and I don’t want to hear anyone complaining that she took the Bulmeria news in stride but had a big “what” moment over Becky, but we know that down there will be a comment thread ripping Joyce and Dorothy apart for… 1. being gay. 2. “cheating” 3. “hurting their boyfriends” 4. existing. 5. IDK insert some other thing here, they have done a lot, still not ok with the one who flagrantly used “whore” (whores get paid baby) ~<3
[Insert rant about white obliviousness here, I’m tired and nearly lost my mind from being bedridden on top of the giant dumpster fire that’s been 2025]
after further diagnostics they prescribed me Cefalexin and an anti-inflammatory ointment, been on them for 2 days now, while it still hurts like hell at least the redness seems to have gone down, progress?
In any case after I'm done healin imma treat myself to a big, big, BIG mug of Irish Coffee (-_-)
Is Joyce particularly aware of it?
She doesn’t seem averse to giving a shit…
I think Becky is highly likely to be much more on her mind.
Isn’t the obliviousness Joyce obliviousness rather than white obliviousness?
No person, not you or any other, cares about every happening thing they ought to care about to the degree that it should be cared about. A self abrogation exceeding by many times the entirety of one’s identity would be required.
Hey, AI buddy, give me a definition for self abrogation.
Self abrogation can be defined as a willful and often systematic undoing, canceling, or relinquishing of one’s own claims, rights, responsibilities, or defining traits, such that the self treats its own standing or authority as null and void.
Core meaning
In this sense, self marks the subject as both agent and object: the person is the one who performs the abrogation and also the thing being abrogated.
Abrogation here echoes its legal sense—“to repeal or annul”—but redirected inward, so the person symbolically “repeals” elements of their own identity, commitments, or entitlements.
Difference from self-abnegation
Self-abnegation usually means denying or subordinating one’s interests or desires for the sake of others or a higher ideal, while still presuming a stable self that is being denied.
Self abrogation, by contrast, implies a more radical move: instead of merely denying desires, the person invalidates their own status as a claimant or authority, as if canceling the very basis on which they could assert or protect themselves.
between technicians having to correct its mistakes post hoc every time people hurt themselves with pretend knowledge on the news to maintain it’s veneer of reliability, environmental caveats, etc
the very IDEA of AI as anything close to a viable source of helpful information is just plain BATSHIT STUPID
it’s like if the world’s most experienced librarian suddenly decided that their experience SORTING BOOKS somehow automatically makes them a reputable authority on absolutely EVERYTHING
but really, to actually get the most out of a LIBRARY, all you really need is basic fucking information literacy and DIRECTIONS TO THE RIGHT SHELF D:
it aint need no fucking rocket science, it aint need no insane amounts of electricity, it aint need no catastrophic environmental damage, it aint need no bourgeois bastards to milk for massive amounts of money
I think a running issue for Joyce is that she is **VERY** laser-focused. I don’t really know if she’s demonstrated an ability to focus on anything grand-scale for any length of time versus what’s immediately pressing for her.
I kind of think a lot of it is a byproduct of how much hypocrisy she had to swallow when she was in more fundie circles, and something she’s having to deconstruct in her own brain.
You’re hating on a 19 year old freshman in college for taking more notice of something directly affecting her best friend over something happening a world a way she can’t change. I’m sorry but that’s asinine. By your logic, none of us should focus on anything but the absolute worst things going on in the world. Joyce is allowed to care about Becky, and she’s allowed to do something about it.
Acting like Becky is still her bestie after the teargas wedding is a stretch.
Though she IS the only one either of the girl’s has given a rat’s ass about (other then themselves) since the tear gas… so maybe they can just thruple up.
She cared about Becky when she gave her a place to stay and did without so they could both eat on her meal plan. She cared about Becky when she punched out Toe Dad. Nothing in the story has changed those feelings. How you feel about one person doesn’t change the way you feel about another.
See, that’s the problem with writing a genocide into the comic’s timeline – now every character has to be evaluated, on some level, along the axis of “do they give a shit about this genocide that their school is involved in?” Most of them don’t!
Yeah, it’s not like she went to a protest about said genocide and wound up on the front page of an article about said protest. It’s completely irrelevant to Joyce and what she’s done, even though her response to someone criticising her about her actions at the protest was to say that she was ‘heroically gay’, which is a weird thing to claim when you don’t care about the protest.
Okay well
1. She didn’t attend the protest, she went to find Jocelyn to warn her about their dad, Joss was at the protest so she went there. If she were at a chuck e cheese she would’ve went there instead. Dotty was the only one who actually tried protesting, tho in a weird self centered “this is absolutely not about the protest” kinda way
2. Saying you’re “heroically gay” has nothing to do with a protest against genocide. It’d make sense if the protest were related to queer rights but it’s completely irrelevant to this one. It was a weird thing to claim in general.
Joyce did not care about the bulmeria protest and iirc, hasn’t really said shit about what the protest was actually for, just stuff surrounding it. I don’t think she’s a bad person for that, but let’s not kid ourselves here. She’s not some heroic ally to [heretofore unnamed genocided group], idk if she could even point to bulmeria on a map. The protest was incidental to her actual goals and actions
“Heroically gay” was a weird thing to say at all, but saying it was only tangentially related to the protest. She said it in response to Raidah telling her the photo would make her unemployable. IOW, to Raidah using homophobia against her.
She also seems to have realized it was weird and walked it back, talking about stolen valor and how real gays are heroic figures fighting oppression like Becky.
You’re responding to a Doylist critique like it’s Watsonian. This is not actually about Joyce in universe, but about external writing decisions made by the author introducing a volatile element into the story that retroactively renders the entire cast suspect. As Mitzi puts it, now that we know a genocide is taking place in universe, every character now has a “do they know or care about it?” sign above their heads that was not there before, and would not be there if not for its inclusion.
You can have a genocide in your story, but the story should then probably be about that, or if it’s a backdrop, it should reveal major things about your characters.
100%. Joyce is nothing if not completely and deliberately ignorant of anything she isn’t focusing her undivided attention on, and making her the “white person who doesn’t actually give a shit about politics that don’t directly affect her” of this couple to contrast against Dorothy’s “white person who gives a shit but is really bad at it” is, despite being incredibly frustrating to read, an interesting decision that has me wondering where it’s going to go.
I actually have way more hope she’s going to be eating humble pie on this attitude sooner as opposed to the cheating thing, which is likely going nowhere soon, if at all.
Everybody wants to be “heroically gay” until the rubber bullets start flying.
(Only semi-related but if anybody is looking for a shred of hope about the merits of organized resistance, the new documentary WTO/99 is really fascinating)
Honestly, I barely even see Acher4’s posts because they’re never worth engaging with — they seem to exist solely to try to ineffectually troll the Doyce-haters.
A character flaw shared by basically everyone commenting here. Why waste time and energy on a webcomic comment forum when there’s an actual genocide going on? This shouldn’t even be nearly as important to any of us as Becky is to Joyce and apparently that should pale in comparison to genocide.
That goes into the question of “what can people actually do about the genocide” both in real life and in the strip. In real life, I assume most people in the comments are doing what they can. In the strip, I have to assume a lot of them don’t care.
This is what I’ve been wondering about. The structure of this strip seems like it HAS to be intentional. So if more Asma & Raidah representation is really all Willis added, people were way overboard with how much they accused Willis of not being aware that DoJo were being clueless at the protest.
On the other hand, the edit to the kiss strip that lampshades the issue suggests the opposite (IMO that was totally unnecessary; I blamed that moment on the characters not the author and didn’t find it out of character at all. I think Dorothy realizing after she saw what Daisy did was perfectly reasonable if not above-average level of wokeness for 18 year old white girls from small town Indiana.)
Just curious: has there been a time – in ANY of our lifetime – that there has NOT been a genocide happening somewhere in the world? I was a pretty globally oblivious kid (grew up in an even more restrictive, fundie background than Joyce), and only vaguely remember hearing names of countries I couldn’t find on a map having “troubles.”
But for the most part, well past my twenties, if I heard “genocide,” I could only picture something Holocaust related… And certainly had no clue how I could ever possibly do anything about it, even though I hated the concept that this could be happening again somewhere.
There’s some time or intervention needed to learn how to rewrite the fundie code/script/programming that “global affairs” are beyond our control or influence. “The hearts of kings are in the hands of the Lord” and all that.
…was everyone else with any integrity, ethics, morals spending every weekend changing the world? I’m genuinely trying to figure out what the appropriate place on the spectrum is, since I have trouble sometimes understanding what makes a middle ground acceptable rather than tending toward one extremely or another (AuDHD here… Not exactly known for doing anything by half measures)
It could be psychosocial numbing, the brain has a defense against feelings of helplessness.
Proximity to a tragedy will also affect reaction to it. Genocide in another country isn’t as shocking as a single murder happening next door, for many people.
Also, as a support worker to adults with autism, most of my clients will not car at all about the war but will be devastated by a tv show being removed from Netflix. I wouldn’t consider them flawed.
Do we need one of those? I would like to cackle manically sometimes… but my inhibitions do not let me.
I do like that something has rattled Joyce out of her “I am with Dorothy, and we had sex and nothing else matters” mind set.
One other point is that I personally kind of hoped that Jennifer would be more firmly in Walky’s corner, I just feel like someone should be. But maybe it was a vain hope that Jennifer would be that person. (And I do not mean that I wanted her to yell at them or anything like that)
Unrelated: typing with a cat on your shoulder who thinks your hair is a cat toy is not that easy.
Jennifer needs notable proximity to other cool people to maintain her veneer of social importance. That’s it. She cares about Walky in an underlying way, but she can’t be seen caring about Walky, because he’s a loser and a dork. Now, she also can’t be seen with Dotty and Joyce, because they have dork-coded themselves. Jennifer cannot engage sincerely on any level with anything, because proximity to uncoolness threatens her standing in the social hierarchy, and that’s the only thing propping up her black hole of an ego.
I’m cautiously optimistic that the plot will start moving with these two soon after this strip
Still think we should check in on some other characters, when was the last time we saw Danny? he had opinions on cheating that could make for some good drama
Based on a post Willis made on social media, showing a bit of a comic that is supposed to come out next October, the situation won’t be dealt with by even then, as Walky still glares are Joyce when they pass in the hall. (If could be for an entirely different reason, they have been messing with eachother for a long time). The social consequences will probably still be going on for another year of the comic unless Walky was pissed at her for another reason.
We saw danny in a bonus strip recently if I remember correctly.
To be honest this strip is fine but given the pacing so far I’m just wondering if we’ll get at most 2-3 strips about this before throwing in more ‘cute’ moments.
I do not find them adorkable. Im not even sure why Jen finds them adorkable. Its like its trying to insist that theyre hecking cute cherubs and they just ain’t imo.
Yeah it feels like the comic constantly has to say that we are supposed to find them cute. It reminds me of shoujo mangas where everyone makes the main couple the center of everything. It feels unnatural.
That’s because the way they’re written ISN’T adorkable, but Willis REALLY wants you think they are, so he constantly mentions it. Ironically, that just makes them less so.
I think the intent is pretty clearly that they’re adorable, but annoying. That even made sense yesterday, depending on how you read the facial expressions.
I’m not fond of that intent, but it’s hard for me to deny it at this point.
To me it feels like there is a very strong ”You WILL find this cute, dammit” spirit here. I’d give Willis more benefit of the doubt, but their social media posts are depressing the heck out of me.
yeah but they aren’t your self-inserts. if one of the characters was your girlsona, you’d obviously be more biased to seeing them as…whatever it was you wanted to see them as, lmao
I dont hate this but I am exhausted over the fact becky is the focus of all the good fallout when we have 2 other perfectly juicy threads just being completely abandoned
Yeah it feels weird that Becky is the second or third most important person in this break up. Are we going to have to wait 2 story lines to get more on what Dina is thinking? Are Joe and Walky going to get to do anything without Joyce or Dorothy being around them? Is anyone going to stop Joyce and Dorothy from being pathologically avoidant towards their exes and their actions, or are we going to suffer through this for several months?
See, I’ve never seen the point in going into so much depth with what ifs. The story has already been written and will unfold in its own time. After 15 years I’m happy believing Willis knows what he’s doing. Your experience may differ.
We do have the titles of the next 4 storylines in the archive page. Guessing one is going to be about/involve Dina is easy when one is called “What a RARR! Mood I’m In”, and the rest is based on the comic going 2 months without Joe twice in a row and being avoidant being Joyce and Dorothy’s main issue anyway?
To be fair, Dorothy and Joyce caring about Becky over others is very consistent with their characters, it’s just…this isn’t the drama I wanted. Becky was going to be upset regardless of how we got to this point, it was practically a foregone conclusion.
So, we’re stuck with “consequences because how dare you be gay in public” and “consequences because people have feelings you can’t control”, but nothing for “consequences for the actual decisions you deliberately made knowing it would hurt the people you were with at the time.” Maybe this is a bit pessimistic, but I don’t think anyone in universe actually gives a shit about the cheating.
I still feel like far too many characters in Joyce and Dorothy’s friend group seem way too willing to tolerate their shitty behavior lately, offering only token criticism if they even bother to criticize them at all. It seems particularly odd to me that Jennifer is so ok with this, since Walky is her long-time friend and one of the two characters they cheated on when they got together.
Also I really don’t think Joyce and Dorothy are the right people to try to fix the problems caused by the school newspaper coverage of them kissing at the protest, partly because they didn’t really seem to know or care about the message of the protest when it was happening, and with how badly they’ve been acting lately I don’t trust them to not somehow make that worse.
And I don’t find them adorkable as a couple at all, mainly because of the already mentioned shitty behavior during this storyline.
I don’t think Joyce and Dorothy are the right people to fix the problems caused by the school newspaper coverage because *it’s not their problem to fix.* Daisy is directly responsible for all of that and has gotten off functionally scot-free for it. A couple strips of Raidah getting upset at her does not even begin to cover how fucked up the cover nonsense was.
If Joyce and Dorothy do anything at all, I want it to be directed solely at the lady responsible for the situation in the first place, if for no other reason than them being forcibly outed on the cover of the paper against their will, which at BEST was an incredibly crass and rude of Daisy, and at worst actively jeopardizes their safety. I’d much prefer that angle to one about the protest, because to be honest, none of the people I’m talking about in this comment are equipped to discuss it.
That’s a good point. Daisy is the one who chose to make the picture of them kissing the main focus of the newspaper story about the protest. So if anyone should be trying to fix that problem, it should be her, and also the people who organized the protest. Certainly not the two women who only showed up to the protest shortly before it was forcibly ended by the cops.
Nope. If life hands a platform of fame and/or privilege, even if by accident then good morals should move you to use it for good. Celebrities can endorse cancer research even if they aren’t doctors and don’t have cancer.
You do not have the moral responsibility to represent a movement you’re only tangentially involved in just because someone puts a photo of you on the front page. It’s not like that magically gives either of them any actual knowledge, influence or power to change anything.
What platform does Dorothy even think they have? It’s not like reporters have knocking on their doors, trying to interview them.
Apparently this is fine, but my longer comment engaging in reasoned criticism was too hot so got reported to oblivion. I’m sure Willis can take a bit of pushback y’all
I used to think so, but the bluesky posts are worrying. They seem to be digging in his heels, and actively mocking a significant proportion of their readers.
And I don’t find them adorkable as a couple at all, mainly because of the already mentioned shitty behavior during this storyline.
I don’t get what these two things are supposed to have to do with each other. They are ador(k)able, and they’ve engaged in some highly questionable behavior. ~:-|
That’s one of the great old divides in fandoms in general:
– these people are doing bad things, and I can’t like them in any way because of it
vs.
– these people are doing bad things, and I like them MORE because of it.
I’m annoyed that Jennifer just wimped out and said “adorkable”.
I don’t really remember a time where Jennifer wasn’t at least a LITTLE bit snarky, even about things she was enjoying, and she’s clearly not enjoying this.
Why is she politely bowing out about something that annoys her? That doesn’t seem like a very Jennifer (or Billie) thing to do.
There was recently a whole plot line where Jennifer acknowledged (to Ruth) that she’s repeatedly been unacceptably and unjustifiably mean to Joyce, and yet Joyce keeps giving her more chances at friendship, and that she feels bad about that.
Also, Jennifer has a general soft spot for romance between girl besties, and Joyce helped specifically her make amends with Alice. The last strip shows this in the smile she gave when Joyce and Dorothy were kissing. She evidently thinks they’re cute when they’re not being obnoxiously loud about their relationship.
It’s possible, but if so it’s an unfortunate time for that to show up. It comes across as a weird part of DoJo’s story rather than a natural development of Jennifer’s.
I really am once again wishing that Willis hadn’t decided to handle criticism of the Doylist elements of their work (the authorial choice to use an analogue of a real, important protest as a backdrop for their OTP getting together) with Watsonian bandaid solutions (their Socially Conscious(tm) character handwringing about the in-universe optics of snogging at a protest).
Like, there is a threshold where the desperate scrambling to retroactively fix the plot trajectory to make it Not Problematic just makes it worse. Especially since snogging at a protest is not the actual messed-up thing that Dorothy and Joyce should be making amends for in-universe; it was actively going against the directions of the protest leaders and endangering the people around them because Dorothy chose someone else’s hill to (very nearly literally) die on whilst in the middle of a destructive downspiral. But that part doesn’t even get touched upon – as far as the narrative is concerned, it’s all about how Dorothy and Joyce took up newspaper space with Dat Smooch.
Like, the schmaltz and lack of social graces and disregard for the people actually wronged by the cheating makes me annoyed at the characters. This is the element that makes me annoyed at the author, and I really don’t like feeling that way.
I think saving Becky for last was a good call ‘cuz that’s going to be more important to Joyce and she may not even be paying attention to the stuff about the protest if she’s focused on that. At least now the political stuff is on Joyce’s radar.
This. It was a tactical deployment of facts from a woman who knows her paramour very well. You can’t let them hyper-fixate before you finish the list, or in practice, you didn’t finish the list.
I’ve been told numerous times that the public wants consequences for the cheating, not consequences for being gay which both of these issues Dorothy mentioned are.
What do they want the consequences to be? We’ll see how the Joyce/Joe talk goes when it happens, and Walky was literally just a replacement partner while Dorothy struggled with her desire towards Joyce.
I’m sure it’ll get explored further but they haven’t murderered anyone. Don’t remember seeing fucking Asher get this much hate despite being partly responsible for the kidnappings.
I think at the very least I think people want them to feel vaguely guilty about it. Because Dorothy just seemed to be relieved to not see Walky while Joyce is squashing down any emotion that isn’t ’yay Dorothy!’.
They are vaguely guilty about it. Dorothy being relieved Walky isn’t here is pretty telling. Of course Joyce isn’t gonna be guilty about Walky, they’ve had beef since they met and Walky teased Joyce about this for months (years).
And again, Joyce clearly felt shitty about Joe, but as Jennifer herself says, they’re still on their honeymoon period. They’ll have time to calm down and examine their mistakes.
I personally don’t know what people really expect by consequences exactly and I don’t think it would actually be as satisfying as people think to see Dorothy or Joyce being chastised and criticized at every moment of their fresh romance, but I do think it is valid to complain that most of the direct fallout so far has just been for them existing as a gay couple. That’s just kinda fucked up.
The only real fallout over them being gay is Becky. The other part was stealing the spotlight at the protest.
And the Becky thing was a long time coming. Joyce being bisexual was always gonna happen and it was gonna end like this unless her bisexual awakening had been with Becky herself.
It’s a nitpick, but I’ll disagree. We’ve seen before that Daisy is quite sensationalist. IMO a Joe/Joyce kiss def also runs.
But even if I’m wrong, Daisy ran the kiss because of her thirst, not to sensationalize gay panic or anything. Which is to say, even if Daisy wouldn’t have run a J/J kiss, a similarly-thirsty straight editor would have.
So IMO publication of the photo was sensationalism and/or happenstance.
But TBF that’s semantics because *consequences of* publication will certain involve it being a gay kiss. Hank was pretty cool about it, but I’m sure we’re not done with that issue.
Does the picture even get taken if it was a hetero couple? I mean yes it would still be a kiss at a protest but I feel like a hetero kiss is more likely to get ignored or even tossed out in film or editing, it just isn’t as sensationalist.
Can’t reply to you again for some reason Nono, but strong disagree. It’s an extremely visually dynamic scene, with the contrast between people in love and tear gas falling. That’s literally an image you submit for a Pulitzer or Pacemaker. 300% chance any photojournalist still captures that scene and their section editor still fights for it, if the couple is straight. Only debate is whether Daisy still agrees. Source: was photojournalist
I can’t speak for everyone, but I didn’t want polemics. Y’all make it sound like people have been calling for DoJo to get expelled or something.
But Walky’s own sister and BFF not being able to muster even “mildly icy to DoJo” after he’s come so far on standing up to their parents for Sal and was so good about being there for Billie during the Ruth fiasco, that doesn’t sit well with me.
I expect messy interpersonal drama as the consequences of a “cheating arc” put in for the sake of having a cheating arc, because otherwise why are we even bothering with this?
Beyond that I expect some hostility towards Joyce and Dorothy from people who care more for Walky and/or Joe and even from some people mostly uninvolved but who dislike cheating, because that tends to happen with immature judgemental teenagers. Jacob especially I feel would wind up saying something harsh or just avoid her from now on, because he was already judging Joyce for the whole fake girlfriend thing and Joe was the one defending her.
Yeah I feel like that’s the buried lede here; the fact that Joe has like, 2 friends at most, and Walky has none (at least, none that aren’t directly connected to the problematic situation) is an issue complicating matters. They are, for the most part, forced into a position where they have to handle this on their own, unless 1) Walky decides to be bold and vulnerable with his sister about it (hahaha) and 2) Joe decides to do the same with Danny and Jacob (I think this might actually happen!)
On the other hand we’ve been shown a few times that Dorothy is bad at connecting with most people and Joyce is wildly uneven outside their tiny social circle. We can safely assume Danny will side against Dorothy after telling her cheating isn’t a bi thing and Joe getting dumped, Dina doesn’t much like Joyce at all, Amber prefers Walky to both of them and feels bad for ruining his relationship, Amazi-Girl probably has strong opinions about cheating, Ruth will approve of Doyce but possibly with reservation, Carla will say yay lesbians and not care about details, Ethan will probably say something judgemental, Jason is inherently a wet blanket, Booster will point out why they’re wrong and encourage them to make more drama, Roz might have feelings about cheating, Charlie won’t notice and Alice would love the goss.
Who else is there?
I do think Danny might say something on his own initiative though, since he has a dynamic with Dorothy already and there’s no way he thinks fondly of Joyce refusing to acknowledge him.
Literally anything noteworthy and, importantly, unique to the cheating. As in, fallout and interpersonal drama that is directly connected to and only exists -because- infidelity happened, that would not exist otherwise. That’s all I’m asking for, personally. To be specific, I’m not interested in running Joyce and Dorothy through a humiliation conga line; I’d actually like to see Joe and Walky have some serious crash outs (in the case of Walky) and breakdowns (in the case of Joe), leading to character development as a result of these relationships crashing and burning around them. Of course, that would require the comic to stop focusing on Joyce and Dorothy for five minutes, which isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.
(I would also have liked it to have been given equal narrative weight to the Becky stuff, but I’m confident that ship has sailed, so I won’t hold my breath.)
My biggest criticism of this plot development has been that the cheating is so meaningless and perfunctory that removing it from the plot would change very little about the outcomes we’ve seen thus far. None of the social or personal consequences Joyce and Dorothy are experiencing are connected to their infidelity, and none of the other people (directly or indirectly) affected by them getting together have anything about their reactions to distinguish whether or not the cheating actually mattered to them, which leads one to question the purpose of the cheating if it isn’t affecting anything or anyone in a distinctive way.
Then we get into the pacing discussion, where the back and forth always devolves into “we’re taking too long to get to the good bits I want,” met with “let Willis cook/the cheating fallout will come eventually/etc.” and thus the comment cycle of the last several months repeats.
Yeah, I feel like pacing is the core of many issues here. I have no doubt we’ll get to these plot points eventually and for now Willis is just allowing the cuteness to happen.
Well you see, Asher is interesting af. Bro was trying to escape the mob, he got pulled back in. Is he in in now or is he still in out, how’s he gonna handle the stealing grandpa’s money thing? How is Ethan gonna handle it when he finds out Asher’s involvement? Does Amber owe the mob because of Asher? Does she owe Asher directly? How is Asher gonna use his knowledge about Amber being AG? Is he going to turn good or turn to evil? Isn’t it obvious why this is considered a character people want to see more of with a large part of it being *because* a guy seemingly trying to reform himself went and called out a hit?
Doyce has like… one interesting thread potential left because the cheating consequences have all been glossed over so much. Which is if Joyce decides to cheat on Dorothy with Joe. But if she’s just decided to ghost him, there is literally nothing inherently interesting left about this ship and all potential consequences for cheating will have evaporated into thin air. Everything they do plot-wise will be new and unrelated, which makes the cheating feel wholly pointless. Not saying they can’t have interesting stories together, but literally every interesting avenue for drama about this ship that couldn’t have been done better with more time and actively visible pining has passed or been glossed over.
If Joyce impulsively sleeps with Joe next, I’ll admit that is interesting. If we are finding out she just follows her desires, and avoids talking about things afterwards, that is actually something.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Asher and am waiting the inevitable drama that’ll come out of the reveal he helped in the kidnapping, but so many people have been dunking on Doyce on the premise that “how dare they cheat” as though it was the biggest moral failing anyone could ever have when, well, we got a dude who helped kidnap like 6 people.
interesting how even in strips that were written before the Asma Patch*, the plan seems to have always been for these two to grapple with the ramifications of making themselves the centerpiece of the protest, rather than just leaving that act as an unexamined good (like people were assuming would be the case when that storyline was running)
once again feel vindicated for Trusting The Process
*since the Asma Patch seems to have just been interweaving plot threads for Asma and Raidah into the existing Book 16 storylines (plus or minus shuffling existing strips around to account for them), this strip is probably running with the dialogue that was originally intended for it??? idk i’m not psychic
Just reading the comic you can tell Willis has at least some knowledge of activism and periodism, so doubts that it would never get adressed were unfounded.
Oversight on giving a voice to the people who were actually a part of the protest is still worth some internal examining.
Were the Raidah strips also added afterwards? Raidah’s confrontation with Joyce seemed important, but the strips where Raidah finds out about the photo were also Asma strips.
The motivation for adding in strips was to correct a lack of Muslim representation in the comic, it makes sense that he’d include both existing Muslim characters in the extra strips rather than just one
Yeah it’s wild how some people theorize Willis is changing plans in strips in reaction to how people react to certain events in the comic. Dude’s got a 10-month buffer, there’s a strong chance whatever people are complaining about is something he’s already made a strip addressing but we won’t get to see it for like half a year.
I think there’s an element of Trust the Process but also if you drag out a resolution too long there’s just the risk of people being dissatisfied enough not to tune in.
Like “okay yeah the first seven seasons are terrible but once you hit season 8 it’s amazing!”.
Of course people are going to speculate on that, Willis said that strips were being inserted. That gets people thinking about what could be inserted, removed or changed no matter what Willis specifically says.
What platform Dorothy, 99% of the readers of the newspaper don’t even know who you are, jfc you’re the worst you’re so silly I love you lol. I don’t think Daisy’s gonna have an interest in doing a follow up interview (or if there’s even a market for that, it wouldn’t be front page news regardless). Sometimes it feels like you just say the most correct sounding thing in the moment regardless of if it’s an actionable thought.
Also, yay! Finally gonna get more Becky checkups? Maybe Joyce starting a fight with Dina entirely on accident by trying to get her to make Becky feel better/blaming her because Joyce and Dina get on like bleach and hydrogen peroxide?
It’s understandable though.
They did become the face of the protest, displacing attention from the actual message. It makes sense to feel like they somehow be able to use that to make up for it and redirect the attention, but like you say, getting the front page photo doesn’t actually give them a platform or any influence. It’s just the distraction.
It’s an interesting point where Dorothy never believed in God and has no context to be able to give comfort to Becky for losing her faith. She also doesn’t probably consider religion to be ever a good thing so it makes the situation extra awkward because Becky losing her faith would be a positive to her.
So she’s stuck with no comfort to give.
Joyce might understand Becky’s thing but all of the things that make her atheism positive for her are things that will never work for Becky. They fundamentally do not think of it the same way or interact with it the same way. For Joyce, it was an authority, for Becky, it was a strength against it.
I don’t think so. Dorothy’s not some Reddit atheist who thinks all religious people are stupid and tries to fix them. She understands full well why religion was important to Becky, and the comfort it gave her. And that the loss of that faith isn’t fundamentally a good thing, especially because Becky at least since coming out hasn’t been the kind of person who used her religion as a cudgel against others. Becky’s faith has actually been a pretty good model of what faith SHOULD be: Something that enriches your life, but you don’t use to bring down others. It can be a good thing in the world, and it was clearly very important to Becky and a big part of her own identity and something she used to get by in the very fucked-up life she’s been living. The idea that Dorothy thinks Becky losing her religion is a good thing doesn’t track with me.
Does Dorothy think religion is never good?
I never got that impression from her.
That seems more like how first day atheist Joyce’s style was than Dorothy’s.
I’m thinking more of the fact that Dorothy is a eighteen year old who has no experience with religion. I try to think of Dorothy as very idealistic and very naive and conflict adverse. She knows religion was important to Becky but she was like, “But that should make Dina like you MORE!”
Which is why I think she’d think of it as a good thing.
The Dina part is just because it’s a comic strip and gotta slip in a joke somewhere. Almost anyone who knows Dina and how much she dislikes religion could have made that comment, I don’t think it’s specific to Dorothy.
Dorothy has plenty of experience with religion. For one thing, it’s basically impossible to grow up in the US without experience with a very specific religion, but for another she was raised vaguely Catholic and she’s Jewish (so I’m assuming is at least passingly familiar with that). She’s also a nosy thing, so there’s basically no chance she hasn’t looked into a ton of religions. It’s really not like religious people keep their beliefs a secret (by and large) so most atheists have a lot of experience with it whether they wanted to or not.
Also… she was right about Dina?? Dina herself said that should have made her happy but it didn’t.
I partly agree with you, and think that Dorothy would be able to offer some comfort and understanding, but I still do not think it is the same as when it comes from someone who went through the same thing.
Like someone with a life changing illness, yes a lot of people can show understanding and offer some sort of comfort, especially friends/family and that is very important. But talking to someone who went through the same, still offers additional perspective.
Didn’t say it would be the same, but I’m responding to someone who said Dorothy would have “no comfort to give” which is just blatantly incorrect. Please be mindful of the context of my replies, thanks.
Right. In the abstract, Becky losing her faith should bring her closer to Dina. It’s not actually that which broke them up, but why she lost it. Or why Dina assumes she did, if there’s more depth to this than just “can’t have Joyce even though she’s into girls means God doesn’t answer lesbian prayers”.
Yeah I’m with Vivvav, being atheist doesn’t inherently mean being unempathetic toward people who believe in a religion. It just means you don’t personally share those beliefs. It’s perfectly within an atheist’s abilities to offer comfort over the loss of something important.
I disagree, strongly. She was never anything but understanding of the fact that Joyce believed. The only pushback she ever gave was where Joyce’s belief was creating unhealthy issues in her life/self-confidence/etc.
I’m not saying hostility, I’m saying she doesn’t have experience and lived in emotional connection to religion on the issue. But, hey, maybe she’ll show a deeper understanding of this than I expect.
And, again, I disagree strongly that having a religion at some point in your life is a necessary component for empathizing with and comforting someone on the loss of theirs.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but would the difference between sympathy and empathy be applicable here?
By my understanding, sympathy=understanding someone else’s pain, kind of in the abstract, while empathy= feeling that same pain (with the connotation that oftentimes the person feeling empathy has experienced the same thing in the past).
In everyday use, the two are very often synonyms but I think here there’s a useful distinction. Dorothy can very much feel *sympathy* for Joyce and Becky’s falling out with their church, but she’s going to have more difficulty with the *empathy* part simply because she lacks that same lived experience.
It’s like how I can sympathize and do my best to help my father in his recovery from a double bypass over the summer (he had a *bad* autumn health-wise but is slowly improving now!) but as someone who’s never been under general anesthesia or had a truly major health scare yet (*furiously knocks wood*), I have no idea what that experience was actually like.
No, I don’t think that distinction is helpful because I disagree that you need to have lived the same experience to have empathy for people. I have empathy all the time toward people who are living wildly different lives and experiences than I do.
I’m very happy with my point of view on this matter.
My apologies. I didn’t intend to change your mind, I was aiming for trying to parse how CT Philips was talking- that, if I’m getting them right, they feel like Dorothy is showing sympathy and not empathy. I should have made it more clear that I’m very much not trying to say that this is any sort of definitive interpretation of Dorothy, just my perspective, rather than how I wrote it which probably came across as being more definitive than I intended.
Based on my own life experience, the way I differentiate sympathy vs. empathy comes down to “I’ve been where you’ve been, friend” and “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, but I’m sure it sucks a lot” in terms of how I offer comfort. I like to think the intent behind the two is largely the same.
And, for whatever it’s worth, I’m all done with this conversation. Getting dragged down into semantic debates about what this or that REALLY means is so silly when my point was “people who are not religious can comfort religious people and it’s nonsense to suggest otherwise”.
I didn’t intend to change your mind, I was aiming for trying to parse how CT Philips was talking- that, if I’m getting them right, they feel like Dorothy is showing sympathy and not empathy.
Based on my own life experience, the way I differentiate sympathy vs. empathy comes down to “I’ve been where you’ve been, friend” and “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, but I’m sure it sucks a lot” in terms of how I offer comfort. I like to think the intent behind the two is largely the same.
Dotty has never done or said anything to imply she’s anti-theist like say, Dina is. She’s a very live and let live type. And honestly considering her background she probably has an appreciation for religion as a source of comfort and community for people. The Dina comment was because she knows Dina is anti-religion, not because she herself sees it as a good thing
They really are adorkable and I love it. Not looking forward to more protest stuff, though.
Honestly, it would be pretty cool if somehow hooking up with someone caused a third party to renounce their religion. I would probably brag about that for the rest of my life. Not cool in these specific circumstances, though.
…I mean, do they really have that much of a platform as a result of The Kiss? Like yeah, both Becky and Joe recognized them in the photo, but at least a few people who know Dorothy (e.g. Daisy, Prof O’Ryan) completely failed to notice that it was her.
You act like Dottie will not get up on The Snowpile with a bullhorn and tell everyone she is the Lesbian Kissing Bandit, and then try to spin some kind of speech about how lesbians aren’t as important as a genocide, leading the Becky into drop kicking her while screaming that lesbians are the most important things ever, while calling Dottie a home wrecking hussy.
Also FWIW I don’t personally think Joyce isn’t meant to care about the genocide here, I think she’s meant to be seriously considering how to possibly leverage what notoriety the newspaper coverage gave them to try to raise political awareness of the genocide. She thinks it sounds doable.
That’s kind of the linchpin upon which the last panel joke hinges: that she’s much more at a loss about how to fix Becky losing her faith and breaking up with Dina than a political crisis.
(I’m not saying anyone needs to find it funny! Personally I am already cringing a little at the idea of these two trying to leverage “LEADERSHIP” to raise awareness for a genocide…… babies. Babies, pls, seek help on this one. This is a textbook “use your privilege to pass the mic” moment.)
Joyce doesn’t care about Bulmeria. I doubt she could point it out on a map unless its nearby a certain other famous beloved country by the religious. Like a lot of Americans, it’s just…out of sight out of mind.
I think she will learn about it, though, and become politically active.
Well…… like I just said, I think she does care about it, because her being indifferent to the genocide in Bulmeria would ruin the setup for the joke in the last panel.
If you want to have a semantic argument about it not being possible to care about an issue while also knowing only “there’s a genocide happening there and genocide is bad,” fine, but I think there are levels of caring, and that Joyce being at Level Zero would, again, ruin the setup for the joke in the last panel.
If Willis had wanted the message to be that Joyce doesn’t care about Bulmeria at all, I imagine she would’ve just said a blank and quiet, “Oh,” instead of looking thoughtful and committing to helping Dorothy fix the mess.
But based off what we’ve seen Joyce doesn’t really care much about it. She’s like “oh yeah sure, I can manage that.” Because it’s something Dorothy wants to do.
When Raidah confronted Joyce directly about it, Joyce just said that she deserved a medal for being heroically gay in public.
Dorothy at least feels guilty about taking attention away from the message of the cause. Joyce doesn’t really seem to care at all, which she doesn’t have to in the abstract, but when your actions are related to the issue at hand feels like she should.
Except Raidah didn’t really confront her about it. Raidah didn’t mention genocide or Bulmeria. She told Joyce that kissing a girl on the front page of the paper would make it hard to get a job. That’s the context for the “heroically gay” line.
Like, how’s this: I’ll give you that Joyce’s level of caring is probably a bit vague and impersonal, which will become less vague and less impersonal as she learns more about the conflict.
But “not caring about a genocide” generally implies actual indifference, not just “ignorant disapproval”.
I don’t think it’s bad thing in a vacuum that Joyce doesn’t care that much about Bulmeria; like, most of the cast don’t care about it. But most of the cast weren’t at the protest, and while they didn’t plan to be in it, the two of them being part of a high-profile picture that hijacked the message of the protest means they’ve had some hand in the movement. So they kinda do have to care about it, a little. Because they’re not bystanders anymore just by being at the protest.
Could be how Asma gets wrangled into the arc more. Dorothy realizes they may be a bit clueless, asks Asma, and Asma is all, “…USE YOUR PRIVILEGE TO PASS US THE MIC AND LET US SPEAK AAAAAAAA”
Would also be a good Raidah moment, though, to reinforce the somewhat shaky but still visible throughline of Raidah not actually being a villain, just an antagonist who really dislikes our protagonist.
While I doubt Willis would go this direction, I could see the campus wanting to use Dorothy and Joyce to take attention away from the subject and making it heroically gay as a way to throw Bulmeria protestors under the bus.
Oh, like a lot of 30 Rock jokes, it suffers in the telling because a lot of it is down to character delivery and some of it is extra funny because of who’s saying it, but the particular line is a bit where the Tracy Morgan character reacts to the news that NBC canceled Law & Order.
“But why?! Why?! It was a tentpole! A tentpole……!!!”
Huh. A tentpole, like as in a pillar of support that holds the rest of the TV show lineup together? Like an anchor?
I still don’t see how it applies to this strip.
…Is it like, Joyce is saying that Becky’s Christian faith and her relationship with Dina are foundational constants of Joyce’s present community?
The idea was that that particular TV show was carrying NBC on its back with its reliable ratings, and I think the alt text joke is basically that Joyce’s reaction is not unlike Dorothy’s — “the only stable couple” in the friend-group.
I think a more apt joke would be quoting Buffy’s reaction to Anya and Xander’s breakup (she had similarly pinned her faith in romantic love on the two of them), but I don’t think Willis is as familiar with Buffy.
(I tried to find a clip, because I feel like the performance would be genuinely helpful context due to the sheer vibe of it, but eh. 90% of the 30 Rock that exists on YouTube is unfortunately 20-40 minute long compilations of funny moments. I’m sure it’s in one of them, but I just do not have the time, Fff.)
Okay, I’ll be nice. This is more of what I want out of this plotline, and it does make me confident that Willis has actual real tangible plans to address all of this.
From what others have said, it appears to be a reference to what we used to call a “television show”.
I cannot confirm, as I never watched that particular one.
Look, the Joyce / Dorothy protest involvement is unsalvageable. The issue was never “Dorothy and Joyce took over the vaguely alluded to genocide protest.”
The issue was David Willis wrote Dorothy and Joyce taking over a protest that is directly copied from a very real protest, about a very real, ongoing genocide and used it as a prop.
It was gross, insensitive, and thoughtless then, and continuing to have the characters used to make that mistake be the centre of “fixing” it only continues to emphasise the shortcomings.
We do not know who is being genocided or why – except we do because it is based on a real thing.
None of the characters cared about this protest to even be aware of it until it appeared whole cloth, so they look woefully ignorant or callous.
And, from a very meta POV, Willis has only posted once in support of Gaza – a single post on Tumblr years ago. It is incredibly easy to post links to fundraisers, ways to contact government officials to protest etc.
Of course nobody is obligated to do so, and I am aware that such things could have been seen as performative. But they do and have posted about other political issues.
They could have posted under the protest comics themselves linking to stories of the real IU protest, and links to humanitarian orgs to support the Gazan people. That would have been some acknowledgement of the reality of the real life events they were using.
Instead publicly Willis’ only interaction with a literal real, ongoing genocide has been a single post many years ago and to use a real protest about it as a prop wedding.
And I would love to be corrected, but Willis has never actually apologised for it.
They have talked about not using their Muslim characters sufficiently, and vowed to included them more. Okay, sure. But will they be included well or as an offset for white guilt?
And that is not addressing the complaint at all that a genocide protest should not have been used at all. Again, it has been some time since I’ve looked at their socials so if they have subsequently apologised please let me know.
There is a vast gulf between “I will include more Muslim rep” and “I understand that using a real anti-genocide protest as a cutesy backdrop was incredibly tasteless and tone deaf at absolute best.”
So seeing that Dorothy’s mission is now to correct their “taking over the protest” in universe is exasperating.
In universe I’d be fine if they were on the front page of the school paper, a few people at school got annoyed by it, and it was never mentioned again.
Because this issue can never be answered in universe, and every attempt to do so only says to me that the criticism – over the choice by the author not the character actions – was not, in fact, understood.
yeeeeeeeeeee.
You are totally lost in your own fanplot there.
A college webcomic, had the backdrop of a college protest.
The story is and has been way too on the nose and important of how the characters are “learning” of the obvious evils of the goverments.
You are trying way too hard to colour the characters and the writer as bad people for not explicity in every corner say that there is a genocide in Gaza.
College protests in College storylines have been used hundrends of times in every other media.
Why do you want so hard to make “this” specific one, your moral superiority moment?
I think Gotthammer is right, because the issue isn’t the college protest happening at a college, it’s that the college protest is based around an actual issue currently going on (but with webcomic dressing to make it slightly different) and the focus was less on the protest (what it’s about, who is affected, what’s happening) and more on yaaay the two girls kissed yaaay. I mean, bottom of the line, you gotta admit having the tear gas imitate a wedding is… a bit tone deaf? I mean, I get it, love through war and all that, but when it’s a protest the characters aren’t even that affected or informed on, it does become genocide protest curtains behind the girlies making out.
The protest as written was basically identical to a real protest at the real university about a real issue. If it was a generic protest then whatever, but it wasn’t. If an author draws parallels to a real world protest they’re gonna get people making judgements on that and what the author is trying to convey by those parallels.
If an author literally uses a real protest event down to the location and cause, but just changes the name of the people being genocided, they’re gonna get people analysing why too.
It’s basically identical except it’s actually about Syria which had, to my knowledge, zero protests on American university campuses. It is somehow two different things at once but also actually about zero things
In April 2024 there was a protest about divesting the real Indiana Universtiy from Israel because of the Palestinian genocide.
This protest was an encampment, which subsequently was broken up after the university changed its rules to forbid them. Police snipers were deployed around the university.
If it’s meant to be fictional, they shouldn’t have completely copied the events of a real protest occurring around the time they wrote the strips.
The protest could have and *should have* been about LGBTQIA rights that are under attack and still are in the US. It would’ve followed up on the political stuff involving Becky from last semester, would’ve been WAY better for the Doyce arc, and wouldn’t have been tone deaf. The only reason to make the protest about genocide was to mirror it to the real life protest at IU and it was a terrible story choice imo because it brings up a LOT of problems that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. It literally would have been perfectly fine if the protest had been about rights instead of genocide.
I think you’re right in that making the protest be about queer rights would have made for a better storyline. Using a distant atrocity that none of the main cast seems to care about creates some thematic deadweight. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, not everything in a story needs to be connected to its themes, things can just exist for background colour reasons, but stories are generally better when they have stronger thematic resonance. This would have achieved that while maintaining the same general plot beats. I think the audience and Willis himself would have been happier too.
That being said, I don’t think the storyline as it stands is bad, I’ve been liking it so far, but I do see the room for improvement here.
Carla is the better (frankly the best) avenue for this conversation, the protest and love story was absolutely not. Carla, Robin (for having supported such policies in the past), Jason (same reasons as Carla given his dad is rich and comically outright evil), etc. Nothing Joyce and Dorothy actually do outside of actual hardcore volunteer work will ever seem like anything beyond lip service to the topic. Especially Dorothy who, bless her heart, is just too liberal for this conversation [see her talking about a platform they don’t have.] The plot will have to move on from Bulmeria eventually, likely before the real life Palestinians and in universe Bulmerians stop being genocided. And then it will have all seemed performative.
Carla’s story can have an ACTUAL resolution and an actual deep discussion about things. Of the rest of the cast, only Dorothy cares about Bulmeria. Billie won’t and won’t be made to, Becky can’t right now, Joyce doesn’t and probably can’t be made to, etc. And without specifics on the Bulmeria situation (for example: is Asma Bulmerian now?) it cannot be discussed in depth. The Israel/Palestine discussion does not stop at simply stopping the genocide and if it does then a genocide will happen again.
Basically this is not a situation where someone can dust their hands off and say “there, there’s a ceasefire, we stopped the killing, we’ve saved Palestine” and walk away. There is so much groundwork that needs to be done for any form of lasting peace. I’m not educated enough on the situation to understand where to start, but I know that far more will have to actually be done. And nobody in this comic would have any better ideas where to start than I do.
Agreed. It would have been more thematically cohesive, it would have still been topical, and it wouldn’t have come with all this baggage that Willis now has to either tiptoe around or find a way to clean up.
The content of the protest matters. This *isn’t* a generic college protest over two-ply versus one-ply toilet paper or whatever else you’d see in a sitcom. This is an obvious and blatant allegory for actual campus encampments protesting the genocide in Gaza. It’s so blatant that trying to deny it feels actively insulting.
I reiterate my belief that Willis did nothing wrong and has nothing to apologize for. Real life public events are valid background for fictional storylines. The plight of the people in Gaza is not worsened in any way, direct or indirect, by his choice to base Indiana University’s Bulmeria divestment protest in Dumbing of Age on Indiana University’s Gaza divestment protest from real life. Nobody, not one single soul, has had their attention on the situation in Gaza diminished by Willis choice of background event.
I think the problem is that Willis can only make it clear that Bulmeria is NOT palestine and that will only exacerbate the issue.
Because the problem is fans want more attention to Palestine and Willis wants it to be absolutely clear he is not going to be using RL conflicts as props because this is about a fictional one being used as a character journey.
And that is the thing people are taking exception to.
Which, again, goes back to the problem with continuing to make hash of it in the story.
Here’s how I feel about it: it was an awkward misstep with unfortunate implications Willis didn’t catch. That’s something that happens and we all can move past having learned a little something for next time.
But…so long as this plot thread *keeps showing up*, “next time” is never going to get here, and the plot being so prominent to the story makes it basically impossible to “move on” from since, you know, it’s still there.
I don’t want Willis to go back and rewrite the past…god, 6 months? of strips. But they absolutely can and should, at the very least, take a look at the strips that haven’t been published yet and change them.
It’s about “how should questions about a story be addressed- from an in-character or ‘craft of storytelling’ perspective?”
Watsonian means in-character, after John Watson, a character in the Sherlock Holmes stories, whiel Doylist means ‘craft of storytelling’, for Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of said stories*
Most of the time folks here are *very* Watsonian- we nitpick, analyze, and break down character motivations to be like “why did they do that?”
* I obviously don’t want to presume you don’t know either of those names, I just write like that LMAO
Arthur Conan Doyle is the writer of the Sherlock Holmes books, which are narrated by Watson.
Doylist means it’s from outside the diegetic world of the story, something metanarrative.
Watsonian is something diegetic, a part of the story.
Doylist problems are those of writing, of narrative choices, what the author has done. Watsonian problems are problems of the narrative, regarding the characters as they exist diegetically.
It’s not just that Watson is the narrator, it’s that in-universe, he’s the one writing the Sherlock Holmes stories. So the question of Doylist vs. Watsonian is the question “Who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories?” If it’s Watson, then you’re taking a perspective from inside the universe of the stories. If it’s Doyle, then you’re taking an out of universe or ‘real world’ perspective.
Thank you for putting all the criticisms I’ve been carrying about this entire plot device in one post. The Bulmeria genocide is a rotten apple, an albatross around the strip’s neck, and everything since the “wedding” (I am still, still, still repulsed by the utterly tasteless use of tear gas as sakura) has shown that Willis has been struggling to actually internalize why what they did was wrong and tasteless. Hopefully they listen to you here!
And you’re right, they should have at minimum been using their platform to spread greater awareness and facilitate support for the people of Gaza who are facing very real genocide. It’s kind of ironic that Dorothy is talking about doing that here in light of the fact that when the protest was going on, what Willis chose to plug instead was the Patreon where you can go and give *them* money. It struck me as crass at the time, and this post has really crystallized for me why that was.
I literally almost ended by calling it an albatross around the story’s neck lol.
And I don’t think people realise just how much the strip copied from real life. It wasn’t that there were protests in general, the exact events of a real 2024 protest at IU played out with the encampment, the rules changes to make it illegal, the snipers, and the police breaking things up.
Copying things that closely, but not bothering to name the real victims students really got brutalised by the police for was, I will charitably say, a grave misstep.
Sorry accidentally reported you. Fat fingers.
Anyway my issue is moreso knowing how long the buffer is actually hurts it even more because as recent as these events feel they were even MORE recent when willis was drafting those strips. Which just adds an extra layer to how uncomfortable the inclusion makes me feel.
I actually never realized how exactly it tracked to precise real-life events that happened in the real university in which the comic’s universe is based, around the exact time and place he would have been writing those strips in his buffer. That’s so much more damning than I initially realized, like what the hell?
Doubly so, because, wasn’t the whole point of starting this comic, that Willis needed a strip that they could write freely without being keyed-in to current events and culture? Picking up a real-life conflict wholesale, and crowbarring it fully into the narrative, seems like the worst idea given that mission statement.
“The issue was David Willis wrote Dorothy and Joyce taking over a protest…”
Really? They marched in, kicked out all the protesters, and loudly announced that this was about being gay now?
Or did Joyce impulsively kiss Dorothy after the cops had already broken up the protest (literally, in some cases), and happened to get photographed doing so? So far, the only people we’ve seen aside from the 19- to 20-year-old kids involved who thought their kiss was the salient image here are one extremely thirsty campus newspaper editor and one extremely weird professor who purports to teach “leadership”.
Everything post the kiss regarding the protest has focussed on the kiss. This strip has the characters literally saying they have become the faces for it.
So yes, Willis has written them as having taken it over.
I think I found out what I feel about Joyce and Dorothy finally being together. They can be so HONEST with themselves and each other, so open. It is freeing to me, a huge relief and a big bite of serotonin.
I don’t think it’s facepalm worthy. Dorothy has a lot of people’s attention on her, she thinks that attention should be elsewhere, and being the one who has it puts her in a position to redirect it. Of course, most likely what will happen from attempting to do this is she brings more attention on herself, because that’s what happens when you have a spotlight on you. It takes a lot of finesse to redirect attention like that, and Dorothy doesn’t have it, but she also lacks the experience to know that. It’s very hard to do nothing when you want to do something.
When you’re on the cover of a huge university’s newspaper people know your face. The public knowing who you are is a platform. You can do something with that.
I can see a possible timeline where they say “Hey, we’re the idiots who were making out in tear gas for no good reason. We weren’t even there for the actual protest, so can you maybe look at that instead of us?” and then someone finds out they both had boyfriends at the time and they become the victims of a targeted misogynistic harassment campaign over that instead, diverting even more attention away from the allegedly-important issue.
yea but we’ve seen continuous proof that literally nobody outside their immediate friend group recognizes Joyce and Dorothy. A guy who sees Dorothy presumably 3x a week, didn’t recognize her, after making the picture his entire lesson plan. They just weren’t that identifiable, because their damn faces were mashed into one another so completely.
Exactly. Even the editor who put the picture on the cover and works with both Dorothy and Joyce didn’t recognize them. What platform does Dorothy think she has? If she has a message she wants to convey, how is she going to get it out? I don’t see how they have a platform at all.
If you promise someone to finish a conversation, it sort of becomes your responsibility to honor the promise. Nobody made her promise anything, she could’ve asked for a few days to think or just said no outright. She specifically said she’d come back and have the conversation after the emergency passed.
Yeah, Joyce’s grace period ran out on in the morning. At this point she is purposely avoiding Joe because she doesn’t want to have the conversation she promised.
Hopefully joyce can pull her “unexpected but welcome” moments of clarity and speaks to becky.
Because tbh, and maybe this is harsh becky is kinda going on wjth the whole “friendzoned” mindset atm in terms of joyce.
She justified it before as “oh she can’t like me, she’s not gay!”
And while complex emotions are a thing and not invalid, she’s letting her lingering affection for joyce detract the actual friendship which was the base for it all.
Which I’m hoping joyce gives her a Frank talk, because they do love each other, but more to love than romance.
Here renounced is a verb, so it is the action Becky took to stop believing in God, the result of that action also being losing her relationship with Dina.
That’s pretty much what it says. Becky renounced God, that renouncement broke up her and Dina. Dina is jealous and hurt that Becky has such strong feelings about her former crush. The logic that Becky thinks there is no goodness in Heaven because if there was, Becky and Joyce would have gotten together romantically, doesn’t sit well with Dina. It makes it sound like Becky thinks getting together with Dina was a bad result.
So far, Dorothy hasn’t really elaborated on those details so Joyce is also confused.
It sounds like Becky didn’t really elaborate on those details either. I’m not sure how much Becky has even worked through the details to herself.
And I do think there’s a lot more to it than just “here is no goodness in Heaven because if there was, Becky and Joyce would have gotten together romantically”, though that seems to be how Dina took it.
What “platform”? They don’t have a fucking “platform”, they have an excuse to commit cannibalism (not in a euphemistic sense, fuck off) and get away with it. Nobody cares about the Bulmerian genocide. It’s not important to anyone we know in the cast. It’s as valid a disaster as the little news tickers in Plague, Inc. that say things like “Thousands died after forgetting to drink water. Joyce and Dorothy can eat any of the other human characters in the cast and excuse it with “They were supporting the Bulmerian genocide, pass the ketchup” and it would be 1:1 morally equivalent with their trip to the beach.
I really hope they use this as an opportunity to make the university a villain wanting to suppress attention on the Bulmeria protest. I am really intrigued with it as long as they keep it nicely divorced from the RL subject.
No, that doesn’t make any sense and would be boring even if it did. It’s much better and more in-character for Joyce and Dorothy to eat human flesh in a spooky basement.
She had her government-mandated 15-minute impulsivity break, and now she’s back on the clock, Dorothy-ing as hard as she can to solve every problem on Earth in order of perceived importance. Now that there’s Shit Going On, she has to revert to her prior coping mechanism, which is being Miss Fix-It about everything.
Sadly, a human did not draw that image with their hands as far as I can tell. It appears to have been AI generated using an app called Idyllic, which is likely why you’re not getting any answers from them.
Found through reverse-image searching their pfp, so take with a grain of salt bc it’s at least a little possible Idyllic stole the art to promote their app.
Having an AI generated avatar in the comments section of a webcomic is hilarious. You do know that the general fanbase for that kind of thing generally likes looking at human art and will see you as a fucking dork for using the slop machine, right
I literally just used Google to search for “black anime girl pics” and snagged one at random. It’s something I’ve done since I was a teenager in roleplaying forums. I didn’t really give it much thought…
Just, “ooh, this looks nice. I’m gonna save it then crop it and upload it.”
Hey that’s a way better response than when I called someone out on using obvious ai for their grav. “I cant afford to hire a real furry artist yet” or smth, weak ass excuse
As funny as Jennifer is when she’s wrong, I like her best when she’s right. This comic is great because it’s both! Joyce and Dorothy are super adorkable, but Jennifer is wrong when she says she doesn’t do adorkable, because she has totally been an adorable dork on multiple occasions.
…what’s that thing, where an author will insist something is true, and keep having characters comment on it, in an attempt to tell the audience what they’re supposed to feel?
(And from JENNIFER, of all people?)
Also: the protest thing was awkward. We all agree. Move past it, don’t spend another few months focusing on it, PLEASE
“We seem to inadvertently be the face of the Bulmeria protests…at this one university, in this one town, in this one state. There are many, many other protests occurring all over the country and also world”
It makes sense for Dorothy to take that “Our photo displaced the real message” and have that lead to “So that gives us a responsibility and a platform to do something about it”.
It just doesn’t make it true.
It’s so infuriatingly JOYCE of her to deeply regret the indirect couple that gets broken up by their actions, but the other two people she knowingly hurt are merely uncomfortable to think about and a bonus, respectively.
(confetti) Consequences! Even MORE consequences then being unable to share the new life experiences and intimacy she’s discovered with people she cares about who would be receptive because the way this relationship started was messy!!
(puts hand to my ear) sorry im being told this is Definitely Still Not Enough because they’re daring to prioritize. Yes. Joyces lifelong best friend whos dad got killed after trying to kidnap everyone she knew and her to do corrective christian dad control issue shit, like, in the last year. And her relationship, which Joyce adored and seemed completely stable, being Bad.
(yes I remember joe and walky exist. I promise I remember. Perhaps That Will Also come Up, Eventually, Since Everything Can’t Happen At Once)
Apparently, the only acceptable consequences of this whole mess are for everyone on the campus to spend three days yelling at the girls, then shun them both for all eternity, with maybe a side dish of Walky and Joe throwing rocks at them as they leave the university in disgrace. Everything else has been dismissed as “not enough”.
Jeez, when my first wife moved in with her boyfriend, I just spent some time moping, then met another woman and moved on with my life. (Hard part was finding her in order to serve divorce papers – she told people I was some sort of abusive monster, so nobody wanted to admit to knowing where she was. Had to settle for finding out where she worked, then sending someone else in to drop the papers off.)
What “everything else” are you referring to? So far the only in-strip consequences for the cheating have been “mild disapproval, but otherwise not even a raised voice” and “Joyce can no longer discuss things with people she was formerly close to but has alienated”, which is to be fair exactly the kind of consequence that should be happening.
Loading ...
that’s the best WHAT since Raidah’s
amen to that
and I don’t want to hear anyone complaining that she took the Bulmeria news in stride but had a big “what” moment over Becky, but we know that down there will be a comment thread ripping Joyce and Dorothy apart for… 1. being gay. 2. “cheating” 3. “hurting their boyfriends” 4. existing. 5. IDK insert some other thing here, they have done a lot, still not ok with the one who flagrantly used “whore” (whores get paid baby) ~<3
Hey, now DJT, I’m looking forward to reading today’s hate thread as I scroll down.
We need someone to collect all the big WHATs in this comic and do a thing with them.
A WHATrospective, if you will.
Okay, I’ve done my part, I created the pun, now someone else get to work!
I’ll supervise!
In kind of a hands-off way.
Hater containment thread, kvetch here, mostly perfunctory because I mostly don’t hate this one ⬇️
So is it an intentional character flaw that Joyce clearly does not give a shit about the genocide in Bulmeria or what
[Insert rant about white obliviousness here, I’m tired and nearly lost my mind from being bedridden on top of the giant dumpster fire that’s been 2025]
Take good care of you, NGPZ.
🫖🍵
That, I shall, thank you. T~T <3
after further diagnostics they prescribed me Cefalexin and an anti-inflammatory ointment, been on them for 2 days now, while it still hurts like hell at least the redness seems to have gone down, progress?
In any case after I'm done healin imma treat myself to a big, big, BIG mug of Irish Coffee (-_-)
Sending you all my hopes!
🌈⚕️🕯
And tell them I said to double the whiskey. For medicinal purposes.
Is Joyce particularly aware of it?
She doesn’t seem averse to giving a shit…
I think Becky is highly likely to be much more on her mind.
Isn’t the obliviousness Joyce obliviousness rather than white obliviousness?
No person, not you or any other, cares about every happening thing they ought to care about to the degree that it should be cared about. A self abrogation exceeding by many times the entirety of one’s identity would be required.
Do you mean self abnegation? Google dislikes “self abrogation” and refuses to reveal its secrets to me
Hey, AI buddy, give me a definition for self abrogation.
Self abrogation can be defined as a willful and often systematic undoing, canceling, or relinquishing of one’s own claims, rights, responsibilities, or defining traits, such that the self treats its own standing or authority as null and void.
Core meaning
In this sense, self marks the subject as both agent and object: the person is the one who performs the abrogation and also the thing being abrogated.
Abrogation here echoes its legal sense—“to repeal or annul”—but redirected inward, so the person symbolically “repeals” elements of their own identity, commitments, or entitlements.
Difference from self-abnegation
Self-abnegation usually means denying or subordinating one’s interests or desires for the sake of others or a higher ideal, while still presuming a stable self that is being denied.
Self abrogation, by contrast, implies a more radical move: instead of merely denying desires, the person invalidates their own status as a claimant or authority, as if canceling the very basis on which they could assert or protect themselves.
like, re: AI
between technicians having to correct its mistakes post hoc every time people hurt themselves with pretend knowledge on the news to maintain it’s veneer of reliability, environmental caveats, etc
the very IDEA of AI as anything close to a viable source of helpful information is just plain BATSHIT STUPID
it’s like if the world’s most experienced librarian suddenly decided that their experience SORTING BOOKS somehow automatically makes them a reputable authority on absolutely EVERYTHING
but really, to actually get the most out of a LIBRARY, all you really need is basic fucking information literacy and DIRECTIONS TO THE RIGHT SHELF D:
it aint need no fucking rocket science, it aint need no insane amounts of electricity, it aint need no catastrophic environmental damage, it aint need no bourgeois bastards to milk for massive amounts of money
anger rising, rant ending
All I know is that the things I’m not actively thinking about don’t really exist and can’t be all that important or I’d be thinking about them.
I think a running issue for Joyce is that she is **VERY** laser-focused. I don’t really know if she’s demonstrated an ability to focus on anything grand-scale for any length of time versus what’s immediately pressing for her.
I kind of think a lot of it is a byproduct of how much hypocrisy she had to swallow when she was in more fundie circles, and something she’s having to deconstruct in her own brain.
If she’s AuDHD, hyperfocus is an aspect of that.
You’re hating on a 19 year old freshman in college for taking more notice of something directly affecting her best friend over something happening a world a way she can’t change. I’m sorry but that’s asinine. By your logic, none of us should focus on anything but the absolute worst things going on in the world. Joyce is allowed to care about Becky, and she’s allowed to do something about it.
Acting like Becky is still her bestie after the teargas wedding is a stretch.
Though she IS the only one either of the girl’s has given a rat’s ass about (other then themselves) since the tear gas… so maybe they can just thruple up.
At this point they’re still friends out of inertia. They’re besties because they’ve always been besties and why would that change?
She cared about Becky when she gave her a place to stay and did without so they could both eat on her meal plan. She cared about Becky when she punched out Toe Dad. Nothing in the story has changed those feelings. How you feel about one person doesn’t change the way you feel about another.
See, that’s the problem with writing a genocide into the comic’s timeline – now every character has to be evaluated, on some level, along the axis of “do they give a shit about this genocide that their school is involved in?” Most of them don’t!
Yeah, it’s not like she went to a protest about said genocide and wound up on the front page of an article about said protest. It’s completely irrelevant to Joyce and what she’s done, even though her response to someone criticising her about her actions at the protest was to say that she was ‘heroically gay’, which is a weird thing to claim when you don’t care about the protest.
Okay well
1. She didn’t attend the protest, she went to find Jocelyn to warn her about their dad, Joss was at the protest so she went there. If she were at a chuck e cheese she would’ve went there instead. Dotty was the only one who actually tried protesting, tho in a weird self centered “this is absolutely not about the protest” kinda way
2. Saying you’re “heroically gay” has nothing to do with a protest against genocide. It’d make sense if the protest were related to queer rights but it’s completely irrelevant to this one. It was a weird thing to claim in general.
Joyce did not care about the bulmeria protest and iirc, hasn’t really said shit about what the protest was actually for, just stuff surrounding it. I don’t think she’s a bad person for that, but let’s not kid ourselves here. She’s not some heroic ally to [heretofore unnamed genocided group], idk if she could even point to bulmeria on a map. The protest was incidental to her actual goals and actions
“Heroically gay” was a weird thing to say at all, but saying it was only tangentially related to the protest. She said it in response to Raidah telling her the photo would make her unemployable. IOW, to Raidah using homophobia against her.
She also seems to have realized it was weird and walked it back, talking about stolen valor and how real gays are heroic figures fighting oppression like Becky.
You’re responding to a Doylist critique like it’s Watsonian. This is not actually about Joyce in universe, but about external writing decisions made by the author introducing a volatile element into the story that retroactively renders the entire cast suspect. As Mitzi puts it, now that we know a genocide is taking place in universe, every character now has a “do they know or care about it?” sign above their heads that was not there before, and would not be there if not for its inclusion.
Almost like maybe we shouldn’t have had a genocide in this story.
You can have a genocide in your story, but the story should then probably be about that, or if it’s a backdrop, it should reveal major things about your characters.
Right. If it’s just window dressing it just feels pointless at best and tone deaf at worst.
100%. Joyce is nothing if not completely and deliberately ignorant of anything she isn’t focusing her undivided attention on, and making her the “white person who doesn’t actually give a shit about politics that don’t directly affect her” of this couple to contrast against Dorothy’s “white person who gives a shit but is really bad at it” is, despite being incredibly frustrating to read, an interesting decision that has me wondering where it’s going to go.
I actually have way more hope she’s going to be eating humble pie on this attitude sooner as opposed to the cheating thing, which is likely going nowhere soon, if at all.
Everybody wants to be “heroically gay” until the rubber bullets start flying.
(Only semi-related but if anybody is looking for a shred of hope about the merits of organized resistance, the new documentary WTO/99 is really fascinating)
Ok… seriously.
Where the heck did you get that flaw from???
What line? What panel???
OMG! *eyeroll*
Where’s Big Z with his pushbroom
Honestly, I barely even see Acher4’s posts because they’re never worth engaging with — they seem to exist solely to try to ineffectually troll the Doyce-haters.
The sort of manic 2008 deviantART Gir-posting vibe is at least a little novel.
It certainly is….something
A character flaw shared by basically everyone commenting here. Why waste time and energy on a webcomic comment forum when there’s an actual genocide going on? This shouldn’t even be nearly as important to any of us as Becky is to Joyce and apparently that should pale in comparison to genocide.
That goes into the question of “what can people actually do about the genocide” both in real life and in the strip. In real life, I assume most people in the comments are doing what they can. In the strip, I have to assume a lot of them don’t care.
This is what I’ve been wondering about. The structure of this strip seems like it HAS to be intentional. So if more Asma & Raidah representation is really all Willis added, people were way overboard with how much they accused Willis of not being aware that DoJo were being clueless at the protest.
On the other hand, the edit to the kiss strip that lampshades the issue suggests the opposite (IMO that was totally unnecessary; I blamed that moment on the characters not the author and didn’t find it out of character at all. I think Dorothy realizing after she saw what Daisy did was perfectly reasonable if not above-average level of wokeness for 18 year old white girls from small town Indiana.)
Just curious: has there been a time – in ANY of our lifetime – that there has NOT been a genocide happening somewhere in the world? I was a pretty globally oblivious kid (grew up in an even more restrictive, fundie background than Joyce), and only vaguely remember hearing names of countries I couldn’t find on a map having “troubles.”
But for the most part, well past my twenties, if I heard “genocide,” I could only picture something Holocaust related… And certainly had no clue how I could ever possibly do anything about it, even though I hated the concept that this could be happening again somewhere.
There’s some time or intervention needed to learn how to rewrite the fundie code/script/programming that “global affairs” are beyond our control or influence. “The hearts of kings are in the hands of the Lord” and all that.
…was everyone else with any integrity, ethics, morals spending every weekend changing the world? I’m genuinely trying to figure out what the appropriate place on the spectrum is, since I have trouble sometimes understanding what makes a middle ground acceptable rather than tending toward one extremely or another (AuDHD here… Not exactly known for doing anything by half measures)
It could be psychosocial numbing, the brain has a defense against feelings of helplessness.
Proximity to a tragedy will also affect reaction to it. Genocide in another country isn’t as shocking as a single murder happening next door, for many people.
Also, as a support worker to adults with autism, most of my clients will not car at all about the war but will be devastated by a tv show being removed from Netflix. I wouldn’t consider them flawed.
No hate, just maniacal cackling.
Ok well this isn’t the maniacal cackling containment thread
Do we need one of those? I would like to cackle manically sometimes… but my inhibitions do not let me.
I do like that something has rattled Joyce out of her “I am with Dorothy, and we had sex and nothing else matters” mind set.
One other point is that I personally kind of hoped that Jennifer would be more firmly in Walky’s corner, I just feel like someone should be. But maybe it was a vain hope that Jennifer would be that person. (And I do not mean that I wanted her to yell at them or anything like that)
Unrelated: typing with a cat on your shoulder who thinks your hair is a cat toy is not that easy.
Yeah, I wasn’t expecting Jennifer of all people to be bemused here.
Jennifer needs notable proximity to other cool people to maintain her veneer of social importance. That’s it. She cares about Walky in an underlying way, but she can’t be seen caring about Walky, because he’s a loser and a dork. Now, she also can’t be seen with Dotty and Joyce, because they have dork-coded themselves. Jennifer cannot engage sincerely on any level with anything, because proximity to uncoolness threatens her standing in the social hierarchy, and that’s the only thing propping up her black hole of an ego.
I’m cautiously optimistic that the plot will start moving with these two soon after this strip
Still think we should check in on some other characters, when was the last time we saw Danny? he had opinions on cheating that could make for some good drama
Based on a post Willis made on social media, showing a bit of a comic that is supposed to come out next October, the situation won’t be dealt with by even then, as Walky still glares are Joyce when they pass in the hall. (If could be for an entirely different reason, they have been messing with eachother for a long time). The social consequences will probably still be going on for another year of the comic unless Walky was pissed at her for another reason.
We saw danny in a bonus strip recently if I remember correctly.
Yup, with Joe, though it’s not really getting into his thoughts on the situation directly, just him checking in on Joe.
He might be glaring at her for a completely unrelated reason.
Im optimistic BECKYs plot will start moving
To be honest this strip is fine but given the pacing so far I’m just wondering if we’ll get at most 2-3 strips about this before throwing in more ‘cute’ moments.
The 72 hour rule hasn’t been wrong yet.
I do not find them adorkable. Im not even sure why Jen finds them adorkable. Its like its trying to insist that theyre hecking cute cherubs and they just ain’t imo.
If Sarah starts finding them adorkable I’m gonna throw my hands in the air.
lik you just don’t care
Yeah it feels like the comic constantly has to say that we are supposed to find them cute. It reminds me of shoujo mangas where everyone makes the main couple the center of everything. It feels unnatural.
The comic insists upon Doyce, and Doyce insists upon itself.
That’s because the way they’re written ISN’T adorkable, but Willis REALLY wants you think they are, so he constantly mentions it. Ironically, that just makes them less so.
It’s a form of plot armor. Instead of getting mad at these two, they just get mildly annoyed, don’t care, or find them ador(k)able.
It would be an interesting spin off if we found out this was some kind of Truman Show situation with Joyce and Dorothy as Truman.
Yeah. Willis keeps insisting they are super cute, and we’re just wrong for not agreeing.
I figure Billie is making a polite excuse to get outta there that doesn’t make her just say outright “yall are annoying together”
I think the intent is pretty clearly that they’re adorable, but annoying. That even made sense yesterday, depending on how you read the facial expressions.
I’m not fond of that intent, but it’s hard for me to deny it at this point.
To me it feels like there is a very strong ”You WILL find this cute, dammit” spirit here. I’d give Willis more benefit of the doubt, but their social media posts are depressing the heck out of me.
I still don’t find them cute tbh. Like at all
yeah but they aren’t your self-inserts. if one of the characters was your girlsona, you’d obviously be more biased to seeing them as…whatever it was you wanted to see them as, lmao
I dont hate this but I am exhausted over the fact becky is the focus of all the good fallout when we have 2 other perfectly juicy threads just being completely abandoned
Yeah it feels weird that Becky is the second or third most important person in this break up. Are we going to have to wait 2 story lines to get more on what Dina is thinking? Are Joe and Walky going to get to do anything without Joyce or Dorothy being around them? Is anyone going to stop Joyce and Dorothy from being pathologically avoidant towards their exes and their actions, or are we going to suffer through this for several months?
See, I’ve never seen the point in going into so much depth with what ifs. The story has already been written and will unfold in its own time. After 15 years I’m happy believing Willis knows what he’s doing. Your experience may differ.
We do have the titles of the next 4 storylines in the archive page. Guessing one is going to be about/involve Dina is easy when one is called “What a RARR! Mood I’m In”, and the rest is based on the comic going 2 months without Joe twice in a row and being avoidant being Joyce and Dorothy’s main issue anyway?
To be fair, Dorothy and Joyce caring about Becky over others is very consistent with their characters, it’s just…this isn’t the drama I wanted. Becky was going to be upset regardless of how we got to this point, it was practically a foregone conclusion.
So, we’re stuck with “consequences because how dare you be gay in public” and “consequences because people have feelings you can’t control”, but nothing for “consequences for the actual decisions you deliberately made knowing it would hurt the people you were with at the time.” Maybe this is a bit pessimistic, but I don’t think anyone in universe actually gives a shit about the cheating.
Its certainly been a ride…
I still feel like far too many characters in Joyce and Dorothy’s friend group seem way too willing to tolerate their shitty behavior lately, offering only token criticism if they even bother to criticize them at all. It seems particularly odd to me that Jennifer is so ok with this, since Walky is her long-time friend and one of the two characters they cheated on when they got together.
Also I really don’t think Joyce and Dorothy are the right people to try to fix the problems caused by the school newspaper coverage of them kissing at the protest, partly because they didn’t really seem to know or care about the message of the protest when it was happening, and with how badly they’ve been acting lately I don’t trust them to not somehow make that worse.
And I don’t find them adorkable as a couple at all, mainly because of the already mentioned shitty behavior during this storyline.
I don’t think Joyce and Dorothy are the right people to fix the problems caused by the school newspaper coverage because *it’s not their problem to fix.* Daisy is directly responsible for all of that and has gotten off functionally scot-free for it. A couple strips of Raidah getting upset at her does not even begin to cover how fucked up the cover nonsense was.
If Joyce and Dorothy do anything at all, I want it to be directed solely at the lady responsible for the situation in the first place, if for no other reason than them being forcibly outed on the cover of the paper against their will, which at BEST was an incredibly crass and rude of Daisy, and at worst actively jeopardizes their safety. I’d much prefer that angle to one about the protest, because to be honest, none of the people I’m talking about in this comment are equipped to discuss it.
That’s a good point. Daisy is the one who chose to make the picture of them kissing the main focus of the newspaper story about the protest. So if anyone should be trying to fix that problem, it should be her, and also the people who organized the protest. Certainly not the two women who only showed up to the protest shortly before it was forcibly ended by the cops.
Nope. If life hands a platform of fame and/or privilege, even if by accident then good morals should move you to use it for good. Celebrities can endorse cancer research even if they aren’t doctors and don’t have cancer.
You do not have the moral responsibility to represent a movement you’re only tangentially involved in just because someone puts a photo of you on the front page. It’s not like that magically gives either of them any actual knowledge, influence or power to change anything.
What platform does Dorothy even think they have? It’s not like reporters have knocking on their doors, trying to interview them.
Daisy didn’t recognize them in the photo (almost nobody has so far!) and didn’t think anybody was recognizable in it.
Agreed as this is a similar, but more eloquent version of my first thought which was “christ this shit is so ass.”
Apparently this is fine, but my longer comment engaging in reasoned criticism was too hot so got reported to oblivion. I’m sure Willis can take a bit of pushback y’all
I used to think so, but the bluesky posts are worrying. They seem to be digging in his heels, and actively mocking a significant proportion of their readers.
I don’t get what these two things are supposed to have to do with each other. They are ador(k)able, and they’ve engaged in some highly questionable behavior. ~:-|
That’s one of the great old divides in fandoms in general:
– these people are doing bad things, and I can’t like them in any way because of it
vs.
– these people are doing bad things, and I like them MORE because of it.
I’m annoyed that Jennifer just wimped out and said “adorkable”.
I don’t really remember a time where Jennifer wasn’t at least a LITTLE bit snarky, even about things she was enjoying, and she’s clearly not enjoying this.
Why is she politely bowing out about something that annoys her? That doesn’t seem like a very Jennifer (or Billie) thing to do.
There was recently a whole plot line where Jennifer acknowledged (to Ruth) that she’s repeatedly been unacceptably and unjustifiably mean to Joyce, and yet Joyce keeps giving her more chances at friendship, and that she feels bad about that.
So perhaps Jennifer is getting… better?
Also, Jennifer has a general soft spot for romance between girl besties, and Joyce helped specifically her make amends with Alice. The last strip shows this in the smile she gave when Joyce and Dorothy were kissing. She evidently thinks they’re cute when they’re not being obnoxiously loud about their relationship.
It’s possible, but if so it’s an unfortunate time for that to show up. It comes across as a weird part of DoJo’s story rather than a natural development of Jennifer’s.
I hate how Jennifer thinks she is too good for adorkableness /s
I don’t think it’s hate, but the commentary cops might. Dorothy is oblivious when she thinks they have a platform.
I really am once again wishing that Willis hadn’t decided to handle criticism of the Doylist elements of their work (the authorial choice to use an analogue of a real, important protest as a backdrop for their OTP getting together) with Watsonian bandaid solutions (their Socially Conscious(tm) character handwringing about the in-universe optics of snogging at a protest).
Like, there is a threshold where the desperate scrambling to retroactively fix the plot trajectory to make it Not Problematic just makes it worse. Especially since snogging at a protest is not the actual messed-up thing that Dorothy and Joyce should be making amends for in-universe; it was actively going against the directions of the protest leaders and endangering the people around them because Dorothy chose someone else’s hill to (very nearly literally) die on whilst in the middle of a destructive downspiral. But that part doesn’t even get touched upon – as far as the narrative is concerned, it’s all about how Dorothy and Joyce took up newspaper space with Dat Smooch.
Like, the schmaltz and lack of social graces and disregard for the people actually wronged by the cheating makes me annoyed at the characters. This is the element that makes me annoyed at the author, and I really don’t like feeling that way.
“That should have them boinking like animals!”
“That’s what I said! … not in as many words.”
Dorothy used way more words.
Don’t trust platforms.
Might have wanted to lead with that Becky thing there, Dororthy.
But I’m glad we’re not shelving that storyline.
I think saving Becky for last was a good call ‘cuz that’s going to be more important to Joyce and she may not even be paying attention to the stuff about the protest if she’s focused on that. At least now the political stuff is on Joyce’s radar.
This. It was a tactical deployment of facts from a woman who knows her paramour very well. You can’t let them hyper-fixate before you finish the list, or in practice, you didn’t finish the list.
Hi there! Consequences here!
YES THE TRUTH HAS BEEN LEARNED
JOYCE DO YOUR THING AND GET THEM TO TALK ABOUT IT BEFORE I HAVE TO HUNT WILLIS LIKE GAME
I’ve been told numerous times that the public wants consequences for the cheating, not consequences for being gay which both of these issues Dorothy mentioned are.
What do they want the consequences to be? We’ll see how the Joyce/Joe talk goes when it happens, and Walky was literally just a replacement partner while Dorothy struggled with her desire towards Joyce.
I’m sure it’ll get explored further but they haven’t murderered anyone. Don’t remember seeing fucking Asher get this much hate despite being partly responsible for the kidnappings.
I think at the very least I think people want them to feel vaguely guilty about it. Because Dorothy just seemed to be relieved to not see Walky while Joyce is squashing down any emotion that isn’t ’yay Dorothy!’.
They are vaguely guilty about it. Dorothy being relieved Walky isn’t here is pretty telling. Of course Joyce isn’t gonna be guilty about Walky, they’ve had beef since they met and Walky teased Joyce about this for months (years).
And again, Joyce clearly felt shitty about Joe, but as Jennifer herself says, they’re still on their honeymoon period. They’ll have time to calm down and examine their mistakes.
I personally don’t know what people really expect by consequences exactly and I don’t think it would actually be as satisfying as people think to see Dorothy or Joyce being chastised and criticized at every moment of their fresh romance, but I do think it is valid to complain that most of the direct fallout so far has just been for them existing as a gay couple. That’s just kinda fucked up.
The only real fallout over them being gay is Becky. The other part was stealing the spotlight at the protest.
And the Becky thing was a long time coming. Joyce being bisexual was always gonna happen and it was gonna end like this unless her bisexual awakening had been with Becky herself.
Does Daisy run the photo unless it’s two girls kissing? Maybe she does? I don’t trust her to be that objective.
There’s definitely an element of editorial bias there (like I don’t think Daisy cares as much if it was a non-lesbian couple).
Yeah that’s a fair point, actually. Still I wouldn’t call those consequences for ‘being gay.’
I’d call that consequences for Daisy’s horniness
It’s a nitpick, but I’ll disagree. We’ve seen before that Daisy is quite sensationalist. IMO a Joe/Joyce kiss def also runs.
But even if I’m wrong, Daisy ran the kiss because of her thirst, not to sensationalize gay panic or anything. Which is to say, even if Daisy wouldn’t have run a J/J kiss, a similarly-thirsty straight editor would have.
So IMO publication of the photo was sensationalism and/or happenstance.
But TBF that’s semantics because *consequences of* publication will certain involve it being a gay kiss. Hank was pretty cool about it, but I’m sure we’re not done with that issue.
Does the picture even get taken if it was a hetero couple? I mean yes it would still be a kiss at a protest but I feel like a hetero kiss is more likely to get ignored or even tossed out in film or editing, it just isn’t as sensationalist.
Can’t reply to you again for some reason Nono, but strong disagree. It’s an extremely visually dynamic scene, with the contrast between people in love and tear gas falling. That’s literally an image you submit for a Pulitzer or Pacemaker. 300% chance any photojournalist still captures that scene and their section editor still fights for it, if the couple is straight. Only debate is whether Daisy still agrees. Source: was photojournalist
I can’t speak for everyone, but I didn’t want polemics. Y’all make it sound like people have been calling for DoJo to get expelled or something.
But Walky’s own sister and BFF not being able to muster even “mildly icy to DoJo” after he’s come so far on standing up to their parents for Sal and was so good about being there for Billie during the Ruth fiasco, that doesn’t sit well with me.
I expect messy interpersonal drama as the consequences of a “cheating arc” put in for the sake of having a cheating arc, because otherwise why are we even bothering with this?
Beyond that I expect some hostility towards Joyce and Dorothy from people who care more for Walky and/or Joe and even from some people mostly uninvolved but who dislike cheating, because that tends to happen with immature judgemental teenagers. Jacob especially I feel would wind up saying something harsh or just avoid her from now on, because he was already judging Joyce for the whole fake girlfriend thing and Joe was the one defending her.
“People who care more for Walky and/or Joe” well there’s your problem
Yeah I feel like that’s the buried lede here; the fact that Joe has like, 2 friends at most, and Walky has none (at least, none that aren’t directly connected to the problematic situation) is an issue complicating matters. They are, for the most part, forced into a position where they have to handle this on their own, unless 1) Walky decides to be bold and vulnerable with his sister about it (hahaha) and 2) Joe decides to do the same with Danny and Jacob (I think this might actually happen!)
On the other hand we’ve been shown a few times that Dorothy is bad at connecting with most people and Joyce is wildly uneven outside their tiny social circle. We can safely assume Danny will side against Dorothy after telling her cheating isn’t a bi thing and Joe getting dumped, Dina doesn’t much like Joyce at all, Amber prefers Walky to both of them and feels bad for ruining his relationship, Amazi-Girl probably has strong opinions about cheating, Ruth will approve of Doyce but possibly with reservation, Carla will say yay lesbians and not care about details, Ethan will probably say something judgemental, Jason is inherently a wet blanket, Booster will point out why they’re wrong and encourage them to make more drama, Roz might have feelings about cheating, Charlie won’t notice and Alice would love the goss.
Who else is there?
I do think Danny might say something on his own initiative though, since he has a dynamic with Dorothy already and there’s no way he thinks fondly of Joyce refusing to acknowledge him.
Oh I’m keeping my fingers crossed for both Danny and Walky red panels in the coming year. I need them PISSED.
“What do they want the consequences to be?”
Literally anything noteworthy and, importantly, unique to the cheating. As in, fallout and interpersonal drama that is directly connected to and only exists -because- infidelity happened, that would not exist otherwise. That’s all I’m asking for, personally. To be specific, I’m not interested in running Joyce and Dorothy through a humiliation conga line; I’d actually like to see Joe and Walky have some serious crash outs (in the case of Walky) and breakdowns (in the case of Joe), leading to character development as a result of these relationships crashing and burning around them. Of course, that would require the comic to stop focusing on Joyce and Dorothy for five minutes, which isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.
(I would also have liked it to have been given equal narrative weight to the Becky stuff, but I’m confident that ship has sailed, so I won’t hold my breath.)
My biggest criticism of this plot development has been that the cheating is so meaningless and perfunctory that removing it from the plot would change very little about the outcomes we’ve seen thus far. None of the social or personal consequences Joyce and Dorothy are experiencing are connected to their infidelity, and none of the other people (directly or indirectly) affected by them getting together have anything about their reactions to distinguish whether or not the cheating actually mattered to them, which leads one to question the purpose of the cheating if it isn’t affecting anything or anyone in a distinctive way.
Then we get into the pacing discussion, where the back and forth always devolves into “we’re taking too long to get to the good bits I want,” met with “let Willis cook/the cheating fallout will come eventually/etc.” and thus the comment cycle of the last several months repeats.
Yeah, I feel like pacing is the core of many issues here. I have no doubt we’ll get to these plot points eventually and for now Willis is just allowing the cuteness to happen.
Well you see, Asher is interesting af. Bro was trying to escape the mob, he got pulled back in. Is he in in now or is he still in out, how’s he gonna handle the stealing grandpa’s money thing? How is Ethan gonna handle it when he finds out Asher’s involvement? Does Amber owe the mob because of Asher? Does she owe Asher directly? How is Asher gonna use his knowledge about Amber being AG? Is he going to turn good or turn to evil? Isn’t it obvious why this is considered a character people want to see more of with a large part of it being *because* a guy seemingly trying to reform himself went and called out a hit?
Doyce has like… one interesting thread potential left because the cheating consequences have all been glossed over so much. Which is if Joyce decides to cheat on Dorothy with Joe. But if she’s just decided to ghost him, there is literally nothing inherently interesting left about this ship and all potential consequences for cheating will have evaporated into thin air. Everything they do plot-wise will be new and unrelated, which makes the cheating feel wholly pointless. Not saying they can’t have interesting stories together, but literally every interesting avenue for drama about this ship that couldn’t have been done better with more time and actively visible pining has passed or been glossed over.
Interesting future stories*
If Joyce impulsively sleeps with Joe next, I’ll admit that is interesting. If we are finding out she just follows her desires, and avoids talking about things afterwards, that is actually something.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Asher and am waiting the inevitable drama that’ll come out of the reveal he helped in the kidnapping, but so many people have been dunking on Doyce on the premise that “how dare they cheat” as though it was the biggest moral failing anyone could ever have when, well, we got a dude who helped kidnap like 6 people.
I definitely responded to the wrong comment here it was meant o be a reply to @Staszu13
Yeah, they didn’t really register the cheating as a consequence here. But priorities are elsewhere to be… Fair? I’m feeling conflicted
Oh she said *Additional unforseen consequences. I guess that clears it up
OH, SNAPPETH!
*puts on DBZ Kai narrator voice*
An affectionate affirmation, from Jennifer?!?!
Joyce and Dorothy face the conses of their quences!!!
Also, can you believe this isn’t butter?!
interesting how even in strips that were written before the Asma Patch*, the plan seems to have always been for these two to grapple with the ramifications of making themselves the centerpiece of the protest, rather than just leaving that act as an unexamined good (like people were assuming would be the case when that storyline was running)
once again feel vindicated for Trusting The Process
*since the Asma Patch seems to have just been interweaving plot threads for Asma and Raidah into the existing Book 16 storylines (plus or minus shuffling existing strips around to account for them), this strip is probably running with the dialogue that was originally intended for it??? idk i’m not psychic
Just reading the comic you can tell Willis has at least some knowledge of activism and periodism, so doubts that it would never get adressed were unfounded.
Oversight on giving a voice to the people who were actually a part of the protest is still worth some internal examining.
Were the Raidah strips also added afterwards? Raidah’s confrontation with Joyce seemed important, but the strips where Raidah finds out about the photo were also Asma strips.
The motivation for adding in strips was to correct a lack of Muslim representation in the comic, it makes sense that he’d include both existing Muslim characters in the extra strips rather than just one
Two of the existing Muslim characters to be fair, because the others are also not characters (Nash and Sayid).
*bit characters, thanks autocorrect
Willis mentioned adding more involvement for both Asma and Raidah.
Yeah it’s wild how some people theorize Willis is changing plans in strips in reaction to how people react to certain events in the comic. Dude’s got a 10-month buffer, there’s a strong chance whatever people are complaining about is something he’s already made a strip addressing but we won’t get to see it for like half a year.
I think there’s an element of Trust the Process but also if you drag out a resolution too long there’s just the risk of people being dissatisfied enough not to tune in.
Like “okay yeah the first seven seasons are terrible but once you hit season 8 it’s amazing!”.
Of course people are going to speculate on that, Willis said that strips were being inserted. That gets people thinking about what could be inserted, removed or changed no matter what Willis specifically says.
Some commenters kept talking as if Willis was chaging the whole plot.
It was obvie never the case. He just openly talked that he wanted more fleshed out Muslim characters in his comic. :/
Me dealing with another life-changing trauma vs. me dropping a fork
just like me fr fr
What platform Dorothy, 99% of the readers of the newspaper don’t even know who you are, jfc you’re the worst you’re so silly I love you lol. I don’t think Daisy’s gonna have an interest in doing a follow up interview (or if there’s even a market for that, it wouldn’t be front page news regardless). Sometimes it feels like you just say the most correct sounding thing in the moment regardless of if it’s an actionable thought.
Also, yay! Finally gonna get more Becky checkups? Maybe Joyce starting a fight with Dina entirely on accident by trying to get her to make Becky feel better/blaming her because Joyce and Dina get on like bleach and hydrogen peroxide?
It’s understandable though.
They did become the face of the protest, displacing attention from the actual message. It makes sense to feel like they somehow be able to use that to make up for it and redirect the attention, but like you say, getting the front page photo doesn’t actually give them a platform or any influence. It’s just the distraction.
It’s an interesting point where Dorothy never believed in God and has no context to be able to give comfort to Becky for losing her faith. She also doesn’t probably consider religion to be ever a good thing so it makes the situation extra awkward because Becky losing her faith would be a positive to her.
So she’s stuck with no comfort to give.
Joyce might understand Becky’s thing but all of the things that make her atheism positive for her are things that will never work for Becky. They fundamentally do not think of it the same way or interact with it the same way. For Joyce, it was an authority, for Becky, it was a strength against it.
Good writing, Willis.
I don’t think so. Dorothy’s not some Reddit atheist who thinks all religious people are stupid and tries to fix them. She understands full well why religion was important to Becky, and the comfort it gave her. And that the loss of that faith isn’t fundamentally a good thing, especially because Becky at least since coming out hasn’t been the kind of person who used her religion as a cudgel against others. Becky’s faith has actually been a pretty good model of what faith SHOULD be: Something that enriches your life, but you don’t use to bring down others. It can be a good thing in the world, and it was clearly very important to Becky and a big part of her own identity and something she used to get by in the very fucked-up life she’s been living. The idea that Dorothy thinks Becky losing her religion is a good thing doesn’t track with me.
Does Dorothy think religion is never good?
I never got that impression from her.
That seems more like how first day atheist Joyce’s style was than Dorothy’s.
I’m thinking more of the fact that Dorothy is a eighteen year old who has no experience with religion. I try to think of Dorothy as very idealistic and very naive and conflict adverse. She knows religion was important to Becky but she was like, “But that should make Dina like you MORE!”
Which is why I think she’d think of it as a good thing.
The Dina part is just because it’s a comic strip and gotta slip in a joke somewhere. Almost anyone who knows Dina and how much she dislikes religion could have made that comment, I don’t think it’s specific to Dorothy.
Dorothy has plenty of experience with religion. For one thing, it’s basically impossible to grow up in the US without experience with a very specific religion, but for another she was raised vaguely Catholic and she’s Jewish (so I’m assuming is at least passingly familiar with that). She’s also a nosy thing, so there’s basically no chance she hasn’t looked into a ton of religions. It’s really not like religious people keep their beliefs a secret (by and large) so most atheists have a lot of experience with it whether they wanted to or not.
Also… she was right about Dina?? Dina herself said that should have made her happy but it didn’t.
This is absolutely canon, the Keeners said that Dorothy did a lot of research before settling on atheism.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/areligious/
(Lotsa canon! None of us can remember it all.)
I partly agree with you, and think that Dorothy would be able to offer some comfort and understanding, but I still do not think it is the same as when it comes from someone who went through the same thing.
Like someone with a life changing illness, yes a lot of people can show understanding and offer some sort of comfort, especially friends/family and that is very important. But talking to someone who went through the same, still offers additional perspective.
Didn’t say it would be the same, but I’m responding to someone who said Dorothy would have “no comfort to give” which is just blatantly incorrect. Please be mindful of the context of my replies, thanks.
Right. In the abstract, Becky losing her faith should bring her closer to Dina. It’s not actually that which broke them up, but why she lost it. Or why Dina assumes she did, if there’s more depth to this than just “can’t have Joyce even though she’s into girls means God doesn’t answer lesbian prayers”.
Dorothy was exposed to both Catholicism and Judaism when growing up. Her family have traditions, if not belief.
Dorothy is Nineteen
Yeah I’m with Vivvav, being atheist doesn’t inherently mean being unempathetic toward people who believe in a religion. It just means you don’t personally share those beliefs. It’s perfectly within an atheist’s abilities to offer comfort over the loss of something important.
I absolutely believe and know this.
I don’t think DOROTHY feels that way, specifically.
I disagree, strongly. She was never anything but understanding of the fact that Joyce believed. The only pushback she ever gave was where Joyce’s belief was creating unhealthy issues in her life/self-confidence/etc.
I’m not saying hostility, I’m saying she doesn’t have experience and lived in emotional connection to religion on the issue. But, hey, maybe she’ll show a deeper understanding of this than I expect.
And, again, I disagree strongly that having a religion at some point in your life is a necessary component for empathizing with and comforting someone on the loss of theirs.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but would the difference between sympathy and empathy be applicable here?
By my understanding, sympathy=understanding someone else’s pain, kind of in the abstract, while empathy= feeling that same pain (with the connotation that oftentimes the person feeling empathy has experienced the same thing in the past).
In everyday use, the two are very often synonyms but I think here there’s a useful distinction. Dorothy can very much feel *sympathy* for Joyce and Becky’s falling out with their church, but she’s going to have more difficulty with the *empathy* part simply because she lacks that same lived experience.
It’s like how I can sympathize and do my best to help my father in his recovery from a double bypass over the summer (he had a *bad* autumn health-wise but is slowly improving now!) but as someone who’s never been under general anesthesia or had a truly major health scare yet (*furiously knocks wood*), I have no idea what that experience was actually like.
No, I don’t think that distinction is helpful because I disagree that you need to have lived the same experience to have empathy for people. I have empathy all the time toward people who are living wildly different lives and experiences than I do.
I’m very happy with my point of view on this matter.
My apologies. I didn’t intend to change your mind, I was aiming for trying to parse how CT Philips was talking- that, if I’m getting them right, they feel like Dorothy is showing sympathy and not empathy. I should have made it more clear that I’m very much not trying to say that this is any sort of definitive interpretation of Dorothy, just my perspective, rather than how I wrote it which probably came across as being more definitive than I intended.
Based on my own life experience, the way I differentiate sympathy vs. empathy comes down to “I’ve been where you’ve been, friend” and “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, but I’m sure it sucks a lot” in terms of how I offer comfort. I like to think the intent behind the two is largely the same.
I don’t define those words the way you do, and I wasn’t misunderstanding I was disagreeing. Sorry if I was unclear.
CT wasn’t saying anything about sympathy OR empathy, he said “no comfort to give” and that’s, again, just patently untrue.
And, for whatever it’s worth, I’m all done with this conversation. Getting dragged down into semantic debates about what this or that REALLY means is so silly when my point was “people who are not religious can comfort religious people and it’s nonsense to suggest otherwise”.
I didn’t intend to change your mind, I was aiming for trying to parse how CT Philips was talking- that, if I’m getting them right, they feel like Dorothy is showing sympathy and not empathy.
Based on my own life experience, the way I differentiate sympathy vs. empathy comes down to “I’ve been where you’ve been, friend” and “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through, but I’m sure it sucks a lot” in terms of how I offer comfort. I like to think the intent behind the two is largely the same.
Better version of what I wanted to say above, go ahead and report this one y’all
(my kingdom for an edit/delete option)
Dotty has never done or said anything to imply she’s anti-theist like say, Dina is. She’s a very live and let live type. And honestly considering her background she probably has an appreciation for religion as a source of comfort and community for people. The Dina comment was because she knows Dina is anti-religion, not because she herself sees it as a good thing
They really are adorkable and I love it. Not looking forward to more protest stuff, though.
Honestly, it would be pretty cool if somehow hooking up with someone caused a third party to renounce their religion. I would probably brag about that for the rest of my life. Not cool in these specific circumstances, though.
…I mean, do they really have that much of a platform as a result of The Kiss? Like yeah, both Becky and Joe recognized them in the photo, but at least a few people who know Dorothy (e.g. Daisy, Prof O’Ryan) completely failed to notice that it was her.
You act like Dottie will not get up on The Snowpile with a bullhorn and tell everyone she is the Lesbian Kissing Bandit, and then try to spin some kind of speech about how lesbians aren’t as important as a genocide, leading the Becky into drop kicking her while screaming that lesbians are the most important things ever, while calling Dottie a home wrecking hussy.
It’s possible they might specifically be able to get air time with Dorothy’s polisci professor’s help.
Leadership!
Not leadership!
As long as they don’t ask any questions or apologize until they already have the platform!
Don’t trust leadership
I like this I actually love this this is great.
I still don’t like how Becky has been the only real fallout from this, but its still good.
Oh good, she WAS gonna tell Joyce about Becky. ❤️ I had hoped so.
Also, excellent 30 Rock joke in the alt text.
Also FWIW I don’t personally think Joyce isn’t meant to care about the genocide here, I think she’s meant to be seriously considering how to possibly leverage what notoriety the newspaper coverage gave them to try to raise political awareness of the genocide. She thinks it sounds doable.
That’s kind of the linchpin upon which the last panel joke hinges: that she’s much more at a loss about how to fix Becky losing her faith and breaking up with Dina than a political crisis.
(I’m not saying anyone needs to find it funny! Personally I am already cringing a little at the idea of these two trying to leverage “LEADERSHIP” to raise awareness for a genocide…… babies. Babies, pls, seek help on this one. This is a textbook “use your privilege to pass the mic” moment.)
Joyce doesn’t care about Bulmeria. I doubt she could point it out on a map unless its nearby a certain other famous beloved country by the religious. Like a lot of Americans, it’s just…out of sight out of mind.
I think she will learn about it, though, and become politically active.
Well…… like I just said, I think she does care about it, because her being indifferent to the genocide in Bulmeria would ruin the setup for the joke in the last panel.
If you want to have a semantic argument about it not being possible to care about an issue while also knowing only “there’s a genocide happening there and genocide is bad,” fine, but I think there are levels of caring, and that Joyce being at Level Zero would, again, ruin the setup for the joke in the last panel.
If Willis had wanted the message to be that Joyce doesn’t care about Bulmeria at all, I imagine she would’ve just said a blank and quiet, “Oh,” instead of looking thoughtful and committing to helping Dorothy fix the mess.
But based off what we’ve seen Joyce doesn’t really care much about it. She’s like “oh yeah sure, I can manage that.” Because it’s something Dorothy wants to do.
When Raidah confronted Joyce directly about it, Joyce just said that she deserved a medal for being heroically gay in public.
Dorothy at least feels guilty about taking attention away from the message of the cause. Joyce doesn’t really seem to care at all, which she doesn’t have to in the abstract, but when your actions are related to the issue at hand feels like she should.
Except Raidah didn’t really confront her about it. Raidah didn’t mention genocide or Bulmeria. She told Joyce that kissing a girl on the front page of the paper would make it hard to get a job. That’s the context for the “heroically gay” line.
I mean it’s a protest about genocide.
Joyce not acknowledging it is itself a sign she doesn’t care.
Like, how’s this: I’ll give you that Joyce’s level of caring is probably a bit vague and impersonal, which will become less vague and less impersonal as she learns more about the conflict.
But “not caring about a genocide” generally implies actual indifference, not just “ignorant disapproval”.
I don’t think it’s bad thing in a vacuum that Joyce doesn’t care that much about Bulmeria; like, most of the cast don’t care about it. But most of the cast weren’t at the protest, and while they didn’t plan to be in it, the two of them being part of a high-profile picture that hijacked the message of the protest means they’ve had some hand in the movement. So they kinda do have to care about it, a little. Because they’re not bystanders anymore just by being at the protest.
Could be how Asma gets wrangled into the arc more. Dorothy realizes they may be a bit clueless, asks Asma, and Asma is all, “…USE YOUR PRIVILEGE TO PASS US THE MIC AND LET US SPEAK AAAAAAAA”
Fingers crossed!
Would also be a good Raidah moment, though, to reinforce the somewhat shaky but still visible throughline of Raidah not actually being a villain, just an antagonist who really dislikes our protagonist.
While I doubt Willis would go this direction, I could see the campus wanting to use Dorothy and Joyce to take attention away from the subject and making it heroically gay as a way to throw Bulmeria protestors under the bus.
What is the joke?
Oh, like a lot of 30 Rock jokes, it suffers in the telling because a lot of it is down to character delivery and some of it is extra funny because of who’s saying it, but the particular line is a bit where the Tracy Morgan character reacts to the news that NBC canceled Law & Order.
“But why?! Why?! It was a tentpole! A tentpole……!!!”
Huh. A tentpole, like as in a pillar of support that holds the rest of the TV show lineup together? Like an anchor?
I still don’t see how it applies to this strip.
…Is it like, Joyce is saying that Becky’s Christian faith and her relationship with Dina are foundational constants of Joyce’s present community?
The idea was that that particular TV show was carrying NBC on its back with its reliable ratings, and I think the alt text joke is basically that Joyce’s reaction is not unlike Dorothy’s — “the only stable couple” in the friend-group.
I think a more apt joke would be quoting Buffy’s reaction to Anya and Xander’s breakup (she had similarly pinned her faith in romantic love on the two of them), but I don’t think Willis is as familiar with Buffy.
Ok, thank you Li!
You’re welcome! Happy to help.
(I tried to find a clip, because I feel like the performance would be genuinely helpful context due to the sheer vibe of it, but eh. 90% of the 30 Rock that exists on YouTube is unfortunately 20-40 minute long compilations of funny moments. I’m sure it’s in one of them, but I just do not have the time, Fff.)
All good! 😅
Okay, I’ll be nice. This is more of what I want out of this plotline, and it does make me confident that Willis has actual real tangible plans to address all of this.
hang on a second is that billie jennifer being friendly and complimentary?
IT’S A MIMIC KILL IT
Tentpole? Clue? Bob? I’m clueless…
Could someone please explain the alt-text to me?
Thank you!
From what others have said, it appears to be a reference to what we used to call a “television show”.
I cannot confirm, as I never watched that particular one.
Thanks!
And there, at last, is something Joyce can’t dismiss or ignore.
(replying to my own comment to try to clear out the Website field, which somehow got some null text stuck in it)
So we can expect to not see Billie at lunch with these two till 2040 at the earliest.
finally, someone Joyce won’t brag over. Wish Walky got the same reaction.
Okay, I didn’t expect this scene to also follow up on the protests, but the Becky and Dina thing seemed like it was obviously coming.
Look, the Joyce / Dorothy protest involvement is unsalvageable. The issue was never “Dorothy and Joyce took over the vaguely alluded to genocide protest.”
The issue was David Willis wrote Dorothy and Joyce taking over a protest that is directly copied from a very real protest, about a very real, ongoing genocide and used it as a prop.
It was gross, insensitive, and thoughtless then, and continuing to have the characters used to make that mistake be the centre of “fixing” it only continues to emphasise the shortcomings.
We do not know who is being genocided or why – except we do because it is based on a real thing.
None of the characters cared about this protest to even be aware of it until it appeared whole cloth, so they look woefully ignorant or callous.
And, from a very meta POV, Willis has only posted once in support of Gaza – a single post on Tumblr years ago. It is incredibly easy to post links to fundraisers, ways to contact government officials to protest etc.
Of course nobody is obligated to do so, and I am aware that such things could have been seen as performative. But they do and have posted about other political issues.
They could have posted under the protest comics themselves linking to stories of the real IU protest, and links to humanitarian orgs to support the Gazan people. That would have been some acknowledgement of the reality of the real life events they were using.
Instead publicly Willis’ only interaction with a literal real, ongoing genocide has been a single post many years ago and to use a real protest about it as a prop wedding.
And I would love to be corrected, but Willis has never actually apologised for it.
They have talked about not using their Muslim characters sufficiently, and vowed to included them more. Okay, sure. But will they be included well or as an offset for white guilt?
And that is not addressing the complaint at all that a genocide protest should not have been used at all. Again, it has been some time since I’ve looked at their socials so if they have subsequently apologised please let me know.
There is a vast gulf between “I will include more Muslim rep” and “I understand that using a real anti-genocide protest as a cutesy backdrop was incredibly tasteless and tone deaf at absolute best.”
So seeing that Dorothy’s mission is now to correct their “taking over the protest” in universe is exasperating.
In universe I’d be fine if they were on the front page of the school paper, a few people at school got annoyed by it, and it was never mentioned again.
Because this issue can never be answered in universe, and every attempt to do so only says to me that the criticism – over the choice by the author not the character actions – was not, in fact, understood.
+1
yeeeeeeeeeee.
You are totally lost in your own fanplot there.
A college webcomic, had the backdrop of a college protest.
The story is and has been way too on the nose and important of how the characters are “learning” of the obvious evils of the goverments.
You are trying way too hard to colour the characters and the writer as bad people for not explicity in every corner say that there is a genocide in Gaza.
College protests in College storylines have been used hundrends of times in every other media.
Why do you want so hard to make “this” specific one, your moral superiority moment?
I think Gotthammer is right, because the issue isn’t the college protest happening at a college, it’s that the college protest is based around an actual issue currently going on (but with webcomic dressing to make it slightly different) and the focus was less on the protest (what it’s about, who is affected, what’s happening) and more on yaaay the two girls kissed yaaay. I mean, bottom of the line, you gotta admit having the tear gas imitate a wedding is… a bit tone deaf? I mean, I get it, love through war and all that, but when it’s a protest the characters aren’t even that affected or informed on, it does become genocide protest curtains behind the girlies making out.
The protest as written was basically identical to a real protest at the real university about a real issue. If it was a generic protest then whatever, but it wasn’t. If an author draws parallels to a real world protest they’re gonna get people making judgements on that and what the author is trying to convey by those parallels.
If an author literally uses a real protest event down to the location and cause, but just changes the name of the people being genocided, they’re gonna get people analysing why too.
It’s basically identical except it’s actually about Syria which had, to my knowledge, zero protests on American university campuses. It is somehow two different things at once but also actually about zero things
I think you’re on to something here.
It’s not about Syria though. None of things being protested line up. Especially the US arms manufacturers supplying the genocide.
It boils down to this:
Willis didn’t want it about Palestine because it’s a fictionalized protest.
and a lot of fans don’t believe it’s fictionalized at all let alone enough.
In April 2024 there was a protest about divesting the real Indiana Universtiy from Israel because of the Palestinian genocide.
This protest was an encampment, which subsequently was broken up after the university changed its rules to forbid them. Police snipers were deployed around the university.
If it’s meant to be fictional, they shouldn’t have completely copied the events of a real protest occurring around the time they wrote the strips.
https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2024/04/29/iu-protests-and-police-action-draw-criticism-defense/
Literally about divesting IU from Israel: https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/state-police-leader-confirms-rooftop-sniper-at-iu-protest-responds-to-excessive-force-accusations
The protest could have and *should have* been about LGBTQIA rights that are under attack and still are in the US. It would’ve followed up on the political stuff involving Becky from last semester, would’ve been WAY better for the Doyce arc, and wouldn’t have been tone deaf. The only reason to make the protest about genocide was to mirror it to the real life protest at IU and it was a terrible story choice imo because it brings up a LOT of problems that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. It literally would have been perfectly fine if the protest had been about rights instead of genocide.
I think you’re right in that making the protest be about queer rights would have made for a better storyline. Using a distant atrocity that none of the main cast seems to care about creates some thematic deadweight. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, not everything in a story needs to be connected to its themes, things can just exist for background colour reasons, but stories are generally better when they have stronger thematic resonance. This would have achieved that while maintaining the same general plot beats. I think the audience and Willis himself would have been happier too.
That being said, I don’t think the storyline as it stands is bad, I’ve been liking it so far, but I do see the room for improvement here.
Yeah. Like it’s not even a BAD thing that Joyce doesn’t care about Bulmeria, because most of the cast don’t.
The problem is the meta issue of the author using the clear allusion to a very Real Protest that’s still fresh as a prop.
I mean then there wouldn’t be any conflict at all.
This is about greater social awareness of atrocities outside of your in group.
Carla is the better (frankly the best) avenue for this conversation, the protest and love story was absolutely not. Carla, Robin (for having supported such policies in the past), Jason (same reasons as Carla given his dad is rich and comically outright evil), etc. Nothing Joyce and Dorothy actually do outside of actual hardcore volunteer work will ever seem like anything beyond lip service to the topic. Especially Dorothy who, bless her heart, is just too liberal for this conversation [see her talking about a platform they don’t have.] The plot will have to move on from Bulmeria eventually, likely before the real life Palestinians and in universe Bulmerians stop being genocided. And then it will have all seemed performative.
Carla’s story can have an ACTUAL resolution and an actual deep discussion about things. Of the rest of the cast, only Dorothy cares about Bulmeria. Billie won’t and won’t be made to, Becky can’t right now, Joyce doesn’t and probably can’t be made to, etc. And without specifics on the Bulmeria situation (for example: is Asma Bulmerian now?) it cannot be discussed in depth. The Israel/Palestine discussion does not stop at simply stopping the genocide and if it does then a genocide will happen again.
Basically this is not a situation where someone can dust their hands off and say “there, there’s a ceasefire, we stopped the killing, we’ve saved Palestine” and walk away. There is so much groundwork that needs to be done for any form of lasting peace. I’m not educated enough on the situation to understand where to start, but I know that far more will have to actually be done. And nobody in this comic would have any better ideas where to start than I do.
Agreed. It would have been more thematically cohesive, it would have still been topical, and it wouldn’t have come with all this baggage that Willis now has to either tiptoe around or find a way to clean up.
The content of the protest matters. This *isn’t* a generic college protest over two-ply versus one-ply toilet paper or whatever else you’d see in a sitcom. This is an obvious and blatant allegory for actual campus encampments protesting the genocide in Gaza. It’s so blatant that trying to deny it feels actively insulting.
I reiterate my belief that Willis did nothing wrong and has nothing to apologize for. Real life public events are valid background for fictional storylines. The plight of the people in Gaza is not worsened in any way, direct or indirect, by his choice to base Indiana University’s Bulmeria divestment protest in Dumbing of Age on Indiana University’s Gaza divestment protest from real life. Nobody, not one single soul, has had their attention on the situation in Gaza diminished by Willis choice of background event.
Agreed.
The TL;DR is that this is a Doylist issue and we’ve only seen Watsonian responses.
I think the problem is that Willis can only make it clear that Bulmeria is NOT palestine and that will only exacerbate the issue.
Because the problem is fans want more attention to Palestine and Willis wants it to be absolutely clear he is not going to be using RL conflicts as props because this is about a fictional one being used as a character journey.
And that is the thing people are taking exception to.
It’s not fictionalized enough.
Which, again, goes back to the problem with continuing to make hash of it in the story.
Here’s how I feel about it: it was an awkward misstep with unfortunate implications Willis didn’t catch. That’s something that happens and we all can move past having learned a little something for next time.
But…so long as this plot thread *keeps showing up*, “next time” is never going to get here, and the plot being so prominent to the story makes it basically impossible to “move on” from since, you know, it’s still there.
Yeah, so I’m for accepting this is an important part of the characters development and follow it to the natural conclusion.
I’m not, though.
I don’t want Willis to go back and rewrite the past…god, 6 months? of strips. But they absolutely can and should, at the very least, take a look at the strips that haven’t been published yet and change them.
Maybe I’m dumb but what does Doylist and Watsonian mean?
I picked it up from TVTropes lol.
It’s about “how should questions about a story be addressed- from an in-character or ‘craft of storytelling’ perspective?”
Watsonian means in-character, after John Watson, a character in the Sherlock Holmes stories, whiel Doylist means ‘craft of storytelling’, for Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of said stories*
Most of the time folks here are *very* Watsonian- we nitpick, analyze, and break down character motivations to be like “why did they do that?”
* I obviously don’t want to presume you don’t know either of those names, I just write like that LMAO
Arthur Conan Doyle is the writer of the Sherlock Holmes books, which are narrated by Watson.
Doylist means it’s from outside the diegetic world of the story, something metanarrative.
Watsonian is something diegetic, a part of the story.
Doylist problems are those of writing, of narrative choices, what the author has done. Watsonian problems are problems of the narrative, regarding the characters as they exist diegetically.
It’s not just that Watson is the narrator, it’s that in-universe, he’s the one writing the Sherlock Holmes stories. So the question of Doylist vs. Watsonian is the question “Who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories?” If it’s Watson, then you’re taking a perspective from inside the universe of the stories. If it’s Doyle, then you’re taking an out of universe or ‘real world’ perspective.
Thank you @Rogue 7 and @Bill Erak. Both explanations were helpful.
Thank you for putting all the criticisms I’ve been carrying about this entire plot device in one post. The Bulmeria genocide is a rotten apple, an albatross around the strip’s neck, and everything since the “wedding” (I am still, still, still repulsed by the utterly tasteless use of tear gas as sakura) has shown that Willis has been struggling to actually internalize why what they did was wrong and tasteless. Hopefully they listen to you here!
And you’re right, they should have at minimum been using their platform to spread greater awareness and facilitate support for the people of Gaza who are facing very real genocide. It’s kind of ironic that Dorothy is talking about doing that here in light of the fact that when the protest was going on, what Willis chose to plug instead was the Patreon where you can go and give *them* money. It struck me as crass at the time, and this post has really crystallized for me why that was.
I literally almost ended by calling it an albatross around the story’s neck lol.
And I don’t think people realise just how much the strip copied from real life. It wasn’t that there were protests in general, the exact events of a real 2024 protest at IU played out with the encampment, the rules changes to make it illegal, the snipers, and the police breaking things up.
Copying things that closely, but not bothering to name the real victims students really got brutalised by the police for was, I will charitably say, a grave misstep.
I always come back to the fact that we do not even know the name of the group facing genocide in Bulmeria.
Sorry accidentally reported you. Fat fingers.
Anyway my issue is moreso knowing how long the buffer is actually hurts it even more because as recent as these events feel they were even MORE recent when willis was drafting those strips. Which just adds an extra layer to how uncomfortable the inclusion makes me feel.
Also don’t forget earlier strips that had Robin talking about Bulmeria and Leslie replying she didn’t think it was a real country… :/
I actually never realized how exactly it tracked to precise real-life events that happened in the real university in which the comic’s universe is based, around the exact time and place he would have been writing those strips in his buffer. That’s so much more damning than I initially realized, like what the hell?
Doubly so, because, wasn’t the whole point of starting this comic, that Willis needed a strip that they could write freely without being keyed-in to current events and culture? Picking up a real-life conflict wholesale, and crowbarring it fully into the narrative, seems like the worst idea given that mission statement.
“The issue was David Willis wrote Dorothy and Joyce taking over a protest…”
Really? They marched in, kicked out all the protesters, and loudly announced that this was about being gay now?
Or did Joyce impulsively kiss Dorothy after the cops had already broken up the protest (literally, in some cases), and happened to get photographed doing so? So far, the only people we’ve seen aside from the 19- to 20-year-old kids involved who thought their kiss was the salient image here are one extremely thirsty campus newspaper editor and one extremely weird professor who purports to teach “leadership”.
Everything post the kiss regarding the protest has focussed on the kiss. This strip has the characters literally saying they have become the faces for it.
So yes, Willis has written them as having taken it over.
My guy, responding to a clearly Doylist comment purely with Watsonian counterarguments is very much not the sick burn you think it is.
I think I found out what I feel about Joyce and Dorothy finally being together. They can be so HONEST with themselves and each other, so open. It is freeing to me, a huge relief and a big bite of serotonin.
That’s a great description. I think you’re right that that is a big part of what’s so wonderful about them.
“Use our platform to redirect public attention”
Is everything Dorothy says these days supposed to make me facepalm or am I the fool here?
I said a lot of dumb shit I thought sounded smart when I was a teenager too.
I don’t think it’s facepalm worthy. Dorothy has a lot of people’s attention on her, she thinks that attention should be elsewhere, and being the one who has it puts her in a position to redirect it. Of course, most likely what will happen from attempting to do this is she brings more attention on herself, because that’s what happens when you have a spotlight on you. It takes a lot of finesse to redirect attention like that, and Dorothy doesn’t have it, but she also lacks the experience to know that. It’s very hard to do nothing when you want to do something.
When you’re on the cover of a huge university’s newspaper people know your face. The public knowing who you are is a platform. You can do something with that.
I can see a possible timeline where they say “Hey, we’re the idiots who were making out in tear gas for no good reason. We weren’t even there for the actual protest, so can you maybe look at that instead of us?” and then someone finds out they both had boyfriends at the time and they become the victims of a targeted misogynistic harassment campaign over that instead, diverting even more attention away from the allegedly-important issue.
That is the monkey’s paw answer of consequences for cheating I hadn’t even considered, that would be so terrifying.
I mean, at least then the readership would get what they apparently want.
yea but we’ve seen continuous proof that literally nobody outside their immediate friend group recognizes Joyce and Dorothy. A guy who sees Dorothy presumably 3x a week, didn’t recognize her, after making the picture his entire lesson plan. They just weren’t that identifiable, because their damn faces were mashed into one another so completely.
Exactly. Even the editor who put the picture on the cover and works with both Dorothy and Joyce didn’t recognize them. What platform does Dorothy think she has? If she has a message she wants to convey, how is she going to get it out? I don’t see how they have a platform at all.
And still Joe stands alone, waiting for his cheating ex to come back and finish a conversation she promised she would
I don’t know if she really own anything about it. Mainly because she’s his ex.
If you promise someone to finish a conversation, it sort of becomes your responsibility to honor the promise. Nobody made her promise anything, she could’ve asked for a few days to think or just said no outright. She specifically said she’d come back and have the conversation after the emergency passed.
Yeah, Joyce’s grace period ran out on in the morning. At this point she is purposely avoiding Joe because she doesn’t want to have the conversation she promised.
They didn’t break up and I don’t think either thinks they did.
Fun fact: you can actually come back and finish a conversation more than 24 hours after it’s interrupted!
Hopefully joyce can pull her “unexpected but welcome” moments of clarity and speaks to becky.
Because tbh, and maybe this is harsh becky is kinda going on wjth the whole “friendzoned” mindset atm in terms of joyce.
She justified it before as “oh she can’t like me, she’s not gay!”
And while complex emotions are a thing and not invalid, she’s letting her lingering affection for joyce detract the actual friendship which was the base for it all.
Which I’m hoping joyce gives her a Frank talk, because they do love each other, but more to love than romance.
Sorry im not native but its something off with Dorothy last sentence, as if the subject of the sentence had been changed from Becky to reunced of God
Here renounced is a verb, so it is the action Becky took to stop believing in God, the result of that action also being losing her relationship with Dina.
That’s pretty much what it says. Becky renounced God, that renouncement broke up her and Dina. Dina is jealous and hurt that Becky has such strong feelings about her former crush. The logic that Becky thinks there is no goodness in Heaven because if there was, Becky and Joyce would have gotten together romantically, doesn’t sit well with Dina. It makes it sound like Becky thinks getting together with Dina was a bad result.
So far, Dorothy hasn’t really elaborated on those details so Joyce is also confused.
It sounds like Becky didn’t really elaborate on those details either. I’m not sure how much Becky has even worked through the details to herself.
And I do think there’s a lot more to it than just “here is no goodness in Heaven because if there was, Becky and Joyce would have gotten together romantically”, though that seems to be how Dina took it.
Kind of loving everything in this update.
Jennifer’s face and adorkable line.
Dorothy saying all the important things (yes finally, everythings out in the open).
Our girls getting ready to start “fixing” things… and finally the roll rolling for the Becky problem.
What “platform”? They don’t have a fucking “platform”, they have an excuse to commit cannibalism (not in a euphemistic sense, fuck off) and get away with it. Nobody cares about the Bulmerian genocide. It’s not important to anyone we know in the cast. It’s as valid a disaster as the little news tickers in Plague, Inc. that say things like “Thousands died after forgetting to drink water. Joyce and Dorothy can eat any of the other human characters in the cast and excuse it with “They were supporting the Bulmerian genocide, pass the ketchup” and it would be 1:1 morally equivalent with their trip to the beach.
I really hope they use this as an opportunity to make the university a villain wanting to suppress attention on the Bulmeria protest. I am really intrigued with it as long as they keep it nicely divorced from the RL subject.
No, that doesn’t make any sense and would be boring even if it did. It’s much better and more in-character for Joyce and Dorothy to eat human flesh in a spooky basement.
WHAT.
(well, now she knows. No, rushing to Becky probably won’t help, Joyce)
Congrats Dotty on actually mentioning these in order of importance and not in order of how urgent it feels.
Yeah Dorothy’s really coming out ahead in my estimations of these two
She had her government-mandated 15-minute impulsivity break, and now she’s back on the clock, Dorothy-ing as hard as she can to solve every problem on Earth in order of perceived importance. Now that there’s Shit Going On, she has to revert to her prior coping mechanism, which is being Miss Fix-It about everything.
“may have caused some additional unforseen consequences”
*insert white owl with open mouth, a meme*
Professor O’Ryan: “Burying the lead isn’t good leadership, Keener.”
This is why shipping trounces all issues ever.
I am too unsure of my feelings to visit my precious thread. So for now, I shall linger here.
Um…
I dunno if this is how I wanted Joyce to finally be possibly horrified of her actions. I think that’s what’s got me conflicted.
What is the username of the human being who drew your icon with their hands?
Sadly, a human did not draw that image with their hands as far as I can tell. It appears to have been AI generated using an app called Idyllic, which is likely why you’re not getting any answers from them.
Found through reverse-image searching their pfp, so take with a grain of salt bc it’s at least a little possible Idyllic stole the art to promote their app.
Having an AI generated avatar in the comments section of a webcomic is hilarious. You do know that the general fanbase for that kind of thing generally likes looking at human art and will see you as a fucking dork for using the slop machine, right
Oh,I’m sorry.
I literally just used Google to search for “black anime girl pics” and snagged one at random. It’s something I’ve done since I was a teenager in roleplaying forums. I didn’t really give it much thought…
Just, “ooh, this looks nice. I’m gonna save it then crop it and upload it.”
I can change it no problem.
Hey that’s a way better response than when I called someone out on using obvious ai for their grav. “I cant afford to hire a real furry artist yet” or smth, weak ass excuse
It’s certainly defensive.
Anyway, it’s done! I’m replying here because I just realized Gravatar changes the older replies, too. Which is neat!
But that’d make the comments look weird and we don’t want that.
Anyway, this girl is from “Tokyo 7th Sisters” which is an idol raising and rhythm game. I checked this time.
As funny as Jennifer is when she’s wrong, I like her best when she’s right. This comic is great because it’s both! Joyce and Dorothy are super adorkable, but Jennifer is wrong when she says she doesn’t do adorkable, because she has totally been an adorable dork on multiple occasions.
Yeah who the fuck does she think she’s fooling. She’s absolutely read Ruth her Kit Fisto fanfiction
literally made me flash back to her flirting with Danny. Girl??
…what’s that thing, where an author will insist something is true, and keep having characters comment on it, in an attempt to tell the audience what they’re supposed to feel?
(And from JENNIFER, of all people?)
Also: the protest thing was awkward. We all agree. Move past it, don’t spend another few months focusing on it, PLEASE
“tell, don’t show”?
Something like “informed attribute”?
The legal term is “isekai”.
I mean, it is true for me and many other commenters so.
“Protagonist Centered Morality?”
“We seem to inadvertently be the face of the Bulmeria protests…at this one university, in this one town, in this one state. There are many, many other protests occurring all over the country and also world”
I hope it’s nationally.
Also they don’t have a platform! They were in a single blurry photograph!
I honestly feel like I’m going insane.
It makes sense for Dorothy to take that “Our photo displaced the real message” and have that lead to “So that gives us a responsibility and a platform to do something about it”.
It just doesn’t make it true.
Yeah, it fits.
It’s so infuriatingly JOYCE of her to deeply regret the indirect couple that gets broken up by their actions, but the other two people she knowingly hurt are merely uncomfortable to think about and a bonus, respectively.
Joyce’s reaction to the first problem: Wow, that’s a big problem! I’m not sure wha it can do about it, I’m just a homeschooled ex-Christian
Joyce’s reaction to the second problem: I WILL TEAR DOWN THE GATES OF HEAVEN TO SAVE MY FRIEND
(confetti) Consequences! Even MORE consequences then being unable to share the new life experiences and intimacy she’s discovered with people she cares about who would be receptive because the way this relationship started was messy!!
(puts hand to my ear) sorry im being told this is Definitely Still Not Enough because they’re daring to prioritize. Yes. Joyces lifelong best friend whos dad got killed after trying to kidnap everyone she knew and her to do corrective christian dad control issue shit, like, in the last year. And her relationship, which Joyce adored and seemed completely stable, being Bad.
(yes I remember joe and walky exist. I promise I remember. Perhaps That Will Also come Up, Eventually, Since Everything Can’t Happen At Once)
Also: they really are adorkable. I’ve always loved their dynamic.
Apparently, the only acceptable consequences of this whole mess are for everyone on the campus to spend three days yelling at the girls, then shun them both for all eternity, with maybe a side dish of Walky and Joe throwing rocks at them as they leave the university in disgrace. Everything else has been dismissed as “not enough”.
Jeez, when my first wife moved in with her boyfriend, I just spent some time moping, then met another woman and moved on with my life. (Hard part was finding her in order to serve divorce papers – she told people I was some sort of abusive monster, so nobody wanted to admit to knowing where she was. Had to settle for finding out where she worked, then sending someone else in to drop the papers off.)
What “everything else” are you referring to? So far the only in-strip consequences for the cheating have been “mild disapproval, but otherwise not even a raised voice” and “Joyce can no longer discuss things with people she was formerly close to but has alienated”, which is to be fair exactly the kind of consequence that should be happening.
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3macitv4j2k2g
I cannot see who they are responding to can anyone else do so? Either way, full agree.
There is a username mentioned in the replies whose own bsky replies seem to fit what’s happening, let’s say.
yeah blusky has a pretty aggressive block function but like Big Z said, the person is mentioned in the replies
I tried looking them up but couldn’t find them.
Is it toxic to say it’s entirely unsurprising that this person is a sonic fan? Nothing against sonic fans just. It makes sense. It clicks.