I wonder what her source of info is. Actually it’s probably Raidah/Alice, and she’s going to assume they’re just openly cheating. But I don’t think jennifer will actually deign to pass moral judgement or anything like that. If anything, she’ll be relieved that her one tit pic actually was for Joyce and not walky.
I was gonna say her source might be the newspaper, but somehow I can absolutely see Jennifer never reading that despite the fact that she writes for it.
Correct, she has specifically chastised Joyce for picking up the paper to see her own work published, which Billie is supposedly #TooCoolForSchool to do. While I’d be willing to believe that she nonetheless picks up the paper in secret to see HER OWN bylines, ain’t no way she’s ever read a news story (anywhere; I’m not limiting this to the school paper) not written by herself.
Yeah Joyce I get that you’re totally in love or whatever but there’s a conversation you should really be having now that the newspaper is apparently no longer an urgent matter
Somehow, I don’t think enough of Joyce’s brain will come back online for any productive conversation until after she gets a room with Dotty for a week anyways.
she told him she was breaking off with him. He said “hey, maybe we can make this work” and she said “uhh maybe” and then left. He has no ownership over her, she can do what she wants
Imo they’re quasi broken up rn. If they don’t go poly, that convo will have been the break up point. If they do go poly, then they never actually broke up.
Sure, there’s a convo to have. But Joyce made it clear that, while she’s not closing the door on a poly future, the future will have Dorothy kissing in it. So while, yes, that is a convo to have sooner rather than later, there is no longer any problem with getting Dorothy kissing going.
And she’ll ask. But as I see it, Joyce is not currently in a romantic relationship with Joe. As things are now, she wouldn’t smooch him or go on dates with him or do anything romantic until the matter is settled. There’s a ‘pending’ relationship request with a poly style arrangement, which Dorothy might well say ‘nope’ to. In which case it is no, Joyce has made it very clear that she chooses Dorothy over Joe. And so, I find these smooches to be entirely fine.
I really actually want them to do this, but my enthusiasm for it keeps being dampened by activation of every contrarian neuron in my body, some of which are newly generated.
Maybe that’s what kept happening when I worked at Quizno’s in college. Every Sunday night different couples would show up having serious and tense deep conversations. They’d stay until we locked up and staff theory was that people needed to break up on Sundays in a Quizno’s. Schrödingers breakup (at Quiznos). We observed it, but couldn’t confirm if the relationship was alive or dead.
Joyce apparently thinks they are, despite the ambiguity with which she left Joe’s company.
She could, certainly, stand to be MORE clear about it with him, but as one who has been straight up ghosted by a partner at that age, following months (as opposed to days or perhaps weeks here) of dating, she could certainly be doing far worse than she is. She had an epiphany and shared it with him. His reaction is not what she expected, but in her hormone-addled state, that probably feels sufficient.
She referred to him as her boyfriend two strips ago. And in this strip, she said informed them. Not broken up with them. She’s now hiding Joe from Dorothy.
Yeah, Joe did leave her with questions. I’ll consider her clean unless she bangs Joe again before discussion/aftet Dorothy goes no/after she decides break up, or she leaves the discussion for more than a day, right now it’s confusing enough that I’d give her a bit of a buffer to at least get her head on straight to decide. Joe knows and is giving her the option and likely expects her to need a little, and she hasn’t boinked or kissed him since Dorothy expected the break up
Note that I’m not full on condoning her actions, just that, based on her actions so dar, I’m going, “Yeah, fine, a lot has happened in the last 24 hours, but she had better decide soon”
1. True, Dorothy would like to be more informed.
2. Joe explicitly said he was fine with her doing whatever with Dorothy, so while it is underinforming, it does not rise to the level of involving her in betrayal
Very good explanation. They are indeed in the clear. Joyce’s horrible mother may be after them already with another gang; what do they care what some campus busybodies think?
And remember, if she’s telling Joe that he’s on the back burner for “more pressing matters” even after he basically pleaded to still be in her life, he doesn’t matter to her. From what she’s saying in this panel it feels like she came to see the guys as an obstacle to Dorothy. Hence the sad close up on his face previously. That was a hurt man. Sarah was right, Joe didn’t deserve this, but how is it anything but over?
The behaviors in this arc are really hard to swallow from the characters. I mean, I want drama, but turning Joyce of all people, into this? It feels like in Pro Wrestling when a Hero wrestler goes Heel. Like she’s designed to get boos from a section of the crowd that once adored her. Same for Dorothy. Now we wait and see what Joe or Walky will do, but the writing seems to be pushing aside or making slight/light of any reactions they ought to be or are having.
No one has ownership over anyone but generally it’s encouraged to be considerate of people you care about and give some care to people’s feelings because we live in a society
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that it makes sense for this to be something joe is upset about. She isn’t dating Joe, in which case she should be able to do whatever she wants without arbitrarily considering him first.
Even if you treat her non-answer to his request to be poly as an unresolved thread, the end result is that the two options suggested were “Is dating dorothy” or “Is dating dorothy and joe” and in either case she can hug dorothy
Just to add: I distractedly only replied to only the second paragraph. Whether she’s actually dating Joe is unclear and perhaps dependent on how “dating” is to be defined. The state of their relationship is ambiguous right now, due to a combination of Joyce’s indecision in the face of new information and sudden panic at trying to deal with an emerging crisis.
Also, I’m pretty sure David Willis is enjoying dragging this out and keeping us uncertain, hence the lack of clear answers given (Joyce and Joe will apparently talk later, Dorothy never confirmed Joyce’s claimed break-up of Dorothy and Walky… we weren’t even told exactly why Joyce panicked over the newspaper until it was shown — there may be still more to that than has been addressed).
“she isn’t dating joe” except she literally called him her boyfriend a few strips ago and then sort of gave a non-commital response when dorothy suggests otherwise. implying she either is still dating joe, wants to be, and/or still considers him her boyfriend. lol.
again, to reiterate: it is encouraged to be considerate of people you care about for a variety of reasons, and this does not imply ownership. while contextually reasonable to avoid getting into whether or not she’s still dating joe immediately is reasonable in the context of a few strips ago, it is something she may want to discuss with dorothy soon… because it is the considerate thing to do.
Joyce hasn’t even broken up with Joe, and she hasn’t told Dorothy of Joe’s proposal that they be a poly relationship. She ran off after seeing the newspaper and never gave him a proper answer.
The only person who Joyce gave a straight answer too on the status of their love life was Walky and it was “Your relationship with your favorite girlfriend is over! She’s mine now get lost loser.”
There is an argument that it would be deeply hypocritical for her to pursue a polyamorous relationship without at least offering Dorothy the choice of also having one, regardless of how unlikely it may be that either Dorothy or Walky is interested in that outcome.
One is concerning them being made known without their permission or authorization and one is about “well it’s pretty much known now that we might as well do a little.”
So there’s this lil thing called consent. I feel like you should know what it is but since you plainly don’t, I’ll go ahead and explain.
Daisy could have asked them if they wanted to be publicized. She didn’t.
Joyce could have asked to (and consented to) kissing Dorothy again right here and now. She did!
In one case, consent was obtained. In the other, it was not.
For example:
If you like coffee, and you drink coffee every day, it would still be very weird of me to walk up and pour coffee down your throat.
It would be totally reasonable of you to get upset. Even if you then immediately went and bought yourself a coffee.
It’s entirely possible to be like “I didn’t want to be outed to the whole school, but now that I have been, I might as well snuggle my girlfriend in public“, and that doesn’t retroactively make the outing fine with you!
That’s absolutely a moral and logical position to have. Indeed it’s probably the best way to approach the issue.
To sum up a discussion we’re having below in hopefully way fewer words: My view of Dorothy & particularly Joyce is that it’s not one that they would have (I expect more awkward flailing and panicking) but I don’t at all think this is an issue of hypocrisy or anything.
Totally a fair opinion to have! But this short pithy reply was definitely directed at the idea that they’re being hypocrites. I think I wound up coincidentally saying a longer version to you down below though, heh.
Also how in the fucking world is “making out” now “nookie”? Why are we so determined to collapse the waveform between “kissing” and “fucking”? Like, yes, cheating, kissing cheating, cheating BAD, I understand this logic chain, but “kissing = fucking” I just can’t get behind.
I need someone to walk by these two macking and react appropriately for once. Someone start applauding for these two upon sight. Jocelyne knew the deal.
Unlike basically everyone else in the friendgroup she barely knows Walky and Joe and probably wouldn’t care to bat for them. And kissing someone inside a cloud of teargas is exactly the kinda grand gesture that mirrors that sorta “love wins” kinda of summer-movie ending of Alice and Billy’s promnight almost was.
Though swap the literal carcrash in the end to a metaphorical carcrash plowing through the friendgroup instead
Yeah this feels hard to justify next to the strips from last Wednesday and Thursday. They were clearly in a rush to do something, and nothing’s really been accomplished since then, so what? Did they just give up? It doesn’t really add up to me.
They were literally just told that aside from an apology, nothing about the newspaper situation is fixable or preventable. Also, they’re horny and stupid.
I’m fucking sick of “they’re horny and stupid” as an excuse for every single thing these two do. You cannot justify everything with that and expect it to be satisfying.
You misread my sarcasm, it was directed at Lumino. I am very tired of seeing “everyone forgives everything these two do” because it’s so categorically untrue even of readers who are indifferent to the (fictional) cheating.
Not always, no, but that line has been used super commonly throughout the comic’s run. Almost always to justify a storytelling choice that some people like and others don’t. Sometimes I’m in one group and sometimes I’m in the other.
And I’ve never liked this line as a defense. I find it lazy and condescending as a discussion point. As if *I’m* the unreasonable one for not liking a character choice that feels out of left field.
Just because you *can* technically use “the characters are dumb teenagers” to defend literally anything, that doesn’t mean it’s a good or satisfying excuse.
It’s a valid excuse in terms of “this is a story,” not in “Joyce doesn’t need to suffer any consequences.” We’re all (well, many of us) looking forward to those consequences.
Are people using it as an excuse, though? I know I’ve only used it as an explanation, much as someone might explain a kitten peeing where they shouldn’t by noting they don’t yet understand where to do that.
It’s not what they’d ideally do, and hopefully they’ll learn better, but we can still explain why they’re doing the thing they shouldn’t be doing.
Just to add: I personally find the webcomic easier to read if I just roll my eyes at DoJo’s foolishness instead of getting emotionally involved in the outcome.
Aside from brief moments of attempting to resolve matters, they’re being stupid about this whole thing and there’s no indication that’s about to change.
Besides, at worst, said eye-rolling takes your gaze from the strip, delivering a brief respite from looking at their latest brain-overridden-by-horny moment.
Slowly but surely the superior ship name is catching on
Still low-key pissed y’all claim to love this ship and then gave it a disrespectfully nasty ass shipname like “joyrothy”. That’s even worse than jorothy. My mouth doesn’t like making the shapes required to pronounce that. Garbage, utter garbage, DoJo is literally RIGHT THERE and it’s SO COOL
There is a cascade of consequences awaiting the young lovers. Sarah is pissed. Becky is Dorothy’s roommate. Hank. Carol. Ukulele boy. Walky and Joe aren’t dead or gone.
I mean. It just hasn’t stopped being true once this whole time.
Also as other people have pointed out, explanation != excuse. Along the same lines, “I think this is a mitigating factor” isn’t the same thing as “the characters aren’t doing anything wrong”.
This is the only take in this vein I agree with – Joyce needed to have called Jocelyne to let her know, and called her dad to either get ahead of the conversation or to initiate a proper discussion.
I’m just confused about what they expected to be able to do by going to the newspaper office. Like, anyone who they’re worried about seeing it may have already seen it, and pulling all the physical editions would have been deeply impractical. Maybe they could have pushed harder to have it pulled from online in case Hank hasn’t seen it yet, though. Daisy should probably have offered to blur their faces in the online edition, though doing that might open up the university to liability for not having done so in the first place.
I mean.. they’re not gonna cram the toothpaste back into the tube. Their biggest concern was the newspaper and they were just told there’s nothing they can do about that, so at best they can rush around to clear things up with their friends before they find out from the news.
Otherwise.. ye. The building’s already on fire, the exits are blocked. All they can do for now is wait and watch and either be burned or see the structure crumble around them.
I am not in any way saying folks can’t judge and speculate based on the current strip, because like, that’s the whole ballgame here, we might as well all stop commenting if I make that argument.
But I do think “this morning has been one stressful thing after another and so they tried to steal a moment to themselves to recover and maybe reaffirm that all of this stress (including being outed to the whole school) wasn’t for nothing”… makes sense? At least for this strip.
Plus, it’s not like Jennifer is going to let them have that before kicking off the next leg of the crisis, is it. It’s not like she’s here to give them both high-fives.
(She might have mixed feelings re: high-fiving Dorothy, she DOES care about Walky a lot even if she has trouble showing it — but also she’s been worried about Dorothy bottoming out, and she did indirectly encourage both of them to do this when she didn’t know it was going to involve cheating on Walky. She told Joyce you can make out with your best friend and still be platonic besties; she approved of Dorothy sending lewds as long as it wasn’t to Walky and tried to “help” by giving Dorothy a photo of her own cleavage to use for that purpose; she told Dorothy that maybe Joyce “should be” hers, because Dorothy’s angry defense of her friendship skill was “the first time [she’d] ever eeen a fire lit under [Dorothy’s] ass”.
Jennifer might not be self-aware enough to put all of that together, but like, heh. She MIGHT also feel some responsibility. And she might also be somewhat relieved that Dorothy isn’t singing more depressed karaoke. Just like some part of Becky might be relieved that Dorothy is doing this instead of more “numbly dissociating in the middle of the night”.)
The TL;DR on the first part of my comment is that I’m personally reserving judgment because I’m not at all convinced the drama of the newspaper outing is over. I think Jennifer is also here right now because she saw it, rather than because Walky texted her off-panel, and I think Hank and potentially Carol are also going to be factors. I think Joyce and Dorothy are trying to catch their breath for a moment, but that that doesn’t mean that even they think this is completely over, and even if they do, they’re wrong.
TL;DR on the second part is “oops I put a couple more things together re: Jennifer”. I still hope she’s going to be on Walky’s side here, and I also hope Walky is going to react more than we saw from him, but I bet he hasn’t told anyone he’s hurting yet, so I bet she’s here because of the newspaper? And also she has more potential reactions to this development beyond either generic disapproval of cheating or specific defense of Walky.
Frankly, having her find out about this from the newspaper and initially ASSUME Walky is fine with this would allow Willis to have their cake and eat it too: Jennifer can have all those other reactions now, without compassion for Walky getting in the way of them, and then she can talk to Walky later and be a shoulder for him! And potentially circle back on Dorothy or Joyce later!
Billie having heard about this from Walky and coming to be a good sister to him would be my ideal but I’m done holding my breath that I’ll get anything I’ll find satisfactory out of this storyline except maybe a messy attempt at poly from Joe/Joyce/Dorothy.
I didn’t say get rid of; I said taken care of. It’s like being hungry; you eat when you’re hungry, but eating once doesn’t eliminate being hungry in the future.
You satisfy that desire/need, and that desire is taken care of until enough time has passed that you have the desire/need again.
So what will it be Jennifer?
Will you get on them for betraying Walky?
Congratulate them on realizing their feelings?
Comment on how their kiss took focus away from the protest?
Some fourth option I’m not thinking about?
Or some combination of any and/or all of them?
She was on Walky’s side the last time they broke up, but she hasn’t been particularly friendly or close with him since the semester started, despite their civil conversation the last time we saw them, so I give it 50/50.
I mean you’re absolutely right, and funnily enough Dorothy said a very similar “if he’ll cheat with you he’ll cheat on you” line to Joyce regarding Jacob back in the day. Funny that she’s in that role herself now.
This is actually fine for them to do while Joyce mulls over what Joe proposed. She actually doesn’t have to tell Dorothy jack nor shit about it until she’s decided something on her own, because until that exact moment, it literally does not affect Dorothy in any tangible way. Do not dare put the @ symbol in front of me.
It’s withholding information that Dorothy might want to have before she feels comfortable kissing or being physically affectionate with Joyce. She was the one most insistent that they break up with their boyfriends before doing anything and, well, that hasn’t actually been accomplished.
If I was in Dorothy’s position, I wouldn’t think it was fine. It would impact how comfortable I’d feel doing things with Joyce. I would consider it breaching the boundaries I tried to set between us.
I mean, does she have a leg to stand on in that position though? They started their sexual relationship via cheating even if you look at it in the best possible light.
And of course, she should have had a proper sit-down discussion about their standing as a couple before she just *assumed* they’re exclusive.
I mean, it’s just not assumed you’re exclusive in this age of dating after all!
Its a tad more than just “assuming” when the girls discussed breaking up with “their boys” as a first step on the to do list. Not everything happens on screen but what we’ve seen definitely points to their having decided to be exclusive – would be weird to be only Walky-and-Joe-exclusive.
Joyce doesn’t need to decide now, but it’s been long enough now since it was put on the table by Joe for her to tell Dorothy she’s considering it and asking her to think about it too.
Now of course much depends on whether Joe and Joyce are still an item. Some people seem to think yes, others no, but from her reactions, Joyce seems to think they’re still together ad référendum.
So now she needs to scramble up some courage and do it. It’s cruel to drag it on.
But… Yeah, it is difficult. It’s easier to say “Rip off that ban aid” than to do it, and I’m definitely guilty of putting off tough discussions, so she’s got my sympathy. Not my approval.
I feel like you’re treating a philosophical debate brought up repeatedly in the comments for something any of the characters ever suggested they believed, and/or expecting people who pointed out that Joe and Joyce never technically discussed exclusivity to now be outraged that you’re “flipping the script” on them, because you think the people who were making that argument don’t really believe it.
I suggest you direct this trolling at people who actually made the argument, rather than random commenters. It’ll be less confusing that way, and you’ll get to find out whether they’re actually hypocrites or not.
If I were in Dorothy’s position I would think it was fine. But neither of us is Dorothy and neither of us is Willis so maybe we should just wait until we know if Dorothy is fine with it or not before we start arguing about how horrible Joyce is for doing something that people may or may not be fine with depending on the person being asked.
I try not to worry about whether my takes are “correct”. Any time I do, I find myself getting needlessly defensive and acidic about it, and that’s not a fun way to be.
For reals. She said they had to break up. He said, “okay, but what if?” as a counter-offer and she said they could talk about that later. Right now, it’s just a counter-offer on the table, one she has not picked up.
There’s kind of a reflection of laundry night, and also something Dorothy said to Joyce during the Jacob episode about rival suitors, that makes me feel Dorothy signed up for this.
yeah, like, honestly? it is a conversation joyce needs to have but i dont think theres anything wrong with having a little “oh thank god we’re finally most of the way out of these woods” kissing. this day has been a lot so far, they could use the relief!
It’s really not though. Whether she ultimately breaks up with Joe or not s up to Joyce, but not telling Dorothy that she hasn’t, after explicitly telling Dorothy how she’s going to break up with him, is scummy.
It is, in fact, fine. No laws are being violated, no gods are infuriated, and the cymatic scan from Psycho-Pass hasn’t even changed fucking color. Enforcement Mode is not authorized.
I feel like finding a more private area to do this would be better. An example would be they could go to the theater, choose a movie that has few people, or no people, watching, and make out in the dark.
Not that I want to plant any ideas, but some Joyce/Dorothy action would be nice…
Well said. So far only Sarah has called out the bullshit, with her disappointment in Joyce carrying more weight than I expected. Maybe Jennifer/Billy is going to add some fuel to that.
Walky has agency. If he didn’t want to get back together with Dorothy, he could have said no. She has never forced him into anything. He did, in fact, tell her no at one point.
is skater girl’s comment NOT in response to pointing out that dorothy hasn’t been fair to walky during their relationship? if i’ve misread which comment the reply is in reponse to – my bad! but in what way would the words “if walky didn’t want to get back together he could have said no” in response to suggesting that she had been mistreating them in their relationship not be brushing it off as something justifiable or excusable?
Sorry. I’m bad at picking up on implications sometimes, and maybe focussed too much on Skater Girl’s exact text and not enough on context.
His continued willingness to get back together with her could be taken as acceptance of her treatment of him (and she’s outright stated it’s not meant to be a serious relationship), but even as I was typing that I was reminded of how people sometimes return to their abusers. I don’t think that’s what’s been happening in the comic (and I’m confident it hasn’t been intended as such), but… well, I just mean it’s evidence that someone getting back together with their ex isn’t proof that they were fine with everything about it.
Besides, as Joyce and Dorothy have repeatedly demonstrated, hormones can override sense.
…and all the above isn’t to say anything about how healthy their explicitly-casual relationship was. That was a lot of waffle to admit my comment was foolish, wasn’t it?
Joyce has been in two (2) prior relationships, and neither of them started or ended with a lie from her, so. Literally not even sure what you’re trying to say there. Is Ethan’s attempt to convince himself he can be straight somehow a lie Joyce was telling him? Are you trying to call the mess with Jacob’s brother a relationship? What about when Joyce was extremely upfront with Joe about what she was looking for in a partner, and he let her think he was totally down for all of that, when really he just wanted to “fix” her with his dick? Is that also somehow her lie, or were you not counting it because one date doesn’t make a relationship?
Seriously: you can be displeased by what’s happening here without trying to comfort it into some sort of deep truism about the characters.
(I don’t agree with your characterization of Dorothy’s relationship with Walky either, but at least I can sort of understand how you got there.)
I’ve been liking the pairing more for this shift. Their old dynamic was fine as friends, but I wasn’t really feeling it as a romantic ship. The gain vs loss in confidence sorta levels the playing field a bit.
Whether realization she cannot save the world, she’s overwhelmed or she was pining for Joyce so hard—Yale was originally Dorothy’s priority. I distinctly Dorothy musing if Walky’s academic struggles were ADHD—but we never really followed up on that. Instead? Hussy pills.
I WOULD LIKE TO STATE FOR THE BENEFIT OF MY OWN SANITY I DONT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH WHO HOOKS UP OR DATES OR SMASHES WHO IN THIS COMIC.
EHEM.
…Anyway, I think Dorothy is already there in terms of Joyce = Priority 1. Been there for a VERY long time.
Joyce is kind of treating Dorothy badly too by not telling her any of this stuff. Like, maybe Dorothy wanted to try the polycule thing with Walky, or would’ve at least liked the opportunity to consider it, but Joyce dumped Walky for her. That’s on top of the BJ thing, and now not telling her she hasn’t broken it off with Joe yet. Kind of dick moves all around by Joyce.
It’s funny, in previous strips, Joyce thinks the reason for Dorothy’s problems is her own, and Dorothy denies it.
Believe me, I wish for both of them to learn a lesson, not a tragedy, but to see if it truly opens their eyes, especially Dorothy’s. (My hope and faith in her is already very small, fragile, and on the verge of shattering, but it’s there.)
I’ve decided Becky won’t be showing up because Willis is going to introduce sci-fi elements like UFOs, aliens, and government conspiracies. Becky is going to be kidnapped by aliens, given superpowers, and then recruited to overthrow the dictator of Bulmeria. Who is a kind of alien, a head alien. This spinoff will be called It’s Becky.
I just wonder how long it’d be before the shippers find a way to hack the blockchain. You say you and that other person can’t stand each other, and are also sexually incompatible? But the app says you’ve been secretly pining for each other since you met, and finally got together one night, with hundreds of people who know all about it despite there having been no witnesses!
That’s AI! Blockchain at least performs extremely basic, minimal functions. It is at least a program that does something. The similarly enormous waste of water and electricity, the acceleration of climate change in the name of “””the future”””, is also very similar.
AI is gonna destroy the tech industry when it pops, lol sob
Also yeah I said AI is bad at everything. People talk about it “analyzing” huge amounts of data when it can’t even analyze the number of r’s in a word.
(They specifically patched ChatGPT for “strawberry” so it no longer says 5 r’s. But try any other random word, especially words with no r’s in them. It isn’t analyzing shit, it is just putting words together in a vaguely convincing sequence.)
AI is pretty damn good at some things, in that I’ve personally helped set up some machine-learning/machine-vision applications that resulted in reducing waste in some factory processes by upwards of 90%.
LLMs like ChatGPT? Yeah, they’re basically just planet-killing, art-theiving hallucination generators.
(Personally I can conceptually understand why you’d want a language model AI. I have yet to come up with a worthwhile use case for “distributed write-only ledger”, which is what a blockchain fundamentally is, that doesn’t fall apart in some way or another.)
Yeah, I used to make distinctions, but then it turned out that the “AI” that was supposedly so good at detecting cancer was actually just really good at detecting whether or not an x-ray has a ruler in the shot for scale (something we do when there’s a tumor).
So. You know. Now I don’t trust that any “AI” we’ve developed actually does what we think it does. 🙂
Yeah, it’s funny, when I was working on machine learning I wrote a serious white paper for my organization’s internal training titled “You are not smart enough to design a machine learning project” and about how any project that didn’t involve at least one subject-matter expert in the process being automated and one data scientist who understood to look for stuff like the ruler thing was DOOMED.
But like, specifically, if you were a software engineer who was good at setting up and training machine learning models, you were NOT TO EVEN THINK ABOUT IT unless you had a staff of actual experts on both sides telling you how to do that setup and training.
Yeah, we are not, as a whole, even trying to create something worthy of the name “AI”. We are trying to devalue human labor. And the people steering the ship are all people who decided from the outset that a more convincingly human response when not knowing something was to lie rather than admit it, so. It’s all poisonous fruit in a more technical sense than usual, lulz.
Oh I forgot one more thing “AI” seems to be good at, encouraging dangerous delusions and self-harm! I’m so glad it’s being actively advertised to teens as a free therapist!
(Also let me clarify: I don’t think Blockchain is the right tool for any job really, I just think it DOES do what it’s programmed to do, which gives it a real leg up on “AI”.
Blockchain creates a write-only ledger, as you note. That has limited applications in logging actions, like packages shipped, where you don’t need to want to edit entries once they’ve been made. Blockchain is still incredibly inefficient, by design, at doing that, and also ludicrously vulnerable to social engineering because it was created by people who wanna imagine themselves as fighting off Hollywood hackers instead of dealing with the vastly more common, more mundane ways in which people gain access to systems, but it does, technically, create write-only logs of actions!
Meanwhile “AI” appears to be best at laundering plagiarism and, like, facilitating the kind of spam needed by scammers.)
Oh, there are a LOT of use cases for a write-only ledger that’s externally cryptographically verifiable. There aren’t any use cases where it adds anything useful to spread that ledger across thousands of machines and have them get paid mostly-trivial amounts to do a shitload of math to keep track of it, though.
Right but that’s so deeply intrinsic to the concept, heh.
Ugh. I worked in tech for 12 years, I was a casualty of mass layoffs last year, and I am simultaneously depressed about the loss of a career track I enjoyed and was good at, and fully convinced the popping of the bubble here is what my industry deserves.
Please let the ruination of the industry at least bring us UBI before we all starve 8D;;;;;
It still feels weird that Becky has this much mind share in their relationship. Like if things were reversed and Joyce were possessive and jealous enough it got between Becky and Dina would that be accepted from Becky?
It’s not about possessiveness or jealousness, it’s about *hurt*. Becky was in love with Joyce for years, while Joyce just thought of her as family. They’re worried that their relationship will reopen that wound for Becky.
We don’t actually know if it will, and there’s no indication at all that Becky would get in the way or behave in any way that would be unfair to Dorothy or Joyce. They’re concerned out of *empathy,* because she’s important to both of them. She’s basically Joyce’s sister and Dotty’s roommate.
Sorry, this post is far too humanizing of Dorothy and Joyce. You need to balance it out with a six paragraph screed about how this strip should be a perpetual morality play, and make absolutely sure that everybody knows just how morally wrong you understand the characters actions to be, lest everybody naturally assume that you are an amoral social degenerate who condones every bad action you have ever seen in fiction. Otherwise, how will we know you don’t actually kick puppies, or eat orphans?
Hi there. I’m one of the people with many of the opinions you’re reacting to.
Whether this comes from a place of condescension or a place of hurt, I just wanted to let you know that this exact sentiment is shared by a lot of people over here too.
Hopefully this reads as sympathy and not yet another barbed jab at the “other side.” Your comment and the way it portrayed people like me got me super pissy and I lined up a whole bunch of snarky comments before I realized it was getting such a reaction because I’ve been in your exact shoes.
I’ve been confused on their dynamic every time this subject comes up because it feels like a double standard to me. Becky is never this considerate about Joyce’s relationship with Dorothy even when it was platonic. It wouldn’t hurt Joyce as well? I know Becky is a friend and you don’t want to see your friends hurt by your actions it would just be nice if Becky showed any of that same consideration all this time instead of being so jealous.
Becky has been pretty unconditionally there for Joyce, and as recently as a few nights ago, Becky noticed Dorothy was having a rough time and dropped the nemesis act to help, up to and including deferring to someone else when she realised Dorothy wasn’t up for talking with her personally about it, even with Becky being a little jealous every time Dorothy and Joyce show or imply even platonic intimacy in front of her. I think it does make perfect sense for both of them to be a little worried about Becky’s feelings, even if they know neither of them are actually “betraying” her in any tangible way – Becky tries to take care of them and their feelings, and they want to return that favor. None of these girls are perfect angels, so I’m willing to give all of them a little slack for trying to look out for each other when they understand that it matters.
(inb4 many comments about how Joyce and Dorothy aren’t looking out for the boys/each other right now when it matters, yadda yadda – like I said, they’re not perfect, they do need to talk, I’m not begrudging them a little kissing first until people leave them alone long enough for more than 10 seconds at a time so they can actually have a private conversation)
This point too, but I guess they’ve both technically known Becky longer than either if their most recent relationship s have lasted. If that’s where their priorities are.
IMO, part of it is not wanting to hurt Becky. Another part of it is not wanting to have to think of themselves as the sort of person who would hurt someone they actually care about (like Becky). See Joyce’s shock and horror a few pages back at having to admit that she is a “hussy”.
Your mileage opinion may vary to what degree these motivations apply – or, if you prefer, which is stronger/what the ratio is.
Billifer! Honestly I hope the rest of this storyline is just Joyce/Dorothy trying to mack on each other and repeatedly being interrupted by their friends (including ghost Mike idealy) until it finally get’s to Becky; who has inconceivably not heard the news yet.
I don’t care about walkys feelings, joyce and dorothy care about walkys feelings, WALKY doesnt care about walkys feelings, statistically speaking someone, somewhere, had to give a shit about him
Joyce’s key choice of saying “informed” is certainly doing a lot of heavy lifting for her while also giving her some plausible deniability. Though I am not so sure if Dorothy will very enthused by the fact that Joyce can claim by technicality that she never actually deceived Dorothy about not having broken up with Joe yet, when Dorothy inevitably learns that factoid.
She did break up with joe. Joe’s reluctance to accept it and proposal of a Poly relationship does not change the fact that she broke up with him and said she did not want to date them both.
She said she would talk to him later, not that she would think about his proposal.
You and I read that conversation very differently. What Joyce said is that she can’t date them both, because she’s “not a hussy”. Not that she doesn’t want to. In fact, I think it’s pretty safe to infer an “I want to, but …” before both of the “I cant!”-s in that strip. The problem here is one of post-fundamentalist sexual shame, not one of lack of desire. We know she loves Joe. And we know she loves Dorothy. The only problem (for her personally) is that dating them both would mean perceiving herself as a sinner.
She also never said “I break up with you”, she said “I have to break up with you”, something she clearly didn’t want to do, to which Joe responded with asking why. Joyce was then presented with an option where she doesn’t have to end it with him. After which the more urgent matter of the newspaper came up, because the risk of Becky (who could be very hurt by all this) seeing it meant it needed attention right now. And since Joyce is impulsive, she ran off to deal with that. I really don’t see where this “Joyce and Joe are broken up!” thing comes from. They have had half a conversation about it at best.
From her choice of “informed” and “my boyfriend saw it” (plus her face and “Errrr” when amended by Dorothy to “ex”), I’m inclined to think Joyce herself feels she’s no more than 35% broken up with Joe.
Going from “We’ll talk, okay? I promise,” to ignoring that promise in favor of more smooches while passionately embraced is lending credence to my theory that Joyce is becoming Old Joe, in the sense that she’s using physical indulgence in order to avoid being hurt by emotional honesty. All those feelings she had for Joe didn’t evaporate overnight! But she doesn’t have to think about dealing with those feelings so long as she keeps getting her mack on. It’ll be fun to see where her Anti-Joyce arc goes!
She said she would talk, not that she would at all think about his proposal. She broke up with him, even said she did not want to date them both and made it clear she has decided to be with Dorothy.
She said they would talk because she didn’t want to leave it like that but had to run off, and its been like maybe an hour since she left, still plenty of time for her to go finish that talk when everything has been dealt with.
“We’ll talk” in this context is understood to mean “we’ll talk about what you’re proposing” by any reasonable person, come on now. If she meant “No, absolutely not, we’re through,” then that would be one thing. She didn’t, though! Hell, she even confirmed that the question is up in the air two strips ago, when she and Dorothy first burst into Daisy’s office. To say that a clean break happened is a poor reading of what happened at best and a willful disregard of the events we’ve seen at worst.
I mean, no, she hasn’t made a clean break, but “we’ll talk” also doesn’t mean “I’ll come back as soon as humanly possible and give you an immediate answer.” Although she does need to prioritize figuring it out.
I imagine at this particular moment, she doesn’t know what she wants, and what she’s okay with. She’s going to have to figure that out before she can talk with Joe, and before she can figure out what she wants, she has to know what Dorothy’s boundaries are. Becoming a hinge between Joe and Dotty also means probably giving Dotty the option to stay with Walky, which is probably something she actively *doesn’t* want, and even if she’s okay with it, she’s going to have to apologize to Walky and make it clear she’s okay with him, which is going to be embarassing after her razzing earlier.
And honestly while they’re taking this moment to comfort each other and be affectionate, they still really need to make sure Becky’s okay before they can have that conversation with clear hearts. So there’s a lot that needs to happen before Joyce can give Joe an answer, unless she already knows the answer is “no.” If the answer even might be “yes,” she can’t commit to staying with him and THEN talk to Dorothy.
To quote someone above, “What Joyce said is that she can’t date them both, because she’s “not a hussy”. Not that she doesn’t want to.” And she ended that strip with the shocked realization that she in fact is a “hussy”.
She promised they woild talk later not that they would talk immediately the moment she is free. She can do other stuff before that.and it’s not breaking that promise
I think some of yall’s want for them to be Poly has blinded you from what has actually happened.
Joyce Broke up with Joe on her end, she told him they have to break up and was against dating both her and joe. In Joyce’s mind it is Dorothy all the way.
Joyce said that she would talk to Joe later, she did not say that she would think about them being in a poly relationship or anything of the sort, she simply said she would talk to him later, probably to explain her feelings further.
Joyce told him she was breaking up with him, thats where that relationship ended. It does not matter if Joe did not consent to the break up, it happened regardless. They may have a conversation about it later, but regardless, they are broken up and Joyce has full rights to be with Dorothy now.
She doesn’t even Owe Joe that conversation, she just feels bad for leaving it like that.
I mean, she did specially say “We’ll talk, okay? I promise,” which is a weird thing to say to Joe’s proposal if she considers the two of them 100% over with! If she didn’t actually mean that she’s willing to weigh being poly and instead just lied to Joe for the sake of convenience, then I don’t think anyone can say that she’s operating from any sort of moral high ground.
That assumption relies on her saying “Well talk” meaning that she wants to continue discussing the poly thing, which would be ignoring the many other senarios that could happen.
Joyce straight up told him she did not want to date them both, that she couldn’t.
She told him they would talk more because their conversation was cut off nearly mid thought because of the newspaper issue, if she ran off without saying anything it would be like she was running away from the issue.
Joyce broke up with him, her saying that she would talk to him later does not change that.
Joyce showed dissonance with Dorothy about the idea that she and Joe were now exes literally two days ago. I’m sorry but you’re objectively wrong about this!
She seemed pretty unsure if Joe was actually her EX-boyfriend when Dorothy corrected her about it 2 strips ago. “Yyehh?” is not a sound of confidence in that regard.
Relevant strip: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/dateboth/
And that latter statement was followed by “I’m not a hussy!” which (aside from being an implicitly internalized anti-poly reaction) was countered by the last panel’s “I am a hussy!”
So, if the reason she “can’t date two people at the same time” is that she’s “not a hussy”, but it turns out that she actually is “a hussy”… well…
A refresher: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/endorse/ and the following strip.
I’m not going to get into counter-arguments because OngoingConversation handled that pretty well two thread up (nicely relevant username, incidentally); to summarise, in case of TL;DR reactions: those strips imply pretty strongly that breaking up was something she felt obliged to do, not that she wanted to do.
Technically, her words were “that’s why I have to break up with you.”
To which, Joe asked her why, which altered the path. She *attempted* to break up with him but didn’t close that door.
If nothing else, think about how Joyce keeps referring to Joyce in a present possessive nature. Still referring to him as her boyfriend and not agreeing enthusiastically when Dorothy referred to him as an ex. Plus in this strip, saying “our boys.”
IMO, per my comment above, she walked into that room believing that she had to choose one or the other. She left believing she has permission to keep everything she wants and not have to give up anything.
It’s an absolute win! (For Joyce.)
Why do you assume Joyce is thinking about Walky, in any sense at all? She’s already juggling Dorothy, Joe, and her crushing guilt from her evangelical upbringing. That’s a lot right there.
Yes. Some people (it’s you) are very attached to their specific reading of the comic and aren’t leaving any room for any other option to be true.
She went in the room intending to break up with Joe. Whether she feels she did or not is up for debate (see above: the debate) until she explicitly states it. Not sure why you fired a dart at people who want the poly relationship to happen when no one was boxing you about it, but go off I guess.
TL;DR: Yeah, maybe SOME of us (again, you) should acknowledge their viewpoint is biased.
Anyone else wonder if the Ernie Pyle statue is one of those statue mimes, and they’re sitting there with an itch they catch scratch until these kids either leave or tip them.
The reason they’re off-panel is so Willis doesn’t have to tag them.
I mean, she still DOES need to finish talking to Joe, but I think we can allow her putting that off for a bit, Joyce deserves a break to be cute and gay with Dorothy, billy has other plans though it seems
Bro literally died so everyone across the universe could do whatever they wanted under any and all circumstances forever without any catches or conditions. You don’t need to ask him, he already said okay.
Well, she did inform him and was given explicit consent from him to keep kissing Dorothy. Encouragement, even. I think as far as Joyce is concerned, she’s totally in the clear for a smooch or two in terms of not going behind the boys’ backs.
Dorothy’s back is a different matter, to be fair, but presumably they’ll get there when they run out of interruptions.
Yeah, Dorothy pretty much didn’t even get to hear what Walky’s response was. :/ Sure, he remarked that he “saw it coming”, but that doesn’t say whether he was OK with it, or what he wanted to do going forward. I do love Joyce and Dorothy (not necessarily their ship), but this whole situation has me facepalming a lot. >.<
It just struck me; Joyce has been putting off the important conversation about Joe (and, ideally, Walky too). Maybe, when they try to explain the situation to Jennifer, she’ll take it upon herself to “solve” their problem for them in a way that makes everything worse and forces an immediate decision regarding poly and such… which could well end up with Joyce encouraging Dorothy to take Walky back, out of a sense of fairness and some sort of belief that it’s a necessary concession for her to keep Joe.
And, of course, the urgency could prevent them getting advice on how poly relationships work, so they think everyone involved has to get along…
What’s true: they’re no longer sneaking around! The boys have indeed been “informed”!
Also true: Joe has okayed this. He probably wouldn’t begrudge than a little bit of post-“we’ve been outed?!” adrenaline smooching.
Also true: Dorothy demonstrably thinks Joyce broke up with Joe, and it’s possible the next conversation might end with Dorothy saying “it’s me or him”.
I imagine that Joyce figures she’ll choose Dorothy if she has to pick one, so smooching her is still okay. I also doubt she’s really let herself think much further than that: I don’t think she’s currently on the page of “I definitely want to keep dating both of them,” so much as, “gosh, I need to think about this more, I wonder what Dorothy will think.”
I assume she does NOT think a possibility for the upcoming conversation is “Dorothy ends things the second she hears I even want to think about polyamory, for whatever reason”, but it IS a possibility, however remote.
(It might freak Dorothy out, or it might make her look on Joyce’s interruption with Walky a lot less kindly, or… etc.)
While that possibility exists, it’s crummy to seek smooches. But I doubt Joyce is thinking of that.
Huh. I guess this means that, when Joyce had that big epiphany moment about everyone reading the newspaper, she was just thinking that she needed to let Dorothy know. I thought that was a “oh no, Becky knows, we gotta deal with that” setup.
Every time I read the comments, I’m gobsmacked by all the judging, and the view that “they ought to be punished”. I mean, what is this? Fundie religion 101, they bin naughty, God gunna smack them?
Dude is writing us a story. Enjoy it.
The objections from most of the relationship paladins here have nothing to do with instant gratification or with attention span. It’s that the consequences directly linked to cheating are being explicitly defused. Joe doesn’t care about the cheating, he just wants to keep dating Joyce anyway he can. Walky just shrugs it off in a joke strip.
With Walky, I’m pretty sure that hurt will come later. We all know he avoids sadfeels like the plague, so him seemingly shrugging it off with a joke doesn’t at all necessarily mean he was okay. But also, him and Dorothy really weren’t a relationship with much fire from either party, so it makes sense he wouldn’t take the breakup too harshly.
With Joe, he’d seen this coming from a mile away. He says as much himself (“Who do you think nudged Dorothy in your direction?”). So while the consequences haven’t been coming, that hasn’t been contrived in any way. And depending on how Walky and/or Becky react later on, they might still arrive.
“Joe doesn’t care about the cheating, he just wants to keep dating Joyce anyway he can. Walky just shrugs it off”
See though, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Walky had one panel to react, Joe had 4 strips and the final one ended with him looking very concerned. This is a melodrama, you’re going to have to wait for the stakes to ramp up for maximum oof to occur. That’s just how story arcs work.
See though, this is exactly what I’m talking about.
Yeah, the poly thing is likely to blow up in their faces and Walky is likely to be affected down the road, but both of those look to be tied more to the poly attempt itself or just to being dumped (again) in Walky’s case than to the cheating part.
There isn’t even a poly thing happening yet. I know there’s been a lot of “isn’t there someone you haven’t asked?” jokes, but there literally is, Dorothy. Joyce ran off, thinking she’s gonna have her cake and eat it too, slapped the cake out of Dorothy’s hands, and just assumed Dorothy would be okay with going splits on her with someone she’s disliked for years. It could very easily be dead in the water the second Joyce says “Joe wants to take me out for dinner” and Dorothy says “I thought we were breaking up with our boyfriends?”
Folks seem to forget Dorothy has a strained history/relationship with Joe. She borderline called him a predator when he first started showing interest in dating Joyce. Dorothy thinks Joyce is everything and angrily thought it was unfair that Joe always manages to get everything he wants. And yet SOME HOW they’re magically going to be poly and okay with both dating Joyce at the same time. Not to mention Dorothy’s constant correction of “ex-boyfriend” whenever Joyce mentions Joe.
Some of us would like to see some actual negative consequences for cheating and other shitty behavior. Unfortunately we’ve seen very little of that so far.
There’s a real “secular belief in a just universe” energy in these comments, the main site comments, specifically. Like, it kind of permeates them, and I’m not going to go off into a tangent about cultural Christianity because 1.) false, we’ve seen it from a whole spectrum of self-confirmed non-Christians around here and 2.) we don’t need another pointless religion debate.
It’s just an, uh, really idealistic view of how universes both fictional and real operate, though, that human morality systems mean anything and that consequences will find the guilty, inevitably. That’s not how life or stories work?
Yeah, actually, I should amend my thoughts there, because yeah, sometimes it’s nice to see a fictional just universe! Sometimes! Escapism is healthy and fun!
Watching Black Sails, in utter bafflement that there’s no child character (voiced by Cree Summer) looking into the camera and saying “Today I learned an important lesson about the paying close attention. If John Silver hadn’t distracted the Captain with his terrible pig roast, Flint would have noticed the ropes coming loose on the tree, and Randall would still have his leg.”
Unless those self confirmed non-Christians were raised somewhere Christianity isn’t the norm then they’re still culturally Christian. You wind up absorbing shit from all the Christians around you in society, especially from media that just assumes that both the characters and the audience are obviously Christian and care about all the things Christian’s are supposed to. Or at least the version of Christianity endemic to the country the media is from.
I mean, this comic has been pretty much that in a lot of ways all along. It’s been a story about dumb kids growing up and learning lessons. Especially Joyce. Unlearning her old bad ideas and bigotries. Or Joe, learning not to objectify women.
I don’t expect a protagonist in this comic to be openly prejudiced or sexist and stay that way. I expect that to be confronted and them to learn and grow. Because that’s what I’ve seen for years. I guess cheating is different.
That title has been thrown around so much lately, I finally looked it up. Seems like the point is that the red A is stupid and just makes things worse for everyone.
So I’m confused. Joyce got worried and ran off on Joe because she realized that the picture means folks like her parents are going to know about her smooching Dorothy. The ladies’ initial reaction was to try and bar the door long after the horses had all left. And Daisy told them “those horses are two miles down the road, friendos”.
So they’ve realized they can’t prevent folks from seeing the IDS. But Joyce then going “oh well, may as well smooch my gf” seems…really off to me.
Folks will know I’m a “paladin”, but this isn’t even about the boys- that’s a completely separate Charlie Foxtrot. What it is is Joyce, someone who’s still supposed to be hung up on the shame of others seeing her as a sexual being, just…accepting it. If this strip was something like “I need to go do damage control, but give us a kiss first”, I wouldn’t be here. If Dorothy was freaking out and Joyce tried to calm her down with a smooch, I wouldn’t be here.
Really, if this strip wasn’t acting like confronting Daisy only to be told “nothing to be done” was the entirety of what DoJo felt like they needed to do in reaction to being plastered across the front page, I wouldn’t be here.
But, like, how is this in character? How is Dorothy not working on drafting up her public statement that she thinks she’ll inevitably need? How is Joyce not planning on reaching out to Jocelyne in order to manage their parents’ responses? Heck, how is Joyce not scrambling for the nearest tree now that she’s aware everyone on campus can prove she has a sex drive?
I’m sorry, but Joyce has *never* been an “in for a penny, in for a pound” type before. It being too late to do anything should be making her freak out more, not less.
Joyce’s entire history is nothing but “in for a penny, in for a pound.” Once Joyce finds something that grabs her attention, she hyper-focuses on it. Remember when she discovered Dexter and Monkey-Master? Remember when Dorothy introduced her to some new music? The only way she really knows how to engage with a new interest is to jump in head-first, with genuine enthusiasm.
Not to belittle her relationship with Dorothy by comparing it to a hobby, or anything, but this is hardly out of character for her. If “being in a romantic relationship with Dorothy” is the new paradigm, Joyce’s natural reaction is to go: “OK, paradigm shift complete, full ahead, Warp 9.”
Oh, wait, she wasn’t allowed to watch Star Trek. It promotes (checks writing on hand) anti-capitalist beliefs.
Thinking on it, I may have used the wrong idiom. What I meant was that Joyce has never been someone who goes “they’re going to judge us anyways regardless of what we do, so I may as well do what makes me happy”. I think what I meant was more https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/one_may_as_well_hang_for_a_sheep_as_a_lamb
Point is, Joyce has never been one to not be neurotic about how others percieve her, and this strip is very much her not only not being neurotic about it but full-on making out in public, a remarkable escalation from any previous PDAs she didn’t do in the middle of a cloud of tear gas.
It’s not the same thing, but she was willing to stand up to her parents in a dramatic and highly visible way to defend her friendship with Dorothy rather than just keep quiet until they went away.
This? Yes, it’s full-on making out in public, but it’s clearly already too late to keep it secret, and there don’t seem to be many people around (despite Jennifer’s chance arrival).
Just to add, though: being aroace, I don’t understand this whole “hormonal and must kiss” thing, so can’t judge how much it’d affect a normal person. Or, for that matter, Joyce and Dorothy, who are possibly as far from normal as I am, but on the opposite side.
See, I actually think that strip *supports* my point.
Because Joyce took the active option there. She confronted her parents and defended her love for Dorothy. Despite her being told, essentially, “there’s nothing you can do about it” when it comes to her parents making decisions for her, she stepped up to the plate and went to bat for Dorothy.
But here, she’s taking the passive option. There’s nothing she can do about the newspaper, so she’s not even going to try, she’s just going to cuddle up to Dorothy.
So something that Willis has talked about before (in Shortpacked!, if memory serves) is a fantasy that they, and other former fundies they’ve spoken to, have had regarding sex. The fantasy went that they and another person had both done something so horrible that they were now 100% guaranteed to burn in hell for all eternity no matter what, so they might as well fuck like bunnies because their souls can’t possibly become more damned than they already are no matter how much they sin. Basically a really fucked up imaginary nightmare framework that freed them to be sexually expressive, because that was the only way they could imagine having sex before marriage without crushing guilt and fear of divine wrath.
This fantasy/kink never fully went away even after shaking off their faith. Joyce is an autobiographical character. She is now in a situation where her reputation as someone who wants to do passionate smooches with Dorothy cannot possibly get worse, with all the consequences it entails. She is already in hell. So it doesn’t surprise me that acts that she previously recoiled at performing in public no longer bothers her; her reputation in that arena is already out of her hands.
I genuinely think you are just underestimating adrenaline crash.
They did a full panic. Dorothy APPARENTLY managed to round up all the newspapers — Raidah obviously lives nearby, either on a different floor of their building or in a very nearby building, because we keep seeing them run into her when they’re on their way in, but she’s not under Ruth’s auspices as RA.
They came all the way here, still running on that panic — and then crashed in the face of Daisy’s massive shrug emoji.
I get that there’s still a couple of things they could theoretically do, but I also find it entirely believable that they’re emotionally and physically exhausted from the morning, and horny IS a reaction to surviving dangerous situations, which is one of the things that makes adrenaline crash.
TL;DR: I mean, I’m ace, but I get it? Seeking comfort from each other is a pretty natural progression.
The way this strip is laid out for me, it’s very much a transitional strip. It’s moving from the problem of the newspaper outing to dealing with Jennifer’s reaction to the new happy couple.
And…the fundamental problem of the newspaper outing them hasn’t been solved. Sure, there’s nothing DoJo can feasibly do right now. But that’s never stopped either of them from worrying about problems before (hell, that’s Dorothy’s entire brand) and the strip here is very much giving me a “problem solved, what, me worry” vibe.
It’s a continuing pattern that I’ve noticed that major obstacles in the face of DoJo don’t seem to last long at all.
I mean. If the last panel of this strip didn’t exist, you’d have a stronger argument? It’s more like dramatic irony, that Joyce thought they could steal a moment to smooch “after” a crisis, only for the consequences of the newspaper outing to immediately continue. Unless you don’t think Jennifer is reacting this way because she read the article? (I doubt Walky told her.)
Your phrasing is also puzzling me. What do you mean by “obstacles in the face of DoJo don’t last”? Like, never mind the fact that this definitely isn’t over and it’s really surprising to me how many readers seem to think it is — in what way was this “supposed to” be an “obstacle” to their ship name?
1st paragraph:
I mean, in my head it still absolutely is dramatic irony? Joyce says “We’re finally in the clear” and then here comes Jennifer with a steel chair! I’m not debating that. I think Jennifer being introduced means a *different* obstacle to them getting it on compared to the newspaper crisis. If tomorrow Jennifer goes “yeah, everyone on campus is talking about you two” and it does tie into the newspaper crisis, sure. But my assumption is that Alice told her, and that what she wants to address has more to do with the relationship between Jennifer and DoJo rather than addressing how Joyce’s dad or the public at large might take the news- related, yes, but definitely a separate issue.
As to the second paragraph:
Let me put it in a metaphor: Dorothy & Joyce’s relationship (DoJo) is a train, and “obstacles” are things that might slow down the train from its maximum speed. “Brakes” would be a better term for them, honestly. Not something that would derail the relationship like a log lying across the tracks (in this metaphor meaning make them break up) but something that would slow down their momentum.
The first and most obvious brake was the cops. That was solved via application of Amazi-girl.
The next and perhaps just as obvious brake was Joe. That was solved by making him OK with sharing Joyce with Dorothy. Essays can and have been written by many people feeling some sort of way about that characterization decision, but for the purposes of this discussion what matters is that another brake- that Joyce might decide to slow down/change her relationship with Dorothy because of how Joe felt- was removed.
The “Walky” brake was removed via Joyce declaring that Dorothy was hers and not his.
And the brake of “the front-page picture on a student newspaper that Joyce’s dad reads online outed us what are we going to do about that” got removed by, as you put it, Daisy’s massive shrug emoji telling them “well, there’s nothing you *can* do”. And apparently they’ve come to terms with that and decided to accept it- that, to me, flies in the face of their previous characterizations, where Joyce is neurotic about how other people perceive her and should be an anxious mess that everyone is going to know she’s “a hussy” while Dorothy’s inability to accept that there’s nothing she can do about a problem is the entire core of her breakdown over the past few months.
There are other potential brakes, yes.
Becky is the most obvious- she’s named in the strip as one, basically- but I’ll be honest, I don’t expect her reaction to in any way have a meaningful effect on DoJo’s pace to being status quo. Even if Becky feels some sort of way about it (and I think that’s far from a guarantee), the fallout there would mostly be centered around her relationship with Dina rather than leading to DoJo being more discreet out of consideration for Becky’s feelings.
The other big brakes we have yet to see are any sort of self-reflection on Joyce’s part to being someone who kisses women now or Dorothy realizing that her spiraling and PTSD are *not* going to be solved just because she can kiss Joyce now.
To continue the metaphor, none of these brakes being applied means that the train is a whole heck of a lot more likely to derail when it hits a swerve- with “derail” here meaning “have a big messy falling out”. But I’ll be honest- I’ll eat my hat if that happens soon. Because this relationship train hasn’t had any brakes basically since DoJo went to that bar together and it shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. I just don’t see the big crash coming, I see everyone and everything getting out of the way so that DoJo can keep going at breakneck speed.
TL;DR- and I don’t blame you- I see Jennifer as a separate problem to the newspaper outing, and I realize “brakes” is a better term than “obstacles”. And so I don’t really expect whatever Jennifer brings up to give these two pause for more than, like, 2 strips.
Okay. I guess I just haven’t conceptualized any of those things as obstacles to Dorothy/Joyce. At most they strike me as obstacles (or brakes, either way!) to the two of them getting to kiss on screen?
Like, to my way of thinking, obstacles to DoJo would be more like all the hurdles that have already been overcome: Dorothy struggling to accept that she’s really bi, Joyce missing Dorothy’s cleavage pic when it first got sent, Dorothy trying to convince both of them that their mutual attraction was “just” a trauma response… and now we have a new one, which is that Joyce hasn’t yet told Dorothy how her “breakup” with Joe went!
Those are obstacles to them as a couple.
Cops at the protest? That was never an obstacle “to” them, it was an obstacle “for” them — an action sequence through which they maneuvered together and over which they can now bond.
Sarah’s disapproval was the same, and if Becky disapproves, that will also be the same. I doubt Dorothy’s PTSD is going to be an obstacle, either — it’ll be something Joyce helps her through, because that’s one of the things being a couple means.
(It would be neat if Joe also wound up helping her through it; waves my “metamor!Joe+Dorothy platonic friendship flag”.)
The difference, IMHO, is whether or not a given obstacle / brake has any actual potential to stop these two from being a couple: the cops didn’t, except maybe by straight-up killing one of them? Sarah and Becky don’t, though they do have the power to potentially make them feel guiltier about how they got together. Joe didn’t, though again he could have made Joyce feel guiltier — and he wound up not doing that, because, as I really must emphasize was foreshadowed, he knew this was coming and expected it. Walky definitely didn’t!
Now, mind you, Joe might be part of the last real obstacle I see at the moment, but it’s not anything he’s doing: if anything goes south here, it will be 100% on Joyce not telling Dorothy soon enough, or Dorothy agreeing to try polyamory but turning out to be too possessive to handle it. It won’t be because Joe presented an obstacle or a brake.
Final note, bc I think this is the last major thing I haven’t responded to, but ADHD so I’m sorry if I missed something else! I am trying 🙂…
“And the brake of “the front-page picture on a student newspaper that Joyce’s dad reads online outed us what are we going to do about that” got removed by, as you put it, Daisy’s massive shrug emoji telling them “well, there’s nothing you *can* do”. And apparently they’ve come to terms with that and decided to accept it- that, to me, flies in the face of their previous characterization.”
I really don’t think this is actually what’s happening — that they’ve come to terms with being outed… I just think this is a moment of trying to grab hold of the one positive thing they’ve gotten out of this exhausting awful morning! And that if Jennifer hadn’t interrupted, if NO ONE else interrupted, at most we’d get a quick Slipshine cutaway, followed by them lying there, sticky and tired and feeling a little better… and then having the real world come crashing back in.
They might, for example, get a text from Hank at that point.
So yeah, there’s my take! I might be wrong. But I would be very surprised if this strip were meant to show that they’ve both come to complete terms with being “out” and are gonna go, like, buy queer identity pins to advertise their new status to everyone they meet. Similarly to how I’ll be very surprised if Willis isn’t planning on bringing Hank back in, or if it turns out that Walky really has ZERO further reaction to Joyce/Dorothy.
I think we’re actually mostly in agreement here re: brakes, so I’ll keep this short for both of our sanity’s sake.
You said “At most they strike me as obstacles (or brakes, either way!) to the two of them getting to kiss on screen?”
And…yes, exactly. That’s why I changed terminology. All the things I brought up aren’t going to *derail* the DoJo express to New OTP City, they’re merely things that would mean they get to Grand Kisstral Terminal later than scheduled.
Giving that review of Pride & Prejudice — “just a bunch of people going to each other’s houses”. Yes, if your definition of plot is strictly based in action set pieces, romances have never had plot.
Credit to I think Contrapoints’ video on Twilight. The books are very crappy but it’s literally untrue to say the first one for example has no plot until the last few chapters: that’s when a villain kidnaps Bella, sure, but the book was full of plot before that point, it was just the kind of plot that’s very typical of romance… girl and boy feel mutual attraction, various forces (including many of them internal!) try to keep them apart, girl and boy overcome forces to get together.
There ARE inciting incidents and rising actions, you just have to adjust your expectations for what those things look like if you’re not familiar with the genre.
Oh I should clarify she is QUOTING a negative review of the book to make a point lol. If the OP of the review was trying to be funny, then well done on their point as well! Otherwise credit to Contrapoints for putting it in humorous context.
Dorothy and Joyce are making out in front Franklin Hall … once the library at IU, which explains the inscription above the door – “a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit”, by John Milton. The full quote is from Milton’s Areopagitica (1644), an influential and impassioned philosophical defense of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression. As an aside, since Franklin Hall is now the home of Media Studies, the quote is still highly appropriate.
Two options
There’s a conga line of people waiting to interrupt their smooches
Jennifer will give them the worst advice possible with complete confidence and they will follow it.
You assume “it is true” means means she knows Dorothy and Joyce are together. I assume it means Billie’s finally accepted that Sal is not Amazi-Girl… since she now knows for certain that it must be Dorothy. We are not the same.
Kay I’m about to be very dramatic bc it’s fun, all of this is hyperbole (but not as much as I’d like)
The dissonance between their objective, on paper cuteness and the absolute nothing it gives me is slowly driving me mad. Its like Chinese water torture, every strip it gets a little worse; a drip feed of nothingness, every strip I turn over the nothing and there’s more nothing! I’m eating on Styrofoam while watching everyone else feast on a spread fit for the gods. Am I broken in some way? What is missing from me? Does my need for visual contrast truly run so deep that it destroys my ability to enjoy nice things? Why can’t I just watch the (VERY figurative) pretty colors? I don’t even want to dislike this ship, in fact I desperately want to love it. God I beg of you, have mercy on this poor sinner’s soul and let me see what they see, past the beige landscape of 5’4 bespectacled blonde whiteness, into the beauty that lies within. I am dying of thirst in an ocean, I am Tantalus being taunted with what is just out of reach.
I don’t care about “Joyce needs to communicate Joe’s proposition with Dorothy!” Or “they haven’t finished communicating perfectly with the boys!” (I mean, I wanna get back to that joe conversation bc it was more interesting but still). I don’t care about the morality of this relationship or the cheating or literally any of that. I just want to feel something. Anything. Even the drama in the comments is boring now, its all just people yapping about cheating or communication, or people yapping about those people 😭😭😭
See, this viewpoint I kind of fuck with, at least re: Joyrothy as a purely yuri, no-boys-allowed deal? Like, it’s not bad, it’s not immoral despite it coming from infidelity or whatever, but liiiike as just those two it’s like a very plain cheeseburger, no real toppings, strictly normal-ass fries.
When you add Joe and you have a full triad I start getting excited and hollering because now the spice is back! The new flavors are back! The odd combos that you don’t think will work are back!
Yeah I’ve been using a lot of food metaphors to describe how I feel about shipping lately, and I cant even call these two butterscotch mixed with caramel anymore (nice and sweet but redundant and indistinct.) they’re just. A meal Joyce would eat. That’s the best way to put it
This is really where I’m at. These two together on their own is agonizing to watch, just the whitest of white bread as far as yuri is concerned. Even the cheating doesn’t do much to make them interesting because the repercussions that I cared about seeing just kind of fizzled out.
Add Joe, make it a hinge? Now we’re cooking with gas. Now we have some meat on the menu. And not that cheap shit, I’m talking A5 wagyu steak imported direct from Kobe.
We are cooking with CHARCOAL babeyyyy
We are cooking with pimento wood, make this shit an emotionally complicated hinge situation and we are turning this boiled white chicken breast into JERK CHICKEN
It probably doesn’t help that there’s practically nothing new; for all that they’ve only “officially” been together since the protest, they’ve practically been a couple for most of the strip. It feels like they’re doing basically the same thing as always, just with kissing added and drama removed… which, in a way, is impressive.
All this panicked running around and worrying about cheating and such has managed to become less interesting than when they were, for example, getting excited about an iguana or spotting Walky in a cartoon or whatever. They had a more compelling relationship back when they were getting Joyce’s birth control!
I’m still hoping that it’s leading somewhere interesting, and it’s just the cute-for-other-people stuff slowing things down, but it’s hard to be enthusiastic anymore. So… when I’m clinging to poly hopes, it’s not just that I want it to be messy and confused, with them having no idea what they’re doing. I mean, that too, but just adding something else to this could make it less tedious. Joe? Yes, especially if it’s not a hinge (due to cluelessness) and Dorothy struggles to get along with him. But, at this point, I’d welcome anyone.
However: I still refuse to accept that Joyce is blonde. Blonde hair is yellow, and that’s a light brown, dangit!
The “Joyce is blonde” reveal fucked me up too, chief, you’re not alone.
I think they bring out the worst in each other in the least interesting way. Dots the most interesting when she’s breaking from her usual habits. She indulged in a lil goofiness when she was with walky (don’t want to compare to a straight relationship but that’s literally all we’ve got, so shrug). They balanced each other out, she drove him to try harder and he made her chill out and enjoy youth a little more. Dotty gets silly with Joyce sometimes, but more often than not she goes into mommy/manager mode. It may be her main character flaw but she’s still at her least interesting to watch when she’s just competently managing other people’s lives. And Joyce just. Let’s her do it. Because shes obsessed with dotty, she frankly welcomes it without any pushback (unless she’s particularly going through something like toward the start of season 2). A big part of their dynamic is just
D: Joyce you/we need to do [___]
J: Okay ily
Dorothy also doesn’t really push Joyce into any new territory either. Joyce gets inspired to change by knowing her, but most of that was tied up in when she was unraveling her religious upbringing. They can very easily just be, stagnant. They’re too comfortable, they’re like an old married couple in the worst way. Literally (but that’s Patreon stuff so I can’t talk about it much here I think).
Joe and Joyce were also just, very sweet and I can see why some people would find them dull. But there was internal conflict there! Joe’s fear of fucking up or “ruining” Joyce forever (in Liz’s eternal words), clashing with Joyce’s desire to break away from how she was raised and have sex because there’s no hell and she can and she wants to, which ITSELF clashed with her leftover puritanical programing. Watching them slowly untangle that, even if it was silent and undramatic, was very fun. Even now, Joes self loathing and idolization of Joyce basically meaning he’ll let her do whatever she wants, regardless of his own feelings is fascinating! Dotty and Joyce though, so far all their conflict is external, the baby gays vs the world who doesn’t like that they cheated on their boyfriends. I’m sure they’ll develop some internal conflict eventually but so far it’s just. Nothing. Its the kind of comfort you’ve earned like three years into a relationship, without any of the the anxious buildup and missteps from the start of a relationship. Its just the boring parts.
Things have just started so the interesting stuff is probably gonna happen eventually but like. Fuck its gonna be a slog to get there day by day.
Well, I found it worth reading anyway.
I was going to add something about how interesting things keep almost happening, but nothing comes of it… but, on second thought, is it actually less eventful, objectively speaking, than other storylines have been? Maybe it’s just that DoJo have been managing to be so bland that they drain the drama from stuff around them (and their smoochy moments feel almost like filler by this point… though I can’t deny the panel 3 cuddle was cute).
But maybe it’s as Donovan’s speculated below: the rewrites may have caused stuff just to not flow right for a bit. And there are many promising bits of setup that might yet fix things?
This storyline is really subscribing to that law of the universe: nothing ever happens. Things might almost happen, but they won’t. I definitely agree with Donovan, it’s probably the rewrites. I hope it is anyway.
I’m still banking on a Walky crashout, he’s due one by now
Having recently listened to “Once More With Feeling”, your comment is really giving me 🎼 I touch the fire and it freezes me 🎶 I look into it and see black 🎵 vibes.
Ships absolutely either connect with you or they don’t. It’s not a rational choice anyone is making, despite the many attempts to appeal to rationality that you’ll see in ship wars.
It hurts so bad when the ship you don’t connect with is at the center of the plot big dawg ಥ‿ಥ this comic is supposed to be my daily serotonin shot, WHERES THE SEROTONIN
Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I did that bit of poorly-thought-out shipping in the comments yesterday; some part of my brain’s confused about the presence of what initially seems to be a cute couple but just doesn’t produce the expected “aww” reaction, so I had to make up new possibilities to satisfy it.
You’re both super valid and I’m sorry! I’ve been there.
But yeah, ships… on a fundamental level they’re VERY very primal. If a ship hits you the right away, it’s amazing and you could listen to the characters read from the phone book for an hour if they occasionally paused to almost kiss.
If a ship hits you the wrong way, best case scenario: you’re bored. Worst case scenario, you’re viscerally upset in one of several ways.
(I think being triggered by a ship dynamic is a worse experience than being squicked, but let’s be clear that both are very personal, internal reactions, and an author that wrote a ship you find triggering didn’t do anything wrong. There is no such thing as a trigger-free ship dynamic.)
I’m with you. I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I’m not a Joyorthy fan. I wasn’t even a big Joe/Joyce fan. (I did like Dorothy/Walky; they are cute…I like how it seems to show a different side of Dorothy.)
Joyce is experiencing massive personal growth. Dorothy has been, too. It seems to me that when a character is experiencing massive personal growth, they should just…BE SINGLE for a while. Maybe a longish while.
In general, I’m not a fan of when protagonists just seem to fail upward into relationship after relationship. I never thought that was realistic on TV and I’m not a huge fan of it here, either.
In DoA, I would like if more characters could just be comfortable in their singledom. I mean, relationships are great and all, but it just doesn’t seem realistic to me that all these college students would be jumping into shacking up.
Maybe singledom is too boring in a narrative? But there are lots of interesting things happening here that don’t involve romance. I mean, there’s a dang superhero on campus who’s risking life and limb to fight cops!
And you can BE single and still fool around and hook up and such with other single people, without being unethical about it. I did that in college. I’m OK with the smoochy chart being an ouroboros.
Jesus, people, can we let the girls have a moment to kiss without getting notarized authorization from everyone they know? Is that really so much to ask? Who knew that coming out involved so much bureaucracy?
Meanwhile, panel 3 is all that good and pure in this world.
that’s a privilege only afforded to real people who are complex beings with autonomy and impulses adrift in the sea of circumstances that is life, not fictional characters which are inherently tools to facilitate a story that can effect the quality of the story.
Joyce……. you did get consent from Joe to also date Dorothy, but you didn’t get consent from Dorothy to also date Joe, but also didn’t tell Joe you decided to stop dating him……. CAN WE PLEASE HAVE AN ADULT CONVERSATION
WHY IS EVERYONE SO DUMB at this AGE
i must admit i initially misread your reply as the cast fucking the boxes, like the boxes themselves not just being inside a box while partaking in the temptations of flesh – and while i understand well what you meant upon an immediate reread, i have decided that maybe what dumbing of age really needs right now is some objectum representation.
…DID Dorothy tell Walky? And Joyce only got halfway thru her convo with Joe. I get that they’re all excited about this new thing but genuinely, they’re acting really weak. They’re human and make mistakes, of course – even moreso being dummies in college… but this kinda behavior definitely makes me like them less. Can’t wait for the fallout.
Joyce told walky, and then laughed in his face about it
Though I guess there’s a chance that he won’t realize she’s not just ribbing him like usual given it is pretty cartoonishly cruel to do that to a person for real
Joyce told walky, and then laughed in his face about it
Though I guess there’s a chance that he won’t realize she’s not just sarcastically ribbing him like usual given it is pretty cartoonishly cruel to do that to a person for real
real talk, I thought amber/walky was pure torture boring uninteresting ship, though now if it were revisited I think I’d find it more interesting, especially since I’m just sad to see less of Amber in contexts where someone actually likes her with no issues about it.
So, with that in mind… I love joyrothy. I didn’t ship them before it suddenly became apparent that this was where the narrative arc was heading, I didn’t get on board immediately, but the longing. That old familiar longing. The tempting! That old, familiar tempting! When two friends have feelings for one another but are afraid to will it into existence by speaking it, in case it’s just them, or their friend is too good for them. That hooked me!
And then the first kiss. And all the kisses after that. And seeing them cuddled up to one another, still enjoying the bliss of requited feelings. Yes, I love this, I think it’s fantastic. They are precious together, they are clearly, deeply in love. Yes, they are flawed people and their actions have hurt and will likely hurt others more. But also? Those people would have hurt. They would still hurt. It’s been two days, whether they broke up before touching, gave it a year out of respect for the death of their previous relationships, condemned themselves to celibacy forevermore to atone for their wicked thoughts while with Good Men… their boyfriends would still hurt, for a while, because they lost them. And it is the losing that hurts the most. That’s why people stay with cheaters, that’s why polyamory forms. People get into other people, and then they fear losing the bond they already have. It isn’t evil incarnate we’re seeing here, it’s human teenagers (ostensibly, this is Willis of course), fumbling through feelings so strong that they have probably never had anything equivalent in their lives.
It’s lovely to watch, and if we do get some up in arms rage anger then it will feel entirely to me like the christian shame-punishment complex in motion once again. How dare they be impure? Sinners! Cast into the depths of hell, and repent.
Well said, eskimolos. Love and other emotions aren’t so tidy those fit into neat little shipping containers we would easily digest. Especially the emotions of horny teenagers struggling with heavy baggage and narrow preceptions of identity and relations. Watching these characters learn and grow has been a joy. However, the raging discourse is also entertaining and edifying. Diatribes in this forum have been very well articulated and allow me a glimpse at a varied perspective. But be careful labelling those that would share their grievances, lest you feed the trolls!
Two things:
1. It’s been like 12 hours, not two days. Less than one day in story and more than a week out of story, so I’m not sure why you picked two days for your comment.
2. Considering the people who are poly or support poly, I wouldn’t reduce that type of relationship to simply fearing loss nor would I compare it to people who stay with cheaters. It assumes and dismisses their experience.
I don’t see it. He tried to talk to her into keeping him in her stable of lovers, and she didn’t even respond. It was “oops! Something important (not you) has come up, so I’m off.”
(“ethically dubious” referring to J+D’s entering their relationship via cheating, not the gay part, since someone or other in this comment section is bound to misinterpret this lol)
comic today is very good but i mostly wanted to comment to state how confused i was about the prospect of a bethesda massachusetts before realising that willis forgot that the abbreviation for maryland is MD and not MA
Well, I’m glad I came back and looked at the comments again. There were some much more interesting ones later. The ones going on about how sinful they are and how life should punish them were far too fundie for me.
And here is a story: 43 years after an event, I have just realised what I should have said at the time. But I didn’t say it at the time and the moment was past in a few minutes and I never saw either of the people again. It has taken me 43 years of life experience to know what would probably have been good to say, but I didn’t say anything, just walked away. What was I thinking all those 43 years that stopped me from realising? I was thinking about ME. What person B said to person A, about me, annoyed me so much that I didn’t think at all about how person A might be feeling. 43 years! Just apply that to this comic. And to yourselves. How often do you now what you should have said/done when it is way too late?
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aaawweee ^-^ <3
oh hai Billy XD
this should be fun :3
I wonder what her source of info is. Actually it’s probably Raidah/Alice, and she’s going to assume they’re just openly cheating. But I don’t think jennifer will actually deign to pass moral judgement or anything like that. If anything, she’ll be relieved that her one tit pic actually was for Joyce and not walky.
I was gonna say her source might be the newspaper, but somehow I can absolutely see Jennifer never reading that despite the fact that she writes for it.
Correct, she has specifically chastised Joyce for picking up the paper to see her own work published, which Billie is supposedly #TooCoolForSchool to do. While I’d be willing to believe that she nonetheless picks up the paper in secret to see HER OWN bylines, ain’t no way she’s ever read a news story (anywhere; I’m not limiting this to the school paper) not written by herself.
Evidence for this (or at least Jennifer’s claim):
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/publishedarticle/
Counterpoint:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/billing/
Guess it’s performative, then. Trying to act “cool” in front of others while privately actually caring? Who’d have expected that from her?
That’s our Jennifer!
[10 second sitcom theme music sting]
Aw, Ruth is super cute in this strip.
Me when Ruth
Almost certainly Alice
This isn’t necessarily in response to the photo. Joyce told Jennifer she’d had kinda sex with Dorothy. Walky told Jennifer Joyce probably didn’t.
Raidah told Carla.
The entire campus knows inside of half an hour
Joyce: “I consent”
Dorothy: “I consent”
Jennifer: “I don’t”
Don’t stop kissing. Just flip Ms Billingsworth the bird and carry on.
The kiss is great and all, but I am living for panel 3. Their little cuddle is so cute!
Yes 100%. Good cuddles are spectacular.
Yes you “informed” them…one might have been lead to a different conclusion than the other but whatever.
Yeah Joyce I get that you’re totally in love or whatever but there’s a conversation you should really be having now that the newspaper is apparently no longer an urgent matter
Counterpoint. Letting the ideas presented have time to be considered, and not rushing the discussion can allow for more reasoned discourse.
And in the meantime, she can make with the multiple hankies panky.
Somehow, I don’t think enough of Joyce’s brain will come back online for any productive conversation until after she gets a room with Dotty for a week anyways.
Honestly, I just want Joyce to have the conversation with Joe (a REAL one), so I can enjoy her and Dorothy smooching.
she told him she was breaking off with him. He said “hey, maybe we can make this work” and she said “uhh maybe” and then left. He has no ownership over her, she can do what she wants
They’re still not actually broken up which is probably information Dorothy would like to have!
Imo they’re quasi broken up rn. If they don’t go poly, that convo will have been the break up point. If they do go poly, then they never actually broke up.
Joyce explicitly deferred the conversation to a later point. There was no conclusion either way.
Sure, there’s a convo to have. But Joyce made it clear that, while she’s not closing the door on a poly future, the future will have Dorothy kissing in it. So while, yes, that is a convo to have sooner rather than later, there is no longer any problem with getting Dorothy kissing going.
I think y’all are forgetting that Dorothy herself might have opinions she wishes to express about whether Joyce is still dating Joe.
It’s not up to her if Joyce can still see Joe, but it is up to her if that’s an arrangement she doesn’t feel comfortable being in.
And she’ll ask. But as I see it, Joyce is not currently in a romantic relationship with Joe. As things are now, she wouldn’t smooch him or go on dates with him or do anything romantic until the matter is settled. There’s a ‘pending’ relationship request with a poly style arrangement, which Dorothy might well say ‘nope’ to. In which case it is no, Joyce has made it very clear that she chooses Dorothy over Joe. And so, I find these smooches to be entirely fine.
Schrödinger’s poly. They need to have that talk and collapse that wavefunction.
I really actually want them to do this, but my enthusiasm for it keeps being dampened by activation of every contrarian neuron in my body, some of which are newly generated.
Schrödingers breakup!
Well, don’t I feel silly for making the same joke a few minutes later.
The waveform collapsed, making all responses the same.
Maybe that’s what kept happening when I worked at Quizno’s in college. Every Sunday night different couples would show up having serious and tense deep conversations. They’d stay until we locked up and staff theory was that people needed to break up on Sundays in a Quizno’s. Schrödingers breakup (at Quiznos). We observed it, but couldn’t confirm if the relationship was alive or dead.
Joyce apparently thinks they are, despite the ambiguity with which she left Joe’s company.
She could, certainly, stand to be MORE clear about it with him, but as one who has been straight up ghosted by a partner at that age, following months (as opposed to days or perhaps weeks here) of dating, she could certainly be doing far worse than she is. She had an epiphany and shared it with him. His reaction is not what she expected, but in her hormone-addled state, that probably feels sufficient.
And plus Joyce a few strips ago had a very lose response when referring to Joe as her “Ex boyfriend”: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/splash/
She referred to him as her boyfriend two strips ago. And in this strip, she said informed them. Not broken up with them. She’s now hiding Joe from Dorothy.
When she finds out, I’m sure Dorothy won’t react to that news badly at all!
Yeah, Joe did leave her with questions. I’ll consider her clean unless she bangs Joe again before discussion/aftet Dorothy goes no/after she decides break up, or she leaves the discussion for more than a day, right now it’s confusing enough that I’d give her a bit of a buffer to at least get her head on straight to decide. Joe knows and is giving her the option and likely expects her to need a little, and she hasn’t boinked or kissed him since Dorothy expected the break up
Note that I’m not full on condoning her actions, just that, based on her actions so dar, I’m going, “Yeah, fine, a lot has happened in the last 24 hours, but she had better decide soon”
1. True, Dorothy would like to be more informed.
2. Joe explicitly said he was fine with her doing whatever with Dorothy, so while it is underinforming, it does not rise to the level of involving her in betrayal
Very good explanation. They are indeed in the clear. Joyce’s horrible mother may be after them already with another gang; what do they care what some campus busybodies think?
Joyce did not say anything close to a “maybe”. Re-read the strips. She legt realized she’s a hussy and dipped out of the conversation for more “pressing matters”.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/dateboth/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/everyones/
And remember, if she’s telling Joe that he’s on the back burner for “more pressing matters” even after he basically pleaded to still be in her life, he doesn’t matter to her. From what she’s saying in this panel it feels like she came to see the guys as an obstacle to Dorothy. Hence the sad close up on his face previously. That was a hurt man. Sarah was right, Joe didn’t deserve this, but how is it anything but over?
The behaviors in this arc are really hard to swallow from the characters. I mean, I want drama, but turning Joyce of all people, into this? It feels like in Pro Wrestling when a Hero wrestler goes Heel. Like she’s designed to get boos from a section of the crowd that once adored her. Same for Dorothy. Now we wait and see what Joe or Walky will do, but the writing seems to be pushing aside or making slight/light of any reactions they ought to be or are having.
The pressing matter probably was her realising that becky will see this picture. I don’t think that’s her dismissing Joe.
You mean the pressing matter they haven’t yet talked to but that’s now unimportant since she’s not anywhere near here?
No one has ownership over anyone but generally it’s encouraged to be considerate of people you care about and give some care to people’s feelings because we live in a society
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that it makes sense for this to be something joe is upset about. She isn’t dating Joe, in which case she should be able to do whatever she wants without arbitrarily considering him first.
Even if you treat her non-answer to his request to be poly as an unresolved thread, the end result is that the two options suggested were “Is dating dorothy” or “Is dating dorothy and joe” and in either case she can hug dorothy
Exactly; while I’m one of those who considers it unresolved, the fact is that Joe’s specifically endorsed Joyce kissing Dorothy (and/or doing other things) in a decidedly unambiguous way.
Just to add: I distractedly only replied to only the second paragraph. Whether she’s actually dating Joe is unclear and perhaps dependent on how “dating” is to be defined. The state of their relationship is ambiguous right now, due to a combination of Joyce’s indecision in the face of new information and sudden panic at trying to deal with an emerging crisis.
Also, I’m pretty sure David Willis is enjoying dragging this out and keeping us uncertain, hence the lack of clear answers given (Joyce and Joe will apparently talk later, Dorothy never confirmed Joyce’s claimed break-up of Dorothy and Walky… we weren’t even told exactly why Joyce panicked over the newspaper until it was shown — there may be still more to that than has been addressed).
“she isn’t dating joe” except she literally called him her boyfriend a few strips ago and then sort of gave a non-commital response when dorothy suggests otherwise. implying she either is still dating joe, wants to be, and/or still considers him her boyfriend. lol.
again, to reiterate: it is encouraged to be considerate of people you care about for a variety of reasons, and this does not imply ownership. while contextually reasonable to avoid getting into whether or not she’s still dating joe immediately is reasonable in the context of a few strips ago, it is something she may want to discuss with dorothy soon… because it is the considerate thing to do.
Joyce hasn’t even broken up with Joe, and she hasn’t told Dorothy of Joe’s proposal that they be a poly relationship. She ran off after seeing the newspaper and never gave him a proper answer.
The only person who Joyce gave a straight answer too on the status of their love life was Walky and it was “Your relationship with your favorite girlfriend is over! She’s mine now get lost loser.”
There is an argument that it would be deeply hypocritical for her to pursue a polyamorous relationship without at least offering Dorothy the choice of also having one, regardless of how unlikely it may be that either Dorothy or Walky is interested in that outcome.
Sure, but we can’t hold anything in that strip against her because it was a funny joke.
Weird read of what people were saying but okay.
Hey, the bare minimum is still the bare minimum!
“How dare you out us in the newspaper!”
“Also since we’re out here how about some nookie”
I wonder what the difference is. Hmm. I guess we’ll never know. A mystery for the ages.
One is concerning them being made known without their permission or authorization and one is about “well it’s pretty much known now that we might as well do a little.”
There is a difference
So there’s this lil thing called consent. I feel like you should know what it is but since you plainly don’t, I’ll go ahead and explain.
Daisy could have asked them if they wanted to be publicized. She didn’t.
Joyce could have asked to (and consented to) kissing Dorothy again right here and now. She did!
In one case, consent was obtained. In the other, it was not.
For example:
If you like coffee, and you drink coffee every day, it would still be very weird of me to walk up and pour coffee down your throat.
It would be totally reasonable of you to get upset. Even if you then immediately went and bought yourself a coffee.
Hope that helps!!
Oooo, yes. Pour it! Pour it down my throat!
( new fetish unlocked )
Also mixing up cause and effect.
It’s entirely possible to be like “I didn’t want to be outed to the whole school, but now that I have been, I might as well snuggle my girlfriend in public“, and that doesn’t retroactively make the outing fine with you!
That’s absolutely a moral and logical position to have. Indeed it’s probably the best way to approach the issue.
To sum up a discussion we’re having below in hopefully way fewer words: My view of Dorothy & particularly Joyce is that it’s not one that they would have (I expect more awkward flailing and panicking) but I don’t at all think this is an issue of hypocrisy or anything.
Totally a fair opinion to have! But this short pithy reply was definitely directed at the idea that they’re being hypocrites. I think I wound up coincidentally saying a longer version to you down below though, heh.
Also how in the fucking world is “making out” now “nookie”? Why are we so determined to collapse the waveform between “kissing” and “fucking”? Like, yes, cheating, kissing cheating, cheating BAD, I understand this logic chain, but “kissing = fucking” I just can’t get behind.
Nothing is true. Everything is permissible.
Everything is true. Nothing is permissible.
Truth is subjective and cheap. Permits are expensive.
Cheaps truths are subjectively permitted. Expenses must be permitted by your manager.
You can check out any time you want. But you can never leave.
+1 Love that song
Filthy Acts at a Reasonable Price
Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.
Even false things?
Even false things are true.
How can that be?
I don’t know man, I didn’t do it.
Hail Eris.
Kallisti!
“My dear doctor, it was all true.”
“Even the lies?”
“Especially the lies.”
permission is true, nothing is everything
Oohh. Do we have a legitimate practitioner of
sillychaos magick?No, just an old RAW fan.
I need someone to walk by these two macking and react appropriately for once. Someone start applauding for these two upon sight. Jocelyne knew the deal.
Eh, maybe Alice..
Unlike basically everyone else in the friendgroup she barely knows Walky and Joe and probably wouldn’t care to bat for them. And kissing someone inside a cloud of teargas is exactly the kinda grand gesture that mirrors that sorta “love wins” kinda of summer-movie ending of Alice and Billy’s promnight almost was.
Though swap the literal carcrash in the end to a metaphorical carcrash plowing through the friendgroup instead
Sal had the right reaction. This is barely any different from their normal dynamic
Really got a fire lit under their ass to deal with this emergency, huh
Yeah this feels hard to justify next to the strips from last Wednesday and Thursday. They were clearly in a rush to do something, and nothing’s really been accomplished since then, so what? Did they just give up? It doesn’t really add up to me.
They were literally just told that aside from an apology, nothing about the newspaper situation is fixable or preventable. Also, they’re horny and stupid.
I’m fucking sick of “they’re horny and stupid” as an excuse for every single thing these two do. You cannot justify everything with that and expect it to be satisfying.
They can and they WILL absolve Dorothy and Joyce of all culpability in their actions.
Sure why not. They’ve never done anything wrong in their lives. It’s all someone else’s fault. Idk whose, throw a dart.
A lot of opinions sure are being projected onto me today.
You misread my sarcasm, it was directed at Lumino. I am very tired of seeing “everyone forgives everything these two do” because it’s so categorically untrue even of readers who are indifferent to the (fictional) cheating.
Ouch! Who threw that dart?
OW MY EYE
I don’t expect it to be satisfying, least of all to you.
See also: every time “well it ain’t called SMARTING of Age” is used as a blanket defense for every storytelling choice
Explanation is not automatically defense.
Not always, no, but that line has been used super commonly throughout the comic’s run. Almost always to justify a storytelling choice that some people like and others don’t. Sometimes I’m in one group and sometimes I’m in the other.
And I’ve never liked this line as a defense. I find it lazy and condescending as a discussion point. As if *I’m* the unreasonable one for not liking a character choice that feels out of left field.
Just because you *can* technically use “the characters are dumb teenagers” to defend literally anything, that doesn’t mean it’s a good or satisfying excuse.
Criticisms of expectations should not be confused with defense of characters.
You seem, this time it bothers me, so the characters should be making objectively perfect decisions
It’s a valid excuse in terms of “this is a story,” not in “Joyce doesn’t need to suffer any consequences.” We’re all (well, many of us) looking forward to those consequences.
Are people using it as an excuse, though? I know I’ve only used it as an explanation, much as someone might explain a kitten peeing where they shouldn’t by noting they don’t yet understand where to do that.
It’s not what they’d ideally do, and hopefully they’ll learn better, but we can still explain why they’re doing the thing they shouldn’t be doing.
Just to add: I personally find the webcomic easier to read if I just roll my eyes at DoJo’s foolishness instead of getting emotionally involved in the outcome.
Aside from brief moments of attempting to resolve matters, they’re being stupid about this whole thing and there’s no indication that’s about to change.
Besides, at worst, said eye-rolling takes your gaze from the strip, delivering a brief respite from looking at their latest brain-overridden-by-horny moment.
As a recovering Warcraft addict, calling them “The DoJo” tickles my fancies like no Maytag ever has…
Horny stupid I.U. freshmen
Horny stupid I.U. freshmen
Horny stupid I.U. freshmen
Frenching at the protest
In the paper
Former Fundie laundried ’til she creamed
“Prez Doris” couldn’t take the warcrime scene
When the bastard coppers attack,
Amazi-Girl has got their backs
Horny stupid I.U. freshmen
Horny stupid I.U. freshmen
Horny stupid I.U. freshmen
Frenching at the protest
In the paper
Slowly but surely the superior ship name is catching on
Still low-key pissed y’all claim to love this ship and then gave it a disrespectfully nasty ass shipname like “joyrothy”. That’s even worse than jorothy. My mouth doesn’t like making the shapes required to pronounce that. Garbage, utter garbage, DoJo is literally RIGHT THERE and it’s SO COOL
How about “it’s been maybe ten goddamn minutes in-universe, have a little patience”?
There is a cascade of consequences awaiting the young lovers. Sarah is pissed. Becky is Dorothy’s roommate. Hank. Carol. Ukulele boy. Walky and Joe aren’t dead or gone.
Jennifer is the harbinger of many difficulties.
I mean. It just hasn’t stopped being true once this whole time.
Also as other people have pointed out, explanation != excuse. Along the same lines, “I think this is a mitigating factor” isn’t the same thing as “the characters aren’t doing anything wrong”.
meh, it’s correct characterization, not moral. They are making mistakes. Good for them! They might learn something.
The apology didn’t make it so Hank won’t see the photo. Why is that less urgent now?
When Rome is burning and there is nothing you can do to put out the fire, you might as well enjoy a little fiddle music.
This is the only take in this vein I agree with – Joyce needed to have called Jocelyne to let her know, and called her dad to either get ahead of the conversation or to initiate a proper discussion.
I’m just confused about what they expected to be able to do by going to the newspaper office. Like, anyone who they’re worried about seeing it may have already seen it, and pulling all the physical editions would have been deeply impractical. Maybe they could have pushed harder to have it pulled from online in case Hank hasn’t seen it yet, though. Daisy should probably have offered to blur their faces in the online edition, though doing that might open up the university to liability for not having done so in the first place.
And by “pushed harder” you mean “brought it up at all”.
I mean.. they’re not gonna cram the toothpaste back into the tube. Their biggest concern was the newspaper and they were just told there’s nothing they can do about that, so at best they can rush around to clear things up with their friends before they find out from the news.
Otherwise.. ye. The building’s already on fire, the exits are blocked. All they can do for now is wait and watch and either be burned or see the structure crumble around them.
Could probably demand they take the picture off the online edition at least. Wouldn’t fix anything but would prevent more eyes from seeing it ig
One more example of the weird tone whiplash that this entire storyline has going on, really.
I am not in any way saying folks can’t judge and speculate based on the current strip, because like, that’s the whole ballgame here, we might as well all stop commenting if I make that argument.
But I do think “this morning has been one stressful thing after another and so they tried to steal a moment to themselves to recover and maybe reaffirm that all of this stress (including being outed to the whole school) wasn’t for nothing”… makes sense? At least for this strip.
Plus, it’s not like Jennifer is going to let them have that before kicking off the next leg of the crisis, is it. It’s not like she’s here to give them both high-fives.
(She might have mixed feelings re: high-fiving Dorothy, she DOES care about Walky a lot even if she has trouble showing it — but also she’s been worried about Dorothy bottoming out, and she did indirectly encourage both of them to do this when she didn’t know it was going to involve cheating on Walky. She told Joyce you can make out with your best friend and still be platonic besties; she approved of Dorothy sending lewds as long as it wasn’t to Walky and tried to “help” by giving Dorothy a photo of her own cleavage to use for that purpose; she told Dorothy that maybe Joyce “should be” hers, because Dorothy’s angry defense of her friendship skill was “the first time [she’d] ever eeen a fire lit under [Dorothy’s] ass”.
Jennifer might not be self-aware enough to put all of that together, but like, heh. She MIGHT also feel some responsibility. And she might also be somewhat relieved that Dorothy isn’t singing more depressed karaoke. Just like some part of Becky might be relieved that Dorothy is doing this instead of more “numbly dissociating in the middle of the night”.)
The TL;DR on the first part of my comment is that I’m personally reserving judgment because I’m not at all convinced the drama of the newspaper outing is over. I think Jennifer is also here right now because she saw it, rather than because Walky texted her off-panel, and I think Hank and potentially Carol are also going to be factors. I think Joyce and Dorothy are trying to catch their breath for a moment, but that that doesn’t mean that even they think this is completely over, and even if they do, they’re wrong.
TL;DR on the second part is “oops I put a couple more things together re: Jennifer”. I still hope she’s going to be on Walky’s side here, and I also hope Walky is going to react more than we saw from him, but I bet he hasn’t told anyone he’s hurting yet, so I bet she’s here because of the newspaper? And also she has more potential reactions to this development beyond either generic disapproval of cheating or specific defense of Walky.
Frankly, having her find out about this from the newspaper and initially ASSUME Walky is fine with this would allow Willis to have their cake and eat it too: Jennifer can have all those other reactions now, without compassion for Walky getting in the way of them, and then she can talk to Walky later and be a shoulder for him! And potentially circle back on Dorothy or Joyce later!
Billie having heard about this from Walky and coming to be a good sister to him would be my ideal but I’m done holding my breath that I’ll get anything I’ll find satisfactory out of this storyline except maybe a messy attempt at poly from Joe/Joyce/Dorothy.
Oh well! There’ll be other storylines/
What I was trying to say was that she could not be doing that right now but still do it later, if she hasn’t heard about this from him yet.
Honestly at this point Joyce just needs to be sent out to a test range where she can safely detonate her horny.
on my planet they call that getting laid
I feel like “detonate the horny” is more appropriate for Joyce; she needs an explosively good time to get all those pent up desires taken care of.
yes, having really good and satisfying sex is definitely how you get rid of sexual desires
I didn’t say get rid of; I said taken care of. It’s like being hungry; you eat when you’re hungry, but eating once doesn’t eliminate being hungry in the future.
You satisfy that desire/need, and that desire is taken care of until enough time has passed that you have the desire/need again.
At their age, that period is literally measured in minutes.
They’re going to need to be stopped by something else, like dehydration, or chafing.
(I’d have added “or someone taking a garden hose to them”, but they’ve already shrugged off tear gas, a little water ain’t gonna do nothin’.)
Garden hoses await. Their roommates.
How do they know Becky isn’t near? BFF Becky-senses?
No body-snatchers screech audible even from off-campus.
It worked so well when Joyce, Liz, and Sarah were hanging out in Joe’s room.
Becky’s lesbian senses would’ve gone off already if she were in range
Really curious to see which camp Jennifer falls under. Paladins or sickos
We already know her stance that smooching your bestie doesn’t count. Depends on if she’s gotten over her own bi-phobia or not I guess.
It would be fun if Billie kick started the “Bi or lesbian now” fight these two are possibly freight training towards though.
Paladickos
So what will it be Jennifer?
Will you get on them for betraying Walky?
Congratulate them on realizing their feelings?
Comment on how their kiss took focus away from the protest?
Some fourth option I’m not thinking about?
Or some combination of any and/or all of them?
I know it’s too much to ask that Billie be a good sister to Walky for once but hope springs eternal
She was on Walky’s side the last time they broke up, but she hasn’t been particularly friendly or close with him since the semester started, despite their civil conversation the last time we saw them, so I give it 50/50.
Jennifer is far from my favorite, but with the current circumstances…….
Call them nerds and go ask Alice if she wants to make out.
That is indeed a fourth option I had not considered, but is very much on brand for her.
…I’m convinced. Go to, Jennifer!
Maybe it’ll be a your welcome for all of the heavy lifting she accidentally did to get them together?
Wouldn’t be the first time she wanted acknowledgement for getting people together.
5) Ask if they’ve heard from joyce’s dad?
6)ask if jocylin is ok
Regarding 6: https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/jocelyne+jennifer/ shows no matches. I don’t think they’ve met.
they may not have met, but may have been discussed in off camera discussions
Total dismissal of their relationship as “experimental” or “now you’re lesbians” because bisexuality is a myth?
The one you’re not informing right now is Dorothy, about the fact you’ve not yet broken up with Joe nor know if you should.
Joyce is intending to tap it out in Morse Code on Dorothy’s back molars.
I was thinking an entirely different place, look at you with the innocent soul.
Joyce, you should at least tell Dorothy about what Joe said and that you aren’t actually officially broken up with him.
I’d love to see Joyce get cheated on for once to see how she’d react.
Her phrasing is certainly curious.
“Informed our boys”. Still their boys, merely informed and not broken it off.
Certainly, we (and Dorothy) can infer that it means broken up, but Joyce is definitely being misleading.
It’s fiiiiine… Dorothy had her chance to be mad about Joyce banging Joe when Joyce gave him head.
But the equation has definitely changed since then, at least in Dorothy’s head.
Back then, she was still external to the official couple. Now — as far as SHE knows at least — she’s the “official” partner.
When one makes the job change from side piece to official, it’s not really a promotion, it’s just re-opening up the side piece position.
It would be fun if Joe went to karaoke and picked Sabrina Carpenter’s Taste as his song.
I mean you’re absolutely right, and funnily enough Dorothy said a very similar “if he’ll cheat with you he’ll cheat on you” line to Joyce regarding Jacob back in the day. Funny that she’s in that role herself now.
Joyce is still being shitty. Instead of being honest about her talk with Joe, she’s letting Dorothy assume they’re now broken up when they aren’t yet.
What Joyce heard from Joe is that she does not have to give up anything and can have everything she wants.
(I’m not saying that’s what he said; it’s what she heard, and would like to believe.)
I shouldn’t have taken a sip of water as I opened the comic- I nearly did an actual spit-take because I wasn’t expecting Jennifer.
Anyways hi Jennifer!
Nobody expects the Spanish Jenquisition!
I certainly didn’t expect her to be Spanish, no.
Sudden Jennifer!
(I’ll just take this moment to remind everyone of the last line here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/sudden/ )
Dorothy getting jealous towards Jennifer is priceless.
It’s true. It’s true. The crown has made it clear. This comic must get gayer all yeaaaaaaaaar.
This is actually fine for them to do while Joyce mulls over what Joe proposed. She actually doesn’t have to tell Dorothy jack nor shit about it until she’s decided something on her own, because until that exact moment, it literally does not affect Dorothy in any tangible way. Do not dare put the @ symbol in front of me.
It’s withholding information that Dorothy might want to have before she feels comfortable kissing or being physically affectionate with Joyce. She was the one most insistent that they break up with their boyfriends before doing anything and, well, that hasn’t actually been accomplished.
It’s fine.
If I was in Dorothy’s position, I wouldn’t think it was fine. It would impact how comfortable I’d feel doing things with Joyce. I would consider it breaching the boundaries I tried to set between us.
Yeah, it’s not a particularly auspicious start to a new relationship
Okay, that’s your opinion and it’s not illegal to have. What you’re not taking into account here is, it’s fine.
I mean, does she have a leg to stand on in that position though? They started their sexual relationship via cheating even if you look at it in the best possible light.
And of course, she should have had a proper sit-down discussion about their standing as a couple before she just *assumed* they’re exclusive.
I mean, it’s just not assumed you’re exclusive in this age of dating after all!
Its a tad more than just “assuming” when the girls discussed breaking up with “their boys” as a first step on the to do list. Not everything happens on screen but what we’ve seen definitely points to their having decided to be exclusive – would be weird to be only Walky-and-Joe-exclusive.
Joyce doesn’t need to decide now, but it’s been long enough now since it was put on the table by Joe for her to tell Dorothy she’s considering it and asking her to think about it too.
Now of course much depends on whether Joe and Joyce are still an item. Some people seem to think yes, others no, but from her reactions, Joyce seems to think they’re still together ad référendum.
So now she needs to scramble up some courage and do it. It’s cruel to drag it on.
But… Yeah, it is difficult. It’s easier to say “Rip off that ban aid” than to do it, and I’m definitely guilty of putting off tough discussions, so she’s got my sympathy. Not my approval.
A first step she never got confirmation on. Not Joyce’s fault that Dottie just *assumes* she’s exclusive without a notarized affidavit.
I can’t see how anyone could put the blame on this silly misunderstanding on Joyce, when Dorothy has done such slipshod paperwork.
I feel like you’re treating a philosophical debate brought up repeatedly in the comments for something any of the characters ever suggested they believed, and/or expecting people who pointed out that Joe and Joyce never technically discussed exclusivity to now be outraged that you’re “flipping the script” on them, because you think the people who were making that argument don’t really believe it.
I suggest you direct this trolling at people who actually made the argument, rather than random commenters. It’ll be less confusing that way, and you’ll get to find out whether they’re actually hypocrites or not.
If I were in Dorothy’s position I would think it was fine. But neither of us is Dorothy and neither of us is Willis so maybe we should just wait until we know if Dorothy is fine with it or not before we start arguing about how horrible Joyce is for doing something that people may or may not be fine with depending on the person being asked.
Finally, a correct take.
I try not to worry about whether my takes are “correct”. Any time I do, I find myself getting needlessly defensive and acidic about it, and that’s not a fun way to be.
For reals. She said they had to break up. He said, “okay, but what if?” as a counter-offer and she said they could talk about that later. Right now, it’s just a counter-offer on the table, one she has not picked up.
I like later. It’s like right now except without being right now.
There’s kind of a reflection of laundry night, and also something Dorothy said to Joyce during the Jacob episode about rival suitors, that makes me feel Dorothy signed up for this.
Perhaps these two will eventually revisit if they bring out the worst in each other.
yeah, like, honestly? it is a conversation joyce needs to have but i dont think theres anything wrong with having a little “oh thank god we’re finally most of the way out of these woods” kissing. this day has been a lot so far, they could use the relief!
Except they’re no more out of the woods than they were when it was critical that Joyce drag Dorothy away from Walky to deal with the crisis.
…yes, except I don’t think Joyce is actually mulling. She trips from one distraction into the next.
Why sweat the little details?
It’s really not though. Whether she ultimately breaks up with Joe or not s up to Joyce, but not telling Dorothy that she hasn’t, after explicitly telling Dorothy how she’s going to break up with him, is scummy.
Nah, she’s doing okay right now. Dorothy will survive a short period of ignorance.
It is, in fact, fine. No laws are being violated, no gods are infuriated, and the cymatic scan from Psycho-Pass hasn’t even changed fucking color. Enforcement Mode is not authorized.
oh no there she comes….
Isn’t that an 80s song lyric?
Or close enough for government work, anyway.
p sure it’s “whoa-oh here she comes….” but ye close enough
It’s true, bet you’re thinking, “She’s so cool”… that they did all what’s needed in 12 hours.
so, Willis… is this still non-canon?
I have to do it. Don’t trust Jennifer.
Alpha bongos always get the job done, even if you do not like the way they do it.
Correct.
Like a god damn house of cards…on FIRE.
I feel like finding a more private area to do this would be better. An example would be they could go to the theater, choose a movie that has few people, or no people, watching, and make out in the dark.
Not that I want to plant any ideas, but some Joyce/Dorothy action would be nice…
jennifer’s just mad it’s not her making out with dorothy. me too jennifer. me too.
I’m not very pleased with how Joyce and Dorothy “informed” their boys. They’ve treated them really badly so far.
They treated them how they have always treated people in their orbit, as disposable.
Joyce started or ended every relationship she’s ever been in with a lie.
Dorothy has constantly played around with Walky, picking up and discarding him at her whims with no concern about his feeling.
I think it’s time for people to admit that Dorothy and Joyce are just awful partners.
Well said. So far only Sarah has called out the bullshit, with her disappointment in Joyce carrying more weight than I expected. Maybe Jennifer/Billy is going to add some fuel to that.
Walky has agency. If he didn’t want to get back together with Dorothy, he could have said no. She has never forced him into anything. He did, in fact, tell her no at one point.
do you genuinely believe that justifies mistreating him in the context of their relationship?
? Skater Girl never said anything about that.
There’s plenty to argue about (as has been made clear by recent comment sections) without inventing new stuff.
is skater girl’s comment NOT in response to pointing out that dorothy hasn’t been fair to walky during their relationship? if i’ve misread which comment the reply is in reponse to – my bad! but in what way would the words “if walky didn’t want to get back together he could have said no” in response to suggesting that she had been mistreating them in their relationship not be brushing it off as something justifiable or excusable?
Sorry. I’m bad at picking up on implications sometimes, and maybe focussed too much on Skater Girl’s exact text and not enough on context.
His continued willingness to get back together with her could be taken as acceptance of her treatment of him (and she’s outright stated it’s not meant to be a serious relationship), but even as I was typing that I was reminded of how people sometimes return to their abusers. I don’t think that’s what’s been happening in the comic (and I’m confident it hasn’t been intended as such), but… well, I just mean it’s evidence that someone getting back together with their ex isn’t proof that they were fine with everything about it.
Besides, as Joyce and Dorothy have repeatedly demonstrated, hormones can override sense.
…and all the above isn’t to say anything about how healthy their explicitly-casual relationship was. That was a lot of waffle to admit my comment was foolish, wasn’t it?
I, for one, appreciate the introspection.
Now they can be awful together!
Umm no i don’t think i will admit that.
Joyce has been in two (2) prior relationships, and neither of them started or ended with a lie from her, so. Literally not even sure what you’re trying to say there. Is Ethan’s attempt to convince himself he can be straight somehow a lie Joyce was telling him? Are you trying to call the mess with Jacob’s brother a relationship? What about when Joyce was extremely upfront with Joe about what she was looking for in a partner, and he let her think he was totally down for all of that, when really he just wanted to “fix” her with his dick? Is that also somehow her lie, or were you not counting it because one date doesn’t make a relationship?
Seriously: you can be displeased by what’s happening here without trying to comfort it into some sort of deep truism about the characters.
(I don’t agree with your characterization of Dorothy’s relationship with Walky either, but at least I can sort of understand how you got there.)
*confort
*seriously, “began OR ended”, where are the ending lies…
Joyce just jumped in and bragged about her “victory” and Walker.
She didn’t even let Dorothy say it.
You know, I’m starting to think that if this keeps up, Dorothy will lose all will to think for herself and will only make Joyce “the real priority.”
*Joyce just jumped in and bragged about her “victory” to Walky.
It IS a neat reversal of their prior dynamic of Dorothy compulsively dragging Joyce kicking and screaming through basic adulting.
I’ve been liking the pairing more for this shift. Their old dynamic was fine as friends, but I wasn’t really feeling it as a romantic ship. The gain vs loss in confidence sorta levels the playing field a bit.
You could argue that was already the case.
Whether realization she cannot save the world, she’s overwhelmed or she was pining for Joyce so hard—Yale was originally Dorothy’s priority. I distinctly Dorothy musing if Walky’s academic struggles were ADHD—but we never really followed up on that. Instead? Hussy pills.
I WOULD LIKE TO STATE FOR THE BENEFIT OF MY OWN SANITY I DONT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH WHO HOOKS UP OR DATES OR SMASHES WHO IN THIS COMIC.
EHEM.
…Anyway, I think Dorothy is already there in terms of Joyce = Priority 1. Been there for a VERY long time.
Joyce verbally recognized that she did wrong and committed to finishing that conversation once she’s got her ducks in a row.
Joyce is kind of treating Dorothy badly too by not telling her any of this stuff. Like, maybe Dorothy wanted to try the polycule thing with Walky, or would’ve at least liked the opportunity to consider it, but Joyce dumped Walky for her. That’s on top of the BJ thing, and now not telling her she hasn’t broken it off with Joe yet. Kind of dick moves all around by Joyce.
It’s funny, in previous strips, Joyce thinks the reason for Dorothy’s problems is her own, and Dorothy denies it.
Believe me, I wish for both of them to learn a lesson, not a tragedy, but to see if it truly opens their eyes, especially Dorothy’s. (My hope and faith in her is already very small, fragile, and on the verge of shattering, but it’s there.)
I’ve decided Becky won’t be showing up because Willis is going to introduce sci-fi elements like UFOs, aliens, and government conspiracies. Becky is going to be kidnapped by aliens, given superpowers, and then recruited to overthrow the dictator of Bulmeria. Who is a kind of alien, a head alien. This spinoff will be called It’s Becky.
You’re hired! Here’s half a million virtual bucks, now go forth and make it so.
tbh i wouldn’t be opposed to like… a weekly strip of Becky just being domestic and loving life and loving wife
There should be some blockchain app for unambiguously determining the status of relationship terminations.
This is extra funny because blockchain isn’t that great at that
I just wonder how long it’d be before the shippers find a way to hack the blockchain. You say you and that other person can’t stand each other, and are also sexually incompatible? But the app says you’ve been secretly pining for each other since you met, and finally got together one night, with hundreds of people who know all about it despite there having been no witnesses!
> This is extra funny because blockchain isn’t that great at
thatanything.That’s AI! Blockchain at least performs extremely basic, minimal functions. It is at least a program that does something. The similarly enormous waste of water and electricity, the acceleration of climate change in the name of “””the future”””, is also very similar.
AI is gonna destroy the tech industry when it pops, lol sob
Also yeah I said AI is bad at everything. People talk about it “analyzing” huge amounts of data when it can’t even analyze the number of r’s in a word.
(They specifically patched ChatGPT for “strawberry” so it no longer says 5 r’s. But try any other random word, especially words with no r’s in them. It isn’t analyzing shit, it is just putting words together in a vaguely convincing sequence.)
Oh no, it’s pedantic nitpicking in my field! 😀
AI is pretty damn good at some things, in that I’ve personally helped set up some machine-learning/machine-vision applications that resulted in reducing waste in some factory processes by upwards of 90%.
LLMs like ChatGPT? Yeah, they’re basically just planet-killing, art-theiving hallucination generators.
(Personally I can conceptually understand why you’d want a language model AI. I have yet to come up with a worthwhile use case for “distributed write-only ledger”, which is what a blockchain fundamentally is, that doesn’t fall apart in some way or another.)
Yeah, I used to make distinctions, but then it turned out that the “AI” that was supposedly so good at detecting cancer was actually just really good at detecting whether or not an x-ray has a ruler in the shot for scale (something we do when there’s a tumor).
So. You know. Now I don’t trust that any “AI” we’ve developed actually does what we think it does. 🙂
Yeah, it’s funny, when I was working on machine learning I wrote a serious white paper for my organization’s internal training titled “You are not smart enough to design a machine learning project” and about how any project that didn’t involve at least one subject-matter expert in the process being automated and one data scientist who understood to look for stuff like the ruler thing was DOOMED.
But like, specifically, if you were a software engineer who was good at setting up and training machine learning models, you were NOT TO EVEN THINK ABOUT IT unless you had a staff of actual experts on both sides telling you how to do that setup and training.
Y’know, like the exact opposite of what we have at ChatGPT and Copilot and such.
Yeah, we are not, as a whole, even trying to create something worthy of the name “AI”. We are trying to devalue human labor. And the people steering the ship are all people who decided from the outset that a more convincingly human response when not knowing something was to lie rather than admit it, so. It’s all poisonous fruit in a more technical sense than usual, lulz.
Oh I forgot one more thing “AI” seems to be good at, encouraging dangerous delusions and self-harm! I’m so glad it’s being actively advertised to teens as a free therapist!
(Also let me clarify: I don’t think Blockchain is the right tool for any job really, I just think it DOES do what it’s programmed to do, which gives it a real leg up on “AI”.
Blockchain creates a write-only ledger, as you note. That has limited applications in logging actions, like packages shipped, where you don’t need to want to edit entries once they’ve been made. Blockchain is still incredibly inefficient, by design, at doing that, and also ludicrously vulnerable to social engineering because it was created by people who wanna imagine themselves as fighting off Hollywood hackers instead of dealing with the vastly more common, more mundane ways in which people gain access to systems, but it does, technically, create write-only logs of actions!
Meanwhile “AI” appears to be best at laundering plagiarism and, like, facilitating the kind of spam needed by scammers.)
Oh, there are a LOT of use cases for a write-only ledger that’s externally cryptographically verifiable. There aren’t any use cases where it adds anything useful to spread that ledger across thousands of machines and have them get paid mostly-trivial amounts to do a shitload of math to keep track of it, though.
Right but that’s so deeply intrinsic to the concept, heh.
Ugh. I worked in tech for 12 years, I was a casualty of mass layoffs last year, and I am simultaneously depressed about the loss of a career track I enjoyed and was good at, and fully convinced the popping of the bubble here is what my industry deserves.
Please let the ruination of the industry at least bring us UBI before we all starve 8D;;;;;
If you did anything remotely close to infrastructure automation, I’ll let you know when my next opening comes up.
“Aw damn it, my situationship with Amazi-Girl got funged!”
all my girlfriends gone
Did you try using multiple slurp juices?
Cute… also boom
It still feels weird that Becky has this much mind share in their relationship. Like if things were reversed and Joyce were possessive and jealous enough it got between Becky and Dina would that be accepted from Becky?
It’s not about possessiveness or jealousness, it’s about *hurt*. Becky was in love with Joyce for years, while Joyce just thought of her as family. They’re worried that their relationship will reopen that wound for Becky.
We don’t actually know if it will, and there’s no indication at all that Becky would get in the way or behave in any way that would be unfair to Dorothy or Joyce. They’re concerned out of *empathy,* because she’s important to both of them. She’s basically Joyce’s sister and Dotty’s roommate.
Sorry, this post is far too humanizing of Dorothy and Joyce. You need to balance it out with a six paragraph screed about how this strip should be a perpetual morality play, and make absolutely sure that everybody knows just how morally wrong you understand the characters actions to be, lest everybody naturally assume that you are an amoral social degenerate who condones every bad action you have ever seen in fiction. Otherwise, how will we know you don’t actually kick puppies, or eat orphans?
Don’t cut yourself on all that edge.
There is nothing edgy about that comment?
Its not edgy to point out how annoying the commentariat can be
All the edge of a billiard ball.
Hi there. I’m one of the people with many of the opinions you’re reacting to.
Whether this comes from a place of condescension or a place of hurt, I just wanted to let you know that this exact sentiment is shared by a lot of people over here too.
Hopefully this reads as sympathy and not yet another barbed jab at the “other side.” Your comment and the way it portrayed people like me got me super pissy and I lined up a whole bunch of snarky comments before I realized it was getting such a reaction because I’ve been in your exact shoes.
I’ve been confused on their dynamic every time this subject comes up because it feels like a double standard to me. Becky is never this considerate about Joyce’s relationship with Dorothy even when it was platonic. It wouldn’t hurt Joyce as well? I know Becky is a friend and you don’t want to see your friends hurt by your actions it would just be nice if Becky showed any of that same consideration all this time instead of being so jealous.
Becky has been pretty unconditionally there for Joyce, and as recently as a few nights ago, Becky noticed Dorothy was having a rough time and dropped the nemesis act to help, up to and including deferring to someone else when she realised Dorothy wasn’t up for talking with her personally about it, even with Becky being a little jealous every time Dorothy and Joyce show or imply even platonic intimacy in front of her. I think it does make perfect sense for both of them to be a little worried about Becky’s feelings, even if they know neither of them are actually “betraying” her in any tangible way – Becky tries to take care of them and their feelings, and they want to return that favor. None of these girls are perfect angels, so I’m willing to give all of them a little slack for trying to look out for each other when they understand that it matters.
(inb4 many comments about how Joyce and Dorothy aren’t looking out for the boys/each other right now when it matters, yadda yadda – like I said, they’re not perfect, they do need to talk, I’m not begrudging them a little kissing first until people leave them alone long enough for more than 10 seconds at a time so they can actually have a private conversation)
I get that and it’s reasonable to be concerned about her.
It’s that they’re treating her as more of a concern than their actual boyfriends that they cheated on that bothers me.
This point too, but I guess they’ve both technically known Becky longer than either if their most recent relationship s have lasted. If that’s where their priorities are.
IMO, part of it is not wanting to hurt Becky. Another part of it is not wanting to have to think of themselves as the sort of person who would hurt someone they actually care about (like Becky). See Joyce’s shock and horror a few pages back at having to admit that she is a “hussy”.
Your
mileageopinion may vary to what degree these motivations apply – or, if you prefer, which is stronger/what the ratio is.Yeahhhh, you two are probably still gonna be fielding questions for at least today.
Every party needs a pooper, that’s why they invited you.
Joyce, you still have something to discuss with Dorothy.
Billifer! Honestly I hope the rest of this storyline is just Joyce/Dorothy trying to mack on each other and repeatedly being interrupted by their friends (including ghost Mike idealy) until it finally get’s to Becky; who has inconceivably not heard the news yet.
They’re gonna end up scratching their glasses like that.
Jennifer has angry eyebrows. I bet she’s going to bat for Walky’s feelings.
Well statistically speaking SOMEONE has to care about walkys feelings lmao
Sure as hell won’t be Walky but personally I can’t wait for when his crashout comes
I don’t care about walkys feelings, joyce and dorothy care about walkys feelings, WALKY doesnt care about walkys feelings, statistically speaking someone, somewhere, had to give a shit about him
Joyce’s key choice of saying “informed” is certainly doing a lot of heavy lifting for her while also giving her some plausible deniability. Though I am not so sure if Dorothy will very enthused by the fact that Joyce can claim by technicality that she never actually deceived Dorothy about not having broken up with Joe yet, when Dorothy inevitably learns that factoid.
She did break up with joe. Joe’s reluctance to accept it and proposal of a Poly relationship does not change the fact that she broke up with him and said she did not want to date them both.
She said she would talk to him later, not that she would think about his proposal.
You and I read that conversation very differently. What Joyce said is that she can’t date them both, because she’s “not a hussy”. Not that she doesn’t want to. In fact, I think it’s pretty safe to infer an “I want to, but …” before both of the “I cant!”-s in that strip. The problem here is one of post-fundamentalist sexual shame, not one of lack of desire. We know she loves Joe. And we know she loves Dorothy. The only problem (for her personally) is that dating them both would mean perceiving herself as a sinner.
She also never said “I break up with you”, she said “I have to break up with you”, something she clearly didn’t want to do, to which Joe responded with asking why. Joyce was then presented with an option where she doesn’t have to end it with him. After which the more urgent matter of the newspaper came up, because the risk of Becky (who could be very hurt by all this) seeing it meant it needed attention right now. And since Joyce is impulsive, she ran off to deal with that. I really don’t see where this “Joyce and Joe are broken up!” thing comes from. They have had half a conversation about it at best.
From her choice of “informed” and “my boyfriend saw it” (plus her face and “Errrr” when amended by Dorothy to “ex”), I’m inclined to think Joyce herself feels she’s no more than 35% broken up with Joe.
*Yyyeh
But same difference
Going from “We’ll talk, okay? I promise,” to ignoring that promise in favor of more smooches while passionately embraced is lending credence to my theory that Joyce is becoming Old Joe, in the sense that she’s using physical indulgence in order to avoid being hurt by emotional honesty. All those feelings she had for Joe didn’t evaporate overnight! But she doesn’t have to think about dealing with those feelings so long as she keeps getting her mack on. It’ll be fun to see where her Anti-Joyce arc goes!
She said she would talk, not that she would at all think about his proposal. She broke up with him, even said she did not want to date them both and made it clear she has decided to be with Dorothy.
She said they would talk because she didn’t want to leave it like that but had to run off, and its been like maybe an hour since she left, still plenty of time for her to go finish that talk when everything has been dealt with.
“We’ll talk” in this context is understood to mean “we’ll talk about what you’re proposing” by any reasonable person, come on now. If she meant “No, absolutely not, we’re through,” then that would be one thing. She didn’t, though! Hell, she even confirmed that the question is up in the air two strips ago, when she and Dorothy first burst into Daisy’s office. To say that a clean break happened is a poor reading of what happened at best and a willful disregard of the events we’ve seen at worst.
If she SAID “No, absolutely not, we’re through,” rather. “Meant” was leftover from an earlier version of that sentence, whoops 😳
I mean, no, she hasn’t made a clean break, but “we’ll talk” also doesn’t mean “I’ll come back as soon as humanly possible and give you an immediate answer.” Although she does need to prioritize figuring it out.
I imagine at this particular moment, she doesn’t know what she wants, and what she’s okay with. She’s going to have to figure that out before she can talk with Joe, and before she can figure out what she wants, she has to know what Dorothy’s boundaries are. Becoming a hinge between Joe and Dotty also means probably giving Dotty the option to stay with Walky, which is probably something she actively *doesn’t* want, and even if she’s okay with it, she’s going to have to apologize to Walky and make it clear she’s okay with him, which is going to be embarassing after her razzing earlier.
And honestly while they’re taking this moment to comfort each other and be affectionate, they still really need to make sure Becky’s okay before they can have that conversation with clear hearts. So there’s a lot that needs to happen before Joyce can give Joe an answer, unless she already knows the answer is “no.” If the answer even might be “yes,” she can’t commit to staying with him and THEN talk to Dorothy.
To quote someone above, “What Joyce said is that she can’t date them both, because she’s “not a hussy”. Not that she doesn’t want to.” And she ended that strip with the shocked realization that she in fact is a “hussy”.
Ergo, dating them both is still on the table.
I mean, to be honest, I don’t think it actually is, and I think Joe knows it. But I don’t think *Joyce* does yet.
She promised they woild talk later not that they would talk immediately the moment she is free. She can do other stuff before that.and it’s not breaking that promise
I think some of yall’s want for them to be Poly has blinded you from what has actually happened.
Joyce Broke up with Joe on her end, she told him they have to break up and was against dating both her and joe. In Joyce’s mind it is Dorothy all the way.
Joyce said that she would talk to Joe later, she did not say that she would think about them being in a poly relationship or anything of the sort, she simply said she would talk to him later, probably to explain her feelings further.
Joyce told him she was breaking up with him, thats where that relationship ended. It does not matter if Joe did not consent to the break up, it happened regardless. They may have a conversation about it later, but regardless, they are broken up and Joyce has full rights to be with Dorothy now.
She doesn’t even Owe Joe that conversation, she just feels bad for leaving it like that.
I mean, she did specially say “We’ll talk, okay? I promise,” which is a weird thing to say to Joe’s proposal if she considers the two of them 100% over with! If she didn’t actually mean that she’s willing to weigh being poly and instead just lied to Joe for the sake of convenience, then I don’t think anyone can say that she’s operating from any sort of moral high ground.
That assumption relies on her saying “Well talk” meaning that she wants to continue discussing the poly thing, which would be ignoring the many other senarios that could happen.
Joyce straight up told him she did not want to date them both, that she couldn’t.
She told him they would talk more because their conversation was cut off nearly mid thought because of the newspaper issue, if she ran off without saying anything it would be like she was running away from the issue.
Joyce broke up with him, her saying that she would talk to him later does not change that.
Joyce showed dissonance with Dorothy about the idea that she and Joe were now exes literally two days ago. I’m sorry but you’re objectively wrong about this!
Not even that is true. You’re reading really strangely specific things into what little has actually been said.
The “Yyehh?” two strips back suggests that sickos stay winning.
Except a couple pages ago where she was non-committal when Dorothy referred to Joe as her ex, so the comic still setting things up for a fallout.
She seemed pretty unsure if Joe was actually her EX-boyfriend when Dorothy corrected her about it 2 strips ago. “Yyehh?” is not a sound of confidence in that regard.
Others have mentioned “Yyehh?”
Let’s not forget how hesitant her “I can’t date two people at the same time!” was, with a heavily implied unsaid “I want to, but” before it.
Relevant strip: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/dateboth/
And that latter statement was followed by “I’m not a hussy!” which (aside from being an implicitly internalized anti-poly reaction) was countered by the last panel’s “I am a hussy!”
So, if the reason she “can’t date two people at the same time” is that she’s “not a hussy”, but it turns out that she actually is “a hussy”… well…
A refresher: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/endorse/ and the following strip.
I’m not going to get into counter-arguments because OngoingConversation handled that pretty well two thread up (nicely relevant username, incidentally); to summarise, in case of TL;DR reactions: those strips imply pretty strongly that breaking up was something she felt obliged to do, not that she wanted to do.
Technically, her words were “that’s why I have to break up with you.”
To which, Joe asked her why, which altered the path. She *attempted* to break up with him but didn’t close that door.
If nothing else, think about how Joyce keeps referring to Joyce in a present possessive nature. Still referring to him as her boyfriend and not agreeing enthusiastically when Dorothy referred to him as an ex. Plus in this strip, saying “our boys.”
IMO, per my comment above, she walked into that room believing that she had to choose one or the other. She left believing she has permission to keep everything she wants and not have to give up anything.
It’s an absolute win! (For Joyce.)
(Not for Walky; Joyce despises him that much.)
Why do you assume Joyce is thinking about Walky, in any sense at all? She’s already juggling Dorothy, Joe, and her crushing guilt from her evangelical upbringing. That’s a lot right there.
Yes. Some people (it’s you) are very attached to their specific reading of the comic and aren’t leaving any room for any other option to be true.
She went in the room intending to break up with Joe. Whether she feels she did or not is up for debate (see above: the debate) until she explicitly states it. Not sure why you fired a dart at people who want the poly relationship to happen when no one was boxing you about it, but go off I guess.
TL;DR: Yeah, maybe SOME of us (again, you) should acknowledge their viewpoint is biased.
For what it’s worth, I’m biased too.
Still hoping for that messy poly to happen somehow.
Really wish Billie would just have the day she deserves.
UUUGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Was really hoping for joyce to do better. GET’ER BILLY!
Anyone else wonder if the Ernie Pyle statue is one of those statue mimes, and they’re sitting there with an itch they catch scratch until these kids either leave or tip them.
The reason they’re off-panel is so Willis doesn’t have to tag them.
catch->can’t*
I mean, she still DOES need to finish talking to Joe, but I think we can allow her putting that off for a bit, Joyce deserves a break to be cute and gay with Dorothy, billy has other plans though it seems
Billie sorry
All else aside, Panels 2 and 3 are incredibly sweet.
panel 3 is soooo tender…. and wow, do these two have chemistry <3
ISN’T THERE SOMEONE YOU FORGOT TO ASK?
J-Jesus……?
Bro literally died so everyone across the universe could do whatever they wanted under any and all circumstances forever without any catches or conditions. You don’t need to ask him, he already said okay.
That makes you a Nicolaidite. Burn, heretic.
That’s a rude thing to say. I don’t even like SpongeBob all that much.
“we’ve informed our boys”
– Walked out on Joe mid conversation
– Completely blindsighted Walky with a bombshell before just leaving.
I mean… I GUESS…
I mean, Walky didn’t seem particularly blindsided. But yeah …
Well, she did inform him and was given explicit consent from him to keep kissing Dorothy. Encouragement, even. I think as far as Joyce is concerned, she’s totally in the clear for a smooch or two in terms of not going behind the boys’ backs.
Dorothy’s back is a different matter, to be fair, but presumably they’ll get there when they run out of interruptions.
Yeah, Dorothy pretty much didn’t even get to hear what Walky’s response was. :/ Sure, he remarked that he “saw it coming”, but that doesn’t say whether he was OK with it, or what he wanted to do going forward. I do love Joyce and Dorothy (not necessarily their ship), but this whole situation has me facepalming a lot. >.<
Sometimes I feel like “facepalming a lot” is the intended response to some of these strips.
Note: this is not a condemnation of any kind.
I remember a bunch of commenters here claiming Joyce didn’t break Walky and Dorothy up because she couldn’t, only Dorothy could do that.
I guess Dorothy is still cheating then.
That hussy.
blindsided him, from the side, which is where (as in Jurassic Park) he didn’t expect the attack to come from
Cunning young lady.
The drama really is gonna delayed and come from *inside the house,* isn’t it?
The dropping of the Becky drama, either explosion or dud, will be anticlimactic either way. It’s much more valuable as a shoe waiting to drop.
Careful girls, we have a problem silver here.
Head cheerleader, problem silver …
Is that how that went?
It just struck me; Joyce has been putting off the important conversation about Joe (and, ideally, Walky too). Maybe, when they try to explain the situation to Jennifer, she’ll take it upon herself to “solve” their problem for them in a way that makes everything worse and forces an immediate decision regarding poly and such… which could well end up with Joyce encouraging Dorothy to take Walky back, out of a sense of fairness and some sort of belief that it’s a necessary concession for her to keep Joe.
And, of course, the urgency could prevent them getting advice on how poly relationships work, so they think everyone involved has to get along…
Yes, still hoping for poly mess. It could happen!
Billie
and i mean this with love
KINDLY FUCK OFF
Joyce baby girl noooooo this is where you go “okay so there’s another thing we need to talk about vis a vis our boys”
Before the additional smooching
vis-à-vis means “opposite”, as in “across the street”; do you mean à propos?
What’s true: they’re no longer sneaking around! The boys have indeed been “informed”!
Also true: Joe has okayed this. He probably wouldn’t begrudge than a little bit of post-“we’ve been outed?!” adrenaline smooching.
Also true: Dorothy demonstrably thinks Joyce broke up with Joe, and it’s possible the next conversation might end with Dorothy saying “it’s me or him”.
I imagine that Joyce figures she’ll choose Dorothy if she has to pick one, so smooching her is still okay. I also doubt she’s really let herself think much further than that: I don’t think she’s currently on the page of “I definitely want to keep dating both of them,” so much as, “gosh, I need to think about this more, I wonder what Dorothy will think.”
I assume she does NOT think a possibility for the upcoming conversation is “Dorothy ends things the second she hears I even want to think about polyamory, for whatever reason”, but it IS a possibility, however remote.
(It might freak Dorothy out, or it might make her look on Joyce’s interruption with Walky a lot less kindly, or… etc.)
While that possibility exists, it’s crummy to seek smooches. But I doubt Joyce is thinking of that.
Huh. I guess this means that, when Joyce had that big epiphany moment about everyone reading the newspaper, she was just thinking that she needed to let Dorothy know. I thought that was a “oh no, Becky knows, we gotta deal with that” setup.
Fashionably late to the party, eh Billie?
“Welcome to the club of ‘accidentally fell in love with my best friend but I’m not gay’, Joyce!”
No. There is no such club.
Because Jennifer, and everything she feels and does is completely normal.
Completely. Normal.
Oh, Jennifer might rip them to shreds.
I would like to dedicate this number to Joyce and Dorothy and how they’re currently handling this entire situation.
I am a sapphic and I’m digging a hole
Diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole!
Every time I read the comments, I’m gobsmacked by all the judging, and the view that “they ought to be punished”. I mean, what is this? Fundie religion 101, they bin naughty, God gunna smack them?
Dude is writing us a story. Enjoy it.
Welcome to the age of instant gratification, where nobody has the attention span for consequences that aren’t immediately felt.
The objections from most of the relationship paladins here have nothing to do with instant gratification or with attention span. It’s that the consequences directly linked to cheating are being explicitly defused. Joe doesn’t care about the cheating, he just wants to keep dating Joyce anyway he can. Walky just shrugs it off in a joke strip.
With Walky, I’m pretty sure that hurt will come later. We all know he avoids sadfeels like the plague, so him seemingly shrugging it off with a joke doesn’t at all necessarily mean he was okay. But also, him and Dorothy really weren’t a relationship with much fire from either party, so it makes sense he wouldn’t take the breakup too harshly.
With Joe, he’d seen this coming from a mile away. He says as much himself (“Who do you think nudged Dorothy in your direction?”). So while the consequences haven’t been coming, that hasn’t been contrived in any way. And depending on how Walky and/or Becky react later on, they might still arrive.
Hurt from the breakup will come. That’s not the same thing.
And sure, you can argue it’s been set up so that it’s reasonable the people cheated on are okay with it. That’s the point. That’s the problem.
“Joe doesn’t care about the cheating, he just wants to keep dating Joyce anyway he can. Walky just shrugs it off”
See though, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Walky had one panel to react, Joe had 4 strips and the final one ended with him looking very concerned. This is a melodrama, you’re going to have to wait for the stakes to ramp up for maximum oof to occur. That’s just how story arcs work.
See though, this is exactly what I’m talking about.
Yeah, the poly thing is likely to blow up in their faces and Walky is likely to be affected down the road, but both of those look to be tied more to the poly attempt itself or just to being dumped (again) in Walky’s case than to the cheating part.
There isn’t even a poly thing happening yet. I know there’s been a lot of “isn’t there someone you haven’t asked?” jokes, but there literally is, Dorothy. Joyce ran off, thinking she’s gonna have her cake and eat it too, slapped the cake out of Dorothy’s hands, and just assumed Dorothy would be okay with going splits on her with someone she’s disliked for years. It could very easily be dead in the water the second Joyce says “Joe wants to take me out for dinner” and Dorothy says “I thought we were breaking up with our boyfriends?”
Folks seem to forget Dorothy has a strained history/relationship with Joe. She borderline called him a predator when he first started showing interest in dating Joyce. Dorothy thinks Joyce is everything and angrily thought it was unfair that Joe always manages to get everything he wants. And yet SOME HOW they’re magically going to be poly and okay with both dating Joyce at the same time. Not to mention Dorothy’s constant correction of “ex-boyfriend” whenever Joyce mentions Joe.
These kisses are truly the calm before the storm.
Some of us would like to see some actual negative consequences for cheating and other shitty behavior. Unfortunately we’ve seen very little of that so far.
Then go read something else
It took over 2 dozen strip for Ross to face consequences. You’re gonna have to wait more than 5 strips for a years long arc to reach its denouement.
There’s a real “secular belief in a just universe” energy in these comments, the main site comments, specifically. Like, it kind of permeates them, and I’m not going to go off into a tangent about cultural Christianity because 1.) false, we’ve seen it from a whole spectrum of self-confirmed non-Christians around here and 2.) we don’t need another pointless religion debate.
It’s just an, uh, really idealistic view of how universes both fictional and real operate, though, that human morality systems mean anything and that consequences will find the guilty, inevitably. That’s not how life or stories work?
It IS how a certain type of stories work.
And there’s nothing wrong with adults watching shows or playing games written for and aimed at children! There’s nothing wrong with adults reading YA!
But, if that’s making up most or all of your media diet, it IS gonna skew your perception of how stories are “supposed” to work.
Yeah, actually, I should amend my thoughts there, because yeah, sometimes it’s nice to see a fictional just universe! Sometimes! Escapism is healthy and fun!
But like…yeah. Exactly. About the skewing thing.
Ye, and your comment was fine too. 🙂 Just reminded me.
Watching Black Sails, in utter bafflement that there’s no child character (voiced by Cree Summer) looking into the camera and saying “Today I learned an important lesson about the paying close attention. If John Silver hadn’t distracted the Captain with his terrible pig roast, Flint would have noticed the ropes coming loose on the tree, and Randall would still have his leg.”
I laughed.
Unless those self confirmed non-Christians were raised somewhere Christianity isn’t the norm then they’re still culturally Christian. You wind up absorbing shit from all the Christians around you in society, especially from media that just assumes that both the characters and the audience are obviously Christian and care about all the things Christian’s are supposed to. Or at least the version of Christianity endemic to the country the media is from.
I mean, this comic has been pretty much that in a lot of ways all along. It’s been a story about dumb kids growing up and learning lessons. Especially Joyce. Unlearning her old bad ideas and bigotries. Or Joe, learning not to objectify women.
I don’t expect a protagonist in this comic to be openly prejudiced or sexist and stay that way. I expect that to be confronted and them to learn and grow. Because that’s what I’ve seen for years. I guess cheating is different.
Yeah, pretty much. It’s like The Scarlet Letter around here.
That title has been thrown around so much lately, I finally looked it up. Seems like the point is that the red A is stupid and just makes things worse for everyone.
So I’m confused. Joyce got worried and ran off on Joe because she realized that the picture means folks like her parents are going to know about her smooching Dorothy. The ladies’ initial reaction was to try and bar the door long after the horses had all left. And Daisy told them “those horses are two miles down the road, friendos”.
So they’ve realized they can’t prevent folks from seeing the IDS. But Joyce then going “oh well, may as well smooch my gf” seems…really off to me.
Folks will know I’m a “paladin”, but this isn’t even about the boys- that’s a completely separate Charlie Foxtrot. What it is is Joyce, someone who’s still supposed to be hung up on the shame of others seeing her as a sexual being, just…accepting it. If this strip was something like “I need to go do damage control, but give us a kiss first”, I wouldn’t be here. If Dorothy was freaking out and Joyce tried to calm her down with a smooch, I wouldn’t be here.
Really, if this strip wasn’t acting like confronting Daisy only to be told “nothing to be done” was the entirety of what DoJo felt like they needed to do in reaction to being plastered across the front page, I wouldn’t be here.
But, like, how is this in character? How is Dorothy not working on drafting up her public statement that she thinks she’ll inevitably need? How is Joyce not planning on reaching out to Jocelyne in order to manage their parents’ responses? Heck, how is Joyce not scrambling for the nearest tree now that she’s aware everyone on campus can prove she has a sex drive?
For Joyce this is entirely in character. New, unexpected situation that she can’t do anything about? Default to whatever you want in your confusion.
Dorothy thinks the public statement is taken care of, the list is checked off, so she has permission to proceed to the end goal.
Simply because it’s too late.
I’m sorry, but Joyce has *never* been an “in for a penny, in for a pound” type before. It being too late to do anything should be making her freak out more, not less.
Joyce’s entire history is nothing but “in for a penny, in for a pound.” Once Joyce finds something that grabs her attention, she hyper-focuses on it. Remember when she discovered Dexter and Monkey-Master? Remember when Dorothy introduced her to some new music? The only way she really knows how to engage with a new interest is to jump in head-first, with genuine enthusiasm.
Not to belittle her relationship with Dorothy by comparing it to a hobby, or anything, but this is hardly out of character for her. If “being in a romantic relationship with Dorothy” is the new paradigm, Joyce’s natural reaction is to go: “OK, paradigm shift complete, full ahead, Warp 9.”
Oh, wait, she wasn’t allowed to watch Star Trek. It promotes (checks writing on hand) anti-capitalist beliefs.
Hyperfixation is not remotely what I mean.
Thinking on it, I may have used the wrong idiom. What I meant was that Joyce has never been someone who goes “they’re going to judge us anyways regardless of what we do, so I may as well do what makes me happy”. I think what I meant was more https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/one_may_as_well_hang_for_a_sheep_as_a_lamb
Point is, Joyce has never been one to not be neurotic about how others percieve her, and this strip is very much her not only not being neurotic about it but full-on making out in public, a remarkable escalation from any previous PDAs she didn’t do in the middle of a cloud of tear gas.
It’s not the same thing, but she was willing to stand up to her parents in a dramatic and highly visible way to defend her friendship with Dorothy rather than just keep quiet until they went away.
This? Yes, it’s full-on making out in public, but it’s clearly already too late to keep it secret, and there don’t seem to be many people around (despite Jennifer’s chance arrival).
Joyce may have often been neurotic about how people perceive her, but not enough to not do what she does. Note also https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/ruthandbillie/ and contrast the strip after, where she’s just shrugged off the collective groan at her then-fundie attitude.
Just to add, though: being aroace, I don’t understand this whole “hormonal and must kiss” thing, so can’t judge how much it’d affect a normal person. Or, for that matter, Joyce and Dorothy, who are possibly as far from normal as I am, but on the opposite side.
See, I actually think that strip *supports* my point.
Because Joyce took the active option there. She confronted her parents and defended her love for Dorothy. Despite her being told, essentially, “there’s nothing you can do about it” when it comes to her parents making decisions for her, she stepped up to the plate and went to bat for Dorothy.
But here, she’s taking the passive option. There’s nothing she can do about the newspaper, so she’s not even going to try, she’s just going to cuddle up to Dorothy.
Discovering Dexter and Monkey Master:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/not-investing/ (and the following strip)
then, two days later (note that she knew her parents were arriving that day, but didn’t think about how it might look): https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/trufan/
So something that Willis has talked about before (in Shortpacked!, if memory serves) is a fantasy that they, and other former fundies they’ve spoken to, have had regarding sex. The fantasy went that they and another person had both done something so horrible that they were now 100% guaranteed to burn in hell for all eternity no matter what, so they might as well fuck like bunnies because their souls can’t possibly become more damned than they already are no matter how much they sin. Basically a really fucked up imaginary nightmare framework that freed them to be sexually expressive, because that was the only way they could imagine having sex before marriage without crushing guilt and fear of divine wrath.
This fantasy/kink never fully went away even after shaking off their faith. Joyce is an autobiographical character. She is now in a situation where her reputation as someone who wants to do passionate smooches with Dorothy cannot possibly get worse, with all the consequences it entails. She is already in hell. So it doesn’t surprise me that acts that she previously recoiled at performing in public no longer bothers her; her reputation in that arena is already out of her hands.
I feel like if that’s where Joyce’s head is at, it really, really doesn’t come across in the strip.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the pipeline! Here’s that post, by the by.
I genuinely think you are just underestimating adrenaline crash.
They did a full panic. Dorothy APPARENTLY managed to round up all the newspapers — Raidah obviously lives nearby, either on a different floor of their building or in a very nearby building, because we keep seeing them run into her when they’re on their way in, but she’s not under Ruth’s auspices as RA.
They came all the way here, still running on that panic — and then crashed in the face of Daisy’s massive shrug emoji.
I get that there’s still a couple of things they could theoretically do, but I also find it entirely believable that they’re emotionally and physically exhausted from the morning, and horny IS a reaction to surviving dangerous situations, which is one of the things that makes adrenaline crash.
TL;DR: I mean, I’m ace, but I get it? Seeking comfort from each other is a pretty natural progression.
The way this strip is laid out for me, it’s very much a transitional strip. It’s moving from the problem of the newspaper outing to dealing with Jennifer’s reaction to the new happy couple.
And…the fundamental problem of the newspaper outing them hasn’t been solved. Sure, there’s nothing DoJo can feasibly do right now. But that’s never stopped either of them from worrying about problems before (hell, that’s Dorothy’s entire brand) and the strip here is very much giving me a “problem solved, what, me worry” vibe.
It’s a continuing pattern that I’ve noticed that major obstacles in the face of DoJo don’t seem to last long at all.
I mean. If the last panel of this strip didn’t exist, you’d have a stronger argument? It’s more like dramatic irony, that Joyce thought they could steal a moment to smooch “after” a crisis, only for the consequences of the newspaper outing to immediately continue. Unless you don’t think Jennifer is reacting this way because she read the article? (I doubt Walky told her.)
Your phrasing is also puzzling me. What do you mean by “obstacles in the face of DoJo don’t last”? Like, never mind the fact that this definitely isn’t over and it’s really surprising to me how many readers seem to think it is — in what way was this “supposed to” be an “obstacle” to their ship name?
1st paragraph:
I mean, in my head it still absolutely is dramatic irony? Joyce says “We’re finally in the clear” and then here comes Jennifer with a steel chair! I’m not debating that. I think Jennifer being introduced means a *different* obstacle to them getting it on compared to the newspaper crisis. If tomorrow Jennifer goes “yeah, everyone on campus is talking about you two” and it does tie into the newspaper crisis, sure. But my assumption is that Alice told her, and that what she wants to address has more to do with the relationship between Jennifer and DoJo rather than addressing how Joyce’s dad or the public at large might take the news- related, yes, but definitely a separate issue.
As to the second paragraph:
Let me put it in a metaphor: Dorothy & Joyce’s relationship (DoJo) is a train, and “obstacles” are things that might slow down the train from its maximum speed. “Brakes” would be a better term for them, honestly. Not something that would derail the relationship like a log lying across the tracks (in this metaphor meaning make them break up) but something that would slow down their momentum.
The first and most obvious brake was the cops. That was solved via application of Amazi-girl.
The next and perhaps just as obvious brake was Joe. That was solved by making him OK with sharing Joyce with Dorothy. Essays can and have been written by many people feeling some sort of way about that characterization decision, but for the purposes of this discussion what matters is that another brake- that Joyce might decide to slow down/change her relationship with Dorothy because of how Joe felt- was removed.
The “Walky” brake was removed via Joyce declaring that Dorothy was hers and not his.
And the brake of “the front-page picture on a student newspaper that Joyce’s dad reads online outed us what are we going to do about that” got removed by, as you put it, Daisy’s massive shrug emoji telling them “well, there’s nothing you *can* do”. And apparently they’ve come to terms with that and decided to accept it- that, to me, flies in the face of their previous characterizations, where Joyce is neurotic about how other people perceive her and should be an anxious mess that everyone is going to know she’s “a hussy” while Dorothy’s inability to accept that there’s nothing she can do about a problem is the entire core of her breakdown over the past few months.
There are other potential brakes, yes.
Becky is the most obvious- she’s named in the strip as one, basically- but I’ll be honest, I don’t expect her reaction to in any way have a meaningful effect on DoJo’s pace to being status quo. Even if Becky feels some sort of way about it (and I think that’s far from a guarantee), the fallout there would mostly be centered around her relationship with Dina rather than leading to DoJo being more discreet out of consideration for Becky’s feelings.
The other big brakes we have yet to see are any sort of self-reflection on Joyce’s part to being someone who kisses women now or Dorothy realizing that her spiraling and PTSD are *not* going to be solved just because she can kiss Joyce now.
To continue the metaphor, none of these brakes being applied means that the train is a whole heck of a lot more likely to derail when it hits a swerve- with “derail” here meaning “have a big messy falling out”. But I’ll be honest- I’ll eat my hat if that happens soon. Because this relationship train hasn’t had any brakes basically since DoJo went to that bar together and it shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. I just don’t see the big crash coming, I see everyone and everything getting out of the way so that DoJo can keep going at breakneck speed.
TL;DR- and I don’t blame you- I see Jennifer as a separate problem to the newspaper outing, and I realize “brakes” is a better term than “obstacles”. And so I don’t really expect whatever Jennifer brings up to give these two pause for more than, like, 2 strips.
Okay. I guess I just haven’t conceptualized any of those things as obstacles to Dorothy/Joyce. At most they strike me as obstacles (or brakes, either way!) to the two of them getting to kiss on screen?
Like, to my way of thinking, obstacles to DoJo would be more like all the hurdles that have already been overcome: Dorothy struggling to accept that she’s really bi, Joyce missing Dorothy’s cleavage pic when it first got sent, Dorothy trying to convince both of them that their mutual attraction was “just” a trauma response… and now we have a new one, which is that Joyce hasn’t yet told Dorothy how her “breakup” with Joe went!
Those are obstacles to them as a couple.
Cops at the protest? That was never an obstacle “to” them, it was an obstacle “for” them — an action sequence through which they maneuvered together and over which they can now bond.
Sarah’s disapproval was the same, and if Becky disapproves, that will also be the same. I doubt Dorothy’s PTSD is going to be an obstacle, either — it’ll be something Joyce helps her through, because that’s one of the things being a couple means.
(It would be neat if Joe also wound up helping her through it; waves my “metamor!Joe+Dorothy platonic friendship flag”.)
The difference, IMHO, is whether or not a given obstacle / brake has any actual potential to stop these two from being a couple: the cops didn’t, except maybe by straight-up killing one of them? Sarah and Becky don’t, though they do have the power to potentially make them feel guiltier about how they got together. Joe didn’t, though again he could have made Joyce feel guiltier — and he wound up not doing that, because, as I really must emphasize was foreshadowed, he knew this was coming and expected it. Walky definitely didn’t!
Now, mind you, Joe might be part of the last real obstacle I see at the moment, but it’s not anything he’s doing: if anything goes south here, it will be 100% on Joyce not telling Dorothy soon enough, or Dorothy agreeing to try polyamory but turning out to be too possessive to handle it. It won’t be because Joe presented an obstacle or a brake.
Final note, bc I think this is the last major thing I haven’t responded to, but ADHD so I’m sorry if I missed something else! I am trying 🙂…
“And the brake of “the front-page picture on a student newspaper that Joyce’s dad reads online outed us what are we going to do about that” got removed by, as you put it, Daisy’s massive shrug emoji telling them “well, there’s nothing you *can* do”. And apparently they’ve come to terms with that and decided to accept it- that, to me, flies in the face of their previous characterization.”
I really don’t think this is actually what’s happening — that they’ve come to terms with being outed… I just think this is a moment of trying to grab hold of the one positive thing they’ve gotten out of this exhausting awful morning! And that if Jennifer hadn’t interrupted, if NO ONE else interrupted, at most we’d get a quick Slipshine cutaway, followed by them lying there, sticky and tired and feeling a little better… and then having the real world come crashing back in.
They might, for example, get a text from Hank at that point.
So yeah, there’s my take! I might be wrong. But I would be very surprised if this strip were meant to show that they’ve both come to complete terms with being “out” and are gonna go, like, buy queer identity pins to advertise their new status to everyone they meet. Similarly to how I’ll be very surprised if Willis isn’t planning on bringing Hank back in, or if it turns out that Walky really has ZERO further reaction to Joyce/Dorothy.
I think we’re actually mostly in agreement here re: brakes, so I’ll keep this short for both of our sanity’s sake.
You said “At most they strike me as obstacles (or brakes, either way!) to the two of them getting to kiss on screen?”
And…yes, exactly. That’s why I changed terminology. All the things I brought up aren’t going to *derail* the DoJo express to New OTP City, they’re merely things that would mean they get to Grand Kisstral Terminal later than scheduled.
Gotcha!
Because they want to kiss.
GIVE THEM A MOMENT!
They’ve had several strips of moments, it’s time for plot!
Romance is also plot, I regret to inform you.
Giving that review of Pride & Prejudice — “just a bunch of people going to each other’s houses”. Yes, if your definition of plot is strictly based in action set pieces, romances have never had plot.
That is a masterful description of P&P.
Credit to I think Contrapoints’ video on Twilight. The books are very crappy but it’s literally untrue to say the first one for example has no plot until the last few chapters: that’s when a villain kidnaps Bella, sure, but the book was full of plot before that point, it was just the kind of plot that’s very typical of romance… girl and boy feel mutual attraction, various forces (including many of them internal!) try to keep them apart, girl and boy overcome forces to get together.
There ARE inciting incidents and rising actions, you just have to adjust your expectations for what those things look like if you’re not familiar with the genre.
Oh I should clarify she is QUOTING a negative review of the book to make a point lol. If the OP of the review was trying to be funny, then well done on their point as well! Otherwise credit to Contrapoints for putting it in humorous context.
Its not when they’re literally just standing there being cute. That’s nothing.
I regret to inform you that you are incorrect.
What you mean is “this is not a plot I’m interested in.” Which is a totally valid opinion and not a thing that would be incorrect.
Dorothy and Joyce are making out in front Franklin Hall … once the library at IU, which explains the inscription above the door – “a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit”, by John Milton. The full quote is from Milton’s Areopagitica (1644), an influential and impassioned philosophical defense of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression. As an aside, since Franklin Hall is now the home of Media Studies, the quote is still highly appropriate.
Two options
There’s a conga line of people waiting to interrupt their smooches
Jennifer will give them the worst advice possible with complete confidence and they will follow it.
Ukulele boy would be a better choice.
Harrison Ford confirms.
You assume “it is true” means means she knows Dorothy and Joyce are together. I assume it means Billie’s finally accepted that Sal is not Amazi-Girl… since she now knows for certain that it must be Dorothy. We are not the same.
I SERIOUSLY ADORE THAT THIRD PANEL!!!
whoops, capslock….
oh well.
I ADORE IT!!!
No one expects the Billie inquisition!
Kay I’m about to be very dramatic bc it’s fun, all of this is hyperbole (but not as much as I’d like)
The dissonance between their objective, on paper cuteness and the absolute nothing it gives me is slowly driving me mad. Its like Chinese water torture, every strip it gets a little worse; a drip feed of nothingness, every strip I turn over the nothing and there’s more nothing! I’m eating on Styrofoam while watching everyone else feast on a spread fit for the gods. Am I broken in some way? What is missing from me? Does my need for visual contrast truly run so deep that it destroys my ability to enjoy nice things? Why can’t I just watch the (VERY figurative) pretty colors? I don’t even want to dislike this ship, in fact I desperately want to love it. God I beg of you, have mercy on this poor sinner’s soul and let me see what they see, past the beige landscape of 5’4 bespectacled blonde whiteness, into the beauty that lies within. I am dying of thirst in an ocean, I am Tantalus being taunted with what is just out of reach.
I don’t care about “Joyce needs to communicate Joe’s proposition with Dorothy!” Or “they haven’t finished communicating perfectly with the boys!” (I mean, I wanna get back to that joe conversation bc it was more interesting but still). I don’t care about the morality of this relationship or the cheating or literally any of that. I just want to feel something. Anything. Even the drama in the comments is boring now, its all just people yapping about cheating or communication, or people yapping about those people 😭😭😭
See, this viewpoint I kind of fuck with, at least re: Joyrothy as a purely yuri, no-boys-allowed deal? Like, it’s not bad, it’s not immoral despite it coming from infidelity or whatever, but liiiike as just those two it’s like a very plain cheeseburger, no real toppings, strictly normal-ass fries.
When you add Joe and you have a full triad I start getting excited and hollering because now the spice is back! The new flavors are back! The odd combos that you don’t think will work are back!
Well, we all know how Joyce feels about food touching. Can’t expect an intricate dish.
Yeah I’ve been using a lot of food metaphors to describe how I feel about shipping lately, and I cant even call these two butterscotch mixed with caramel anymore (nice and sweet but redundant and indistinct.) they’re just. A meal Joyce would eat. That’s the best way to put it
This is really where I’m at. These two together on their own is agonizing to watch, just the whitest of white bread as far as yuri is concerned. Even the cheating doesn’t do much to make them interesting because the repercussions that I cared about seeing just kind of fizzled out.
Add Joe, make it a hinge? Now we’re cooking with gas. Now we have some meat on the menu. And not that cheap shit, I’m talking A5 wagyu steak imported direct from Kobe.
Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys! (Couldn’t resist)
We are cooking with CHARCOAL babeyyyy
We are cooking with pimento wood, make this shit an emotionally complicated hinge situation and we are turning this boiled white chicken breast into JERK CHICKEN
It probably doesn’t help that there’s practically nothing new; for all that they’ve only “officially” been together since the protest, they’ve practically been a couple for most of the strip. It feels like they’re doing basically the same thing as always, just with kissing added and drama removed… which, in a way, is impressive.
All this panicked running around and worrying about cheating and such has managed to become less interesting than when they were, for example, getting excited about an iguana or spotting Walky in a cartoon or whatever. They had a more compelling relationship back when they were getting Joyce’s birth control!
I’m still hoping that it’s leading somewhere interesting, and it’s just the cute-for-other-people stuff slowing things down, but it’s hard to be enthusiastic anymore. So… when I’m clinging to poly hopes, it’s not just that I want it to be messy and confused, with them having no idea what they’re doing. I mean, that too, but just adding something else to this could make it less tedious. Joe? Yes, especially if it’s not a hinge (due to cluelessness) and Dorothy struggles to get along with him. But, at this point, I’d welcome anyone.
However: I still refuse to accept that Joyce is blonde. Blonde hair is yellow, and that’s a light brown, dangit!
I think either way, Joyce is a light Brown.
The “Joyce is blonde” reveal fucked me up too, chief, you’re not alone.
I think they bring out the worst in each other in the least interesting way. Dots the most interesting when she’s breaking from her usual habits. She indulged in a lil goofiness when she was with walky (don’t want to compare to a straight relationship but that’s literally all we’ve got, so shrug). They balanced each other out, she drove him to try harder and he made her chill out and enjoy youth a little more. Dotty gets silly with Joyce sometimes, but more often than not she goes into mommy/manager mode. It may be her main character flaw but she’s still at her least interesting to watch when she’s just competently managing other people’s lives. And Joyce just. Let’s her do it. Because shes obsessed with dotty, she frankly welcomes it without any pushback (unless she’s particularly going through something like toward the start of season 2). A big part of their dynamic is just
D: Joyce you/we need to do [___]
J: Okay ily
Dorothy also doesn’t really push Joyce into any new territory either. Joyce gets inspired to change by knowing her, but most of that was tied up in when she was unraveling her religious upbringing. They can very easily just be, stagnant. They’re too comfortable, they’re like an old married couple in the worst way. Literally (but that’s Patreon stuff so I can’t talk about it much here I think).
Joe and Joyce were also just, very sweet and I can see why some people would find them dull. But there was internal conflict there! Joe’s fear of fucking up or “ruining” Joyce forever (in Liz’s eternal words), clashing with Joyce’s desire to break away from how she was raised and have sex because there’s no hell and she can and she wants to, which ITSELF clashed with her leftover puritanical programing. Watching them slowly untangle that, even if it was silent and undramatic, was very fun. Even now, Joes self loathing and idolization of Joyce basically meaning he’ll let her do whatever she wants, regardless of his own feelings is fascinating! Dotty and Joyce though, so far all their conflict is external, the baby gays vs the world who doesn’t like that they cheated on their boyfriends. I’m sure they’ll develop some internal conflict eventually but so far it’s just. Nothing. Its the kind of comfort you’ve earned like three years into a relationship, without any of the the anxious buildup and missteps from the start of a relationship. Its just the boring parts.
Things have just started so the interesting stuff is probably gonna happen eventually but like. Fuck its gonna be a slog to get there day by day.
Oh shit that was a god damn thesis paper, sorry y’all 🙁
Well, I found it worth reading anyway.
I was going to add something about how interesting things keep almost happening, but nothing comes of it… but, on second thought, is it actually less eventful, objectively speaking, than other storylines have been? Maybe it’s just that DoJo have been managing to be so bland that they drain the drama from stuff around them (and their smoochy moments feel almost like filler by this point… though I can’t deny the panel 3 cuddle was cute).
But maybe it’s as Donovan’s speculated below: the rewrites may have caused stuff just to not flow right for a bit. And there are many promising bits of setup that might yet fix things?
This storyline is really subscribing to that law of the universe: nothing ever happens. Things might almost happen, but they won’t. I definitely agree with Donovan, it’s probably the rewrites. I hope it is anyway.
I’m still banking on a Walky crashout, he’s due one by now
I also agree with Donovan
Having recently listened to “Once More With Feeling”, your comment is really giving me 🎼 I touch the fire and it freezes me 🎶 I look into it and see black 🎵 vibes.
Thank you, I put a lot of pride in being able to cram as much of my bloated vocabulary and literary references into the stupidest shit possible
Ships absolutely either connect with you or they don’t. It’s not a rational choice anyone is making, despite the many attempts to appeal to rationality that you’ll see in ship wars.
Also, this.
It hurts so bad when the ship you don’t connect with is at the center of the plot big dawg ಥ‿ಥ this comic is supposed to be my daily serotonin shot, WHERES THE SEROTONIN
Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I did that bit of poorly-thought-out shipping in the comments yesterday; some part of my brain’s confused about the presence of what initially seems to be a cute couple but just doesn’t produce the expected “aww” reaction, so I had to make up new possibilities to satisfy it.
You’re both super valid and I’m sorry! I’ve been there.
But yeah, ships… on a fundamental level they’re VERY very primal. If a ship hits you the right away, it’s amazing and you could listen to the characters read from the phone book for an hour if they occasionally paused to almost kiss.
If a ship hits you the wrong way, best case scenario: you’re bored. Worst case scenario, you’re viscerally upset in one of several ways.
(I think being triggered by a ship dynamic is a worse experience than being squicked, but let’s be clear that both are very personal, internal reactions, and an author that wrote a ship you find triggering didn’t do anything wrong. There is no such thing as a trigger-free ship dynamic.)
Its not just youb i am also very bored.
Styrofoam is a good description for the shipb for me
I’m with you. I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I’m not a Joyorthy fan. I wasn’t even a big Joe/Joyce fan. (I did like Dorothy/Walky; they are cute…I like how it seems to show a different side of Dorothy.)
Joyce is experiencing massive personal growth. Dorothy has been, too. It seems to me that when a character is experiencing massive personal growth, they should just…BE SINGLE for a while. Maybe a longish while.
In general, I’m not a fan of when protagonists just seem to fail upward into relationship after relationship. I never thought that was realistic on TV and I’m not a huge fan of it here, either.
In DoA, I would like if more characters could just be comfortable in their singledom. I mean, relationships are great and all, but it just doesn’t seem realistic to me that all these college students would be jumping into shacking up.
Maybe singledom is too boring in a narrative? But there are lots of interesting things happening here that don’t involve romance. I mean, there’s a dang superhero on campus who’s risking life and limb to fight cops!
And you can BE single and still fool around and hook up and such with other single people, without being unethical about it. I did that in college. I’m OK with the smoochy chart being an ouroboros.
Jesus, people, can we let the girls have a moment to kiss without getting notarized authorization from everyone they know? Is that really so much to ask? Who knew that coming out involved so much bureaucracy?
Meanwhile, panel 3 is all that good and pure in this world.
that’s a privilege only afforded to real people who are complex beings with autonomy and impulses adrift in the sea of circumstances that is life, not fictional characters which are inherently tools to facilitate a story that can effect the quality of the story.
Joyce youre fucking up kinda bad
Nuh uh
By … kissing?
Goshdarn. In a world full of hate and killing, kissing seems like progress.
To be real I think the strip pacing here is still feeling the changing pain from willis presumably changing plans when doing the protest arc
Theres a lot of little things that are just enough out of joint to irk me in the past (approx.) Week or two
It’s funny how Jennifer/Billie seems to think she’s up on all the hot goss, but in reality she’s always the last to know things
It’s really funny that she’s besties with Alice, who IS on top of the tea
Even funnier since she is supposed to be a Journalist. She is like the Internet Explorer of the reporters.
“So it *is* true” she says, regarding an event that was *on the front of the newspaper she supposedly writes for*
I mean, working for the paper she knows best just how much media lie XD
A Force Awakens reference? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.
This is literally not a problem, Billie’s probably just talking about one of them being Amazi-girl or something.
or both of them..! it all adds up!
Joyce……. you did get consent from Joe to also date Dorothy, but you didn’t get consent from Dorothy to also date Joe, but also didn’t tell Joe you decided to stop dating him……. CAN WE PLEASE HAVE AN ADULT CONVERSATION
WHY IS EVERYONE SO DUMB at this AGE
Time is a round square, why waste energy fussing over the linear order of events?
But…. they aren’t adults! Which is exactly the point!
Legally, they are adults. Or else the porn Willis draws as a side hustle is gonna land him in some hot water.
Can you give them a minute?
New desire unlocked: Joyce helps Dorothy work through her PTSD, and metamor!platonic friend!Joe does, too.
I’m just please Willis has finally started abusing the power of being able to draw girls kissing as much as one pleases.
I’d just prefer if it were the ones I like seeing kiss! You know, Billie and Ruth, Dina and Becky, Danny and Sal,
Yes the cast need to get back in their fucking boxes it’s true.
idk why you’re projecting an opinion that was not even implied by dot’s reply when you could have focused on how clever that transfem danny joke was
Unless, of course, Shakes meant that Willis should depict the cast fucking in boxes…
i must admit i initially misread your reply as the cast fucking the boxes, like the boxes themselves not just being inside a box while partaking in the temptations of flesh – and while i understand well what you meant upon an immediate reread, i have decided that maybe what dumbing of age really needs right now is some objectum representation.
Now we’re talking.
I’m glad someone appreciates it!
…DID Dorothy tell Walky? And Joyce only got halfway thru her convo with Joe. I get that they’re all excited about this new thing but genuinely, they’re acting really weak. They’re human and make mistakes, of course – even moreso being dummies in college… but this kinda behavior definitely makes me like them less. Can’t wait for the fallout.
Joyce told walky, and then laughed in his face about it
Though I guess there’s a chance that he won’t realize she’s not just ribbing him like usual given it is pretty cartoonishly cruel to do that to a person for real
(oh whoops double send this by accident, hopefully willis can just delete it or something)
Joyce told walky, and then laughed in his face about it
Though I guess there’s a chance that he won’t realize she’s not just sarcastically ribbing him like usual given it is pretty cartoonishly cruel to do that to a person for real
Yeah they’re kinda being assholes. I mean, I get it, DUMBING of Age, etc. But still, you can be dumbing while not…asshole-ing.
real talk, I thought amber/walky was pure torture boring uninteresting ship, though now if it were revisited I think I’d find it more interesting, especially since I’m just sad to see less of Amber in contexts where someone actually likes her with no issues about it.
So, with that in mind… I love joyrothy. I didn’t ship them before it suddenly became apparent that this was where the narrative arc was heading, I didn’t get on board immediately, but the longing. That old familiar longing. The tempting! That old, familiar tempting! When two friends have feelings for one another but are afraid to will it into existence by speaking it, in case it’s just them, or their friend is too good for them. That hooked me!
And then the first kiss. And all the kisses after that. And seeing them cuddled up to one another, still enjoying the bliss of requited feelings. Yes, I love this, I think it’s fantastic. They are precious together, they are clearly, deeply in love. Yes, they are flawed people and their actions have hurt and will likely hurt others more. But also? Those people would have hurt. They would still hurt. It’s been two days, whether they broke up before touching, gave it a year out of respect for the death of their previous relationships, condemned themselves to celibacy forevermore to atone for their wicked thoughts while with Good Men… their boyfriends would still hurt, for a while, because they lost them. And it is the losing that hurts the most. That’s why people stay with cheaters, that’s why polyamory forms. People get into other people, and then they fear losing the bond they already have. It isn’t evil incarnate we’re seeing here, it’s human teenagers (ostensibly, this is Willis of course), fumbling through feelings so strong that they have probably never had anything equivalent in their lives.
It’s lovely to watch, and if we do get some up in arms rage anger then it will feel entirely to me like the christian shame-punishment complex in motion once again. How dare they be impure? Sinners! Cast into the depths of hell, and repent.
Well said, eskimolos. Love and other emotions aren’t so tidy those fit into neat little shipping containers we would easily digest. Especially the emotions of horny teenagers struggling with heavy baggage and narrow preceptions of identity and relations. Watching these characters learn and grow has been a joy. However, the raging discourse is also entertaining and edifying. Diatribes in this forum have been very well articulated and allow me a glimpse at a varied perspective. But be careful labelling those that would share their grievances, lest you feed the trolls!
Two things:
1. It’s been like 12 hours, not two days. Less than one day in story and more than a week out of story, so I’m not sure why you picked two days for your comment.
2. Considering the people who are poly or support poly, I wouldn’t reduce that type of relationship to simply fearing loss nor would I compare it to people who stay with cheaters. It assumes and dismisses their experience.
While loss aversion is a powerfully motivating force, I agree that the tapestry of our lives would be dull and bleak if only woven with fear.
Poor Joe! Looks like he is out. He tried, but they talk like he is yesterdays news. I feel for the guy.
*Dorothy* talks about him like he’s yesterdays’ news.
*Joyce* still knows she wants to get riggidy reck’d by him
I don’t see it. He tried to talk to her into keeping him in her stable of lovers, and she didn’t even respond. It was “oops! Something important (not you) has come up, so I’m off.”
Jennifer, affronted that Joyce and Dorothy are gunning for her and Ruth’s “Ethically Dubious Gay Relationship” crown.
(“ethically dubious” referring to J+D’s entering their relationship via cheating, not the gay part, since someone or other in this comment section is bound to misinterpret this lol)
comic today is very good but i mostly wanted to comment to state how confused i was about the prospect of a bethesda massachusetts before realising that willis forgot that the abbreviation for maryland is MD and not MA
Well, I’m glad I came back and looked at the comments again. There were some much more interesting ones later. The ones going on about how sinful they are and how life should punish them were far too fundie for me.
And here is a story: 43 years after an event, I have just realised what I should have said at the time. But I didn’t say it at the time and the moment was past in a few minutes and I never saw either of the people again. It has taken me 43 years of life experience to know what would probably have been good to say, but I didn’t say anything, just walked away. What was I thinking all those 43 years that stopped me from realising? I was thinking about ME. What person B said to person A, about me, annoyed me so much that I didn’t think at all about how person A might be feeling. 43 years! Just apply that to this comic. And to yourselves. How often do you now what you should have said/done when it is way too late?
The Small Press Expo banner is wrong. As of right now it says “Bethesda, MA” for a show in Maryland.
Maryland is MD. MA is Massachusetts.
But if you want to ditch the show, fly into Logan, and get some real steamed clams and Papa Gino’s pizza instead, I wouldn’t blame you.
And now it’s fixed!
More pizza for me, then.
ahahaha splendid i gotz some Domino’s myself today
not quite local but still good on account i haven’t had it in a while XD
Damn, Joyce healed some fears of her
Looks how she’s pulling Dorothy.