Amen on the human bites thing, I’ve been bitten before and thankfully it didn’t break the skin/there was no tooth on skin action (I usually wound up being bitten through fabric) but a coworker of mine got bitten hard enough to break the skin and it got baaaad…
I used to work with special needs children who had behavioral troubles. Sometimes the business provided special sleeves to protect against biting, other times if I knew I was going to work with a kid who would bite, I’d wear a jacket. What do you do for work?
Ooh yes, the hitting… I’ve personally experienced biting, scratching, hitting, punching, hair pulling, furniture throwing… although I’ve never had to get treatment for bites, I DID have to get an x-ray for my hand when a chair got thrown at me and I instinctually brought my hand up to block it. Thankfully I only got a bone bruise on my pinky, but that sucker HURT and doing paper work at the clinic when my injured hand was my dominant hand sucked major ass. Thank god for workman’s comp at least.
I contrast, I don’t clearly know when I first had sex. There was a long series of sexual acts with this girl over the span of high school, but at the time I thought it didn’t count, because it was with another girl, and also that it was wrong, because it was with another girl. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, while having sex with a different girl, that I realized I’d been having sex all along.
Nah, I was never enthusiastic about laundry. It was more repeated sleepovers with very affectionate good night hugs. You know, just gals being pals. No self-loathing and recrimination about our totally innocent cuddling, the need to keep it hidden, or our inability to stop touching each other like that.
Gah, is it rude to ask for more details? I want more details.
Not on the sex stuff, but more the relationship. Was your relationship still essentially platonic, or more you realised years later it was more romantic than you understood at the time.
Ignore me if i’m being a creep. I just love backstory stuff like this.
We were just friends who had irrepressible sexual lust towards each other, but we barely ever discussed or acknowledged it even though we kept acting on it, because our combined guilt and shame made discussion impossible. Like, what am I supposed to say when the girl who is undressing because she wants me to touch her keeps reminding me that “this is wrong” and “we should stop”? Should I agree? Should I disagree? Which one results in more sexy stuff? Which one results in less guilt? I don’t know! So on account of all that, there was no romance between us.
In fact, we had so little romantic chemistry that we were able to make it look innocent when her mother caught us in the bathtub together one day. I panicked and bailed, but my friend kept her cool and told her mom that we’d been play-acting like little kids so we were having a little kid foam bath, and she bought it. I know the mom had to have believed it, because otherwise there would have been hell to pay.
Honestly, the whole thing kind of sucked? It was like dying of thirst but only having a muddy spring to drink from. I wouldn’t recommend it. Better to have sex with people who think the sex you’re having is awesome. Best though is to be in love, everything is awesomer when you are in love.
As someone who has previously found Joyce painfully relatable but not as much recently, I’m not sure if I’m jealous or horrified that this is how some people reacted to their first time having sex.
nobody’s gonna be normal about it on account of this being Joyce but tbh, being real, if i had bite marks from a hot chick on my shoulder i’d be annoying and yap about it too
I wish I had friends like Joyce spouting stuff like this to me. I’m not even gonna tell them “phrasing”, just show me that hickey. At the least if they want to talk shop I’ll have someone to finally talk shop with!
I even have a fun hickey / ER visit story to share on our way to the med center.
i guess lucy didn’t say anything about it, or she would’ve toned it done speaking to jen. or knowing how jen was in the past, think she would’ve been fine iwth this kinda brag
Sure, me too probably, but I’d like to give both of us the benefit of the doubt that we’d do it NOT well within earshot of the the guy she JUST broke up with (or we broke up with for her, and not gently).
I would expect Zooble to either be a mega-screamer or the type who cums harder than you ever have or ever will and just says “Oh hell yeah, dude.” in a casual tone. Total coin flip.
Shits overrated, sex toys are better and less gross than people if you need to get the shit done. I’m so glad my friends never wanted to talk to me about their sex lives, this feels so weird
Did they?
IIRC, they showed up together at a party they didn’t expect Lucy to be at and were all awkwardly apologetic. They didn’t cheat on her to start it. She dumped him. They certainly didn’t run on about how they’d had sex right in front of her.
Dorothy cheated on Walky with Joyce.
Lucy dumped Walky, saying she deserved better.
Joyce yelled at Walky about how she won, and he lost, and is shouting about her sexual escapades with her cheating partner.
Dorothy offered to help Walky make up with Lucy. Dorothy and Walky immediately felt awkward about demonstrating their relationship around Lucy. Dorothy offered to leave to make Lucy more comfortable.
This has always been here, admittedly. Usually not to this extent, but the tone of DoA can get very wonky at times. Has been that way since the beginning.
None of my friends acted like this the first time we had sex. This is just Joyce being extremely annoying on a new topic, and possibly using the autism as an excuse to intentionally ignore the fact that everyone is specifically telling her that they don’t want to hear these details
No. The thing to keep in mind about her is that she’s not just on the autism spectrum, she’s also extremely extroverted. She combines the urge to tell everyone all details (extroversion) with difficulties in telling which ones anyone might actually want to hear (autism spectrum).
Also, she didn’t grow up autistic, it’s something she found out may be true about herself, like, 2-3 weeks ago? A month? She isn’t “using autism as an excuse,” because that’s a learned behavior and she hasn’t had the damn time to learn it. She’s not intentionally ignoring everybody’s discomfort, she doesn’t recognize it. Recognizing signs that people are uncomfortable, is something that takes practice, and if you didn’t grow up knowing you were different, then the impulse to do that won’t ever develop, because you’d need to recognize something is wrong, first.
Honestly, this is less annoying to me than when Becky and Dina did it, because at least this one isn’t “let’s tell everyone VERY LOUDLY AND FREQUENTLY AD PUBLICLY except that one person who you’re all friends with, she must never know, shhhh, but also WE’LL KEEP SAYING IT VERY LOUDLY AND PUBLICLY AND FREQUENTLY”.
I think you’re really ARE just getting whiplash from yesterday.
Pretty sure Joyce is ALWAYS really grating and usually awful to people, its just that for some reason both cast and readers spent a long time thinking she was just amazing.
Feels a lot like she was perceived as the ‘hot prize’ and the manly guy possibly losing her suddenly made people realize she’s bad.
I mean people been out here being uncomfortable with how aggressively pro having sex she was despite Joe clearly being uncomfortable for a bit. It’s just that in a lot of other places she’s learned and toned it down, and serious Joyce who has toned it down is fairly endearing. We are now focusing almost exclusively on some spaces where she absolutely has not done the learning yet. And Joyce pre-doing the learning has always been a lot. So I think it’s a lot of not getting the more likeable Joyce energy in with the uncomfortable shit that’s souring people, not the manly guy losing her.
Though to be fair, Joe was pretty good in bringing out more serious even behavior from her. If poly doesn’t emerge I will seriously mourn the loss of that dynamic.
Okay this isn’t even a hater thing, this is a me problem, and its stepping outside my mildly shitposty nature but
If I was just trying to sleep in my own goddamn bed and my roomate decided to just start fucking a few feet away from me, i’d be so incredibly skeeved out, they’d be dead to me.
BUT on the other side of the scale, Sarah’s behavior at some point was this: newrecord bluffing
I’m not at all claiming that this is equivalent to Joyce-and-Dorothy’s behavior, not even close. But I do think it bears mentioning? I still think Joyce-and-Dorothy’s rudeness tops it by a mile or more.
Really?
Sarah threw her pants on Joyce’s face because Sarah wanted to wank and didn’t care that Joyce was not only in the room but actively asking her not to.
Compared to that quietly fucking your girlfriend in your own bed is not that big of a deal
Didn’t Joyce want Sarah to never masturbate while Sarah was refusing to consider that? Sarah’s was a bit much, but Joyce overstepped first and it was very much a punchline.
I think that’s pretty normal, but this is also why they have roommate agreements. Y’know that thing that was an important plot device for Jennifer for like two weeks. If fucking and girlfriends staying over in your shared living space uninvited isn’t Sarah’s vibe she can and should speak up.
Maybe she feels she can’t say anything considering they were trying to avoid Becky/give Becky space plus the fact that Sarah canonically threw her pants at Joyce so she could start using other Jacob (did she go through with it, idk, but pants were thrown).
She entirely did speak up, though maybe not clearly enough to get the point across. I’m thinking the direct approach might have helped, where her usual jaded sarcasm apparently didn’t cause any change in behavior, and she’s proved she can do direct at least sometimes.
@Effie
I always took that as her just speaking into the aether for an end of strip punchline, not that she was legitimately speaking to them to get them to stop, especially because she can be direct and we never got a response from them.
Yeah no I think I’d actually kill someone if they did that to me. At the very least I’d throw stuff at them and cuss they asses out cuz. Fucking vile. Ts is why I refused to have roommates in university
There’s only been 2-3 strips dealing with Jacob and Lucy being grating to other people aorund them, one of which was Ethan ducking out because it was obvious they wanted privacy but didn’t want to tell him to leave when he was depressed, and the rest were more mild than this, more self aware than this and were being contrasted with Jennifer blowing up her relationship with Asher at the same time.
Because we see them kick Jennifer out when they decide to hook up after the dorm party, she wasn’t there for that.
Sadly, yeah, it almost seems like my solution (that I actually had to use on my own obnoxious roommate’s sexy times) of “make popcorn, turn on the lights, spectate” wouldn’t actually work on Joyce in the slightest.
I think it’s less about virginity culture specifically and more about an obsession with / desire to hone in endlessly on sexual topics (in either direction) that other people would rather not discuss
I thought this a few days ago but sometimes I wish we had a hater hater containment thread. Which is not the same as an “enjoyer” containment thread but rather a thread for the people who specifically just hate the haters and wanna complain about them.
Maybe it would reach a hater-hater hater thread and then stop.
I mean, there’s probably going to be a fairly substantial overlap between the hater thread and the hater-hater hater thread, so that if you hate the comments of one group then you probably hate the comments of the other group, so there is really no need to expand the number of threads past that.
Idunno if it’s because I’m old and ace and functionally incapable of relating to… whatever the opposite of a post-nut clarity is, but MAN am I relating hard to Jennifer here. Those ninety minutes of class where even Joyce Brown could not turn the topic of discussion to How Good She Banged With Dorothy must have felt like heaven on earth to her.
Okay so science class should be like, after Christmas (real world) time. Looking like some awkward drama on the horizon unless this (in-comic) day drags out
Y’know early on in DOA I found Joyce annoying. Just really obnoxious. Which was purposeful but like…I didn’t find her endearing. I didn’t start coming around to her until right before the timeskip where I feel like I started really coming around to her. Then after some bumps post-timeskip I really started to finally get it. This is the character I can get attached to.
In such a short time I’ve gone all the way back to my initial read of Joyce. I don’t find her endearing or fun and when she’s got a strip I’ll just roll my eyes and wait for the next one. I feel less like she’s degraded as a character and more like I’m an idiot for being tricked into thinking she was a better character than what she is.
She’s always been this. It was my fault for allowing myself to be endeared at all.
I feel like a lot of the cast listened to Joe’s speech about how great she is for always trying to better herself and do the right thing and bought into it… and now much like Joe we’re all realizing that it was all made up and she’s actually awful.
I’m still curious what the writing end goal here is. Like Willis has to know that the way they’re writing Joyce in this strips is meant to ramp up her obnoxiousness. Either they’ve underestimated just how much of the negative reaction to Joyce was gonna be, or there’s some amazing writing plan where people will come round to her again.
I’m not sure, for me personally it would be really hard for Joyce to recover in my read of her.
This is still in line with her character. She said in early strips that she wanted the MRS. Degree and wanted a whirlwind fairytale romance. She also hinted that she’d save herself only for her husband (though she wasn’t too old fashioned in that she didn’t believe her first time would be on her wedding night, just that the first guy she’d sleep with would be the guy she married, similar to her Walkyverse counterpart) and, other than Dorothy being a girl, she got everything she wanted in a life-partner. I don’t agree with how boastful she’s become, especially around Walky, but this is keeping in line with her character because she won in love and all she needs to do is marry Dorothy and be the perfect First Lady to Dotty’s president.
Seconded. This is entirely consistent with her previous bouts of being absolutely insufferable about New Thing, and all the other stuff Corey mentioned. And now everyone – both us and her friends – are just going to have to put up with her being like this, or find somewhere else to be, until she gets over it.
I was at the point where, no matter what, at least she tries to be a good friend, and also the apostacy and the surrounding sexual issues resonated.
First her sexual issues zig-zagged abruptly. She suddenly didn’t care about being judged for months about what was her most sensitive issue up until that panel, which I guess was to fit a punchline into a progressing scene, but it eroded how she resonated. Like I probably would have stopped talking and shut down, and it didn’t even register for her.
Then it turns out she doesn’t try to be a good friend, she just says she tries to be a good friend. Which I like better storywise, there’s at least a consistency in the character, even if my view of the character is in a different light. But that light is meh-tinted now.
Yea I used to think people were too hard on Joyce, not giving her grace since she had just left her faith and opened up her world but….this showed me a side of her I straight up detest. This has nothing to do with growing up sheltered, this is just her personality and I dont like it.
Joyce was raised Fundy, has a (to me) fairly annoying personality at the best of times, and just had a major world shift with coming out.
Its not surprising she’s being over the top. He’ll none of the Dorothy/Joyce ship is that weird in and of itself. Cheating is bad but its far from uncommon, Joyce doesn’t get social norms is not a new revelation, etc.
What is weird is WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL TALKING TO THEM. Why is everyone else in this friend group just rolling with all this? At worst Walky got grouchy for half a strip but everyone else has reacted by basically going “oh well, it was always gonna happen”
Even this strip the realistic reaction isnt an eye roll and a joke its “Joyce you are being too much and Im already sick of this. Just walk by yourself till you calm down because I tired of hearing about it.”
It’s all “they’re dumb immature teenagers!” until it comes to reacting to anything someone else does. Then they’re all mature and introspective like Becky not blaming Dorothy at all, or apathetic like Sarah – who rather famously had a whole thing about her roommate disturbing her – not caring one bit about Joyce moving Dorothy in without asking her and then keeping her up at night fucking.
Yeah, this is what bothers me so much about the current arc. It feels like established character traits are discarded if they show any chance of getting in the way of the Joyrothy honeymoon period. Whereas I feel like the plot would be much more interesting if said established character traits *did* get in the way of the honeymoon period, and we had realistic drama arising from it.
Arent’ we still at… like, 2 nights of any sort of intimacy, and only one of actual fucking? Pretty sure Lucy and Jacob’s bangathon went on a lot longer than that, and very few folks in the comments felt any sympathy for Billie then.
Again, I’m pretty sure a lot of this is the storyline being impacted by the established pace of the strip, in that it’s just taking forever to get to the payoff. Joyce’s friends are willing to cut her a day or three of slack, I don’t see that as particularly out of character.
If this grace period goes on for more than a week, in-comic, then I’d be genuinely surprised.
Their ‘bangathon’ is the time they hooked up after the dorm party (where they kicked Billy out of the room instead of having her there) and the time they screwed in Jacob’s room? They’ve definitely slept over in each others rooms more often than that, but there’s nothing to say they were screwing while Jennifer was in the room.
Also no one had sympathy for Jennifer because that was mid or just after she blew up her relationship with Asher for no reaosn and thus the sour grasp were her own fault.
And even if all of what you said happened, we don’t dwell on the actions of Lucy, Jacob and Jennifer like we do Joyce and Dorothy. People will get fed up faster the more we see of something, no matter how much time that covers in universe.
> Even this strip the realistic reaction isnt an eye roll and a joke its “Joyce you are being too much and Im already sick of this. Just walk by yourself till you calm down because I tired of hearing about it.”
Not really? I mean sure it’s possible, but far, far more likely is being either polite or low-key passive-aggressive to the annoying person’s face, then venting and percussioning about them to one another after they’re out of earshot. For most people, it takes a *lot* to overcome the instinct to “get along” in a social group dynamic, sometimes to the point of detriment to society (which obviously this falls short of, but for an extreme example, see the concept of “missing stair”).
I think I’m actually finding Joyce more annoying in this strip than I did in some of her worst moments back when she was still a fundie Christian. Which is impressive, because I was kinda happy when she first became an atheist. I feel like Joyce getting with Dorothy has made her a much worse person than she was before they got together.
For me it’s that at least, as a fundie, her fundieness still came through as a care for others, or at least thinking about them, you know? Like she would express some wack idea but it was her way of saying she cares / understands / sympathises etc.
Now she literally is just talking out loud to herself and people make vague comments she doesn’t even acknowledge half the time. On one hand it makes sense, cheaters are inherently incredibly selfish people, but her behaviour is being presented as funny and quirky not gross and self absorbed so who even knows.
If you do a Garfield Minus Garfield but it’s DoA minus everyone but Joyce very little of some of these strips would change.
So that one strip was all we got/is all we’re going to get of Walky saying something to Joyce?
I hope there will be more, but I’m not expecting it anymore, at least not without some new trigger.
Which is disappointing, because I don’t feel a new trigger is warranted.
Maybe Walky will find someone he can talk to about this without it being dismissed, tho I have no idea who.
Maybe he’ll start talking to Mike’s ghost…
I don’t think you’d like the Walky that keeps snapping at Joyce and stays bitter about Dorothy. Not saying he doesn’t have justified anger, just that it’s really out of character for him. You really want Walky whining for weeks about how he lost his girl?
I would like a bitter Walky, actually. Because I don’t think he’d be bitter forever and down that road leads to Incelerator doing a “you’re not so different you and I” and him getting absolutely annihilated by a Walky working through some stuff loathing that comparison, and then Walky recovers.
Like I’m pretty sure the Night Guy stuff is long over with, I just like it. I want Walky to get a second round in lol
I think and hope that we’re not going to get closure on Walky until he actually talks to Dorothy about it.
Sure, Joyce was obnoxious to him, but they’ve always had that back and forth with each other, so that can kind of be written off. It’s Dorothy who actually hurt him.
So… did Joyce somehow forget that she already had sex with Joe, both by her own definition of sex and by other people’s common definitions of sex? Or was it just Willis who forgot that? This whole “NOW I’ve had sex, this is entirely new, last night with Dorothy was my first sextime ever!” line feels like a weird retcon.
She’d also already had sex with Dorothy by her own definition.
It’s kind of a retcon, but it’s not really weird I think. Those past ones were kind of “I’ve technically had sex”, but she clearly feels like this time went beyond that. Which is understandable.
I don’t think this one needs a hater containment thread. Authorial intent on this one seems pretty clear that we’re supposed to find Joyce annoying on this one / Billie is being the voice of the audience. Especially considering the clear contrast between Joyce not hearing a word Walky said and Dorothy REALLY hearing everything Becky said.
I think Willis is aiming for “you little shit (affectionate)”. Where Jennifer’s exasperated face and sarcastic comments are the limit to the pushback Joyce gets without it feeling mean. She’s supposed to be the happy little puppy who just chewed up the newspaper before you could read it- annoying, yes, but aw look at how cute she is!
Sadly, I (and I suspect a lot of folks in the HCT but I don’t want to speak for them) are at “you little shit (derogatory)”, where Joyce may be an adorable puppy but she also just took a dump all over the new carpet despite months of housetraining.
If Joyce had broken up with Joe first, and Dorothy hadn’t cheated I probably would have found todays strip amusing.
The issue is that I don’t really like Joyce anymore. It has stopped being “you are over enthusiastic but well intentioned” to “You are kinda a self-centered jerk”.
And I am realizing Joyce was always pretty self-centered. It is just that before she’d look inside herself and see God, and would follow the God-rules.
The last thing you said, IMO, is the key point. Joyce just hasn’t unpacked the reality in her own head, that being secular does not mean what she was taught it means. Yeah, she’s been more selfish, and not obsessed with doing no wrong by anyone, and not obsessed with never breaking rules; because, in her head, that’s a God Thing, so now she doesn’t have to do it, anymore.
She needs to wrap her head around, for instance, that part of the reason she found Dorothy so platonically and romantically attractive in the first place, was that she saw Dorothy as a good person who was well-meaning and cared about others. Joyce (and Dorothy) both spent so long selfishly attempting to be as unselfish as possible, because it was the right thing to do, and they must always do the right thing; but, Joyce’s motivation for that was “don’t get exiled from my in-group, and don’t get damned,” and so she’s lost any tether to her internal motivation to be, or do, any good.
Dorothy hasn’t lost that, because her compulsive need to be perfectly omni-good, was always internally motivated. Selfishly motivated, sure, but still internally motivated. Joyce’s compulsive need to do right by God, was fully externally prescribed, and so she’s unconsciously failing to hold herself responsible for her actions and their consequences…because, from her perspective, that’s not a skill she’s ever developed, it’s just a part of her internal dogma, which she has rejected.
That’s what the underlying meaning of her saying she was “vibing off transgressive feelings:” Joyce’s drive to always do good, was framed for her as a perpetual rejection of her own wants and needs, to suppress unChristian behaviors. For the first time in her life, Joyce is actually trying this new thing, where she follows through on her basic impulses, because it’s “not wrong” (read: not Sin) to do so. So, in practice, she’s socializing like an adult toddler, because that’s how deep her repression is woven into the fabric of her mind and personality. There is no Joyce-self before the God-Fearing Instinct, and so she’s starting from scratch on learning to be a secular person who isn’t a totally selfish, entitled piece of shit.
This is the first time she’s ever truly been free, and so of course she’s fucking bad at it, because she’s being judged by the standards of someone who has 15 years experience not being a total asshole. But, she has 0. There was never any internal motivation for her to know how to make good choices, only externally-imposed hierarchical standards from her in-group.
It would be nice if some of her friends were willing to talk to her about these important milestones in her life. Doesn’t really seem like a huge ask to me.
This, for sure. Joyce is having First Experiences, and she’s excited, and it’s honestly kinda sad that none of her friends are hype for her. I get that part of that is the cheating fiasco, but none of them really seem that bugged by the how-and-why, just the talking about it part.
College Kid Mindset dictates that being cringe will supersede whether or not she did something fucked up. It also doesn’t help that Walky’s own standing in the group is questionable at best.
I mean, Billie isn’t addressing the how-and-why because Walky hearing her say “Walky is literally 5 feet away and can hear you, can we talk about this literally anywhere else” would make the how-and-why problem *even worse*, not better.
Joyce didn’t do that part, you see. She didn’t ask anyone if they wanted to talk about it. She just started rambling about her sex life nonstop at people who said nothing to indicate they wanted to hear it. This is why Joyce needs to shut up right now.
I wonder what she’s doing now? You think she’s too busy?
That aside I feel like this is a very normal reaction. Plenty of them have had sex a few have even done it for the first time with very little in the way of fanfare or celebration about it. Walky was a virgin, Lucy was a virgin. Why is Joyce special here? I’m not even trying to hate, this just feels like expectations changing specifically for her.
I think there’s a greater expectation to match how Joyce had way more hangups over sex than Walky or Lucy did. There’s a reason we only saw her have fucked up dreams about it and watching porn covertly. On paper, most of her friends understand this is a huge step towards normalcy for her, but it doesn’t feel like that when she’s being as annoying about it as possible.
I mean. Yeah, Joyce having sex for the first time is a much bigger deal to her than it was for Walky, and it seems to have been a much bigger deal to her than it was for Lucy. Lucy’s also religious, but she’s never seemed to have any of Joyce’s sexual shame.
Also “why is Joyce special here, why are expectations changing specifically for her” — I… don’t know what you’re talking about here. I don’t think Nymph or Astariel would think less of Lucy or Walky if they’d been as excited as Joyce is right now about losing their respective virginities. Why are you assuming expectations are, in fact, different for Joyce on this?
I definitely feel like she had SOME sexual shame. She kept putting limits on when her and walky could have sex and was constantly trying not to seem too horny in front of him. Girl had a pretty decent amount of shame. Maybe not as much as Joyce but not none.
Like, Lucy was able to name her desire. She was able to say she was making up excuses to justify fulfilling it. She was able to point out to Walky that they were getting closer to having sex…
We also didn’t have multiple storylines where we learned Lucy didn’t know how to masturbate, or watch her burst into tears in a shower cubicle because she was too ashamed to touch herself.
A) Yes, Becky would have been GREAT if she were not currently having issues with exactly this thing. Of all the people Joyce cannot talk to about fucking Dorothy and expect joy and support, Becky is the highest on that list imo. To the point I’m unclear why you brought her up.
B) Sunglasses emoji
C) Who the hell said Joyce was special and expectations should do anything for her? You have zero idea how I’d have reacted to this exact scene with Walky or Lucy where Joyce is, and I’m not fighting against things you’re assuming without evidence. That’s just silly.
I brought up Becky in response to “It would be nice if some of her friends asked about these important milestones in her life.” and “It’s honestly kind of sad that none of her friends are as hype for her.” These statements are not true. One of her friends was very hyped for her and was willing to talk to her about it. It was Becky. It’s unfortunate that Becky isn’t available now, but none of her other friends were ever that interested in her sex life.
That’s not how I meant that to be read. It’s fine for Joyce to be excited about sex, my question is why should her friends who have never much cared about her sex life or the sex life of others in the past talk to her about it now? That’s why the desire for conversation feels like a special exception for Joyce, but it feels out of character for the group around here to engage like that.
Becky and Dina did something extremely similar, actually.
I bet a big part of what’s going on here is that Becky got an immediate if amused high-five reaction from everyone she told, and Joyce is instead getting impatience, “we all already knew,” and silence.
Some of which is justifiable and all, but that doesn’t mean I’m not expecting it to turn out explicitly here that the reason why Joyce is being so loud is to fill silence.
Yes, I definitely agree about the contrast between the responses to Becky & Dina’s very similar reaction to having sex for the first time & the responses to Joyce. The worst Becky & Dina seemed to get was amused tolerance, whereas the best Joyce has been getting is begrudging tolerance mixed with snide remarks.
These seems to extend to the comments as well. I recall there being some pushback to Becky & Dina, but not much, whereas there’s a lot of disapproval for Joyce.
And like I just said to Nymph: I get that some of this is that the cheating has soured this moment for her friend group. Especially with Jennifer.
So I understand WHY Joyce is getting what’s basically a very passive-aggressive cold shoulder.
I understand less why the comment section is acting like Joyce is wildly oversharing for no reason, as if we hadn’t had a continued escalation with increasingly visible strain from Joyce, or as if — as Nymph puts it so well downthread — this same crowd hasn’t been VERY HAPPY to talk about Joyce’s sex life or lack thereof, and her masturbation habits or lack thereof, for months.
““It’s honestly kind of sad that none of her friends are as hype for her.” These statements are not true.”
I find it sad. So I called it sad. that’s a true statement. Becky not being available now means that currently (which is when I was discussing) none of her friends are hyped for her. And that’s sad. Truly.
People she calls friends have discussed Joyce’s sex life both with her and behind her back for months now. In predictions about her sucking a billion dicks, in mockery, in worry, etc. Now that she’s hype and excited about it, the topic is suddenly weird and off-limits? Nah.
It’s not a “special exception” in that I would hope literally any person in their group who was hype/excited about sex they just had would find someone to be hype/excited with them. You can keep painting this in whatever way you like, but at this point you’re just wildly misreading a pretty simple statement of:
Joyce is having First Experiences, and she’s excited, and it’s honestly kinda sad that none of her friends are hype for her.
Also, speaking for myself, I get that the cheating IS affecting reception, particularly with Jennifer. I can think something is understandable and still think it’s sad.
Also: oops, now I’m even more annoyed at the intensity of the “this is so weird of Joyce to be talking to anyone about” scolding segment of the comment section right now, because you’re right.
This specific friend-group was not only expressly fine with Becky and Dina’s very similar tour of telling everyone they’d fucked, it’s ALSO full of people who have been gleefully speculating about Joyce’s sexual future and her masturbatory habits, sometimes in front of her, always to her visible embarrassment and sometimes active distress.
So no, this specific friend-group does not get to pull an “it’s so weeeeeird of you to be telling us this, ew” Uno Reverse now that Joyce is proud instead of ashamed. This specific friend-group made their water bed, and now they have to lie in it.
I’m glad that I’m like 90% sure Jennifer’s frost right now is because of the cheating, because anything else would be hypocritical and frankly gross.
If a friend came to me to share that they’d had sex and were excited about it, I’d congratulate them and be willing to talk (to a certain threshold at least).
Not unprompted, in a group setting, though. That’s a weird vibe.
Really, I feel like this is at least partially a function of how shallow a lot of these friendships really are. As was mentioned, she’s had pretty good sex talks with her closest friends — Dorothy, Becky — and probably WAS getting close enough to Sarah that she could have had these discussions with her as well. Now it seems like she’s alienated (at least, temporarily) the two of her closest confidants that she’s not currently dating.
Hell, she could probably have a good conversation about it with Joe, too, as close as they were and given how he still feels, but at this point I can’t even tell if she’s avoiding that on purpose or it’s just circumstance.
i think that’d make her more annoying about it, like how she (rightfully) went off on everyone for when she had an outburst about the birth control pill
No, no, no! The current ruling on Joyce is that she’s always been insufferable, that she will always be irredeemable, and that she has never, in any way, shape or form, been a good friend, and any and all evidence to the contrary was just her successfully hiding her secret awfulness.
At least, that seems to be the consensus of the Hater Containment Thread. Which I should thank for making Joyce my new favorite character.
Honestly as we get further and further along it’s looking more to me like Joe dodged a bullet here. Joyce Brown does not care about him. He was working so hard to be better for a woman who wasn’t as invested. That’s been proven now and her not being nearly as happy after realizing she’d had sex with him is just another sign of that. Part of me prefers Joe not being in the narrative to have to face this obnoxious version of Joyce that was undercutting their relationship to Sarah mere hours after cheating and snughling Dorothy under the blanket he bought her. She’d probably just laugh at him and say “No hard feelings.” (Only about half of this is sarcasm)
“He was working so hard to be better for a woman who wasn’t as invested.”
Kind of a foil to Lucy and Walky’s relationship, except Lucy being the more invested one there.
Lucy and Joyce both remarked on their similarities upon or immediately after their first meeting.
They were both involved with guys who were more sexually experienced with them and were both trying to set things up for them to properly go on a date and lose their virginity.
Both Walky and Joe had (different) toxic masculinity traits and both have been trying to improve themselves (Walky wasn’t specifically working on the toxic masculinity, but still improving himself).
And both Joe and Walky are still affected by the ending of the relationships (Joe’s ending is much fresher, tho), while the ladies have happily moved on and don’t seem to give any thought to their exes now that they have.
I wouldn’t say that Joyce was completely divested from Joe emotionally. If she had felt no attachment whatsoever she probably would have gloated into his face about her starting a relationship with Dorothy like she did to Walky but she does seem to have genuine conflicted emotions on Joe since she can’t bring herself to cut the knot entirely.
And got fingered like a day before. And gave a handjob not long before that. And not too long before that she had joe cop a feel while cuddling topless. Big big week for joyce
Thank you all for yesterday. What was originally just screaming into the void ended up bringing a surprising amount of comfort that I wasn’t expecting. I read through your responses several times today whenever things became too difficult with handling her affairs. Thank you all again, and I hope the end of 2025 treats you all as kindly as you treated me.
Look, Joyce: you need to call The Lonely Island & Akon, then tell them to meet you of Garbage Roof. Then you can all sing “I Just Had Sex” and get it out of your system.
Seriously! When are we going to cut back to Akiva Schaffer?! His two best friends get a boat ride for three, but they just up and invite Akon, right in his face?
People were wondering, myself included, if Joyce’s cheating fiasco would fuck up the friend group, but now I realize she’s guilty of a much more heinous crime to college kids: killing the vibe.
Well, no character here is exempt from doing silly things. But Joyce seems to want to go beyond the limits of silliness; she’s willing to break records.
I wonder if part of the “I must proclaim this to everyone” mindset comes atleast partially from the fact that her upbringing would have defined sex in purely PiV terms and thus pre college Joyce wouldn’t have really thought of what her and Dorothy did as sex.
So the need to label it comes from her still having the ingrained belief that sex with your true love is the biggest deal possible combined with a need to tell others that sex isnt just PiV and what she did with Dorothy counts as that life changing sex with true love thing.
I suspect Joyce has even more hangups about sex than we’ve been told.
Think of that whole bit where Dorothy got the feeling that Joyce was obsessing over the definition of “sex” to INSIST that her first time was with Dorothy, actually…because then, according to her upbringing, she’d “saved herself” for her “true love.” A whole lot wrapped up in there for sure.
Joyce was cheating on Dorothy all that time, with Joe, and telling poor Dorothy all about it. What a witch. I mean what happened on top of the drier was clearly Dorothy helping her to have an orgasm, so, at that moment, perpetual monogamy was mandated and even to look at another person, let alone kiss them was cheating big time. And so there should have been massive consequences. Joyce should have died or been executed or something. And, of course, that’s all on Willis for not writing it like that. C’mon, don’t you people know nothing? (Parse that phrase if you can!)
I think she would have always thought what she and Dorothy did was sex. She thought Becky and Dina had had sex.
She wouldn’t have thought that she’d had sex with Joe with PiV, but that doesn’t really contradict.
o/~ I’ve… haaaad… sex!
I’ve had sex!
And I did it in my specs!
Dorothy plundered my downtown
And she’s carried off my sex crown
I’ve had sex!
I’ve had sex!
Oh my insides she suplexed
See this bite mark on my shoulder
it’s what put me in her folder
I’ve had sex!
I’ve had sex!
She’s opened up my pokedex!
I’ll go off about it for forever mooooooooore
And if being far too sexy
Gives my best friends apoplexy
I don’t care!
I’ve had sex!
I’ve had sexxxxxx! o/~
Geeze, even 90s teen romcom nerds are less self-congratulatory than Joyce is right now. Most of the time they just get a high five and then move on.
I also find it most amusing that Joyce is riding the high of having sex with her “one true love” and blocking out everyone that’s telling her to just shut up while Dorothy is finding out the hard way about all the collateral damage she and Joyce are doing to not only their friends (Becky and Dina, and to a lesser extent Sarah) but to the school in general (the “Leadership Course” teacher thinking the protest was about queerness and not convincing the college to divest in a weapons tech company). Joyce’s insistence that she can now have all the PDA with Dotty that she wants and anyone who tells her “time and place” is just a bigot will most DEFINITELY cause a strain with Dotty down the line after the previous conversation she had with Becky.
I think “bigot” wasn’t exactly the right term to use but more how Joyce basically gets a bit dismissive to downright rude or hostile if someone pushes back on her actions at all… But that’s always been a Joyce trait it’s just been more amplified since a lot more characters are getting caught in the crossfire of her actions now.
I assume via conflating Joyce’s “I have been heroically gay” and similar in-comic statements with some of the (very infrequent, very fringe) opinions/personal attacks that crop up in the comment section.
(Meant to add: that’s wrong, of course. Neither Joyce nor Dorothy have used homophobia accusations to dismiss criticism. But I have seen it crop up in the comment section so I could easily see getting the commentary mixed up with the actual in-universe discourse)
The weird thing to me is the notion that Dotty is in any way responsible for the ‘harm’ done to the protest. I keep wondering if folks would’ve preferred if Daisy had ignored the story entirely. Or maybe just run some boilerplate copaganda–something that would’ve been made much easier by the number of cops reporting injuries due to Amazi-Girl’s actions, I should note.
Sure, an in-depth analysis of the school’s finances and explaining how many dollars they’ve made on a per-dead-child basis would’ve been frikkin’ amazing, but Daisy’s never been that sort of editor. What we got was the best of all the ~likely~ options, IMNSHO.
On the one hand, the classic Touchdown Celebration advice of “act like you’ve been there before” is always apposite, but on the other hand, Joyce ha snever had any chill about anything else, either, so
But the point of the idiom is, “if getting there was such a big deal to you, it naturally implies you were so untalented, that you never thought you’d get there.” After all, you aren’t cool for having one sex, you’re cool for being a person who “has sex,” and that implies it’s just a thing that regularly happens to you, without much effort – which is how a star sportsballer should treat celebrating their scores, because scoring is literally the thing they were hired and paid to do, and if it’s a big deal to them, it naturally follows that they don’t do that often, and therefore, that they suck at their job.
Back in uni, I announced my newly acquired sex life by texting my sister an mp3 file of “I Just Had Sex”… Years later, our little sister did the same thing (she didn’t have to send the song from a flip phone, though)
She didn’t consider herself as having had sex with Joe until Becky pointed out that hand stuff counts. And then she got distracted by Dotty. She was bragging about him fingering her tho, which lead to that conversation. I do think she’d be exactly like this if they kept along their path. Just more talk about getting,, fuckin hammered. She was very vocal about how much she wanted him to slam her down big style to their friends
She didn’t think of it as sex when she had it with Joe. (And the bj wasn’t sex for her by her new definition.) Nor did the original laundry scene, even though she retroactively classified as sex. It still didn’t push the same emotional buttons.
But really, I think it’s sort of the whole package that crossed the line to really feeling like having sex. That it was a back and forth for both of them, rather than one doing something for the other, like her times with Joe probably made a big difference.
I genuinely don’t mind when Joyce is being obnoxious, bc that’s a core character trait of hers and I’m kinda numb to it. The fictional characters usually don’t bother me that much. That being said, whew this one was a tough read lmao
I wonder if she actually means it too, bc that’s kind of the opposite sentiment of most recent unvirgins. Ig its more about socialization and being “normal” than anything else
Pretty sure this level of “public sex bragging” is yet another one of those things, like turkey vs. ham at Thanksgiving, where half the population finds this completely relatable/normal and the other half cannot IMAGINE real people doing this sort of thing, and this thread in particular is where a lot of folks are finding out for the first time the other half exists.
I will say, talking frankly about th details of your sexual experiences is definitely more of a thing in gay communities. But this is just Joyce being autistic and not understanding normative social boundaries, and nobody correcting her on it for some reason.
Yeah, it’s kinda foreign to me and I was definitely in a community with a reputation for it — but man, even my fraternity guys didn’t say this kinda thing on the steps of a classroom building, even if we did say similar stuff in the privacy of our communal living room.
This is also a relevant detail. It’s not like anybody she’s talked is enthusiastically participating, basically everybody is being at least a little cold and stand-offish directly at her. It’s very deliberate. Joyce just does not recognize those signals, which is totally consistent with her through the whole comic.
I bet a good part of the reason why Joyce is being so loud and relentless is that this has been her reception the entire time (exasperation, impatience, and lots of silence).
Becky and Dina were also very braggy, but the got a bunch of bemused high-fives. Joyce has instead gotten, at best, “yeah we already know and we don’t care”.
I don’t know if I think this level of triangle smile is genuine, or if I think it’s masking because she doesn’t want to accept how very not-happy-for-her her actual friend-group is, but either way I bet she would not still be talking if she’d gotten any validation from any of the people she’s told so far. Like, this is decidedly an escalation from when she first said hi.
(I’m not saying any of this because I think it’s, like, unfair of people to be frosty to her? Just that it makes sense to me why she’d be pushing this boundary.)
I can even see why Joyce, regardless of where one thinks she is on the spectrum, might not immediately clock the differences between Becky/Dina’s situation and her own.
Unsure if a typo there is changing the meaning of your comment (can or can’t?), but I didn’t mean to suggest Joyce was consciously comparing herself to them and thinking, “Why not Zoidberg?”
I just meant: Joyce and Becky at one point had a similar level of sexual shame, and Becky, similarly, felt compelled to blurt out the fact that she and Dina had had sex to all of their friends, so it makes sense to me that Joyce would want to do the same thing.
Becky didn’t keep pressing the issue, but she ALSO got immediate if sometimes amused validation from the people she told. I think if she’d gotten a wall of exasperation and silence instead, she might also have kept talking and gotten more ‘obnoxious’ about it.
And again, not sure whether or not I think Joyce is even doing it on purpose. I think Becky’s desire for validation (and reassurance that she hadn’t done anything wrong by becoming sexually active) was probably at least somewhat subconscious. Joyce could be in a similar boat.
Only, you know, in Joyce’s case she did in fact do something wrong. So she’s getting a lot of silence, some exasperation, and an “I liked you better when you were a virgin.”
And-again-again, also not sure whether I think Joyce’s triangle smile is obliviousness to the frost, or if it’s in defiance of it. Either way, though, I respect it to come to a head fairly soon.
Yeah, it was not a typo — and I think most folks knowing Becky’s story even tangentially would be a LOT more tolerant-to-enthusiastic about “hey, I have a girlfriend and we had sex (after a BUNCH of bad shit happened because my family hated that I was a lesbian)” compared to “hey, I have a girlfriend and we had sex (in a complete 180 where I cheat on the guy I’d BEEN dating, and otherwise haven’t had any bad experiences yet with people being homophobic at me)”.
I think it would be silly to talk about this while ignoring that yes, Jennifer’s slightly passive-aggressive cold shoulder here is because of the cheating and because she cares about Walky’s feelings and doesn’t like how Joyce and Dorothy got together.
But I think it’s also silly to discuss it without acknowledging that this friend-group has been happy to talk and gossip about Joyce’s sex life and masturbatory habits back when it made her uncomfortable, so. I don’t really think they specifically get to pull “why are you oversharing so much, eugh” on her.
i could see that. i think maybe another part of this is over-correcting after exposure to purity culture; shame and silence around positive sexual experiences probably were common for her upbringing. so in trying to reject that she’s being a little too open without regard for the circumstances.
I definitely didn’t, but there is a stage in a relationship where you want to let everyone know very directly that you’re now with someone new and they’re great etc etc which is hardly distinguishable.
You couldn’t pay to to listen to my friend yell the details of their sexlife, up to and including the fact that they had it. Let alone do it myself (tho it’d be a very short list of details). That shit is funny to watch like, entertainers do. But when it’s someone you know it’s suddenly real and that’s gross to me. I’m generally not sex repulsed, in fact I’m deeply fascinated with sex- until the sex is suddenly in my vicinity. Then I recoil like a snail from salt.
I think the “this is a gross breach of boundaries, how could Joyce think this would be okay with anyone” take would have a lot more to back it up with this specific friend-group if they hadn’t, as Nymph points out so eloquently above, spent the last few months very cheerfully speculating about Joyce’s sexuality.
Her sex life or lack thereof and her masturbation habits or lack thereof were both treated as totally fine topics for other people to talk about without Joyce’s consent, sometimes behind her back and sometimes to her face, so like. It would honestly be kind of gross of most of these people to suddenly act like Joyce’s sex life is an icky thing she shouldn’t talk to the about.
Thankfully I don’t think that’s at all what’s happening: I am pretty sure this somewhat passive-aggressive frostiness is because of the cheating.
like, you’re completely within your rights to think this is a supremely uncomfortable topic, I am not saying it would be unfair of you to be uncomfortable if a friend talked to you like this unprompted. I’m also ace, I also generally don’t appreciate people talking to me about this stuff.
But. You know. It’s just not unprompted, in Joyce’s case. In Joyce’s case, it’s more like “ugh, it was so much more fun to speculate about your masturbatory habits back when doing so made you viscerally uncomfortable, weird that you think any of us would care now that you’ve actually had sex and aren’t ashamed of it anymore.”
So I’m very glad Jennifer almost certainly behaving this way out of discomfort, but because she’s Walky’s friend as well as Joyce’s, and she cares about his feelings.
I don’t know, i think it’s perfectly acceptable explanation that she is just, kind of hypocritical. It was fine when I wanted to talk about your sex habits and oddities but it’s not that you are sharing it without shame. I don’t personally think it has anything to do with Walky.
“It was fine when I wanted to talk about your sex life without your consent, it’s gross that you now expect me to be interested in it now that you’re happy to share” would be a really really crappy place for Jennifer to be coming from.
I don’t really care if it is a jerk move, i only care if it makes sense from the character and i think it does. You might disagree with that and that’s fine with me.
Probably an age element to it, too. In the past there was much more opprobrium for talking about sex. Hell, my mother refused to allow it to be said that i dated a bloke my sister later got together with, and that’s not even about sex (there wasn’t any), just the sheer horror of …. something perfectly normal!
Honestly, I’d compare this to a slightly different bit in the same vein. I saw a comedian start with, “If you wipe your ass while sitting, raise your hands.” “Now, if you wipe your ass while standing, raise your hands.” “Now, if you only just now realized the other half of the room exists, raise your hands.” Naturally, he got just about the entire room raising their hands at that point–and it really was close to a 50/50 split prior.
Eh, actually, this Joyce is more to my liking. Part of that may be my habit of reading the Hater Containment Threads, since folks have been so gleefully retconning Joyce into having always been the worst person in the world, that I’ve become increasingly fond of her.
So viewing this through the lens that Joyce is the character who is most autobiographical for Willis, I get the impression that Willis went through some distinct phases that they’re still not too comfortable about, and doesn’t want to whitewash.
And progress isn’t linear in real life. You don’t lose the damaged impulses that you had as you strip away the layers that enabled them. You will often make the same mistakes in different contexts, and that can and will be rough on your friends as you unpack your shit. It’s not a tremendously enjoyable process for anyone involved, least of all yourself.
And there’s a temptation to think, at various points, that you’ve scraped all that out of yourself. You want to believe that, because it sure as hell seems bottomless at times. It has dimensions you’re not even aware of, because it was invisible to you most of your life. You had, and still have, blind spots you could drive a truck through.
And sure, for us as readers, it’s difficult to watch as well. Because I don’t think Willis has fully forgiven themself for how they used to act, and perhaps feels they shouldn’t.
Working on yourself is exhausting, and it’s very tempting at times to declare the work done, as Joyce has, that you have achieved your final, perfect, actualized form. But that’s not true. The work is never done, but it still needs doing.
This part is not autobiographical. Willis never cheated on a partner.
So, if they’re still beating themselves up for the alleged crime of being a bit insufferable when they first had sex — and to a friend group where this isn’t even completely abnormal (Becky and Dina) — then they should definitely forgive themselves.
There are sooooo many worse things to be in the world than a little bit cringe.
And one of the things that makes this boasting worse, is the cheating aspect. Or even without the cheating, doing it right in front of the person who got dumped so you could.
So, even if Willis is exorcising a part of their own past, placing it in this context makes it a bigger deal.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I only think Joyce is boasting more than Becky and Dina right now because when they went on a tour of telling every person they knew that they’d fucked, they got affirmations and bemused high-fives.
Joyce has instead gotten exasperation, silence, “no one’s surprised”, and now, “I liked you better as a virgin.”
So, she’s ramped things up. She’s gotten louder and more explicit. In the last panel, she’s so desperate for some type of at least NEUTRAL interaction around the fact that she had sex that she’s raised a medical concern. “Please look at my hickey, it might be infected. Haha, I got this from Dorothy…”
I’m still undecided on whether I think she’s overcompensating consciously or subconsciously, but I’m very sure she would have changed the subject by now if she weren’t trying to fill silence.
And, in case it needs to be said: I think Jennifer in particular being frosty with her makes sense and is justified.
I just don’t think “Joyce is extremely happy right now and doesn’t care at all that her friends are freezing her out” is an accurate read of the strip.
Whether she’s fully self-aware of her own feelings and why she’s doing that, and whether her smile is about to crack or not, we’ll see in a strip or three.
I am not convinced at all that she had sex with Asher.
Now I’ll concede she is absolutely bi, even if she can’t acknowledge it. That’s word-of-god, and due to the fact that sexualities did not change between the Walkyverse and the Dumbiverse.
But for all she’s in denial about it, I would put good money that her only sexual partners have been Alice and Ruth.
Upon further review of the memory banks, I think Jennifer proposed the fucking and Asher was like “that would also be acceptable” because he was cranky about quitting smoking.
Which is immaterial in support of my overall point that they were doing the no-pants dance frequently, but not correcting it would bug me for the rest of the day.
Yeah, it would be a huge reveal and drastic change to her character if that came out. I’m not sure I’d believe it wasn’t a big retcon.
There’s way too much implied in her drunken party girl backstory for there not to be something there. And with that established about her, her not having sex with Asher would seem an important place to focus on that. Asher knew her rep.
all of Joyce’s actual friends are either currently her sex partner or she’s pushed them away. The fact that she’s talking to Jennifer about this is kind of sad.
Joyce definitely considers Jennifer a close friend, and Jennifer seemed to have a bit of a Realization about that after she went to Joyce for help convincing Alice she has friends and Joyce was so happy to oblige.
I think Jennifer is only reacting like this (instead of giving Joyce amused head pats) because she’s also Walky’s friend, and she cares about his feelings.
Still, she definitely would get a frostier reception from Sarah, she obviously can’t talk about it with Becky or Joe. Those are her closest friendships aside from Dorothy, I believe. She may consider Jennifer a close friend but the feeling is clearly not mutual.
Yeah, Jennifer’s reaction is probably mostly because of Walky, but that’s not really what I’m getting at.
Some of yall who are wondering why Joyce expects these people to care that she had sex need to reread, because while I would also, personally, be uncomfortable with this level of disclosure from a friend…
…we are talking about a group of characters who have been very happy to speculate about Joyce’s sex life and her masturbatory habits for months. Sometimes behind her back, sometimes to her face. They opened this door! They made this water bed!
It would be genuinely so gross if it turns out that Jennifer’s frosty reception right now is because she thinks it’s inappropriate of Joyce to speak joyfully about her sex life, rather than because she, Jennifer, is also friends with Walky, cares about his feelings, and is Displeased about how Joyce and Dorothy got together.
Most of them have also been happy to discuss their own sex lives with her, to various levels of detail, openly either enjoying or mocking her obvious discomfort with the subject.
I want to buy Joyce a freakin’ loudspeaker, at this point.
Again: I think Jennifer has reason to be cold to her, I think Walky especially has reason to be cold to her, but “weirdo oversharing about sex” in this group? Nah.
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Those first two panels are exactly how I felt the day after I first had sex. This has got to be in the top five most relatable Joyce moments.
Also, you should probably get that looked at if she broke the skin, Joyce. Human bites can be filthy.
Amen on the human bites thing, I’ve been bitten before and thankfully it didn’t break the skin/there was no tooth on skin action (I usually wound up being bitten through fabric) but a coworker of mine got bitten hard enough to break the skin and it got baaaad…
What do you do for work? I’ve also been bitten at work, but same about it being through fabric and not breaking the skin.
I used to work with special needs children who had behavioral troubles. Sometimes the business provided special sleeves to protect against biting, other times if I knew I was going to work with a kid who would bite, I’d wear a jacket. What do you do for work?
Similar, working in classrooms with kids with high support needs. I’ve only had a couple of bites, more likely to deal with hitting.
Ooh yes, the hitting… I’ve personally experienced biting, scratching, hitting, punching, hair pulling, furniture throwing… although I’ve never had to get treatment for bites, I DID have to get an x-ray for my hand when a chair got thrown at me and I instinctually brought my hand up to block it. Thankfully I only got a bone bruise on my pinky, but that sucker HURT and doing paper work at the clinic when my injured hand was my dominant hand sucked major ass. Thank god for workman’s comp at least.
I think Joyce is frankly virginal enough that she thinks a normal hickey might be infected
she’s still struggling to not shower with them platform shoes, so I ain’t surprised lol
That would be very in-character for Joyce.
I contrast, I don’t clearly know when I first had sex. There was a long series of sexual acts with this girl over the span of high school, but at the time I thought it didn’t count, because it was with another girl, and also that it was wrong, because it was with another girl. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, while having sex with a different girl, that I realized I’d been having sex all along.
You must have had the cleanest laundry in the world
I’m confused by this comment, what do you mean?
I’d assumed it was a doing laundry reference.
Ohhh!! Thank you so much for explaining lmao that is definitely it.
Nah, I was never enthusiastic about laundry. It was more repeated sleepovers with very affectionate good night hugs. You know, just gals being pals. No self-loathing and recrimination about our totally innocent cuddling, the need to keep it hidden, or our inability to stop touching each other like that.
Gah, is it rude to ask for more details? I want more details.
Not on the sex stuff, but more the relationship. Was your relationship still essentially platonic, or more you realised years later it was more romantic than you understood at the time.
Ignore me if i’m being a creep. I just love backstory stuff like this.
We were just friends who had irrepressible sexual lust towards each other, but we barely ever discussed or acknowledged it even though we kept acting on it, because our combined guilt and shame made discussion impossible. Like, what am I supposed to say when the girl who is undressing because she wants me to touch her keeps reminding me that “this is wrong” and “we should stop”? Should I agree? Should I disagree? Which one results in more sexy stuff? Which one results in less guilt? I don’t know! So on account of all that, there was no romance between us.
In fact, we had so little romantic chemistry that we were able to make it look innocent when her mother caught us in the bathtub together one day. I panicked and bailed, but my friend kept her cool and told her mom that we’d been play-acting like little kids so we were having a little kid foam bath, and she bought it. I know the mom had to have believed it, because otherwise there would have been hell to pay.
Honestly, the whole thing kind of sucked? It was like dying of thirst but only having a muddy spring to drink from. I wouldn’t recommend it. Better to have sex with people who think the sex you’re having is awesome. Best though is to be in love, everything is awesomer when you are in love.
The sex was inside you all along! Wait.
xD! ✨
The true sex was with the friends we made along the way.
The true sex was the friends we sexed along the way.
The true friends were the sex we had along the way.
Put the things inside the other things!
As someone who has previously found Joyce painfully relatable but not as much recently, I’m not sure if I’m jealous or horrified that this is how some people reacted to their first time having sex.
In my defense, I didn’t actually say it out loud to anyone. I was just thinking it.
So that makes a BIG difference — I didn’t brag out loud this hard to my FRATERNITY BROTHERS, in PRIVATE. 😀
nobody’s gonna be normal about it on account of this being Joyce but tbh, being real, if i had bite marks from a hot chick on my shoulder i’d be annoying and yap about it too
god forbid a doll do anything
The autism yapping cannot and will not be stopped,
And should not
You know it was a good party when your nipples still hurt on Tuesday.
Speak for yourself! 😩
I assure you
I am
You gotta brag about the hickeys!
I wish I had friends like Joyce spouting stuff like this to me. I’m not even gonna tell them “phrasing”, just show me that hickey. At the least if they want to talk shop I’ll have someone to finally talk shop with!
I even have a fun hickey / ER visit story to share on our way to the med center.
i guess lucy didn’t say anything about it, or she would’ve toned it done speaking to jen. or knowing how jen was in the past, think she would’ve been fine iwth this kinda brag
Sure, me too probably, but I’d like to give both of us the benefit of the doubt that we’d do it NOT well within earshot of the the guy she JUST broke up with (or we broke up with for her, and not gently).
Absolutely.
Amazing Digital Circus fans will understand that I had to.
This feels mostly accurate except for I do not buy that Zooble would give impassioned screams. Doesn’t seem like their style.
It’s always the ones you least expect.
You also forgot the crucial inaccuracy that Zooble has no teeth.
Depends on what parts they attached that day.
I would expect Zooble to either be a mega-screamer or the type who cums harder than you ever have or ever will and just says “Oh hell yeah, dude.” in a casual tone. Total coin flip.
lmao I will say the latter is the only option that actually speaks to me
I believe the consensus was that the correct buttons were pressed. I do not know if any rabbits were involved.
I am commenting as a person who has had sex before! I’m commenting, and I’ve had sex!!!1!
I have had sex several times.
Many, I mean many times.
I’m having sex as a person who has commented!!
How do you do, my fellow sex havers?
I’m a real good sex person.
I do it _all_ the different ways.
Now imagining Steve Buscemi saying just that, wearing cap, carrying skateboard, in a high school. Much creepy; very no-thanks.
I’m glad we could share that mutual psychic damage.
Don’t trust bite marks….and you’ve had sex.
Joyce wasn’t this giddy after she and Joe had sex.
To be fair, she didn’t even initially clock what she and Joe did as ‘sex’ until Becky spelled it out for her. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/fingering/ I’m sure if she went into it already thinking it was sex, she’d be just as jazzed.
Jizzed, you could say.
She’s jizzed to fuck!
Guess what the origin of the word “jazz” is.
Clearly it’s inspired by the classic music genre “Jizz” popularized a long time ago in a galaxy Far, Far away.
She is truly a bit more giddy. (
But I do remember her being quite giddy enough to be:
“LookLookLook Sarah! I touched a penis!!!!”
(It’s butter… :P)
Me too, Jennifer
Hater containment thread, kvetch below ⬇️
Idk if Joyce is really being especially grating here or if it’s just a nasty contrast from how interesting and deep Dorothy was being with Becky
Yes
I’m too asexual for this, sex isn’t even that good.
While I am not asexual, I do believe I might too prudish for this.
preach!
sex is a way to pass the time for when you order a pizza and beyond that it’s useless
Shits overrated, sex toys are better and less gross than people if you need to get the shit done. I’m so glad my friends never wanted to talk to me about their sex lives, this feels so weird
I think I still have leftover mild irritation from how Joyce has treated Walky and how she’s still gleeful about her own thing.
The others and specifically Billie here are giving her a lot of leeway because she’s Joyce but something has to give at some point surely
And the most horrible thing about all of this is that she’s shouting it out with great care, with Walky right in front of her.
On the one hand, Walky and Dorothy kind of did the same thing to Lucy. On the other hand, maybe they’re all kind of shitty about this stuff
Did they?
IIRC, they showed up together at a party they didn’t expect Lucy to be at and were all awkwardly apologetic. They didn’t cheat on her to start it. She dumped him. They certainly didn’t run on about how they’d had sex right in front of her.
Yeah they were just kind of there and obviously an item.
No, they really really didn’t.
Dorothy cheated on Walky with Joyce.
Lucy dumped Walky, saying she deserved better.
Joyce yelled at Walky about how she won, and he lost, and is shouting about her sexual escapades with her cheating partner.
Dorothy offered to help Walky make up with Lucy. Dorothy and Walky immediately felt awkward about demonstrating their relationship around Lucy. Dorothy offered to leave to make Lucy more comfortable.
This feels like a huge tonal whiplash from where we were just at.
Becky: I miss my dead mom😭
Joyce: I got laid!😁
This has always been here, admittedly. Usually not to this extent, but the tone of DoA can get very wonky at times. Has been that way since the beginning.
And now Dead Mike is having sex with her Dead Mom for 5 pennies (because I heard pennies are now dead).
I came here to say this, and now I don’t have to.
Always leave two nickels on your eyelids, so that when you cross the river, Mike can fuck both your moms.
None of my friends acted like this the first time we had sex. This is just Joyce being extremely annoying on a new topic, and possibly using the autism as an excuse to intentionally ignore the fact that everyone is specifically telling her that they don’t want to hear these details
No. The thing to keep in mind about her is that she’s not just on the autism spectrum, she’s also extremely extroverted. She combines the urge to tell everyone all details (extroversion) with difficulties in telling which ones anyone might actually want to hear (autism spectrum).
Also, she didn’t grow up autistic, it’s something she found out may be true about herself, like, 2-3 weeks ago? A month? She isn’t “using autism as an excuse,” because that’s a learned behavior and she hasn’t had the damn time to learn it. She’s not intentionally ignoring everybody’s discomfort, she doesn’t recognize it. Recognizing signs that people are uncomfortable, is something that takes practice, and if you didn’t grow up knowing you were different, then the impulse to do that won’t ever develop, because you’d need to recognize something is wrong, first.
Joyce being so
badunpracticed at, well, everything reminds me of a scene from The Matrix, shortly after Neo gets extracted from it:“Why do my eyes hurt?”
“You’ve never used them before.”
Honestly, this is less annoying to me than when Becky and Dina did it, because at least this one isn’t “let’s tell everyone VERY LOUDLY AND FREQUENTLY AD PUBLICLY except that one person who you’re all friends with, she must never know, shhhh, but also WE’LL KEEP SAYING IT VERY LOUDLY AND PUBLICLY AND FREQUENTLY”.
I think you’re really ARE just getting whiplash from yesterday.
Heh, meanwhile, I think I’m pretty much at “yeah, I was exactly this annoyed with Becky’s ongoing announcements back then”.
Willis edging us with Jorothy fallout drama again…
Pretty sure Joyce is ALWAYS really grating and usually awful to people, its just that for some reason both cast and readers spent a long time thinking she was just amazing.
Feels a lot like she was perceived as the ‘hot prize’ and the manly guy possibly losing her suddenly made people realize she’s bad.
I mean people been out here being uncomfortable with how aggressively pro having sex she was despite Joe clearly being uncomfortable for a bit. It’s just that in a lot of other places she’s learned and toned it down, and serious Joyce who has toned it down is fairly endearing. We are now focusing almost exclusively on some spaces where she absolutely has not done the learning yet. And Joyce pre-doing the learning has always been a lot. So I think it’s a lot of not getting the more likeable Joyce energy in with the uncomfortable shit that’s souring people, not the manly guy losing her.
Though to be fair, Joe was pretty good in bringing out more serious even behavior from her. If poly doesn’t emerge I will seriously mourn the loss of that dynamic.
Sarah’s going to need a hose if she wants any peace.
I would be filing for a transfer or however the fuck that works. Idk i didn’t get to go to college
Okay this isn’t even a hater thing, this is a me problem, and its stepping outside my mildly shitposty nature but
If I was just trying to sleep in my own goddamn bed and my roomate decided to just start fucking a few feet away from me, i’d be so incredibly skeeved out, they’d be dead to me.
Honestly I’d be upset too, having sex with someone else in the room without at least checking in to see if they’re okay with that iiiis… mmmmgross.
I pretty much agree with all this.
BUT on the other side of the scale, Sarah’s behavior at some point was this:
newrecord
bluffing
I’m not at all claiming that this is equivalent to Joyce-and-Dorothy’s behavior, not even close. But I do think it bears mentioning? I still think Joyce-and-Dorothy’s rudeness tops it by a mile or more.
Really?
Sarah threw her pants on Joyce’s face because Sarah wanted to wank and didn’t care that Joyce was not only in the room but actively asking her not to.
Compared to that quietly fucking your girlfriend in your own bed is not that big of a deal
Didn’t Joyce want Sarah to never masturbate while Sarah was refusing to consider that? Sarah’s was a bit much, but Joyce overstepped first and it was very much a punchline.
I think that’s pretty normal, but this is also why they have roommate agreements. Y’know that thing that was an important plot device for Jennifer for like two weeks. If fucking and girlfriends staying over in your shared living space uninvited isn’t Sarah’s vibe she can and should speak up.
I’m shocked that she hasn’t yet, there’s been set up for it.
Maybe she feels she can’t say anything considering they were trying to avoid Becky/give Becky space plus the fact that Sarah canonically threw her pants at Joyce so she could start using other Jacob (did she go through with it, idk, but pants were thrown).
She entirely did speak up, though maybe not clearly enough to get the point across. I’m thinking the direct approach might have helped, where her usual jaded sarcasm apparently didn’t cause any change in behavior, and she’s proved she can do direct at least sometimes.
@Effie
I always took that as her just speaking into the aether for an end of strip punchline, not that she was legitimately speaking to them to get them to stop, especially because she can be direct and we never got a response from them.
Yeah, I got the same impression cb did. I didn’t get the impression that was meant to be heard at all.
Yeah, no. I definitely feel like I’d have to ruin some lives. The disrespect…
You have accurately described one of the many reasons I abruptly stopped being friends with my freshman year roommate mid-year.
Yeah no I think I’d actually kill someone if they did that to me. At the very least I’d throw stuff at them and cuss they asses out cuz. Fucking vile. Ts is why I refused to have roommates in university
I do hope you apply this principle to Jacob and Lucy.
What
Will do, the MINUTE we discover that Jacob and Lucy have been initiating sex while one of their roommates was in the room and trying to sleep.
Which has never been even hinted at, thus far.
There’s only been 2-3 strips dealing with Jacob and Lucy being grating to other people aorund them, one of which was Ethan ducking out because it was obvious they wanted privacy but didn’t want to tell him to leave when he was depressed, and the rest were more mild than this, more self aware than this and were being contrasted with Jennifer blowing up her relationship with Asher at the same time.
Because we see them kick Jennifer out when they decide to hook up after the dorm party, she wasn’t there for that.
Sadly, yeah, it almost seems like my solution (that I actually had to use on my own obnoxious roommate’s sexy times) of “make popcorn, turn on the lights, spectate” wouldn’t actually work on Joyce in the slightest.
It wpuld work on Dorothy though. Especially if Sarah complains about wishing she could study instead.
Proof that this ship shows Joyce is the one doing the most damage, and there is still hope for Dorothy.
Dorothy makes everyone else’s problems her problems, so she can avoid addressing her own problems (of which there are many).
Joyce makes her problems everyone else’s problems whether they want to hear it or not.
This “Sex fundamentally changes you.” is just virginity BS inverted.
I think it’s less about virginity culture specifically and more about an obsession with / desire to hone in endlessly on sexual topics (in either direction) that other people would rather not discuss
I thought this a few days ago but sometimes I wish we had a hater hater containment thread. Which is not the same as an “enjoyer” containment thread but rather a thread for the people who specifically just hate the haters and wanna complain about them.
This leads to an endless regress….
(What kind of a band would use “Endless Regress” as a name?)
crabcore band probably
Maybe it would reach a hater-hater hater thread and then stop.
I mean, there’s probably going to be a fairly substantial overlap between the hater thread and the hater-hater hater thread, so that if you hate the comments of one group then you probably hate the comments of the other group, so there is really no need to expand the number of threads past that.
I feel like there’s at least one person yearning for it, so maybe.
Idunno if it’s because I’m old and ace and functionally incapable of relating to… whatever the opposite of a post-nut clarity is, but MAN am I relating hard to Jennifer here. Those ninety minutes of class where even Joyce Brown could not turn the topic of discussion to How Good She Banged With Dorothy must have felt like heaven on earth to her.
Not exactly a hater, but I do kinda wish that the Becky Dorothy convo had continued a bit.
What this comic needs is a slower pace. At our current rate, it will eventually be over.
How is anyone still spending time with her?
Not much choice when they’re in classes together, but I hope they start pulling away from her and Dorothy.
Speaking of classes, when’s the next Professor Brock science class with Becky, Dina, Joe, and Joyce?
Tomorrow (their time) I believe. Though I don’t really keep track.
Okay so science class should be like, after Christmas (real world) time. Looking like some awkward drama on the horizon unless this (in-comic) day drags out
Billie speaks for me here and I’m not happy about it.
Joyce having no fucking chill – and/or no chill about fucking – continues to be both realistic and exhausting.
Y’know early on in DOA I found Joyce annoying. Just really obnoxious. Which was purposeful but like…I didn’t find her endearing. I didn’t start coming around to her until right before the timeskip where I feel like I started really coming around to her. Then after some bumps post-timeskip I really started to finally get it. This is the character I can get attached to.
In such a short time I’ve gone all the way back to my initial read of Joyce. I don’t find her endearing or fun and when she’s got a strip I’ll just roll my eyes and wait for the next one. I feel less like she’s degraded as a character and more like I’m an idiot for being tricked into thinking she was a better character than what she is.
She’s always been this. It was my fault for allowing myself to be endeared at all.
I feel like a lot of the cast listened to Joe’s speech about how great she is for always trying to better herself and do the right thing and bought into it… and now much like Joe we’re all realizing that it was all made up and she’s actually awful.
I’m still curious what the writing end goal here is. Like Willis has to know that the way they’re writing Joyce in this strips is meant to ramp up her obnoxiousness. Either they’ve underestimated just how much of the negative reaction to Joyce was gonna be, or there’s some amazing writing plan where people will come round to her again.
I’m not sure, for me personally it would be really hard for Joyce to recover in my read of her.
This is still in line with her character. She said in early strips that she wanted the MRS. Degree and wanted a whirlwind fairytale romance. She also hinted that she’d save herself only for her husband (though she wasn’t too old fashioned in that she didn’t believe her first time would be on her wedding night, just that the first guy she’d sleep with would be the guy she married, similar to her Walkyverse counterpart) and, other than Dorothy being a girl, she got everything she wanted in a life-partner. I don’t agree with how boastful she’s become, especially around Walky, but this is keeping in line with her character because she won in love and all she needs to do is marry Dorothy and be the perfect First Lady to Dotty’s president.
Seconded. This is entirely consistent with her previous bouts of being absolutely insufferable about New Thing, and all the other stuff Corey mentioned. And now everyone – both us and her friends – are just going to have to put up with her being like this, or find somewhere else to be, until she gets over it.
I was at the point where, no matter what, at least she tries to be a good friend, and also the apostacy and the surrounding sexual issues resonated.
First her sexual issues zig-zagged abruptly. She suddenly didn’t care about being judged for months about what was her most sensitive issue up until that panel, which I guess was to fit a punchline into a progressing scene, but it eroded how she resonated. Like I probably would have stopped talking and shut down, and it didn’t even register for her.
Then it turns out she doesn’t try to be a good friend, she just says she tries to be a good friend. Which I like better storywise, there’s at least a consistency in the character, even if my view of the character is in a different light. But that light is meh-tinted now.
Yea I used to think people were too hard on Joyce, not giving her grace since she had just left her faith and opened up her world but….this showed me a side of her I straight up detest. This has nothing to do with growing up sheltered, this is just her personality and I dont like it.
*Willis slapping the roof of Joyce’s friend group*
This bad boy can fit SO MUCH Joyce Cringe!! *car explodes*
Heh. This is great.
Joyce was raised Fundy, has a (to me) fairly annoying personality at the best of times, and just had a major world shift with coming out.
Its not surprising she’s being over the top. He’ll none of the Dorothy/Joyce ship is that weird in and of itself. Cheating is bad but its far from uncommon, Joyce doesn’t get social norms is not a new revelation, etc.
What is weird is WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL TALKING TO THEM. Why is everyone else in this friend group just rolling with all this? At worst Walky got grouchy for half a strip but everyone else has reacted by basically going “oh well, it was always gonna happen”
Even this strip the realistic reaction isnt an eye roll and a joke its “Joyce you are being too much and Im already sick of this. Just walk by yourself till you calm down because I tired of hearing about it.”
It’s all “they’re dumb immature teenagers!” until it comes to reacting to anything someone else does. Then they’re all mature and introspective like Becky not blaming Dorothy at all, or apathetic like Sarah – who rather famously had a whole thing about her roommate disturbing her – not caring one bit about Joyce moving Dorothy in without asking her and then keeping her up at night fucking.
Yeah, this is what bothers me so much about the current arc. It feels like established character traits are discarded if they show any chance of getting in the way of the Joyrothy honeymoon period. Whereas I feel like the plot would be much more interesting if said established character traits *did* get in the way of the honeymoon period, and we had realistic drama arising from it.
Arent’ we still at… like, 2 nights of any sort of intimacy, and only one of actual fucking? Pretty sure Lucy and Jacob’s bangathon went on a lot longer than that, and very few folks in the comments felt any sympathy for Billie then.
Again, I’m pretty sure a lot of this is the storyline being impacted by the established pace of the strip, in that it’s just taking forever to get to the payoff. Joyce’s friends are willing to cut her a day or three of slack, I don’t see that as particularly out of character.
If this grace period goes on for more than a week, in-comic, then I’d be genuinely surprised.
Their ‘bangathon’ is the time they hooked up after the dorm party (where they kicked Billy out of the room instead of having her there) and the time they screwed in Jacob’s room? They’ve definitely slept over in each others rooms more often than that, but there’s nothing to say they were screwing while Jennifer was in the room.
Also no one had sympathy for Jennifer because that was mid or just after she blew up her relationship with Asher for no reaosn and thus the sour grasp were her own fault.
And even if all of what you said happened, we don’t dwell on the actions of Lucy, Jacob and Jennifer like we do Joyce and Dorothy. People will get fed up faster the more we see of something, no matter how much time that covers in universe.
> Even this strip the realistic reaction isnt an eye roll and a joke its “Joyce you are being too much and Im already sick of this. Just walk by yourself till you calm down because I tired of hearing about it.”
Not really? I mean sure it’s possible, but far, far more likely is being either polite or low-key passive-aggressive to the annoying person’s face, then venting and percussioning about them to one another after they’re out of earshot. For most people, it takes a *lot* to overcome the instinct to “get along” in a social group dynamic, sometimes to the point of detriment to society (which obviously this falls short of, but for an extreme example, see the concept of “missing stair”).
Has Jennifer ever resisted the urge to say something rude to Joyce? She’s not caustic with it but she doesn’t really keep her opinion to herself.
I think I’m actually finding Joyce more annoying in this strip than I did in some of her worst moments back when she was still a fundie Christian. Which is impressive, because I was kinda happy when she first became an atheist. I feel like Joyce getting with Dorothy has made her a much worse person than she was before they got together.
For me it’s that at least, as a fundie, her fundieness still came through as a care for others, or at least thinking about them, you know? Like she would express some wack idea but it was her way of saying she cares / understands / sympathises etc.
Now she literally is just talking out loud to herself and people make vague comments she doesn’t even acknowledge half the time. On one hand it makes sense, cheaters are inherently incredibly selfish people, but her behaviour is being presented as funny and quirky not gross and self absorbed so who even knows.
If you do a Garfield Minus Garfield but it’s DoA minus everyone but Joyce very little of some of these strips would change.
When she was fundie you can have hope shr eill get better now she is past her milestone
So that one strip was all we got/is all we’re going to get of Walky saying something to Joyce?
I hope there will be more, but I’m not expecting it anymore, at least not without some new trigger.
Which is disappointing, because I don’t feel a new trigger is warranted.
Maybe Walky will find someone he can talk to about this without it being dismissed, tho I have no idea who.
Maybe he’ll start talking to Mike’s ghost…
I don’t think you’d like the Walky that keeps snapping at Joyce and stays bitter about Dorothy. Not saying he doesn’t have justified anger, just that it’s really out of character for him. You really want Walky whining for weeks about how he lost his girl?
I actually want Walky to say something more about Joyce laughing in his face more than the losing of Dorothy to Joyce.
Also, we got one strip of him saying something, not even close to a week in or out of story.
I don’t need him to say something until I’m tired of seeing it, but I would like to feel narratively satisfied, and I am not.
Judging from his facial expression at that time, he found it so stupid he didn’t find it worth reacting to.
Not how I judged his face.
I would like a bitter Walky, actually. Because I don’t think he’d be bitter forever and down that road leads to Incelerator doing a “you’re not so different you and I” and him getting absolutely annihilated by a Walky working through some stuff loathing that comparison, and then Walky recovers.
Like I’m pretty sure the Night Guy stuff is long over with, I just like it. I want Walky to get a second round in lol
I think and hope that we’re not going to get closure on Walky until he actually talks to Dorothy about it.
Sure, Joyce was obnoxious to him, but they’ve always had that back and forth with each other, so that can kind of be written off. It’s Dorothy who actually hurt him.
I recognize the *point* of this scene is for Joyce to be insufferable but it’s kind of doing a “cool motive, still murder” thing for me.
So… did Joyce somehow forget that she already had sex with Joe, both by her own definition of sex and by other people’s common definitions of sex? Or was it just Willis who forgot that? This whole “NOW I’ve had sex, this is entirely new, last night with Dorothy was my first sextime ever!” line feels like a weird retcon.
Joyce is aggressively editing the past to conform to the New Truth, which is that she has only ever been
at warin love with Dorothy.She’d also already had sex with Dorothy by her own definition.
It’s kind of a retcon, but it’s not really weird I think. Those past ones were kind of “I’ve technically had sex”, but she clearly feels like this time went beyond that. Which is understandable.
The previous stuff was all premarital hanky-panky, this stuff is True Love and thus real sex /s
The JoJo arc was well-written and compelling, but it’s being treated like it didn’t happen and that really sticks in my craw.
Right?! There was so much foundation work building up to their first time that got tossed in the recycle bin…
It was so much betterrrrrr
I don’t think this one needs a hater containment thread. Authorial intent on this one seems pretty clear that we’re supposed to find Joyce annoying on this one / Billie is being the voice of the audience. Especially considering the clear contrast between Joyce not hearing a word Walky said and Dorothy REALLY hearing everything Becky said.
I think Willis is aiming for “you little shit (affectionate)”. Where Jennifer’s exasperated face and sarcastic comments are the limit to the pushback Joyce gets without it feeling mean. She’s supposed to be the happy little puppy who just chewed up the newspaper before you could read it- annoying, yes, but aw look at how cute she is!
Sadly, I (and I suspect a lot of folks in the HCT but I don’t want to speak for them) are at “you little shit (derogatory)”, where Joyce may be an adorable puppy but she also just took a dump all over the new carpet despite months of housetraining.
Becky really doesn’t look great with her hair up like that for some reason. Probably the angle, but it really makes the girl’s head look off.
“I am making everyone consider ostracizing me from their friend circle… and I had sex!”
If Joyce had broken up with Joe first, and Dorothy hadn’t cheated I probably would have found todays strip amusing.
The issue is that I don’t really like Joyce anymore. It has stopped being “you are over enthusiastic but well intentioned” to “You are kinda a self-centered jerk”.
And I am realizing Joyce was always pretty self-centered. It is just that before she’d look inside herself and see God, and would follow the God-rules.
The last thing you said, IMO, is the key point. Joyce just hasn’t unpacked the reality in her own head, that being secular does not mean what she was taught it means. Yeah, she’s been more selfish, and not obsessed with doing no wrong by anyone, and not obsessed with never breaking rules; because, in her head, that’s a God Thing, so now she doesn’t have to do it, anymore.
She needs to wrap her head around, for instance, that part of the reason she found Dorothy so platonically and romantically attractive in the first place, was that she saw Dorothy as a good person who was well-meaning and cared about others. Joyce (and Dorothy) both spent so long selfishly attempting to be as unselfish as possible, because it was the right thing to do, and they must always do the right thing; but, Joyce’s motivation for that was “don’t get exiled from my in-group, and don’t get damned,” and so she’s lost any tether to her internal motivation to be, or do, any good.
Dorothy hasn’t lost that, because her compulsive need to be perfectly omni-good, was always internally motivated. Selfishly motivated, sure, but still internally motivated. Joyce’s compulsive need to do right by God, was fully externally prescribed, and so she’s unconsciously failing to hold herself responsible for her actions and their consequences…because, from her perspective, that’s not a skill she’s ever developed, it’s just a part of her internal dogma, which she has rejected.
That’s what the underlying meaning of her saying she was “vibing off transgressive feelings:” Joyce’s drive to always do good, was framed for her as a perpetual rejection of her own wants and needs, to suppress unChristian behaviors. For the first time in her life, Joyce is actually trying this new thing, where she follows through on her basic impulses, because it’s “not wrong” (read: not Sin) to do so. So, in practice, she’s socializing like an adult toddler, because that’s how deep her repression is woven into the fabric of her mind and personality. There is no Joyce-self before the God-Fearing Instinct, and so she’s starting from scratch on learning to be a secular person who isn’t a totally selfish, entitled piece of shit.
This is the first time she’s ever truly been free, and so of course she’s fucking bad at it, because she’s being judged by the standards of someone who has 15 years experience not being a total asshole. But, she has 0. There was never any internal motivation for her to know how to make good choices, only externally-imposed hierarchical standards from her in-group.
10/10 as always.
….ow ?
Jennifer is far from being a character that you genuinely empathize with, but damn, how much truth there is in that last panel.
I empathize with every character, even the ones named Jennifer.
It’s easy to write off a lot of these characters because they are “young”, but youth does not negate very real, very unhealthy behavior.
Someone could certainly teach Joyce that no one cares if she’s a virgin, and/or bisexual.
Unfortunately I doubt there is anyone in the cast who could get through to her.
It would be nice if some of her friends were willing to talk to her about these important milestones in her life. Doesn’t really seem like a huge ask to me.
This, for sure. Joyce is having First Experiences, and she’s excited, and it’s honestly kinda sad that none of her friends are hype for her. I get that part of that is the cheating fiasco, but none of them really seem that bugged by the how-and-why, just the talking about it part.
College Kid Mindset dictates that being cringe will supersede whether or not she did something fucked up. It also doesn’t help that Walky’s own standing in the group is questionable at best.
This is also her queer realisation experience too.
It’s kind of a lot, all at once.
+++
I mean, Billie isn’t addressing the how-and-why because Walky hearing her say “Walky is literally 5 feet away and can hear you, can we talk about this literally anywhere else” would make the how-and-why problem *even worse*, not better.
Key word: ask.
Joyce didn’t do that part, you see. She didn’t ask anyone if they wanted to talk about it. She just started rambling about her sex life nonstop at people who said nothing to indicate they wanted to hear it. This is why Joyce needs to shut up right now.
Yeah, but the thing is, I missed the part where you asked if anyone wanted to hear about why Joyce needs to shut up right now.
You guys must have some weirdly perfect friendships.
You know who the person talking to her about this milestone was right? It was Becky.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/salacioussexgoss/
I wonder what she’s doing now? You think she’s too busy?
That aside I feel like this is a very normal reaction. Plenty of them have had sex a few have even done it for the first time with very little in the way of fanfare or celebration about it. Walky was a virgin, Lucy was a virgin. Why is Joyce special here? I’m not even trying to hate, this just feels like expectations changing specifically for her.
I think there’s a greater expectation to match how Joyce had way more hangups over sex than Walky or Lucy did. There’s a reason we only saw her have fucked up dreams about it and watching porn covertly. On paper, most of her friends understand this is a huge step towards normalcy for her, but it doesn’t feel like that when she’s being as annoying about it as possible.
I mean. Yeah, Joyce having sex for the first time is a much bigger deal to her than it was for Walky, and it seems to have been a much bigger deal to her than it was for Lucy. Lucy’s also religious, but she’s never seemed to have any of Joyce’s sexual shame.
Also “why is Joyce special here, why are expectations changing specifically for her” — I… don’t know what you’re talking about here. I don’t think Nymph or Astariel would think less of Lucy or Walky if they’d been as excited as Joyce is right now about losing their respective virginities. Why are you assuming expectations are, in fact, different for Joyce on this?
I definitely feel like she had SOME sexual shame. She kept putting limits on when her and walky could have sex and was constantly trying not to seem too horny in front of him. Girl had a pretty decent amount of shame. Maybe not as much as Joyce but not none.
She had the normal amount of sexual shame I think most American girls have
The girl said out loud with her mouth that Walky had no idea what self-imposed hoops a good Christian girl would jump through to justify having sex.
So compared with Joyce? Yes, none.
Like, Lucy was able to name her desire. She was able to say she was making up excuses to justify fulfilling it. She was able to point out to Walky that they were getting closer to having sex…
We also didn’t have multiple storylines where we learned Lucy didn’t know how to masturbate, or watch her burst into tears in a shower cubicle because she was too ashamed to touch herself.
That’s not what I was asking but I articulated it poorly in my writing.
Okay so:
A) Yes, Becky would have been GREAT if she were not currently having issues with exactly this thing. Of all the people Joyce cannot talk to about fucking Dorothy and expect joy and support, Becky is the highest on that list imo. To the point I’m unclear why you brought her up.
B) Sunglasses emoji
C) Who the hell said Joyce was special and expectations should do anything for her? You have zero idea how I’d have reacted to this exact scene with Walky or Lucy where Joyce is, and I’m not fighting against things you’re assuming without evidence. That’s just silly.
I brought up Becky in response to “It would be nice if some of her friends asked about these important milestones in her life.” and “It’s honestly kind of sad that none of her friends are as hype for her.” These statements are not true. One of her friends was very hyped for her and was willing to talk to her about it. It was Becky. It’s unfortunate that Becky isn’t available now, but none of her other friends were ever that interested in her sex life.
That’s not how I meant that to be read. It’s fine for Joyce to be excited about sex, my question is why should her friends who have never much cared about her sex life or the sex life of others in the past talk to her about it now? That’s why the desire for conversation feels like a special exception for Joyce, but it feels out of character for the group around here to engage like that.
Becky and Dina did something extremely similar, actually.
I bet a big part of what’s going on here is that Becky got an immediate if amused high-five reaction from everyone she told, and Joyce is instead getting impatience, “we all already knew,” and silence.
Some of which is justifiable and all, but that doesn’t mean I’m not expecting it to turn out explicitly here that the reason why Joyce is being so loud is to fill silence.
Yes, I definitely agree about the contrast between the responses to Becky & Dina’s very similar reaction to having sex for the first time & the responses to Joyce. The worst Becky & Dina seemed to get was amused tolerance, whereas the best Joyce has been getting is begrudging tolerance mixed with snide remarks.
These seems to extend to the comments as well. I recall there being some pushback to Becky & Dina, but not much, whereas there’s a lot of disapproval for Joyce.
And like I just said to Nymph: I get that some of this is that the cheating has soured this moment for her friend group. Especially with Jennifer.
So I understand WHY Joyce is getting what’s basically a very passive-aggressive cold shoulder.
I understand less why the comment section is acting like Joyce is wildly oversharing for no reason, as if we hadn’t had a continued escalation with increasingly visible strain from Joyce, or as if — as Nymph puts it so well downthread — this same crowd hasn’t been VERY HAPPY to talk about Joyce’s sex life or lack thereof, and her masturbation habits or lack thereof, for months.
““It’s honestly kind of sad that none of her friends are as hype for her.” These statements are not true.”
I find it sad. So I called it sad. that’s a true statement. Becky not being available now means that currently (which is when I was discussing) none of her friends are hyped for her. And that’s sad. Truly.
People she calls friends have discussed Joyce’s sex life both with her and behind her back for months now. In predictions about her sucking a billion dicks, in mockery, in worry, etc. Now that she’s hype and excited about it, the topic is suddenly weird and off-limits? Nah.
It’s not a “special exception” in that I would hope literally any person in their group who was hype/excited about sex they just had would find someone to be hype/excited with them. You can keep painting this in whatever way you like, but at this point you’re just wildly misreading a pretty simple statement of:
Joyce is having First Experiences, and she’s excited, and it’s honestly kinda sad that none of her friends are hype for her.
Agreed like 500%.
Also, speaking for myself, I get that the cheating IS affecting reception, particularly with Jennifer. I can think something is understandable and still think it’s sad.
Also: oops, now I’m even more annoyed at the intensity of the “this is so weird of Joyce to be talking to anyone about” scolding segment of the comment section right now, because you’re right.
This specific friend-group was not only expressly fine with Becky and Dina’s very similar tour of telling everyone they’d fucked, it’s ALSO full of people who have been gleefully speculating about Joyce’s sexual future and her masturbatory habits, sometimes in front of her, always to her visible embarrassment and sometimes active distress.
So no, this specific friend-group does not get to pull an “it’s so weeeeeird of you to be telling us this, ew” Uno Reverse now that Joyce is proud instead of ashamed. This specific friend-group made their water bed, and now they have to lie in it.
I’m glad that I’m like 90% sure Jennifer’s frost right now is because of the cheating, because anything else would be hypocritical and frankly gross.
If a friend came to me to share that they’d had sex and were excited about it, I’d congratulate them and be willing to talk (to a certain threshold at least).
Not unprompted, in a group setting, though. That’s a weird vibe.
Really, I feel like this is at least partially a function of how shallow a lot of these friendships really are. As was mentioned, she’s had pretty good sex talks with her closest friends — Dorothy, Becky — and probably WAS getting close enough to Sarah that she could have had these discussions with her as well. Now it seems like she’s alienated (at least, temporarily) the two of her closest confidants that she’s not currently dating.
Hell, she could probably have a good conversation about it with Joe, too, as close as they were and given how he still feels, but at this point I can’t even tell if she’s avoiding that on purpose or it’s just circumstance.
i think that’d make her more annoying about it, like how she (rightfully) went off on everyone for when she had an outburst about the birth control pill
You mean besides another lecture from Dorothy? Yeah, probably not.
Nah, Jen didn’t like Joyce before she had sex.
Whatchoo talking about, Joyce is her best friend.
(Actually Joyce has probably been demoted to second-best now that she has Alice back.)
Notably, Joyce played a major role in helping that happen. She’s been a good friend to Jennifer.
No, no, no! The current ruling on Joyce is that she’s always been insufferable, that she will always be irredeemable, and that she has never, in any way, shape or form, been a good friend, and any and all evidence to the contrary was just her successfully hiding her secret awfulness.
At least, that seems to be the consensus of the Hater Containment Thread. Which I should thank for making Joyce my new favorite character.
I mean if we’re getting into semantics she also sucked a dick a few days ago. Busy weekend for Joyce.
hope joe’s doing alright
wouldn’t mind him just being sarah’s personal trainer to take mind off things
I think if Joyce had bit him we’d already know, so he’s probably fine.
That’d require him to be present in this narrative.
Honestly as we get further and further along it’s looking more to me like Joe dodged a bullet here. Joyce Brown does not care about him. He was working so hard to be better for a woman who wasn’t as invested. That’s been proven now and her not being nearly as happy after realizing she’d had sex with him is just another sign of that. Part of me prefers Joe not being in the narrative to have to face this obnoxious version of Joyce that was undercutting their relationship to Sarah mere hours after cheating and snughling Dorothy under the blanket he bought her. She’d probably just laugh at him and say “No hard feelings.” (Only about half of this is sarcasm)
I said basically the same thing in patreon on an earlier strip and was told that I shouldn’t act like present actions negate past ones.
But I don’t know… Your summation just makes the most sense to me.
“He was working so hard to be better for a woman who wasn’t as invested.”
Kind of a foil to Lucy and Walky’s relationship, except Lucy being the more invested one there.
Lucy and Joyce both remarked on their similarities upon or immediately after their first meeting.
They were both involved with guys who were more sexually experienced with them and were both trying to set things up for them to properly go on a date and lose their virginity.
Both Walky and Joe had (different) toxic masculinity traits and both have been trying to improve themselves (Walky wasn’t specifically working on the toxic masculinity, but still improving himself).
And both Joe and Walky are still affected by the ending of the relationships (Joe’s ending is much fresher, tho), while the ladies have happily moved on and don’t seem to give any thought to their exes now that they have.
I wouldn’t say that Joyce was completely divested from Joe emotionally. If she had felt no attachment whatsoever she probably would have gloated into his face about her starting a relationship with Dorothy like she did to Walky but she does seem to have genuine conflicted emotions on Joe since she can’t bring herself to cut the knot entirely.
Do triangle smiles work like vampirism, where if you get bitten by one you contract the condition yourself?
there’s hope for ex-fundies
And got fingered like a day before. And gave a handjob not long before that. And not too long before that she had joe cop a feel while cuddling topless. Big big week for joyce
suckin dick is pretty bland ngl
getting bitten while being fingered is a lot more fun lol
>bland
Use better toppings then.
Thank you all for yesterday. What was originally just screaming into the void ended up bringing a surprising amount of comfort that I wasn’t expecting. I read through your responses several times today whenever things became too difficult with handling her affairs. Thank you all again, and I hope the end of 2025 treats you all as kindly as you treated me.
I’m glad you did find some comfort. Please reach out again if it will (or even might) help.
I’m very glad that anything we said brought you even a single easier breath.
Glad to hear it.
Goober before, goober after.
Sigh… it was nice while it lasted.
I mean. Benefit of the doubt. She’s not being an asshole to walky rn at least
Joyce, babe. Honey.
You’re talking like Faz.
Not enough charts or statistics.
Or blatant misogyny
Dorothy has that side covered
AAAAAAA I BURNED MY HAND!
And I’ve had sex.
Joyce is no longer a virgin. Now she’s an example of Indiana being full of, not hicks, but hickies.
Adorable.
Look, Joyce: you need to call The Lonely Island & Akon, then tell them to meet you of Garbage Roof. Then you can all sing “I Just Had Sex” and get it out of your system.
I’m worried that involving singers might butt up against Joyce’s current M.O., which seems to be “make this all about me (and Dorothy)”
Seriously! When are we going to cut back to Akiva Schaffer?! His two best friends get a boat ride for three, but they just up and invite Akon, right in his face?
Having sex while you’re roommate is in the room is gross Joyce
surprised sarah didn’t excuse herself versus being ‘sexiled’
It’s understandable gross-ness, since her roommate taught her that it’s acceptable to masturbate openly while your roommate is in the room.
People were wondering, myself included, if Joyce’s cheating fiasco would fuck up the friend group, but now I realize she’s guilty of a much more heinous crime to college kids: killing the vibe.
Well, no character here is exempt from doing silly things. But Joyce seems to want to go beyond the limits of silliness; she’s willing to break records.
To go from “I had sex” to “Is the bite wound from the primal banging we had infected?” is
A jump
Oh I am so here for this dynamic.
I *also* liked her better as a virgin.
And it feels like she’s overcompensating. She snuck “hanky-panky” in there, despite her desire to shout that sexual intercourse was had.
God, it’s like how whenever Sarah is blissful, someone is miserable.
Dorothy getting hit with the negatives while Joyce is cruising. Could really go for a reversal right about now.
Dumbing of Age, Book 17: I Liked You Better As A Virgin
I wonder if part of the “I must proclaim this to everyone” mindset comes atleast partially from the fact that her upbringing would have defined sex in purely PiV terms and thus pre college Joyce wouldn’t have really thought of what her and Dorothy did as sex.
So the need to label it comes from her still having the ingrained belief that sex with your true love is the biggest deal possible combined with a need to tell others that sex isnt just PiV and what she did with Dorothy counts as that life changing sex with true love thing.
I suspect Joyce has even more hangups about sex than we’ve been told.
Think of that whole bit where Dorothy got the feeling that Joyce was obsessing over the definition of “sex” to INSIST that her first time was with Dorothy, actually…because then, according to her upbringing, she’d “saved herself” for her “true love.” A whole lot wrapped up in there for sure.
Joyce was cheating on Dorothy all that time, with Joe, and telling poor Dorothy all about it. What a witch. I mean what happened on top of the drier was clearly Dorothy helping her to have an orgasm, so, at that moment, perpetual monogamy was mandated and even to look at another person, let alone kiss them was cheating big time. And so there should have been massive consequences. Joyce should have died or been executed or something. And, of course, that’s all on Willis for not writing it like that. C’mon, don’t you people know nothing? (Parse that phrase if you can!)
I think she would have always thought what she and Dorothy did was sex. She thought Becky and Dina had had sex.
She wouldn’t have thought that she’d had sex with Joe with PiV, but that doesn’t really contradict.
No, PIV isn’t sex, of course not.
I think I meant “withoutPiV”.
Probably.
Joyce, probably:
o/~ I’ve… haaaad… sex!
I’ve had sex!
And I did it in my specs!
Dorothy plundered my downtown
And she’s carried off my sex crown
I’ve had sex!
I’ve had sex!
Oh my insides she suplexed
See this bite mark on my shoulder
it’s what put me in her folder
I’ve had sex!
I’ve had sex!
She’s opened up my pokedex!
I’ll go off about it for forever mooooooooore
And if being far too sexy
Gives my best friends apoplexy
I don’t care!
I’ve had sex!
I’ve had sexxxxxx! o/~
Ah, Lonely Island has entered the chat.
（¬‿¬）
Beauty and the beast with two backs
(〃＾▽＾〃)
Geeze, even 90s teen romcom nerds are less self-congratulatory than Joyce is right now. Most of the time they just get a high five and then move on.
I also find it most amusing that Joyce is riding the high of having sex with her “one true love” and blocking out everyone that’s telling her to just shut up while Dorothy is finding out the hard way about all the collateral damage she and Joyce are doing to not only their friends (Becky and Dina, and to a lesser extent Sarah) but to the school in general (the “Leadership Course” teacher thinking the protest was about queerness and not convincing the college to divest in a weapons tech company). Joyce’s insistence that she can now have all the PDA with Dotty that she wants and anyone who tells her “time and place” is just a bigot will most DEFINITELY cause a strain with Dotty down the line after the previous conversation she had with Becky.
“Anyone who tells her time and place is just a bigot” where the hell did you take that from??
I think “bigot” wasn’t exactly the right term to use but more how Joyce basically gets a bit dismissive to downright rude or hostile if someone pushes back on her actions at all… But that’s always been a Joyce trait it’s just been more amplified since a lot more characters are getting caught in the crossfire of her actions now.
I assume via conflating Joyce’s “I have been heroically gay” and similar in-comic statements with some of the (very infrequent, very fringe) opinions/personal attacks that crop up in the comment section.
(Meant to add: that’s wrong, of course. Neither Joyce nor Dorothy have used homophobia accusations to dismiss criticism. But I have seen it crop up in the comment section so I could easily see getting the commentary mixed up with the actual in-universe discourse)
The weird thing to me is the notion that Dotty is in any way responsible for the ‘harm’ done to the protest. I keep wondering if folks would’ve preferred if Daisy had ignored the story entirely. Or maybe just run some boilerplate copaganda–something that would’ve been made much easier by the number of cops reporting injuries due to Amazi-Girl’s actions, I should note.
Sure, an in-depth analysis of the school’s finances and explaining how many dollars they’ve made on a per-dead-child basis would’ve been frikkin’ amazing, but Daisy’s never been that sort of editor. What we got was the best of all the ~likely~ options, IMNSHO.
On the one hand, the classic Touchdown Celebration advice of “act like you’ve been there before” is always apposite, but on the other hand, Joyce ha snever had any chill about anything else, either, so
I would be severely disappointed if she had any chill about this.
Also… she’s never been there before. That’s kinda why she’s so pumped.
But the point of the idiom is, “if getting there was such a big deal to you, it naturally implies you were so untalented, that you never thought you’d get there.” After all, you aren’t cool for having one sex, you’re cool for being a person who “has sex,” and that implies it’s just a thing that regularly happens to you, without much effort – which is how a star sportsballer should treat celebrating their scores, because scoring is literally the thing they were hired and paid to do, and if it’s a big deal to them, it naturally follows that they don’t do that often, and therefore, that they suck at their job.
Right, but my point was that I think that’s a silly mindset and Joyce is trying to share joy, not prove anything.
Back in uni, I announced my newly acquired sex life by texting my sister an mp3 file of “I Just Had Sex”… Years later, our little sister did the same thing (she didn’t have to send the song from a flip phone, though)
okay this is the most adorable anecdote i’ll encounter today
Based on previous evidence, Dorothy finds this kind of thing adorable, though preferably without having to admit it.
“I liked you better as a virgin” is def a mood for some people… 😛
i mean i’m sure some would ‘brag’ but not quite the same way joyce does
‘does this look infected’ lmao as if being meticulous about sterlizing/being hygenic as aftercare wouldn’t be part of it
“Does this invisible bite mark look infected?”
“No, it doesn’t look like anything, because it wasn’t drawn.”
Ate you not entertained, Jennifer?
Notice how she’s doing all this for having sex with Dorothy but we got none of this pride for when she and Joe started getting serious.
Who’s Joe? Sounds like some guy.
Some guy she used to know
She did go boast to Sarah about the handjob and to Becky about being fingered after their date.
It wasn’t as extreme because whatever her decisions about definitions, it didn’t really register as fully “having sex”.
She didn’t consider herself as having had sex with Joe until Becky pointed out that hand stuff counts. And then she got distracted by Dotty. She was bragging about him fingering her tho, which lead to that conversation. I do think she’d be exactly like this if they kept along their path. Just more talk about getting,, fuckin hammered. She was very vocal about how much she wanted him to slam her down big style to their friends
100% she would be just as insufferable if she hit all these milestones with Joe.
Well, she never got to have sex with Joe. That’s kind of the distinction.
If fingering and oral dont count as sex then I dont know if she had sex with dorothy either.
She didn’t think of it as sex when she had it with Joe. (And the bj wasn’t sex for her by her new definition.) Nor did the original laundry scene, even though she retroactively classified as sex. It still didn’t push the same emotional buttons.
But really, I think it’s sort of the whole package that crossed the line to really feeling like having sex. That it was a back and forth for both of them, rather than one doing something for the other, like her times with Joe probably made a big difference.
PIV sex that is?
Joyce really is the biggest sore winner on earth, huh
just insufferable about anything good happening to her.
Big same, Jennifer. Big same.
Ow.
I think I got whiplash from the roller coaster of a difference in tone between today and yesterday.
I genuinely don’t mind when Joyce is being obnoxious, bc that’s a core character trait of hers and I’m kinda numb to it. The fictional characters usually don’t bother me that much. That being said, whew this one was a tough read lmao
I wonder if she actually means it too, bc that’s kind of the opposite sentiment of most recent unvirgins. Ig its more about socialization and being “normal” than anything else
This is gonna be like the time Joyce started cussing and everyone kept trying to “fix the problem” until Sal told them they were being dumb about it.
Joyce is just excited, yeah it’s a little cringe but growing up repressed will do that to you.
Also after the first time I had sex all I wanted to do was tell people. This is extremely relatable.
wait why are Walky and Sal not tagged? Are those two imposters or Walkerton impersonators or something?
I have a feeling that panel three is going to become a reaction gif in some subreddits I frequent.
Such a Noob.
Joyce has joined The Society for Putting Things Inside of Other Things
Dumbing of Age, and I’ve Had Sex!
Pretty sure this level of “public sex bragging” is yet another one of those things, like turkey vs. ham at Thanksgiving, where half the population finds this completely relatable/normal and the other half cannot IMAGINE real people doing this sort of thing, and this thread in particular is where a lot of folks are finding out for the first time the other half exists.
I will say, talking frankly about th details of your sexual experiences is definitely more of a thing in gay communities. But this is just Joyce being autistic and not understanding normative social boundaries, and nobody correcting her on it for some reason.
Yeah, it’s kinda foreign to me and I was definitely in a community with a reputation for it — but man, even my fraternity guys didn’t say this kinda thing on the steps of a classroom building, even if we did say similar stuff in the privacy of our communal living room.
Billie is correcting her on it by not engaging positively, but Joyce isn’t the type to get it. Or care, lately.
This is also a relevant detail. It’s not like anybody she’s talked is enthusiastically participating, basically everybody is being at least a little cold and stand-offish directly at her. It’s very deliberate. Joyce just does not recognize those signals, which is totally consistent with her through the whole comic.
Mm.
I bet a good part of the reason why Joyce is being so loud and relentless is that this has been her reception the entire time (exasperation, impatience, and lots of silence).
Becky and Dina were also very braggy, but the got a bunch of bemused high-fives. Joyce has instead gotten, at best, “yeah we already know and we don’t care”.
I don’t know if I think this level of triangle smile is genuine, or if I think it’s masking because she doesn’t want to accept how very not-happy-for-her her actual friend-group is, but either way I bet she would not still be talking if she’d gotten any validation from any of the people she’s told so far. Like, this is decidedly an escalation from when she first said hi.
(I’m not saying any of this because I think it’s, like, unfair of people to be frosty to her? Just that it makes sense to me why she’d be pushing this boundary.)
I can even see why Joyce, regardless of where one thinks she is on the spectrum, might not immediately clock the differences between Becky/Dina’s situation and her own.
Unsure if a typo there is changing the meaning of your comment (can or can’t?), but I didn’t mean to suggest Joyce was consciously comparing herself to them and thinking, “Why not Zoidberg?”
I just meant: Joyce and Becky at one point had a similar level of sexual shame, and Becky, similarly, felt compelled to blurt out the fact that she and Dina had had sex to all of their friends, so it makes sense to me that Joyce would want to do the same thing.
Becky didn’t keep pressing the issue, but she ALSO got immediate if sometimes amused validation from the people she told. I think if she’d gotten a wall of exasperation and silence instead, she might also have kept talking and gotten more ‘obnoxious’ about it.
And again, not sure whether or not I think Joyce is even doing it on purpose. I think Becky’s desire for validation (
and reassurance that she hadn’t done anything wrong by becoming sexually active) was probably at least somewhat subconscious. Joyce could be in a similar boat.Only, you know, in Joyce’s case she did in fact do something wrong. So she’s getting a lot of silence, some exasperation, and an “I liked you better when you were a virgin.”
And-again-again, also not sure whether I think Joyce’s triangle smile is obliviousness to the frost, or if it’s in defiance of it. Either way, though, I respect it to come to a head fairly soon.
*expect
Yeah, it was not a typo — and I think most folks knowing Becky’s story even tangentially would be a LOT more tolerant-to-enthusiastic about “hey, I have a girlfriend and we had sex (after a BUNCH of bad shit happened because my family hated that I was a lesbian)” compared to “hey, I have a girlfriend and we had sex (in a complete 180 where I cheat on the guy I’d BEEN dating, and otherwise haven’t had any bad experiences yet with people being homophobic at me)”.
I think it would be silly to talk about this while ignoring that yes, Jennifer’s slightly passive-aggressive cold shoulder here is because of the cheating and because she cares about Walky’s feelings and doesn’t like how Joyce and Dorothy got together.
But I think it’s also silly to discuss it without acknowledging that this friend-group has been happy to talk and gossip about Joyce’s sex life and masturbatory habits back when it made her uncomfortable, so. I don’t really think they specifically get to pull “why are you oversharing so much, eugh” on her.
i could see that. i think maybe another part of this is over-correcting after exposure to purity culture; shame and silence around positive sexual experiences probably were common for her upbringing. so in trying to reject that she’s being a little too open without regard for the circumstances.
Well, yes, that is why Becky was as loud and proud as she was, too. 🙂 She and Joyce had the same wall of sexual shame they were trying to get over.
yo I hadn’t considered this angle and I think you have a solid point
I think if you go back to the previous strips in this sequence, it only becomes more obvious, like…
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/02-im-the-problem-its-me/mathclasswalkinggroup/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/02-im-the-problem-its-me/residual/
Specifically that big hopeful smile in panel 3.
I definitely didn’t, but there is a stage in a relationship where you want to let everyone know very directly that you’re now with someone new and they’re great etc etc which is hardly distinguishable.
You couldn’t pay to to listen to my friend yell the details of their sexlife, up to and including the fact that they had it. Let alone do it myself (tho it’d be a very short list of details). That shit is funny to watch like, entertainers do. But when it’s someone you know it’s suddenly real and that’s gross to me. I’m generally not sex repulsed, in fact I’m deeply fascinated with sex- until the sex is suddenly in my vicinity. Then I recoil like a snail from salt.
Mood
In this way, we are soul-bonded
I think the “this is a gross breach of boundaries, how could Joyce think this would be okay with anyone” take would have a lot more to back it up with this specific friend-group if they hadn’t, as Nymph points out so eloquently above, spent the last few months very cheerfully speculating about Joyce’s sexuality.
Her sex life or lack thereof and her masturbation habits or lack thereof were both treated as totally fine topics for other people to talk about without Joyce’s consent, sometimes behind her back and sometimes to her face, so like. It would honestly be kind of gross of most of these people to suddenly act like Joyce’s sex life is an icky thing she shouldn’t talk to the about.
Thankfully I don’t think that’s at all what’s happening: I am pretty sure this somewhat passive-aggressive frostiness is because of the cheating.
like, you’re completely within your rights to think this is a supremely uncomfortable topic, I am not saying it would be unfair of you to be uncomfortable if a friend talked to you like this unprompted. I’m also ace, I also generally don’t appreciate people talking to me about this stuff.
But. You know. It’s just not unprompted, in Joyce’s case. In Joyce’s case, it’s more like “ugh, it was so much more fun to speculate about your masturbatory habits back when doing so made you viscerally uncomfortable, weird that you think any of us would care now that you’ve actually had sex and aren’t ashamed of it anymore.”
So I’m very glad Jennifer almost certainly behaving this way out of discomfort, but because she’s Walky’s friend as well as Joyce’s, and she cares about his feelings.
*Jennifer’s not behaving this way out of discomfort, but because…
I don’t know, i think it’s perfectly acceptable explanation that she is just, kind of hypocritical. It was fine when I wanted to talk about your sex habits and oddities but it’s not that you are sharing it without shame. I don’t personally think it has anything to do with Walky.
“It was fine when I wanted to talk about your sex life without your consent, it’s gross that you now expect me to be interested in it now that you’re happy to share” would be a really really crappy place for Jennifer to be coming from.
Yeah? I didn’t say it wasn’t, i just thought it makes sense.
Like, an interesting character beat? Sure. But it would be a jerk move in-universe.
I don’t really care if it is a jerk move, i only care if it makes sense from the character and i think it does. You might disagree with that and that’s fine with me.
Hell, it’s probably a little Column A, a little Column B.
I am just reacting to the overwhelming “ew Joyce is oversharing, I’m with Jennifer” sentiment in the comments today, that’s all.
Probably an age element to it, too. In the past there was much more opprobrium for talking about sex. Hell, my mother refused to allow it to be said that i dated a bloke my sister later got together with, and that’s not even about sex (there wasn’t any), just the sheer horror of …. something perfectly normal!
Honestly, I’d compare this to a slightly different bit in the same vein. I saw a comedian start with, “If you wipe your ass while sitting, raise your hands.” “Now, if you wipe your ass while standing, raise your hands.” “Now, if you only just now realized the other half of the room exists, raise your hands.” Naturally, he got just about the entire room raising their hands at that point–and it really was close to a 50/50 split prior.
We all did Billie. We all did lol
Eh, actually, this Joyce is more to my liking. Part of that may be my habit of reading the Hater Containment Threads, since folks have been so gleefully retconning Joyce into having always been the worst person in the world, that I’ve become increasingly fond of her.
So viewing this through the lens that Joyce is the character who is most autobiographical for Willis, I get the impression that Willis went through some distinct phases that they’re still not too comfortable about, and doesn’t want to whitewash.
And progress isn’t linear in real life. You don’t lose the damaged impulses that you had as you strip away the layers that enabled them. You will often make the same mistakes in different contexts, and that can and will be rough on your friends as you unpack your shit. It’s not a tremendously enjoyable process for anyone involved, least of all yourself.
And there’s a temptation to think, at various points, that you’ve scraped all that out of yourself. You want to believe that, because it sure as hell seems bottomless at times. It has dimensions you’re not even aware of, because it was invisible to you most of your life. You had, and still have, blind spots you could drive a truck through.
And sure, for us as readers, it’s difficult to watch as well. Because I don’t think Willis has fully forgiven themself for how they used to act, and perhaps feels they shouldn’t.
Working on yourself is exhausting, and it’s very tempting at times to declare the work done, as Joyce has, that you have achieved your final, perfect, actualized form. But that’s not true. The work is never done, but it still needs doing.
This part is not autobiographical. Willis never cheated on a partner.
So, if they’re still beating themselves up for the alleged crime of being a bit insufferable when they first had sex — and to a friend group where this isn’t even completely abnormal (Becky and Dina) — then they should definitely forgive themselves.
There are sooooo many worse things to be in the world than a little bit cringe.
And one of the things that makes this boasting worse, is the cheating aspect. Or even without the cheating, doing it right in front of the person who got dumped so you could.
So, even if Willis is exorcising a part of their own past, placing it in this context makes it a bigger deal.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I only think Joyce is boasting more than Becky and Dina right now because when they went on a tour of telling every person they knew that they’d fucked, they got affirmations and bemused high-fives.
Joyce has instead gotten exasperation, silence, “no one’s surprised”, and now, “I liked you better as a virgin.”
So, she’s ramped things up. She’s gotten louder and more explicit. In the last panel, she’s so desperate for some type of at least NEUTRAL interaction around the fact that she had sex that she’s raised a medical concern. “Please look at my hickey, it might be infected. Haha, I got this from Dorothy…”
I’m still undecided on whether I think she’s overcompensating consciously or subconsciously, but I’m very sure she would have changed the subject by now if she weren’t trying to fill silence.
And, in case it needs to be said: I think Jennifer in particular being frosty with her makes sense and is justified.
I just don’t think “Joyce is extremely happy right now and doesn’t care at all that her friends are freezing her out” is an accurate read of the strip.
Whether she’s fully self-aware of her own feelings and why she’s doing that, and whether her smile is about to crack or not, we’ll see in a strip or three.
Also gonna break this out into a separate thread because it’s unrelated to the prior post:
It occurs to me that Jennifer has perhaps never been intimate with the opposite sex, and has in no way properly considered that.
Even with Asher?
I am not convinced at all that she had sex with Asher.
Now I’ll concede she is absolutely bi, even if she can’t acknowledge it. That’s word-of-god, and due to the fact that sexualities did not change between the Walkyverse and the Dumbiverse.
But for all she’s in denial about it, I would put good money that her only sexual partners have been Alice and Ruth.
The way Asher proposed “ugh, can’t we just fuck” that one time so casually leads me to believe they most likely had an active sex life.
In general I find it easier to believe that Billie has had 100 sexual partners than I do that she has had 2.
Upon further review of the memory banks, I think Jennifer proposed the fucking and Asher was like “that would also be acceptable” because he was cranky about quitting smoking.
Which is immaterial in support of my overall point that they were doing the no-pants dance frequently, but not correcting it would bug me for the rest of the day.
And If you hadn’t, I’d have had to go to the trouble of finding it, and searching other encounters because I thought you were wrong! Thanks.
Yeah, it would be a huge reveal and drastic change to her character if that came out. I’m not sure I’d believe it wasn’t a big retcon.
There’s way too much implied in her drunken party girl backstory for there not to be something there. And with that established about her, her not having sex with Asher would seem an important place to focus on that. Asher knew her rep.
Wasn’t she about to fuck Danny on the spur of the moment once? But he said no, or at least not yes?
Or am I thinking of someone else?
Yes and yes.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/eyecontact/
She talked about her approach to parties, looking for ~”alcohol and boys who would fuck her”
all of Joyce’s actual friends are either currently her sex partner or she’s pushed them away. The fact that she’s talking to Jennifer about this is kind of sad.
Joyce definitely considers Jennifer a close friend, and Jennifer seemed to have a bit of a Realization about that after she went to Joyce for help convincing Alice she has friends and Joyce was so happy to oblige.
I think Jennifer is only reacting like this (instead of giving Joyce amused head pats) because she’s also Walky’s friend, and she cares about his feelings.
Still, she definitely would get a frostier reception from Sarah, she obviously can’t talk about it with Becky or Joe. Those are her closest friendships aside from Dorothy, I believe. She may consider Jennifer a close friend but the feeling is clearly not mutual.
Yeah, Jennifer’s reaction is probably mostly because of Walky, but that’s not really what I’m getting at.
Some of yall who are wondering why Joyce expects these people to care that she had sex need to reread, because while I would also, personally, be uncomfortable with this level of disclosure from a friend…
…we are talking about a group of characters who have been very happy to speculate about Joyce’s sex life and her masturbatory habits for months. Sometimes behind her back, sometimes to her face. They opened this door! They made this water bed!
It would be genuinely so gross if it turns out that Jennifer’s frosty reception right now is because she thinks it’s inappropriate of Joyce to speak joyfully about her sex life, rather than because she, Jennifer, is also friends with Walky, cares about his feelings, and is Displeased about how Joyce and Dorothy got together.
Most of them have also been happy to discuss their own sex lives with her, to various levels of detail, openly either enjoying or mocking her obvious discomfort with the subject.
I want to buy Joyce a freakin’ loudspeaker, at this point.
Yep.
Again: I think Jennifer has reason to be cold to her, I think Walky especially has reason to be cold to her, but “weirdo oversharing about sex” in this group? Nah.
yay jennifer is on screen yay
NOOOO I’M UP TO DATE WHY