paper does explain how “dude” can sometimes be gender neutral, but not always.
When a straight guy insists that dude is always gender-neutral, it’s fun to ask them to say “I love to fuck dudes”. (Or “to kiss dudes”, if you want to be less crass about it.) That opens their minds pretty quickly, to: it depends!
Southern Californians habitually call everything dude, including inanimate objects. But straight-guy Californians still don’t want to smooch dudes.
I think if you’re getting corrected on it more than once, you’re probably talking to people where it’s not landing well, so maybe switch out the word for something else.
There’s also a pretty healthy rubric to the effect of “if you’ve ever let the word ‘dude-ette’ pass your lips, you probably don’t internally think of ‘dude’ as completely gender-neutral”.
Part of it is context sensitive though. Used to address some one, like Joe is using it here, it’s far more unisex than other contexts, which is partly why the “kiss dudes” approach gets a different reaction.
I like to smooch some dudes, not all dudes. Pretty much I like to smooch the dudes who present as female. (That’s actually an exaggeration; I’m autistic, and don’t like to even touch most dudes, much less smooch them.)
I mean. The people correcting you probably have reason for not wanting to be called dude, or know someone who deeply does not want to be called dude.
Can’t ask us to override what people in your life have said.
But also: what Leorale said. A lot of people who think they use it completely gender neutrally will still discover to their surprise that they don’t if they’re asked to really think about it.
I wonder if it’s generational because most of the people that have corrected me skew older. Mother’s friends I’ve occasionally tried to converse with, professional acquaintances, perhaps it might even be as simple as “dude” being too casual or familiar a term for the assumed relationship dynamic. People I don’t even know that are close in age to me don’t seem to care much regardless of assumed gender, but I do also live in Cali so like it could even be a regional thing like adding “like” unnecessarily or using the occasional “hella”.
It’s also a gender thing. People with dysphoria have more reason and more intense feelings about “gender-neutral” terms that seem to get used disproportionately on them. It’s so often micro aggression that it ceases to be neutral at all.
This is also the case with the singular they when applied to trans women, just as a fun fact! It’s used to degender us and disregard our female identity.
Yeah, I’m admittedly defaulting to it with the comment section, but I AM trying to remember individual people’s pronouns because… yep! Still wish there was a field for it.
This is the sort of thing we really need a set of formal etiquette rules for. I know a couple of trans folks (in the far reaches of one of my gaming circles) whose opinion is “asking me my pronouns is implicitly saying I’m not female-presenting enough, and is just as degendering as calling me ‘them'”.
Meanwhile, my partner finds it deeply disheartening that it’s very rare someone guesses “they” for them, as an AFAB enby who is actively trying to de-feminize their look.
Personally, the majority of folks I’ve interacted with have been in agreement with “asking pronouns upon first meeting is the polite way to go about it”, but the diversity of opinions, some mutually exclusive, makes me wish it were possible to guarantee avoiding offending anyone.
@Li: Also a problem specific to the comment section — the gravatar situation routinely leads to people having avatars that do NOT match their gender identity, which just adds that little frission of difficulty to remembering
I think there ARE situations where asking for pronouns is othering, but… honestly the only solution there is to keep doing it, in every situation, until it’s genuinely the default behavior, and NOT something you have to wonder if a group of cis people are only doing because they clocked you, specifically, as trans.
That said: if corporate doesn’t have out trans people in visible positions of power, asking employees to put their pronouns in their bios or whatever is always going to be… hit or miss, shall we say. Having to choose between misgendering yourself and outing yourself at work is always a sucky thing.
@Li
… but you can pick one. You can set your grav at the “Get a Gravatar” link by where you enter your name.
You need to put in your own image, but avoiding Grav Roulette is exactly why I did that.
@Rose that’s not what I want tho! I want the ability to pick a character name from a drop down so that I always have the latest grav for that character 🙂
I suspect that it’s partly generational, partly what Li said, and partly dependent on exactly what cultural context everyone involved has around the word.
You could probably write some kind of Ph.D. thesis on the differences in usage/connotations of “Dude” among Californian surf culture followers, fans of The Big Lebowski, and fans of Good Burger.
(as one of the latter two, I will both happily say “yeah, I’ve fucked tons of dudes. We’re all dudes.” and happily NOT say it to refer to people whose opinion on the word I don’t know or are negative, e.g., we’re all dudes, but my friend K is never a dude, because they construe it as masculine and they are not.)
Both? The default masculine is grammatically accepted in many languages not just English slang. And on the other hand there are many women, cis included, who would feel misgendered, de-gendered, or just plain disrespected by being addressed with a masculine default especially from their partners. So, yes uhh gender neutral-ish dude exists, and also sometimes it’s highly inappropriate.
Many, many women do not like to be called it. “Dude” is being rebranded as gender neutral because up until recently, male gender was viewed as neutral to most situations. It’s gotten beyond the point where you should pivot if someone requests you to, you should just *never* refer to someone as dude without prior knowledge of their comfort levels.
I can’t speak for Joe and Joyce, I’m sure they’re both fine with it. In the real world, this kind of thing is a slap waiting to happen.
My feeling is that dude is usually gender neutral, especially when referring to a group of people, and while it sometimes can be specifically masculine (rarely specifically feminine, except as an explicit contrast to the masculine usage), context and/or intonation will nearly always make the distinction clear. Regardless, however, it’s not polite to use it to refer to someone who has expressed a preference to the contrary.
I thought it was Walky, but Joyce was the true harem protagonist this whole time! Throw Becky and Dina in there too while we workshopping this. Joe already has a weird sort of platonically physical relationship thing going on with Dina anyway.
Tangentially related but have you see the video for the Miike Snow song “My Trigger” which is the second greatest music video ever, of all time, because it features the same two dancers from Genghis Khan?
The real answer is that between impaired motor functions and lack of fucks given, i just kinda slap the keyboard and don’t go back to check that what I typed was really words or not.
Hi everyone, I’m sober again. What I meant to say was:
I called this back during the conversation where Joe called Joyce “everything” right when Dorothy was realizing she was getting a little bit gay. There was never any monogamous explanation for that lmao.
Which also means that Joe has been planning for this the whole time. In an ideal, perfect situation, he’d have said it up front and Joyce wouldn’t have jumped the line. Unfortunately, being polyamorous is still deeply stigmatized and he probably had trouble finding the words/was scared of the reaction, so he put it off until he couldn’t anymore. He’s not degrading himself by suggesting it as a last resort, this isn’t a trauma response to avoid feeling cheated, this was his desired, ideal outcome from the jump.
Also, wow, I really thought alcohol was supposed to taste *better* the more you have, but every additional chug of that sangria last night tasted more and more like turpentine. Bleugh.
i also have a recipe for a really ficking sweet hard hitting drink that tastes like strawberry pocky, but i do ot recomend having more than one due to it being 1oz baharosa, 1oz kalhua and fill glass with milk
I… how does that make even the slightest bit of sense? How do you say “I am monogamous” and also say “man, I hate it when someone else actually likes their partner.” How does the internet keep attracting people with the most bizarre takes? Tired of my brain being broken by the gibbering madness of these people.
I’m mostly venting about how monogamous people on the internet tend to get deeply upset about my identity and lifestyle, to the point where several of them have implied or outright stated my fiance should find someone more “””faithful””” because they truly do not believe polyamorous love is actually love.
hence my incredulity at the notion a straight, supposedly monogamous cis guy would see someone with intentions on his girlfriend and offer unyielding support and understanding. Like yeah, Joe could just be the fantastical ideal of an ally, but… he’s probably just poly, is what i’m saying, lmao. because, again, if they can’t even support people in *other* relationships, i very much doubt it being very common in their *own* relationships without that polyamory being part of the equation
It will never cease to amaze me how bad some folks are at minding their own goddamn business. I didn’t know about polyamory until very recently, then another friend of mine mentioned it offhand. My response was “oh, alright. Hey, do you mind passing the cheetos?” (Actually, my real response was to do research because I am a giant fucking nerd who enjoys that thing and wanted to better understand the world my friend inhabits.)
Is it something I am interested in? No. Am I gonna be a whiny little bongo if other people can find happiness and fulfillment in ways that make sense? No. My motto is “you do you, fam,” or “live and let live” if we’re being formal.
your error was sangria, the extra aciditty of the fruits wil lcause that as you drink more. my recommendation is 2 large ice cubes, 1oz kraken gold rum (goddamn oompaloompa, can’t get it here in canuckistan atm) a slice of lime and canada dry ginger ale, will have you going “what alcohol”
P.s. i know canada dry is only ginger flavoured but i am such pale ass freckled ginger that i don’t need the real stuff in in my G.ALE. honestly find the ones with the extract to be to poor for mixing with rum, better with whisky.
also the flavour agent is basically super condensed ginger extract that has been used by peple to flavour thngs ginger for 200+ years
If you’re going for rum and ginger, a proper Dark and Stormy is the only way to go.
Gosling’s Black Seal, a good Ginger Beer and that little bit of lime. To be fair, it’s not exactly a “I really can’t taste the alcohol” drink
I’m both amused and saddened that ginger snobs exist, and that you’ve run into enough of them to need to put a disclaimer on a mixed drink recipe using Canada Dry.
I don’t think this one worked out very well… whatever. Here’s my attempt:
Messin’ up, kissed on the street
Fell in love, took my chances
Went the distance, though I know I did cheat
On my man and his wish that I thrive
So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your Joe for Dorothy
Don’t lose your grip on the loves that may last
You must share just to keep them alive
It’s the eye of the hussy, it’s the thrill of the night
Risin’ up to the challenge of our romance
And the last chance polycule saves the fool from her plight
And she’s watching them both with the eyes of the hussy
Face to face, kissing so sweet
Lovin’ both, stayin’ horny
They stack on top of her under the sheet
For the squish, with the wish that she thrive
It’s the eye of the hussy, it’s the thrill of the night
Risin’ up to the challenge of our romance
And the last chance polycule saves the fool from her plight
And she’s watching them both with the eyes of the hussy
Datin’ both, no need to swap
Ex-fundie, fixed the story
Became the hinge, now we’re not gonna stop
Just a girl and her loves… and sex drive
It’s the eye of the hussy, it’s the thrill of the night
Risin’ up to the challenge of our romance
And the last chance polycule saves Joyce Brown from her plight
And she’s watching them both with the eyes of the hussy
Wish I could edit… Forgot to switch back to first person for the second verse, and the ellipsis in the third should’ve been an em dash. Also, I think “kissing so sweet” should’ve been “kisses so sweet”, but am not sure why.
I’m sure there’re other things that could’ve been done better, but I’m not sure how.
When Joyce learned Becky and Dina had sex, she insisted it wasn’t gross to her because “they’re in love” whereas she viewed herself engaging with sex as her being gross. I think it’s similar here, where Joyce would say “Mandy, Sierra, and Grace are in love” but would view herself as being a gross greedy hussy for wanting to date two people.
For a lot of people who haven’t seriously considered the possibility that they may be polyamorous, there can be some cognitive dissonance: for other people it’s a valid relationship structure that’s no better or worse than monogamy, but for them it would be selfish, it would be slutty, it would be whatever excuse they need to make for themselves in order to avoid confronting the fact that the socially hegemonic relationship structure isn’t what would make them happiest.
Lets also be clear on something, though: There is a big difference between “you being polyamorous doesn’t mean you’re a hussy” and “you are polyamorous”.
As long as everyone involved in a relationship group is fine with the polyamorousness, then that can be great! And as long as everyone involved understands the situation fully, then that’s also great!
But… not everyone is going to be polyamorous. We can leave the debate on how much of it is nature vs nuture vs social-brainwashing-that-can-be-overcome for the sociologists to get into a big sociological fuckpile over, but if one of Joyce, Dorothy, or Joe is not actually able to do polyamory, then it could cause some… problems.
Sincerely, beyond that she’s attracted to multiple people, what makes you say that she’s clearly polyamorous?
Like, the signs of Joyce being clearly Bisexual are pretty well trodden at this point (she wants to bang Joe and Dorothy). But what signs are you seeing that indicate that she’s interested in and capable of being in a romantic/sexual relationship with multiple people at the same time?
Imo that doesn’t make her polyam. Many monogamous folk want to be with multiple people and not want to choose. It’s often a conflict because their values and ideals dont align with it (and often lack the emotional ability to sit with it because they aren’t taught those skills).
I see relationship styles and structures more as a active choice we make based on our intrinsic values. Joyce could be/come polyam but her current values and beliefs don’t align with that too well (yet).
(And on the flipside someone can be poly without having/desiring multiple relationships. I get polysaturated very quickly so Ive never had more than one long-term partner at a time though my values, relationship style and preferences align far more with Polyamory)
I think Joyce’s briefs and values have been at odds with what she actually wants and what would actually make her happy for her entire life.
Growing pains are going to happen here, but I absolutely think she keeps doing and saying things that align much better with polyamory than with monogamy.
I also think a lot of the mono people who genuinely want to be with more than one person and don’t want to choose might be happier if they allowed themselves to try it, even if it winds up not being for them, but my point was more that a lot of people like cheating specifically, and if they actually had permission to be with more than one person, they wouldn’t want to be anymore. Those people are chasing the high of taboo.
Just want to say that I relate to aligning with polyamory but getting saturated.
I am currently in a closed relationship with one person. I tend to say “closed” rather than monogamous because I don’t really identify with monogamy, and ideally would like a healthy polycule. But I learned through awful experiences that I don’t have the emotional stability to manage the complexity of a polyamorous relationship right now, especially with real people who have trauma and communication issues and are not some Platonic Ideal of a polyamorous person. I decided my partner was more important to me than a polyamorous relationship, and this wasn’t them asking me to make the choice. Rather it became clear to me that I couldn’t trust them to make the kind of conscientious ethical choices I would want for an open relationship. But I still chose them over poly with some abstract person I may never meet.
(I can’t reply directly to your comment for some reason)
I 100% agree with your first point. She still has a lot of learned beliefs and expectations to examine, both from her specific religious upbringing and from wider cultural norms. That goes for Joe and Dorothy, too, and it’s something that a lot of people tend to get stuck on irl. Like, how we deal with (or avoid dealing with) uncomfortable emotions and interpersonal conflicts.
I’m really interested to see how this story goes. I personally don’t think any of them are going to be a good fit for healthy polam but it would be really cool to see how they do evolve. I think it’ll be a fun ride either way.
Definitely agree with your point about cheating, too. Changing a relationship from monogamous to polyam is really complicated, too, because it’s not just one person trying it out, it’s everyone involved having to either do the work or walk away. Or try to just shoehorn another person into a monogamous setup.
You’re not alone in that. I have a very low social drive and very high social anxiety so my connections with others tend to be more comet-like and more blended based on the person, so kinda relationship-anarchyish? Like, I have one lady friend who is my partner partner because that’s what she wants/works for us, and she has her partners. And I have comet partners who are friends but that might include different kinds of intimacy but we either decided we didn’t want to accelerate and risk the friendship, or we recognise that our lives/goals don’t fit well.
I can’t manage multiple partners because I get very easily overwhelmed, but monogamy doesnt gel with how I experience friendships either.
One other distinction being missed here is that poly doesn’t just involve wanting more than one person, but also being willing to share them. That doesn’t always happen in practice, you might wind up the hinge in a triad, but going in with the attitude of “You have to be monogamous to me, but I don’t have to do the same” isn’t a good start.
I really wish monogamous folks would stop pushing this idea that the default is to only be capable of wanting to be with one person at a time and that wanting multiple people at once is this rare ability, as if half of romantic comedies aren’t centered around a character being in love with two people at once, and as if cheating isn’t INCREDIBLY common in long-term committed monogamous relationships. If wanting multiple people at the same time were the primary criteria for being polyamorous, at least half the planet would be polyam.
Lets say that being monogamous-only is the minority and open-to-polyamory is the majority.
If Joe and Joyce are polyamorous and Dorothy is not, then this is not a functional polyamorous relationship, even though most of those that are in the group are polyamorous. That’s one of the major issues here.
I’m not trying to push “monogamous as default”. I am someone that’s lived in a society for my entire life that pushes that, but I’m trying to be cognizant of that and asking a sincere question about what indicators there are that this major character is, in fact, interested in such things beyond “I’m horny for more than one person”, so that I can, ya know, understand this shit better.
I’ve never seen anyone but delusional people claim that the default is only feeling attraction to one person. But as a monogamous person, I can say that the big difference is that I’m not going to *do* anything with that.
I know that if I try to get involved with multiple people, there is such a high chance that I fuck it up that it isn’t worth trying.
There’s also that I have yet to meet a single person out there I vibe with as much as I do my partner. No one comes close to being on the same wavelength.
Analogy: “I can’t decide whether I want pizza or sushi for dinner” versus “I want both sushi and pizza for dinner”. I think most people can agree that those are substantially different things, and that feeling one does not imply feeling the other.
Mmm, I don’t think that’s necessarily true — I’ve known at least a few mono people who ended up in dire straits because they knew they ultimately wanted to pick a partner, but had decision paralysis for one reason or another over it.
Joyce could be open to poly.
Joyce could be having a hard time picking apart who she really wants in the heteronormative sea we all swim in.
Joyce could be having a hard time separating out love and lust.
Joyce could be having a hard time separating out romantic and non-romantic love, in this relationship-ladder-normative sea we all swim in.
In my opinion, Joyce not being extremely concerned about Joe during this whole thing, is a big pointer to it. if you have trouble understanding other people reacting differently than you to things; and you don’t experience jealousy that way and you would only be, at worst, surface-level hurt if your partner kissed someone; you might not emotionally key into the fact that it is really major for a lot of (probably most?) people. If we look at it through that lens, Joyce not minding her partner kissing other people is a pretty big sign of not being monogamous.
(I still think it’s out of character because I think she’s a little better at understanding other people’s views than that, but that’s a separate topic.)
She’s not just “attracted” to multiple people, she’s in love with multiple people. Poly isn’t about lots of sex, it’s about lots of love. I’ve never had sex with J, I never will, but I’d die for him in a heartbeat, no questions asked.
This is an expected first reaction from Joyce. Give her somewhere between a few minutes and a day or two and she’ll figure it out. Lingering remnants of her being raised in a cult. Just glad she didn’t have that reaction in front of anyone she would horribly offend.
No, it makes perfect sense. Other people being in poly or open relationships are open minded and progressive. *Her* wanting to date two people at the same time is hussy behavior. It makes perfect sense!
This is probably more frustration on Joe’s side than true anger. But I’m still glad to see it.
Anyway, now it looks like things are really starting to sink in for Joyce now. More so than when she decided she was gonna break up with him. Was she still romanticizing the whole thing up to this point? Hm…
She’s trying to repress so hard, g-d bless her. She’s just had one earth shattering revelation about her personal relationship preferences, why does she have to have another? Better to just ignore it and keep on keeping on!
And his anger can plausibly be interpreted as not about her being interested in someone else (he isn’t upset about that), but at her lack of self awareness of what she wants.
Having seen the number of comments yesterday’s strip got, just want to take a moment to spread the good word of not reading the comments/minimizing your engagement with them. I’ve been cutting back a lot, usually just making one comment if any, and it’s been good for me. If you’re considering leaving or mostly leaving the comments… do it.
I stopped participating in comments for years and just talk to my friends who also read about it, away from the internet, where the reading comprehension of the collective whole has been tanking steadily. It’s really disheartening to see how many people just have no media literacy.
On the other hand, one can read the comments is a sort of data-gathering way. Yesterday was so many and so widely ranging, it was quite educational.
And then there are the ‘OMG, I was wrong’ s vs the ” I’ma twist this into a pretzel to still be right’ s, which are entertaining.
I haven’t gotten to the point of not reading the comments at all, but I do try to avoid replying to a lot of comments, especially from some people here who I really don’t like and don’t get along with very well.
Yep. I try to comment in response to people I do agree with/vibe/appreciate their perspective rather than the other way around. It takes discipline but leads to a more enjoyable experience.
Those really I focus on *comments* I agree/vibe with, which aren’t aways from the same people.. some days I vibe with things people say that said things that disturbed me other days, and vice versa.
I’ve actually had the comments section adblocked. That way I need to go through the added steps of unblocking it and putting up mental fortitude, instead of just casually scrolling down and getting frustrated.
Maybe there’s a way to just block certain people but I don’t know it?
Is anyone reminded of when Duncan told Ethan in Shortpacked that the latter couldn’t keep being high and mighty about toys because Ethan was a kidnapper?
What hooked me to the Willisverse was a Shortpacked! strip in which Ethan was on a plane and obsessing over the fact that at that very moment they were restocking a specific Transformer in the particular store that the plane was currently flying over. And then in the comment section Willis casually admitted that bit was *autobiographical*.
I did not remember that at all. But when looking for when he kidnapped Galasso, I ran across another time Willis used “I want to be you” to show attraction. The most disturbing instance so far.
I like that Joe pointed out his nudging. I remember him telling Dorothy what he loved about Joyce, and at the time it seemed strange. It feels better in this light
Yeah, this entire time I’ve been thinking “None of this would have even happened without that conversation Joe had with Dorothy. What was he hoping to accomplish?” I did *not* think until now that he was setting this up intentionally lol
Responding as though it’s not snark: 100% reinforcing my long-held belief that Joyce fundamentally is seeing her own romantic life through the fairy-tale lens — anything she does in service of her One True Love is valid!
… wait, Two True Loves?
Someone get this girl some modern YA, stat, so she can incorporate it into her worldview.
unfortunately most times waterheaters do that is rusty slidgy hot water too
but at least we are 50 years past waterheaters that will rip througth three floor of your house and another 100+ ft in the air (loved that mythbusters)
If all participants are cool with polyamory, then great! But that does not mean that it will go well, and that certainly does not mean that shit will not get fucked up!
True, it requires everyone to not only be honest, but be honest with themselves about what they want. Our first triad broke because Jeff wasn’t honest with himself, and when H got pregnant (by me, as we determined later), everything got too serious and grown-up and he ghosted. J’s been with our triad for 20 years now, so I’d say this relationship’s pretty stable – we even went through a miscarriage and J’s PTSD from Iraq together (still going through that one, to be honest, and probably always will), and here we are.
So I’ve been wondering this for a while and I guess no is the best time to ask:
If Joyce largely fictional, but is also somewhat semi-autobiographical does this mean that Willis cheated in his first relationship and/or somehow turned that into a three-way? Does … Does Willis pull? Is that the right use of that phrase?
Whether Willis cheated in his first relationship is Willis’s business and definitely not mine.
I’m not sure I’ve ever cheated in a relationship, but in a couple of instances it was a fine line and reasonable people might disagree. It comes from being stupid and not thinking things through.
i think it was my grade 6 teahcer (a very normative presenting cis white hetero male) who told us “there is no normal, as even if we have 99% in common with those around us, that 1% of difference has so many options that there are not enough 100% alikes to have a normal to base it on” (paraphrased after 30 years) i remember him going then onto use sample size as an example along the lines of “if 1% of 7 billion is 70 million that is double the number of people who live in our country” to drive home how much variance can occur with 1%
Willis wasn’t a girl with a real superhero friend either, so while Joyce is definitely inspired by his upbringing and life she isn’t exactly a 1-1 match.
I wasn’t trying to cast accusations or aspersions, I just don’t know very little about the author or what he has talked about in social media. I’m not trying to insinuate anything, I mostly just wanted to know if he had said something about this period in his life and also sort of wanted to make a jest about Willis being some manner of sex god as from what little I did know of him, he did not seem like the type to take relationships frivolously. However, I failed to both clearly convey that nor syncretize legitimate question and humor in anyway and ended up making an ass of myself again. I should have thought out more how that comment might sound and see now how it could be hurtful implications I had not considered. I am sorry about that.
So this strip confirms a couple of things:
1. Joe considers the whole situation as Joyce cheating on him.
2. Joe considers himself her boyfriend.
I know there’s been some comments made about where he stands on all that so I’m glad he’s said it and we can all move on to more productive topics. Right? …right?
If cheating is being a hussy, and dating 2 people at once is being a hussy (no, I’m not down on Joyce for a split second reaction without investigating the full logic), one falls back on the definition of cheating and indeed the expectation of monogamy that has seen so much traffic.
Joyce, it is society and its rules you are looking at here. What do YOU think constitutes cheating, and is monogamy assumed if no contract has been made. We all know you are un-colonising yourself. Un-colonise this then re-appraise whether you are a hussy or not.
i think being briefly exasperated by the inherent deep-seated contradictions in Joyce’s world-view, is not the same thing as joe being deliberately manipulative or threatening?
Naw Joe’s clearly fine with stepping aside if that’s what Joyce wants. But it’s hard not to get a little annoyed at her calling polly people “hussys” even if she doesn’t realize that’s what she’s doing. Joyce has enough experience, at this point, that being raised as a fundie baby isn’t much of an excuse
Speaking from personal experience, it takes a LOT longer than “a few months during freshman year” to deprogram some of those religious/conservative mindworms, even if you are hanging out with a lot of queer people
This, I’ve been trying to exercise them for a decade and change, and it’s still a daily struggle. Joyce and Becky are practically speedrunning their mental detox, and frankly I am a little jealous. 😅
Oh no Walky also draws a comic for the IDS and he, uh, did not have a Joe-ment where he nudged someone toward his girlfriend. This could be messy. Eek.
Fun twist: Walky doesn’t get mad when he finds out Dorothy is macking Joyce, he gets mad when he finds out that Dorothy gave up on Yale for Joyce, but didn’t even consider it for him.
But, that might be too similar to Becky’s eventual freak-out, maybe.
Does this mean we’ll get to know Sierra, Grace, and Mandy better? I kind of hope so, especially since Sierra attended church with Lucy and Becky, so her take on any lingering Joyce shame will probably be very insightful.
sometimes I think that the main reason the perfect characters for a situation are not consulted, is purely because their advice would be too insightful, and would undercut the comic’s ability to actually create meaningful conflict.
Given how different a lot of superficially similar poly relationships are “under the hood”, so to speak, I would also accept “they consult Sierra/Grace/Mandy, and get advice that works perfectly for those three but does not work at all for Joe/Joyce/Dorothy”.
i’ve been led to believe sierra grace and mandy are more of a throuple situation (could be wrong, i do not remember their deal super well) which is, i think, as far from possible for dorothy and joe as something can physically get.
Yeah, it’d be the “fun” combination of “these are wildly different relationship structures” with “at least one of these two groups, possibly both, has no real knowledge of the wider poly culture and the combined life experience of ‘a bunch of college freshmen in the US’.”
Verbally, not like zombies. Good lord, someone being down for actual repercussions for infidelity that aren’t “Oh you zany kids” as the characters use your sexuality as a misguided band-aide, instead of giving it any kind of actual respect is flabbergasting. My gastings are flabbered.
i’m assuming you’re also waiting in the wings for Becky to find out Joyce is bi now and to go “Wait, no, you’re not allowed to love women LIKE THAT!!! Have more self respect and go back to dating men!”
Most of us aren’t. Even those who have issues with this arc.
I wonder if Becky’s going to be hurt to be confronted with the fact that Joyce can love women, just not her, but I don’t expect or want Becky to take that approach.
Actually, I’m waiting for Becky to say bisexuals can’t actually exist. And Joyce is lying to herself that she ever actually liked weens, and she needs to realize she’s a lesbian, because you can’t actually like both, that her confusion about still liking dudes is just her institutional hetero brainwashing talking.
Like when I came out as bi to all my gay and lesbian friends.
Maybe part of the problem is that your phrasing — hopefully unintentionally and coincidentally — was somewhat reminiscent of certain misogynistic commenters who pile hatred upon any woman who dares show “disrepect” toward a man.
I mean, I’m perfectly happy to accept that that isn’t what you meant; it’s just that, in the context of certain recent overreactions (which I’m not accusing your comment of being), it’s easy to read unintended malice into things.
If they immediately move publicly into a polycule, people might assume she was cheating at first, but change that opinion when they find out she’s openly with both Joe and Dorothy.
I don’t think we can rightly say “no consequence” until we at MINIMUM see the following:
– Joyce’s relationship(s) settle down into something longer than a day
– Dorothy’s reaction to Joe’s poly proposal, assuming Joyce even accepts it
– Walky’s reaction to Dorothy, period
– Becky’s reaction to anything, period
Make no mistake — I am very sympathetic to the idea that it FEELS like it’s taking longer for the other shoe to drop in this storyline, but the shoes are still there, precariously perched on the high shelf that’s not quite level.
It’s not so much that they’re taking longer to drop, but that we’re seeing at least one shoe being taken off that shelf in this sequence.
Also that a lot of the remaining shoes you describe aren’t really consequences of the cheating, but of Joyce falling for Dorothy. Like if Dorothy rejects Joe’s poly proposal, Joyce will have to choose one of them, which is a consequence, but Joe’s already given her a pass on the cheating and said he’d step aside.
I’m provisionally willing to accept “no consequences for cheating” if I accept “Joe has been kinda nudging things this way”.
I’m not sure I’m happy about that latter yet, but if this is a Polyamory Xanatos Gambit, it really just exchanges the “Joyce cheated” shoe for “what’s going on in Joe’s head to make him go this direction” shoe — which could also be taken down if we accept the “eyes wide open, no worries” Joe instead of the “grasping at straws because of low-self-worth-in-relationships” Joe.
To an extent, but whether it was a Xanatos Gambit or not, Joe’s already defused the obvious “Joyce’s partner is upset about being cheated on” shoe. Even if Joe’s grasping at straws that becomes more of a “failing at poly” shoe, which isn’t directly tied to the cheating, since it could have been the same drama even if everyone had talked it out before kissing. Joe would have been doing the same “I’ll step aside, but you could date both of us” thing and it could still have the same problems.
Yeah, I think some folks are losing track of the fact that while we’ve been reading this for days, this conversation has been going on for maybe five minutes in-universe, tops.
Sure, but it’s not just “hasn’t happened yet”, it’s directly taking one of the consequences off the table. They might still break up, if Joyce isn’t mentally ready for poly or if Dorothy isn’t willing, but Joe is clearly giving her a pass on cheating.
And that also defuses the only person who’s actually so far been upset with Joyce for it, since Sarah was angry on Joe’s behalf.
I’m sorry Joyce I want to desperately say no to that assumption but it’s almost impossible to make excuses….Anyway, now smash cut to Dorothy going back to her room where Becky and Walky are waiting for her with a news paper.
he doesnt have to actively read it, there is guarenteed a display rack of them if not in the hall of his dorm, in all the buildings entryways, and as was pointed out by myself and bunch of others, it there is a digital edition, it may get blanket sent to all students school emails, and he could end up just seeing the image as like a preview pane
Feels like Joe’s stopped being as honest as he’s been. Both with himself, based off of the look on his face in the last strip, and with Joyce, since he set this up without telling her. I like it, he’s more interesting for it, and his bad judgement call.
after ruminating:
Joe has done something typically in Dorothy’s wheelhouse, decide for Joyce what’s best for Joyce.
on the other hand, I don’t like how Joyce remains “technically” innocent yet again. The worst judgment in Joyce+Dorothy keeps getting protected from hurting people through things either out of their control or unbeknownst to them.
Is it weird that I want to see Joyce/Dorothy/Walky in a 3some more than Joyce/Dorothy/Joe? Joyce and Walky have an established competition over Dorothy, and they’ve all slept together many a night. Dorothy and Joe just have latent trauma with each other, that isn’t as light-hearted or fun XD
I suspect I’ll get a lot of flack for this, but maybe a poly relationship is not the best route for Joe and Joyce and Dorothy. Maybe poly is not a good solution to a situation where two women have cheated on their boyfriends.
You can’t decide what someone deserves, they need to choose for themselves, and this is the path Joe is choosing. For better or worse, this is what he wants.
Disagree strongly in the general case — I try very hard not to let loved ones settle for less than they deserve when they are being ill-treated by other people in their lives.
Oh, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna try if I see someone doing something that looks bad for them. That’s part of what friendship is.
(Related: I sorta-recently reconnected with one of my oldest and best friends after a several-year period of relatively low contact, initiated by the fact I told him his then-fiancee was bad news. Multiple cheating incidents and other badness later, he did admit he shoulda listened to me back in the day)
I don’t disagree, honestly. Also, glad you reconnected with your friend, it’s always a shame when that happens but when it counted you were still there for him.
Wait… you mean… Joe ISN’T real???? Oh my god… Willis lied to me!!!! What’s next, Joyce isn’t real?! Doroth! My sense of reality is crumbling at the seams!!!!!
I’ve talked to Big Z too much to think it’s even a little bit possible he’s anthropomorphizing Joe like that. He’s just talking about the general case: what one can and can’t do, and should or shouldn’t do, if a friend is making a choice you don’t think is good for them.
Yeah, he literally pushed Dorothy into Joyce’s arms and all, fully knowing Joyce loved her and would want to be with her, and having already done all the research into polyamory so he knew all the right terms and words to say, but this is clearly him devaluing himself. he doesn’t want any of those things he made a rube goldberg machine to achieve. don’t be silly
The thing is (if I’m reading it correctly) that Joe thinks *Joyce* deserves better than him and that’s why he’s been kind of pushing things in that direction. Which makes this whole mess incredibly sad.
to me it seems more that joe is in a state “you are awesome and noting will make me happier than your happyness” and “l am willing to share in your happyness with whom ever else you desire, if you are wanting/willing to allow me to”
there maybe some feelings of inferiority under the surface, it would make sense with his history, but i doubt he is aware of them in this moment if in fact he feels any.
honestly the more i think of how joe has behaved since the time skip, i don’t read much towards him being consious of any issues of self esteem or self worth. he had the confidence to shoot his shot with joyce and is showing the strength to be able to let the cards fall as the mayno matter what happens
For me, it’s the fact that he’s been actively nudging Dorothy towards Joyce (and he’s aware of it) I think there *are* serious self-worth issues with this boy.
as i said if there is any it is buried deep as i read his actions as exuding almost a bugs bunny level of self confidence and awareness, he knows what he wants, he knows it is going to take work and patience, he knows he may lose her, but that was always a possibilty, and he has taken actions for and with the purpose of shooting his shot to get it.
i am a hetero cis male, been with my wife 21 years, i was the first human she met she ever felt strongly enough about to even attempt entering a relationship with. but, in the last 5 years a friend has entered our lives and for only the second time in her life has she developed honest romantic feelings towards another person. and i do in fact know that he reciprocates the feelings to a very large extent, and i have actively encouraged her to explore those feelings, to love this man, why BECAUSE IT MAKES HER HAPPIER. it also has had the benefit of helping her achieve a healthier mental health state, which again makes her happier.
i will add context that the relationship between them has settled into an incredibly strong platonic bond, to the level that she refers to him as her best friend, a term she hasnt used for anyone but me since she was 8. and amn did haring her call him that make me happy
The fact that he seems to think the two possibilities are poly or he steps aside so she can be with Dorothy is a big clue to me that he not only feels inferior here, but does so consciously.
Hank literally shows up because he’s so worried about his girls, but he wrongly concludes that it’s Jocelyne in the foreground, and Joyce in the background, because he’s already seen Joyce date boys, and he is old-fashioned.
I agree, though perhaps not for the same reasons you do. First, we’d need to find out what Dorothy thinks about the idea of a throuple or polyamory. If she’s against it, then the idea is obviously immediately out. I admit I did not expect Joe to be into it, but perhaps since he’s coming from a background where his relationships had no emotional connection to them, it’s not that surprising. But I think the biggest problem here might be Joyce, because I get the feeling that she still wants the idea of a “One True Love” and a soulmate with whom she remains with forever. That ambition won’t gel nicely with polyamory.
Being polyamorous doesn’t mean your “relationships [have] no emotional connection to them” so that point is irrelevant in whether or not Joe is down for polyamory.
Also, you can have multiple “soulmates” and “true loves” with polyamory, so she’ll probably be fine actually. Her ideas about monogamy are similar to her religious upbringing: it does no harm to question it and explore other options. Even if she ultimately chooses monogamy as a better fit, it’s okay if she tests the water to find out.
Joe got cheated on by her. Being a little bit pissed about it is fine in my book. If being called dude a bit for it is all she has to face, she probably shouldn’t complain.
Bojack Horseman is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen and I dead-ass couldn’t finish it because it’s just too routinely heart-wrenching, lmao. I’d assume anything made by anyone who made that, must be really really good.
It is! It’s a lot more grounded compared to Bojack, not talking animals here. It’s about 3 Jewish siblings and their personal struggles through the years.
I actually fully love that Joe DOES acknowledge that what Joyce did was ultimately cheating to satisfy one half of the audience, but is also completely understanding as to why Joyce, specifically, would fall into this exact situation, with the exact person that she did, which has ultimately been the point a lot of us have been trying to fucking make about this whole storyline, from the start.
The readers expect the characters to not make any mistakes under any circumstances, while even the other characters in the fake comic strip are more empathetic to each other, than the omniscient observers.
The comments are frequently a good reminder to go outside from time to time so I don’t wind up hunched over my keyboard at 6am trying to work out how the comic explains whether Willis or his wife cheated on the other in college.
I don’t think most of the so-called Paladins want characters to not make any mistakes, but they want those mistakes to be treated as mistakes.
Not framed narratively as grand romantic gestures as the Kiss was or immediately handwaved away as Joe is doing here.
i don’tget how him calling her out for it in this strip is him handwaving it away.
but more important here is that HE STATES HE PUSHED DOTTY INTO HER ARMS. he admit and takes responsibility for the fact that with any hyperbole the he created the environment for her to cheat!
acknowledging the context of the events in and around the decisions is important.
also crossing a line (like cheating) may be a poor decision, and it may have consequences, but if they learn from it, grow, and work to avoid making the same decision in the future, can we truely call it a mistake.
I vote yes. It’s still a mistake that’s the whole point. That’s why you need to learn from it, grow and avoid doing it again.
And generally people do that best if there are negative consequences. If you get what you want and no one even seems to be hurt by it, what’s there to learn? You learn that it worked out.
take apeak at some of the more recent psyc papers regarding te effectiveness of negative reinforcement of any kind, there is a LOT coming out now about the myth of the effectiveness of negaticve reinforcement. for something between 10-25% of te general population yes they learn best/only really learn from negative reinforcement, the rest show that at best negative reinforcement has no effect on the ability to learn from our actions. the theory i read on it that resonated most with me is that because of the vocal minority that do learn best from negative reinforcement tend to be amplyfied as their crossing of a line tends to be headline grabbing, which has lead to the “they only learn if we severely punish them, so anyone who crosses a line is only going to learn from severe punishment” becoming a more common view
The ex-fundie is jumping out but it’s okay, we’re learning, we’re becoming a better and more nuanced and more understanding person each day. And maybe a bit of a hussy, if that is what we find rewarding and joyful to us
I… think I like where this is going. Cool. This makes Joe’s reaction (and the comic’s framing thereof) make a lot of sense.
I get a bit of a gross reaction from Joe’s handling of the situation though. If I were Joyce (and I’m not), after I got over the initial high, I’d realize my boyfriend engineered a situation setting me up to cheat on him without communicating that to me, and that feels slimy. I might have to think on that some more.
I would say that he did tell Dorothy she should figure out her feelings for Joyce, and didn’t condemn her for it. He didn’t communicate that to Joyce because it isn’t his place to reveal Dorothy’s feelings for her. However, he couldn’t predict how things were going to play out. I’d assume his thought process was basically the following:
Dorothy: Joyce I’m in love with you.
Joyce A: Oh I’m flattered but no thank you, I’m already in a relationship and/or inexplicably straight.
OR
Joyce B: I have feelings for you too but I’d rather talk to Joe before we do anything solid.
He definitely didn’t set up them going to the protest and having a super charged moment that ends with a kiss, that was all them.
I think your first paragraph is overly vague for what Joe himself says is “nudging Dorothy in [Joyce’s] direction.” Joe himself is saying he (subtly, sure) guided Dorothy to pursue Joyce.
You’re right and make an important point when you say that cheating was not the only way this could have ended. I was too caught up in how things happened to turn out and didn’t think about that.
However,
While something like your outlined thought process seems feasible, (subtly, sure) guiding someone to pursue your (mutually-believed exclusive) girlfriend seems very reckless. Like it’s easy to imagine something going wrong, cheating possibly happening, even if it’s definitely not guaranteed.
Also, while I agree that Joe shouldn’t have revealed Dorothy’s feelings, there are other, more moderate courses of communication he could have taken. One is just, specifying beforehand that he would be okay with Joyce being non-exclusive with him, without making reference to anyone in specific. Joyce would probably say “I would never do such a thing” at the time, based on her reaction here, but when the time came and she kissed Dorothy, she wouldn’t have to worry about betraying Joe.
Another option is like, since he strongly believed Dorothy was in denial and wanted to pursue Joyce, he could have somehow made his approval clear to Dorothy, so that Dorothy could say “Joe is OK with this trust me.”
Maybe these options have flaws. It’s past midnight and I didn’t think through them that hard. But there were options, is what I mean to say.
Here, he calls it ‘nudging Dorothy in Joyce’s direction’ but the wording I used in my first paragraph is based on the actual exchange between Dorothy and Joe. Aka, what he considers his nudging. Which was just him saying “be honest with yourself, Dorothy”.
I do agree that those other options are available and he could have done them. I think the reason he didn’t do them sooner could be because of how quickly things snowballed in the comic. For us it’s been weeks. For Joe it’s been… two days? Maybe three? Could be that he was still figuring out how to word such things or how to have those kinds of conversations. I do think if Joe was open to being non-exclusive from the start, he should have said so. I do think this is where some people have a point that Joe is primarily making this choice because of Joyce kissing Dorothy. Not exactly a great place to start with polyamory, but I’m curious to see how it goes.
He wanted them to talk about their feelings for eachother, him being understanding about the cheating doesn’t mean it was at all part of his goals. People can have discussions like that without cheating.
Nah, he just told Dorothy to be honest about her feelings. What Dorothy then did with those feelings and how Joyce responded was completely un-engineered. I don’t think Joe even told Dorothy to talk to Joyce about her feelings, just to be honest with herself.
I’m not convinced Joe wanted his talking with Dorothy in past strips to result in Dorothy and Joyce cheating on him, but I do think he wanted Dorothy to realize and acknowledge her feelings for Joyce.
think i’ve said as much before, but his actions and comments going all the way back to the drinking night to me read that he fully was prepared for the possibility that dorothy and joyce would end up at the minimum kissing after poking dotty towards this. it feels to me at least if he wasnt at least prepared for this possibility, there would be more confusion at the minimum from him
If Joe were trying to weaponize it against Joyce, that could’ve been icky, but I don’t think that’s his goal here. He might have expected that Dorothy would stay in denial longer than a week, and he’d have a chance to talk to Joyce before that went anywhere. I don’t think this situation was exactly how he wanted it to go, but, he’s obviously thought it over and decided he could live with it. It remains to be seen if he came to that conclusion when it was still hypothetical, or when he saw the paper.
I don’t know if “icky” is the word I would have chosen, but I think it ties back to yesterday’s discussion about this coming from an unhealthy place for Joe.
Particularly combined with “But I will step aside, if “. If he’s deliberately set up a situation where that’s the expected outcome, he’s definitely seeing himself as a lesser partner for Joyce from the start.
He did set it up, to a degree that tarnishes him (more realistic and more interesting character) but also in a way that narratively absolves her too much IMO. I dread the after-the-fact consequentialism that’s going to excuse her cheating.
I’m really glad that Joyce is spinning out about this, and seeing polyamoury as inherently amoral because it’s so true to her character. Like yes she’s changed a lot etc but she’s still very young and has only been at uni for a little over a year? Or maybe not even a year yet? I appreciate Willis’ skill in writing character development, and part of that is recognising that Joyce is “unevenly lapsing out of a cult”.
Oh, no, I think it’s worse than that. I think she *will* “accept” it, even though it bothers her, because she’ll lie to herself *and* Joyce about being mature enough to handle something like polyamory because it’s the progressive thing to do. And she’ll just keep letting that fester.
I hope not, but of the three of them, Dorothy is the only one who has actually expressed jealousy regarding the others, and that’s a bad sign for poly.
Yikes, the way people talk about polyamory here is so fucking gross. She wouldn’t be “sloppy seconds” she’d be “Joyce’s other partner” or “Joyce’s girlfriend”.
I think the person you were trying to reply to was describing how they think Dorothy would feel in that situation, not give an objective assessment of the relationship dynamic. “Gross” is kinda the point.
It was 100% how I think *Dorothy* would take being poly with not just Joe, but anyone.
Dorothy, the character, screams unable to share whoever her current sexual partner is, be it Walky or Joyce.
It is in no way a slam on polyamory in it’s entirety. I, in fact, have gone on record as saying I want actual good poly representation, or at least less “Make them poly!” when *everything* about this foursome turning poly would be a train wreck.
Hell, I literally said “I want Joyce’s brother to be poly because I know ya’ll are itching for an actual not trainwreck representation.”
My bad, in that case. There has just been a LOT lately and I’m feeling snappish about it. I appreciate you clearing that up (and thanks to everyone else who helped) I misread the original comment and I don’t necessarily disagree that Dotty will refuse poly (though I hope she’s game for it).
@Nymph as correct as you probably are, this is not how Joyce thinks about it, and from what we know of Dorothy I don’t think she’s poly at all. So she’d feel like “sloppy seconds” even if she could intellectualise herself into being outwardly chill with it. Again, I hope we don’t see a “Just be ploly!” For these three because Joyce and Dotry defs aren’t, and it just delegitimises a whole relationship structure
Is it a true revelation if it doesn’t leave you muttering in an arcane tongue, curled up in a corner like a Lovecraft protagonist at the end of the story? 😆
Joe gently pushing Dotty aside
“Out of the way little girl.”
He flexes
“Only a big man like me can squish her against the wall like it’s a crusher press from the junkyard.
It’s certainly the train of though Joe is guiding her through. He may not agree with the premise that she’s a hussy, but you have to use the premises and categories that people have in their heads, their vocabulary if you will, to get anywhere.
Comment Section Yesterday: Joe’s so sad! Look how hurt he is in panel 5
Joe Today: I have spent the last six months in a hyperdimensional relationship cube constructing an intricate scheme in order to get my girlfriend to cheat on me. I’m not merely okay with you cheating on me, I actively caused it.
Probably not “to cheat on me”. More to leave me for her real love.
And I don’t think most people who were concerned for Joe yesterday were thinking he looked hurt so much as worried that he was being self-sacrificing because he didn’t really think he deserved Joyce. Which the whole “I’ll step aside” thing here reinforces.
Yeah, I’m getting a little tired of arguing with folks about it. They believe what they believe, and they’re going to keep twisting exasperation into rage until the comic stops giving them crumbs of hope for a big blow-out argument. (Then they’ll probably loudly announce that they’re dropping the comic, although they’ll really keep reading it.)
I’m not sure what you think I said, but I don’t think it was what you read.
I’m basically sure at this point there’s going to be no big argument here. I’m not fond of that, but it’s clearly where the story is going.
My point was that, responding to ESM’s post, I don’t think Joe had a scheme to get Joyce to cheat on him. That wasn’t his intent. To the extent it was a scheme, it was to get them to admit their feelings and then either try poly or he’d step aside. Cheating on him was a consequence, but not the plan.
Joyce: I’m sorry but I wanted to do it with Dorothy.
Joe: “Do it”? Joyce, I’m not a Republic Serial villain. Do you really think you’d give me a master stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting it’s outcome? You did it thirty-five minutes ago.
Amazing strip. Truly love everything about this. Looking forward to Dorothy’s reaction, and finding out whether she really is possessive of Joyce.
Personally my read is that everything she’s done that might come across that way was coming from a place of deep denial that she had feelings for Joyce and feelings of jealousy and fear that she was struggling to rationalize, much less accept. I feel like it’ll be different now.
And I also expect the actual relationship, if it gets off the ground, to be all kinds of messy! I just don’t agree with the idea that Willis did all of this just to have Dorothy immediately freak out at Joyce and dump her.
Honestly, I’m torn, but I don’t know that I would find it particularly realistic that Dorothy “I don’t tell my therapist everything so I can avoid getting a formal diagnosis” Keener is going to be able to come to terms with all of her internal issues/turmoil over this THAT quickly.
I’d still bet on “Dorothy, in some way, tries to make Joyce choose”, but I’d only bet one of Mike’s nickels because it’s clear that whatever Willis is doing this year has fundamentally broken my ability to predict what any of these dorks are going to do.
1. Dorothy HAS been hiding things from her therapist to avoid a formal diagnosis, but VERY specifically she said she was doing that because she was pretty sure that getting any kind of diagnosis would = not being a viable presidential candidate. That’s no longer on the table, so… maybe? Future sessions might be more productive?
But only “maybe”. Because even though she SAID this was the reason, I doubt it’s the entire reason. I just keep mentally comparing her resistance to being potentially autistic and her resistance to being potentially bisexual. It could EASILY all come back to the same thing, that her identity is still wrapped up in those expectations she set for herself as a child, but I don’t think she’s LET GO of it any of it, just because she’s let go of the idea of being president.
Or, put differently, I expect her to still need to work through some of this. Even if the proximal cause is gone, it left scar tissue. You know?
(But also, I would NOT be entirely surprised if Dorothy’s no longer resistant to the idea of being specifically bi. Because, speaking from experience, it can be a lot easier to face up to and tell other people “btw, I have an amazing girlfriend!” than “btw, I’m not straight… just thought you should know”.)
2. I can imagine it being a topic, I just can’t imagine it actually being a sticking point that ends the relationship, because yeah, too much work into poly at this point.
(Every strip where it’s come up with Joyce now reads like foreshadowing and it’s amazing.)
I don’t think Dorothy is going to freak out and dump Joyce, but I think she’s going to be in a tough position. I don’t think she’s going to be happy about the prospect of a poly relationship. She doesn’t like Joe, and she’s frequently been possessive of Joyce. I suspect she wants to revel in this new relationship that she wanted but never imagined she could have, and not have to split time with anyone else. I could be wrong, but that’s my read on her character.
But, she’s going to feel a lot of pressure to go along with it. If, as seems likely, Joyce comes up to her and says, “Hey, Joe wants to do a poly relationship where I date both you. I’m in, are you?” then either Dorothy goes along with it or she disappoints Joyce and guarentees heartbreak for either herself or Joe. That’s going to be a very tough position for her to be in if she’s not genuinely into the poly idea.
“She doesn’t like Joe” — this is one of the things I SPECIFICALLY think we might not actually know for sure just yet. Ditto on her actually being possessive of Joyce.
Because she’s said that she resented having to spend time with Joe for years while she was dating Danny, but at the same time, she really did become MUCH more overtly hostile to and about him after his romantic interest in Joyce became clear, and……. you know, we now know there were other factors there.
Similarly, I think any possessive tendencies she’s displayed were coming so much from a place of “jealous feelings I can’t even admit to myself, and therefore can’t process”. I think time will tell whether she’s actually a jealous person or not.
Personally, I think it’s at least as likely that we instead get “Dorothy tries too hard to be okay with this and to be nice to Joe, because she still feels guilty (not unreasonably) for the cheating, and also how nice he was to her about her denied feelings for Joyce”, which would be very awkward and potentially unsustainable, but a different TYPE of grist for the drama mill than “Dorothy hates Joe and forces Joyce to choose”.
…And then Puck flew back through the forest with the magic flower and zapped everyone back to their previously scheduled lovers. No polyamory, no bestiality…
Man, what a cop-out old Bill pulled.
Luckily our author doesn’t need to stay on the good side of an Established Church.
Yet.
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, though there’s no actual bestiality in it. It’s a man with the head of a donkey, magically, temporarily.
Let’s not forget that Joyce also “cheated” on Dorothy while Dotty was outside the room when Joyce attempted to first break up with Joe… and ended up giving him a BJ as thanks for a nice blanket.
Yeah, she’s actually just a confused idiot dealing with feelings she’s long suppressed, but, according to her old upbringing, her face should be in the dictionary under the word “hussy.”
I’ve been hesitating to say this because I really, really don’t want to discuss Israel/Palestine (which is a real and ongoing trauma for my family and me personally. Please don’t answer my vulnerability by talking about the horrible real-world events, please don’t cheer about what side you’re on, etc. Thank you very much for your kindness about this.)
And I’ve been hesitating to mention it because I anxiously hold onto every time Bulmeria *isn’t* a stand-in for traumatic world events that the author has less connection to / finds less traumatizing than I do — like, I hold onto the idea that it’s a civil war.
But, Joe’s reaction here is such a notable departure from how Isr/Pal impacts Jewish students in America.
Joseph Rosenthal doesn’t have family there, he has no particular opinion on Bulmeria, nobody ever accosts him about Bulmeria on the way to class. Nobody is threatening his safety over imagined ties to Bulmeria, he doesn’t even consider attempting to hide his ethnicity about it. He hasn’t lost friends because they’re chanting about how they sure hope his family will die. Bulmeria just doesn’t seem to impact him personally at all.
So, I’m glad Bulmeria is fictional, and not like the real thing, and it’s just a backdrop for some Westerners having a bisexual awakening.
I mean, Willis absolutely made Bulmeria into Bulmeria because it was and IS a backdrop.
Unfortunately, a lot of people seemed to have assumed the backdrop was not serious. That it was not him trying to signal the audience. “I am not going to talk about the real life tragedy here even if I’m going to comment on police brutality. It’s too big for a dramedy.”
Going back and reading this strip with the knowledge that Joe is actively manipulating Dorothy into a Dorothy ♣ Joe ♣ Joyce polycule is just incredibly hilarious.
I know this is supposed to be wholesome and everyone’s happy ending but I kind of wish Willis leaned into Joe being some kind of Lex Luthor of Threesomes. Because it’s so incredibly fucked up that Joe is all “Bisexual, you say” when this was apparently his plan all along and as a chaos sicko I absolutely love it. What in the hell.
What does he mean? How do you read “Who do you think nudged Dorothy in your direction?” The only other way I can see it is him basically conceding which I don’t think he’s doing. Whatever Joe is proposing feels a little strange otherwise.
I guess he’s willing to what? Be Joyce’s side dick? Her mister? Is that the proper term? That feels a little unfair to him. I’m not experienced at all in poly relationship dynamics. Info or context from experienced persons would be great.
So, all poly relationships are different, but it seems like you’re approaching it from the lens of being, like, a monogamous relationship where you’re allowed to cheat. No one is the side piece, she’ll just be dating both of them. Equally.
I understand a bit more after reading some of the comments. Thanks. I’ve decided to wait and see if we get more context to see if this is some big master plan from Joe or if he’s intentionally undercutting his own chances with Joyce or something else entirely. The way he presented this kinda threw me off. I guess ultimately whatever makes Joyce happy is his end goal.
There’s a word that I didn’t learn until after beginning my poly journey, “compersion”. It means taking joy in the fact that your partner(s) are feeling joy. I’m not H’s “side dick”, nor is J. We all want each other to be happy, is all. We’re happy when the others are happy. It’s really nice, especially when it’s firing on all cylinders. Sex is fun, but love, imo, is better.
He absolutely is at least willing to concede. “But I will step aside” – which if I remember correctly Willis was originally going to have him say to Dorothy in that scene where he talks to her about her crush on Joyce.
He doesn’t even seem to entertain the idea that Joyce might choose him over Dorothy (probably correctly). He’s definitely seeing himself as the lesser partner in the potential poly relationship – which is not healthy and is absolutely not how healthy poly works (or has to work – there are lots of variations).
I think it actually makes sense though because hes clearly aware of it and i dont think its a function of self loathing but the fact that he realizes now that dorothy and joyce have lowkey been dating for nearly a year in calender and he has been dating like 2 weeks
1. Joe was actively trying to get Dorothy to bang Joyce in that conversation, totally fine with Joyce cheating on him (and Dorothy cheating on Walky).
2. Joe’s ultimate goal is to be clubs with Joyce and Dorothy
Like, he’s apparently fine with Joyce breaking up with him to be with Dorothy, but his ideal scenario is a polycule with both of them and he’s saying all that explicitly here. Where am I wrong? Even if you believe he’s not be nefarious, he’s very much being manipulative in that conversation.
Ya, this is one of those situations where intent matters a lot to the context. You could certainly perceive it as shady behavior but once you add in the context and his intent, it falls apart.
My guess is that Joe foresaw this happening eventually if he said nothing, and didn’t want it dangling like a sword of Damocles over his relationship with Joyce. He might’ve had longer with her that way in the event he wasn’t chosen, but waiting for the drop would have poisoned it.
Joe foreseeing this as a potential issue was always my thought, too — I always read it as being more likely Joe was going for “look, you two, if you want to date go do that before I get invested in Joyce too hard, I’ll understand” but sure, “I’m willing to be poly about it” is adjacent enough that I can buy it.
In that context, Joe’s nudge is just that — “I need Dorothy and Joyce to figure out what is going on between them before I can really get committed to Joyce, and if that means I have to needle Dorothy onto the path of understanding that she’s bi, so it goes.”
i think viewing someone who was quietly aiming for a polyamorus relationship because it would make him and his girlfriend happy as some sex criminal who’s been secretly manipulating women this whole time is uh. fucked up, a little bit
ah studies at the beginning you are a young energetic girl from a fundamental family and before you know it you are building a wagon fort with other Hussites
It’s not really something these two should care about but I feel like this date both of us strat maybe screws over Walky. I guess we’ll see. Maybe Dorothy will try and pitch the same deal.
There is an exploit you can use though to boost your wisdom score an additional two points per level, but it’s really finicky. I hope they don’t patch it out anytime soon.
I meant to say this yesterday, but I’m seeing this working out with Joe, then Joyce going back to get stuff from her room, telling Sarah it all worked out and Joe says she can date them both, then Sarah dropping “Did Dorothy say you could date them both?”
Pfft, this sounds really on-brand for the comic honestly. It also is a very clean segway into the next lesson about a poly relationship: making sure you are considering both of your partners whenever life happens.
Joe might be an absolute GOAT character. Holy development Batman.
“Hey, I’m fine with doing the poly thing, but also yeah you did kinda cheat,” is like the most mature way he could’ve possibly navigated this situation. (I’m reacting to yesterday’s too because apparently I forgot to read it then.)
… Sooooo I’m guessing the Dorothy and Walky side will be an unmitigated disaster :V
you can tell joyce is SIGNIFICANTLY more comfortable with breaking down her boundaries/social constructs/sexual anxiety, incredibly so, because the last panel doesn’t have a red background
so. does her father or mother get the paper? will this be on other news? because uh-oh
Yeah, my parents were helicopter-adjacent and lived an hour’s drive from my campus, and THEY didn’t bother trying to get the campus newspaper (or, in my last year or two, look at it online).
That’s a thought I hadn’t considered. Most parents won’t keep up on the campus paper, but if they know their kid has a regular feature in it? That they’ll want to see.
I actually wondered about that and went and searched out the scene where she got the first issue with her comic in it. She said she was getting a copy for her dad. And for Jocelyne, her aunt, her grandfather, but probably not John. She ignores Sarah when she asks about her mom.
Joyce’s parents have a zero chance of reading the paper, or near enough.
The local mainstream news sources will have someone reading the campus paper as a minor part of their job, and police on the campus will be news. It comes down to what the reporter and editor think is important. Now, of course there is social media, a campus full of people with phones, and what spreads.
No, but it’s still a good photogenic shot. It’s likely to show up, even if it’s not given the focus Daisy gave it.
It’s also likely to take off on social media.
I have been watching this with glee for sure, and not having a *lot* to comment, but I will say – just like yesterday’s recontextualised Joe’s comments the morning after the gaybar girldranks – that this strip adds a fascinating new dimension to in the previous book
This is a really interesting observation and it makes a lot of sense! If we take Joe at his word- and I can’t think of a good reason not to- he honestly thought the greatest thing he could do for Joyce, the girl he loves, is to help her get laid with the other girl she gave every appearance of being in not-lesbians with.
As an aside, I am really frustrated how “Joyce is gay for Dorothy” being presented as a running gag for the entire run of the comic has screwed with my ability to interpret character traits. I’m so used to assuming that you’re just supposed to ignore character traits that are presented as humorous rather than take them seriously that I discount them out of hand. But deciding consciously *not* to do that still doesn’t solve the problem because the sexuality jokes are still right alongside other personality jokes like people being raging assholes to each other for a punchline or betraying each other for an exciting cliffhanger twist. I don’t like the idea that we’re supposed to take some parts of the comic more seriously than others, but which parts those are is a fun mystery for us to solve ourselves.
1) Wow, Joe really showing off his Joyce expertise here. 100% patience for Joyce, but Carol gets the steel chair. He’s never beating the “he is good for you” allegations.
2) Ooh we got some confirmation on Joe’s intent during his big scene with Dorothy. He wasn’t just being magnanimous or calling her out gently which is what it seemed like from Dorothy’s perspective. Seems like not only was he aware and accepting that Joyce might leave him from the first tiddy pic (and not just leave, but that it would be on him to “step out of the way”?? damn.) but also that he’s been considering asking for non-monogamy for several days?? Did we successfully sidestep the poly-under-duress trap?
What are we thinkin, gang? Has Joe officially entered Smarting of Age territory or is he is being overly selfless in a doormat way? Maybe some combination?
Yeah exactly this. I dont know why people thought Joe would have an issue. It seems pretty obvious and we’ve had a lot of foreshadowing to him being unjealous by nature and aware of non monogamy. First he mentions it to amazi girls mother its brought up with Sarah and Lucy and the like. But he b has noted the awkward intimacy between Joyce and dorothy knew this was a possibility. It is a bit sad he knew he would be the one to step aside but given how much longer this has been building between Joyce and Dorothy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew that was likely.
Both. I think Joe is still coming at this from a place of self-loathing (someone above said that he acknowledged that Joyce’s feelings for Dorothy were so much stronger than her feelings for him, which is certainly an interpretation of what he said yesterday. The thought of ever being in that position dealt horrific psychic damage to me.) but he’s trying his best to be “mature.”
I put “mature” into quotations because I personally believe it’s an incredibly childish view imo that anger is an immature emotion rather than a protective one/call-to-action one and that that belief is partially why things in the world have gotten so dangerous for various communities [not victim blaming them, I believe that the vilification of anger and idolization of nonviolence and pacifism are on some degrees malicious propaganda that it’s hard to make reasonable sounding arguments against.] Not that Joe should fly off the handle or anything, but he’s been saying very saintly things and making faces that don’t necessarily align with his words or actions.
Like, people say he orchestrated this like a grand master plan, but the face he made after Joyce and Dorothy went drinking was not the face of a man who had a great plan. His face when he answered the door today was not the face of a man who was pleased at this outcome. Irritation has seeped through several times during this conversation. He’s not as okay with this as he’s letting on, but it’s a mixture of really wanting to not lose Joyce and genuinely believing he doesn’t deserve to be jealous (as said before with Rachel). Maybe it’s something he works past, maybe he decides he wants someone who can reserve their whole heart for him instead of him having to settle for the quietest corner.
So like, he’s being smart-ish and mature-ish about this, but he’s also making himself smaller and less obtrusive. The discussion + understanding == Smarting, the potential denial of his own emotions and worth as a human being == Dumbing.
It doesn’t seem that way. It seems like he is somewhat upset but foresaw this and was pretty aware Joyce and Dorothy were stupidly horny for eachother and knew this would come up so he told dorothy to figure out your shit. It went unfortunately with a moment of passion pushing them to act unexpectedly to themselves but not everyone who knows them.
Joe doesnt seem to be minimizing himself just very aware that thisbis an option in a way Joyce isnt despite them both knowing a non monogamous group.
Joe “nudging” Dorothy into making a move on Joyce while angling for the polycule ending is…I wouldn’t really call it “nefarious” but there’s something a little Σ(-᷅_-᷄๑) about it.
I know we’ve discussed this but I still have to note how incredibly pissed I am with Daisy for what she did here. The image is one thing, it’s attention-getting and it has a kind of Banksy vibe that I get is irresistible to college age folks. But the headline and the way it outs them is just so so supremely crappy. It also makes me remember Jennifer telling Carla that Ruth’s home is not safe, because not everyone’s is. Just…ugh, dude, why? There were a million better ways to have handled that and I know this is a minor issue in the grand scheme but it continues to bug me. So there, noted, back to the mess at hand.
I have a million issues as a dyke with how daisy is portrayed and this is definitely one of them lol. Didn’t even reach out to Joyce and Dorothy for comment?
I am less concerned about Joyce and Dorothy being “outed”. (After all, they’re engaging in a public display of affection, in the middle of a conflict which probably has significant media attention.)
I would be more concerned that she was more concerned about a couple’s romantic relationship than the whole “police shooting at protestors” thing, which should have bee the subject that grabbed the headlines.
Super hero beating up cops and escaping was probably the biggest news of the day, but yeah as far as we know no shots were actually fired.
Tear gas and some hand-to-hand violence, but not even any evidence of rubber bullets being used. None of that’s really news.
The “grand scheme”, I think it’d be a much bigger issue. Not only does Daisy out them, it’s not even an appropriate photo for the news story. I find it hard to believe that there were no photos of the police violently arresting people or protestors standing off against the police.
IIRC, in the real life IDS article about police arresting protestors, the top photo is a line of riot police and a line of protestors, with a professor in a “not in our name” shirt in between.
This is why you don’t out people even for a great picture or headline: everywhere Joyce or Dorothy go, they’re going to get… feedback on this picture. And certain people will see it who might make trouble for them.
I like that Joe is acknowledging that what happened was wrong even if it isn’t really an issue for him. Andnwe do see he isn’t exactly okay with it but foresaw her and Dorothy having a thing
That’s not how I read it.
I don’t think he’s criticizing her kissing Dorothy or claiming it’s immoral.
I think he’s criticizing her hypocrisy and claiming dating both ( or him really) is something immoral and beyond the pale, when she already went very public doing it.
I don’t think he’s slut shaming her as defending their continuing relationship from her slut shaming it to Death.
( But she did have him beaten up for less ,so ).
My reading is that Joe knew that the Joyce / Dorothy matter would rise up at some time. He wanted it addressed before he and Joyce went too far. Better to have it out now than months down the road. Insightful and thoughtful.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to regard an actual relationship structure that millions of people feel fulfilled and happy in as something inherently salacious.
Real talk: I see a masc-presenting person who’s not exactly conventionally hot, who is talking about being in a serious poly relationship or with long experience with same, and I just immediately assume he’s a hero in the romantic arts.
It really depends on how the relationships are developed. “Harem” in a contemporary fictional context is “One important character, with multiple accessory side characters as romantic partners”.
We don’t look at harem stories as “Oh what a great example of poly relationships in media” because they aren’t. What distinguishes them is the one sided focus. Only one character is actually narratively important, and the other characters just exist to bolster and develop the fantasy of the person with the “harem”.
To be honest, I do see some of this in Joe and Joyce’s relationship. Right now it basically seems 100% one-sided. Is Joe right now a character that has his own separate interests and agency that are developed and explored in the story?
Now that Joyce AND Joe have referred to Joyce’s actions as cheating (which Dorothy and Sarah have also effectively said), I hope that’ll be the end of replies I got like this one from yesterday:
“What cheating?
People jumping on the “cheating” wagon really say more of themselves than of Joyce and Dorothy. <.<"
Joyce: I’m becoming… you.
Joe: Yeah, go on, girl!
Joyce: I want… to having sex… with all girls in campus.
Joe: Hell yea, girl, go wild!!
Joyce: I want… I feeling like … pushing up 150 lb !!
Joe: What?
*Joyce’s arms and legs are growing up. Shes is stretching, getting taller and more muscler.
Joyce: AHHHH *rips her shirt* I’M A MONSTER, MOTHERFUCKER!! WHERE’S MY SHAKE? BIRRRLLL!!
Joe: No! Not like that, Joyce! Not like that!
On the one hand, shipper brain likes both Joyrothy and Joeyce, wants both
On the other, yeah, I don’t think Joyce is in a place mentally to handle being polyamorous. It takes work. And also she is still in a lot of fundie mindset that she needs to work through first. Honestly probably needs to address more of it now that she’s kissin’ girls.
Joyce is polyamorous. Joyce has been polyamorous. She just needed someone to point it out, and she needs to figure out how to be poly without fucking it up like she has been the last couple of comic days. And the sooner she starts figuring that out, the better.
I mean, seriously, in the last couple of days, she almost kissed her girlfriend, then immediately jumped up and went on a romantic date with her boyfriend, which she expressly intended to end with sex (which it did, more or less). Then she figured out that her girlfriend had already taken her virginity (by some definitions) and dragged her off to do it again, but that got interrupted, and instead she ended up lesbian-marrying her girlfriend in the middle of a police riot and making out with her on the front page of the newspaper. And apparently everywhere else between Dunn Meadow and the front steps of their dorm. Then she gave her boyfriend a bj before taking her girlfriend to bed to spoon her and nibble on her ear, and then try to lure her into the shower with her in the morning. That’s not to mention going out on a date for dranks, cuddles, and suggestive little arm caresses with her girlfriend before coming home and crawling into bed with her boyfriend.
She’s already dating both of them. She’s arguably been dating Dorothy longer than she’s been dating Joe, even if neither of them consciously acknowledged that their relationship was romantic and/or sexual. And now it turns out that everyone was aware of this except her. Basically all Joe is saying here is, “I know what you’ve been doing, and I support you continuing to do it.”
(Tangentially, Joe knows about Joyce “doing laundry” with Dorothy, but he’s never been given any details, and I doubt he suspects that it was as hilariously PG as it actually was. He probably thinks that Joyce and Dorothy were already more physically involved than they are even now when she got together with him.)
It is one thing to love multiple people, it is another thing to choose to devote the time, energy, and emotional capacity to recognize that love as a romantic relationship.
Joyce has a lot of love, but she is absolute shit at polyamory because polyamory requires trust, respect, and communication.
This is what I love about this comic. Joyce giving grace to others but still thinking of herself as a sinner, or in this instance; a “hussy,” rings so very true to how de-programming works, or at least how mine has been.
Both Joyce and Becky speak so truly to the experience of “escaping from a fundie upbringing and trying to purge that toxicity from not just your words but also your thoughts” that despite being a cishet guy, there is no one I identify with harder than these two queer women.
Now, did my journey include a bi-awakening, having a gun pointed at me, or being kidnapped by a mobster? Thankfully no, but it’s the… the word I wanna use is “mental landscape” of these characters is so achingly familiar.
I absolutely love love love it. Keep up the great work, (Damn You) Willis. 😄
That scene highlighted an important step in the deprogramming process: recognizing that there are positive things that stay with you too, and that you don’t have to reject 100% of your previous identity and life in service of growth. Quoting that line of scripture helped to punctuate and illustrate the depth of her feelings in that moment (in a very “Darmok and Jalad” sense). There is so much of scripture that is in fact quite beautiful and meaningful and helpful to personal growth, it’s when you start to ascribe extrinsic authority to its words that you enter the danger zone.
Side note: I really like her citing scripture in that scene because it really highlights how much she’s moved beyond the “contrarian” phase of her atheism into a more healthy equilibrium.
I’ve always found Joyce’s struggles with her own sexuality compared to her Fundie upbringing interesting, especially because in a way it was reversed for me. We’ve both already discussed religious backstory in the past, but I’d say even when I no longer believed in it, the main reason I identified as ‘Christian’ for as long as I did is because, while my peers were all sorts of hormonal and clearly experiencing ‘the hornt’, I… was not.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized of course that I am a sex repulsed asexual but in the late 00s we didn’t have that kind of vocabulary, and certainly not for teenagers in the south. So for me, I just figured it was because of all the southern Christianity stuff. Like even when I doubted things, I’d think “hrrm well. I still believe in waiting to have sex til after marriage (because I have no desire or urge to do so but I don’t understand that yet) so clearly I must still be a Christian”. As I started accepting myself and again, making peace with the fact that I really REALLY held no love for the church (helped along by going to college and experiencing fundamentalist protestors yelling at us about how we were going to Hell), I was able to shed what little connection to ‘Christianity’ was left.
Sidenote too, during one of those instances of protestors yelling at students, one of them singled me out and accusingly asked if I was a virgin. When I answered that I was, she immediately set her hands on me and said “oh BLESS you. BLESS you for waiting until marriage!!!” and I had to just scurry away in a HURRY like “uh huh yeah sure of course marriage wink wink”.
You know what they say, ain’t no hate like “Christian love.” It never ceases to amaze me how these fundies and fanatics can’t line up the dots between “people don’t like going to church or associating with us” and “we are unceasing assholes to everyone all the god damn time.”
I recently got turned on to the preview panels available on Tumblr Blue sky etc and it’s weird reading the comic that that context now. Certain things are ruled out, like for example that Joyce and Walky will never be in the same room again without yelling at each other (at least not constantly).
I think Joe might be the most emotionally mature character in the story right now. Holy shit. He’s handling this really well. I doubt it will last. The psychological damage of all of this is being held back by raw willpower and compassion right now, but it’ll hit eventually. This could very possibly end well, but they really need attend therapy *together* and work it all out as a throuple, because this is an awful, terrible start to things.
Ah, so this was actually all according to keikaku
I wonder how the people who were full “how dare Joyce betray Joe! >:(” are feeling right now
….
your feelings were valid
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HUSSY TIME!
oh, look at the time!
Joyce can do a little hussing. As a treat.
Out of curiosity, where did the “as a treat” meme come from?
Know Your Meme let me down, but apparently Twitter in 2019 is where this came from. https://www.themarysue.com/you-can-have-a-little-new-twitter-meme-as-a-treat/
I feel like I’ve heard that phrase even earlier than 2019, though. It feels like something that I’d hear on an old Super Best Friends let’s play.
Oh, the phrase itself is way older than the meme. it was just the “cat can have little a salami” meme that made it more popular.
This sentence at the end of the article is blowing my mind a little:
“It’s the end of the year, we’re all broken and trying to just get to 2020 (which … why? It’s just going to be the same kind of stuff), and if we want to laugh at a meme that started by giving cats pieces of salami, as a treat? Well, that’s what we deserve after whatever kind of year 2019 ended up being.”
The fact that that writer thought 2019 was a terrible year and expected 2020 to be more of the same… ahh, the joys of 20/20 hindsight… xD
my internal monologue when i read the line “having x as a little treat” is always a female voice i cannot place, but my feeling is it either comes from one of the Philly creamcheese adds of the late 90s early aughts, or a sex and the city style show (i have a female voice saying something along the lines of “it’s nice to treat yourself to a little treat!” or “some times (something related to dating/one night stands) is nice as a little treat” i
Thank you, Mac089. I had feared it was from a movie that everyone in the world except me had seen.
It is on KYM after all, with some information the article from The MarySue lacks:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cats-can-have-little-a-salami
The lack of the frequently-added “as a treat” may have made it harder to find? Searching for “little a salami”, as kancil said, helped.
Oh! First time commenting because I have the autistic need to pop in with Helpful Information!
It’s actually probably related to the “cats can have little a salami” meme (frequently reproduced with “as a treat” at the end). I personally saw it morph and evolve in real time, when people started saying things like “X can have a little Y, as a treat”—some maintained the “little a” configuration at first, but it largely dropped off over time as it became more distanced from its source material. I don’t know if there are any convergent evolution lines in play, but the cat meme is definitely one directly traceable source.
Thanks for being helpful!
peanut butter HUSSY time
peanut butter HUSSY time
smoochin’ faces ALLA time it’s
peanut butter HUSSY time
(from The Ethical Hussy, by Joyce Brown, PhD, University of Chicago Press, 2036)
YOU MEDDLESOME HUSSY!
it would’ve worked too if it weren’t for you
…meddling photographers?
Dorothy works for that paper
To extent, so does Joyce (via the comics)
Did Daisy knowingly publish a photo of two of her own employees just because she was too thirsty to realize what she’s doing
…I had not thought about these are your employees angle. Don’t love that.
Unless maybe whichever adult faculty member who oversees the paper said “Why are you not running this article about the protest? Lead with that!” and unwittingly pushed this photo for the lead article. xD
And thus Joyce takes her next step on the road toward Internet Porn Queen.
David Willis: the man drew hussies.
“Hussin’ makes me feel good”
Hussytime! Can’t touch this!
I am here to note that today is the 1-year anniversary of this strip: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/dropped/
Happy 1-year anniversary!
Perfect
I scrolled a few strips on from that and came across this lovely exchange.
Sarah : “Polyamory is not a magical solution to all relationship conflict.”
Joyce : “Did someone hit you on the head?”
(I may have not included surrounding context, but it’s funnier this way).
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/envisioned/
*Makes a bookmark for this strip right next to the one where Joe breaks down about how much he hates cheating*
I remember Joe breaking down about hating divorces when carol came to visit but I don’t remember him having another breakdown vis a vis cheating.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/delight/
Less of a specific breakdown more of building his whole persona around the fact that cheating ruined his childhood
So, this is a tricky one, because it’s true but I’m not sure it was Willis’s original intent.
Joe DID defend his list to Joyce by specifically saying that “that way, no one really gets hurt” [1], but in context? This strip came directly after Joyce told him she liked her rating because it was the only one based on how he felt about her as a human being, and he was defending not thinking of other people as human beings.
Joyce then challenges him on this notion directly, and the next time he says anything about his list, he’s telling Rachel he “thought [he] was being funny, but [he] wasn’t, so [he’s] stopping” [2], and then we later see him approach Amber specifically to “make friends” and to “learn how to talk to people as people” [3] (go back one comic for the previous line).
At the same time, Joe’s feelings about his parents’ divorce have evolved. Way back in 2013 when Richard first appeared, Joe was kind of blase about his dad’s behavior (“I wish I could say he was like this only after the divorce” [4]), whereas when Richard first tried to tell him that he and Stacy were an item, Joe was much more hostile: “No, Dad. Because you won’t be faithful to her. You will cheat on her and you will hurt her” [5].
I actually don’t think Joe has ever directly connected these two dots, though it does of course make sense that they would be related.
(I also think the fact that Richard has so far stayed faithful to Stacy might ALSO be part of why Joe asked Joyce out: if there’s hope for his dad, then maybe…
But that’s even more headcanon, heh.)
Bonus: Joe has, more than once, talked about himself as being ruinous in a not-quite defined fashion [6][7]. It reminds me of how Joyce sometimes talks about herself, actually, Dorothy, too, has gone on similar little rants about what a bad person she is. In this potential polycule: left side anxiety, none self-esteem.
References (1/4)
1. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/shallow/
2. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/oath/
References (3/4)
5. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/doing/
6. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/messed-2
References (4/4)
7. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/established-2/
… sighs tiredly at my formatting oh well
References (2/4)
3. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/circumstances/
4. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/persistent/
Good catch, so she is aware. In the abstract, at least.
it’s amazing how much changes in 2 days
o7 godspeed, joyce. own it
Lmao
I kinda love that he’s calling her dude, for some reason that makes me happy
I am a major proponent of the belief that dude is 100% gender neutral, status neutral, even species neutral.
I am dude, my sister is dude, my dad is dude, even my cat is dude.
We are all as one, and that one is dude.
Regardless of its usage, Dude abides.
Historical note that might be of interest to someone: The first time I heard “dude” used to mean “man” or “guy” was in 1967, in Middletown, O. I thought it was weird usage, because, up to then, “dude” was a western term for a well-dressed city slicker from back east. Wikipedia says the modern usage goes back to California surfer culture in the early ’60s.
Personally, I’ve never called anyone “dude.”
It was a common saying amoust the Teddies I caroused with back then.
these days everyone is Bruh
How many dudes would Joe say he’s had sex with?
Well, there’s at least Joyce, by her own metric.
I would advise not putting this belief into practice when interacting with trans women. Just a tip.
Heh, I came out as a trans woman at work months before I planned because one manager, who didn’t know any better, kept calling me dude in a conversation. I knew that he didn’t know, but it bothered me so much that I came out the next day. xD
as a trans woman, i agree, but i’m also a Californian surfer girl, i use dude unisex as well. mostly as an intensifier tho
Actually, I’m pretty sure Joe’s just using it as an intensifier here, too.
Yes, dude is mostly an intensifier for me.
Dude is 100% an intensifier. A milder version of “My Brother in Christ” as in “My Brother in Christ, why is there a pizza in the oven with a timer set for two hours?”
This discussion of the grammatical use of the word dude warms my heart.
Absolutely under no circumstances call a trans woman “my brother in christ” either
Dot: How about something like “my sister in Hecate”? Or whatever other goddess appeals.
Look just call me “she.”
She, you got caught cheating on your boyfriend on the front page!
ha. ha. ha.
there, Risky, do you feel better
I spent an insane amount of money in life to not be called dude, and i certainly don’t look like one now lol. Even still i mostly just roll my eyes when someone addresses me like that. Not really worth the effort of correcting them unless i know them personally. It’s just kinda annoying is all.
My best friend had to break his habit of calling everyone dude when he started working at a school with a shall we say highly unusual proportion of trans and nonbinary kids to cis ones, because while some embrace dude, you never know which ones will be offended, so better not to do it at all. He switched to saying human (as in “What’s shakin’, my humans?”), which comes out just pleasantly weird enough to not bother anyone so far.
I love this
“my gentle and of course very modern apes”.
h/t to Gutsick Gibbon
yeah, myself and the other trans women i know all bristle at it pretty distinctly. it doesn’t feel great to hear
Yeah, you have to keep in mind that even if you think a word like Dude ought to be unisex, we live in a world where it isn’t and people aren’t always going to interpret it like you do.
Agreed. But I think this is one of those situations where one also needs to analyze intent. For example, back in Australia it’s fairly common for “c*nt” to be used as an insult for an a-hole, regardless of the person’s actual gender. In some circles (often considered as people coming from a lower-class background), it’s even thrown around so casually that it’s lost its pejorative impact and has become just another slang. It would also be unrealistic to expect an entire culture to change in a short time to fit a universal ideal. (It would be NICE, mind you, but I’m being realistic here. These sorts of changes take time, often generations.)
Fun fact, the c-word is the English pronunciation of “cunnis” which is the latin term for vulva (weirdly, the word vulva is latin for the womb). As such, it is actually the correct word for the labia and other outer structures whereas vagina specifically means the internal canal.
Personally, I’ve been trying to reclaim it as a replacement for p—y since I find the later term both demeaning and gross.
Yes, except it’s cunnus.
That’s why it’s le con in French – well, it was. These days that means “male dumbass”.
Oh, I’ve been doing the same in my writing. I couldn’t find a different term for that general anatomy that I liked- everything is either too clinical, or it’s that one word that I associate with just /so/ much bad writing at this point. This one’s good- short and snappy and matches up well with the various terms for the, ah, other type of frequently-involved-in-smut anatomy.
@eh, whatever
I don’t actually know latin, I just do a lot of research, so I relied on google translate for the proper spelling. Fuckin google.
@S.R. I know right? Both four letters, both punchy, both start with a C. They’re well matched.
I’m also a fan of “phallus” for male anatomy because it’s fun to say. “Phallus!”
Both my cats think, indeed, that their name is Dude.
That’s adprable
*adorable
And then there’s THE Dude. The One Dude to dude them all.
Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Obviously you’re not a golfer.
Krypto is dude! 😛
I agree on dude. I sometimes use guys as a pronoun for family or friends, regardless of sex.
I have this feeling that the ninja turtles may ave helped prepare the gender neutrality ot the term as “dude” and Dudette” were both in early cartoon mikes primary slang, but i seem to remember as the srries went on that he hust shortened to calling the whole group as dude/dudes especially after black haired glasses girl (aprils’ ….. assistant i think its been 30 years) became a part of the regular cast
I wonder (honestly my adhd brains filing system is like using Mbasic to compine python) where the line “My dudes, dudettes, duderinos and duderitas” is coming from in my head
Ladies, gentleman, fluids, and nonbinaries. Answer this question for me. Is “dude” a unisex/universal term now? Cause I use it pretty universally to address anyone but I’ve also been corrected a few times conversationally so I’m not 100% sure. Maybe it’s a generational thing?
In my opinion “dude” is a universal term until someone says that they don’t want to be called it. Gotta be respectful, that’s all.
sometimes everything in life, society, and culture, is actually THIS EASY. too bad most will never understand
So much this. Do jerkwads realize how much time and effort they could save by NOT going out of their way to be complete bongos to people, often complete strangers?
I recall a comedian explaining that depending on tone, “Dude” can mean anything from “Congrats on the Nobel” (Duuude!!!) to “stop setting fire to my dog” (Dude….) to “Are you in the closet with a knife” (….Duude???)
…duuude…
Some people are okay with it, others aren’t. Pretty much like most opinions. Personally I don’t use it universally because I’d rather err on the side of caution.
Depends on the person.
Personally, I’m in the habit of calling my sister “dudette”. She seems to enjoys it :D.
There’s also the option taken by Soos from Gravity Falls. Adressing Dipper and Dipper’s twin sister Mable:
“Dude, girl dude.”
One of the rare cases where “What would Soos do?” is the correct question to ask ^^
Scott Pilgrim (movie version) greeted two people with the words “lady dudes.”
Ah, now I’m thinking about Carrot and Vimes discussing ‘honcho’, because surely ‘honchette’ is the diminutive, not the feminine
If Kim Petras is the “head head honcho,” then I assume “honcho” is gender neutral.
But if Ted Striker was the numero uno honcho, that implies it’s masculine (at least in Spanish)…
but it works for chumps and chumpettes!
That’s the feminine diminutive. The masculine diminutive would be honchet, like sachet (from French sac).
In Spanish, it’s -ito m., -ita f..
@Wraithy2773
I too enjoy a good French feminization.
How it is used is dependent on the speaker and to whom they are speaking. In particular, there can be different connotations from a guy calling another guy dude from a guy calling a gal dude. A guy may use it more casually with other guys, as a subconscious recognition of masculinity. But the same guy might only call a lady “dude” to show acceptance into a closer circle.
I read something that explained all that better, but can’t find a link.
I think it was this or something very much like it but more recent. Figure 2 shows relative rates of “Use of dude by Gender of Speaker and Addressee for People under 30 Years of Age”.
I expect the values of the chart have changed since 2004, but the paper does explain how “dude” can sometimes be gender neutral, but not always.
if you read it, expect some heteronormativity.
Yeh
When a straight guy insists that dude is always gender-neutral, it’s fun to ask them to say “I love to fuck dudes”. (Or “to kiss dudes”, if you want to be less crass about it.) That opens their minds pretty quickly, to: it depends!
Southern Californians habitually call everything dude, including inanimate objects. But straight-guy Californians still don’t want to smooch dudes.
I think if you’re getting corrected on it more than once, you’re probably talking to people where it’s not landing well, so maybe switch out the word for something else.
There’s also a pretty healthy rubric to the effect of “if you’ve ever let the word ‘dude-ette’ pass your lips, you probably don’t internally think of ‘dude’ as completely gender-neutral”.
Part of it is context sensitive though. Used to address some one, like Joe is using it here, it’s far more unisex than other contexts, which is partly why the “kiss dudes” approach gets a different reaction.
I like to smooch some dudes, not all dudes. Pretty much I like to smooch the dudes who present as female. (That’s actually an exaggeration; I’m autistic, and don’t like to even touch most dudes, much less smooch them.)
I mean. The people correcting you probably have reason for not wanting to be called dude, or know someone who deeply does not want to be called dude.
Can’t ask us to override what people in your life have said.
But also: what Leorale said. A lot of people who think they use it completely gender neutrally will still discover to their surprise that they don’t if they’re asked to really think about it.
I wonder if it’s generational because most of the people that have corrected me skew older. Mother’s friends I’ve occasionally tried to converse with, professional acquaintances, perhaps it might even be as simple as “dude” being too casual or familiar a term for the assumed relationship dynamic. People I don’t even know that are close in age to me don’t seem to care much regardless of assumed gender, but I do also live in Cali so like it could even be a regional thing like adding “like” unnecessarily or using the occasional “hella”.
It’s also a gender thing. People with dysphoria have more reason and more intense feelings about “gender-neutral” terms that seem to get used disproportionately on them. It’s so often micro aggression that it ceases to be neutral at all.
This is also the case with the singular they when applied to trans women, just as a fun fact! It’s used to degender us and disregard our female identity.
Yeah, I’m admittedly defaulting to it with the comment section, but I AM trying to remember individual people’s pronouns because… yep! Still wish there was a field for it.
This is the sort of thing we really need a set of formal etiquette rules for. I know a couple of trans folks (in the far reaches of one of my gaming circles) whose opinion is “asking me my pronouns is implicitly saying I’m not female-presenting enough, and is just as degendering as calling me ‘them'”.
Meanwhile, my partner finds it deeply disheartening that it’s very rare someone guesses “they” for them, as an AFAB enby who is actively trying to de-feminize their look.
Personally, the majority of folks I’ve interacted with have been in agreement with “asking pronouns upon first meeting is the polite way to go about it”, but the diversity of opinions, some mutually exclusive, makes me wish it were possible to guarantee avoiding offending anyone.
@Li: Also a problem specific to the comment section — the gravatar situation routinely leads to people having avatars that do NOT match their gender identity, which just adds that little frission of difficulty to remembering
I think there ARE situations where asking for pronouns is othering, but… honestly the only solution there is to keep doing it, in every situation, until it’s genuinely the default behavior, and NOT something you have to wonder if a group of cis people are only doing because they clocked you, specifically, as trans.
That said: if corporate doesn’t have out trans people in visible positions of power, asking employees to put their pronouns in their bios or whatever is always going to be… hit or miss, shall we say. Having to choose between misgendering yourself and outing yourself at work is always a sucky thing.
But also, yes. I like gravitar roulette… but it WOULD be nice if we had the option to pick one.
@Li
… but you can pick one. You can set your grav at the “Get a Gravatar” link by where you enter your name.
You need to put in your own image, but avoiding Grav Roulette is exactly why I did that.
@Rose that’s not what I want tho! I want the ability to pick a character name from a drop down so that I always have the latest grav for that character 🙂
I suspect that it’s partly generational, partly what Li said, and partly dependent on exactly what cultural context everyone involved has around the word.
You could probably write some kind of Ph.D. thesis on the differences in usage/connotations of “Dude” among Californian surf culture followers, fans of The Big Lebowski, and fans of Good Burger.
(as one of the latter two, I will both happily say “yeah, I’ve fucked tons of dudes. We’re all dudes.” and happily NOT say it to refer to people whose opinion on the word I don’t know or are negative, e.g., we’re all dudes, but my friend K is never a dude, because they construe it as masculine and they are not.)
Both? The default masculine is grammatically accepted in many languages not just English slang. And on the other hand there are many women, cis included, who would feel misgendered, de-gendered, or just plain disrespected by being addressed with a masculine default especially from their partners. So, yes uhh gender neutral-ish dude exists, and also sometimes it’s highly inappropriate.
Many, many women do not like to be called it. “Dude” is being rebranded as gender neutral because up until recently, male gender was viewed as neutral to most situations. It’s gotten beyond the point where you should pivot if someone requests you to, you should just *never* refer to someone as dude without prior knowledge of their comfort levels.
I can’t speak for Joe and Joyce, I’m sure they’re both fine with it. In the real world, this kind of thing is a slap waiting to happen.
In certain contexts (like calling someone out in exasperation) dude is a gender neutral tern
In the wise words of Ed from Good Burger: “I’m a dude, he’s a dude, she’s a dude, we’re all dudes, hey”
Which came out in the 90s! So for at least 30 years Dude had been gender neutral!
Dude has been a gender neutral term for a long time for me.
samesies ^^
My feeling is that dude is usually gender neutral, especially when referring to a group of people, and while it sometimes can be specifically masculine (rarely specifically feminine, except as an explicit contrast to the masculine usage), context and/or intonation will nearly always make the distinction clear. Regardless, however, it’s not polite to use it to refer to someone who has expressed a preference to the contrary.
“I’m a dude, he’s a dude, she’s a dude, ’cause we’re all dudes. Hey!”
– Ed from Good Burger
i ask where else do we get such a civil discussion of the term dude.
now informal question for the technicalor rainbow that is the comment section:
for as many uses we can study for the word dude, is “fuck” even more versatile?
*plays Filthy/Gorgeous by Scissor Sistors on hacked muzak*
Don’t trust hussies!
Hussiephobe.
Hussies are just as trustworthy as everyone else! Trust me, I know, I’m one!
Or anyone that uses ‘dude’.
Dude.
Especially hussies with their own ongoing comics! That’s how you get people painting themselves gray.
Accepting your true nature is the first step, Joyce. 🙂
Honestly, true.
This is exactly what I have been waiting for, acknowledgment.
The first step towards anti-Joyce?
I thought it was Walky, but Joyce was the true harem protagonist this whole time! Throw Becky and Dina in there too while we workshopping this. Joe already has a weird sort of platonically physical relationship thing going on with Dina anyway.
it’s only a few short steps from “Joyce Brown, front-page hussy” to “Joyce Brown, internet pornlord”
Yesss. Embrace the hussitude. Become shameless (positive).
#HUSSYSWEEP
We have Joyce-face
Wasn’t sure we would ever see it again. 🙂
Embrace the hussydom Joyce! Use it to conquer the world!
ifuckeing todla yougus ythat jeo was doign ti on ruspe lololol
imd runk rn buti nedd togloat. hahaha
I beleive the following is an accurate translation:
“I fucking told you guys that Joe was doing it on purpose. lol lol lol
I’m drunk right now but I need to gloat. ha ha ha”
omgthank yo us omuch i was s os cared not one wheould know this
youre may now best friend
Stay hydrated tonight and have fun!
I’m big enough to admit when I was wrong. Well done.
Though unfortunately, I no longer have a use here for Mike Snow’s Genghis Khan – the greatest music video ever, of all time.
Tangentially related but have you see the video for the Miike Snow song “My Trigger” which is the second greatest music video ever, of all time, because it features the same two dancers from Genghis Khan?
I have now! Thank you for the recommendation.
Why do you drunktype like you were an Andrew Hussie character?
thats htgenmeansiest thine snyeones every said to me
Awww 🙁
I’m sorry, have a good time being drunk.
Well one lf the characters actually was drunk typing pretty often.
The real answer is that between impaired motor functions and lack of fucks given, i just kinda slap the keyboard and don’t go back to check that what I typed was really words or not.
Congrats! Both for the prediction, and for being so drunk!
Hi everyone, I’m sober again. What I meant to say was:
I called this back during the conversation where Joe called Joyce “everything” right when Dorothy was realizing she was getting a little bit gay. There was never any monogamous explanation for that lmao.
Which also means that Joe has been planning for this the whole time. In an ideal, perfect situation, he’d have said it up front and Joyce wouldn’t have jumped the line. Unfortunately, being polyamorous is still deeply stigmatized and he probably had trouble finding the words/was scared of the reaction, so he put it off until he couldn’t anymore. He’s not degrading himself by suggesting it as a last resort, this isn’t a trauma response to avoid feeling cheated, this was his desired, ideal outcome from the jump.
Also, wow, I really thought alcohol was supposed to taste *better* the more you have, but every additional chug of that sangria last night tasted more and more like turpentine. Bleugh.
Being monogamous doesn’t prevent you from showing empathy for someone who has a crush on your partner.
have you ever met a monogamous person? they get mad at me for having a crush on *my* partner
i also have a recipe for a really ficking sweet hard hitting drink that tastes like strawberry pocky, but i do ot recomend having more than one due to it being 1oz baharosa, 1oz kalhua and fill glass with milk
goddamn this was supposed to be below th other post
I… how does that make even the slightest bit of sense? How do you say “I am monogamous” and also say “man, I hate it when someone else actually likes their partner.” How does the internet keep attracting people with the most bizarre takes? Tired of my brain being broken by the gibbering madness of these people.
I’m mostly venting about how monogamous people on the internet tend to get deeply upset about my identity and lifestyle, to the point where several of them have implied or outright stated my fiance should find someone more “””faithful””” because they truly do not believe polyamorous love is actually love.
hence my incredulity at the notion a straight, supposedly monogamous cis guy would see someone with intentions on his girlfriend and offer unyielding support and understanding. Like yeah, Joe could just be the fantastical ideal of an ally, but… he’s probably just poly, is what i’m saying, lmao. because, again, if they can’t even support people in *other* relationships, i very much doubt it being very common in their *own* relationships without that polyamory being part of the equation
It will never cease to amaze me how bad some folks are at minding their own goddamn business. I didn’t know about polyamory until very recently, then another friend of mine mentioned it offhand. My response was “oh, alright. Hey, do you mind passing the cheetos?” (Actually, my real response was to do research because I am a giant fucking nerd who enjoys that thing and wanted to better understand the world my friend inhabits.)
Is it something I am interested in? No. Am I gonna be a whiny little bongo if other people can find happiness and fulfillment in ways that make sense? No. My motto is “you do you, fam,” or “live and let live” if we’re being formal.
your error was sangria, the extra aciditty of the fruits wil lcause that as you drink more. my recommendation is 2 large ice cubes, 1oz kraken gold rum (goddamn oompaloompa, can’t get it here in canuckistan atm) a slice of lime and canada dry ginger ale, will have you going “what alcohol”
P.s. i know canada dry is only ginger flavoured but i am such pale ass freckled ginger that i don’t need the real stuff in in my G.ALE. honestly find the ones with the extract to be to poor for mixing with rum, better with whisky.
also the flavour agent is basically super condensed ginger extract that has been used by peple to flavour thngs ginger for 200+ years
If you’re going for rum and ginger, a proper Dark and Stormy is the only way to go.
Gosling’s Black Seal, a good Ginger Beer and that little bit of lime. To be fair, it’s not exactly a “I really can’t taste the alcohol” drink
as i said, rum and realginger ale/ginger beer do not taste good togeter to me, pairs better with a whisky
Cool.
I just couldn’t let it pass without mentioning a similar favorite.
I’m both amused and saddened that ginger snobs exist, and that you’ve run into enough of them to need to put a disclaimer on a mixed drink recipe using Canada Dry.
I cannot wait to see the look on Dorothy’s face when she realizes Joe was wingmanning her this entire time
Same
Dotty is going to absolutely be angry about it, lmao
Wingmanning is the highest virtue! Of course he was wingmanning her!
sorry, wingpersonning. Wingdudeing?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/wingpersonness/
/popcorn munching intensifies
Epistemological collapse in progress
Eyes of the hussy!
It’s the eye of the hussy, the thrill of the night, rising up to the challenge of . . .
Not sure how to keep going in a way that keeps the lyrics both scanning and making sense for the situation.
Rising up to the challenge of… vaginas?
I don’t think this one worked out very well… whatever. Here’s my attempt:
Messin’ up, kissed on the street
Fell in love, took my chances
Went the distance, though I know I did cheat
On my man and his wish that I thrive
So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your Joe for Dorothy
Don’t lose your grip on the loves that may last
You must share just to keep them alive
It’s the eye of the hussy, it’s the thrill of the night
Risin’ up to the challenge of our romance
And the last chance polycule saves the fool from her plight
And she’s watching them both with the eyes of the hussy
Face to face, kissing so sweet
Lovin’ both, stayin’ horny
They stack on top of her under the sheet
For the squish, with the wish that she thrive
It’s the eye of the hussy, it’s the thrill of the night
Risin’ up to the challenge of our romance
And the last chance polycule saves the fool from her plight
And she’s watching them both with the eyes of the hussy
Datin’ both, no need to swap
Ex-fundie, fixed the story
Became the hinge, now we’re not gonna stop
Just a girl and her loves… and sex drive
It’s the eye of the hussy, it’s the thrill of the night
Risin’ up to the challenge of our romance
And the last chance polycule saves Joyce Brown from her plight
And she’s watching them both with the eyes of the hussy
(repeat “The eyes of the hussy” until fade)
Beautiful.
Wish I could edit… Forgot to switch back to first person for the second verse, and the ellipsis in the third should’ve been an em dash. Also, I think “kissing so sweet” should’ve been “kisses so sweet”, but am not sure why.
I’m sure there’re other things that could’ve been done better, but I’m not sure how.
far greater than anything i could have come up with!
We know Joyce is aware of a poly relationship in her dorm, so this is a concerning view from Joyce. Funny reaction image though
Concerning but not surprising!
When Joyce learned Becky and Dina had sex, she insisted it wasn’t gross to her because “they’re in love” whereas she viewed herself engaging with sex as her being gross. I think it’s similar here, where Joyce would say “Mandy, Sierra, and Grace are in love” but would view herself as being a gross greedy hussy for wanting to date two people.
Oh whoops this was meant to be more so directed at Jacob rather than you. Sorry!!
For a lot of people who haven’t seriously considered the possibility that they may be polyamorous, there can be some cognitive dissonance: for other people it’s a valid relationship structure that’s no better or worse than monogamy, but for them it would be selfish, it would be slutty, it would be whatever excuse they need to make for themselves in order to avoid confronting the fact that the socially hegemonic relationship structure isn’t what would make them happiest.
Lets also be clear on something, though: There is a big difference between “you being polyamorous doesn’t mean you’re a hussy” and “you are polyamorous”.
As long as everyone involved in a relationship group is fine with the polyamorousness, then that can be great! And as long as everyone involved understands the situation fully, then that’s also great!
But… not everyone is going to be polyamorous. We can leave the debate on how much of it is nature vs nuture vs social-brainwashing-that-can-be-overcome for the sociologists to get into a big sociological fuckpile over, but if one of Joyce, Dorothy, or Joe is not actually able to do polyamory, then it could cause some… problems.
Sure but Joyce is clearly polyamorous
Sincerely, beyond that she’s attracted to multiple people, what makes you say that she’s clearly polyamorous?
Like, the signs of Joyce being clearly Bisexual are pretty well trodden at this point (she wants to bang Joe and Dorothy). But what signs are you seeing that indicate that she’s interested in and capable of being in a romantic/sexual relationship with multiple people at the same time?
The fact that she wants to be with both of them at the same time and doesn’t want to choose is, like. A major signal.
Imo that doesn’t make her polyam. Many monogamous folk want to be with multiple people and not want to choose. It’s often a conflict because their values and ideals dont align with it (and often lack the emotional ability to sit with it because they aren’t taught those skills).
I see relationship styles and structures more as a active choice we make based on our intrinsic values. Joyce could be/come polyam but her current values and beliefs don’t align with that too well (yet).
(And on the flipside someone can be poly without having/desiring multiple relationships. I get polysaturated very quickly so Ive never had more than one long-term partner at a time though my values, relationship style and preferences align far more with Polyamory)
I think Joyce’s briefs and values have been at odds with what she actually wants and what would actually make her happy for her entire life.
Growing pains are going to happen here, but I absolutely think she keeps doing and saying things that align much better with polyamory than with monogamy.
I also think a lot of the mono people who genuinely want to be with more than one person and don’t want to choose might be happier if they allowed themselves to try it, even if it winds up not being for them, but my point was more that a lot of people like cheating specifically, and if they actually had permission to be with more than one person, they wouldn’t want to be anymore. Those people are chasing the high of taboo.
Just want to say that I relate to aligning with polyamory but getting saturated.
I am currently in a closed relationship with one person. I tend to say “closed” rather than monogamous because I don’t really identify with monogamy, and ideally would like a healthy polycule. But I learned through awful experiences that I don’t have the emotional stability to manage the complexity of a polyamorous relationship right now, especially with real people who have trauma and communication issues and are not some Platonic Ideal of a polyamorous person. I decided my partner was more important to me than a polyamorous relationship, and this wasn’t them asking me to make the choice. Rather it became clear to me that I couldn’t trust them to make the kind of conscientious ethical choices I would want for an open relationship. But I still chose them over poly with some abstract person I may never meet.
/Overshare
(I can’t reply directly to your comment for some reason)
I 100% agree with your first point. She still has a lot of learned beliefs and expectations to examine, both from her specific religious upbringing and from wider cultural norms. That goes for Joe and Dorothy, too, and it’s something that a lot of people tend to get stuck on irl. Like, how we deal with (or avoid dealing with) uncomfortable emotions and interpersonal conflicts.
I’m really interested to see how this story goes. I personally don’t think any of them are going to be a good fit for healthy polam but it would be really cool to see how they do evolve. I think it’ll be a fun ride either way.
Definitely agree with your point about cheating, too. Changing a relationship from monogamous to polyam is really complicated, too, because it’s not just one person trying it out, it’s everyone involved having to either do the work or walk away. Or try to just shoehorn another person into a monogamous setup.
@ Meagan
You’re not alone in that. I have a very low social drive and very high social anxiety so my connections with others tend to be more comet-like and more blended based on the person, so kinda relationship-anarchyish? Like, I have one lady friend who is my partner partner because that’s what she wants/works for us, and she has her partners. And I have comet partners who are friends but that might include different kinds of intimacy but we either decided we didn’t want to accelerate and risk the friendship, or we recognise that our lives/goals don’t fit well.
I can’t manage multiple partners because I get very easily overwhelmed, but monogamy doesnt gel with how I experience friendships either.
One other distinction being missed here is that poly doesn’t just involve wanting more than one person, but also being willing to share them. That doesn’t always happen in practice, you might wind up the hinge in a triad, but going in with the attitude of “You have to be monogamous to me, but I don’t have to do the same” isn’t a good start.
I really wish monogamous folks would stop pushing this idea that the default is to only be capable of wanting to be with one person at a time and that wanting multiple people at once is this rare ability, as if half of romantic comedies aren’t centered around a character being in love with two people at once, and as if cheating isn’t INCREDIBLY common in long-term committed monogamous relationships. If wanting multiple people at the same time were the primary criteria for being polyamorous, at least half the planet would be polyam.
Lets say that being monogamous-only is the minority and open-to-polyamory is the majority.
If Joe and Joyce are polyamorous and Dorothy is not, then this is not a functional polyamorous relationship, even though most of those that are in the group are polyamorous. That’s one of the major issues here.
I’m not trying to push “monogamous as default”. I am someone that’s lived in a society for my entire life that pushes that, but I’m trying to be cognizant of that and asking a sincere question about what indicators there are that this major character is, in fact, interested in such things beyond “I’m horny for more than one person”, so that I can, ya know, understand this shit better.
I’ve never seen anyone but delusional people claim that the default is only feeling attraction to one person. But as a monogamous person, I can say that the big difference is that I’m not going to *do* anything with that.
I know that if I try to get involved with multiple people, there is such a high chance that I fuck it up that it isn’t worth trying.
There’s also that I have yet to meet a single person out there I vibe with as much as I do my partner. No one comes close to being on the same wavelength.
Analogy: “I can’t decide whether I want pizza or sushi for dinner” versus “I want both sushi and pizza for dinner”. I think most people can agree that those are substantially different things, and that feeling one does not imply feeling the other.
I had to draw “Joyce’s briefs” because it made me giggle
https://imgur.com/gallery/7yngxXA
Mmm, I don’t think that’s necessarily true — I’ve known at least a few mono people who ended up in dire straits because they knew they ultimately wanted to pick a partner, but had decision paralysis for one reason or another over it.
Joyce could be open to poly.
Joyce could be having a hard time picking apart who she really wants in the heteronormative sea we all swim in.
Joyce could be having a hard time separating out love and lust.
Joyce could be having a hard time separating out romantic and non-romantic love, in this relationship-ladder-normative sea we all swim in.
My point, at least, not trying to speak for anyone else, is that I don’t think Joyce does have decision paralysis. I think that would look different.
But we’ll find out, of course.
Yeah, my Willis Crystal Ball is on the fritz these days so I’ve been more enumerating possibilities than trying to predict them.
Haha, fair.
In my opinion, Joyce not being extremely concerned about Joe during this whole thing, is a big pointer to it. if you have trouble understanding other people reacting differently than you to things; and you don’t experience jealousy that way and you would only be, at worst, surface-level hurt if your partner kissed someone; you might not emotionally key into the fact that it is really major for a lot of (probably most?) people. If we look at it through that lens, Joyce not minding her partner kissing other people is a pretty big sign of not being monogamous.
(I still think it’s out of character because I think she’s a little better at understanding other people’s views than that, but that’s a separate topic.)
She’s not just “attracted” to multiple people, she’s in love with multiple people. Poly isn’t about lots of sex, it’s about lots of love. I’ve never had sex with J, I never will, but I’d die for him in a heartbeat, no questions asked.
Aw. 🙂
Also thank you for the distinction pointer.
This is an expected first reaction from Joyce. Give her somewhere between a few minutes and a day or two and she’ll figure it out. Lingering remnants of her being raised in a cult. Just glad she didn’t have that reaction in front of anyone she would horribly offend.
Next strip pans over to Sierra in the doorway
zacly. she’s had about 1 second!
Girl can’t go five minutes without having some core tenet of her worldview shaken to the core.
It would not be her first double standard that was more restrictive for herself.
No, it makes perfect sense. Other people being in poly or open relationships are open minded and progressive. *Her* wanting to date two people at the same time is hussy behavior. It makes perfect sense!
I read yesterday’s strip and was like “yeah NOPE not reading comments today.”
I went to see how many comments it managed to get in 24 hours and I’m very glad for that decision.
You are smarter that all of us.
Let’s have a Tony party!
this is the first reason I’ve seen that actually makes me sad I’m not a day ahead of the rabble, actually
That is every day of my life.
That’s a wise decision.
Went through the exact same process, lmao.
This is probably more frustration on Joe’s side than true anger. But I’m still glad to see it.
Anyway, now it looks like things are really starting to sink in for Joyce now. More so than when she decided she was gonna break up with him. Was she still romanticizing the whole thing up to this point? Hm…
I love Joe. He’s my favorite character
word, it’s been great to see his character growth
I love this comic so goddamn much.
There is an unsaid “I want to, but . . .” before both of Joyce’s “I can’t.”
Joe notices, gets bold, calls out Joyce’s infidelity, shows some of the anger he’d been holding back, and gets Joyce to embrace her inner hussy.
She’s trying to repress so hard, g-d bless her. She’s just had one earth shattering revelation about her personal relationship preferences, why does she have to have another? Better to just ignore it and keep on keeping on!
Good, good… let the hussy flow through you…
And his anger can plausibly be interpreted as not about her being interested in someone else (he isn’t upset about that), but at her lack of self awareness of what she wants.
Yeah it reads more being annoyed at her being dishonest with herself tbh
i get the same read
Having seen the number of comments yesterday’s strip got, just want to take a moment to spread the good word of not reading the comments/minimizing your engagement with them. I’ve been cutting back a lot, usually just making one comment if any, and it’s been good for me. If you’re considering leaving or mostly leaving the comments… do it.
I stopped participating in comments for years and just talk to my friends who also read about it, away from the internet, where the reading comprehension of the collective whole has been tanking steadily. It’s really disheartening to see how many people just have no media literacy.
On the other hand, one can read the comments is a sort of data-gathering way. Yesterday was so many and so widely ranging, it was quite educational.
And then there are the ‘OMG, I was wrong’ s vs the ” I’ma twist this into a pretzel to still be right’ s, which are entertaining.
Agreed.
I haven’t gotten to the point of not reading the comments at all, but I do try to avoid replying to a lot of comments, especially from some people here who I really don’t like and don’t get along with very well.
Yep. I try to comment in response to people I do agree with/vibe/appreciate their perspective rather than the other way around. It takes discipline but leads to a more enjoyable experience.
Those really I focus on *comments* I agree/vibe with, which aren’t aways from the same people.. some days I vibe with things people say that said things that disturbed me other days, and vice versa.
The wolf you feed, you know.
I’ve actually had the comments section adblocked. That way I need to go through the added steps of unblocking it and putting up mental fortitude, instead of just casually scrolling down and getting frustrated.
Maybe there’s a way to just block certain people but I don’t know it?
It should not be too hard to code a web proxy that could do that.
in which Joyce has a realization
“Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?”
Is anyone reminded of when Duncan told Ethan in Shortpacked that the latter couldn’t keep being high and mighty about toys because Ethan was a kidnapper?
Link: https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/fourohfour
TIL that all the other timelines also have utterly insane story beats in random places mid-story
What hooked me to the Willisverse was a Shortpacked! strip in which Ethan was on a plane and obsessing over the fact that at that very moment they were restocking a specific Transformer in the particular store that the plane was currently flying over. And then in the comment section Willis casually admitted that bit was *autobiographical*.
I mean, this is peanuts in comparison.
I mean this isn’t even the craziest thing to happen in Dumbing of Age
So much of that comic feels like a fever dream, it was my first introduction to Willis (through Stumble Upon, if anyone remembers that)
I did not remember that at all. But when looking for when he kidnapped Galasso, I ran across another time Willis used “I want to be you” to show attraction. The most disturbing instance so far.
I admit I wanted Ethan to remain evil.
But Willis seemed to realize he’d written himself into a corner.
Link: https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/voyage-of-the-black-repaint
Why fight it, Joyce? Cum, er, come to the Hussy Side. They have waffles.
Muffins, too.
As long as she doesn’t become *the* Hussie.
Waffle Hussies? Tell me more…
At least it wasn’t at a Coldplay concert, Joyce. The buffer was waaaay too far back for Willis to make a reference to that.
Hee hee haa haa
I like that Joe pointed out his nudging. I remember him telling Dorothy what he loved about Joyce, and at the time it seemed strange. It feels better in this light
Yeah, this entire time I’ve been thinking “None of this would have even happened without that conversation Joe had with Dorothy. What was he hoping to accomplish?” I did *not* think until now that he was setting this up intentionally lol
What a truly odd play, but very selfless.
I called it. I ducking called it.
Morrison
March 5, 2025 at 12:52 am | #
This last panel is like a hinge closing.
Clif
Clif
March 5, 2025 at 3:12 am
Not clear.
Morrison
Morrison
March 5, 2025 at 12:54 am | #
This strip is like a hinge becoming attached to a door and a frame.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/suggestion/
It’s so weird how that strip feels so much more recent than March, because in-store it was so recent.
Joyce: “Cheating doesn’t phase me but consensual non monogamy? What kind of girl do you think I am?!”
Responding as though it’s not snark: 100% reinforcing my long-held belief that Joyce fundamentally is seeing her own romantic life through the fairy-tale lens — anything she does in service of her One True Love is valid!
… wait, Two True Loves?
Someone get this girl some modern YA, stat, so she can incorporate it into her worldview.
Honestly, from the first time I saw somebody comment that bit about Fairy Tales, it made complete sense.
Specifically the “Anything is OK because it’s True Love” bit.
LOL
……..yeah, this is going far too well, even with Joyce’s self-proclaimed fear of being a hussy.
I have a feeling this is going to be like clamping off a water heater’s pressure release valve…
Is the water heater going to snap and suck like a billion dicks?
More like suddenly spray hot liquids in every direction.
So, you know, similar.
unfortunately most times waterheaters do that is rusty slidgy hot water too
but at least we are 50 years past waterheaters that will rip througth three floor of your house and another 100+ ft in the air (loved that mythbusters)
There’s plenty of other hooks for additional drama in this situation, don’t worry
Yup, hence why I said it was like clamping off the pressure release valve. Delaying the explosion can make it bigger. 😀
Eh, wouldn’t be the first time a major drama bomb was either quickly defused or contained.
https://www.tumblr.com/itswalky/792809204308197376/do-you-ever-have-to-fight-the-urge-to-clarify-what?source=share
https://www.tumblr.com/itswalky/792821097566535680/even-separate-for-how-convenient-it-is-in-the-plot?source=share
I couple of Willis asks to share, the first one to gloat a bit. Second to try calm down he tenpers a bit (it probably wouldn’t work).
Yeah, that second one is the thing for me.
If all participants are cool with polyamory, then great! But that does not mean that it will go well, and that certainly does not mean that shit will not get fucked up!
True, it requires everyone to not only be honest, but be honest with themselves about what they want. Our first triad broke because Jeff wasn’t honest with himself, and when H got pregnant (by me, as we determined later), everything got too serious and grown-up and he ghosted. J’s been with our triad for 20 years now, so I’d say this relationship’s pretty stable – we even went through a miscarriage and J’s PTSD from Iraq together (still going through that one, to be honest, and probably always will), and here we are.
The full strip that the panel in the second one is from, well worth reading the rest of the dialogue there: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/envisioned/
Whoop, reported this in error when I meant to click a link. Sorry dude
So I’ve been wondering this for a while and I guess no is the best time to ask:
If Joyce largely fictional, but is also somewhat semi-autobiographical does this mean that Willis cheated in his first relationship and/or somehow turned that into a three-way? Does … Does Willis pull? Is that the right use of that phrase?
Or it means that he made this part up.
Yeah I’m guessing he didn’t also have a superhero in his dorm and get kidnapped by his best friends dad
But… but… tell me he at least was able to teleport to his best friend! That bit can’t be made up, can it?
Whether Willis cheated in his first relationship is Willis’s business and definitely not mine.
I’m not sure I’ve ever cheated in a relationship, but in a couple of instances it was a fine line and reasonable people might disagree. It comes from being stupid and not thinking things through.
This part of the story seems heavily influenced by the comments….
Willis can play his audience like a fiddle from a year in advance.
No. And also no. Willis has talked about what inspired the plotline in public posts on their Patreon and on their Tumblr, if you’re curious.
Patreon has public posts?
public on tumbler, public to patreons
no. Public-public on Patreon. They are free posts, on Patreon, available to the public. If you check out Willis’s Patreon, you will see them!
Joyce’s religious upbringing and apostasy in particular is what’s autobiographical.
Speculating on real people’s relationships based on what they draw and write is gross.
From this statement I conclude that your close relationships are rare, but strong, deep and above all honest.
clif can you be normal for like two minutes
I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.
Pretty sure that Taffy already knew I was gross.
as i said yesterday normal only exists as a mathematical concept!
EMBRACE THE ABNORMAL! BE THE WEIRD!
A wise man once told me that “normal” people are just people you don’t know very well.
i think it was my grade 6 teahcer (a very normative presenting cis white hetero male) who told us “there is no normal, as even if we have 99% in common with those around us, that 1% of difference has so many options that there are not enough 100% alikes to have a normal to base it on” (paraphrased after 30 years) i remember him going then onto use sample size as an example along the lines of “if 1% of 7 billion is 70 million that is double the number of people who live in our country” to drive home how much variance can occur with 1%
Yeah… that kinda shit is a whole new level of parasocial.
Willis wasn’t a girl with a real superhero friend either, so while Joyce is definitely inspired by his upbringing and life she isn’t exactly a 1-1 match.
i dont really think its healthy or productive to have these kinds of speculations about a happily married couple with two kids
I wasn’t trying to cast accusations or aspersions, I just don’t know very little about the author or what he has talked about in social media. I’m not trying to insinuate anything, I mostly just wanted to know if he had said something about this period in his life and also sort of wanted to make a jest about Willis being some manner of sex god as from what little I did know of him, he did not seem like the type to take relationships frivolously. However, I failed to both clearly convey that nor syncretize legitimate question and humor in anyway and ended up making an ass of myself again. I should have thought out more how that comment might sound and see now how it could be hurtful implications I had not considered. I am sorry about that.
So this strip confirms a couple of things:
1. Joe considers the whole situation as Joyce cheating on him.
2. Joe considers himself her boyfriend.
I know there’s been some comments made about where he stands on all that so I’m glad he’s said it and we can all move on to more productive topics. Right? …right?
WRONG! 500 more years relitigating whether they ever said they were exclusive.
And after that… ONE MILLION YEARS DUNGEON!
Joe being like you cheated on me and I was fine with it, if you don’t want this that’s your choice but what the fuck is your problem.
I suspect it’s less “fine with it” and more “giving her a second chance” (and perhaps intending to discuss it after he’s made sure he’s not driving Joyce away).
Besides, he’s made mistakes of his own. For example: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/01-everybodys-looking-for-nothing/philanderer/
If cheating is being a hussy, and dating 2 people at once is being a hussy (no, I’m not down on Joyce for a split second reaction without investigating the full logic), one falls back on the definition of cheating and indeed the expectation of monogamy that has seen so much traffic.
Joyce, it is society and its rules you are looking at here. What do YOU think constitutes cheating, and is monogamy assumed if no contract has been made. We all know you are un-colonising yourself. Un-colonise this then re-appraise whether you are a hussy or not.
Considering she allowed Mike to psychically assault Joe for wandering eye? I think she’s a double hussy. A Hhuussssyy, if you will.
While it’s perfectly possible that Mike psychically assaulted Joe, I think Mike mostly enjoyed the hitting part.
This is what I get for blindingly trusting the spell check.
At times like these, it’s traditional to shake your fist at the sky and yell “Damn you, Spell Chack!”
No, wait. That was something else.
Okay disregarding everything else, Joe’s face in the fifth panel must be one of the top 5 in the comic’s history.
ITS REALLY GOOD willis has been killingggg it with the expressions these last few months i must say
It’s the -__- face!
Look either you can date both of us or I can be mad about it
i think being briefly exasperated by the inherent deep-seated contradictions in Joyce’s world-view, is not the same thing as joe being deliberately manipulative or threatening?
wrong, try again
Naw Joe’s clearly fine with stepping aside if that’s what Joyce wants. But it’s hard not to get a little annoyed at her calling polly people “hussys” even if she doesn’t realize that’s what she’s doing. Joyce has enough experience, at this point, that being raised as a fundie baby isn’t much of an excuse
Speaking from personal experience, it takes a LOT longer than “a few months during freshman year” to deprogram some of those religious/conservative mindworms, even if you are hanging out with a lot of queer people
This, I’ve been trying to exercise them for a decade and change, and it’s still a daily struggle. Joyce and Becky are practically speedrunning their mental detox, and frankly I am a little jealous. 😅
Joe isn’t mad about anything. He’s guiding her through the logic.
Joyce just gained +5 insight. She can see the Amygdala on the side of the dormitory now.
Joyce definitely started with the Threaded Cane.
Re: the tags+newspaper — Is Dorothy perceivable? I kinda suspect she’s been perceived. Probably perceived a lot.
Oh no Walky also draws a comic for the IDS and he, uh, did not have a Joe-ment where he nudged someone toward his girlfriend. This could be messy. Eek.
Walky no longer draws the strip for the IDS, because Daisy could only afford to pay one of them, and only Joyce was willing to do the tax paperwork.
Is this how Dorothy gets her Yale offer withdrawn
Fun twist: Walky doesn’t get mad when he finds out Dorothy is macking Joyce, he gets mad when he finds out that Dorothy gave up on Yale for Joyce, but didn’t even consider it for him.
But, that might be too similar to Becky’s eventual freak-out, maybe.
Oh, there’s plenty of shoes waiting to be dropped. Enjoy the now.
Does this mean we’ll get to know Sierra, Grace, and Mandy better? I kind of hope so, especially since Sierra attended church with Lucy and Becky, so her take on any lingering Joyce shame will probably be very insightful.
sometimes I think that the main reason the perfect characters for a situation are not consulted, is purely because their advice would be too insightful, and would undercut the comic’s ability to actually create meaningful conflict.
Given how different a lot of superficially similar poly relationships are “under the hood”, so to speak, I would also accept “they consult Sierra/Grace/Mandy, and get advice that works perfectly for those three but does not work at all for Joe/Joyce/Dorothy”.
i’ve been led to believe sierra grace and mandy are more of a throuple situation (could be wrong, i do not remember their deal super well) which is, i think, as far from possible for dorothy and joe as something can physically get.
Yeah, it’d be the “fun” combination of “these are wildly different relationship structures” with “at least one of these two groups, possibly both, has no real knowledge of the wider poly culture and the combined life experience of ‘a bunch of college freshmen in the US’.”
God I would *adore* for them to just rip Joyce apart and demand Joe have actual self respect.
*backing away slowly*
=_=
Verbally, not like zombies. Good lord, someone being down for actual repercussions for infidelity that aren’t “Oh you zany kids” as the characters use your sexuality as a misguided band-aide, instead of giving it any kind of actual respect is flabbergasting. My gastings are flabbered.
i’m assuming you’re also waiting in the wings for Becky to find out Joyce is bi now and to go “Wait, no, you’re not allowed to love women LIKE THAT!!! Have more self respect and go back to dating men!”
Most of us aren’t. Even those who have issues with this arc.
I wonder if Becky’s going to be hurt to be confronted with the fact that Joyce can love women, just not her, but I don’t expect or want Becky to take that approach.
Actually, I’m waiting for Becky to say bisexuals can’t actually exist. And Joyce is lying to herself that she ever actually liked weens, and she needs to realize she’s a lesbian, because you can’t actually like both, that her confusion about still liking dudes is just her institutional hetero brainwashing talking.
Like when I came out as bi to all my gay and lesbian friends.
Maybe part of the problem is that your phrasing — hopefully unintentionally and coincidentally — was somewhat reminiscent of certain misogynistic commenters who pile hatred upon any woman who dares show “disrepect” toward a man.
I mean, I’m perfectly happy to accept that that isn’t what you meant; it’s just that, in the context of certain recent overreactions (which I’m not accusing your comment of being), it’s easy to read unintended malice into things.
Only now noticed I’d typoed “disrespect”. Oops. Then again, maybe it’s fitting somehow.
Last panel Joyce is the epitome of the deer in the headlights look.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that”
Have more respect for yourself Joe
The direction the comic is currently going is really satisfying after all if the awful comment threads we’ve had recently
Of*
Ugh these typos are almost as bad as the threads have been
Are you kidding? They said “cheating” in-universe.
This is “main character does something shitty and suffers no consequences”
I wouldn’t say no consequences
literally EVERYONE who sees that newspaper is gonna know
ya know that for THIS, Becky’s MIDDLE NAME is “consequences”
Everyone who sees it will know what? That Joyce and Dorothy are kissing?
If they make even an attempt at poly, the kissing can easily be seen as part of that, not as cheating.
Having to live with classifying herself as a hussy is “no consequences”? Just look at her face!
Let’s see:
Everyone who knows her knows she’s a cheater now
Becky will know without being told by Joyce
Her self worth is being questioned
I mean, I guess if everyone’s main goal in life is only to have a man, then sure, no consequences.
If they immediately move publicly into a polycule, people might assume she was cheating at first, but change that opinion when they find out she’s openly with both Joe and Dorothy.
I don’t think we can rightly say “no consequence” until we at MINIMUM see the following:
– Joyce’s relationship(s) settle down into something longer than a day
– Dorothy’s reaction to Joe’s poly proposal, assuming Joyce even accepts it
– Walky’s reaction to Dorothy, period
– Becky’s reaction to anything, period
Make no mistake — I am very sympathetic to the idea that it FEELS like it’s taking longer for the other shoe to drop in this storyline, but the shoes are still there, precariously perched on the high shelf that’s not quite level.
It’s not so much that they’re taking longer to drop, but that we’re seeing at least one shoe being taken off that shelf in this sequence.
Also that a lot of the remaining shoes you describe aren’t really consequences of the cheating, but of Joyce falling for Dorothy. Like if Dorothy rejects Joe’s poly proposal, Joyce will have to choose one of them, which is a consequence, but Joe’s already given her a pass on the cheating and said he’d step aside.
I’m provisionally willing to accept “no consequences for cheating” if I accept “Joe has been kinda nudging things this way”.
I’m not sure I’m happy about that latter yet, but if this is a Polyamory Xanatos Gambit, it really just exchanges the “Joyce cheated” shoe for “what’s going on in Joe’s head to make him go this direction” shoe — which could also be taken down if we accept the “eyes wide open, no worries” Joe instead of the “grasping at straws because of low-self-worth-in-relationships” Joe.
To an extent, but whether it was a Xanatos Gambit or not, Joe’s already defused the obvious “Joyce’s partner is upset about being cheated on” shoe. Even if Joe’s grasping at straws that becomes more of a “failing at poly” shoe, which isn’t directly tied to the cheating, since it could have been the same drama even if everyone had talked it out before kissing. Joe would have been doing the same “I’ll step aside, but you could date both of us” thing and it could still have the same problems.
yeah, shitty comments like this one, specifically! thanks for providing an example, ironically, and for no other reason than to prove Mym’s point!
No [immediate, negative] consequences [before she’s even left the room or finished the conversation], yeah.
Yeah, I think some folks are losing track of the fact that while we’ve been reading this for days, this conversation has been going on for maybe five minutes in-universe, tops.
Sure, but it’s not just “hasn’t happened yet”, it’s directly taking one of the consequences off the table. They might still break up, if Joyce isn’t mentally ready for poly or if Dorothy isn’t willing, but Joe is clearly giving her a pass on cheating.
And that also defuses the only person who’s actually so far been upset with Joyce for it, since Sarah was angry on Joe’s behalf.
I’m sorry Joyce I want to desperately say no to that assumption but it’s almost impossible to make excuses….Anyway, now smash cut to Dorothy going back to her room where Becky and Walky are waiting for her with a news paper.
I can’t imagine Walky reading a newspaper…unless Lucy shook it at him.
But omg how do I keep forgetting about Becky? Maybe I’m desperate to never see her hurt again
Becky’s screams of anguish can be heard all the way to Chicago
“Here’s where Becky goes berserk.”
she is gonna go super saiyan APESHIT on Joyce :0
That thing was too big to be called a sword. Too big, too thick, to heavy, too rough it was more like a large hunk of iron.
TV Tropes: “BFS”
In the same way Dotty saved the comics from the paper, Walky would clip them every day and eat them like an angry hamster.
+1
he doesnt have to actively read it, there is guarenteed a display rack of them if not in the hall of his dorm, in all the buildings entryways, and as was pointed out by myself and bunch of others, it there is a digital edition, it may get blanket sent to all students school emails, and he could end up just seeing the image as like a preview pane
character growth? https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/directions-2/
#HUSSYSWEEP
After college and multiple surgeries, she changed her name and began a webcomic called Homestuck
Ok hands up, who thinks the next poll in its entirety, will read “Hussy: Yes or No”?
Your not hussy Joyce, you and Joe are just not exclusive anymore. Hope that helps.
okay but i’ve been reading this comic and, i think joyce might actually be a hussy.
not that there’s anything wrong with that!
She did still cheat on her boyfriend before they were not exclusive anymore. That probably qualifies for her definition of “hussy”
Feels like Joe’s stopped being as honest as he’s been. Both with himself, based off of the look on his face in the last strip, and with Joyce, since he set this up without telling her. I like it, he’s more interesting for it, and his bad judgement call.
after ruminating:
Joe has done something typically in Dorothy’s wheelhouse, decide for Joyce what’s best for Joyce.
on the other hand, I don’t like how Joyce remains “technically” innocent yet again. The worst judgment in Joyce+Dorothy keeps getting protected from hurting people through things either out of their control or unbeknownst to them.
You are not a Hussy, hun, you are boiling over with love and also horny.
BTW I read Joe’s stern expression next to last panel not as a value judgment on her actions, but as “dude, now you’re in denial”
tbf i think you’re probably correct
Now? She’s spent most of this comic in denial.
Yes.
“From a former hussy to a new one, girl get a grip!”
Hell yeah
💯
Good to know I am not alone in this read.
As grim as this is looking, my internal perv vibe is still hoping to see a Joyce/Dorothy/Joe 3way slipshine.
Is it weird that I want to see Joyce/Dorothy/Walky in a 3some more than Joyce/Dorothy/Joe? Joyce and Walky have an established competition over Dorothy, and they’ve all slept together many a night. Dorothy and Joe just have latent trauma with each other, that isn’t as light-hearted or fun XD
I feel like Joyce would want her partners the same way she wants her food: untouching, in separate containers
Oh god, this makes too much sense. I can definitely see that happening.
So, like some sort of bondage thing where she can touch them but they can’t touch each other?
Kinky. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Joyce: “I’m not a hussy. Please dont put in the newspaper that I’m a hussy”
I suspect I’ll get a lot of flack for this, but maybe a poly relationship is not the best route for Joe and Joyce and Dorothy. Maybe poly is not a good solution to a situation where two women have cheated on their boyfriends.
And I still think Joe deserves better than this.
You can’t decide what someone deserves, they need to choose for themselves, and this is the path Joe is choosing. For better or worse, this is what he wants.
Disagree strongly in the general case — I try very hard not to let loved ones settle for less than they deserve when they are being ill-treated by other people in their lives.
You can try as hard as you can but in the end, you can’t always force someone to do something you think they ought to. Trust me.
Oh, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna try if I see someone doing something that looks bad for them. That’s part of what friendship is.
(Related: I sorta-recently reconnected with one of my oldest and best friends after a several-year period of relatively low contact, initiated by the fact I told him his then-fiancee was bad news. Multiple cheating incidents and other badness later, he did admit he shoulda listened to me back in the day)
I don’t disagree, honestly. Also, glad you reconnected with your friend, it’s always a shame when that happens but when it counted you were still there for him.
Dude, it’s a comic. You’re treating Joe like he’s a real person.
Wait… you mean… Joe ISN’T real???? Oh my god… Willis lied to me!!!! What’s next, Joyce isn’t real?! Doroth! My sense of reality is crumbling at the seams!!!!!
Wait until you find out about Danny.
Danny HAS to be real… he HAS to be! Otherwise my icon is… is… a lie…!
I’ve talked to Big Z too much to think it’s even a little bit possible he’s anthropomorphizing Joe like that. He’s just talking about the general case: what one can and can’t do, and should or shouldn’t do, if a friend is making a choice you don’t think is good for them.
You can’t force other people to accept what you think they deserve, but you absolutely can and should have opinions about it.
Yep! I agree!
joe engineered exactly this scenario, what are you talking about
Yeah, he literally pushed Dorothy into Joyce’s arms and all, fully knowing Joyce loved her and would want to be with her, and having already done all the research into polyamory so he knew all the right terms and words to say, but this is clearly him devaluing himself. he doesn’t want any of those things he made a rube goldberg machine to achieve. don’t be silly
The thing is (if I’m reading it correctly) that Joe thinks *Joyce* deserves better than him and that’s why he’s been kind of pushing things in that direction. Which makes this whole mess incredibly sad.
to me it seems more that joe is in a state “you are awesome and noting will make me happier than your happyness” and “l am willing to share in your happyness with whom ever else you desire, if you are wanting/willing to allow me to”
there maybe some feelings of inferiority under the surface, it would make sense with his history, but i doubt he is aware of them in this moment if in fact he feels any.
honestly the more i think of how joe has behaved since the time skip, i don’t read much towards him being consious of any issues of self esteem or self worth. he had the confidence to shoot his shot with joyce and is showing the strength to be able to let the cards fall as the mayno matter what happens
For me, it’s the fact that he’s been actively nudging Dorothy towards Joyce (and he’s aware of it) I think there *are* serious self-worth issues with this boy.
as i said if there is any it is buried deep as i read his actions as exuding almost a bugs bunny level of self confidence and awareness, he knows what he wants, he knows it is going to take work and patience, he knows he may lose her, but that was always a possibilty, and he has taken actions for and with the purpose of shooting his shot to get it.
i am a hetero cis male, been with my wife 21 years, i was the first human she met she ever felt strongly enough about to even attempt entering a relationship with. but, in the last 5 years a friend has entered our lives and for only the second time in her life has she developed honest romantic feelings towards another person. and i do in fact know that he reciprocates the feelings to a very large extent, and i have actively encouraged her to explore those feelings, to love this man, why BECAUSE IT MAKES HER HAPPIER. it also has had the benefit of helping her achieve a healthier mental health state, which again makes her happier.
would you say i have self worth issues?
i will add context that the relationship between them has settled into an incredibly strong platonic bond, to the level that she refers to him as her best friend, a term she hasnt used for anyone but me since she was 8. and amn did haring her call him that make me happy
The fact that he seems to think the two possibilities are poly or he steps aside so she can be with Dorothy is a big clue to me that he not only feels inferior here, but does so consciously.
…What is the third option here?
Stay with him. He knows if it comes to that choice, he’ll lose.
And probably knew that when he started nudging Dorothy
Funniest possible outcome:
Hank literally shows up because he’s so worried about his girls, but he wrongly concludes that it’s Jocelyne in the foreground, and Joyce in the background, because he’s already seen Joyce date boys, and he is old-fashioned.
… you might be onto something here!
Well this isn’t a Speedrun so what the best route is or isn’t doesn’t really matter
It’s probably not the best route for them, but will it be the most entertaining route for us?
Yes, we’ve all noticed you personally will not be happy til they’ve both been paraded through the streets wearing a scarlet letter
You’re right but we gotta tie up these threads as neat as possible
Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not. Like a lot of things in life.
I agree, though perhaps not for the same reasons you do. First, we’d need to find out what Dorothy thinks about the idea of a throuple or polyamory. If she’s against it, then the idea is obviously immediately out. I admit I did not expect Joe to be into it, but perhaps since he’s coming from a background where his relationships had no emotional connection to them, it’s not that surprising. But I think the biggest problem here might be Joyce, because I get the feeling that she still wants the idea of a “One True Love” and a soulmate with whom she remains with forever. That ambition won’t gel nicely with polyamory.
Being polyamorous doesn’t mean your “relationships [have] no emotional connection to them” so that point is irrelevant in whether or not Joe is down for polyamory.
Also, you can have multiple “soulmates” and “true loves” with polyamory, so she’ll probably be fine actually. Her ideas about monogamy are similar to her religious upbringing: it does no harm to question it and explore other options. Even if she ultimately chooses monogamy as a better fit, it’s okay if she tests the water to find out.
yikes yikes yikes yikes yikes
Ew, friend.
I think polyamory is not the best route for them*, and also that the best way for them to know that is by trying and failing.
*Joyce: How it’s starting
Joe: How it’s starting, and probably at this time in his life
Dorothy: Everything about it
Why does Joe keep “dudifing” Joyce.
It seems recent. And othering, nonromantic .
I
Maybe condescending. It doesn’t seem a term of endearment. It doesn’t seem like something Joyce would ignore or like
Well she clearly is ignoring it and not having any issue with it. There are more important things on the table right now.
Joe got cheated on by her. Being a little bit pissed about it is fine in my book. If being called dude a bit for it is all she has to face, she probably shouldn’t complain.
He’s from Indiana, that’s how people from Indiana talk.
See how Superman talks to Krypto.
Superman is from KANSAS, you slanderous fruitbadger! 🤬
<3
THANK YOU! It’s like, an essential and well known part of his origin story!
I don’t think cis people care nearly as much about the term as trans people, at least when it’s between cis people. Especially Midwestern cis people.
Source: I am a Midwestern trans people.
Is he using it as a term of address or as an expression of exasperation?
Hey anyone here watched the new show from the creator of Bojack horseman “long story short”? It’s pretty good
Bojack Horseman is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen and I dead-ass couldn’t finish it because it’s just too routinely heart-wrenching, lmao. I’d assume anything made by anyone who made that, must be really really good.
It is! It’s a lot more grounded compared to Bojack, not talking animals here. It’s about 3 Jewish siblings and their personal struggles through the years.
Samesies. Mother is too fucking relateable (different but oof), so I actually had to tap out.
My mother is nowhere near ss bad and yet i still fell stressed out just watching it.
Hussy Hussy Hussy
oi! oi! oi!
I needed a moment ti remenber why this sounded familiar to me and it was this
https://youtu.be/7J9wKVPOC_4?si=WRFvNIuaH9a_tKFe
Thought this was gonna be that new Outback commercial Hulu keeps showing me.
It’s three. Three “oi”s.
My take is Joe is trying to be understanding and unfortunately a bit self-deprecating about it. That he doesn’t deserve better.
But he’s also really tired of having to lead Joyce through this.
I actually fully love that Joe DOES acknowledge that what Joyce did was ultimately cheating to satisfy one half of the audience, but is also completely understanding as to why Joyce, specifically, would fall into this exact situation, with the exact person that she did, which has ultimately been the point a lot of us have been trying to fucking make about this whole storyline, from the start.
The readers expect the characters to not make any mistakes under any circumstances, while even the other characters in the fake comic strip are more empathetic to each other, than the omniscient observers.
From tvtropes that is called fourth wall myopia.
Get thee behind me, TvTropes tempter.
Though it certainly helps you didn’t post a link.
The comments are frequently a good reminder to go outside from time to time so I don’t wind up hunched over my keyboard at 6am trying to work out how the comic explains whether Willis or his wife cheated on the other in college.
I don’t think most of the so-called Paladins want characters to not make any mistakes, but they want those mistakes to be treated as mistakes.
Not framed narratively as grand romantic gestures as the Kiss was or immediately handwaved away as Joe is doing here.
i don’tget how him calling her out for it in this strip is him handwaving it away.
but more important here is that HE STATES HE PUSHED DOTTY INTO HER ARMS. he admit and takes responsibility for the fact that with any hyperbole the he created the environment for her to cheat!
acknowledging the context of the events in and around the decisions is important.
also crossing a line (like cheating) may be a poor decision, and it may have consequences, but if they learn from it, grow, and work to avoid making the same decision in the future, can we truely call it a mistake.
i vote no
I vote yes. It’s still a mistake that’s the whole point. That’s why you need to learn from it, grow and avoid doing it again.
And generally people do that best if there are negative consequences. If you get what you want and no one even seems to be hurt by it, what’s there to learn? You learn that it worked out.
take apeak at some of the more recent psyc papers regarding te effectiveness of negative reinforcement of any kind, there is a LOT coming out now about the myth of the effectiveness of negaticve reinforcement. for something between 10-25% of te general population yes they learn best/only really learn from negative reinforcement, the rest show that at best negative reinforcement has no effect on the ability to learn from our actions. the theory i read on it that resonated most with me is that because of the vocal minority that do learn best from negative reinforcement tend to be amplyfied as their crossing of a line tends to be headline grabbing, which has lead to the “they only learn if we severely punish them, so anyone who crosses a line is only going to learn from severe punishment” becoming a more common view
There’s a long distance between “severe punishment” and getting what you didn’t even know you wanted without anyone being hurt.
i guess i simply don’t view “not getting what i want” on its own as a punishment but just a fact of life.
“Punishment” is not a word I used here.
The negative consequence here could be as simple as hurting someone she cares about, but we’re not even getting that from Joe.
Hell yeah, welcome to ‘slut’dom, Joyce! 😀
The ex-fundie is jumping out but it’s okay, we’re learning, we’re becoming a better and more nuanced and more understanding person each day. And maybe a bit of a hussy, if that is what we find rewarding and joyful to us
Yeah. A good reminder that the ex-fundie isn’t totally gone.
I think it goes beyond ex-fundie to a lot of mainstream monogamists.
As the reaction from a lot of posters here has been…less than understanding.
The call is coming from inside the huss.
Also Joe, a lot of ‘dudes’ are coming from you this morning.
Will Joyce become a Hussite?
Circle the wagons!
(Hey, just because I concentrated on the 17th C in college, doesn’t mean I can’t dig deeper.)
That’s a deep cut. Love it.
and then Joyce started her “OnlyHussies” account. Funfact, it’s just her being adorably awkward on cam, fully clothed.
Honestly I can see there being a market for that.
oh god joyce is going to be a scene girl
I… think I like where this is going. Cool. This makes Joe’s reaction (and the comic’s framing thereof) make a lot of sense.
I get a bit of a gross reaction from Joe’s handling of the situation though. If I were Joyce (and I’m not), after I got over the initial high, I’d realize my boyfriend engineered a situation setting me up to cheat on him without communicating that to me, and that feels slimy. I might have to think on that some more.
I don’t think you can call that engineering a situation
I’m not particularly attached to those words. You can use other ones if you like.
He had a role in it and wanted it to happen. That’s what I mean and care about.
Or am I just misunderstanding something about the situation?
I would say that he did tell Dorothy she should figure out her feelings for Joyce, and didn’t condemn her for it. He didn’t communicate that to Joyce because it isn’t his place to reveal Dorothy’s feelings for her. However, he couldn’t predict how things were going to play out. I’d assume his thought process was basically the following:
Dorothy: Joyce I’m in love with you.
Joyce A: Oh I’m flattered but no thank you, I’m already in a relationship and/or inexplicably straight.
OR
Joyce B: I have feelings for you too but I’d rather talk to Joe before we do anything solid.
He definitely didn’t set up them going to the protest and having a super charged moment that ends with a kiss, that was all them.
I think your first paragraph is overly vague for what Joe himself says is “nudging Dorothy in [Joyce’s] direction.” Joe himself is saying he (subtly, sure) guided Dorothy to pursue Joyce.
You’re right and make an important point when you say that cheating was not the only way this could have ended. I was too caught up in how things happened to turn out and didn’t think about that.
However,
While something like your outlined thought process seems feasible, (subtly, sure) guiding someone to pursue your (mutually-believed exclusive) girlfriend seems very reckless. Like it’s easy to imagine something going wrong, cheating possibly happening, even if it’s definitely not guaranteed.
Also, while I agree that Joe shouldn’t have revealed Dorothy’s feelings, there are other, more moderate courses of communication he could have taken. One is just, specifying beforehand that he would be okay with Joyce being non-exclusive with him, without making reference to anyone in specific. Joyce would probably say “I would never do such a thing” at the time, based on her reaction here, but when the time came and she kissed Dorothy, she wouldn’t have to worry about betraying Joe.
Another option is like, since he strongly believed Dorothy was in denial and wanted to pursue Joyce, he could have somehow made his approval clear to Dorothy, so that Dorothy could say “Joe is OK with this trust me.”
Maybe these options have flaws. It’s past midnight and I didn’t think through them that hard. But there were options, is what I mean to say.
Here, he calls it ‘nudging Dorothy in Joyce’s direction’ but the wording I used in my first paragraph is based on the actual exchange between Dorothy and Joe. Aka, what he considers his nudging. Which was just him saying “be honest with yourself, Dorothy”.
I do agree that those other options are available and he could have done them. I think the reason he didn’t do them sooner could be because of how quickly things snowballed in the comic. For us it’s been weeks. For Joe it’s been… two days? Maybe three? Could be that he was still figuring out how to word such things or how to have those kinds of conversations. I do think if Joe was open to being non-exclusive from the start, he should have said so. I do think this is where some people have a point that Joe is primarily making this choice because of Joyce kissing Dorothy. Not exactly a great place to start with polyamory, but I’m curious to see how it goes.
I’m really digging Joe’s commitment to self-honesty. Kissing somebody else doesn’t annoy him nearly as much as deluding oneself. It’s fun.
Co sign this
He wanted them to talk about their feelings for eachother, him being understanding about the cheating doesn’t mean it was at all part of his goals. People can have discussions like that without cheating.
I think Ado can call that engineering a situation.
ok but i don’t think he anticipated the cheating so
On the other hand, Amber engineered Dorothy sending Joyce lit and posed pictures pictures of her assets. She even gave fair warning.
Can we agree that Amber deserves Walky more than Dorothy does?
Nah, he just told Dorothy to be honest about her feelings. What Dorothy then did with those feelings and how Joyce responded was completely un-engineered. I don’t think Joe even told Dorothy to talk to Joyce about her feelings, just to be honest with herself.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/suggestion/ Just gonna link this here to back you up, Joe indeed just says “be honest with yourself, Dorothy”. He does not, in fact, say “go to the protest and throw yourself into danger so Joyce can valiantly return to you and declare her love for you and then you both kiss”.
“I don’t think Joe even told Dorothy to talk to Joyce.”
Joe is the one saying that he nudged Dorothy “in her direction.” Joe believes that Joe (subtly, sure) guided Dorothy to talk to Joyce.
I made a longer comment above that gets into more detail about the rest of what you’re saying.
I’m not convinced Joe wanted his talking with Dorothy in past strips to result in Dorothy and Joyce cheating on him, but I do think he wanted Dorothy to realize and acknowledge her feelings for Joyce.
I’ve unfortunately run a bit amuck of this board’s lack of an edit feature.
I agree it’d be too far to say he wanted Dorothy and Joyce to cheat on him, and I’d edit that into my main post if I could.
However, as I go into more detail above, I do think he acted recklessly and could have communicated better.
think i’ve said as much before, but his actions and comments going all the way back to the drinking night to me read that he fully was prepared for the possibility that dorothy and joyce would end up at the minimum kissing after poking dotty towards this. it feels to me at least if he wasnt at least prepared for this possibility, there would be more confusion at the minimum from him
This wouldn’t be the first time someone set her up and interfered with her lovelife (Ala Sarah and Jacob)
If Joe were trying to weaponize it against Joyce, that could’ve been icky, but I don’t think that’s his goal here. He might have expected that Dorothy would stay in denial longer than a week, and he’d have a chance to talk to Joyce before that went anywhere. I don’t think this situation was exactly how he wanted it to go, but, he’s obviously thought it over and decided he could live with it. It remains to be seen if he came to that conclusion when it was still hypothetical, or when he saw the paper.
I don’t know if “icky” is the word I would have chosen, but I think it ties back to yesterday’s discussion about this coming from an unhealthy place for Joe.
Particularly combined with “But I will step aside, if “. If he’s deliberately set up a situation where that’s the expected outcome, he’s definitely seeing himself as a lesser partner for Joyce from the start.
He did set it up, to a degree that tarnishes him (more realistic and more interesting character) but also in a way that narratively absolves her too much IMO. I dread the after-the-fact consequentialism that’s going to excuse her cheating.
I’m really glad that Joyce is spinning out about this, and seeing polyamoury as inherently amoral because it’s so true to her character. Like yes she’s changed a lot etc but she’s still very young and has only been at uni for a little over a year? Or maybe not even a year yet? I appreciate Willis’ skill in writing character development, and part of that is recognising that Joyce is “unevenly lapsing out of a cult”.
I hope there’s no polyamoury outcome as I feel like it makes zero sense for where these three characters are at right now.
There is no way Dorothy will accept forever being sloppy seconds, even if Joe thinks she usurped the first place spot.
Oh, no, I think it’s worse than that. I think she *will* “accept” it, even though it bothers her, because she’ll lie to herself *and* Joyce about being mature enough to handle something like polyamory because it’s the progressive thing to do. And she’ll just keep letting that fester.
I hope not, but of the three of them, Dorothy is the only one who has actually expressed jealousy regarding the others, and that’s a bad sign for poly.
Yikes, the way people talk about polyamory here is so fucking gross. She wouldn’t be “sloppy seconds” she’d be “Joyce’s other partner” or “Joyce’s girlfriend”.
I think the person you were trying to reply to was describing how they think Dorothy would feel in that situation, not give an objective assessment of the relationship dynamic. “Gross” is kinda the point.
I dunno, judging by a lot of the other replies today, I think Nymph has a point.
It was 100% how I think *Dorothy* would take being poly with not just Joe, but anyone.
Dorothy, the character, screams unable to share whoever her current sexual partner is, be it Walky or Joyce.
It is in no way a slam on polyamory in it’s entirety. I, in fact, have gone on record as saying I want actual good poly representation, or at least less “Make them poly!” when *everything* about this foursome turning poly would be a train wreck.
Hell, I literally said “I want Joyce’s brother to be poly because I know ya’ll are itching for an actual not trainwreck representation.”
My bad, in that case. There has just been a LOT lately and I’m feeling snappish about it. I appreciate you clearing that up (and thanks to everyone else who helped) I misread the original comment and I don’t necessarily disagree that Dotty will refuse poly (though I hope she’s game for it).
@Nymph as correct as you probably are, this is not how Joyce thinks about it, and from what we know of Dorothy I don’t think she’s poly at all. So she’d feel like “sloppy seconds” even if she could intellectualise herself into being outwardly chill with it. Again, I hope we don’t see a “Just be ploly!” For these three because Joyce and Dotry defs aren’t, and it just delegitimises a whole relationship structure
If Joyce is to embrace polyamory, this is the way. It has to break her mind. All her best epiphanies do.
Is it a true revelation if it doesn’t leave you muttering in an arcane tongue, curled up in a corner like a Lovecraft protagonist at the end of the story? 😆
Maybe only Dorothy can fill that sapphic spot in Joyce’s heart, but maybe only Joe can double-dude her
Double dude dare you!
Joe gently pushing Dotty aside
“Out of the way little girl.”
He flexes
“Only a big man like me can squish her against the wall like it’s a crusher press from the junkyard.
He actually said dude two more times since this convo had started. He’s quad-duding her now.
new candidate for best last panel
re: alt text- Iconic
Joyce’s train of thought*
“Only a hussy would date both Dorothy and Joe.”
“I am a hussy.”
“Therefore, I can have both Dorothy and Joe.”
*such as it is
It’d better be!
It’s certainly the train of though Joe is guiding her through. He may not agree with the premise that she’s a hussy, but you have to use the premises and categories that people have in their heads, their vocabulary if you will, to get anywhere.
who’s ready for joyce to enter her hussy era? 😀
Blades,nails, mascara~! Fit check for my Hussy Era!
It’s about time tbh.
New Joyce freakout face!
Actually this is the exact same face she made when Ruth first threatened to remove her femurs, in literally month 1 of this comic.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/femurs/
Comment Section Yesterday: Joe’s so sad! Look how hurt he is in panel 5
Joe Today: I have spent the last six months in a hyperdimensional relationship cube constructing an intricate scheme in order to get my girlfriend to cheat on me. I’m not merely okay with you cheating on me, I actively caused it.
Probably not “to cheat on me”. More to leave me for her real love.
And I don’t think most people who were concerned for Joe yesterday were thinking he looked hurt so much as worried that he was being self-sacrificing because he didn’t really think he deserved Joyce. Which the whole “I’ll step aside” thing here reinforces.
Yesterday: He was being encouraging in panel 5. Did no one see that little smile?
Today: I’m reasonably sure that’s not what Joe said.
Yeah, I’m getting a little tired of arguing with folks about it. They believe what they believe, and they’re going to keep twisting exasperation into rage until the comic stops giving them crumbs of hope for a big blow-out argument. (Then they’ll probably loudly announce that they’re dropping the comic, although they’ll really keep reading it.)
I’m not sure what you think I said, but I don’t think it was what you read.
I’m basically sure at this point there’s going to be no big argument here. I’m not fond of that, but it’s clearly where the story is going.
My point was that, responding to ESM’s post, I don’t think Joe had a scheme to get Joyce to cheat on him. That wasn’t his intent. To the extent it was a scheme, it was to get them to admit their feelings and then either try poly or he’d step aside. Cheating on him was a consequence, but not the plan.
he self-sabotaged. He can be hurt by something he’s trying to convince her and himself that he’s “okay” with.
Joe looks handsome in these colors. That is all.
he is rocken that fit!
Joyce: I’m sorry but I wanted to do it with Dorothy.
Joe: “Do it”? Joyce, I’m not a Republic Serial villain. Do you really think you’d give me a master stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting it’s outcome? You did it thirty-five minutes ago.
Joe: Mind you, I thought dorothy would respect the boundaries we’d set in our relationship but she’s actually terrible.
😀
Amazing strip. Truly love everything about this. Looking forward to Dorothy’s reaction, and finding out whether she really is possessive of Joyce.
Personally my read is that everything she’s done that might come across that way was coming from a place of deep denial that she had feelings for Joyce and feelings of jealousy and fear that she was struggling to rationalize, much less accept. I feel like it’ll be different now.
And I also expect the actual relationship, if it gets off the ground, to be all kinds of messy! I just don’t agree with the idea that Willis did all of this just to have Dorothy immediately freak out at Joyce and dump her.
Honestly, I’m torn, but I don’t know that I would find it particularly realistic that Dorothy “I don’t tell my therapist everything so I can avoid getting a formal diagnosis” Keener is going to be able to come to terms with all of her internal issues/turmoil over this THAT quickly.
I’d still bet on “Dorothy, in some way, tries to make Joyce choose”, but I’d only bet one of Mike’s nickels because it’s clear that whatever Willis is doing this year has fundamentally broken my ability to predict what any of these dorks are going to do.
I’d bet the other way (but also only one of Mike’s nickels). I just can’t see Willis teasing poly this hard and then immediately shooting it down.
That doesn’t mean any of them will actually have dealt with all their internal issues or that it won’t blow up later on, of course.
I agree with @thejeff’s reply, but I want to add:
1. Dorothy HAS been hiding things from her therapist to avoid a formal diagnosis, but VERY specifically she said she was doing that because she was pretty sure that getting any kind of diagnosis would = not being a viable presidential candidate. That’s no longer on the table, so… maybe? Future sessions might be more productive?
But only “maybe”. Because even though she SAID this was the reason, I doubt it’s the entire reason. I just keep mentally comparing her resistance to being potentially autistic and her resistance to being potentially bisexual. It could EASILY all come back to the same thing, that her identity is still wrapped up in those expectations she set for herself as a child, but I don’t think she’s LET GO of it any of it, just because she’s let go of the idea of being president.
Or, put differently, I expect her to still need to work through some of this. Even if the proximal cause is gone, it left scar tissue. You know?
(But also, I would NOT be entirely surprised if Dorothy’s no longer resistant to the idea of being specifically bi. Because, speaking from experience, it can be a lot easier to face up to and tell other people “btw, I have an amazing girlfriend!” than “btw, I’m not straight… just thought you should know”.)
2. I can imagine it being a topic, I just can’t imagine it actually being a sticking point that ends the relationship, because yeah, too much work into poly at this point.
(Every strip where it’s come up with Joyce now reads like foreshadowing and it’s amazing.)
I don’t think Dorothy is going to freak out and dump Joyce, but I think she’s going to be in a tough position. I don’t think she’s going to be happy about the prospect of a poly relationship. She doesn’t like Joe, and she’s frequently been possessive of Joyce. I suspect she wants to revel in this new relationship that she wanted but never imagined she could have, and not have to split time with anyone else. I could be wrong, but that’s my read on her character.
But, she’s going to feel a lot of pressure to go along with it. If, as seems likely, Joyce comes up to her and says, “Hey, Joe wants to do a poly relationship where I date both you. I’m in, are you?” then either Dorothy goes along with it or she disappoints Joyce and guarentees heartbreak for either herself or Joe. That’s going to be a very tough position for her to be in if she’s not genuinely into the poly idea.
Based on future storyline titles, I suspect an attempt will be made that ends in flames and tears.
“She doesn’t like Joe” — this is one of the things I SPECIFICALLY think we might not actually know for sure just yet. Ditto on her actually being possessive of Joyce.
Because she’s said that she resented having to spend time with Joe for years while she was dating Danny, but at the same time, she really did become MUCH more overtly hostile to and about him after his romantic interest in Joyce became clear, and……. you know, we now know there were other factors there.
Similarly, I think any possessive tendencies she’s displayed were coming so much from a place of “jealous feelings I can’t even admit to myself, and therefore can’t process”. I think time will tell whether she’s actually a jealous person or not.
Personally, I think it’s at least as likely that we instead get “Dorothy tries too hard to be okay with this and to be nice to Joe, because she still feels guilty (not unreasonably) for the cheating, and also how nice he was to her about her denied feelings for Joyce”, which would be very awkward and potentially unsustainable, but a different TYPE of grist for the drama mill than “Dorothy hates Joe and forces Joyce to choose”.
*lol actually a POSSESSIVE person or not
*jealous, literally shown to be true, but I think it remains to be seen whether she’s prone to irrational jealousy or not
…And then Puck flew back through the forest with the magic flower and zapped everyone back to their previously scheduled lovers. No polyamory, no bestiality…
Man, what a cop-out old Bill pulled.
Luckily our author doesn’t need to stay on the good side of an Established Church.
Yet.
I fell this referring something because it’s too specific but i don’t know what
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, though there’s no actual bestiality in it. It’s a man with the head of a donkey, magically, temporarily.
That’s true, but the guy’s name is literally Bottom.
Huh – foreshadowing? I never noticed that before.
One of Will’s famous dirty jokes. Bottom gets turned into an ass.
Sooooo many sex jokes in Shakespeare’s oeuvre. SO MANY.
Let’s not forget that Joyce also “cheated” on Dorothy while Dotty was outside the room when Joyce attempted to first break up with Joe… and ended up giving him a BJ as thanks for a nice blanket.
Yeah, she’s actually just a confused idiot dealing with feelings she’s long suppressed, but, according to her old upbringing, her face should be in the dictionary under the word “hussy.”
I’ve been hesitating to say this because I really, really don’t want to discuss Israel/Palestine (which is a real and ongoing trauma for my family and me personally. Please don’t answer my vulnerability by talking about the horrible real-world events, please don’t cheer about what side you’re on, etc. Thank you very much for your kindness about this.)
And I’ve been hesitating to mention it because I anxiously hold onto every time Bulmeria *isn’t* a stand-in for traumatic world events that the author has less connection to / finds less traumatizing than I do — like, I hold onto the idea that it’s a civil war.
But, Joe’s reaction here is such a notable departure from how Isr/Pal impacts Jewish students in America.
Joseph Rosenthal doesn’t have family there, he has no particular opinion on Bulmeria, nobody ever accosts him about Bulmeria on the way to class. Nobody is threatening his safety over imagined ties to Bulmeria, he doesn’t even consider attempting to hide his ethnicity about it. He hasn’t lost friends because they’re chanting about how they sure hope his family will die. Bulmeria just doesn’t seem to impact him personally at all.
So, I’m glad Bulmeria is fictional, and not like the real thing, and it’s just a backdrop for some Westerners having a bisexual awakening.
I hear you. I don’t follow everything you are saying and am not sure if there’s some sarcasm /facetiousness, but I hear you trying to bring awareness.
I mean, Willis absolutely made Bulmeria into Bulmeria because it was and IS a backdrop.
Unfortunately, a lot of people seemed to have assumed the backdrop was not serious. That it was not him trying to signal the audience. “I am not going to talk about the real life tragedy here even if I’m going to comment on police brutality. It’s too big for a dramedy.”
Just. An internet gesture of support.
oh no /o\
Going back and reading this strip with the knowledge that Joe is actively manipulating Dorothy into a Dorothy ♣ Joe ♣ Joyce polycule is just incredibly hilarious.
I know this is supposed to be wholesome and everyone’s happy ending but I kind of wish Willis leaned into Joe being some kind of Lex Luthor of Threesomes. Because it’s so incredibly fucked up that Joe is all “Bisexual, you say” when this was apparently his plan all along and as a chaos sicko I absolutely love it. What in the hell.
That’s a very weird way to see it.
Joe says it himself in panel 2! Joyce cheating on him was something he actively worked at doing and his endgame was polycule.
I don’t that is what he mean by that at all.
What does he mean? How do you read “Who do you think nudged Dorothy in your direction?” The only other way I can see it is him basically conceding which I don’t think he’s doing. Whatever Joe is proposing feels a little strange otherwise.
I guess he’s willing to what? Be Joyce’s side dick? Her mister? Is that the proper term? That feels a little unfair to him. I’m not experienced at all in poly relationship dynamics. Info or context from experienced persons would be great.
So, all poly relationships are different, but it seems like you’re approaching it from the lens of being, like, a monogamous relationship where you’re allowed to cheat. No one is the side piece, she’ll just be dating both of them. Equally.
I understand a bit more after reading some of the comments. Thanks. I’ve decided to wait and see if we get more context to see if this is some big master plan from Joe or if he’s intentionally undercutting his own chances with Joyce or something else entirely. The way he presented this kinda threw me off. I guess ultimately whatever makes Joyce happy is his end goal.
That’s how it should work, but I’m not sure that’s how Joe is seeing it.
There’s a word that I didn’t learn until after beginning my poly journey, “compersion”. It means taking joy in the fact that your partner(s) are feeling joy. I’m not H’s “side dick”, nor is J. We all want each other to be happy, is all. We’re happy when the others are happy. It’s really nice, especially when it’s firing on all cylinders. Sex is fun, but love, imo, is better.
I mean, if that’s what he wants.
It’s just that “nudge her in her direction” not all the other stuff esm said.
He absolutely is at least willing to concede. “But I will step aside” – which if I remember correctly Willis was originally going to have him say to Dorothy in that scene where he talks to her about her crush on Joyce.
He doesn’t even seem to entertain the idea that Joyce might choose him over Dorothy (probably correctly). He’s definitely seeing himself as the lesser partner in the potential poly relationship – which is not healthy and is absolutely not how healthy poly works (or has to work – there are lots of variations).
I think it actually makes sense though because hes clearly aware of it and i dont think its a function of self loathing but the fact that he realizes now that dorothy and joyce have lowkey been dating for nearly a year in calender and he has been dating like 2 weeks
1. Joe was actively trying to get Dorothy to bang Joyce in that conversation, totally fine with Joyce cheating on him (and Dorothy cheating on Walky).
2. Joe’s ultimate goal is to be clubs with Joyce and Dorothy
Like, he’s apparently fine with Joyce breaking up with him to be with Dorothy, but his ideal scenario is a polycule with both of them and he’s saying all that explicitly here. Where am I wrong? Even if you believe he’s not be nefarious, he’s very much being manipulative in that conversation.
I just don’t believe he is being manipulative nefariously or otherwise.
Ya, this is one of those situations where intent matters a lot to the context. You could certainly perceive it as shady behavior but once you add in the context and his intent, it falls apart.
Those are dirty words, ’round these parts.
My guess is that Joe foresaw this happening eventually if he said nothing, and didn’t want it dangling like a sword of Damocles over his relationship with Joyce. He might’ve had longer with her that way in the event he wasn’t chosen, but waiting for the drop would have poisoned it.
Joe foreseeing this as a potential issue was always my thought, too — I always read it as being more likely Joe was going for “look, you two, if you want to date go do that before I get invested in Joyce too hard, I’ll understand” but sure, “I’m willing to be poly about it” is adjacent enough that I can buy it.
In that context, Joe’s nudge is just that — “I need Dorothy and Joyce to figure out what is going on between them before I can really get committed to Joyce, and if that means I have to needle Dorothy onto the path of understanding that she’s bi, so it goes.”
ESM, it’s an interesting comic you’re reading. I hope that you’re enjoying it.
i think viewing someone who was quietly aiming for a polyamorus relationship because it would make him and his girlfriend happy as some sex criminal who’s been secretly manipulating women this whole time is uh. fucked up, a little bit
Maybe a lot.
I can’t read the clubs in any other way than as an unhinged Homestuck reference (since Taffy brought that back to the forefront of my brain).
They are a couple of Hussies, after all ( ✧≖ ͜ʖ≖)
8^y
For me this is the strip where Joe knew for certain that he wanted to see Joyce and Dorothy date.
He got this big shot of compersion while also realizing that he is a kindred spirit with Dorothy in how they both love Joyce.
ah studies at the beginning you are a young energetic girl from a fundamental family and before you know it you are building a wagon fort with other Hussites
It’s not really something these two should care about but I feel like this date both of us strat maybe screws over Walky. I guess we’ll see. Maybe Dorothy will try and pitch the same deal.
New Joyce (Face) Unlocked! 😛
Finally i been so many one star triangle smile pulls.
Oh, Joe. My poor, sweet, precious boy. You thought you were helping ^^u
There we go. Some thoughts are heppening. Slowly, and late in the game, but they are happening.
So what are the stat boosts for being a hussy?
You get to do more taxes.
Damn… I’ll continue tax evading.
Weak against Water Type, Steel Type; strong against Fighting Type
I can’t think of any existing Type combination that would produce those exact results. Pretty cool.
Fairy/Grass
True, though that also comes with a double weakness to Poison and an assortment of other weaknesses and strengths.
There is an exploit you can use though to boost your wisdom score an additional two points per level, but it’s really finicky. I hope they don’t patch it out anytime soon.
I meant to say this yesterday, but I’m seeing this working out with Joe, then Joyce going back to get stuff from her room, telling Sarah it all worked out and Joe says she can date them both, then Sarah dropping “Did Dorothy say you could date them both?”
Pfft, this sounds really on-brand for the comic honestly. It also is a very clean segway into the next lesson about a poly relationship: making sure you are considering both of your partners whenever life happens.
Joe might be an absolute GOAT character. Holy development Batman.
“Hey, I’m fine with doing the poly thing, but also yeah you did kinda cheat,” is like the most mature way he could’ve possibly navigated this situation. (I’m reacting to yesterday’s too because apparently I forgot to read it then.)
… Sooooo I’m guessing the Dorothy and Walky side will be an unmitigated disaster :V
I just stumbled across this strip and find it pretty funny in the context of the current development: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/01-everybodys-looking-for-nothing/entice/
Not how Sarah would have anticipated it to go.
Ohh, I totally forgot this strip.
And now she’s berating them for doing what she wanted.
HAVE IT ALL, JOYCE!!! I WANNA LIVE THE LOVE TRIANGLE DREAM. IVE BEEN WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO PULL THIS SINCE I WAS 9 READING RANMA 1/2!!!
… so, wait, the dream wasn’t her riding a unicorn, it was her riding a horse with wings?
*waits for exactly 1.7 people to get that joke*
“I am the hussie. It is me”
-Joyce Brown
excited to watch Julia Gray introduce 12 new characters who are all space aliens with teen love triangle drama
Whatever you think of this storyline, this punchline kills.
Dumbing of Age – we come back because it’s fucking funny.
☝️
Joe, LLLLOOOOLLLLL 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I hate this. I really hate this.
Sometimes, one CAN have their cake and eat it too. lmao
you can tell joyce is SIGNIFICANTLY more comfortable with breaking down her boundaries/social constructs/sexual anxiety, incredibly so, because the last panel doesn’t have a red background
so. does her father or mother get the paper? will this be on other news? because uh-oh
College newspapers do not have a very broad circulation.
Yeah, my parents were helicopter-adjacent and lived an hour’s drive from my campus, and THEY didn’t bother trying to get the campus newspaper (or, in my last year or two, look at it online).
sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if the incident made bigger news
or if one of the parents was checking up on their kids’ comic strip
That’s a thought I hadn’t considered. Most parents won’t keep up on the campus paper, but if they know their kid has a regular feature in it? That they’ll want to see.
The question is does Joyce talk to her parents enough that they’d know about the strip?
I actually wondered about that and went and searched out the scene where she got the first issue with her comic in it. She said she was getting a copy for her dad. And for Jocelyne, her aunt, her grandfather, but probably not John. She ignores Sarah when she asks about her mom.
So, Hank at least knows about it.
I would be genuinely surprised if Joyce has told either of her parents about her comic strip, for like, all kinds of reasons.
But I do think Hank might follow an alumni Facebook account.
She explicitly got a copy of at least the first issue with her comic to send to Hank, though not one for Carol.
Joyce’s parents have a zero chance of reading the paper, or near enough.
The local mainstream news sources will have someone reading the campus paper as a minor part of their job, and police on the campus will be news. It comes down to what the reporter and editor think is important. Now, of course there is social media, a campus full of people with phones, and what spreads.
The local news is likely not headed up by a horny touch-starved lesbian with a personal urge to center sapphic passion
No, but it’s still a good photogenic shot. It’s likely to show up, even if it’s not given the focus Daisy gave it.
It’s also likely to take off on social media.
I have been watching this with glee for sure, and not having a *lot* to comment, but I will say – just like yesterday’s recontextualised Joe’s comments the morning after the gaybar girldranks – that this strip adds a fascinating new dimension to in the previous book
Ack! I’m terrible at HTML! That was supposed to be “to Wingpersonness in the previous book”
Okay I give up. You know what I mean, at least the strip linked each time
This is a really interesting observation and it makes a lot of sense! If we take Joe at his word- and I can’t think of a good reason not to- he honestly thought the greatest thing he could do for Joyce, the girl he loves, is to help her get laid with the other girl she gave every appearance of being in not-lesbians with.
As an aside, I am really frustrated how “Joyce is gay for Dorothy” being presented as a running gag for the entire run of the comic has screwed with my ability to interpret character traits. I’m so used to assuming that you’re just supposed to ignore character traits that are presented as humorous rather than take them seriously that I discount them out of hand. But deciding consciously *not* to do that still doesn’t solve the problem because the sexuality jokes are still right alongside other personality jokes like people being raging assholes to each other for a punchline or betraying each other for an exciting cliffhanger twist. I don’t like the idea that we’re supposed to take some parts of the comic more seriously than others, but which parts those are is a fun mystery for us to solve ourselves.
That’s what I like about this college: the dorm rooms all come with a gelled deep-red key light.
Didn’t yours?
We also had “Penn State Blue” in ours, but no one used them because it was too on the nose.
Joyce, you got the gift of your life and still refusing because guilty???
1) Wow, Joe really showing off his Joyce expertise here. 100% patience for Joyce, but Carol gets the steel chair. He’s never beating the “he is good for you” allegations.
2) Ooh we got some confirmation on Joe’s intent during his big scene with Dorothy. He wasn’t just being magnanimous or calling her out gently which is what it seemed like from Dorothy’s perspective. Seems like not only was he aware and accepting that Joyce might leave him from the first tiddy pic (and not just leave, but that it would be on him to “step out of the way”?? damn.) but also that he’s been considering asking for non-monogamy for several days?? Did we successfully sidestep the poly-under-duress trap?
What are we thinkin, gang? Has Joe officially entered Smarting of Age territory or is he is being overly selfless in a doormat way? Maybe some combination?
Yeah exactly this. I dont know why people thought Joe would have an issue. It seems pretty obvious and we’ve had a lot of foreshadowing to him being unjealous by nature and aware of non monogamy. First he mentions it to amazi girls mother its brought up with Sarah and Lucy and the like. But he b has noted the awkward intimacy between Joyce and dorothy knew this was a possibility. It is a bit sad he knew he would be the one to step aside but given how much longer this has been building between Joyce and Dorothy. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew that was likely.
Both. I think Joe is still coming at this from a place of self-loathing (someone above said that he acknowledged that Joyce’s feelings for Dorothy were so much stronger than her feelings for him, which is certainly an interpretation of what he said yesterday. The thought of ever being in that position dealt horrific psychic damage to me.) but he’s trying his best to be “mature.”
I put “mature” into quotations because I personally believe it’s an incredibly childish view imo that anger is an immature emotion rather than a protective one/call-to-action one and that that belief is partially why things in the world have gotten so dangerous for various communities [not victim blaming them, I believe that the vilification of anger and idolization of nonviolence and pacifism are on some degrees malicious propaganda that it’s hard to make reasonable sounding arguments against.] Not that Joe should fly off the handle or anything, but he’s been saying very saintly things and making faces that don’t necessarily align with his words or actions.
Like, people say he orchestrated this like a grand master plan, but the face he made after Joyce and Dorothy went drinking was not the face of a man who had a great plan. His face when he answered the door today was not the face of a man who was pleased at this outcome. Irritation has seeped through several times during this conversation. He’s not as okay with this as he’s letting on, but it’s a mixture of really wanting to not lose Joyce and genuinely believing he doesn’t deserve to be jealous (as said before with Rachel). Maybe it’s something he works past, maybe he decides he wants someone who can reserve their whole heart for him instead of him having to settle for the quietest corner.
So like, he’s being smart-ish and mature-ish about this, but he’s also making himself smaller and less obtrusive. The discussion + understanding == Smarting, the potential denial of his own emotions and worth as a human being == Dumbing.
It doesn’t seem that way. It seems like he is somewhat upset but foresaw this and was pretty aware Joyce and Dorothy were stupidly horny for eachother and knew this would come up so he told dorothy to figure out your shit. It went unfortunately with a moment of passion pushing them to act unexpectedly to themselves but not everyone who knows them.
Joe doesnt seem to be minimizing himself just very aware that thisbis an option in a way Joyce isnt despite them both knowing a non monogamous group.
Joe “nudging” Dorothy into making a move on Joyce while angling for the polycule ending is…I wouldn’t really call it “nefarious” but there’s something a little Σ(-᷅_-᷄๑) about it.
Not so much angling for it as acknowledging that this is where things are heading so might as well rip off the band-aid.
My inclination was Joe wanted Dorothy to talk to Joyce about her feelings.
However, Dorothy made a move because Dorothy can’t confront her feelings.
Also, Dorothy holds Joe in such contempt that she never assumed they’d be mature about it.
Dorothy didn’t make a move. Dorothy repressed and channeled her emotions into self-destructiveness. Joyce made the move.
That’s what Willis wants you to think.
Well Joyce, it could’ve been worse. At least you weren’t outed as a hussie by the Jumbotron at a Coldplay concert!
Anarchy! Nearly-red panel!
If nothing else, this storyline has been aces for my gravatar choices.
You’ve achieved your final form.
Unlikely, but likelier than it was yesterday!
omg
no notes, haha
I know we’ve discussed this but I still have to note how incredibly pissed I am with Daisy for what she did here. The image is one thing, it’s attention-getting and it has a kind of Banksy vibe that I get is irresistible to college age folks. But the headline and the way it outs them is just so so supremely crappy. It also makes me remember Jennifer telling Carla that Ruth’s home is not safe, because not everyone’s is. Just…ugh, dude, why? There were a million better ways to have handled that and I know this is a minor issue in the grand scheme but it continues to bug me. So there, noted, back to the mess at hand.
I have a million issues as a dyke with how daisy is portrayed and this is definitely one of them lol. Didn’t even reach out to Joyce and Dorothy for comment?
I am less concerned about Joyce and Dorothy being “outed”. (After all, they’re engaging in a public display of affection, in the middle of a conflict which probably has significant media attention.)
I would be more concerned that she was more concerned about a couple’s romantic relationship than the whole “police shooting at protestors” thing, which should have bee the subject that grabbed the headlines.
It did afford her the rare “pun headline” opportunity, though. “Kiss goodbi to bombs”? How could she pass that up?
I just want to know when the police were shooting at protestors.
This other comic that people read must be fascinating.
Super hero beating up cops and escaping was probably the biggest news of the day, but yeah as far as we know no shots were actually fired.
Tear gas and some hand-to-hand violence, but not even any evidence of rubber bullets being used. None of that’s really news.
The “grand scheme”, I think it’d be a much bigger issue. Not only does Daisy out them, it’s not even an appropriate photo for the news story. I find it hard to believe that there were no photos of the police violently arresting people or protestors standing off against the police.
IIRC, in the real life IDS article about police arresting protestors, the top photo is a line of riot police and a line of protestors, with a professor in a “not in our name” shirt in between.
Daisy is not really concerned with the seriousness of politics when she has her own personal agenda.
And her agenda is stuff that turns her on.
Also, *we* know that Joyce/Dorothy are bisexual, but does Daisy? Is that “Goodbi” pun appropriate?
Well, “goodlez” isn’t really a pun, so… 🙂
Read the fine print:
*making an assumption for the sake of a pun
This is why you don’t out people even for a great picture or headline: everywhere Joyce or Dorothy go, they’re going to get… feedback on this picture. And certain people will see it who might make trouble for them.
“Great picture: can’t use it.”
Embrace it !!
Own it !!
I like that Joe is acknowledging that what happened was wrong even if it isn’t really an issue for him. Andnwe do see he isn’t exactly okay with it but foresaw her and Dorothy having a thing
That’s not how I read it.
I don’t think he’s criticizing her kissing Dorothy or claiming it’s immoral.
I think he’s criticizing her hypocrisy and claiming dating both ( or him really) is something immoral and beyond the pale, when she already went very public doing it.
I don’t think he’s slut shaming her as defending their continuing relationship from her slut shaming it to Death.
( But she did have him beaten up for less ,so ).
POSSIBILITIES: unlocked
Joyce sometimes makes me want to flip a table
My reading is that Joe knew that the Joyce / Dorothy matter would rise up at some time. He wanted it addressed before he and Joyce went too far. Better to have it out now than months down the road. Insightful and thoughtful.
You people say poly, I say this reads like harem.
Polyamory isn’t just “everyone is dating everyone.”
Honest answer: Yes, I’m now learning this!
Dishonest answer: Harem sounds more salacious so I may keep saying it.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to regard an actual relationship structure that millions of people feel fulfilled and happy in as something inherently salacious.
And yet most people still do. I don’t know how they look at this face and conclude “smoldering pile of sex”, but there you go.
I must admit, it was the first thing that crossed my mind.
Real talk: I see a masc-presenting person who’s not exactly conventionally hot, who is talking about being in a serious poly relationship or with long experience with same, and I just immediately assume he’s a hero in the romantic arts.
Modestly, I am also describing myself. 😁
As long as we are clear that it is *Joyce’s* harem
It really depends on how the relationships are developed. “Harem” in a contemporary fictional context is “One important character, with multiple accessory side characters as romantic partners”.
We don’t look at harem stories as “Oh what a great example of poly relationships in media” because they aren’t. What distinguishes them is the one sided focus. Only one character is actually narratively important, and the other characters just exist to bolster and develop the fantasy of the person with the “harem”.
To be honest, I do see some of this in Joe and Joyce’s relationship. Right now it basically seems 100% one-sided. Is Joe right now a character that has his own separate interests and agency that are developed and explored in the story?
The good news is that Dorothy seemed pretty unphazed when Joyce told her she had sex with Joe instead of breaking up with him.
Well, technically oral, if I understand their interaction/discussion.
Most people won’t make the distinction between oral and full sex, but a few people might.
President Clinton has joined the chat.
This is by far the funniest outcome of this, “Joyce harem” was not on my bingo card
It’s not a harem.
Yet.
Yes. This is the correct attitude/mindset. 😈
I can’t believe we’re witnessing the sudden and immediate hussification of Joyce, who has never once had anything like this foreshadowed.
That is just slander about negajoyce an easy mixup
Maybe the true hussy were the friends we made along the way
Now that Joyce AND Joe have referred to Joyce’s actions as cheating (which Dorothy and Sarah have also effectively said), I hope that’ll be the end of replies I got like this one from yesterday:
“What cheating?
People jumping on the “cheating” wagon really say more of themselves than of Joyce and Dorothy. <.<"
Joyce: I’m becoming… you.
Joe: Yeah, go on, girl!
Joyce: I want… to having sex… with all girls in campus.
Joe: Hell yea, girl, go wild!!
Joyce: I want… I feeling like … pushing up 150 lb !!
Joe: What?
*Joyce’s arms and legs are growing up. Shes is stretching, getting taller and more muscler.
Joyce: AHHHH *rips her shirt* I’M A MONSTER, MOTHERFUCKER!! WHERE’S MY SHAKE? BIRRRLLL!!
Joe: No! Not like that, Joyce! Not like that!
She-Hulk joyce may be something Joe is into.
JOYCE SMASH! 😂
She also seduced a guy and broke up his relationship, so she’s not really beating the hussy-allegations.
No no see? Hussies will mix food Ingredients. Not including ketchup and Mac cheese.
On the one hand, shipper brain likes both Joyrothy and Joeyce, wants both
On the other, yeah, I don’t think Joyce is in a place mentally to handle being polyamorous. It takes work. And also she is still in a lot of fundie mindset that she needs to work through first. Honestly probably needs to address more of it now that she’s kissin’ girls.
Joyce is polyamorous. Joyce has been polyamorous. She just needed someone to point it out, and she needs to figure out how to be poly without fucking it up like she has been the last couple of comic days. And the sooner she starts figuring that out, the better.
I mean, seriously, in the last couple of days, she almost kissed her girlfriend, then immediately jumped up and went on a romantic date with her boyfriend, which she expressly intended to end with sex (which it did, more or less). Then she figured out that her girlfriend had already taken her virginity (by some definitions) and dragged her off to do it again, but that got interrupted, and instead she ended up lesbian-marrying her girlfriend in the middle of a police riot and making out with her on the front page of the newspaper. And apparently everywhere else between Dunn Meadow and the front steps of their dorm. Then she gave her boyfriend a bj before taking her girlfriend to bed to spoon her and nibble on her ear, and then try to lure her into the shower with her in the morning. That’s not to mention going out on a date for dranks, cuddles, and suggestive little arm caresses with her girlfriend before coming home and crawling into bed with her boyfriend.
She’s already dating both of them. She’s arguably been dating Dorothy longer than she’s been dating Joe, even if neither of them consciously acknowledged that their relationship was romantic and/or sexual. And now it turns out that everyone was aware of this except her. Basically all Joe is saying here is, “I know what you’ve been doing, and I support you continuing to do it.”
(Tangentially, Joe knows about Joyce “doing laundry” with Dorothy, but he’s never been given any details, and I doubt he suspects that it was as hilariously PG as it actually was. He probably thinks that Joyce and Dorothy were already more physically involved than they are even now when she got together with him.)
Right, what Joe is proposing here is codifying the existing status quo.
It is one thing to love multiple people, it is another thing to choose to devote the time, energy, and emotional capacity to recognize that love as a romantic relationship.
Joyce has a lot of love, but she is absolute shit at polyamory because polyamory requires trust, respect, and communication.
Thank you Ordo! Made my point far better than I did. I don’t think Joyce is in a place to do this *right* yet.
This is what I love about this comic. Joyce giving grace to others but still thinking of herself as a sinner, or in this instance; a “hussy,” rings so very true to how de-programming works, or at least how mine has been.
Both Joyce and Becky speak so truly to the experience of “escaping from a fundie upbringing and trying to purge that toxicity from not just your words but also your thoughts” that despite being a cishet guy, there is no one I identify with harder than these two queer women.
Now, did my journey include a bi-awakening, having a gun pointed at me, or being kidnapped by a mobster? Thankfully no, but it’s the… the word I wanna use is “mental landscape” of these characters is so achingly familiar.
I absolutely love love love it. Keep up the great work, (Damn You) Willis. 😄
See also: Joyce falling back on scripture to comfort herself and steel her resolve when charging into the protest after Dorothy
That scene highlighted an important step in the deprogramming process: recognizing that there are positive things that stay with you too, and that you don’t have to reject 100% of your previous identity and life in service of growth. Quoting that line of scripture helped to punctuate and illustrate the depth of her feelings in that moment (in a very “Darmok and Jalad” sense). There is so much of scripture that is in fact quite beautiful and meaningful and helpful to personal growth, it’s when you start to ascribe extrinsic authority to its words that you enter the danger zone.
Side note: I really like her citing scripture in that scene because it really highlights how much she’s moved beyond the “contrarian” phase of her atheism into a more healthy equilibrium.
I’ve always found Joyce’s struggles with her own sexuality compared to her Fundie upbringing interesting, especially because in a way it was reversed for me. We’ve both already discussed religious backstory in the past, but I’d say even when I no longer believed in it, the main reason I identified as ‘Christian’ for as long as I did is because, while my peers were all sorts of hormonal and clearly experiencing ‘the hornt’, I… was not.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized of course that I am a sex repulsed asexual but in the late 00s we didn’t have that kind of vocabulary, and certainly not for teenagers in the south. So for me, I just figured it was because of all the southern Christianity stuff. Like even when I doubted things, I’d think “hrrm well. I still believe in waiting to have sex til after marriage (because I have no desire or urge to do so but I don’t understand that yet) so clearly I must still be a Christian”. As I started accepting myself and again, making peace with the fact that I really REALLY held no love for the church (helped along by going to college and experiencing fundamentalist protestors yelling at us about how we were going to Hell), I was able to shed what little connection to ‘Christianity’ was left.
Sidenote too, during one of those instances of protestors yelling at students, one of them singled me out and accusingly asked if I was a virgin. When I answered that I was, she immediately set her hands on me and said “oh BLESS you. BLESS you for waiting until marriage!!!” and I had to just scurry away in a HURRY like “uh huh yeah sure of course marriage wink wink”.
You know what they say, ain’t no hate like “Christian love.” It never ceases to amaze me how these fundies and fanatics can’t line up the dots between “people don’t like going to church or associating with us” and “we are unceasing assholes to everyone all the god damn time.”
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3lxanqtbcgc27
Fun fact
Return of the unibrow! Truly one of my favorite kinds of cartooning shorthand, it’s great.
I recently got turned on to the preview panels available on Tumblr Blue sky etc and it’s weird reading the comic that that context now. Certain things are ruled out, like for example that Joyce and Walky will never be in the same room again without yelling at each other (at least not constantly).
I think Joe might be the most emotionally mature character in the story right now. Holy shit. He’s handling this really well. I doubt it will last. The psychological damage of all of this is being held back by raw willpower and compassion right now, but it’ll hit eventually. This could very possibly end well, but they really need attend therapy *together* and work it all out as a throuple, because this is an awful, terrible start to things.
Ah, so this was actually all according to keikaku
I wonder how the people who were full “how dare Joyce betray Joe! >:(” are feeling right now
….
your feelings were valid
the only difference between being in a throuple and being a hussie is mutual consent between all parties
Well, even if tacit, she didn’t know she had it.
I’m still waiting on the heart to heart between Dorothy and Joe.
“nudged… In the first place?”
There was Billy the other day.
But really I think that was Amber.
Or Billy. Before that.
But Sarah before that. Although, that was more of a shove.
“I am a Hussy.
An Andrew Hussie.
I have to make Homestuck now.”