If you think that’s bad, I’m pretty much mainlining oxygen, using an over-glorified bellows to pump it into my veins 24/7. At this point if I quit the withdrawal symptoms could kill me in a matter of minutes. And yes, I know a lot of people minimize it because it’s so dang common, but we’re talking about one of the most notoriously corrosive gasses there is, responsible for rot and decay than can ever be tallied.
One of my teachers once told me that fire needs oxygen to burn. He put an equation on the board and everything. and that is going into my body!? YIKES.
Evil is probably a safe bet if you don’t know. Joyce’s parents could probably twist Sesame Street into being sin. I think they actually might have. Sesame Street has been rather progressive from the start.
I think this is a good place to mention that there was a officially sanctioned Doomclone based on Noah’s Ark. You were feeding the animals instead of killing demons.
I remember a friend who had religious parents, but they didn’t know much about media itself. So as long as he explained any magic in the games as actually not being magic he was allowed to play them.
As a child of the 80’s/90’s, my tastes are unfortunately pretty locked into the “waif” archetype by this point, but I think that it’s awesome that there’s a growing trend towards various female body shapes being considered “attractive” than the old “you gotta be thin to be hot” adage that was omnipresent when I was growing up.
I am tipsy & checking webcomics so I decided to actually go back to figure out if we’ve ever actually SEEN a full-body panel of Liz’s body shape? I think we have seen exactly one frame of 2/3rds of her body, haha. I guess that’s enough…
Joe, you didn’t have to keep going. Sarah, you don’t have to take back your thanks. I swear, these two could be friends if they weren’t so determined to avoid being nice to each other. (Alternatively, Joe is already one of Sarah’s closest friends.)
New Danny!? Not hardly. Sarah always has been and is nice. She doesn’t portray herself as nice, as a defense mechanism, but in the end she just does nice things, even if they’re brutally hard for her to do.
On topic, Joe’s flustered dive away from having exposed his feels in panel one is hillarious. That look like “ZOMG What did I just SAY?! Abort, abort, abort, distract by being pervy but not gross, uh… ” is Joyce and Liz is pleasingly shaped.”
I personally make a distinction between “nice” and “kind.” Many people in my evangelical hometown are extremely nice – they’re polite, they talk to you, they send you brownies – but they’re not kind. They wouldn’t do more to help you out of a bind than send a sympathy casserole, and they’ll probably talk about your problems to half the town before they try to find a solution.
Sarah, on the other hand, will absolutely take matters into her own hands to help you solve your problems. She won’t be polite at all while she does it, though, and she’ll make the hard choices for you if you can’t make a choice under pressure. And she knows the meaning of privacy better than most.
While true, most vitamin gummies have ridiculously low levels of supplemental vitamins in them. And there seems to be an inverse relationship between gummy quality and amount of vitamins. Good vitamins are kinda crap visually as gummies, but say take 1 or 2 a day. Gummy supplements that are good gummies, tend to be crap vitamin sources, saying take 4 per day. source: am parent, have tried lots. As for flavour, they (gummies, not ‘chewables’) actually all seem pretty alright. The more opaque ones taste closer to a ‘fruit snack’ and the clearer ones taste like traditional gummies.
I saw a version of HD Mario that was multi-player and would zoom in and out based on how close the players were to each other. It would kind of follow the center of mass of the players so they were supposed to move together like a flock or something, but I’ve forgot which one it was, and haven’t been able to figure it out. Anyone have any idea which Mario I’m talking about?
Or one of those old ‘Hypercolor’ shirts with the ink that faded with an increase in temperature. In fact, those are so outdated that they’re about due to come back into style again.
Really? Cause I find it to be almost a textbook definition of it, especially since she mentioned him hallucinating. It’s just a more tame and humorous version than what is commonly associated with the term. Less..mean spirited I guess. Although I’m not really sure what counts since the use of the term and practice of it is rather liberally used.
Absolutely not.
Gaslighting is not lying to someone, especially when they KNOW you’re lying.
Gaslighting is a PATTERN of abuse, OVER TIME. Sarah would have to spend days or weeks convincing Joe that his memory of the events is wrong and that’s he’s literally crazy for thinking she was ever in his room. She would constantly have to belittle his ability to remember things correctly, and make him doubt he can truly remember his own version of events instead of Sarah’s.
STOP using gaslighting as a synonym for lying, please and thank you. Gaslighting is an abusive tactic that involves lying and manipulation, but just doing those two things is not gaslighting by itself
are you fucking shitting me right now
are you really claiming that a person teaching the meaning of a term to other people is gaslighting because it’s different from what you thought it was
I’m….I’m going to go scream in the woods now
Yeah, see I’m just confused now. I thought gaslighting was a general term since the act itself has a general application more than just the malicious one. From casual interactions, to entertainment and jokes. But from what you’re saying it only applies to the specific practice of psychological manipulation.
I was thinking it was more like the term “homicide” which is the general killing of a human
But it’s actually more like the term “murder” which is the specific, malicious, premeditated killing of a human.
Sorry if that’s a dark comparison. Is was the first one I could think of.
I think you’ve got it Sirksome, and frankly the darkness of the comparison is absolutely appropriate. Clinical gas-lighting (not actually a clinical term but…) is about destroying someone’s mind. Murder is about destroying their mind via destroying their body. Both of them make the person go away, either as ashes, or as a shell of a person occupying the husk of their body.
@Derek You are absolutely right about the meaning, but you aren’t going to succeed in policing language mate. (especially because it’s not a clinical term, even though it’s recognized in clinical contexts) And people use words, and are *free* to use words how they please. Even Sirksome’s wonderful example of ‘Murder’ is used elsewise, as in reddit’s wonderful sub: r/MurderedByWords. You’re doing good work in sharing the precise meaning, especially in cases like this. But you may as well shovel back the tide if you think you’ll be able to stop people using “gas-lighting” as they please. I mean even the term itself is borrowed from a movie about a villain who literally takes advantage of the house’s gas-lighting, to dim and flicker the lights and then ignore and lie to the victim about the lights dimming. Heck, the _real_ meaning of gas-lighting is literally, “to be illuminated by, or furnished with, a source of light derived from the combustion of gaseous petro-chemicals”.
you’re probably right that people are going to do whatever they want anyway, but by the same token I’m going to hold fast to the proper definition of things.
Power to ya. And yeah, especially here, where Joe is playing along with Sarah’s “you didn’t see anything” *waves penguin flippers*, is definitely not what people mean by an abuser gas-lighting someone.
It’s past time we acknowledge that “gaslighting” isn’t what people think it is.
Gaslighting is slowly eroding someone’s ability to tell what’s real. Lying is not telling the truth. What Sarah is doing is neither, but being self-referential about her own grumpiness, which Joe, who knows Sarah fairly well at this point, is well aware of.
Fluorescent tubes do contain and rely on gases to produce light, though. You can argue that fluorescent lighting is gas lighting, in the same way that incandescent lighting is tungsten lighting.
Oooo, I *like* you, we’re going to have fun. Flourescent tubes are unfortunately notouriously bad at dimming (they don’t until they’re failing, and *then* it’s erratic), so they’re still not particularly good for classicaly gas-lighting someone. … Although, given how prevalent the *flickeringly dim flourescent bulb* is in horror and suspense films, it does have a whole host of other emotions already laden with it’s use. One could even have a janitor (even *that* Janitor) come in and put in a “new” bulb, and *then* gas-light a victim by refusing to acknowledge that the replacement is flickering, because it’s ‘new’ obviously.
Are you perchance a child of Galasso’s? Do you have an inside slice on the quality of his dish?
It’s a comic and they’re out of frame. Think of it like stage whispering where the audience is meant to hear, but ‘not’ cast members on stage right (or left).
How the hell does Sarah plan on making it in life if she has literally zero people skills? I hate damn near everyone, but I can at least fake it through a work week.
Even trying the case isn’t about amazing people drama the way hollywood portrays and schysters try and make it seem. Actual trials are about laying out the facts, providing the relevant laws and case precedents, and then letting the Judge and/or Jury come to a decision. I mean, no mistake, there *are* lawyers who fancy themselves as showmen, but they are clowns.
Joe is making a note of Joyce’s physical attraction alongside Liz, but he can’t bring himself to say “lmao shes hot” the way he can for another woman because he knows that’s at least tangential to major trauma and also he likes her beyond just her body.
I’m going to spend all day thinking about Joe’s smile in panel 5. I think that he’s found that being helpful to his friends is more fun and fulfilling than he thought.
I’m going to wait but my feeling that panel 1 was Joe realising that his mask was slipping a little.
I played video games with my older sister, mostly when I was a little kid. There’s one or two video games we’ve played together more recently, but we both work so we rarely have time to play them together now.
Turns out Amazi-Girl is not part of Amber’s MPD, she is Amber’s Magical Girl form, but DYW is too much of a prude to show us the transformation scenes with implied nudity.
Sal, of course, is or was her Dark Magical Girl Nemesis.
Well yeah, if Joe ever admitted he liked someone that he means he has the capacity, and thus the inevitability, of ruining them.
Joe actually, earnestly thinks that all relationships end up like his parents did. His mom didn’t just love his dad, his dad loved her back, but he still cheated. He still kept inflicting misery and despair onto his family until she couldn’t take it anymore because he was a randy ol’ stallion and just couldn’t help himself when surrounded by all these pretty ladies.
Joe has seen what a “real man” is like, and he thinks that he himself will be that way too, so he rejected and embraced it at the same time. He will be just as much of a horny goat but he’ll make sure he never gets attached and that no one gets attached to him. He’ll be a loathsome person, and anyone who wants him will know what they’re getting into and not want him for anything else.
Joe trapped himself in a cage of toxic masculinity.
Joe saw what it meant to be a real man, and like all men he hates it but can’t defy it.
So he changes the labels. He won’t care about anyone, and he won’t let anyone care about him. He will always hurt people if he cares, so he never will.
He’s a man, after all. He can take it. He’s no pussy.
Yeah, Joe’s got stuff to work through. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he thinks /all/ relationships are doomed. Just that based on his awareness of his own role-model and whatever he perceives as having happened to his mom, all relationships with *him* are doomed. (n.b. he doesn’t discourage others from being in relationships)
Also, Joe’s perception of his relationship potential is based on that particular aspect of toxic masculinity, not all available aspects. We’ve already seen many more examples of more emphasized toxic masculinity in the comic, including ones still alive (college dude bros). Joe is growing, and by all appearances it seems he’ll get there. The journey may be a little painful, but he’ll get there.
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dang, how many d’ya EAT, Joe??
also, one Big Sisters by taunting the shit out of Li’l Sibs, thought ya knew that
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarijuanaIsLSD
That, or just spending as much time away from the pest as possible.
One a day everyday, its clearly a real problem that he can’t go a day without one.
I’m that way with water.
You are clearly suffering from an unhealthy water addiction.
Yeah, don’t you realize everyone who’s ever died has come into contact with that stuff? And it’s everywhere?!
They use it in NUCLEAR REACTORS, for God’s sake!
It’s a major component in acid rain too
One study showed that all murderers had used water.
Not just murderers! Freaking Nazi’s used water! And that jerk Godwin is even known to drink a glass on occasion.
I’ve known Godwin for about a decade. Relatively nice guy, for a lawyer.
If you think that’s bad, I’m pretty much mainlining oxygen, using an over-glorified bellows to pump it into my veins 24/7. At this point if I quit the withdrawal symptoms could kill me in a matter of minutes. And yes, I know a lot of people minimize it because it’s so dang common, but we’re talking about one of the most notoriously corrosive gasses there is, responsible for rot and decay than can ever be tallied.
One of my teachers once told me that fire needs oxygen to burn. He put an equation on the board and everything. and that is going into my body!? YIKES.
This is why newborns cry, from rage at being forced into oxygen addiction.
Good golly man be careful! Oxygen is responsible for one of the biggest extinctions in earths history.
Huh, I forget, does Joyce do video games? Was she allowed Mario as a kid, or was it evil somehow?
Evil is probably a safe bet if you don’t know. Joyce’s parents could probably twist Sesame Street into being sin. I think they actually might have. Sesame Street has been rather progressive from the start.
Well we all know what Bert and Ernie are promoting.
Child abuse.
No, I couldn’t make something that stupid up.
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/bryan-fischer-the-new-yorker-is-promoting-child-abuse-with-bert-and-ernie-cover-9986178e2b43/
Never mind what what happens to Brad when he won’t eat his peas.
She might have been allowed to play some approved christian games, but I get the vibe that most secular media was off limits
I think this is a good place to mention that there was a officially sanctioned Doomclone based on Noah’s Ark. You were feeding the animals instead of killing demons.
Was there a BFS (Big Feeding Spoon) that let you feed every animal in sight at once?
Remember ChexQuest? A Doom reskin based on nutrition and mucus. They gave it away in cereal boxes.
Steam has a new version.
I remember a friend who had religious parents, but they didn’t know much about media itself. So as long as he explained any magic in the games as actually not being magic he was allowed to play them.
Yelling and growling is actually a very solid base. It’s pretty much how my older brother communicated to me for a decade.
Grunting is good too.
“If you’ve done everything right, nobody will know you’ve done anything at all.”
I think the quote is inexact, but I get you.
I don’t know the quote origin, but that phrase is either hype talk for some type of covert operation or the destruction of someone’s soul.
It’s a line by god in Futurama.
Or an AI that believes its god, anyway.
I mean I wouldn’t say it out loud but…Yeah I concur. Extremely pleasingly shaped. (Though my favorite shape is that HAIR BABY. I love the poof.)
As a child of the 80’s/90’s, my tastes are unfortunately pretty locked into the “waif” archetype by this point, but I think that it’s awesome that there’s a growing trend towards various female body shapes being considered “attractive” than the old “you gotta be thin to be hot” adage that was omnipresent when I was growing up.
Not just when you were growing up as witnessed by this icon of my youth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiggy
I am tipsy & checking webcomics so I decided to actually go back to figure out if we’ve ever actually SEEN a full-body panel of Liz’s body shape? I think we have seen exactly one frame of 2/3rds of her body, haha. I guess that’s enough…
It’s too bad Joe isn’t that sort of friend. I think he’d be pretty good at it.
He kind of is, but pretends he isn’t.
( thatsthejoke.jpg, except it’s not funny
)
Pretty sure yelling and growling is approved big sister technique.
Joe, you didn’t have to keep going. Sarah, you don’t have to take back your thanks. I swear, these two could be friends if they weren’t so determined to avoid being nice to each other. (Alternatively, Joe is already one of Sarah’s closest friends.)
Your first two sentences are pretty good because they’re both valid for the same reason.
That last sentence (parenthetical withstanding, but I’ll get to that) is amazing because it’s so true.
Your parenthetical is astounding because there’s a point to be mad there.
I’d say panel 4 supports the parenthetical.
*cues up some REO Speedwagon*
I mean if we’re calling the ship JoJo then we might as well
Deep Cuts Are Appropriate
Placement tells us Sarah is gonna go be a Nice Guy
Yes! Was waiting to see if anyone else saw this. Sarah is the new Danny.
New Danny!? Not hardly. Sarah always has been and is nice. She doesn’t portray herself as nice, as a defense mechanism, but in the end she just does nice things, even if they’re brutally hard for her to do.
On topic, Joe’s flustered dive away from having exposed his feels in panel one is hillarious. That look like “ZOMG What did I just SAY?! Abort, abort, abort, distract by being pervy but not gross, uh… ” is Joyce and Liz is pleasingly shaped.”
I personally make a distinction between “nice” and “kind.” Many people in my evangelical hometown are extremely nice – they’re polite, they talk to you, they send you brownies – but they’re not kind. They wouldn’t do more to help you out of a bind than send a sympathy casserole, and they’ll probably talk about your problems to half the town before they try to find a solution.
Sarah, on the other hand, will absolutely take matters into her own hands to help you solve your problems. She won’t be polite at all while she does it, though, and she’ll make the hard choices for you if you can’t make a choice under pressure. And she knows the meaning of privacy better than most.
That’s actually really cool. Don’t get me wrong, I loves me a surprise casserole, but I absolutely take your point. Thanks for sharing.
…are there any Mario games that have 3-player but not 4-player?
Oh right I forgot non-optional Toadette Super Crown was a thing
Joe’s not planning to play; he’s the host. Gotta keep their sodas and vitamans topped up.
You mean “drinks and edibles”, right?
I think this is the appropriate place to remind people that some vitamins are toxic in high doses.
I remember that episode of House!
Every episode of House: “It’s not lupus.” Except the one time it was.
While true, most vitamin gummies have ridiculously low levels of supplemental vitamins in them. And there seems to be an inverse relationship between gummy quality and amount of vitamins. Good vitamins are kinda crap visually as gummies, but say take 1 or 2 a day. Gummy supplements that are good gummies, tend to be crap vitamin sources, saying take 4 per day. source: am parent, have tried lots. As for flavour, they (gummies, not ‘chewables’) actually all seem pretty alright. The more opaque ones taste closer to a ‘fruit snack’ and the clearer ones taste like traditional gummies.
Oh, absolutely. May he interest you in a weed? Perhaps some boozes?
I saw a version of HD Mario that was multi-player and would zoom in and out based on how close the players were to each other. It would kind of follow the center of mass of the players so they were supposed to move together like a flock or something, but I’ve forgot which one it was, and haven’t been able to figure it out. Anyone have any idea which Mario I’m talking about?
Awww, Big Sis is Big Sis-ing!
And for a moment in time, Sarah was the Nice Guy.
Do kind of like how the Nice Guy disappeared in the last panel when Sarah game back to gaslight Joe.
It must be a smart matter t-shirt that erases the message when it is invalid.
It never said Nice Guy. That was a hallucination.
Or one of those old ‘Hypercolor’ shirts with the ink that faded with an increase in temperature. In fact, those are so outdated that they’re about due to come back into style again.
I’m not sure that actually counts as gaslighting.
Really? Cause I find it to be almost a textbook definition of it, especially since she mentioned him hallucinating. It’s just a more tame and humorous version than what is commonly associated with the term. Less..mean spirited I guess. Although I’m not really sure what counts since the use of the term and practice of it is rather liberally used.
If Sarah’s not trying to genuinely make him doubt his own memories and perception of reality, she’s not gaslighting him.
Absolutely not.
Gaslighting is not lying to someone, especially when they KNOW you’re lying.
Gaslighting is a PATTERN of abuse, OVER TIME. Sarah would have to spend days or weeks convincing Joe that his memory of the events is wrong and that’s he’s literally crazy for thinking she was ever in his room. She would constantly have to belittle his ability to remember things correctly, and make him doubt he can truly remember his own version of events instead of Sarah’s.
STOP using gaslighting as a synonym for lying, please and thank you. Gaslighting is an abusive tactic that involves lying and manipulation, but just doing those two things is not gaslighting by itself
So then Derek isn’t gasslighting us by convincing us that the word doesn’t mean what we use it to mean?
are you fucking shitting me right now
are you really claiming that a person teaching the meaning of a term to other people is gaslighting because it’s different from what you thought it was
I’m….I’m going to go scream in the woods now
99% sure that was a joke.
Yeah, see I’m just confused now. I thought gaslighting was a general term since the act itself has a general application more than just the malicious one. From casual interactions, to entertainment and jokes. But from what you’re saying it only applies to the specific practice of psychological manipulation.
I was thinking it was more like the term “homicide” which is the general killing of a human
But it’s actually more like the term “murder” which is the specific, malicious, premeditated killing of a human.
Sorry if that’s a dark comparison. Is was the first one I could think of.
I think it’s broader than the full on abusive practice, but not nearly as broad as “tells an obvious lie”.
You have to actually make an attempt to convince the other person that their perception/memory is wrong.
I think you’ve got it Sirksome, and frankly the darkness of the comparison is absolutely appropriate. Clinical gas-lighting (not actually a clinical term but…) is about destroying someone’s mind. Murder is about destroying their mind via destroying their body. Both of them make the person go away, either as ashes, or as a shell of a person occupying the husk of their body.
@Derek You are absolutely right about the meaning, but you aren’t going to succeed in policing language mate. (especially because it’s not a clinical term, even though it’s recognized in clinical contexts) And people use words, and are *free* to use words how they please. Even Sirksome’s wonderful example of ‘Murder’ is used elsewise, as in reddit’s wonderful sub: r/MurderedByWords. You’re doing good work in sharing the precise meaning, especially in cases like this. But you may as well shovel back the tide if you think you’ll be able to stop people using “gas-lighting” as they please. I mean even the term itself is borrowed from a movie about a villain who literally takes advantage of the house’s gas-lighting, to dim and flicker the lights and then ignore and lie to the victim about the lights dimming. Heck, the _real_ meaning of gas-lighting is literally, “to be illuminated by, or furnished with, a source of light derived from the combustion of gaseous petro-chemicals”.
you’re probably right that people are going to do whatever they want anyway, but by the same token I’m going to hold fast to the proper definition of things.
Power to ya. And yeah, especially here, where Joe is playing along with Sarah’s “you didn’t see anything” *waves penguin flippers*, is definitely not what people mean by an abuser gas-lighting someone.
If the term is being liberally used that means it’s being misused.
Gaslighting is in reference to a specific pattern of behaviour. It doesn’t mean “character makes an obvious joke to another character.”
It’s past time we acknowledge that “gaslighting” isn’t what people think it is.
Gaslighting is slowly eroding someone’s ability to tell what’s real. Lying is not telling the truth. What Sarah is doing is neither, but being self-referential about her own grumpiness, which Joe, who knows Sarah fairly well at this point, is well aware of.
Gods, not this misuse again. It’s going to be like Joe crawling out of gender studies saying “I was never here” all over again, isn’t it?
Right? These are dorms. Both they and the classroom are, I’m certain, lit by flourescent tubes, unless they’ve been transitioned to LED’s.
Fluorescent tubes do contain and rely on gases to produce light, though. You can argue that fluorescent lighting is gas lighting, in the same way that incandescent lighting is tungsten lighting.
Oooo, I *like* you, we’re going to have fun.
Flourescent tubes are unfortunately notouriously bad at dimming (they don’t until they’re failing, and *then* it’s erratic), so they’re still not particularly good for classicaly gas-lighting someone. … Although, given how prevalent the *flickeringly dim flourescent bulb* is in horror and suspense films, it does have a whole host of other emotions already laden with it’s use. One could even have a janitor (even *that* Janitor) come in and put in a “new” bulb, and *then* gas-light a victim by refusing to acknowledge that the replacement is flickering, because it’s ‘new’ obviously.
Are you perchance a child of Galasso’s? Do you have an inside slice on the quality of his dish?
Are they not heard by the other two who are maybe 8 feet away?
They are stoned out of their heads on edibles by now, remember?
Joe is a beta tester for the new Ruttech Cone of Silence.
It’s a comic and they’re out of frame. Think of it like stage whispering where the audience is meant to hear, but ‘not’ cast members on stage right (or left).
I think the other two are a bit too focused on each other to notice.
How the hell does Sarah plan on making it in life if she has literally zero people skills? I hate damn near everyone, but I can at least fake it through a work week.
What is she majoring in again? Law, or am i thinking of someone else?
Speaking of stoning and majors, I wonder what Meredith’s major is.
You’re right, she’s majoring in law.
She could wind up as the kind of lawyer who does the research, rather than actually trying the case.
And technically, she’s not majoring in law, since that’s not an undergrad major, but she is aiming at law school, so it’s close enough.
Even trying the case isn’t about amazing people drama the way hollywood portrays and schysters try and make it seem. Actual trials are about laying out the facts, providing the relevant laws and case precedents, and then letting the Judge and/or Jury come to a decision. I mean, no mistake, there *are* lawyers who fancy themselves as showmen, but they are clowns.
You don’t need to be an amazing showman, but both judges and juries are people and presentation and personality matter.
Maybe she plans to become a hermit and live in the woods or on a mountaintop or something?
I though you can only do that if you were a retired superhero or spy.
There’s a world of difference between being polite in professional contexts and hanging out with your friends who know and accept your crusty shell.
Joe is aiming to lose his arrow.
owitch
does joe assume sarah knows how he only recognises he feels about Joyce? what was that line, joyce is joyce?
We know what he means, but from Sarah’s point of view it’s easy to see it as just referring to Joyce being physically attractive
Yeah.
Joe is making a note of Joyce’s physical attraction alongside Liz, but he can’t bring himself to say “lmao shes hot” the way he can for another woman because he knows that’s at least tangential to major trauma and also he likes her beyond just her body.
Even about Liz he kinda flubs the pitch with, “pleasingly shaped.”
Whoops, that was a reply to @thejeff
D’awww
love the smile on joe’s face, btw. Very nice touch, and excellent drawing/composition skills. It’s these that keep my opinion elevated 
I am actually surprised by how much I like Joyce and Joe and how well I think they could work with the growth were seeing teased
What a nice 5-panel arrangement we’ve got today!
Hopefully we’ll see some growth for Sarah this storyline
the nice guy shirt is my new favorite character
I saw panel 5 and put down my phone to look for flying pigs.
I’m going to spend all day thinking about Joe’s smile in panel 5. I think that he’s found that being helpful to his friends is more fun and fulfilling than he thought.
I’m going to wait but my feeling that panel 1 was Joe realising that his mask was slipping a little.
Yup. He almost admitted he’s got it bad for Joyce again.
Yeah, that would just be awful.
Joe and Sarah — you heard it here first. Or maybe not.
I really wanted to say that these are some excellent Sarah faces in this strip
Joe has more experience in being a brother than Sarah because he and Danny are like brothers.
Joe is making giant steps with Sarah, still not sure where he wants to go with her.
Away from the baseball bat
I played video games with my older sister, mostly when I was a little kid. There’s one or two video games we’ve played together more recently, but we both work so we rarely have time to play them together now.
Are we getting into a harem anime here? Because that’s what it sounds like.
Dumbing of Age is now an isekai
Ok, but which character came from a different reality then?
Faz, clearly.
Galasso
Asma because she’s in the back, watching. Always watching.
Oh, and the Janitor
Turns out Amazi-Girl is not part of Amber’s MPD, she is Amber’s Magical Girl form, but DYW is too much of a prude to show us the transformation scenes with implied nudity.
Sal, of course, is or was her Dark Magical Girl Nemesis.
But who’s the center of the harem?
That literal wandering eye on Joe in panel one: On purpose, or happy accident?
Yes, Joe. Hide behind your horrible reputation. Godforbid it might get out that you like somebody for who they are.
Well yeah, if Joe ever admitted he liked someone that he means he has the capacity, and thus the inevitability, of ruining them.
Joe actually, earnestly thinks that all relationships end up like his parents did. His mom didn’t just love his dad, his dad loved her back, but he still cheated. He still kept inflicting misery and despair onto his family until she couldn’t take it anymore because he was a randy ol’ stallion and just couldn’t help himself when surrounded by all these pretty ladies.
Joe has seen what a “real man” is like, and he thinks that he himself will be that way too, so he rejected and embraced it at the same time. He will be just as much of a horny goat but he’ll make sure he never gets attached and that no one gets attached to him. He’ll be a loathsome person, and anyone who wants him will know what they’re getting into and not want him for anything else.
Joe trapped himself in a cage of toxic masculinity.
I never thought I would feel bad for Joe.
Well yeah where do you think he got it from?
Joe saw what it meant to be a real man, and like all men he hates it but can’t defy it.
So he changes the labels. He won’t care about anyone, and he won’t let anyone care about him. He will always hurt people if he cares, so he never will.
He’s a man, after all. He can take it. He’s no pussy.
Yeah, Joe’s got stuff to work through. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he thinks /all/ relationships are doomed. Just that based on his awareness of his own role-model and whatever he perceives as having happened to his mom, all relationships with *him* are doomed. (n.b. he doesn’t discourage others from being in relationships)
Also, Joe’s perception of his relationship potential is based on that particular aspect of toxic masculinity, not all available aspects. We’ve already seen many more examples of more emphasized toxic masculinity in the comic, including ones still alive (college dude bros). Joe is growing, and by all appearances it seems he’ll get there. The journey may be a little painful, but he’ll get there.
Joe is helping
Sarah is now a Nice Guy, according to the tee
It’s not as if the other two people in the room didn’t know t hat already!
3 players because he has no intention to join ?
Joe forgot that he’s trying to be the worst again
I love that “Joyce is Joyce” could be interpreted as a negative, but can also be interpreted as…not
Considering it’s put right next to an argument IN FAVOR of banging Liz, I think we know what Joe thinks of Joyce’s Joyce-ness.
Not the wingman you deserve, but the wingman you need.
I love Sarah so much. And Joe also.