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Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
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This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
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Russian here – actually, Russian New Year is basically Western Christmas (gift-giving, “Deda Moroz/Grandfather Frost”, tree-decoration, and all that). Russians currently mark Christmas on the 7th of January, which is the 21st-century Gregorian Calendar date that corresponds to 25 December of the Julian Calendar (which the government used until the Emperor was overthrown in 1917 or thereabouts, and which the Russian Orthodox Church still uses).
Yesterday Becky had to confide in Leslie that Dina’s stated willingness to have sex whenever Becky was comfortable was, actually, proof that the two were doomed and that Dina would never be sexually interested in her, because Becky only knows how to process sex as “loudly declares intent to fuck but never acts on it until Baby Jesus gives the divine thumbs up.”
Dina is not asexual, or she wouldn’t be eager to have sex with Becky.
When Dina first “came out” (at least to the readers) she said that she wasn’t lesbian or bi so much as the distinction of gender didn’t matter to her; which I think would make her pansexual.
Asexuality doesn’t really work like that. Asexuality is a lack of attraction, not desire (yes those are distinct). Not being attracted to someone doesn’t mean you can’t want to bone them, just that you don’t have pants-feelings for them. There’s a whole range of attitudes towards sex in the ace community, from sex-repulsed to totally down for it(varying amounts of libido exist too). Also asexuality is a spectrum in and of itself – Dina seems either grey-ace or demisexual to me and those are part of the ace spectrum. (Not to mention that many people confuse someone’s romantic orientation to also be their sexual orientation even when those are distinct)
What others have said. I get it, though. I thought “asexual” meant a very specific type of person. I don’t even remember what inspired me to dig deeper and educate myself, but I’m glad I did. Learning that there’s a difference between sexual attraction and aesthetic attraction was the most eye-opening part.
If we were talking about a real person, yes. Joyce is not a real person. It’s okay to speculate and joke about fictional people in ways that aren’t okay for real people.
Joyce is a character. Joyce could be 100% straight today, 100% lesbian next week, 100% straight the next, and a pansexual ultra-slut who identifies as a hermaphrodite the week after that.
That said, Joyce in this strip is at least somewhat an avatar for Willis himself.
So then the question becomes “So, is Willis straight?”
Well, he’s got the wife and kids, but that’s not really definitive. He writes a comic were LGBTQ+ characters are portrayed in a positive light, which would indicate he’s got no problems with non-straight sexualities. He’s not religious, used to be but isn’t any more, so no religious hangups.
Joyce is very probably straight.
But since Joyce isn’t actually Willis because she’s just a character, your Joyce/Dorothy/Sal/Marcie/Malaya/Mary lesbian orgy fanfics are still ok.
The other thing is that, because these are fictional characters, we have access to more information than they have (or admit) to themselves. Jennifer, for instance, is still unwilling to admit she’s genuinely attracted to women as well as men and is currently claiming she’s straight and Ruth was an outlier. We know in-strip that Ruth’s not an outlier (hi, Alice!) but we also know from active Word of Willis that Jennifer is bi. Not relevant in this case, because Joyce hasn’t had any explicit indication one way or another (including in the old universe,) but the part where we have a degree of omniscience they don’t still applies. For instance, we know, but not all the characters do, that when Robin brought up the ‘Leslie Knope is straight’ homework assignment, it’s part of Robin’s own efforts to convince herself she’s heterosexual. Joyce bringing up the friends thing can then be read as a parallel to Robin of queer and in denial. (I actually don’t get a totally romantic vibe off Leslie and Ann, but Robin’s indisputably queer and Joyce gets… mixed vibes off me.)
Joyce is also not 100% a Willis analogue even in pretty basic points – assigned gender at birth, for one, but also sibling order (IIRC, Willis is the oldest.) So sexuality could ultimately end up being a difference point as well.
Like…I’m glad you agree with me, but I was literally -just- talking there about how you shouldn’t speculate about the sexuality of real people?
It isn’t even part of the question, anyway. As Regalli points out, Joyce -isn’t- Willis, some of her struggles are autobiographical, but they are still definitely different people. (Besides, if they -were- the same person, you could just as easily flip that around and say “Does Willis like ladies? Yes he does, therefore Joyce likes ladies.”)
Whether or not Joyce ends up gay, bi, demi, generally undefinably queer, or locked-in-straight-as-an-arrow is open for debate, but it doesn’t depend on Willis sexuality, it depends on his decisions for her character.
I don’t know if “acts on it” needs to be the bar here. Bi people are still bi even if they’ve only ever dated people of one gender, or even if they haven’t dated anyone at all.
Which makes me think that this particular dramallama may well be in Willis’ arsenal for potential future deployment against his characters and our feels.
True, but Becky’s denialism isn’t about fraudulently claiming things that aren’t trueabout herself. Instead she’s engaging in a more lentian denial, wherein she /knows/ she’s hornier than a styracosaurus, but she only denies herself the fulfilment of said desires, not that they exist. Now… the reasons she’s doing that are messed up (unless you’re religious), but at least she’s living her truth. (vs. lying about what her truth is.)
I genuinely don’t understand why so many people think Joyce isn’t straight. I haven’t gotten that impression at all, and as a gay woman I am always yearning for more sapphic ladies everywhere. She also very explicitly stated that she was certain she was straight after Becky kissed her, because Becky kissed her.
I mean, I wouldn’t take the Becky comment as proof of anything. When Joyce says she knows she’s not gay because otherwise she’d be gay for Becky, all she’s admitting to is that she is not attracted to Becky. I don’t know if her thought process is 1) if I were gay, I’d naturally be gay for the woman I’m closest to in the world, or 2) if I were gay, I’d just be with Becky because my lack of attraction to her hurt her so much in the moment it made me wish I was attracted to her—but either way, the thought process is logically flawed and not at all proof that she is 100% totally straight. Like, not being attracted to one girl doesn’t definitively make you not straight.
I myself am on the fence about what to think re: Joyce’s sexuality. I would have agreed with you entirely before the strip a few days ago where Word of Willis seemed to hint that there was something going on with Joyce parallel to Leslie Knope. But maybe that was more of an in-joke than a serious hint at anything (because again, I agree there’s not much to back up the theory that Joyce isn’t straight).
Yeah, I don’t think her attraction (or lack thereof) to Becky is a reliable indicator of anything but that. They’re long-time close childhood friends, which can subconsciously categorize non-blood-relatives as ‘family’ and therefore ‘not boinkable’. Maybe Becky felt differently about their relationship because she’s an only child, but my read is that Joyce thinks of her as “the sister I never had” (as far as she knows).
(That’s a gross oversimplification of something I read ages ago, so it might be wrong.)
That’s pretty much exactly how I read it as well. As the “only” girl (so far as she knew) in a large family, it makes sense that Joyce would categorize her closest female friend as the sister she always wanted. Becky, by contrast, likely always wanted a girlfriend, even if she didn’t quite realize it at the time, and it makes equal sense that she’d latch on to her closest female friend.
There’s the end of last storyline, for one, where she had to state the Dorothy and Joyce analogues she’d excised her feelings onto ‘definitely don’t have feelings for each other’ – that’s the kind of oddly-specific denial that raises way more questions than it answers. This storyline, there’s been the line about Walky ‘only now being hot enough for Dorothy’, and the one about Sal being the ‘coolest, hottest person (girl category)’ they know, both of which are… suggestive of some unacknowledged attraction to women, just that those women aren’t Becky. The comment about Sal isn’t the only time she’s said things that are noticeably suggestive of attraction (including that strip’s discussion of Sal’s hair being ‘extremely brushable’ and it making sense Walky had latent hotness due to their shared genetics,) and there have been a few moments with Jennifer as well – among other things, the bit about wanting to crawl into her boobs and be warm and safe forever. (After insisting she’d only have ‘naughty thoughts’ about guys, and Jennifer asking how she knows she hasn’t had naughty thoughts yet at all.)
As Joyce admits, her childhood best friend being closeted, gay, and crushing on her specifically seems to have skewed Joyce’s ideas of platonic female intimacy. But even accounting for that, she’s had a lot of moments that read A LOT like she’s attracted to women. Could be her lack of attraction to Becky’s a Westermarck Effect thing given how long they’ve known each other, or that Becky’s just not her type, or that she’s heterosexual but biromantic, but they occur so often a lot of people think there’s something to them. (Note also that Becky and Joyce didn’t really recognize bisexuality was a thing when Joyce said she was straight.) Especially with the frequency in the last few storylines.
Also I posted this yesterday on Patreon but I wanted to know what y’all thought about this theory:
Becky when she’s saying her last words to Ross says “tell mom I’ll be a while” which, given that her family ascribed to some pretty deep fundie logic to the point where no one knew her mom committed suicide but that she passed away due to cancer… does Becky think her mom is in Hell?
No, given her repeated assertions that God loves her, I think Becky thinks her mom is in Heaven; I think she may have sidestepped the question of Hell altogether in a way that Joyce never did.
She adapted her religion to her sexuality, we don’t know how that’s adapted to the perception of suicide as a mortal sin, especially since she also hasn’t adapted her religion in a way that lets her healthily process her sexual frustrations.
I think Becky has been more malleable with her belief in God himself, but I think it’s been pretty clear she still ascribes to a lot of those ingrained fundie beliefs since she hasn’t recognized they’re harmful yet, the way she adapted her beliefs when faced with the concept of God not loving her for being a lesbian.
I read it as Becky either believing or trying to convince herself that, no matter how awful Ross was, he was still going to Heaven. I don’t think Becky has it in her to consign anyone to Hell.
“Mortal sins” is a concept pretty limited to Catholic theology. While lots of other denominations are super weird about suicide, I don’t know of any evangelical subsets that believe mortal sins exist. They might say that suicide demonstrates a lack of trust in God and think that it indicates the suicidal person was never a true believer, but the suicide itself isn’t what would lead to hell. And lots of people are super embarrassed about suicide while still believing the person who died is definitely in heaven. If Becky retains any stigma about suicide, she probably has a pretty similar view about her mom that she has about her dad “they were misguided and made some really big mistakes but they loved Jesus and were trying ti do what was right” or something like that. In my experience, that’s a pretty standard conservative evangelical approach to suicide.
I’m not certain, but the discussion with Amber after Blaine’s death (especially the emphasis on how those feelings might change over time, but it doesn’t make either emotion invalid) and at least one other relatively recent scene I can’t remember offhand right now suggest Becky’s feelings about Bonnie are a bit more complicated than simple grief. The method of her death (and the fact that Becky was the one who found her after the attempt, and the implied drawn-out nature of it rather than if she had died immediately of the overdose) seems like a very likely factor in that. I don’t think we can draw conclusions about her belief in suicides in general off it, but I do think she hasn’t let herself work through the messy feelings around Bonnie’s death because no one likes a Debbie Downer. Especially since she COULDN’T talk about it at the time with her best friend at minimum, Joyce being given a fake story about cancer. (And given Ross’s whole ‘Satan stole her from us’ bit, even if she tried to discuss it with him I don’t think she would have gotten far. Especially since I really do think the narrow scope of the life Bonnie was allowed was a huge factor in her depression, and Ross was almost certainly as controlling of her as he was to Becky.)
The question of Becky’s belief in Hell or lack thereof hasn’t really been brought up, especially considering she’s dating an atheist. I think convincing herself there was enough good in Ross he’d be in heaven is a decent explanation. There’s also the fact that she’s adapted her faith to accommodate her sexuality and ambitions but is still keeping a lot of hangups (the whole thing with Dina being, in part, that unspeakably horny Dina would absolve her of responsibility for ‘giving in’ linked downthread.) Could be one of those hangups – or just general trauma – is not fully reckoning, just yet with how controlling and abusive Ross really was, could be that in the moment she really wasn’t thinking of those so much as the good times. Could be her statement wasn’t about belief Ross would be going to Hell so much as stating to him, one last time, that she would be going the same place as her mom because she didn’t consider anything wrong with her gayness (and neither did God who answers lesbian prayers) and he would have to deal with that. Honestly I’d lean towards it being a combination of factors that were focused more on her and Ross than any belief about Bonnie. The complicated feelings there seem to be separate from the complicated feelings about Ross.
I only wish I could’ve made it more terrifying AND sexy. After all there’s a strong correlation in girls being scary and HOT for me. ie. Dimitresku or Kayako
It’s true. We need more hot monsters in our media. Power Rangers (of all things) has been doing it right for decades. Can’t think of many sexy horror monsters, except maybe from stuff like Resident Evil.
Xenia Onatop and roughly 50% of all Bond women. Sarah Kerrigan. Pretty much every female comicbook villain. Jumping back to mythology, many gods spent less time being good or evil and more just focused on their own objectives. So it seems many of their interactions come across as being villainous even with more ‘good’ on their charter. Really it seems Christianity spent more time casting evil women as ugly, but this follows a long history of the ancients associating asthetics with evil.
I’m not saying there’s no sexy villains. I’m saying specifically SCARY sexy villains. Either a horror movie villain or an aforementioned villain who’s more about being scary than just powerful.
Ya know… Joyce might not be wrong, but boy is she being a bit of a jerk when it comes to Walky. No one is perfect or beyond reproach, and whether Dorothy decides to do anything (though unlikely) is her business.
I’m trying to recall where or when we learned that Dorothy had been a cross-country runner. I assumed it was during the episode in Book 3 when Amazi-Girl went full parkour in making her getaway from Dorothy and Walky, but after looking back I couldn’t find anything there.
Yes. Then. Amazagirl (sp) was running away when Dorothy said she couldn’t escape due to Dorothy running cross country.
To which AG replied that she jumped hurdles while proceeding to jump over several bushes, one after the other, thus escaping future president Keener.
Becky desperate to fuck her girlfriend that’s pounding at the back of her eyeballs so bad it’s making her insane being the one to whip out the “are the straights okay” memetic bc she sees Dorothy being horny for less than a minute is a perfect demonstration of that memetic.
People had been insightfully pointing out that Becky’s current uncertainty about Dina are rooted in her evangelical fundamentalist upbringing—namely, that she wants to be in a position to “give in” to a horny partner, rather than choosing to embrace her own desires. This seems as good a place as any to drop a link to the comic that makes it explicit in case some haven’t seen it lately:
Yep, that is definitely making it explicit! Thanks, that strip occuring right before everything went to shit with Mike and the Evil Dad Chase means I don’t remember it as strongly.
I’m starting to get a distinct vibe as of this 20-something I once knew, who told me that she was going to do a thing that would fix a person, and I said No, hell no, if you do that thing then that person will be heartbroken and miserable, and she said No, my intentions are pure so nothing bad can happen, and she did the thing, and then the person was indeed heartbroken and miserable and she was all surprised Pikachu face. (But she did admit that she had screwed up.)
The straights are definitely not okay, but I’m so sure they gays are doing so well either. For example in this comic we’ve got Leslie who keeps going for women who are bad for her, and Becky who’s still avoiding talking about her worries with her girlfriend.
Dorothy actually seems to be one of the better-adjusted people with regards to their romantic lives in this strip. And frankly, that is an alarming statement.
We have not seen him since September 2017, when Malaya moved into the hall and Mary tried to ‘offer some guidance,’ using scripture in a way that Malaya could con Peter into carrying the box containing Fuckface’s tank. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/replacement/ (The strip immediately before his last, but sets up the situation.)
So he could be offscreen because Mary’s been out of focus, or they could have broken up offscreen and it hasn’t been worth mentioning. Honestly, he could have ruptured his appendix and died over the timeskip and it would change nothing. (Especially since it could only be at most the second-most gossipworthy death in the wing that semester.) I think there was a MENTION of him after Jason was fired, but not an appearance, when Walky introduces him to the hall and they realize Walky’s friends are all girls, but I’m not certain. Between that and Joe’s line to Rachel that ‘your wing can keep Peter’ he definitely seems to have been sincerely a Mary equivalent (there was a theory briefly that he was faking to sleep with her,) but who knows. One of them could’ve had standards about the kidnapping, or he could have deemed Mary’s attraction to him Impure at some point, or they had an argument about whether or not some anime is acceptable to Good Christians. Or, again, they could still be together. No evidence to say either way.
Either way I wouldn’t call a relationship based on their mutual feelings of superiority to everyone else particularly well-adjusted, but that’s mainly because that attitude itself is toxic as hell. I do admit they were made for each other. God help us all.
Sadly this hits a little too close to home. All of my friends are either married or in long term relationships and I’ve barely talked to them, let alone seen them, in years. It’s hard to make new friends being an introvert and at my age.
Honestly, as a cishet white male, I’ve always felt people who aren’t are totally allowed to make judgy generalisations on these things. Mind you, this is probably because I’m all over observing when the neurotypicals do not appear to be okay…
I just don’t like generalisations. Not about gay women, like me, and not about “the straights”. Probably just a me-thing, but I just don’t like going and assuming stuff about people based on some characteristic they just fall into, because they don’t have any control over it.
Joyce is just being an outright bongo; Dorothy has every right to decide for herself, who she wants to hang out with. Dorothy needs to put Joyce in her place; she is a good friend, but that does not give her the right to dictate Dorothy’s social life.
Me if I ever see Tony Hawk: Hey you’re Tony Hawk the famous skateboarder. That’s right I recognise you. Won’t be able to get any content out of this will you, you piece of shit
How to read all 28 issues of my Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane run on Marvel Unlimited:
1: The first four issues were published as the miniseries "Mary Jane."
www.marvel.com/comics/serie...
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
Hot Toys Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith 1/6 Scale Darth Vader Deluxe ($495) & Standard ($315) is up for preorder at Sideshow - shrsl.com/4wcx6 #ad
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 2d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
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MAY DAY MAY DAY DIRE STRAIGHTS AHEAD
I still hate your stupid handsome face
The straights Becky, are never ok, and never have been.
I mean, these are more okay than most others
The queers have their own problems, but sure.
“May Day? Why, that’s the Russian New Year! We’ll have a big parade, and serve hot Hors D’oeuvres…”
“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue…”
Russian here – actually, Russian New Year is basically Western Christmas (gift-giving, “Deda Moroz/Grandfather Frost”, tree-decoration, and all that).
Russians currently mark Christmas on the 7th of January, which is the 21st-century Gregorian Calendar date that corresponds to 25 December of the Julian Calendar (which the government used until the Emperor was overthrown in 1917 or thereabouts, and which the Russian Orthodox Church still uses).
I am serious and stop calling me Shirley
It took me way longer to realize that Danny was sitting down in that comic than I’d like to admit. I was wondering why he looked like a little kid.
Joyce had better pick up the pace, or else Dorothy’s gonna be so far away.
♫Get your money for nothing and your chicks for free♫
Cool, haven’t listened to them for a while.
They’re really not, Becky.
As in they’re really not okay, or they’re not really straight?
Yes
Somehow that works with that username/gravatar.
“Straights” I think that’s still up for debate for at least one of them.
Yesterday Becky had to confide in Leslie that Dina’s stated willingness to have sex whenever Becky was comfortable was, actually, proof that the two were doomed and that Dina would never be sexually interested in her, because Becky only knows how to process sex as “loudly declares intent to fuck but never acts on it until Baby Jesus gives the divine thumbs up.”
The straights being not okay doesn’t necessarily imply that the not-straights ARE okay (see: Ruth, Jennifer, Danny, etc).
Really, who the heck IS okay these days?
Asexuals?
I can’t speak for other asexuals, but I am definitely not okay. But my aceness and me not being okay are also completely unrelated.
I concur with every word of this
Dina seems pretty okay.
Dina is not asexual, or she wouldn’t be eager to have sex with Becky.
When Dina first “came out” (at least to the readers) she said that she wasn’t lesbian or bi so much as the distinction of gender didn’t matter to her; which I think would make her pansexual.
Asexuality is technically defined as lack of sexual attraction, meaning wanting to have sex and being asexual are not necessarily exclusive.
Asexuality doesn’t really work like that. Asexuality is a lack of attraction, not desire (yes those are distinct). Not being attracted to someone doesn’t mean you can’t want to bone them, just that you don’t have pants-feelings for them. There’s a whole range of attitudes towards sex in the ace community, from sex-repulsed to totally down for it(varying amounts of libido exist too). Also asexuality is a spectrum in and of itself – Dina seems either grey-ace or demisexual to me and those are part of the ace spectrum. (Not to mention that many people confuse someone’s romantic orientation to also be their sexual orientation even when those are distinct)
What others have said. I get it, though. I thought “asexual” meant a very specific type of person. I don’t even remember what inspired me to dig deeper and educate myself, but I’m glad I did. Learning that there’s a difference between sexual attraction and aesthetic attraction was the most eye-opening part.
Turns out okay-ness and straight/gayness are not related and making blanket statements like “the straights/gays/bis are not okay” isn’t okay either.
Dude it’s a queer community meme, just let the gays meme
True I suppose, it’s just wild for Becky to throw stones from her glass house. Hell it’s basically a castle at this stage.
I mean yeah. She’s still right
Yeah, that gal’s got some weird ideas in her head. Can’t take “yes” for an answer.
Is Joyce a straight, though? Is she?
Until she acts on otherwise, sure.
I know it’s fun to poke at her ‘possibly bi’ tendencies, but unless there’s concrete evidence, if she says she’s straight, I’d show that some respect.
This!
Has she said she’s straight though? Just kidding here but seriously Joyce has been purposefully neglecting self evaluation on a lot of things.
Yes, she has.
I’m hoping that link works.
Crumbs. Use this then.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/foranybody/
TBF she also said she’s asexual, and one thing Joyce is very definitely not is asexual. So I think her self evaluations are… terrible.
If we were talking about a real person, yes. Joyce is not a real person. It’s okay to speculate and joke about fictional people in ways that aren’t okay for real people.
This.
Joyce is a character. Joyce could be 100% straight today, 100% lesbian next week, 100% straight the next, and a pansexual ultra-slut who identifies as a hermaphrodite the week after that.
That said, Joyce in this strip is at least somewhat an avatar for Willis himself.
So then the question becomes “So, is Willis straight?”
Well, he’s got the wife and kids, but that’s not really definitive. He writes a comic were LGBTQ+ characters are portrayed in a positive light, which would indicate he’s got no problems with non-straight sexualities. He’s not religious, used to be but isn’t any more, so no religious hangups.
Joyce is very probably straight.
But since Joyce isn’t actually Willis because she’s just a character, your Joyce/Dorothy/Sal/Marcie/Malaya/Mary lesbian orgy fanfics are still ok.
The other thing is that, because these are fictional characters, we have access to more information than they have (or admit) to themselves. Jennifer, for instance, is still unwilling to admit she’s genuinely attracted to women as well as men and is currently claiming she’s straight and Ruth was an outlier. We know in-strip that Ruth’s not an outlier (hi, Alice!) but we also know from active Word of Willis that Jennifer is bi. Not relevant in this case, because Joyce hasn’t had any explicit indication one way or another (including in the old universe,) but the part where we have a degree of omniscience they don’t still applies. For instance, we know, but not all the characters do, that when Robin brought up the ‘Leslie Knope is straight’ homework assignment, it’s part of Robin’s own efforts to convince herself she’s heterosexual. Joyce bringing up the friends thing can then be read as a parallel to Robin of queer and in denial. (I actually don’t get a totally romantic vibe off Leslie and Ann, but Robin’s indisputably queer and Joyce gets… mixed vibes off me.)
Joyce is also not 100% a Willis analogue even in pretty basic points – assigned gender at birth, for one, but also sibling order (IIRC, Willis is the oldest.) So sexuality could ultimately end up being a difference point as well.
Like…I’m glad you agree with me, but I was literally -just- talking there about how you shouldn’t speculate about the sexuality of real people?
It isn’t even part of the question, anyway. As Regalli points out, Joyce -isn’t- Willis, some of her struggles are autobiographical, but they are still definitely different people. (Besides, if they -were- the same person, you could just as easily flip that around and say “Does Willis like ladies? Yes he does, therefore Joyce likes ladies.”)
Whether or not Joyce ends up gay, bi, demi, generally undefinably queer, or locked-in-straight-as-an-arrow is open for debate, but it doesn’t depend on Willis sexuality, it depends on his decisions for her character.
I don’t know if “acts on it” needs to be the bar here. Bi people are still bi even if they’ve only ever dated people of one gender, or even if they haven’t dated anyone at all.
I doubt it.
She’s has to be or Becky will die.
As messed up as it is the concept that joyce is bi and yet not interested in her would destroy her.
Yyyyup.
Which makes me think that this particular dramallama may well be in Willis’ arsenal for potential future deployment against his characters and our feels.
Yeah, because Becky certainly hasn’t shown herself to be emotionally resilient and adaptable or anything.
I mean, they definitely aren’t, but you aren’t exactly a paragon of okayness either, Becks.
True, but Becky’s denialism isn’t about fraudulently claiming things that aren’t trueabout herself. Instead she’s engaging in a more lentian denial, wherein she /knows/ she’s hornier than a styracosaurus, but she only denies herself the fulfilment of said desires, not that they exist. Now… the reasons she’s doing that are messed up (unless you’re religious), but at least she’s living her truth. (vs. lying about what her truth is.)
“hornier than a styracosaurus”
If any pickup line could ever work on Dina, it’s this one.
*pause*
“The feeling! In my pants! It came back when you said that. SAY IT AGAIN.”
Look on the bright side, Joyce.
At least with your glasses, you can see her running away from you.
“Wait, Dorothy doesn’t have the ability to magically teleport?”
I mean Becky’s not wrong
…about the straights not being okay, I mean. About Joyce being straight, however, I have my doubts.
I genuinely don’t understand why so many people think Joyce isn’t straight. I haven’t gotten that impression at all, and as a gay woman I am always yearning for more sapphic ladies everywhere. She also very explicitly stated that she was certain she was straight after Becky kissed her, because Becky kissed her.
I mean, I wouldn’t take the Becky comment as proof of anything. When Joyce says she knows she’s not gay because otherwise she’d be gay for Becky, all she’s admitting to is that she is not attracted to Becky. I don’t know if her thought process is 1) if I were gay, I’d naturally be gay for the woman I’m closest to in the world, or 2) if I were gay, I’d just be with Becky because my lack of attraction to her hurt her so much in the moment it made me wish I was attracted to her—but either way, the thought process is logically flawed and not at all proof that she is 100% totally straight. Like, not being attracted to one girl doesn’t definitively make you not straight.
I myself am on the fence about what to think re: Joyce’s sexuality. I would have agreed with you entirely before the strip a few days ago where Word of Willis seemed to hint that there was something going on with Joyce parallel to Leslie Knope. But maybe that was more of an in-joke than a serious hint at anything (because again, I agree there’s not much to back up the theory that Joyce isn’t straight).
Yeah, I don’t think her attraction (or lack thereof) to Becky is a reliable indicator of anything but that. They’re long-time close childhood friends, which can subconsciously categorize non-blood-relatives as ‘family’ and therefore ‘not boinkable’. Maybe Becky felt differently about their relationship because she’s an only child, but my read is that Joyce thinks of her as “the sister I never had” (as far as she knows).
(That’s a gross oversimplification of something I read ages ago, so it might be wrong.)
That’s pretty much exactly how I read it as well. As the “only” girl (so far as she knew) in a large family, it makes sense that Joyce would categorize her closest female friend as the sister she always wanted. Becky, by contrast, likely always wanted a girlfriend, even if she didn’t quite realize it at the time, and it makes equal sense that she’d latch on to her closest female friend.
There’s the end of last storyline, for one, where she had to state the Dorothy and Joyce analogues she’d excised her feelings onto ‘definitely don’t have feelings for each other’ – that’s the kind of oddly-specific denial that raises way more questions than it answers. This storyline, there’s been the line about Walky ‘only now being hot enough for Dorothy’, and the one about Sal being the ‘coolest, hottest person (girl category)’ they know, both of which are… suggestive of some unacknowledged attraction to women, just that those women aren’t Becky. The comment about Sal isn’t the only time she’s said things that are noticeably suggestive of attraction (including that strip’s discussion of Sal’s hair being ‘extremely brushable’ and it making sense Walky had latent hotness due to their shared genetics,) and there have been a few moments with Jennifer as well – among other things, the bit about wanting to crawl into her boobs and be warm and safe forever. (After insisting she’d only have ‘naughty thoughts’ about guys, and Jennifer asking how she knows she hasn’t had naughty thoughts yet at all.)
As Joyce admits, her childhood best friend being closeted, gay, and crushing on her specifically seems to have skewed Joyce’s ideas of platonic female intimacy. But even accounting for that, she’s had a lot of moments that read A LOT like she’s attracted to women. Could be her lack of attraction to Becky’s a Westermarck Effect thing given how long they’ve known each other, or that Becky’s just not her type, or that she’s heterosexual but biromantic, but they occur so often a lot of people think there’s something to them. (Note also that Becky and Joyce didn’t really recognize bisexuality was a thing when Joyce said she was straight.) Especially with the frequency in the last few storylines.
Everyone is not okay
(Relatively)
*Chemistry by Semisonic looms in the distance*
But can they be Feeling Strangely Fine while still not okay?
Yes, that’s why reality is a comedy of tragic errors.
Why the Laughing Gods Laugh. Things work out sometimes. Just takes some doing.
They never are, Becky. They never are
And I’ve got such a long way to go (such a long way to go…)
To make it to the border of Mexico…
Mean while those two are cross-crossing campus.
No one is okay. But that’s okay, really.
Yeah okay, that’s not ok, but I’m OK with that not being o.k. mm’kay?
We’re doing our best!
Also I posted this yesterday on Patreon but I wanted to know what y’all thought about this theory:
Becky when she’s saying her last words to Ross says “tell mom I’ll be a while” which, given that her family ascribed to some pretty deep fundie logic to the point where no one knew her mom committed suicide but that she passed away due to cancer… does Becky think her mom is in Hell?
No, given her repeated assertions that God loves her, I think Becky thinks her mom is in Heaven; I think she may have sidestepped the question of Hell altogether in a way that Joyce never did.
She adapted her religion to her sexuality, we don’t know how that’s adapted to the perception of suicide as a mortal sin, especially since she also hasn’t adapted her religion in a way that lets her healthily process her sexual frustrations.
I think Becky has been more malleable with her belief in God himself, but I think it’s been pretty clear she still ascribes to a lot of those ingrained fundie beliefs since she hasn’t recognized they’re harmful yet, the way she adapted her beliefs when faced with the concept of God not loving her for being a lesbian.
I read it as Becky either believing or trying to convince herself that, no matter how awful Ross was, he was still going to Heaven. I don’t think Becky has it in her to consign anyone to Hell.
“Mortal sins” is a concept pretty limited to Catholic theology. While lots of other denominations are super weird about suicide, I don’t know of any evangelical subsets that believe mortal sins exist. They might say that suicide demonstrates a lack of trust in God and think that it indicates the suicidal person was never a true believer, but the suicide itself isn’t what would lead to hell. And lots of people are super embarrassed about suicide while still believing the person who died is definitely in heaven. If Becky retains any stigma about suicide, she probably has a pretty similar view about her mom that she has about her dad “they were misguided and made some really big mistakes but they loved Jesus and were trying ti do what was right” or something like that. In my experience, that’s a pretty standard conservative evangelical approach to suicide.
I think it’s more that ‘if her mom is in heaven, how is Ross going to tell her?”
I don’t think so? Especially with the line you quoted, unless Becky thinks she’s also going to hell, which doesn’t fit with what we’ve seen.
Keep in mind that her faith also professes that you can literally accept salvation with your dying breath, without any regard for the life you lived.
There’s a lot of wiggle room.
I’m not certain, but the discussion with Amber after Blaine’s death (especially the emphasis on how those feelings might change over time, but it doesn’t make either emotion invalid) and at least one other relatively recent scene I can’t remember offhand right now suggest Becky’s feelings about Bonnie are a bit more complicated than simple grief. The method of her death (and the fact that Becky was the one who found her after the attempt, and the implied drawn-out nature of it rather than if she had died immediately of the overdose) seems like a very likely factor in that. I don’t think we can draw conclusions about her belief in suicides in general off it, but I do think she hasn’t let herself work through the messy feelings around Bonnie’s death because no one likes a Debbie Downer. Especially since she COULDN’T talk about it at the time with her best friend at minimum, Joyce being given a fake story about cancer. (And given Ross’s whole ‘Satan stole her from us’ bit, even if she tried to discuss it with him I don’t think she would have gotten far. Especially since I really do think the narrow scope of the life Bonnie was allowed was a huge factor in her depression, and Ross was almost certainly as controlling of her as he was to Becky.)
The question of Becky’s belief in Hell or lack thereof hasn’t really been brought up, especially considering she’s dating an atheist. I think convincing herself there was enough good in Ross he’d be in heaven is a decent explanation. There’s also the fact that she’s adapted her faith to accommodate her sexuality and ambitions but is still keeping a lot of hangups (the whole thing with Dina being, in part, that unspeakably horny Dina would absolve her of responsibility for ‘giving in’ linked downthread.) Could be one of those hangups – or just general trauma – is not fully reckoning, just yet with how controlling and abusive Ross really was, could be that in the moment she really wasn’t thinking of those so much as the good times. Could be her statement wasn’t about belief Ross would be going to Hell so much as stating to him, one last time, that she would be going the same place as her mom because she didn’t consider anything wrong with her gayness (and neither did God who answers lesbian prayers) and he would have to deal with that. Honestly I’d lean towards it being a combination of factors that were focused more on her and Ross than any belief about Bonnie. The complicated feelings there seem to be separate from the complicated feelings about Ross.
You’re not wrong, Becky. You’re not wrong.
“The Straights Are Not Okay” needs to be a volume title.
https://imgur.com/a/sCIgOUL
Sorry I wanted to draw this a few days ago but I got distracted and lazy. (Honestly I wanted to go lewder but I’ll settle for canon)
That’s sexy AND terrifying! A classic combo. Nice work.
I only wish I could’ve made it more terrifying AND sexy. After all there’s a strong correlation in girls being scary and HOT for me. ie. Dimitresku or Kayako
I swear, there’s a reason every single piece of horror media on Earth has gratuitous fanservice and male gaze in it.
That’s the problem though isn’t it. They always make the VICTIMS sexy. That’s boring. Make the MONSTER sexy. Now I will buy your horror movie.
It’s true. We need more hot monsters in our media. Power Rangers (of all things) has been doing it right for decades. Can’t think of many sexy horror monsters, except maybe from stuff like Resident Evil.
Ever watched Killing Eve? Talk about a sexy monster *0*
I’m only getting results for some TV show with that lady from that old hospital show in it.
Sandra Oh, that’s right. she’s not the monster.
watch a trailer maybe
as for an actual slasher with a sexy monster: Jennifer’s Body
in re Killing Eve, milu is referring to this assassin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villanelle_(character)
YES
SHE’S A SEXY MONSTER
Xenia Onatop and roughly 50% of all Bond women. Sarah Kerrigan. Pretty much every female comicbook villain. Jumping back to mythology, many gods spent less time being good or evil and more just focused on their own objectives. So it seems many of their interactions come across as being villainous even with more ‘good’ on their charter. Really it seems Christianity spent more time casting evil women as ugly, but this follows a long history of the ancients associating asthetics with evil.
I’m not saying there’s no sexy villains. I’m saying specifically SCARY sexy villains. Either a horror movie villain or an aforementioned villain who’s more about being scary than just powerful.
NICE!
I would like to think Amber has some thoughts about her own sexuality after this…
You have a way with many things but I think my favorite is your drawing of confused (and often blushing) faces, like Joyce’s here.
Joyce? You mean amber, riiiiight?
(By the way, I’ve set this as my new spray on Left 4 Dead 2. It’s very good.)
Oh shit, did you color it? Lemme see!
Sure thing!
(If the HTML doesn’t work, try the name)
NICE. that’s super Cool of ya!
My hat off to you both. You are truly doing the lord’s work.
Sweet merciful Neptune.
Dumbing of Age Book 11: The Straights Are Not Okay
It would work
Personally I still prefer “This Meltdown is Completely Rational“
holy shit Dorothy is thirsty.
Cross country will do that.
I think the running away is more about finding Joyce really annoying at the moment and she finds it easier to leave than to tell her that.
Plus it gets her to Walky faster.
Gotta go fast
So, can I say Joyce doesn’t get to order Dorothy who she sleeps with NOW?
Yes she has now crossed the line.
Thank you.
Hey Joyce! You don’t get to decide who Dorothy fucks!
Do I get to decide?
Only if you’re Willis!
The existence of slash indicates that even DyW only has control over the character’s canon interactions. They still have non-canon free reign.
Ya know… Joyce might not be wrong, but boy is she being a bit of a jerk when it comes to Walky. No one is perfect or beyond reproach, and whether Dorothy decides to do anything (though unlikely) is her business.
Also Becky, you really want to go there?
Is Dorothy running because she wants the Walky ‘D’, or does she just not want a Joyce lecture?
Por Que No Los Dos?
Runnin’ down a D
That never would come to me
Workin’ on the Walky ween
Ridin’ wherever it lead
Runnin’ down a D
*guitar solo*
Yes.
it is from my experience that the straights have never been ok
To be fair, when it comes to ships, NO one is really OK. At best, ya got a 50/50 chance and I am probably highballing it.
how about 30/70
I’m trying to recall where or when we learned that Dorothy had been a cross-country runner. I assumed it was during the episode in Book 3 when Amazi-Girl went full parkour in making her getaway from Dorothy and Walky, but after looking back I couldn’t find anything there.
It was pretty early on, before that. Dorothy was chasing Amber at night by herself.
Yes. Then. Amazagirl (sp) was running away when Dorothy said she couldn’t escape due to Dorothy running cross country.
To which AG replied that she jumped hurdles while proceeding to jump over several bushes, one after the other, thus escaping future president Keener.
Amazi-Squirrel!
The straights are just straight-up not having a good time.
Go Hompk your girlfriend, Becky.
Becky desperate to fuck her girlfriend that’s pounding at the back of her eyeballs so bad it’s making her insane being the one to whip out the “are the straights okay” memetic bc she sees Dorothy being horny for less than a minute is a perfect demonstration of that memetic.
People had been insightfully pointing out that Becky’s current uncertainty about Dina are rooted in her evangelical fundamentalist upbringing—namely, that she wants to be in a position to “give in” to a horny partner, rather than choosing to embrace her own desires. This seems as good a place as any to drop a link to the comic that makes it explicit in case some haven’t seen it lately:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/signalling/
Yep, that is definitely making it explicit! Thanks, that strip occuring right before everything went to shit with Mike and the Evil Dad Chase means I don’t remember it as strongly.
I am a straight and I can confirm
Is that a fucking Overwatch Hanzo reference in the alt text?!?!?!
Maybe, though it’s a much older phrase than that.
of course they’re not
these are DIRE straights
They’re like regular straights, but dire.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t consider Joyce or Dorothy larger than other straights.
Also, dire creatures tend to have sharper, more damaging natural weapons.
So, like regular straights, but… hornier.
The Dire Straits are really good.
You’re not exactly top tier right now Becky.
I’m starting to get a distinct vibe as of this 20-something I once knew, who told me that she was going to do a thing that would fix a person, and I said No, hell no, if you do that thing then that person will be heartbroken and miserable, and she said No, my intentions are pure so nothing bad can happen, and she did the thing, and then the person was indeed heartbroken and miserable and she was all surprised Pikachu face. (But she did admit that she had screwed up.)
The straights are definitely not okay, but I’m so sure they gays are doing so well either. For example in this comic we’ve got Leslie who keeps going for women who are bad for her, and Becky who’s still avoiding talking about her worries with her girlfriend.
Dorothy actually seems to be one of the better-adjusted people with regards to their romantic lives in this strip. And frankly, that is an alarming statement.
I hate to bring it up, but whatever happened to Mary’s “let us be holier-than-thou together” boyfriend?
We have not seen him since September 2017, when Malaya moved into the hall and Mary tried to ‘offer some guidance,’ using scripture in a way that Malaya could con Peter into carrying the box containing Fuckface’s tank. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/replacement/ (The strip immediately before his last, but sets up the situation.)
So he could be offscreen because Mary’s been out of focus, or they could have broken up offscreen and it hasn’t been worth mentioning. Honestly, he could have ruptured his appendix and died over the timeskip and it would change nothing. (Especially since it could only be at most the second-most gossipworthy death in the wing that semester.) I think there was a MENTION of him after Jason was fired, but not an appearance, when Walky introduces him to the hall and they realize Walky’s friends are all girls, but I’m not certain. Between that and Joe’s line to Rachel that ‘your wing can keep Peter’ he definitely seems to have been sincerely a Mary equivalent (there was a theory briefly that he was faking to sleep with her,) but who knows. One of them could’ve had standards about the kidnapping, or he could have deemed Mary’s attraction to him Impure at some point, or they had an argument about whether or not some anime is acceptable to Good Christians. Or, again, they could still be together. No evidence to say either way.
Either way I wouldn’t call a relationship based on their mutual feelings of superiority to everyone else particularly well-adjusted, but that’s mainly because that attitude itself is toxic as hell. I do admit they were made for each other. God help us all.
“The boyfriend shall remain gone and I am still claiming my time” is the sequel to one of Joyce’s greatest hits.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/recuse/
Especially if they try to stop Dorothy to have a nice, innocent, very necessary and well deserved talk with Walky. Joyce, mind your own business!!!!!
Unfortunately, Becky, this is nothing new with Joyce. But no, she definitely is not.
Everybody is friends until they got in dates. Yes, it’s personal. Yes, I’ve lot a lot of friends and my brother to their dates.
Sadly this hits a little too close to home. All of my friends are either married or in long term relationships and I’ve barely talked to them, let alone seen them, in years. It’s hard to make new friends being an introvert and at my age.
I’m 30 years old, and still felt it.
Wait’ll they have kids.
The first rule of Baby Club is that you don’t talk to anyone not in Baby Club.
Oh, she noticed. It’s a reaction caused by male unconsciously learning the “sexy hair flip” maneuver. A very rare occurrence or so I’m told.
What is the male “sexy hair flip”?
Nevermind. Google found it for me. Apparently some people think Trudeau is offering a masterclass in it.
I on the otherhand, am learning to butcher http encoding.
Google found Trudeau’s hair flip.
♫ First of May, outdoor fu- oh wait, it’s January over there isn’t it.
Ah that magical day in every young queers’ life: realizing the straights are also really messed up despite being the majority.
run Dorothy run
I always thought that line was super cringy, and I was glad to see it get less common. Because it’s sooooo judgemental, I just don’t like it…
Honestly, as a cishet white male, I’ve always felt people who aren’t are totally allowed to make judgy generalisations on these things. Mind you, this is probably because I’m all over observing when the neurotypicals do not appear to be okay…
I just don’t like generalisations. Not about gay women, like me, and not about “the straights”. Probably just a me-thing, but I just don’t like going and assuming stuff about people based on some characteristic they just fall into, because they don’t have any control over it.
Maybe the Straights are not okay, but The Kids Are All Right.
Damn, now I want to listen to The Who.
No, we’re not.
That last panel has great meme potential
Joyce is just being an outright bongo; Dorothy has every right to decide for herself, who she wants to hang out with. Dorothy needs to put Joyce in her place; she is a good friend, but that does not give her the right to dictate Dorothy’s social life.
Disregard this comment. Just testing to make sure I remember how to do [this](https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/answer-2/)
Nope, that ain’t how it worked. Goddamnit, to the internet
Try again
Close, how bout ?