Joe said he would be bi if he got to bang more chick’s. With Joyce he was ready to be completely monogamous. By agreeing to be in a four way with Walky and Dorothy he will be bi and by doing so bang twice as many chick’s as before.
No, no, the right wing abused “it’s just a joke” for years, so now we must take even obvious jokes extremely literally. That’s not an overreaction or anything, it’s a moral mandate.
It wasn’t serious, but it was still gross. Even on its own, but even more as a deflection from not treating Carla as a woman and “not being mean” about Jocelyne.
Kind of hope we circle back to that at some point.
The story itself doesn’t frame Joe’s joking as a good thing. The reason we even like Joe now is because he developed as a character. Dismissing his flaws undercuts that. Like you can choose to ignore what the story is telling you I guess? But don’t fault if other’s comment because they might understand more than you.
Cooler heads failed yesterday. Today they MUST succeed at holding back from eachother until the relationship issue is sorted!Joyce IS aware that she’s cheating on Joe. If she can’t face that and fess up things are going to get so much worse.
Joyce STILL seems unwilling to give the situation the weight it deserves. She begrudging accepts to stop stabbing Joe in the back, after Dorothy bullies her into it.
If even Sarah couldn’t get through to her, I’m not sure who else could. I doubt Dorothy is up to the task.
Joyce making out with Dorothy and them trying to be all hush hush about it is cheating. Its a betrayal towards their already committed partners. Sarah aptly said it, the secrecy and tip toeing around the affair makes it much worse. The two even feel guilt from their new developing relationship.
In a vacuum, Joyce stroking Dorothy’s cheek is not cheating.
But this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Joyce and Dorothy just cheated, and every bit of affection they display is a continuation of that cheating. Everything more they do makes it a bit more severe.
Dorothy correctly clocks that they need to pause. What’s done is done, but they can stop making it worse.
I mean Joyce continuing to act like dots girlfriend while being Joe’s girlfriend is kinda stabbing him in the back yeah
God damn it I don’t even really give a shit about cheating. It’s bad and I’ll say damn fuck that dude if you tell me about it, but i roll my eyes when people say it’s the worst thing you can do to a partner without any qualifiers (eg. Worst non violent thing you can do). I didn’t care when my own ex cheated on me, it’s like the least bad thing he did to me. It’s just, really annoying when people insist on calling a spade a club or diamond when it’s so clearly a spade.
I imagine for some, being cheated on is either the worst thing that has happened to them, or the worst thing they can imagine. The stuff that gets even worse I suspect people folks try to avoid thinking about… which isn’t really an option for folks who are fully aware of how bad it can get through first or second-hand experience.
It’s not the worst thing you can do (and what they’ve done so far is far from the worst cheating can be), but it’s not far from the worst thing that you’re going to see in this kind of context. That doesn’t turn the character into an outright villain in most people’s eyes. That gets a large (majority?) portion of the commentariat excusing or condoning it.
That arguably is being portrayed positively and/or romantically in the comic itself.
I disagree that it’s being portrayed positively given the instant pushback they’ve gotten from Sarah and Danny’s pontification on how you’d have to be an awful terrible person to ever do this.
I think Willis is portraying that Dorothy and Joyce both think this is positive, which makes sense, but I’m not seeing a lot of it outside their opinions (other than the framing of the original kiss, which I think was just always going to be dramatic and romantic no matter what).
I very much read it as Joyce being partially swept up in the honeymoon phase of a new relationship and partially Joyce avoiding thinking about the situation seriously because the moment she really DOES let herself face the reality of it she’s gonna collapse like a house of cards, girl is currently running on honeymoon phase and inertia, and the moment she stops and processes things she’s NOT gonna be in a good place about everything
Of course I’m only speculating, but Joyce doesn’t really seem to think Joe is going to really be upset. Maybe not even surprised. She’s probably assuming they’ll easily come to some sort of arrangement.
After all, she saw how Dorothy and Walky got back together even after Dorothy already broke up with him once. So why couldn’t she and Joe remain good friends?
See, I don’t even know that I think Joyce is thinking it through that hard — most of what she’s doing seems to be following the same basic script of “well, we’re in Twue Wuv, so that makes anything we do all right”, whether consciously or unconsciously.
I think it’s more that she’s still hopped up on romcom brain and averting her gaze from the issue. I think I drew the comparison before but it’s like how in sinbad, Sinbad fucks his best friend’s wife and the dude is just written to be chill with it bc true love. Joyce thinks she’s in Sinbad, she’s not.
Amplified, possibly, by legacy fundie brainworms — the only relationships one is allowed to be in are ones with the express purpose of going directly to marriage, do not pass go, do not date around. A surprisingly large number of ex-fundies of my acquaintance seem to have that change into “whatever relationship I’m currently in now is my only valid relationship ever, and I will go full steam ahead in it”.
Nah, they don’t have to do anything. And how is it going to make things worse? Are Joe and Walky going to be cool with everything they did yesterday and last night, but emotionally wrecked by some cheek stroking this morning? That die is cast, one way or another, and a little extra affection between these two isn’t going to make a difference.
Your position appears to be that Dorothy and Joyce hold no obligation whatsoever to act considerately towards the people in their lives that they care about. That’s a position one can hold, but it’s not one likely to endear them to anyone.
I’m reading it as more of “it doesn’t matter how much more they do, nothing will make it worse than the initial cheating” — which isn’t a completely invalid position, even if I don’t really agree with it. I think a decent number of people will consider “I did something wrong, and then immediately fessed up” is less bad than dragging out not admitting the malfeasance, especially in the case of “cheating” and “engaging in body fluid exchange with more than one person in quick succession” or “acting like we’re still dating including physical affection, when you knew damn well that’s not how YOU felt”.
To answer Astariel’s question: right now, this won’t make it much worse (one can make the case that sustaining the deception incrementally makes it worse, though). Engaging in activities with Joe yesterday without telling him DID make it worse, and doing so again (should that happen) would also make it worse.
I mean I get it, people get attached to characters.
Personally I also think some perspective is needed, and consideration that we’re a year behind Willis on all this. I know the laundry comic caused an uproar at the time but context for what the characters are doing and thinking gets provided in the long run.
Real talk, but also it seems that Willis has scrapped and redone a lot of the buffer based on feedback to the recent storylines, so not sure how far ahead we legitimately are now, I suppose we should be grateful we have a proprietor so benevolent and prolific.
Tbh people just need to get comfortable with the idea of their woobies doing things that are wrong sometimes. That applies to like 90% of the arguments here. Both sides.
God damn it you made me a centrist. I’ve become what I sought to destory
Yes! I live in fear of the buffer! 🙂 Deep inside I’m saying “Don’t you hurt [insert name]”, but the story arcs have pretty much been worked out for a year ahead. Still Mr. Willis has been a good writer and should continue. He must be good if people are so invested in the happiness of fictional characters. LOL
I was going to ask the same thing… I am not a part of any of the other socials surrounding this comic, so if it’s not here, chances are I never see it unless someone else references it here.
The… homosexuality? The queer awakening that has been coming for Joyce like a freight train down the tracks for every moment this comic has existed? It, uh, tends to be pretty overwhelming, when it hits a gal!
Also, knowing what any of her desires are, and having the agency to act on them. Any sexuality at all that isn’t about raising Christian babies for Jesus, but it’s about what she wants. The fact that it’s powerful forbidden Atheist lady-lust is just extra spiffy.
“This feels like a Love Story, and as I am the Protagonist of my story, anything I do in service of finding my True Love is narratively justified”.
Not literally, obviously, but I suspect two of Joyce’s residual “very religious upbringing” brain worms are “Everything will go the way it’s supposed to go, there is a Plan and you can know you are following It” and “I am allowed to center my own immediate feelings and impulses, even though I no longer believe they are the Spirit moving me”
Speaking as a “Paladin,” as this point the thing about the cheating storyline I like the least is the commenters losing their minds over it. Yes, Cheating is Bad ™ but sometimes good people do bad things. Calling out your friend when they’re doing something bad doesn’t make you judgmental, and it doesn’t mean your friend needs to commit seppuku either.
Whatever happened to “the strip isn’t called SmartingOfAge, amiright?” I know this attitude isn’t limited to this storyline; it’s been a reoccurring problem basically since the beginning. It just makes me want to skip reading comments entirely.
I prefer the comic strip be played for laughs yes. I don’t feel the need to get all judgmental. But I do like how honest and forthright Sarah was and how she stood up for Joe, and how they are chastened. Even if still finding it difficult to be chaste.
personally I hate the response “this strip isn’t called smarting of age”, it feels like an attempt to shut down people. Yeah of course the characters aren’t perfect and yeah sometimes dumb shit happens for the sake of drama, so what is the comments section FOR if not to talk about that?
I think an increasing number of folks have been feeling discomfort with how acrimonious the comments have been, and how much open seething anger has been expressed towards the characters, and also, often, towards the people who are okay with the characters.
Like, I know *I’m* uncomfortable with it, it’s been really weirding me out and making me feel a lot less comfortable with our community, here.
But also often to the people who are not okay with the characters. This is not a one-sided thing, even if it can seem that way when you’re on one of the sides.
But yeah, it’s been ugly. It’s far from the first time though.
This right here. I try very hard not to get irritated about it, but I’ve had quite a few experiences where someone jumped straight down my throat because I had a position that was vaguely in the same quadrant as someone who was a shithead.
I don’t mind people overanalyzing media. I love overanalyzing media. But some commentators pretend to just be doing media analysis when what they’re actually doing is making shit up in order to portray this or that character in the worst way possible.
Like people saying that Joyce has shown zero signs of guilt, and what looks like guilt is just her being sad that she won’t be Joe’s girlfriend anymore. Wild shit like that.
Same, with a side note of “it’s not smarting of age” generally only being applied to “whatever the commenter saying it wants to happen” and not “ALL of these college kids are college kids, and they are going to react like college kids”.
As a fellow member of the Paladin Order, I’m mostly just annoyed that THIS is gonna be the story for awhile. Cheating plotlines are my least favorite sources of Drama in stories and that’s all we’re gonna get with these characters until this resolves.
I’m not sure exactly why, but I feel the same way about cheating drama…
It feels too easy to pull out of nowhere, and too hard to solve in a satisfying manner, maybe?
As someone more on the sicko side, I think one thing we have to remember is just like how the characters in the comics are people dealing with hormones, trauma and other things, so are a lot of the commenters. The commenters who are taking this strip rather badly are going to be a mix of people dealing with their own things.
With a bunch of them the story could be bringing up a bunch of cheating trauma for them. But with others it could be that Joyce and Dorothy as characters resonated with them, so to see them act like this feels like a betrayal. Both characters have always been depicted as having strong moral cores that at least always try to do the right thing, so i can see why their current actions are making a lot of the paladins so angry.
Even to say that the characters are still dumb teenagers capable of making horny mistakes doesn’t negate that. I guess it’s like if a writer took Spider-Man and had him start committing crimes for petty personal gain, and then put it down to Peter Parker having a hard time and making mistakes. You could probably make a story like that work but it does go against the ethos of the character, especially if after committing the crimes he didn’t show that much guilt over it.
As a Paladin, I actually cosign all of this, with the addition to your first paragraph of “of COURSE there are going to be other characters who are impulsively angry or hurt or feel betrayed about this development regardless of how connected they are to it or what logical sense it makes, because J&D aren’t the ONLY dumb hormone-ridden college kids in this strip.”
Everyone over the age of 12, any time they’re made aware of something that happened more than five seconds ago: “Oh god, I am the ancient fossil being from Planet Old”
It’s almost as if she’s a character who – at one point – had the defining conflict of repeatedly zapping herself with a memory eraser to block out negative memories.
Actively ignoring outside information that casts her self-image in a bad light seems like the clear real-world version of that.
Joyce blanking out her own memories.
I’ve noticed more character beats that were sci-fi in the previous series bleeding through here with more grounded consequences/effects, and I think part of the reason we haven’t been getting into Joyce’s mindset lately is that she’s choosing – consciously or not – to block out her own memories.
It’s a real thing, I’ve seen my own dad do it in real time – he did an act in anger that hurt someone, and you could see it on his face. Realization, pause, blank stare, emotional reset, then when questioned about it seconds later, denial that he had done the harmful act. I only saw it the once, but it left a major impression.
I think Joyce’s self-image is at stake here, so she’s not allowing herself to recognize the consequences of her actions. Quite honestly, she’s probably still in trauma mode from the protest yesterday, and throwing herself into a relationship with Dorothy (or recognizing that’s what it’s been all along) is an excellent self-distraction from processing that she risked being arrested or worse yesterday.
Though completely off-topic, this somehow brought to mind another moment from the original timeline.
“Joyce, I’m hoping these memories are from a different timeline rather than our actual future, and I’d really like to confirm that through the easy low-cost action of you changing into a different shirt.”
“No! I refuse to reassure you with empirical evidence! Increased understanding of the spacetime continuum is meaningless if it isn’t based on Faith!”
https://www.itswalky.com/comic/a-good-relationship/
(Thoughts straying further–“So, you say these vaccinations protect against disease? Have you done a double-blind trial to make your case convincing?” “No! I don’t have to prove what I know in my heart to be true–a double-blind trial would be cheating!”)
https://www.itswalky.com/comic/a-good-relationship/
(Continuing the previous parallel: “I have to hold onto hope–if I did a double-blind trial, I’d know for certain that the vaccination works, and then I wouldn’t any more be able to hold onto hope that it did!”)
((“But didn’t you already say that you know it to be true? So how are you able to hold onto hope any more now than if the evidence agreed with you that it were true..?”))
Honestly…
I think Dorothy’s right.
The fact they went against their own morals for this, it kinda sours me on Dorothy/Joyce entirely.
Maybe if in ten in-universe years they could try again, but sincerely, I don’t think they should be together if they can’t keep decently level heads on.
I think that’s going way too far.
What caused them to act this way is not directly related to how they are to each other, but to the fact they could not previously accept their feelings.
Ok, that’s currently not good, but breaking it off doesn’t even feel possible to me. I think it would necessitate that the two of them stay away from each other, and that can’t be good…
(I’m also far from the US, just saw them in the internet dgfhdj but you know the ones. “waoh. If there’s no god…? then what stops me from xyz…?”, something I personally also find hilarious.)
I introduced a friend of mine who didn’t grow up fundie to the magical world of Jack Chick a week or two ago. I had to assure him that they were not, in fact, parody.
Also, not only can you still buy these things, they’ve made new ones since his death. They’re also the only goddamn thing not affected by greedflation. These things come in boxes of a zillion at fifty cents a pop or even less if you buy in bulk.
Because I for sure promise you, that is not a general rule for women, and you are setting yourself up for some real bad disappointment if you think it is.
i read it as “demonstrated tendency to engage in sexual activities instead of having difficult conversations” rather than anything specifically about what her limits are.
the point being, she hasn’t broken up with him yet, so the “new developments” she refers to are at this point… aspirational?
Yeah, I think in this context the comment is referring to a trend we’ve been seeing. Joyce almost kissed Dorothy, but then kept her date with Joe and received digital stimulation. Then she did kiss Dorothy, but then went and gave Joe a blowjob. There’s a pattern. It might be broken, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it continued.
Given this troubling pattern…Dorothy better not have sex with Joyce or, by extrapolation, it might result in Joyce accidentally marrying, settling down with, and living a long and happy life with Joe!
Certainly doesn’t follow as a general rule, but since she definitely wasn’t planning on the blow job when she went to talk to Joe, it’s hard to completely rule out something else she isn’t planning on.
Joyce also, accidentally, brings out the worst in Dorothy — who is barely holding it together at the best of times, and probably didn’t need to decide to emulate Joyce’s impulsiveness right just when she did.
Off topic, but… this’s one reason that Intelligent Design nonsense annoyed me so much. How is this “intelligent”? Automatically preparing for pregnancy every four weeks or so, regardless of how the person is interested in or even ready for children in any way beyond the physical (and sometimes not even that), then just throwing it away and starting again, for the majority of a person’s life… while some animals get to have a spermatheca to hang onto it until it’s useful (so we could then just have our periods when they might actually do something worthwhile)…
And I know many of them use the excuse of it being an inherited curse based on Eve’s sin, but what about when Jesus supposedly died for our sins? Wouldn’t this apply to all that Original Sin stuff? Besides, punishing people for the actions of their ancestors doesn’t really fit with that whole “loving god” thing…
Sorry. Guess I’m moody today, but hopefully this little rant will, in some way, act as comfort through internet sympathy, or something?
With just one example, why the Intelligent Design/Young-Earth Creationist, “literal” interpretation of all of this stuff, why it makes so many more problems than it solves.
Yes, I put “literal” in quotations. It’s a long story, but the short of it is, literal is a dog whistle for “reading the Bible and contorting everything it says so it fits my existing narrative (and often prejudices.)”
A lot of fundies treat the Bible like it’s some National Treasure puzzle game, and all you gotta do is have the magic decoder ring out of your cereal box to guess as to what it really means.
All that stuff about taking care of the poor and the unfortunate? That stuff about not using faith as get-rich-quick scheme? That vision they use to say “oh we don’t have to follow Leviticus law anymore” and yet cling to the Leviticus verse of “man shall not lie down with” like it’s the only book in the Bible? Or they ignore the bit in Numbers where it actually approves and recommends terminating a pregnancy?
Silly normies. Obviously that’s just filler for the stuff you’re really supposed to be reading into it. Like that somehow the book of Revelations predicted the Cold War.
Hi! I’m just a Random Internet Stranger, but I think it’s probs time for you to hit up a pregnancy test (pref one that starts “from the day of your missed period). Always better to know early!!
I’m having my second one in two months and it’s been over a week (〒﹏〒) I know that’s supposed to be normal but with my birth control I usually get them like, once a season
I have an urge to not trust but I’ve already expressed my distrust for both characters present and saying “Don’t trust birth control.” at minimum feels problematic. You win this time!
Yeah… “don’t trust birth control” was a common refrain from one of my Catholic theology teachers in high school. Very nice guy… but a little brainwashed. Or, as I suppose we now say, “Vatican-pilled.”
…Huh. That surprises me a little, just because in my Catholic high school our teachers taught us many, MANY types of birth control with medically accurate information (at the time, which was 15 years ago so). Our religion teachers said the Catechism the pill was against the rules I THINK (I don’t remember if it’s allowed if you’re married but holding off on a baby for whatever reason, it’s been a long time and I am not actually Catholic) but I also seem to recall they were like ‘You shouldn’t but if anything happens, just be responsible, please, you don’t want a baby in high school and if pregnancy happens HEY adoption is a GREAT option’. Which…I am told many Catholics in the US are strongly against adoption and consider it abandoning your baby so. Maybe Canadian Catholics are different or maybe my school just had very practical teachers. Or it could be because it was a public school so they had to balance theology with public funding curriculum rules and standards.
Ah, yeah. That’ll do it. My province still has publicly funded Catholic schools so they had to follow the same provincial curriculum standards except for religion class. They actually had a pretty good sex ed class now that I think on it. Obviously it was anti-abortion but a lot of the time that ended up ‘It exists but the catechism says no and now who wants to watch the 17th video of some Catholic lady saying she COULD’VE been aborted but was given up for adoption instead and how much she LOVES her bio mom for it?’
We got a class that compared sleeping with more than one person to scotch tape. You stick it to one thing, it sticks pretty well. Peel it off and put it on the second thing, still some adhesion but not as good. Peel it off again and so on and so forth until it has zero adhesive properties left and is just full of hair and dirty and grime.
This, they said, was what sleeping with more than one person would do to you. Eventually your entire ability to love other humans would be irreparably damaged and destroyed. They implied that even if you do find “The One” later in life, you would be unable to love them properly and fully because you’d given your affection to so many other people.
Because apparently affection and human warmth is subject to the laws of supply and demand, and is somehow a limited resource? Look, these people also said that people in the India had the right idea, and lamented the fact that we don’t do arranged marriages in America.
Really scary thing is that these people were the sane, compassionate moderates compared to my middle school.
Not gonna lie, if I hadn’t already heard something even more toxic from the Evangelical middle school, it would have messed me up. As it was, it just served as reinforcement for the prior statements, except it came from Roman Catholics… so basically taking regular ol’ sexual guilt and then spicing it up with some Italian seasoning.
The biggest ACTUAL difference between Catholics and Protestants is that Protestants admit they have dozens upon dozens of sects and sub-sects, whereas Roman Catholics will never admit that there are, functionally, at least four or five separate “Roman Catholic Church”es that only agree, and sometimes not even then, on things specifically said by the Pope when he’s speaking specifically in the “infallible God-appointed leader” mode.
I was only aware of the regular Catholics and Catholics Classic that were all pre-Vatican 2. Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised there’s a whole mess of different factions as well.
As it turns out there’s literally no rule about it, only a tradition that one stays celibate after one gets ordained, but there are Catholic areas where priests are basically 100% single men, and areas (mostly scattered around sub-Saharan Africa, IIRC) where a surprising number of priests were married, had kids, then became a priest when the kids were older.
A lot of them aren’t so much formal doctrinal disputes, but shifts in emphasis. Shifts in culture. For example, Irish Catholics and Central American Catholics are hugely different in every way but the Catholicism and despite attempts at top down control, those differences shape the Catholic experience as well.
US Catholics in general are relatively liberal, as far as Christians in the US go, but there’s a strong right wing faction among US bishops and other top leaders
Right, but to be clear, when taken correctly it’s suuuper close. Like, always be mindful, but definitely still take it if it is safe and reasonable for you to do so.
This one reveals a lot about joyce’s motivations, I think. We see that selfishness with regards to relationships again, which while a defining part of her character, has been pretty subdued or harmless until now.
She also seems to be writing off the idea of being with Joe anymore, which is a little suprising to me honestly. Still, I do kinda get it. This does also reframe her previous scenes as less “i don’t want to have to choose” and more “oh, I do feel bad for doing this to him. He’s nice.” That said, it’s also a joke, so who’s to say how serious to take it.
The “Ugh fine” is showing that she really doesn’t consider this to be that big of a deal. There are probably a bunch of small reasons you could say for why she is acting that way.
She clearly is still operating in the mindset of it all being fine because it’s for true love, and things like “ending the relationship you’re already in before gently caressing the cheek of your sapphic lover” somewhat annoying hoops she has to jump through. Even if she cares for Joe and doesn’t want to hurt him, she’s continuing to display a lack of care and consideration for his feelings in this situation.
She does seem to still be riding the emotional high of the paradigm shift, though while it appears that in the abstract she “plans” to be monogamous with Dorothy, I have a feeling once the discomfort and distress over the the prospect of telling Joe the truth and breaking up with him becomes a more tangible reality to her again, Joyce’s tendencies are going to push her towards avoidance again.
Joyce was prepared to spend the rest of her life with Ethan and fix him. Joyce had convinced herself, urging of Sarah’s or not that he and her were destined to be together. Up until now, if you had asked Joyce, Joe was everything to her and helping her learn and explore and be. Now she’s locked into Dorothy and reconciles her rivalry with Walky as having always secretly wanted Dorothy as her forever lover.
The hard truth is for Joyce? Every game is the endgame.
I wonder if there’s something going on here that’s not just writing Joe off completely. We didn’t see much of her interaction with Joe last night, but it ending with a blow job doesn’t really suggest writing him off. Even with the date the night before there was a sudden switch from barely thinking about Joe to barely considering Dorothy as soon as he showed up.
She seems to be focused completely on whichever one she’s with
dang, Joyce wanted to have unprotected sex?
is it slut-shaming to suggest Joe is a high-risk partner because he’s had multiple other partners before? I assume he was wearing condoms every time, but does Joyce know that? has she had a conversation with him about this?
would she have the gumption to ask him to get tested for STDs?
hmmm though now that I think about it, Dorothy has also had multiple partners, because “two” does fall under the definition of multiple.
Dorothy has claimed 3 partners and I’m pretty sure it’s a throwaway but I’m pushing my “Dorothy is a serial cheater and cheated on Danny” theory anyways because why tf not.
Also, idk why, but I feel like Joe would’ve gotten tested around the time of the Roz thing. Not out of fear or slutshamey reasons, I just feel like that’s a thing that would’ve been discussed between them for some reason. Like Dot said, those two are the most trustworthy I feel to have safe sex lol
“Dorothy was a serial cheater on Danny theory?” I’m gonna be real with you, I have no bloody idea how you came to that conclusion. Either I’m completely forgetting something major from the early strips, or we aren’t reading the same webcomic.
I assume “serial cheater” is meant to be once on Danny and now again on Walky.
The idea’s based on her claiming 3 partners and there not being a lot of time to fit that 3rd partner in. I don’t think unmentioned casual sex with someone during the time skip makes any sense. It could have been before Danny, but that would have been pretty young, so cheating on Danny does kind of make sense as a possibility. Just in time line terms.
I don’t really think it makes sense in characterization terms.
I mean… okay, but some people do lose their v-cards young. That’s not impossible. It seems kinda bad-faith to go from “unaccounted third person” to “oh she had to have been cheating.”
It’s not impossible. But it’s where the idea came from and why people think it’s a possibility.
Part of the weirdness with it, as I suggested elsewhere, is that we know Dorothy and Danny dated for a long time (2 years?) before they went all the way, which I think would be unusual, though again not impossible, if she’d already had sex. It would I think suggest pretty bad feelings about that first time, which have never come up or really been hinted at.
Well, the thing is that Dorothy is confirmed to have waited years to have had sex with Danny, which implies either she was a virgin when they got together or something Really Bad happened (that holy shit would be whack af to drop so casually as an “I’ve had like… 3 partners” comments. Not that people don’t trauma dump casually like that, it would just be whack.) They got together at 15, so there’s literally one year of it being “really young but somewhat normal”
Anyways, like I said, I’m pretty sure the 3 partners thing was just a throwaway comment that doesn’t hold any actual weight and is probably retconned out, but I find it a fun theory regardless.
The fact of the matter is that whether or not adults like acknowledging it kids are also having sex in middle school. When I was taking sex ed in the 7th grade the teachers even told us as much–“I guarantee some of your classmates are already having sex. I would not recommend that, but we want to make sure you’re all aware of how it works so that if you’re going to do it you can do it safely” is what we were told pretty directly. And many of us were like what twelve year olds are having sex, but. Like. It does happen.
Some unnamed and basically unconfirmed schmuck. I’m not gonna dig for it, but she said something like “I’ve only had sex with like three people, I’m not an amoral lust machine” when Joyce was fucking around with her comic at some point. With Danny and Walky already accounted for, unless she’s exaggerating the number for no reason, she fucked one other guy. I feel safe assuming it was a guy, since she didn’t think she was even attracted to women until like two days ago.
Well, we know she dated Danny for three years in high school and after two years, they had sex after the junior prom (my extrapolation based on Willis saying Danny’s had ‘prom sex’ and that Danny himself said two years). That was when Danny lost his virginity but we don’t have confirmation on when Dorothy lost her’s that I recall.
Then of course, she dated Walky for about six or seven weeks in first semester where she also took Walky’s virginity and commented that one day she was going to date a non-virgin.
So, either Dorothy had sex sometime before her sophomore year in high school or she had sex with someone new over the time skip.
Having sex as a freshman in high school (or earlier) with someone never mentioned and then not being willing to repeat it with a guy you’re seriously dating for another two years has some really unpleasant implications.
And I can’t really see Dorothy having sex with anyone over the time skip without it coming up in some fashion.
I don’t necessarily think it has to have unpleasant implications. Could’ve just been too early or waiting for a right moment or DANNY not having been ready.
Not necessarily, but sex at that age is already a red flag. It could certainly have been perfectly fine and she was completely happy with it, but just not willing to repeat it with Danny for years, but the odds don’t lean that way.
But then, I don’t think the cheating really fits either.
I don’t have a good take on the “only 3 people” thing.
I have been trying not to worry about Dorothy’s pre-Danny sexual intimacy. It IS entirely possible it went fine, even at a young age; that it was fumbly and awkward and maybe even sort of regrettable the same way her first kiss was, without actually being traumatic.
Danny could have been that romantic, but he also complained about how quickly she slept with Walky after, I believe he said “how hard it was for *me* to get into your pants”
With who? Joe, Danny, and Dorothy all knew each other from high school, but they’re the only ones we’ve seen from that group. What mysterious person would Dorothy have been cheating on Danny with? And why?? Early Dorothy really gave off “I don’t need nobody to slow me down” vibes.
I could see like if it were during summer break their first year, and they’re not in the same city the whole summer. And Dorothy assumes they’re done or on a break.
Or maybe after she’d decided she was going to break up with him last spring, but only dropped hints instead of breaking up with him.
it’d be not serious, like she first told Walky they were going to be.
Joe’s sexual hang ups would 100% have him being fully on board for safe sex.
He would never want to get someone knocked up. His entire deal was “No attachments, no broken hearts.”
for like the 900th time, his dudebro stuff was a cover. He *acted* like an asshole but he wasn’t one where it mattered, he was just unaware that his persona was also harmful.
I admit, I’d talk more about Walky if he was more prominent in the recent strips themselves. The last strips didn’t even pretend to have Dorothy try to break up with Walky, but made a point to have Joyce see Joe, and hammer home how sweet he was being. Walky hasn’t been seen, at all, since Joyce and Dorothy got to the protest. Joe got a big conversation with Rachel. And, Joe and Joyce’s relationship took center stage up for several strips right before the protest. I admit it’s not entirely fair, but I think a fair argument could be made that Joe has had more pivotal moments lately than Walky, as has his relationship with Joyce than Dorothy/Walky going back to old patterns, and that keeps him on people’s mind.
Plus, and this also isn’t fair: Walky was so blase when Billie and Alice brought up the idea that Joyce had feelings for Joyce, that I don’t exactly know….how…? to worry about him. Joe has glimpsed this on the horizon with the tit pics and talk with Dorothy. He and Joyce just had a big night, and now he’s gotten her a special blanket. It’s easier to see the shadow looming over him, waiting to become real. Walky doesn’t even engage with the idea of Joyce/Dorothy as a possibility. It’s going to suck for him, and I do feel bad for him and worry about the fallout, but I find it harder to theorize how he’ll even react. I don’t have a good way to explain it, but it’s like: Joe got explicit foreshadowing of what’s about to hit him and tried to face it before a big relationship step with Joyce; Walky’s just kinda casually coasting in his renewed relationship with Dorothy, and laughed off the foreshadowing that Billie and Alice gave him. The tension is different.
The more I’ve thought on it—the more I realize Walky laughing it off has nothing to do with Joyce and everything to do with Dorothy. His trust in Dorothy is implicit. Walky has never once thought for a second that Joyce doesn’t love Dorothy. He dunks on it every and any chance he gets. It’s literally the impetus of any antagonism he and Joyce share, comedic or otherwise.
He laughed off because in his mind, Dorothy would never willingly pursue Joyce unless they were both single and they aren’t. Or Dorothy just has never been into Joyce that way, it was always one-sided. Whatever soon-to-crumble beliefs he had, they were so ironclad and implicitly trusting in Dorothy that he laughed it off.
Compare that to Joe who is at least aware enough to see the signs—not that he doesn’t trust Joyce but he saw infidelity in his parents’ marriage first hand. He can guess where affection and closeness can lead.
I think it boils down to being dumped by Dotty is old hat to him. Also, how they went back to being a couple felt skeevy.
Walky also hasn’t really grown as a person yet. Walky getting away from Dorothy, and *finally* taking her off the pedestal he’s put her on, would be a good thing for him.
Becky has Dina, and if she botches that, that’s on her. I legit think Becky is going to go postal on Joyce for turning into the godless sinner stereotype they were told Atheists were.
I think Walky might be the one to take it well. Or rather ‘well’. He’s been through Dorothy’s relationship shenanigans before, and it’s worth remembering that this time around their ‘relationship’ has just been her using him as a booty call a couple of times. Neither of them have spent much time together, and Walky doesn’t seem nearly as attached this time.
Dorothy expects him to be heartbroken, because she can’t see herself as anything but Walky’s Great Forever Perfect Luv, but I think he learned both from his first time around with her and his experience with Lucy that Dorothy wasn’t ever as invested as he was. She hasn’t been investing this time either, so he hasn’t been investing.
Or I kind of hope, anyway. Regardless, I think some apathy of a ‘yeah, I didn’t expect much’ flavor would genuinely bother Dorothy a lot more than the hurt she’s already expecting and scripting for him. Part of her of her takes being on Walky’s highest pedestal as her just dues, and ‘whatever, see ya’ would knock that at least a bit.
I don’t think it’s true that Dorothy wasn’t as invested as Walky was in their first relationship. That’s why it was so hard for her to let it go when she needed more time for her goals and I think it’s why she wanted to go back to him in the first place – it was the last time she was REALLY happy.
I do think Walky is likely to feel used though and that’s why I think he might be the pissed off one. Personally I think it’ll be either Joe or Becky who takes it well.
Or maybe I’m totally wrong and all three will be some combo of sad and/or pissed.
For a while Walky embodied to Dorothy the halcyon days of August and September, before the guns on campus and the bad grades and the kidnappings and trying to ignore her feelings for her best friend, when things were simple and she was happy with her uncomplicated goofball boyfriend. She wanted him back because she wanted that time back, but of course you can’t repeat the past. Time is always marching on. Their rebound together was always doomed.
There’s some truth to that, but she also wanted him back right after they broke up. And apparently all along afterwards until at some point it switched over to just being nostalgia/distraction from Joyce.
I think a lot of this is also the fact that we don’t actually have any good idea of what way Walky will take this.
It’s been clear for a while that he’s not only hiding his pain and insecurities behind his goofball devil-may-care facade, he is AWARE he is doing this (to the point of throwing away math tests with bad results, if I remember correctly) and is consciously trying to maintain said facade.
So the only really interesting question becomes “is THIS the thing that shatters the facade?” and I don’t think we have any real evidence for what he might do if it does.
Walky in the Walkyverse was an extremely angry, rageful person beneath the goofball mask. In the Dumbiverse, a lot of that anger has been scooped out and replaced with Sad. I’m still crossing my fingers and hoping we get to see some angry Walky again.
I wonder if some of the intensity of the negative reaction isn’t just that the girls are cheating, but due to the pace of the comic, it doesn’t feel like they’ve been cheating for less than 24 hours, it feels like they’ve been cheating for *weeks*.
Like, if you first got upset when they kissed, this situation has been upsetting you for *so* long, at this point, due to the rate at which time passes in this comic. I could see that aggravating the situation for folks, even if only on a subconscious and purely emotional level.
I’ve personally moved on from the cheating anger and now I’m walking full speed into being angry about Joyce’s weird sexual derailment. It was like… Two days? from “my thigh is touching his ween through two pairs of pajamas oh no!” to blowing him for a blanket, then smooching Dotty again.
My upset is exactly this. Willis wanted to jump to his future plan, skipping years of comics, and suddenly the characters are not behaving like themselves. It’s a jarring shift.
This is where I am. 24 hours is a time period in which setting things right is possible. No one is entitled to the other being willing to feel that way, of course. But that’s my personal rule: “Within 24-hours of cheating you can come clean, and at least try to break it off before it goes any further.” It’d still be painful, it doesn’t make what was done right, and it doesn’t mean they have to be ok with you or it.
But at least they tried to course-correct as immediately as possible.
See, I kinda disagree with this, in that I think that you break the timer when you do things that are further along on the “cheating” scale — and, IMHO, one of those things is “go from romantic contact with your new partner to romantic contact with your extant partner to romantic contact with your new partner” — I could give Joyce a 24-hour buffer, if not for “going to talk to Joe and them engaging in sexual contact rather than her coming clean”.
Confessing right away is better than drawing it out (with some exceptions if it would be a particularly bad time for your partner, like right before an important test), but best is not cheating at all.
That is part of it, but it is also the type of relationship Joe has with her. He has been very determined to change himself for what he sees as better because of her and who he wants to be around her. There are some qualms you can have about someone using someone else as motivation to change themselves (rather than just for themselves), but it doesn’t change the fact that she has been his motivation. Joyce’s actions seem to spit in the face of that and his openness and fragileness (not sure if that is the word I want) around her. This isn’t a relationship where he was just going through the motions, “just for fun”, or just trying something out. He is invested (along with the rest of us in that storyline) in this relationship. Joyce’s actions with the cheating and dumping appear like they will have bad emotional and mental consequences for Joe and it is hard to see a way that he comes out of this okay. Not to downplay any of the other cheating scenes, but the stakes seem like they were made more obvious and painful for the one being cheating on than just happening off screen in the background.
It also feels like Joyce hasn’t been with Joe that long before this started happening, though that could just be my perception. It still feels like Joe is taking his first trembling steps in this relationship and isn’t confident in acting in this new way that he wants to be. If he was shown to be confident and steadfast in his new self, it might not feel as bad. You could see him bouncing back from it easier.
Yeah, it’s literally every single day and has been for a long-ass time with a big ol’ buffer, whereas almost every other webcomic I read is at 2 or 3 pages a week, with seemingly no buffer whatsoever. Some are even less than that, with Oglaf on a weekly schedule and Dolmistaska seeming to just update whenever.
There are other comics that I follow that can get more out of an individual update than DoA, but DoA easily makes up for it on frequency and consistency.
I just did a reread of the whole comic and I knew the effect your talking about beforehand what was wild to me is it reads completely differently (not just a bit less intense). Like I used to be on the Mike hate train and on re-read I was like be sucks but he came off so much less bad. Same with this storyline. I’m very sad for Joe (because he’s clearly in love with Joyce) but the Joyce/Dorothy seems less bad. It’s like I can finally see the in universe timescales better. I mean I’m still 100% with Sarah on this topic but it’s not as frustrating to me personally as a reader now.
I mean yeah the strip a day format is dragging this out long past charming into “can we get this over with already?” territory. Especially if you don’t actually like the couple that much
Today’s strip has more examples of why I love Dorothy because she’s kind of not entirely wrong here. Dorothy/Joyce does bring out a lot of bad in Joyce it seems, and again has the issue of her infantilizing Joyce just a bit even here. In fact, this is actually Dorothy doing the same shit she did with all her boyfriends. She dictates the terms of the relationship, she knows what’s best, she’s putting her foot down.
It actually puts me way more at ease about things, because Dorothy is very controlling. That issue will be a thing that crops up and will be addressed lol.
Idk, that sounds like a lot of smack talking Dorothy, it’s really hard for me to express how much that is not hating on Dorothy. I love her for her flaws because they’re so… idk. They’re good flaws. I adore Dorothy as a character and I like that she is capable of stepping back and saying “actually no, we need to do things right” while still also demonstrating that her perspective is still the only one she really ever considers in full.
I will say though, Joyce’s attitude about all of this is very much a bro wtf to me. It doesn’t even really read in her voice today, she almost sounds like Billie. She should know better than to emulate Billie lol. [Also, the last two panels I find very relatable given that I take my BC so I don’t bleed to death yet still feel the need to test it once a year to be like “idk maybe this time it’ll be normal” and it never is.]
As someone with ADHD I would love a partner like Dorothy, my husband wasn’t naturally that but he’s adopted some Dorothy-esque qualities because I needed it and he saw my need. Joyce resonates a lot with me because she’s so in-the-moment and forgetful, she does well with someone who can manifest working memory for her.
I get that it isn’t smack talk but I also don’t see it as a flaw, and I feel like its portrayal here is showing that Dorothy and Joyce care about one another and are still the same people to one another that they’ve been pretty much the entire strip, Dorothy ensuring Joyce has her glasses and takes her meds feels to me as an attempt to show rather than tell the ways that Dorothy has prioritised helping Joyce grow and take care of herself more.
It is a messy situation but this dynamic is not bad, and however long this takes the situation doesn’t merit the weight to crush the ship entirely. This from someone who had never shipped Jorothy before the kiss.
It’s less the taking care of her that I think is emblematic of the flaw, it’s that Dorothy immediately asks if she’s bad for Joyce. Which, if the answer Dorothy unilaterally determines is “yes” will lead to her breaking up with Joyce or at least attempting to and causing angst about it. Joyce’s actual perspective on whether or not Dorothy is “ruining her” she doesn’t truly consider because she immediately throws up that wall again and changes the subject. Like, it’s not a damning thing, but I think it’s a sign of that main tendency we know she still has, if that makes sense.
In a way, it’s kind of an echo of the Ruth/Billie thing. Maybe this will come up multiple times until Ruth is like “Hey. Stop. You’re gonna mess up the best thing that ever happened to you.” (And Jason is just in the background, coasting because that’s his life now.)
Yeah, Dorothy is a self-sabotager. She loves to strive but she doesn’t know what to do with actual success and tries to resist it once she has it in her hands. Yale is the perfect example.
I think Joyce is in denial (as in unconsciously ignoring all that is not compatible with the joy of accepting her own feelings)? And maybe that’s why she sounds like Billie to you?
That strip is also I feel a big example of why I don’t really like them as a couple. I think I preferred Joe/Joyce because Joe treated Joyce like an adult capable of making her own decisions, and Dorothy tends to dictate the field and acts as though the people in her life have no agency.
But like, it’s happening again, so soon, so I feel much happier that we’ll see this conflict crop up again and be addressed because Dorothy desperately needs to overcome it.
I think you have a better handle on Dorothy’s problem than a lot of people have had. I’ve seen people say she babies Joyce, when it’s more that she does this with basically everybody, like she’s acknowledged her issue of treating her friends as projects.
Even with her acknowledging that, she’s still doing it. Like, I’d point to her saying she was drafting up a breakup speech with Walky, and I don’t think it’d occur to her how enormously patronizing that is. No conversation, just her talking at him. That’s going to be a trainwreck.
I remember when Danny turned her patronizing shoulder touch around on her, and rather than really acknowledge that what she’d done was patronizing she basically just said “well I’m GOOD at it”
I mean, she would be right. It is a problem with her and not with Walky. Treating your partner like shit is 100% a you problem.
I really hope Walky finds a decent relationship, that isn’t built on “this doesn’t matter”, “we’re garbage”, or false idolization (and then misdirected blame).
If Joyce and Dorothy do properly break up with their boyfriends and stay together as a couple, Joyce is gonna have to deal with that from Dorothy even worse than when they were just friends. I wonder how long she’ll be ok with that.
right. like for almost all of their friendship, Dorothy has been too busy to spend a lot of time with Joyce. (I think Joyce played up her helplessness at times, consciously or sub-, to get Dorothy to spend time with her). Now Joyce is going to be the focus of most of her attention, not Walky, not Future President Dorothy Keener.
I wasn’t really on board with how Dorothy/Joyce is happening at the start of the arc. Generally cheating/triangle relationships are boring to read to me. However, the “two generally good people making each other worse” angle would be an interesting thing to explore with Joyce and Dorothy. I’m warming up to the vision, and looking forward to see how Willis develop this plot.
Turning on the light that mostly keeps Joyce entirely in shadow. While Dorothy is partially in it, and also trying to stay responsible, influenced by Sarah’s words. [Sarah also walked out of the shadows and into the light in the previous strip.]]
Until Dorothy has to push back Joyce a little and finally turn on the light, helping Joyce get ready for the day. [Cute little thing all things considered.] And Joyce’s words definitely imply she’s ready for moving beyond laundry, no longer blind literally and figuratively.
Everything is coming to light!
Or I’m over analyzing the composition, but neat work
I should note, being responsible as in communicating with their partners. Not like responsible for Joyce being “bad”, though that is an interesting weight on her shoulders.
Surely Dorothy feeling overly responsible for Joyce along won’t be a returning issue!
And once again Willis shows they’re “yes, I was raised fundie” credentials. This is something that eludes so many of these folks. They don’t know what birth control is, they don’t know how it works, and they genuinely think the medication has no other uses besides that. They really think the only use is for “sl*ts that can’t keep their legs closed!”
If you bring up that doctors use them for other methods, like period pains… I am not fucking making this up: One person heavily implied that there was probably some kind of sinister anti-baby conspiracy of doctors over-prescribing birth control for everything from paper-cuts to concussions… all for the eventual goal of…
Actually, that part they never really made clear. This person seemed to think that all of society was completely (but secretly) on board with the Voluntary Extinction Movement or something.
And so I must say “damn you” not to Willis (breaking centuries of precedent, I know) but to my own brainrot. I used to be flawless at the there/their/they’re but too much time in comments section has crossed my wires.
So, the answer to that is the kind that’s gonna require me to do the boat ride music from Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. You know, “There’s no knowing where we’re going, how to stop or even if we’re slowing…”
Spoiler warning: at the end of the rabbit hole is… often racism dressed up in an eco-friendly mask. There’s a long, long history of movements concerned about “overpopulation” being something of a smokescreen for that whole Great Replacement Theory nonsense. So it’s not that they think “they” need to get off Earth’s lawn… they want those “other” people to take a hike. You know, because there are “too many of them around.”
Obviously this doesn’t go for everyone who expresses concern about overpopulation, but that’s just what makes using it as a cover so effective. The ones who are honest about population concerns talk about how it’s more about… supply. You know, like the quip that if every country consumed at the rate America is, we’d need the resources of four planet Earths to feed it. On top of that is the fact that Earth could possibly support even more people if, you know, 99% of the resources didn’t just get Hoover’d up by the top percentile.
The ones that don’t focus on the best known ways to slow population growth at least: education and opportunity for women and access to birth control. Focus on that and you bend the curve.
Still combine those last two facts of yours and you have to remember than an awful lot of non-elite Americans are in that top 1% globally. I don’t think supporting even more people, but with a lower standard of living is a better goal, even if it’s more equitable. I’d rather aim for raising standards of living while cutting the population growth curve. (I’m all for cutting the share going to the real elites along the way of course.)
See, the fact that they haven’t killed themselves yet just shows me that they’re hypocrites. It’s like that one Calvin & Hobbes strip about satanic heavy metal musicians.
There’s also the related anti-natalist movement, we just had some idiot with those beliefs bomb an IVF clinic specifically to prevent more babies from being made.
Damn… I’ve heard of anti-natalists before, but only in the context of “I’ve decided that I’m not interested in having kids. Rest of you feel free to enjoy though.”
Those people are not called anti-natalists, and it’s important because anti-natalists are oof-y, they’re called childfree (versus childless if it’s not voluntary).
Honestly people go off their meds so goddamn often because they forget what it’s like when they’re off them and go “I don’t need these!” and then it’s RIGHT Back where you started and sometimes worse and this is EXACTLY that kind of shit.
(And that’s part of how you get antibiotics resistant eVErYtHInG kids)
Yeah, I had one doctor call me the “poster boy” for medication compliance, and I’m like “it’s pretty simple to me. I remember what it was like before I had these, and that sucked.”
I really really love the lightswitch coming on and fully breaking the lesbian flag color palette that’s been used for the lightning in the last few strips. A very cool detail that I appreciate a lot.
That would be kinda funny. So far Dorothy and Joyce have basically been assuming that Joyce will break up with Joe. Dorothy seemed to totally not mind about the blowjob.
If Joyce were to fail to break up with him again, and instead had sex, it might indicate to Dorothy that Joyce isn’t actually fully willing to break up with Joe to be together.
Dorothy feels upset, and feels guilty doing her normal thing and assuming full responsibility. “I am making Joyce act badly. I am breaking up a happy relationship” and also “How much does Joyce really love me if she won’t break up with Joe so that we can be together honestly? Is she just in love with whichever of us is in front of her right now?”
Dorothy calls off the relationship. Joe finds out about the cheating and dumps Joyce. Lots of mess, pain and drama
To be honest, Dorothy probably should have done that after the BJ. I’ve been in her shoes (granted it was an ex that told me he picked me over the other woman) and that shit fucking *hurts*. It’s especially humiliating. Joyce should probably end up dumped by both parties, but I don’t think she will. I think Joyce needs to be talked to by someone with a long repeated history of nuking relationships and unnecessary drama. Maybe an actual conversation with Billie where Billie knows what the hell she’s signing off on and also trying to be good lol. Maybe Sal, though I can’t see her having any avenue towards that convo.
“Considering new developments… what need would I even have for them anymore?”
A very interesting line, that one. Even setting aside, for the moment, the debilitating menstrual pain that she is actually taking them for.
Was gonna do a semi-deep read on it but typing on my phone makes it annoying to edit as I write, which is non-tenable for the way I write so IDK maybe I’ll do one when I’m back on my laptop IDK
I know a lot of people like to bandy about the idea that none of this is in character for Joyce but I disagree, Joyce has for a long time been teetering on the verge of this kind of no-holds-barred, Jesus-take-the-wheel, knowingly potentially self-destructive heads-first dive into waters so uncharted she didn’t even know they existed just an in-universe year ago. That includes the fact that she’s queer, despite what some people want to believe. It’s gonna be messy, and as I said the other day, I am here for messy, especially queer messy. Give her time, she’ll find her equilibrium, even if it’s just a ‘new normal.’
I keep wondering just how far on the Kinsey scale Joyce is gonna go. Can’t wait to find out.
As an aside to your aside — I don’t think a lot of us are questioning Joyce’s sudden headfirst dive into hedonistic debauchery, just that she seems to have turned off the part of her brain that handles things like “empathy for her friends” while she’s doing it.
Admittedly, there’ve also been indications along the way that Joyce’s sense of morality and empathy have always taken a backseat to The Narrative in her head (ex: trying to get Jacob to cheat on Raidah was okay, because Sarah doesn’t like Raidah and does like Jacob, so it’s just like a Love Story!) but it still feels like the Joyce who’s been using Joe as a sounding board for serious stuff since pre-timeskip and who was concerned about not even having the appearance of cheating on him prior to their date night is being suddenly awfully callous with his feelings.
It’s not that deep imo. Joyce fundamentally (lol) thinks her birth control pills are there to allow her to have premarital sex because “hussy pills.” Now she’s going to (ostensibly) break up with Joe to be with Dorothy as a lesbian. Why would someone need birth control if they’re in a lesbian relationship?
And then Dorothy reminds her, it’s not for birth control reasons. And she goes, oh. Right. That.
Just dropping a top-level to note that I am still enjoying all of this! Not really up to engaging with comments today, but don’t want that to get lost in the general wave of feedback Willis is getting.
Comic good. Girls cute. I for one deeply appreciate help remembering to take my meds and I thank my gf every time. My reading of the first two panels is also that Dorothy’s anxiety over bringing out the worst in Joyce is meant to be just that: anxiety, not a delivered truth! Might be wrong, of course, but that’s what I got from it.
Lighting and expressions are also especially nice right now. Good job on the art.
I think only one of the data points has ever annoyed Joyce, though, so I’m not sure the other points should be counted.
(Even for the eye doctor thing, Joyce was never annoyed with Dorothy at any point, and clearly didn’t process it as overbearing; she felt supported. The only time she’s ever been annoyed by it was when she was in debilitating pain and it was a major source of latent fundie anxiety.
Extremely valid of other people to feel like they’d hate being friends with a Dorothy, but I think they’ll be disappointed if they expect “we’ve learned to let each other say yes” Joyce to ever agree with them.)
Like: if Joyce ever again seems even a lil bit annoyed by Dorothy doing stuff like this, I’ll take it back!
But right now I think this is actively one of the thing Joyce likes in a partner, and I feel genuinely bad for people who relate to Joyce and dislike this level of — whatever we wanna call it.
(I’d call it assistance or caretaking, I suspect other people would call it micromanaging.)
Especially because we HAVE seen Dorothy say out loud that she needs to stop turning friends into projects, that she needs to find other ways to say “I love you”.
But I think saying, “Okay, time for us both to face the music, I’ll get your glasses and your meds for you,” isn’t making Joyce a project.
Heck, I also think Dorothy was being too harsh with herself when she said that line, I’ll elaborate in a second comment lulz.
Why I think Dorothy was being too hard on herself:
— Becauss I think Jennifer and Roz’s criticisms of the type of friend she’s been to Joyce (always either too hands-on or too hands-off — she should have done more to confront Joyce’s bigotry, she should have done more to get Joyce on birth control, but also she’s too pushy about getting Joyce to actually take said birth control and also being slut-shamey…) really did a number on Dorothy’s confidence in how to be a friend to Joyce — and by extension, to literally anyone, since as I’ve noted I think Joyce was Dorothy’s first friend.
— Because I don’t think she read up on autism out of some sort of creepy neurotypical fascination with the topic. I think she read up on it both in a VERY neurodiverse-typical attempt to be a better friend* AND because, you know, on some subconscious level she knows it’s relevant information.
(And I bet she spent a lot of her research time going, “Well, this doesn’t describe me, I’m GREAT at managing xyz thing in my life, in fact I have a whole system for handling it. I’m definitely not touch-averse! Even though having Danny lay a hand on my shoulder unexpectedly felt awful. That’s just because he’s bad at physical comfort. Unlike me, because I’ve practiced it, which is very normal.”)
— Her impulse to immediately research ADHD “for” Walky? More of the same. At the very least, more of that neurodiverse urge to do deep dives into “weird” things in an attempt to be a good friend. The sooner Dorothy accepts that she’s not a creepy neurotypical studying her ND friends like bugs, the better she’ll feel about herself.
(idk, of course I could be wrong, but I bet our girl’s actually AuDHD.)
Man. I get that Joyce is in love with Dorothy, but her eagerness in this strip to not think about Joe at all here is HOLY SHIT WAIT A MINUTE
JOYCE IS BECOMING OLD JOE. That’s gotta be intentional, right? I mean it’s not 1-1 with Old Joe but the intentional shedding of any emotional investment she once had in pursuit of pure libido (obviously Joyce loves Dorothy for more than just sex appeal but her only concerns/source of annoyance in this strip is who she can or can’t be immediately physically intimate with) just SCREAMS Joe Classic. That’s AMAZING. I could be totally off-base but if I’m not this is going to rule SO HARD
The second she starts rating the rest of Clark Hall on her own personal “Do List” then she’s Old Joe. Like Joe said, he’s only ever been in one relationship, and he’s been faithful to her, so acting on whatever shenanigans Dorothy was imagining would be actually *far worse* than Old Joe.
In the words of Danny, “That’s just being a morally bankrupt human being.”
You’re looking at the comparison from the wrong angle. It’s not their ACTIONS that line up, it’s their MOTIVES.
Joe then and Joyce now turned to indulging in physical intimacy to shield themselves from being hurt by emotional investment. We know that Joyce loves Dorothy, but Joyce also has a sizable amount of emotional investment in Joe. Breaking up with him isn’t just a matter of having to have a painful conversation, it means giving up on that emotional investment and her efforts to be open together with him (there are many examples but Joyce wanting to drink with Joe and what followed comes immediately to mind). Turning to physical intimacy was her immediate move when she felt guilt at the idea of confessing to Joe, and she’s annoyed at the idea of having to stop being physical with Dorothy for even a moment.
Is Joyce going to become a pickup artist, or openly objectifying her peers? I very much doubt it. But I think she WILL be inclined to push for physicality with both Dorothy and Joe to avoid having to think about or confront her mixed feelings about making a clean break with her boyfriend that she’s emotionally invested in order to be with the girlfriend she’s even closer to. And not for nothing, but Joyce is flying blind: until recently she believed that anyone you dated had to be with the intention of marrying them. Presumably she discarded that view when she lost her faith, but knowing how to handle relationships is a learned behavior, and listen I get that this sounds sort of crazy but it makes a perfect sort of sense to me that Joyce’s two-timing will go on for longer than we thought, and that any attempt to cut her off from her indulgence with either partner is going to be met with hostility, like we’re seeing now.
Or maybe I’m a moron and none of this will happen! Time will tell.
Dorothy and Joe are both wanting to be with Joyce after a whole character arc of figuring out their shit but even if this ends with poly(which I kind of want for the mess), Joyce is probably gonna struggle to stay with Joe and Dorothy
Even in the situation where they find what seems a perfect solution I think Joyce will still desire other people
I think it’s more that Joyce has no nuance. She’s all one thing or another, and that’s been a recurring issue for her and part of why she’s so ghastly levels of awkward about new developments and terrible at lying.
She’s about Dorothy now, which makes it really difficult for her to consider a lot else, until she runs into it head-on, like her botching trying to break up with Joe because, shit, she still does have feelings for him, too.
That said, it’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out, you may be right about some parallels.
The parallels are absolutely inescapable imo. Joe is sensitive to cheating because of the divorce. Joyce, much like his dad, cannot help herself when something new and exciting is dangled in front of her face. Rather than confront it head on, she hid it and just carried on like nothing happened.
On some level I legit think Joyce is going to fuck her relationship with Joe up because of her bad instincts. We might get to polycule but this is a huge stick of dynamite and it’s not going to be easy to resolve because Dorothy is going to throw her whole ass behind her and Joyce and it’s going to fuck up the boyfriends real bad.
I wonder…could this story-line get messy enough that Joyce will somehow convince herself that she should have PiV sex with Joe before she breaks-ups with him?
It’s really messed up that part of me wants that, as a J/J shipper. It’s not right if she doesn’t tell him. I just felt so much chemistry between them and their relationship was so built up. But it would be twisted at this point. I liked their romance. That happening without him knowing about Dorothy would twist the knife more, and make this incredibly real. It would be bold for Willis to take it that far.
And before anyone goes “it’s not cheating because they have not had sex or whatever”, they have kissed a lot and are already acting like they are a couple.
Well, they can’t now retroactively have not cheated and “we need to keep our hands off each other” is basically “stop cheating”, so I’m not sure what parts of the lecture Dorothy is discarding.
As someone who’s worn glasses since I was a little kid, same. Holding them by the lenses is a good way to get smudges that are annoyingly hard to clean off.
Based on my nesting partner’s experience, it’s 100% the new coatings that are doing it — I have a pair of plain ol’ glasses because I usually wear contacts and they don’t get greasy at all, really, just dusty and smudged. My partner’s new glasses with the fancy coatings need soap and water twice a day to even start to get the smudges and grease off.
Honestly, as a fellow glasses-wearer, we see Joyce do so many ill-advised things with her glasses, but the real existential horror here is that Willis also wears glasses.
Oooh, Dorothy, that is such a sweet thing to say about Joyce. And it’s unfortunately not true. Joyce THINKS she’s trying to bring out the best in everyone. But she does not. More than once, her plans, well intentioned though they may be, have encouraged the worst in people, like Ethan’s self doubts and Sarah’s rivalry with Raidah over Jacob. And, not that Dorothy is objective and not that I expect her to be, but this situation is not bringing out the best in you, Dorothy.
It’s disappointing to see that yesterday’s odd facial expression is pretty much confirmed to be apathy and avoidance.
I really wanna go back to another set of characters, even the beginning of the fallout is not really proving to be all that entertaining. Starting to see what the people who say these two are boring are talking about.
I like that Joyce immediately shuts down Dorothy’s insecurities here. Though, yes, it’s time to stop doing the fun thing and face reality. Sorry, Joyce.
And yeah, I’m gonna guess it’ll be a while before she remembers those aren’t just Harlot Pills. XD
A few have touched on it, but taking my hands off the pearls for a moment . . .
Joyce’s eagerness to just drop Joe like a sack of rotten potatoes feels really weird to me. Joyce genuinely seemed happy with Joe. Hell, she was so touched by the gift of a weighted blanket that she gave him a blowjob.
Then she decides she wants to smooch Dorothy and immediately pivots to more or less going “lol. Joe, who?” whenever she’s not being actively pushed to consider his feelings in this situation.
If I was in a happy relationship I just don’t think I’d even consider acting on an attraction to someone else unless that partner did something to make the relationship into an unhappy one. So Joyce is just feeling especially callous lately. And I know some people are hoping for some kind of poly outcome, but I’d hate it because it feels like it’d just be rewarding Joyce for being scummy.
I do agree with the takes that would like some more strips that show us the internal logic/thoughts of Joyce going on right now. Some insight into how this all makes sense to her, what’s driving her… I think not having this context makes it very easy to interpret her as, at best, really flaky.
A friend once joked that I have “Shiny Object Syndrome.” He ended up being 100% right. I wonder if Joyce is experiencing something similar. She’s still riding the high that was “ZOMG, I’M SMOOCHING DOROTHY” and this rebuke from Sarah was only the first of many reality checks that are going to make her realize, to quote our leading lady herself; “I have said a bad.”
I think that is exactly what is going on, supported by her “wanting to kiss each other after so long” line. Like, do I think there’s genuine attraction? Yes. But it’s bering accented by her deprogramming.
My big complaint about joyce has been less “shiny object syndrome” and more “object permanence”. It seems to me like Joyce is firmly attached to Joe and Doeothy both, but only when they’re actually within her field of vision.
She couldn’t break up with Joe not just because she was so touched by his gift but because she saw him and remembered how much she liked him. Then she went back to Dorothy and was fully on the train of sapphic love forever.
It’s one of the big reasons I think a poly situation would be an even bigger relationship disaster than what we have now. Joyce would constantly be standing up the partner that isn’t in her line of sight.
That’s pretty close to what I’m thinking, too, along with the residual fundie-ism that might have Joyce thinking “sexual desire is for True Love only”, which could easily flip into “I feel desire, therefore I am In Love” — and lord knows we know she’s deeply sexually attracted to both Dorothy and Joe, and has been long before she was willing to admit it to herself.
My read on the blanket was it made her feel so guilty she gave him an apology BJ. Which really has nothing to do with how she feels about him, more he’s nice and she felt bad (which could apply to any decent partner). Honestly ever since Joe and Joyce got together it felt very one sided in terms of Joe liking in Joyce in particular as an individual and Joyce liking him because he’s a good bf. Which is not what I expected from the set up of there connection but I feel like it’s what we got.
Sorry if I implied it was not creepy. It very much gives me the ick and I would be horrified if a partner did this to me. I was saying that was Joyce’s intention (as opposed to having overwhelming feelings for Joe which I’ve seen as the other read) I’m not saying that’s acceptable or that Joe would want that (I really think he wouldn’t).
It’s possible, but since we didn’t actually get any insight into what she was thinking when it happened, it’s really hard to say. Which is probably intentional.
I do agree with Odo here that it definitely makes the cheating worse, but “apology blowjob” would work as a motivation if Joyce assumed he would want that.
Yeah, I’m having trouble seeing this Joyce and Past Joyce as the same person in my head. Seeing her behaviour as a result of a kind of monotropism is the best I can do.
This is another thing that’s bothering me about Joyce, along with the cheating. Since the kiss at the protest with Dorothy, she seems to only think about Joe and how her actions might affect him when someone else brings him up or she actually meets him. All other times since that kiss she seems to not even consider Joe. I liked Joyce before this story arc, but her behavior lately has lowered my opinion of her a lot.
I’d say that actually started earlier – in bed with Dorothy before the date. And it might work the other way with Dorothy as well. That bit where Joe knocks on the door and she goes instantly from about to kiss Dorothy to happy excitement that Joe’s there.
We just haven’t seen enough of her with Joe (or without Dorothy) since the Kiss to have a good feel for it.
Agreed. I understand she’s super wrapped up in the excitement of Dorothy, but with her fundie upbringing of being used to feeling guilty for EVERYTHING, like even thinking about sex, you’d think she’d feel at least a LITTLE bit guilty about cheating on Joe. She had a moment yesterday when she felt sad while she was rehearsing the breakup speech, but that’s it. But I’m even more shocked that Joyce doesn’t seem to give a shit about Sarah’s disappointment either. I’m glad that Sarah voiced my feelings, “I didn’t know you as well as I thought.”
I know she had a lightbulb moment of breaking free of her fundie upbringing, including shaking off the homophobia and the guilt over sex, but it still seems like a very extreme 180. This isn’t just “Repressed Christian girl leaves home and becomes sexually wild”. You can become wild and still care about people’s feelings and not hurting people.
And the “sexually wild” doesn’t really seem like it’s been a thing either. She backed off from PiV sex with Joe just the night before. You could argue that’s because she was thinking about Dorothy, but that’s not really in evidence. It was only the morning before that she was lying in bed with Joe freaking out about nudging his business with her thigh. It’s really hard to argue she’s shook off all the sexual hangups.
I’m not sure what the big deal is with the Joe situation is here. If Joyce is bi (or has a type she’s attracted to, regardless of gender because there are people like that) then they could discuss a poly relationship. I think Dorothy has some respect for Joe, and it could eventually grow in to genuine affection with time…
i mean, he was an atrocious sexist who was openly shitty to her for years, his new persona has been the work of a few months at most. all things considered i think she’s more than cordial to the dude
Dorothy has more reasons to dislike him than just about anyone specifically because of long experience and the fact they knew each other in high school.
Meanwhile, the folks who’ve only known him in college watched him follow something that was a pretty common track for a guy like that back in my college days, namely “dude does sexist nonsense (but never crosses or really even approaches the line into criminal behavior), gets called the fuck out, and course-corrects into a basically reasonable guy”.
(in my experience, there was always a relatively bright line between “dude who sleeps around and is sexist, but gives a shit about consent” and “dude who sleeps around and is sexist”, with the former usually eventually ending up getting set straight and the latter turning into the kind of people who hang out with Incelerator)
In my experience, anyone who behaved like Joe did early on was well on the wrong side of that line. The “gives a shit about consent” part was almost entirely Word of Willis and occasional claims from Joe, while at the same time he talked about alcohol helping with threesomes and had to be yelled at to temporarily keep him from hitting on you.
We now know that Joe had hidden depths and wasn’t ever as bad as he appeared, but Old Joe’s presentation was all red flags.
Yeah. My biggest problem with Joe. Willis wasn’t willing to commit to making him bad enough and now to many readers are just “He was always basically a good guy.”
at the risk of angering the Dorothy X Joyce shippers. I’m going to say that given the information we know right now Joe is by far the more healthy relationship option for Joyce.
As for why Joe has had his past of being a horndog and sleeping around, but he’s also been reformist and his time dating Joyce he has been nothing but respectful and trying to work to stay in her comfort zone to try and be a good boyfriend and supportive.
Dorothy on the other hand is currently in a self destructive state where she is burning her bridges as she goes primarilly as a result of the trauma recent events dumped on her as well as her own crisis of faith. Dorothy really should get herself some therapy
Joyce may be attracted to him (she’s bi, by the way), but all the times Joyce gets weird about sex with him, or avoided him, may show she’s not THAT attracted.
Lot of people didn’t see it after all. And I believe Joe can get it soon. For his own good.
Or it could be because Joyce still has years of fundamentalist brainwashing she’s still unlearning and hang-ups about sex is one of the biggest she’s still having trouble getting over.
In addition, Joyce also almost got roofied in her first week of college and from the sight of Joyce clutching her glass smashing hand after discovering that Joe pretended to be drunk while she actually was drunk ( https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/bothbe/ ) I think she understandably is still navigating trusting a man in a sexual situation.
I think she is attracted to Joe, she wouldn’t give him a handy and a blowjob if she wasn’t, but she’s still unlearning her religious hang ups regarding sex as well as trauma and fear that are completely understandable.
She’s an ex-fundie virgin who only really masturbated the first time less than 2 weeks ago. Since then she’s given him a hand job and a blow job and gotten fingered by him. That’s not weird hesitation about sex proving she’s not attracted, that’s speed running it.
She gave him a spontaneous blow job. I don’t think she is that weirded out by sex with him. It seems more like a learning curve of getting comfortable with the idea of sex in general.
I think part of the reason why she has seemed less hesitant about sex with Dorothy was that originally she didn’t think it was even sex. She doesn’t associate it with the “big boom religious doom” she associates with PiV intercourse. She used to associate it with “the sin of homosexuality” but has had more time and experience getting over that.
Also, she hasn’t actually had sex with Dorothy yet – in an interactive sense anyway. She was talking big about how she was going to have sex with Joe a couple days ago then chickened out. She hasn’t even talked like that about sex with Dorothy.
That one comment about how it would be “easier with you”, but at that stage I don’t think she was even considering as a real possibility. Reality is scarier.
Wow, would you look at that. It’s someone yet again suggesting a poly relationship, for roughly the billionth time now, as if it’ll be a miraculous panacea that magically wipes away any and all conflict whatsoever from this situation.
Polyamory is not a magic cure-all, nor is it something entered into lightly. And the fact that these two are, as Sarah put it, doing this all in hushes and mumbles makes it clear they know it’s something wrong.
Speaking from experience, I have participated in poly and it went badly because my partner hid things from me and made me feel lied to. That’s why poly isn’t something I see happening, nor do I think it should happen.
It’s also fairly exhausting to see anyone against the actions of Dorothy and Joyce being decried as “paladins” or “prudes” when the truth is that many of us have been cheated on, have had partners hide things from us, and it genuinely sucks to see characters we’re all attached to make these calls. I hesitated to even say anything at all because of how people have been treated over not liking this.
Most of the people who want polyamory here explicitly do not think it will fix everything, or indeed anything. There are poly people on both sides of the “I do/don’t want polyamory to happen here” divide.
you know, i think my issue with the relationship paladins is that they’re treating some very light infidelity as though it’s somehow on par with the repeated kidnapping, murder, and suicide attempts that have already happened on the floor this year. hell, there was a police riot on campus yesterday. joyce and dorothy got teargassed! joyce and joe potentially breaking up isn’t even the biggest deal in joyce and joe’s lives right now, forget about the rest of the cast
While I am very much in the camp that highly disapproves of Joyce/Dorothy’s current course of action, I think the reason why the opposing reaction has been so visceral is because for a lot of people, they have actually experienced cheating and betrayal themselves, so it feels very personal (kind of like TWs), especially if you’re emotionally invested in the characters. (See: parasocial relationships.) On the other hand, stuff like kidnapping, murder and suicide, while vastly worse, is still likely to have not personally touched as many people so it feels more “distant” to them.
I think the parasociality is a *very* large element of this. People continue to react as if characters in a story that is being written to be entertaining and dramatic are actual real human beings that they know, who are real and can be hurt and betrayed. Instead of this being a story about queer self-discovery and coming out, and how messy and disruptive that can be.
And no, this doesn’t mean I think people shouldn’t have emotional investment in the story, it means I think they should be reminding themselves that it *is* a story, and the only actual “stakes” are whether you enjoy it or not. People are relating to this like they’re watching their actual friends make mistakes, and all they can do is furiously pound on the glass and demand that they course correct to become the morally pure sweeties they need them to be.
They… they super are. I can understand that you have maybe skipped or not seen the comments in time but there were people who were so upset they were hoping that Willis had cheated on his wife and this comic plotline was how she found out.
I don’t think most of the relationship paladins are treating this cheating as just as bad as the kidnapping, murder, and suicide attempts. I think a lot of us in that group of commenters are annoyed at how many people are trying to minimize cheating and act like it’s not a big deal to the people getting cheated on, however. And while it’s clear that some characters (Asma, Amber, and probably others) were affected by the protest and the police riot on campus, Joe didn’t go to it, and Joyce and Dorothy seem to be much more focused on their newly realized feelings for each other right now than about the police riot and teargassing at the protest. I’m assuming we’ll see more about the effects the events at the protest had on other characters later.
When there were kidnapping and murder attempts everyone agreed “That’s bad” and the kidnappers/murderers were considered villains. There was no big response condemning them because condemnation was already built into the comic.
A major response to the cheating, however, has been “Aww how cute” or “Yay! You go girls!”, not necessarily because it is cheating, but still responding to the same actions that were cheating.
“The love is more important”, “I deserve to be messy this once”, “It is the heat of the moment”, “they will get over it eventually”, “we never had a formal monogamy contract”, etc… Are all excuses that people deciding to cheat actually use, so seeing them parrotted in the comments is disturbing.
TBF I am partially reacting to how the comic has been framing the cheating as well. Willis chose to add a bunch of wedding imagery. They chose to have several punchlines be essentially “Isn’t our cheating adorkable”
It’s definitely both. Most of the previous blowups in the comments were when there were two strong factions reacting to conflicts in the comic, not to clear villains. Sometimes early on in a villain arc when some were still not seeing the villain as a villain (“Mary just wanted to study” or Joyce’s lunch with John and Jocelyne), but even more when there was a conflict between two protagonists (The Becky/Joyce blow up or the Sal/Amber fight). The latter are closer in some ways to this not only because there are protagonists readers are attached to on both sides, but also because the authorial stance wasn’t clearly supporting one or the other, which made it possible for both sides to read the author in their favor.
Here, while I largely agree with you about how the comic is framing it, it’s clear there are readers who don’t and that changes how they see the story.
I think it’s really interesting that the people whose primary emotional reaction is fury at the cheating never stop to consider, even for a moment, that the people who aren’t posting about how furious they are might have their own incredibly solid reasons for not reacting the way you are.
I think it’s really weird that it is, instead, taken as a personal slight, and a defense of real cheating in the real world. Like, maybe it’s worth doing a little introspection as to why this is *so* directly incensing to y’all, and why it’s so important to you that everyone else agrees.
Is there anything that you would be uncomfortable to see people applaud due to its immorality?
How would you feel if Joe punched Joyce and the reactions were “He looks so cool in this scene!”, “Sarah is a hypocrite if she condemns this since she punched Raidah”, “He made a mistake in the heat of the moment”, “He’s young and stupid and lost control of his emotions”?
I am not saying that the two are equivalently bad, just trying to gauge where you draw the line.
And if it would upset you to see domestic violence framed like that, maybe recognize that it isn’t a pathology to get upset when people gloss over/make exuses for bad actions even in a story.
And I also think it’s interesting that repeatedly, when folks like you are upset that I’m not showing a visceral display of contempt and anger at the behavior of Joyce and Dorothy, what you reach for to compare it to is someone being punched.
I think it’s really interesting that apparently, you consider domestic violence and assault, actual, for real crimes, equivalent and on par with two girls kissing the night they decide to break up with their boyfriends.
I really think it’s worth doing some examination as to why these feel equivalent, and why this keeps being the example that’s reached for. Why you think there’s *any* equivalence here whatsoever.
Like, I see you writing “I’m not saying the two are equivalently bad,” and yet, three or four times now in the last weeks, this is the *exact* example that has been reached for. It feels like some telling on yourself, quite frankly.
I can: we’re talking about framing something that’s malfeasant on the same level as cheating, which means we’re talking about dishonesty + getting something you’re ethically not supposed to get.
I don’t know exactly how you’d frame a comic about Joe committing minor gift card/check fraud, but supposing he was doing it to a small business owner but for like, a reason that seemed good to him but was at best morally a null signal.
Ironically, that’s actually kinda perfect. “Turns out Joe stole the weighted blanket from someone somewhere. The comic frames this as a good thing, because it’s an expensive-yet-thoughtful gift for his girlfriend.”
First Big Z I don’t think that it is important to use an example of a “similar level of badness” because the comparison isn’t trying to find two equally bad things.
The point of the comparison is that basically everyone feels uncomfortable when something they think is bad is being glossed over because of other good things. The comparison isn’t comparing the badness, rather it is comparing the emotional response.
Second, the theft from a small business would work, but only if the small business owner had been personalized in the story so we would empathize with them, and we know how the theft would hurt them. Do we think it would be realistic for a business owner to spend 30 minutes crying over a bit of lost merchandise? Maybe, but lots of businesses expect to be stolen from and account for it in their prices. We would need it to be a pointed and painful experience for the owner, not just a metric on the inventory.
Let’s say Joe stole the blanket from a person we know, and the blanked had some sentimental value. Furthermore, to make the comparison more apt, let’s say Joe stole the blanket from a friend of his, so that it would be a particular betrayal.
Let’s say Sal gave Danny that blanket on their second date, Joe stole it from Danny to give to Joyce, and the primary response was “how cute” and “isn’t he thoughtful”.
There is a difference between “being upset” and “assuming everyone reacting like that must be doing it for the worst possible reasons, and treating them accordingly”.
Specifically you are assuming that I think people are saying “Aww” because they secretly like cheating. You are saying that I think this even though I have repeatedly said I do not.
I think people are saying “Aww” because they think Joyce and Dorothy are cute together.
However, I also think that focusing on “they are cute” rather than “they are being selfish, dishonest, and cruel” is glossing over the cheating aspect of it.
I am critiquing the comment and its contents, which doesn’t depend on an overall assesment of the person writing it.
“I think the thing that “Paladins” generally respond to is when “Sickos” call the cheating cute.”
I’m “””assuming””” that because it’s what you said, repeatedly, before eventually shifting to this new variant where people are just excusing or minimizing or glossing over the cheating, but still aren’t capable of separating “Joyce and Dorothy snuggling” from “Joe and Walky’s hearts breaking”, and if they think the first thing is cute, they must at least think the second thing doesn’t matter.
I clarified for you multiple times that by “calling the cheating cute” I mean “calling something cute AND that thing is cheating” not “calling it cute because it is cheating” or “Calling cheating cute in general”.
Li, you are a hypocrite. You criticize me for supposedly holding my interpretation over their intent, yet you consistently do exactly that to me.
Like I said, other people can click that link, or heck, just look at our conversation on this very page, and decide for themselves if I’m actually misrepresenting what you’re saying.
Oh my can you seriously fuck off with your atupid “what if joe punch jouce” hypothetical. You used it so much and it’s already been said why is really weird and dumb.
Odo living in a grey concrete cube with no decorations or windows, surrounded by plain white sand as far as the eye can see, in a place that’s perpetually cloudy and doesn’t get much sunlight, with only this exact website for entertainment.
How would you feel if Joe punched Joyce and the reactions were “He looks so cool in this scene!”
What if Joe 360 no-scoped the President of the United States™?
What if Joyce walked into Joe’s room to break up with him and he was crouched over Danny’s dead body, eating Danny’s intestines, and Joe turned around to face Joyce like in Resident Evil?
What if Joe played a guitar solo so loud he exploded everyone in the building?
What if Goku gave Joe some energy to escape the exploding planet Namek and Joe used the energy to shoot Goku in the back?
What if Joe ate a Hot Pocket on purpose and looked Joyce in the eye while he did it?
Nobody’s engaging with your dipshit hypothetical because it’s dumb as hell, and in a rhetorical sense it’s worth less than the shit that sprays out of my ass when I go to the toilet and spray shit into it out of my ass. Knock it the fuck off, you look like a creep.
It really has been odd seeing so many people in the comments make excuses for cheating the past few weeks, when pretty much everyone was in agreement that the other obviously bad things characters did in this comic were bad. I don’t like the cheating and it’s lowered my opinion of Joyce and Dorothy, and seeing lots of people make excuses for them cheating has also lowered my opinions of a lot of other commenters here.
Thank you for informing us about your opinion of us, stranger who we will never encounter in meatspace and therefore will never have to deal with tangible repercussions of your negative opinion.
Please help me out here, and actually point to someone treating the cheating as anything more severe than cheating. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it, even as a joke. (compared to lots and lots of very serious posts about how romantically kissing your sapphic lover is not cheating on your boyfriend).
I mean Odo does specifically keep reaching for “what if Joe did a domestic violence and people were okay with that, how would you feel then” when trying to get people to agree with them about the cheating being bad.
But yes, you’ve missed other comments. Many weeks ago several people all had a thread where they agreed that Dorothy and Joyce are now the worst characters in the comic, specifically at least as bad as Ross if not Blaine.
Eh, I use metaphors and analogies a lot to try to help convey how I see things but it can really hard sometimes to think of an apt analogy that’s exactly comparable. Odo did say they know domestic violence is obviously much worse. I feel like I understand where Odo is coming from – Speaking for myself, it’s not that I need people to agree with me, it’s that sometimes when they don’t I think it’s because I’m not expressing myself coherently. I doubt my communication ability.
I told Odo last time that I was ignoring the inappropriateness of the example because it would derail the conversation and involve saying unkind things. Odo’s response was to snap at me for suggesting there was anything unkind to say. Today, Odo’s using the example again. It doesn’t feel like a mistake at this point.
AFAIK Odo also still hasn’t responded to my response, which was that it’s not that there’s nothing in fiction where a positive framing and seemingly approving responses would weird me out or upset me, but that I wouldn’t let my upset feelings cause me to leap to assuming I knew what everyone else involved was thinking, and that they were thinking “[bad thing] is cool and great, in real life and in fiction”. I especially wouldn’t jump to that assumption and then also tell people who disagreed with me that they were lying.
* people who disagreed with me about what I was assuming they meant by the words they were saying, to be clear.
Odo was arguing that their interpretation of someone else’s words (“aw” = “cheating is cute and good”) supersedes what that person has told them it meant.
Please don’t speak for me. I do not believe you are doing a sincere job, or are particularly good at understanding me. It is also particularly hypocritical considering your overall critique.
This was the literal substance of our argument, as I understand it:
Me painstakingly telling you over and over that other readers are able to separate “Joyce and Dorothy snuggling (cute)” from “Joyce and Dorothy cheating on Joe and Walky (not cute)” — and you arguing that the two things are inseparable, so everyone who says “aw” is in fact talking about the cheating, even if they explicitly say they’re not and don’t like that part.
I think at some point you modulated your position to at least be “they don’t consider the cheating a dealbreaker”, or that it’s “not the most important part”, but I didn’t think I had made any progress whatsoever in convincing you that for some of us, the cheating is in fact a completely separate issue, not something we are minimizing or dismissing or tacitly approving of, when we say that a given strip is cute.
And my argument wasn’t that they weren’t separating the two, rather that they shouldn’t separate the two.
I think the action of separating the two and only responding to the cuteness is what glosses over the cheating. I think treating the two as if they can be seperated is fundamentally glossing over cheating.
It isn’t about intent or interpretation, it is about actions.
I’m not the boss of you and you’re obviously going to go right on insisting that every person who says “aw” at any point is specifically “acting” (somehow) to dismiss the wrongness of cheating, but you’re gonna keep getting argued with and pushed back on, whether or not it’s by me.
It sucks to feel misunderstood and misrepresented, as I’m sure you feel you’re very ironically aware of (because you’re sure I’m doing it right now). It makes people wanna argue.
If you’re fine with people continuing to argue every time you say it, by all means.
You are again moving from actions to intent. I am not saying people intend to dismiss the cheating, I am saying that the action does.
And yup, I am going to continue to say we shouldn’t be framing any action that is cheating as cute.
eskimolos had a rather good perspective that whether you are more concerned by the romance or by the cheating depends on whose perspective you are adopting. If you are seeing the story through Joyces lens then the romance is most important. If you are seeing the story through Joe’s eyes then the betrayal is most important.
I think it is better to understand the story from the lens of the victim than the perpetrator. I think there are plenty of people in the world who like to see the story only through their own lens, or from the perspective of people they identify with, and that makes it easy for them to ignore harm being done to other people.
And yes, in a sense, we can only view anything through one lens, our own. So the best we can do is aim to have it be as expansive and un-muddied a lens as possible.
So let’s incorporate Joyce and Dorothy and Joe into one lens:
Joyce and Dorothy are feeling a lot of feelings of love and desire, which is what is motivating them to kiss, cuddle, sleep together, etc… Those actions will also, likely, be incredibly painful for Joe since they are a betrayal by Joyce of their relationship.
Seems good?
Now “cute” isn’t a lens for understanding. It is our response. We can shrink our lens to just look at Joyce and Dorothy feeling things (and each other), but like you said that would be reductive. We might certainly think of Joyce and Dorothy kissing each other as cute, but does it still seem as cute when we expand the lens to simultaneously also include how it will impact others? Or does it seem selfish?
And using the example isn’t a mistake, it is intentional. I am choosing to use the example because it helps demonstrate a dynamic other people might be able to relate to.
Like I said, it is not saying “these are two equivalently bad things” because the thing that is being compares is not “how bad they are”.
For you yourself chose to compare my actions to transphobic bigotry. Are you saying that “someone feeling uncomfortable towards people giving approving response towards cheating” is as bad as transphobic bigotry?
No. I can appreciate that you are drawing a comparison to try to illustrate a similar dynamic.
Does it help? Does it help illustrate your point? Or is it a distractingly bad example that keeps making people ask you why you’re comparing those two things.
“For you yourself chose to compare my actions to transphobic bigotry. Are you saying that “someone feeling uncomfortable towards people giving approving response towards cheating” is as bad as transphobic bigotry?
No. I can appreciate that you are drawing a comparison to try to illustrate a similar dynamic.”
That… that wasn’t a metaphor. Here’s what I actually said:
“And no, feeling disturbed is not “moral intuition”. As with disgust, it’s an emotional response which can be entirely divorced from morality, and conflating the two is genuinely dangerous.
I am not accusing you of anything, Odo, but lots of people use the fact that trans people disturb and disgust them as moral intuition.
Disentangling our feelings of disgust from our moral judgments isn’t always easy, but it’s worth doing.”
Because what you were arguing to me was that “disgust” is “intuitional morality”.
Which is a dangerous line of thinking. Whether you’re using it to say that your feelings of disgust are how you know fictional cheating is wrong or it’s being used by bigots to say it’s how they know queer people existing is wrong, it’s the same dangerous core thought process.
What is the point of mentioning it if you were not drawing a comparison?
“Whether you’re using it to say that your feelings of disgust are how you know fictional cheating is wrong or it’s being used by bigots to say it’s how they know queer people existing is wrong, it’s the same dangerous core thought process.”
How is this not drawing a comparison between the two?
You are saying that, a certain part of them, is the same. “it’s the same dangerous core thought process.”
You tried to say I “compared” you to a transphobic bigot for not liking cheating.
I am providing the context of why I actually said your logic was the same logic employed by not only bigots but fascists, and how I stand by that completely.
And I was arguing that “feelings” are important internal signs for what we care about, and what we care about is basically our personal understanding of morality.
When someone feels something is bad they should ask themselves “why”. That feeling is connecting them to something true inside themselves. Now, people don’t always have the self-awareness or perspective to get a good answer, but the feeling is a starting point.
And at a certain point it is the only starting point. There is not some perfectly logical proof of morality that isn’t grounded in “this feels right” at a certain point. Kant tried it and got pretty close, but not all the way there (and he was pretty racist).
You care about other people. Why? Do you have some logical proof? Or at a certain point do you just feel that other people have value? Should we doubt that feeling? Should we doubt everything?
We certainly can but that descends towards nihilism which isn’t a very useful framework.
Things are immoral when they do harm to other people.
What I feel inside is not relevant, and insisting that it is… runs aground very quickly with a variety of neurodiversities.
Plenty of low-empathy people out there who do not feel the way you’re insisting they need to still choose to do the right thing over and over again by using this much simpler, much less flawed litmus test.
If your argument in response contains any variety of “but why do you care about harming other people”, I just don’t think there’s any point in continuing the conversation.
“Things are immoral when they do harm to other people.”
Do you have a logical proof, or is this something you feel is true.
“Plenty of low-empathy people out there who do not feel the way you’re insisting they need to still choose to do the right thing over and over again by using this much simpler, much less flawed litmus test.”
A litmus test that is created and enforced by other people. I don’t think it is a bad test, I just don’t think we can ever prove it, and the only evidence we can really give for it, after a certain point, is that it feels right, our moral intuition.
Yeah, see, you’re asking me to prove that hurting other people is wrong, and continuing to assert that the only way I can think such a thing is if I “feel” it intuitively inside.
I am not asking you to “prove it”. I am asking if you “have a proof”.
Do you have a reason other than feelings for believing it is true? If so I would love to hear it.
Maybe it is just something you were raised to believe. Is tradition a better basis for understanding morality?
Maybe you do have a logical proof for it, if so I hope you publish soon.
You are arguing that your understanding of morality is not rooted in what you feel. I used to think the exact same, but over time I realized that feeling are not simply “intrusive thoughts” like you claim, but rather they are deeply important and connect us to what is alive in us, which is also how we can hope to connect to what is alive in others.
Li i really think it’s just not worth to engage with odo anymore they just keep doing this, adding onto the pile of meaningless discourse, it probably better to just leave them to it.
I remembered that interaction but I assumed it had to be someone else, that it would not be the same person continuing to go “but how would you feel if Joe punched Joyce, though?”
Yes, although I have a fuzzy memory of it not being the first time the comparison had been made then, either, and I think the first time was someone else, weeks and weeks ago, before the kiss.
That’s fair, along the lines of our previous discussion wherein between “things get deleted” and “I sometimes skip a few days”. I don’t necessarily see this as an ongoing thread — I’m kinda with Erica that Odo’s choice of examples is impolitic but doesn’t really appear to be equating “cheating” with “violence” except inasmuch as they’re both “kinds of malfeasance that can be framed by the narrative as good”. (which is, I guess, strictly true, but seems weird to say that way).
It’s worth noting this scene where Ruth body slams Jennifer.
Note that people actually largely didn’t respond condemning the violence, although I don’t see comments cheering for Ruth (or Jennifer in the previous slide). Obviously not a 1-1 parallel, but there has been domestic violence in the strip before.
Interesting you pick that and not the previous two scenes where Jennifer kicks the door down and slams into Ruth.
With that framing in place, knowing Ruth has initiated violence against Jennifer before (and was roundly considered a heel both in-strip and by the commentariat for it) It’s not particularly surprising that people would see this particular vignette as more neutral/mutual combat than any kind of “domestic violence”, despite it strictly being such.
Interestingly, perhaps, I’ve seen some call for “domestic violence” charges to also apply to “roommates and people who share some/all household facilities” in addition to just romantic partners and family members, on the grounds that part of the extra seriousness of DV is being victimized by a person who shares your home that you can’t easily escape.
That might not be true for these two at this point either, as I think by this strip Jennifer’s in the other dorm.
“Intimate partner violence (IPV) is abuse or aggression that occurs in a romantic relationship. Intimate partner refers to both current and former spouses and dating partners.”
That first sentence, indicating that you just went with the first example regardless of really considering its applicability, indicates to me that you don’t seem to actually understand at least part of the issue here.
I’m not sure i like how much these two being together actively pisses me off. It just makes me feel terrible for Joe, he’s grown so much and this feels like stomping on that
If Joyce started acting her age and not her shoe size people wouldn’t have to tell her basic things like “dont cheat on the partner you obviously still care for or you wouldn’t have sucked his dick”
Can we stop acting like they’re 14? They’re “teenagers” and yet still full grown ass adults. Joyce is odd not stupid or cruel which makes pages like these annoying
I think we’re splitting a hair here, but “legal adult” and “full-grown-ass-adult” definitely feel different to me!
18+ is a legal adult for many things but not most things.
21+ is a legal adult for almost everything, plus you might be out of college by then
25+ is when you’re an adult for the purposes of car insurance rates
I tend to think “full-grown-ass-adult” implies “out of schooling, into a career, legally able to drink without a fake ID, etc” whereas just “adult” is “over 18”.
I do agree with others that Joyce’s reactions are…surprising, and i don’t think any theories have resonated for me. I thought she’d be WRECKED by Sarah being disappointed in her, or at least feel uncomfortable. I also thought she’d be more worried about Joe getting hurt, or more conflicted. (Quick reminder, not a relationship paladin, this is more a character consistency thing on my part).
Idk, I doubt my own memory of her now, I might have to go reread some things!
I was in that boat, but do you remember how the Jacob situation went down? Remember her pretending she was his girlfriend to his brother for a whole lunch? (which isn’t that long but that’s a lot of strained, awkward pretending)
Or her and Ethan? She’s in Joyce-world right now. She’ll be hit by the clue-bat eventually, but right now she’s very busy rejecting your reality.
I really want to see more of her inner monologue, but everything to me is currently pointing at “Joyce is enough of a romantic that she can pretend everything is okay as long as she’s doing it in service of Twue Wuv”.
are comments getting moderated more heavily or just autodeleted because of reports or something
I know it’s been wild sometimes recently but I can’t keep track of what’s getting disappeared because of what and I don’t want to accidentally the same thing that’s getting deleted
Just insta-swapping to gay overnight and fuck everything else has flown in the face of everything these characters have done since day 1. I’m a very open person and have enjoyed Shortpacked!, It’s Walky, all of the shorts but this shit… I’m just out
did u not see joyce talking about her deep abiding weirdly intense love for dorothy like 10 years ago? Leslie knope and anne perkins references back when that show was still on tv? theyve been gay
Probably it is precisely because “no one will miss you”. If people someone is distressed by how the comic is handling a subject, feeling like there distress has no value to other people is itself another source of distress.
And a viewer has no real power to change anything. The only thing they can do is leave, so that is what they do. But leaving silently doesn’t get the response or recognition that they actually want, so they announce it.
Maybe futile or pointless, but also basically people being human.
I kinda get it if you have people you like who might wonder why you suddenly stopped posting. I’ve definitely wondered if people who used to post regularly and then stopped were okay and I’d have liked knowing ‘Everything’s fine, just not feeling this comic anymore’. Obviously writing some ‘break up’ note to the author or whatever is weird but yeah, sometimes people DO care in the forums/comments.
I’ve been wondering for a long time if Anna Chronistic is still around under a different pseudonym, if she stopped commenting/reading, or if something happened to her.
This is true in terms of saying “She is gay”, but speaking for myself as a bi person, I sometimes use gay as an umbrella term for queer sexuality. I’m totally okay saying my partner and I are “being gay together” even if technically he is gay and I am bi.
Sure, but that’s so obviously not what OP meant by “insta-swapping to gay”. They don’t mean she’s bi, they mean she’s a lesbian, and they’re mad about it specifically.
Honestly that’s fair. While everyone is dismissing you comment cause Joyce was obvious bi for a long time. I have to say “ya. We obviously knew that but you know who didn’t know that: Joyce”.
Like literally every other character who realized they were gay in the story had some time to contemplate their sexuality.
For as long as this plot point has been brewing its weird that Joyce is the one character who hasn’t had this.
When Joyce said she felt this way for a long time that feels like a meta thing instead of a Joyce thing.
I am genuinely amazed that anyone can seriously claim these characters are “insta-swapping to gay.” People have assembled dozens of strips going back to the first year of the comic that have foreshadowed this.
That second panel is about one half-step more subtle than having Joyce turn to the camera and say, “Attention, readers, I am officially, canonically, not straight!”
I’m not that put off my Joyce not taking a lot of time to process. Everyone has a different reaction to the realization, including “Alright, I guess I like (some)men/women. Good to know.”
Realizing you’re queer doesn’t have to be angsty, sometimes it just makes you feel comfy and at peace.
It seems kinda odd to me that Joyce and Dorothy realizing they’re bi and attracted to each other is what made you decide to stop reading this comic, and not other stuff like them cheating on their boyfriend or anything else.
left field thought: dots been internalizing how much shes been changing and affecting joyce, right? indont remember her saying she officially said no to going to yale. i could see this storyline going towards “dot goes to yale to srop beinf a bad influence to joyce”, then i can see joyce being depressed.. and then its a mirror to what happened to sarahs firsr college roommate.
Inspired by yesterday… Could we please jump back to Carla and Charlie? That’s a relationship I am actually invested in, and would be a heck of a lot more interesting than just watching an extended reel of Joyce and Dorothy being shitty.
We can jump back when they are actually telling Walky/Joe, but watching them (Dorothy) plan to eventually do the right thing while Joyce shrugs is not where the drama is.
(This is just friendly teasing, the art in these comics is great and its been wonderful to see Willis’ skill improving over the years as its a reminder that practice and dedication does pay off)
I don’t think that’s what she’s doing. I think what she’s doing is that fundie programming where every relationship is obviously on a course for lifelong monogamous marriage — she’s into Dorothy now, which means obviously she’ll ALWAYS be ONLY into Dorothy.
That makes sense. My initial read was “Why would I *ever* need birth control now that I’m gay” but it could have been “Why would I ever need birth control now that I’m going to be with you for the rest of my life and no one else.
Meanwhile, to me the most interesting part of the survey result is the proportion of cis men who are readers. My initial guess is “that’s related somehow to the demographics of Transformers fandom” which also in my head seems likely to correlate to the 30-39 age group, but could also easily be an artifact of “cis men, in general, are more likely to jump at the chance to put their opinion out there” (guilty as charged).
On the other hand, we are collectively SIGNIFICANTLY less straight than the general public.
I know, it’s very surprising to me! But, I also think it’s a positive thing to see that so many cis men are avid readers of a comic about a bunch of queer goofballs.
Gonna be honest! I think the number of cis men is directly related to the degree of fury being expressed on behalf of Joe, and why Joe’s pain and Joe’s well being and Joe’s right to have a girlfriend seem to be the primary locus of anger and conversation.
I think there’s one character in this story that white cis guys can most easily project themselves into, and it’s Joe, and that is not unrelated to the degree of rage being expressed about a story where a sad thing is gonna happen to Joe.
It is statistically interesting but as a woman I can say that you don’t have to be able to relate to Joe to have empathy for him and anger on his behalf
I didn’t choose cis woman or trans woman bc neither really describes me but I do highly identify w my womanhood even though I’m very nonbinary/neutral in practice and it killed me take away frm that statistic lmfao. Lesbo nonbinary who very much dislikes the joyrothy storyline tho
Check this out! In addition to the overall stats, I have a comparison of the stats compared to each “Just for Fun” response and it’s surprisingly super evenly distributed!
I agree that the number of cis men is an interesting insight into the comment section. I take issue with “It’s because the readership is mostly cis men that so many commenters care about Joe’s pain and are angry at Joyce’s behavior.” I honestly feel like that’s a big disservice to women and queer people. We can have empathy for people who aren’t the same as us.
It also isn’t true. There are more non-cis responses than “Man (cis)” responses.
Don’t know about people who selected multiple, but about 54% of the responses were cis, and 46% were not. Cis men are not “most of the readership” and cis people in general only have a small majority.
True, but cis men are definitely way over-represented. Mostly at the expense of cis women, which is the really strange part.
Non-cis people are also over-represented, I think.
“Right to have a girlfriend” feels like a big reach. I don’t think gender has anything to do with someone not liking the idea of someone else being cheated on. You’re being disingenuous, at best.
Well, as a cis dude, I will admit to identifying with Joe, but up until this cheating nonsense I was even more strongly identifying with JOYCE and her “going from fundie prude to confused horny atheist” arc. I’m mostly irritated that the person I’d been identifying most with crossed an ethical line that I’ve never even considered crossing.
I’m a nonbinary, pan, poly person and I relate to Joe because I’ve had a similar situation of “I thought the relationship was going fairly well but then my girlfriend suddenly found a girl she liked more and simply dropped me without really thinking about me in the slightest because the new person fit better.”
I also felt that I was not entitled to the relationship continuing but the callousness with which I was dropped really hurt and felt especially nasty after I had tried to be really supportive and attentive to her. I felt like I deserved to at least be treated decently by her if she wanted to break things off and seeing the way Joyce is acting here honestly brings up some really personally painful memories.
It feels especially bad because Joyce is a character I directly related to before as like, one of the only explicitly stated instances of an autistic main character in any fiction I have ever seen. A depiction that didn’t feel infantilizing or horribly stereotypical. To see this happen to her as a character does genuinely really bum me out.
I’m sorry you went through that and that does sound very relatable. Like, it would have hurt to be dumped regardless, but it hurts to more to just be thrown away like you’re NOTHING, like you meant so little, when they meant so much to you and you thought they felt the same.
Thank you, I appreciate that. In retrospect she never really seemed to care that much looking back and some pretty bad shit happened later where she got herself kicked out of the community I met her in for being awful. I ultimately dodged what wouldn’t have been a healthy relationship but it still sucked.
The demographics get even weirder than that. Despite there being far more cis men than women, there are far more lesbians than gay men. Like 40% of the women are lesbian.
And far more trans women than trans men. Nearly as many trans women as cis women.
I didn’t really make the survey with the goal of drawing any conclusions. It was really just curiosity about the demographics in general, and if there were any trends between demographics and reactions/interpretations of the comic. Interpret it how you will, or just enjoy the data!
Though I suppose here are two conclusions I have:
1. There’s way more cis male readers than I expected for this comic
2. While it does seem there is a trend for cis people to be more likely to identify as paladins, the most popular response by far is is “Joyce and Dorothy are cute but the cheating tarnishes it” and there’s a very balanced distribution of all demographics among all responses. Which is really interesting to me, as I really thought queer vs straight experiences might have a more significant impact on people’s feelings (especially based on the comments)!
Additionally, that third group (“they’re cute but the cheating tarnishes it”) has about equal odds of identifying as sicko, paladin, or neither.
The “sicko” version of that sentiment is something like, “Cheating diminishes how much I like this ship, but I remain hyped for chaos/mess fallout/consequences!”
The “paladin” version of it is more like, “I’d be so on board for this ship if it weren’t for the cheating 🙁 I wish they’d broken up with their boyfriends first.”
Good observation, I hadn’t even paid attention to the self-comparison graph to notice the distribution of sicko/paladin among the other responses (I’m glad I made it multiple response!)
Oop, found them. Silly me, honestly I didn’t think people like that would read a comic like this. I don’t want to disable the other responses because there are a lot of thoughtful and interesting replies, but read at your own risk I guess
In addition to the overall stats, I have a comparison of the stats compared to each “Just for Fun” response and it’s surprisingly evenly distributed across all demographics. I think that’s really interesting! The paladins lean more cis, but by far the most common response is “Joyce and Dorothy are cute but the cheating tarnishes it” with a decent representation of all demographics.
This is what I expected! There were too many people saying “as a lesbian this sucks” or some variant of it for the paladins to be heavily straight.
I’m sure there’s a Certain Flavor of Paladin that’s overwhelmingly cis and straight and also an asshole, but the other paladins deserve better than to be lumped in with him.
I’m surprised by the evenness of the distribution, but I suppose I had a selection bias of noticing the “as a gay person you need to go easy on them” comments far more than the “as a gay person I don’t like this” comments. I also thought that straight/cis vs queer lived experiences might have had a significant impact on reaction, but it doesn’t seem to much, other than a slight correlation with paladin vs sicko.
Oooh, I also just noticed that “I’ve completely lost respect for Joyce and Dorothy” has an especially large bi response. Which makes a lot of sense, since I know a lot of bi people were very frustrated by them living out the “cheating bisexuals” stereotype.
Haha, no worries. Yeah, us bi-type queer people were pretty evenly divided, too. Honestly a very similar divide, I think, to the divide among poly people, though I’m mono, so that I don’t feel as confident speaking on.
Summarized, it’s something like:
“Not all bi/poly people are cheaters. This isn’t how I want my #representation to behave.”
versus
“Bi/poly people should be allowed to be as messy as anyone else. This is exactly how I want my #representation to behave.”
Like, I think both of these viewpoints are extremely valid. Some bi people think this is playing into harmful stereotypes; other bi people think this comic has enough non-cheating bi characters that it’s not.
I feel like we’re all actually coming at it from the same basic feeling, too — it just depends on whether we’re prioritizing “bi/poly people don’t have to be cheaters” or “bi/poly people shouldn’t have to be perfect”.
(Big big disclaimer: I’m definitely not saying anyone has to cheat in order to be imperfect or messy! The bar is not underground!! Just that there is a legit, reasonable divide in the community here. I myself have gone through phrases of ONLY wanting to see happy bi characters pairing off monogamously with people of the same gender, because I just… had seen a bunch of the opposite. Nowadays I am firmly in the camp of “bi people are not Gay Lite ™ and I want to see some relationship drama darn it”, but I still remember feeling that first way, and I know we’re all at different points on our journeys.)
Good to know I’m still younger than most readers, that’s important for some reason. Lotta old dudes reading this comic tho, like a surprising amount of cis guys
Wow, she’s completely written off Joe, hasn’t she? I thought it was still a debate in her heart, still but no, she’s just tossed him like a used tissue. And betrayed him in the way that would hurt him the most – infidelity. Good drama, but disappointing character development. And shame on Dorothy for doing everything she accused Joe of and more, regarding Joyce.
I mean, looking at how Dorothy left Danny and Walky after ending her relationships with them, you can’t really say she has a great track record for improving her romantic partners.
I don’t understand why Joyce and Dorothy don’t just *handle this like adults.*
Joyce sits down with Joe. Dorothy sits down with Walky. They basically say:
“I’ve realized I’m bisexual. And I have strong feelings for (Joyce/Dorothy). I also have strong feelings for you. Still. And while I’d like to explore my new gay side, I don’t want to cheat on you to do it.”
Yeah, it’s a tough conversation to have, but if this happened to me, I’d rather my partner be honest. Joe might be hurt because he *chose* monogamy *for Joyce*… but the *only way through this* is open honesty.
Ethical non-monogamy may be an option. Or it may not be. But sneaking around *is cheating.* Having feelings — even experimenting a little — isn’t cheating. Lying about it? It’s cheating.
No snark intended, you’re discovered/restated one of the many Relationship Paladin positions.
And they’re not handling this like adults because they’re teenagers, honestly. I do still think they’re being shitty, but we can recognize that they’re not really full adults.
But the rest of the conversation has to be: “I’ve also already made out with her and we slept together and cuddled last not and I’m not going to give her up, but I’m not sure what to do about you.”
Which puts a bit of a harsher twist on it.
And that’s assuming they’re actually up for that. Joyce and Dorothy haven’t even talked about the idea of non-monogamy. I’m not sure that Dorothy would be interested in continuing with Walky or in sharing Joyce with Joe. I suspect Joyce would be okay with it, but hasn’t actually given it any thought.
I am pretty sure that neither of them would be willing to give up the other if their boyfriend wasn’t open to non-monogamy. Which is a pretty rough ultimatum to open with.
Joyce and Dorothy should call Joe and Walky over, and once they’re all in a room together, they should say, “We have something we need to tell you.” And then make out licky-style.
Then if the boys are still there, they should say, “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
All problems solved!
Well, most of them. They can invite Amber and Amazi-Girl next time. I think they’re probably not up for making out right now.
You’ve reminded me of the scene in Dude, Where’s My Car? in which the main characters are in a car (not the eponymous car), and pull up next to a couple at a stop light. The two pairs start silently comparing cool things with each other, which escalates to the couple making out as a flex. The two (straight, male) protagonists, not to be outdone, make out right back at them and then look at them like “What now?”. The couple give them homophobic looks and drive off, which means the heroes have won the encounter.
What would be the absolute opposite of breaking up? Because I feel like each time it should escalate. Either to the point Joe proposes, or Joyce does the opposite of breaking up and just adds more people to the polycule. Instead of ending one relationship, she keeps starting new ones.
There is maybe one in a billion chance of this happening, but I could see it being a funny bit if written well. 😀
What follows is “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” if it was written by Damn-You-Willis. Shenanigans ensue… the dinosaur/lizard people will show up, but instead of LSD being the cause, it will be because Joyce’s blood sugar spiked from eating too many of Joe’s vitamin gummies.
it is pretty wild how they’re all in on each other without, apparently, a first thought
has me asking myself are they just young or are they straight up in love for real
Oh, look, we’re reinventing paladins vs. sickos. I don’t mean to be snarky, but the actual conflict is more along the lines of “what, you want them to face CONSEQUENCES? That’s silly, they’re beautiful” and “You don’t understand how cheating is bad, I’m going to come up with an argument so weird that you’ll think I equate cheating and murder” and “obviously Joyce is actually straight and this is bullshit” and, most commonly, “I said a moderate position that’s nowhere near any of those, why are people reacting to me as though I said them and accusing me of various crimes in response?”
Wait, is that what sickos and paladins divide was? Christ… part of why I love the zoomer phrase “go and touch grass” is because it’s so damn useful. Every opportunity in the world to bring it up.
Same! though i’m not sure it’d work out. if someone is inexperienced and not good yet at communicating with ONE partner, that inability will multiply with several partners. And communication is incredibly important with poly…
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Joe said he would be bi if he got to bang more chick’s. With Joyce he was ready to be completely monogamous. By agreeing to be in a four way with Walky and Dorothy he will be bi and by doing so bang twice as many chick’s as before.
chicks. I meant chicks. 🐥 🐤
Where did he say that?
This ya’lls GOAT?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/taptap/
The phrasing Morrison used was off, but more importantly this seems like an obvious joke rather than a real consideration.
No, no, the right wing abused “it’s just a joke” for years, so now we must take even obvious jokes extremely literally. That’s not an overreaction or anything, it’s a moral mandate.
He has also since determined that he is retroactively bi for banging Malaya (who came out as nonbinary afterward): https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/02-the-one-where-jocelyne-returns/bestow/
Oh yes, that was extremely serious.
It wasn’t serious, but it was still gross. Even on its own, but even more as a deflection from not treating Carla as a woman and “not being mean” about Jocelyne.
Kind of hope we circle back to that at some point.
It was what?
My god the delicate flowers in these comments sections.
The story itself doesn’t frame Joe’s joking as a good thing. The reason we even like Joe now is because he developed as a character. Dismissing his flaws undercuts that. Like you can choose to ignore what the story is telling you I guess? But don’t fault if other’s comment because they might understand more than you.
Like you, snowflake? Your username could use better capitalization, btw.
Gee, called a snowflake by someone who never read Neuromancer.
Does mommy know you’re reading webcomics with bad words in them?
As are we all. Serious people discussing the serious issues of the day.
Cooler heads failed yesterday. Today they MUST succeed at holding back from eachother until the relationship issue is sorted!Joyce IS aware that she’s cheating on Joe. If she can’t face that and fess up things are going to get so much worse.
Joyce STILL seems unwilling to give the situation the weight it deserves. She begrudging accepts to stop stabbing Joe in the back, after Dorothy bullies her into it.
If even Sarah couldn’t get through to her, I’m not sure who else could. I doubt Dorothy is up to the task.
“Bullies her into it” are you using a different definition of that word that the usual one! Otherwise i don’t get hiw it applies there.
I think Joyce, probably very reasonably, doesn’t feel like stroking Dorothy’s cheek is “stabbing Joe in the back.”
Joyce making out with Dorothy and them trying to be all hush hush about it is cheating. Its a betrayal towards their already committed partners. Sarah aptly said it, the secrecy and tip toeing around the affair makes it much worse. The two even feel guilt from their new developing relationship.
Oh, thanks, I didn’t realize that anyone was cheating, before now.
Well, yes! Welcome to the Comments Section, Grasshopper!
In a vacuum, Joyce stroking Dorothy’s cheek is not cheating.
But this isn’t happening in a vacuum. Joyce and Dorothy just cheated, and every bit of affection they display is a continuation of that cheating. Everything more they do makes it a bit more severe.
Dorothy correctly clocks that they need to pause. What’s done is done, but they can stop making it worse.
I mean Joyce continuing to act like dots girlfriend while being Joe’s girlfriend is kinda stabbing him in the back yeah
God damn it I don’t even really give a shit about cheating. It’s bad and I’ll say damn fuck that dude if you tell me about it, but i roll my eyes when people say it’s the worst thing you can do to a partner without any qualifiers (eg. Worst non violent thing you can do). I didn’t care when my own ex cheated on me, it’s like the least bad thing he did to me. It’s just, really annoying when people insist on calling a spade a club or diamond when it’s so clearly a spade.
I imagine for some, being cheated on is either the worst thing that has happened to them, or the worst thing they can imagine. The stuff that gets even worse I suspect people folks try to avoid thinking about… which isn’t really an option for folks who are fully aware of how bad it can get through first or second-hand experience.
It’s not the worst thing you can do (and what they’ve done so far is far from the worst cheating can be), but it’s not far from the worst thing that you’re going to see in this kind of context. That doesn’t turn the character into an outright villain in most people’s eyes. That gets a large (majority?) portion of the commentariat excusing or condoning it.
That arguably is being portrayed positively and/or romantically in the comic itself.
I disagree that it’s being portrayed positively given the instant pushback they’ve gotten from Sarah and Danny’s pontification on how you’d have to be an awful terrible person to ever do this.
I think Willis is portraying that Dorothy and Joyce both think this is positive, which makes sense, but I’m not seeing a lot of it outside their opinions (other than the framing of the original kiss, which I think was just always going to be dramatic and romantic no matter what).
I said “arguably”, but I’m not really interested in arguing it.
Some people see it that way. Others, like you, obviously don’t.
Wasn’t an argument, just discussing opinions in the opinion discussing forum💕
I very much read it as Joyce being partially swept up in the honeymoon phase of a new relationship and partially Joyce avoiding thinking about the situation seriously because the moment she really DOES let herself face the reality of it she’s gonna collapse like a house of cards, girl is currently running on honeymoon phase and inertia, and the moment she stops and processes things she’s NOT gonna be in a good place about everything
Of course I’m only speculating, but Joyce doesn’t really seem to think Joe is going to really be upset. Maybe not even surprised. She’s probably assuming they’ll easily come to some sort of arrangement.
After all, she saw how Dorothy and Walky got back together even after Dorothy already broke up with him once. So why couldn’t she and Joe remain good friends?
I think that might be her mindset.
See, I don’t even know that I think Joyce is thinking it through that hard — most of what she’s doing seems to be following the same basic script of “well, we’re in Twue Wuv, so that makes anything we do all right”, whether consciously or unconsciously.
I don’t think she’s even thinking about Joe, other than the moment yesterday when she in the room with him.
Joyce is struggling with object permanence.
Object permanence is exactly right. She has turned into an impulse driven baby.
I think it’s more that she’s still hopped up on romcom brain and averting her gaze from the issue. I think I drew the comparison before but it’s like how in sinbad, Sinbad fucks his best friend’s wife and the dude is just written to be chill with it bc true love. Joyce thinks she’s in Sinbad, she’s not.
Amplified, possibly, by legacy fundie brainworms — the only relationships one is allowed to be in are ones with the express purpose of going directly to marriage, do not pass go, do not date around. A surprisingly large number of ex-fundies of my acquaintance seem to have that change into “whatever relationship I’m currently in now is my only valid relationship ever, and I will go full steam ahead in it”.
no plan survives contact with the enemy
methinks Joyce is going to want her cake, and eat it too.
I hope so. That is much more interesting than the alternative.
“Things are going to get so much worse” might as well be an alternative title for the comic.
Yo, next book title just dropped!
Nah, they don’t have to do anything. And how is it going to make things worse? Are Joe and Walky going to be cool with everything they did yesterday and last night, but emotionally wrecked by some cheek stroking this morning? That die is cast, one way or another, and a little extra affection between these two isn’t going to make a difference.
Your position appears to be that Dorothy and Joyce hold no obligation whatsoever to act considerately towards the people in their lives that they care about. That’s a position one can hold, but it’s not one likely to endear them to anyone.
I’m reading it as more of “it doesn’t matter how much more they do, nothing will make it worse than the initial cheating” — which isn’t a completely invalid position, even if I don’t really agree with it. I think a decent number of people will consider “I did something wrong, and then immediately fessed up” is less bad than dragging out not admitting the malfeasance, especially in the case of “cheating” and “engaging in body fluid exchange with more than one person in quick succession” or “acting like we’re still dating including physical affection, when you knew damn well that’s not how YOU felt”.
To answer Astariel’s question: right now, this won’t make it much worse (one can make the case that sustaining the deception incrementally makes it worse, though). Engaging in activities with Joe yesterday without telling him DID make it worse, and doing so again (should that happen) would also make it worse.
I’m basing my post on this user’s additional and repeated assertion that Sarah was wrong, should have butted out, and was not worth listening to
I apologize for what I started.
If it makes you fell better, the comments would still be equally awful, it would just not have those two words
Yeah, the meme was the funniest thing about this whole mess. It’s just people taking it too far who are the problem.
I mean I get it, people get attached to characters.
Personally I also think some perspective is needed, and consideration that we’re a year behind Willis on all this. I know the laundry comic caused an uproar at the time but context for what the characters are doing and thinking gets provided in the long run.
Real talk, but also it seems that Willis has scrapped and redone a lot of the buffer based on feedback to the recent storylines, so not sure how far ahead we legitimately are now, I suppose we should be grateful we have a proprietor so benevolent and prolific.
Tbh people just need to get comfortable with the idea of their woobies doing things that are wrong sometimes. That applies to like 90% of the arguments here. Both sides.
God damn it you made me a centrist. I’ve become what I sought to destory
Yes! I live in fear of the buffer! 🙂 Deep inside I’m saying “Don’t you hurt [insert name]”, but the story arcs have pretty much been worked out for a year ahead. Still Mr. Willis has been a good writer and should continue. He must be good if people are so invested in the happiness of fictional characters. LOL
having your oppenheimer moment now, huh
Your comment was funny, and it’s not really your fault that Willis thought so too & held a magnifying glass on it.
Apparently i’m out of the loop. What was the comment?
Yeah, wanna be looped in
I was going to ask the same thing… I am not a part of any of the other socials surrounding this comic, so if it’s not here, chances are I never see it unless someone else references it here.
This one here:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/almosthappened/#comment-1886937
What is going on in Joyce Brown’s head?
Lust, mostly. Exacerbated by 19 or so years of repression.
Something something Ruth Was Right, she’ll bang half the town in a tasmanian devil whirlwind of lust now her repression has broken
what exactly is she repressing since birth that makes lust worse?
Everything.
She’s spent her entire life repressing everything because of how she was raised.
The… homosexuality? The queer awakening that has been coming for Joyce like a freight train down the tracks for every moment this comic has existed? It, uh, tends to be pretty overwhelming, when it hits a gal!
Also, knowing what any of her desires are, and having the agency to act on them. Any sexuality at all that isn’t about raising Christian babies for Jesus, but it’s about what she wants. The fact that it’s powerful forbidden Atheist lady-lust is just extra spiffy.
Uh, I think Billie’s “it okay if it’s with your best friend” is running on repeat
Not even Willis knows.
“This feels like a Love Story, and as I am the Protagonist of my story, anything I do in service of finding my True Love is narratively justified”.
Not literally, obviously, but I suspect two of Joyce’s residual “very religious upbringing” brain worms are “Everything will go the way it’s supposed to go, there is a Plan and you can know you are following It” and “I am allowed to center my own immediate feelings and impulses, even though I no longer believe they are the Spirit moving me”
LIGHTSWITCH
I for one welcome our new literal sound effect overlords.
I choose to believe that “lightswitch« is the literal sound it makes due to clever Ruttech engineering.
*starts mentally building an arduino that i could hook up to the lightswitch in my living room*
If you squint your brain it actually works as an onomatopoeia.
Does anyone remember the “RESLAM” sound effect?
Speaking as a “Paladin,” as this point the thing about the cheating storyline I like the least is the commenters losing their minds over it. Yes, Cheating is Bad ™ but sometimes good people do bad things. Calling out your friend when they’re doing something bad doesn’t make you judgmental, and it doesn’t mean your friend needs to commit seppuku either.
Whatever happened to “the strip isn’t called SmartingOfAge, amiright?” I know this attitude isn’t limited to this storyline; it’s been a reoccurring problem basically since the beginning. It just makes me want to skip reading comments entirely.
Speaking as a Sicko… Yes… Ha ha ha… Yes!
I prefer the comic strip be played for laughs yes. I don’t feel the need to get all judgmental. But I do like how honest and forthright Sarah was and how she stood up for Joe, and how they are chastened. Even if still finding it difficult to be chaste.
personally I hate the response “this strip isn’t called smarting of age”, it feels like an attempt to shut down people. Yeah of course the characters aren’t perfect and yeah sometimes dumb shit happens for the sake of drama, so what is the comments section FOR if not to talk about that?
I think an increasing number of folks have been feeling discomfort with how acrimonious the comments have been, and how much open seething anger has been expressed towards the characters, and also, often, towards the people who are okay with the characters.
Like, I know *I’m* uncomfortable with it, it’s been really weirding me out and making me feel a lot less comfortable with our community, here.
Agreed. We are lashing out at each other, from the Trump chaos and stress. It’s not fun.
But also often to the people who are not okay with the characters. This is not a one-sided thing, even if it can seem that way when you’re on one of the sides.
But yeah, it’s been ugly. It’s far from the first time though.
This right here. I try very hard not to get irritated about it, but I’ve had quite a few experiences where someone jumped straight down my throat because I had a position that was vaguely in the same quadrant as someone who was a shithead.
Ngl its always struck me as thought-terminating
I don’t mind people overanalyzing media. I love overanalyzing media. But some commentators pretend to just be doing media analysis when what they’re actually doing is making shit up in order to portray this or that character in the worst way possible.
Like people saying that Joyce has shown zero signs of guilt, and what looks like guilt is just her being sad that she won’t be Joe’s girlfriend anymore. Wild shit like that.
Same, with a side note of “it’s not smarting of age” generally only being applied to “whatever the commenter saying it wants to happen” and not “ALL of these college kids are college kids, and they are going to react like college kids”.
Counterpoint – some people need to be shut down, because what they’re saying is silly.
As a fellow member of the Paladin Order, I’m mostly just annoyed that THIS is gonna be the story for awhile. Cheating plotlines are my least favorite sources of Drama in stories and that’s all we’re gonna get with these characters until this resolves.
I’m not sure exactly why, but I feel the same way about cheating drama…
It feels too easy to pull out of nowhere, and too hard to solve in a satisfying manner, maybe?
As someone more on the sicko side, I think one thing we have to remember is just like how the characters in the comics are people dealing with hormones, trauma and other things, so are a lot of the commenters. The commenters who are taking this strip rather badly are going to be a mix of people dealing with their own things.
With a bunch of them the story could be bringing up a bunch of cheating trauma for them. But with others it could be that Joyce and Dorothy as characters resonated with them, so to see them act like this feels like a betrayal. Both characters have always been depicted as having strong moral cores that at least always try to do the right thing, so i can see why their current actions are making a lot of the paladins so angry.
Even to say that the characters are still dumb teenagers capable of making horny mistakes doesn’t negate that. I guess it’s like if a writer took Spider-Man and had him start committing crimes for petty personal gain, and then put it down to Peter Parker having a hard time and making mistakes. You could probably make a story like that work but it does go against the ethos of the character, especially if after committing the crimes he didn’t show that much guilt over it.
As a Paladin, I actually cosign all of this, with the addition to your first paragraph of “of COURSE there are going to be other characters who are impulsively angry or hurt or feel betrayed about this development regardless of how connected they are to it or what logical sense it makes, because J&D aren’t the ONLY dumb hormone-ridden college kids in this strip.”
Or if Spider-Man made a literal deal with the devil, trading his marriage away out of grief for his aunt, for a random example.
It’s been 18 years. People born the day it was published are getting ready for college.
Welp, I’ll just be over here turning to dust quietly.
Everyone over the age of 12, any time they’re made aware of something that happened more than five seconds ago: “Oh god, I am the ancient fossil being from Planet Old”
So that whole tongue-lashing from Sarah completely went in one ear and out the other, huh Joyce.
Joyce has a knack for holing herself up and refusing to listen when it comes to matters of the heart.
I’m glad at least Dorothy seems to have listened and thought a little about what Sarah said.
It’s almost as if she’s a character who – at one point – had the defining conflict of repeatedly zapping herself with a memory eraser to block out negative memories.
Actively ignoring outside information that casts her self-image in a bad light seems like the clear real-world version of that.
Joyce blanking out her own memories.
I’ve noticed more character beats that were sci-fi in the previous series bleeding through here with more grounded consequences/effects, and I think part of the reason we haven’t been getting into Joyce’s mindset lately is that she’s choosing – consciously or not – to block out her own memories.
It’s a real thing, I’ve seen my own dad do it in real time – he did an act in anger that hurt someone, and you could see it on his face. Realization, pause, blank stare, emotional reset, then when questioned about it seconds later, denial that he had done the harmful act. I only saw it the once, but it left a major impression.
I think Joyce’s self-image is at stake here, so she’s not allowing herself to recognize the consequences of her actions. Quite honestly, she’s probably still in trauma mode from the protest yesterday, and throwing herself into a relationship with Dorothy (or recognizing that’s what it’s been all along) is an excellent self-distraction from processing that she risked being arrested or worse yesterday.
Your comment reminded me of https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/proven/
Not at all the same thing, but even so…
Actually, I think that’s exactly the same thing!
“This breaks my world view so it’s going to the garbage”
That mindset doesn’t just go away immediately when you leave the social group that taught it to you.
That’s a perfect example of it happening in DoA!
Oh, it’s an it’s walky thing. I was so confused
Just wanted to say that your comment was insightful, thank you for sharing.
Though completely off-topic, this somehow brought to mind another moment from the original timeline.
“Joyce, I’m hoping these memories are from a different timeline rather than our actual future, and I’d really like to confirm that through the easy low-cost action of you changing into a different shirt.”
“No! I refuse to reassure you with empirical evidence! Increased understanding of the spacetime continuum is meaningless if it isn’t based on Faith!”
https://www.itswalky.com/comic/s-so-this-is-it/
https://www.itswalky.com/comic/a-good-relationship/
(Thoughts straying further–“So, you say these vaccinations protect against disease? Have you done a double-blind trial to make your case convincing?” “No! I don’t have to prove what I know in my heart to be true–a double-blind trial would be cheating!”)
https://www.itswalky.com/comic/a-good-relationship/
(Continuing the previous parallel: “I have to hold onto hope–if I did a double-blind trial, I’d know for certain that the vaccination works, and then I wouldn’t any more be able to hold onto hope that it did!”)
((“But didn’t you already say that you know it to be true? So how are you able to hold onto hope any more now than if the evidence agreed with you that it were true..?”))
Thank god for that.
I reiterate: what exactly is your problem?
Bro you are being so weird about this
Honestly…
I think Dorothy’s right.
The fact they went against their own morals for this, it kinda sours me on Dorothy/Joyce entirely.
Maybe if in ten in-universe years they could try again, but sincerely, I don’t think they should be together if they can’t keep decently level heads on.
That would require control over their horniness.
That’s more or less how I feel about it too, yeah.
“Decently level heads” generally does not describe college freshmen who just discovered that they’re both gay and in love with each other.
It is, uh, inherently not an experience that tends to leave one’s heads level, even if only on the hormonal level.
I think that’s going way too far.
What caused them to act this way is not directly related to how they are to each other, but to the fact they could not previously accept their feelings.
Ok, that’s currently not good, but breaking it off doesn’t even feel possible to me. I think it would necessitate that the two of them stay away from each other, and that can’t be good…
That’s just ridiculous. What kind of boring-ass romance is always level-headed?
GURL. OMG.
I’m far from a paladin but this is spiraling into chik tracks (?) parody territory
(I’m also far from the US, just saw them in the internet dgfhdj but you know the ones. “waoh. If there’s no god…? then what stops me from xyz…?”, something I personally also find hilarious.)
From what I know of Jack Chick… Nothing. He was a total hypocrite, who accused everyone else of being one.
I introduced a friend of mine who didn’t grow up fundie to the magical world of Jack Chick a week or two ago. I had to assure him that they were not, in fact, parody.
Also, not only can you still buy these things, they’ve made new ones since his death. They’re also the only goddamn thing not affected by greedflation. These things come in boxes of a zillion at fifty cents a pop or even less if you buy in bulk.
Joyce, you sucked Joe’s dick last night (if she’s willing to put it in her mouth, she’s willing to put it down there).
I wouldn’t say that logic follows at all really.
Yeah I’m kinda wondering if the mention of the pill is foreshadowing. Things are…odd, right now.
I would be fascinated to hear your rationale here
On what, exactly, are you basing that.
Because I for sure promise you, that is not a general rule for women, and you are setting yourself up for some real bad disappointment if you think it is.
i read it as “demonstrated tendency to engage in sexual activities instead of having difficult conversations” rather than anything specifically about what her limits are.
the point being, she hasn’t broken up with him yet, so the “new developments” she refers to are at this point… aspirational?
Yeah, I think in this context the comment is referring to a trend we’ve been seeing. Joyce almost kissed Dorothy, but then kept her date with Joe and received digital stimulation. Then she did kiss Dorothy, but then went and gave Joe a blowjob. There’s a pattern. It might be broken, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it continued.
Given this troubling pattern…Dorothy better not have sex with Joyce or, by extrapolation, it might result in Joyce accidentally marrying, settling down with, and living a long and happy life with Joe!
Certainly doesn’t follow as a general rule, but since she definitely wasn’t planning on the blow job when she went to talk to Joe, it’s hard to completely rule out something else she isn’t planning on.
Eh, not sure about that one, mate.
Joyce brings out the worst in Joyce.
Joyce also, accidentally, brings out the worst in Dorothy — who is barely holding it together at the best of times, and probably didn’t need to decide to emulate Joyce’s impulsiveness right just when she did.
Joyce: OH right, I forgot my coochie broke
Uterus, but close!
dammit im due for mine this week
let’s dooooo the time waaaaarp agaaaaaaaiiiinnn X-X
I was due two weeks ago and have every sign except the actual bleeding and it’s starting to piss me off
Off topic, but… this’s one reason that Intelligent Design nonsense annoyed me so much. How is this “intelligent”? Automatically preparing for pregnancy every four weeks or so, regardless of how the person is interested in or even ready for children in any way beyond the physical (and sometimes not even that), then just throwing it away and starting again, for the majority of a person’s life… while some animals get to have a spermatheca to hang onto it until it’s useful (so we could then just have our periods when they might actually do something worthwhile)…
And I know many of them use the excuse of it being an inherited curse based on Eve’s sin, but what about when Jesus supposedly died for our sins? Wouldn’t this apply to all that Original Sin stuff? Besides, punishing people for the actions of their ancestors doesn’t really fit with that whole “loving god” thing…
Sorry. Guess I’m moody today, but hopefully this little rant will, in some way, act as comfort through internet sympathy, or something?
With just one example, why the Intelligent Design/Young-Earth Creationist, “literal” interpretation of all of this stuff, why it makes so many more problems than it solves.
Yes, I put “literal” in quotations. It’s a long story, but the short of it is, literal is a dog whistle for “reading the Bible and contorting everything it says so it fits my existing narrative (and often prejudices.)”
A lot of fundies treat the Bible like it’s some National Treasure puzzle game, and all you gotta do is have the magic decoder ring out of your cereal box to guess as to what it really means.
All that stuff about taking care of the poor and the unfortunate? That stuff about not using faith as get-rich-quick scheme? That vision they use to say “oh we don’t have to follow Leviticus law anymore” and yet cling to the Leviticus verse of “man shall not lie down with” like it’s the only book in the Bible? Or they ignore the bit in Numbers where it actually approves and recommends terminating a pregnancy?
Silly normies. Obviously that’s just filler for the stuff you’re really supposed to be reading into it. Like that somehow the book of Revelations predicted the Cold War.
Looking at this again: the “sorry” was for the rant, but it could also have been for the lack of proofreading. Oops.
Hi! I’m just a Random Internet Stranger, but I think it’s probs time for you to hit up a pregnancy test (pref one that starts “from the day of your missed period). Always better to know early!!
I’m a lesbian who hasn’t had sex since January so unless Jesus is planning on a replay I think I’m safe
ope, forgot which device I used for the original comment. I am the same person as bogeywoman.
lmao so fair.
I’m having my second one in two months and it’s been over a week (〒﹏〒) I know that’s supposed to be normal but with my birth control I usually get them like, once a season
Somehow Sarah stopped this from being fun-messy and now it’s just upsetting-messy
I’m still here for it tho, it’s just gonna be of the “destroys me emotionally” flavour instead now
It’s still fun messy for me!
No matter how this shakes out I do hope they stay friends at the end for moments like this (remembering meds)
I have an urge to not trust but I’ve already expressed my distrust for both characters present and saying “Don’t trust birth control.” at minimum feels problematic. You win this time!
Don’t trust lightswitches!
They’ll flip on you.
Okay, that one got me. 10/10 dad joke. No notes.
fff love it
Peak dad joke
Let’s not trust glasses, I surely don’t need them to se-
And here is proof i dont need to wear glasses while typing. That or I just type so much that i just know where all the keys are…
Touch-typing is a thing. I’m old enough to have studied it with my grandma’s exercise book.
Yeah… “don’t trust birth control” was a common refrain from one of my Catholic theology teachers in high school. Very nice guy… but a little brainwashed. Or, as I suppose we now say, “Vatican-pilled.”
…Huh. That surprises me a little, just because in my Catholic high school our teachers taught us many, MANY types of birth control with medically accurate information (at the time, which was 15 years ago so). Our religion teachers said the Catechism the pill was against the rules I THINK (I don’t remember if it’s allowed if you’re married but holding off on a baby for whatever reason, it’s been a long time and I am not actually Catholic) but I also seem to recall they were like ‘You shouldn’t but if anything happens, just be responsible, please, you don’t want a baby in high school and if pregnancy happens HEY adoption is a GREAT option’. Which…I am told many Catholics in the US are strongly against adoption and consider it abandoning your baby so. Maybe Canadian Catholics are different or maybe my school just had very practical teachers. Or it could be because it was a public school so they had to balance theology with public funding curriculum rules and standards.
Yeah, this was a private high school and it was American. I suspect both differences you mentioned were big, big factors.
Ah, yeah. That’ll do it. My province still has publicly funded Catholic schools so they had to follow the same provincial curriculum standards except for religion class. They actually had a pretty good sex ed class now that I think on it. Obviously it was anti-abortion but a lot of the time that ended up ‘It exists but the catechism says no and now who wants to watch the 17th video of some Catholic lady saying she COULD’VE been aborted but was given up for adoption instead and how much she LOVES her bio mom for it?’
We got a class that compared sleeping with more than one person to scotch tape. You stick it to one thing, it sticks pretty well. Peel it off and put it on the second thing, still some adhesion but not as good. Peel it off again and so on and so forth until it has zero adhesive properties left and is just full of hair and dirty and grime.
This, they said, was what sleeping with more than one person would do to you. Eventually your entire ability to love other humans would be irreparably damaged and destroyed. They implied that even if you do find “The One” later in life, you would be unable to love them properly and fully because you’d given your affection to so many other people.
Because apparently affection and human warmth is subject to the laws of supply and demand, and is somehow a limited resource? Look, these people also said that people in the India had the right idea, and lamented the fact that we don’t do arranged marriages in America.
Really scary thing is that these people were the sane, compassionate moderates compared to my middle school.
Ick! My sympathies.
Not gonna lie, if I hadn’t already heard something even more toxic from the Evangelical middle school, it would have messed me up. As it was, it just served as reinforcement for the prior statements, except it came from Roman Catholics… so basically taking regular ol’ sexual guilt and then spicing it up with some Italian seasoning.
The biggest ACTUAL difference between Catholics and Protestants is that Protestants admit they have dozens upon dozens of sects and sub-sects, whereas Roman Catholics will never admit that there are, functionally, at least four or five separate “Roman Catholic Church”es that only agree, and sometimes not even then, on things specifically said by the Pope when he’s speaking specifically in the “infallible God-appointed leader” mode.
I was only aware of the regular Catholics and Catholics Classic that were all pre-Vatican 2. Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised there’s a whole mess of different factions as well.
One of the fun ones is “Can priests be married?”
As it turns out there’s literally no rule about it, only a tradition that one stays celibate after one gets ordained, but there are Catholic areas where priests are basically 100% single men, and areas (mostly scattered around sub-Saharan Africa, IIRC) where a surprising number of priests were married, had kids, then became a priest when the kids were older.
A lot of them aren’t so much formal doctrinal disputes, but shifts in emphasis. Shifts in culture. For example, Irish Catholics and Central American Catholics are hugely different in every way but the Catholicism and despite attempts at top down control, those differences shape the Catholic experience as well.
US Catholics in general are relatively liberal, as far as Christians in the US go, but there’s a strong right wing faction among US bishops and other top leaders
You shouldn’t trust birth control, it’s not 100% effective!
Unlike say, Pikachu’s Thunderbolt on a water type, which would be
Right, but to be clear, when taken correctly it’s suuuper close. Like, always be mindful, but definitely still take it if it is safe and reasonable for you to do so.
This one reveals a lot about joyce’s motivations, I think. We see that selfishness with regards to relationships again, which while a defining part of her character, has been pretty subdued or harmless until now.
She also seems to be writing off the idea of being with Joe anymore, which is a little suprising to me honestly. Still, I do kinda get it. This does also reframe her previous scenes as less “i don’t want to have to choose” and more “oh, I do feel bad for doing this to him. He’s nice.” That said, it’s also a joke, so who’s to say how serious to take it.
The “Ugh fine” is showing that she really doesn’t consider this to be that big of a deal. There are probably a bunch of small reasons you could say for why she is acting that way.
She clearly is still operating in the mindset of it all being fine because it’s for true love, and things like “ending the relationship you’re already in before gently caressing the cheek of your sapphic lover” somewhat annoying hoops she has to jump through. Even if she cares for Joe and doesn’t want to hurt him, she’s continuing to display a lack of care and consideration for his feelings in this situation.
She does seem to still be riding the emotional high of the paradigm shift, though while it appears that in the abstract she “plans” to be monogamous with Dorothy, I have a feeling once the discomfort and distress over the the prospect of telling Joe the truth and breaking up with him becomes a more tangible reality to her again, Joyce’s tendencies are going to push her towards avoidance again.
Agreed to both of the above. Unfortunately.
This does, unfortunately, track for the gal who told Jacob’s brother that she was his girlfriend.
Joyce was prepared to spend the rest of her life with Ethan and fix him. Joyce had convinced herself, urging of Sarah’s or not that he and her were destined to be together. Up until now, if you had asked Joyce, Joe was everything to her and helping her learn and explore and be. Now she’s locked into Dorothy and reconciles her rivalry with Walky as having always secretly wanted Dorothy as her forever lover.
The hard truth is for Joyce? Every game is the endgame.
‘He’ being Jacob* at Sarah’s urging.
Joyce does everything with her whole heart. Especially the dumb things.
I wonder if there’s something going on here that’s not just writing Joe off completely. We didn’t see much of her interaction with Joe last night, but it ending with a blow job doesn’t really suggest writing him off. Even with the date the night before there was a sudden switch from barely thinking about Joe to barely considering Dorothy as soon as he showed up.
She seems to be focused completely on whichever one she’s with
She lacks object permanence.
Wow, they aren’t objects they are people! 🚩
(for the sake of avoiding angry comments: this is a joke)
dang, Joyce wanted to have unprotected sex?
is it slut-shaming to suggest Joe is a high-risk partner because he’s had multiple other partners before? I assume he was wearing condoms every time, but does Joyce know that? has she had a conversation with him about this?
would she have the gumption to ask him to get tested for STDs?
hmmm though now that I think about it, Dorothy has also had multiple partners, because “two” does fall under the definition of multiple.
everyone should get tested!
Joe and Roz are the characters I trust most in this strip to always have safe sex.
Joe prided himself on “Ethical” horn dog. He always used protection and he always checked for consent. He would not spread disease.
Dorothy has claimed 3 partners and I’m pretty sure it’s a throwaway but I’m pushing my “Dorothy is a serial cheater and cheated on Danny” theory anyways because why tf not.
Also, idk why, but I feel like Joe would’ve gotten tested around the time of the Roz thing. Not out of fear or slutshamey reasons, I just feel like that’s a thing that would’ve been discussed between them for some reason. Like Dot said, those two are the most trustworthy I feel to have safe sex lol
“Dorothy was a serial cheater on Danny theory?” I’m gonna be real with you, I have no bloody idea how you came to that conclusion. Either I’m completely forgetting something major from the early strips, or we aren’t reading the same webcomic.
I assume “serial cheater” is meant to be once on Danny and now again on Walky.
The idea’s based on her claiming 3 partners and there not being a lot of time to fit that 3rd partner in. I don’t think unmentioned casual sex with someone during the time skip makes any sense. It could have been before Danny, but that would have been pretty young, so cheating on Danny does kind of make sense as a possibility. Just in time line terms.
I don’t really think it makes sense in characterization terms.
I mean… okay, but some people do lose their v-cards young. That’s not impossible. It seems kinda bad-faith to go from “unaccounted third person” to “oh she had to have been cheating.”
It’s not impossible. But it’s where the idea came from and why people think it’s a possibility.
Part of the weirdness with it, as I suggested elsewhere, is that we know Dorothy and Danny dated for a long time (2 years?) before they went all the way, which I think would be unusual, though again not impossible, if she’d already had sex. It would I think suggest pretty bad feelings about that first time, which have never come up or really been hinted at.
Well, the thing is that Dorothy is confirmed to have waited years to have had sex with Danny, which implies either she was a virgin when they got together or something Really Bad happened (that holy shit would be whack af to drop so casually as an “I’ve had like… 3 partners” comments. Not that people don’t trauma dump casually like that, it would just be whack.) They got together at 15, so there’s literally one year of it being “really young but somewhat normal”
Anyways, like I said, I’m pretty sure the 3 partners thing was just a throwaway comment that doesn’t hold any actual weight and is probably retconned out, but I find it a fun theory regardless.
Also some people date in middle school, guys.
This too. She never said sexual partners, did she? Just partners (unless I’m remembering wrong.)
“I’ve only had sex with like three people” doesn’t leave a lot of room for non-sexual partners.
The fact of the matter is that whether or not adults like acknowledging it kids are also having sex in middle school. When I was taking sex ed in the 7th grade the teachers even told us as much–“I guarantee some of your classmates are already having sex. I would not recommend that, but we want to make sure you’re all aware of how it works so that if you’re going to do it you can do it safely” is what we were told pretty directly. And many of us were like what twelve year olds are having sex, but. Like. It does happen.
No one in this discussion has said it was impossible, but cheating isn’t impossible either.
Also, if we’re going off those probabilities, most of those kids having sex in middle school are girls and they’re mostly having it with older boys.
See, that’s my guess too. Throwaway comment no longer considered relevant.
who is the third?
Some unnamed and basically unconfirmed schmuck. I’m not gonna dig for it, but she said something like “I’ve only had sex with like three people, I’m not an amoral lust machine” when Joyce was fucking around with her comic at some point. With Danny and Walky already accounted for, unless she’s exaggerating the number for no reason, she fucked one other guy. I feel safe assuming it was a guy, since she didn’t think she was even attracted to women until like two days ago.
Well, we know she dated Danny for three years in high school and after two years, they had sex after the junior prom (my extrapolation based on Willis saying Danny’s had ‘prom sex’ and that Danny himself said two years). That was when Danny lost his virginity but we don’t have confirmation on when Dorothy lost her’s that I recall.
Then of course, she dated Walky for about six or seven weeks in first semester where she also took Walky’s virginity and commented that one day she was going to date a non-virgin.
So, either Dorothy had sex sometime before her sophomore year in high school or she had sex with someone new over the time skip.
She’s mentioned wanting to stop dating virgins, so I got the impression that while she was Danny’s first, he was not hers.
May very well not have been.
Having sex as a freshman in high school (or earlier) with someone never mentioned and then not being willing to repeat it with a guy you’re seriously dating for another two years has some really unpleasant implications.
And I can’t really see Dorothy having sex with anyone over the time skip without it coming up in some fashion.
I don’t necessarily think it has to have unpleasant implications. Could’ve just been too early or waiting for a right moment or DANNY not having been ready.
Not necessarily, but sex at that age is already a red flag. It could certainly have been perfectly fine and she was completely happy with it, but just not willing to repeat it with Danny for years, but the odds don’t lean that way.
But then, I don’t think the cheating really fits either.
I don’t have a good take on the “only 3 people” thing.
It could also have been DANNY wanted to wait for a special moment. That sounds like him and also like something Dorothy would respect.
Good point, well-made.
I have been trying not to worry about Dorothy’s pre-Danny sexual intimacy. It IS entirely possible it went fine, even at a young age; that it was fumbly and awkward and maybe even sort of regrettable the same way her first kiss was, without actually being traumatic.
I just. Really hope that, for Dorothy’s sake.
Danny could have been that romantic, but he also complained about how quickly she slept with Walky after, I believe he said “how hard it was for *me* to get into your pants”
With who? Joe, Danny, and Dorothy all knew each other from high school, but they’re the only ones we’ve seen from that group. What mysterious person would Dorothy have been cheating on Danny with? And why?? Early Dorothy really gave off “I don’t need nobody to slow me down” vibes.
Since it would have had to have been before college, it would have been with some high school kid we haven’t seen.
I could see like if it were during summer break their first year, and they’re not in the same city the whole summer. And Dorothy assumes they’re done or on a break.
Or maybe after she’d decided she was going to break up with him last spring, but only dropped hints instead of breaking up with him.
it’d be not serious, like she first told Walky they were going to be.
Joe’s sexual hang ups would 100% have him being fully on board for safe sex.
He would never want to get someone knocked up. His entire deal was “No attachments, no broken hearts.”
for like the 900th time, his dudebro stuff was a cover. He *acted* like an asshole but he wasn’t one where it mattered, he was just unaware that his persona was also harmful.
maybe I should clarify that “safe sex” the way I am saying it means “protected from STDs not just pregnancy”.
If Joyce wants to have sex without a condom that is NOT safe sex, even if she’s taking birth control.
Pretty sure the bulk of sexual protection for dudes covers both.
Though I’m hoping the next gag joke is that they did all that cuddle smooching and Joyce never brushed her teeth after gorking Joe’s mork.
Right, but it’s pretty common for dudes to push the birth control part off on the woman if she’s on the pill.
So if Joe was just thinking in terms of not knocking someone up and she said she was on the pill, he might well have been fine without using condoms.
Joe deserves better communication.
Oh, absolutely. Joe deserves a lot of respect and consideration that he’s not getting in this situation.
Weird how nobody in either the comments or the comic seems to be worried about Walky, though, huh. Just Joe, always Joe. And very, very rarely, Becky.
I admit, I’d talk more about Walky if he was more prominent in the recent strips themselves. The last strips didn’t even pretend to have Dorothy try to break up with Walky, but made a point to have Joyce see Joe, and hammer home how sweet he was being. Walky hasn’t been seen, at all, since Joyce and Dorothy got to the protest. Joe got a big conversation with Rachel. And, Joe and Joyce’s relationship took center stage up for several strips right before the protest. I admit it’s not entirely fair, but I think a fair argument could be made that Joe has had more pivotal moments lately than Walky, as has his relationship with Joyce than Dorothy/Walky going back to old patterns, and that keeps him on people’s mind.
Plus, and this also isn’t fair: Walky was so blase when Billie and Alice brought up the idea that Joyce had feelings for Joyce, that I don’t exactly know….how…? to worry about him. Joe has glimpsed this on the horizon with the tit pics and talk with Dorothy. He and Joyce just had a big night, and now he’s gotten her a special blanket. It’s easier to see the shadow looming over him, waiting to become real. Walky doesn’t even engage with the idea of Joyce/Dorothy as a possibility. It’s going to suck for him, and I do feel bad for him and worry about the fallout, but I find it harder to theorize how he’ll even react. I don’t have a good way to explain it, but it’s like: Joe got explicit foreshadowing of what’s about to hit him and tried to face it before a big relationship step with Joyce; Walky’s just kinda casually coasting in his renewed relationship with Dorothy, and laughed off the foreshadowing that Billie and Alice gave him. The tension is different.
The more I’ve thought on it—the more I realize Walky laughing it off has nothing to do with Joyce and everything to do with Dorothy. His trust in Dorothy is implicit. Walky has never once thought for a second that Joyce doesn’t love Dorothy. He dunks on it every and any chance he gets. It’s literally the impetus of any antagonism he and Joyce share, comedic or otherwise.
He laughed off because in his mind, Dorothy would never willingly pursue Joyce unless they were both single and they aren’t. Or Dorothy just has never been into Joyce that way, it was always one-sided. Whatever soon-to-crumble beliefs he had, they were so ironclad and implicitly trusting in Dorothy that he laughed it off.
Compare that to Joe who is at least aware enough to see the signs—not that he doesn’t trust Joyce but he saw infidelity in his parents’ marriage first hand. He can guess where affection and closeness can lead.
I think it boils down to being dumped by Dotty is old hat to him. Also, how they went back to being a couple felt skeevy.
Walky also hasn’t really grown as a person yet. Walky getting away from Dorothy, and *finally* taking her off the pedestal he’s put her on, would be a good thing for him.
Becky has Dina, and if she botches that, that’s on her. I legit think Becky is going to go postal on Joyce for turning into the godless sinner stereotype they were told Atheists were.
I’ve been thinking about how Walky will take it. I think he’s either gonna be the heartbroken one or he’s gonna be PISSED.
I’m saying this because I think that out of Becky, Joe, and Walky, one will take it well, one will be sad and one will be furious.
I think Walky might be the one to take it well. Or rather ‘well’. He’s been through Dorothy’s relationship shenanigans before, and it’s worth remembering that this time around their ‘relationship’ has just been her using him as a booty call a couple of times. Neither of them have spent much time together, and Walky doesn’t seem nearly as attached this time.
Dorothy expects him to be heartbroken, because she can’t see herself as anything but Walky’s Great Forever Perfect Luv, but I think he learned both from his first time around with her and his experience with Lucy that Dorothy wasn’t ever as invested as he was. She hasn’t been investing this time either, so he hasn’t been investing.
Or I kind of hope, anyway. Regardless, I think some apathy of a ‘yeah, I didn’t expect much’ flavor would genuinely bother Dorothy a lot more than the hurt she’s already expecting and scripting for him. Part of her of her takes being on Walky’s highest pedestal as her just dues, and ‘whatever, see ya’ would knock that at least a bit.
I don’t think it’s true that Dorothy wasn’t as invested as Walky was in their first relationship. That’s why it was so hard for her to let it go when she needed more time for her goals and I think it’s why she wanted to go back to him in the first place – it was the last time she was REALLY happy.
I do think Walky is likely to feel used though and that’s why I think he might be the pissed off one. Personally I think it’ll be either Joe or Becky who takes it well.
Or maybe I’m totally wrong and all three will be some combo of sad and/or pissed.
For a while Walky embodied to Dorothy the halcyon days of August and September, before the guns on campus and the bad grades and the kidnappings and trying to ignore her feelings for her best friend, when things were simple and she was happy with her uncomplicated goofball boyfriend. She wanted him back because she wanted that time back, but of course you can’t repeat the past. Time is always marching on. Their rebound together was always doomed.
There’s some truth to that, but she also wanted him back right after they broke up. And apparently all along afterwards until at some point it switched over to just being nostalgia/distraction from Joyce.
To be fair, Walky has gotten very little consideration within the text itself, which helps to explain some of the slanted discussion.
I’ve never forgotten him though.
Given how good Willis is at moving pieces…
It might be on purpose to keep Walky from our purview and put more focus on how Joe and Becky will react.
I think a lot of this is also the fact that we don’t actually have any good idea of what way Walky will take this.
It’s been clear for a while that he’s not only hiding his pain and insecurities behind his goofball devil-may-care facade, he is AWARE he is doing this (to the point of throwing away math tests with bad results, if I remember correctly) and is consciously trying to maintain said facade.
So the only really interesting question becomes “is THIS the thing that shatters the facade?” and I don’t think we have any real evidence for what he might do if it does.
Walky in the Walkyverse was an extremely angry, rageful person beneath the goofball mask. In the Dumbiverse, a lot of that anger has been scooped out and replaced with Sad. I’m still crossing my fingers and hoping we get to see some angry Walky again.
^ Another reason I think we might be headed for angry Walky.
I wonder if some of the intensity of the negative reaction isn’t just that the girls are cheating, but due to the pace of the comic, it doesn’t feel like they’ve been cheating for less than 24 hours, it feels like they’ve been cheating for *weeks*.
Like, if you first got upset when they kissed, this situation has been upsetting you for *so* long, at this point, due to the rate at which time passes in this comic. I could see that aggravating the situation for folks, even if only on a subconscious and purely emotional level.
Well yeah
I’ve personally moved on from the cheating anger and now I’m walking full speed into being angry about Joyce’s weird sexual derailment. It was like… Two days? from “my thigh is touching his ween through two pairs of pajamas oh no!” to blowing him for a blanket, then smooching Dotty again.
When it oours it rains 🤷
My upset is exactly this. Willis wanted to jump to his future plan, skipping years of comics, and suddenly the characters are not behaving like themselves. It’s a jarring shift.
This is ALWAY gonna be a faction in reaction to serial release fiction, no matter the ‘in universe’ timescale. Always has been, always will be.
Factor*
This is where I am. 24 hours is a time period in which setting things right is possible. No one is entitled to the other being willing to feel that way, of course. But that’s my personal rule: “Within 24-hours of cheating you can come clean, and at least try to break it off before it goes any further.” It’d still be painful, it doesn’t make what was done right, and it doesn’t mean they have to be ok with you or it.
But at least they tried to course-correct as immediately as possible.
See, I kinda disagree with this, in that I think that you break the timer when you do things that are further along on the “cheating” scale — and, IMHO, one of those things is “go from romantic contact with your new partner to romantic contact with your extant partner to romantic contact with your new partner” — I could give Joyce a 24-hour buffer, if not for “going to talk to Joe and them engaging in sexual contact rather than her coming clean”.
I think it is a matter of “how bad”.
Confessing right away is better than drawing it out (with some exceptions if it would be a particularly bad time for your partner, like right before an important test), but best is not cheating at all.
That is part of it, but it is also the type of relationship Joe has with her. He has been very determined to change himself for what he sees as better because of her and who he wants to be around her. There are some qualms you can have about someone using someone else as motivation to change themselves (rather than just for themselves), but it doesn’t change the fact that she has been his motivation. Joyce’s actions seem to spit in the face of that and his openness and fragileness (not sure if that is the word I want) around her. This isn’t a relationship where he was just going through the motions, “just for fun”, or just trying something out. He is invested (along with the rest of us in that storyline) in this relationship. Joyce’s actions with the cheating and dumping appear like they will have bad emotional and mental consequences for Joe and it is hard to see a way that he comes out of this okay. Not to downplay any of the other cheating scenes, but the stakes seem like they were made more obvious and painful for the one being cheating on than just happening off screen in the background.
It also feels like Joyce hasn’t been with Joe that long before this started happening, though that could just be my perception. It still feels like Joe is taking his first trembling steps in this relationship and isn’t confident in acting in this new way that he wants to be. If he was shown to be confident and steadfast in his new self, it might not feel as bad. You could see him bouncing back from it easier.
That’s a perennial problem with this sort of webcomic. Honestly DoA keeps a relatively brisk pace compared to some of the other comics I read
Yeah, it’s literally every single day and has been for a long-ass time with a big ol’ buffer, whereas almost every other webcomic I read is at 2 or 3 pages a week, with seemingly no buffer whatsoever. Some are even less than that, with Oglaf on a weekly schedule and Dolmistaska seeming to just update whenever.
There are other comics that I follow that can get more out of an individual update than DoA, but DoA easily makes up for it on frequency and consistency.
*cries in Dresden Codak/Dark Science fan*
I just did a reread of the whole comic and I knew the effect your talking about beforehand what was wild to me is it reads completely differently (not just a bit less intense). Like I used to be on the Mike hate train and on re-read I was like be sucks but he came off so much less bad. Same with this storyline. I’m very sad for Joe (because he’s clearly in love with Joyce) but the Joyce/Dorothy seems less bad. It’s like I can finally see the in universe timescales better. I mean I’m still 100% with Sarah on this topic but it’s not as frustrating to me personally as a reader now.
I mean yeah the strip a day format is dragging this out long past charming into “can we get this over with already?” territory. Especially if you don’t actually like the couple that much
Today’s strip has more examples of why I love Dorothy because she’s kind of not entirely wrong here. Dorothy/Joyce does bring out a lot of bad in Joyce it seems, and again has the issue of her infantilizing Joyce just a bit even here. In fact, this is actually Dorothy doing the same shit she did with all her boyfriends. She dictates the terms of the relationship, she knows what’s best, she’s putting her foot down.
It actually puts me way more at ease about things, because Dorothy is very controlling. That issue will be a thing that crops up and will be addressed lol.
Idk, that sounds like a lot of smack talking Dorothy, it’s really hard for me to express how much that is not hating on Dorothy. I love her for her flaws because they’re so… idk. They’re good flaws. I adore Dorothy as a character and I like that she is capable of stepping back and saying “actually no, we need to do things right” while still also demonstrating that her perspective is still the only one she really ever considers in full.
I will say though, Joyce’s attitude about all of this is very much a bro wtf to me. It doesn’t even really read in her voice today, she almost sounds like Billie. She should know better than to emulate Billie lol. [Also, the last two panels I find very relatable given that I take my BC so I don’t bleed to death yet still feel the need to test it once a year to be like “idk maybe this time it’ll be normal” and it never is.]
As someone with ADHD I would love a partner like Dorothy, my husband wasn’t naturally that but he’s adopted some Dorothy-esque qualities because I needed it and he saw my need. Joyce resonates a lot with me because she’s so in-the-moment and forgetful, she does well with someone who can manifest working memory for her.
I get that it isn’t smack talk but I also don’t see it as a flaw, and I feel like its portrayal here is showing that Dorothy and Joyce care about one another and are still the same people to one another that they’ve been pretty much the entire strip, Dorothy ensuring Joyce has her glasses and takes her meds feels to me as an attempt to show rather than tell the ways that Dorothy has prioritised helping Joyce grow and take care of herself more.
It is a messy situation but this dynamic is not bad, and however long this takes the situation doesn’t merit the weight to crush the ship entirely. This from someone who had never shipped Jorothy before the kiss.
It’s less the taking care of her that I think is emblematic of the flaw, it’s that Dorothy immediately asks if she’s bad for Joyce. Which, if the answer Dorothy unilaterally determines is “yes” will lead to her breaking up with Joyce or at least attempting to and causing angst about it. Joyce’s actual perspective on whether or not Dorothy is “ruining her” she doesn’t truly consider because she immediately throws up that wall again and changes the subject. Like, it’s not a damning thing, but I think it’s a sign of that main tendency we know she still has, if that makes sense.
In a way, it’s kind of an echo of the Ruth/Billie thing. Maybe this will come up multiple times until Ruth is like “Hey. Stop. You’re gonna mess up the best thing that ever happened to you.” (And Jason is just in the background, coasting because that’s his life now.)
Yeah, Dorothy is a self-sabotager. She loves to strive but she doesn’t know what to do with actual success and tries to resist it once she has it in her hands. Yale is the perfect example.
I think Joyce is in denial (as in unconsciously ignoring all that is not compatible with the joy of accepting her own feelings)? And maybe that’s why she sounds like Billie to you?
Sooner or later that’s going to really irritate her again, even without the background pain. Dorothy managing her so much.
That strip is also I feel a big example of why I don’t really like them as a couple. I think I preferred Joe/Joyce because Joe treated Joyce like an adult capable of making her own decisions, and Dorothy tends to dictate the field and acts as though the people in her life have no agency.
But like, it’s happening again, so soon, so I feel much happier that we’ll see this conflict crop up again and be addressed because Dorothy desperately needs to overcome it.
I think you have a better handle on Dorothy’s problem than a lot of people have had. I’ve seen people say she babies Joyce, when it’s more that she does this with basically everybody, like she’s acknowledged her issue of treating her friends as projects.
Even with her acknowledging that, she’s still doing it. Like, I’d point to her saying she was drafting up a breakup speech with Walky, and I don’t think it’d occur to her how enormously patronizing that is. No conversation, just her talking at him. That’s going to be a trainwreck.
I remember when Danny turned her patronizing shoulder touch around on her, and rather than really acknowledge that what she’d done was patronizing she basically just said “well I’m GOOD at it”
IMO, Dorothy wanted to be President because she wanted to fix everyone’s problems for them and thought she was uniquely qualified to do that.
Turns out she’s not even qualified to fix her own problems.
“Walky, it’s never been you, it’s always been me—and that’s why I have to break up with you again. For your own good. Joyce and I…”
And it collapses form there.
I mean, she would be right. It is a problem with her and not with Walky. Treating your partner like shit is 100% a you problem.
I really hope Walky finds a decent relationship, that isn’t built on “this doesn’t matter”, “we’re garbage”, or false idolization (and then misdirected blame).
but it’s for love
If Joyce and Dorothy do properly break up with their boyfriends and stay together as a couple, Joyce is gonna have to deal with that from Dorothy even worse than when they were just friends. I wonder how long she’ll be ok with that.
right. like for almost all of their friendship, Dorothy has been too busy to spend a lot of time with Joyce. (I think Joyce played up her helplessness at times, consciously or sub-, to get Dorothy to spend time with her). Now Joyce is going to be the focus of most of her attention, not Walky, not Future President Dorothy Keener.
It did not occur to me how much Dorothy is going to make Joyce her whole world—and potentially vice versa.
Christ it’s gonna be aggravating to watch once they’re out of the woods
We will suffer together
Hooray…?
I wasn’t really on board with how Dorothy/Joyce is happening at the start of the arc. Generally cheating/triangle relationships are boring to read to me. However, the “two generally good people making each other worse” angle would be an interesting thing to explore with Joyce and Dorothy. I’m warming up to the vision, and looking forward to see how Willis develop this plot.
Turning on the light that mostly keeps Joyce entirely in shadow. While Dorothy is partially in it, and also trying to stay responsible, influenced by Sarah’s words. [Sarah also walked out of the shadows and into the light in the previous strip.]]
Until Dorothy has to push back Joyce a little and finally turn on the light, helping Joyce get ready for the day. [Cute little thing all things considered.] And Joyce’s words definitely imply she’s ready for moving beyond laundry, no longer blind literally and figuratively.
Everything is coming to light!
Or I’m over analyzing the composition, but neat work
I should note, being responsible as in communicating with their partners. Not like responsible for Joyce being “bad”, though that is an interesting weight on her shoulders.
Surely Dorothy feeling overly responsible for Joyce along won’t be a returning issue!
Nah, you cooked with this comment. I love the symbolism usage of lighting in this webcomic.
Oh that’s fun stuff. Great comment
HELL YES BLOCKING ANALYSIS!!! MORE!!!
“Oh, right. The real reason.”
And once again Willis shows they’re “yes, I was raised fundie” credentials. This is something that eludes so many of these folks. They don’t know what birth control is, they don’t know how it works, and they genuinely think the medication has no other uses besides that. They really think the only use is for “sl*ts that can’t keep their legs closed!”
If you bring up that doctors use them for other methods, like period pains… I am not fucking making this up: One person heavily implied that there was probably some kind of sinister anti-baby conspiracy of doctors over-prescribing birth control for everything from paper-cuts to concussions… all for the eventual goal of…
Actually, that part they never really made clear. This person seemed to think that all of society was completely (but secretly) on board with the Voluntary Extinction Movement or something.
*their
And so I must say “damn you” not to Willis (breaking centuries of precedent, I know) but to my own brainrot. I used to be flawless at the there/their/they’re but too much time in comments section has crossed my wires.
Is there a Voluntary Extinction Movement? Like, an active one? Because that’s a really funny concept to me.
There is indeed! It was started in ’91 by a dude who though the only way to heal the environment was for us to disappear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement
Hot diggety damn, I thought he was as wacky as it get, but apparently there are folks even more nuts!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Euthanasia
What a bunch of bozos. They want people gone badly enough to claim it as their religion, but not enough to actually do something about it?
I wonder how many of them vaccinate. Or wear seatbelts, or use masks or bicycle helmets or cross only at crosswalks and only on the green.
So, the answer to that is the kind that’s gonna require me to do the boat ride music from Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. You know, “There’s no knowing where we’re going, how to stop or even if we’re slowing…”
Spoiler warning: at the end of the rabbit hole is… often racism dressed up in an eco-friendly mask. There’s a long, long history of movements concerned about “overpopulation” being something of a smokescreen for that whole Great Replacement Theory nonsense. So it’s not that they think “they” need to get off Earth’s lawn… they want those “other” people to take a hike. You know, because there are “too many of them around.”
Obviously this doesn’t go for everyone who expresses concern about overpopulation, but that’s just what makes using it as a cover so effective. The ones who are honest about population concerns talk about how it’s more about… supply. You know, like the quip that if every country consumed at the rate America is, we’d need the resources of four planet Earths to feed it. On top of that is the fact that Earth could possibly support even more people if, you know, 99% of the resources didn’t just get Hoover’d up by the top percentile.
Oh yeah, racism is all over those movements.
The ones that don’t focus on the best known ways to slow population growth at least: education and opportunity for women and access to birth control. Focus on that and you bend the curve.
Still combine those last two facts of yours and you have to remember than an awful lot of non-elite Americans are in that top 1% globally. I don’t think supporting even more people, but with a lower standard of living is a better goal, even if it’s more equitable. I’d rather aim for raising standards of living while cutting the population growth curve. (I’m all for cutting the share going to the real elites along the way of course.)
See, the fact that they haven’t killed themselves yet just shows me that they’re hypocrites. It’s like that one Calvin & Hobbes strip about satanic heavy metal musicians.
There’s also the related anti-natalist movement, we just had some idiot with those beliefs bomb an IVF clinic specifically to prevent more babies from being made.
Damn… I’ve heard of anti-natalists before, but only in the context of “I’ve decided that I’m not interested in having kids. Rest of you feel free to enjoy though.”
Those people are not called anti-natalists, and it’s important because anti-natalists are oof-y, they’re called childfree (versus childless if it’s not voluntary).
Honestly people go off their meds so goddamn often because they forget what it’s like when they’re off them and go “I don’t need these!” and then it’s RIGHT Back where you started and sometimes worse and this is EXACTLY that kind of shit.
(And that’s part of how you get antibiotics resistant eVErYtHInG kids)
Yeah, I had one doctor call me the “poster boy” for medication compliance, and I’m like “it’s pretty simple to me. I remember what it was like before I had these, and that sucked.”
I really really love the lightswitch coming on and fully breaking the lesbian flag color palette that’s been used for the lightning in the last few strips. A very cool detail that I appreciate a lot.
or, y’know, when you’re gonna bang Joe later.
Mmm.
That would be kinda funny. So far Dorothy and Joyce have basically been assuming that Joyce will break up with Joe. Dorothy seemed to totally not mind about the blowjob.
If Joyce were to fail to break up with him again, and instead had sex, it might indicate to Dorothy that Joyce isn’t actually fully willing to break up with Joe to be together.
Dorothy feels upset, and feels guilty doing her normal thing and assuming full responsibility. “I am making Joyce act badly. I am breaking up a happy relationship” and also “How much does Joyce really love me if she won’t break up with Joe so that we can be together honestly? Is she just in love with whichever of us is in front of her right now?”
Dorothy calls off the relationship. Joe finds out about the cheating and dumps Joyce. Lots of mess, pain and drama
To be honest, Dorothy probably should have done that after the BJ. I’ve been in her shoes (granted it was an ex that told me he picked me over the other woman) and that shit fucking *hurts*. It’s especially humiliating. Joyce should probably end up dumped by both parties, but I don’t think she will. I think Joyce needs to be talked to by someone with a long repeated history of nuking relationships and unnecessary drama. Maybe an actual conversation with Billie where Billie knows what the hell she’s signing off on and also trying to be good lol. Maybe Sal, though I can’t see her having any avenue towards that convo.
Billie being the voice of reason would perhaps be a bigger upset to the status quo than this entire arc. XD
broken clock
“Considering new developments… what need would I even have for them anymore?”
A very interesting line, that one. Even setting aside, for the moment, the debilitating menstrual pain that she is actually taking them for.
Was gonna do a semi-deep read on it but typing on my phone makes it annoying to edit as I write, which is non-tenable for the way I write so IDK maybe I’ll do one when I’m back on my laptop IDK
Don’t worry, I had the same (or at least an adjacent) thought. I gotcha covered, my Time Lord homie.
I noticed that too.
I know a lot of people like to bandy about the idea that none of this is in character for Joyce but I disagree, Joyce has for a long time been teetering on the verge of this kind of no-holds-barred, Jesus-take-the-wheel, knowingly potentially self-destructive heads-first dive into waters so uncharted she didn’t even know they existed just an in-universe year ago. That includes the fact that she’s queer, despite what some people want to believe. It’s gonna be messy, and as I said the other day, I am here for messy, especially queer messy. Give her time, she’ll find her equilibrium, even if it’s just a ‘new normal.’
I keep wondering just how far on the Kinsey scale Joyce is gonna go. Can’t wait to find out.
As an aside to your aside — I don’t think a lot of us are questioning Joyce’s sudden headfirst dive into hedonistic debauchery, just that she seems to have turned off the part of her brain that handles things like “empathy for her friends” while she’s doing it.
Admittedly, there’ve also been indications along the way that Joyce’s sense of morality and empathy have always taken a backseat to The Narrative in her head (ex: trying to get Jacob to cheat on Raidah was okay, because Sarah doesn’t like Raidah and does like Jacob, so it’s just like a Love Story!) but it still feels like the Joyce who’s been using Joe as a sounding board for serious stuff since pre-timeskip and who was concerned about not even having the appearance of cheating on him prior to their date night is being suddenly awfully callous with his feelings.
I’ve definitely seen more than a couple folks, not just here, complaining about how this is all out of character for Joyce.
There’s also the stuff that gets deleted from here but remains up elsewhere and it’s truly unhinged.
It’s not that deep imo. Joyce fundamentally (lol) thinks her birth control pills are there to allow her to have premarital sex because “hussy pills.” Now she’s going to (ostensibly) break up with Joe to be with Dorothy as a lesbian. Why would someone need birth control if they’re in a lesbian relationship?
And then Dorothy reminds her, it’s not for birth control reasons. And she goes, oh. Right. That.
Just dropping a top-level to note that I am still enjoying all of this! Not really up to engaging with comments today, but don’t want that to get lost in the general wave of feedback Willis is getting.
Comic good. Girls cute. I for one deeply appreciate help remembering to take my meds and I thank my gf every time. My reading of the first two panels is also that Dorothy’s anxiety over bringing out the worst in Joyce is meant to be just that: anxiety, not a delivered truth! Might be wrong, of course, but that’s what I got from it.
Lighting and expressions are also especially nice right now. Good job on the art.
Yes for that.
I’m still happy for somethings Willis didn’t get the easy path in history.
❤️
It’s good to remind your partner to take their meds, but with Dorothy it’s moreso a single data point in a broader trend.
I think only one of the data points has ever annoyed Joyce, though, so I’m not sure the other points should be counted.
(Even for the eye doctor thing, Joyce was never annoyed with Dorothy at any point, and clearly didn’t process it as overbearing; she felt supported. The only time she’s ever been annoyed by it was when she was in debilitating pain and it was a major source of latent fundie anxiety.
Extremely valid of other people to feel like they’d hate being friends with a Dorothy, but I think they’ll be disappointed if they expect “we’ve learned to let each other say yes” Joyce to ever agree with them.)
Like: if Joyce ever again seems even a lil bit annoyed by Dorothy doing stuff like this, I’ll take it back!
But right now I think this is actively one of the thing Joyce likes in a partner, and I feel genuinely bad for people who relate to Joyce and dislike this level of — whatever we wanna call it.
(I’d call it assistance or caretaking, I suspect other people would call it micromanaging.)
Especially because we HAVE seen Dorothy say out loud that she needs to stop turning friends into projects, that she needs to find other ways to say “I love you”.
But I think saying, “Okay, time for us both to face the music, I’ll get your glasses and your meds for you,” isn’t making Joyce a project.
Heck, I also think Dorothy was being too harsh with herself when she said that line, I’ll elaborate in a second comment lulz.
Why I think Dorothy was being too hard on herself:
— Becauss I think Jennifer and Roz’s criticisms of the type of friend she’s been to Joyce (always either too hands-on or too hands-off — she should have done more to confront Joyce’s bigotry, she should have done more to get Joyce on birth control, but also she’s too pushy about getting Joyce to actually take said birth control and also being slut-shamey…) really did a number on Dorothy’s confidence in how to be a friend to Joyce — and by extension, to literally anyone, since as I’ve noted I think Joyce was Dorothy’s first friend.
— Because I don’t think she read up on autism out of some sort of creepy neurotypical fascination with the topic. I think she read up on it both in a VERY neurodiverse-typical attempt to be a better friend* AND because, you know, on some subconscious level she knows it’s relevant information.
(And I bet she spent a lot of her research time going, “Well, this doesn’t describe me, I’m GREAT at managing xyz thing in my life, in fact I have a whole system for handling it. I’m definitely not touch-averse! Even though having Danny lay a hand on my shoulder unexpectedly felt awful. That’s just because he’s bad at physical comfort. Unlike me, because I’ve practiced it, which is very normal.”)
— Her impulse to immediately research ADHD “for” Walky? More of the same. At the very least, more of that neurodiverse urge to do deep dives into “weird” things in an attempt to be a good friend. The sooner Dorothy accepts that she’s not a creepy neurotypical studying her ND friends like bugs, the better she’ll feel about herself.
(idk, of course I could be wrong, but I bet our girl’s actually AuDHD.)
She probably is but I hope it never gets confirmed. I don’t want there to be another AuADHD Dorothy around here!
I want you to know I laughed.
I tried and failed to think up a witty rejoinder, but I didn’t want to leave you hanging.
It’s already bad enough having to sift through a sea of people using MY nickname for her when ctrl+fing to check my threads 😛
“Well now one of us is going to have to change.”
Man. I get that Joyce is in love with Dorothy, but her eagerness in this strip to not think about Joe at all here is HOLY SHIT WAIT A MINUTE
JOYCE IS BECOMING OLD JOE. That’s gotta be intentional, right? I mean it’s not 1-1 with Old Joe but the intentional shedding of any emotional investment she once had in pursuit of pure libido (obviously Joyce loves Dorothy for more than just sex appeal but her only concerns/source of annoyance in this strip is who she can or can’t be immediately physically intimate with) just SCREAMS Joe Classic. That’s AMAZING. I could be totally off-base but if I’m not this is going to rule SO HARD
The second she starts rating the rest of Clark Hall on her own personal “Do List” then she’s Old Joe. Like Joe said, he’s only ever been in one relationship, and he’s been faithful to her, so acting on whatever shenanigans Dorothy was imagining would be actually *far worse* than Old Joe.
In the words of Danny, “That’s just being a morally bankrupt human being.”
You’re looking at the comparison from the wrong angle. It’s not their ACTIONS that line up, it’s their MOTIVES.
Joe then and Joyce now turned to indulging in physical intimacy to shield themselves from being hurt by emotional investment. We know that Joyce loves Dorothy, but Joyce also has a sizable amount of emotional investment in Joe. Breaking up with him isn’t just a matter of having to have a painful conversation, it means giving up on that emotional investment and her efforts to be open together with him (there are many examples but Joyce wanting to drink with Joe and what followed comes immediately to mind). Turning to physical intimacy was her immediate move when she felt guilt at the idea of confessing to Joe, and she’s annoyed at the idea of having to stop being physical with Dorothy for even a moment.
Is Joyce going to become a pickup artist, or openly objectifying her peers? I very much doubt it. But I think she WILL be inclined to push for physicality with both Dorothy and Joe to avoid having to think about or confront her mixed feelings about making a clean break with her boyfriend that she’s emotionally invested in order to be with the girlfriend she’s even closer to. And not for nothing, but Joyce is flying blind: until recently she believed that anyone you dated had to be with the intention of marrying them. Presumably she discarded that view when she lost her faith, but knowing how to handle relationships is a learned behavior, and listen I get that this sounds sort of crazy but it makes a perfect sort of sense to me that Joyce’s two-timing will go on for longer than we thought, and that any attempt to cut her off from her indulgence with either partner is going to be met with hostility, like we’re seeing now.
Or maybe I’m a moron and none of this will happen! Time will tell.
No no no this is exactly my read too
Dorothy and Joe are both wanting to be with Joyce after a whole character arc of figuring out their shit but even if this ends with poly(which I kind of want for the mess), Joyce is probably gonna struggle to stay with Joe and Dorothy
Even in the situation where they find what seems a perfect solution I think Joyce will still desire other people
-and not stop herself making moves
I think it’s more that Joyce has no nuance. She’s all one thing or another, and that’s been a recurring issue for her and part of why she’s so ghastly levels of awkward about new developments and terrible at lying.
She’s about Dorothy now, which makes it really difficult for her to consider a lot else, until she runs into it head-on, like her botching trying to break up with Joe because, shit, she still does have feelings for him, too.
That said, it’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out, you may be right about some parallels.
The parallels are absolutely inescapable imo. Joe is sensitive to cheating because of the divorce. Joyce, much like his dad, cannot help herself when something new and exciting is dangled in front of her face. Rather than confront it head on, she hid it and just carried on like nothing happened.
On some level I legit think Joyce is going to fuck her relationship with Joe up because of her bad instincts. We might get to polycule but this is a huge stick of dynamite and it’s not going to be easy to resolve because Dorothy is going to throw her whole ass behind her and Joyce and it’s going to fuck up the boyfriends real bad.
Yyyyup.
At the risk of repeating what others have said, I think this is the basic disconnect:
“These people are making very bad, selfish decisions that will have bad consequences for them and many other people.”
“I know, isn’t it great? Bring on the messy drama involving fictional characters who exist for my entertainment!”
… dang it, that was supposed to go at the end, in its own separate thread. Reporting my own comment and reposting below.
I wonder…could this story-line get messy enough that Joyce will somehow convince herself that she should have PiV sex with Joe before she breaks-ups with him?
It’s really messed up that part of me wants that, as a J/J shipper. It’s not right if she doesn’t tell him. I just felt so much chemistry between them and their relationship was so built up. But it would be twisted at this point. I liked their romance. That happening without him knowing about Dorothy would twist the knife more, and make this incredibly real. It would be bold for Willis to take it that far.
I don’t think it’s messed up of you to want that. Embrace the drama loving goblin side!
I’m glad Dorothy seems to be actually thinking about what Sarah said. Now if only Joyce would do the same for more than a few seconds.
Nah, it’s not worth thinking about.
Sarah was definitely right to say what she said.
Comment a little more relevant to today’s strip:
Dorothy: “Am I a bad person?”
Joyce: “Un-possible.”
Dunno why, but I read that in Alucard Abridged voice, from episode 10. It gave me a smile, so thank you for that.
Yo, Dotty, that is an incredibly fucking generous takeaway of Sarah’s words.
Hey, if you recontextualize it enough, you can make the past be whatever you want it to be. It’s like magic!
It is like Dorothy to discard the “Joe doesn’t deserve to be hurt like this” portions of the lecture.
I think “for now” is intended to be “until we tell them”, which is fair. What else can they do now?
They can not cheat.
Like that’s not hard.
And before anyone goes “it’s not cheating because they have not had sex or whatever”, they have kissed a lot and are already acting like they are a couple.
Well, they can’t now retroactively have not cheated and “we need to keep our hands off each other” is basically “stop cheating”, so I’m not sure what parts of the lecture Dorothy is discarding.
I have no commentary on any of the relationship stuff, that’s just story unfolding.
But damn do I hate how both Dorothy and Joyce are handling Joyce’s glasses. How can she even see anything through the fingerprint smudges?
As someone who’s worn glasses since I was a little kid, same. Holding them by the lenses is a good way to get smudges that are annoyingly hard to clean off.
Glasses get smudge even without you touching them I don think that’s avoidable
Especially the newer ones with the anti-glare coatings, which seem to magnetically attract skin oils from your hands, your own face, and passerby.
IS THAT WHAT’S HAPPENING omfg. I got anti-glare coating on my latest pair and I cannot keep them clean it’s been driving me bonkers.
Based on my nesting partner’s experience, it’s 100% the new coatings that are doing it — I have a pair of plain ol’ glasses because I usually wear contacts and they don’t get greasy at all, really, just dusty and smudged. My partner’s new glasses with the fancy coatings need soap and water twice a day to even start to get the smudges and grease off.
I’ll get the next ones without and see how it goes. ty for mentioning this because seriously I hate my glasses being greasyyyy.
holy shit same, omg. I’ve been due a new pair for like a year now, hopefully I can at least try to avoid this. It’d been driving me crazy
Honestly, as a fellow glasses-wearer, we see Joyce do so many ill-advised things with her glasses, but the real existential horror here is that Willis also wears glasses.
Responsible glasses wearers has had too much representation already, it’s time gor us, stupid bongoes, to get some too.
Haha. 🙂
Oooh, Dorothy, that is such a sweet thing to say about Joyce. And it’s unfortunately not true. Joyce THINKS she’s trying to bring out the best in everyone. But she does not. More than once, her plans, well intentioned though they may be, have encouraged the worst in people, like Ethan’s self doubts and Sarah’s rivalry with Raidah over Jacob. And, not that Dorothy is objective and not that I expect her to be, but this situation is not bringing out the best in you, Dorothy.
And the pink dim wears off, great visual rhyme.
A+ storytelling.
It’s disappointing to see that yesterday’s odd facial expression is pretty much confirmed to be apathy and avoidance.
I really wanna go back to another set of characters, even the beginning of the fallout is not really proving to be all that entertaining. Starting to see what the people who say these two are boring are talking about.
I like that Joyce immediately shuts down Dorothy’s insecurities here. Though, yes, it’s time to stop doing the fun thing and face reality. Sorry, Joyce.
And yeah, I’m gonna guess it’ll be a while before she remembers those aren’t just Harlot Pills. XD
A few have touched on it, but taking my hands off the pearls for a moment . . .
Joyce’s eagerness to just drop Joe like a sack of rotten potatoes feels really weird to me. Joyce genuinely seemed happy with Joe. Hell, she was so touched by the gift of a weighted blanket that she gave him a blowjob.
Then she decides she wants to smooch Dorothy and immediately pivots to more or less going “lol. Joe, who?” whenever she’s not being actively pushed to consider his feelings in this situation.
If I was in a happy relationship I just don’t think I’d even consider acting on an attraction to someone else unless that partner did something to make the relationship into an unhappy one. So Joyce is just feeling especially callous lately. And I know some people are hoping for some kind of poly outcome, but I’d hate it because it feels like it’d just be rewarding Joyce for being scummy.
I do agree with the takes that would like some more strips that show us the internal logic/thoughts of Joyce going on right now. Some insight into how this all makes sense to her, what’s driving her… I think not having this context makes it very easy to interpret her as, at best, really flaky.
A friend once joked that I have “Shiny Object Syndrome.” He ended up being 100% right. I wonder if Joyce is experiencing something similar. She’s still riding the high that was “ZOMG, I’M SMOOCHING DOROTHY” and this rebuke from Sarah was only the first of many reality checks that are going to make her realize, to quote our leading lady herself; “I have said a bad.”
I think that is exactly what is going on, supported by her “wanting to kiss each other after so long” line. Like, do I think there’s genuine attraction? Yes. But it’s bering accented by her deprogramming.
My big complaint about joyce has been less “shiny object syndrome” and more “object permanence”. It seems to me like Joyce is firmly attached to Joe and Doeothy both, but only when they’re actually within her field of vision.
She couldn’t break up with Joe not just because she was so touched by his gift but because she saw him and remembered how much she liked him. Then she went back to Dorothy and was fully on the train of sapphic love forever.
It’s one of the big reasons I think a poly situation would be an even bigger relationship disaster than what we have now. Joyce would constantly be standing up the partner that isn’t in her line of sight.
That’s pretty close to what I’m thinking, too, along with the residual fundie-ism that might have Joyce thinking “sexual desire is for True Love only”, which could easily flip into “I feel desire, therefore I am In Love” — and lord knows we know she’s deeply sexually attracted to both Dorothy and Joe, and has been long before she was willing to admit it to herself.
My read on the blanket was it made her feel so guilty she gave him an apology BJ. Which really has nothing to do with how she feels about him, more he’s nice and she felt bad (which could apply to any decent partner). Honestly ever since Joe and Joyce got together it felt very one sided in terms of Joe liking in Joyce in particular as an individual and Joyce liking him because he’s a good bf. Which is not what I expected from the set up of there connection but I feel like it’s what we got.
I still think it is creepy to initiate a sexual encounter with someone while you are actively cheating on them and putting off breaking up with them.
“Apology blowjob” only works if we disregard Joe and assume that of course he would want a blowjob as an apology for being cheated on.
Sorry if I implied it was not creepy. It very much gives me the ick and I would be horrified if a partner did this to me. I was saying that was Joyce’s intention (as opposed to having overwhelming feelings for Joe which I’ve seen as the other read) I’m not saying that’s acceptable or that Joe would want that (I really think he wouldn’t).
No need to apologize. My comment was an “AND” not a “BUT”. You’re all good!
It’s possible, but since we didn’t actually get any insight into what she was thinking when it happened, it’s really hard to say. Which is probably intentional.
I do agree with Odo here that it definitely makes the cheating worse, but “apology blowjob” would work as a motivation if Joyce assumed he would want that.
Yeah, I’m having trouble seeing this Joyce and Past Joyce as the same person in my head. Seeing her behaviour as a result of a kind of monotropism is the best I can do.
This is another thing that’s bothering me about Joyce, along with the cheating. Since the kiss at the protest with Dorothy, she seems to only think about Joe and how her actions might affect him when someone else brings him up or she actually meets him. All other times since that kiss she seems to not even consider Joe. I liked Joyce before this story arc, but her behavior lately has lowered my opinion of her a lot.
I’d say that actually started earlier – in bed with Dorothy before the date. And it might work the other way with Dorothy as well. That bit where Joe knocks on the door and she goes instantly from about to kiss Dorothy to happy excitement that Joe’s there.
We just haven’t seen enough of her with Joe (or without Dorothy) since the Kiss to have a good feel for it.
Agreed. I understand she’s super wrapped up in the excitement of Dorothy, but with her fundie upbringing of being used to feeling guilty for EVERYTHING, like even thinking about sex, you’d think she’d feel at least a LITTLE bit guilty about cheating on Joe. She had a moment yesterday when she felt sad while she was rehearsing the breakup speech, but that’s it. But I’m even more shocked that Joyce doesn’t seem to give a shit about Sarah’s disappointment either. I’m glad that Sarah voiced my feelings, “I didn’t know you as well as I thought.”
I know she had a lightbulb moment of breaking free of her fundie upbringing, including shaking off the homophobia and the guilt over sex, but it still seems like a very extreme 180. This isn’t just “Repressed Christian girl leaves home and becomes sexually wild”. You can become wild and still care about people’s feelings and not hurting people.
And the “sexually wild” doesn’t really seem like it’s been a thing either. She backed off from PiV sex with Joe just the night before. You could argue that’s because she was thinking about Dorothy, but that’s not really in evidence. It was only the morning before that she was lying in bed with Joe freaking out about nudging his business with her thigh. It’s really hard to argue she’s shook off all the sexual hangups.
I’m not sure what the big deal is with the Joe situation is here. If Joyce is bi (or has a type she’s attracted to, regardless of gender because there are people like that) then they could discuss a poly relationship. I think Dorothy has some respect for Joe, and it could eventually grow in to genuine affection with time…
Is Joyce not actually attracted to Joe?
I think Dorothy hates Joe and hates that Joe has changed to an extent because she can’t reconcile her hatred to his new persona.
i mean, he was an atrocious sexist who was openly shitty to her for years, his new persona has been the work of a few months at most. all things considered i think she’s more than cordial to the dude
Dorothy has more reasons to dislike him than just about anyone specifically because of long experience and the fact they knew each other in high school.
Meanwhile, the folks who’ve only known him in college watched him follow something that was a pretty common track for a guy like that back in my college days, namely “dude does sexist nonsense (but never crosses or really even approaches the line into criminal behavior), gets called the fuck out, and course-corrects into a basically reasonable guy”.
(in my experience, there was always a relatively bright line between “dude who sleeps around and is sexist, but gives a shit about consent” and “dude who sleeps around and is sexist”, with the former usually eventually ending up getting set straight and the latter turning into the kind of people who hang out with Incelerator)
In my experience, anyone who behaved like Joe did early on was well on the wrong side of that line. The “gives a shit about consent” part was almost entirely Word of Willis and occasional claims from Joe, while at the same time he talked about alcohol helping with threesomes and had to be yelled at to temporarily keep him from hitting on you.
We now know that Joe had hidden depths and wasn’t ever as bad as he appeared, but Old Joe’s presentation was all red flags.
Oh, definitely, in my experience that “not cool on consent” version is MUCH more common.
Much like Joe, it’s often only clear that a problematic dude is the kind of dude who can turn it around after they successfully do so.
I feel like Willis had to do that because the internet would start acting like Joe was a rapist otherwise.
Yeah. My biggest problem with Joe. Willis wasn’t willing to commit to making him bad enough and now to many readers are just “He was always basically a good guy.”
My vote is “he was always basically an redeemable level of shithead”, personally.
(to clarify — he was a level of shithead where he could have easily tipped into “irredeemably evil” rather than his current state)
And that’s probably why he and Lizz happened.
We saw how Joe reacted when someone told him no in a very intimate setting–he immediately backed off.
Yeah, but that was an already mostly changed Joe.
at the risk of angering the Dorothy X Joyce shippers. I’m going to say that given the information we know right now Joe is by far the more healthy relationship option for Joyce.
As for why Joe has had his past of being a horndog and sleeping around, but he’s also been reformist and his time dating Joyce he has been nothing but respectful and trying to work to stay in her comfort zone to try and be a good boyfriend and supportive.
Dorothy on the other hand is currently in a self destructive state where she is burning her bridges as she goes primarilly as a result of the trauma recent events dumped on her as well as her own crisis of faith. Dorothy really should get herself some therapy
Dorothy IS getting therapy, but she actively lies to her therapist a good bit of the time, or so she’s said.
Yes, finally someone is figuring it out.
Joyce may be attracted to him (she’s bi, by the way), but all the times Joyce gets weird about sex with him, or avoided him, may show she’s not THAT attracted.
Lot of people didn’t see it after all. And I believe Joe can get it soon. For his own good.
Or it could be because Joyce still has years of fundamentalist brainwashing she’s still unlearning and hang-ups about sex is one of the biggest she’s still having trouble getting over.
In addition, Joyce also almost got roofied in her first week of college and from the sight of Joyce clutching her glass smashing hand after discovering that Joe pretended to be drunk while she actually was drunk ( https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/bothbe/ ) I think she understandably is still navigating trusting a man in a sexual situation.
I think she is attracted to Joe, she wouldn’t give him a handy and a blowjob if she wasn’t, but she’s still unlearning her religious hang ups regarding sex as well as trauma and fear that are completely understandable.
Right, the Trauma. That too.
She’s an ex-fundie virgin who only really masturbated the first time less than 2 weeks ago. Since then she’s given him a hand job and a blow job and gotten fingered by him. That’s not weird hesitation about sex proving she’s not attracted, that’s speed running it.
She’s not a virgin anymore according to her and that’s the only person it should matter with.
Fair on the terminology, but the point still stands.
Now that you said it, I’m remembering the time Rich Mullins appeared to her when at the bed with Joe…
She gave him a spontaneous blow job. I don’t think she is that weirded out by sex with him. It seems more like a learning curve of getting comfortable with the idea of sex in general.
I think part of the reason why she has seemed less hesitant about sex with Dorothy was that originally she didn’t think it was even sex. She doesn’t associate it with the “big boom religious doom” she associates with PiV intercourse. She used to associate it with “the sin of homosexuality” but has had more time and experience getting over that.
Also, she hasn’t actually had sex with Dorothy yet – in an interactive sense anyway. She was talking big about how she was going to have sex with Joe a couple days ago then chickened out. She hasn’t even talked like that about sex with Dorothy.
That one comment about how it would be “easier with you”, but at that stage I don’t think she was even considering as a real possibility. Reality is scarier.
“they could discuss a poly relationship”
Wow, would you look at that. It’s someone yet again suggesting a poly relationship, for roughly the billionth time now, as if it’ll be a miraculous panacea that magically wipes away any and all conflict whatsoever from this situation.
What an original take. *exhausted sigh*
I hate that people think poly will magically fix and love triangle/square. It highlights a lack of understanding regarding polyamory.
Polyamory is not a magic cure-all, nor is it something entered into lightly. And the fact that these two are, as Sarah put it, doing this all in hushes and mumbles makes it clear they know it’s something wrong.
Speaking from experience, I have participated in poly and it went badly because my partner hid things from me and made me feel lied to. That’s why poly isn’t something I see happening, nor do I think it should happen.
It’s also fairly exhausting to see anyone against the actions of Dorothy and Joyce being decried as “paladins” or “prudes” when the truth is that many of us have been cheated on, have had partners hide things from us, and it genuinely sucks to see characters we’re all attached to make these calls. I hesitated to even say anything at all because of how people have been treated over not liking this.
Most of the people who want polyamory here explicitly do not think it will fix everything, or indeed anything. There are poly people on both sides of the “I do/don’t want polyamory to happen here” divide.
I’m sorry for what you’ve experienced, though.
Joyce has gone off into a mild fuge state multiple times when just thinking about being intimate with Joe.
Whatever else is going on in her head, she’s absolutely still down bad for him physically.
Joyce obviously has no respect for Joe and doesnt deserve to be in any kind of relationship with him anymore.
If this ends in any way other than them broken up i ree
Not Joe’s drawing hanging on the background 😭
Ouch.
See how Willis is not that dumb? He knows where he’s going.
I actually have a feeling that might be Julia Gray! AKA Joyce’s totally original character and definitely not self insert for her newspaper strip.
It’s not Joe’s drawing.
you know, i think my issue with the relationship paladins is that they’re treating some very light infidelity as though it’s somehow on par with the repeated kidnapping, murder, and suicide attempts that have already happened on the floor this year. hell, there was a police riot on campus yesterday. joyce and dorothy got teargassed! joyce and joe potentially breaking up isn’t even the biggest deal in joyce and joe’s lives right now, forget about the rest of the cast
but it is what the narrative camera is currently on so like.
I reiterate until I die that paladins/sickos was a mistake
Agreed.
It should have been sickos only.
While I am very much in the camp that highly disapproves of Joyce/Dorothy’s current course of action, I think the reason why the opposing reaction has been so visceral is because for a lot of people, they have actually experienced cheating and betrayal themselves, so it feels very personal (kind of like TWs), especially if you’re emotionally invested in the characters. (See: parasocial relationships.) On the other hand, stuff like kidnapping, murder and suicide, while vastly worse, is still likely to have not personally touched as many people so it feels more “distant” to them.
I think the parasociality is a *very* large element of this. People continue to react as if characters in a story that is being written to be entertaining and dramatic are actual real human beings that they know, who are real and can be hurt and betrayed. Instead of this being a story about queer self-discovery and coming out, and how messy and disruptive that can be.
And no, this doesn’t mean I think people shouldn’t have emotional investment in the story, it means I think they should be reminding themselves that it *is* a story, and the only actual “stakes” are whether you enjoy it or not. People are relating to this like they’re watching their actual friends make mistakes, and all they can do is furiously pound on the glass and demand that they course correct to become the morally pure sweeties they need them to be.
It is, genuinely, weirding me out!
Are the parasocials in the room with us right now
Yes, hi, hello
They… they super are. I can understand that you have maybe skipped or not seen the comments in time but there were people who were so upset they were hoping that Willis had cheated on his wife and this comic plotline was how she found out.
It hasn’t been everyone, but it’s been plenty.
Oh, man, the “it was just a joke, I’m having a hard time” gyrations that guy went through when people called him on it were something, weren’t they?
I don’t think most of the relationship paladins are treating this cheating as just as bad as the kidnapping, murder, and suicide attempts. I think a lot of us in that group of commenters are annoyed at how many people are trying to minimize cheating and act like it’s not a big deal to the people getting cheated on, however. And while it’s clear that some characters (Asma, Amber, and probably others) were affected by the protest and the police riot on campus, Joe didn’t go to it, and Joyce and Dorothy seem to be much more focused on their newly realized feelings for each other right now than about the police riot and teargassing at the protest. I’m assuming we’ll see more about the effects the events at the protest had on other characters later.
When there were kidnapping and murder attempts everyone agreed “That’s bad” and the kidnappers/murderers were considered villains. There was no big response condemning them because condemnation was already built into the comic.
A major response to the cheating, however, has been “Aww how cute” or “Yay! You go girls!”, not necessarily because it is cheating, but still responding to the same actions that were cheating.
“The love is more important”, “I deserve to be messy this once”, “It is the heat of the moment”, “they will get over it eventually”, “we never had a formal monogamy contract”, etc… Are all excuses that people deciding to cheat actually use, so seeing them parrotted in the comments is disturbing.
Exactly. I keep saying, the relationship paladins are reacting to the COMMENTS, not the comic
TBF I am partially reacting to how the comic has been framing the cheating as well. Willis chose to add a bunch of wedding imagery. They chose to have several punchlines be essentially “Isn’t our cheating adorkable”
It’s definitely both. Most of the previous blowups in the comments were when there were two strong factions reacting to conflicts in the comic, not to clear villains. Sometimes early on in a villain arc when some were still not seeing the villain as a villain (“Mary just wanted to study” or Joyce’s lunch with John and Jocelyne), but even more when there was a conflict between two protagonists (The Becky/Joyce blow up or the Sal/Amber fight). The latter are closer in some ways to this not only because there are protagonists readers are attached to on both sides, but also because the authorial stance wasn’t clearly supporting one or the other, which made it possible for both sides to read the author in their favor.
Here, while I largely agree with you about how the comic is framing it, it’s clear there are readers who don’t and that changes how they see the story.
That is also true. The big dramatic kiss scene was definitely visually framed as a triumph
I think it’s really interesting that the people whose primary emotional reaction is fury at the cheating never stop to consider, even for a moment, that the people who aren’t posting about how furious they are might have their own incredibly solid reasons for not reacting the way you are.
I think it’s really weird that it is, instead, taken as a personal slight, and a defense of real cheating in the real world. Like, maybe it’s worth doing a little introspection as to why this is *so* directly incensing to y’all, and why it’s so important to you that everyone else agrees.
Is there anything that you would be uncomfortable to see people applaud due to its immorality?
How would you feel if Joe punched Joyce and the reactions were “He looks so cool in this scene!”, “Sarah is a hypocrite if she condemns this since she punched Raidah”, “He made a mistake in the heat of the moment”, “He’s young and stupid and lost control of his emotions”?
I am not saying that the two are equivalently bad, just trying to gauge where you draw the line.
And if it would upset you to see domestic violence framed like that, maybe recognize that it isn’t a pathology to get upset when people gloss over/make exuses for bad actions even in a story.
And I also think it’s interesting that repeatedly, when folks like you are upset that I’m not showing a visceral display of contempt and anger at the behavior of Joyce and Dorothy, what you reach for to compare it to is someone being punched.
I think it’s really interesting that apparently, you consider domestic violence and assault, actual, for real crimes, equivalent and on par with two girls kissing the night they decide to break up with their boyfriends.
I really think it’s worth doing some examination as to why these feel equivalent, and why this keeps being the example that’s reached for. Why you think there’s *any* equivalence here whatsoever.
Like, I see you writing “I’m not saying the two are equivalently bad,” and yet, three or four times now in the last weeks, this is the *exact* example that has been reached for. It feels like some telling on yourself, quite frankly.
Can you think of something else that would be a better example to illustrate Odo’s question?
I can: we’re talking about framing something that’s malfeasant on the same level as cheating, which means we’re talking about dishonesty + getting something you’re ethically not supposed to get.
I don’t know exactly how you’d frame a comic about Joe committing minor gift card/check fraud, but supposing he was doing it to a small business owner but for like, a reason that seemed good to him but was at best morally a null signal.
Joe stole the weighted blanket from a small POC-owned business! But he did it out of love!
Ironically, that’s actually kinda perfect. “Turns out Joe stole the weighted blanket from someone somewhere. The comic frames this as a good thing, because it’s an expensive-yet-thoughtful gift for his girlfriend.”
First Big Z I don’t think that it is important to use an example of a “similar level of badness” because the comparison isn’t trying to find two equally bad things.
The point of the comparison is that basically everyone feels uncomfortable when something they think is bad is being glossed over because of other good things. The comparison isn’t comparing the badness, rather it is comparing the emotional response.
Second, the theft from a small business would work, but only if the small business owner had been personalized in the story so we would empathize with them, and we know how the theft would hurt them. Do we think it would be realistic for a business owner to spend 30 minutes crying over a bit of lost merchandise? Maybe, but lots of businesses expect to be stolen from and account for it in their prices. We would need it to be a pointed and painful experience for the owner, not just a metric on the inventory.
Let’s say Joe stole the blanket from a person we know, and the blanked had some sentimental value. Furthermore, to make the comparison more apt, let’s say Joe stole the blanket from a friend of his, so that it would be a particular betrayal.
Let’s say Sal gave Danny that blanket on their second date, Joe stole it from Danny to give to Joyce, and the primary response was “how cute” and “isn’t he thoughtful”.
Ahh yes, I’ve exposed myself as someone who thinks domestic violence and cheating are both bad. However shall my reputation survive…
Shame!
And I see that you dodged the question, and also actively misrepresented what I wrote.
“maybe it’s worth doing a little introspection as to why this is so directly incensing” to you.
Nobody wants to respond directly to your question because it sucks. Because domestic violence isn’t a neutral topic to just spring on people.
You know perfectly well that cheating is a triggering topic for some people, but at least we all come into the comments these days prepared for it.
There is a difference between “being upset” and “assuming everyone reacting like that must be doing it for the worst possible reasons, and treating them accordingly”.
Seems like you are the one making assumptions here.
Specifically you are assuming that I think people are saying “Aww” because they secretly like cheating. You are saying that I think this even though I have repeatedly said I do not.
I think people are saying “Aww” because they think Joyce and Dorothy are cute together.
However, I also think that focusing on “they are cute” rather than “they are being selfish, dishonest, and cruel” is glossing over the cheating aspect of it.
I am critiquing the comment and its contents, which doesn’t depend on an overall assesment of the person writing it.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/coolsville-2/#comment-1914591
“I think the thing that “Paladins” generally respond to is when “Sickos” call the cheating cute.”
I’m “””assuming””” that because it’s what you said, repeatedly, before eventually shifting to this new variant where people are just excusing or minimizing or glossing over the cheating, but still aren’t capable of separating “Joyce and Dorothy snuggling” from “Joe and Walky’s hearts breaking”, and if they think the first thing is cute, they must at least think the second thing doesn’t matter.
I clarified for you multiple times that by “calling the cheating cute” I mean “calling something cute AND that thing is cheating” not “calling it cute because it is cheating” or “Calling cheating cute in general”.
Li, you are a hypocrite. You criticize me for supposedly holding my interpretation over their intent, yet you consistently do exactly that to me.
Like I said, other people can click that link, or heck, just look at our conversation on this very page, and decide for themselves if I’m actually misrepresenting what you’re saying.
Oh my can you seriously fuck off with your atupid “what if joe punch jouce” hypothetical. You used it so much and it’s already been said why is really weird and dumb.
Like I said before: My life will be happier and more beautiful without you.
That’s very sad if true. I am sure your life is not so barren that just not having me wouldn’t meaningfully improve it.
Odo living in a grey concrete cube with no decorations or windows, surrounded by plain white sand as far as the eye can see, in a place that’s perpetually cloudy and doesn’t get much sunlight, with only this exact website for entertainment.
How would you feel if Joe punched Joyce and the reactions were “He looks so cool in this scene!”
What if Joe 360 no-scoped the President of the United States™?
What if Joyce walked into Joe’s room to break up with him and he was crouched over Danny’s dead body, eating Danny’s intestines, and Joe turned around to face Joyce like in Resident Evil?
What if Joe played a guitar solo so loud he exploded everyone in the building?
What if Goku gave Joe some energy to escape the exploding planet Namek and Joe used the energy to shoot Goku in the back?
What if Joe ate a Hot Pocket on purpose and looked Joyce in the eye while he did it?
Nobody’s engaging with your dipshit hypothetical because it’s dumb as hell, and in a rhetorical sense it’s worth less than the shit that sprays out of my ass when I go to the toilet and spray shit into it out of my ass. Knock it the fuck off, you look like a creep.
It really has been odd seeing so many people in the comments make excuses for cheating the past few weeks, when pretty much everyone was in agreement that the other obviously bad things characters did in this comic were bad. I don’t like the cheating and it’s lowered my opinion of Joyce and Dorothy, and seeing lots of people make excuses for them cheating has also lowered my opinions of a lot of other commenters here.
Good no one cares about your opinion of them.
Literally lmfao.
Thank you for informing us about your opinion of us, stranger who we will never encounter in meatspace and therefore will never have to deal with tangible repercussions of your negative opinion.
Please help me out here, and actually point to someone treating the cheating as anything more severe than cheating. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it, even as a joke. (compared to lots and lots of very serious posts about how romantically kissing your sapphic lover is not cheating on your boyfriend).
I mean Odo does specifically keep reaching for “what if Joe did a domestic violence and people were okay with that, how would you feel then” when trying to get people to agree with them about the cheating being bad.
But yes, you’ve missed other comments. Many weeks ago several people all had a thread where they agreed that Dorothy and Joyce are now the worst characters in the comic, specifically at least as bad as Ross if not Blaine.
Eh, I use metaphors and analogies a lot to try to help convey how I see things but it can really hard sometimes to think of an apt analogy that’s exactly comparable. Odo did say they know domestic violence is obviously much worse. I feel like I understand where Odo is coming from – Speaking for myself, it’s not that I need people to agree with me, it’s that sometimes when they don’t I think it’s because I’m not expressing myself coherently. I doubt my communication ability.
I told Odo last time that I was ignoring the inappropriateness of the example because it would derail the conversation and involve saying unkind things. Odo’s response was to snap at me for suggesting there was anything unkind to say. Today, Odo’s using the example again. It doesn’t feel like a mistake at this point.
AFAIK Odo also still hasn’t responded to my response, which was that it’s not that there’s nothing in fiction where a positive framing and seemingly approving responses would weird me out or upset me, but that I wouldn’t let my upset feelings cause me to leap to assuming I knew what everyone else involved was thinking, and that they were thinking “[bad thing] is cool and great, in real life and in fiction”. I especially wouldn’t jump to that assumption and then also tell people who disagreed with me that they were lying.
* people who disagreed with me about what I was assuming they meant by the words they were saying, to be clear.
Odo was arguing that their interpretation of someone else’s words (“aw” = “cheating is cute and good”) supersedes what that person has told them it meant.
Please don’t speak for me. I do not believe you are doing a sincere job, or are particularly good at understanding me. It is also particularly hypocritical considering your overall critique.
This was the literal substance of our argument, as I understand it:
Me painstakingly telling you over and over that other readers are able to separate “Joyce and Dorothy snuggling (cute)” from “Joyce and Dorothy cheating on Joe and Walky (not cute)” — and you arguing that the two things are inseparable, so everyone who says “aw” is in fact talking about the cheating, even if they explicitly say they’re not and don’t like that part.
I think at some point you modulated your position to at least be “they don’t consider the cheating a dealbreaker”, or that it’s “not the most important part”, but I didn’t think I had made any progress whatsoever in convincing you that for some of us, the cheating is in fact a completely separate issue, not something we are minimizing or dismissing or tacitly approving of, when we say that a given strip is cute.
Is that wrong? I’ll go buy myself an ice cream.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/coolsville-2/#comment-1914591
“I think the thing that “Paladins” generally respond to is when “Sickos” call the cheating cute.”
Followed by many comments of us arguing over whether or not that’s what anyone is doing.
Anyone who is worried I’m strawmanning Odo is welcome to read the discussion for themself! It carries on in multiple threads below this one, though.
And my argument wasn’t that they weren’t separating the two, rather that they shouldn’t separate the two.
I think the action of separating the two and only responding to the cuteness is what glosses over the cheating. I think treating the two as if they can be seperated is fundamentally glossing over cheating.
It isn’t about intent or interpretation, it is about actions.
Look.
I’m not the boss of you and you’re obviously going to go right on insisting that every person who says “aw” at any point is specifically “acting” (somehow) to dismiss the wrongness of cheating, but you’re gonna keep getting argued with and pushed back on, whether or not it’s by me.
It sucks to feel misunderstood and misrepresented, as I’m sure you feel you’re very ironically aware of (because you’re sure I’m doing it right now). It makes people wanna argue.
If you’re fine with people continuing to argue every time you say it, by all means.
You are again moving from actions to intent. I am not saying people intend to dismiss the cheating, I am saying that the action does.
And yup, I am going to continue to say we shouldn’t be framing any action that is cheating as cute.
eskimolos had a rather good perspective that whether you are more concerned by the romance or by the cheating depends on whose perspective you are adopting. If you are seeing the story through Joyces lens then the romance is most important. If you are seeing the story through Joe’s eyes then the betrayal is most important.
I think it is better to understand the story from the lens of the victim than the perpetrator. I think there are plenty of people in the world who like to see the story only through their own lens, or from the perspective of people they identify with, and that makes it easy for them to ignore harm being done to other people.
This argument presupposes that no one can view the story through more than one lens. I think that’s reductive.
Also, words are fundamentally not actions.
Writing is fundamentally an action. Words have impact.
Or are you seriously going to say we shouldn’t ever critique what people say?
And yes, in a sense, we can only view anything through one lens, our own. So the best we can do is aim to have it be as expansive and un-muddied a lens as possible.
So let’s incorporate Joyce and Dorothy and Joe into one lens:
Joyce and Dorothy are feeling a lot of feelings of love and desire, which is what is motivating them to kiss, cuddle, sleep together, etc… Those actions will also, likely, be incredibly painful for Joe since they are a betrayal by Joyce of their relationship.
Seems good?
Now “cute” isn’t a lens for understanding. It is our response. We can shrink our lens to just look at Joyce and Dorothy feeling things (and each other), but like you said that would be reductive. We might certainly think of Joyce and Dorothy kissing each other as cute, but does it still seem as cute when we expand the lens to simultaneously also include how it will impact others? Or does it seem selfish?
Fair enough!
Wildly, I didn’t see or respond to your reply that came at 11:45 pm.
Psshh rookie. I stay up until 1am regularly responding to the comments. …..I’m so tired
And using the example isn’t a mistake, it is intentional. I am choosing to use the example because it helps demonstrate a dynamic other people might be able to relate to.
Like I said, it is not saying “these are two equivalently bad things” because the thing that is being compares is not “how bad they are”.
For you yourself chose to compare my actions to transphobic bigotry. Are you saying that “someone feeling uncomfortable towards people giving approving response towards cheating” is as bad as transphobic bigotry?
No. I can appreciate that you are drawing a comparison to try to illustrate a similar dynamic.
Does it help? Does it help illustrate your point? Or is it a distractingly bad example that keeps making people ask you why you’re comparing those two things.
Even people who agree with you otherwise think it’s a weird example.
“For you yourself chose to compare my actions to transphobic bigotry. Are you saying that “someone feeling uncomfortable towards people giving approving response towards cheating” is as bad as transphobic bigotry?
No. I can appreciate that you are drawing a comparison to try to illustrate a similar dynamic.”
That… that wasn’t a metaphor. Here’s what I actually said:
“And no, feeling disturbed is not “moral intuition”. As with disgust, it’s an emotional response which can be entirely divorced from morality, and conflating the two is genuinely dangerous.
I am not accusing you of anything, Odo, but lots of people use the fact that trans people disturb and disgust them as moral intuition.
Disentangling our feelings of disgust from our moral judgments isn’t always easy, but it’s worth doing.”
Because what you were arguing to me was that “disgust” is “intuitional morality”.
Which is a dangerous line of thinking. Whether you’re using it to say that your feelings of disgust are how you know fictional cheating is wrong or it’s being used by bigots to say it’s how they know queer people existing is wrong, it’s the same dangerous core thought process.
What is the point of mentioning it if you were not drawing a comparison?
“Whether you’re using it to say that your feelings of disgust are how you know fictional cheating is wrong or it’s being used by bigots to say it’s how they know queer people existing is wrong, it’s the same dangerous core thought process.”
How is this not drawing a comparison between the two?
You are saying that, a certain part of them, is the same. “it’s the same dangerous core thought process.”
You tried to say I “compared” you to a transphobic bigot for not liking cheating.
I am providing the context of why I actually said your logic was the same logic employed by not only bigots but fascists, and how I stand by that completely.
And I was arguing that “feelings” are important internal signs for what we care about, and what we care about is basically our personal understanding of morality.
When someone feels something is bad they should ask themselves “why”. That feeling is connecting them to something true inside themselves. Now, people don’t always have the self-awareness or perspective to get a good answer, but the feeling is a starting point.
And at a certain point it is the only starting point. There is not some perfectly logical proof of morality that isn’t grounded in “this feels right” at a certain point. Kant tried it and got pretty close, but not all the way there (and he was pretty racist).
You care about other people. Why? Do you have some logical proof? Or at a certain point do you just feel that other people have value? Should we doubt that feeling? Should we doubt everything?
We certainly can but that descends towards nihilism which isn’t a very useful framework.
Things are immoral when they do harm to other people.
What I feel inside is not relevant, and insisting that it is… runs aground very quickly with a variety of neurodiversities.
Plenty of low-empathy people out there who do not feel the way you’re insisting they need to still choose to do the right thing over and over again by using this much simpler, much less flawed litmus test.
If your argument in response contains any variety of “but why do you care about harming other people”, I just don’t think there’s any point in continuing the conversation.
“Things are immoral when they do harm to other people.”
Do you have a logical proof, or is this something you feel is true.
“Plenty of low-empathy people out there who do not feel the way you’re insisting they need to still choose to do the right thing over and over again by using this much simpler, much less flawed litmus test.”
A litmus test that is created and enforced by other people. I don’t think it is a bad test, I just don’t think we can ever prove it, and the only evidence we can really give for it, after a certain point, is that it feels right, our moral intuition.
Yeah, see, you’re asking me to prove that hurting other people is wrong, and continuing to assert that the only way I can think such a thing is if I “feel” it intuitively inside.
This is not a conversation worth continuing.
I am not asking you to “prove it”. I am asking if you “have a proof”.
Do you have a reason other than feelings for believing it is true? If so I would love to hear it.
Maybe it is just something you were raised to believe. Is tradition a better basis for understanding morality?
Maybe you do have a logical proof for it, if so I hope you publish soon.
You are arguing that your understanding of morality is not rooted in what you feel. I used to think the exact same, but over time I realized that feeling are not simply “intrusive thoughts” like you claim, but rather they are deeply important and connect us to what is alive in us, which is also how we can hope to connect to what is alive in others.
I told you twice that I wasn’t going to keep talking to you about this if you made this argument.
I am done talking to you, at least about this. Maybe period.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
Li i really think it’s just not worth to engage with odo anymore they just keep doing this, adding onto the pile of meaningless discourse, it probably better to just leave them to it.
@Nadamás oh don’t worry, that’s definitely the plan at this point.
Oh wait THAT WAS ALSO ODO??
I remembered that interaction but I assumed it had to be someone else, that it would not be the same person continuing to go “but how would you feel if Joe punched Joyce, though?”
Yes, although I have a fuzzy memory of it not being the first time the comparison had been made then, either, and I think the first time was someone else, weeks and weeks ago, before the kiss.
But like I said, fuzzy memory.
That’s fair, along the lines of our previous discussion wherein between “things get deleted” and “I sometimes skip a few days”. I don’t necessarily see this as an ongoing thread — I’m kinda with Erica that Odo’s choice of examples is impolitic but doesn’t really appear to be equating “cheating” with “violence” except inasmuch as they’re both “kinds of malfeasance that can be framed by the narrative as good”. (which is, I guess, strictly true, but seems weird to say that way).
It’s worth noting this scene where Ruth body slams Jennifer.
Note that people actually largely didn’t respond condemning the violence, although I don’t see comments cheering for Ruth (or Jennifer in the previous slide). Obviously not a 1-1 parallel, but there has been domestic violence in the strip before.
Interesting you pick that and not the previous two scenes where Jennifer kicks the door down and slams into Ruth.
With that framing in place, knowing Ruth has initiated violence against Jennifer before (and was roundly considered a heel both in-strip and by the commentariat for it) It’s not particularly surprising that people would see this particular vignette as more neutral/mutual combat than any kind of “domestic violence”, despite it strictly being such.
They’re also not in a relationship at this point, so it’s violence (non-domestic), which is just much less… fraught, for most people.
Interestingly, perhaps, I’ve seen some call for “domestic violence” charges to also apply to “roommates and people who share some/all household facilities” in addition to just romantic partners and family members, on the grounds that part of the extra seriousness of DV is being victimized by a person who shares your home that you can’t easily escape.
That might not be true for these two at this point either, as I think by this strip Jennifer’s in the other dorm.
The CDC disagrees with you.
“Intimate partner violence (IPV) is abuse or aggression that occurs in a romantic relationship. Intimate partner refers to both current and former spouses and dating partners.”
@Big Z: Oh, absolutely agree it should apply to roommates, I shouldn’t have phrased it that way because boy oh boy do I agree.
But also yeah, they were indeed no longer sharing a dorm building.
Honestly, it was just the one I found first. The comic is full of Ruth and Jennifer hurting each other.
I did mention that Jennifer also attacked Ruth in the previous slide.
That first sentence, indicating that you just went with the first example regardless of really considering its applicability, indicates to me that you don’t seem to actually understand at least part of the issue here.
*Lightswitch*
I’m not sure i like how much these two being together actively pisses me off. It just makes me feel terrible for Joe, he’s grown so much and this feels like stomping on that
And we’re back to issuing commands and parenting Joyce again.
I don’t know. I have ADHD, and this is how my wife helps me cope with my neurodivergence. I love her for getting me too focus and remember tasks.
While I do similar things for my partner, I would have felt awfully presumptuous doing them right after our first hookup!
OTOH, they were already best friends before so it’s not quite the same as “first hookup” implies.
If Joyce started acting her age and not her shoe size people wouldn’t have to tell her basic things like “dont cheat on the partner you obviously still care for or you wouldn’t have sucked his dick”
She brings it upon herself
“Act your age, not your shoe size” is an excellent phrase that I am totally stealing.
I’ve had shoe size 40 since I was like 12
This saying works better with US shoe sizes
She is acting her age tho? Teenagers are know for doing atupid things impulsively out of emotion (and horniness).
Can we stop acting like they’re 14? They’re “teenagers” and yet still full grown ass adults. Joyce is odd not stupid or cruel which makes pages like these annoying
I mean they are literally by definition not “full grown ass adults”.
No they literally, by definition, are adults. 18+ is an adult in every state.
I think we’re splitting a hair here, but “legal adult” and “full-grown-ass-adult” definitely feel different to me!
18+ is a legal adult for many things but not most things.
21+ is a legal adult for almost everything, plus you might be out of college by then
25+ is when you’re an adult for the purposes of car insurance rates
I tend to think “full-grown-ass-adult” implies “out of schooling, into a career, legally able to drink without a fake ID, etc” whereas just “adult” is “over 18”.
Correction:”18+ is a legal adult for many things but not *everything.”
Yeah what you said.
I will admit I intentionally split hairs because Nadamas said “by definition” and it made me want to be a little pedantic lmao.
It’s okay it happens to the best of us (and also me).
They are legally adults, but 18 year olds are still often considered not fully grown. A lot of maturing usually takes place in the next couple years.
Sucking dick doesn’t equal caring. People suck dick for a loooootttt of reasons, sometimes including guilt which Joyce is definitely feeling.
I do agree with others that Joyce’s reactions are…surprising, and i don’t think any theories have resonated for me. I thought she’d be WRECKED by Sarah being disappointed in her, or at least feel uncomfortable. I also thought she’d be more worried about Joe getting hurt, or more conflicted. (Quick reminder, not a relationship paladin, this is more a character consistency thing on my part).
Idk, I doubt my own memory of her now, I might have to go reread some things!
I’ve been reading it as Joyce being unable to focus directly on her own guilt because it would be too painful for her.
I was in that boat, but do you remember how the Jacob situation went down? Remember her pretending she was his girlfriend to his brother for a whole lunch? (which isn’t that long but that’s a lot of strained, awkward pretending)
Or her and Ethan? She’s in Joyce-world right now. She’ll be hit by the clue-bat eventually, but right now she’s very busy rejecting your reality.
I really want to see more of her inner monologue, but everything to me is currently pointing at “Joyce is enough of a romantic that she can pretend everything is okay as long as she’s doing it in service of Twue Wuv”.
Denial is a very very thick armor, very difficult to pierce
Yeah Joyce, it’s in the damn Bible.
“If thine uterus fucking hateth thee, choppeth it out and throw it away. Or medicateth it into submission, I’meth not thine father.” – Matthew 18:9
Amen.
Rouxls Kaard when he becomes a gynaecologist
Bagel!
🎵 E is even more than anyone that you adore can! 🎵
I see that John Allison’s sound effect style is spreading.
Speaking of, I’m reminded of…
These
Three
Strips
…in particular
I love those strips so much.
are comments getting moderated more heavily or just autodeleted because of reports or something
I know it’s been wild sometimes recently but I can’t keep track of what’s getting disappeared because of what and I don’t want to accidentally the same thing that’s getting deleted
As long as you’re not being explicitly some kind of phobic, misogynistic, or too furious with the other commenters I think you’ll be fine.
Honestly with all this? I think I’m done.
Just insta-swapping to gay overnight and fuck everything else has flown in the face of everything these characters have done since day 1. I’m a very open person and have enjoyed Shortpacked!, It’s Walky, all of the shorts but this shit… I’m just out
did u not see joyce talking about her deep abiding weirdly intense love for dorothy like 10 years ago? Leslie knope and anne perkins references back when that show was still on tv? theyve been gay
Don’t know why dinguses need to announce their departure. This isn’t an airport. Nobody cares about you leaving and nobody will miss you.
Probably it is precisely because “no one will miss you”. If people someone is distressed by how the comic is handling a subject, feeling like there distress has no value to other people is itself another source of distress.
And a viewer has no real power to change anything. The only thing they can do is leave, so that is what they do. But leaving silently doesn’t get the response or recognition that they actually want, so they announce it.
Maybe futile or pointless, but also basically people being human.
I kinda get it if you have people you like who might wonder why you suddenly stopped posting. I’ve definitely wondered if people who used to post regularly and then stopped were okay and I’d have liked knowing ‘Everything’s fine, just not feeling this comic anymore’. Obviously writing some ‘break up’ note to the author or whatever is weird but yeah, sometimes people DO care in the forums/comments.
I’ve been wondering for a long time if Anna Chronistic is still around under a different pseudonym, if she stopped commenting/reading, or if something happened to her.
I think I saw her on Patreon recently, so may just be that she’s been reading there.
okay see you tomorrow
1) “Gay” and “bi” are not the same thing.
2) Joyce being into Dorothy has been telegraphed almost since day one.
3) Don’t let the door hit you.
This is true in terms of saying “She is gay”, but speaking for myself as a bi person, I sometimes use gay as an umbrella term for queer sexuality. I’m totally okay saying my partner and I are “being gay together” even if technically he is gay and I am bi.
Sure, but that’s so obviously not what OP meant by “insta-swapping to gay”. They don’t mean she’s bi, they mean she’s a lesbian, and they’re mad about it specifically.
Which is why I said “This is true in terms of saying ‘She is gay'”.
I am adding to Big Z, not contradicting them in relation to the original comment.
Honestly that’s fair. While everyone is dismissing you comment cause Joyce was obvious bi for a long time. I have to say “ya. We obviously knew that but you know who didn’t know that: Joyce”.
Like literally every other character who realized they were gay in the story had some time to contemplate their sexuality.
For as long as this plot point has been brewing its weird that Joyce is the one character who hasn’t had this.
When Joyce said she felt this way for a long time that feels like a meta thing instead of a Joyce thing.
“I’m a very open person, but characters discovering that they are gay is just a bridge too far for me.”
Okay! Bye!
I am genuinely amazed that anyone can seriously claim these characters are “insta-swapping to gay.” People have assembled dozens of strips going back to the first year of the comic that have foreshadowed this.
I was thinking of this strip last night: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/rebounding/
That second panel is about one half-step more subtle than having Joyce turn to the camera and say, “Attention, readers, I am officially, canonically, not straight!”
I’m not that put off my Joyce not taking a lot of time to process. Everyone has a different reaction to the realization, including “Alright, I guess I like (some)men/women. Good to know.”
Realizing you’re queer doesn’t have to be angsty, sometimes it just makes you feel comfy and at peace.
It seems kinda odd to me that Joyce and Dorothy realizing they’re bi and attracted to each other is what made you decide to stop reading this comic, and not other stuff like them cheating on their boyfriend or anything else.
Goodbye. I am sure everyone will miss you. 😑
left field thought: dots been internalizing how much shes been changing and affecting joyce, right? indont remember her saying she officially said no to going to yale. i could see this storyline going towards “dot goes to yale to srop beinf a bad influence to joyce”, then i can see joyce being depressed.. and then its a mirror to what happened to sarahs firsr college roommate.
Relevant: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/01-everybodys-looking-for-nothing/feeding/
Goodbye beautiful sunrise palette 😔
The sound effect reminds me of the literal videos that were a thing for about six months in the before times. Like https://youtu.be/fsgWUq0fdKk?si=rxDtiroVaX9m4v_4
I am just here for the occasional Walky + chicken nuggets jokes.
Inspired by yesterday… Could we please jump back to Carla and Charlie? That’s a relationship I am actually invested in, and would be a heck of a lot more interesting than just watching an extended reel of Joyce and Dorothy being shitty.
We can jump back when they are actually telling Walky/Joe, but watching them (Dorothy) plan to eventually do the right thing while Joyce shrugs is not where the drama is.
You comment a whole lot for someone who is not invested 😴.
Joyce’s arm in panel two is giving Slenderman
(This is just friendly teasing, the art in these comics is great and its been wonderful to see Willis’ skill improving over the years as its a reminder that practice and dedication does pay off)
*do pay off
It’s funny that Joyce isn’t even considering that she’s bi
Survey results! https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-fu7pUMvpsBTEiYJetnuNDw_3D_3D/
Link if you still want to take the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZRHLW8K
I don’t think that’s what she’s doing. I think what she’s doing is that fundie programming where every relationship is obviously on a course for lifelong monogamous marriage — she’s into Dorothy now, which means obviously she’ll ALWAYS be ONLY into Dorothy.
That makes sense. My initial read was “Why would I *ever* need birth control now that I’m gay” but it could have been “Why would I ever need birth control now that I’m going to be with you for the rest of my life and no one else.
Meanwhile, to me the most interesting part of the survey result is the proportion of cis men who are readers. My initial guess is “that’s related somehow to the demographics of Transformers fandom” which also in my head seems likely to correlate to the 30-39 age group, but could also easily be an artifact of “cis men, in general, are more likely to jump at the chance to put their opinion out there” (guilty as charged).
On the other hand, we are collectively SIGNIFICANTLY less straight than the general public.
I know, it’s very surprising to me! But, I also think it’s a positive thing to see that so many cis men are avid readers of a comic about a bunch of queer goofballs.
Gonna be honest! I think the number of cis men is directly related to the degree of fury being expressed on behalf of Joe, and why Joe’s pain and Joe’s well being and Joe’s right to have a girlfriend seem to be the primary locus of anger and conversation.
I think there’s one character in this story that white cis guys can most easily project themselves into, and it’s Joe, and that is not unrelated to the degree of rage being expressed about a story where a sad thing is gonna happen to Joe.
No one has said Joe has a right to have a girlfriend. People were just really bad at having an honest reading of what Sarah was saying.
And yeah, I care more about the pain of the person being cheated on than “how cute” the cheaters are.
This right here, 100%.
Right to have a girlfriend? I agree about sympathizing with Joe’s pain and well being but who ever said he has a right to have a girlfriend?
It is statistically interesting but as a woman I can say that you don’t have to be able to relate to Joe to have empathy for him and anger on his behalf
I didn’t choose cis woman or trans woman bc neither really describes me but I do highly identify w my womanhood even though I’m very nonbinary/neutral in practice and it killed me take away frm that statistic lmfao. Lesbo nonbinary who very much dislikes the joyrothy storyline tho
Check this out! In addition to the overall stats, I have a comparison of the stats compared to each “Just for Fun” response and it’s surprisingly super evenly distributed!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-6mhyRRE5W_2F5Ack9czVQ_2BRw_3D_3D/
No one is defending Joe’s “right to have a girlfriend,” don’t be disingenuous.
I agree that the number of cis men is an interesting insight into the comment section. I take issue with “It’s because the readership is mostly cis men that so many commenters care about Joe’s pain and are angry at Joyce’s behavior.” I honestly feel like that’s a big disservice to women and queer people. We can have empathy for people who aren’t the same as us.
It also isn’t true. There are more non-cis responses than “Man (cis)” responses.
Don’t know about people who selected multiple, but about 54% of the responses were cis, and 46% were not. Cis men are not “most of the readership” and cis people in general only have a small majority.
True, but cis men are definitely way over-represented. Mostly at the expense of cis women, which is the really strange part.
Non-cis people are also over-represented, I think.
That makes a lot of sense.
“Right to have a girlfriend” feels like a big reach. I don’t think gender has anything to do with someone not liking the idea of someone else being cheated on. You’re being disingenuous, at best.
I don’t think anyone here has been saying Joe has a right to have a girlfriend.
Well, as a cis dude, I will admit to identifying with Joe, but up until this cheating nonsense I was even more strongly identifying with JOYCE and her “going from fundie prude to confused horny atheist” arc. I’m mostly irritated that the person I’d been identifying most with crossed an ethical line that I’ve never even considered crossing.
I’m a nonbinary, pan, poly person and I relate to Joe because I’ve had a similar situation of “I thought the relationship was going fairly well but then my girlfriend suddenly found a girl she liked more and simply dropped me without really thinking about me in the slightest because the new person fit better.”
I also felt that I was not entitled to the relationship continuing but the callousness with which I was dropped really hurt and felt especially nasty after I had tried to be really supportive and attentive to her. I felt like I deserved to at least be treated decently by her if she wanted to break things off and seeing the way Joyce is acting here honestly brings up some really personally painful memories.
It feels especially bad because Joyce is a character I directly related to before as like, one of the only explicitly stated instances of an autistic main character in any fiction I have ever seen. A depiction that didn’t feel infantilizing or horribly stereotypical. To see this happen to her as a character does genuinely really bum me out.
I’m sorry you went through that and that does sound very relatable. Like, it would have hurt to be dumped regardless, but it hurts to more to just be thrown away like you’re NOTHING, like you meant so little, when they meant so much to you and you thought they felt the same.
Thank you, I appreciate that. In retrospect she never really seemed to care that much looking back and some pretty bad shit happened later where she got herself kicked out of the community I met her in for being awful. I ultimately dodged what wouldn’t have been a healthy relationship but it still sucked.
*looks at your comment, looks at my comment right above it*
… together, we fight crime?
Cis Man and Nonbinary Person!
My arm is not long enough for the jerkoff motion that is my soul.
The demographics get even weirder than that. Despite there being far more cis men than women, there are far more lesbians than gay men. Like 40% of the women are lesbian.
And far more trans women than trans men. Nearly as many trans women as cis women.
Right? I love data! It’s interesting!
I’ve got no idea what conclusions to draw from it though.
Other than straight cis women are really underrepresented. 🙂
don’t worry I’m here to be the token loud representative of straight cis women lol
I didn’t really make the survey with the goal of drawing any conclusions. It was really just curiosity about the demographics in general, and if there were any trends between demographics and reactions/interpretations of the comic. Interpret it how you will, or just enjoy the data!
Though I suppose here are two conclusions I have:
1. There’s way more cis male readers than I expected for this comic
2. While it does seem there is a trend for cis people to be more likely to identify as paladins, the most popular response by far is is “Joyce and Dorothy are cute but the cheating tarnishes it” and there’s a very balanced distribution of all demographics among all responses. Which is really interesting to me, as I really thought queer vs straight experiences might have a more significant impact on people’s feelings (especially based on the comments)!
Additionally, that third group (“they’re cute but the cheating tarnishes it”) has about equal odds of identifying as sicko, paladin, or neither.
The “sicko” version of that sentiment is something like, “Cheating diminishes how much I like this ship, but I remain hyped for chaos/mess fallout/consequences!”
The “paladin” version of it is more like, “I’d be so on board for this ship if it weren’t for the cheating 🙁 I wish they’d broken up with their boyfriends first.”
Good observation, I hadn’t even paid attention to the self-comparison graph to notice the distribution of sicko/paladin among the other responses (I’m glad I made it multiple response!)
So am I. 🙂 Good survey! Thank you for making it.
You might try to make the “other” responses not visible. Bigots suck and are why we can’t have nice things.
I haven’t been reading all the responses, which question(s) should I be concerned about? I’ll look into it.
Oop, found them. Silly me, honestly I didn’t think people like that would read a comic like this. I don’t want to disable the other responses because there are a lot of thoughtful and interesting replies, but read at your own risk I guess
Twin responses in my head of “Oh, that’s way less idiocy when I was expecting” and “yeah, this is why we can’t have nice things”.
They just sound so dumb though. Like, are you lost?
In addition to the overall stats, I have a comparison of the stats compared to each “Just for Fun” response and it’s surprisingly evenly distributed across all demographics. I think that’s really interesting! The paladins lean more cis, but by far the most common response is “Joyce and Dorothy are cute but the cheating tarnishes it” with a decent representation of all demographics.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-6mhyRRE5W_2F5Ack9czVQ_2BRw_3D_3D/
This is what I expected! There were too many people saying “as a lesbian this sucks” or some variant of it for the paladins to be heavily straight.
I’m sure there’s a Certain Flavor of Paladin that’s overwhelmingly cis and straight and also an asshole, but the other paladins deserve better than to be lumped in with him.
I’m surprised by the evenness of the distribution, but I suppose I had a selection bias of noticing the “as a gay person you need to go easy on them” comments far more than the “as a gay person I don’t like this” comments. I also thought that straight/cis vs queer lived experiences might have had a significant impact on reaction, but it doesn’t seem to much, other than a slight correlation with paladin vs sicko.
Oooh, I also just noticed that “I’ve completely lost respect for Joyce and Dorothy” has an especially large bi response. Which makes a lot of sense, since I know a lot of bi people were very frustrated by them living out the “cheating bisexuals” stereotype.
Wait sorry ignore that, I was looking at the wrong graph
Haha, no worries. Yeah, us bi-type queer people were pretty evenly divided, too. Honestly a very similar divide, I think, to the divide among poly people, though I’m mono, so that I don’t feel as confident speaking on.
Summarized, it’s something like:
“Not all bi/poly people are cheaters. This isn’t how I want my #representation to behave.”
versus
“Bi/poly people should be allowed to be as messy as anyone else. This is exactly how I want my #representation to behave.”
Like, I think both of these viewpoints are extremely valid. Some bi people think this is playing into harmful stereotypes; other bi people think this comic has enough non-cheating bi characters that it’s not.
I feel like we’re all actually coming at it from the same basic feeling, too — it just depends on whether we’re prioritizing “bi/poly people don’t have to be cheaters” or “bi/poly people shouldn’t have to be perfect”.
(Big big disclaimer: I’m definitely not saying anyone has to cheat in order to be imperfect or messy! The bar is not underground!! Just that there is a legit, reasonable divide in the community here. I myself have gone through phrases of ONLY wanting to see happy bi characters pairing off monogamously with people of the same gender, because I just… had seen a bunch of the opposite. Nowadays I am firmly in the camp of “bi people are not Gay Lite ™ and I want to see some relationship drama darn it”, but I still remember feeling that first way, and I know we’re all at different points on our journeys.)
I wish there was a like feature on here cuz I have nothing to say but this is a great comment
<3 Me too 🙁 I would like SO many comments!
Good to know I’m still younger than most readers, that’s important for some reason. Lotta old dudes reading this comic tho, like a surprising amount of cis guys
“What use do I have for them now?”
Wow, she’s completely written off Joe, hasn’t she? I thought it was still a debate in her heart, still but no, she’s just tossed him like a used tissue. And betrayed him in the way that would hurt him the most – infidelity. Good drama, but disappointing character development. And shame on Dorothy for doing everything she accused Joe of and more, regarding Joyce.
Joe’s not in the room, he doesn’t exist for her libido until she can see him. Schrödinger’s dingdong.
Joyce doesn’t lack morals, she just lacks object permanence!
As someone with no object permanence, I’m feeling very offen- Hey look a phone notification, give me a second.
What were we talking about?
Cocks. We were comparing Joyce’s and Dorothy’s.
Joyce: “now I became Old Joe, the destroyer of Virtues”.
“Am I bringing out the worst in you?” weeeeell…..
You’re not not not NOT bringing out the not BEST in her…
I mean, looking at how Dorothy left Danny and Walky after ending her relationships with them, you can’t really say she has a great track record for improving her romantic partners.
In fairness to Danny, he’s thriving for the most part, he just needs to realize he’s a girl next.
Love panel 2. These two are so wonderful!
I don’t understand why Joyce and Dorothy don’t just *handle this like adults.*
Joyce sits down with Joe. Dorothy sits down with Walky. They basically say:
“I’ve realized I’m bisexual. And I have strong feelings for (Joyce/Dorothy). I also have strong feelings for you. Still. And while I’d like to explore my new gay side, I don’t want to cheat on you to do it.”
Yeah, it’s a tough conversation to have, but if this happened to me, I’d rather my partner be honest. Joe might be hurt because he *chose* monogamy *for Joyce*… but the *only way through this* is open honesty.
Ethical non-monogamy may be an option. Or it may not be. But sneaking around *is cheating.* Having feelings — even experimenting a little — isn’t cheating. Lying about it? It’s cheating.
I like your take on this. There are more people involved in this than just Joyce and Dorothy, and they should have their voice.
No snark intended, you’re discovered/restated one of the many Relationship Paladin positions.
And they’re not handling this like adults because they’re teenagers, honestly. I do still think they’re being shitty, but we can recognize that they’re not really full adults.
But the rest of the conversation has to be: “I’ve also already made out with her and we slept together and cuddled last not and I’m not going to give her up, but I’m not sure what to do about you.”
Which puts a bit of a harsher twist on it.
And that’s assuming they’re actually up for that. Joyce and Dorothy haven’t even talked about the idea of non-monogamy. I’m not sure that Dorothy would be interested in continuing with Walky or in sharing Joyce with Joe. I suspect Joyce would be okay with it, but hasn’t actually given it any thought.
I am pretty sure that neither of them would be willing to give up the other if their boyfriend wasn’t open to non-monogamy. Which is a pretty rough ultimatum to open with.
Joyce would be open to it if she thought about it, Joe might go along with it, not a chance in hell Dorothy would be open to it
So here’s my proposal:
Joyce and Dorothy should call Joe and Walky over, and once they’re all in a room together, they should say, “We have something we need to tell you.” And then make out licky-style.
Then if the boys are still there, they should say, “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
All problems solved!
Well, most of them. They can invite Amber and Amazi-Girl next time. I think they’re probably not up for making out right now.
Wow. Before today I would not have said a perfect solution existed.
You’ve reminded me of the scene in Dude, Where’s My Car? in which the main characters are in a car (not the eponymous car), and pull up next to a couple at a stop light. The two pairs start silently comparing cool things with each other, which escalates to the couple making out as a flex. The two (straight, male) protagonists, not to be outdone, make out right back at them and then look at them like “What now?”. The couple give them homophobic looks and drive off, which means the heroes have won the encounter.
Five-star comment
A fun thing to do is after reading the current day’s strip, hit the random button and see if a related strip comes up. (very often does) So todays random shot was possibly hilarious.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/overbearin/
Holy shit that’s perfect. Walky was way off though, it was more like 3 months!
I got this one, which y’know what, close enough
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/enjoy/
I got this one: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/03-trystin-in-the-wind/cleanest/
Dang it, now I’m worried that there’ll be a week of running gags where Joe never quite finds out.
Joyce: “I’m going to tell Joe right now.”
Joyce returns, hair tousled, shirt inside-out, shoes on wrong feet.
Dorothy: “How did it go?”
Joyce: “I told him as nicely as I could. I said we kissed, that we hugged. I said we had deep feelings for each other.”
Dorothy; “How did he react?”
Dorothy: “How did he react?”
Joyce: “You know, he gets very vigorous when you talk to him like that.”
Dorothy (frowning): “well I should be mad, but at least he knows you are breaking up.”
Joyce: “OH GODAMMIT!!”
What would be the absolute opposite of breaking up? Because I feel like each time it should escalate. Either to the point Joe proposes, or Joyce does the opposite of breaking up and just adds more people to the polycule. Instead of ending one relationship, she keeps starting new ones.
There is maybe one in a billion chance of this happening, but I could see it being a funny bit if written well. 😀
> What would be the absolute opposite of breaking up?
They get married
Joe: “I know you were upset when you got drunk and I didn’t, so why don’t we both get drunk tonight?”
They wake up in a drive through wedding chapel.
What follows is “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” if it was written by Damn-You-Willis. Shenanigans ensue… the dinosaur/lizard people will show up, but instead of LSD being the cause, it will be because Joyce’s blood sugar spiked from eating too many of Joe’s vitamin gummies.
COWS ARE GOING TO KILL ME. BISEXUALS ARE GOING TO KILL ME
And Elvis is officiating
Still not loving Joyce’s attitude. Dorothy at least is trying. Little and late, but at least a bit.
it is pretty wild how they’re all in on each other without, apparently, a first thought
has me asking myself are they just young or are they straight up in love for real
I mean yeah i think that’s been pretty clear for a while.
At the risk of repeating what others have said, I think this is the basic disconnect:
“These people are making very bad, selfish decisions that will have bad consequences for them and many other people.”
“I know, isn’t it great? Bring on the messy drama involving fictional characters who exist for my entertainment!”
Oh, look, we’re reinventing paladins vs. sickos. I don’t mean to be snarky, but the actual conflict is more along the lines of “what, you want them to face CONSEQUENCES? That’s silly, they’re beautiful” and “You don’t understand how cheating is bad, I’m going to come up with an argument so weird that you’ll think I equate cheating and murder” and “obviously Joyce is actually straight and this is bullshit” and, most commonly, “I said a moderate position that’s nowhere near any of those, why are people reacting to me as though I said them and accusing me of various crimes in response?”
Wait, is that what sickos and paladins divide was? Christ… part of why I love the zoomer phrase “go and touch grass” is because it’s so damn useful. Every opportunity in the world to bring it up.
Mmhmm.
To be fair on the first one, some people went really crazy with he sort of consequences they expected.
Oh, for sure. There was hyperbolic overreaction on all sides, that’s all I’m sayin’.
I’m still in favor of polyamory!
Same! though i’m not sure it’d work out. if someone is inexperienced and not good yet at communicating with ONE partner, that inability will multiply with several partners. And communication is incredibly important with poly…