Shout-out to the continued saga of Jennifer being the absolute worst-qualified journalist on campus. Or just having the passive perception of your average dump-WIS barbarian…that is also blind.
There are in fact heterosexual (read: platonic) explanations for that. They were not what happened. But they exist and I wish that phrase would die in a hole forever.
Sincerely, your local queerplatonic partnership haver.
I mean this question fully without sarcasm and entirely just genuine confusion: how does heterosexual, typically defined as being sexually attracted to the opposite sex, mean the same thing as platonic, typically defined as non-sexual?
When someone says there is no heterosexual explanation for this, they mean this is not something people do platonically. They mean this is not something friends do.
It’s contextual. But the context here is pointing to a pair of women doing a thing together that’s weird for normative friendship and saying there isn’t any way this happens if they’re heterosexual. It’s actively rebutting a platonic reading, it happens because people are tired of straight people saying “it’s not actually gay they’re just gal pals” (which, fair) and it also often frames my important life experiences as implausible things that would never ACTUALLY happen platonically, it’s just straight people gaslighting you. Which. Uh. Hurts.
Amatonormativity sucks, but I don’t actually think “there’s no platonic explanation for this” is what “there’s no heterosexual explanation for this” means.
Heterosexual in this case is being used as a stand-in for pericishet, which it arguably shouldn’t be.
Queerplatonic is not pericishet.
Therefore, if there’s a queerplatonic explanation for something, that’s NOT a “heterosexual” explanation.
Li, you are well intentioned and I appreciate you, and I have no doubt that if you said it that’s what you’d have meant. But to be really frank, I will extend this kind of benefit of the doubt when it is literally any different trying to get queerfolk to acknowledge QPRs than it is getting cishet etc. folks to.
I have grown up in very queer spaces. I have had both queer and not folks be lovely and understanding. I have also been told that if I wasn’t in a romantic relationship with my best friend people hoped we would figure it out soon. An awful lot of both straight/etc and queer people will get pretty hostile with you on the internet for suggesting an ace or queerplatonic understanding of something. The world, broadly, has not earned this kind of benefit of the doubt from me, because more often than not when I engage people using phrases like this they very much do NOT mean what you are saying.
Sorry. I’m not trying to be an asshole. But the thing you’re saying very much does not align with my lived experience.
idk, I know I’ve never used the phrase in any way other than self-deprecating (because it’s almost never being said about media where there’s any actual hope that the characters in question are anything other than pericishet), so.
People meaning it literally, in my experience, are teenagers.
Which doesn’t invalidate any of your points, just contributes further to a lack of nuance.
You’re good people. It’s just one of my particular sharp points. Used to be shit I laughed off but coming to terms with the fact that I will never be able to share insurance with that partner the way I can with my spouse has made all the platonic and poly stuff feel a lot sharper as a full adult. Sigh.
Man I WISH I was mostly encountering it unironically from teenagers. I used to hang out on relationship subreddits and oh boy have I had some really bad interactions with middle aged folks about these topics. Sigh. I do not spend time in those places anymore and it is probably for the best. I will second though that it feels like as most people get older they get more chill about other people’s life choices, at least in queerspace. And my people in real life are all good about it at this point. People confronted with real humans in real life tend to be kinder than people on the internet in general, I appreciate you bringing that level of humanity to your internet presence too.
I don’t always succeed! It’s so easy to get lost in your own head and find you’ve become much more invested in Being Right On the Internet than makes any sense? Like. I do legitimately enjoy debate. But this isn’t a debate club, much less some sort of tournament! There’s no prize for “arguing a case the most effectively”.
But there sure is pride, isn’t there. And in some cases that can be harder to give up on than a more literal prize.
Thank you for explaining your feelings so kindly.
And I’m even more sorry reading this response! Glad that you’re in a better place, sorry that you had to go through what you’ve been through to get there. I’m ace but not aro: I try to remember my aro siblings, and I obviously need to do better.
I’m also not aro, just a heteroromantic ace who also does a lot of the same stuff they do in addition to like. Spouse. Not around but I believe in their beliefs. The funny category of guy who does some of the stuff from lots of buckets but none of it in ways that categorize neatly.
Probably relatable in different ways since you’re NB and I kinda get the sense that is often The NB Gender Experience TM.
I think writing is a medium that tends to want you to be certain of the things that you put down. It’s real work entertaining the amount of uncertainty that you get to just passively hold when having a conversation in the air with someone. I think that definitely contributes to the Trying To Be Right On The Internet phenomenon. Anyway. I don’t really think you can be faulted for not holding all possible human experiences in your head at once every time you say words. We all gotta use shortcuts and shorthands places, and sometimes they’re the wrong ones and we update for the circumstances.
Anyway mostly replying bc of my perpetual (and perhaps foolish) desire to be understood 100% correctly at all times, have my general positive regard, may we both look forward to tomorrow’s strip.
Also pff not judging how you communicate!!! I am all too often typing stuff on my phone in these comments. And uh. Sometimes jogging at the same time! Smart! Safe!
My peripheral vision is good! I haven’t injured myself yet! fff
AK – I just wanted to say that I think you’re super cool, and this reply must have taken a lot of effort to write so well. It is joyous as a third party to see someone working so hard to find trust in others and react kindly when something erasing has happened, but still explain what is up. Your purpose was not bringing a bright spot to my day, but you did so, and I needed it, so thank you.
No, but that’s also not what people usually mean by “no heterosexual explanation”. The way it has been used consistently is “There’s same-sex attraction going on here”, which there in this case very much is. But what AK is getting mad at is the fact that this mindset applies to almost any other context where “no heterosexual explanation” is called. Queerplatonic is not pericishet, as you say, but it’s also not necessarily gay. And, more importantly, not all meaningful platonic interaction is queer. Lots of things can happen between friends, but because of amatanormativity people will assume it’s romantic/sexual. There can be an explanation of meaningful moments between two girls that is entirely platonic, as opposed to romantic or even queer, and thus entirely heterosexual. That absolutely was not the case here, but the phrase in general is used in ways that support amatanormativity.
Which in turn is no excuse for the gross underrepresentation of sapphic love, or straight people deciding things aren’t gay because the people involved are just “gal pals”. But still. Gal pals (and other close pals) do exist, and would like to be recognised as such.
Two things. Let’s see if I can be at all brief. Mostly fair points well made! But two things.
One: boy would it not be what I meant by the term, I don’t care if a given character is gay, I am much more interested in characters being queer. Especially in non cis gay ways, bc we don’t have much of any rep but we have the most of that kind.
But I also don’t use this term unironically, so I should not be assuming my usage is typical. Even if it were, it would be worth pushing back on the wording to be more inclusive.
Two: oh man the way I bristled at “same-sex attraction”.
TL;DR: the push to use this term in LGBTQIA+ spaces came from TERFs. Lots of people then used it perfectly innocently, but it’s not a great term even on its face, much less as a litmus test for who is and isn’t “””really””” LGBT. I’m nonbinary: I don’t have a “same” sex. Lots of nonbinary people feel the same way. Also, because it came from TERFs, you can guess what they thought of trans women and men being “same-sex attracted”.
Bonus: the term ORIGINATES in conservative Christian circles. They used it to minimize the significance of queer feelings in order to better argue for conversion therapy. Because it’s just attraction, see, not an intrinsic part of your identity.
TERFs tried to argue this wasn’t the origin of the term and that it was somehow instead an off shoot of Black queer terminology. Which… they were appropriating and changing so that white people could use it. Great defense there, TERFs! A+.
I FEEL A DESPERATE NEED TO CLARIFY: I was not accusing you of anything! Big big emphasis on “innocently repeated” terminology. It SEEMS like it should build a bridge between the LGs and the Bs, at the very least. Please don’t feel bad for saying a thing, we’re a big community and trying to keep up with terminology is daunting af.
I think I understand now. You weren’t saying heterosexual is equivalent to queerplatonic, but taking issue with the implications of using the phrase. I was confused by the “(read: queerplatonic)” because I’ve only seen it used as equivalence. Thank you for clarifying!
It’s baseball season! (Context: Elmer was trying to determine hunting season for rabbits and/or ducks, only to be told baseball season in the dead of winter)
nah, the bugs/daffy gay requires a sort of loving bongoiness towards one another that these two just aren’t capable of right now.
This is also different from the statler/waldorf gay relationship where the bongoiness is equal among both partners. if one side of the pairing isn’t flinching at sudden appearance of the other, its not a bugs/daffy situation.
maybe in their twenties when they can explore bdsm without all these judgy bongoes breathing down their necks
I think Big Z is probably thinking of Joyce channeling Daffy Duck when she intruded on Dorothy and Walky’s conversation. If he’s not, it sure was MY first thought.
Like, translate it into the appropriate local diction, it will still be true. Straight, perisex, cisgender people who want to call themselves [local vernacular for queer/LGBTQIA+] pretty much always have a very valid reason for doing that, even if they don’t know it yet. People are not drawn to our community for no reason.
The “cringey overly invested ally” might never come out to YOU (because you were an asshole to them and made them feel unsafe!), but that doesn’t mean they’re never going to come out.
Not to be confused with: “why isn’t there a Straight Pride month”, which is entirely separate and annoying.
The point I was trying to make was that Queer specifically, as a word that can mean both “Strange/Weird” and “Somewhere in the LGBT+ spectrum”, is an english thing.
Sorta? I know that it’s also a loanword meaning LGBTQIA+ in several other languages, though!
I would otherwise assume that if you aren’t speaking English, and you are talking about this sorta thing, you are using the local vernacular. I dunno why you would translate what I’m saying into a different language but not also translate the word queer appropriately.
Mostly because the comment chain you were responding to was talking about the difference between weird and queer (which means weird but is usually used as a part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella), which only really works if you’re speaking English. I am commenting specifically about that.
It has been a while, but if I remember his arc correctly he is either:
1. Panicking his way through another massive social fuck up
2. Kissing sexy guys or banging hot girls while achieving inhuman levels of confidence and self actualization.
3. Orbiting Joe in state of awkward confusion and/or snarky exasperation
Oddly enough, Old Joyce could have said she was still technically a virgin after all that.
Her initial waffling about having PiV with Joe could have been the instilled-by-religion sexual trauma too. Dorothy is “Safer” since she’s not a man and “it’s not REAL premarital hanky panky if there’s no PiV.”
So now she’s a runaway garage door spring of sexual repression with a perfect loophole for her “Why the fundip are you not in therapy yet you dingus?!” mind.
Thats my theory too, despite acknowledgeing that Becky isn’t a virgin she’s had it drilled into her subconscious that sex makes babies and therefore anything that cant do that isn’t real sex.
I love that Joyce of all people has had sex with two different people by her definition.
Not mocking her or her definition, either, like I think centering PIV sex isn’t terribly constructive for a number of reasons, just, it’s a mark of how different her life got in less than a year’s time. Hell, in a matter of weeks, as it’d turn out.
Are you in the habit of completely writing off ongoing stories that you like and are invested in because of a bad season or book? Inertia’s a pretty powerful thing.
Healthy adults learn to leave and come back, instead of hate-reading every day and posting about it. Lord knows I fell out of DOA for months at a time circa Dads In Villain Costumes.
Eh, if I’m already invested if a comic can maintain a consistent update schedule and maintain anything even remotely resembling quality I’m usually willing to stick it out.
Dumbing of Age even at it’s worst updates like clockwork and can usually swing a semi-decent joke or a neat character beat even in the middle of a bad run of strips.
I think healthy adults can in fact keep reading something they enjoy and dislike things happening in it currently and make comments about it, the idea that you have to engage only positively with media you consume and have to take a sabbatical otherwise is goofy.
Acting like everyone who just doesn’t like the storyline and says something about it is sitting here reading it while shaking and quivering in rage is equally as goofy.
Yup. Frankly, starting a sentence with “Healthy adults…” and proceeding to assert that an arbitrary personal preference is actually the only acceptable behavior is frankly weirder and worse behavior than 90% of the “hate” comments that survive the reporting button.
Dads in Villain Costumes was the peak of Dumbing of Age.
It was *incredibly stupid*, obviously, but in a fun doofy way. When Amazi-Girl was chasing Toedad with a grappling hook, the srs kidnapping storyline and the superhero silliness jarred badly, but when the dads are ALSO in costumes it all kind of gels better. I’m legitimately sad the Legion of Dad didn’t expand to get new members.
And then there are those who find this arc boring or uninteresting but come back anyway because it is extremely rare to enjoy every single minute of a media and that’s fine. They also get to dislike it and say it, this whole “any criticism means you need to go” is a tad exaggerated, I’d argue
Honestly I haven’t really been invested in the current arc in a while. The storytelling is so decompressed I can’t make heads or tails of it. Joyce and Joe were dating for a week in-comic before the breakup(?) a few strips ago. That was literally over TWO years ago for us. TWO YEARS AND IT WAS UNDER TWO WEEKS IN-STORY!
I just come in, read the 4 panels, and then come into the comments section to eat popcorn and point at the angry people. And sometimes snark at people.
No, but I for sure do not show up every single day to remind people how much I dislike it, or tell other people that they shouldn’t be enjoying it. That seems childish to me, I guess.
No, but I do expect them to back away, and check in occasionally to see if the storyline they hate so badly is still going on. You can put something down for a few minutes without throwing it away, you know. Except an ice cream sandwich – they melt and get all messy.
I still buy nearly every sonic game despite the series slowly transitioning into something that no longer appeals to me. That’s just the way I am. Just got done playing the beta for Crossworlds despite me being infuriated that Spongebob is in it.
(God I’m so mad spongebob is gonna be in it).
Nah, I’m with you. This has certainly been one of the weaker story lines.
But I think that’s because I just don’t like Dorothy, like at all. I’ve never found her compelling, I never thought her presence added anything to a scene and I’ve found her, at best, a mediocore teacher to Joyce. More often it felt like she was infantalizing Joyce than trying to teach her, and that just rubbed me the wrong way.
Like, I think Dorothy might be the least enjoyable character for me, because I’m just apathetic about her. Mary and Raidah I can hate, but Dorothy is just… boring.
I like Dorothy for those reasons. She is a shitty teacher, and she doesn’t know it. She is condescending, and thinks she’s being kind. She’s a dumbass, no less than any other character. She has the unearned confidence of Jennifer, but somehow gets more credit than she deserves, (and Jennifer less than she deserves).
Her not realizing she’s a dumbass can drag on though, and this is probably going to slow that down. Especially when circumstances outside Dorothy and Joyce’s knowledge or control keep rescuing them from their dumbassery. And she’s kind of turning into a clone of Joyce now.
*I also like Raidah. She’s a version of Dorothy, though, so if you don’t like one it’s not surprising if you don’t like the other.
There are a significant number of people who have expressed the same sentiment, and also a significant number of people who have explicitly expressed the opposite sentiment.
Asher and Ethan have the sword of damocles that is Asher’s involvement with the man who killed Mike. Gives a bit of weight to all their interactions. Not quite a perfect spark, but good enough
Dorothy and Joyce was fun as a thing that was teased, but now that it’s happened it’s kind of meh. Not a huge fan of the cheating but honestly without it I don’t know if there’d be much here.
Pretty much this. I’ve got no objections to Dorothy and Joyce as a couple, really, aside from that. Which makes the cheating and protest-conflict a double-edged sword — it gives them the opportunity to be interesting, but the events and pacing thereof since it’s started going down has so far largely squandered that opportunity.
(shout out to everyone who thinks “I think the pacing is bad/inconsistent” is the same thing as “I don’t have any patience” or “can’t envision future interesting story beats beyond the exact current time”.)
At least Ethan and Asher have angst. DoJos just domestic, like they already have white picket fence, 2.5 kids vibes and they’re not even straight. I feel like Dot is gonna compulsively say “we owe the Hendersons a dinner” soon
(Someone plz get that reference, dotty could so easily be a bree vanderkamp but she doesnt commit hard enough! She also doesn’t have Marcia Cross’s overpowering charisma but who does?)
I mean, lots of people dislike it for various reasons.
Lots of other people are enjoying it!
So, neither? It’s not just you but nor is it the objective truth of the matter. I’m not sure there really is an objective truth when it comes to whether or not a given piece of art “sucks”.
You can talk about objective features, but. “Boring” is subjective. “Bad” is subjective.
1. Bringing in the Gaza Genocide only for it to serve as a backdrop to white woman yuri is tonally jarring
2. Everyone is way too fucking chill with everything and it feels unnatural that Joe and Walky don’t seem to even care about being cheating on.
3. Joyce is cheating and that’s bad how dare characters do bad things (Obviously I don’t agree with this one!)
But like one third of DoA storylines have major tone problems and so did one-half of the Walkyverse storylines to the point that it was a running gag in Shortpacked. Can’t really call that a dealbreaker here when it wasn’t for Toedad vs Amazi-Girl. And while I’m personally mad at how chill everyone is it’s still very early in the story and Dorothy doesn’t know about the Polycule Plan yet.
I’m not loving this storyline either, but it’s middle of the DoA storyline pack quality-ways.
wrt 2, Walky had a single panel to respond so lets not say we know what’s going on there, but Joe has so much baggage attached to infidelity that it really feels like a reach to say he’s fine with it. His last appearance, he looked ready to cry. I think he knows he can’t compete with Dorothy for Joyce’s affection, so he’s grasping for what he can, and it’s going to tear him up.
Which is great for those of us who want some finely aged drama when things come to a head in 6 months.
I feel that most of the players here have been wildly out of character.
I keep commenting because if folks here can’t handle that level of mild criticism that’s a them problem. Some commentors here put the author on a pedestal and reflexively defend every decision they make, even when I think a lot of those decisions are at cross purposes, and having that be the only response to their work the author takes seriously is not conducive to my long-term enjlyment of the story.
As far as I can tell, a significant portion (I’m not saying “the majority”, because I can’t even begin to think how I’d quantify it) of the worst throat-jumping is driven by people who really can’t seem to distinguish between “mild, if repetitive, criticism” and “the kind of frothing hatred that shows up mostly in the deleted comments and other less-nice discussion spaces”.
Which is a much more charitable assumption, honestly, than my previous assumption that at least some of it is being driven by people being offended that their ship isn’t universally liked.
I mean, for better or worse, this is a kind of a community, and people are going to have their daily post, and so what if that daily post is “hey, I’m kinda bored by this current arc”?
I think a lot of people in this comment section (including myself on occasion) would do well to develop the skill of seeing a post they disagree with but have nothing substantial to say about or discuss and simply move on.
I’ve started with the baby step of defining a few folks (who appear to be on both “sides” further proving that there are no defined sides) whose comments are basically >50% mean-spirited, and vowing never to interact with them.
I do break that vow, especially with folks who are close to the 50% mark, but I’m trying.
Like, my knee-jerk reaction to the OP of this thread was bad! It was something whiny about how I don’t mind the negativity as much as I mind top-levels that don’t give me or anyone else anything to respond to beyond “yes I agree this is bad writing” or “no I disagree this isn’t bad writing”… at least make a more specific complaint so that we have something to discuss!
…and like. lol @ me, what an entitled reaction to have to other people’s comments. Sometimes a thread just isn’t gonna spark discussion for me personally and that’s fine!
I finally decided they were soliciting a headcount so I could respond on that level, but if there had been nothing for me to say: oh well! I can start my own threads, it’s literally fine.
Its not just you, the pacing has slowed to a somehow even slower crawl than usual and these two make for a pretty boring hook to place at the center. In universe it’s only been like an hour but IRL it feels like nothing’s happened since Sarah. I’m just begging for something to happen, anything other than these two nerds kissing for the 50th time
Also, unlike most past arcs, we haven’t checked in on any other goings on since this whole thing started. A few other characters, but always in the context of this plot (assuming we include the protest as part of it).
That’s been true before in the big action arcs, but usually not so long otherwise.
Reasons this should cause Reddit Chuds to explode:
– Their hatred of Dorothy.
– Their hatred of the laundry room incident.
– Their infantilizing of Joyce.
Far from being manipulated by Dorothy, Joyce affirms she enjoyed the event spectacularly; and was even thinking of Dorothy to make it extra spectacular.
Joyce enjoyed sexual pleasure, deal with it, chuds.
Yeah, like, even IN the moment, Joyce gave enthusiastic consent. It wasn’t the least bit ambiguous that she was able to withdraw it at any time, and she didn’t.
This is on par with knocking over a dizzy toddler. It’s easy to do, and kids falling over is funny, but they were gonna fall over anyway before you pushed them. I’d complain that you’re also financially abusing them by driving them to purchase another statue of Rei Ayanami in a bikini, but it’s close enough to the first of the month that they can probably manage it anyway.
Considering that your “criticisms” of them before they banned you were swearing at them and calling them idiots, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on when it comes to what a reasonable criticism is.
I see them rewriting the comics to have people call the girls “wh*res,” I see them telling willis to quit writing, I see them accusing Willis of cheating or being cheated on, I see them making anti-trans comments and calling Joe a “p*ssy” and “cuck,” I see them telling Willis to quit writing, and I guess I wonder what part of that seems reasonable.
Good god, if you want to yell at redditors just go to Reddit.
Roasting the “Reddit chuds” is an obsession now I guess. Can’t stand people being miserable somewhere else so you gotta make us miserable yammering on about their misery, secondhand?
It’d just be nice if people on different sites could stop circlejerking over how crappy and weird people are on the site that’s not the one they’re using. Like, as much as I enjoy calling them jar-filling gooners with a Funko addiction where their emotions should be, the fact is they’re just not actually here. We don’t see them unless we go there and look for them, so what they’re saying and thinking doesn’t actually deserve the amount of obsessive attention it’s been getting, the last couple of weeks. The redditors literally are not in the room with us right now, just like were not in the room with them right now, and it’d be nice not to be reminded daily about how much the people in each room want the people in the other room stapled to the wall dressed like Clopin Trouillefou and soaked in barbecue sauce for daring to talk about this webcomic differently. It’s gotten a little pathetic.
It’s not that they “talk about it differently” it’s the misogyny and intense amount of hatred they have for the both the comic and the weird af para social psyoanalyzing of Willis which they have callled out themselves. It’s really nit a matter of a difference of opinion they are actual assholes that very much deserve to be mocked.
There was never a question about what’s possible. It’s equally possible, and almost guaranteed if you’re not in a room full of insecure shitheads, for the other people in the room you’re in to get fed up hearing you complain about what the guys in the other room are supposedly doing. It’s masturbatory.
The tribalism is getting a bit weird?
Like, they shouldn’t be more a monolith than we are, not everyone in our comment section are agreeing, otherwise the last couple of weeks strips wouldn’t be among the most commented strips ever.
Joyce’s current definition of sex has always seemed weird and a bit too broad to me. There are many sexual activities that could fall under that definition that most people probably wouldn’t consider sex.
The bigger problem, I think, is that there are lots of things that are pretty clearly sex that Joyce’s definition rules out. Like, as the hovertext on that strip points out, by Joyce’s definition, Roz has never had sex. I’m pretty sure Roz would strenuously disagree.
Everyone’s free to have their own lines and boundaries, but when you start using terms in conversation with other people, they need to know what you mean by them, or it leads to, at best, comical misunderstandings. And when Joyce says, “I had sex with Dorothy,” no one, not even Dorothy, is assuming that she means, “Dorothy held my hand while we sat two machines apart in the laundry room, and then I made her leave before i got off. But I thought about her!”
Honestly, I’d say my bigger disagreement with it is that it’s not broad *enough*. You can have sex without someone orgasming (or even intent thereof) and you can certainly have sex without loving someone
Yeah, lotta virginal Christian moms by Joyce’s definition. Its both really, it’s too broad AND not broad enough (basically considers all sexual activity sex but only if you’re in love and cum)
Gentle reminder that a couple of your fellow commenters expressed empathy and agreement with that definition.
I know it’s a popular joke that Willis invented it for the story, but like, they very much did not. Some real people do define sex that way for themselves. As long as they’re not telling you you have to use their definitions for yourself, I don’t think it should really bother anyone.
I think it definitely becomes a problem if you have a very different definition of sex than someone else and then, according to this storyline, start telling third parties that that other person had sex with you.
As long as they’re not telling you you have to use their definitions for yourself, I don’t think it should really bother anyone.
Bolded for you.
If you think I’m complaining about nothing, I would suggest you go back to read the comments on the comic where Joyce tells Becky she’s still a virgin and then the comments on the following two strips. Note how many people seem to be upset with Becky for having the gal to not force a smile when Joyce’s first definition of sex blatantly erases her experiences, and then how many people proceed to spend like a week straight complaining that Joyce’s new definition is weird and stupid.
One especially bizarre and potentially triggering take so read with caution: “this would have massive repercussions on sexual assault laws!” As if Willis or Joyce were lobbying to replace legal definitions of sex. As if “rape” needs to legally be “sex” in order to be a crime.
It would bother me if someone attributed am act that by my own definitions did not perform or mean to perform. I don’t want people going around saying I had sex with them when my version of the events is that I didn’t. Especially if they’re speaking about it publicly to people I know. Joyce and dotty are. Together now but imagine if they weren’t and Joyce saying that was upsetting to Dorothy or putting strains on her relationships? I’m not gonna say it’s right or wrong but it is good social etiquette to run these things by your partner before saying them, unless you just don’t particularly care.
I genuinely think this can be solved by just communicating with people, though? Get on the same page with your partner about what acts constitute sex, and you don’t have to worry about this happening to you.
I don’t think the current situation, which is only happening bc Joyce and Dorothy did something together that neither thought was sex at the time and then Joyce recontextualized it later (and doesn’t have a great filter, so when she was proudly claiming to be Normal to Alice and Jennifer, she also wound up blurting out that “according to some definitions” she’s had sex with Joe! …and Dorothy!), is not something anyone else needs to worry about stumbling into.
A lot of problems can be solved (or prevented) by communicating! That doesn’t make them not problems though.
I think what people were specifically responding to is your repeated comment that no one should be bothered unless a definition is being forced on them, when there are other situations where someone could be bothered. (Like Dorothy is, in this strip! I’m sure it’s not that serious though, and just played up for the comedy. Still, fair thing to be bothered by.)
the thing that upsets me is people calling Joyce’s definition stupid and bad, when real people have said they related to or felt seen by her definition.
Can we please, please, please just make space for other people who define sex in less conventional ways. That’s all I’m asking for.
I mean, yeah, I know that that is what you’re talking about. I’m sorry this topics been so bad in the comment section. What I wanted to clarify was that the people who were replying to you WEREN’T talking about that and instead a specific phrasing you used – resulting in a sort of talking past each other. Again, sorry if it’s caused you frustration though, I know the feeling.
It also feels like maybe folks were assuming I was paraphrasing and that my objection was about all negative comments on Joyce’s definition? Which I wasn’t. Her and Dorothy not being on the same page is certainly part of the miscommunication happening right now.
But yeah I was just talking about people calling it “stupid” and “bad”. Not “everyone who dislikes the definition at all for any reason”.
In hindsight it does feel like that’s an obvious potential miscommunication that I could have anticipated, heh.
There’s an essay, I’m sure I’ve linked before, by Greta Christina, called “Are We having Sex Now or What” about defining what sex is, the gray area, and does it matter.
It doesn’t matter if what they did is in a pigeonhole definition of sex. It was a sexual encounter, there was sexual intimacy.
To use a crude but actually relevant example: CLERKS has a subplot where Dante and his girlfriend Veronica have a healthy and stable relationship that is the only good thing in his life. It is ruined by the discovery they have different definitions of sex with Veronica not thinking oral sex counted and thus quite comfortable doing it on a first date. So she has had way more “sex” than Dante.
I mean, was that relationship ruined by Dante and Veronica having different definitions of sex, or was it ruined by Dante letting patriarchy tell him how to feel about Veronica’s life prior to dating him.
Like, was he ACTUALLY upset that her definition of sex was narrower than his, or was he upset that she gave blowjobs to x number of prior partners, because on some level he thinks that makes her dirty?
i think her fucking a priaptic corpse upset him more that anything else, but yeah we gota glimpse of smith’s patriarcal catholic schooling coming through there i feel.
That would be Caitlin not Veronica, two different characters.
Smith also talked about how the, “men must be more experienced than women” in CHASING AMY so it’s not a blindspot of his but something he views as a flaw of his male leads.
Frankly, that definition potentially being at odds with a lot of the other characters’ definition, at least two of whom she’s having some form of sexual interactions with, is one of the actually interesting hooks about this storyline that I’m hoping we see some more tension about here.
It would be interesting. I’m not sure whether it would, for me personally, be worth the uptick in people complaining that Joyce’s definition of sex is and and stupid and also she lost her virginity to a washing machine ha ha ha ha ha ha ha kill me please.
I dunno if anyone has mentioned this but I think this recent poll is FAR from “Cursed Pairings”
-Walky/Joe
Not at all cursed. If anything seems pretty solid. Joe and Walky have had friendly conversation. Their girlfriends are dating. They got a cute Big guy/Little Guy dynamic. They’d be cute.
-Dorothy/Jennifer
I mean Dorothy’s a bit Neurotic and Billie’s a bit of a pill but this isn’t exactly cursed. Aesthetically I think they’d look good together.
-Sarah/Raidah
The closest we’ve gotten to “cursed” so far. And honestly…Enemies to Lovers is a favorite dynamic of mine so I don’t think this is all that cursed. I could ship it.
-Roz/Mary
The most cursed couple here and mostly cuz Mary is in it.
but y’know…
And they were roommates.
Seriously though the sexually liberated Roz getting the hyper repressed conservative to loosen up through the power of sex positive flirting is like…my jam.
-Sal/Amazi-girl
Nothing weird about Masturbation.
Jokes aside no I’d love that. They’d have such a “cool girls doing cool things” dynamic. I’d love to see them fighting crime together or riding motorcycles and junk. Granted Sal has said she’s not into girls but to be fair Joyce has implied similar.
Also why’re all the “cursed” ships gay ships? Gimmie some STRAIGHT cursed Ships. Like Walky/Billie. Or Becky and Ethan. Feels weird to only have gay cursed ship pairings.
I refuse to believe anything resembling a cursed DOA ship doesn’t involve their parents. Those guys are x10 messier, and you can combine them in so many awful ways. Call me back when Stacy tries to rebound off her new ex-husband.
Yeah, I’d agree that most of these (except Dorothy/Jen, that one’s got legs) are pretty uninteresting, but ‘boring’ isn’t enough to make a thing cursed.
Only Roz/Mary rises to the level of actually cursed.
As an experiment, I decided to open the cast page and throw all the names there into a random name picker. Half the ships will still be gay but let’s see what we get…
– Jason/Tony: They’ve never interacted in canon so I guess fill in your fave nerd/jock dynamic
– Leslie/Malaya: Okay this is a disaster, well done RNG
– Ruth/Malaya: I could see a hatefuck out of this
– Charlie/Ethan: No sex but they talk about toys for 5 hours
– Joycelyn/Walky: Whatever actually goes on gets overshadowed by Joyce having a conniption fit over the idea of Walky as brother-in-law
Ahahaha, Joyce having walky as a brother in law would be the worst, for her. She’d be so upset. But at least she’d get to also have Sal (and Jennifer) as sisters-in-laws.
I floated the idea yesterday that Jennifer running into these two before she learns how Walky was dumped and how he’s feeling about it would afford Willis the opportunity to give her multiple different reactions without any of them colliding with or minimizing the others. And boy are there a variety of things for Jennifer to react to this with, like, “oh man I hope this is what you were so depressed about and now it’s a bit better,” which I do think is also gonna be part of Becky’s reaction.
I really, really like the ongoing gag that Billie is horrifically face-blind. It’s always good when it’s part of the whole Billie vs Amazi-Girl gag, but it gets even funnier when it comes up in unexpected places like this.
What’s gayer?whatever it is Dorothy and Joyce are doing now█████████████████(85%, 4,154 Votes)Dorothy and Joyce having sex███(15%, 746 Votes)Total Voters: 4,900
I feel like the “see tomorrow’s comic today” Patreon blurbs in the caption have gotten a ton more frequent. Like, even a few months ago it would just be on really momentous strips or cliffhangers, but I feel like it’s been posted more days than not in the past month or two.
It’s not bad or anything, just feel like I’m noticing.
Y’know, there was what was once a very good comic book (before its author had Something Happen to his brain and became a screaming, shrieking misogynist religious nut) which gave an entire issue to the lead character taking a piss.
It could be a lot slower and count your blessings is what I’m saying. xD
Yeah but I have a coupling I’ve been invested in for literal years constantly downplayed cuz it’s “only been a couple weeks” has been frustrating.
It’s like the Straw hats in One Piece. Pre-Timeskip wasn’t even a year. They spent more time APART in the 2 year timeskip than they ever spent together.
The pacing is worse right now than usual, I’m guessing it’s a rewrite issue? Its always been slow but it’s never felt like it’s just barely above a halt like this before
a couple strips back; Walky/Lucy broke up last week, the same week the laundry room moment between Dorothy and Joyce happened. Then not even a day later is when Walky/Dorothy hooked up. This week/ three days ago is when Walky/Dorothy officially “got back together”, and now we’re three days later, Dorothy and Joyce have made out and Walky got dumped again because his premonitions about is girlfriend’s bf having a crush and wanting to steal her a way came true.
Its also worth mentioning that Alice is very much being a chaos gremlin right now by spreading this information around campus to strangers she doesn’t know/has no affiliations with. So thats.. interesting.
As I pointed out under that strip, Alice’s timeline is off, mostly because people have been giving her imprecise information.
Today is Sunday. Laundry day was last Wednesday; eleven days ago now.
On Thursday (D-10), at some point between Anti-Joyce climbing a tree and Joe and Joyce arriving at science class, they started dating.
Last Sunday (D-7), Walky went to church with Lucy, and Lucy dumped his ass.
On Monday (D-6), Joyce took Dorothy out for dranks, cuddles, and proposals to watch her fuck, then came back home and crawled into bed with Joe.
On Tuesday morning (D-5), Joyce had topless cuddles with Joe, Dorothy and Walky got back together and Dorothy floated the idea of closet Joyce watching them fornicate, and Dina liberated a jug of booze and they had a party in her room, where Lucy and Jacob got together.
On Thursday (D-3) Jocelyne came out to Joyce, Sarah met Tony, and Dorothy sent Joyce a picture of her tits. As a joke. lol.
On Friday (D-2) Joe talked to Dorothy about her crush on Joyce, Joyce finally saw Dorothy’s titty pics, Dorothy had apology sex with Walky (without actually getting to the apology part), Joyce helped get Billie and Alice back together, Sarah stayed over with Tony, and Joyce almost kissed Dorothy and then went on a romantic date with Joe.
Early Saturday morning (yesterday!), Joe and Joyce came back from their date, and Joyce got fingerbanged, then in the morning she realized that she’d “had sex” with Dorothy, then she ran into Billie and Alice in the lobby, which is where Alice overheard Joyce telling Billie that she’d “had sex” with Dorothy “a week ago”. Then Joyce and Dorothy went to have some more “sex”, but were distracted by discovering that Jocelyne might have been outed to Hank, so instead they went to the protest, got lesbian-married, made out (emphasis on “out”) on camera, were saved by Amazi-Girl, made out some more, then Joyce gave Joe a bj and then spent the night spooning Dorothy.
Oh yeah, also yesterday, after running into Joyce, Billie and Alice had lunch with Walky, which is where they learned that Walky got back with Dorothy “like three days ago” (it was actually four at that point, and is five now), and Alice put the pieces together into a vague approximation of reality. Also Alice learned what Wally’s name actually is.
Thank you. That’s why I keep trying to point out to people saying Joyce is a terrible person for not having more of that conversation with Joe, that in-universe it’s been like ten minutes since she left the room to panic about the newspaper.
Because this is a confrontation between Jennifer and Joyce, with curious Alice behind the scenes very interested in the shenanigans, I calculate that there is a greater than 100% chance that Jennifer will say something really stupid and cutting which also accidentally encapsulates her relationship with Alice, and then Dorothy and Joyce will have that face, and Jennifer will be like, “She’s right behind me, isn’t she.”
And I say “greater than 100%” because while that’s pretty much guaranteed, I think there’s a good chance that Joyce calls Jennifer “Billie” because she sees Alice coming up, and Jennifer yells something like “My name is Jennifer! Not Billie!!” Which would be the icing on top of the cake.
I don’t think jennifer is actually happy with being called jennifer, but she absolutely doesn’t want to be the same person she used to be as Billie either. That’s how I read the progression of names sequence from a couple months back. And by a couple I mean like 6 or maybe 24 idk.
Joyce holds Dorothy’s hand. As a consequence, both of them get to hold a woman’s hand.
Dorothy buys Joyce a bubble tea. As a consequence, she gets to watch Joyce make Joyce Faces™ about the boba.
Joyce kills Dorothy’s long-forgotten ex-suitor, Micheletto Ricci, in an honorable sword duel. As a consequence, Dorothy gets to see Joyce commit violence with a sabre, Micheletto gets to see his love truly happy before he dies, and Joyce gets to learn the joy of seeing the exact moment the life leaves a rival’s body.
I mean igaf about “consequences” but id still rather see some drama. I’ll even take new commentariat drama. Fuck it I’ll start some
The star wars animated universe is the best way to consume any of the visual media. Everything but the original trilogy (and sequels ig by relation) matters. Rebels > original trilogy. Fight me
Very bemused anytime someone says x or y is “gayer than gay sex.” Let’s not get it twisted. Gay sex would be gayer than this. Let me know when Joyce is knuckle deep in Dororthy’s cooter. Until then I’m not interested.
(Not that you can’t also get sensation from straps, especially some setups, I’m just saying even without that it seems right up Joyce’s metaphorical alley rn.)
Somebody in the physics department there at the college could write one helluva thesis if only they could come up with a way to describe the way time passes in Indiana.
“Anyway, look, Daisy wants to start a spinoff gay-culture-on-campus magazine, with you two featuring in issue one. She wants to call it ‘Daisy Chain’ but I’m gonna talk her out of that.”
Billy (so far) seems rather chill with the entire ordeal but I am curious how this will affect the wider friend group as a whole given Dot and Joyce are kind of the hinge on the entire core friend group.
Dina, Becky & Sarah aren’t particularly close to Walky or Joe by any means, even though I do with Becky and Walky hung out more together. And while we know which way Sarah swings on this, I can totally buy Becky and Dina fully siding with DoJo both because they don’t quite know Joe and Walky like that but also on a maybe more concerning side because there’s a chance Becky is going to internalize the fact that the person she was pining on all this time who she believed just wasn’t gay, now is gay which might make the rejection of her advances suddenly feel a LOT more real. And then over-compensate for that hurt by just fully throwing her support behind Joyce despite the dubious actions she took to get where she is.
Joe seems okay in the immediate right now of things but I feel like at some point Danny is gonna start noticing that Joe’s been on a pretty rough path of questioning himself so much that it kinda comes at the cost of his personal self-respect. Distrusting himself so much because he doesn’t want to be his old self again and while he’s actually made a good step forward recently with his talk with Rachel, acknowledging that he is improving. Joe clinging to the relationship at even the cost of just entirely overlooking that Joyce fully broke his trust by proxy of actively and intentionally cheating on him on top of not informing him about said cheating when they first met up after it had happened does feel concerning to me and makes me worry that he’s simply stepping into the kind of poly relationship Joyce predicted for Lucy, Sarah & Jacob. Where Joe will just be gradually pushed out of the relationship with time.
Also I want Walky to pick up longboarding so he can spend some time with Marcie and Sal away from the group, and honestly the campus grounds as a whole. I think it’d be healthy for him to have friends outside the Math Squad and Sal & Marcie’s skate squad feels like the exact kind of low drama stuff he needs right now. Especially since it opens up the possibility of Walky/Carla hijinx since they actually have the potential of being good friends, both being cartoon loving goofballs that enjoy annoying other people for attention.
Walky hanging out with Sal and Marcie could lead to Malaya and Walky friendship. My dream platonic [for real] pairing. Walky’s idea of “guy friendships” seems like it’s put off everyone in his circle/floor whom he could be that kind of friend with. But Malaya has a kind of abrasiveness, I don’t know if I can explain it. They’ll call out Walky’s shit, but his shit won’t stop them from hanging out.
I see them being the focus of each other’s obnoxiousness, taking the edge off them for everyone else, but not bothering each other.
Like Walky wants someone to put him in a headlock and Malaya wants to put someone in a headlock. Platonically.
If I were dotty I’d immediately drag Joyce off to her room bc god damn, the realization that your first time having sex as a couple was fucking. Fully clothed, sitting on dryers, out of the room for the climax, only touching is holding hands, not even a damn peck on the lips. That’s so absurdly lame I’d have to fix it on the spot. They even fuck in the most boring way possible, damn. Whatever the fuck it is mormons do is spicier than that. If you gotta stop and think “well yeah I guess technically that counts” then that’s lame!
eh. I don’t think the definition of “had sex” has to be the exact inverse of the definition of platonic, and I don’t think having it not be so is automatically tied to christian purity culture or whatever.
I mean, Joyce is IMHO correct that they had sex, but Joyce’s definition is not inclusive of things that many other people would consider to be “having sex”, so I’m not on #TeamJoyce per se.
I mean, yes, but also, in my pretty substantial firsthand experience, this situation almost always leads to one party or the other catching feelings, because people are lonely and don’t want to be and are often biologically wired to attempt to reproduce and raise offspring, so hormones often blind people from reasoning through whether this is a good match in the face of someone being available and probably also lonely.
idk, I am not personally comfortable with “very frequently”, and I’m even less comfortable with “almost always”, when I know none of us have data to back it up.
It’s an extremely common fictional trope. Amatonormativity is also a very real pressure, and in America at least, the pressure to find a partner and start a family is also rooted deeply in ageism: no one is more terrified of aging than a single person in their early 30s, the culture is SCREAMING at you to find a partner and settle down before you start “looking” old and become “doomed to die alone”.
But without unbiased data, I don’t think any of us can really say what is or isn’t “more common” in the real world wrt relationships deliberately begun as any type of platonic sex partners — especially given that the aforementioned cultural expectation sets a lot of people up for failure.
Or, more specifically, the common belief that “catching feelings” is all but inevitable sometimes leads people to agree to a platonic sexual relationship specifically with the expectation that it won’t stay that way.
^ Li said what I was going to say but better, said the poly/enm guy who is pretty good about not catching feelings when feelings are not part of the original definition of the relationship.
Sometimes, but sometimes not. I have friends and acquaintances I’ve had sexual relationships with that never had any romantic aspects develop. Sometimes you and your friends find each other sexy and decide to fuck but acknowledge that you’re not romantically compatible. The human tapestry is rich and complex.
I feel like we’re brushing up against the limits of commonly accepted meanings of words in the English language. Like, if platonic love means something that friends experience but romantic partners experience something more, I feel that being “more than friends” puts it in a grey area, no?
@yak nah it just means they’re friends I trust and like enough to fuck and sext. There’s all different kinds and levels of friendship but it doesn’t mean romantic feelings get involved.
I was more saying that we may be operating under different understandings of what the meaning of platonic love is. Normally I understand it to mean any love which has no sexual component. From context I thought Big Z meant that it was the type of love that friends or close family members feel for each other, however if I understand correctly Dot means it is any love which is not romantic.
In that case I agree that platonic sex is not only possible but very common, and “catching feelings” from fwb situationships is probably not usual.
Here’s one to chew on: Do you count ERP/Cyber-sex? Personally, I do. I didn’t at first, until I learned my girlfriend very much does, in a very unfortunate way, and now it’s been firmly solidified.
Yeah, and it’s been a consistent factor across the entire comic. As much as Joyce loves intensely with her whole being, she’s also frequently an insensitive dick with hit-or-miss communication skills, and pointing that out isn’t any sort of contradiction in a person’s reading comprehension.
It’s been interesting seeing her insensitive dickish tendencies shift from “kind of adorable fundie misunderstandings” to “actually really objectionable stuff that gets her yelled at”
I’m still not over the fact that her spitefued with Walky doesn’t get paused for anything, up and apparently including her needing to boast about “stealing” his girlfriend away from him.
Gentle reminder that a couple of your fellow commenters expressed empathy and agreement with Joyce’s definition of sex.
Please keep that in mind when you feel the impulse to make fun of it as bad or stupid!
Obviously Dorothy also gets a say in whether or not it’s okay for Joyce to go around telling other people that they’ve had sex, but that’s like, the only real reason it even matters for the two of them to be on the same page about whether or not they’ve had sex.
Otherwise, it’s fine. Any other hypothetical problem caused by a different definition of sex is really something else in disguise — like, if Joyce used “we’ve had sex once already” as an argument for why Dorothy should consent to more sex immediately, that’s Hypothetical Joyce being a shitty pushy partner, and it’s not the definition difference that’s the problem.
It’s not like she told just anybody, she did tell Jennifer because Jennifer is one of Joyce’s friends she holds to be a close one, even if Jennifer is sort of all over the place in how much she returns that. She *did* call Joyce her best friend in college at one point, but it wasn’t exactly as a compliment in-context.
Of course, Dorothy and Jennifer are often at loggerheads, but do seem to still consider each other friends. Just, she’s probably the friend who most pisses Dorothy off.
Like, this is not about what’s happening in the comic, bluntly. This is just reiterating a plea for folks to make a little more space in this comment section for folks who define sex differently from them.
I do think that Joyce’s definition of sex is something that, when it involves another person, she really ought to make sure the other person agrees. Like clearly Dorothy doesn’t agree that she and Joyce have had sex by Joyce’s definition. And I think that matters primarily because if I was dating someone and their definition of sex was basically “I thought about you while masturbating therefore we have had sex and I’ve also told at least two other people this”, I personally would feel very upset and violated because that’d be a lie in my eyes.
I do also think it’s actually very important for two people who are in a relationship to be very much on the same page regarding sex, just as a general rule of thumb in a relationship. But that’s just me and my opinion on it. I respect if other people disagree for whatever reason they happen to do so. If Dorothy goes on to say she consents to Joyce’s definition of sex and agrees that they’ve had sex, then kudos for them.
I guess to add onto this I will say that I can’t speak for everyone else who has commented regarding Joyce’s definition of sex but speaking for myself, much like you are saying some people feel empathy for Joyce’s definition and feel seen, please understand that for someone like myself, for reasons I will not go into, this sort of murky gray area speech about sex that opens the door to other unfortunate subjects is something I myself am sensitive to. Out of respect for the sentiment you’ve expressed here, and because we’ve commented in the past and I do actually like you (as much as I can like someone who I just brush around with in the comments section at least, you know how it be), I will refrain from commenting regarding Joyce and her definition of sex from this point on. I never meant any harm when I commented in the negative prior, and I apologize for any past offenses or rudeness in such exchanges.
Your comment was fine! I don’t think you’ve ever actually trod on the thing I was trying to call out here. I’m also sorry for the discomfort or more than that.
Maybe folks are assuming I’m not being literal when I say my problem is people calling Joyce’s definition stupid and bad, but that is exactly what my problem is. Not “this could cause communication problems”, not “Joyce shouldn’t be telling other people she and Dorothy had sex”, but
“this definition is stupid, it’s bad, no one should define sex like this, no one WOULD define sex like this, Willis just had Joyce do that to contrive this storyline into existence.”
The person who bravely told us about redefining what sex meant because her partner is paralyzed? Hasn’t left a comment around these parts for more than a month now. I kind of feel like she left because of the constant thoughtless ragging on Joyce’s definition, and if so…. good for her taking care of herself, but also we suck.
Ugh. Again, I’m sorry. I should have been more specific about that because you’ve implied something really heavy here 😢 I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sorry my post dredged up something so ugly for you.
I also should have anticipated that it would sound like I was objecting to ALL forms of negativity around the definition, instead of to a very small specific portion. I think that would’ve been better communication and at least MIGHT have avoided doing additional damage 😞
Some sort of irony, or perhaps a sort of conflicting access needs here.
Also right back at you in terms of liking you! A friendly internet stranger acquaintanceship sort of a thing. 😞
(don’t get me wrong, ‘some’ recognition is enough to be a problem, but I was surprised how recognizable they seemed at first in a black and white newspaper photo, with Joe, then Raidah. Billy and Daisy are balancing that back out for me)
Look on the brightside Dorothy maybe this is what he needs to finally admit your not perfect…then again there’s as much of a chance of that happening as Joyce admitting it.
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Okay but which was the gayest part
Hand holding, obviously
Hands are well-known as the most prevalent infection site for cooties.
I would have thought that pressing foreheads against each other was a more viable infection site.
its all on a sliding scale of gay
Obviously. The most degenerate of fetishes.
Right up there with calling your partner by their first name
I’m not kink shaming but that’s going too far
Probably the calm, rational discussion about each other’s definitions and boundaries.
Now I am filking Blondie’s “The Hardest Part” in my head.
“That sounds a little gay dude.”
“It is a little gay dude.”
TFS really is the gift that keeps on giving.
Well that’s just objectively true, Jennifer.
Shout-out to the continued saga of Jennifer being the absolute worst-qualified journalist on campus. Or just having the passive perception of your average dump-WIS barbarian…that is also blind.
Super gay
…Gravatar completely unintentioned, but fitting as I could see Walky saying that
Confirmation, Joyce was thinking of Dorothy when she had that first orgasm.
To repeat the saying: There is no heterosexual explanation for that.
There are in fact heterosexual (read: platonic) explanations for that. They were not what happened. But they exist and I wish that phrase would die in a hole forever.
Sincerely, your local queerplatonic partnership haver.
As a fellow QPR-haver, amen. Usually most things can have a platonic explanation, but as you said, that is not what happened.
Heterosexual (read: platonic)? What?
Hetero doesn’t just mean not gay, y’all.
I mean this question fully without sarcasm and entirely just genuine confusion: how does heterosexual, typically defined as being sexually attracted to the opposite sex, mean the same thing as platonic, typically defined as non-sexual?
Maybe I am misreading what you’re saying here?
When someone says there is no heterosexual explanation for this, they mean this is not something people do platonically. They mean this is not something friends do.
It’s contextual. But the context here is pointing to a pair of women doing a thing together that’s weird for normative friendship and saying there isn’t any way this happens if they’re heterosexual. It’s actively rebutting a platonic reading, it happens because people are tired of straight people saying “it’s not actually gay they’re just gal pals” (which, fair) and it also often frames my important life experiences as implausible things that would never ACTUALLY happen platonically, it’s just straight people gaslighting you. Which. Uh. Hurts.
I mean.
Amatonormativity sucks, but I don’t actually think “there’s no platonic explanation for this” is what “there’s no heterosexual explanation for this” means.
Heterosexual in this case is being used as a stand-in for pericishet, which it arguably shouldn’t be.
Queerplatonic is not pericishet.
Therefore, if there’s a queerplatonic explanation for something, that’s NOT a “heterosexual” explanation.
Li, you are well intentioned and I appreciate you, and I have no doubt that if you said it that’s what you’d have meant. But to be really frank, I will extend this kind of benefit of the doubt when it is literally any different trying to get queerfolk to acknowledge QPRs than it is getting cishet etc. folks to.
I have grown up in very queer spaces. I have had both queer and not folks be lovely and understanding. I have also been told that if I wasn’t in a romantic relationship with my best friend people hoped we would figure it out soon. An awful lot of both straight/etc and queer people will get pretty hostile with you on the internet for suggesting an ace or queerplatonic understanding of something. The world, broadly, has not earned this kind of benefit of the doubt from me, because more often than not when I engage people using phrases like this they very much do NOT mean what you are saying.
Sorry. I’m not trying to be an asshole. But the thing you’re saying very much does not align with my lived experience.
That’s fair, and I’m sorry.
idk, I know I’ve never used the phrase in any way other than self-deprecating (because it’s almost never being said about media where there’s any actual hope that the characters in question are anything other than pericishet), so.
People meaning it literally, in my experience, are teenagers.
Which doesn’t invalidate any of your points, just contributes further to a lack of nuance.
I appreciate the hell out of you, Li. Just wanted to say it. One of the best intentioned and understanding people around here.
You’re good people. It’s just one of my particular sharp points. Used to be shit I laughed off but coming to terms with the fact that I will never be able to share insurance with that partner the way I can with my spouse has made all the platonic and poly stuff feel a lot sharper as a full adult. Sigh.
Man I WISH I was mostly encountering it unironically from teenagers. I used to hang out on relationship subreddits and oh boy have I had some really bad interactions with middle aged folks about these topics. Sigh. I do not spend time in those places anymore and it is probably for the best. I will second though that it feels like as most people get older they get more chill about other people’s life choices, at least in queerspace. And my people in real life are all good about it at this point. People confronted with real humans in real life tend to be kinder than people on the internet in general, I appreciate you bringing that level of humanity to your internet presence too.
I try.
I don’t always succeed! It’s so easy to get lost in your own head and find you’ve become much more invested in Being Right On the Internet than makes any sense? Like. I do legitimately enjoy debate. But this isn’t a debate club, much less some sort of tournament! There’s no prize for “arguing a case the most effectively”.
But there sure is pride, isn’t there. And in some cases that can be harder to give up on than a more literal prize.
Thank you for explaining your feelings so kindly.
And I’m even more sorry reading this response! Glad that you’re in a better place, sorry that you had to go through what you’ve been through to get there. I’m ace but not aro: I try to remember my aro siblings, and I obviously need to do better.
Internet gesture of support. 🙁
also, gosh, Josh, thanks. You’re pretty cool, too. 🙂
I’m also not aro, just a heteroromantic ace who also does a lot of the same stuff they do in addition to like. Spouse. Not around but I believe in their beliefs. The funny category of guy who does some of the stuff from lots of buckets but none of it in ways that categorize neatly.
Probably relatable in different ways since you’re NB and I kinda get the sense that is often The NB Gender Experience TM.
I think writing is a medium that tends to want you to be certain of the things that you put down. It’s real work entertaining the amount of uncertainty that you get to just passively hold when having a conversation in the air with someone. I think that definitely contributes to the Trying To Be Right On The Internet phenomenon. Anyway. I don’t really think you can be faulted for not holding all possible human experiences in your head at once every time you say words. We all gotta use shortcuts and shorthands places, and sometimes they’re the wrong ones and we update for the circumstances.
Anyway mostly replying bc of my perpetual (and perhaps foolish) desire to be understood 100% correctly at all times, have my general positive regard, may we both look forward to tomorrow’s strip.
*not aro
Sorry voice to text typos are stupid sometimes.
Yes I use an insane mix of phone typing and voice to text don’t @ me. I’m going to run away now.
Thank you.
Also pff not judging how you communicate!!! I am all too often typing stuff on my phone in these comments. And uh. Sometimes jogging at the same time! Smart! Safe!
My peripheral vision is good! I haven’t injured myself yet! fff
AK – I just wanted to say that I think you’re super cool, and this reply must have taken a lot of effort to write so well. It is joyous as a third party to see someone working so hard to find trust in others and react kindly when something erasing has happened, but still explain what is up. Your purpose was not bringing a bright spot to my day, but you did so, and I needed it, so thank you.
This comment made all the tension leave my body all at once. Thank you. I appreciate you saying this.
No, but that’s also not what people usually mean by “no heterosexual explanation”. The way it has been used consistently is “There’s same-sex attraction going on here”, which there in this case very much is. But what AK is getting mad at is the fact that this mindset applies to almost any other context where “no heterosexual explanation” is called. Queerplatonic is not pericishet, as you say, but it’s also not necessarily gay. And, more importantly, not all meaningful platonic interaction is queer. Lots of things can happen between friends, but because of amatanormativity people will assume it’s romantic/sexual. There can be an explanation of meaningful moments between two girls that is entirely platonic, as opposed to romantic or even queer, and thus entirely heterosexual. That absolutely was not the case here, but the phrase in general is used in ways that support amatanormativity.
Which in turn is no excuse for the gross underrepresentation of sapphic love, or straight people deciding things aren’t gay because the people involved are just “gal pals”. But still. Gal pals (and other close pals) do exist, and would like to be recognised as such.
Two things. Let’s see if I can be at all brief. Mostly fair points well made! But two things.
One: boy would it not be what I meant by the term, I don’t care if a given character is gay, I am much more interested in characters being queer. Especially in non cis gay ways, bc we don’t have much of any rep but we have the most of that kind.
But I also don’t use this term unironically, so I should not be assuming my usage is typical. Even if it were, it would be worth pushing back on the wording to be more inclusive.
Two: oh man the way I bristled at “same-sex attraction”.
TL;DR: the push to use this term in LGBTQIA+ spaces came from TERFs. Lots of people then used it perfectly innocently, but it’s not a great term even on its face, much less as a litmus test for who is and isn’t “””really””” LGBT. I’m nonbinary: I don’t have a “same” sex. Lots of nonbinary people feel the same way. Also, because it came from TERFs, you can guess what they thought of trans women and men being “same-sex attracted”.
Bonus: the term ORIGINATES in conservative Christian circles. They used it to minimize the significance of queer feelings in order to better argue for conversion therapy. Because it’s just attraction, see, not an intrinsic part of your identity.
TERFs tried to argue this wasn’t the origin of the term and that it was somehow instead an off shoot of Black queer terminology. Which… they were appropriating and changing so that white people could use it. Great defense there, TERFs! A+.
I FEEL A DESPERATE NEED TO CLARIFY: I was not accusing you of anything! Big big emphasis on “innocently repeated” terminology. It SEEMS like it should build a bridge between the LGs and the Bs, at the very least. Please don’t feel bad for saying a thing, we’re a big community and trying to keep up with terminology is daunting af.
I think I understand now. You weren’t saying heterosexual is equivalent to queerplatonic, but taking issue with the implications of using the phrase. I was confused by the “(read: queerplatonic)” because I’ve only seen it used as equivalence. Thank you for clarifying!
<3
Actually, there is a rather simple and elegant explanation for it, but sadly it is too large to fit in this comment box.
A Pierre de Fermat reference in the Dumbing of Age comment section? These are my people.
the only way to get gayer is to develop some sorta Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck dynamic
The Huntin’ Twilogy wasn’t them trying to get each other killed.
They were fucking with Elmer, literally caused him to lose his mind at the end.
It’s baseball season! (Context: Elmer was trying to determine hunting season for rabbits and/or ducks, only to be told baseball season in the dead of winter)
And then begins shooting at the baseball that is bouncing away…
Elmer: Sowwy, fewwas, but I’m a vegetawian. I only hunt fow spowt.
Bugs: Oh yeah? Well, there’s other sports besides hunting, ya know!
Daffy (suddenly in full tennis regalia): Anyone for tennis?
*Elmer shoots Daffy*
Daffy (shot): Nice… game…
They’re at LEAST three-quarters of the way there already, let’s be honest.
nah, the bugs/daffy gay requires a sort of loving bongoiness towards one another that these two just aren’t capable of right now.
This is also different from the statler/waldorf gay relationship where the bongoiness is equal among both partners. if one side of the pairing isn’t flinching at sudden appearance of the other, its not a bugs/daffy situation.
maybe in their twenties when they can explore bdsm without all these judgy bongoes breathing down their necks
I think Big Z is probably thinking of Joyce channeling Daffy Duck when she intruded on Dorothy and Walky’s conversation. If he’s not, it sure was MY first thought.
joyce and walky aren’t into each other, though, thats not bugs and daffy, that’s just having an enemy
Well, Walky was NOT being Bugs Bunny, Joyce was just being Daffy Duck about breaking him and Dorothy up.
So, halfway there already as in, Joyce recently behaved kinda like Daffy Duck, now we just need Dorothy to behave like Bugs Bunny?
That’s my guess, though, I’m not Big Z.
Pretty much.
In those cartoons, _everyone_ is gay for Bugs.
Yep. Witness all the times Yosemite Sam and Elmer (just to mention a couple) have drooled all over Bugs in drag. 😉
Jennifer speaks the truth
nah that wasn’t gay, just weird as fuck
It can be both
And it can be quite adorable too.
gayness is more often than not weird as fuck
straightness seems to pretty weird as well
As an aroace who’s baffled by this whole subject, I can confirm. Can also confirm the adorableness Vanessa mentions, though.
Allos in general are incompehensible. Weird as fuck
there is no normal we are all weird!!!
“Queer” is a synonym for “weird”
The Straights™ are weird, but they don’t get to be Queer.
Autistic straight confirming – I’m weird, but I’m not queer. (My wife is, though; she’s pan.)
I have never met a pericishet person who wanted to call themself queer who didn’t have a VERY valid reason for doing so tbh.
Even if they weren’t yet out to themselves, that feeling doesn’t come from nowhere.
*(Your results may vary if you aren’t speaking english)
…I don’t think in any way that matters?
Like, translate it into the appropriate local diction, it will still be true. Straight, perisex, cisgender people who want to call themselves [local vernacular for queer/LGBTQIA+] pretty much always have a very valid reason for doing that, even if they don’t know it yet. People are not drawn to our community for no reason.
The “cringey overly invested ally” might never come out to YOU (because you were an asshole to them and made them feel unsafe!), but that doesn’t mean they’re never going to come out.
Not to be confused with: “why isn’t there a Straight Pride month”, which is entirely separate and annoying.
The point I was trying to make was that Queer specifically, as a word that can mean both “Strange/Weird” and “Somewhere in the LGBT+ spectrum”, is an english thing.
Sorta? I know that it’s also a loanword meaning LGBTQIA+ in several other languages, though!
I would otherwise assume that if you aren’t speaking English, and you are talking about this sorta thing, you are using the local vernacular. I dunno why you would translate what I’m saying into a different language but not also translate the word queer appropriately.
Mostly because the comment chain you were responding to was talking about the difference between weird and queer (which means weird but is usually used as a part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella), which only really works if you’re speaking English. I am commenting specifically about that.
And somewhat exhibitionist since it was a public area.
That’s a bit of a stretch, since there was no one else in said area when they did it.
Yeaahhhhhh that’s pretty much how I anticipated this Jennifer conversation was gonna go.
I wonder what Danny is up to
I hope it’s gay.
It has been a while, but if I remember his arc correctly he is either:
1. Panicking his way through another massive social fuck up
2. Kissing sexy guys or banging hot girls while achieving inhuman levels of confidence and self actualization.
3. Orbiting Joe in state of awkward confusion and/or snarky exasperation
who?
Sal’s significant other. The one with the hat.
OH Hatguy! why didnt you say so
Well she’s this girl Sal is seeing
Hat guy
He’s kissing Sal in the Slipshine ad, so Sal would be a good guess.
with the power of positive thinking the answer could be estrogen
I like the cut of your jib!
so, the theme today is semantics…
My Favorite!!!!!!
You are technically correct!
The best kind of correct!
Joyce, who has definitely done sex acts involving contact with a penis: “My first time involved a Maytag and someone in the next room.”
Somehow nobody who really knows her is surprised.
It makes Dorothy’s initial motivations hilarious, too.
“Here, I’ll teach her to masturbate, that’ll stop her from doing sex stuff with Joe.”
Joyce then jerks him off, gets fingerblasted, and blows him.
Great plan, Dotty.
His love language is small favors, and her love language is a similar thing.
Bravo. “Fingerblasted” is my new favorite word!
Oddly enough, Old Joyce could have said she was still technically a virgin after all that.
Her initial waffling about having PiV with Joe could have been the instilled-by-religion sexual trauma too. Dorothy is “Safer” since she’s not a man and “it’s not REAL premarital hanky panky if there’s no PiV.”
So now she’s a runaway garage door spring of sexual repression with a perfect loophole for her “Why the fundip are you not in therapy yet you dingus?!” mind.
Thats my theory too, despite acknowledgeing that Becky isn’t a virgin she’s had it drilled into her subconscious that sex makes babies and therefore anything that cant do that isn’t real sex.
Damn, channeling Carol Brown here:
“YOU HAD AN INDECENT ACT WITH A WASHING MACHINE AND TOUCHED A MAN’S WEE AND KISSED ANOTHER GIRL??”
The thing I love about Joyce’s definition of sex? Joyce didn’t lose her virginity to Joe. But, Joe lost his with her.
…no, Joe had lost his long before. o_O
Not according to Joyce’s definition. You have to be in love!
I love that Joyce of all people has had sex with two different people by her definition.
Not mocking her or her definition, either, like I think centering PIV sex isn’t terribly constructive for a number of reasons, just, it’s a mark of how different her life got in less than a year’s time. Hell, in a matter of weeks, as it’d turn out.
#hussyera
The Old Joyce can’t come to the phone right now.
Why?
Because she’s dead.
Is there an ISO Standard for gayness?
Yes, and it references a platinum rod kept in a vault in Paris.
Don’t ask what else the rod was used for.
But how hard is it?
By statute, it’s never left its glass dome, but the AO3 tags are filthy.
Teehee, “rod”
Platinum Rod is innocent!
Are you sure it’s platinum? I don’t know why, but Antimony sounds like the gayest element to me.
There’s definitely a thing with Jones.
Dumbing of Age Book Sixteen: Somehow Whatever You Two’ve Been Up To Has Been Gayer Than Any Actual Sex
Damn, thats good given current developments
Billie is saying what every doa fan has been thinking
Dorothy is trying hard not to say “But… but… BUT I DIDNT GET TO SEE ANYTHING!”
There did seem to be some disappointment in her surprise, being asked to leave.
Is the gay dial on the gayometer at 11 now? Can it go further?
Over 9000
ONE BILLLION!!! (dr evil pinky to the corner of the mouth)
“Over 9000??? The gayometer must be broken!” (snatches scanner off face, smashes it to the ground)
“Well, it sure as hell is now, Vegeta. Nice job.”
Is it me or does this storyline suck
It’s you
It’s you.
You’re definitely not alone in disliking the current storyline.
Yep. It’s you also.
yeah, for some reason, people who’ve hated every strip in the past 4 months just keep coming back and reading it. weird.
Are you in the habit of completely writing off ongoing stories that you like and are invested in because of a bad season or book? Inertia’s a pretty powerful thing.
Healthy adults learn to leave and come back, instead of hate-reading every day and posting about it. Lord knows I fell out of DOA for months at a time circa Dads In Villain Costumes.
We’re here commenting on a webcomic at, what for many of us, is midnight. None of us are healthy.
Eh, if I’m already invested if a comic can maintain a consistent update schedule and maintain anything even remotely resembling quality I’m usually willing to stick it out.
Dumbing of Age even at it’s worst updates like clockwork and can usually swing a semi-decent joke or a neat character beat even in the middle of a bad run of strips.
I think healthy adults can in fact keep reading something they enjoy and dislike things happening in it currently and make comments about it, the idea that you have to engage only positively with media you consume and have to take a sabbatical otherwise is goofy.
Acting like everyone who just doesn’t like the storyline and says something about it is sitting here reading it while shaking and quivering in rage is equally as goofy.
Yeah
Yup. Frankly, starting a sentence with “Healthy adults…” and proceeding to assert that an arbitrary personal preference is actually the only acceptable behavior is frankly weirder and worse behavior than 90% of the “hate” comments that survive the reporting button.
Dads in Villain Costumes was the peak of Dumbing of Age.
It was *incredibly stupid*, obviously, but in a fun doofy way. When Amazi-Girl was chasing Toedad with a grappling hook, the srs kidnapping storyline and the superhero silliness jarred badly, but when the dads are ALSO in costumes it all kind of gels better. I’m legitimately sad the Legion of Dad didn’t expand to get new members.
100% Life is too damn short to spend time reading comics that piss you off when you could do something that you enjoy instead.
What if I enjoy being pissed off?
You’re clearly not alone in this comment section
And then there are those who find this arc boring or uninteresting but come back anyway because it is extremely rare to enjoy every single minute of a media and that’s fine. They also get to dislike it and say it, this whole “any criticism means you need to go” is a tad exaggerated, I’d argue
Honestly I haven’t really been invested in the current arc in a while. The storytelling is so decompressed I can’t make heads or tails of it. Joyce and Joe were dating for a week in-comic before the breakup(?) a few strips ago. That was literally over TWO years ago for us. TWO YEARS AND IT WAS UNDER TWO WEEKS IN-STORY!
I just come in, read the 4 panels, and then come into the comments section to eat popcorn and point at the angry people. And sometimes snark at people.
No, but I for sure do not show up every single day to remind people how much I dislike it, or tell other people that they shouldn’t be enjoying it. That seems childish to me, I guess.
You seriously expect people to leave and never come back just off a single storyline they’re not enjoying?
When they complain with the vitrol I’ve seen lately, yes. Or at least take a break and see if it reads better when they aren’t waiting day by day.
No, but I do expect them to back away, and check in occasionally to see if the storyline they hate so badly is still going on. You can put something down for a few minutes without throwing it away, you know. Except an ice cream sandwich – they melt and get all messy.
I still buy nearly every sonic game despite the series slowly transitioning into something that no longer appeals to me. That’s just the way I am. Just got done playing the beta for Crossworlds despite me being infuriated that Spongebob is in it.
(God I’m so mad spongebob is gonna be in it).
I guess they are getting their enjoyment from hate reading?
I suppose they could just browse Harry Potter and the methods of rationality, but who knows maybe they actually enjoyed that.
Now lets not say things we can’t take back
If you want to see me *actually* hate-reading, I can start to post my thoughts whenever the latest Bort, son of Nart chapter goes up on Viz.
The real hate reading is so many of us coming to the comment section, fully expecting to be PO’d.
(It’s me, I’m one of those people sometimes! There’s a catharsis in hate-reading tbqh. Sometimes we all do it.)
‘Fraid so. It’s you.
You.
That’s been a commonly expressed sentiment. It does seem to be one of the less popular stories.
It’s not you. It’s me.
There are certainly parts of it that suck. I do think we’re past of the worst of it, hopefully.
You.
Nah, I’m with you. This has certainly been one of the weaker story lines.
But I think that’s because I just don’t like Dorothy, like at all. I’ve never found her compelling, I never thought her presence added anything to a scene and I’ve found her, at best, a mediocore teacher to Joyce. More often it felt like she was infantalizing Joyce than trying to teach her, and that just rubbed me the wrong way.
Like, I think Dorothy might be the least enjoyable character for me, because I’m just apathetic about her. Mary and Raidah I can hate, but Dorothy is just… boring.
I concur.
“Infatalizing” by helping her have an orgasm?
I like Dorothy for those reasons. She is a shitty teacher, and she doesn’t know it. She is condescending, and thinks she’s being kind. She’s a dumbass, no less than any other character. She has the unearned confidence of Jennifer, but somehow gets more credit than she deserves, (and Jennifer less than she deserves).
Her not realizing she’s a dumbass can drag on though, and this is probably going to slow that down. Especially when circumstances outside Dorothy and Joyce’s knowledge or control keep rescuing them from their dumbassery. And she’s kind of turning into a clone of Joyce now.
*I also like Raidah. She’s a version of Dorothy, though, so if you don’t like one it’s not surprising if you don’t like the other.
Turning Dotty into Peggy Hill was *not* on my Comments Bingo card, but I am here for it.
I like Dorothy but only when she proves to be horribly wrong about something and breaks down that her worldview is wrong.
There are a significant number of people who have expressed the same sentiment, and also a significant number of people who have explicitly expressed the opposite sentiment.
This had not been my favorite storyline
But DOA have had other storylines I didn’t enjoy and then pulled itself together again, so hoping it will once more.
The problem is that they are less interesting together than every other couple in the strip. They’re too similar, and there’s no tension, no spark.
The same issue occurs with Ethan and Asher, but those two aren’t front-and-centre 2/3 of the time.
I miss Mike
We didn’t know what we had until he was gone.
But our moms certainly did.
all those nickels
upside, we have Booster now.
downside, Booster and Mike will never get to roast the shit out of each other
still holding out for the “he’s in hiding” conspiracy
That may have been the case but then Amber finally let him go and grieved, so I think that possibility is as dead as the man is.
Asher and Ethan have the sword of damocles that is Asher’s involvement with the man who killed Mike. Gives a bit of weight to all their interactions. Not quite a perfect spark, but good enough
Dorothy and Joyce was fun as a thing that was teased, but now that it’s happened it’s kind of meh. Not a huge fan of the cheating but honestly without it I don’t know if there’d be much here.
Pretty much this. I’ve got no objections to Dorothy and Joyce as a couple, really, aside from that. Which makes the cheating and protest-conflict a double-edged sword — it gives them the opportunity to be interesting, but the events and pacing thereof since it’s started going down has so far largely squandered that opportunity.
(shout out to everyone who thinks “I think the pacing is bad/inconsistent” is the same thing as “I don’t have any patience” or “can’t envision future interesting story beats beyond the exact current time”.)
It’s a crime to speculate on how events might play out with the information one has access to, don’t you know?
At least Ethan and Asher have angst. DoJos just domestic, like they already have white picket fence, 2.5 kids vibes and they’re not even straight. I feel like Dot is gonna compulsively say “we owe the Hendersons a dinner” soon
(Someone plz get that reference, dotty could so easily be a bree vanderkamp but she doesnt commit hard enough! She also doesn’t have Marcia Cross’s overpowering charisma but who does?)
I mean, lots of people dislike it for various reasons.
Lots of other people are enjoying it!
So, neither? It’s not just you but nor is it the objective truth of the matter. I’m not sure there really is an objective truth when it comes to whether or not a given piece of art “sucks”.
You can talk about objective features, but. “Boring” is subjective. “Bad” is subjective.
opinions are divided and strong.
I love this storyline intensely.
it’s you
The main issues people have with this story are
1. Bringing in the Gaza Genocide only for it to serve as a backdrop to white woman yuri is tonally jarring
2. Everyone is way too fucking chill with everything and it feels unnatural that Joe and Walky don’t seem to even care about being cheating on.
3. Joyce is cheating and that’s bad how dare characters do bad things (Obviously I don’t agree with this one!)
But like one third of DoA storylines have major tone problems and so did one-half of the Walkyverse storylines to the point that it was a running gag in Shortpacked. Can’t really call that a dealbreaker here when it wasn’t for Toedad vs Amazi-Girl. And while I’m personally mad at how chill everyone is it’s still very early in the story and Dorothy doesn’t know about the Polycule Plan yet.
I’m not loving this storyline either, but it’s middle of the DoA storyline pack quality-ways.
wrt 2, Walky had a single panel to respond so lets not say we know what’s going on there, but Joe has so much baggage attached to infidelity that it really feels like a reach to say he’s fine with it. His last appearance, he looked ready to cry. I think he knows he can’t compete with Dorothy for Joyce’s affection, so he’s grasping for what he can, and it’s going to tear him up.
Which is great for those of us who want some finely aged drama when things come to a head in 6 months.
Nope, not just you.
I feel that most of the players here have been wildly out of character.
I keep commenting because if folks here can’t handle that level of mild criticism that’s a them problem. Some commentors here put the author on a pedestal and reflexively defend every decision they make, even when I think a lot of those decisions are at cross purposes, and having that be the only response to their work the author takes seriously is not conducive to my long-term enjlyment of the story.
People will really jump down your throat if you criticize this storyline, huh. Ridiculous how defensive some people get over extremely mild criticism.
(This does not apply to actually ridiculous or bad faith criticism, including bigotry)
Why are you frothing in rage, Dot!?
As far as I can tell, a significant portion (I’m not saying “the majority”, because I can’t even begin to think how I’d quantify it) of the worst throat-jumping is driven by people who really can’t seem to distinguish between “mild, if repetitive, criticism” and “the kind of frothing hatred that shows up mostly in the deleted comments and other less-nice discussion spaces”.
Which is a much more charitable assumption, honestly, than my previous assumption that at least some of it is being driven by people being offended that their ship isn’t universally liked.
I mean, for better or worse, this is a kind of a community, and people are going to have their daily post, and so what if that daily post is “hey, I’m kinda bored by this current arc”?
I think a lot of people in this comment section (including myself on occasion) would do well to develop the skill of seeing a post they disagree with but have nothing substantial to say about or discuss and simply move on.
I’ve started with the baby step of defining a few folks (who appear to be on both “sides” further proving that there are no defined sides) whose comments are basically >50% mean-spirited, and vowing never to interact with them.
I do break that vow, especially with folks who are close to the 50% mark, but I’m trying.
This.
Like, my knee-jerk reaction to the OP of this thread was bad! It was something whiny about how I don’t mind the negativity as much as I mind top-levels that don’t give me or anyone else anything to respond to beyond “yes I agree this is bad writing” or “no I disagree this isn’t bad writing”… at least make a more specific complaint so that we have something to discuss!
…and like. lol @ me, what an entitled reaction to have to other people’s comments. Sometimes a thread just isn’t gonna spark discussion for me personally and that’s fine!
I finally decided they were soliciting a headcount so I could respond on that level, but if there had been nothing for me to say: oh well! I can start my own threads, it’s literally fine.
It’s definitely you.
Its not just you, the pacing has slowed to a somehow even slower crawl than usual and these two make for a pretty boring hook to place at the center. In universe it’s only been like an hour but IRL it feels like nothing’s happened since Sarah. I’m just begging for something to happen, anything other than these two nerds kissing for the 50th time
Also, unlike most past arcs, we haven’t checked in on any other goings on since this whole thing started. A few other characters, but always in the context of this plot (assuming we include the protest as part of it).
That’s been true before in the big action arcs, but usually not so long otherwise.
Don’t trust things gayer than actual sex.
Dumbing of Age Book 16: Somehow Whatever You Two’ve Been Up to Has Been Gayer Than Any Actual Sex
We have a winner
Jennifer would fit right in with the past year of comments.
Reasons this should cause Reddit Chuds to explode:
– Their hatred of Dorothy.
– Their hatred of the laundry room incident.
– Their infantilizing of Joyce.
Far from being manipulated by Dorothy, Joyce affirms she enjoyed the event spectacularly; and was even thinking of Dorothy to make it extra spectacular.
Joyce enjoyed sexual pleasure, deal with it, chuds.
Yeah, like, even IN the moment, Joyce gave enthusiastic consent. It wasn’t the least bit ambiguous that she was able to withdraw it at any time, and she didn’t.
Yes indeed this is the cutest, gayest thing ever and Billie is jealous AF.
This is on par with knocking over a dizzy toddler. It’s easy to do, and kids falling over is funny, but they were gonna fall over anyway before you pushed them. I’d complain that you’re also financially abusing them by driving them to purchase another statue of Rei Ayanami in a bikini, but it’s close enough to the first of the month that they can probably manage it anyway.
Body pillow. Body pillow of Re Ayanami.
They don’t own jars big enough for the pillows.
Body pillow. Body pillow of Rei Ayanami.
what not shinji in a speedo?
Despite your attempts to portray them as a bunch of chuds, most of them have made pretty reasonable criticisms of the current storyline.
I have yet to see any of them make even one reasonable criticism, much less “most.”
Considering that your “criticisms” of them before they banned you were swearing at them and calling them idiots, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on when it comes to what a reasonable criticism is.
Some people don’t deserve reasonableness but just being treated like whst they are: Idiots and weirdos
I see them rewriting the comics to have people call the girls “wh*res,” I see them telling willis to quit writing, I see them accusing Willis of cheating or being cheated on, I see them making anti-trans comments and calling Joe a “p*ssy” and “cuck,” I see them telling Willis to quit writing, and I guess I wonder what part of that seems reasonable.
The obsession with reddit recently is kind of weird.
Hey they can stop being a bunch of weirdos worth making fun of any day now
I really wish people’d stop shadowboxing with them here
Right? Especially since seemingly the last thing people’d want to do is accidentally attract any of the worst bits of that energy over here.
Redditors are annoying and funny to bully but bringing them up unprompted is also very reddit behavior
Good god, if you want to yell at redditors just go to Reddit.
Roasting the “Reddit chuds” is an obsession now I guess. Can’t stand people being miserable somewhere else so you gotta make us miserable yammering on about their misery, secondhand?
They banned me; ironically, couldn’t handle reasonable criticism.
please stop making that our problem
Ok, I’ll stop.
Let them stew in their own hate.
i mean not to kick a deadhorse off it’s pedestal but the way you’re writing kinda feels like you’re malding more than the redditors are right now.
This is one of the ways the Patreon comments are pretty good, people don’t get all twisted uo if you complain about the subreddit
It’d just be nice if people on different sites could stop circlejerking over how crappy and weird people are on the site that’s not the one they’re using. Like, as much as I enjoy calling them jar-filling gooners with a Funko addiction where their emotions should be, the fact is they’re just not actually here. We don’t see them unless we go there and look for them, so what they’re saying and thinking doesn’t actually deserve the amount of obsessive attention it’s been getting, the last couple of weeks. The redditors literally are not in the room with us right now, just like were not in the room with them right now, and it’d be nice not to be reminded daily about how much the people in each room want the people in the other room stapled to the wall dressed like Clopin Trouillefou and soaked in barbecue sauce for daring to talk about this webcomic differently. It’s gotten a little pathetic.
It’s not that they “talk about it differently” it’s the misogyny and intense amount of hatred they have for the both the comic and the weird af para social psyoanalyzing of Willis which they have callled out themselves. It’s really nit a matter of a difference of opinion they are actual assholes that very much deserve to be mocked.
And they’re still not in the room with us right now.
No but they’re living in someone’s head
Yeah? And last i check it is completely possible to complain about sssholes even when they not in the room so i don’t see how that’s relevant.
There was never a question about what’s possible. It’s equally possible, and almost guaranteed if you’re not in a room full of insecure shitheads, for the other people in the room you’re in to get fed up hearing you complain about what the guys in the other room are supposedly doing. It’s masturbatory.
Don’t listen to them reflex it was very funny
The tribalism is getting a bit weird?
Like, they shouldn’t be more a monolith than we are, not everyone in our comment section are agreeing, otherwise the last couple of weeks strips wouldn’t be among the most commented strips ever.
Sibling its been weird
ya mean the same chuds who call Hollow Knight “beyond forgetable”
(9-9) ya better off payin no bother to those mayo boi bozos
Turbo-gay to the maximum utmost
I don’t remember Dandadan starting like this
Finally, something Sal and Billie can agree on.
Join Joyce on a face journey today!
Joyce’s current definition of sex has always seemed weird and a bit too broad to me. There are many sexual activities that could fall under that definition that most people probably wouldn’t consider sex.
The bigger problem, I think, is that there are lots of things that are pretty clearly sex that Joyce’s definition rules out. Like, as the hovertext on that strip points out, by Joyce’s definition, Roz has never had sex. I’m pretty sure Roz would strenuously disagree.
God willing, on-panel.
I mean. Joyce’s definition of sex doesn’t have to work for anybody but her.
Everyone’s free to have their own lines and boundaries, but when you start using terms in conversation with other people, they need to know what you mean by them, or it leads to, at best, comical misunderstandings. And when Joyce says, “I had sex with Dorothy,” no one, not even Dorothy, is assuming that she means, “Dorothy held my hand while we sat two machines apart in the laundry room, and then I made her leave before i got off. But I thought about her!”
There’s glory for you!
A Humpty Dumpty deep cut.
Oh well, a minor misunderstanding has occurred! Something that never happens even when everyone agrees what all the words mean.
Sorry John, I’m grumpy. Reminded myself of how assholeish people in the comments have been about Joyce’s definition ever since she changed it.
Honestly, I’d say my bigger disagreement with it is that it’s not broad *enough*. You can have sex without someone orgasming (or even intent thereof) and you can certainly have sex without loving someone
Yeah, lotta virginal Christian moms by Joyce’s definition. Its both really, it’s too broad AND not broad enough (basically considers all sexual activity sex but only if you’re in love and cum)
I’d argue it’s more correct than it was before and she’s definitely not a virgin.
She has leveled up her Hussy class!
Gentle reminder that a couple of your fellow commenters expressed empathy and agreement with that definition.
I know it’s a popular joke that Willis invented it for the story, but like, they very much did not. Some real people do define sex that way for themselves. As long as they’re not telling you you have to use their definitions for yourself, I don’t think it should really bother anyone.
I think it definitely becomes a problem if you have a very different definition of sex than someone else and then, according to this storyline, start telling third parties that that other person had sex with you.
As long as they’re not telling you you have to use their definitions for yourself, I don’t think it should really bother anyone.
Bolded for you.
If you think I’m complaining about nothing, I would suggest you go back to read the comments on the comic where Joyce tells Becky she’s still a virgin and then the comments on the following two strips. Note how many people seem to be upset with Becky for having the gal to not force a smile when Joyce’s first definition of sex blatantly erases her experiences, and then how many people proceed to spend like a week straight complaining that Joyce’s new definition is weird and stupid.
One especially bizarre and potentially triggering take so read with caution: “this would have massive repercussions on sexual assault laws!” As if Willis or Joyce were lobbying to replace legal definitions of sex. As if “rape” needs to legally be “sex” in order to be a crime.
It would bother me if someone attributed am act that by my own definitions did not perform or mean to perform. I don’t want people going around saying I had sex with them when my version of the events is that I didn’t. Especially if they’re speaking about it publicly to people I know. Joyce and dotty are. Together now but imagine if they weren’t and Joyce saying that was upsetting to Dorothy or putting strains on her relationships? I’m not gonna say it’s right or wrong but it is good social etiquette to run these things by your partner before saying them, unless you just don’t particularly care.
I genuinely think this can be solved by just communicating with people, though? Get on the same page with your partner about what acts constitute sex, and you don’t have to worry about this happening to you.
I don’t think the current situation, which is only happening bc Joyce and Dorothy did something together that neither thought was sex at the time and then Joyce recontextualized it later (and doesn’t have a great filter, so when she was proudly claiming to be Normal to Alice and Jennifer, she also wound up blurting out that “according to some definitions” she’s had sex with Joe! …and Dorothy!), is not something anyone else needs to worry about stumbling into.
A lot of problems can be solved (or prevented) by communicating! That doesn’t make them not problems though.
I think what people were specifically responding to is your repeated comment that no one should be bothered unless a definition is being forced on them, when there are other situations where someone could be bothered. (Like Dorothy is, in this strip! I’m sure it’s not that serious though, and just played up for the comedy. Still, fair thing to be bothered by.)
What I am making pains to clarify:
the thing that upsets me is people calling Joyce’s definition stupid and bad, when real people have said they related to or felt seen by her definition.
Can we please, please, please just make space for other people who define sex in less conventional ways. That’s all I’m asking for.
I mean, yeah, I know that that is what you’re talking about. I’m sorry this topics been so bad in the comment section. What I wanted to clarify was that the people who were replying to you WEREN’T talking about that and instead a specific phrasing you used – resulting in a sort of talking past each other. Again, sorry if it’s caused you frustration though, I know the feeling.
It also feels like maybe folks were assuming I was paraphrasing and that my objection was about all negative comments on Joyce’s definition? Which I wasn’t. Her and Dorothy not being on the same page is certainly part of the miscommunication happening right now.
But yeah I was just talking about people calling it “stupid” and “bad”. Not “everyone who dislikes the definition at all for any reason”.
In hindsight it does feel like that’s an obvious potential miscommunication that I could have anticipated, heh.
well there’s sex sex and SEX sex.
( in all seriousness by definition an act described as a sexual activity can be called sex, just as any fuck can be used to describe any fuck)
What about the sex SEX?
There’s an essay, I’m sure I’ve linked before, by Greta Christina, called “Are We having Sex Now or What” about defining what sex is, the gray area, and does it matter.
It doesn’t matter if what they did is in a pigeonhole definition of sex. It was a sexual encounter, there was sexual intimacy.
To use a crude but actually relevant example: CLERKS has a subplot where Dante and his girlfriend Veronica have a healthy and stable relationship that is the only good thing in his life. It is ruined by the discovery they have different definitions of sex with Veronica not thinking oral sex counted and thus quite comfortable doing it on a first date. So she has had way more “sex” than Dante.
I mean, was that relationship ruined by Dante and Veronica having different definitions of sex, or was it ruined by Dante letting patriarchy tell him how to feel about Veronica’s life prior to dating him.
Like, was he ACTUALLY upset that her definition of sex was narrower than his, or was he upset that she gave blowjobs to x number of prior partners, because on some level he thinks that makes her dirty?
i think her fucking a priaptic corpse upset him more that anything else, but yeah we gota glimpse of smith’s patriarcal catholic schooling coming through there i feel.
That would be Caitlin not Veronica, two different characters.
Smith also talked about how the, “men must be more experienced than women” in CHASING AMY so it’s not a blindspot of his but something he views as a flaw of his male leads.
Frankly, that definition potentially being at odds with a lot of the other characters’ definition, at least two of whom she’s having some form of sexual interactions with, is one of the actually interesting hooks about this storyline that I’m hoping we see some more tension about here.
hope springs eternal
It would be interesting. I’m not sure whether it would, for me personally, be worth the uptick in people complaining that Joyce’s definition of sex is and and stupid and also she lost her virginity to a washing machine ha ha ha ha ha ha ha kill me please.
*bad and stupid
Meanwhile Lucy and that guy are using the opportunity of Billie being out to strip naked and …
…then get into their comfiest clothes to binge-watch a Teen Titans marathon, because Jacob is eager to try to share his girlfriend’s interests.
Did I guess right? Is there a prize?
Could just as well go the opposite way, I suppose, with them getting into workout gear because Lucy wants to share Jacob’s habits.
Next time we see them, Lucy’ll have biceps bigger than her head.
Joyce and Dorothy haven’t touched each other at the beach or at the swimming pool. Good to know.
Out of curiousity went back to the beach episode and ye, dang, they didn’t touch each other during the entire thing
Yeah, Joyce threw a toy at Dorothy’s head in approved fashion, but still couldn’t get Dorothy to play with her.
I dunno if anyone has mentioned this but I think this recent poll is FAR from “Cursed Pairings”
-Walky/Joe
Not at all cursed. If anything seems pretty solid. Joe and Walky have had friendly conversation. Their girlfriends are dating. They got a cute Big guy/Little Guy dynamic. They’d be cute.
-Dorothy/Jennifer
I mean Dorothy’s a bit Neurotic and Billie’s a bit of a pill but this isn’t exactly cursed. Aesthetically I think they’d look good together.
-Sarah/Raidah
The closest we’ve gotten to “cursed” so far. And honestly…Enemies to Lovers is a favorite dynamic of mine so I don’t think this is all that cursed. I could ship it.
-Roz/Mary
The most cursed couple here and mostly cuz Mary is in it.
but y’know…
And they were roommates.
Seriously though the sexually liberated Roz getting the hyper repressed conservative to loosen up through the power of sex positive flirting is like…my jam.
-Sal/Amazi-girl
Nothing weird about Masturbation.
Jokes aside no I’d love that. They’d have such a “cool girls doing cool things” dynamic. I’d love to see them fighting crime together or riding motorcycles and junk. Granted Sal has said she’s not into girls but to be fair Joyce has implied similar.
Also why’re all the “cursed” ships gay ships? Gimmie some STRAIGHT cursed Ships. Like Walky/Billie. Or Becky and Ethan. Feels weird to only have gay cursed ship pairings.
Joe and Walky after Walky visits Canada and decides to start HRT and be a woman. An anomalous quantity of cheese may have been involved.
Man. This is the future innit? People are gonna talk about HRT the way they used to talk about Legal Weed. Didn’t expect that to depress me so much.
I mean, it was meant as a reference to the Canadian Anomaly in It’s Walky!, during which (among other events) Walky turns into a woman from Head Alien mindhacking The Cheese and gets hot for Joe 👀 I knew I should’ve thrown in something about Walky being in Canada for a Dexter & Monkey Master convention
Oh right. I liked that arc.
😛 Ignore me.
NOPE, now you gotta draw Walkie and Joe doing sexy rebounding to each other after being dumped by their girlfriends as penance, those’re the rules
Or just a gag picture about the chaos that a Joyce♥️Dorothy Dorothy♥️Walkie Walkie♥️Joe Joe♥️Joyce circular polycule would entail
Oh right, that did happen.
Maybe we can bump Joe/Walky up above Sal/AG. Still south of the line, but improvement
Eh, he’s a mop head wig away from dating any of Sal’s exes, as is. And, most of them don’t really need the wig.
I refuse to believe anything resembling a cursed DOA ship doesn’t involve their parents. Those guys are x10 messier, and you can combine them in so many awful ways. Call me back when Stacy tries to rebound off her new ex-husband.
Carol and Linda is a favorite of mine.
Yeah, I’d agree that most of these (except Dorothy/Jen, that one’s got legs) are pretty uninteresting, but ‘boring’ isn’t enough to make a thing cursed.
Only Roz/Mary rises to the level of actually cursed.
As an experiment, I decided to open the cast page and throw all the names there into a random name picker. Half the ships will still be gay but let’s see what we get…
– Jason/Tony: They’ve never interacted in canon so I guess fill in your fave nerd/jock dynamic
– Leslie/Malaya: Okay this is a disaster, well done RNG
– Ruth/Malaya: I could see a hatefuck out of this
– Charlie/Ethan: No sex but they talk about toys for 5 hours
– Joycelyn/Walky: Whatever actually goes on gets overshadowed by Joyce having a conniption fit over the idea of Walky as brother-in-law
Ahahaha, Joyce having walky as a brother in law would be the worst, for her. She’d be so upset. But at least she’d get to also have Sal (and Jennifer) as sisters-in-laws.
Ah yeah a couple of us left “what is cursed? other, of course, than Mary” when the poll went up, they’re back in comments if you want.
A link to such comment thread: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/missing-them/#comment-1927348
Becky/Mary is my cursed ship of choice because it’s obviously terrible and yet it kind of works.
But the MOST cursed ship is Amazi-Girl and Incelerator doing a Batman/Catwoman thing.
And he’s her only nemesis who is still alive and unglassed!
Oh, okay, so Jennifer’s expression the other day was not angry eyebrows, but simply deadpan eyebrows.
We can’t all be bug-eyed Aslan.
I floated the idea yesterday that Jennifer running into these two before she learns how Walky was dumped and how he’s feeling about it would afford Willis the opportunity to give her multiple different reactions without any of them colliding with or minimizing the others. And boy are there a variety of things for Jennifer to react to this with, like, “oh man I hope this is what you were so depressed about and now it’s a bit better,” which I do think is also gonna be part of Becky’s reaction.
I really, really like the ongoing gag that Billie is horrifically face-blind. It’s always good when it’s part of the whole Billie vs Amazi-Girl gag, but it gets even funnier when it comes up in unexpected places like this.
This was my thought exactly, I enjoy the consistency of the humorous portrayal of Billie’s face-blindness
So yeah, they’ve reached second base
how long then until they go for three… or more
Ah, but first, it must conquer itself.
They’ll be at 50th base any day now.
I feel like the “see tomorrow’s comic today” Patreon blurbs in the caption have gotten a ton more frequent. Like, even a few months ago it would just be on really momentous strips or cliffhangers, but I feel like it’s been posted more days than not in the past month or two.
It’s not bad or anything, just feel like I’m noticing.
Willis needs a giant dinosaur bed!
Holy crap, that was just a week ago in story time?
I really really really really really wish Dumbing of Age’s pacing was faster.
Y’know, there was what was once a very good comic book (before its author had Something Happen to his brain and became a screaming, shrieking misogynist religious nut) which gave an entire issue to the lead character taking a piss.
It could be a lot slower and count your blessings is what I’m saying. xD
Yeah but I have a coupling I’ve been invested in for literal years constantly downplayed cuz it’s “only been a couple weeks” has been frustrating.
It’s like the Straw hats in One Piece. Pre-Timeskip wasn’t even a year. They spent more time APART in the 2 year timeskip than they ever spent together.
fuck i forgot about the cerebus pissing issue
The pacing is worse right now than usual, I’m guessing it’s a rewrite issue? Its always been slow but it’s never felt like it’s just barely above a halt like this before
Yes, to paraphrase Alice (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/whatshername/)
a couple strips back; Walky/Lucy broke up last week, the same week the laundry room moment between Dorothy and Joyce happened. Then not even a day later is when Walky/Dorothy hooked up. This week/ three days ago is when Walky/Dorothy officially “got back together”, and now we’re three days later, Dorothy and Joyce have made out and Walky got dumped again because his premonitions about is girlfriend’s bf having a crush and wanting to steal her a way came true.
Its also worth mentioning that Alice is very much being a chaos gremlin right now by spreading this information around campus to strangers she doesn’t know/has no affiliations with. So thats.. interesting.
As I pointed out under that strip, Alice’s timeline is off, mostly because people have been giving her imprecise information.
Today is Sunday. Laundry day was last Wednesday; eleven days ago now.
On Thursday (D-10), at some point between Anti-Joyce climbing a tree and Joe and Joyce arriving at science class, they started dating.
Last Sunday (D-7), Walky went to church with Lucy, and Lucy dumped his ass.
On Monday (D-6), Joyce took Dorothy out for dranks, cuddles, and proposals to watch her fuck, then came back home and crawled into bed with Joe.
On Tuesday morning (D-5), Joyce had topless cuddles with Joe, Dorothy and Walky got back together and Dorothy floated the idea of closet Joyce watching them fornicate, and Dina liberated a jug of booze and they had a party in her room, where Lucy and Jacob got together.
On Thursday (D-3) Jocelyne came out to Joyce, Sarah met Tony, and Dorothy sent Joyce a picture of her tits. As a joke. lol.
On Friday (D-2) Joe talked to Dorothy about her crush on Joyce, Joyce finally saw Dorothy’s titty pics, Dorothy had apology sex with Walky (without actually getting to the apology part), Joyce helped get Billie and Alice back together, Sarah stayed over with Tony, and Joyce almost kissed Dorothy and then went on a romantic date with Joe.
Early Saturday morning (yesterday!), Joe and Joyce came back from their date, and Joyce got fingerbanged, then in the morning she realized that she’d “had sex” with Dorothy, then she ran into Billie and Alice in the lobby, which is where Alice overheard Joyce telling Billie that she’d “had sex” with Dorothy “a week ago”. Then Joyce and Dorothy went to have some more “sex”, but were distracted by discovering that Jocelyne might have been outed to Hank, so instead they went to the protest, got lesbian-married, made out (emphasis on “out”) on camera, were saved by Amazi-Girl, made out some more, then Joyce gave Joe a bj and then spent the night spooning Dorothy.
And that brings us up to today.
Bless you for providing a more cohesive timeline. Honestly appreciate it.
Excellent summation! 😀
I really want to see a DoA calendar breaking down every event of the last six months like this.
You are the Hero of the Comments.
Oh yeah, also yesterday, after running into Joyce, Billie and Alice had lunch with Walky, which is where they learned that Walky got back with Dorothy “like three days ago” (it was actually four at that point, and is five now), and Alice put the pieces together into a vague approximation of reality. Also Alice learned what Wally’s name actually is.
Thank you. That’s why I keep trying to point out to people saying Joyce is a terrible person for not having more of that conversation with Joe, that in-universe it’s been like ten minutes since she left the room to panic about the newspaper.
it’s actually pretty funny to see a character make the same joke we’ve all been making for months, but now it’s in canon
Panel 5 Billie just summed up their relationship quite succinctly. Since Day One.
if you think about it dot was basically toy edging joyce during her first time together. Just in the lamest and least dommy way possible.
This is the most virginal kinky sex I’ve ever seen
It’s a microcosm of what fails to appeal about their relationship really
Oh no, Billie is *right* about something. It must be the end times!!
Because this is a confrontation between Jennifer and Joyce, with curious Alice behind the scenes very interested in the shenanigans, I calculate that there is a greater than 100% chance that Jennifer will say something really stupid and cutting which also accidentally encapsulates her relationship with Alice, and then Dorothy and Joyce will have that face, and Jennifer will be like, “She’s right behind me, isn’t she.”
And I say “greater than 100%” because while that’s pretty much guaranteed, I think there’s a good chance that Joyce calls Jennifer “Billie” because she sees Alice coming up, and Jennifer yells something like “My name is Jennifer! Not Billie!!” Which would be the icing on top of the cake.
I don’t think jennifer is actually happy with being called jennifer, but she absolutely doesn’t want to be the same person she used to be as Billie either. That’s how I read the progression of names sequence from a couple months back. And by a couple I mean like 6 or maybe 24 idk.
Do you mean https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/billie/ ?
Yep that’s the one! So 41 months actually. Dang. Lmao
Damm, Billie really is the worst journalist they have on board, not reading the paper
i know right!
It seems like she did read the paper, but somehow didn’t recognize them on it.
Is she even a journalist, at this point?
Sure she is the standard couldn’t be lower right now!
Dorothy and Jennifer are now security level 5.
A truest sentence has never been uttered
I just want these girls to face consequences (have a lovely time together)
Joyce holds Dorothy’s hand. As a consequence, both of them get to hold a woman’s hand.
Dorothy buys Joyce a bubble tea. As a consequence, she gets to watch Joyce make Joyce Faces™ about the boba.
Joyce kills Dorothy’s long-forgotten ex-suitor, Micheletto Ricci, in an honorable sword duel. As a consequence, Dorothy gets to see Joyce commit violence with a sabre, Micheletto gets to see his love truly happy before he dies, and Joyce gets to learn the joy of seeing the exact moment the life leaves a rival’s body.
Anyone else kinda tired of the words “drama” and “consequences”? They started ti become kinda meaningless to me.
That’s one of the consequences of too much drama.
Just don’t read em. Easy
Very much so.
I mean igaf about “consequences” but id still rather see some drama. I’ll even take new commentariat drama. Fuck it I’ll start some
The star wars animated universe is the best way to consume any of the visual media. Everything but the original trilogy (and sequels ig by relation) matters. Rebels > original trilogy. Fight me
I have created a monster I’m afraid
Any Star Wars ranking that excludes the Ewok Adventures is invalid. Rankings are free to exclude the rise of skywalker.
How about the Star Wars Holiday Special?
Something has to be ranked the lowest.
Isn’t that what the Boba Fett show was for?
introduced boba fett to the world, i feel like that should count for something
Yeah, that’s why it deserves to be at the fucking bottom.
Very bemused anytime someone says x or y is “gayer than gay sex.” Let’s not get it twisted. Gay sex would be gayer than this. Let me know when Joyce is knuckle deep in Dororthy’s cooter. Until then I’m not interested.
Yes, I think Joyce should be the top
I’ve got no investment in this milquetoast ship but. You’re right.
She’s literally always been the Domme, people just don’t want to accept the truth!
nah, brat bottom.
Once she learns how to use a strap it’s all over
I think Joyce would REALLY like using a strap on. Multiple reasons why most of the sex she’s had so far was more focused on her partner’s pleasure.
(Not that you can’t also get sensation from straps, especially some setups, I’m just saying even without that it seems right up Joyce’s metaphorical alley rn.)
Oh service top Joyce would be divine
<3
We already know she’s like a size six.
Joyce has always been the top and will always be the top. Anyone who questions this is wrong.
Willis :
Billy line, “whatever you to been up to… Gayer than actual gay sex”
I’m sorry but the joke in the last panel has been made so many times that I don’t really find it funny.
That was only a WEEK ago??
Somebody in the physics department there at the college could write one helluva thesis if only they could come up with a way to describe the way time passes in Indiana.
It was well over a week ago. Billie is working with incomplete information.
It’s a thing they’re already arguing over. Explains the Hubble Tension’s disparities.
Time passes normally in Indiana. Each of these strips encapsulates a matter of seconds, not an entire day.
“Anyway, look, Daisy wants to start a spinoff gay-culture-on-campus magazine, with you two featuring in issue one. She wants to call it ‘Daisy Chain’ but I’m gonna talk her out of that.”
Billy (so far) seems rather chill with the entire ordeal but I am curious how this will affect the wider friend group as a whole given Dot and Joyce are kind of the hinge on the entire core friend group.
Dina, Becky & Sarah aren’t particularly close to Walky or Joe by any means, even though I do with Becky and Walky hung out more together. And while we know which way Sarah swings on this, I can totally buy Becky and Dina fully siding with DoJo both because they don’t quite know Joe and Walky like that but also on a maybe more concerning side because there’s a chance Becky is going to internalize the fact that the person she was pining on all this time who she believed just wasn’t gay, now is gay which might make the rejection of her advances suddenly feel a LOT more real. And then over-compensate for that hurt by just fully throwing her support behind Joyce despite the dubious actions she took to get where she is.
Joe seems okay in the immediate right now of things but I feel like at some point Danny is gonna start noticing that Joe’s been on a pretty rough path of questioning himself so much that it kinda comes at the cost of his personal self-respect. Distrusting himself so much because he doesn’t want to be his old self again and while he’s actually made a good step forward recently with his talk with Rachel, acknowledging that he is improving. Joe clinging to the relationship at even the cost of just entirely overlooking that Joyce fully broke his trust by proxy of actively and intentionally cheating on him on top of not informing him about said cheating when they first met up after it had happened does feel concerning to me and makes me worry that he’s simply stepping into the kind of poly relationship Joyce predicted for Lucy, Sarah & Jacob. Where Joe will just be gradually pushed out of the relationship with time.
Also I want Walky to pick up longboarding so he can spend some time with Marcie and Sal away from the group, and honestly the campus grounds as a whole. I think it’d be healthy for him to have friends outside the Math Squad and Sal & Marcie’s skate squad feels like the exact kind of low drama stuff he needs right now. Especially since it opens up the possibility of Walky/Carla hijinx since they actually have the potential of being good friends, both being cartoon loving goofballs that enjoy annoying other people for attention.
idk, that’s just me rambling tho
“I do wish Becky and Walky hung out more together”*
(aw man i proofread this twice..)
Dina and Joe are friends.
Tru, I’m just also having an impossible time getting a beat on how Dina could possibly react to all of this
Begging Walky to join some sort of club. Get this man into d&d, let him be the most obnoxious problem Bard
Oh I want a DND arc really bad now.
Ugh, I really would too if it wouldn’t mean that Walky is playing more D&D than I am…
Walky hanging out with Sal and Marcie could lead to Malaya and Walky friendship. My dream platonic [for real] pairing. Walky’s idea of “guy friendships” seems like it’s put off everyone in his circle/floor whom he could be that kind of friend with. But Malaya has a kind of abrasiveness, I don’t know if I can explain it. They’ll call out Walky’s shit, but his shit won’t stop them from hanging out.
I see them being the focus of each other’s obnoxiousness, taking the edge off them for everyone else, but not bothering each other.
Like Walky wants someone to put him in a headlock and Malaya wants to put someone in a headlock. Platonically.
Walky and Malaya being friends would give Sal a conniption and I support it on those grounds alone.
Malaya would befriend Walky if only to call him cooler than sal
I hope Asher is commotting crimes, wherever he is. I hope he’s doing embezzlement.
With a gun
Embezzling bullets out of the magazine?
I think Dotty should cheat on Joyce with amazigirl. Itd be funny
If I were dotty I’d immediately drag Joyce off to her room bc god damn, the realization that your first time having sex as a couple was fucking. Fully clothed, sitting on dryers, out of the room for the climax, only touching is holding hands, not even a damn peck on the lips. That’s so absurdly lame I’d have to fix it on the spot. They even fuck in the most boring way possible, damn. Whatever the fuck it is mormons do is spicier than that. If you gotta stop and think “well yeah I guess technically that counts” then that’s lame!
I am with #TeamJoyce on this because:
“You mutually masturbated with me in a public place” is no person’s definition of platonic.
eh. I don’t think the definition of “had sex” has to be the exact inverse of the definition of platonic, and I don’t think having it not be so is automatically tied to christian purity culture or whatever.
You can have sex platonically
I’m with Dot here — people have platonic sex all the time, witness the popularity of Friends With Benefits.
I mean, Joyce is IMHO correct that they had sex, but Joyce’s definition is not inclusive of things that many other people would consider to be “having sex”, so I’m not on #TeamJoyce per se.
People also “catch feelings” really frequently in those kind of circumstances, though.
* in Hollywood
I mean, yes, but also, in my pretty substantial firsthand experience, this situation almost always leads to one party or the other catching feelings, because people are lonely and don’t want to be and are often biologically wired to attempt to reproduce and raise offspring, so hormones often blind people from reasoning through whether this is a good match in the face of someone being available and probably also lonely.
Can admit. I have a long distance friend with benefits. Feelings have been caught.
By me. Only by me.
But that’s cuz I’m super lonely.
awe same here bruh, is a totes valid thing
me and my (poly) friend do flirty stuff over the internet and we’ve had lots of fun ^-^
idk, I am not personally comfortable with “very frequently”, and I’m even less comfortable with “almost always”, when I know none of us have data to back it up.
It’s an extremely common fictional trope. Amatonormativity is also a very real pressure, and in America at least, the pressure to find a partner and start a family is also rooted deeply in ageism: no one is more terrified of aging than a single person in their early 30s, the culture is SCREAMING at you to find a partner and settle down before you start “looking” old and become “doomed to die alone”.
But without unbiased data, I don’t think any of us can really say what is or isn’t “more common” in the real world wrt relationships deliberately begun as any type of platonic sex partners — especially given that the aforementioned cultural expectation sets a lot of people up for failure.
Or, more specifically, the common belief that “catching feelings” is all but inevitable sometimes leads people to agree to a platonic sexual relationship specifically with the expectation that it won’t stay that way.
^ Li said what I was going to say but better, said the poly/enm guy who is pretty good about not catching feelings when feelings are not part of the original definition of the relationship.
Sometimes, but sometimes not. I have friends and acquaintances I’ve had sexual relationships with that never had any romantic aspects develop. Sometimes you and your friends find each other sexy and decide to fuck but acknowledge that you’re not romantically compatible. The human tapestry is rich and complex.
Yeah it’s far from universal. I just think there’s ample evidence that sex and romance are very tightly bound up in most peoples’ brains.
or maybe not romance per se– just that sex is “more than friendly”, to most people.
Oh yeah it’s definitely more than friendly, it requires a great deal of trust and intimacy but it can most certainly be entirely platonic even so.
I feel like we’re brushing up against the limits of commonly accepted meanings of words in the English language. Like, if platonic love means something that friends experience but romantic partners experience something more, I feel that being “more than friends” puts it in a grey area, no?
English and its only having one word for love so that we have to apply awkward modifiers all the time, yeah.
@yak nah it just means they’re friends I trust and like enough to fuck and sext. There’s all different kinds and levels of friendship but it doesn’t mean romantic feelings get involved.
oh I missed that implication entirely, I was so busy agreeing that we need more words for different kinds of love oops
I was more saying that we may be operating under different understandings of what the meaning of platonic love is. Normally I understand it to mean any love which has no sexual component. From context I thought Big Z meant that it was the type of love that friends or close family members feel for each other, however if I understand correctly Dot means it is any love which is not romantic.
In that case I agree that platonic sex is not only possible but very common, and “catching feelings” from fwb situationships is probably not usual.
er rather I should say, fwb situationships turning non-platonic
Dorothy is denying.
Joyce is planning.
“Dorothy gets to second base”
Honestly, Joyce delighting in not being sorry is also delightful in itself. There will eventually be consequences, but for now, is good.
how many non-penetrative things count as sex?
I’ve counted at least 7, possibly as many as 8.
Here’s one to chew on: Do you count ERP/Cyber-sex? Personally, I do. I didn’t at first, until I learned my girlfriend very much does, in a very unfortunate way, and now it’s been firmly solidified.
You know, the last several pages show that Joyce is something of a dick. (You can yell all you want, but you can’t deny it.)
Yeah, and it’s been a consistent factor across the entire comic. As much as Joyce loves intensely with her whole being, she’s also frequently an insensitive dick with hit-or-miss communication skills, and pointing that out isn’t any sort of contradiction in a person’s reading comprehension.
It’s been interesting seeing her insensitive dickish tendencies shift from “kind of adorable fundie misunderstandings” to “actually really objectionable stuff that gets her yelled at”
I’m still not over the fact that her spitefued with Walky doesn’t get paused for anything, up and apparently including her needing to boast about “stealing” his girlfriend away from him.
And it’s mainly one-sided at this point. Most of the time, he just shrugs at her.
Reposting this as its own top level:
Gentle reminder that a couple of your fellow commenters expressed empathy and agreement with Joyce’s definition of sex.
Please keep that in mind when you feel the impulse to make fun of it as bad or stupid!
Obviously Dorothy also gets a say in whether or not it’s okay for Joyce to go around telling other people that they’ve had sex, but that’s like, the only real reason it even matters for the two of them to be on the same page about whether or not they’ve had sex.
Otherwise, it’s fine. Any other hypothetical problem caused by a different definition of sex is really something else in disguise — like, if Joyce used “we’ve had sex once already” as an argument for why Dorothy should consent to more sex immediately, that’s Hypothetical Joyce being a shitty pushy partner, and it’s not the definition difference that’s the problem.
It’s not like she told just anybody, she did tell Jennifer because Jennifer is one of Joyce’s friends she holds to be a close one, even if Jennifer is sort of all over the place in how much she returns that. She *did* call Joyce her best friend in college at one point, but it wasn’t exactly as a compliment in-context.
Of course, Dorothy and Jennifer are often at loggerheads, but do seem to still consider each other friends. Just, she’s probably the friend who most pisses Dorothy off.
Not really my point, heh.
Like, this is not about what’s happening in the comic, bluntly. This is just reiterating a plea for folks to make a little more space in this comment section for folks who define sex differently from them.
I do think that Joyce’s definition of sex is something that, when it involves another person, she really ought to make sure the other person agrees. Like clearly Dorothy doesn’t agree that she and Joyce have had sex by Joyce’s definition. And I think that matters primarily because if I was dating someone and their definition of sex was basically “I thought about you while masturbating therefore we have had sex and I’ve also told at least two other people this”, I personally would feel very upset and violated because that’d be a lie in my eyes.
I do also think it’s actually very important for two people who are in a relationship to be very much on the same page regarding sex, just as a general rule of thumb in a relationship. But that’s just me and my opinion on it. I respect if other people disagree for whatever reason they happen to do so. If Dorothy goes on to say she consents to Joyce’s definition of sex and agrees that they’ve had sex, then kudos for them.
I guess to add onto this I will say that I can’t speak for everyone else who has commented regarding Joyce’s definition of sex but speaking for myself, much like you are saying some people feel empathy for Joyce’s definition and feel seen, please understand that for someone like myself, for reasons I will not go into, this sort of murky gray area speech about sex that opens the door to other unfortunate subjects is something I myself am sensitive to. Out of respect for the sentiment you’ve expressed here, and because we’ve commented in the past and I do actually like you (as much as I can like someone who I just brush around with in the comments section at least, you know how it be), I will refrain from commenting regarding Joyce and her definition of sex from this point on. I never meant any harm when I commented in the negative prior, and I apologize for any past offenses or rudeness in such exchanges.
Your comment was fine! I don’t think you’ve ever actually trod on the thing I was trying to call out here. I’m also sorry for the discomfort or more than that.
Maybe folks are assuming I’m not being literal when I say my problem is people calling Joyce’s definition stupid and bad, but that is exactly what my problem is. Not “this could cause communication problems”, not “Joyce shouldn’t be telling other people she and Dorothy had sex”, but
“this definition is stupid, it’s bad, no one should define sex like this, no one WOULD define sex like this, Willis just had Joyce do that to contrive this storyline into existence.”
The person who bravely told us about redefining what sex meant because her partner is paralyzed? Hasn’t left a comment around these parts for more than a month now. I kind of feel like she left because of the constant thoughtless ragging on Joyce’s definition, and if so…. good for her taking care of herself, but also we suck.
/rereading…
Ugh. Again, I’m sorry. I should have been more specific about that because you’ve implied something really heavy here 😢 I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sorry my post dredged up something so ugly for you.
I also should have anticipated that it would sound like I was objecting to ALL forms of negativity around the definition, instead of to a very small specific portion. I think that would’ve been better communication and at least MIGHT have avoided doing additional damage 😞
Some sort of irony, or perhaps a sort of conflicting access needs here.
Also right back at you in terms of liking you! A friendly internet stranger acquaintanceship sort of a thing. 😞
I like the confirmation that most people other than Raidah didn’t actually recognize them
(don’t get me wrong, ‘some’ recognition is enough to be a problem, but I was surprised how recognizable they seemed at first in a black and white newspaper photo, with Joe, then Raidah. Billy and Daisy are balancing that back out for me)
Look on the brightside Dorothy maybe this is what he needs to finally admit your not perfect…then again there’s as much of a chance of that happening as Joyce admitting it.
“I left before you finished”
Dorothy over at the desk playing games dot meme
I see Dorothy’s reached level 5 clearance! And so has Jennifer, I guess…