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Sigh. The probability wave has collapsed. Unsurprisingly, it pointed out yet again that people suck. The only question to be determined is how much.
While your puns are great, and your artwork better, for this one Yoto, I just want to watch her be Mario in Super Mario Bros. So she can eat it in a pit of fiery lava in world 1’s Bowser Castle on her last life.
She strikes me as the kind who would totally jump off to get a boost while over lava, and I don’t even know what that is equivalent to in this metaphor.
Here’s where we discover whether Joe’s nascent feelings for Joyce, his fear/respect for Sarah, and the small shriveled husk of his conscience, are together powerful enough to Voltron themselves into something like Willpower and defeat the Boner Monster.
I guess. I guess my bet is that Joe will sleep with Liz. Because I think he needs at least one more character beat where he’s terrible. I think he’ll do it and then feel bad about it and he’ll realize he’s out of options unless he puts real relationships back on the table.
I think that’s possible, but I think it’d make sense to be not “bad” as in guilty for any reason, but “bad” in the sense that this kind of thing is everything Joe has said he wants, and yet he didn’t like it at all.
I completely agree that Joe, is going to bang Liz. As much as he says he is trying, and as much as we want to see a less predatory Joe, remember that the last thing we saw of Joe, before Danny and Sal came back, was him, kicking himself for not trying to get Liz, Joyce, and Sarah, in a foursome.
I think that was more commentary on what he thinks he’s supposed to be doing.
Girls! Playing video games! In his room! Two of them are sisters and the other is the ex-churchy girl! It’s supposed to be a scenario for Sexy College Shenanigans and not only is Joe not trying to make it happen, he’s aghast that he’s not interested.
This is in contrast with Danny, who has Sal literally climbing through his window so they can ride bikes, eat sandwiches, cuddle in the snow and talk about feelings, but Joe thinks he’s out having mindblowing sex with the hottest girl on campus because Joe can’t get that Danny and Sal provide something for each other than a lay, because he’s never been able to consider otherwise.
Leaning towards not sleeping with her. Joe is, at this point, fully cognizant of his crush on Joyce, and I think he’s starting to put more serious thought/effort into it. I think it’ll be a struggle but I think Joe will try to restrain himself.
Yeah. Despite some not seeing anything wrong with it, any amount of awareness of your friends’ emotions would make it obvious to Joe how much this would hurt Joyce and Sarah.
Oh… oh look. It’s “Dumbing” of Age, not “Smart Respectful Behaviour” of Age.
Moreover, if he went through with it, why do Joyce and Sarah get any leverage over him? Joe didn’t do wrong by Joyce because he slept around it’s because constantly objectified the women around him by literally ranking them by number, and being Liz’s older sister doesn’t actually let Sarah have the keys to her vagina.
What is with this wack-ass sexual purity nonsense going on tonight?
“Please stop talking to me.” Is a two way street. I respected it. Oh well.
As for _why_ they get “leverage” over him: It’s not leverage. Since I literally just spelled it out for those that can comprehend it, I’m not going to reword it. If you can’t see the emotional impact this would have, then there isn’t likely a way to explain it to you.
It was a similar disagreement about not being able to see how a person with a different perspective might feel. One can acknowledge the validity of anothers feelings or perspective, without having to have the same reaction themselves. Much of the discussion here is focused on a larger interpretation of social and religious expectations and the rights of people to live within their own bodies. And that’s all totally valid. What it doesn’t do though, is prevent there from being emotional effects in the animals around us when we take actions that don’t directly involve those others.
Joyce doesn’t need to have a messed up background to have valid complicated feelings about Joe and Lucy hooking up if she finds out. She and Joe are engaged in a mutual emotional connection, and her body and mind may very well have a jealous or other response. We’re animals and our physical/emotional reactions are not always logical or reasonable. Joe’s not _responsible_ for that, but as Joyce’s friend he may care about it. Like I said, it’s not leverage, it’s empathy.
As for yesterday’s by play, mea-culpa. I forgot who I was “giving space” to. Today reminded me.
See this is an interesting intersection in how people view sex.Liberalism has always been a lot more freedom about sexuality. But it’s also tied to ideas like feminism and consent and power dynamics. Which ends up making sex seem like a bad thing. Having negative opinions on someone who has a lot of sex not because of religion but just because someone who sleeps around seems like they’d bump up against these ideas. But at the same time we’re vividly aware that ideas like monogamy and sex being bad are usually religious or conservative ideas so you thin want to say “no we should be able to sleep around with any other consenting adult”. There’s also gender weirdness where, ironically ducking tradition, women who like sex a lot tend to be treated as more sex positive than men who like sex alot. Or queer people who have sex a lot being an affirmation of their validity while cishet men liking sex a lot being another example of men being pigs. It’s especially clear that a lot of people have had bad experiences with horndog guys so that plays a part too. Of course some people are aware that THAT is also somewhat problematic as Cishet men tend to not speak up about abuse from women for the very same reason that people tend to think of them as pigs. There’s a bit of a double standard in that regard.
Sex can’t be no big deal, we think too highly of it. It’s an act which involves a lot of trust and vulnerability for people and unfortunately that means that a lot of people will disapprove of people who treat it casually. No matter how much we try to normalize it, we will always suffer from this idea that fucking someone is this inherently immoral act. Or dirty. Or obscene. Even though it’s the reason a majority of us are here.
I think it’s mostly a conservative distortion of liberal views that tries to turn consent and power dynamics into some kind of liberal puritanism. There are certainly some radical particularly feminist views that see all sex as rape, but that’s a vanishingly small minority.
There are definitely a lot aspects of sexual relations that we’re still working through as a society. Not a great surprise, since we started in a legitimately awful place. I definitely agree that sex is really going to stay a big deal for most people for a long time – which doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll treat it like it’s immoral/dirty/obscene, just that it carries a lot of emotional weight for many people.
This is obviously brilliant foreshadowing on the part of Willis, indicating to us that whatever happens tonight, Liz shall indeed finish last, one way or another.
I doubt that. She goes to a different school. I don’t know how far Ball State is from IU but it’s apparently need a ride distance. So it might be hard to see her everyday. That being said this comic moves at a snail’s pace so just one day of Liz could last like six months.
And yeah, there’s nothing wrong with banging Joe. It’s maybe a little morally dubious since Liz believes Joe is Joyce’s sex friend but Joyce lied about that so it’s kind of fair trade here.
I’m not sure why Joyce would take it hard. I’m not greasy at empathizing with jealousy so maybe that’s it, but I dunno, it didn’t seem like something that would bother her?
It’s difficult to explain because it’s certainly not logical. The best way I can put it is: Joyce still has a LOT of programming, guilt, trauma, and various other hang-ups regarding sex.
All those hangups haven’t just disappeared because she’s lost her faith. We saw that in how she lied to Liz about her sexual relationship with Joe; she’s still terrified of and clueless about sex. She considers it a Really Big Deal. But she’s also really embarrassed that she feels that way, because she now thinks that attitude is silly and immature, and she should be smarter and more grown-up than that. But she isn’t.
So finding out that Joe and Liz slept together would hurt her, but even worse, she would feel like she had to pretend it didn’t, and would be feeling intense guilt and shame because she was feelings things she thinks she shouldn’t be, and she frankly hasn’t developed the kind of self-reflection and insight to realize any of this was happening.
Sarah Literally told her Liz was an oversexed Boyfriend stealer.
Her response to this knowledge was to skip class and Dangle Joe in front of her because of his reputation ( and hotness) and pretend they Hook up.
If she was NOT trying to manipulate them both into screwing , then its odd how she out of her way to go through all the motions unnecessarily at her own expense.
But why would she be hurt in the first place? Joyce knows Joe sleeps around, and I can’t remember her ever having been hurt when he’s done it in the past. The closest thing is when he slept with Malaya, but I thought that disappointment was because he was supposed to be taking care of Faz then.
Why would that make it any level of morally dubious? Joe has A Reputation for being a sex fiend and Liz knows Joyce knows it. Joyce made her relationship sound like it wasn’t some deeply romantic monogamous one, and it honestly isn’t even discounting the lying.
Maybe it’s not. Like I said yesterday I don’t have any experience with casual sex between multiple parties. To me it just seems like a gray area because entering any kind of regular sexual relationship implies a certain level of communication and mutual understanding of expectation. Just randomly going after someone’s sex partner seems a little sketch since I personally would a least want to know a sex partner was banging other people just to avoid STDs.\
A little? That is a gray area on the matter of safe sex practices, though that’d be more Joe’s responsibility if his (hypothetical) relationship with Joyce called for keeping her up to date on that, providing and checking for that, and so on.
But in this case specifically, Joe’s advertised himself as willing to have sex with people without checking for that, and Joyce *knows this*. It’d be a pretty safe inference for Liz to assume that Joyce is 100% okay with whatever side chicks Joe takes on the side.
(Now, it may get written into this story that Liz has some nefarious motive like only wanting to sleep with Joe because it’s Joyces friend and meddle in the relationship and be a troublemaker, but that is hardly the only way it could go, and it doesn’t make any actions she’s taken so far wrong)
The nefarious motive has been lampshaded already in that Sarah has pointed out that she has a habit of going for men that her family and friends care for.
There’s nothing technically wrong with going for someone who is free, of course, so she can do it as much as she pleases and if anyone’s feelings gets hurt she can point at them and laugh, and call them out for feeling jealousy (a natural emotion) as if they are in the wrong.
It looks very much like this is part of the thrill for her, because this seems to be a pattern. The uncertain nature of whether she’s actually done something wrong or not allows her to engage in a form of gas lighting blame-free.
life hack: always use protections with a sex partner. You don’t want to rely on trust for that one. This’ll help more than extensive knowledge of other partners’ history.
Morally and logically, Joe’s completely in the clear here.
The only question is: how serious are his burgeoning feelings about Joyce? How seriously does he want to pursue a relationship with her? Because this will wreck his chances of getting with Joyce any time soon.
I think Liz is just acting in her own self-interest here. Given the information she has about Joe and Joyce’s relationship, she probably doesn’t think she’s stealing him from her.
Joe knows Joyce is still full of hangups about sex though, and he might feel like he’s hurting her by having another casual romp.
Its extra morally dubious that JOyce went out her way to tell sarah Lies that would want to make her bang Joe. Right After she learned Lizs Buttons.
The only explanation i have is so Joyce can feel temporally superiors at Sarahs expense , ie feel like she has Less sexual hangups than Sarah. ( for once ) . While minorly cruel, turnabout is fair play.
There was no way this wasn’t a hookup, and I feel like a lot of the commenters yesterday knew that was a long shot. That said, sex isn’t inherently immoral, so Liz and Joe fucking by itself wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Yeah, I was a sucker. I feel like folks are always thinking the worst of characters but I guess I picked the wrong one to give the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah that’s how Becky and Dorothy cyberstalked Joyce. They went on Liz’s facebook and she posted that she was going to the den of sinful lust where Roz shot her video.
This literally no way for me to describe in so many words how attractive I find Liz. It’s substantial. It’s a very very powerful attraction. Arguably moreso than any other character in this comic.
Oh my type is “problematic” My earliest crushes are on Fifi la fume, The Kanker Sisters, and Mamimi from Fooly Cooly. My “type” is literally “girls who will ruin my life.”
God I’m not sure, I feel like Jennifer’s absence lately has blinded me. If she begins to show up prominently again I may change my mind cuz she’s my favorite <3.
But yeah atm I do like Liz more.
Honestly nah, not for me. In terms of raw sexiness Jennifer’s got it made in the shade. Though if we’re adding personality then Cocky!Joyce is climbing up there for me.
I mean Joe is tall and substantially muscular. Those are typically very attractive traits for a male at least traditionally. His personality is usually what turns some women off.
On the one hand, stupid fun with a hot guy is literally what Joe has been advertising all year.
On the other, she doesn’t actually know him at all, so stupid fun with a hot guy is pretty much exactly what she’s after AND she didn’t have to listen to him be an ass. Win Win!
Different women like all different things.
Liz does indeed like cheap Johnny Bravo. Most of the women on campus hate him — think of Rachel’s reaction to his whole deal, for example.
Find the people who like you.
To be fair, the reason most women on campus hate him is because of hit list rating girls by their hotness. But that wasn’t his fault as it was stolen from him and leaked without his permission. It was, in essence, a private diary showing his personal thoughts never meant for public viewing. He was a victim of extreme privacy violation, but I think most forget or ignore that part because it doesn’t let them view him as a bastard. He’s always been honest about his intentions, asks for consent, and if turned down accepts their decision. He does what he’s supposed to be doing.
Wasn’t there a time when he admits he had been giving people the link to the blog and knowingly publishing it on the public setting? I’m pretty sure that’s canon somewhere but I’m not doing an archives binge to find it.
He handed it out to anyone who wanted it, and then Rachel spelled out it out in block capital that it was a list of names, appearances and locations of women around campus, and maybe that’s startlingly unethical at best, at worst something incredibly destructive in the hands of anyone who wanted something other than a quick lay.
Yeah I think if his list was just his own personal tastes for him in general it’d be fine, but because he made it as this sorta…guidebook for other guys on campus that definitely makes it more of a dick move. The idea that it was “leaked” is more of an exaggerated term because it was sorta a public secret. Literally he made it accessible to anyone who was interested so it would be the simplest thing on god’s green earth to make it public.
Even as strictly personal it would be kind of icky – it’s still a clear indication of his objectification of women. Talking up his ratings constantly and offering up the RSS feed just make it worse.
True, but I feel like being icky alone is different than being publicly icky. I’d probably never make a pros/cons list of real people I know obviously but I definitely do it for fictional characters all the time. (I spend a lot of time in tier list makers) I can understand, at the very least, the desire to compartmentalize your feelings about something in an organized list even if it’s rude to do so.
As others have said the list wasn’t really private, he just kept it from girls he thought might be bothered by it.
More importantly though, the list was only a symptom of Joe’s problems. Until he started making a connection with Joyce, he treated women like objects who had something he wanted, interacting with them only to hit on them. Joyce had to explain to him at length how that affected her and others.
Joe was all red flags back then, despite his talk about consent, which we’ve only seen him respect when it came forcefully. He was only not as bad as he seemed because much of it turned out to be performative boasting.
Joe’s character growth involves realizing that how he was behaving wasn’t actually okay, even if he was avoiding his dad’s issues. I don’t like dismissing that character arc by pretending he was always just fine.
Are we just going to ignore the fact that he deliberately created a semi-public “do” list in the first place? Knowledge of its existence spreading like wildfire wasn’t the root issue there, as Danny put together after Rachel berated Joe while they were hiding in the IT building.
I had a friend who was SUPER into Johnny Bravo. She thought he was super attractive. Which, to be fair, if there was a female Johnny Bravo I might be down bad too.
I like the interpretation of Johnny as being such a chauvinist pig because he’s constantly reinforced that’s how it’s supposed to work, and when he’s in a scenario that doesn’t let him play by the rulebook he lets his admirable qualities shine through.
Part of me wants to tell my sister Elizabethan “NO! THIS IS A REALLY BAD IDEA!” and to run away…and another part of me wants her to go for the gusto. I just hope the gusto has condoms.
Are you kidding? This girl is a MINE FIELD. She’s Sarah’s sister, she’s a high schooler of indeterminate age, and she’s kind of a brat. Joyce crush aside, sleeping with her would definitely make an enemy out of Sarah and may actually be a crime for him. I’m not sure what the statutory laws in Indiana are like.
I believe she’s a college freshman (at Ball U), and of legal age. (Remember, Sarah’s a year ahead of the rest of the cast.)
Everything else still applies.
It’s weird how often various ages of consent get brought up. Feels like I hear about it every couple of weeks wherever I go, one way or another. Like, it’s important to be aware of in general, of course, not arguing that, but… am I the odd one out for not thinking about it much?
Some states have weird laws and if you’re all young and close in age it’s worth being aware.
Like, 15 and 16 isn’t much creepier than 16 and 17 is, but one might well be criminal and the other legal.
That said, it’s often older guys focusing the laws, which is creepy. People around the age of consent tend to not pay attention and just do what they’re going to do.
Here of course it only came up because Heavensrun mistakenly thought she was in high school and possibly significantly younger.
If there’s a big age gap, sure. But if we’re talking about whether an 18yo would be committing a crime by sleeping with a 17yo, not so much? It’s a valid discussion to have.
(Also as someone who was 15 when I first had sex- with an 18yo- I don’t think 18 is a good age of consent. If there’s concerns with predatory behaviour towards teens maybe make the age of consent include rules about age differences for teens, but it’s far better to teach young people how to be safe and healthy than just telling them “don’t”.)
It depends. I’m 27 so anyone under 20 feels off limits. But if you’re like…19 it might be something to be concerned about if a 17 year old girl is hitting on ya. And since cases of statutory rape are being increasingly more cracked down on, it makes sense to me that people wanna make sure they’re not actually doing anything illegal.
(worth noting that when I was 16 I had an 18 year old girlfriend, but we were only a grade apart.)
…. okay, fine, not a great metaphor. Most people are attracted to things that are minefield-ADJACENT, which are why the minefields are there. It’s not like Joe is actually attracted to the booby traps.
Well, I live near some minefields. Luckily most of ’em are gone or rusted enough not to detonate anymore, but you still have to be cautious when gardening. So I’m obviously attracted to… uh… roads? forest? myself? Do am I still attracted to myself when I’m in holidays somewhere where there aren’t minefields?
I’m goin’ for the long throw and guessing they hook up, Danny goes off and does whatever, and if Sarah finds out she doesn’t care because she has exactly zero respect for Joe already and doesn’t seem like she’d be surprised at Liz for bangin’ him.
I saw on twitter some guy made that his halloween costume, with a portable window. the handles to hold it up where were his hands were pressed to the window. it was pretty cool!
Honestly, I’m hoping Joe says no–not for Joyce, but for Sarah, his kind-of friend. Please, Joe, surprise us. You’re overdue for it.
(Also, I’ve been rereading Shortpacked lately, and… between Malaya, SP-Roz and now Liz, it’s kind of a recurring shtick of “bad promiscuous nonwhite girl who doesn’t care about consequences seducing the guy with bad impulse control”. idk. It’s not-not a thing.)
Hooking up with a stranger isn’t bad. Ditching your friend (Joyce) and sister (Sarah) in the middle of a crisis, and then hooking up with your friend’s friend (Joe) without even asking if there’s anything between them. There’s a lack of loyalty, considering that Joyce and Liz have been Facebook friends all schoolyear.
So in isolation, nothing wrong with a hookup at all. It’s the details, the lack of empathy to a friend that is frustrating, to me at least. Joyce did ask for it with all them lies though.
Certainly possible, but if she was planning on sticking around to bang Joe it’s weird that she tried to leave on schedule in the first place, prior to being Sarah Hugged.
Could it possibly be not-not a thing because a person can want to have sex with a person who frequently signals their desire to have sex, and this is, in fact, not anything morally questionable in the slightest?
I mean, WOC have been hypersexualized since the colonizer’s boats first started washing up on various shores. Willis is pretty good with this kind of stuff so i don’t think it’s intentional, but i certainly can’t fault someone wanting to take a closer look at it in the media they consume
Like, I do understand the argument of implications, nobody thinks along these lines without some pretty constant reminders of why they think it and women of colour getting fetishized as hypersexualized by white dudes is absolutely a real thing, I think that’s something where surrounding context matters a lot when it comes to fiction.
Like, Shortpacked!’s A-plot was the romance between Robin and Leslie where, yeah, Robin’s a kooky nutbar, but her commitment to Leslie was never under question (getting into that time they broke up is a whole post of its own, but per Word of Willis (’cause I asked them one time) it was more about Robin’s complete inability to accept she was queer, she started dating Joe (who was dating Rachel until she vanished and was too depressed to have sex until Robin), and then the ultimate resolution was affirming to her that Leslie was and always would be her one true love), Lucy was there and her romance with Ken was painfully normal, and Sydney Yus didn’t date anyone (though she was a minor gag character).
Plus while Roz was a “bad girl seducing dude with poor impulse control”, she did ultimately show that she actually liked Jacob, and his “poor impulse control” wasn’t even impulse control; dude had an outright addiction to sex that he was really unhappy about that Roz just refused to accept was real and damaging to him, partly because of her views on sexual liberty and partly because she was actually trying to be with him and couldn’t just say it until she had done enough damage that Jacob didn’t want to be with her. I don’t really know how that applies to Malaya either, since I don’t think she ever actually pursued any dudes in the comic at all.
Then you get to DoA where Lucy is a slightly more sexually aware Joyce (as in she’ll wait till the third date), Billie was in love with Ruth to actually painful levels, Sarah wanted Jacob and then backed off entirely when he said he wanted “a real relationship”, Marcie wanted to bang Malaya and seems to have found something pretty great there given they’re still together according to a Patreon strip, and Dina’s grey-ace to the point where Becky’s deeply nettled that she’s not wildly horny on main for her as Becky is for Dina.
Like, even if there are WOC characters who can be sexually forward, and even “forward” feels like a weirdly pushy way to describe “is fine with pursuing sex”, there are plenty who don’t process it the same way.
I guess Sal is technically this? In that she banged Jason for a grade that one time, but like, bringing up Sal is more meant to highlight how just because it resembles something on the surface, the actual context matters. Yeah Sal banged some stuffy white dude who needed to keep it in his pants, but Sal banged him in the heat of the moment because that stuffy white dude kept insulting her efforts and said that the only thing that mattered was the end result, Jason suffered the consequences for it that he himself openly accepts, and now she’s dating the sandwich making ukelele lad in a dapper hat because he’s a constant fount of emotional support and validation, after she kissed him on the cheek and said she liked him because he was good and kind. That doesn’t strike me as hyper-aggressive.
Idk if anything, to me it sorta reads more like “Man, all these white girls sure have a lot of hangups about sex”, and less like “These women of color are having casual sex as a symptom of their general immorality, which is wrong”. Apologies if the second one isn’t quite what you were getting at, I’m a little tired today and not much of a media analyst.
Placing my bet that Joe isn’t going to sleep with Liz. We already went down this road with Malaya, so what would it be accomplishing, story wise? We already know Joe has trouble valuing possible long term emotional investment over short term physical gratification.
Story-wise it brings a… not exactly a vice, for Joe, but a trend that’s unhealthy on an emotional level for him specifically… to a head by causing a huge showdown between him and Sarah and setting him on a path to change. This is the second season of Dumbing of Age, and we’re into 1st plot point territory.
I mean his long term emotional investment isn’t in conflict with his short term physical gratification here. It’s not like he’s trying to hook up with Joyce and then end it right there; he has it bad for her, which makes things complicated.
I don’t think this is Joe’s final temptation before he steps into the healing light of Committed Monogamy, the only acceptable path for him, it probably hinges on whether Joe himself even wants to have sex with her because he’s totally drained any kind of emotion out of sex, and he’s starting to realize that isn’t working out.
It’s not short term gratification with Joyce I’m talking about, it’s short term gratification with other women. As long as Joe is having a lot of casual sex, he’s never going to start an actual relationship with Joyce. And that’s be fine if it would make Joe happy, I don’t think monogamy is the only way to be happy. But in Joe’s case we’ve seen he emotionally distances himself from people because he doesn’t think he’s worth being close to.
its Really weird how most of the commenters are judging two ( unattached AFA WE KNOW ) sex positive College adults from Hooking up.
They are the same age. Neither is Innocent.
JOyce isnt Innocent either. She friggin set them up on purpose! Sarah told Joyce Liz was a compulsive Boyfriend stealer.
Then Joyce LIED through her friggin teeth pretended Joe was her regular sex hookup and “best Friend” , because of his reputation. Joyce used joe and manipulated both.
No one is being bullied here. ( ruth ) No one is being handcuffed here. ( ruth ) . shamed, handcuffed, threatened, druged. There is no power imbalance.
This is what agency looks like. No one is Bad because sarah doenst approve.
So what? When does Sarah EVER approve?
Yea I think the comments are assuming bad luck in story somehow means casual sex is a bad thing when that’s just drama. People have sex all the time for all kinds of reasons and as long as all parties involved are clear on intent their isn’t anything wrong. This includes just feeling good, nothing wrong with a shallow hookup.
I also think the comments are way too harsh on Liz, she basically played Mario kart and shit talked her former religion and unlike Joyce she wasn’t mocking a friend. Maybe everyone needs to not auto assume a dark skinned black women is pure evil just cause she’s a little mean sometimes.
I do feel like the story is vilifying her a little bit? Though maybe it’s just because I’ve been reading the comments. She does seem like she could care a bit more about what she at the very least helped cause, but it’s not exactly on her that Joyce keeps doubling down and making things worse for herself.
And I don’t think it helps that we(?) know and love Sarah, so her hating Liz makes the readership more likely to, on the whole.
Anyway all I’m saying is, I don’t think there’s anything at all morally questionable about this. Even if I do ship Joeyce.
I can understand that but it gets wack to me when two main characters are in conflict so our audience bias now has to play hot potato between whoever’s being mean.
It is, but it also gets brought up as the only possible reason for the audience leaning towards a main character, even when the other character isn’t being portrayed positively.
It is a real thing, but it’s not the only thing.
Does a character need to be positive before the Right/Wrong argument starts?
‘Cause I don’t think Raidah’s Secretly Good All Along, for example, I just think she’s entitled to not having her relationship ruined by Sarah and Joyce, and that the conflict between her and Sarah that led to that is way too ambiguous and open-ended to make a solid judgment on her character, considering that conflict is what her entire character revolves around.
I agree that the story is making it easier and I don’t think it’s wrong to dislike whoever anyone dislikes. But I think it’s important to recognise when marginalised characters get the brunt of the dislike. That being said I do hope Liz has a moment to see her better qualities shine
She’s gregarious, friendly, personal, Joyce finds her admirable and easy to talk to, and being easy to talk to gave Joyce the first time to get right and proper mad about growing up in a death cult.
Liz has a beef with a religion acting as a cornerstone for cultural norms in the country she lives in that she has no innate need to be kind to, let alone whatever about it is making her lie to her stepmom that she’s still faithful. She’s got plenty of positive qualities and one that’s negative on the grounds that it comes at a consequence to Becky isn’t really enough to diminish that.
I guess I’m trying to understand comic execution vs intention vs audience bias vs read
Like outside of being a little mean all the qualities you said are on display, and yet the small amounts of being mean are getting focused as the worst things ever. Is it the audience or the comic? Maybe a defensiveness of a very powerful religion?
I’m maybe being overly empathetic in trying to understand the dislike of her hahahaa
We like these characters when they are Wholesome, and we hate them when they’re Problematic.
The machinations and emotions and long storied character relationships don’t actually matter, what matters is whether or not individual world bubbles in one panel in a single strip of a character’s history proves that they’re being shitty. A story is not something to be felt, it is a puzzle to be solved and the answer is always finding the current moral victor.
Honestly Joyce wasn’t even mocking Becky when she said it, by any reasonable interpretation. It’s only when Becky and Dorothy barged in and everyone started becoming super hostile to anything Joyce said that wasn’t a full “no, christians aren’t being stupid and wrong!”, as if you can’t think people are being wrong and still respect them at the same time.
Which led to Joyce being backed into a corner and doubling down on her position, and then her statements *retroactively* started becoming about Becky and all the other christians. But I can’t believe that, in the moment Joyce said those things, she was picturing Becky.
But I can’t believe that, in the moment Joyce said those things, she was picturing Becky.
This is true, yeah. Becky was only part of it by association, and she was only part of it by association because Joyce thought every religious person on Earth processed it as a set of inerrant facts like she did.
Or: Joyce doesn’t understand why Becky still believes in God when she knows the Earth isn’t 6000 years old and there were no dinosaurs on the ark, because all three of those things were equally true to her and had to remain as such.
@adam black i mean, a lot of commenters are merely saying “oh no, there’s gonna be draaaamaaaa” rather than “they are Bad” or “this is an abuse situation somehow”.
it’s like when you’re watching a movie with a bestie and you just performatively gasp and grab their arm and whimper because you anticipate things are about to go boom you know?
Yet, at least. And it does seem like any handcuffing will be entirely consensual.
But you bring up a good point. I think the main thing I have with Joe and Liz hooking up here is that, while there’s no reasons not to do it… it ain’t like there’s a lot of reasons *to* do it.
And it starts to slip into Narrative Analysis stuff. If we came back to this in a month or two (aka “one or two days in-universe”) and found out that Joe and Liz banged before she left, I think 99% of the comments section wouldn’t really care. It’s what Joe does, duh, and yeah, who cares about casual sex between consenting partners?
But we’re seeing it. Our attention is being brought to it. We kinda can’t help but look at it in a different manner, with all of the recent context added into it.
I will also add that it doesn’t paint Liz in the best of lights. Yeah, no judgement about casual consensual sex, sure, but all of that drama with your big sister and Joyce didn’t put your libido on snooze for a while?
There’s not exactly a huge reason to not fuck around, assuming proper protection is used yadda yadda yadda, but focusing on it in-story tends to need a reason beyond “because”.
Which is why I bring up the narrative analysis aspect of it. “We fucked and had fun” is not exactly a thrilling character piece for either Joe (who regularly fucks and has fun off-screen) or Liz (a character that’s unlikely to be seen again after this in-world day).
Again, if we found out later that Joe and Liz fucked, I don’t think anyone would really care. But people are caring about this precisely because the story is telling us to care about it. TvTropes calls this concept “The Law of Conservation of Detail”, basically the notion that a well-crafted work, with a finite space in which to tell its story, will exclude redundant bits that will not advance story or character or world.
And because it’s entirely normal for the characters to fuck, and it’s obviously acceptable in-universe for them to fuck based on common law, and the story is spending time focusing on it, we’re meant to be looking at it beyond simply “they have compatible sexual orientations and potential willingnesses to bang”.
Please don’t confuse “pointing at a place that does a good job introducing the concept in question to a broad audience, complete with examples that demonstrate the concept in question” with “getting your entire mindset from”.
It’s not actually clear that Joe does regularly fuck and have fun off-screen. Especially since his character growth, but possibly even before then.
We know some of it was bullshit – he lied about the threesomes. It’s not clear how much else was. Personally, I very much doubt he’s had casual sex since Malaya and that is important to his character arc. He was shown as conflicted about it then, especially in the Slipshine and it would feel weird if he’d just happily gone back to it behind the scenes.
I mean the obvious story reason is “Joe is being propositioned for sex at a point in time where he doesn’t really know what sex means to him anymore, with someone who is extremely similar to the girl he is kinda sorta totally in love with.”
Also Liz knew Joyce for like three hours, and it was made clear that Liz didn’t say anything that upset Becky, because Becky’s upset Joyce said it.
What is she supposed to say to the Mom Squad? No, actually, Joyce is totally allowed to grow in a way she finds most important to herself, even if it comes at the cost of someone who’s love for her shattered when she found out she changed?
It’s not the general details that matter to me but the specific ones. Someone that is conflict averse like Liz (tried to bolt the second that talking to Joyce became a conflict with others) should be trying to avoid emotional fallout and should therefore be checking that it will not cause problems between herself and Joyce if she tries to sleep with Joe. That is what a good friend would do to absolutely make sure that they aren’t going to be stomping on any toes or causing any rifts. You don’t want to be part of drama? You make sure you don’t start it. Though I think Liz’s way of avoiding it will be to jump on a bus and physically distance herself from it, and to deny that it matters.
People can posture in front of the other person to hide feels and that’s not secret knowledge, it is common knowledge. And yes, it would primarily be on Joyce for conveying her feels falsely. It would be like, at least 80% on her for playing it up to seem cool. But Joyce didn’t know Liz was going to be here right now (so there is no importance to her to correct this view) and Liz isn’t asking her (so she isn’t getting the opportunity to correct her or clarify). And honestly I think Liz may specifically be avoiding asking her so she can claim she ‘didn’t know’ it would cause a problem if Joyce gets upset.
Playing the game of ‘technically I did nothing wrong by you on purpose and did a thing I was allowed to and the other person consented to’ by choosing to not ask so you can’t be corrected, is a great way to lose a friend still. Because sure, logically you did nothing wrong based on the information you had.
Emotionally, it isn’t a secret that people posture, and if you didn’t want to hurt your friend’s feelings and cause a blow-up, you would ask, not assume they’d be cool with it, and make sure all the information you have is correct. Because presumably, like most people, you don’t want to lose a friend over having a hook-up when you easily could have found another partner for that.
Even if Liz did really miss the bus back, that she’s avoided her sister and friend in favor of coming back to Joe for the hookup suggests her conflict avoidance strategy is “hide it and hope not to get caught” rather than “prevent it in the first place”.
That is what I am thinking as well. Right now she is coming across to me as someone who does what she wants and feels like which creates drama then runs for the hills so she can’t be confronted on it. And if she is confronted on it, she can technically blame the other party for not being 100% honest neglecting to mention that she opted not to ask.
There is also the possibility that she could be causing problems on purpose just for fun but I’m not sure yet if she is actively that malicious and actually that drama-stirring rather than just a bit selfish and not perfectly considerate of friends.
Why would she need to stick around for drama she didn’t create to solve the emotional turbulence between someone she doesn’t know and someone she’s known for three hours?
Or is this in reference to wanting to sleep with a guy that the extremely cool and wordly Joyce, who weeds it up while playing video games where she runs over loose women with her car for points, made an extremely compelling case for Joe as a friend with rewards program?
I didn’t read the whole thread but I would be disappointed if they banged because I’d like to see Joe clean up his act a bit in preparation for a relationship with Joyce. Liz isn’t aware of the complexities of that situation, but Joe is, thus the face in the last panel.
If this happens and Joyce finds out, I think we can kiss the JoJo ship goodbye for a while.
… Joe has cleaned up his act. He’s trying to be an emotionally supportive friend to Joyce while dealing with having it bad for her and the Do List is gone.
He’s had sex one time since and it was with Malaya, and he hasn’t had sex otherwise because Joyce made him realize what this entire persona he built up what was actually like and Joe was mortified because that entire persona was something he built up to protect himself from going through what his parents went did. Afterwards he alternated between engaging in old behaviour in a way that can only be described as transparently performative (he hits on Ruth and Joyce can tell he wasn’t even trying) and throwing himself into emotionally chaotic situations so he can support Joyce.
What part of his act is not cleaned up, or in the process of being cleaned?
In this calculus of what emotional reactions friends “owe” to each other, is there any consideration for whether they’ll be hurt by something you do, whether it’s justified or whether you owe them or not?
It’s just a really weird way of thinking about social interaction to me. “I know this is going to bother my friend, but it’s not listed on the checklist of things I’ve agreed to clear with her, so what the hell, guess I don’t have to care.”
Now, I don’t think it would be morally wrong for Joe to do it and I don’t even know if he’s aware that it would mess with Joyce (or even if it would), it’s just the way it keeps getting framed that seems strange to me.
“I know this is going to bother my friend, but it’s not listed on the checklist of things I’ve agreed to clear with her, so what the hell, guess I don’t have to care.”
This feels like weird overburdening on whoever is it doing the act to constantly check with whoever to make sure doing something they want to do won’t potentially upset them.
So like what? Does Joe have to go to Joyce and be all ‘Hey we aren’t in any way, shape or form dating, going out, or committed, so would it bother YOU if I had consentual sex with another adult?’
To which Joyce starts screaming about premarital sex because her view on sex is so healthy?
@Reaver @Spencer: It seems neither of you understands what the thejeff is saying.
“This feels like weird overburdening on whoever is it doing the act to constantly check with whoever to make sure doing something they want to do won’t potentially upset them.”
again, you are reframing what thejeff said, transposing it once again into the exact way of thinking he’s calling weird, making it sound like they’re setting an absurdly high bar for accountability of everyone always. but that’s not what they’re saying. thejeff isn’t talking about consideration for others’ feelings as a moral imperative.
” Does Joe have to go to Joyce”
Well, no he doesn’t have to. And thejeff is pretty clear on that. it’s more about the failure of strict, black-and-white language like “has to” or “owes it to X to do Y” or “is under no obligation” etc, to capture the breathing nuance of social interaction, the complex way we make decisions by not only running them through our ethical algorithm but also through the more subtle and personal filters of self-censorship and caution and consideration and forethought and solicitude etc based on our read of possible consequences of our actions to others. These filters are highly subjective, it’s really a part of one’s personality to a large degree, but also fluctuate based on mood and whatnot.
…Anyway, i share the sentiment. (@thejeff or do i? i think i understood what you meant, sorry if my intervention is off the mark)
See? I’ve said I didn’t understood why Joe questioning how Danny could get together with Sal. Girls keep going after him, and that is not enough. Hard life for him.
Joe judges his worth on having a sexual partner, so he’s judging Danny by the standard of “how did you land the hottest girl in school?” failing to understand it’s because Danny and Sal have a strong emotional bond.
This might actually be the first time he’s been propositioned him since Malaya, who just wanted to fuck him so it’d annoy everyone in their dorm. I don’t think he’s actually had sex since.
Joe doesn’t understand that being able to emotionally connect and give a damn is attractive because he finds that terrifying and relies solely on physical attraction to draw sexual partners.
Joe rates himself as a 10 for that and Danny at a 7 for that (which is about where they would be if generally someone demanded you put a number on them based on solely physical appearance). So to him, someone like Sal that is ‘a 10 if she drops the smoking’, should only be attracted to fellow ‘9s/10s’ on physical attractiveness. It was fine to him when it was Jennifer who he rated 6 or Dorothy who he rated 7 as those were close to his ‘rank’ for Danny. But Sal who he rates at a 10?
In his mind, she should be out of Danny’s league and it actually genuinely doesn’t make sense to him that Sal would like Danny based on his mental calculations because even if he isn’t using a list and precise numbers any more, it wouldn’t change that his mentality is ‘Sal is very hot cool motorcycle gal, why is attracted to kind of cute dork guy’? Which also is skewed by his own biases on what makes someone attractive.
I didn’t get: do you mean Joe got kind of scared because Danny got a top plus girl like Sal? Like, Joe saw in front of his eyes someone could be attracted to other not because beauty?
I think it is more Joe doesn’t understand it. Sal has never been interested in him (even though he has highly attractive physical features in his own mind). But she’s interested in Danny? Danny who is a dorkus with a hat and a ukelele? Based on his own ideas, that shouldn’t be possible. Danny shouldn’t even ping on Sal’s radar. So it doesn’t fit into his idea of how the world works and that is confusing to him. Because if the world doesn’t work in X way, how does it work?
It bothers him because it conflicts with his world view and might prove him wrong about some of his relationship ideas. And while Joe DOES enjoy sex, he actually does crave the emotional connection of a real relationship. So it is a little bit confronting and he still hasn’t processed fully what it really means and that emotionally connecting can be attractive and fulfilling and it doesn’t have to instantly turn into a disaster (because he doesn’t have to choose to be a cheater like his Dad).
There have been hints that he may be ready for a real relationship with Joyce but he will need to stop sleeping around, no matter how eager the partners.
1. Committed monogamy isn’t the only “real” relationship.
2. He can sleep with Liz right now and also, at a later date, pursue a committed monogamous relationship with Joyce, because Joyce didn’t put her signature on his butt yet.
3. Joyce getting mad that this dude she’s friends with had casual sex with is wack, it’s only slightly less wack for her to actually be hurt about it because “Joe sleeps with women” isn’t her problem with him, it’s “Joe thinks I’m a lump of meat for him to constantly objectify, because he rates me and other women numerically and then tells himself he’s being cool.”
4. Joe not wanting to sleep with Liz right now would be down to him not wanting to, even if not wanting to is at least partially rooted in Mega Feels for Joyce. But if he did, that isn’t a moral failing on any objective level, just something Joe would probably process as given his recent hangups about sex and relationships.
A real relationship built on trust. Where Joyce can trust Joe not to cheat. More importantly, where Joe can trust Joe not to cheat. Joyce isn’t ready for a polyamorous or open relationship. For real trust to exist, Joe would need to prove that he’s capable of saying no to casual sex.
Joyce and Joe are not dating yet, but there has been significant emotional exchange. If Joyce finds out that someone she has feelings for slept with her friend, she will be hurt. The trust will be damaged and they may never have a relationship.
Joe is under no moral obligation to act a certain way, but his actions will likely have consequences for his future with Joyce. You can see in the final panel that he understands the delicate nature of the situation.
This is a bizarre level of commitment you’re putting on two people who haven’t even verbalized anything resembling concrete to each other. I know Joe’s thoughts are textual but all Joyce has done is say she knows he cares even if he doesn’t show it, and stared at his butt one time.
Anyway if Joyce gets mad that a dude she is not dating has sex, she’s not ready to date anyone. Joe’s dick doesn’t need to be controlled on what it might do to Joyce.
I strongly suspect Joyce will be hurt by this. Not mad because Joe did something wrong, but hurt because she thought he was becoming a different person.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe Joe and Liz can have a good time, and Joyce won’t be at all upset or jealous. Maybe the feelings that this stirs up will be a catalyst for them to become closer. Maybe Joe is completely unaware of Joyce’s feelings and the effect this will have on her. But I suspect this is a pivotal moment for Joe. Because for the first time he may have a reason to say no.
I’m saying it doesn’t actually matter if Joyce got upset, which I believe could happen but I believe that because Joyce has fucked up views on sex. Like, if Joe sleeping with someone before Joyce even admits in any capacity she likes him, that’s not really something she can reasonably hold against him and it’s something she’d have to face for herself if she wants to pursue him.
Like, Joe “becoming a different person” doesn’t involve a chastity belt, it’s in the part where he treated women like objects for getting his dick wet and he totally convinced himself this was righteous and healthy, and how that came about because he’s terrified of any kind of emotional connection with another human being, let alone a woman he’s in love with.
Realtalk, I do think Joe is going to say no, but not on the grounds of “it’ll make Joyce sad”, because I have a strong suspicion that the idea of Joyce never getting closer to him so he never has the chance to ruin her life is something he’s pretty comfortable with, I think he’ll do it because he’s got it bad for her and, more importantly, he doesn’t know what sex means to him anymore.
Yeah, I dunno about this. They’re not dating and they haven’t really even flirted if we’re being honest. Joe doesn’t owe Joyce any level of romantic commitment until and unless they’re actually romantically committed. And I honestly really doubt Joyce is gonna hold his casual sex against him if they DO hook up, unless she goes full Dora on him for some reason.
Joyce has given no indication that that is a possibility. She has spent the last week expressing disdain and hostility to Joe in the context of their being lab partners. And then she showed up in his room a few hours ago, uninvited, in company, demanding drugs, and telling wild lies. Which resulted in an ugly scene.
For Joe in this situation to forsake all others out of sexual devotion to Joyce would actually be rather creepy. And for Joyce to expect it of him would be bizarre.
This looks like the perfect time for Danny to go to visit Sal ♡. Can’t wait to see how Malaya will react! I wonder what nastiness she will tell to both of them! Most importantly, will Danny find Fuckface adorable or just interesting? Speaking of Joe… Liz is asking for help. Even thinking of all the possibles, horrible disastrous etc, consequences; it would be rude to just say “No” to her.
Joyce’s feelings are not a factor in this whole shebang, and I have no idea why you’d think they would be, considering that Joyce has no feelings in this whole shebang for them to be factor.
It might be considered rude to invite someone over specifically for sex, then say no once they get there. Even then, though, I would consider the rude part inviting them over in the first place. Also, just so its clear, saying no is always 100% the right choice to make if, for any reason whatsoever, you don’t want to have sex.
I probably don’t need to spell this out, we’re all adults I assume, but yes, it is always 100% acceptable to say “No” to sex and I do not have any opinions or inclinations to the contrary.
I was mostly referring to a scenario like you said, where one person goes out of their way to invite another over explicitly and solely for sex, builds an expectation that This Is Happening at This Time, makes sure the other person doesn’t plan other things during that time, and then once the moment arrives the first person just stops with no explanation and boots the other out. That happens weirdly often where I live, and the one inviting always brags about it after and makes fun of the invitee for thinking they were gonna do it all the way up to the point the condom went on. I understand that’s probably not a very common scenario elsewhere, and yes like you said, it’s the whole setup that’s rude, not specifically the not-fucking part. That’s about as far as that thought went, it wasn’t really meant to be some thought-provoking thesis statement.
I was just thinking about letting her sleep in the room without doing anything else. Then… think of the classic scenario where they are seen by chance by Joyce, Sarah or someone and nobody believes Joe even if he, for once, did nothing! Obviously Danny couldn’t defend him because he was in Sal’s room.
yeah i was just being a smartass but pretty much as soon as i hit post i was like, “well, i mean, sure i can think of situations.”
like you said, we agree that saying no to sex is always absolutely fine and cool and non negotiable. That said, if i was Liz, and Joe had been hyped to high heavens to me as this Indomitable Sex Monster, and I was standing right in front of him being cute and horny and he just said “No”?? i would be so mad at him =P
I see Joe turning it down UNLESS Liz states she knows Joyce and him aren’t really going out. Which she might have figured out on her own if Sarah or Joyce told her anything that occurred with Jacob, but Joe will assume Sarah or Joyce came clean to specifically give their blessing for his inevitable one night stand.
The delicious drama I foresee is 1) Joe goes for it but 2) Liz makes a comment of comparison between her and Joyce, and that 3) freaks Joe out because thinking of their theoretical sex during sexy times with Liz either turns him off… or on!
Either way, delicious confrontation of his denial occurs. And maybe Joyce catches onto them. etc etc. Goof stuff.
It’s a good thing Joe is clean-shaven. If he sprouted a beard, he’d look like Popeye’s antagonist Bluto. I’d hate to see the copyright hassles springing forth from that decision.
On one hand, Joe has the opportunity for some serious character development by saying no. On the other hand, which appears to be on Liz’s ass, we get the chance for more Slipshine. Horny brain and rational brain are currently at war, much like I think Joe’s is.
Oh boy, is Joe in a dilemma. On the one hand, there is this hawt, sexy, thing, that is making it clear, that she wants to ride him; on the other, she is the younger sister of a scary individual, who also made it perfectly clear, as to the consequences of taking her to bone town. My gut is telling me that he will say yes, despite what his self preservation instincts will tell him, and the rest of this arc will be Danny, looking for a place to crash, for the night.
I don’t really care where you live at
Just turn around boy, let me hit that
Don’t be a little bongo with your chit chat
Just show me where your dick is at
-Ke$ha
This may be a weird thought, but I personally think it’s ok for Joe to say yes. It’s two consenting adults, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with a fling as long as consent exists. It’s not for everyone, but there’s nothing wrong with it.
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...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 16h
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
www.ebay.com/itm/23609767...
selling my netflix war for cybertron megatron -- the walmart exclusive one that came with pinpointer and lionizer (but being sold here without pinpointer and lionizer)
Gran... IS ALIVE?
okay, juliette still has brown hair, so this is probably definitely a flashback
i'm just surprised that the comic has remembered her, at all
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 16h
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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she just wants another edible gummy and Mario fix
Don’t give her any more vitamins, she’ll become too powerful!
That orb is really sneaky.
Sigh. The probability wave has collapsed. Unsurprisingly, it pointed out yet again that people suck. The only question to be determined is how much.
While your puns are great, and your artwork better, for this one Yoto, I just want to watch her be Mario in Super Mario Bros. So she can eat it in a pit of fiery lava in world 1’s Bowser Castle on her last life.
Finger’s crossed:
Liz wants to play Super Mario Bros, but Joe shoots her down, “Sorry bongo, but your penis is in another castle.”
I’m not gonna hold my breath.
was confused until I looked down and realised the comments threaded incorrectly again
She wants to play Mario Paint and whip Joe with that flyswatter
She wants to play Mario World so she can ride Joe’s Yoshi.
She wants to play Mario 3 because she wants Joe’s Tanuki to become rock hard.
She wants to play Mario 64 so she can make his Tiny Island-Huge.
She want wants to play Mario Kart because she wants to come back from behind.
She wants to play galaxy because she wants to make him see stars.
She wants to play mario Tennis because her Game’s gonna be Love.
She wants to play Mario Golf cuz she want a hole-in-one.
I’m impressed you came up with something for each one, excellent work.
She wants to play Mario Party and win from doing nothing.
She wants to play Mario Sunshine because her plaza is getitng soaked.
She wants to play Luigi’s mansion so she can catch herself a new Boo.
She wants to play Mario Odyssey because she’s about to take him around the world.
She wants to play Paper Mario because she’s looking for his wish-granting rod.
She wants to play Dr. Mario because she’ll give him fever and send a chill down his spine.
@Matthew
Nice One
She wants to play Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga so that he can explore her hoohoo village.
She’s gonna be like Super Princess Peach because ain’t nobody gonna play her.
She’s gonna play Mario 3D world because her cat’s gonna make it to the top of the pole.
To all these, all I have to say is, LOL!!!
Can anyone make Mario themed sex puns or is it only you cause I think she wants I think she wants Joe to use his final smash.
She wants to play Super Mario Bros. so she can do multiplayer with Joe’s Toad.
She want to play Donkey Kong to Joe can have her over a barrel.
Does she want to play Super Mario bros. 2? ’Cause I must be dreaming!
Oh, God, make Yotomoe stop!
@0phidiophile
Suggest some topic-relevant fanart and that’ll distract’em for a while.
It would absolutely be no difficult feat to get me to draw Liz again.
It’s been a long time since I saw so many puns and innuendos in one place. I applaud your abilities.
She wants to play Wario Land 4 so Joe will explore her golden pyramid.
That is far more Mario-based innuendo than the joke demanded, you’ve really gone above and beyond here
wait i gotta better one
She wants to play Wario Land 3 so Joe will fit into her music box.
This entire thread reminds me of Luigi’s Ballad by Starbomb, and I’m here for it.
She want to play Super Mario Odyssey, because she wants to get her hands on Joe’s Joy-Con.
Yoto you are having entirely too much fun with this.
She strikes me as the kind who would totally jump off to get a boost while over lava, and I don’t even know what that is equivalent to in this metaphor.
Preferably one who fails to get the boost or stick the landing.
I mean, she’s being her authentic self. yay. it’s pretty awful.
Here’s where we discover whether Joe’s nascent feelings for Joyce, his fear/respect for Sarah, and the small shriveled husk of his conscience, are together powerful enough to Voltron themselves into something like Willpower and defeat the Boner Monster.
Place ya’ bets.
I’m… very 50/50 on this question.
I guess. I guess my bet is that Joe will sleep with Liz. Because I think he needs at least one more character beat where he’s terrible. I think he’ll do it and then feel bad about it and he’ll realize he’s out of options unless he puts real relationships back on the table.
I think that’s possible, but I think it’d make sense to be not “bad” as in guilty for any reason, but “bad” in the sense that this kind of thing is everything Joe has said he wants, and yet he didn’t like it at all.
So basically another Malaya situation
I’m wondering if he’ll try but wont’t be able to -rise to the occasion-, so to speak.
I completely agree that Joe, is going to bang Liz. As much as he says he is trying, and as much as we want to see a less predatory Joe, remember that the last thing we saw of Joe, before Danny and Sal came back, was him, kicking himself for not trying to get Liz, Joyce, and Sarah, in a foursome.
I think that was more commentary on what he thinks he’s supposed to be doing.
Girls! Playing video games! In his room! Two of them are sisters and the other is the ex-churchy girl! It’s supposed to be a scenario for Sexy College Shenanigans and not only is Joe not trying to make it happen, he’s aghast that he’s not interested.
This is in contrast with Danny, who has Sal literally climbing through his window so they can ride bikes, eat sandwiches, cuddle in the snow and talk about feelings, but Joe thinks he’s out having mindblowing sex with the hottest girl on campus because Joe can’t get that Danny and Sal provide something for each other than a lay, because he’s never been able to consider otherwise.
I’m guessing no. Boner Monster is more of a final boss, and Joe is still a hero’s journey away from having the magical elixir to fight it.
(ESPECIALLY since Liz is kind of a mix of Joyce and Sarah AT THE SAME TIME.)
Ok, I’m officially voting on fear of Sarah’s reaction winning, but I’m not positive.
I mean if he slept with her, he’s not doing anything wrong. You can, in fact, sleep with someone when the only objection is “Sarah said you can’t.”
It’s whether or not he actually wants to sleep with her.
It be may not be morally objectionable but it can still be a bad idea that’s potentially hazardous to his health
Leaning towards not sleeping with her. Joe is, at this point, fully cognizant of his crush on Joyce, and I think he’s starting to put more serious thought/effort into it. I think it’ll be a struggle but I think Joe will try to restrain himself.
Yeah. Despite some not seeing anything wrong with it, any amount of awareness of your friends’ emotions would make it obvious to Joe how much this would hurt Joyce and Sarah.
Oh… oh look. It’s “Dumbing” of Age, not “Smart Respectful Behaviour” of Age.
Noooooooo???
Moreover, if he went through with it, why do Joyce and Sarah get any leverage over him? Joe didn’t do wrong by Joyce because he slept around it’s because constantly objectified the women around him by literally ranking them by number, and being Liz’s older sister doesn’t actually let Sarah have the keys to her vagina.
What is with this wack-ass sexual purity nonsense going on tonight?
A lot of us gpt our ideas about sex, romance, and true love from the same morally grotty Hollywood tropes that Joyce did.
Yeah, that’ll do it.
“Please stop talking to me.” Is a two way street. I respected it. Oh well.
As for _why_ they get “leverage” over him: It’s not leverage. Since I literally just spelled it out for those that can comprehend it, I’m not going to reword it. If you can’t see the emotional impact this would have, then there isn’t likely a way to explain it to you.
Hoss, you spoke to me yesterday. It was about bi puns and everything.
I don’t remember what made me say “please stop talking to me” in the first place, but given the pure smug of this post here, I was clearly right to.
It was a similar disagreement about not being able to see how a person with a different perspective might feel. One can acknowledge the validity of anothers feelings or perspective, without having to have the same reaction themselves. Much of the discussion here is focused on a larger interpretation of social and religious expectations and the rights of people to live within their own bodies. And that’s all totally valid. What it doesn’t do though, is prevent there from being emotional effects in the animals around us when we take actions that don’t directly involve those others.
Joyce doesn’t need to have a messed up background to have valid complicated feelings about Joe and Lucy hooking up if she finds out. She and Joe are engaged in a mutual emotional connection, and her body and mind may very well have a jealous or other response. We’re animals and our physical/emotional reactions are not always logical or reasonable. Joe’s not _responsible_ for that, but as Joyce’s friend he may care about it. Like I said, it’s not leverage, it’s empathy.
As for yesterday’s by play, mea-culpa. I forgot who I was “giving space” to. Today reminded me.
See this is an interesting intersection in how people view sex.Liberalism has always been a lot more freedom about sexuality. But it’s also tied to ideas like feminism and consent and power dynamics. Which ends up making sex seem like a bad thing. Having negative opinions on someone who has a lot of sex not because of religion but just because someone who sleeps around seems like they’d bump up against these ideas. But at the same time we’re vividly aware that ideas like monogamy and sex being bad are usually religious or conservative ideas so you thin want to say “no we should be able to sleep around with any other consenting adult”. There’s also gender weirdness where, ironically ducking tradition, women who like sex a lot tend to be treated as more sex positive than men who like sex alot. Or queer people who have sex a lot being an affirmation of their validity while cishet men liking sex a lot being another example of men being pigs. It’s especially clear that a lot of people have had bad experiences with horndog guys so that plays a part too. Of course some people are aware that THAT is also somewhat problematic as Cishet men tend to not speak up about abuse from women for the very same reason that people tend to think of them as pigs. There’s a bit of a double standard in that regard.
Sex can’t be no big deal, we think too highly of it. It’s an act which involves a lot of trust and vulnerability for people and unfortunately that means that a lot of people will disapprove of people who treat it casually. No matter how much we try to normalize it, we will always suffer from this idea that fucking someone is this inherently immoral act. Or dirty. Or obscene. Even though it’s the reason a majority of us are here.
I think it’s mostly a conservative distortion of liberal views that tries to turn consent and power dynamics into some kind of liberal puritanism. There are certainly some radical particularly feminist views that see all sex as rape, but that’s a vanishingly small minority.
There are definitely a lot aspects of sexual relations that we’re still working through as a society. Not a great surprise, since we started in a legitimately awful place. I definitely agree that sex is really going to stay a big deal for most people for a long time – which doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll treat it like it’s immoral/dirty/obscene, just that it carries a lot of emotional weight for many people.
The boner monster is a tough opponent, and I’m not convinced Joe can defeat it right now.
My bet is that if he does it doesen’t really show anything that different then the thing with Malaya but if he doesen’t it’s somthing new so he won’t.
I can’t tell if Joe’s shirt is accurate or not today.
I think it’s malfunctioning. It should be “Bad Girl”.
Naw “bad girls” are fine. Liz is an “awful person”
This is obviously brilliant foreshadowing on the part of Willis, indicating to us that whatever happens tonight, Liz shall indeed finish last, one way or another.
Yeah she’s here to bang him. A lot of peeps yesterday were giving her the benefit of the doubt which I understand but uh…yeah.
I mean, it’s not like there’s anything particularly wrong with her wanting to bang Joe. Can’t really fault her for that.
I’m wondering how long she’s going to be sticking around in the comic, though. Is she about to pull a Becky?
I doubt that. She goes to a different school. I don’t know how far Ball State is from IU but it’s apparently need a ride distance. So it might be hard to see her everyday. That being said this comic moves at a snail’s pace so just one day of Liz could last like six months.
And yeah, there’s nothing wrong with banging Joe. It’s maybe a little morally dubious since Liz believes Joe is Joyce’s sex friend but Joyce lied about that so it’s kind of fair trade here.
It’s a betrayal weather it’s fair or not. Joyce will take it hard, or against all odds Joe will turn her down to protect Joyce.
I’m not sure why Joyce would take it hard. I’m not greasy at empathizing with jealousy so maybe that’s it, but I dunno, it didn’t seem like something that would bother her?
It’s difficult to explain because it’s certainly not logical. The best way I can put it is: Joyce still has a LOT of programming, guilt, trauma, and various other hang-ups regarding sex.
All those hangups haven’t just disappeared because she’s lost her faith. We saw that in how she lied to Liz about her sexual relationship with Joe; she’s still terrified of and clueless about sex. She considers it a Really Big Deal. But she’s also really embarrassed that she feels that way, because she now thinks that attitude is silly and immature, and she should be smarter and more grown-up than that. But she isn’t.
So finding out that Joe and Liz slept together would hurt her, but even worse, she would feel like she had to pretend it didn’t, and would be feeling intense guilt and shame because she was feelings things she thinks she shouldn’t be, and she frankly hasn’t developed the kind of self-reflection and insight to realize any of this was happening.
Sarah Literally told her Liz was an oversexed Boyfriend stealer.
Her response to this knowledge was to skip class and Dangle Joe in front of her because of his reputation ( and hotness) and pretend they Hook up.
If she was NOT trying to manipulate them both into screwing , then its odd how she out of her way to go through all the motions unnecessarily at her own expense.
Humans are complicated.
She needed a friend she could swear and be an atheist from.
Which is Joe.
In front of.
Jesus. It’s not funny anymore.
But why would she be hurt in the first place? Joyce knows Joe sleeps around, and I can’t remember her ever having been hurt when he’s done it in the past. The closest thing is when he slept with Malaya, but I thought that disappointment was because he was supposed to be taking care of Faz then.
Why would that make it any level of morally dubious? Joe has A Reputation for being a sex fiend and Liz knows Joyce knows it. Joyce made her relationship sound like it wasn’t some deeply romantic monogamous one, and it honestly isn’t even discounting the lying.
Maybe it’s not. Like I said yesterday I don’t have any experience with casual sex between multiple parties. To me it just seems like a gray area because entering any kind of regular sexual relationship implies a certain level of communication and mutual understanding of expectation. Just randomly going after someone’s sex partner seems a little sketch since I personally would a least want to know a sex partner was banging other people just to avoid STDs.\
A little? That is a gray area on the matter of safe sex practices, though that’d be more Joe’s responsibility if his (hypothetical) relationship with Joyce called for keeping her up to date on that, providing and checking for that, and so on.
But in this case specifically, Joe’s advertised himself as willing to have sex with people without checking for that, and Joyce *knows this*. It’d be a pretty safe inference for Liz to assume that Joyce is 100% okay with whatever side chicks Joe takes on the side.
(Now, it may get written into this story that Liz has some nefarious motive like only wanting to sleep with Joe because it’s Joyces friend and meddle in the relationship and be a troublemaker, but that is hardly the only way it could go, and it doesn’t make any actions she’s taken so far wrong)
The nefarious motive has been lampshaded already in that Sarah has pointed out that she has a habit of going for men that her family and friends care for.
There’s nothing technically wrong with going for someone who is free, of course, so she can do it as much as she pleases and if anyone’s feelings gets hurt she can point at them and laugh, and call them out for feeling jealousy (a natural emotion) as if they are in the wrong.
It looks very much like this is part of the thrill for her, because this seems to be a pattern. The uncertain nature of whether she’s actually done something wrong or not allows her to engage in a form of gas lighting blame-free.
life hack: always use protections with a sex partner. You don’t want to rely on trust for that one. This’ll help more than extensive knowledge of other partners’ history.
Morally and logically, Joe’s completely in the clear here.
The only question is: how serious are his burgeoning feelings about Joyce? How seriously does he want to pursue a relationship with her? Because this will wreck his chances of getting with Joyce any time soon.
Well, I don’t expect this to be a repeat of the story beat in which Malaya slept with Joe and Joyce was disappointed in him.
Logically, Joe’s completely in the clear except for the baseball bat coming for his base balls.
Who knows. Maybe he’s into that.
I think Liz is just acting in her own self-interest here. Given the information she has about Joe and Joyce’s relationship, she probably doesn’t think she’s stealing him from her.
Joe knows Joyce is still full of hangups about sex though, and he might feel like he’s hurting her by having another casual romp.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/work-2/
There’s also the looming, tangible threat of Sarah’s baseball bat on the “don’t hook up with Liz” side of the scale.
Its extra morally dubious that JOyce went out her way to tell sarah Lies that would want to make her bang Joe. Right After she learned Lizs Buttons.
The only explanation i have is so Joyce can feel temporally superiors at Sarahs expense , ie feel like she has Less sexual hangups than Sarah. ( for once ) . While minorly cruel, turnabout is fair play.
edit. Out of her way to tell LIz Lies
>I don’t know how far Ball State is from IU but it’s apparently need a ride distance.
Depending how you go, looks like in the neighborhood of a 2- 2.5 hour drive.
There was no way this wasn’t a hookup, and I feel like a lot of the commenters yesterday knew that was a long shot. That said, sex isn’t inherently immoral, so Liz and Joe fucking by itself wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Yeah, I was a sucker. I feel like folks are always thinking the worst of characters but I guess I picked the wrong one to give the benefit of the doubt.
She saw the video and liked what she saw.
I think this is appropriate here:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=TGWcLg4QlKQ
I wasn’t sure yesterday, but now it seems pretty clear that’s why Liz came back.
I predict Joe and her sleep together against all possible subversion.
Plot twist! Danny’s hat offends Liz’s sensibilities so badly that she can’t stop thinking about it, and she can’t recover the mood.
That smile thou.
Huh. So do you think she recognized the room earlier?
I’d say it’s more likely she recognized Joe.
The Roz thing definitely came up
*earlier in the storyline.
Yeah that’s how Becky and Dorothy cyberstalked Joyce. They went on Liz’s facebook and she posted that she was going to the den of sinful lust where Roz shot her video.
This literally no way for me to describe in so many words how attractive I find Liz. It’s substantial. It’s a very very powerful attraction. Arguably moreso than any other character in this comic.
she’s a combination of “bad” and “hot” I’ve previously noted in one other character of very different phenotype (Penny).
Yeah, I think she’s supposed to be insurmountable temptation.
“Extremely pleasingly shaped”, as Joe put it.
It is definitely an appropriate description.
Oh, speaking of which, here’s a little Jennifer art I scrapped together:
https://imgur.com/a/WGKKPpP
I do believe this is called “cheesecake”.
It is and I enjoy it. Good picture choice, I really like how I drew her here so it’s a good pic to refine <3.
Thanks!
I’m actually not gonna do any more pics for a while — I’m busy making something for all you that’s gonna knock your socks off!
And by the way, in case you’re wondering, it’s only pure coincidence that I’m refraining right at the start of No Nut November.
It’s that smile matched with those eyes.
I mean despite that she can be a bit problematic even she is kind of really fine as hell…Fuck thinking about this is messing with my head.
Oh my type is “problematic” My earliest crushes are on Fifi la fume, The Kanker Sisters, and Mamimi from Fooly Cooly. My “type” is literally “girls who will ruin my life.”
Liz is objectively the hottest character in DoA to date.
Sorry Lucy and Billie.
*Jennifer
God I’m not sure, I feel like Jennifer’s absence lately has blinded me. If she begins to show up prominently again I may change my mind cuz she’s my favorite <3.
But yeah atm I do like Liz more.
How’s she doing it for you now that she’s cranked up the haughtiness and ego to ojou-sama levels?
Y’see that’d normally be a deterrent for most people, but I legitimately find Jenny more attractive when she’s being more of a pill, so…
You’re a man of refined tastes.
Honestly nah, not for me. In terms of raw sexiness Jennifer’s got it made in the shade. Though if we’re adding personality then Cocky!Joyce is climbing up there for me.
She kinds looks like 90s janet jackson. Inset eyes. heart shaped face. round cheeks, killer smile
Confident and knows what she wants.
And she has a cute nose.
I like her smile. It’s gregarious, like it’d drag you into any kind of mischief.
Also hips.
Won’t lie, the hips are a huge factor for me. And the hair. And lipstick and a skin tone.
It’s a lotta things.
She’s definitely attractive.
Yeah no she has the best figure in the comic by a mile.
“Sorry, neither!”
– Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols, improvising a reply to “fair maiden” that got past the censors)
She must really like Mario Cart
OOPS
I thought Joe was expecting her based on his dialogue in the previous strip. Now it seems her turning up is a surprise.
Joe: “There’s a little voice in my head telling me this is a bad idea!”
Liz: “Tell it to shut up and watch.”
Joyce once told both of her voices that.
(“I make lots of weird faces.”)
*Sigh* I guess cheap brand Johnny Bravo does it for girls now a days.
My view is that Liz is a lot more Joyce than she lets on.
I mean Joe is tall and substantially muscular. Those are typically very attractive traits for a male at least traditionally. His personality is usually what turns some women off.
On the one hand, stupid fun with a hot guy is literally what Joe has been advertising all year.
On the other, she doesn’t actually know him at all, so stupid fun with a hot guy is pretty much exactly what she’s after AND she didn’t have to listen to him be an ass. Win Win!
Different women like all different things.
Liz does indeed like cheap Johnny Bravo. Most of the women on campus hate him — think of Rachel’s reaction to his whole deal, for example.
Find the people who like you.
To be fair, the reason most women on campus hate him is because of hit list rating girls by their hotness. But that wasn’t his fault as it was stolen from him and leaked without his permission. It was, in essence, a private diary showing his personal thoughts never meant for public viewing. He was a victim of extreme privacy violation, but I think most forget or ignore that part because it doesn’t let them view him as a bastard. He’s always been honest about his intentions, asks for consent, and if turned down accepts their decision. He does what he’s supposed to be doing.
Wasn’t there a time when he admits he had been giving people the link to the blog and knowingly publishing it on the public setting? I’m pretty sure that’s canon somewhere but I’m not doing an archives binge to find it.
He had been giving the link to women he thought would appreciate the high rating he gave them. One of them obviously thought he was a douche.
yeh
He handed it out to anyone who wanted it, and then Rachel spelled out it out in block capital that it was a list of names, appearances and locations of women around campus, and maybe that’s startlingly unethical at best, at worst something incredibly destructive in the hands of anyone who wanted something other than a quick lay.
Yeah I think if his list was just his own personal tastes for him in general it’d be fine, but because he made it as this sorta…guidebook for other guys on campus that definitely makes it more of a dick move. The idea that it was “leaked” is more of an exaggerated term because it was sorta a public secret. Literally he made it accessible to anyone who was interested so it would be the simplest thing on god’s green earth to make it public.
Even as strictly personal it would be kind of icky – it’s still a clear indication of his objectification of women. Talking up his ratings constantly and offering up the RSS feed just make it worse.
True, but I feel like being icky alone is different than being publicly icky. I’d probably never make a pros/cons list of real people I know obviously but I definitely do it for fictional characters all the time. (I spend a lot of time in tier list makers) I can understand, at the very least, the desire to compartmentalize your feelings about something in an organized list even if it’s rude to do so.
Fictional is fine. You don’t have to treat fictional people like real people.
In real life, don’t rate women, Joe.
Even without the list Joe was quite annoying with his constant hitting on any woman in his path.
He was giving out the RSS feed to casual acquaintances.
The RSS feed had subscribers. It was far from a private diary.
As others have said the list wasn’t really private, he just kept it from girls he thought might be bothered by it.
More importantly though, the list was only a symptom of Joe’s problems. Until he started making a connection with Joyce, he treated women like objects who had something he wanted, interacting with them only to hit on them. Joyce had to explain to him at length how that affected her and others.
Joe was all red flags back then, despite his talk about consent, which we’ve only seen him respect when it came forcefully. He was only not as bad as he seemed because much of it turned out to be performative boasting.
Joe’s character growth involves realizing that how he was behaving wasn’t actually okay, even if he was avoiding his dad’s issues. I don’t like dismissing that character arc by pretending he was always just fine.
Are we just going to ignore the fact that he deliberately created a semi-public “do” list in the first place? Knowledge of its existence spreading like wildfire wasn’t the root issue there, as Danny put together after Rachel berated Joe while they were hiding in the IT building.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/skew/
I had a friend who was SUPER into Johnny Bravo. She thought he was super attractive. Which, to be fair, if there was a female Johnny Bravo I might be down bad too.
There was that episode where he got turned into a woman. Both versions are pretty attractive
I like the interpretation of Johnny as being such a chauvinist pig because he’s constantly reinforced that’s how it’s supposed to work, and when he’s in a scenario that doesn’t let him play by the rulebook he lets his admirable qualities shine through.
wait that’s just how I read Joe’s character what the fuck
Be confident in yourself, my dude.
You gotta love the person you are, ’cause anyone who wouldn’t love the real you ain’t worth your time, but you gotta let the real you out.
Obligatory eyes emoji.
Part of me wants to tell my sister Elizabethan “NO! THIS IS A REALLY BAD IDEA!” and to run away…and another part of me wants her to go for the gusto. I just hope the gusto has condoms.
Anybody else hearing INXS playing all of a sudden?
Need You Tonight?
The One Thing?
Don’t Change?
Suicide blonde?
Has to be Original Sin
Referring to the alt. text:
Of course it is a business related visit. Monkey Business. (Which should interest Walky as well.
)
But, as recently established, Joyce is the monkey.
“Danny, be a nice guy and leave?”
Nonono. LIZ is the nice guy. Just look at the comic.
Danny, you need to leave.
Or go to sleep with a camera on his foot.
It would only be polite.
“I needed to leave.”
I’m sure sal would be ready and willing to take him in
I guess that’s one way for Sarah to hate him even more. . .
…did Joe take a step back? I think he did. Good for Joe.
…where is Joe’s left hand?
Why is Liz smiling?
Where’s the spray bottle
Please Joe do not succumb to your weird crush on a Joyce that doesn’t exist anymore. This is literally fortune smiling on you.
I mean I feel like NuJoyce and Liz is a pretty lateral move personality-wise.
I remember what Joe said to Jacob about Joyce, and think not.
Are you kidding? This girl is a MINE FIELD. She’s Sarah’s sister, she’s a high schooler of indeterminate age, and she’s kind of a brat. Joyce crush aside, sleeping with her would definitely make an enemy out of Sarah and may actually be a crime for him. I’m not sure what the statutory laws in Indiana are like.
(Ah, wait, she’s 18, nevermind. However Sarah did literally threaten to murder Joe if he tried to bang her. So my larger point stands.)
I believe she’s a college freshman (at Ball U), and of legal age. (Remember, Sarah’s a year ahead of the rest of the cast.)
Everything else still applies.
Age of consent in Indiana is sixteen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_States#Indiana
If they’re only old enough for you to have to quote the age of consent, you know it’s a bad idea.
I actually agree with this, but we’re not talking about a grown ass man. Joe’s 19, he’s been out of high school for like six months now.
Eighteen? You’re seriously squicking out about eighteen-year-olds having sex?
It’s weird how often various ages of consent get brought up. Feels like I hear about it every couple of weeks wherever I go, one way or another. Like, it’s important to be aware of in general, of course, not arguing that, but… am I the odd one out for not thinking about it much?
I agree. If you have to do math to figure out of a (potential) relationship is creepy, it’s probably creepy.
Some states have weird laws and if you’re all young and close in age it’s worth being aware.
Like, 15 and 16 isn’t much creepier than 16 and 17 is, but one might well be criminal and the other legal.
That said, it’s often older guys focusing the laws, which is creepy. People around the age of consent tend to not pay attention and just do what they’re going to do.
Here of course it only came up because Heavensrun mistakenly thought she was in high school and possibly significantly younger.
If there’s a big age gap, sure. But if we’re talking about whether an 18yo would be committing a crime by sleeping with a 17yo, not so much? It’s a valid discussion to have.
(Also as someone who was 15 when I first had sex- with an 18yo- I don’t think 18 is a good age of consent. If there’s concerns with predatory behaviour towards teens maybe make the age of consent include rules about age differences for teens, but it’s far better to teach young people how to be safe and healthy than just telling them “don’t”.)
It depends. I’m 27 so anyone under 20 feels off limits. But if you’re like…19 it might be something to be concerned about if a 17 year old girl is hitting on ya. And since cases of statutory rape are being increasingly more cracked down on, it makes sense to me that people wanna make sure they’re not actually doing anything illegal.
(worth noting that when I was 16 I had an 18 year old girlfriend, but we were only a grade apart.)
Especially given that the laws around age of consent vary dramatically from state to state, so it’s not always at all clear.
Some people are attracted to minefields.
… a lot, actually. Otherwise minefields wouldn’t be dangerous.
I think minefields are dangerous, because you don’t know until you step on one, cause you don’t know where all of em are.
…. okay, fine, not a great metaphor. Most people are attracted to things that are minefield-ADJACENT, which are why the minefields are there. It’s not like Joe is actually attracted to the booby traps.
…your comment is a booby trap and i’m not falling for it!
*wipes brow*
Well, I live near some minefields. Luckily most of ’em are gone or rusted enough not to detonate anymore, but you still have to be cautious when gardening. So I’m obviously attracted to… uh… roads? forest? myself? Do am I still attracted to myself when I’m in holidays somewhere where there aren’t minefields?
Wait,aren’t minefields fields where mines are grown? With all these people selling tickets around?
Nonono. Minefields are fields like geology and mineralogy. You’re thinking of mimefields, where mimes are grown.
Her university has been mentioned multiple times since her introduction
Please Joe do not succumb to your weird crush on a Joyce that doesn’t exist anymore.
wut
Idk either man that one was weird
Wonder how this is gonna play out
Badly.
Either way.
I’m goin’ for the long throw and guessing they hook up, Danny goes off and does whatever, and if Sarah finds out she doesn’t care because she has exactly zero respect for Joe already and doesn’t seem like she’d be surprised at Liz for bangin’ him.
She’s already told him not to bang her little sister.
Either of them.
Threats stop working if you don’t follow through with them.
Maaan don’t do it.
Please don’t do it.
“Say no to this!”
(No, no!)
“Say no to this!”
Still gross
OK. Everyone who called Liz being interested in Joe line up single file so I can you each $50.
I’m sure some of you made that bet.
On one hand, I feel like that one image that goes “Sickos: YES… HA HA HA… YES!”
On the other… wait, there is no other. I thrive on character drama involving my favourite characters and their dynamics.
I saw on twitter some guy made that his halloween costume, with a portable window. the handles to hold it up where were his hands were pressed to the window. it was pretty cool!
I saw it too! I thought it was pretty creative… and very fitting to my emotions regarding the potential in this storyline.
Honestly, I’m hoping Joe says no–not for Joyce, but for Sarah, his kind-of friend. Please, Joe, surprise us. You’re overdue for it.
(Also, I’ve been rereading Shortpacked lately, and… between Malaya, SP-Roz and now Liz, it’s kind of a recurring shtick of “bad promiscuous nonwhite girl who doesn’t care about consequences seducing the guy with bad impulse control”. idk. It’s not-not a thing.)
You see Liz as bad?
They’re just hooking up, what’s bad about that?
Hooking up with a stranger isn’t bad. Ditching your friend (Joyce) and sister (Sarah) in the middle of a crisis, and then hooking up with your friend’s friend (Joe) without even asking if there’s anything between them. There’s a lack of loyalty, considering that Joyce and Liz have been Facebook friends all schoolyear.
So in isolation, nothing wrong with a hookup at all. It’s the details, the lack of empathy to a friend that is frustrating, to me at least. Joyce did ask for it with all them lies though.
She had a bus to catch she has since missed, presumably because she was trapped in the Sarah Hug.
Besides, what was there to say? Hi, person I don’t know! Sorry I think your God is dumb and you’re dumb for liking him!
Honestly, I don’t think anyone actually believes Liz genuinely missed the bus on accident.
Certainly possible, but if she was planning on sticking around to bang Joe it’s weird that she tried to leave on schedule in the first place, prior to being Sarah Hugged.
i mean, it was as good an excuse as any to get out of the room. it didn’t have to be true to work as an excuse
I mean, sure, but that strikes me as looking for a conclusion first.
Could it possibly be not-not a thing because a person can want to have sex with a person who frequently signals their desire to have sex, and this is, in fact, not anything morally questionable in the slightest?
I mean, WOC have been hypersexualized since the colonizer’s boats first started washing up on various shores. Willis is pretty good with this kind of stuff so i don’t think it’s intentional, but i certainly can’t fault someone wanting to take a closer look at it in the media they consume
Okay but they aren’t “hypersexualized”, they’re just not Suburban White People sexualized.
Like, I do understand the argument of implications, nobody thinks along these lines without some pretty constant reminders of why they think it and women of colour getting fetishized as hypersexualized by white dudes is absolutely a real thing, I think that’s something where surrounding context matters a lot when it comes to fiction.
Like, Shortpacked!’s A-plot was the romance between Robin and Leslie where, yeah, Robin’s a kooky nutbar, but her commitment to Leslie was never under question (getting into that time they broke up is a whole post of its own, but per Word of Willis (’cause I asked them one time) it was more about Robin’s complete inability to accept she was queer, she started dating Joe (who was dating Rachel until she vanished and was too depressed to have sex until Robin), and then the ultimate resolution was affirming to her that Leslie was and always would be her one true love), Lucy was there and her romance with Ken was painfully normal, and Sydney Yus didn’t date anyone (though she was a minor gag character).
Plus while Roz was a “bad girl seducing dude with poor impulse control”, she did ultimately show that she actually liked Jacob, and his “poor impulse control” wasn’t even impulse control; dude had an outright addiction to sex that he was really unhappy about that Roz just refused to accept was real and damaging to him, partly because of her views on sexual liberty and partly because she was actually trying to be with him and couldn’t just say it until she had done enough damage that Jacob didn’t want to be with her. I don’t really know how that applies to Malaya either, since I don’t think she ever actually pursued any dudes in the comic at all.
Then you get to DoA where Lucy is a slightly more sexually aware Joyce (as in she’ll wait till the third date), Billie was in love with Ruth to actually painful levels, Sarah wanted Jacob and then backed off entirely when he said he wanted “a real relationship”, Marcie wanted to bang Malaya and seems to have found something pretty great there given they’re still together according to a Patreon strip, and Dina’s grey-ace to the point where Becky’s deeply nettled that she’s not wildly horny on main for her as Becky is for Dina.
Like, even if there are WOC characters who can be sexually forward, and even “forward” feels like a weirdly pushy way to describe “is fine with pursuing sex”, there are plenty who don’t process it the same way.
I guess Sal is technically this? In that she banged Jason for a grade that one time, but like, bringing up Sal is more meant to highlight how just because it resembles something on the surface, the actual context matters. Yeah Sal banged some stuffy white dude who needed to keep it in his pants, but Sal banged him in the heat of the moment because that stuffy white dude kept insulting her efforts and said that the only thing that mattered was the end result, Jason suffered the consequences for it that he himself openly accepts, and now she’s dating the sandwich making ukelele lad in a dapper hat because he’s a constant fount of emotional support and validation, after she kissed him on the cheek and said she liked him because he was good and kind. That doesn’t strike me as hyper-aggressive.
Idk if anything, to me it sorta reads more like “Man, all these white girls sure have a lot of hangups about sex”, and less like “These women of color are having casual sex as a symptom of their general immorality, which is wrong”. Apologies if the second one isn’t quite what you were getting at, I’m a little tired today and not much of a media analyst.
I mean, let’s run down the list of white girls in this comic:
Joyce: messed up.
Amber: really messed up.
Ruth: …. yeah.
Dorothy: tried, but couldn’t fit it into her schedule.
Penny: I’ll just stop there.
Well, it’s been (fairly) nice knowing Joe.
Uh oh… Temptation calling. What will Joe do?
Placing my bet that Joe isn’t going to sleep with Liz. We already went down this road with Malaya, so what would it be accomplishing, story wise? We already know Joe has trouble valuing possible long term emotional investment over short term physical gratification.
Story-wise it brings a… not exactly a vice, for Joe, but a trend that’s unhealthy on an emotional level for him specifically… to a head by causing a huge showdown between him and Sarah and setting him on a path to change. This is the second season of Dumbing of Age, and we’re into 1st plot point territory.
I mean his long term emotional investment isn’t in conflict with his short term physical gratification here. It’s not like he’s trying to hook up with Joyce and then end it right there; he has it bad for her, which makes things complicated.
I don’t think this is Joe’s final temptation before he steps into the healing light of Committed Monogamy, the only acceptable path for him, it probably hinges on whether Joe himself even wants to have sex with her because he’s totally drained any kind of emotion out of sex, and he’s starting to realize that isn’t working out.
It’s not short term gratification with Joyce I’m talking about, it’s short term gratification with other women. As long as Joe is having a lot of casual sex, he’s never going to start an actual relationship with Joyce. And that’s be fine if it would make Joe happy, I don’t think monogamy is the only way to be happy. But in Joe’s case we’ve seen he emotionally distances himself from people because he doesn’t think he’s worth being close to.
its Really weird how most of the commenters are judging two ( unattached AFA WE KNOW ) sex positive College adults from Hooking up.
They are the same age. Neither is Innocent.
JOyce isnt Innocent either. She friggin set them up on purpose! Sarah told Joyce Liz was a compulsive Boyfriend stealer.
Then Joyce LIED through her friggin teeth pretended Joe was her regular sex hookup and “best Friend” , because of his reputation. Joyce used joe and manipulated both.
No one is being bullied here. ( ruth ) No one is being handcuffed here. ( ruth ) . shamed, handcuffed, threatened, druged. There is no power imbalance.
This is what agency looks like. No one is Bad because sarah doenst approve.
So what? When does Sarah EVER approve?
Sarah approved of Joycob.
…. admittedly that was really an extension of her DISapproval of Raidah. But hey, approval arising from disapproval is still approval.
Yea I think the comments are assuming bad luck in story somehow means casual sex is a bad thing when that’s just drama. People have sex all the time for all kinds of reasons and as long as all parties involved are clear on intent their isn’t anything wrong. This includes just feeling good, nothing wrong with a shallow hookup.
I also think the comments are way too harsh on Liz, she basically played Mario kart and shit talked her former religion and unlike Joyce she wasn’t mocking a friend. Maybe everyone needs to not auto assume a dark skinned black women is pure evil just cause she’s a little mean sometimes.
I do feel like the story is vilifying her a little bit? Though maybe it’s just because I’ve been reading the comments. She does seem like she could care a bit more about what she at the very least helped cause, but it’s not exactly on her that Joyce keeps doubling down and making things worse for herself.
And I don’t think it helps that we(?) know and love Sarah, so her hating Liz makes the readership more likely to, on the whole.
Anyway all I’m saying is, I don’t think there’s anything at all morally questionable about this. Even if I do ship Joeyce.
And I don’t think it helps that we(?) know and love Sarah, so her hating Liz makes the readership more likely to, on the whole.
I get the feeling this is at the root of just about every reaction we’ve ever had to an argument between two characters.
Audience bias towards the viewpoints of the main characters is pretty common in fiction generally
I can understand that but it gets wack to me when two main characters are in conflict so our audience bias now has to play hot potato between whoever’s being mean.
It is, but it also gets brought up as the only possible reason for the audience leaning towards a main character, even when the other character isn’t being portrayed positively.
It is a real thing, but it’s not the only thing.
Does a character need to be positive before the Right/Wrong argument starts?
‘Cause I don’t think Raidah’s Secretly Good All Along, for example, I just think she’s entitled to not having her relationship ruined by Sarah and Joyce, and that the conflict between her and Sarah that led to that is way too ambiguous and open-ended to make a solid judgment on her character, considering that conflict is what her entire character revolves around.
Joeyce all the way!
I agree that the story is making it easier and I don’t think it’s wrong to dislike whoever anyone dislikes. But I think it’s important to recognise when marginalised characters get the brunt of the dislike. That being said I do hope Liz has a moment to see her better qualities shine
Have they not already?
She’s gregarious, friendly, personal, Joyce finds her admirable and easy to talk to, and being easy to talk to gave Joyce the first time to get right and proper mad about growing up in a death cult.
Liz has a beef with a religion acting as a cornerstone for cultural norms in the country she lives in that she has no innate need to be kind to, let alone whatever about it is making her lie to her stepmom that she’s still faithful. She’s got plenty of positive qualities and one that’s negative on the grounds that it comes at a consequence to Becky isn’t really enough to diminish that.
I guess I’m trying to understand comic execution vs intention vs audience bias vs read
Like outside of being a little mean all the qualities you said are on display, and yet the small amounts of being mean are getting focused as the worst things ever. Is it the audience or the comic? Maybe a defensiveness of a very powerful religion?
I’m maybe being overly empathetic in trying to understand the dislike of her hahahaa
Oh it’s simple.
We like these characters when they are Wholesome, and we hate them when they’re Problematic.
The machinations and emotions and long storied character relationships don’t actually matter, what matters is whether or not individual world bubbles in one panel in a single strip of a character’s history proves that they’re being shitty. A story is not something to be felt, it is a puzzle to be solved and the answer is always finding the current moral victor.
Honestly Joyce wasn’t even mocking Becky when she said it, by any reasonable interpretation. It’s only when Becky and Dorothy barged in and everyone started becoming super hostile to anything Joyce said that wasn’t a full “no, christians aren’t being stupid and wrong!”, as if you can’t think people are being wrong and still respect them at the same time.
Which led to Joyce being backed into a corner and doubling down on her position, and then her statements *retroactively* started becoming about Becky and all the other christians. But I can’t believe that, in the moment Joyce said those things, she was picturing Becky.
But I can’t believe that, in the moment Joyce said those things, she was picturing Becky.
This is true, yeah. Becky was only part of it by association, and she was only part of it by association because Joyce thought every religious person on Earth processed it as a set of inerrant facts like she did.
Or: Joyce doesn’t understand why Becky still believes in God when she knows the Earth isn’t 6000 years old and there were no dinosaurs on the ark, because all three of those things were equally true to her and had to remain as such.
Yeah that.
Buncha hecking prudes up in here.
@adam black i mean, a lot of commenters are merely saying “oh no, there’s gonna be draaaamaaaa” rather than “they are Bad” or “this is an abuse situation somehow”.
it’s like when you’re watching a movie with a bestie and you just performatively gasp and grab their arm and whimper because you anticipate things are about to go boom you know?
“So what? When does Sarah EVER approve?”
haha good point.
hm ok maybe i see what you mean now ^^ there is a bit of moralizing going round. ugh well
“No one is being handcuffed here.”
Yet, at least. And it does seem like any handcuffing will be entirely consensual.
But you bring up a good point. I think the main thing I have with Joe and Liz hooking up here is that, while there’s no reasons not to do it… it ain’t like there’s a lot of reasons *to* do it.
And it starts to slip into Narrative Analysis stuff. If we came back to this in a month or two (aka “one or two days in-universe”) and found out that Joe and Liz banged before she left, I think 99% of the comments section wouldn’t really care. It’s what Joe does, duh, and yeah, who cares about casual sex between consenting partners?
But we’re seeing it. Our attention is being brought to it. We kinda can’t help but look at it in a different manner, with all of the recent context added into it.
I will also add that it doesn’t paint Liz in the best of lights. Yeah, no judgement about casual consensual sex, sure, but all of that drama with your big sister and Joyce didn’t put your libido on snooze for a while?
There’s not exactly a huge reason to not fuck around, assuming proper protection is used yadda yadda yadda, but focusing on it in-story tends to need a reason beyond “because”.
Here’s the #1 reason to Do It: “Sex is fun and we’re both looking for some fun.” Anything else is just extra, you don’t really need more.
Which is why I bring up the narrative analysis aspect of it. “We fucked and had fun” is not exactly a thrilling character piece for either Joe (who regularly fucks and has fun off-screen) or Liz (a character that’s unlikely to be seen again after this in-world day).
Again, if we found out later that Joe and Liz fucked, I don’t think anyone would really care. But people are caring about this precisely because the story is telling us to care about it. TvTropes calls this concept “The Law of Conservation of Detail”, basically the notion that a well-crafted work, with a finite space in which to tell its story, will exclude redundant bits that will not advance story or character or world.
And because it’s entirely normal for the characters to fuck, and it’s obviously acceptable in-universe for them to fuck based on common law, and the story is spending time focusing on it, we’re meant to be looking at it beyond simply “they have compatible sexual orientations and potential willingnesses to bang”.
Please don’t ever get your narrative analysis skills from TVTropes.
Please don’t confuse “pointing at a place that does a good job introducing the concept in question to a broad audience, complete with examples that demonstrate the concept in question” with “getting your entire mindset from”.
Okay that’s actually a good use of TVTropes, especially since the Law of Conservation of Detail is an Actual Thing in storytelling.
I object to the specific context in which you’re employing it but I think arguing that point would be a huge dick move on my part.
It’s not actually clear that Joe does regularly fuck and have fun off-screen. Especially since his character growth, but possibly even before then.
We know some of it was bullshit – he lied about the threesomes. It’s not clear how much else was. Personally, I very much doubt he’s had casual sex since Malaya and that is important to his character arc. He was shown as conflicted about it then, especially in the Slipshine and it would feel weird if he’d just happily gone back to it behind the scenes.
I mean the obvious story reason is “Joe is being propositioned for sex at a point in time where he doesn’t really know what sex means to him anymore, with someone who is extremely similar to the girl he is kinda sorta totally in love with.”
Also Liz knew Joyce for like three hours, and it was made clear that Liz didn’t say anything that upset Becky, because Becky’s upset Joyce said it.
What is she supposed to say to the Mom Squad? No, actually, Joyce is totally allowed to grow in a way she finds most important to herself, even if it comes at the cost of someone who’s love for her shattered when she found out she changed?
Because she already said that.
It’s not the general details that matter to me but the specific ones. Someone that is conflict averse like Liz (tried to bolt the second that talking to Joyce became a conflict with others) should be trying to avoid emotional fallout and should therefore be checking that it will not cause problems between herself and Joyce if she tries to sleep with Joe. That is what a good friend would do to absolutely make sure that they aren’t going to be stomping on any toes or causing any rifts. You don’t want to be part of drama? You make sure you don’t start it. Though I think Liz’s way of avoiding it will be to jump on a bus and physically distance herself from it, and to deny that it matters.
People can posture in front of the other person to hide feels and that’s not secret knowledge, it is common knowledge. And yes, it would primarily be on Joyce for conveying her feels falsely. It would be like, at least 80% on her for playing it up to seem cool. But Joyce didn’t know Liz was going to be here right now (so there is no importance to her to correct this view) and Liz isn’t asking her (so she isn’t getting the opportunity to correct her or clarify). And honestly I think Liz may specifically be avoiding asking her so she can claim she ‘didn’t know’ it would cause a problem if Joyce gets upset.
Playing the game of ‘technically I did nothing wrong by you on purpose and did a thing I was allowed to and the other person consented to’ by choosing to not ask so you can’t be corrected, is a great way to lose a friend still. Because sure, logically you did nothing wrong based on the information you had.
Emotionally, it isn’t a secret that people posture, and if you didn’t want to hurt your friend’s feelings and cause a blow-up, you would ask, not assume they’d be cool with it, and make sure all the information you have is correct. Because presumably, like most people, you don’t want to lose a friend over having a hook-up when you easily could have found another partner for that.
Even if Liz did really miss the bus back, that she’s avoided her sister and friend in favor of coming back to Joe for the hookup suggests her conflict avoidance strategy is “hide it and hope not to get caught” rather than “prevent it in the first place”.
That is what I am thinking as well. Right now she is coming across to me as someone who does what she wants and feels like which creates drama then runs for the hills so she can’t be confronted on it. And if she is confronted on it, she can technically blame the other party for not being 100% honest neglecting to mention that she opted not to ask.
There is also the possibility that she could be causing problems on purpose just for fun but I’m not sure yet if she is actively that malicious and actually that drama-stirring rather than just a bit selfish and not perfectly considerate of friends.
Why would she need to stick around for drama she didn’t create to solve the emotional turbulence between someone she doesn’t know and someone she’s known for three hours?
Or is this in reference to wanting to sleep with a guy that the extremely cool and wordly Joyce, who weeds it up while playing video games where she runs over loose women with her car for points, made an extremely compelling case for Joe as a friend with rewards program?
I didn’t read the whole thread but I would be disappointed if they banged because I’d like to see Joe clean up his act a bit in preparation for a relationship with Joyce. Liz isn’t aware of the complexities of that situation, but Joe is, thus the face in the last panel.
If this happens and Joyce finds out, I think we can kiss the JoJo ship goodbye for a while.
… Joe has cleaned up his act. He’s trying to be an emotionally supportive friend to Joyce while dealing with having it bad for her and the Do List is gone.
He’s had sex one time since and it was with Malaya, and he hasn’t had sex otherwise because Joyce made him realize what this entire persona he built up what was actually like and Joe was mortified because that entire persona was something he built up to protect himself from going through what his parents went did. Afterwards he alternated between engaging in old behaviour in a way that can only be described as transparently performative (he hits on Ruth and Joyce can tell he wasn’t even trying) and throwing himself into emotionally chaotic situations so he can support Joyce.
What part of his act is not cleaned up, or in the process of being cleaned?
The part where he has ICKY sex that only dirty, unclean people have outside of wedlock ofcourse.
So on the one hand Joe can have sex
on the other Sarah would probably rip off his head and also he has feelings for Joyce so
Your move, Joe, I’ll get the popcorn.
See I shouldn’t make this decision because Sarah inflicting violence upon me would be in the “positive” corner.
Plus, Sarah would be inflicting violence on after you’ve banged Liz, perhaps during if she catches you in the act.
So it’s win/win for you.
On the one hand, he and Liz are both consenting adults that can make their own choices and don’t need Sarah policing their sexual nature.
On the other hand, Joyce and Joe haven’t even spoken about possibly being a thing so he doesn’t really owe Joyce any monogamy whatsoever.
Joe do what you want here, there’s literally no reason for you not to.
In this calculus of what emotional reactions friends “owe” to each other, is there any consideration for whether they’ll be hurt by something you do, whether it’s justified or whether you owe them or not?
It’s just a really weird way of thinking about social interaction to me. “I know this is going to bother my friend, but it’s not listed on the checklist of things I’ve agreed to clear with her, so what the hell, guess I don’t have to care.”
Now, I don’t think it would be morally wrong for Joe to do it and I don’t even know if he’s aware that it would mess with Joyce (or even if it would), it’s just the way it keeps getting framed that seems strange to me.
“I know this is going to bother my friend, but it’s not listed on the checklist of things I’ve agreed to clear with her, so what the hell, guess I don’t have to care.”
This feels like weird overburdening on whoever is it doing the act to constantly check with whoever to make sure doing something they want to do won’t potentially upset them.
So like what? Does Joe have to go to Joyce and be all ‘Hey we aren’t in any way, shape or form dating, going out, or committed, so would it bother YOU if I had consentual sex with another adult?’
To which Joyce starts screaming about premarital sex because her view on sex is so healthy?
Yeah no.
Joyce won’t even acknowledge that Joe is her friend. Just a few days ago in comic time she was making heavy weather of being his lab partner.
@Reaver @Spencer: It seems neither of you understands what the thejeff is saying.
“This feels like weird overburdening on whoever is it doing the act to constantly check with whoever to make sure doing something they want to do won’t potentially upset them.”
again, you are reframing what thejeff said, transposing it once again into the exact way of thinking he’s calling weird, making it sound like they’re setting an absurdly high bar for accountability of everyone always. but that’s not what they’re saying. thejeff isn’t talking about consideration for others’ feelings as a moral imperative.
” Does Joe have to go to Joyce”
Well, no he doesn’t have to. And thejeff is pretty clear on that. it’s more about the failure of strict, black-and-white language like “has to” or “owes it to X to do Y” or “is under no obligation” etc, to capture the breathing nuance of social interaction, the complex way we make decisions by not only running them through our ethical algorithm but also through the more subtle and personal filters of self-censorship and caution and consideration and forethought and solicitude etc based on our read of possible consequences of our actions to others. These filters are highly subjective, it’s really a part of one’s personality to a large degree, but also fluctuate based on mood and whatnot.
…Anyway, i share the sentiment. (@thejeff or do i? i think i understood what you meant, sorry if my intervention is off the mark)
Yeah, pretty much.
There is definitely some fundamental gap in understanding here.
An addendum for Bradbury:
It was a pleasure to burn [bridges].
See? I’ve said I didn’t understood why Joe questioning how Danny could get together with Sal. Girls keep going after him, and that is not enough. Hard life for him.
Joe judges his worth on having a sexual partner, so he’s judging Danny by the standard of “how did you land the hottest girl in school?” failing to understand it’s because Danny and Sal have a strong emotional bond.
This might actually be the first time he’s been propositioned him since Malaya, who just wanted to fuck him so it’d annoy everyone in their dorm. I don’t think he’s actually had sex since.
Joe doesn’t understand that being able to emotionally connect and give a damn is attractive because he finds that terrifying and relies solely on physical attraction to draw sexual partners.
Joe rates himself as a 10 for that and Danny at a 7 for that (which is about where they would be if generally someone demanded you put a number on them based on solely physical appearance). So to him, someone like Sal that is ‘a 10 if she drops the smoking’, should only be attracted to fellow ‘9s/10s’ on physical attractiveness. It was fine to him when it was Jennifer who he rated 6 or Dorothy who he rated 7 as those were close to his ‘rank’ for Danny. But Sal who he rates at a 10?
In his mind, she should be out of Danny’s league and it actually genuinely doesn’t make sense to him that Sal would like Danny based on his mental calculations because even if he isn’t using a list and precise numbers any more, it wouldn’t change that his mentality is ‘Sal is very hot cool motorcycle gal, why is attracted to kind of cute dork guy’? Which also is skewed by his own biases on what makes someone attractive.
I didn’t get: do you mean Joe got kind of scared because Danny got a top plus girl like Sal? Like, Joe saw in front of his eyes someone could be attracted to other not because beauty?
I think it is more Joe doesn’t understand it. Sal has never been interested in him (even though he has highly attractive physical features in his own mind). But she’s interested in Danny? Danny who is a dorkus with a hat and a ukelele? Based on his own ideas, that shouldn’t be possible. Danny shouldn’t even ping on Sal’s radar. So it doesn’t fit into his idea of how the world works and that is confusing to him. Because if the world doesn’t work in X way, how does it work?
It bothers him because it conflicts with his world view and might prove him wrong about some of his relationship ideas. And while Joe DOES enjoy sex, he actually does crave the emotional connection of a real relationship. So it is a little bit confronting and he still hasn’t processed fully what it really means and that emotionally connecting can be attractive and fulfilling and it doesn’t have to instantly turn into a disaster (because he doesn’t have to choose to be a cheater like his Dad).
Joe, aka Hate Sink, is getting into some real hot water here.
She just “accidentally” backed into Joe’s hand with her butt, didn’t she?
it’s not clear but if she did it was absolutely not accidental, nor would she want to make it look that way =)
Joeseph, think. Sarah WILL tear them off.
Welp guess we know what the next slipshine will be
I want to believe Joe will do the right thing, but no…
Ah yes, casual sex with an eager partner.
Truly highlighting of the debauchery of man.
Man has fallen, but fortunately he can get it up.
There have been hints that he may be ready for a real relationship with Joyce but he will need to stop sleeping around, no matter how eager the partners.
1. Committed monogamy isn’t the only “real” relationship.
2. He can sleep with Liz right now and also, at a later date, pursue a committed monogamous relationship with Joyce, because Joyce didn’t put her signature on his butt yet.
3. Joyce getting mad that this dude she’s friends with had casual sex with is wack, it’s only slightly less wack for her to actually be hurt about it because “Joe sleeps with women” isn’t her problem with him, it’s “Joe thinks I’m a lump of meat for him to constantly objectify, because he rates me and other women numerically and then tells himself he’s being cool.”
4. Joe not wanting to sleep with Liz right now would be down to him not wanting to, even if not wanting to is at least partially rooted in Mega Feels for Joyce. But if he did, that isn’t a moral failing on any objective level, just something Joe would probably process as given his recent hangups about sex and relationships.
A real relationship built on trust. Where Joyce can trust Joe not to cheat. More importantly, where Joe can trust Joe not to cheat. Joyce isn’t ready for a polyamorous or open relationship. For real trust to exist, Joe would need to prove that he’s capable of saying no to casual sex.
Joyce and Joe are not dating yet, but there has been significant emotional exchange. If Joyce finds out that someone she has feelings for slept with her friend, she will be hurt. The trust will be damaged and they may never have a relationship.
Joe is under no moral obligation to act a certain way, but his actions will likely have consequences for his future with Joyce. You can see in the final panel that he understands the delicate nature of the situation.
This is a bizarre level of commitment you’re putting on two people who haven’t even verbalized anything resembling concrete to each other. I know Joe’s thoughts are textual but all Joyce has done is say she knows he cares even if he doesn’t show it, and stared at his butt one time.
Anyway if Joyce gets mad that a dude she is not dating has sex, she’s not ready to date anyone. Joe’s dick doesn’t need to be controlled on what it might do to Joyce.
I strongly suspect Joyce will be hurt by this. Not mad because Joe did something wrong, but hurt because she thought he was becoming a different person.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe Joe and Liz can have a good time, and Joyce won’t be at all upset or jealous. Maybe the feelings that this stirs up will be a catalyst for them to become closer. Maybe Joe is completely unaware of Joyce’s feelings and the effect this will have on her. But I suspect this is a pivotal moment for Joe. Because for the first time he may have a reason to say no.
I’m saying it doesn’t actually matter if Joyce got upset, which I believe could happen but I believe that because Joyce has fucked up views on sex. Like, if Joe sleeping with someone before Joyce even admits in any capacity she likes him, that’s not really something she can reasonably hold against him and it’s something she’d have to face for herself if she wants to pursue him.
Like, Joe “becoming a different person” doesn’t involve a chastity belt, it’s in the part where he treated women like objects for getting his dick wet and he totally convinced himself this was righteous and healthy, and how that came about because he’s terrified of any kind of emotional connection with another human being, let alone a woman he’s in love with.
Realtalk, I do think Joe is going to say no, but not on the grounds of “it’ll make Joyce sad”, because I have a strong suspicion that the idea of Joyce never getting closer to him so he never has the chance to ruin her life is something he’s pretty comfortable with, I think he’ll do it because he’s got it bad for her and, more importantly, he doesn’t know what sex means to him anymore.
Yeah, I dunno about this. They’re not dating and they haven’t really even flirted if we’re being honest. Joe doesn’t owe Joyce any level of romantic commitment until and unless they’re actually romantically committed. And I honestly really doubt Joyce is gonna hold his casual sex against him if they DO hook up, unless she goes full Dora on him for some reason.
Joyce has given no indication that that is a possibility. She has spent the last week expressing disdain and hostility to Joe in the context of their being lab partners. And then she showed up in his room a few hours ago, uninvited, in company, demanding drugs, and telling wild lies. Which resulted in an ugly scene.
For Joe in this situation to forsake all others out of sexual devotion to Joyce would actually be rather creepy. And for Joyce to expect it of him would be bizarre.
I hope so. Regardless I also know what I’LL be drawing next
This looks like the perfect time for Danny to go to visit Sal ♡. Can’t wait to see how Malaya will react! I wonder what nastiness she will tell to both of them! Most importantly, will Danny find Fuckface adorable or just interesting? Speaking of Joe… Liz is asking for help. Even thinking of all the possibles, horrible disastrous etc, consequences; it would be rude to just say “No” to her.
I can think of very few instances where it could be considered rude to say “No” to sex. And none of them apply here.
^^^ This.
Liz’s feeling aren’t the main issue here.
There is literally no issue here.
The issue (for Joe) is Joyce’s feelings. I wouldn’t count on this remaining secret.
Joyce’s feelings are not a factor in this whole shebang, and I have no idea why you’d think they would be, considering that Joyce has no feelings in this whole shebang for them to be factor.
instances where it could be considered rude to say “No” to sex:
• a sexual roleplay scenario in which saying “No” to sex is considered rude.
• ?
It might be considered rude to invite someone over specifically for sex, then say no once they get there. Even then, though, I would consider the rude part inviting them over in the first place. Also, just so its clear, saying no is always 100% the right choice to make if, for any reason whatsoever, you don’t want to have sex.
I probably don’t need to spell this out, we’re all adults I assume, but yes, it is always 100% acceptable to say “No” to sex and I do not have any opinions or inclinations to the contrary.
I was mostly referring to a scenario like you said, where one person goes out of their way to invite another over explicitly and solely for sex, builds an expectation that This Is Happening at This Time, makes sure the other person doesn’t plan other things during that time, and then once the moment arrives the first person just stops with no explanation and boots the other out. That happens weirdly often where I live, and the one inviting always brags about it after and makes fun of the invitee for thinking they were gonna do it all the way up to the point the condom went on. I understand that’s probably not a very common scenario elsewhere, and yes like you said, it’s the whole setup that’s rude, not specifically the not-fucking part. That’s about as far as that thought went, it wasn’t really meant to be some thought-provoking thesis statement.
I was just thinking about letting her sleep in the room without doing anything else. Then… think of the classic scenario where they are seen by chance by Joyce, Sarah or someone and nobody believes Joe even if he, for once, did nothing! Obviously Danny couldn’t defend him because he was in Sal’s room.
yeah i was just being a smartass but pretty much as soon as i hit post i was like, “well, i mean, sure i can think of situations.”
like you said, we agree that saying no to sex is always absolutely fine and cool and non negotiable. That said, if i was Liz, and Joe had been hyped to high heavens to me as this Indomitable Sex Monster, and I was standing right in front of him being cute and horny and he just said “No”?? i would be so mad at him =P
Panel 5 Joe’s face is a great cliffhanger.
Danny. It’s always for Joe.
Yeah.
Girls here for Danny go through the window.
Huh, it never occurred to me that Danny was around when they were doing that… did Roz ask for his consent to participate?
Attached the camera to his phone while he was asleep.
TO HIS FOOT.
God damn it what the fuck is wrong with my brain. Fucking words tripping over each other.
It was his knife, duh.
Well, that’s just a terrible prop for a camera. Most knives are really bad at staying upright.
I reread that strip recently and he had no idea. He wakes up and there’s a girl in the room and a webcam on his foot.
I see Joe turning it down UNLESS Liz states she knows Joyce and him aren’t really going out. Which she might have figured out on her own if Sarah or Joyce told her anything that occurred with Jacob, but Joe will assume Sarah or Joyce came clean to specifically give their blessing for his inevitable one night stand.
Joyce told Liz she and Joe were friends with reward programs, not that they were going out.
hahaha, point for Liz for being super smooth
The delicious drama I foresee is 1) Joe goes for it but 2) Liz makes a comment of comparison between her and Joyce, and that 3) freaks Joe out because thinking of their theoretical sex during sexy times with Liz either turns him off… or on!
Either way, delicious confrontation of his denial occurs. And maybe Joyce catches onto them. etc etc. Goof stuff.
JOE, CHARACTER MOMENT
It’s a good thing Joe is clean-shaven. If he sprouted a beard, he’d look like Popeye’s antagonist Bluto. I’d hate to see the copyright hassles springing forth from that decision.
Aaaand here’s a chibi Liz I drew!
https://twitter.com/namioshiro/status/1454877357571969029?s=20
My bet is that they’re gonna bang. I mean, I hope they don’t, but I think they will.
Cute!
wow, nice
AHA! I thought your chibi style looked familiar when I saw it before! You make FE chibis too, right?
I sure do! I’ve been posting 2 every day for a while now.
awwww she’s so prettyyyy =3
On one hand, Joe has the opportunity for some serious character development by saying no. On the other hand, which appears to be on Liz’s ass, we get the chance for more Slipshine. Horny brain and rational brain are currently at war, much like I think Joe’s is.
She’s here for some *bid*nezz*
Alright, let me go to the bathroom first, do you want me to shave off this stubble or do you prefer the rugged thing?
I think Joe will say no, but not be sure why until he allows himself to really think about it.
Oh boy, is Joe in a dilemma. On the one hand, there is this hawt, sexy, thing, that is making it clear, that she wants to ride him; on the other, she is the younger sister of a scary individual, who also made it perfectly clear, as to the consequences of taking her to bone town. My gut is telling me that he will say yes, despite what his self preservation instincts will tell him, and the rest of this arc will be Danny, looking for a place to crash, for the night.
Not to mention that she is sorta a mixup of Sarah and Joyce for traits. To ladies Joe finds attractive for very different reasons.
Poor Joe. On the other hand, he wasn’t wrong. She does have a “pleasing shape”. Maybe I should say “poor Joe”.
C’mon Joe this is your defining character moment
Assuming, of course, she’s just after a casual screw and not a means to follow in Roz’s footsteps and record the whole thing in hopes of going viral…
“Yeah, my life and future prospects haven’t been run into the ground YET, so why stop tempting fate like I think I’m invincible?”
I don’t really care where you live at
Just turn around boy, let me hit that
Don’t be a little bongo with your chit chat
Just show me where your dick is at
-Ke$ha
I kinda want Joe to pull out a spray bottle and squirt her like you would a naughty cat. “Bad Liz, no!
…he slept throught it, in the same room ? lol
This may be a weird thought, but I personally think it’s ok for Joe to say yes. It’s two consenting adults, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with a fling as long as consent exists. It’s not for everyone, but there’s nothing wrong with it.
I absolutely agree. A big sister trying to police her younger siblings sex life like that is not ok either.
She’s looking at get Joed ™
Homesister just wants some of that ol’ Cup of Joe!