It’s a reference to a very old (at this point) strip in the original IW!, which was also a crossover with at least one other comic running at the time (Avalon). The gist is that, while investigating an anomaly in Canada, both Walky and Joyce got gender-swapped. The female Walky did not have an undercut, and just looked a lot like Sal. (And male Joyce, when asked by squadmate Robin what it was like having a ****, blushingly compared it to “a little dog that barks at everything.”)
The only part of the interpretation I see any difficulty with is where Joe develops telepathy so he knows what happens. I don’t really see Amber or Booster spilling the beans.
Amber is barely involved in this whole mess: she encouraged Dorothy to send a single not-even-tiddy-pic, because she thought it’d be funny. No way Joe sees that as anywhere even close to blame.
I mean if he’s hurt by anyone other than Joyce, it’d be Dorothy…since he kind of very directly confronted her about this exact situation two days ago or something and thus she has absolutely no excuse.
Right? Its like he’s just a dude who hasn’t been gay like even once. How dare he interfere and make us recognize how selfish the les-*coughs*bisexuals are?!
what the fuck. like maybe theres like a three layer deep of irony you are trying to present this on but this is just like, open unabashed biphobia right.
It’s 100% sarcasm. They’re trying to make a joke that because Joe isn’t gay, or bisexual, he is somehow lesser than the rest of the cast.
In response to Astariel’s comment about how everyone is concerned with Joe; which I believe people are right to be concerned with Joe just not forgetting the rest of the cast.
It is genuinely a liiiiiiittle bit exhausting how, despite Willis’s best efforts, the entirety of Dorothy and Joyce realizing they’re both bi has been about a straight guy in the comments.
1) the “entire” comments section hasn’t been about Joe, not even while discussing the cheating.
2) Dorothy’s bi realization came awhile back; what we’re really seeing is mostly Joyce’s realization and Dorothy’s newfound conviction that drove her to FOLLOW her new bi feelings
3) not only is Joyce’s partner hurt by all this, and therefore worth discussing, but Joe is someone who recently opened himself up to a relationship *because* he’s seen the damage infidelity causes. It’s just a cruel twist that instead of he himself cheating, as he might fear, he’s being cheated ON.
I don’t think you have much of a leg to stand on if you try to turn THAT into some kind of point about heteronormativity or bi erasure or whatever. People aren’t yelling “bUt WHaT ABoUt tHe StRAigHt GuY?!?”, they’re looking at the clues FROM THE STORY that show a character they care about is due for a deep heartbreak, and they’re talking about it. But shame on them for caring, I guess.
1. Yeah, but every time people aren’t talking enough about Joe, there’s been a lot of complaining! A lot of accusing people of not caring about Joe enough.
2. Okay, but I’m talking about a pattern that started when the comment section first started taking Dorothy’s feelings for Joyce seriously, so, Dorothy’s bi realization was relevant to the point I was making.
3. Of course Joe was worth discussing. But there was never enough Joe discussion. Even after days of talking about Joe, when he didn’t show up for a strip and it was just Joyce or Dorothy so most people were talking about Joyce or Dorothy, there were commenters guilt-tripping people for not talking about Joe more.
“if you try to turn THAT into some kind of point about heteronormativity or bi erasure or whatever. People aren’t yelling “bUt WHaT ABoUt tHe StRAigHt GuY?!?””
Literally all I said was that it’s been a bit exhausting, but. You know. Go off I guess.
– Literally all I said was that it’s been a bit exhausting, but. You know. Go off I guess.
Literally – yes, that’s technically “all” you said.
Rhetorically – the implicit accusation is that the people who disagree with you care more about a straight character than the lesbian characters.
I think it would be great if Becky was thrilled by this development. I wanna hear that Becky is Over It and still loves Joyce but seriously she has Dina so why would she be upset?
I think that the implied message is that France is a kinky country, not that France is a romantic country. I mean the two are related, sure.
We inherited the English tendency to put the French descriptor on anything that was perceived as being dubious. French tickler, etc. When I was a kid and my mother realized she had used language she didn’t want us using, she always followed it up with “Pardon my French.”
The thing is that France isn’t even a particularly kinky country! Germany is well known for being much kinkier.
I think a lot of the ‘romance’ of European cities, especially the ones that weren’t bombed to shit in the world wars, is just because they’re truly old cities and you literally cannot go to one of those in the Americas because they are all either historical sites or destroyed. That plus Europeans have romanticized castles basically ever since they stopped being real military installations.
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My one-foot-taller partner and I sleep in spoon position and we switch spoon sides often. I can testify, Dot and Joyce have it easy being so close in height. My arm is constantly twisted up and half asleep, but spooning is worth it. Usually.
I have often wondered how I managed to sleep like this every night in college without my arm going to sleep constantly.
Actually, rather than spoon, we usually slept face-to-face in a tangle of arms and legs that must have looked like someone fired two sets of body parts at each other point-blank from canons
its been consistently at the xx:16 point for me the last few days, fingers crossed the clock resets soonish!! because god forbid i gotta wait to see hijinks
You’re trying your level best, Willis, and I truly respect that, but I just still do not feel anything toward this couple. I cannot yet give my lesbian seal of approval.
You know it’s funny, I legit think Dotty might actually be lesbian and not Bi. It would explain a lot about her character and how she’s dealt with her relationships before Joyce.
^^ this, I’ve been wondering this for a while now. Like, we’ve seen her show sexual attraction to Walky, but I question if she’s biromantic or just homoromantic.
Actually… I was browsing Willis’s Bluesky yesterday and… well, unfortunately can’t seem to find it again right now, but there was a brief discussion deep in one of the threads about how both Walky and Danny may be trans and currently unaware… Danny, notably, would fit that “mid guy to awesome girl” pipeline, and it would make him being called a “good egg” extra-fitting; Walky, meanwhile, hasn’t been especially prone to introspection, which doesn’t prove anything but leaves plenty of room for later self. Also: https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3lvlobv5r5k2p — I’m not saying that’s a transbian Walky over to the side there, but it could well be a transbian Walky.
Anyway, in summary: maybe Dorothy’s been lesbian the whole time and just didn’t realise she’s only been with girls.
I agree. Dorothy fell in love with Walky the first time around, she has missed him, she was excited to bang him plenty of times. I don’t think that reads like a lesbian at allll, but people can spitball all they want.
I feel things for this couple on a panel by panel basis. Or, like, until the end of the current cute strip, before reality sets in. Like this strip: it’s very sweet in all of the cuddles and quiet intimacy/comfort and Joyce explicitly expressing her sexuality. D’aaww.
But then the strip ends and I think over the story as a whole and remember: “Oh yeah, this is happening less than 24, 12?, hours after Joe, still clueless boyfriend Joe, gave Joyce a weighted blanket and she put her mouth on his weenus. Hmmmm…” It just breaks the cuteness for me. For me. Me personally. No judgment or statement about what anyone else should be feeling.
I completely agree. The existence of the cheating leaves a foul taste in my mouth. How can I enjoy sweet cuddling when I know how much wrong they did (and are still doing) to get here?
That’s part of why I want them to be discovered. I’ll be able to enjoy the sweetness once it’s honest.
Yes, if there’s any chance of enjoying the sweetness for me, it’d be with honesty and dealing with the full situation. I’m willing to give benefit of the doubt I’ll get there but forecast says highly unlikely.
Yeah this one is just overly sappy and cutesy in a way I don’t care about much. I found Joyce and Dorothy more interesting even a few comics ago, when they were a little more frazzled or frantic. This cutesy-couples talk doesn’t really fit anything I’ve seen from their dynamic, and sure maybe it’s their new norm now that they’re a couple, but “smooth, quippy Joyce” doesn’t really track for me.
I agree. I enjoy the rainbow of all possible couplings in DOA, but I find the long arc of the character developments of Joe and Joyce, and their “inevitable” pairing to blossom as a little rosebud against all odds.
Come on: Joe finally really fell in love! Transformed person! Tender and vulnerable!
Come on: Joyce coming to terms with her dreams tearing her apart! Longing for those arms to be put around her! (not to mention his weenus)!
…just to see this ship gone with the wind and run aground and the passengers join the Confused Anonymous crowd.
(shakes fist towards the clouds: “Damn You, Willis!”)
I wouldn’t mind if it hadn’t been for Joyce+Joe… Joyce+Dorothy are cute together, but — aside from the cheating subplot, which doesn’t seem to be doing much (though hopefully will become more eventful later) — there’s not much more than that, especially as, with all their past interactions, it feels like there’s barely anything new but for their self-awareness. (As an aside: I’ve seen people saying that Joyce seemed to be “suddenly gay”. How? I’m aro ace and even I saw it years ago.)
By contrast, Joyce+Joe was producing significant character development… Hopefully that’ll find a way to continue, but right now, Joyce+Dorothy strips are basically either “aww” or *facepalm*, with the occasional teasing that something might actually happen soon… any day now…
I’ll just finish this with a general apathetic “Damn You, Willis”, I suppose. With the general everything of the world these days, hope’s already strained. I don’t exactly doubt that David Willis has plans that’ll resolve all this, and can accept that it’s just a temporary drama slump for the happiness of the sapphic fans (and I don’t begrudge them)… but I just can’t be emotionally optimistic these days, even here. I just read and wait.
The first moment I really started liking Joe/Joyce as a ship was when Joe was giving out the apology doughnuts and Joyce told him about how she was almost raped. That was a HUGE turning point for both of them, and I’ve been hoping the two of them would get together ever since.
In contrast, I never really got any enjoyment out of Dorothy and Joyce. Perhaps its just a case of something being more important to the author than to myself, it’s certainly possible.
Willis has also stated in recent bonus content that, while writing the protest scene, they decided spur-of-the-moment to make Joyce/Dorothy happen RIGHT NOW, when in their mind that development had still been multiple years of strips away
So if it feels like their romantic relationship is really suddenly WAY further along than the comic had prepared you for, that’s why. People are saying “this feels really sudden” for a good reason.
Personally, I think I needed that extra time. At least a bit of it.
o3o Alright Guys. Jorothy shippers eating good right now. Not really my thing but I’m happy for y’all. But it got me thinking. What’re some of YOUR favorite ships. Either Already together, Formerly together, Hinted or WAY out of left field. And give a reason why you like ’em so much. (Poly is, of course) permitted.
Not me.
I 100% approve of them together.
I spell it with an “l” as a combination between scow (a boat often used in hauling trash up and down rivers) and scowl (an angry frown), and I spell it with a “k” because I’m not very good at remembering how to spell either scow or scowl.
I was a big fan of Garbage Scow back in the day, but not since Halloween. Not saying I couldn’t be brought back, but not without Amber actually putting in the work at a redemption arc (starting with admitting she NEEDS a redemption arc).
You Jen/Ruth shippers are stronger than me. I can’t trust Ruth anymore after the breakup. How do you know you’re not gambling she’ll not just torch it again? They were in such a good space. 😭
Wasn’t it, if you love something let it go. If it comes back to you and it’s a butterfly, you’ve changed the future. Or was that a different time line?
Me First!
Walky/Amber- I feel like there’s so much chemistry between these two it’s insane. Amber is the only girlfriend Walky had that didn’t try to “fix” him, and I feel like that made HIM want to be a better version of himself. It was a bad time and a bad situation but I think they should give it another shot.
Billie/Ruth- It’s been enough time. I want them back. My OG toxic ship.
Liz/Joyce- Honestly I thought if anyone was gonna be her bi awakening it’d be Liz, but maybe that was just wishful thinking in hindsight. Honestly they’d be cute together and if they dated then her and Sarah would ACTUALLY be sisters 😛
Sal/Danny- GAWD They’re cute. Hope nothing happens to ’em
Dina/Joe- Now before you guys crucify me for shipping Dina with anyone but becky…Joe and Dina have an UNEXPECTED amount of chemistry. I don’t even know if I’d want them to date as much as have like a FWB type thing idk. In the ideal DOA polycule I definitely attach those two branches.
HELL yeah! also I’m a sucker for height differences in a couple and Dina being so short while Joe’s so tall, yet she’s the dom in that dynamic, that’s what I like to see >D
Also I cannot take credit for this setup (my friend made this polycule setup) but I feel like this would be my ideal DOA Poly ship. https://imgur.com/a/Wx96toL
I can get behind that but I think Becky might explode with anxiety even if she understood it was just because she was FWB with Joe to scientifically determine exactly how best to make him tremble. And even if she was sharing data with Joyce…
I suggest surprise additional node between her and Dorothy and the discovery that the antagonism from her is suppressed attraction (see “if girls like her were shoving me into lockers, I’d have figured out I was gay a lot quicker” to Walky re: Billie/Jen), with Dorothy going to Joyce for a sweet time, and them going to eachother for frenetic “this would break a dryer” type sessions. Plausibly under Dina’s direction sometimes…
I’d draw a line from Dina to Joyce in addition, but I’m pretty sure Becky’d stab me with my own sharpie if I didn’t also draw a line from her to Joyce as well, lol.
i see the appeal of dina/joe too!! i like their up-front respectful relationship & i think joe being pretty far away from dina on the “responsiveness to sex” spectrum would make a fwb deal a fun research-based venture for them. i think one of my fave parts of DoA is its recognition that there isnt really a perfect destined match, a lot of different pairings work well at different times and for different lengths :] and right now dina & becky are having a pretty good time
Mine is chain-poly. It goes Beef – Sarah – Jacob – Lucy – Becky – Dina – Joe – Joyce – Dorothy – Walky – Amber // Amazigirl – Sal – Danny – Ethan – Asher – Jenifer – Ruth – Jason – Conquest
Yes, Conquest is a little young, but Jason is not known for good decisions.
I actually thought that Joe had a shocking amount of chemistry with Stacy- obviously ignoring the age gap/relationship with Richard/yada yada it’s a cartoon. (But that kind of speaks to her type!)
I just think there’s something accidentally very funny about how well their dynamics matched up. Stacy had usually been portrayed as being a anxious as Amber, but when she’s around college kids her maturity and confidence shines through. Meanwhile, Joe is the opposite, a guy who was faking maturity and experience but started getting torn down and knocked down a peg into humility.
When I say it out loud, it’s a lot of the same appeal of Joe/Joyce: you think Joe is gonna be horny to this cute innocent seeming girl, but actually the cute woman LOVES messing with him. Only with Stacy, you get the fun power dynamic of “guy who pretends to be sexually experienced vs a woman who IS way more experienced”.
The very flippant and dismissive way she treated Joe’s apology donuts was also FASCINATING. It was such a subtle and off-hand thing, but it adds so much nuance to her character. Stacy had been portrayed on a spectrum from “Victim” to “Enabler”, but that one moment was very well written in showing us who she is. The way she’s just so casually dismissing the red flags, playing it off as “cute boys being boys”, and seemingly being MORE confident when around crappy guys ….it’s really good writing! You instantly understand what her taste is like and how she ends up in awful relationships.
And… frankly, hitting on a 19 year old guy who looks like your recent divorced husband would genuinely be kinda lame and pathetic for Stacy to do. And that’s why it feels kinda real to her character. I think the fact that she sucks a little is the best thing about her.
Not just “looks like your recent divorced husband” though – “is your very recently ex-stepson”… 😬 Even though the relationship didn’t come into being until he was at college, ICK
The thing with Stacy and the donuts will always fascinate me and I think it’s because, what with the comic being written, we cannot hear her tone. But for me, when she replied that Joe’s donut scheme to apologize about his list was “cute”, I didn’t see it as her actually thinking it is cute.
I just don’t see this as her thinking it’s actually adorable, or a positive quality. Like, if the comic had voice acting, I honestly imagine her tone would be a bit dry or sardonic. She views what he’s done as being immature. But, that’s also just me. I just find it interesting how many ways different people can read the same panel and dialogue.
I’m sorry, but I’m hung up on this: Only with Stacy, you get the fun power dynamic of “guy who pretends to be sexually experienced vs a woman who IS way more experienced”.
Joe is lacking in actual romantic relationships, but his sexual experience is canon; I’m not sure where you’re getting that he’s actually inexperienced sexually.
Because other than Dina’s moment talking about using him for sexual data making him blush, I can’t think of anything that would lead you to think this, and that situation was special, both in the person doing the talking and what she said.
I don’t think that when Joe comes home from a night of 3somes, we’re supposed to believe he’s lying on his dick.
And as for Stacy being way more experienced, she’s older and she was been married, twice now, but that doesn’t equal being more sexually experienced, especially if we assume Joe’s sexcapades are legitimate, which, again, I believe is supposed to be the case.
Also, because I got caught up on this statement of yours, I reread all the Stacy strips, and, other than Richard talking about the two of them doing a lot of stuff as she’s 15 years younger than him and hot, I saw nothing referencing her sexual experience, let alone that would lead one to believe she’s super experienced compared to Joe.
I’m not criticizing the dynamic in general, but I feel like you’re either misremembering something or I’m flat out missing something for this part of your comment to apply to this pairing.
Well, Joe did admit he never actually had a threesome. It’s not much of a stretch to think some of his experience is exaggerated. How much we’re not sure.
That’s one of the things that really annoys me about Joe’s arc. We didn’t get to see enough of how he was before he started to reform. We saw him harassing some of our main characters, but he was willing to back off when they yelled at him. That and the list is all we’ve really got.
You’ve actually brought me around to wanting Walky and Amber. They’re just very comfortable together. They seem to have the same energy and expectations from each other.
Other than that I really wanted Jen and Dorothy to hate smooch but doesn’t seem likely anymore.
Every other couple I wish a very (be infinitely worse than you already are)
Oh and Leslie with any other woman that’s not Anna. I think her name is Anna.
My toxic trait is I still want Leslie and Robin to work out somehow. Of all the Willis couples I want them to be a universe constant the most. I cried when they broke up in Shortpacked.
I was initially a little disappointed by Dina not being ace, for personal reasons, but she and Becky are so adorable together… Dina X Becky X science is easily my favourite relationship in the comic.
Yes, sorry. Gray ace, yes, so my first sentence was technically incorrect; I was just thinking back and remembering that reflexive “dangit, not another seemingly-aroace character falling in love/finding their libido”… Not only that, but I’m generally very much in favour of gray ace characters. It was just a disappointment at the time. I’d have probably gotten over it soon anyway, but they just work together so well that merely “getting over it” quickly became an irrelevant concern.
Also, science.
There’s just nothing I can dislike about their relationship, and I like it even more knowing Dina’s gray aceness works so well for you.
Also I getcha, there’s… THERE JUST ISN’T ENOUGH. In some ways there are “a lot” of sex-repulsed romance-repulsed ace characters, but they’re usually also not human. Or, if they’re human, they’re Weird in other ways, maybe very morally gray, maybe very creepy, maybe just straight-up villains.
And let me be clear I love those characters. Like the Depraved Bisexual trope, I can shake my head at it while still being like, “those characters are amazing though.” 🥺
Dina/Becky – I shipped them as soon as Becky made Dina smile during the party and immediately cheered when they became a thing. They’re adorable and I’m happy to have amazing grey-ace representation in Dina.
Sal/Carla – I gotta admit, back when it was hinted that Carla had a crush on Sal, I was so for it. Mainly because Carla is so high on herself, but was really, really desiring and crushing on Sal and I kinda liked how unimpressed Sal was with her. Seemed like it gave her a good challenge.
Ethan/Danny – It’s definitely been blown sky high by Danny’s comment after Mike’s death, but before that point I really wanted them to work out.
I was so mad when Danny somehow shoved his entire foot down his mouth on that one. Bro obliterated his own ship like he installed a self destruct button.
He could have made a recovery but when he double downed by bringing up fucking Star Wars I wanted to reach through the comic and throttle him. “JUST TAKE THE L, MAN! DON’T COMPARE MIKE TO FUCKING DARTH VADER”
I wouldn’t say it was necessarily doomed just because of that… mainly because 1) Ethan seemed to be embracing a more casual thing at the time and wasn’t trying to date anyone anyways so I doubt he would have dated Mike if he didn’t even try to become official after sleeping with him (this regret is likely part of why he’s so torn up in the present) and 2) at the risk of pulling a Danny… I mean… Mike IS dead now… so… if Ethan can embrace moving on in some way with Asher, he absolutely could have done so with Danny if he didn’t Danny it up.
I totally stand with Danny on this. Ethan flat out admitted Mike was an asshole and that was okay because he was Ethan’s asshole. Even admitting if things were reversed he wouldn’t care if Mike dissed Danny while he was in a coma. Better to have that tension out in the open. The sad fact was that Ethan will always choose Mike over Danny so that relationship would never work.
Mike’s death is the only reason Ethan has any ground to stand on. I think they could talk it out though but Ethan’s clearly still too raw to ever broach the subject these days. Maybe if Asher ever proves…..untrustworthy….it will spark a change in Ethan.
Danny’s not wrong to call Ethan out on the way he defended Mike’s asshole-y behavior, but I think the issue is time and place. He didn’t need to pick a fight about Mike while the man was literally dying in a hospital bed, particularly with the guy who had a fling/situationship with said dying dude. There was no reason to have that conversation other than that Danny was jealous about Mike.
Perhaps it is simple to say that since yeah, that is the only ground Ethan has to stand on, like you said. However, not only is it very firm ground, but it’s very emotionally sound ground too. Danny went into that interaction wanting to ask Ethan out and came out of it making an ass out of himself instead.
Ethan/Danny never getting a chance to become real is the greatest tragedy of the strip by far and as much as I don’t want Sal to be hurt I absolutely DO need Danny getting plowed while held in Ethan’s strong arms
For the purpose of this fantasy scenario Ethan has strong arms instead of having the minimal muscle mass of a nerd who edits Transformers wikis instead of using a gym
ngl once upon a time i liked the idea of carla making god girl whose name i’m too high to remember a better less horrible person through the power of lesbianism. between now and then god girl’s character arc and also the actual arc of real world history has disabused me of that.
Carla and Mary is my never ever ship that I really really want. GOD that would be so much fun, especially the courtship phase where Mary’s entire world crashes around her.
I was one of them too. Nice to see some had the same idea. There was potential there for Mary x Carla when their rivalry was more cartoon stakes and less abhorrent transphobia and intolerance. I’ve also been informed it promoted a problematic trope of implying toxic bullies secretly like you.
Now a days Mary is just too far gone as a character.
Yeah it was a short run. I really thought when Mary had pulled the glue stunt the prank war would escalate and resolve to them finding mutual respect. I actually think that moment is when Mary went from being the Joyce but worse to full mask off, (arguably evil?), right wing, MAGA, conservative, creep.
Alternate idea: Mary struggles with bisexuality, which goes against everything in her worldview. She tries to supress it as much as possible, keep it secret at all costs… then here comes Carla, who is not just open but loud and proud about her queerness.
Rather than be honest with herself and admit that’s what she wants for herself, Mary’s deep-seated envy of Carla (especially her supportive parents) morphs into cruelty. If Mary can convince herself that Carla is more of an “aberration” than she is, or so she reasons, maybe she can stop hating herself and her own inability to fit the square peg of her own “sinful cravings” into the round hole of her upbringing.
It doesn’t absolve Mary of her hurtful words and actions, but it does leave the door open to making amends and eventually growing into a better person. She’s burned a lot of bridges, and rebuilding them will take time. Mary’s journey to self-acceptance will be her recognizing the harm she’s done.
Or she stays the stays the unrepentant Draco Malfoy of the series, and provides us with endless cathartic schadenfreude. Either works, really.
I mean, by all means ship Mary with Carla, you thinking it would be neat in your head doesn’t promote anything.
Adults in positions of power regularly responding to reports of bullying by telling usually girls that the usually boy probably just has a crush on them in real life is what promotes toxic ideas, and I don’t think that’s coming from media — I think it comes from a combination of things, like the very real phenomenon of actual-children struggling to express feelings like “I like you” and sometimes landing on “so I’m gonna push you in the mud”…
…and society at large tolerating immaturity in (white) boys for much longer than it tolerates immaturity in anyone else…
…combining with school administrators frequently being lazy assholes who would rather tell a bullying victim to suck it up than actually try to discipline a bully.
(And that’s when they don’t just privately agree that a bullying victim deserves to be bullied.)
Billie/Ruth. I don’t remember liking the pairing that much, but on a full reread I realized I love their dynamic. They balance on the edge of being terrible and really cute in a way I just keep hoping it will work out somehow.
Sal x Danny might be the only canon ship I have really strong feelings for and that’s partially because i was/still am a Sal x Danny fan back during my initial readings of the Walkyverse comics.
i can see them having a fun prep x jock punch-clock frenemies relationship. like they’re similar enough to bond over a lot of things while also being different enough to clash when it comes to each other’s flaws. plus both have strong enough personalities that i feel like they can take each other’s shit lol.
I saw this the other day on tumblr. the art style is really good!! Malaya x Roz os truly galaxybrained lol especially because they’re 2 characters I’d just like to see more. They’re also both pretty headstrong and have like, a solid sense of who they are? Very fun.
Also Raidah x Jen is so terrible I love itttt I’m a little sad that she’ll likely move out of that circle soon what with hanging out with people who actually like her & stuff.
I have made fanart for some of my favorite dumbing of age rarepairs before but in general with the exception of maybe 1-2 ships i’m pretty down for whatever.
Sal x Danny might be the only canon ship I have really strong feelings for and that’s partially because i was a Sal x Danny fan back during my initial readings of the Walkyverse comics and partially because it’s very cute to see Sal get to let her guard down and be constantly vulnerable with someone.
Also IDK if there’s just something softblocking my ability to share links bc I’ve been trying to share my rarepair fanart for a hot minute to no avail. C’mon I need those Malaya x Roz stocks to go up.
In the past 3+ years, it didn’t matter if I used HTML or just copy/pasted the URL, if it had any kind of link my comment would just get eaten and end up not appearing at all. It didn’t matter how long I waited, that comment was just GONE. I’d still try on occasion though, cause I had a feeling it was gonna probably sort itself out one day in the future.
So I really need you to imagine how hangdog I felt when I learned that day was gonna be 30 minutes after I reposted my comment like a goofball 😵💫
While I always keep my beautifully toxic suicide pact ship in my heart, it has been for a while been Dotty/Joyce, and honestly, since I hated Joe/Joyce and love drama I’m eating so flipping good right now.
In terms of wholesomeness I just hope to Willis Dina and Beck stay together forever
I actually liked Joe/Joyce, and am sad to see it go, but my feathers aren’t ruffled enough to get off this wild ride. 200% agreement on that last sentence, though. I certainly have my favorite ships, and cross my fingers harder for some than I do others… and Becky/Dina is my ride-or-die endgame.
Carla/Jocelyne is my personal crackship. I get a self-indulgent enjoyment of it from a “I’m a t4t lesbian and I think it’d be awesome if this comic’s most major trans women made out” perspective, but then when you actually think about it it feels like the kinda thing where the shared Gender Experience combined with the way their personalities would hypothetically mesh feels like it’d be interesting to explore. They’re both trolls with righteous streaks that manifest in different ways, and they would probably bounce off of each other well! …Then once you get past that, you reach an inner core of even hornier self-indulgence because I think Carla being spoiled by an older trans woman would be amazingly hot.
while we’re here i also think i’m the only person on earth who’d be interested in a Joyce/Danny revisit, but ONLY after Danny’s transitioned. i think becoming a woman is the only thing that could make Joyce care even a little bit about Danny, lol
they haven’t met yet! but i hope they do soon, because i think that would be a really funny scene! i need her to have Some Sort Of Reaction to Jugs’ Hot Older Sister.
Oh, she is. Especially with the console that pulls in four other versions of her from different timelines as backup. Use that, the Nanoprobe Infestation console, and the Holographic Ships console, and she’s a one-ship fleet!
Oh I forgot Joe/Joyce
I remember in a commentary for Roomies years ago Willis said something along the lines of him realizing that Joe and Joyce actually had a surprising amount of chemistry and wishing he had capitalized on it more at the time. I didn’t quite see it at the time but this past storyline has absolutely sold me on it.
Another one I thought of, I actually like Ruth/Jason. The two bonding over not being American was really cute and it sold me on them. I like that it seems their vibe is kinda… casual? Like they’re both ‘take it or leave it’, but also presently happy just to vibe together and have a good time. I think Ruth needs that after last semester. No, they probably won’t get married, and they probably aren’t endgame, but as long as they make each other content for a while… I dunno, I just kinda like that.
Ruth and Jason somehow making it to end game would be amazing and hilarious because they should be exactly as boring as Lucy/Walky except somehow neither of them being into it at all (and Jason showing up only on Leap Years and federal holidays for food) makes it weirdly enjoyable just for the absurdity. Like I do not ship these people unironically, it’s only because this appears to be their cosmic punishment.
I would absolutely love that, honestly. Ruth and Jason in a very boring, functional marriage where they eat dinner together and barely mumble at each other. That’s HILARIOUS.
Bless you for bringing this to the community’s attention. Just that introduction line and I am giggling with glee. I also extend to you what kudos I can spare.
In this comic? Sal/Danny because they’re very sweet. Sal/Marcie because I think they’d be very sweet with the touuuuuuch of angst that makes it delicious. Sal/Carla because I think they’d be cute and annoying. Sal/Asher because I sometimes don’t want sweet, I want toxic! Sal/Malaya for the same reason. Jason/Sal if I want toxic and feel nostalgic for Walkyverse. Sal/Jennifer and Sal/Ruth because of earlier comments. Sal/Tony because Walkyverse.
…Okay, fine. I’ll get off Sal. Carla and Charlie have been cute so far and I like how Charlie challenges her without being pushy. I’m kinda digging the energy Booster and Ruth and Booster and Amber have. Dorothy/Walky is probably my favourite non-Sal ship because I have so many feelings over how he supports her and unfailingly believes in her. Joyce/Joe because of their whole arc. I have residual Malaya/Carla and Joe/Rachel feelings. Still ship the fuck out of Jennifer and Ruth. Marcie and Malaya seem happy thus far so who am I to judge? Still kinda like Ethan and Danny and Danny/AG but in a ‘those two are better off not together now but it was nice while it lasted’ kinda way. Ethan/Asher seems intriguing and had a huge drama bomb hanging off it. I’ll always love Mike/Amber but he had a good thing going with Ethan for like two seconds. Leslie and Robin but only in the Walkyverse. Kinda happy to see Lucy and Jacob give it a go but I still like the idea of him and Sarah. Though Tony is RAPIDLY rising the ranks of boyfrienddom so I’m gonna give him and Sarah their flowers. Of course the polycule in the dorm. I’m digging the energy for Jason/Ruth but very casually which I think fits. Becky/Dina 4ever of course and I kinda like Becky/Joyce in a ‘what could’ve been’ way. Walky/Amber was really cute too! Jennifer/Alice could be interesting if it goes anywhere. I have a kinda crackship Roz/Sal for ONE DATE where they agree to piss off each other’s families for kicks. Since you brought it up, I do think Dina and Joe have cool chemistry if they’re ever down to fuck around and find out.
My crackship of choice is Sarah/Dorothy or Sarah/Danny because they’re two of the people Sarah actually likes.
Joyce x Joe x Dorothy Full Triangle No Hinge Polycule: I am ride or die for this ship. I know it’s currently being shot full of cannonballs and is on fire, and I do not care. ; 3; Okay, maybe I care a little. My thing is I love the two dumb codependent blondes and I think they’re cute and their queer journey falling down all the stairs is hilarious, I love Joe and Joyce and think they’re very cute in a shoujo-manga-ass, Ranma and Akane kind of way, and then like, Dorothy also banging Joe seems really funny and hot and a nice way to bury their high school hatchet! Plus it would be Joyce’s idea, and Joe finally having a threesome BECAUSE JOYCE PROPOSED IT? Hilarious???
Joe x Jocelyne: This is my crackship consolation prize. Jocelyne is a sexual dynamo who loves hot dudes (and some girls now). Joe is a former sexual dynamo who loved Joyce. Of course he goes for a girl who looks like Joyce almost exactly. Of course the slipshine is titled “Bestow Me Womanhood With Your Boner”. Also Jocelyne could do the funny lean on him and Joyce would be SO APPALLED.
Amber x Walky: Walky fumbled but I believe he can grab the ball! I want him to have a partner he doesn’t mask with dammit and Amber feels good around him and etc.
Jason x Ruth: JOKE’S ON YOU, I DO SHIP THEM UNIRONICALLY.
D:
Billie x Alice: I am a sucker for this one and it’s gonna hurt me, but I don’t give a shit.
I am 1000% here for Joe x Jocelyne as my new crackship after thinking about it more. I could even see it get more cracked, as Jocelyne seems like the kind of person who absolutely would apologize to Joe for what Joyce did, and things go from there.
I am not a huge shipper in general? The point of relationships is to show me new sides of characters, and as long as they get the same narrative weight romances are not superior to friendships. But I have like. Two I guess.
I did and do like Joyce/Joe a lot, I like the sides they bring out in each other and the character development is great. I will be very sad to see them go if that’s the way things pan out. I feel like this is one I’ve been steadily shifted from “this is probably going to happen” to “this is really interesting and I like it” to “there’s enough groundwork and friction here that watching them be cute feels satisfying” over time. The goal for romantic relationships to me is to find someone who’s the right combination of challenging and comfortable, and this is a really strong ship from that perspective.
And then this is kinda left field but I like basically every time Ruth and Carla are onscreen together and I think that ship would be an interesting extension of that dynamic. I think disrupting each other’s bullshit is a good trait to have in a couple, and I like both of those characters the most when they are being forced to be sincere but not in a cutesy way.
Honorable mention to the fact that I seem to be the only person on the planet who prefers Dorothy/Walky the second time around to the same ship the first time around. Feels a little more real, even if it’s less mutually enamored. In part because it’s less mutually enamored. Anyway this isn’t like my ship or anything, I like it about normal for a well written fictional relationship, but I do like it better than all the other Walky ships so far and given that it seems broadly unpopular I figured I’d give words in its defense.
I think it’s probably evident that I find friction really important in terms of where I feel romantic chemistry is interesting. I liked Danny/Amber a lot at the time (I did hold out hope for Danny/Amber for a while past it’s expiration, but I don’t ship it now), I liked Billie/Ruth a lot at the time, I was broadly positive on Joyce/Jacob, and Sarah/Jacob finally acquired chemistry like 30 seconds before it sank. But idk I like watching people chafe against each other and figure out what the friction means and how that is going to change them. That can be amicable or nastier, but it’s the friction that makes the fire so to speak.
Sweetness: Sal/Danny. They just WORK together in a way that Danny with almost anyone else hasn’t for me.
Messiness: Ruth/Billie, if for no other reason than it would mean the end of “Jennifer”. They’ve always struck me as the couple that could work, if they could remove their respective heads from their own butt-cheeks long enough.
Sexiness: Becky/Dina. I love their dynamic, and they are definitely the couple that seems the most plausibly steamy.
Total Trainwreck I Could Not Ignore: Jason/Robin.
What A Twist: Joe/Asma, preferably after another time-skip, and their pairing is never, ever explained.
They Deserve Each Other Polycule: Booster, Malaya, Mary, Raidah, Roz. I don’t care how implausible this is, it would secure the rest of the cast from having to be shipped with any of them. They can move off-campus into a shared household. Helen can be their house-mom.
Anyway calling it now: Jocelyne, somehow under the mistaken belief that Joyrothy were honest to Joe about The Big Kiss, is gonna accidentally break the news to someone.
If they want that research to be as accurate as possible, they’ll need plenty of repetition. It’s basic rigor, gotta perform the experiment enough times to create a valid sample size.
I’m mad because I really don’t like the way they’re getting together (cheating on their actual current partners). And I love love loved Joe/Joyce so I’m sad to see that ship sink. But. These two are…SO gotdamn cute. The conflict of it all!!
We didn’t see them get ready for bed; just climb into the bed to watch cartoons, so there’s a good chance they remembered to brush their teeth, and to shower, before sleeping.
They had on big heavy coats. Unless you think they’re wearing their jeans right now, none of the clothing that’s visible should be tear gas stained. So yeah, why not put it back on.
A comic strip cannot possibly give a full account of everything that transpires between panels, let alone days. And, even the most meticulous author will eventually transgress continuity.
However, while we had a scene that showed a lot of gas being used in the park, we didn’t see either of these two cough. That might imply they didn’t have a significant amount in their clothing to begin with, especially under their jackets.
For now, I will choose to give Joyce the benefit of the doubt about having brushed her teeth between strips, at Dorothy’s behest had she not taken the initiative!
Although, now that I think of it… has there been any indication that Dorothy might not enjoy weenus breath?
have you ever seen a ship deployed so badly it actively turns you homophobic
*editor’s note: this is said in a hyperbolic tone for the purposes of comedy and also to riff on the people last week/two weeks ago who kept declaring anyone who doesn’t find this cute is a homophobe
anyway, back in the real world, which is steeped in queerphobia and causes unconscious biases, it’s possible to have queerphobic reactions to a comic strip that aren’t nakedly “I hate this because it’s gay”
Also plenty of people were mask-off queerphobic. Just because it wasn’t the majority of comments doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Even seeing other characters REACTING to the cheating would be nice, but honestly for all the proclamations about how relationship messes add to the drama and interesting stories, we have had basically 50% hijinks, 50% cuddling, 0% messy drama from this so far.
As with the kidnapping/mike dies arc, when it breaks I think the storm will last quite a while, and we have to watch a few panels day by day to establish the course of events that will culminate in the storm. I would like there to be no storm, or more of a drizzle, because what I have liked about this comic over the last 5 years has been the cute relationships developing, and people being devastated over cheating is the opposite of that, as well neither walky nor Joe would likely be surprised since Dorothy and Joyce have been super gay with one another consistently, but it is what it is and we can’t control how it feels to be hurt.
I loved Joyce and Joe, I thought it was adorable and also hot. I always felt Joyce wasn’t as invested as Joe, but liked him a lot and wanted things to work out. As for Dorothy, we knew she’d been a wreck since The Timeskip, and that she was making a lot of self destructive decisions. This still feels A Bit like that, but I also like them as a ship and this is still cute and hot.
Good luck to sickos and paladins alike, in the coming weeks, months, and years, we may be coping hardcore with secondhand cringe and sadness.
Nobody’s reacting because nobody knows. Them not going to talk to their boyfriends is a major step towards making the mess worse. Honestly, if all they’d done was kiss a bit and then go confess as soon as they were back in the dorm, it would probably all blow over quickly. That’s not cool, but it’s about as mild as cheating can be. This approach delays the consequences, but almost certainly makes them worse.
It’s such a shame that with getting further from religion, Joyce also forgot the good lessons Christianity has about interpersonal romance and lust :\
Which is 100% might be what D.Willis intends to lead to, and how things might have been fine if they were straight(lol) about it instead of these last chapters.
Yeah I was trying to imagine what Christianity has said about lust and from my experience here in the Southern Baptist and Pentecostal churches, their lessons on lust are basically “lust BAD. sex BAD. sex only good for BABIES. D< "
For what it’s worth? I think I get what you mean. Spirituality and healthy sexuality need not be mutually exclusive. It’s a shame that so many people (usually the ultra-religious themselves) are so blisteringly ignorant of that.
Heck, you want a good example of that? Look no further than Beck; she’s able to be true to herself, be intimate with her partner, and still follows and participates in her faith.
You gotta remember though that Becky is shown to experience deep shame for being intimate with her partner. I think Dina even admitted that she’s had to comfort a crying Becky post sex. I’m not saying it is impossible just that Becky isn’t a good example because she’s still untangling the deep shame her religious upbringing has indoctrinated into her for the sin of being lustful and whatnot.
Like, Becky is actually a great example about how “the good lessons Christianity has about interpersonal romance and lust” mess you up and traumatize you, actually.
I mean, I’m not a theologian, I can only speak to my own experiences… but I really like Becky because her journey mirrors some of my own. By which I mean, learning that the people who claim to speak for God do not. Learning that God is love, despite what fundies believe and act like.
Nobody has to agree with me, heck, y’all can think I’m a complete goofball… but I just like the example Becky provides of someone who, despite leaving an abusive past behind, still holds fervently to her spirituality, she’s just learning what it means to her personally and forging her own understanding with the Divine rather than letting others dictate it to her.
Don’t know if that explanation makes any sense, but it’s just my take. Becky still has plenty of deprogramming to do, and as someone who’s also in the process of deprogramming some toxic stuff without wanting to jettison their spirituality wholesale, I can’t help but both empathize and want to root for her.
One of the cutest exchanges she ever had, in my opinion, was that bit where Dina said something along the lines of “I’m afraid there is no proof this God exists.” and Becky responds with a loving “You’re proof that He does.”
I wanna buy that kinda wholesome vibe in Sam’s Club bulk size and inject it directly into my veins.
I can definitely agree with that aspect, like that’s what I love about Becky and Dina. And I’m happy that Becky can be Christian and still be a lesbian! One of my best friends is a bi man who identifies as Christian! And one of the arguments I’ve heard from small minded people in the past regarding gay marriage is “well why would they go to a church to get married anyway, seems they’re just trying to start a fight” as if… gay people… can’t be religious. And as if churches aren’t where many marriages are typically held and affirmed.
Religion is a rough spot for me, personally, and I apologize if I was rude in my responses here. I grew up with friends who would guilt me into going to church with them by telling me if I didn’t, I’d “go to hell” and they just “didn’t want that to happen to me”. I saw a traumatic Church play about sin and death at the lovely age of 7 where all I could do was bawl about how unfair the events in the play were and wonder why “Jesus” would be so MEAN if he’s supposed to be ‘good’. When Passion of the Christ came out, my neighbor took myself and her daughter to go see it even though we were 10, because she thought it was important we see the bloody, bloody sacrifice Jesus made for us. Growing up, my favorite holiday was Halloween, and I was often told that by partaking in it I was sinning, that it was the devil’s birthday. Much like Dina, I had a passion for dinosaurs and got into arguments with a kid at school who tried to insist that “God put dino bones in the Earth to test our faith”. When I did go to church, I’d poke holes in the logic of what I was being taught and quickly found myself disliked in the church sphere. I could go on! I don’t know if these things count as religious trauma but… it feels like it, sometimes.
But I hold no ill will towards people who do embody the parts of religion that ought be embraced. Love for one’s fellow man, the urge to better oneself, the power of community. There’s lovely things about religion, I’ve just been exposed to too much of the negative stuff to personally ever feel attached. But I do love characters like Becky, who can embody making the best of what she’s been through and doing what she can. I respect my best friend for his drive to help others and commitment to his spirituality. And I respect you too, and I wish you the best with deprogramming the toxic stuff! I hope I don’t impede your journey.
Also, you don’t have to go to church to get married and churches aren’t required to perform gay marriages.
But the overwhelmingly religious groups that opposed gay marriage opposed it for everyone and not long before had also opposed separate but equal civil unions. Some one wanted a fight certainly.
(Apologies in advanced for the incoming wall of text, I didn’t mean to type this much, but I can’t find anything here I’d actually want to edit out.)
From one internet nomad to another, FUCK every one of those people who treated you that way. However you choose to distance yourself and heal from that bullcrap is valid. If you never set foot in another church again? Good for you. I will be cheering for you all the way. My belief is that all the people who try to dress their hate in what amounts to “Bible drag” are way higher on God’s shit list than anyone who opts out of the performative stuff but lives their life with compassion and empathy for their fellow humans.
I’ve known atheists, Wiccans, Muslims, even Satanists that are ten thousand times better Christians than any of the folks who can memorize entire books of the Bible.
When I got out of that fundie world, you know who welcomed me with open arms? All the people I was told to fear, all the folks they demonized, all the folks they told us to hate. The “freaks,” the “weirdos,” the “sickos”… they showed me kindness that none of the WASP’s ever did.
For me? Those are my people. They will forever be my people, and to my mind, they are the true children of God, whether they realize it or not.
I know I got a little heated there, but it’s in solidarity with fellow kids (even if neither of us are children anymore) who deserved to be nurtured and instead got bullied. Call ’em fundies, call ’em Thumpers; far as I’m concerned, end of the day, they’re bullies.
But you know what? They failed. They tried to break you, tried to stuff you in a metaphorical box, and they failed. And if you live your life in a way to leave this spinning space rock a better place than you found it? You’re more powerful than they could ever hope to be.
Honestly Tequila, I really appreciate your comment and I’m sorry that you have similar experiences. The fundie world can be so punishing at times, and for the people who come out of it still believing in a loving God? Honestly, happy for them. I would never want to squash someone’s feelings if its what helps them get through. I’ve known people who’ve gone through mental healthy crises and addictions and the way they make it through the other side has been through their belief in a higher power. I’d never take that joy, that success from them.
But I also truly appreciate your understanding and giving me that same space and respect. It’s true, I’ll never again step foot in a church outside of attending marriages or funerals. Although I’ve still been roped into prayer before eating when around certain family members, I’ve only respectfully closed my eyes and held hands, but have not uttered a word of grace. And thankfully, no one has called me out on that.
In the end, I feel much the same as you. If people are doing their best to leave the world a bit better than it was before, if they’re trying to cause as little harm as they can, that’s all anyone can ask for! Religion or no religion. God or no God on the other side. Your Ted Talk was wonderful and I hope you have a fantastic night!
Also, I did not take anything you said as rude, and nothing you said impeded my journey. There was not a single thing you said that I interpreted as hostile. 🙂 I hope you too have a fantastic evening (or morning, whatever time it is in your time zone.)
I don’t know if you’ll come back and read this response but thank you for the reassurance. When I was younger (and angrier), I did have very nasty responses to others when they brought up religion or tried to give me religious advice, and it was something where I had to take a step back and recognize that I have the right to feel that way, but not the right to lash out at people who mean no harm. Its something I’ve tried to be better about and I’m glad I didn’t say anything hostile or harmful to you!
Yes, I’m absolutely sure that this story is intended as an Aesop about how Joyce would have been just fine with her big heterosexual boyfriend if she’d just come back to Christ. That is totally a story that David Willis would write in The Year of Our Lord 2024.
people who don’t like seeing amoral modes of affection realize they don’t need to keep reading and commenting every week right? like if you’re so disgusted by messy queers in the webcomic about being queer and messy, you don’t actually need to leave daily comments about it, you literally have other stuff going on. write that novel, build that gundam model, i believe in you. just do whatever your life leads you towards quietly, you’re getting *so* annoying fr fr
I hate that people make comments at all! Why can we not simply read the comic and then express no opinion, desires, or observations in any regard? Just good old fashioned staring at a wall and watching paint dry! That’s what we need in these trying times!
Watching paint dry? That sounds pretty bourgeois there mate. Maybe you can afford to hop down to Dutch Boys and slather some filthy capitalist chromatic grease on the walls of your fortress of privilege, but true connoisseurs have no need of such gluttonous luxury! You want to change the course of this new generation? Get them to start watching grass grow!
I’ll do you guys better. A free activity that can be enjoyed by one and all? Watching your own fingernails grow!! Now we can bridge the gap between the generations AND the wealth gap!
See, here, a perfect example of abilist privilege, slipping into even the most well-intentioned of suggestions, assuming everyone has hands with fingers (and thus fingernails). Or, for that matter, eyes that can see them! If you want a truly all-inclusive activity, we must all simply contemplate our own selves and naught else.
There… is a difference between not enjoying the comment section sometimes, and not enjoying the main plot of the attached web comic, tho?
Like, those are not equivalent.
I have my fingers crossed for the folks who aren’t enjoying this but are still sticking around, that the eventual consequences will be satisfying enough or that they’ll find some other reason to enjoy the story again. For the record.
Oh no, people who like the same webcomic I do have different opinions about a single storyline and are expressing it when that storyline comes up. Call the webcomic comment police!
people discussing the actual comic is one thing, but the moral handwringing and insults to the author are still unnecessary. like im talking about the ppl who are obviously in real life upset at the story and at willis. those people shouldnt keep reading lol
also no offense but even if it is just about the story and nothing else, leaving daily posts just going “this is bad” over and over is, as I’ve said, annoying as fuck
In all seriousness, I feel like we have something like four separate classes of “posts the same thing every day” posters, it’s certainly not limited to “man, this story sucks”.
okay but posting the same cute or funny thing every day is not the same as posting the same rude thing every day. like one of these is not like the others
I thought about that first, but I think Big Z means complaints about the complainers.
I actually don’t think we’ve had a ton of the SAME people commenting that, but I do think we’ve had similar top level comments from a bunch of different one-time posters recently, just dropping in to be like “ugh everyone here sucks, get over the cheating” and then leaving again.
I’ll also expand — I feel like I see at least one of each of the following pretty much daily: “I hate this (derogatory)”, “I love this and if you don’t then nyah (derogatory)”, “I’m saying something deliberately trollish like I do EVERY DAY”, “I’m skirting JUST inside the line of politeness with my responses like I do EVERY DAY”.
I’d be fine with less comments from the people who seem to love posting deliberately trollish comments every day. Unfortunately some of those people are regular commenters right now.
idk when the definition of trolling changed, but defending the author of a webcomic from a constant stream of negative feedback over a relatively benign storyline just because it so happens to be about two queer women cheating on two straight men doesn’t, like, typically fall under that classical definition umbrella of being a general asshole, last time i checked. idk, kids these days, etc etc.
like i’m very cognizant of the fact everyone in these comments hates my guts, but like maybe more people here should try and remember that this fictional story has an actual queer person writing it, and maybe try to temper their vitriol once or twice if they don’t want to be called out on that. shrugging emoji. sorry
“Trolling” has always been more specifically about posting something deliberately either disingenuous or inflammatory specifically for the purpose of drawing outsized reactions, IMHO, rather than general asshole-ery. And we have a couple of those.
For whatever it’s worth – I don’t hate your guts, Megan. I don’t even know who you are, it’d be weird to have that much involvement with a total stranger.
I think, probably, most people actually feel that way and only very few (if any) hate you at all. I think it’s likely zero people, if I’m honest.
Only cuz you like one of those things and don’t like the other of those things. Sometimes saying “I don’t like this” is cathartic when you have a community agreeing so you feel like it’s not just you.
Fair enough, but the advice of “stop reading a strip you’ve been reading for over a decade, from an artist you’ve potentially been reading for longer, because you don’t like one specific storyline” is not, I think, going to move many people.
And it’s the internet — people aren’t gonna resist the allure of the comment box at the best of times.
How dare some of us who’ve been reading this strip for years have different opinions than you about the current story arc, and express those opinions in the comments. If you don’t like reading our comments, maybe you’re the one who should stop reading them and go do other things.
like genuinely. there is a time and a place for expressing frustrations about a story you are a regular reader of going in a way you do not like, its very natural to want to get those frustrations out. That time and place, however, does not happen to be on the front lawn of the author, every morning at dawn.
Just for the the hell of it: I recently finished this anime mini series xalled Takopi original din snd i recommend you check it out if you wanna be emotionally devastated.
JOYCE IS THE BIG SPOON! The Quiet, timid, feels the need to hide half the time is the big spoon! Dorothy who always feels like she needs to be in control is the little spoon. THIS IS EVERYTHING TO ME!
please no please no please no please they’re basically about to date now please don’t call it ‘mommying’ the guy that ships them as a mom/daughter incest ship is gonna come back and goon all over the place
Gonna reply here so it’s easier for both people above to read (and to avoid writing the same answer twice) but yeah back when Dorothy was beginning to broach the “do I like Joyce” subject, there was a guy in the comments section who was like “no no I get it guys see Dorothy just really loves her like mother loves her daughter and is CONFUSING that feeling for attraction to Joyce” at which point I and other commenters were like “dude that isn’t a normal conclusion to come to at all how the fuck do you come to that” and he has THANKFULLY disappeared from the comments since then.
Honestly, Jacob and Joe both have had very similar energies with Joyce as Dorothy has, because all three of them find her specific type of sheltered upbringing by turns endearing and horrifying. Joe buying a weighted blanket without even talking to Joyce about it was a very Dorothy move.
But only Dorothy gets called a mommy nag! It’s weird.
Surely there’s a difference between giving someone a gift you put thought into, and goading them into attending the medical appointments you booked for them.
Like if you reaaaaaaaallllllly wanna interpret that in the least charitable possible way, wherein you pretend listening to Joyce’s anxieties and comforting her about them is “goading”, sure.
Honestly? I think it’s pretty fair to read this as “Dorothy starts out excessively pushy and ends up dialing it down to persuading” as much as the way you read it.
I would bet, though, that there are some specifics in here as to how one specifically reacts to “someone restraining you by your backpack” (phrasing deliberately chosen to frame it a certain way) and “performative yelling for help in the hopes that someone ACTUALLY rescues you, but you don’t want to get anyone in TROUBLE so you make it sound like it could be a joke.”
Obviously: at the end of it, Joyce didn’t feel that way, and she’s got her glasses and her BC pills etc. But I still think it’s not exactly UNFAIR to call it “goading” as much as “listening/comforting” — it frankly looks to me like BOTH of those things happened.
I was a bit heated in my reply. Lower down on the page I reminded myself that Dorothy’s behavior is gonna hit some people sour specifically because of how much they’d hate it if a friend did the exact same things she actually does do. I think a lot of readers have legitimately struggled with that disconnect, because they feel like Dorothy and Sarah treat Joyce pretty terribly, and they want it to be on purpose so that they can hope Joyce will eventually tell them both to fuck off.
I imagine that for this segment of readers, the PMDD storyline was a shining ray of hope, and that Joyce turned out to be so angry because she was in pain, rather than because she had finally reached the end of her rope, was beyond disappointing.
Meanwhile, at this point, hearing Dorothy called Joyce’s mom or their relationship described as manipulative power imbalance really really rubs me the wrong way, and comments that remind me of those takes might sometimes get a needlessly snappish response.
so Joe and Walky are gonna be devastated, Becky will feel hurt by Dorothy getting Joyce and that might hurt Dina, Lucy will get to be Smug over Walky, and Danny will get to be smug over Dorothy also being Bisexual.
I was thinking more along the lines of “so the two of you cheated on your boyfriends with each other? Nothing but adulterous harlots, the two of you, and both of you pretending at airs of nobility!”
The tradgedy is that they wouldn’t need to be. Dorothy and Joyce having attraction for each other is not a bad thing. How they are dealing with it, and the apparently willingness to disregard the feelings of others is the bad bit.
If you two dumb-dumbs would have just talked with your romantic partners like civilized beings, nothing about this would need to be ugly. Messy for sure, but not nasty. It’s the callousness that makes it nasty.
The one thing I’ll continue to accept the “relationship paladin” label about is this — I’ve been consumed by stupid horny many a time (I will not even qualify with “at that age”), but I have always managed to end one relationship before starting another (or, later, to check in with my poly partners who cared before adding another).
The fact neither of these dorks managed to do so makes me like them as characters a little less.
I’m legitimately really delighted to see we’re moving past another painful realization Joyce is going to have about herself and just right into “oh, that’s another one. Makes sense though.” and we get tight cuddling while they figure out what to do about their boyfriends.
I am a bit confused at — not the impatience, you’re of course entitled to not be enjoying this and to want it to move along more quickly to consequences — but the expectation that unless consequences happen right now, they’re not going to happen at all? And that all the readers who voted sickos must either think the same thing — so, if we’re not expressing (more) frustration, we must not have really wanted mess?
I like this ship and I rooted for mess, and I feel like I’m already getting both aplenty, but also like it’s pretty obvious that we’re in the calm before the storm.
Inasmuch as it can be “calm” when Joyce already escalated significantly by trying to tell Joe about all of this and then instead giving him a blowjob.
Also-also: them being happy together IS legitimately part of what makes it “messy”.
If they weren’t happy together, or weren’t being shown as happy together, this would just be: “Joyce and Dorothy did a bad thing that hurt Joe and Walky and then faced consequences.” Neat and tidy and a very simple morality play.
That they seem to genuinely make each other happy is part of what makes this messy.
I admit, at this point I’m mostly-performatively bored with these two being lovely-dovey — I know there will be consequences, and I want them NOW.
(Hypocritically, especially because this should be a lovey-dovey moment with Joyce and Joe, damnit.)
Regarding them being happy together, there’s an aspect where one of the reasons I don’t really like this ship is that there’s been no particular internal mess/conflict between them thus far — just some mild inability to completely agree on how much they should be doing before they confess to the boys, quickly tossed aside. They didn’t even have any kind of drama about Joyce giving Joe a blowjob!
They’ve been together for a couple of hours! I think it’s early yet to say they’re not going to have any conflict. I also think it’s early to say the inability to tell the boys has been brushed aside. New Relationship Energy is a powerful thing.
I don’t know, man. NRE is great stuff, very powerful, but I kinda lost suspension of disbelief when it allowed “So actually, not only did I not tell Joe, but I also put my mouth on his weenus” to go by with ZERO drama.
Also: If I’m evaluating how THE CHARACTERS feel I count time in hours, but when evaluating how *I* feel I count time in strips. =)
Again, I don’t think that did happen with zero drama, I think that is a massive undropped penny.
If you just mean Dorothy didn’t get upset, well, yeah, of course she didn’t, as she said she hasn’t really “tagged in” yet so despite Joyce’s expressed guilt, she doesn’t feel cheated on. Dorothy is in full spreadsheet mode, which I know some folks think is super unhealthy and something she needs to stop doing, but, well, I think the spreadsheet mode itself is just autism and fine. What she needs to stop doing is feeling responsible for managing everyone else’s safety and happiness, and technically this is a step in that direction, heh.
Plausibly, we have two differing definitions — where you see a “massive undropped penny”, I see “this is a deposit in a drama account, but we have not yet cashed the drama check so there’s no drama yet.”
And yeah, I do find it vaguely unnerving that Dorothy basically didn’t react at all for reasons that don’t resonate as real to me. I feel like we’re due for SOME kind of “Dorothy and Joyce realize that they’re not yet ENTIRELY on the same page” drama, as well.
Also seriously it is genuinely very interesting how differently we are reading all of this, because I keep seeing comments saying, “nothing bad is going to happen! Everything’s fine, ugh!”
and meanwhile I’m just watching the Majora’s Mask moon loom larger and larger in the sky.
That’s actually a fair part of my disconnect — from my POV, the moon is certainly maybe getting larger, but it has neither started descending nor can I see what kind of face it has yet.
(ironically, perhaps, my second-least-favorite actual Zelda game after BotW, which I disliked so much I haven’t even tried ToTK, which is ironic because I’m a Souls fan (but an unreasonable micro-genre purist about things like Zelda))
I found Majora’s Mask EXTREMELY stressful and couldn’t finish it, but when I first reached for “steadily growing asteroid shadow”, that horrible creepy moon face popped into my head.
BotW though is far and away my fave, with Twilight Princess and Windwaker jockeying for second place.
Not all of us sickos wanted mess. I wanted exactly this and as much of it as possible. I’d be perfectly happy to skip all the mess, (not that I expect that to happen).
There’s fully also that. The original poll was “are you angry about the cheating or are you a sicko?” — lots of people picked the second option just because it was obviously diametrically opposed to the first option, not because they otherwise want The Worst Things to happen all the time.
That’s also probably true. It FEELS like there are more people rooting for mess than people who just want this to be sweetly sapphic and all work out, but I haven’t gone and counted it up.
…wow, people really will just reach and reach and reach to avoid admitting a character is bisexual or queer even when the character is on-screen saying they are.
That’s wild. I really thought there was a limit, but nope!
I continue to be amazed by how many people are sincerely, earnestly pleading with the author for the characters to not do anything wrong, and to not experience any drama, and to not have any problems.
Like, guys, you do understand that conflict, drama, problems, and mistakes are what makes a story, right? Things need to *happen*, and our characters need to *fuck up* so they can experience consequences, and learn, and change, and grow.
If this webcomic was just a ceaseless stream of bland vanilla niceness, why would any of us have ever been reading it in the first place?
Genuinely, just what is it that you want out of a story? What are you looking for, here?
Super hero battles, dysfunctional twisted relationships based on love, the return of Mike with no explanation ever, investigations into the haunted rooms at the end of the hallway when Booster overcomes their mental block, campus bombings, the dean being fired and replaced by Robin, the return of the Martians with no alien abductees around to defend Earth, Richard and Jennifer, Mary’s redemption arc, and Joyce/Walky endgame.
This scene is not relationship drama. That is the difference.
Relationship drama is all fine and good. Making stupid mistakes is all fine and good.
This scene isn’t showing Drama. It is showing them being “cute” together. Yet I don’t see you complaining that this scene is just “bland vanilla niceness”.
So let’s get to the drama. Let’s have it be messy and painful. I would find that entertaining. Just endless “Aww, aren’t the cheaters adorable together” and “haha shenanegans trying to hide their cheating” isn’t.
Fun thing, webcomic pacing goes rather slowly, not everything happens at once, and also you need to offset moments of drama with moments of niceness and moments of comedy, otherwise it’d be a bit one note. Presumably when things are more dramatic for Joyce and Dorothy, other characters will be having some funnier or sweeter moments!
This. We haven’t even gotten to the relationship drama yet. Aside from Joyce and Dorothy feeling bad for a few moments, there’s been no negative consequences for their cheating at all so far.
Speak for yourself bud, I love bland vanilla niceness. “Decent people being decent to each other” is my favourite genre and it’s the reason I’ve consumed so many thousands of fanfics over the years. Willis is a good author and I’m sure I’ll enjoy DoA more in the future, but I’m not enjoying having front-row seats to what Joyce and Dorothy are up to right now.
That’s valid! There are lots of slice-of-life stories out there, though I think “relationship drama” (like jealousy, if not cheating) is one of the very common ingredients.
For many people this comic was good for over a decade and they simply don’t like this recent development. I find it obnoxious when you don’t like a development in a comic people go “it’s not for you get out.” As if it wasn’t “for me” for the entire time I read it and just never noticed.
Also weird to claim this comic has never been about bland vanilla niceness during one of the most bland vanilla nice strips in months. And keep in mind I like this strip. Vanilla is the finest of the flavors.
“this comic was good for over a decade and they simply don’t like this recent development”
Considering some of the morally reprehensible shit multiple major characters — including Joyce and Dorothy! — have done and said over the years, it’s curious that people are objecting this loudly now when it involves a queer relationship that’s been telegraphed for 14 years. But what do I know?
I tend to hold that stuff against them too. I’m still full on “Fuck you forever” for Danny telling Ethan that it wouldn’t be so bad if Mike died. It’s just that that isn’t relevant right now. Joyce/Dorothy is. There’s a lotta factors driving this discussion so fervently, and I won’t deny part is homophobia. But it’s also just the framing, The protest, The cheating, The comment section discourse. It’s like a perfect storm for drama especially since everyone’s pretty heated about it.
I’m fine with characters fucking up and facing consequences. It’s not like their hasn’t been plenty of that in this comic in the past.
I’m uncomfortable with the narrative framing this as a grand romance (wedding imagery during the Kiss and all) rather than leaning into facing those consequences. We’ll see how it turns out.
So, what narrative purpose does this serve? Is this the drama people say they crave?
Because it kind of seems like it is just fanservice for people who really, really want Joyce/Dorothy and compared to that desire don’t mind the cheating.
The thing people don’t like isn’t about Joyce/Joe vs Joyce/Dorothy, it is about the cheating, and how the context of cheating shatters the emotional safety that would otherwise make the scene cute.
“Awww” is an emotion of protect, connect, and care, but right now I don’t want to protect the relationship, I don’t want it to be a model for human connection. Because the emotional safety and intimacy we might find cute is founded on a betrayal of emotional intimacy.
I truly do not give a damn about the cheating. I actually just posted a comment complaining about how a large part of this fanbase is so overly focused and vocal about it, that it drowns out any other legitimate criticism.
Feel free to comment your criticism. I don’t see how other people focusing on other things in any way stops you from saying what you want to say.
The reason why the cheating is a hot topic is because it is divisive. You have some people who say “Cheating is bad” and then are upset when the story presents it as cute.
You have other people who say “Joyce/Dorothy is cute” and are upset when people rain on their parade by saying the cheating makes it bad.
It doesn’t stop me from saying what I want to say, but I do think it’s just… bad? Makes for boring conversation that will go nowhere.
It also is much easier to dismiss that more substantial criticism. Looking at the sidebar survey, it seems pretty obvious Willis is going “Lolz people are only complaining because they hate cheating and/or are being homophobic.”
Don’t really agree with all of that, but I do think that “it is icky to frame cheating as cute/romantic/adorable” is a key point that’s lost in a lot of the discourse. For me at least, it’s not “no cheating stories ever” or even “I don’t want the protagonists to make mistakes that cause drama”, it’s how the cheating has been framed that I have an issue with.
…really? Which option on the poll do you think is “haha, you’re only mad because you’re homophobic”?
A lot of poll options are almost direct quotes of individual commenters — like the previous cheating poll was inspired by someone directly saying “I’m not anybody’s mom”.
But there are a bunch of negative options that aren’t silly, and only one that I think is at all hyperbolic, but then, I haven’t seen all the comments that didn’t make it through moderation, so it’s entirely possible that the “graphic bodily harm” answer is legit. Also, 66 people did pick it, though most probably for laughs.
“Just fan service” or Willis themself wanted to draw it. Willis also recognized that for a good chunk of us, showing Joyce and Dorothy being happy together is an important ingredient in the mess.
Frankly? There would be no mess if they just kissed once and then got immediately caught. There would be no mess if they were never shown on-panel to be a happy couple, if Willis just had them get together and then skipped forward to people finding out and being disgusted and abandoning Joyce and Dorothy, or whatever level of punishment you personally would find satisfying.
That would not be mess. That would be “cheating is bad, so these two got punished for it.” Very neat and tidy.
They have already repeatedly kissed. This isn’t anything new.
It’s already established that they are super into each other. It’s already established that they could be really cute in a relationship together.
This doesn’t develop the narrative. It is just here for a bunch of people to go “Awww”, which is why I called it fanservice. You’re right that maybe Willis was intrinsicly motivated to draw it aside from the fan response, but I don’t see any evidence that it was to help develop the drama for the arc.
And in terms of mess, this doesn’t make things any messier because it adds nothing new.
Okay. I mean, you are entitled to your opinion, of course, but I will continue to think that showing them being happy together and making each other happy is “adding something new” and “developing the narrative”.
And I think most of the folks who are sad about Joe/Joyce think so too, because they spent years being happy together, and no one complained that Willis had already established them as a cute couple, so every additional strip where they’re happy together is redundant.
But we are talking about different motivations here.
I don’t mind about characters being cute just for the sake of cuteness, even if it isn’t new. Joyce and Joe being cute wasn’t about developing the narrative, it was just cute to see.
This strip likewise doesn’t advance the narrative, but unlike with Joe/Joyce I don’t think “just being cute” is enough because I don’t find cheating cute.
And choosing to make the “cuteness” of the relationship the thing we are focusing on, instead of other aspects of the messy relationship, seems like a weird prioritization.
We could be spending time developing how Joe is feeling right now, setting up for a bigger gut punch later.
But instead the focus is “cuteness” to satisfy the desires of Joyce/Dorothy shippers.
Oh, I disagree, I think Joyce and Joe being cute WAS to develop the narrative. I think it developed the narrative the same way this is, which is why I picked it. Considering that Willis was planning on doing this before they got Joe and Joyce together, I think a lot of their cuteness was specifically to increase the tragedy of what’s happening right now.
As for thinking we need to spend more time with Joe — I mean, did we need to spend more time with Raidah for it to be wrong that Joyce was scheming to steal her boyfriend? That Joe deserves sympathy is the default position, I think. I’m sure we are going to get more Joe POV soon, but I strongly disagree that we actually need to spend more panel time showing how in love with Joyce he is and how much he doesn’t deserve to be cheated on — we did that for three years.
Also, serious question, did you consider Joe and Joyce being cute together something that was being done “to satisfy the desires of the Joe/Joyce shippers”, or is that not phrasing you enjoy having turned in your direction, because of how it implies that Willis didn’t have any authentic interest in their relationship?
With Raidah I think the Joyce situation was handled similarly to when Sarah punched Raidah. It was framed as “kinda wrong” but not something we need to care that much about because the victim wasn’t someone we were expected to care about.
Much like how the Star Wars series didn’t expect us to feel too bad about the people on the Death Star, the emotional impact on Raidah was minimized. She was cast as a villain so in the internal narrative it makes sense not to care too much about when people act poorly towards her.
Furthermore we see how the bad actions didn’t actually give Sarah/Joyce what they wanted. Joyce didn’t get Jacob and Sarah just ended up looking unstable.
Right now, Joyce and Dorothy seem basically set to get exactly what they want. Sure there will be consequences, but they seem willing to make that trade.
—
I consider the Joe/Joyce cuteness to be fanservice as much as I consider this strip to be fanservice. I don’t think the distinguishing feature of fanservice is a lack of authentic authorial desire.
In its earliest sense, “fan service” was for stuff in animes where it would focus on a woman’s breasts or something like that. Would that stop being fan service if the creator genuinely wanted to draw pictures of breasts? No, because “fan service” is about how the content operates within the work, not about authorial intent.
To me, fan service has more to do with including things that are non-essential to the plot because they are pleasing to the audience, regardless of whether they are also pleasing to the creator.
And I don’t actually mind some fan service because it isn’t at all strange to produce content that the audience enjoys.
And yeah, I do think the Joe/Joyce cute content was included because the audience likes to see cute relationships. And I think this Joyce/Dorothy content is included because there is a strong base of people who really want to see Joyce and Dorothy together, and maybe that includes Willis.
To be clear, however, I am not a Joe/Joyce shipper so this isn’t “turning it it my direction”. I thought Joe/Joyce was cute, but I could see a lot of relationships as cute. If it weren’t for the cheating I would think Joyce/Dorothy is cute. I don’t care who they date.
But my point about fan service is a response to the claims from people like yourself that people who are upset by the recent cheating strips are just leaping to conclusions and aren’t being patient for the story/consequences to unfold.
It is not just about “consequences” at some point in the future. It is about how the cheating is being framed. A lot of narrative focus has gone into emphasizing how “cute” they are or how much they love each other.
Framing them as “star crossed lovers” overcoming whatever obstacles stand in the way of their love is gross. Cooing over two people continuing to make the conscious decision to betray their partners gives me the ick.
— “Much like how the Star Wars series didn’t expect us to feel too bad about the people on the Death Star”
This is an interesting comparison? I get what you’re trying to say about Raidah being too much of a villain to be sympathetic, but… we were very much still supposed to see what Joyce was doing as wrong. I don’t think we’re supposed to see Luke blowing up the Death Star as wrong. I think it’s more accurate to say that folks in the decades since that movie have occasionally pointed out that there were probably at least some people working on the Death Star who weren’t any more evil than, say, the janitor at Lockheed Martin.
— “Furthermore we see how the bad actions didn’t actually give Sarah/Joyce what they wanted. Joyce didn’t get Jacob and Sarah just ended up looking unstable.”
Actually, Sarah got everything she wanted — by that point, her attitude was much less “I want Jacob for myself” than “I want to hurt Raidah.”
Where things didn’t go so well for Sarah is that Joyce got hurt, too.
She didn’t actually lose any face with Jacob — Joyce told her that befriending him had originally been designed to get him and Sarah together, but she did NOT tell him that Sarah had been part of the scheme to break him and Raidah up, and she and Jacob just didn’t talk again until after the timeskip, by which point Jacob had forgiven Joyce, and the only negative thing he had to say about Sarah was that he didn’t like being objectified by her while he was working out.
Like, I do keep seeing folks framing the “Joyce and Jacob cheating” arc as a storyline with major negative consequences where everyone should’ve learned a lesson, but… no? Not really?
Joyce didn’t “get” Jacob, it’s true, but nor did her friend group abandon her, and the next time she and Jacob run into each other, he’s perfectly friendly to her.
In fact, the final notes that arc ended on were Raidah vowing revenge that has yet to materialize, and Joe telling Jacob that all Joyce had done was engage in sitcom hijinx, and that someday Jacob was going to regret not being with her because someday she’d be perfect.
So: if anything, I think we are currently heading for more consequences, not fewer.
— I mean, Wordnik defines fan service as “The inclusion in a work of fiction of any material, especially racy or sexual material, which has no relevance to the storyline, but is designed merely to excite the viewer.”
It’s not always going to be sexual, but the association is pretty strong, and most people use it negatively, so. I think you’ll have to clarify that you don’t mean it negatively if you want to communicate effectively.
— “But my point about fan service is a response to the claims from people like yourself that people who are upset by the recent cheating strips are just leaping to conclusions and aren’t being patient for the story/consequences to unfold.
“It is not just about ‘consequences’ at some point in the future. It is about how the cheating is being framed. A lot of narrative focus has gone into emphasizing how ‘cute’ they are or how much they love each other.”
I mean, like I said to Big Z, I don’t think it’s weird to want the story to hurry up and get to the consequences, especially when you aren’t enjoying the relationship, especially-especially when you aren’t enjoying the cheating.
I just think it’s legitimately surprising how many folks are reading what’s happening right now as indicating that there won’t be any consequences, because for me strips like this are so clearly telegraphed as the calm before the storm.
So it’s surprising to hear other readers say what amounts to, “Well, the storm is clearly over, and that sucks.”
The term fanservice sounded more useless the further I read. I guess what you see as “fanservice” I really just do see as part of the story, and also serving that story – because DoA is about people and relationships, and showing people in relationships is part of that. And yes, showing couples being cute is to get the reader invested but I’d call it a fundamental part of romance as a genre & romance stories being told. I get that your issue is that this IS a romance being told because if the cheating and whatnot, but that’s really got nothing to do with fanservice.
Like my issue with the term being used is that it really just sounds like you don’t like what the story/Willis as an author considers “essential” – which is an entirely different point that you are also making and conflating here.
(As an aside – I do think a big part of the backlash against the “typical” fanservice of random boob or ass shots is the inherent sexism and objectification, along with the fact that said objectification doesn’t feel relevant to the story being told about, say, a highschool girls playing in band or whatever. Like idk she’s talking about her guitar, why are we getting a shot going up her legs or whatever. I think that’s at least a little important when applying that to other contexts.)
I’ll be honest, I’m annoyed at the fanbase. So many people are obsessed with the cheating aspect, that it poisons any discussion.
Even looking at that annoying survey in the sidebar- Willis seems to think that the only reason someone could dislike this whole plotline is because Cheating is Bad.
Meanwhile, I mostly dislike it because it’s another example of Dorothy having a meltdown, but for some reason this time it’s good??? Joyce has been acting very out of character (not just in regards to cheating), the riot stuff was ham-fisted, the “wedding” imagery was bizarre, and finally, it’s just not fun for me to read.
It’s an annoying feeling. It’s like when you have legitimate criticism of a movie, but it’s drowned out because a huge contingent of complaining fans are just being sexist or whatever.
Ya i nearly forgot about that. The protest was really bizarre. Like it really felt like a trailer moment. Like the idea of Dorothy and Joyce confessing while an army is coming at them was interesting but wasn’t that much of a desire to explore any of the ideas the protest was connected to it. At least not with Dorothy and Joyce.
“Dorothy having a meltdown, but for some reason this time it’s good”
Yup, fully agree with this. I do think it could be resolved satisfactorily if Dorothy recognizes it in retrospect. There would be guilt over how she acted, but also potentially resentment towards Joyce for consistently encouraging them to escalate.
“Joyce has been acting very out of character (not just in regards to cheating)”
In what ways do you think Joyce is acting out of character (aside from the cheating)?
“the riot stuff was ham-fisted”
The riot stuff ended up mostly being a backdrop for Joyce/Dorothy. Which part of it do you think was ham fisted?
“the “wedding” imagery was bizarre”
Yup, I agree with you here, but I don’t think this can be seperated from the whole “Cute vs Cheating” discussion. I found it bizarre and disturbing because it seemed to be framing cheating as a romantic/beautiful thing. It was included because it seems like some of the fanbase, and the author, wanted the cheating to be framed as cute/romantic/beautiful.
If Joyce and Dorothy weren’t dating other people I wouldn’t have found the wedding imagery quite so bizarre. I would have thought it was a clever framing and appreciated subverting the tear gas.
But you want to critique it apart from the cheating so what reasons do you have for feeling it was bizarre?
“finally, it’s just not fun for me to read.”
I think the issue with engaging with this sort of legitimate criticism is that there is nothing to engage with. It’s not fun to read for you… so? There isn’t an argument here that something should be done differently.
For Joyce, I felt that during the last arc she felt very “passive.” We got very little of her internal thoughts, and in hindsight she almost felt like a prize to be won by Dorothy.
Put another way, Dorothy had been having sleepless nights where she came to terms with her attraction to Joyce. Joyce… was mostly having a great time with her new boyfriend and being “close gal pals” with Dorothy.
The joke for the entirety of the strip has been that Dorothy and Joyce’s relationship has been kinda gay, but the assumed truth behind the joke was that it was, in actuality, platonic. Joyce suddenly swept up in this wave of emotion and lust felt… odd, especially since we STILL haven’t really gotten a window into her thoughts.
The riot stuff: It kept going back and forth between being “background stuff” and “extremely important thing that is making everyone examine their moral character.” Sometimes it was simply an excuse for Dorothy to do yet another reckless thing, and sometimes it got Extra Serious like with Carla, or Amazi-girl swooping in to fight riot cops.
I agree with you on the wedding stuff. And while I’m deliberately trying not to focus on the cheating, I do think that framing it like Willis did was a weird choice. It was framed like “yes, finally, these star-crossed lovers are finally together.” Meanwhile, Willis has even said his inspiration for doing this was essentially “You know, I have a bunch of horny teens in this strip and nobody ever cheats, at all.”
Agreed that juxtaposing the concept of “horny teens sometimes cheat” and “finally, sapphic love conquers all” didn’t ring true.
Finally, “It’s not fun for me to read.” I agree that there isn’t a ton to engage with, but it was worth me saying it. When it comes to fiction, I’m a big fan of the quote “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” (Oscar Wilde)
This whole Dorothy/Joyce thing has mostly felt tedious
I like your take Hat. Today’s strip was kind of charming at least, but it’s poisoned by the callousness towards Joe and Walky. This isn’t being swept in a moment of passion, this is pre-meditated and mendacious.
That is kind of how they’ve been acting for a while now. The scene on the stairs was them going “We should stop… Oh wait! Kisses!”.
They know what they are doing. They know who they are hurting. But they have decided to do it anyway.
I think the main thing is that they are avoidant. They don’t want to actually handle the guilt and the consequences so they are avoiding them instead and trying to extend the fantasy as long as possible.
And frankly, I can relate to that. It’s not great, but it’s definitely understandable.
Likely, avoiding the consequences and extending the fantasy will make things worse in the end. Story wise, I like this better. It makes the cheating arc more of a cheating arc rather than just a couple kisses then a confession.
Assumed by who? A lot of readers have assumed that Joyce is as straight as Jennifer. There’s a term for the “joke” being that they’re straight they just act really gay towards each other. That term is queer baiting.
I don’t want to reply to every point, but I need to push back on this line:
“For Joyce, I felt that during the last arc she felt very “passive.” We got very little of her internal thoughts”
You word as if these are the same thing but they are in fact, very different. While we have, indeed, seem very little of Joyce’s internal thoughts, I think it is a tremendous misread to classify her as “passive”.
In the last previous storyline, she was the one who went look for Dorothy at morning. She was the one who proposed “doing laundry” and she was the one who decided go to the protest. And when Dorothy sent her away, she was the one that came back, she was the one who initiated the kiss. And even in the night before, she was the one who reach for Dorothy in bed.
It may be the case you don’t understand the why Joyce did all those things. But it is she who did it. She haven’t been just going along with Dorothy, she was the driving force.
This. I keep seeing folks say Joyce is being passive and that she just goes along with whatever Dorothy says, but like. Where. What comic are yall reading.
I think a lot of readers strongly identify with — well, their own mental version of Joyce? I see a lot of comments to the effect of, “I’d hate it if my friends treated me like Joyce’s friends treat her,” and I think for some folks, it’s VERY hard to separate that from Joyce as Willis actually writes her.
She didn’t hate Dorothy for making that eye doctor appointment or nudging her until she went to it. I get that for some of yall, that would really have sucked. But it didn’t suck for Joyce. If it had, she wouldn’t have let it happen, because Joyce honestly has no problem standing up for herself when she wants to.
They’re definitely not the same thing and I agree she hasn’t been passive, but I still find the lack of insight into what she’s been thinking frustrating. It’s not surprising people have been misinterpreting her.
FWIW, Willis sees you. They made a BlueSky post the other day to the effect of, “I’m so sorry for all the people who aren’t enjoying this storyline for perfectly good reasons because some folks today are making the WORST arguments against it.” Or something like that.
It seems exhausting to be annoyed about other people enjoying something that is fictional and therefore harmless. I’m really sorry you’re dealing with that.
I could name a couple of works of fiction that I think are actively harmful (to be clear, I don’t think this webcomic is one) — Atlas Shrugged is the ur-example of “Fiction that occasionally causes the reader to agree with its superficially reasonable but ultimately harmful assertions” — although in general I think a fictional work has to be specifically intended to propagandize a harmful view in order to be harmful.
I have to admit I’m not vibing with the current story direction. While the cheating is the main reason, there are a few others. For example I find it strange that Dorothy getting a big gay realization instead of Joyce. I understand the Joyce attraction to Dorothy has always been obvious so we needed to see that from Dorothy’s side but while Joyce’s attraction to girls has been obvious, her coming to accept that attraction feels like a giant part of her story that got skipped. Like she went from thinking that she can’t be attracted to women because she wasn’t attracted to Becky and not realizing that Bisexuality is a thing to being completely fine admitting her attraction to to Dorothy. There’s a hole there I wish we got to see.
All jokes aside there *has* been a slow drip of incremental things sapping my interest in this story. Hearing that Willis held something that — I feel — was very on-its-face obviously a dicey idea from their sensitivity reader because ‘spoilers’ was a fairly large drop in the bucket, but still just a single drop among many. Really everything about the protest’s framing and inclusion.
(I also don’t like a LOT of bi erasure that’s been ebbing and flowing through the comments since this whole thing started rolling but I’m getting numb to that now. Too tired.)
Add in the sickos/paladins false dichotomy becoming adopted as unironic terminology to sling at the ‘opposite side’ and people taking frustrations they have with some commenters out on completely unrelated parties and this whole things is just a tar pit.
Although can you explain what “Hearing that Willis held something that — I feel — was very on-its-face obviously a dicey idea from their sensitivity reader because ‘spoilers’ was a fairly large drop in the bucket, but still just a single drop among many” meant?
Asher should have a gun. Or they should stop talking about his nefarious criminal connections. It’s like there’s a whole “I want to redeem myself from a life of crime!” plotline that’s been setup 5 years in advance, and we just have to be reminded of it once a year for whenever Willis decides to get around to it.
Mostly referring to Willis holding back The Kiss strips from his protest-related sensitivity reader. It let to big chunk of audience being soured by the ‘white women centered at a protest about genocide’, and *that* critisicm is what likely contributed to Willis realizing they needed to do more with their Muslim characters.
That’s, uh, a huge oversimplification of what happened, the sensitivity reader in question is a person who is often in these comments and made it very clear that more than the kiss was held back, that they had a very serious and personal talk with Willis, and I feel like it’s not really fair to use that as rhetorical ammunition. :/
I mean, I didn’t claim I knew *every detail* of the situation. My outline was based on the parts that I knew about.
It also wasn’t rhetorical ammunition. I’m just communicating the things I have been perceiving to some degree or another that are coloring my view on things.
tl:dr its the difference between ‘you’re purposely twisting things to to portray the situation x way’ and ‘you’re missing some context on x situation.’
Yeah, I think I perceived twisting and jumped the gun, mea culpa. Things have not been calm (I am not innocent in making them not calm, because I am an opinionated jackass) and I was like “whoa, hey, most of this is just shitposting that doesn’t matter but that might matter.” BUT. Things are Fine.
Like, honest to God, you can be mad about the cheating, or you can love the cheating, or you can be indifferent to the cheating. I do think there’s some bi erasure being flung around on both sides, and as a bi dude, I Hate To See It, but I also feel you on the being tired part. That’s all valid. I may have gotten very loud about my own opinions, for sure, but at the end of the day those opinions are just the arguments of one loud mouthed jackass (me).
But like, making a point to, I dunno, shame Willis for a very personal exchange that only affected most of us as an audience tangentially (if you have family or ancestry in Palestine I retract this somewhat because that’s a personal investment) via a yucky story beat, but for them and for the person they asked to check this out was intensely personal business? That just feels wrong.
Alright, I may have been reading tone in, as I am wont to do, so that’s good and I will cease my brow-furrowing and genuine concern on this. Thank you for the good-faith responses.
Understandable, it happens. I wasn’t *entirely* joking about the tar pit comment — there’s been a lot of bad faith thrown around on all sides, everyone’s testy. I can’t super blame you.
As said to Hat, I was referring to Willis holding back The Kiss strips from his protest-related sensitivity reader. It let to big chunk of audience being soured by the ‘white women centered at a protest about genocide’, and *that* criticism is what likely contributed to Willis being like ‘hey i need to use my Muslim characters more’ on blusky
It was actually a few commenters here pointing out that Willis didn’t have any real Muslim rep in his comic and it was weird to do a story arc (the protest) based in Muslim experiences IRL without actually having any main-cast Muslims.
The sensitivity reader issue was separate but connected via the same plot arc, but their decision to spend more time intentionally on their Muslim characters was a direct response to that exact critique.
Okay a question for data purposes. This is a no-judgment zone, so please people do not bring argumentative shit in here, I am asking this question genuinely and solely of The People Who Are Mad About the Cheating:
Would it be a better story, for you, if we had less Joyrothy moments, less of them as a couple, and more focus solely on the fallout of their actions? Like, you know, in a typical cheating plotline where the focus is on the cheated-upon.
Genuine curiosity, I am shutting up my opinions and listening even if I might think it’s baloney.
Though I do keep reminding myself that this is still the first time Willis has tried to do a messy breakup / cheating / etc, and it might still turn out to be that they’re too vanilla for the real sickos in the audience, and that tomorrow morning Joyce and Dorothy might immediately come clean, heh.
My main issue with this has been having so much narrative focus on how “cute” Joyce and Dorothy are. This leaves me uncomfortable because I don’t see any cheating relationship as cute.
Focusing more on other aspects of the story would make me like this arc a lot more. Putting more time into developing the consequences, including just foreshadowing potential consequences, would make this a better story for me.
I do think I am seeing several people either concerned or very sure that the end result of all of this is going to be “cheating is good, actually”, and every moment we get of these two being cute or happy is more evidence of that.
I don’t think that’s going to be the final message at all, but I do think that, for some readers, Joyce and Dorothy winding up together will still promote that message, even if they suffer a lot of other negative consequences.
And, you know, THAT I understand being worried about, so for the folks who feel that way, I don’t think I have any comfort to offer them.
For me in particular, and I know this seems mean-spirited to some people, I wouldn’t even mind them ending up together if they had some narrative loss along the lines of “most/all of the friend group sides with Joe/Walky and kinda pushes these two to the periphery until they figure out how to make up for doling out the hurt”.
There’s a tightrope there to make sure it’s clear the problem is “don’t kick Joe/Walky in the metaphorical teeth” and not “don’t be gay/bi, date your nice boyfriends and seethe”, although that’s less a “Willis” problem and more a “thankfully a minority of the commenters” problem.
Mm, I mean that’s a valid way to feel? I do think that, as you acknowledge, it would be really difficult to actually do that and not have it accidentally play into the other thing, the same way that even when you’ve got lots of bi characters and you even had one of them say “no, bi people aren’t prone to cheating,” having what are basically at this point your two main characters be both bi and cheat… still rubs a lotta people the wrong way!
(I sympathize. As I’ve said before, it doesn’t twig the trope for me, and it makes me wonder if there’s any way to do a cheating storyline where the characters happen to be bi that wouldn’t still trip over the trope, but I do sympathize.)
On the other hand, I do think there are some readers who will still feel like the cheating is being legitimized unless Dorothy and Joyce break up, and I fully understand suspecting they’re not gonna break up in the near future, so for those folks especially I think the strip is kinda doomed.
And that’s okay. For real. No judgment from me, and full sympathy to people who have been enjoying it since 2010 but now have to stare down a long bleak few years at least of these two being an item.
Ya… Ya, this, pretty much. Been an awful lot of celebrating in the strip as well as the comments when it should be uncomfortable. There easily has been more than three times as many strips making it look cute rather than uncomfortable. And the uncomfortable ones feel like punchlines.
I know we disagree pretty strongly on this, and I know that the consequences Willis has in mind might not be enough, but I really do think they are coming and that what’s happening now is more of a calm before the storm than anything else.
I think writing them as cute and happy between moments of intense guilt is part of the point, that it’s even important in terms of character motivation — if this didn’t also make them both happy, it wouldn’t be something they felt tempted to do — but I do sympathize with folks for whom it’s like nails on a chalkboard.
I’ve said it before, but everything since the leadup to The Kiss (retroactively, I can say I start feeling this around the time of face-touching-in-bed-prior-to-Joe-date) with these two has felt like that one looping animated gif of the truck speeding towards the bollard but never quite hitting it.
“Showing Joyce and Dorothy are really in NRE right now” is fine, wacky failing-to-tell-the-boyfriends hijinks are fine, but I could have done with maybe a week of that feeling rather than on-and-off-over a *checks archives* holy shit the leadup in bed to the cheek touch was THE FIRST WEEK OF WAY.
Honestly, there are strips in here that feel like filler — this is one of them. We KNOW they’re starry-eyed, and it honestly feels fan-service-y to me a bit.
The hypocritical aspect of my gripe here is that I don’t think Joe and Joyce got even HALF as many “we are just being cute together” panels/strips — THEY had punchlines or discussions, none of these lingering moments.
Going solely based on vibes, it feels like Joyrothy has had more strips that are just “these two are in love and figuring it out/enjoying it” than basically all other couples combined, and I’d be happy to have it shown to me that I’m experiencing recency bias.
…and thinking about it a scooch more, I think that’s really my main two gripes — my favorite ship sinking before it even left port, and on top of that the narrative focus of these two FEELS like they’re getting a lot of “they are in love, look at the d’aww!” compared to most other couples getting strips that are solely “together, but moves the plot/drama/punchline”.
Nah, it’s too early for that. I like that Willis is drawing out the fallout even as I also complain I hate them for it. 😛 I don’t actually, Willis! This is me being a sulky fan on the edge of my seat, not any judgement of you!
Really, I was mostly put out by the cheating because of my own ships and because it’d hurt characters I like. Sure, cheating is bad, but as a story it can be great drama. If it were a ship I didn’t care about or weren’t as invested in being cheated on, my reaction would be more like this:
Strip: Guess what happened?
Me: *b word* what happened?
Strip: Cheating!
Me: *gasp* No! Tell me EVERYTHING.
I am both a wholesome lover and a trash goblin that wants mess! I contain multitudes!
Instead of building up to a big triumphant moment like the climax of Star Wars episode 8 I would have preferred a slower build as their attraction went from subtle to overt to undeniable. Maybe with more…self questioning and introspection on…really both of their parts. I really wish the comic time would speed up a bit faster than an arc a day. Things feel like they simultaneously move too fast and too slow. Even if we get a couple weeks of Dorothy questioning herself that’s like…an hour of the exact same day she kisses Joyce. Let HER mull it over for a few weeks. Let Joyce mull it over for a few weeks. The girl who doesn’t like food touching should at least have some anxiety about breaching her boyfriend’s trust. Let time pass a bit faster. I want Walky to date amber but not if it’s a next day rebound like going from Lucy to amber. But if it’s not a one day rebound it’ll take like a year.
I’ve been in their place and it sucks all round but unfortunately sometimes you don’t have a choice. Someone is going to be hurty here, and they could have handled it better, but they are also both still college freshmen and have no real idea how to handle this stuff. It’s better to rip the bandaid off because the longer they put it off the worse it gets
Willis is not afraid to make characters unlikable and that’s a good thing. For Joyce and Dorothy to have a good story about cheating they actually have to, you know, cheat.
really enjoy seeing this type of thing. it compellingly shows what about this relationship is fun and nice and exciting for them. These two have fallen asleep in bed together before, and showing them being intimate in a really sweet way helps highlight how it’s different now.
This of course serves a bunch of purposes, but the thing that stands out the most is that it gets across WHY they are both so willing to drop the other people in their life for this. It might be true that joe and maybe even walky give both of them similar things, but at least here, neither is willing to give up the moment they are in right now for it.
I’ll just say that this wasn’t supposed to be a reply at all. I fully left the page and came back later in the day and it still decided to make it a reply to something i’d considered writing earlier
It’s not a problem that people still like them! Characters can do a thing that’s bad and people can still like them!
It is in fact possible to both think that they shouldn’t have cheated and that they’re very cute together. These things can both be true.
And the result, as I stated, it people cooing over cheating. In this strip they are cheating, and one of the main responses is “how cute”.
TW: domistic violence
Let’s go back to my example. If Joe, let’s say, in an out-of-character moment “lost his temper” and punched Joyce, how would you feel about people fawning over how cool he looked while doing it?
Thinking a punch looks “cool” doesn’t mean thinks it was morally okay after all… And they can still like Joe even though he did a bad thing.
I think a few people would say that not least because It’s The Internet
hell I certainly have the urge to let loose with stupid comments in that vein when something bad happens even IRL, even to those I care about or even when something happens to myself
but that’s tangential, more to the point sometimes I like things in fiction that I hate in reality and I think that’s common
also I think that maybe people can for real be doing cute shit together even when they’re cheating? I don’t think one precludes the other. maybe people who’ve cheated are gonna pop up and tell me that it’s impossible but I doubt it
That’s not a problem of any kind. People are allowed to enjoy different things in their stories, and it actually doesn’t impact what the author intended or what you personally take from it at all.
This isn’t a morality play, no one should be expected to hiss at the villains and cheer for the heroes who are all easily distinguished by their color-coded hats. It’s okay for people to be enjoying a plotline about cheating, and to think the relationship is cute.
It’s okay for people to be enjoying a plotline about cheating, and to think the relationship is cute.
It’s me. I’m people. I want to see how long they go without telling their boyfriends they’re making out. I wanna see them get increasingly terrible about it and escalate their affair. I want Joe to start piecing things together without being told, because he knows the signs thanks to his dad, and then wait to confront Joyce about it until he’s sure, always meaning to bring it up and talk it through with her and maybe even give her some leniency since it’s a new relationship or something, but then she tramples over the line before he actually pulls the trigger on the conversation and he has to deal with it in the moment.
Trying not to be all “the moral panic is coming from inside the house” again, but it does bother me to read so many comments that basically amount to “unreliable narrators are irresponsible”.
Strict rules about framing are for kids’ media. For adults, it’s okay for something problematic ™ to be framed as good.
And I don’t even think that’s what’s happening here — I think Willis is accurately conveying Joyce and Dorothy’s happiness (mixed though it is), and that how all of this is actually framed won’t be clear until the shoe finally drops.
That’s not actually a real problem, is it. And not to be a contrarian (it happens), I think if Joyce got hit with a cool uppercut, I probably would acknowledge the cool uppercut. Being judgemental of people based on their opinions of a webcomic, that’s completely worthless behavior.
I am living for this sweet gay drama, love them, love the mess this will cause, love the calm before the storm, love how cute they are, it’s all great 😀
Uh oh, am I the trash goblin Amber?
Has he been stabbed? The blade’s visible (with no blood) on the other side of his hand, it looks very much like he’s just sort of successfully deflecting it from chest-stabbing.
I know it’s a reference to something, but I don’t remember what. I don’t THINK the original image has any actual stabbings happening, but I think there’s tension and the sword placement is supposed to have multiple meanings?
Swords have always had a sexual as well as a violent connotation, after all.
It’s a reference to a promotional picture for a production of Shakespear’s The Twelfth Night, starring Anne Hathaway. It is/used to be pretty common meme template for one’s bisexual/ot3 characters to be applied to, given both the nature of the image and the nature of The Twelfth Night as a play.
The fact that this isn’t common knowledge makes me feel either very old or very online in ways that very little else does. Though honestly maybe it should just make me feel very much like a Tumblr denizen, which I am.
Same as Li, I suspect that it’s just because I’m an Old (ugh, “mid-40s” are soon gonna turn into “late 40s”) — now that someone MENTIONED the picture in question, the memory spring into my head.
That’s really what the claim that she’s acting out of character is missing. I identify a lot with Joyce in that I was raised evangelical and religiously, emotionally, and financially (and sometimes physically) abused by my mother for most of my adult life. After she passed away I gradually became more open about myself before I suddenly hit some singularity point as I realized it was finally safe(r) to be me.
re: “SO as i open up Asma narratively, uh, I am quickly going to hit the wall of “oh jeez am I allowed to depict her without her hijab within her own dorm room and other female-only spaces, is that okay, would she be mad at me”
I haven’t gotten any specific answer regarding showing Asma without her Hijab in a girls only space, but this is what Lur (who’s Hijabi) had to say so far:
“my main thought is that if he’s having to hit this wall now that says a lot about how little he’s depicted any Muslim characters
i have noticed that in media, particularly western media (but really, any media not made by muslims), even those who try best at having a diverse range of representation and doing it properly, and that in general do a good job about it and stuff
even in those cases, there’s still little to no muslim representation.
unless it’s a work specifically about something muslim, or muslim characters, or stuff
but casual muslim representation? can’t give you any examples off the top of my head”
It would be great if there is more muslims, here in DoA and other places.
But, I don’t know if it’s true or not, I learnt that some teaching forbides any representation of live things (drawings, paintings, etc.). Maybe it kind of discourage muslins representations, beyond, of course, the usual prejudice we’re used to see…
i’m piggy-backing off your comment and also sending Lur so much love, i look forward to hearing their takes!!
As a disclaimer, I’m not Muslim personally, I just live in a very Muslim neighborhood and follow a lot of Muslim Opinion Havers online, so these are my observations and thoughts as a fellow creative that should ABSOLUTELY be tempered by the opinions of a variety of Muslims (especially Muslim women, nonbinary, and trans people).
in real life, there is a huge variety of experiences and opinions among different Muslim women and their relationship to Hijab and how they want to be represented in media. since there are already multiple Muslim women, it gives Willis a chance to let these characters represent a variety of attitudes and beliefs in surprisingly subtle ways – through framing, and through fashion!
Maybe Asma is comfortable with other women (including non-Muslim women) seeing her without her Hijab, but Nash isn’t – so we see Asma in situations where she would be comfortable without her head covering, but Nash is never put in those same situations. Maybe Nash wears different styles of Hijab, like a turban styled scarf, that Asma would consider to be going against the spirit of wearing one. Maybe Raidah used to wear a Hijab but stopped after starting college (perhaps for networking/social climbing reasons), while Nash started wearing Hijab when she hit puberty, and Asma’s been wearing Hijab since she was very little. So in flash backs to before college, each of these characters’ appearances could reflect their unique relationship to Hijab.
I’d definitely look into the world of Hijabi fashion (you will NEVER regret it btw there is so much gorgeous stuff out there) to help really bring Nash and Asma to life especially, and to read the critiques and writings of Muslim women to better understand why people (and by extension, these characters) make the choices they do.
So I went back strip by strip to revisit the big kiss scene between these two, and noticed there was a new panel added onto it? When did that get there? I only noticed it today. It is funny, admittedly, but I feel like a missed some memo about it. xD
Usually post-publishing edits leave me cold (glares at George Lucas) but this? This is fantastic. Five bright, shiny gold stars that I definitely did not nick from a kindergarten teacher (and you can’t prove otherwise.)
yeah I understand why Willis retconned this strip, honestly that’s good he did that, but like
*siiiigh*
I don’t wanna repeat myself, but I don’t even MIND that the kiss was at the protest, if only, you know, what the protest was actually ABOUT was talked about in-depth by cast members or their friends and family who were affected by the conflict in “”Bulmeria””
also I have this mega-post about this whole dealio and I don’t even know where to START @-@
It sure is weird how the majority — not all, but most — of the negative comments about this arc seem to be coming from cis/het men. Wonder what that’s about?
I admit it’s mostly based on usernames and writing styles. Vibes, if you will. So take what I said with a grain of salt.
Also sometimes the specific way they word their complaints. And the need to argue with every post they disagree with. Not saying that’s a foolproof sign, but it is very characteristic of a certain kind of dude.
re: “the specific way they word their complaints. And the need to argue with every post they disagree with”
yeah I see what you’re saying, it’s a pattern manifest by US cis/het white dudes on the internet who are either
1. right-wing trolls who use bad arguments as bait to turn the discussion from collaboration into a competition about people one-upping each other for arbitrary points, as though debate is like BeyBlade or some shit
2. white liberals who fall for it, cuz they always assume good faith and don’t like letting bad arguments slide
personally i hate the idea that you are assuming people are cishet men based on “vibes” and “writing style” and other gender essentiallist bullshit. could really do with less of that in supposedly trans friendly spaces.
at least icons (when not assigned by gravitar, which is like the majority) is something people picked for themselves, but everything else is just obnoxious
I mean i’m not a cishet man, i just found that claim weird when I know there are other queer people griping (in various degrees), and i don’t like being dismissed as cishet based on ‘vibes’ so i could imagine the same is true of others (theres at least one transbian)
Or like, only the people who were actually being described. It’s a pretty standard formula happening here:
>”Hey, it’s interesting that [specific descriptors] seem to be the ones saying [thing being noticed].”
>”Nuh-uh, I’m not any of those descriptors and I said it!”
>”Okay, then you’re not who I’m questioning.”
>”[Confused RWBY fan noises]”
It happens a lot. If you’re not a cis/get guy being negative about the story, I don’t think June Gloom is talking about you. Like, I don’t even agree with the “most” part of their(?) original post, but I still think it’s odd how many people who don’t fit the description are acting described.
Because it’s worded in such a way that it’s implying “people who don’t like this are [Group I don’t respect the opinion of]. As if to say “They’re only saying this because they are not female or gay or trans and therefore have a closed minded view of the world”. So people feel a desire to step up and say “hey, no. I am one of those other things and I ALSO dislike this. Because me being female, gay or gender nonconforming is, in fact, not the deciding factor in whether or not I enjoy this story. The comment isn’t just stating facts. It’s a criticism. That’s why people are speaking up.
That’s not what No True Scotsman is and you damn well know it. I know there are non-cis men folk who take issue with this storyline. I also do not believe they’re anywhere near the majority. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.
I find it weird how people like you who haven’t been commenting on this comic for months or even years and only started commenting during this current story arc keep trying to claim that everyone who dislikes this story arc must be some homophobic cis/het man, when the regular commenters who dislike the current story arc have expressed why they dislike it many times and it has nothing to do with your ridiculous assumptions.
I have commented on this comic for literally years (under a couple different names, to be fair.) I’ve been reading since Shortpacked!, in fact. I’m just not commenting on every single strip. You can accuse me of whatever you want if it makes you feel better, though, just leave me out of it.
I’ve also been reading Willis comics since long before this one, and I don’t go around assuming people who dislike the current story arc are bigots or something similarly ridiculous. People have said why they dislike it, and it’s mostly the cheating, and some of us also think the protest was handled badly.
No, you instead go around accusing people you disagree with of… what, being outside actors coming in to stir up accusations of homophobia? I’m not even sure what exactly it was you were accusing me of, other than it being total bullshit.
I can’t block you so I’m asking you politely to do me a favor and not reply to me. I’m not interested in anything you have to say, after reading your comments (to me and in general) both from this thread and previous ones.
I’ve also been cheated on. I still said what I said. Did getting cheated on hurt? Sure. Is this still a fictional story with fictional characters whose arc is yet to be seen to completion? Depends on who you ask, apparently.
Many people, not necessarily from here, can forgive lot of issues from each other. Lot of things. But not cheating.
It’s funny how cheating can have a different weight; and addressing it by the main character is a huge step to bring this to table.
Yes, I’m also talking this as a person that was cheated. Twice.
Was I? because I specifically pointed out that not all of the commenters upset with this storyline were cis/het men. And yet a bunch of people rushed in to say I’M NOT A CIS/HET MAN. Cool, try reading. My point was always that the majority of such commenters are, in fact, cis/het men. You arguing with me only says that you disagree with me about the proportion of mad cis male nerds to everyone else, which you’re certainly allowed to but don’t accuse me of saying something I haven’t.
“huge sweeping generalization about a group of people”
“I do not feel like this represents me”
“Well obviously I was not talking about you”
Like Clockwork. Very frustrating logic that your use of the word Maybe is a load bearing word so that you can claim that “oh I only meant most people so obviously you’re the exception to this sweeping generalization I made” instead of just saying “y’know. Maybe my assessment was too broad and people are reasonably upset that their opinions are being written off as being part of an outgroup as a way to disregard any and all opinions they have.” I just find this kind of argument form to be tedious, cruel and harmful.
Yeah i didn’t wanna say anything because i didn’t want to raise a fuss, but the rhetorical trick really bothered me. “If you disagree with me, you’re either part of the group i meant and should lmao shut up, or you’re not part of that group, so i wasn’t talking about *you*, so lmao shut up.”
I mean, I can say how *I* feel about it: It’s just the rhetorical version of “heads I win, tails you lose”. Just a way to pretend to have won an discussion by dismissing the possibility that anyone could be arguing with you in good faith.
It sure is funny how you just threw out a baseless theory with nothing but circumstantial evidence as a way to dismiss the opinions of a group of individuals who disagree with you.
It’s wild to me how many people who don’t identify as cishet men are mad at me for a comment I made about cishet men. I acknowledge that there are people who aren’t cishet men who are upset with the direction this story has taken. And I’m certainly not saying they’re not allowed to be upset about the story, within reason. But I do not believe they’re the majority.
It shouldn’t be wild. People are (rightly) pointing out that randomly demeaning an arbitrary group as being the majority who hold an opinion — based solely on vibes — is kinda weird.
Yeah, and people are pointing out that your basis for that is “like, vibes.” So you’re dismissing the “majority”, in your own words, of criticism on this storyline because you assume–with almost no evidence– that it’s probably from cishet men. Blatantly opening the door to dismiss any criticism until/unless another commenter discloses that they aren’t a cishet man.
People are saying your sweeping generalization is unfounded. You were writing a statement about your assumptions on comment origins, not just your opinion on comments from verified cishet men, and that generalization is not a given. And your response to that is just, “But I didn’t mean you!” Fine, you didn’t mean me–I’m not a cishet man, and I don’t like this storyline– but your assumption that most of the criticism is from cishet men is still an unsubstantiated generalization used, in this case, to broadly dismiss criticism because “the majority” must be from a group you don’t want to listen to. That’s what people have a problem with.
Once again I’m learning that people in these comments only seem to read what they want to read and are hella mad at a bunch of shit I haven’t even said, while also being hella mad at me for stuff I even completely admit to. I was just trying to make an observation based on what I had seen with my own fucking eyeballs and for that I get a bunch of people deciding to make everything about them.
Kyulen wasn’t too far off I guess. Shit like this is why I don’t comment that much. Who needs the grief?
… yes, today, in one single strip’s comment section, and I got a bunch of responses that I replied to. But I don’t comment every day or even most days. I would have thought that meaning was obvious, but apparently not!
Mmm don’t love the idea of scrutinizing people’s typing styles and using it to determine their identities.
The comment section has been pretty evenly divided in terms of identity from what I’ve seen. Plenty of self-described queer folk on both sides. And that’s not even getting into the fact that “this arc” is still tied up in the protest mess.
Yes there are some comments with queerphobic undertones. Some of them were still made by queer people, because some of us still have that particular type of crap to unpack.
I was already planning on taking another comment section sabbatical but oof.
Y’know, a relationship can start with cheating (which is bad and you shouldn’t do, but also sometimes humans – especially young ones – do stupid shit) and still be lovely and great and happy. And also last for a very long time.
This happens in real life all the time actually.
I really hope that’s what we’re going to see with Joyce and Dorothy. They work really well together and deserve to be happy. Together.
my wife and i (lesbians) cringed so hard when we read this strip. this would be sexy and romantic when you’re 18 and just found out you like girls. this is extremely second-hand embarrassing when you are like 30 and lesbian married, of course. really encapsulates the sapphic experience.
Them girls gonna find the absolute worst way to get caught. I don’t know what I mean by worst. Hurtful? Embarrassing? Sensational? Stupid?
At least one of them.
okay so forewarning, although this giant post may seem like biting Willis’ head off cuz of some really hard truths, just know in the end I am only trying my best to help Willis make a better story
and in my venture to do that as of recent, have made made some mistakes of my own
so here we go with
RE: “SO as i open up Asma narratively, uh, I am quickly going to hit the wall of “oh jeez am I allowed to depict her without her hijab within her own dorm room and other female-only spaces, is that okay, would she be mad at me”
Lur (who’s Hijabi Muslim) just cuts straight to the chase:
“my energy towards that post is, ‘that sounds like a him problem’.”
I proceeded to tell her about my suggestion to Willis on bluesky to ask Muslim neighbors or friends about this kind of stuff, and shortly afterwards I realized looking back on my suggestion is that it made it seem okay to shift the burden like this when it really isn’t.
“It has that energy of like, putting the burden of it on the already-burdened people, and also that dehumanizing vibe of like oh cool so we’re a walking encyclopedia to you nice. This kind of question is better to be asked to someone you already know and ideally have a friendship with, so that it’s not just “hey, stranger i usually don’t talk to, help me help you for my benefit”
My other friend whose indigenous also once expressed the same kind of resentment about being treated like a walking history museum by white dudes in high school.
Anyway, I regret my suggestion and desire to learn from what was clearly a mistake, if only because, in the first place I just wanted to make a difference in a positive, CONSTRUCTIVE way for once.
Even when we intend to be progressive or mean well, I’m just tired as hell of the typical online cycle where it feels like the only two modes of operation are
1. “spiral cuz the walls are closing in” and
2. “be angry, ridicule and ironically pay attention to bigots”
Cuz like, I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again — when we spend more time trying to win back bigots as opposed to trying to win back minority targets, not only is it unproductive, but it sends a TERRIBLE message. Lur seemed to agree, stating “bigots, the right, etc, may not know how to meme (as people usually mock them for) but boy do they know engagement”.
Hence why I wanted to help Willis sort out the caveats of bringing Asma into the narrative, however Lur made me realize that the problem wasn’t even identified correctly to begin with.
“The message i got from that tweet was
“well he clearly doesn’t have any Muslim friends or this wouldn’t have even come up. So he should probably fix THAT first, and then focus on the comic after”
Like get to the root of the problem. A Muslim Arab friend of mine once tweeted that in the age of internet, living somewhere with a predominantly white Christian population is no excuse for not having non-white or Muslim (or other belief systems) friends.
If you still somehow have no muslim friends? (muslim/non-white/etc.), then usually what that says about you is that you probably haven’t made an effort to be a safe person for them. There’s a LOT of people on the internet, odds that you haven’t engaged with any of them are rare, if you haven’t made any Muslim friends over the internet, well either you subconsciously avoid them or they consciously avoid you.”
(Sobering reminder of why it’s for the best to just NOT argue with bigoted white dudes on the internet.)
I proceeded to tell them about Willis asking about the Showing Asma Without Her Hijab dilemma on BlueSky and getting a cacophony of conflicting answers eventually prompting him to delete it all entirely.
“I GET that he doesn’t want to learn the hard way after the fact, but my honest answer to that would be, maybe make an effort to knowing more Muslim people and show interest in their community FIRST, and THEN represent what you learn from that on your strip, instead of just asking on the internet so you can do A Representation without actually having any interest in the community.”
And I’ll say, as hard a truth as this is to face, is really the best thing to do.
Much better than defaulting to social media as The Default way of sorting this kinda stuff out,
and CERTAINLY better than listening to folk out there suggesting This Great Brilliant Brand of AI to answer the question, to which I be like,
“WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ACTUALLY INTERACTING WITH ACTUAL PEOPLE AND THEIR CULTURES????”
Only to ironically realize, even tho Willis ain’t no AI shill, whether or not he means it he still kinda guilty of this in the same way with his original question, ain’t he?
“Yeah, it seems like he just trying to do the thing of like, being a Good Ally without actually being an ally, if that makes sense.
It’s kind of a cop-out to me because it’s like he not even making the effort to interact with the culture or anything, but just throwing his question into the ether, hoping someone will give him the answer.
He may be an atheist but that sounds a lot like praying! (not just christian praying, i mean, praying in general. still, not a thing atheists are supposed to do)”
To which I say, yeah, it seems that white Christian informed ethnics are once more manifesting in ways we often don’t even REALIZE.
Lur and I thus promptly concluded that Willis’ initial inquiry was framing the problem as a matter of optimizing the task of mitigating guilt.
This also ironically came to light as of recent when Dorothy scheduled apologizing to Asma for being bad at protesting:
Like here we already talked about US white folk falling back on what they think is Standard Procedure for assuaging guilt and how it feels “proper” on account of having grown up in a society based on a confessional model.
But nonetheless for Dorothy and Joyce to apologize to Asma this way is something they gonna realize is still a racist thing to do.
“You can’t apologize to one Muslim on behalf of all Muslims, and if that they’d be apologizing to a Muslim who lives far far away from the direct consequences of what the protest was even ABOUT.”
Lur, like myself, was also disappointed that none of that cast went in-depth with how the conflict in “”Bulmeria”” personally affected themselves, friends and family, with but subtle hinting which left readers wondering whether he was even alluding to the Israel/Palestine conflict to begin with, such as Mary’s sign reading “Bulmeria has the right to defend itself.”
Lur laid forth their openly, brutally honest opinion of Willis’ attempted approach:
“Pardon the expression, but just hinting at it is for p_ss_es.”
Like, I can GET what Willis was trying to do.
I said before that X-Men Comics are literally social commentary about the Civil Rights Movement.
But at least Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Leiber had it in them to have Magneto mention the holocaust by actual name.
“Remember back then, when I said “this feels like Willis trying to get the Good Ally points for talking about [Israel/Palestine] without actually talking about it”?
Same energy now. I get that’s probably not what’s happening in his head, in terms of intentions.”
Indeed, I can respect Willis for trying to make the effort to make direct action. It feels a bit awkward but at the same time he’s got an important part down — that directly addressing it in his strip (and openly unapologetically talking about Palestine conflict instead of trying to hide veggies in brownies kinda approach) is necessary, cuz the first step is moving past the notion that the racism problem is one which will just automatically fix itself somehow if status quo in media, etc is left to run a “natural course”.
“To quote the Fresh Prince, “He a little confused but he got the spirit!” XD
I appreciate that he’s trying, I just think he’s trying from the wrong angle. Don’t try to represent a people you know nothing about and then maybe learn about them! Interact with those people and THEN represent that —
like there’s an alarm in me that goes “okay but why are you trying to represent something you don’t know about”
We can both agree at this point that as much as it’s disappointing to not see the protest be at the time anything more than a background decoration for white girls kissing, well
“I mean, I’m kind of fine with it in the sense that you can’t cover everything in depth, it’d end up a mess, or if you do try to cover everything you’re probably end up glossing over most of it. And this webcomic, as much as some part of it is also kind of an ensemble cast work thing it is still ultimately about Joyce. Disappointing? Yes, but also, I get that’s not really the point of the comic.
Of course that does bring the question of “well then what’s the point of mentioning it” — but he *technically* didn’t, because Bulmeria isn’t real LMAO”
And that’s pretty much all either of us have to say about it for now.
TL;DR don’t throw a question out into the social media ether about Muslims and just hope for good answers — make an effort to actually interact with the people and their culture first and THEN represent that in the comic.
Like of course that’s gonna take WORK, but like let’s face it, progressive politics are ALWAYS at this natural disadvantage to conservative ones.
In the end, it will always take a relatively large amount of time and effort to be factually and morally right, for the sake of social progress and a more equitable society.
By contrast, it will always take a relatively small amount of time and effort to remain wrong, but nonetheless be satiated with quick answers and quippy rhetoric which FEELS as though it’s correct and absolves guilt and amends sense of self-worth regardless of what’s actually true and morally right.
Good post, and I have nothing substantive to add to it, but quick point of order: Magneto’s origin as a survivor of the Shoah was not established by Lee and Kirby but by a different Jew entirely, Chris Claremont.
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We now return to
The Transformersour regularly scheduled Sapphic white girls!https://youtu.be/RkucYKmm0m8?t=5
Sapphic White Girls was the name of my Ska band in high school! /j
This is definitely one of those times I wish I could like a comment.
This is on of the times I really hope they are telling the truth and not just doing a bit.
Next up, Sarah telling them to go to sleep and be gay in the morning.
GO IN FOR THE EAR BITE! GO IN FOR THE EAR BITE!!!!!!!!!!
I approve this sentiment.
I was gonna say the Neck Nibble. Either Or, they’re both good. ^^
Only if it’s not touching any other part of Dorothy.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA YES! ~<3
*chanting while pounding fists on table*
NIBBLE! NIBBLE! NIBBLE! NIBBLE!
I had to zoom in to figure out whether she already had <3
It’s like kissing, but there’s a winner!
Wicked appropriate avatar for this.
First the ear nibble. Then the throat nip. That gets the heat going.
Do the autistic love chomp. Not even in a sexual way, just get mouthy like an excited dog. It’s the truest form of intimacy
I love this so much, except for the fact that it’s going to hurt Joe, and Becky.
What do I do?
be like the rest of us and grab some popcorn and a lawn chair, sit back and enjoy the chaos
The only sensible play.
“Poor Joe.” 😢 (performative)
Someone brought hotdogs to the last showing, so this time I brought loaded nachos!~
This is the way.
This is the way.
But there’s no chaos! If I’m supposed to enjoy the chaos, I need more chaos and less “lovey, no consequences hitting home yet”.
Fast forward to consequences plz
Delayed gratification.
Or kind of the opposite of gratification, I guess?
Walky as well even if he might be a little more prepared for it since he’s already been dumped by Dotty once already.
I had forgotten about Walky, but yes he’ll be hurt too.
In my powerful mind, she has already joined them in a lesbian throuple, and it’s utterly dysfunctional.
I saw Willis’ “AU” with several characters wearing the Standard Lesbian Undercut and Walky was there. I’m manifesting her being an egg about to crack.
Walky, and only Walky, is standing in Canada in that lesbian undercut AU drawing.
Wait. Is this an actual drawing somewhere? Is there a link to it?
It’s a reference to a very old (at this point) strip in the original IW!, which was also a crossover with at least one other comic running at the time (Avalon). The gist is that, while investigating an anomaly in Canada, both Walky and Joyce got gender-swapped. The female Walky did not have an undercut, and just looked a lot like Sal. (And male Joyce, when asked by squadmate Robin what it was like having a ****, blushingly compared it to “a little dog that barks at everything.”)
Chapter (“Anomalie”) starts here:
https://www.itswalky.com/comic/well-search-all-of-canada-if-we-got-to/
gender swap happens (well, is revealed) here:
https://www.itswalky.com/comic/whats-with-your-voice/
Walky isn’t a lesbian, she’s bi. Unless going on E changes the situation for her.
as per usual, uncle iroh is correct
Keep reading. Try not to stress. Periodically shake your fist at the sky and yell, “Damn You Willis!”
Best advice.
it’s amazing how many people forgot that that is the default response. ~<3
Just keep telling yourself Joyce hasn’t brushed her teeth yet.
“What about Walky?”
“Eh.”
I forgot about Walky; didn’t mean to exclude him from the situation I just didn’t think about it.
I totally understand, just felt it’d be a funny gag. 🙂
I mean it is very funny that Walky got forgotten
I swear, if Joyce gets out of this mess and it winds up being a poly relationship, she has the most game out of any of the main cast.
Joyce. Pulls.
truth!
Methink Becky will be fine.
Honestly I think it’s gonna swerve, Becky will be fine with this but Joe will be devastated
I think the huge blow-up will be Joe at Amber. She has deliberately fucked up his relationship to get with Walky.
Every so often someone comes out with something that is… an interpretation.
The only part of the interpretation I see any difficulty with is where Joe develops telepathy so he knows what happens. I don’t really see Amber or Booster spilling the beans.
Amber is barely involved in this whole mess: she encouraged Dorothy to send a single not-even-tiddy-pic, because she thought it’d be funny. No way Joe sees that as anywhere even close to blame.
I mean if he’s hurt by anyone other than Joyce, it’d be Dorothy…since he kind of very directly confronted her about this exact situation two days ago or something and thus she has absolutely no excuse.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/thumpasprunging/ I mean, that’s not how Booster sees things, and Booster is always magically right so far.
I think we just need to have a ‘But what about Joe?’ thread automatically in the comments of every strip from now on. It would save time.
Amazi-Girl is injured? ‘But what about Joe?’
Becky & Dina being cute? ‘But what about Joe?’
Billifer saying something dumb? ‘But what about Joe?’
Right? Its like he’s just a dude who hasn’t been gay like even once. How dare he interfere and make us recognize how selfish the les-*coughs*bisexuals are?!
what the fuck. like maybe theres like a three layer deep of irony you are trying to present this on but this is just like, open unabashed biphobia right.
It’s 100% sarcasm. They’re trying to make a joke that because Joe isn’t gay, or bisexual, he is somehow lesser than the rest of the cast.
In response to Astariel’s comment about how everyone is concerned with Joe; which I believe people are right to be concerned with Joe just not forgetting the rest of the cast.
Jon in the comment below explains some of it better than I tried to.
It is genuinely a liiiiiiittle bit exhausting how, despite Willis’s best efforts, the entirety of Dorothy and Joyce realizing they’re both bi has been about a straight guy in the comments.
And every now and then someone remembers Walky.
Who’s Walky?
Some guy who doesn’t even have a hat!
Not a straight guy, that’s for sure.
Walky is Danny with worse eating habits and a hotter sister.
1) the “entire” comments section hasn’t been about Joe, not even while discussing the cheating.
2) Dorothy’s bi realization came awhile back; what we’re really seeing is mostly Joyce’s realization and Dorothy’s newfound conviction that drove her to FOLLOW her new bi feelings
3) not only is Joyce’s partner hurt by all this, and therefore worth discussing, but Joe is someone who recently opened himself up to a relationship *because* he’s seen the damage infidelity causes. It’s just a cruel twist that instead of he himself cheating, as he might fear, he’s being cheated ON.
I don’t think you have much of a leg to stand on if you try to turn THAT into some kind of point about heteronormativity or bi erasure or whatever. People aren’t yelling “bUt WHaT ABoUt tHe StRAigHt GuY?!?”, they’re looking at the clues FROM THE STORY that show a character they care about is due for a deep heartbreak, and they’re talking about it. But shame on them for caring, I guess.
Imagine the comments if Billie/Ruth had died because Ruth banged Jason.
Is that supposed to be a thing no one should be upset about or. Like, what’s your point.
There’s a distinct feeling of the comments *only* being cool with this because it’s Sapphic, it feels fetishistic.
And I just wonder if the “Shut up about Joe” club would feel the same about this plot if it was three ladies instead of two and a dude.
Probably should have done ruth/billie/alice for that though, so my bad.
Yeah, it’s gross to say that to people who are themselves sapphic, so maybe don’t accuse us of fetishizing ourselves, lol.
1. Yeah, but every time people aren’t talking enough about Joe, there’s been a lot of complaining! A lot of accusing people of not caring about Joe enough.
2. Okay, but I’m talking about a pattern that started when the comment section first started taking Dorothy’s feelings for Joyce seriously, so, Dorothy’s bi realization was relevant to the point I was making.
3. Of course Joe was worth discussing. But there was never enough Joe discussion. Even after days of talking about Joe, when he didn’t show up for a strip and it was just Joyce or Dorothy so most people were talking about Joyce or Dorothy, there were commenters guilt-tripping people for not talking about Joe more.
“if you try to turn THAT into some kind of point about heteronormativity or bi erasure or whatever. People aren’t yelling “bUt WHaT ABoUt tHe StRAigHt GuY?!?””
Literally all I said was that it’s been a bit exhausting, but. You know. Go off I guess.
– Literally all I said was that it’s been a bit exhausting, but. You know. Go off I guess.
Literally – yes, that’s technically “all” you said.
Rhetorically – the implicit accusation is that the people who disagree with you care more about a straight character than the lesbian characters.
No, that “accusation” is not there.
I think it would be great if Becky was thrilled by this development. I wanna hear that Becky is Over It and still loves Joyce but seriously she has Dina so why would she be upset?
Channel your inner Amber
Shortpacked!Dumbing of Age Might Be a Teensy Bit GayThis is totally adopted babies.
Sounds like the name of a Houspets! collection.
“Are we together now?”
“As long as it doesn’t keep me from sleeping with Joe.”
Sigh. If only we could have had that reality. Where it was OK.
Maybe in France. There’s a reason English stole the term “Menage a trois” from French.
I mean, polyamory happens all over. You don’t have to be in France.
Yeah the French are just mad into non demonized, romantic cheating. Isnt Lancelot basically an OC the French made to be Queen Guineveres boyfriend?
Huh, just realized Lancelot is probably a joke about how he repeatedly stuck in lance in the Queen. Neat.
right???
like, imma be straight (no pun intended), France isn’t nearly as romantic a country as US white folk think it is
heck they’re basically the only ones with that impression of the country LOL
I think that the implied message is that France is a kinky country, not that France is a romantic country. I mean the two are related, sure.
We inherited the English tendency to put the French descriptor on anything that was perceived as being dubious. French tickler, etc. When I was a kid and my mother realized she had used language she didn’t want us using, she always followed it up with “Pardon my French.”
The thing is that France isn’t even a particularly kinky country! Germany is well known for being much kinkier.
I think a lot of the ‘romance’ of European cities, especially the ones that weren’t bombed to shit in the world wars, is just because they’re truly old cities and you literally cannot go to one of those in the Americas because they are all either historical sites or destroyed. That plus Europeans have romanticized castles basically ever since they stopped being real military installations.
Romance and Romantic originally referred to the fact that French (and Spanish) are based on Latin, the language of Rome
Fun fact: “Pardon my French” in its current usage originated as a parody of pretentious types speaking French to sound smart/sophisticated.
Oh, the French definitely have a reputation up here in the Nordics as well. Sensuous, sophisticated and sexy.
(Sadly also sexist and misogynistic, at least for the modern era)
“Huh. Maybe we should talk to Sierra and her girls. Ask them how they do this.”
Those were entirely platonic kisses before this moment
The most wholesome this comic will ever be. We love to see it.
Ha GAAAAAAAAAAAY
DOROTHY? I’m GAY! For YOU!
Maybe a teensy bit.
I’m legit gay! I’m for real gay!
[Announcer]
Normal programs will be interrupted to give later “on the spot” reports as they are received
Meanwhile, we go back to our scheduled program.
[camera pulls out]
Becky: WHAT
Why’s Becky in there?
To watch Joyce while she sleeps. It’s not wierd.
Steven doesn’t want me watching him sleep anymore. So one of you two has to do it.
She’s everywhere, at all times, just beyond the panel border.
Becky exists within Hammerspace.
I love when couples cuddle up like this but also all I can think about is “oh god their arms must be so tingly right now”
There are times when I can barely manage positioning my arms when sleeping alone.
Ditto, if I fall asleep on my stomach and happen to be laying on my arms, it’s so over.
My one-foot-taller partner and I sleep in spoon position and we switch spoon sides often. I can testify, Dot and Joyce have it easy being so close in height. My arm is constantly twisted up and half asleep, but spooning is worth it. Usually.
I have often wondered how I managed to sleep like this every night in college without my arm going to sleep constantly.
Actually, rather than spoon, we usually slept face-to-face in a tangle of arms and legs that must have looked like someone fired two sets of body parts at each other point-blank from canons
That sounds like a mix of being uncomfortable and yet probably super comfortable.
Joyce right arm under Dorothy. Blood flow ceased half hour ago. Dorothy doesn’t even notice.
Don’t trust Joyce.
Joyce reveals Carol was Grandpa Park all along
You should absolutely just do a variant on this comment for the next ten comics. /nods
trys to figure out if Li is talking to Sirksome or Sajuuk-Khar.
Por que no los dos?
Like I said before, pour this into my veins. If this is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
Sorry, boys.
As a Boy:tm:, y’all have fun, we’re apparently getting some Asher time and I just bet he’s gonna make out with Ethan again, eyes emoji nails emoji.
I think they meant specific boys, like Joe and Walky.
Seconded.
You fools! You defy The List and risk incurring its wrath!
Comic aside, are your upload servers just really off? I swear it doesn’t update on my end until like 11:10pm now.
I’ve seen to server updating 11:08, 11:02, even 11:15
its been consistently at the xx:16 point for me the last few days, fingers crossed the clock resets soonish!! because god forbid i gotta wait to see hijinks
It seems to be always random for some reason, it is never on the dot. Thank god I never tried to make the first comment.
It’s been like that for ages. Every so often it gets fixed, but I’m guessing that’s on Hiveworks’ end and out of Willis’ control.
As an aside, did the site just crash in the last few minutes for anyone else?
it did for me yea!! or at least just took a loooooonnngg time to load suddenly before finally pulling through
it happens often, maybe because of traffic
All the sexual tension distorts space and time around the server, sorry.
The server drifts. It’ll reset eventually.
Just let the time drift until it wraps back around to being 24 hours off.
Joyce is the big spoon and I love that for her.
Dorothy is the perfect administrative assistant little spoon for Joyce’s chief executive big spoon.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Holy shit I’m gay.
A teensy bit?
A smidge. A soupçon, perhaps.
No. A lot gay.
Aren’t we all?
meanwhile, Sarah : O_O
If sarah is smart she evacuated LOL
The bathroom’s right through the door
Neeeeerd! Worrrrrd neeeeeerd!
Pretty sure Sarah spent the night in Tony’s room
I mean, we’ve seen no evidence of that, but if I was Sarah I ABSOLUTELY would have made myself scarce.
I think if she had left, these two would’ve sprung apart guiltily. Her being there was a necessary barrier for them to feel safe.
I’m guessing Sarah spent the night with Tony, or she’s just fast asleep.
Still holding out hope for “Sarah, annoyed, is rousting Joe and Walky out of bed to see this bullshit.”
Hell, I’m hoping for, “Sarah, annoyed with this bullshit, is heading over to Joe’s room to REALLY put his dedication to Joycogamy to the test.”
Nah, needs more data points
You’re trying your level best, Willis, and I truly respect that, but I just still do not feel anything toward this couple. I cannot yet give my lesbian seal of approval.
You know it’s funny, I legit think Dotty might actually be lesbian and not Bi. It would explain a lot about her character and how she’s dealt with her relationships before Joyce.
^^ this, I’ve been wondering this for a while now. Like, we’ve seen her show sexual attraction to Walky, but I question if she’s biromantic or just homoromantic.
Actually… I was browsing Willis’s Bluesky yesterday and… well, unfortunately can’t seem to find it again right now, but there was a brief discussion deep in one of the threads about how both Walky and Danny may be trans and currently unaware… Danny, notably, would fit that “mid guy to awesome girl” pipeline, and it would make him being called a “good egg” extra-fitting; Walky, meanwhile, hasn’t been especially prone to introspection, which doesn’t prove anything but leaves plenty of room for later self. Also: https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3lvlobv5r5k2p — I’m not saying that’s a transbian Walky over to the side there, but it could well be a transbian Walky.
Anyway, in summary: maybe Dorothy’s been lesbian the whole time and just didn’t realise she’s only been with girls.
Oops… “later self” was supposed to say “later self-discovery”, with a linebreak afterward to make it less of a wall of text.
I mean, Dorothy is constantly overcome by lust when she sees Walky. Joyce has had a LOT of male-focused sex dreams.
Feels pretty clear that they’re both some level of bi.
I agree. Dorothy fell in love with Walky the first time around, she has missed him, she was excited to bang him plenty of times. I don’t think that reads like a lesbian at allll, but people can spitball all they want.
Yes, I just don’t see ”lesbian” being credible for either one here.
I feel things for this couple on a panel by panel basis. Or, like, until the end of the current cute strip, before reality sets in. Like this strip: it’s very sweet in all of the cuddles and quiet intimacy/comfort and Joyce explicitly expressing her sexuality. D’aaww.
But then the strip ends and I think over the story as a whole and remember: “Oh yeah, this is happening less than 24, 12?, hours after Joe, still clueless boyfriend Joe, gave Joyce a weighted blanket and she put her mouth on his weenus. Hmmmm…” It just breaks the cuteness for me. For me. Me personally. No judgment or statement about what anyone else should be feeling.
I completely agree. The existence of the cheating leaves a foul taste in my mouth. How can I enjoy sweet cuddling when I know how much wrong they did (and are still doing) to get here?
That’s part of why I want them to be discovered. I’ll be able to enjoy the sweetness once it’s honest.
Yes, if there’s any chance of enjoying the sweetness for me, it’d be with honesty and dealing with the full situation. I’m willing to give benefit of the doubt I’ll get there but forecast says highly unlikely.
Yeah this one in particular leaves me cold. Most of them have.
Yeah this one is just overly sappy and cutesy in a way I don’t care about much. I found Joyce and Dorothy more interesting even a few comics ago, when they were a little more frazzled or frantic. This cutesy-couples talk doesn’t really fit anything I’ve seen from their dynamic, and sure maybe it’s their new norm now that they’re a couple, but “smooth, quippy Joyce” doesn’t really track for me.
If it hadn’t started with cheating I’d probably be fine with this relationship.
i’ve given him like twelve of my bisexual seals of approval, so i’m sure they’ll live
The blandest possible couple.
I get that this is where Willis wanted to go all along, but Joe & Joyce are a much more interesting pairing.
I agree. I enjoy the rainbow of all possible couplings in DOA, but I find the long arc of the character developments of Joe and Joyce, and their “inevitable” pairing to blossom as a little rosebud against all odds.
Come on: Joe finally really fell in love! Transformed person! Tender and vulnerable!
Come on: Joyce coming to terms with her dreams tearing her apart! Longing for those arms to be put around her! (not to mention his weenus)!
…just to see this ship gone with the wind and run aground and the passengers join the Confused Anonymous crowd.
(shakes fist towards the clouds: “Damn You, Willis!”)
Yup, pretty much exactly how I feel about it.
And add on the whole “we were promised mess! This isn’t mess, it’s d’aww!”
I wouldn’t mind if it hadn’t been for Joyce+Joe… Joyce+Dorothy are cute together, but — aside from the cheating subplot, which doesn’t seem to be doing much (though hopefully will become more eventful later) — there’s not much more than that, especially as, with all their past interactions, it feels like there’s barely anything new but for their self-awareness. (As an aside: I’ve seen people saying that Joyce seemed to be “suddenly gay”. How? I’m aro ace and even I saw it years ago.)
By contrast, Joyce+Joe was producing significant character development… Hopefully that’ll find a way to continue, but right now, Joyce+Dorothy strips are basically either “aww” or *facepalm*, with the occasional teasing that something might actually happen soon… any day now…
I’ll just finish this with a general apathetic “Damn You, Willis”, I suppose. With the general everything of the world these days, hope’s already strained. I don’t exactly doubt that David Willis has plans that’ll resolve all this, and can accept that it’s just a temporary drama slump for the happiness of the sapphic fans (and I don’t begrudge them)… but I just can’t be emotionally optimistic these days, even here. I just read and wait.
The first moment I really started liking Joe/Joyce as a ship was when Joe was giving out the apology doughnuts and Joyce told him about how she was almost raped. That was a HUGE turning point for both of them, and I’ve been hoping the two of them would get together ever since.
In contrast, I never really got any enjoyment out of Dorothy and Joyce. Perhaps its just a case of something being more important to the author than to myself, it’s certainly possible.
Willis has also stated in recent bonus content that, while writing the protest scene, they decided spur-of-the-moment to make Joyce/Dorothy happen RIGHT NOW, when in their mind that development had still been multiple years of strips away
So if it feels like their romantic relationship is really suddenly WAY further along than the comic had prepared you for, that’s why. People are saying “this feels really sudden” for a good reason.
Personally, I think I needed that extra time. At least a bit of it.
That’s all right, I gave mine.
Baww.
hah
o3o Alright Guys. Jorothy shippers eating good right now. Not really my thing but I’m happy for y’all. But it got me thinking. What’re some of YOUR favorite ships. Either Already together, Formerly together, Hinted or WAY out of left field. And give a reason why you like ’em so much. (Poly is, of course) permitted.
I will always be for the SS Garbage Skowl.
I sort of agree. Would be interesting for it to come back around.
The what
Walky and Amber. Like Garbage Roof, only it’s a ship. And spelled with a ‘l’, to emphasize everybody’s disapproval.
Not me.
I 100% approve of them together.
I spell it with an “l” as a combination between scow (a boat often used in hauling trash up and down rivers) and scowl (an angry frown), and I spell it with a “k” because I’m not very good at remembering how to spell either scow or scowl.
I was a big fan of Garbage Scow back in the day, but not since Halloween. Not saying I couldn’t be brought back, but not without Amber actually putting in the work at a redemption arc (starting with admitting she NEEDS a redemption arc).
Billie and Ruth. It’s a little that I love the trashfire and a little that I like seeing Billie happy.
You Jen/Ruth shippers are stronger than me. I can’t trust Ruth anymore after the breakup. How do you know you’re not gambling she’ll not just torch it again? They were in such a good space. 😭
If you love something you let it go. If it comes back it’s yours etc. etc. I dunno. I just like them.
Wasn’t it, if you love something let it go. If it comes back to you and it’s a butterfly, you’ve changed the future. Or was that a different time line?
I love Billy & Ruth even more than Joyce and Dorothy (whom I’ve been shipping for years). My heart was broken when Ruth sabotaged herself.
I feel your pain because I, too, am going down with this ship.
Also, the ship name (WorthLess) is sooo awesome.
Me First!
Walky/Amber- I feel like there’s so much chemistry between these two it’s insane. Amber is the only girlfriend Walky had that didn’t try to “fix” him, and I feel like that made HIM want to be a better version of himself. It was a bad time and a bad situation but I think they should give it another shot.
Billie/Ruth- It’s been enough time. I want them back. My OG toxic ship.
Liz/Joyce- Honestly I thought if anyone was gonna be her bi awakening it’d be Liz, but maybe that was just wishful thinking in hindsight. Honestly they’d be cute together and if they dated then her and Sarah would ACTUALLY be sisters 😛
Sal/Danny- GAWD They’re cute. Hope nothing happens to ’em
Dina/Joe- Now before you guys crucify me for shipping Dina with anyone but becky…Joe and Dina have an UNEXPECTED amount of chemistry. I don’t even know if I’d want them to date as much as have like a FWB type thing idk. In the ideal DOA polycule I definitely attach those two branches.
I can actually get behind Dina and Joe. I grant you, I ship Dina with Becky a lot, but I can see the chemistry and appeal!
yee, Dina’s power level far surpasses Joe,
we’ve seen what the dino-loving dom can do to Becky
just IMAGINE what she could do to Joe >:D
case in point:
http://dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/02-ill-leave-you-a-phantom/tedium/
HELL yeah! also I’m a sucker for height differences in a couple and Dina being so short while Joe’s so tall, yet she’s the dom in that dynamic, that’s what I like to see >D
YEEEAAAH!!!! >:D
RIGHT!?
I think everyone even vaguely into fem presenting people remembers what she threatened to do to Joe that one time.
Which I could have sworn you had not yet linked to when I replied although that doesn’t seem to be what the timestamps say.
Also I cannot take credit for this setup (my friend made this polycule setup) but I feel like this would be my ideal DOA Poly ship.
https://imgur.com/a/Wx96toL
I can get behind that but I think Becky might explode with anxiety even if she understood it was just because she was FWB with Joe to scientifically determine exactly how best to make him tremble. And even if she was sharing data with Joyce…
I suggest surprise additional node between her and Dorothy and the discovery that the antagonism from her is suppressed attraction (see “if girls like her were shoving me into lockers, I’d have figured out I was gay a lot quicker” to Walky re: Billie/Jen), with Dorothy going to Joyce for a sweet time, and them going to eachother for frenetic “this would break a dryer” type sessions. Plausibly under Dina’s direction sometimes…
I’d draw a line from Dina to Joyce in addition, but I’m pretty sure Becky’d stab me with my own sharpie if I didn’t also draw a line from her to Joyce as well, lol.
i see the appeal of dina/joe too!! i like their up-front respectful relationship & i think joe being pretty far away from dina on the “responsiveness to sex” spectrum would make a fwb deal a fun research-based venture for them. i think one of my fave parts of DoA is its recognition that there isnt really a perfect destined match, a lot of different pairings work well at different times and for different lengths :] and right now dina & becky are having a pretty good time
Good stuff. Some of it I would never have thought of but…we do remember Dina making Joe blush, right?
Mine is chain-poly. It goes Beef – Sarah – Jacob – Lucy – Becky – Dina – Joe – Joyce – Dorothy – Walky – Amber // Amazigirl – Sal – Danny – Ethan – Asher – Jenifer – Ruth – Jason – Conquest
Yes, Conquest is a little young, but Jason is not known for good decisions.
I support this. God yes.
The Ship to End All Ships, the Alpha and Omega pairing.
Sal and Danny are just amazingly adorable, just about every one of their story arcs are a 10/10 in my mind.
I actually thought that Joe had a shocking amount of chemistry with Stacy- obviously ignoring the age gap/relationship with Richard/yada yada it’s a cartoon. (But that kind of speaks to her type!)
I just think there’s something accidentally very funny about how well their dynamics matched up. Stacy had usually been portrayed as being a anxious as Amber, but when she’s around college kids her maturity and confidence shines through. Meanwhile, Joe is the opposite, a guy who was faking maturity and experience but started getting torn down and knocked down a peg into humility.
When I say it out loud, it’s a lot of the same appeal of Joe/Joyce: you think Joe is gonna be horny to this cute innocent seeming girl, but actually the cute woman LOVES messing with him. Only with Stacy, you get the fun power dynamic of “guy who pretends to be sexually experienced vs a woman who IS way more experienced”.
The very flippant and dismissive way she treated Joe’s apology donuts was also FASCINATING. It was such a subtle and off-hand thing, but it adds so much nuance to her character. Stacy had been portrayed on a spectrum from “Victim” to “Enabler”, but that one moment was very well written in showing us who she is. The way she’s just so casually dismissing the red flags, playing it off as “cute boys being boys”, and seemingly being MORE confident when around crappy guys ….it’s really good writing! You instantly understand what her taste is like and how she ends up in awful relationships.
And… frankly, hitting on a 19 year old guy who looks like your recent divorced husband would genuinely be kinda lame and pathetic for Stacy to do. And that’s why it feels kinda real to her character. I think the fact that she sucks a little is the best thing about her.
Not just “looks like your recent divorced husband” though – “is your very recently ex-stepson”… 😬 Even though the relationship didn’t come into being until he was at college, ICK
The thing with Stacy and the donuts will always fascinate me and I think it’s because, what with the comic being written, we cannot hear her tone. But for me, when she replied that Joe’s donut scheme to apologize about his list was “cute”, I didn’t see it as her actually thinking it is cute.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/deserves-2/
I just don’t see this as her thinking it’s actually adorable, or a positive quality. Like, if the comic had voice acting, I honestly imagine her tone would be a bit dry or sardonic. She views what he’s done as being immature. But, that’s also just me. I just find it interesting how many ways different people can read the same panel and dialogue.
OTOH, she follows it up by talking to Amber about it and describing Joe as “a very nice young man”.
I’m sorry, but I’m hung up on this: Only with Stacy, you get the fun power dynamic of “guy who pretends to be sexually experienced vs a woman who IS way more experienced”.
Joe is lacking in actual romantic relationships, but his sexual experience is canon; I’m not sure where you’re getting that he’s actually inexperienced sexually.
Because other than Dina’s moment talking about using him for sexual data making him blush, I can’t think of anything that would lead you to think this, and that situation was special, both in the person doing the talking and what she said.
I don’t think that when Joe comes home from a night of 3somes, we’re supposed to believe he’s lying on his dick.
And as for Stacy being way more experienced, she’s older and she was been married, twice now, but that doesn’t equal being more sexually experienced, especially if we assume Joe’s sexcapades are legitimate, which, again, I believe is supposed to be the case.
Also, because I got caught up on this statement of yours, I reread all the Stacy strips, and, other than Richard talking about the two of them doing a lot of stuff as she’s 15 years younger than him and hot, I saw nothing referencing her sexual experience, let alone that would lead one to believe she’s super experienced compared to Joe.
I’m not criticizing the dynamic in general, but I feel like you’re either misremembering something or I’m flat out missing something for this part of your comment to apply to this pairing.
Well, Joe did admit he never actually had a threesome. It’s not much of a stretch to think some of his experience is exaggerated. How much we’re not sure.
I guess I was the one missing something, because I don’t remember this.
Found it:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/stufflikethis/
In fact, as I recall, his only confirmed sexual encounters were with Roz and Malaya:
Roz: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/serious/
(Implied repeat occurances in https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/topyou/ — or at least willingness on her part.)
Malaya: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/work-2/
I don’t doubt there were others, but there’s a significant lack of evidence.
There’s also Penny.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/twelvethirty/
Oops. Forgot Penny somehow.
Yup. I completely forgot about this.
Apologies for the rant.
That’s one of the things that really annoys me about Joe’s arc. We didn’t get to see enough of how he was before he started to reform. We saw him harassing some of our main characters, but he was willing to back off when they yelled at him. That and the list is all we’ve really got.
I’ll admit i was a lowkey Liz/Joyce. Mainly cause of your art.
You’ve actually brought me around to wanting Walky and Amber. They’re just very comfortable together. They seem to have the same energy and expectations from each other.
Other than that I really wanted Jen and Dorothy to hate smooch but doesn’t seem likely anymore.
Every other couple I wish a very (be infinitely worse than you already are)
Oh and Leslie with any other woman that’s not Anna. I think her name is Anna.
My toxic trait is I still want Leslie and Robin to work out somehow. Of all the Willis couples I want them to be a universe constant the most. I cried when they broke up in Shortpacked.
Dina X Becky,
because Dina, obviously 😀
also their dynamic is diamond
with the Power of Science on her side, of course the autistic empress makes an awesome dom
she barely gotta lift a finger to get Becky to MELT >:D
I was initially a little disappointed by Dina not being ace, for personal reasons, but she and Becky are so adorable together… Dina X Becky X science is easily my favourite relationship in the comic.
Because no one else seems to have, though, I do have to give a shout-out to Charles’s choice:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/mysake/
She’s definitely gray ace. Sex-neutral, enjoys it because she likes how Becky reacts, feels sexual attraction rarely.
I know that’s very specific, so it’s totally possible it doesn’t hit the right note for you, but Dina is very me.
Yes, sorry. Gray ace, yes, so my first sentence was technically incorrect; I was just thinking back and remembering that reflexive “dangit, not another seemingly-aroace character falling in love/finding their libido”… Not only that, but I’m generally very much in favour of gray ace characters. It was just a disappointment at the time. I’d have probably gotten over it soon anyway, but they just work together so well that merely “getting over it” quickly became an irrelevant concern.
Also, science.
There’s just nothing I can dislike about their relationship, and I like it even more knowing Dina’s gray aceness works so well for you.
❤️
Also I getcha, there’s… THERE JUST ISN’T ENOUGH. In some ways there are “a lot” of sex-repulsed romance-repulsed ace characters, but they’re usually also not human. Or, if they’re human, they’re Weird in other ways, maybe very morally gray, maybe very creepy, maybe just straight-up villains.
And let me be clear I love those characters. Like the Depraved Bisexual trope, I can shake my head at it while still being like, “those characters are amazing though.” 🥺
Dina/Becky – I shipped them as soon as Becky made Dina smile during the party and immediately cheered when they became a thing. They’re adorable and I’m happy to have amazing grey-ace representation in Dina.
Sal/Carla – I gotta admit, back when it was hinted that Carla had a crush on Sal, I was so for it. Mainly because Carla is so high on herself, but was really, really desiring and crushing on Sal and I kinda liked how unimpressed Sal was with her. Seemed like it gave her a good challenge.
Ethan/Danny – It’s definitely been blown sky high by Danny’s comment after Mike’s death, but before that point I really wanted them to work out.
I also really wanted Ethan and Danny. Weird ship that never left the harbor.
I was so mad when Danny somehow shoved his entire foot down his mouth on that one. Bro obliterated his own ship like he installed a self destruct button.
He could have made a recovery but when he double downed by bringing up fucking Star Wars I wanted to reach through the comic and throttle him. “JUST TAKE THE L, MAN! DON’T COMPARE MIKE TO FUCKING DARTH VADER”
It was doomed anyway because Ethan had realized he was in love with Mike.
I wouldn’t say it was necessarily doomed just because of that… mainly because 1) Ethan seemed to be embracing a more casual thing at the time and wasn’t trying to date anyone anyways so I doubt he would have dated Mike if he didn’t even try to become official after sleeping with him (this regret is likely part of why he’s so torn up in the present) and 2) at the risk of pulling a Danny… I mean… Mike IS dead now… so… if Ethan can embrace moving on in some way with Asher, he absolutely could have done so with Danny if he didn’t Danny it up.
I totally stand with Danny on this. Ethan flat out admitted Mike was an asshole and that was okay because he was Ethan’s asshole. Even admitting if things were reversed he wouldn’t care if Mike dissed Danny while he was in a coma. Better to have that tension out in the open. The sad fact was that Ethan will always choose Mike over Danny so that relationship would never work.
Mike’s death is the only reason Ethan has any ground to stand on. I think they could talk it out though but Ethan’s clearly still too raw to ever broach the subject these days. Maybe if Asher ever proves…..untrustworthy….it will spark a change in Ethan.
I think the glaring difference is Mike would say it to get a rise out of people. Danny said it because he meant it.
Danny’s not wrong to call Ethan out on the way he defended Mike’s asshole-y behavior, but I think the issue is time and place. He didn’t need to pick a fight about Mike while the man was literally dying in a hospital bed, particularly with the guy who had a fling/situationship with said dying dude. There was no reason to have that conversation other than that Danny was jealous about Mike.
Perhaps it is simple to say that since yeah, that is the only ground Ethan has to stand on, like you said. However, not only is it very firm ground, but it’s very emotionally sound ground too. Danny went into that interaction wanting to ask Ethan out and came out of it making an ass out of himself instead.
Nah, the only reason to have that conversation was that Danny isn’t good at not blurting out things even when he shouldn’t.
Ethan/Danny never getting a chance to become real is the greatest tragedy of the strip by far and as much as I don’t want Sal to be hurt I absolutely DO need Danny getting plowed while held in Ethan’s strong arms
For the purpose of this fantasy scenario Ethan has strong arms instead of having the minimal muscle mass of a nerd who edits Transformers wikis instead of using a gym
ngl once upon a time i liked the idea of carla making god girl whose name i’m too high to remember a
betterless horrible person through the power of lesbianism. between now and then god girl’s character arc and also the actual arc of real world history has disabused me of that.Carla and Mary is my never ever ship that I really really want. GOD that would be so much fun, especially the courtship phase where Mary’s entire world crashes around her.
I was one of them too. Nice to see some had the same idea. There was potential there for Mary x Carla when their rivalry was more cartoon stakes and less abhorrent transphobia and intolerance. I’ve also been informed it promoted a problematic trope of implying toxic bullies secretly like you.
Now a days Mary is just too far gone as a character.
Their rivalry was cartoon stakes for 5 strips before the transphobia came out openly. And that had been their only interaction at that point.
Yeah it was a short run. I really thought when Mary had pulled the glue stunt the prank war would escalate and resolve to them finding mutual respect. I actually think that moment is when Mary went from being the Joyce but worse to full mask off, (arguably evil?), right wing, MAGA, conservative, creep.
Alternate idea: Mary struggles with bisexuality, which goes against everything in her worldview. She tries to supress it as much as possible, keep it secret at all costs… then here comes Carla, who is not just open but loud and proud about her queerness.
Rather than be honest with herself and admit that’s what she wants for herself, Mary’s deep-seated envy of Carla (especially her supportive parents) morphs into cruelty. If Mary can convince herself that Carla is more of an “aberration” than she is, or so she reasons, maybe she can stop hating herself and her own inability to fit the square peg of her own “sinful cravings” into the round hole of her upbringing.
It doesn’t absolve Mary of her hurtful words and actions, but it does leave the door open to making amends and eventually growing into a better person. She’s burned a lot of bridges, and rebuilding them will take time. Mary’s journey to self-acceptance will be her recognizing the harm she’s done.
Or she stays the stays the unrepentant Draco Malfoy of the series, and provides us with endless cathartic schadenfreude. Either works, really.
I mean, by all means ship Mary with Carla, you thinking it would be neat in your head doesn’t promote anything.
Adults in positions of power regularly responding to reports of bullying by telling usually girls that the usually boy probably just has a crush on them in real life is what promotes toxic ideas, and I don’t think that’s coming from media — I think it comes from a combination of things, like the very real phenomenon of actual-children struggling to express feelings like “I like you” and sometimes landing on “so I’m gonna push you in the mud”…
…and society at large tolerating immaturity in (white) boys for much longer than it tolerates immaturity in anyone else…
…combining with school administrators frequently being lazy assholes who would rather tell a bullying victim to suck it up than actually try to discipline a bully.
(And that’s when they don’t just privately agree that a bullying victim deserves to be bullied.)
Billie/Ruth. I don’t remember liking the pairing that much, but on a full reread I realized I love their dynamic. They balance on the edge of being terrible and really cute in a way I just keep hoping it will work out somehow.
I have made fanart about my favorite dumbing of age rarepairs before but in general with the exception of maybe 1-2 ships i’m pretty down for whatever.
Sal x Danny might be the only canon ship I have really strong feelings for and that’s partially because i was/still am a Sal x Danny fan back during my initial readings of the Walkyverse comics.
oh goddamnit. HTML my beloathed
Wow Malaya x Roz is a rarepair but I admire how niche it is. I can kinda see it in a twisted way.
i can see them having a fun prep x jock punch-clock frenemies relationship. like they’re similar enough to bond over a lot of things while also being different enough to clash when it comes to each other’s flaws. plus both have strong enough personalities that i feel like they can take each other’s shit lol.
I saw this the other day on tumblr. the art style is really good!! Malaya x Roz os truly galaxybrained lol especially because they’re 2 characters I’d just like to see more. They’re also both pretty headstrong and have like, a solid sense of who they are? Very fun.
Also Raidah x Jen is so terrible I love itttt I’m a little sad that she’ll likely move out of that circle soon what with hanging out with people who actually like her & stuff.
I have made fanart for some of my favorite dumbing of age rarepairs before but in general with the exception of maybe 1-2 ships i’m pretty down for whatever.
Sal x Danny might be the only canon ship I have really strong feelings for and that’s partially because i was a Sal x Danny fan back during my initial readings of the Walkyverse comics and partially because it’s very cute to see Sal get to let her guard down and be constantly vulnerable with someone.
Also IDK if there’s just something softblocking my ability to share links bc I’ve been trying to share my rarepair fanart for a hot minute to no avail. C’mon I need those Malaya x Roz stocks to go up.
Just type in the single url without trying to get fancy. It isn’t elegant, but it’s hard for the site to mess up.
In the past 3+ years, it didn’t matter if I used HTML or just copy/pasted the URL, if it had any kind of link my comment would just get eaten and end up not appearing at all. It didn’t matter how long I waited, that comment was just GONE. I’d still try on occasion though, cause I had a feeling it was gonna probably sort itself out one day in the future.
So I really need you to imagine how hangdog I felt when I learned that day was gonna be 30 minutes after I reposted my comment like a goofball 😵💫
While I always keep my beautifully toxic suicide pact ship in my heart, it has been for a while been Dotty/Joyce, and honestly, since I hated Joe/Joyce and love drama I’m eating so flipping good right now.
In terms of wholesomeness I just hope to Willis Dina and Beck stay together forever
I actually liked Joe/Joyce, and am sad to see it go, but my feathers aren’t ruffled enough to get off this wild ride. 200% agreement on that last sentence, though. I certainly have my favorite ships, and cross my fingers harder for some than I do others… and Becky/Dina is my ride-or-die endgame.
Carla/Jocelyne is my personal crackship. I get a self-indulgent enjoyment of it from a “I’m a t4t lesbian and I think it’d be awesome if this comic’s most major trans women made out” perspective, but then when you actually think about it it feels like the kinda thing where the shared Gender Experience combined with the way their personalities would hypothetically mesh feels like it’d be interesting to explore. They’re both trolls with righteous streaks that manifest in different ways, and they would probably bounce off of each other well! …Then once you get past that, you reach an inner core of even hornier self-indulgence because I think Carla being spoiled by an older trans woman would be amazingly hot.
while we’re here i also think i’m the only person on earth who’d be interested in a Joyce/Danny revisit, but ONLY after Danny’s transitioned. i think becoming a woman is the only thing that could make Joyce care even a little bit about Danny, lol
OH ALSO, I SOMEHOW COMPLETELY FORGOT! Dorothy/Becky is a good one too. The hate sex would go crazy, I’d inject that shit directly into my veins.
okay now THIS I’d wanna see
I’d pay for that slipshine in a heartbeat >:3
Have they even met or spoken to each other yet? Off the top of my head I can’t remember any interactions between them.
they haven’t met yet! but i hope they do soon, because i think that would be a really funny scene! i need her to have Some Sort Of Reaction to Jugs’ Hot Older Sister.
My favorite ship is USS Fury NCC-93190, a Plymouth-class heavy frigate that punches way above her weight class in Team Fleet Operations.
Tough little ship…
Oh, she is. Especially with the console that pulls in four other versions of her from different timelines as backup. Use that, the Nanoprobe Infestation console, and the Holographic Ships console, and she’s a one-ship fleet!
Oh I forgot Joe/Joyce
I remember in a commentary for Roomies years ago Willis said something along the lines of him realizing that Joe and Joyce actually had a surprising amount of chemistry and wishing he had capitalized on it more at the time. I didn’t quite see it at the time but this past storyline has absolutely sold me on it.
Another one I thought of, I actually like Ruth/Jason. The two bonding over not being American was really cute and it sold me on them. I like that it seems their vibe is kinda… casual? Like they’re both ‘take it or leave it’, but also presently happy just to vibe together and have a good time. I think Ruth needs that after last semester. No, they probably won’t get married, and they probably aren’t endgame, but as long as they make each other content for a while… I dunno, I just kinda like that.
Ruth and Jason somehow making it to end game would be amazing and hilarious because they should be exactly as boring as Lucy/Walky except somehow neither of them being into it at all (and Jason showing up only on Leap Years and federal holidays for food) makes it weirdly enjoyable just for the absurdity. Like I do not ship these people unironically, it’s only because this appears to be their cosmic punishment.
I would absolutely love that, honestly. Ruth and Jason in a very boring, functional marriage where they eat dinner together and barely mumble at each other. That’s HILARIOUS.
Can I interest you in a sadsack vignette in this trying time?
You have earned a kudos and I must say, I really enjoy your prose! From one unironic Ruth/Jason shipper to another, I tip my hat to you.
Bless you for bringing this to the community’s attention. Just that introduction line and I am giggling with glee. I also extend to you what kudos I can spare.
In this comic? Sal/Danny because they’re very sweet. Sal/Marcie because I think they’d be very sweet with the touuuuuuch of angst that makes it delicious. Sal/Carla because I think they’d be cute and annoying. Sal/Asher because I sometimes don’t want sweet, I want toxic! Sal/Malaya for the same reason. Jason/Sal if I want toxic and feel nostalgic for Walkyverse. Sal/Jennifer and Sal/Ruth because of earlier comments. Sal/Tony because Walkyverse.
…Okay, fine. I’ll get off Sal. Carla and Charlie have been cute so far and I like how Charlie challenges her without being pushy. I’m kinda digging the energy Booster and Ruth and Booster and Amber have. Dorothy/Walky is probably my favourite non-Sal ship because I have so many feelings over how he supports her and unfailingly believes in her. Joyce/Joe because of their whole arc. I have residual Malaya/Carla and Joe/Rachel feelings. Still ship the fuck out of Jennifer and Ruth. Marcie and Malaya seem happy thus far so who am I to judge? Still kinda like Ethan and Danny and Danny/AG but in a ‘those two are better off not together now but it was nice while it lasted’ kinda way. Ethan/Asher seems intriguing and had a huge drama bomb hanging off it. I’ll always love Mike/Amber but he had a good thing going with Ethan for like two seconds. Leslie and Robin but only in the Walkyverse. Kinda happy to see Lucy and Jacob give it a go but I still like the idea of him and Sarah. Though Tony is RAPIDLY rising the ranks of boyfrienddom so I’m gonna give him and Sarah their flowers. Of course the polycule in the dorm. I’m digging the energy for Jason/Ruth but very casually which I think fits. Becky/Dina 4ever of course and I kinda like Becky/Joyce in a ‘what could’ve been’ way. Walky/Amber was really cute too! Jennifer/Alice could be interesting if it goes anywhere. I have a kinda crackship Roz/Sal for ONE DATE where they agree to piss off each other’s families for kicks. Since you brought it up, I do think Dina and Joe have cool chemistry if they’re ever down to fuck around and find out.
My crackship of choice is Sarah/Dorothy or Sarah/Danny because they’re two of the people Sarah actually likes.
….I contain MULTITUDES okay?
Just wanna thank you for being so gracious. 🙂
Alright, I’ll bite:
Joyce x Joe x Dorothy Full Triangle No Hinge Polycule: I am ride or die for this ship. I know it’s currently being shot full of cannonballs and is on fire, and I do not care. ; 3; Okay, maybe I care a little. My thing is I love the two dumb codependent blondes and I think they’re cute and their queer journey falling down all the stairs is hilarious, I love Joe and Joyce and think they’re very cute in a shoujo-manga-ass, Ranma and Akane kind of way, and then like, Dorothy also banging Joe seems really funny and hot and a nice way to bury their high school hatchet! Plus it would be Joyce’s idea, and Joe finally having a threesome BECAUSE JOYCE PROPOSED IT? Hilarious???
Joe x Jocelyne: This is my crackship consolation prize. Jocelyne is a sexual dynamo who loves hot dudes (and some girls now). Joe is a former sexual dynamo who loved Joyce. Of course he goes for a girl who looks like Joyce almost exactly. Of course the slipshine is titled “Bestow Me Womanhood With Your Boner”. Also Jocelyne could do the funny lean on him and Joyce would be SO APPALLED.
Amber x Walky: Walky fumbled but I believe he can grab the ball! I want him to have a partner he doesn’t mask with dammit and Amber feels good around him and etc.
Jason x Ruth: JOKE’S ON YOU, I DO SHIP THEM UNIRONICALLY.
D:
Billie x Alice: I am a sucker for this one and it’s gonna hurt me, but I don’t give a shit.
I am 1000% here for Joe x Jocelyne as my new crackship after thinking about it more. I could even see it get more cracked, as Jocelyne seems like the kind of person who absolutely would apologize to Joe for what Joyce did, and things go from there.
i read your ruth/jason fanfic a while back and it like, singlehandedly sold me on the relationship. i enjoy the misanthropic beanpole couple!
I am not a huge shipper in general? The point of relationships is to show me new sides of characters, and as long as they get the same narrative weight romances are not superior to friendships. But I have like. Two I guess.
I did and do like Joyce/Joe a lot, I like the sides they bring out in each other and the character development is great. I will be very sad to see them go if that’s the way things pan out. I feel like this is one I’ve been steadily shifted from “this is probably going to happen” to “this is really interesting and I like it” to “there’s enough groundwork and friction here that watching them be cute feels satisfying” over time. The goal for romantic relationships to me is to find someone who’s the right combination of challenging and comfortable, and this is a really strong ship from that perspective.
And then this is kinda left field but I like basically every time Ruth and Carla are onscreen together and I think that ship would be an interesting extension of that dynamic. I think disrupting each other’s bullshit is a good trait to have in a couple, and I like both of those characters the most when they are being forced to be sincere but not in a cutesy way.
Honorable mention to the fact that I seem to be the only person on the planet who prefers Dorothy/Walky the second time around to the same ship the first time around. Feels a little more real, even if it’s less mutually enamored. In part because it’s less mutually enamored. Anyway this isn’t like my ship or anything, I like it about normal for a well written fictional relationship, but I do like it better than all the other Walky ships so far and given that it seems broadly unpopular I figured I’d give words in its defense.
I think it’s probably evident that I find friction really important in terms of where I feel romantic chemistry is interesting. I liked Danny/Amber a lot at the time (I did hold out hope for Danny/Amber for a while past it’s expiration, but I don’t ship it now), I liked Billie/Ruth a lot at the time, I was broadly positive on Joyce/Jacob, and Sarah/Jacob finally acquired chemistry like 30 seconds before it sank. But idk I like watching people chafe against each other and figure out what the friction means and how that is going to change them. That can be amicable or nastier, but it’s the friction that makes the fire so to speak.
Sweetness: Sal/Danny. They just WORK together in a way that Danny with almost anyone else hasn’t for me.
Messiness: Ruth/Billie, if for no other reason than it would mean the end of “Jennifer”. They’ve always struck me as the couple that could work, if they could remove their respective heads from their own butt-cheeks long enough.
Sexiness: Becky/Dina. I love their dynamic, and they are definitely the couple that seems the most plausibly steamy.
Total Trainwreck I Could Not Ignore: Jason/Robin.
What A Twist: Joe/Asma, preferably after another time-skip, and their pairing is never, ever explained.
They Deserve Each Other Polycule: Booster, Malaya, Mary, Raidah, Roz. I don’t care how implausible this is, it would secure the rest of the cast from having to be shipped with any of them. They can move off-campus into a shared household. Helen can be their house-mom.
“That sounds a little gay, dude.”
“It IS a little gay, dude.”
Anyway calling it now: Jocelyne, somehow under the mistaken belief that Joyrothy were honest to Joe about The Big Kiss, is gonna accidentally break the news to someone.
God I love the TFS Androids. And the regular DB androids. Best thing about the Cell arc.
They should do some more “research.” Just to make sure.
For Science!
Joyce should ask Dina for some pointers there XD <3
If they want that research to be as accurate as possible, they’ll need plenty of repetition. It’s basic rigor, gotta perform the experiment enough times to create a valid sample size.
It is the peer review that is the awkward part.
I just laughed so hard I startled my cat. 10/10 joke, comrade. Made my night.
Pretty sure Dotty can organize the data; she can just alter an existing spreadsheet, after all.
Billie: “Don’t be ridiculous! Sleeping with a few girls now and again doesn’t make you the least bit gay.”
Yeah. Joyce is as straight as Billie.
So, do we have a book title or what?
I threw it out on his Bsky link to this strip, and he replied that it’d make a great companion piece to Book 5: Hey Guess What, I’m a Lesbian. 😀
Auuouauughhhh big spoon Joyce… Them holding handssssss while they sleep… Also Dorothy’s blush in the last frame teehee
also sorry willis for my to-be-moderated comment from my wrong email that i also accidentally reported </3
https://www.tumblr.com/itswalky/790969646879752192/okay-who-heres-got-the-longest-list-of-queer?source=share
Was waiting for this one to come out to put this here.
<3 <3 <3
https://bsky.app/profile/namioshiro.bsky.social/post/3lvmliwc4cs2k
I’ve had drawing this on the brain recently for, obviously, no particular reason.
Oooooh NICE ART!
That’s some fantastic fanart; I would love to see the whole cast done in that style.
Oh, love that. Concur with ZombieKyrik, could use more fanart in that style.
joyce admits she’s a bit gay, colorized
Dorothy looks like healed
don’t worry, she’ll be back to normal when she wakes up
Trauma nightmare incoming.
aaaaanyway, I agree that they look happy!
God are they cute and gayyyyy
This has made me feral, I will go live in the woods now
I’m mad because I really don’t like the way they’re getting together (cheating on their actual current partners). And I love love loved Joe/Joyce so I’m sad to see that ship sink. But. These two are…SO gotdamn cute. The conflict of it all!!
And so, the cheating continues
long may it reign
I must disagree.
Not short enough, it was.
Just a reminder that they didn’t shower and reek of tear gas.
And Joyce still has Joe’s ween on her breath.
We didn’t see them get ready for bed; just climb into the bed to watch cartoons, so there’s a good chance they remembered to brush their teeth, and to shower, before sleeping.
They showered and then changed back into the exact same tear-gas covered clothing?
They had on big heavy coats. Unless you think they’re wearing their jeans right now, none of the clothing that’s visible should be tear gas stained. So yeah, why not put it back on.
Word of God says Joyce brushed her teeth.
Word of Clif says she used it before leaving Joe’s room.
She used Joe’s tooth brush.
Oh no!
Joke’s on you, Dotty’s into that shit
A comic strip cannot possibly give a full account of everything that transpires between panels, let alone days. And, even the most meticulous author will eventually transgress continuity.
However, while we had a scene that showed a lot of gas being used in the park, we didn’t see either of these two cough. That might imply they didn’t have a significant amount in their clothing to begin with, especially under their jackets.
For now, I will choose to give Joyce the benefit of the doubt about having brushed her teeth between strips, at Dorothy’s behest had she not taken the initiative!
Although, now that I think of it… has there been any indication that Dorothy might not enjoy weenus breath?
It would mostly be Joeweenus that she would object to, really, I think.
have you ever seen a ship deployed so badly it actively turns you homophobic
*editor’s note: this is said in a hyperbolic tone for the purposes of comedy and also to riff on the people last week/two weeks ago who kept declaring anyone who doesn’t find this cute is a homophobe
Those were talking about people who were actually being homophobic. Or biphobic as it were.
are you sure about that? because I saw more than one reply to comments saying stuff like “this sucks” with accusations of homophobia.
they’re doing it again.
Examples?
Oh wow SailorCakes’s whole thread got nuked lol.
Anyway, SailorCakes is NOT an example, and no one should have to be associated with her.
How tragic that you’re being forced at gunpoint to keep navigating to this site to witness it
How tragic that you’ve been strapped into a chair with your eyes held open, Clockwork Orange style, and made to read the comments.
How tragic that Mike isn’t around to comment on the issue.
How tragic that Booster isn’t here to gleefully psychoanalyze us from the sidelines.
I like to think they’re doing that anyway.
They’re standing behind you right now, in fact.
See you’re assuming I’m not reading the comments, on purpose and with full intent, to see how many people are whining just like this
anyway, back in the real world, which is steeped in queerphobia and causes unconscious biases, it’s possible to have queerphobic reactions to a comic strip that aren’t nakedly “I hate this because it’s gay”
Also plenty of people were mask-off queerphobic. Just because it wasn’t the majority of comments doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
But you know. Great topic for sarcasm, you are very brave and edgy and stuff.
Haha. So funny. Good joke. Very droll.
Wait a minute, they’re gay????? Like, for EACH OTHER???????
No.
No, no, no no no.
No
It’s just a metaphor. For being happy.
With girls having sex with each other. It’s not real life.
Exactly, Joyce just means she has a gay old time with Dorothy. And that she wants to Yaba Daba Dorothy’s Doo.
They were roommates!
no way, they should be really very friends
almost sisters
I see we’re back to the cheating. I would’ve been fine with seeing more of what others characters are doing instead at this point.
i win some you lose some
Yeah, if this arc becomes the reason Joe backslides and goes full sleazeball, undoing all the good work he’s been putting in, I might be done…
I mean, yeah. it’s an arc about characters cheating, they’re gonna be doing it for a while because it’s like, what the story is currently about.
Even seeing other characters REACTING to the cheating would be nice, but honestly for all the proclamations about how relationship messes add to the drama and interesting stories, we have had basically 50% hijinks, 50% cuddling, 0% messy drama from this so far.
As with the kidnapping/mike dies arc, when it breaks I think the storm will last quite a while, and we have to watch a few panels day by day to establish the course of events that will culminate in the storm. I would like there to be no storm, or more of a drizzle, because what I have liked about this comic over the last 5 years has been the cute relationships developing, and people being devastated over cheating is the opposite of that, as well neither walky nor Joe would likely be surprised since Dorothy and Joyce have been super gay with one another consistently, but it is what it is and we can’t control how it feels to be hurt.
I loved Joyce and Joe, I thought it was adorable and also hot. I always felt Joyce wasn’t as invested as Joe, but liked him a lot and wanted things to work out. As for Dorothy, we knew she’d been a wreck since The Timeskip, and that she was making a lot of self destructive decisions. This still feels A Bit like that, but I also like them as a ship and this is still cute and hot.
Good luck to sickos and paladins alike, in the coming weeks, months, and years, we may be coping hardcore with secondhand cringe and sadness.
Nobody’s reacting because nobody knows. Them not going to talk to their boyfriends is a major step towards making the mess worse. Honestly, if all they’d done was kiss a bit and then go confess as soon as they were back in the dorm, it would probably all blow over quickly. That’s not cool, but it’s about as mild as cheating can be. This approach delays the consequences, but almost certainly makes them worse.
It’s such a shame that with getting further from religion, Joyce also forgot the good lessons Christianity has about interpersonal romance and lust :\
Which is 100% might be what D.Willis intends to lead to, and how things might have been fine if they were straight(lol) about it instead of these last chapters.
I think “Christianty’s lessons on romance and lust” are in like the top 5 worst things about it.
Yeah I was trying to imagine what Christianity has said about lust and from my experience here in the Southern Baptist and Pentecostal churches, their lessons on lust are basically “lust BAD. sex BAD. sex only good for BABIES. D< "
I’m hearing that in TF2 Heavy’s voice
I’d kill to post the gif of the dog doing the “HUH?” face… cause HUH!?
You thought Joyce carrying on about Dorothy eaten by lustwolves and fear to touch her vulva , was good Christianity ?
Did you not pay attention in Gender studies? Or the last 10 years of comics?
For what it’s worth? I think I get what you mean. Spirituality and healthy sexuality need not be mutually exclusive. It’s a shame that so many people (usually the ultra-religious themselves) are so blisteringly ignorant of that.
Heck, you want a good example of that? Look no further than Beck; she’s able to be true to herself, be intimate with her partner, and still follows and participates in her faith.
*Becky
My kingdom for an edit button…
You gotta remember though that Becky is shown to experience deep shame for being intimate with her partner. I think Dina even admitted that she’s had to comfort a crying Becky post sex. I’m not saying it is impossible just that Becky isn’t a good example because she’s still untangling the deep shame her religious upbringing has indoctrinated into her for the sin of being lustful and whatnot.
Like, Becky is actually a great example about how “the good lessons Christianity has about interpersonal romance and lust” mess you up and traumatize you, actually.
I mean, I’m not a theologian, I can only speak to my own experiences… but I really like Becky because her journey mirrors some of my own. By which I mean, learning that the people who claim to speak for God do not. Learning that God is love, despite what fundies believe and act like.
Nobody has to agree with me, heck, y’all can think I’m a complete goofball… but I just like the example Becky provides of someone who, despite leaving an abusive past behind, still holds fervently to her spirituality, she’s just learning what it means to her personally and forging her own understanding with the Divine rather than letting others dictate it to her.
Don’t know if that explanation makes any sense, but it’s just my take. Becky still has plenty of deprogramming to do, and as someone who’s also in the process of deprogramming some toxic stuff without wanting to jettison their spirituality wholesale, I can’t help but both empathize and want to root for her.
One of the cutest exchanges she ever had, in my opinion, was that bit where Dina said something along the lines of “I’m afraid there is no proof this God exists.” and Becky responds with a loving “You’re proof that He does.”
I wanna buy that kinda wholesome vibe in Sam’s Club bulk size and inject it directly into my veins.
I can definitely agree with that aspect, like that’s what I love about Becky and Dina. And I’m happy that Becky can be Christian and still be a lesbian! One of my best friends is a bi man who identifies as Christian! And one of the arguments I’ve heard from small minded people in the past regarding gay marriage is “well why would they go to a church to get married anyway, seems they’re just trying to start a fight” as if… gay people… can’t be religious. And as if churches aren’t where many marriages are typically held and affirmed.
Religion is a rough spot for me, personally, and I apologize if I was rude in my responses here. I grew up with friends who would guilt me into going to church with them by telling me if I didn’t, I’d “go to hell” and they just “didn’t want that to happen to me”. I saw a traumatic Church play about sin and death at the lovely age of 7 where all I could do was bawl about how unfair the events in the play were and wonder why “Jesus” would be so MEAN if he’s supposed to be ‘good’. When Passion of the Christ came out, my neighbor took myself and her daughter to go see it even though we were 10, because she thought it was important we see the bloody, bloody sacrifice Jesus made for us. Growing up, my favorite holiday was Halloween, and I was often told that by partaking in it I was sinning, that it was the devil’s birthday. Much like Dina, I had a passion for dinosaurs and got into arguments with a kid at school who tried to insist that “God put dino bones in the Earth to test our faith”. When I did go to church, I’d poke holes in the logic of what I was being taught and quickly found myself disliked in the church sphere. I could go on! I don’t know if these things count as religious trauma but… it feels like it, sometimes.
But I hold no ill will towards people who do embody the parts of religion that ought be embraced. Love for one’s fellow man, the urge to better oneself, the power of community. There’s lovely things about religion, I’ve just been exposed to too much of the negative stuff to personally ever feel attached. But I do love characters like Becky, who can embody making the best of what she’s been through and doing what she can. I respect my best friend for his drive to help others and commitment to his spirituality. And I respect you too, and I wish you the best with deprogramming the toxic stuff! I hope I don’t impede your journey.
Also, you don’t have to go to church to get married and churches aren’t required to perform gay marriages.
But the overwhelmingly religious groups that opposed gay marriage opposed it for everyone and not long before had also opposed separate but equal civil unions. Some one wanted a fight certainly.
(Apologies in advanced for the incoming wall of text, I didn’t mean to type this much, but I can’t find anything here I’d actually want to edit out.)
From one internet nomad to another, FUCK every one of those people who treated you that way. However you choose to distance yourself and heal from that bullcrap is valid. If you never set foot in another church again? Good for you. I will be cheering for you all the way. My belief is that all the people who try to dress their hate in what amounts to “Bible drag” are way higher on God’s shit list than anyone who opts out of the performative stuff but lives their life with compassion and empathy for their fellow humans.
I’ve known atheists, Wiccans, Muslims, even Satanists that are ten thousand times better Christians than any of the folks who can memorize entire books of the Bible.
When I got out of that fundie world, you know who welcomed me with open arms? All the people I was told to fear, all the folks they demonized, all the folks they told us to hate. The “freaks,” the “weirdos,” the “sickos”… they showed me kindness that none of the WASP’s ever did.
For me? Those are my people. They will forever be my people, and to my mind, they are the true children of God, whether they realize it or not.
I know I got a little heated there, but it’s in solidarity with fellow kids (even if neither of us are children anymore) who deserved to be nurtured and instead got bullied. Call ’em fundies, call ’em Thumpers; far as I’m concerned, end of the day, they’re bullies.
But you know what? They failed. They tried to break you, tried to stuff you in a metaphorical box, and they failed. And if you live your life in a way to leave this spinning space rock a better place than you found it? You’re more powerful than they could ever hope to be.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.Honestly Tequila, I really appreciate your comment and I’m sorry that you have similar experiences. The fundie world can be so punishing at times, and for the people who come out of it still believing in a loving God? Honestly, happy for them. I would never want to squash someone’s feelings if its what helps them get through. I’ve known people who’ve gone through mental healthy crises and addictions and the way they make it through the other side has been through their belief in a higher power. I’d never take that joy, that success from them.
But I also truly appreciate your understanding and giving me that same space and respect. It’s true, I’ll never again step foot in a church outside of attending marriages or funerals. Although I’ve still been roped into prayer before eating when around certain family members, I’ve only respectfully closed my eyes and held hands, but have not uttered a word of grace. And thankfully, no one has called me out on that.
In the end, I feel much the same as you. If people are doing their best to leave the world a bit better than it was before, if they’re trying to cause as little harm as they can, that’s all anyone can ask for! Religion or no religion. God or no God on the other side. Your Ted Talk was wonderful and I hope you have a fantastic night!
Also, I did not take anything you said as rude, and nothing you said impeded my journey. There was not a single thing you said that I interpreted as hostile. 🙂 I hope you too have a fantastic evening (or morning, whatever time it is in your time zone.)
I don’t know if you’ll come back and read this response but thank you for the reassurance. When I was younger (and angrier), I did have very nasty responses to others when they brought up religion or tried to give me religious advice, and it was something where I had to take a step back and recognize that I have the right to feel that way, but not the right to lash out at people who mean no harm. Its something I’ve tried to be better about and I’m glad I didn’t say anything hostile or harmful to you!
Becky’s able to, but that’s despite everything her church taught her about relationships, not because of it.
Hahahah, WHAT?
Yes, I’m absolutely sure that this story is intended as an Aesop about how Joyce would have been just fine with her big heterosexual boyfriend if she’d just come back to Christ. That is totally a story that David Willis would write in The Year of Our Lord 2024.
*scans through 16 years of sunday school memories*
Yeah the only time I ever got good advice from christian media was from The Great Divorce and that would be considered blasphemous in most churches.
I feel like any church that has a problem with C.S. Lewis is telling on themselves.
people who don’t like seeing amoral modes of affection realize they don’t need to keep reading and commenting every week right? like if you’re so disgusted by messy queers in the webcomic about being queer and messy, you don’t actually need to leave daily comments about it, you literally have other stuff going on. write that novel, build that gundam model, i believe in you. just do whatever your life leads you towards quietly, you’re getting *so* annoying fr fr
And you don’t need to leave comments whining about people offering negative feedback. You don’t need to read their comments, so stop complaining.
And you don’t need to whine about people whining, let’s see how fucking recursive we can get this.
I hate that people make comments at all! Why can we not simply read the comic and then express no opinion, desires, or observations in any regard? Just good old fashioned staring at a wall and watching paint dry! That’s what we need in these trying times!
Watching paint dry? That sounds pretty bourgeois there mate. Maybe you can afford to hop down to Dutch Boys and slather some filthy capitalist chromatic grease on the walls of your fortress of privilege, but true connoisseurs have no need of such gluttonous luxury! You want to change the course of this new generation? Get them to start watching grass grow!
Grass? Boooorrrring. No, the interesting growth watching is down here in the weeds.
What species of grass?
I’ll do you guys better. A free activity that can be enjoyed by one and all? Watching your own fingernails grow!! Now we can bridge the gap between the generations AND the wealth gap!
See, here, a perfect example of abilist privilege, slipping into even the most well-intentioned of suggestions, assuming everyone has hands with fingers (and thus fingernails). Or, for that matter, eyes that can see them! If you want a truly all-inclusive activity, we must all simply contemplate our own selves and naught else.
Just here to make another unnecessary comment. Hey guys.
How could you.
There… is a difference between not enjoying the comment section sometimes, and not enjoying the main plot of the attached web comic, tho?
Like, those are not equivalent.
I have my fingers crossed for the folks who aren’t enjoying this but are still sticking around, that the eventual consequences will be satisfying enough or that they’ll find some other reason to enjoy the story again. For the record.
Oh no, people who like the same webcomic I do have different opinions about a single storyline and are expressing it when that storyline comes up. Call the webcomic comment police!
Discussing comic online? How fucking dare you.
people discussing the actual comic is one thing, but the moral handwringing and insults to the author are still unnecessary. like im talking about the ppl who are obviously in real life upset at the story and at willis. those people shouldnt keep reading lol
also no offense but even if it is just about the story and nothing else, leaving daily posts just going “this is bad” over and over is, as I’ve said, annoying as fuck
In all seriousness, I feel like we have something like four separate classes of “posts the same thing every day” posters, it’s certainly not limited to “man, this story sucks”.
okay but posting the same cute or funny thing every day is not the same as posting the same rude thing every day. like one of these is not like the others
I thought about that first, but I think Big Z means complaints about the complainers.
I actually don’t think we’ve had a ton of the SAME people commenting that, but I do think we’ve had similar top level comments from a bunch of different one-time posters recently, just dropping in to be like “ugh everyone here sucks, get over the cheating” and then leaving again.
I’ll also expand — I feel like I see at least one of each of the following pretty much daily: “I hate this (derogatory)”, “I love this and if you don’t then nyah (derogatory)”, “I’m saying something deliberately trollish like I do EVERY DAY”, “I’m skirting JUST inside the line of politeness with my responses like I do EVERY DAY”.
I’d be fine with less comments from the people who seem to love posting deliberately trollish comments every day. Unfortunately some of those people are regular commenters right now.
idk when the definition of trolling changed, but defending the author of a webcomic from a constant stream of negative feedback over a relatively benign storyline just because it so happens to be about two queer women cheating on two straight men doesn’t, like, typically fall under that classical definition umbrella of being a general asshole, last time i checked. idk, kids these days, etc etc.
like i’m very cognizant of the fact everyone in these comments hates my guts, but like maybe more people here should try and remember that this fictional story has an actual queer person writing it, and maybe try to temper their vitriol once or twice if they don’t want to be called out on that. shrugging emoji. sorry
“Trolling” has always been more specifically about posting something deliberately either disingenuous or inflammatory specifically for the purpose of drawing outsized reactions, IMHO, rather than general asshole-ery. And we have a couple of those.
For whatever it’s worth – I don’t hate your guts, Megan. I don’t even know who you are, it’d be weird to have that much involvement with a total stranger.
I think, probably, most people actually feel that way and only very few (if any) hate you at all. I think it’s likely zero people, if I’m honest.
Only cuz you like one of those things and don’t like the other of those things. Sometimes saying “I don’t like this” is cathartic when you have a community agreeing so you feel like it’s not just you.
Fair enough, but the advice of “stop reading a strip you’ve been reading for over a decade, from an artist you’ve potentially been reading for longer, because you don’t like one specific storyline” is not, I think, going to move many people.
And it’s the internet — people aren’t gonna resist the allure of the comment box at the best of times.
How dare some of us who’ve been reading this strip for years have different opinions than you about the current story arc, and express those opinions in the comments. If you don’t like reading our comments, maybe you’re the one who should stop reading them and go do other things.
trust me I tell myself the same thing every day
like genuinely. there is a time and a place for expressing frustrations about a story you are a regular reader of going in a way you do not like, its very natural to want to get those frustrations out. That time and place, however, does not happen to be on the front lawn of the author, every morning at dawn.
Need an edit of the last panel being changed to say whatever Kinsey Scale number she would be
Just for the the hell of it: I recently finished this anime mini series xalled Takopi original din snd i recommend you check it out if you wanna be emotionally devastated.
JOYCE IS THE BIG SPOON! The Quiet, timid, feels the need to hide half the time is the big spoon! Dorothy who always feels like she needs to be in control is the little spoon. THIS IS EVERYTHING TO ME!
ohh
How far do you think they’re gonna get before Sarah reminds them she’s in the room too?
Or until Dorothy’s mommying wears on Joyce’s nerves again.
please no please no please no please they’re basically about to date now please don’t call it ‘mommying’ the guy that ships them as a mom/daughter incest ship is gonna come back and goon all over the place
The WHAT?
Oh God wait what who????
Gonna reply here so it’s easier for both people above to read (and to avoid writing the same answer twice) but yeah back when Dorothy was beginning to broach the “do I like Joyce” subject, there was a guy in the comments section who was like “no no I get it guys see Dorothy just really loves her like mother loves her daughter and is CONFUSING that feeling for attraction to Joyce” at which point I and other commenters were like “dude that isn’t a normal conclusion to come to at all how the fuck do you come to that” and he has THANKFULLY disappeared from the comments since then.
Oh boy, the “mommy” thing again. If that’s the case, then Joe’s been daddying her, same connotations.
Honestly, Jacob and Joe both have had very similar energies with Joyce as Dorothy has, because all three of them find her specific type of sheltered upbringing by turns endearing and horrifying. Joe buying a weighted blanket without even talking to Joyce about it was a very Dorothy move.
But only Dorothy gets called a mommy nag! It’s weird.
Surely there’s a difference between giving someone a gift you put thought into, and goading them into attending the medical appointments you booked for them.
Hm, I’ll take things Dorothy Didn’t Do Either for $500, Alex.
Here I’ll provide receipts for you (2 pending)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/blackboards/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/saunter/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/nugs/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/atwatereyecare/
Like if you reaaaaaaaallllllly wanna interpret that in the least charitable possible way, wherein you pretend listening to Joyce’s anxieties and comforting her about them is “goading”, sure.
Honestly? I think it’s pretty fair to read this as “Dorothy starts out excessively pushy and ends up dialing it down to persuading” as much as the way you read it.
I would bet, though, that there are some specifics in here as to how one specifically reacts to “someone restraining you by your backpack” (phrasing deliberately chosen to frame it a certain way) and “performative yelling for help in the hopes that someone ACTUALLY rescues you, but you don’t want to get anyone in TROUBLE so you make it sound like it could be a joke.”
Obviously: at the end of it, Joyce didn’t feel that way, and she’s got her glasses and her BC pills etc. But I still think it’s not exactly UNFAIR to call it “goading” as much as “listening/comforting” — it frankly looks to me like BOTH of those things happened.
I was a bit heated in my reply. Lower down on the page I reminded myself that Dorothy’s behavior is gonna hit some people sour specifically because of how much they’d hate it if a friend did the exact same things she actually does do. I think a lot of readers have legitimately struggled with that disconnect, because they feel like Dorothy and Sarah treat Joyce pretty terribly, and they want it to be on purpose so that they can hope Joyce will eventually tell them both to fuck off.
I imagine that for this segment of readers, the PMDD storyline was a shining ray of hope, and that Joyce turned out to be so angry because she was in pain, rather than because she had finally reached the end of her rope, was beyond disappointing.
Meanwhile, at this point, hearing Dorothy called Joyce’s mom or their relationship described as manipulative power imbalance really really rubs me the wrong way, and comments that remind me of those takes might sometimes get a needlessly snappish response.
(I’m acknowledging this as something I should work on!!! Not just saying it’s gonna keep happening orz.)
<3 <3 <3
so Joe and Walky are gonna be devastated, Becky will feel hurt by Dorothy getting Joyce and that might hurt Dina, Lucy will get to be Smug over Walky, and Danny will get to be smug over Dorothy also being Bisexual.
am I missing any potential dominos?
Mary might get the opportunity to get all smug and righteous about how “the two of you just turned out to be a pair of filthy sinners after all”.
I’m more of the mind that Mary will insist they’re just Gal Pals until she turns blue
I was thinking more along the lines of “so the two of you cheated on your boyfriends with each other? Nothing but adulterous harlots, the two of you, and both of you pretending at airs of nobility!”
The tradgedy is that they wouldn’t need to be. Dorothy and Joyce having attraction for each other is not a bad thing. How they are dealing with it, and the apparently willingness to disregard the feelings of others is the bad bit.
If you two dumb-dumbs would have just talked with your romantic partners like civilized beings, nothing about this would need to be ugly. Messy for sure, but not nasty. It’s the callousness that makes it nasty.
Yup.
The one thing I’ll continue to accept the “relationship paladin” label about is this — I’ve been consumed by stupid horny many a time (I will not even qualify with “at that age”), but I have always managed to end one relationship before starting another (or, later, to check in with my poly partners who cared before adding another).
The fact neither of these dorks managed to do so makes me like them as characters a little less.
Amber/AG getting involved.
Jocelyne, after they show the pics of them on protest.
I bet the next Future Space Force Captain Julia Gray storyline is gonna be *amazing*.
Well, yeah, that’s pretty stark evidence there.
I”mma try it.
“Damn your sudden and immediate begayal, Willis!”
This is so gay I love this comic so much AAAAAAAA
I’m impressed I’ve literally seen people get further into a gay romance then this without figuring it out/ coming to terms with it.
..man, they didn’t shower after Sarah pointed they smelled weird, did they. now the bed gotta smell that too
I think you’re right. It’s a bit gross now.
They’re going to end up with a tear gas fetish.
I’m legitimately really delighted to see we’re moving past another painful realization Joyce is going to have about herself and just right into “oh, that’s another one. Makes sense though.” and we get tight cuddling while they figure out what to do about their boyfriends.
Yeah, it’s great!
Joe will be fine
He’s a bit of a swordsman who’s left many a young maiden sobbing into their pillow
He’ll cope
He’s a knight, not a paladin.
no, I doubt this. pretty strongly. I think this is going to break him for quite a while.
Not all of them tears of sadness, either. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Ah, this must be that oh-so-exciting drama and mess that the “sickos” were really rooting for.
There is still time for my headcanon of them waking up to see Sarah, Joe and Walky all standing angrily in the doorway of the room.
Who am I kidding, these two are so dumb-kids-in-“love” that they wouldn’t notice if that was happening right now.
If the friend group isn’t crashing out by the end of the month I’ll be very disappointed.
You will be disappointed then.
that’s a shame. I’ve seen college teens implode over way less than this and it could be great fun to watch.
I am a bit confused at — not the impatience, you’re of course entitled to not be enjoying this and to want it to move along more quickly to consequences — but the expectation that unless consequences happen right now, they’re not going to happen at all? And that all the readers who voted sickos must either think the same thing — so, if we’re not expressing (more) frustration, we must not have really wanted mess?
I like this ship and I rooted for mess, and I feel like I’m already getting both aplenty, but also like it’s pretty obvious that we’re in the calm before the storm.
Inasmuch as it can be “calm” when Joyce already escalated significantly by trying to tell Joe about all of this and then instead giving him a blowjob.
(Also I’ve always wanted them to eventually be happy.)
Also-also: them being happy together IS legitimately part of what makes it “messy”.
If they weren’t happy together, or weren’t being shown as happy together, this would just be: “Joyce and Dorothy did a bad thing that hurt Joe and Walky and then faced consequences.” Neat and tidy and a very simple morality play.
That they seem to genuinely make each other happy is part of what makes this messy.
I admit, at this point I’m mostly-performatively bored with these two being lovely-dovey — I know there will be consequences, and I want them NOW.
(Hypocritically, especially because this should be a lovey-dovey moment with Joyce and Joe, damnit.)
Regarding them being happy together, there’s an aspect where one of the reasons I don’t really like this ship is that there’s been no particular internal mess/conflict between them thus far — just some mild inability to completely agree on how much they should be doing before they confess to the boys, quickly tossed aside. They didn’t even have any kind of drama about Joyce giving Joe a blowjob!
They’ve been together for a couple of hours! I think it’s early yet to say they’re not going to have any conflict. I also think it’s early to say the inability to tell the boys has been brushed aside. New Relationship Energy is a powerful thing.
I don’t know, man. NRE is great stuff, very powerful, but I kinda lost suspension of disbelief when it allowed “So actually, not only did I not tell Joe, but I also put my mouth on his weenus” to go by with ZERO drama.
Also: If I’m evaluating how THE CHARACTERS feel I count time in hours, but when evaluating how *I* feel I count time in strips. =)
Again, I don’t think that did happen with zero drama, I think that is a massive undropped penny.
If you just mean Dorothy didn’t get upset, well, yeah, of course she didn’t, as she said she hasn’t really “tagged in” yet so despite Joyce’s expressed guilt, she doesn’t feel cheated on. Dorothy is in full spreadsheet mode, which I know some folks think is super unhealthy and something she needs to stop doing, but, well, I think the spreadsheet mode itself is just autism and fine. What she needs to stop doing is feeling responsible for managing everyone else’s safety and happiness, and technically this is a step in that direction, heh.
Plausibly, we have two differing definitions — where you see a “massive undropped penny”, I see “this is a deposit in a drama account, but we have not yet cashed the drama check so there’s no drama yet.”
And yeah, I do find it vaguely unnerving that Dorothy basically didn’t react at all for reasons that don’t resonate as real to me. I feel like we’re due for SOME kind of “Dorothy and Joyce realize that they’re not yet ENTIRELY on the same page” drama, as well.
Also seriously it is genuinely very interesting how differently we are reading all of this, because I keep seeing comments saying, “nothing bad is going to happen! Everything’s fine, ugh!”
and meanwhile I’m just watching the Majora’s Mask moon loom larger and larger in the sky.
That’s actually a fair part of my disconnect — from my POV, the moon is certainly maybe getting larger, but it has neither started descending nor can I see what kind of face it has yet.
(ironically, perhaps, my second-least-favorite actual Zelda game after BotW, which I disliked so much I haven’t even tried ToTK, which is ironic because I’m a Souls fan (but an unreasonable micro-genre purist about things like Zelda))
I found Majora’s Mask EXTREMELY stressful and couldn’t finish it, but when I first reached for “steadily growing asteroid shadow”, that horrible creepy moon face popped into my head.
BotW though is far and away my fave, with Twilight Princess and Windwaker jockeying for second place.
Not all of us sickos wanted mess. I wanted exactly this and as much of it as possible. I’d be perfectly happy to skip all the mess, (not that I expect that to happen).
There’s fully also that. The original poll was “are you angry about the cheating or are you a sicko?” — lots of people picked the second option just because it was obviously diametrically opposed to the first option, not because they otherwise want The Worst Things to happen all the time.
That’s also probably true. It FEELS like there are more people rooting for mess than people who just want this to be sweetly sapphic and all work out, but I haven’t gone and counted it up.
Awww! Adorbs, charming, heartwarming, and sweet!
To consider all possibilities Joyce, you may just be “straight with an exception”.
On the contrary, Joe is her only exception.
…wow, people really will just reach and reach and reach to avoid admitting a character is bisexual or queer even when the character is on-screen saying they are.
That’s wild. I really thought there was a limit, but nope!
Man, I don’t care who your OTP is, this is adorable.
I continue to be amazed by how many people are sincerely, earnestly pleading with the author for the characters to not do anything wrong, and to not experience any drama, and to not have any problems.
Like, guys, you do understand that conflict, drama, problems, and mistakes are what makes a story, right? Things need to *happen*, and our characters need to *fuck up* so they can experience consequences, and learn, and change, and grow.
If this webcomic was just a ceaseless stream of bland vanilla niceness, why would any of us have ever been reading it in the first place?
Genuinely, just what is it that you want out of a story? What are you looking for, here?
Super hero battles, dysfunctional twisted relationships based on love, the return of Mike with no explanation ever, investigations into the haunted rooms at the end of the hallway when Booster overcomes their mental block, campus bombings, the dean being fired and replaced by Robin, the return of the Martians with no alien abductees around to defend Earth, Richard and Jennifer, Mary’s redemption arc, and Joyce/Walky endgame.
You?
I want Asher to commit first degree murder. I think it’d be funny.
Uh, Asher did commit first degree murder via a hitman.
Not good enough
What? Blain and Grandpa didn’t count?
Murder by proxy is a cowards move
I’m looking for freshmen to fuck up, make huge, life altering choices, and then have to live with them and deal with the consequences.
Which is, more or less, exactly what I’m getting right now.
>Joyce/Walky endgame
I threw up in my mouth! I threw up because you said that!
My job here is done.
This scene is not relationship drama. That is the difference.
Relationship drama is all fine and good. Making stupid mistakes is all fine and good.
This scene isn’t showing Drama. It is showing them being “cute” together. Yet I don’t see you complaining that this scene is just “bland vanilla niceness”.
So let’s get to the drama. Let’s have it be messy and painful. I would find that entertaining. Just endless “Aww, aren’t the cheaters adorable together” and “haha shenanegans trying to hide their cheating” isn’t.
But if we don’t find them cute and appealing, how will Willis ever make us hate ourselves?
Funny thing is, that’s not the reason I read this comic.
That is funny. If you don’t have a dysfunctional love-hate addiction to this comic and its slow motion train wrecks, what are you doing here?
Do you come for the comments and the popcorn?
Fun thing, webcomic pacing goes rather slowly, not everything happens at once, and also you need to offset moments of drama with moments of niceness and moments of comedy, otherwise it’d be a bit one note. Presumably when things are more dramatic for Joyce and Dorothy, other characters will be having some funnier or sweeter moments!
This. We haven’t even gotten to the relationship drama yet. Aside from Joyce and Dorothy feeling bad for a few moments, there’s been no negative consequences for their cheating at all so far.
“So far so good” as the man remarked while falling from the skyscraper.
Speak for yourself bud, I love bland vanilla niceness. “Decent people being decent to each other” is my favourite genre and it’s the reason I’ve consumed so many thousands of fanfics over the years. Willis is a good author and I’m sure I’ll enjoy DoA more in the future, but I’m not enjoying having front-row seats to what Joyce and Dorothy are up to right now.
That’s valid! There are lots of slice-of-life stories out there, though I think “relationship drama” (like jealousy, if not cheating) is one of the very common ingredients.
The question, then, is why you’re reading this at all when bland vanilla niceness has never been the point of this comic.
Not everything has to be for you. I am sure there are other webcomics out there more suitable to your tastes.
For many people this comic was good for over a decade and they simply don’t like this recent development. I find it obnoxious when you don’t like a development in a comic people go “it’s not for you get out.” As if it wasn’t “for me” for the entire time I read it and just never noticed.
Also weird to claim this comic has never been about bland vanilla niceness during one of the most bland vanilla nice strips in months. And keep in mind I like this strip. Vanilla is the finest of the flavors.
“this comic was good for over a decade and they simply don’t like this recent development”
Considering some of the morally reprehensible shit multiple major characters — including Joyce and Dorothy! — have done and said over the years, it’s curious that people are objecting this loudly now when it involves a queer relationship that’s been telegraphed for 14 years. But what do I know?
No seriously. This has been a long time coming.
I tend to hold that stuff against them too. I’m still full on “Fuck you forever” for Danny telling Ethan that it wouldn’t be so bad if Mike died. It’s just that that isn’t relevant right now. Joyce/Dorothy is. There’s a lotta factors driving this discussion so fervently, and I won’t deny part is homophobia. But it’s also just the framing, The protest, The cheating, The comment section discourse. It’s like a perfect storm for drama especially since everyone’s pretty heated about it.
I’m fine with characters fucking up and facing consequences. It’s not like their hasn’t been plenty of that in this comic in the past.
I’m uncomfortable with the narrative framing this as a grand romance (wedding imagery during the Kiss and all) rather than leaning into facing those consequences. We’ll see how it turns out.
I continue to think the sickos/paladins poll did lasting damage to the state of discourse
But think what it’s done for popcorn sales.
Popcorn is a tool of the bourgeois to distract the working class.
Hey, us popcorn shills are workers too.
Look, there’s a
demonic duckkernel of an idea for a popcorn poll.We have seized these delicious tool. We own the means of production for this tasty snack.
popcorn et circenses is the death of social progress
However, we will use their own tools against them (Chinese popcorn cannons)
Worked for me!
only 2 options elections are really a bad thing, it’s so dramatic
I believe the current finely crafted poll has more than two options.
🎵 L is for the way you look at me! 🎵
ooooooh 🎵
So, what narrative purpose does this serve? Is this the drama people say they crave?
Because it kind of seems like it is just fanservice for people who really, really want Joyce/Dorothy and compared to that desire don’t mind the cheating.
The thing people don’t like isn’t about Joyce/Joe vs Joyce/Dorothy, it is about the cheating, and how the context of cheating shatters the emotional safety that would otherwise make the scene cute.
“Awww” is an emotion of protect, connect, and care, but right now I don’t want to protect the relationship, I don’t want it to be a model for human connection. Because the emotional safety and intimacy we might find cute is founded on a betrayal of emotional intimacy.
I truly do not give a damn about the cheating. I actually just posted a comment complaining about how a large part of this fanbase is so overly focused and vocal about it, that it drowns out any other legitimate criticism.
Feel free to comment your criticism. I don’t see how other people focusing on other things in any way stops you from saying what you want to say.
The reason why the cheating is a hot topic is because it is divisive. You have some people who say “Cheating is bad” and then are upset when the story presents it as cute.
You have other people who say “Joyce/Dorothy is cute” and are upset when people rain on their parade by saying the cheating makes it bad.
It doesn’t stop me from saying what I want to say, but I do think it’s just… bad? Makes for boring conversation that will go nowhere.
It also is much easier to dismiss that more substantial criticism. Looking at the sidebar survey, it seems pretty obvious Willis is going “Lolz people are only complaining because they hate cheating and/or are being homophobic.”
And I think that reduction is part of what drives people to keep coming back to that subject.
I think cheating is bad, sure. But that is a basic point.
I think it is icky to frame cheating as cute/romantic/adorable. This is the contentious point.
And when people dismiss that with just “people are homophobic”, “They could be poly”, and “lol, its a story bruh”, I think less of them.
I suppose you have a point that I could just give up on them as a lost cause, but that has never really been my style
Cheating is bad and icky and Joyce/Dorothy are cute/romantic/adorable and I love them for it.
Water is also wet.
You think less of people because of a webcomic? Get your head checked. This isn’t real-life, I’m allowed to like drama
Very ironic statement.
Don’t really agree with all of that, but I do think that “it is icky to frame cheating as cute/romantic/adorable” is a key point that’s lost in a lot of the discourse. For me at least, it’s not “no cheating stories ever” or even “I don’t want the protagonists to make mistakes that cause drama”, it’s how the cheating has been framed that I have an issue with.
…really? Which option on the poll do you think is “haha, you’re only mad because you’re homophobic”?
A lot of poll options are almost direct quotes of individual commenters — like the previous cheating poll was inspired by someone directly saying “I’m not anybody’s mom”.
But there are a bunch of negative options that aren’t silly, and only one that I think is at all hyperbolic, but then, I haven’t seen all the comments that didn’t make it through moderation, so it’s entirely possible that the “graphic bodily harm” answer is legit. Also, 66 people did pick it, though most probably for laughs.
Yes, this is exactly the drama we crave. We’re looking for it to escalate.
But it isn’t dramatic. Two people cuddling in a bed isn’t drama. It kind of seems like what you want isn’t Drama, rather you want a cute relationship.
This is correct.
“Just fan service” or Willis themself wanted to draw it. Willis also recognized that for a good chunk of us, showing Joyce and Dorothy being happy together is an important ingredient in the mess.
Frankly? There would be no mess if they just kissed once and then got immediately caught. There would be no mess if they were never shown on-panel to be a happy couple, if Willis just had them get together and then skipped forward to people finding out and being disgusted and abandoning Joyce and Dorothy, or whatever level of punishment you personally would find satisfying.
That would not be mess. That would be “cheating is bad, so these two got punished for it.” Very neat and tidy.
They have already repeatedly kissed. This isn’t anything new.
It’s already established that they are super into each other. It’s already established that they could be really cute in a relationship together.
This doesn’t develop the narrative. It is just here for a bunch of people to go “Awww”, which is why I called it fanservice. You’re right that maybe Willis was intrinsicly motivated to draw it aside from the fan response, but I don’t see any evidence that it was to help develop the drama for the arc.
And in terms of mess, this doesn’t make things any messier because it adds nothing new.
Okay. I mean, you are entitled to your opinion, of course, but I will continue to think that showing them being happy together and making each other happy is “adding something new” and “developing the narrative”.
And I think most of the folks who are sad about Joe/Joyce think so too, because they spent years being happy together, and no one complained that Willis had already established them as a cute couple, so every additional strip where they’re happy together is redundant.
I mean this update is quite important.
We have them acting like a couple, we have Joyce being wholy open to Dorothy, and we have Joyce accepting herself in being a bit gay for Dorothy.
If this update is not important, then nothing is.
Excellent point, thank you!
But we are talking about different motivations here.
I don’t mind about characters being cute just for the sake of cuteness, even if it isn’t new. Joyce and Joe being cute wasn’t about developing the narrative, it was just cute to see.
This strip likewise doesn’t advance the narrative, but unlike with Joe/Joyce I don’t think “just being cute” is enough because I don’t find cheating cute.
And choosing to make the “cuteness” of the relationship the thing we are focusing on, instead of other aspects of the messy relationship, seems like a weird prioritization.
We could be spending time developing how Joe is feeling right now, setting up for a bigger gut punch later.
But instead the focus is “cuteness” to satisfy the desires of Joyce/Dorothy shippers.
Oh, I disagree, I think Joyce and Joe being cute WAS to develop the narrative. I think it developed the narrative the same way this is, which is why I picked it. Considering that Willis was planning on doing this before they got Joe and Joyce together, I think a lot of their cuteness was specifically to increase the tragedy of what’s happening right now.
As for thinking we need to spend more time with Joe — I mean, did we need to spend more time with Raidah for it to be wrong that Joyce was scheming to steal her boyfriend? That Joe deserves sympathy is the default position, I think. I’m sure we are going to get more Joe POV soon, but I strongly disagree that we actually need to spend more panel time showing how in love with Joyce he is and how much he doesn’t deserve to be cheated on — we did that for three years.
Also, serious question, did you consider Joe and Joyce being cute together something that was being done “to satisfy the desires of the Joe/Joyce shippers”, or is that not phrasing you enjoy having turned in your direction, because of how it implies that Willis didn’t have any authentic interest in their relationship?
With Raidah I think the Joyce situation was handled similarly to when Sarah punched Raidah. It was framed as “kinda wrong” but not something we need to care that much about because the victim wasn’t someone we were expected to care about.
Much like how the Star Wars series didn’t expect us to feel too bad about the people on the Death Star, the emotional impact on Raidah was minimized. She was cast as a villain so in the internal narrative it makes sense not to care too much about when people act poorly towards her.
Furthermore we see how the bad actions didn’t actually give Sarah/Joyce what they wanted. Joyce didn’t get Jacob and Sarah just ended up looking unstable.
Right now, Joyce and Dorothy seem basically set to get exactly what they want. Sure there will be consequences, but they seem willing to make that trade.
—
I consider the Joe/Joyce cuteness to be fanservice as much as I consider this strip to be fanservice. I don’t think the distinguishing feature of fanservice is a lack of authentic authorial desire.
In its earliest sense, “fan service” was for stuff in animes where it would focus on a woman’s breasts or something like that. Would that stop being fan service if the creator genuinely wanted to draw pictures of breasts? No, because “fan service” is about how the content operates within the work, not about authorial intent.
To me, fan service has more to do with including things that are non-essential to the plot because they are pleasing to the audience, regardless of whether they are also pleasing to the creator.
And I don’t actually mind some fan service because it isn’t at all strange to produce content that the audience enjoys.
And yeah, I do think the Joe/Joyce cute content was included because the audience likes to see cute relationships. And I think this Joyce/Dorothy content is included because there is a strong base of people who really want to see Joyce and Dorothy together, and maybe that includes Willis.
To be clear, however, I am not a Joe/Joyce shipper so this isn’t “turning it it my direction”. I thought Joe/Joyce was cute, but I could see a lot of relationships as cute. If it weren’t for the cheating I would think Joyce/Dorothy is cute. I don’t care who they date.
But my point about fan service is a response to the claims from people like yourself that people who are upset by the recent cheating strips are just leaping to conclusions and aren’t being patient for the story/consequences to unfold.
It is not just about “consequences” at some point in the future. It is about how the cheating is being framed. A lot of narrative focus has gone into emphasizing how “cute” they are or how much they love each other.
Framing them as “star crossed lovers” overcoming whatever obstacles stand in the way of their love is gross. Cooing over two people continuing to make the conscious decision to betray their partners gives me the ick.
— “Much like how the Star Wars series didn’t expect us to feel too bad about the people on the Death Star”
This is an interesting comparison? I get what you’re trying to say about Raidah being too much of a villain to be sympathetic, but… we were very much still supposed to see what Joyce was doing as wrong. I don’t think we’re supposed to see Luke blowing up the Death Star as wrong. I think it’s more accurate to say that folks in the decades since that movie have occasionally pointed out that there were probably at least some people working on the Death Star who weren’t any more evil than, say, the janitor at Lockheed Martin.
— “Furthermore we see how the bad actions didn’t actually give Sarah/Joyce what they wanted. Joyce didn’t get Jacob and Sarah just ended up looking unstable.”
Actually, Sarah got everything she wanted — by that point, her attitude was much less “I want Jacob for myself” than “I want to hurt Raidah.”
Where things didn’t go so well for Sarah is that Joyce got hurt, too.
She didn’t actually lose any face with Jacob — Joyce told her that befriending him had originally been designed to get him and Sarah together, but she did NOT tell him that Sarah had been part of the scheme to break him and Raidah up, and she and Jacob just didn’t talk again until after the timeskip, by which point Jacob had forgiven Joyce, and the only negative thing he had to say about Sarah was that he didn’t like being objectified by her while he was working out.
Like, I do keep seeing folks framing the “Joyce and Jacob cheating” arc as a storyline with major negative consequences where everyone should’ve learned a lesson, but… no? Not really?
Joyce didn’t “get” Jacob, it’s true, but nor did her friend group abandon her, and the next time she and Jacob run into each other, he’s perfectly friendly to her.
In fact, the final notes that arc ended on were Raidah vowing revenge that has yet to materialize, and Joe telling Jacob that all Joyce had done was engage in sitcom hijinx, and that someday Jacob was going to regret not being with her because someday she’d be perfect.
So: if anything, I think we are currently heading for more consequences, not fewer.
— I mean, Wordnik defines fan service as “The inclusion in a work of fiction of any material, especially racy or sexual material, which has no relevance to the storyline, but is designed merely to excite the viewer.”
It’s not always going to be sexual, but the association is pretty strong, and most people use it negatively, so. I think you’ll have to clarify that you don’t mean it negatively if you want to communicate effectively.
— “But my point about fan service is a response to the claims from people like yourself that people who are upset by the recent cheating strips are just leaping to conclusions and aren’t being patient for the story/consequences to unfold.
“It is not just about ‘consequences’ at some point in the future. It is about how the cheating is being framed. A lot of narrative focus has gone into emphasizing how ‘cute’ they are or how much they love each other.”
I mean, like I said to Big Z, I don’t think it’s weird to want the story to hurry up and get to the consequences, especially when you aren’t enjoying the relationship, especially-especially when you aren’t enjoying the cheating.
I just think it’s legitimately surprising how many folks are reading what’s happening right now as indicating that there won’t be any consequences, because for me strips like this are so clearly telegraphed as the calm before the storm.
So it’s surprising to hear other readers say what amounts to, “Well, the storm is clearly over, and that sucks.”
The term fanservice sounded more useless the further I read. I guess what you see as “fanservice” I really just do see as part of the story, and also serving that story – because DoA is about people and relationships, and showing people in relationships is part of that. And yes, showing couples being cute is to get the reader invested but I’d call it a fundamental part of romance as a genre & romance stories being told. I get that your issue is that this IS a romance being told because if the cheating and whatnot, but that’s really got nothing to do with fanservice.
Like my issue with the term being used is that it really just sounds like you don’t like what the story/Willis as an author considers “essential” – which is an entirely different point that you are also making and conflating here.
(As an aside – I do think a big part of the backlash against the “typical” fanservice of random boob or ass shots is the inherent sexism and objectification, along with the fact that said objectification doesn’t feel relevant to the story being told about, say, a highschool girls playing in band or whatever. Like idk she’s talking about her guitar, why are we getting a shot going up her legs or whatever. I think that’s at least a little important when applying that to other contexts.)
This is Joyce coming to terms with who she is. It’s part of an arc.
This.
Willis is writing HIS story. What HE wants to write. A lot of us seem to think that we can influence what he writes A YEAR IN ADVANCE.
You are exhausting.
And I dislike you. Please do us both a favor and not engage with me. The less you are in my life the happier I will be.
What narrative purpose? Setting the stage. Digging themselves deeper into the hole.
Want to filk “A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock and Roll” now…
I’ll be honest, I’m annoyed at the fanbase. So many people are obsessed with the cheating aspect, that it poisons any discussion.
Even looking at that annoying survey in the sidebar- Willis seems to think that the only reason someone could dislike this whole plotline is because Cheating is Bad.
Meanwhile, I mostly dislike it because it’s another example of Dorothy having a meltdown, but for some reason this time it’s good??? Joyce has been acting very out of character (not just in regards to cheating), the riot stuff was ham-fisted, the “wedding” imagery was bizarre, and finally, it’s just not fun for me to read.
It’s an annoying feeling. It’s like when you have legitimate criticism of a movie, but it’s drowned out because a huge contingent of complaining fans are just being sexist or whatever.
Things are hard out there for an honest Hater these days. I’m in shambles.
It’s tough! It’s important people be a hater for the right reasons! Not the wrong reasons, which I have defined.
Ya i nearly forgot about that. The protest was really bizarre. Like it really felt like a trailer moment. Like the idea of Dorothy and Joyce confessing while an army is coming at them was interesting but wasn’t that much of a desire to explore any of the ideas the protest was connected to it. At least not with Dorothy and Joyce.
You would almost think the comic strip was about Joyce and Dorothy and not about protests.
That kind of my point though. The protest doesn’t really have any connection to Joyce’s and/or Dorothy’s stories.
Let’s engage with your criticisms.
“Dorothy having a meltdown, but for some reason this time it’s good”
Yup, fully agree with this. I do think it could be resolved satisfactorily if Dorothy recognizes it in retrospect. There would be guilt over how she acted, but also potentially resentment towards Joyce for consistently encouraging them to escalate.
“Joyce has been acting very out of character (not just in regards to cheating)”
In what ways do you think Joyce is acting out of character (aside from the cheating)?
“the riot stuff was ham-fisted”
The riot stuff ended up mostly being a backdrop for Joyce/Dorothy. Which part of it do you think was ham fisted?
“the “wedding” imagery was bizarre”
Yup, I agree with you here, but I don’t think this can be seperated from the whole “Cute vs Cheating” discussion. I found it bizarre and disturbing because it seemed to be framing cheating as a romantic/beautiful thing. It was included because it seems like some of the fanbase, and the author, wanted the cheating to be framed as cute/romantic/beautiful.
If Joyce and Dorothy weren’t dating other people I wouldn’t have found the wedding imagery quite so bizarre. I would have thought it was a clever framing and appreciated subverting the tear gas.
But you want to critique it apart from the cheating so what reasons do you have for feeling it was bizarre?
“finally, it’s just not fun for me to read.”
I think the issue with engaging with this sort of legitimate criticism is that there is nothing to engage with. It’s not fun to read for you… so? There isn’t an argument here that something should be done differently.
Thanks for replying.
For Joyce, I felt that during the last arc she felt very “passive.” We got very little of her internal thoughts, and in hindsight she almost felt like a prize to be won by Dorothy.
Put another way, Dorothy had been having sleepless nights where she came to terms with her attraction to Joyce. Joyce… was mostly having a great time with her new boyfriend and being “close gal pals” with Dorothy.
The joke for the entirety of the strip has been that Dorothy and Joyce’s relationship has been kinda gay, but the assumed truth behind the joke was that it was, in actuality, platonic. Joyce suddenly swept up in this wave of emotion and lust felt… odd, especially since we STILL haven’t really gotten a window into her thoughts.
The riot stuff: It kept going back and forth between being “background stuff” and “extremely important thing that is making everyone examine their moral character.” Sometimes it was simply an excuse for Dorothy to do yet another reckless thing, and sometimes it got Extra Serious like with Carla, or Amazi-girl swooping in to fight riot cops.
I agree with you on the wedding stuff. And while I’m deliberately trying not to focus on the cheating, I do think that framing it like Willis did was a weird choice. It was framed like “yes, finally, these star-crossed lovers are finally together.” Meanwhile, Willis has even said his inspiration for doing this was essentially “You know, I have a bunch of horny teens in this strip and nobody ever cheats, at all.”
Agreed that juxtaposing the concept of “horny teens sometimes cheat” and “finally, sapphic love conquers all” didn’t ring true.
Finally, “It’s not fun for me to read.” I agree that there isn’t a ton to engage with, but it was worth me saying it. When it comes to fiction, I’m a big fan of the quote “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” (Oscar Wilde)
This whole Dorothy/Joyce thing has mostly felt tedious
I like your take Hat. Today’s strip was kind of charming at least, but it’s poisoned by the callousness towards Joe and Walky. This isn’t being swept in a moment of passion, this is pre-meditated and mendacious.
That is kind of how they’ve been acting for a while now. The scene on the stairs was them going “We should stop… Oh wait! Kisses!”.
They know what they are doing. They know who they are hurting. But they have decided to do it anyway.
I think the main thing is that they are avoidant. They don’t want to actually handle the guilt and the consequences so they are avoiding them instead and trying to extend the fantasy as long as possible.
And frankly, I can relate to that. It’s not great, but it’s definitely understandable.
Likely, avoiding the consequences and extending the fantasy will make things worse in the end. Story wise, I like this better. It makes the cheating arc more of a cheating arc rather than just a couple kisses then a confession.
Assumed by who? A lot of readers have assumed that Joyce is as straight as Jennifer. There’s a term for the “joke” being that they’re straight they just act really gay towards each other. That term is queer baiting.
I don’t want to reply to every point, but I need to push back on this line:
“For Joyce, I felt that during the last arc she felt very “passive.” We got very little of her internal thoughts”
You word as if these are the same thing but they are in fact, very different. While we have, indeed, seem very little of Joyce’s internal thoughts, I think it is a tremendous misread to classify her as “passive”.
In the last previous storyline, she was the one who went look for Dorothy at morning. She was the one who proposed “doing laundry” and she was the one who decided go to the protest. And when Dorothy sent her away, she was the one that came back, she was the one who initiated the kiss. And even in the night before, she was the one who reach for Dorothy in bed.
It may be the case you don’t understand the why Joyce did all those things. But it is she who did it. She haven’t been just going along with Dorothy, she was the driving force.
This. I keep seeing folks say Joyce is being passive and that she just goes along with whatever Dorothy says, but like. Where. What comic are yall reading.
I think a lot of readers strongly identify with — well, their own mental version of Joyce? I see a lot of comments to the effect of, “I’d hate it if my friends treated me like Joyce’s friends treat her,” and I think for some folks, it’s VERY hard to separate that from Joyce as Willis actually writes her.
She didn’t hate Dorothy for making that eye doctor appointment or nudging her until she went to it. I get that for some of yall, that would really have sucked. But it didn’t suck for Joyce. If it had, she wouldn’t have let it happen, because Joyce honestly has no problem standing up for herself when she wants to.
They’re definitely not the same thing and I agree she hasn’t been passive, but I still find the lack of insight into what she’s been thinking frustrating. It’s not surprising people have been misinterpreting her.
This one though is completely fair.
FWIW, Willis sees you. They made a BlueSky post the other day to the effect of, “I’m so sorry for all the people who aren’t enjoying this storyline for perfectly good reasons because some folks today are making the WORST arguments against it.” Or something like that.
I read it. Felt rather passive agressive and defensive to me. It made me think a little less of the author, actually.
Okay, well, I don’t think it was either of those things (maybe passive aggressive at the people with the extremely bad takes), but you do you.
People will complain about free content all day long. Where’s the comic you’ve made where people are all perfect?
I’m annoyed at the large chunk of the fanbase that seems to not care about cheating and/or is gleefully cheering it on.
It seems exhausting to be annoyed about other people enjoying something that is fictional and therefore harmless. I’m really sorry you’re dealing with that.
Mmm, I think there’s a quibble here.
I could name a couple of works of fiction that I think are actively harmful (to be clear, I don’t think this webcomic is one) — Atlas Shrugged is the ur-example of “Fiction that occasionally causes the reader to agree with its superficially reasonable but ultimately harmful assertions” — although in general I think a fictional work has to be specifically intended to propagandize a harmful view in order to be harmful.
I have to admit I’m not vibing with the current story direction. While the cheating is the main reason, there are a few others. For example I find it strange that Dorothy getting a big gay realization instead of Joyce. I understand the Joyce attraction to Dorothy has always been obvious so we needed to see that from Dorothy’s side but while Joyce’s attraction to girls has been obvious, her coming to accept that attraction feels like a giant part of her story that got skipped. Like she went from thinking that she can’t be attracted to women because she wasn’t attracted to Becky and not realizing that Bisexuality is a thing to being completely fine admitting her attraction to to Dorothy. There’s a hole there I wish we got to see.
All jokes aside there *has* been a slow drip of incremental things sapping my interest in this story. Hearing that Willis held something that — I feel — was very on-its-face obviously a dicey idea from their sensitivity reader because ‘spoilers’ was a fairly large drop in the bucket, but still just a single drop among many. Really everything about the protest’s framing and inclusion.
(I also don’t like a LOT of bi erasure that’s been ebbing and flowing through the comments since this whole thing started rolling but I’m getting numb to that now. Too tired.)
Add in the sickos/paladins false dichotomy becoming adopted as unironic terminology to sling at the ‘opposite side’ and people taking frustrations they have with some commenters out on completely unrelated parties and this whole things is just a tar pit.
Anyway give Asher a gun, Willis.
Yeah, agreed with everything you said.
Although can you explain what “Hearing that Willis held something that — I feel — was very on-its-face obviously a dicey idea from their sensitivity reader because ‘spoilers’ was a fairly large drop in the bucket, but still just a single drop among many” meant?
Asher should have a gun. Or they should stop talking about his nefarious criminal connections. It’s like there’s a whole “I want to redeem myself from a life of crime!” plotline that’s been setup 5 years in advance, and we just have to be reminded of it once a year for whenever Willis decides to get around to it.
Mostly referring to Willis holding back The Kiss strips from his protest-related sensitivity reader. It let to big chunk of audience being soured by the ‘white women centered at a protest about genocide’, and *that* critisicm is what likely contributed to Willis realizing they needed to do more with their Muslim characters.
That’s, uh, a huge oversimplification of what happened, the sensitivity reader in question is a person who is often in these comments and made it very clear that more than the kiss was held back, that they had a very serious and personal talk with Willis, and I feel like it’s not really fair to use that as rhetorical ammunition. :/
I mean, I didn’t claim I knew *every detail* of the situation. My outline was based on the parts that I knew about.
It also wasn’t rhetorical ammunition. I’m just communicating the things I have been perceiving to some degree or another that are coloring my view on things.
tl:dr its the difference between ‘you’re purposely twisting things to to portray the situation x way’ and ‘you’re missing some context on x situation.’
Yeah, I think I perceived twisting and jumped the gun, mea culpa. Things have not been calm (I am not innocent in making them not calm, because I am an opinionated jackass) and I was like “whoa, hey, most of this is just shitposting that doesn’t matter but that might matter.” BUT. Things are Fine.
also genuinely thank you for providing a bit more of said context for me
Like, honest to God, you can be mad about the cheating, or you can love the cheating, or you can be indifferent to the cheating. I do think there’s some bi erasure being flung around on both sides, and as a bi dude, I Hate To See It, but I also feel you on the being tired part. That’s all valid. I may have gotten very loud about my own opinions, for sure, but at the end of the day those opinions are just the arguments of one loud mouthed jackass (me).
But like, making a point to, I dunno, shame Willis for a very personal exchange that only affected most of us as an audience tangentially (if you have family or ancestry in Palestine I retract this somewhat because that’s a personal investment) via a yucky story beat, but for them and for the person they asked to check this out was intensely personal business? That just feels wrong.
Again, I wasn’t aiming to shame him for anything. His willingness to be open to outside perspectives is very good, actually.
Alright, I may have been reading tone in, as I am wont to do, so that’s good and I will cease my brow-furrowing and genuine concern on this. Thank you for the good-faith responses.
Understandable, it happens. I wasn’t *entirely* joking about the tar pit comment — there’s been a lot of bad faith thrown around on all sides, everyone’s testy. I can’t super blame you.
De-escalation accepted.
What’s happened with the sensitivity reader?
As said to Hat, I was referring to Willis holding back The Kiss strips from his protest-related sensitivity reader. It let to big chunk of audience being soured by the ‘white women centered at a protest about genocide’, and *that* criticism is what likely contributed to Willis being like ‘hey i need to use my Muslim characters more’ on blusky
For helpful reference and not to be a dick:
It was actually a few commenters here pointing out that Willis didn’t have any real Muslim rep in his comic and it was weird to do a story arc (the protest) based in Muslim experiences IRL without actually having any main-cast Muslims.
The sensitivity reader issue was separate but connected via the same plot arc, but their decision to spend more time intentionally on their Muslim characters was a direct response to that exact critique.
Just wanted to be clear with information!
Fair, i was a little muddled about the exacts, (nonmaliciously).
^_^ Easy to get mixed up, a lot was happening at the time.
so sarah didn’t jump in with them???
Look at Joyce actually being smooth for once. Love these two goobers.
Please tell me I need to reactivate my Slipshine account!
Okay a question for data purposes. This is a no-judgment zone, so please people do not bring argumentative shit in here, I am asking this question genuinely and solely of The People Who Are Mad About the Cheating:
Would it be a better story, for you, if we had less Joyrothy moments, less of them as a couple, and more focus solely on the fallout of their actions? Like, you know, in a typical cheating plotline where the focus is on the cheated-upon.
Genuine curiosity, I am shutting up my opinions and listening even if I might think it’s baloney.
I think it’d be better to build up a bit more ominous, like Joe talking about how happy the relationship makes him.
So, more scenes like when he gave Joyce the blanket?
Speaking for myself, that exactly. I was kinda expecting her to break down right there, frankly.
I think we’ll be getting more of them!
Though I do keep reminding myself that this is still the first time Willis has tried to do a messy breakup / cheating / etc, and it might still turn out to be that they’re too vanilla for the real sickos in the audience, and that tomorrow morning Joyce and Dorothy might immediately come clean, heh.
Yes, it would.
My main issue with this has been having so much narrative focus on how “cute” Joyce and Dorothy are. This leaves me uncomfortable because I don’t see any cheating relationship as cute.
Focusing more on other aspects of the story would make me like this arc a lot more. Putting more time into developing the consequences, including just foreshadowing potential consequences, would make this a better story for me.
Oh, I think they’ve been foreshadowed.
I do think I am seeing several people either concerned or very sure that the end result of all of this is going to be “cheating is good, actually”, and every moment we get of these two being cute or happy is more evidence of that.
I don’t think that’s going to be the final message at all, but I do think that, for some readers, Joyce and Dorothy winding up together will still promote that message, even if they suffer a lot of other negative consequences.
And, you know, THAT I understand being worried about, so for the folks who feel that way, I don’t think I have any comfort to offer them.
For me in particular, and I know this seems mean-spirited to some people, I wouldn’t even mind them ending up together if they had some narrative loss along the lines of “most/all of the friend group sides with Joe/Walky and kinda pushes these two to the periphery until they figure out how to make up for doling out the hurt”.
There’s a tightrope there to make sure it’s clear the problem is “don’t kick Joe/Walky in the metaphorical teeth” and not “don’t be gay/bi, date your nice boyfriends and seethe”, although that’s less a “Willis” problem and more a “thankfully a minority of the commenters” problem.
Mm, I mean that’s a valid way to feel? I do think that, as you acknowledge, it would be really difficult to actually do that and not have it accidentally play into the other thing, the same way that even when you’ve got lots of bi characters and you even had one of them say “no, bi people aren’t prone to cheating,” having what are basically at this point your two main characters be both bi and cheat… still rubs a lotta people the wrong way!
(I sympathize. As I’ve said before, it doesn’t twig the trope for me, and it makes me wonder if there’s any way to do a cheating storyline where the characters happen to be bi that wouldn’t still trip over the trope, but I do sympathize.)
On the other hand, I do think there are some readers who will still feel like the cheating is being legitimized unless Dorothy and Joyce break up, and I fully understand suspecting they’re not gonna break up in the near future, so for those folks especially I think the strip is kinda doomed.
And that’s okay. For real. No judgment from me, and full sympathy to people who have been enjoying it since 2010 but now have to stare down a long bleak few years at least of these two being an item.
Ya… Ya, this, pretty much. Been an awful lot of celebrating in the strip as well as the comments when it should be uncomfortable. There easily has been more than three times as many strips making it look cute rather than uncomfortable. And the uncomfortable ones feel like punchlines.
Hey, Josh.
I know we disagree pretty strongly on this, and I know that the consequences Willis has in mind might not be enough, but I really do think they are coming and that what’s happening now is more of a calm before the storm than anything else.
I think writing them as cute and happy between moments of intense guilt is part of the point, that it’s even important in terms of character motivation — if this didn’t also make them both happy, it wouldn’t be something they felt tempted to do — but I do sympathize with folks for whom it’s like nails on a chalkboard.
I’ve said it before, but everything since the leadup to The Kiss (retroactively, I can say I start feeling this around the time of face-touching-in-bed-prior-to-Joe-date) with these two has felt like that one looping animated gif of the truck speeding towards the bollard but never quite hitting it.
“Showing Joyce and Dorothy are really in NRE right now” is fine, wacky failing-to-tell-the-boyfriends hijinks are fine, but I could have done with maybe a week of that feeling rather than on-and-off-over a *checks archives* holy shit the leadup in bed to the cheek touch was THE FIRST WEEK OF WAY.
Honestly, there are strips in here that feel like filler — this is one of them. We KNOW they’re starry-eyed, and it honestly feels fan-service-y to me a bit.
The hypocritical aspect of my gripe here is that I don’t think Joe and Joyce got even HALF as many “we are just being cute together” panels/strips — THEY had punchlines or discussions, none of these lingering moments.
Going solely based on vibes, it feels like Joyrothy has had more strips that are just “these two are in love and figuring it out/enjoying it” than basically all other couples combined, and I’d be happy to have it shown to me that I’m experiencing recency bias.
…and thinking about it a scooch more, I think that’s really my main two gripes — my favorite ship sinking before it even left port, and on top of that the narrative focus of these two FEELS like they’re getting a lot of “they are in love, look at the d’aww!” compared to most other couples getting strips that are solely “together, but moves the plot/drama/punchline”.
Nah, it’s too early for that. I like that Willis is drawing out the fallout even as I also complain I hate them for it. 😛 I don’t actually, Willis! This is me being a sulky fan on the edge of my seat, not any judgement of you!
Really, I was mostly put out by the cheating because of my own ships and because it’d hurt characters I like. Sure, cheating is bad, but as a story it can be great drama. If it were a ship I didn’t care about or weren’t as invested in being cheated on, my reaction would be more like this:
Strip: Guess what happened?
Me: *b word* what happened?
Strip: Cheating!
Me: *gasp* No! Tell me EVERYTHING.
I am both a wholesome lover and a trash goblin that wants mess! I contain multitudes!
Instead of building up to a big triumphant moment like the climax of Star Wars episode 8 I would have preferred a slower build as their attraction went from subtle to overt to undeniable. Maybe with more…self questioning and introspection on…really both of their parts. I really wish the comic time would speed up a bit faster than an arc a day. Things feel like they simultaneously move too fast and too slow. Even if we get a couple weeks of Dorothy questioning herself that’s like…an hour of the exact same day she kisses Joyce. Let HER mull it over for a few weeks. Let Joyce mull it over for a few weeks. The girl who doesn’t like food touching should at least have some anxiety about breaching her boyfriend’s trust. Let time pass a bit faster. I want Walky to date amber but not if it’s a next day rebound like going from Lucy to amber. But if it’s not a one day rebound it’ll take like a year.
I’ve been in their place and it sucks all round but unfortunately sometimes you don’t have a choice. Someone is going to be hurty here, and they could have handled it better, but they are also both still college freshmen and have no real idea how to handle this stuff. It’s better to rip the bandaid off because the longer they put it off the worse it gets
Just sliding along the Kinsey Scale, is our Joyce.
Willis is not afraid to make characters unlikable and that’s a good thing. For Joyce and Dorothy to have a good story about cheating they actually have to, you know, cheat.
The problem is that people still like them. They are doing an unlikable thing but the response (and I would argue the framing) is “Aww, how cute”.
Imagine if someone was punching Joyce and the response was “Damn! Cool uppercut!”.
really enjoy seeing this type of thing. it compellingly shows what about this relationship is fun and nice and exciting for them. These two have fallen asleep in bed together before, and showing them being intimate in a really sweet way helps highlight how it’s different now.
This of course serves a bunch of purposes, but the thing that stands out the most is that it gets across WHY they are both so willing to drop the other people in their life for this. It might be true that joe and maybe even walky give both of them similar things, but at least here, neither is willing to give up the moment they are in right now for it.
I’ll just say that this wasn’t supposed to be a reply at all. I fully left the page and came back later in the day and it still decided to make it a reply to something i’d considered writing earlier
It’s not a problem that people still like them! Characters can do a thing that’s bad and people can still like them!
It is in fact possible to both think that they shouldn’t have cheated and that they’re very cute together. These things can both be true.
And the result, as I stated, it people cooing over cheating. In this strip they are cheating, and one of the main responses is “how cute”.
TW: domistic violence
Let’s go back to my example. If Joe, let’s say, in an out-of-character moment “lost his temper” and punched Joyce, how would you feel about people fawning over how cool he looked while doing it?
Thinking a punch looks “cool” doesn’t mean thinks it was morally okay after all… And they can still like Joe even though he did a bad thing.
I think a few people would say that not least because It’s The Internet
hell I certainly have the urge to let loose with stupid comments in that vein when something bad happens even IRL, even to those I care about or even when something happens to myself
but that’s tangential, more to the point sometimes I like things in fiction that I hate in reality and I think that’s common
also I think that maybe people can for real be doing cute shit together even when they’re cheating? I don’t think one precludes the other. maybe people who’ve cheated are gonna pop up and tell me that it’s impossible but I doubt it
That’s not a problem of any kind. People are allowed to enjoy different things in their stories, and it actually doesn’t impact what the author intended or what you personally take from it at all.
This isn’t a morality play, no one should be expected to hiss at the villains and cheer for the heroes who are all easily distinguished by their color-coded hats. It’s okay for people to be enjoying a plotline about cheating, and to think the relationship is cute.
It’s okay for people to be enjoying a plotline about cheating, and to think the relationship is cute.
It’s me. I’m people. I want to see how long they go without telling their boyfriends they’re making out. I wanna see them get increasingly terrible about it and escalate their affair. I want Joe to start piecing things together without being told, because he knows the signs thanks to his dad, and then wait to confront Joyce about it until he’s sure, always meaning to bring it up and talk it through with her and maybe even give her some leniency since it’s a new relationship or something, but then she tramples over the line before he actually pulls the trigger on the conversation and he has to deal with it in the moment.
Y’know, story plot.
Trying not to be all “the moral panic is coming from inside the house” again, but it does bother me to read so many comments that basically amount to “unreliable narrators are irresponsible”.
Strict rules about framing are for kids’ media. For adults, it’s okay for something problematic ™ to be framed as good.
And I don’t even think that’s what’s happening here — I think Willis is accurately conveying Joyce and Dorothy’s happiness (mixed though it is), and that how all of this is actually framed won’t be clear until the shoe finally drops.
But it WOULD be fine if it were.
That’s not actually a real problem, is it. And not to be a contrarian (it happens), I think if Joyce got hit with a cool uppercut, I probably would acknowledge the cool uppercut. Being judgemental of people based on their opinions of a webcomic, that’s completely worthless behavior.
Good thing no one cares about your moral judgement.
Oh, they are so adorable!
I am living for this sweet gay drama, love them, love the mess this will cause, love the calm before the storm, love how cute they are, it’s all great 😀
Uh oh, am I the trash goblin Amber?
To paraphrase the Cheshire Cat, “we’re all goblins, here.”
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3lvqnyxbqy22x
I couldn’t not share this
I love how the commenters are interpreting it as a curtain rod while Joe is grasping his chest where he has been stabbed.
Has he been stabbed? The blade’s visible (with no blood) on the other side of his hand, it looks very much like he’s just sort of successfully deflecting it from chest-stabbing.
I know it’s a reference to something, but I don’t remember what. I don’t THINK the original image has any actual stabbings happening, but I think there’s tension and the sword placement is supposed to have multiple meanings?
Swords have always had a sexual as well as a violent connotation, after all.
It’s a reference to a promotional picture for a production of Shakespear’s The Twelfth Night, starring Anne Hathaway. It is/used to be pretty common meme template for one’s bisexual/ot3 characters to be applied to, given both the nature of the image and the nature of The Twelfth Night as a play.
The fact that this isn’t common knowledge makes me feel either very old or very online in ways that very little else does. Though honestly maybe it should just make me feel very much like a Tumblr denizen, which I am.
Nah, I’m old! I am officially in my Early 40s now. I just fully missed that production of Twelfth Night. 🙂
Same as Li, I suspect that it’s just because I’m an Old (ugh, “mid-40s” are soon gonna turn into “late 40s”) — now that someone MENTIONED the picture in question, the memory spring into my head.
I love how repressed Joyce just burst like a dam.
That’s really what the claim that she’s acting out of character is missing. I identify a lot with Joyce in that I was raised evangelical and religiously, emotionally, and financially (and sometimes physically) abused by my mother for most of my adult life. After she passed away I gradually became more open about myself before I suddenly hit some singularity point as I realized it was finally safe(r) to be me.
I feel like that episode of Spongebob where the audience are booing Squidward(Jorothy) off the stage, and cheering when Spongebob(AG) is shown.
Queer women being queer together 😍
sorry this is off topic but
re: “SO as i open up Asma narratively, uh, I am quickly going to hit the wall of “oh jeez am I allowed to depict her without her hijab within her own dorm room and other female-only spaces, is that okay, would she be mad at me”
I haven’t gotten any specific answer regarding showing Asma without her Hijab in a girls only space, but this is what Lur (who’s Hijabi) had to say so far:
“my main thought is that if he’s having to hit this wall now that says a lot about how little he’s depicted any Muslim characters
i have noticed that in media, particularly western media (but really, any media not made by muslims), even those who try best at having a diverse range of representation and doing it properly, and that in general do a good job about it and stuff
even in those cases, there’s still little to no muslim representation.
unless it’s a work specifically about something muslim, or muslim characters, or stuff
but casual muslim representation? can’t give you any examples off the top of my head”
It would be great if there is more muslims, here in DoA and other places.
But, I don’t know if it’s true or not, I learnt that some teaching forbides any representation of live things (drawings, paintings, etc.). Maybe it kind of discourage muslins representations, beyond, of course, the usual prejudice we’re used to see…
yeah I just got done talking with Lur, and they had a LOT to say about this, and I came to some rather hard realizations as well
prepare for incoming megapost o3o
i’m piggy-backing off your comment and also sending Lur so much love, i look forward to hearing their takes!!
As a disclaimer, I’m not Muslim personally, I just live in a very Muslim neighborhood and follow a lot of Muslim Opinion Havers online, so these are my observations and thoughts as a fellow creative that should ABSOLUTELY be tempered by the opinions of a variety of Muslims (especially Muslim women, nonbinary, and trans people).
in real life, there is a huge variety of experiences and opinions among different Muslim women and their relationship to Hijab and how they want to be represented in media. since there are already multiple Muslim women, it gives Willis a chance to let these characters represent a variety of attitudes and beliefs in surprisingly subtle ways – through framing, and through fashion!
Maybe Asma is comfortable with other women (including non-Muslim women) seeing her without her Hijab, but Nash isn’t – so we see Asma in situations where she would be comfortable without her head covering, but Nash is never put in those same situations. Maybe Nash wears different styles of Hijab, like a turban styled scarf, that Asma would consider to be going against the spirit of wearing one. Maybe Raidah used to wear a Hijab but stopped after starting college (perhaps for networking/social climbing reasons), while Nash started wearing Hijab when she hit puberty, and Asma’s been wearing Hijab since she was very little. So in flash backs to before college, each of these characters’ appearances could reflect their unique relationship to Hijab.
I’d definitely look into the world of Hijabi fashion (you will NEVER regret it btw there is so much gorgeous stuff out there) to help really bring Nash and Asma to life especially, and to read the critiques and writings of Muslim women to better understand why people (and by extension, these characters) make the choices they do.
Come on Joyce! Here’s your chance to be a genuine gynotikolobomassophile.
Aah-h, Google it.
Today I learned…
I learned a new word!
“Sigh” I am so fucking jealous right now
So I went back strip by strip to revisit the big kiss scene between these two, and noticed there was a new panel added onto it? When did that get there? I only noticed it today. It is funny, admittedly, but I feel like a missed some memo about it. xD
Hey, so there is! It’s a good one, too.
Agreed!
That definitely feels like a post-hoc addition in response to, well… *gestures vaguely at comment section*
For people who want to see but don’t want to go looking: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/live-jocelyne-reaction/
Okay, that’s a fucking funny punchline. A+, no notes.
Usually post-publishing edits leave me cold (glares at George Lucas) but this? This is fantastic. Five bright, shiny gold stars that I definitely did not nick from a kindergarten teacher (and you can’t prove otherwise.)
yeah I understand why Willis retconned this strip, honestly that’s good he did that, but like
*siiiigh*
I don’t wanna repeat myself, but I don’t even MIND that the kiss was at the protest, if only, you know, what the protest was actually ABOUT was talked about in-depth by cast members or their friends and family who were affected by the conflict in “”Bulmeria””
also I have this mega-post about this whole dealio and I don’t even know where to START @-@
Heuy, I liked it, but I don’t know if people will figure it out.
I wonder when Willis changed that, because I only just found out now.
It sure is weird how the majority — not all, but most — of the negative comments about this arc seem to be coming from cis/het men. Wonder what that’s about?
Given that we’re all using usernames and pseudonyms, how would we know? That being said, you’re probably not wrong at all.
I admit it’s mostly based on usernames and writing styles. Vibes, if you will. So take what I said with a grain of salt.
Also sometimes the specific way they word their complaints. And the need to argue with every post they disagree with. Not saying that’s a foolproof sign, but it is very characteristic of a certain kind of dude.
re: “the specific way they word their complaints. And the need to argue with every post they disagree with”
yeah I see what you’re saying, it’s a pattern manifest by US cis/het white dudes on the internet who are either
1. right-wing trolls who use bad arguments as bait to turn the discussion from collaboration into a competition about people one-upping each other for arbitrary points, as though debate is like BeyBlade or some shit
2. white liberals who fall for it, cuz they always assume good faith and don’t like letting bad arguments slide
UK/Canada too, in my experience.
I see, Bryy from around here told me Canada is getting more right-wing, is this true???
I sure hope not, if only because,
*gestures at those of us who may very well become refugees in the following years because of bigotry here*
That does seem to be the case from what I’ve seen, unfortunately. Though they’re still years behind where the US is.
Yeah, lemme know if you decide to head to the Great White North. We can carpool.
I make a point of avoiding such dudes. They do not spark joy.
personally i hate the idea that you are assuming people are cishet men based on “vibes” and “writing style” and other gender essentiallist bullshit. could really do with less of that in supposedly trans friendly spaces.
at least icons (when not assigned by gravitar, which is like the majority) is something people picked for themselves, but everything else is just obnoxious
They aren’t
Thanks for the example.
I mean i’m not a cishet man, i just found that claim weird when I know there are other queer people griping (in various degrees), and i don’t like being dismissed as cishet based on ‘vibes’ so i could imagine the same is true of others (theres at least one transbian)
And i was maybe slightly flip about it.
the majority — not all, but most of the negative comments about this arc seem to be coming from cis/het men
If this doesn’t describe you, then it wasn’t about you, ey?
Sure, sure, only the true scotsmen.
Or like, only the people who were actually being described. It’s a pretty standard formula happening here:
>”Hey, it’s interesting that [specific descriptors] seem to be the ones saying [thing being noticed].”
>”Nuh-uh, I’m not any of those descriptors and I said it!”
>”Okay, then you’re not who I’m questioning.”
>”[Confused RWBY fan noises]”
It happens a lot. If you’re not a cis/get guy being negative about the story, I don’t think June Gloom is talking about you. Like, I don’t even agree with the “most” part of their(?) original post, but I still think it’s odd how many people who don’t fit the description are acting described.
Because it’s worded in such a way that it’s implying “people who don’t like this are [Group I don’t respect the opinion of]. As if to say “They’re only saying this because they are not female or gay or trans and therefore have a closed minded view of the world”. So people feel a desire to step up and say “hey, no. I am one of those other things and I ALSO dislike this. Because me being female, gay or gender nonconforming is, in fact, not the deciding factor in whether or not I enjoy this story. The comment isn’t just stating facts. It’s a criticism. That’s why people are speaking up.
Oh, I’m not confused about the “why”. I fully understand it. I still think it’s odd.
That’s not what No True Scotsman is and you damn well know it. I know there are non-cis men folk who take issue with this storyline. I also do not believe they’re anywhere near the majority. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.
I find it weird how people like you who haven’t been commenting on this comic for months or even years and only started commenting during this current story arc keep trying to claim that everyone who dislikes this story arc must be some homophobic cis/het man, when the regular commenters who dislike the current story arc have expressed why they dislike it many times and it has nothing to do with your ridiculous assumptions.
I have commented on this comic for literally years (under a couple different names, to be fair.) I’ve been reading since Shortpacked!, in fact. I’m just not commenting on every single strip. You can accuse me of whatever you want if it makes you feel better, though, just leave me out of it.
I’ve also been reading Willis comics since long before this one, and I don’t go around assuming people who dislike the current story arc are bigots or something similarly ridiculous. People have said why they dislike it, and it’s mostly the cheating, and some of us also think the protest was handled badly.
No, you instead go around accusing people you disagree with of… what, being outside actors coming in to stir up accusations of homophobia? I’m not even sure what exactly it was you were accusing me of, other than it being total bullshit.
I can’t block you so I’m asking you politely to do me a favor and not reply to me. I’m not interested in anything you have to say, after reading your comments (to me and in general) both from this thread and previous ones.
Well, I’m a *cis* man for sure, but uh *gestures vaguely at enby trans partner of two decades*.
… or people who got cheated. It happens.
I’ve also been cheated on. I still said what I said. Did getting cheated on hurt? Sure. Is this still a fictional story with fictional characters whose arc is yet to be seen to completion? Depends on who you ask, apparently.
Many people, not necessarily from here, can forgive lot of issues from each other. Lot of things. But not cheating.
It’s funny how cheating can have a different weight; and addressing it by the main character is a huge step to bring this to table.
Yes, I’m also talking this as a person that was cheated. Twice.
yes, I’m agreeing with you
I assure you that plenty of women and non-cishet people hate this arc too.
Cool, wasn’t talking about them tho!
You were, though. You were making assumptions about them which just aren’t true.
Was I? because I specifically pointed out that not all of the commenters upset with this storyline were cis/het men. And yet a bunch of people rushed in to say I’M NOT A CIS/HET MAN. Cool, try reading. My point was always that the majority of such commenters are, in fact, cis/het men. You arguing with me only says that you disagree with me about the proportion of mad cis male nerds to everyone else, which you’re certainly allowed to but don’t accuse me of saying something I haven’t.
“huge sweeping generalization about a group of people”
“I do not feel like this represents me”
“Well obviously I was not talking about you”
Like Clockwork. Very frustrating logic that your use of the word Maybe is a load bearing word so that you can claim that “oh I only meant most people so obviously you’re the exception to this sweeping generalization I made” instead of just saying “y’know. Maybe my assessment was too broad and people are reasonably upset that their opinions are being written off as being part of an outgroup as a way to disregard any and all opinions they have.” I just find this kind of argument form to be tedious, cruel and harmful.
Yeah i didn’t wanna say anything because i didn’t want to raise a fuss, but the rhetorical trick really bothered me. “If you disagree with me, you’re either part of the group i meant and should lmao shut up, or you’re not part of that group, so i wasn’t talking about *you*, so lmao shut up.”
I don’t…know how to explain what I feel about it.
I mean, I can say how *I* feel about it: It’s just the rhetorical version of “heads I win, tails you lose”. Just a way to pretend to have won an discussion by dismissing the possibility that anyone could be arguing with you in good faith.
It sure is funny how you just threw out a baseless theory with nothing but circumstantial evidence as a way to dismiss the opinions of a group of individuals who disagree with you.
I mean I was going to dismiss them anyway.
It’s good to know you’re open minded…
About as much as anyone else is in these comments.
It’s been a bit since I’ve seen someone this determined to ruin their own night
It’s wild to me how many people who don’t identify as cishet men are mad at me for a comment I made about cishet men. I acknowledge that there are people who aren’t cishet men who are upset with the direction this story has taken. And I’m certainly not saying they’re not allowed to be upset about the story, within reason. But I do not believe they’re the majority.
It shouldn’t be wild. People are (rightly) pointing out that randomly demeaning an arbitrary group as being the majority who hold an opinion — based solely on vibes — is kinda weird.
Yeah, and people are pointing out that your basis for that is “like, vibes.” So you’re dismissing the “majority”, in your own words, of criticism on this storyline because you assume–with almost no evidence– that it’s probably from cishet men. Blatantly opening the door to dismiss any criticism until/unless another commenter discloses that they aren’t a cishet man.
People are saying your sweeping generalization is unfounded. You were writing a statement about your assumptions on comment origins, not just your opinion on comments from verified cishet men, and that generalization is not a given. And your response to that is just, “But I didn’t mean you!” Fine, you didn’t mean me–I’m not a cishet man, and I don’t like this storyline– but your assumption that most of the criticism is from cishet men is still an unsubstantiated generalization used, in this case, to broadly dismiss criticism because “the majority” must be from a group you don’t want to listen to. That’s what people have a problem with.
Once again I’m learning that people in these comments only seem to read what they want to read and are hella mad at a bunch of shit I haven’t even said, while also being hella mad at me for stuff I even completely admit to. I was just trying to make an observation based on what I had seen with my own fucking eyeballs and for that I get a bunch of people deciding to make everything about them.
Kyulen wasn’t too far off I guess. Shit like this is why I don’t comment that much. Who needs the grief?
You commented like 30 times tho
… yes, today, in one single strip’s comment section, and I got a bunch of responses that I replied to. But I don’t comment every day or even most days. I would have thought that meaning was obvious, but apparently not!
Mmm don’t love the idea of scrutinizing people’s typing styles and using it to determine their identities.
The comment section has been pretty evenly divided in terms of identity from what I’ve seen. Plenty of self-described queer folk on both sides. And that’s not even getting into the fact that “this arc” is still tied up in the protest mess.
Yes there are some comments with queerphobic undertones. Some of them were still made by queer people, because some of us still have that particular type of crap to unpack.
I was already planning on taking another comment section sabbatical but oof.
Y’know, a relationship can start with cheating (which is bad and you shouldn’t do, but also sometimes humans – especially young ones – do stupid shit) and still be lovely and great and happy. And also last for a very long time.
This happens in real life all the time actually.
I really hope that’s what we’re going to see with Joyce and Dorothy. They work really well together and deserve to be happy. Together.
guys, this is because it’s the start of a book. we gotta remind the reader what is going on
I’ve found the perfectest avatar for the moment. Thanks, Willis.
Yes. Yes you have. I burst out laughing when I zoomed in and read the speech bubble.
my wife and i (lesbians) cringed so hard when we read this strip. this would be sexy and romantic when you’re 18 and just found out you like girls. this is extremely second-hand embarrassing when you are like 30 and lesbian married, of course. really encapsulates the sapphic experience.
Them girls gonna find the absolute worst way to get caught. I don’t know what I mean by worst. Hurtful? Embarrassing? Sensational? Stupid?
At least one of them.
okay so forewarning, although this giant post may seem like biting Willis’ head off cuz of some really hard truths, just know in the end I am only trying my best to help Willis make a better story
and in my venture to do that as of recent, have made made some mistakes of my own
so here we go with
RE: “SO as i open up Asma narratively, uh, I am quickly going to hit the wall of “oh jeez am I allowed to depict her without her hijab within her own dorm room and other female-only spaces, is that okay, would she be mad at me”
Lur (who’s Hijabi Muslim) just cuts straight to the chase:
“my energy towards that post is, ‘that sounds like a him problem’.”
I proceeded to tell her about my suggestion to Willis on bluesky to ask Muslim neighbors or friends about this kind of stuff, and shortly afterwards I realized looking back on my suggestion is that it made it seem okay to shift the burden like this when it really isn’t.
“It has that energy of like, putting the burden of it on the already-burdened people, and also that dehumanizing vibe of like oh cool so we’re a walking encyclopedia to you nice. This kind of question is better to be asked to someone you already know and ideally have a friendship with, so that it’s not just “hey, stranger i usually don’t talk to, help me help you for my benefit”
My other friend whose indigenous also once expressed the same kind of resentment about being treated like a walking history museum by white dudes in high school.
Anyway, I regret my suggestion and desire to learn from what was clearly a mistake, if only because, in the first place I just wanted to make a difference in a positive, CONSTRUCTIVE way for once.
Even when we intend to be progressive or mean well, I’m just tired as hell of the typical online cycle where it feels like the only two modes of operation are
1. “spiral cuz the walls are closing in” and
2. “be angry, ridicule and ironically pay attention to bigots”
Cuz like, I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again — when we spend more time trying to win back bigots as opposed to trying to win back minority targets, not only is it unproductive, but it sends a TERRIBLE message. Lur seemed to agree, stating “bigots, the right, etc, may not know how to meme (as people usually mock them for) but boy do they know engagement”.
Hence why I wanted to help Willis sort out the caveats of bringing Asma into the narrative, however Lur made me realize that the problem wasn’t even identified correctly to begin with.
“The message i got from that tweet was
“well he clearly doesn’t have any Muslim friends or this wouldn’t have even come up. So he should probably fix THAT first, and then focus on the comic after”
Like get to the root of the problem. A Muslim Arab friend of mine once tweeted that in the age of internet, living somewhere with a predominantly white Christian population is no excuse for not having non-white or Muslim (or other belief systems) friends.
If you still somehow have no muslim friends? (muslim/non-white/etc.), then usually what that says about you is that you probably haven’t made an effort to be a safe person for them. There’s a LOT of people on the internet, odds that you haven’t engaged with any of them are rare, if you haven’t made any Muslim friends over the internet, well either you subconsciously avoid them or they consciously avoid you.”
(Sobering reminder of why it’s for the best to just NOT argue with bigoted white dudes on the internet.)
I proceeded to tell them about Willis asking about the Showing Asma Without Her Hijab dilemma on BlueSky and getting a cacophony of conflicting answers eventually prompting him to delete it all entirely.
“I GET that he doesn’t want to learn the hard way after the fact, but my honest answer to that would be, maybe make an effort to knowing more Muslim people and show interest in their community FIRST, and THEN represent what you learn from that on your strip, instead of just asking on the internet so you can do A Representation without actually having any interest in the community.”
And I’ll say, as hard a truth as this is to face, is really the best thing to do.
Much better than defaulting to social media as The Default way of sorting this kinda stuff out,
and CERTAINLY better than listening to folk out there suggesting This Great Brilliant Brand of AI to answer the question, to which I be like,
“WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ACTUALLY INTERACTING WITH ACTUAL PEOPLE AND THEIR CULTURES????”
Only to ironically realize, even tho Willis ain’t no AI shill, whether or not he means it he still kinda guilty of this in the same way with his original question, ain’t he?
“Yeah, it seems like he just trying to do the thing of like, being a Good Ally without actually being an ally, if that makes sense.
It’s kind of a cop-out to me because it’s like he not even making the effort to interact with the culture or anything, but just throwing his question into the ether, hoping someone will give him the answer.
He may be an atheist but that sounds a lot like praying! (not just christian praying, i mean, praying in general. still, not a thing atheists are supposed to do)”
To which I say, yeah, it seems that white Christian informed ethnics are once more manifesting in ways we often don’t even REALIZE.
Lur and I thus promptly concluded that Willis’ initial inquiry was framing the problem as a matter of optimizing the task of mitigating guilt.
This also ironically came to light as of recent when Dorothy scheduled apologizing to Asma for being bad at protesting:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/safely/
Like here we already talked about US white folk falling back on what they think is Standard Procedure for assuaging guilt and how it feels “proper” on account of having grown up in a society based on a confessional model.
But nonetheless for Dorothy and Joyce to apologize to Asma this way is something they gonna realize is still a racist thing to do.
“You can’t apologize to one Muslim on behalf of all Muslims, and if that they’d be apologizing to a Muslim who lives far far away from the direct consequences of what the protest was even ABOUT.”
Lur, like myself, was also disappointed that none of that cast went in-depth with how the conflict in “”Bulmeria”” personally affected themselves, friends and family, with but subtle hinting which left readers wondering whether he was even alluding to the Israel/Palestine conflict to begin with, such as Mary’s sign reading “Bulmeria has the right to defend itself.”
Lur laid forth their openly, brutally honest opinion of Willis’ attempted approach:
“Pardon the expression, but just hinting at it is for p_ss_es.”
Like, I can GET what Willis was trying to do.
I said before that X-Men Comics are literally social commentary about the Civil Rights Movement.
But at least Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Leiber had it in them to have Magneto mention the holocaust by actual name.
“Remember back then, when I said “this feels like Willis trying to get the Good Ally points for talking about [Israel/Palestine] without actually talking about it”?
Same energy now. I get that’s probably not what’s happening in his head, in terms of intentions.”
Indeed, I can respect Willis for trying to make the effort to make direct action. It feels a bit awkward but at the same time he’s got an important part down — that directly addressing it in his strip (and openly unapologetically talking about Palestine conflict instead of trying to hide veggies in brownies kinda approach) is necessary, cuz the first step is moving past the notion that the racism problem is one which will just automatically fix itself somehow if status quo in media, etc is left to run a “natural course”.
“To quote the Fresh Prince, “He a little confused but he got the spirit!” XD
I appreciate that he’s trying, I just think he’s trying from the wrong angle. Don’t try to represent a people you know nothing about and then maybe learn about them! Interact with those people and THEN represent that —
like there’s an alarm in me that goes “okay but why are you trying to represent something you don’t know about”
We can both agree at this point that as much as it’s disappointing to not see the protest be at the time anything more than a background decoration for white girls kissing, well
“I mean, I’m kind of fine with it in the sense that you can’t cover everything in depth, it’d end up a mess, or if you do try to cover everything you’re probably end up glossing over most of it. And this webcomic, as much as some part of it is also kind of an ensemble cast work thing it is still ultimately about Joyce. Disappointing? Yes, but also, I get that’s not really the point of the comic.
Of course that does bring the question of “well then what’s the point of mentioning it” — but he *technically* didn’t, because Bulmeria isn’t real LMAO”
And that’s pretty much all either of us have to say about it for now.
TL;DR don’t throw a question out into the social media ether about Muslims and just hope for good answers — make an effort to actually interact with the people and their culture first and THEN represent that in the comic.
Like of course that’s gonna take WORK, but like let’s face it, progressive politics are ALWAYS at this natural disadvantage to conservative ones.
In the end, it will always take a relatively large amount of time and effort to be factually and morally right, for the sake of social progress and a more equitable society.
By contrast, it will always take a relatively small amount of time and effort to remain wrong, but nonetheless be satiated with quick answers and quippy rhetoric which FEELS as though it’s correct and absolves guilt and amends sense of self-worth regardless of what’s actually true and morally right.
Good post, and I have nothing substantive to add to it, but quick point of order: Magneto’s origin as a survivor of the Shoah was not established by Lee and Kirby but by a different Jew entirely, Chris Claremont.
“And we know that there’s small minority of Muslims in Western countries who would take such an affront as just cause for violence.”
…
get the fuck outta here dude
There’s a small minor of white people who would take the Slipshine of Mary masterbating as a call to violence.
I can do this, too.
I have a better idea —
the Report Comment button WORKS
for fucks sake, Islamophobia in our country is already bad enough without bullshit like this posing as intellectualism or some shit
don’t interact with bigotry — contain it.
dang 687 comments?!