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He does apologise with an actual sorry after (you sent me down a short archive dive) and part of the reason for the level of annoyance was that she was worried her presidential dreams were slipping away as her grades went downhill… I think most of the time they get on? Doesn’t mean Dotty will approve of him for Joyce though, or believe he’s really changed his attitude towards commitment…
Yeah I get the impression that Dorothy tolerates Joe as her ex’s best friend and even gets along with him fine at times, but would NOT want him dating her best friend. Especially given that she probably still sees him as the guy he was pre-recent-character-arc.
I think the point is that his dad tried to make Joe believe that he (Richard) had changed (due to his actual love for Stacy, rather than only lust), and Joe did not believe this.
So Joe would be in the analogous situation of trying to make Dorothy believe that he (Joe) had changed (due to his actual love for Joyce, rather than only lust), and Dorothy is the one disbelieving.
So Joe would be apologizing to his dad for not believing that there was actual love, and that actual love could inspire a change in horndog behavior.
I guess. It would depend on how Joe thinks about his changes, compared to how Richard explained himself.
Given that my recollection is that Richard’s defense was “Sex is great now, I don’t even feel like cheating” and that Joe has gone through a lot more soul-searching, I don’t think he’s got any apologies to make.
“Because maybe I’m thinking about saying yes to him sorta kinda asking me out for actual relationship stuff that might also include me being fucked silly.”
Joyce: *gesturing to Joe’s sexy man-body* Because, to quote Sarah, his DNA has heretofore undiscovered nucleobases which help spell out “fuck me”, Dorothy.
Dina: It’s true, the nucleobases do spell this. Though they are specifically “Joyce, please fuck me” nucleobases. I have tested this.
Becky: And I helped! I gathered samples while he was sleepin’! It’s fine because I’m a lesbian.
It is misogynistic to view women primarily as source of sex and to rate their fuckability on a scale.
It is misogynistic to view Joyce’s virginity as a seal he’s eager to pop (I forget the exact words he used, but it was clear what his interest was and why).
He’s experienced some character growth, but “he was a horny teenager” is just shy of “boys will be boys” and it’s not an excuse nor does it invalidate the pretty plain evidence of misogyny.
He literally represented women with just numbers, valuing them based on how attractive and how fuckable they were. That’s standard dehumanizing misogyny.
How he treated women was definitely not fine and respectful. Yes he always ensured he had consent, but that is the *bare minimum* someone should do. There are a lot of levels of behavior between “literally a rapist” and “a good guy who respects women” and not being the former doesn’t automatically make someone the latter.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Joe as a character and am totally shipping this now (I’m a sucker for morally grey characters who develop a conscience), but he was absolutely a misogynistic ass who objectified women before he finally realized how awful his behavior was and how it was making women feel. We can acknowledge he is learning to be a good guy now without dismissing the fact that he wasn’t before. People can learn and change.
Also, we have to remember that Joe’s Character Development has been churning away for literal YEARS in our world, but it hasn’t even been six months for Dorothy.
It’s also amazing to me how many readers choose to ignore that character development in favor of “No, he was always just fine.”
Makes a lot more sense that Dorothy wouldn’t have recognized his development, especially since they rarely hang out and he’s often deliberately played up his old attitudes publicly.
Absolutely. And yeah I think a lot of people (I see it often in the comments section here for whatever reason) have trouble with the concept that people can change, that past bad acts do not make them Forever a Bad Person (and that most people are not 100% good or 100% bad, but make a combo of good and bad choices throughout their lives).
I suspect part of the painting Joe as having always been a totally good guy is just people forgetting stuff, part might unfortunately be some people who do not get why how his previous behavior was before was not okay, but part is also likely people who have trouble with the whole “people can change and learn” thing needing him to have been totally good in the past to feel okay about liking him now.
Oh please, it’s 2022, can we acknowledge that “I want to fuck them” and “I respect them as fully autonomous human beings” are not and have never meant the same thing?
I don’t think his love of women was about *them* but about himself. It’s not a matter of love of hate, but of empathy and lackthereof. He was focused on what they could give him and how it made him feel. He wasn’t thinking about how *they* felt at all.
His change wasn’t so much the result of getting better role models or being taught how to treat people. It was him finally thinking about how his actions were making women feel. He leveled up his empathy skill.
I will stick my neck out and suggest that the women Joe has associated with in the past have treated him exactly the way you describe him treating them. He, also, was a convenience, nothing more.
The problem arises when the parties’ expectations for a relationship are different. And I think that, so far, Joe is dealing with it well.
I feel like there are nuances, where you’re right, he was being creepy, but also, mark is right, because a lot of women/Malaya treated him the same way that he treated women. He’s probably going to be more emotionally healthy now that that sort of behavior isn’t normal to him!
Some of them, yes. Joe’s technique is awful but it has worked well for him because it has detected potential partners who wanted what he wanted. There are lots of women who think he’s a creep, but he only needs to find a few who are looking for the same thing, and rejection hasn’t bothered him. There is no posse of deceived women shouting “I thought we had something special!” because Joe has made it plain that there was nothing special to be had.
That Joe’s technique has worked well for him doesn’t mean it’s good.
And I pointed out cases where the women he interacted with were hurt by it. That those were cases where his techniques didn’t work, don’t change that.
His whole approach was aimed at making sure no one got hurt, because, as you describe it “there was nothing special to be had”. But that wasn’t true. He was wrong. He was still hurting women. That was the climax of his whole first season arc – after the donuts, when Joyce told him about Ryan.
“Joe’s technique is awful but it has worked well for him because it has detected potential partners who wanted what he wanted.”
Well,the list was bad. And some of his behavior was bad. I think he’s trying to fix that.
But then there is a theme in doa that that sex has to be attached to love? Or something? Dorothy started a fling with walky, but then told him she loved him? When walky didnt reciprocate love, dorothy broke up with him?
Ethan was having sex with a bunch of people after mike asked him to make out. But while ethan was doing that, it had the backdrop that he secretly longed for Danny, but that was forbidden live because it would crush amber? And then mike died and ethan went goth-tragic.
Roz taped having sex with joe, no strings attached, but it was a political hit job against her sister?
Sex with vibrators is fine. Encouraged even. But doa brings along some undercurrente of the “you need to be in love to have sex” indoctrination. Liz was eagerly going to have sex with Joe, a perfectly healthy moment, then stops and say “i almost ruined myself”?
Joe could have ditched the part that treated women disresoectfully, and turned into the mal version of Roz, someone who is sex positive, hands out confoms, encourages safe sex, talks about vigorous consent, and then teaches kids new and interesting positions.
His night with Liz could have been exactly that sex positive thing, but it turned into a sex ruins you lesson?
And now he’s maybe falling hard for joyce?
Dunno. Just feels like there is a “you gotta be in love before you have sex” undertow here.
^What thejeff said here, exactly. His intentions to not hurt anyone and only attract people who were fine with what he wanted/expected and how he behaved doesn’t change the fact that he did manage to hurt people.
To use an analogy: if you’re fishing for tuna and your net is fine for catching tuna but also kills dolphins, it doesn’t make it okay that the dolphins got caught and hurt in the process just because you were trying to aim for the tuna, or just because you threw the dolphins back. They still got hurt in the process.
I definitely am not getting any kind of “you must be in love to have sex” message or some sort of message of shame or judgement directed at the idea of casual sex from this at all? Respectfully I think this might be reflexive defensiveness or reading way too much into things that weren’t meant that way.
It was very clear the entire time that the issue with Joe’s previous behavior was not that he had casual sex, it was how he treated women who did not want to be hit on or objectified.
Roz’ attitude towards casual sex is never portrayed as a negative, in fact many arguments are made by other characters that she is well within her rights to do that as a consenting adult with another consenting adult. I’m not sure why you’re ignoring their voices and assuming only the characters who didn’t approve are the voice of the author?
You’re completely misremembering the Walky and Dorothy storyline. She intended it to be a fling but they both ended up feeling something more, and *that* was the issue, because Dorothy specifically did not want or have time for something more. It became a problem after it stopped being a casual thing. Which seems to be saying the opposite of “casual sex is bad for everyone, you must be in love first.”
The Ethan/Mike thing was super complicated involving way too many themes and arcs to summarize but definitely seems like a stretch to boil it down to “this is to tell us casual sex is bad.”
As for Liz and Joe: Willis has said many times this comic is semi-autobiographical. About being raised in a conservative Christian environment and how being at college/out in the world can change one’s perspective after that kind of upbringing. So OF COURSE the comic would include characters wrestling with the idea that casual sex is bad. It doesn’t mean the author is trying to say that as a universal rule for everyone. The Liz/Joe thing was a character trying to be someone she wasn’t, as a way of rebelling against a belief system she had lost faith in. The only message I got from that was: don’t pretend you’re someone you’re not, and just because you’re changing, doesn’t mean you must immediately become the total opposite of what you were.
The fact that Joe is falling for Joyce also isn’t a “casual sex is bad” message. It’s a “people change a lot in college and what they want changes over time” message. It’s the story of one character. It doesn’t mean that’s the author’s commentary on how every single person and relationship dynamic should be ever.
Another one of the main characters besides Dorothy, Sarah, is only interested in casual stuff. This is never objectively portrayed as bad. She only calls off her attempts to hook up with Jacob because she realizes he doesn’t want that, and because it’s clear Joyce likes him. The messages there are: don’t pursue someone who doesn’t want the same things as you, and be sensitive to your friends’ feelings. (With a background of also: don’t manipulate your friends and the boys they like to get revenge on someone you don’t like).
And plenty of other Misc characters are showed happily having casual hookups without it being deemed objectively wrong (including several slipshines). It not being a huge focus doesn’t mean the author thinks it’s objectively wrong. Just like if an artist draws lots of cats and only a few dogs, it doesn’t necessarily mean they hate dogs and think everyone else should too. It may just mean they‘re personally more interested in drawing cats.
“The fact that Joe is falling for Joyce also isn’t a “casual sex is bad” message”
I get every individual decision in the comic is plausible. Its just that if you look at the strip overall, certain things dont show up often.
Like, sure its plausible that the hero in todays crime-procedural series is white and male. But if every fucking crime procedural is white and male, you start to notice the lack of minorities and women.
I get every individual character choice around sex and relationships in DoA is plausible. I just see a hole forming. DoA’s focus seems to be going after and tearing down the religious nonsense around sex, specifically gay=hell and “no premarital hanky panky”. Which is great. But not all the ways sex is turned into a guilt trip.
Its fine i guess. Just thought it was going after more than just religious nonsense around sex. I will try to adjust expectations.
I mean, the comic is not over yet, and while there are many storylines, it is primarily focused on the growth and development of Joyce as the main character, whose arc is currently focused on slowly unpacking and moving away from her heavily religious upbringing. Again as I said above, the fact that casual sex hasn’t been a massive unending focus of the comic so far doesn’t mean the comic is trying to send the message that it’s always bad. Like my above analogy: if you have a comic about animals where most of the characters are cats it doesn’t mean the author *hates* dogs. They may just be writing/drawing what they know/what they’re interested in/what stories they want to tell.
Comparing this to the issue of white men dominating screen over marginalized actors/characters time seems like a stretch. People who have casual sex are not a socioeconomically disenfranchised/marginalized group and differing personal opinions on private intimacy is a very different sort of dynamic than the experiences of people living in a society in which they are heavily, publicly, and consistently harmed and marginalized.
This is one comic, by one person, expressing a story informed by some personal experiences and some fictionalized ones. It’s probably not gonna contain an in-depth look at every single possible style of intimacy ever. And as I said above, it already has done commentary on the idea that consenting adults shouldn’t be judged for having casual sex. So I think it’s unfair and inaccurate to argue that it’s sending the opposite message.
If you’re now arguing that you just want to see more stories about characters who engage in casual relationships, well that’s just personal preference and we all have personal preferences which may or may not ever play out in the story. Not every reader is gonna have their personal story interest be a topic of focus. There are lots of things I’d like to see more of in the media I enjoy. If there are stories not being told that you’d like to see told, you could try creating the sorts of stories and/or art you’d like to see more of! That’s what I do when I want more of a particular kind of content. Stories and art on specific subjects are always best when coming from those who have interest and/or experience in that subject.
Well yes some certainly did. But not all the women Joe objectified viewed him that way. This isn’t just about women who agreed to sleep with him. It’s about all the times he hit on women or ranked them on a list that got passed around, and so-on whether they were comfortable with it or not.
Joe’s first date with Joyce loooong ago before they became friends involved him objectifying her and objectifying other women while on a date with her. Her expectations for how that date (and potential relationship) would go were definitely very different than his. And he definitely did not handle it well at all at the time.
It’s pretty clear he has changed a lot since then though. His past behavior being bad doesn’t mean he can’t be a better person now, and being a better person now doesn’t mean his past behavior wasn’t bad.
She knows him very well from back when he was a total horndog jerk, for most of their lives.
This is the guy who took bets on when Dorothy would break up with Danny (his own bff). And when she did, he immediately added her to the “Do” list, which was a map to where she lived. He made obnoxious come-on jokes all semester in Gender Studies. It’s less that she has a specific beef, and more that she doesn’t know him as boyfriend material.
Plus I doubt they’re friends, not really. They do not hangout. Much like Joyce and Dina they’re more like two people who share a relationship with someone else which causes them to be near each other.
“This is the guy who took bets on when Dorothy would break up with Danny (his own bff).”
This wasnt jerkish. He was trying to warn his best friend he’s about to walk into a death trap. That his girlfriend of 3 years was gonna put him on the choppong block. And danny was totally oblivious to it . Walked right into it.
I can imagine all sorts of conversations Joe tried to clue Danny into over the years, and they all go right over Dannys head.
Nah, the character development is real. I’m not even sure what you’re thinking of as backsliding. Yesterday afternoon would have been the life drawing class, where he was a bit awkward, but mostly not backsliding.
Now, he’s definitely put some effort into to maintaining his old reputation, but we really haven’t seen him hitting on random strange women or updating his list in a long time.
But, seriously, though, CONGRATS! You are one of today’s 10,000 who learned something that “everyone already knew”! Huzzah!
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People need to consume food to life, and our society generally structures this into the concept of “meals,” such as lunch. Geez, Dorothy, you’d think you’d know this.
It’s *obviously* Joyce setting up Joe & Dorothy for a “meet-cute” lunch! *that’s* the secret Amber told her about Joe. The whole “Joe <3 Joyce" was just a red herring!
I mean, let’s be real. Joe’s waaay less misogynistic then people give him credit for.
He’s never treated anyone lesser, he’s 100% consent driven, even forgoing sex if there’s a doubt about it, *and* he’s never lied to anyone about their banging being anything but a FWB situation. His “Bang List” was ALSO private, and was outed against his will.
He’s admitted his thought process is wacked because his father is a cheating asshole, but HE is not.
The act of making a do list, that you give to other people willingly, is scummy in it of itself. Like Joyce said, it could put a lot of the girls there in danger. He’s not a bad dude, but he has done bad things. And yeah he sort of treated woman as lesser, since he just viewed them as people to have sex with at first. That’s why Joyce was happy with being rated a zero, because that meant she was judged based on something that wasn’t her looks.
Yeah, good points. Joe’s never been a woman-hater; just the opposite. He’s been more the lusty Himbo who was just (very) sexually active. Where his biggest fault was, that even though he thought it was private, he rated the women he slept with and gave them rankings.
He actively shared the link to his list out to anyone who wanted it. And people who didn’t. It had an rss feed. He addressed Rachel as 11, the rating he gave her. He constantly talked about his list.
I love Joe but like, let’s not white wash him. Not being a rapist or actively hating women doesn’t automatically make you not misogynist
What thing is she doing? Considering Dorothy’s known him for years and he’s been an obnoxious sex-crazed perv for at least some of that time, she has every reason to be a bit suspicious of his motives right now. She doesn’t know anything about the Joe/Joyce development behind the scenes.
You do know that Joe’s had a Character Arc right? That it involved critiquing all that behavior and stopping most of it?
Canonically, it was a problem and that’s his character growth.
Much of the whole reason he treated women like sex objects was that, thanks to his dad’s influence, he thought he was incapable of having a relationship without cheating and hurting them. His approach kept them at an emotional distance and let him have sex without that risk. It was talking to Joyce, after his apology donuts, that let him see that even that approach was still hurting people.
He’s been working on changing, with some ups and downs, ever since.
Well, food can often be seen as a source of fuel for the human body. Your saliva breaks down the compounds into usable ingredients before sending it down to the digestive tract that completely begins breaking down the useful aspects into energy your body can use. Due to the nature of our size and the strength of our minds, humans expend a lot of energy, often times requiring us to eat several times a day to keep up a healthy amount of energy. Now, humans are often known to be a social mammal, and during such periods as eating we often tend to seek out the company of others. This provides two advantages. For one there is safety in numbers and it is easier to be on the alert from predators in a group, or even fight them off if there’s enough of you. And two, forming stronger bonds within the pack will have benefits for the person in the social hierarchy. It also helps increase the human’s chances for finding a mate. In this instance, Dorothy, Joe is attempting to fulfill the the social role of eating within a group, perhaps because he is worried that there is a beast on the prowl, but more likely because he would like to make Joyce his mate, and hopes to form a mating display through close interactions.
It’s a complicated subject but I like to think I’ve got the gist of it.
Joe’s height would provide a boon in spotting predators during feeding time which often leaves prey species vulnerable. I also imagine predators would be more reluctant to approach with the presence of a powerful male in the group. It’s a wise pack strategy to have him along during their graze.
Good observation. It is also worth noting that it actually assists in forming stronger bonds within the pack to allow them to feel safe to let their guard down. Often times coupling in the human species can be a result of both parties feeling “safe” with one another. I’ve studied the Specimen, designated Joe, and I feel as if he was somewhat ostracized from the pack due to his ill social and mating behavior. Perhaps Joe can find his place integrating back into the pack through forming bonds with the more popular “Joyce”.
Did you notice – Dorothy is not asking “why?” with an question mark she is saying “why.” with a period. That means its not a question – (its a warning?)
Yeah, the subtext is clearly “Joe, if you’re running game here, I am going to insert you into my own real-life PTSD flashback, with double the cell phone action…”
Well. Hopefully the next thing isn’t Dorothy trying to police Joyce’s friendships/relationships. There are limits to the power even the mommest friend should try to exert.
well like actual mom limitting friendships that’d prolly make ppl double down. other than risking pregnancies/drugs with other ‘troubled teens’, can’t rly control it within class/school rather than just not wanting certain ppl in your home, tho always found it weird (unless there was some racial undertones) for like a ten year old to be a ‘bad influence’ depending lol but i never would’ve been overly rowdy as a guest in someone else’s house, tho on the flip side it’d be sucky to be someone befriended specifically to piss your parents off
i mean some ppl prolly need to be told to stop certain behaviors but i’d rather hang out with an up tight goody two shoes than someone that’d risk even a chance of dealing with a cop/juvie officer or so lol
Yesterday, I was trying to remember whether Dorothy knows that Joyce and Joe are friends. I was pretty sure she doesn’t know. Now I am 100% certain she doesn’t know.
I appreciate that mouseover text because sometimes I check to see if two characters have even met before. I think it was Joe and Sal who met for the first time surprisingly recently.
Seriously though, I’m starting to worry for Dorothy. A lot of her social life seems to revolve around Joyce. She might need to seek some other people as companions beyond her. All she really has is Joyce right now and clearly her girl is growing up and being wooed by the local bad boy.
The root of the problem seems to be that as the ‘mom friend’ she gravitates to people who need help adjusting to college life which has been great for people like early joyce but also means she doesn’t have alot of experience with regular socializing.
I deeply regret not spending more time with people I liked but who didn’t *need* me in college. Dorothy! Don’t make my mistakes! Go to Yale! Make new stable friends!
I’m most worried about her too. The perfectionism and need to appear already mature and stable means her side of traumatic events has not really been expressed or dealt with. Her expectations in life are really high and the career goal priorities are clashing with her personal life needs of relationships and closeness.
She’s no exception to being a teenager who has to grow up and encounter the reality of the world (and more importantly, of herself and her limits) and she has a big choice to make with the application to the other university.
“She might need to seek some other people as companions beyond”
Shes got her acceptance letter to Yale. She’s got short timers disease.
Oh, man… and I was getting short. Four more weeks and out. Now I’m going to bite it on this rock. It ain’t fair, man!
She already got walky offloaded to Lucy. Shes tying up loose ends. She absolutely doesnt want some hanger on like Danny following after her. Looking to cut ties. Make a clean break. And leave.
While you don’t have to tell your friends everything, I think Dorothy has cause to be hurt about being kept in the dark regarding (a) Joyce’s atheism (especially as Joyce’s atheist friend!) and (b) Joyce’s odd friendship with Joe, which you may recall dates back to lots of texting last term when Joyce went home.
If I had a friend who was hurt about my own religious decisions I make in private and who I am friends with outside of them… I wouldn’t have that friend for much longer.
You don’t own people just because they’re your friends. They aren’t required to share every aspect of their life with you. It isn’t lying and hiding things to treat certain topics as private until you’re ready to share.
On the other hand, that goes both ways and this is Joyce who teleported to Dorothy in a bathroom to protest that she hadn’t been informed she’d broken up with Walky.
You’ve definitely got a fair point, but Joyce doesn’t have a moral high ground here.
If Joyce accepts that kind of possessiveness in her friends (the way Dorothy does) then that’s on her. I personally wouldn’t, and it’s weird to suggest that it’s standard to allow that.
At no point did I bring up moral high grounds, so argue with yourself on that I guess.
“it’s weird to suggest that it’s standard to allow that.”
To be clear, this was in reference to the original comment I responded to. Since that’s what my original comment was about before you responded about points I didn’t make.
Dorothy has not been a fantastically supportive atheist friend to Joyce’s exploration of atheism. I don’t think she’s equipped for it. Her religious experiences are very, VERY different from Joyce’s, and she really does not get what Joyce is going through. I (raised UU, pretty firmly agnostic by college, overall very positive feelings towards my church and my parents’ decision to raise us in it) was similarly clueless about how to support peers with religious trauma who were struggling with their faith or had rejected it entirely, when I was Dorothy’s age. It took many years and a lot of learning to listen before I could start to really understand the enormity of what it meant to find yourself renegotiating your entire belief system when restrictive dogma has been the underpinning of your whole life. (It’s still something that I can only understand intellectually, not emotionally.)
Atheism is *easy* for Dorothy in a way it’s not for Joyce. It does not surprise me that Joyce didn’t confide in Dorothy about it first. To Joyce, Dorothy’s comfortable relationship with her own beliefs is something that she *wishes* she had, something that makes Dorothy cooler, more worldly, representative of the kind of person Joyce wishes she could be, and feels that she’s still falling short of. That’s been one of the undercurrents of their friendship since pretty much the beginning! (See also their bathroom conversation way back when Joyce kissed Ethan and then freaked out about it.)
An atheist friend of mine said he was baffled by the idea of Christians assuming that atheists wanted to be “missionary” atheism. The idea that they had to be ambassadors for something that, as far as he was concerned, was just a fact. It was utterly irrelevant if anyone believed in it or not and he didn’t particularly care.
Which hilariously got him in a fight with a ex-fundamentalist atheist who HATED this view.
“Dorothy has not been a fantastically supportive atheist friend to Joyce’s exploration of atheism. ”
Citation needed.
The only time i recall dorothy pushing back on joyces atheism was wgen joyce had swung all the way over to militant atheism and was using it to trash, unsult, and put down Becky.
At which point, dorothy wasnt complaining about tbe atheism, but the beating of friends.
y’see dorothy, human beings- most creatures on earth, really- need to regularly ingest nutrients in order to live, and often do so at various set times throughout the day. now the exact human customs differ from culture to culture, but in the western world there is usually a light meal around noon or afternoon, which is called “lunch”. sometimes people eat their lunches together, to make it a social event. human beings love their little social events!
If there is one thing that commenters on this strip are known for, to me, it’s being utterly impenetrable to the idea, that the characters of the strip are not privy to the absolute totality of all knowledge that the readers have. After all, Joe Is Uncomplicatedly A Good Guy, Now! I know this! Therefore, every character in-universe, knows this as well as I do! The comic showed us, did Dorothy not read the comic?!
Also, Dorothy notably was an imperfect friend recently, which means we are now hyper-focused upon all of the ways she is sometimes unreasonable, and she will remain Villain-Coded to the broader readership until the next person in line behaves Worse Than We’ve Come To Expect For Them. She’s handling aspects of her frienship with Joyce poorly, so she’s a bad person now, and if you don’t think so, you’re problematic. Therefore, it is morally righteous to ceaselessly roast her.
However, given all that I said, it could just be that’s about the sense of humor of this community as a whole. It could be a lot less complicated than what I said.
Dorothy’s known Joe for half her life, sure, but can we say she knows Joe or just the macho sex machine facade? As far as I know currently, the only ones that know the existence of the real Joe are Amber, Joyce, and maybe Dina.
high school was half dorothy’s life? or i guess they knew each other/were neighbors but weren’t going to the same schools til high school lol. it’s nice that dorothy’s looking out for joyce i suppose, unless she always had a dislike of joe and only tolerated him when she was dating danny
yeah i supposed ‘middle school’ was called ‘jr high’ in some places. the place i went to had ‘high school’ for two grades and ‘senior high’ for the remaining two lol
The most recent one was when Joyce and Liz were in Joe’s room, playing video games and and dunking on people who believe in god, until Becky and Dorothy walked in on them
What’s really gonna grab Dorothy’s goat is that Joe, of all people, is making Joyce feel better with herself when she tried to help* her get used to taking birth control the other day.
*Not saying that what Dorothy was doing was helpful or not helpful, just that she perceived it to be beneficial for Joyce.
With no deep prior knowledge of Joe and Joyce’s friendship, Dorothy truly does have every reason to be deeply concerned, given Joe’s history. He’s the exact type of guy, historically, you do not leave alone with your traumatized female friends.
Or, at least, he reads that way. Obviously, Joe only seems rapey. But that’s the exact needle that genuinely disgusting men, are generally trying to thread with their vibe.
Also like. It’s consistent that Joe doesn’t pussy foot around too much about ‘oh but she’s vulnerable’. It’s not his problem if a partner regrets her decision, as long as the regret is post-coital. He’s not about second-guessing a consenting adult’s choices.
Until he started wanting to be more than a once off bad decision.
I mean, the same time you’re probably referring to not second-guessing a consenting adult (telling Danny that it sounds like Danny’s the one assuming what women want, and the “she regrets it now! because she asked you!” or whatever), he also includes ‘was she crying?’ as a time that would be inappropriate to accept consent, so I think it’s not quite that cut and dry.
But i clearly remember Sarahs sister getting naked in bed with joe and she says stop, and joe immediately stopped, said ok, got out of bed, and waited while she started having an existential crisis and sex shamed herself.
Calling Joe “rapey” is taking out a lot of shades of grey.
Joe, especially earlier in the comic, before his attempts to change, gave off all sorts of red flags. He didn’t interact with women except to hit on them. He talked to Sarah about “fixing” Joyce with his penis. He talked about alcohol helping with threesomes. We’ve seen Sarah need to yell at him to get him to back off.
He has certainly changed and as we’ve seen more of his inner conflict, we’ve seen that a lot of that is posturing and we’ve seen why. And, as you say, we saw him put that in to practice with Liz.
But the image that he intentionally portrayed is absolutely someone you shouldn’t trust with a vulnerable friend. He seems rapey. He isn’t, but he seems that way.
Joe yelled at his dad when ambers mom said they were in a relationship. Because joe knows his dad is a serial adulterer and serial liar. . He hates his dad for lying his way into womens pants. It feels like joe has always tried to be honest with what he wants. And he has always taken “no” at face value. He takes a woman’s word as valid. This was one of his first interaction we saw with him and danny where danny thought he knew what was best for a woman than the woman did. And joe said take her word as valid.. Joe doesnt lie or mislead or hide his intentions that i can think of. Asshole? Sure. But he clearly has some kind of code that rapists dont.
You seem to have misread what throwatron (and thejeff, and yumi) said and are arguing against something they did not say.
No one is disagreeing with you about what Joe’s actual behavior and intentions are. They’re just saying his behavior gave off a specific vibe that understandably made people believe he was a potential threat, even if he actually wasn’t.
From Dorothy’s perspective, he’s still the same as he ever was. She knows High School Joe, and College Joe’s public façade wasn’t all that different until very recently. She wasn’t there when Rachel tore into him about how the list was really affecting people, or when he was there for Joyce’s existential crisis. She sees surface-level horndog Joe.
Bet Dorothy’s gonna go full “I know what’s best for you Joyce and know you better than you know yourself” or however she’s been lately with Joyce and her “choices.”
Hopefully not though.
Justified distrust? Sure. Justified with Joyce? Nah.
Ok, reading the lyrics, I can imagine Dorothy getting really mad, while Joyce and Joe getting something like this:But she’s touching his chest now
He takes off her dress now.
Same here. Which is weird, because I definitely know Danny and Joe have been friends forever, and I definitely know Dorothy was Danny’s high school gf. I just don’t automatically fit those things together unless something in the strip reminds me.
Not saying Dorothy doesn’t have a reason to question Joes reason for being there but I wonder how much of her reaction is also due to the bad time shes been having lately and seeing Joe as s sort of lightning rod
That’s my story & I’m sticking to it (until Willis tells us otherwise!). If I’m right, it will be interesting that Dorothy may prove that she really knows Joyce well (& that Joyce really has feelings for Joe). Dorothy has never had an ounce of jealousy for Becky or anyone else Joyce clearly cares about less than her.
To be fair~~~~
To be fair, Dorothy hasn’t hung out with Joe much, and hasn’t seen his limited character growth. [Mainly due to her breakup with Danny at the outset.]
While I don’t think the Joyce/Dorothy ship is a thing, Joyce has been confiding in Joe for a long time, emotional labor that Dorothy probably thought was her territory.
Yeah, I think—and also hope, for Dorothy’s sake—this is mostly about her not realizing Joyce and Joe have been developing a rapport for some time now, and being blindsided by the idea that Joyce has another emotional confidante besides Dorothy or Becky.
I do think Dorothy’s been displaying some jealousy over Joyce recently, I just don’t think it’s remotely romantic or sexual in nature. Joyce is her best friend in college and she has a very specific idea of how their respective roles in that friendship function, and recent events have been threatening to challenge both of those things. That’s scary! Especially in the context of Dorothy thinking about leaving for Yale, which is gonna fundamentally alter that friendship, if not end it entirely.
Maybe we will soon discover how hard Dorothy can kick and punch someone, or how loud she can scream full of rage. For her point of view, this is absolute madness with hundreds of red flags and a sure bad end for her best friend. This will be intense to see. VERY intense!
Wait: why does Joyce invited Joe? Like, the idea isn’t ONLY Joe and Joyce have lunch?? Why invite Dorothy.
(I don’t know, I don’t have dating for a while).
It’s not supposed to be a date, it’s supposed to be a hangout just to spend more time together. People often hangout with crushes + friends at the same time.
Hey, HEY! Who’s going out to get a case of Boone’s farm while I melt some butter for the air popper? This is about to get good. Oh and someone order a buncha pizza because the backyard smells like a Greatful Dead concert.
I mean he’d say it to Dorothy because he likes playing to his old reputation, while forgetting almost no one knows or believes he’s changed. “Her pills. Swallow her pills, get it, cause she has trouble with that and it’s funny cause double entendres”, he’d say next, while shrinking down to two inches tall from Dorothy’s stare.
Aw, c’mon Dorothy, I had faith that you were gonna be an adult about this. Don’t prove me wrong!
Joe and Joyce’s understated glee at the idea of getting lunch together is absurdly charming. They may not have made any decisions about whether or not they’re gonna date, but they’re both just so PLEASED to be in the same vicinity.
I genuinely hope that if Dorothy’s hostile to that, it’s less about refusing to accept that Joe could have grown enough to develop a sincere romantic attachment to someone and it’s not just some kind of “get Joyce into bed” ploy, and more the kind of hostility Dorothy had for Jennifer after Jennifer helped Joyce get that crucial first medical intervention—a frustration that someone else, anyone else, can convince Joyce to do something she needs to do, or get those big friendly happy smiles out of Joyce, at a point when Dorothy is aware her own friendship with Joyce is becoming strained (and she doesn’t know WHY, dammit, after all, Dorothy is TRYING SO HARD and PUTTING THE WORK IN unlike these—these Joyce dilettantes! Who just swoop in! How dare they accomplish something with no effort, when Dorothy is struggling at it!).
In a way I feel like Dorothy kind of needs the roots of severance this semester to really follow through with her college intentions, vs. the “I can’t bear to leave” conflict she’ll end up in when being too firmly rooted in her social circle. I mean logistically IRL that’s probably like 8 years from now based on the existing timescale, but I see the arc with Dorothy being more negative/dark, kind of serving as a foil for Joyce who is more in a position of things looking up (in the assumption that the Joe relationship goes well, through having several problems/issues that she is at least cognizant of and/or has solutions for – glasses, birth control, autism, from having survived through the previous dramatic arc that she was very in the middle of.)
Long term, I’m thinking that the current dynamics could end up leading to a bit more Joyce/Amber interactions through Joe. I could see her being somewhat of a confidant down the road while we’re approaching a conflict between Joyce/Dorothy where Dorothy is going to be the surrogate for the parent figure in her life that Joyce is trying to rid herself of (first her actual parents, then God.)
Joe: i said Im sorry. Im trying to change. I can get you an apology donut. Or some healthier food-apology alternative.
Dorothy: what you did was wrong.
Joe: i know. Thats why i apologized. At least I acknowledge it. Joyce had a guy commit a dozen counts of convictable assault and battery against me, and not a peep.
Joyce: i what?
Joe: yeah, back when you were a fire and brimstone, all premarital hanky panky sends you to hell, old testament beat your children, fundamentalist, you had Mike punch me a bunch of times on our first date. He coulduv totally ended up in jail if adults were capable of inserting themselves into our naratives. But there is a police-are-useless trope field that extends at least 10 miles past campus.
Joyce: oh. Uhm… I’m sorry… And uhm…. apology donut?
Joe: im kinda hungry. how bout an apology bagel.
I guess i should be thankful that Dorothy probably isnt going to get Joe assaulted. But maybe shes a tough on crime president who supports capital punishment and filling prisons with nonviolent offenders. Watch your back Joe. Dont want your health to be a political statement.
I honestly do not blame Dorothy for the skepticism; the Joe she has known, and grew up with, is a predator, and a major creep, and a predator. It is going to take some effort, on Joe’s part, to demonstrate that he is not the same person she knew.
Joyce really has gotten quite good at making Dorothy angry recently. Though I’m sure Dorothy is unaware of how much Joe has been working to be better lately.
Dorothy and Joyce’s last several onscreen interactions have been pretty unpleasant/stressful; I feel like this might be the wrong time to spring Joe on her. Like, I think it should be nice if Joyce and Dorothy took some 1-1 time to resolve their fights… But I imagine the dynamics will be plenty fun for us to watch instead #dumbing indeed
Personally I feel like Dorothy is annoyed for multiple reasons here.
There is of course that she has not seen Joe’s character growth first hand, so she is right be suspicious and to feel protective, but also, Joyce has been frustrating and difficult to talk to in multiple conversations which hasn’t been resolved to any degree of satisfaction other than Joyce now being happy again so it’s like she was never even upset and she also used to beg Dorothy for more of her time, and now she’s inviting someone else into it.
Dorothy’s friendship with Joyce right now is not the place for this. And if I was Dorothy, I too, would not be in the best mood.
Joyce is giving up her religious indoctrination and has years of sexual repression bubbling up. There have been multiple characters say shes gonna snap and to do the entire football team or whatever.
New Joe might actually be a good fit for this. He isnt some 18 year old virgin fumbling to unhook a bra. He should know what the hell hes doing be now. He seems to actually dig who she is, and thinks shes good looking. When he first saw her on their first date, his eyebrows jumped off.his face. Joyce seems to have at leaat a tiny amount of respect for new joe, and she has definitely thirsted for him at least once, perhaps more.
If Joe can calibrate the socially acceptable amount of thirsting, they could have a great summer fling, but in the winter, and both feel.good about it.
I think Joe should probably try calibrating his thirst level to Becky’s. Probably the closest thirst level any character has thats considered acceptable to most. Becky is a lesbian horn dog, repeatedly says she doesnt see men because she has no interest in them. Joe could probably calibrate to that level, but not carry Beckys religious baggage, and wow that could be something
A crazy, off the charts sex positive, respectful, passionate, relationship.
I think he’s already a zombie by snu-snu. Death was too kind for his crimes against womankind. This is his divine punishment. Dominated mind, body, and soul by the Joycatrix. Make him bark like a dog, Joyce!
“use Liz as a surrogate – that him doing that with Joyce would “ruin” her.”
Yeah. That pissed me off just a tad. Wtf is up with sudden sex shaming? Jeebus. Your value isnt tied to your virginity or remaing chaste or any other unhealthy religious dogma. I get a person can be overwhelmed by society dumping all that on them and it can sneak up on ya sometimes. But it sure as shit wasnt Joes fault. If joe took on her idea that having mutually consensual sex ruins you, then thats horseshit.
Not sure who you’re pissed at there. Liz has much of the same religious guilt with sex that Joyce and Becky have. She wasn’t dumping any of that on Joe, it was aimed entirely at herself, drawn from her own upbringing.
Sure, it’s horseshit and Joe definitely doesn’t think that ruins her, or anyone. But Joe did recognize that someone like Liz (or like Joyce) could go ahead with sex intentionally and still be traumatized by it. And he doesn’t want to be part of that. Especially for Joyce.
“Joe did recognize that someone like Liz (or like Joyce) could go ahead with sex intentionally and still be traumatized by it.”
Ok, first off, liz was traumatized by her parents telling her virgin=good and sex=hell, not by joe.
And second of all, Joe didnt need liz’s meltdown to tell him joyce has a history of violent cult indictrination around sex and that he needs to be careful with her. Joyce showed joe what her childhood looked like on their first date.
joyce had mike repeatedly violently beat Joe for impure thoughts about sex, because Joyces parents repeatedly beat her for impure thoughts about sex.
Joyce’s parents who even now refuse to acknowledge their adult transgender daughter, who went from cult to cult, who raised a self righteous holier than though asshole son who embezzles money from charity, who raised money to bail their christian taliban kidnapping foot soldier out of jail, who stood with righteous indignation when their taliban footsoldier ended up dead trying to kidnap again, those two fucking assholes beat the ever loving shit out of Joyce for impure thoughts about sex and every other sin they didnt like. Mom and Dad both. Guaranteed.
During their first date, while mike was beating Joe for impure thoughts, Joyce was blaming joe for the beatings, saying he deserved them. At the end of it, joyce walked away with righteous indignation that joe deserved all the beatings he got. A few days later, joe mentioned his bruises and possibly cracked ribs, and joyce blamed joe. Thats how joyces parents raised joyce. We catch glimpses of this righteous indignation defending violence from Joyce’s mom several times. Joyce says they hit her with a spoon, and she DEFENDS her parents use of violence. But i guarantee it wasnt just a spoon.
joyces parents violently policed joyces impure thoughts for 18 years and joyce simply mimicked what she was taught when she did the same to joe on her first date.
Joyce has some seriously violent traumatic memories she is suppressing. And joe fucking knows this already.
Suppressing violent memories is the common theme readers can count on throughout most of dumbing of age.
i understand her skepticism.
the is the “dude, babes right? hot babes. lots of hot babes, and sex, dude. like, so much sex, like… at least 50 sex…. each night!” guy.
i’d be skeptical too if buff quagmire suddenly started hinting at a relationship with someone im worried about.
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
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 ⋅ 2d
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
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 21h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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mayhaps some hard feelings we didn’t know about?
Old Joe: haha… hard.
New Joe: hey now
Dorothy has known Joe for a while and he’s great at fostering bad feelings.
WHY.
https://bleedingfool.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IM782.jpg
You’ll have to click on it. Sorry.
“Why?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR-qdjtyYyc
Yeah I can’t help but think of this strip.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/presidential/
He does apologise with an actual sorry after (you sent me down a short archive dive) and part of the reason for the level of annoyance was that she was worried her presidential dreams were slipping away as her grades went downhill… I think most of the time they get on? Doesn’t mean Dotty will approve of him for Joyce though, or believe he’s really changed his attitude towards commitment…
Yeah I get the impression that Dorothy tolerates Joe as her ex’s best friend and even gets along with him fine at times, but would NOT want him dating her best friend. Especially given that she probably still sees him as the guy he was pre-recent-character-arc.
I can easily see Joe having a heart to heart with Dorothy, trying to get her on-side and suddenly realizing “Oh. I think I owe my dad an apology.”
Why would he owe his dad an apology? What about a conversation with Dorothy would make him think that?
I think the point is that his dad tried to make Joe believe that he (Richard) had changed (due to his actual love for Stacy, rather than only lust), and Joe did not believe this.
So Joe would be in the analogous situation of trying to make Dorothy believe that he (Joe) had changed (due to his actual love for Joyce, rather than only lust), and Dorothy is the one disbelieving.
So Joe would be apologizing to his dad for not believing that there was actual love, and that actual love could inspire a change in horndog behavior.
/possibly overexplaining.
Why, Galasso’s daughter, Conquest, barely shows up on his radar.
I guess. It would depend on how Joe thinks about his changes, compared to how Richard explained himself.
Given that my recollection is that Richard’s defense was “Sex is great now, I don’t even feel like cheating” and that Joe has gone through a lot more soul-searching, I don’t think he’s got any apologies to make.
But we”ve never seen his dad actually change anything.
We at least saw Joe see his mistake with his list and try to apologize.
See first panel
New Joe: Hey now
Me: You’re a rockstar, get the show on, get paid. All that glitters is a gooooold, only shooting stars break the mooooooould…
Because fuck you, that’s why
Maybe more, “Because fuck me, that’s why”?
“Because maybe I’m thinking about saying yes to him sorta kinda asking me out for actual relationship stuff that might also include me being fucked silly.”
Dorothy: …. WHY.
Joyce: *gesturing to Joe’s sexy man-body* Because, to quote Sarah, his DNA has heretofore undiscovered nucleobases which help spell out “fuck me”, Dorothy.
Dina: It’s true, the nucleobases do spell this. Though they are specifically “Joyce, please fuck me” nucleobases. I have tested this.
Becky: And I helped!
I gathered samples while he was sleepin’! It’s fine because I’m a lesbian.
This little fan-fic just made my day.
I think it’s more of a “Fuck HIM, that’s why”
Just gonna fuck in every direction, just to be safe.
That would prove Jennifer’s theory correct.
In every possible direction would include “fuck you”, not just “fuck me”.
Also, “fuck them”.
Five rounds, rapid?
Yeah, things aren’t going as Dorothy thinks they should go. Now we must all stop what we’re doing and make things go Dorothy’s way.
But now Becky has a chance to win back the best friend title by being ProJoe.
Yes, exactly. Because of fuck.
Somebody wants to fuck somebody.
Meh.
Anyone else getting vibes like when Aunt May unknowingly invited both Spider-Man and the Green Goblin for Thanksgiving in the 2002 Spider-Man?
Man, that’s the best scene in that entire movie. I occasionally think of it out of nowhere and just laugh and laugh.
Perfect!
Dorothy’s known Joe long enough to know what questions to ask.
She may, however, have missed some critical updates.
Very possibly because Joyce purposely kept it from her to make a surprise
I think that’s more about updates in Joe’s attitudes. Which he’s kind of been keeping to himself to preserve his old image.
He did a fairly public donut apology tour.
Dorothy doesnt eat donuts though.
Uh, remind me again of the specific beef Dorothy has with Joe?
Joe was generally a misogynistic asshole for most of the time Dorothy knew him.
He wasn’t a misogynistic asshole. He was a horny teenager. He wasn’t tactful and thought with his dick, but he was hardly mistreating anyone.
It is misogynistic to view women primarily as source of sex and to rate their fuckability on a scale.
It is misogynistic to view Joyce’s virginity as a seal he’s eager to pop (I forget the exact words he used, but it was clear what his interest was and why).
He’s experienced some character growth, but “he was a horny teenager” is just shy of “boys will be boys” and it’s not an excuse nor does it invalidate the pretty plain evidence of misogyny.
And, honestly, I think you know that.
He literally represented women with just numbers, valuing them based on how attractive and how fuckable they were. That’s standard dehumanizing misogyny.
How he treated women was definitely not fine and respectful. Yes he always ensured he had consent, but that is the *bare minimum* someone should do. There are a lot of levels of behavior between “literally a rapist” and “a good guy who respects women” and not being the former doesn’t automatically make someone the latter.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Joe as a character and am totally shipping this now (I’m a sucker for morally grey characters who develop a conscience), but he was absolutely a misogynistic ass who objectified women before he finally realized how awful his behavior was and how it was making women feel. We can acknowledge he is learning to be a good guy now without dismissing the fact that he wasn’t before. People can learn and change.
Also, we have to remember that Joe’s Character Development has been churning away for literal YEARS in our world, but it hasn’t even been six months for Dorothy.
It’s also amazing to me how many readers choose to ignore that character development in favor of “No, he was always just fine.”
Makes a lot more sense that Dorothy wouldn’t have recognized his development, especially since they rarely hang out and he’s often deliberately played up his old attitudes publicly.
Absolutely. And yeah I think a lot of people (I see it often in the comments section here for whatever reason) have trouble with the concept that people can change, that past bad acts do not make them Forever a Bad Person (and that most people are not 100% good or 100% bad, but make a combo of good and bad choices throughout their lives).
I suspect part of the painting Joe as having always been a totally good guy is just people forgetting stuff, part might unfortunately be some people who do not get why how his previous behavior was before was not okay, but part is also likely people who have trouble with the whole “people can change and learn” thing needing him to have been totally good in the past to feel okay about liking him now.
He is still a horny teenage boy.
Pretty sure the problem is that Joe loves women too much, rather than hates them, but still had zero role-model for how to treat them.
Oh please, it’s 2022, can we acknowledge that “I want to fuck them” and “I respect them as fully autonomous human beings” are not and have never meant the same thing?
Like, every right-wing politician on the planet seems to have an infinite stream of transgender pornography on their phone.
You do not need to see someone as equivalently human to you, to sexually objectify them. Full stop.
And both statements can be true at the same time, they’re not mutually exclusive.
I don’t think his love of women was about *them* but about himself. It’s not a matter of love of hate, but of empathy and lackthereof. He was focused on what they could give him and how it made him feel. He wasn’t thinking about how *they* felt at all.
His change wasn’t so much the result of getting better role models or being taught how to treat people. It was him finally thinking about how his actions were making women feel. He leveled up his empathy skill.
Typo, should read “not about love OR hate” not “love OF hate”
I will stick my neck out and suggest that the women Joe has associated with in the past have treated him exactly the way you describe him treating them. He, also, was a convenience, nothing more.
The problem arises when the parties’ expectations for a relationship are different. And I think that, so far, Joe is dealing with it well.
Actually, no, Joe’s expectations for this relationship are different.
Would that include the women that, to paraphrase Rachel, he walked up to out of the blue to tell how much he wanted to fuck them?
I feel like there are nuances, where you’re right, he was being creepy, but also, mark is right, because a lot of women/Malaya treated him the same way that he treated women. He’s probably going to be more emotionally healthy now that that sort of behavior isn’t normal to him!
Well yeah, if you come off like that kind of creep to all the women, the women who respond well to it are going to be along the same lines.
Some of them, yes. Joe’s technique is awful but it has worked well for him because it has detected potential partners who wanted what he wanted. There are lots of women who think he’s a creep, but he only needs to find a few who are looking for the same thing, and rejection hasn’t bothered him. There is no posse of deceived women shouting “I thought we had something special!” because Joe has made it plain that there was nothing special to be had.
Until now.
That Joe’s technique has worked well for him doesn’t mean it’s good.
And I pointed out cases where the women he interacted with were hurt by it. That those were cases where his techniques didn’t work, don’t change that.
His whole approach was aimed at making sure no one got hurt, because, as you describe it “there was nothing special to be had”. But that wasn’t true. He was wrong. He was still hurting women. That was the climax of his whole first season arc – after the donuts, when Joyce told him about Ryan.
“Joe’s technique is awful but it has worked well for him because it has detected potential partners who wanted what he wanted.”
Well,the list was bad. And some of his behavior was bad. I think he’s trying to fix that.
But then there is a theme in doa that that sex has to be attached to love? Or something? Dorothy started a fling with walky, but then told him she loved him? When walky didnt reciprocate love, dorothy broke up with him?
Ethan was having sex with a bunch of people after mike asked him to make out. But while ethan was doing that, it had the backdrop that he secretly longed for Danny, but that was forbidden live because it would crush amber? And then mike died and ethan went goth-tragic.
Roz taped having sex with joe, no strings attached, but it was a political hit job against her sister?
Sex with vibrators is fine. Encouraged even. But doa brings along some undercurrente of the “you need to be in love to have sex” indoctrination. Liz was eagerly going to have sex with Joe, a perfectly healthy moment, then stops and say “i almost ruined myself”?
Joe could have ditched the part that treated women disresoectfully, and turned into the mal version of Roz, someone who is sex positive, hands out confoms, encourages safe sex, talks about vigorous consent, and then teaches kids new and interesting positions.
His night with Liz could have been exactly that sex positive thing, but it turned into a sex ruins you lesson?
And now he’s maybe falling hard for joyce?
Dunno. Just feels like there is a “you gotta be in love before you have sex” undertow here.
^What thejeff said here, exactly. His intentions to not hurt anyone and only attract people who were fine with what he wanted/expected and how he behaved doesn’t change the fact that he did manage to hurt people.
To use an analogy: if you’re fishing for tuna and your net is fine for catching tuna but also kills dolphins, it doesn’t make it okay that the dolphins got caught and hurt in the process just because you were trying to aim for the tuna, or just because you threw the dolphins back. They still got hurt in the process.
Ok that may be kind of a wacky analogy, sorry, but basically Joe finally realized that he is responsible for the discomfort caused to women via his methods, even if he didn’t intend it. Now we have new and improved Dolphin Safe Joe ©
I definitely am not getting any kind of “you must be in love to have sex” message or some sort of message of shame or judgement directed at the idea of casual sex from this at all? Respectfully I think this might be reflexive defensiveness or reading way too much into things that weren’t meant that way.
It was very clear the entire time that the issue with Joe’s previous behavior was not that he had casual sex, it was how he treated women who did not want to be hit on or objectified.
Roz’ attitude towards casual sex is never portrayed as a negative, in fact many arguments are made by other characters that she is well within her rights to do that as a consenting adult with another consenting adult. I’m not sure why you’re ignoring their voices and assuming only the characters who didn’t approve are the voice of the author?
You’re completely misremembering the Walky and Dorothy storyline. She intended it to be a fling but they both ended up feeling something more, and *that* was the issue, because Dorothy specifically did not want or have time for something more. It became a problem after it stopped being a casual thing. Which seems to be saying the opposite of “casual sex is bad for everyone, you must be in love first.”
The Ethan/Mike thing was super complicated involving way too many themes and arcs to summarize but definitely seems like a stretch to boil it down to “this is to tell us casual sex is bad.”
As for Liz and Joe: Willis has said many times this comic is semi-autobiographical. About being raised in a conservative Christian environment and how being at college/out in the world can change one’s perspective after that kind of upbringing. So OF COURSE the comic would include characters wrestling with the idea that casual sex is bad. It doesn’t mean the author is trying to say that as a universal rule for everyone. The Liz/Joe thing was a character trying to be someone she wasn’t, as a way of rebelling against a belief system she had lost faith in. The only message I got from that was: don’t pretend you’re someone you’re not, and just because you’re changing, doesn’t mean you must immediately become the total opposite of what you were.
The fact that Joe is falling for Joyce also isn’t a “casual sex is bad” message. It’s a “people change a lot in college and what they want changes over time” message. It’s the story of one character. It doesn’t mean that’s the author’s commentary on how every single person and relationship dynamic should be ever.
Another one of the main characters besides Dorothy, Sarah, is only interested in casual stuff. This is never objectively portrayed as bad. She only calls off her attempts to hook up with Jacob because she realizes he doesn’t want that, and because it’s clear Joyce likes him. The messages there are: don’t pursue someone who doesn’t want the same things as you, and be sensitive to your friends’ feelings. (With a background of also: don’t manipulate your friends and the boys they like to get revenge on someone you don’t like).
And plenty of other Misc characters are showed happily having casual hookups without it being deemed objectively wrong (including several slipshines). It not being a huge focus doesn’t mean the author thinks it’s objectively wrong. Just like if an artist draws lots of cats and only a few dogs, it doesn’t necessarily mean they hate dogs and think everyone else should too. It may just mean they‘re personally more interested in drawing cats.
“The fact that Joe is falling for Joyce also isn’t a “casual sex is bad” message”
I get every individual decision in the comic is plausible. Its just that if you look at the strip overall, certain things dont show up often.
Like, sure its plausible that the hero in todays crime-procedural series is white and male. But if every fucking crime procedural is white and male, you start to notice the lack of minorities and women.
I get every individual character choice around sex and relationships in DoA is plausible. I just see a hole forming. DoA’s focus seems to be going after and tearing down the religious nonsense around sex, specifically gay=hell and “no premarital hanky panky”. Which is great. But not all the ways sex is turned into a guilt trip.
Its fine i guess. Just thought it was going after more than just religious nonsense around sex. I will try to adjust expectations.
I mean, the comic is not over yet, and while there are many storylines, it is primarily focused on the growth and development of Joyce as the main character, whose arc is currently focused on slowly unpacking and moving away from her heavily religious upbringing. Again as I said above, the fact that casual sex hasn’t been a massive unending focus of the comic so far doesn’t mean the comic is trying to send the message that it’s always bad. Like my above analogy: if you have a comic about animals where most of the characters are cats it doesn’t mean the author *hates* dogs. They may just be writing/drawing what they know/what they’re interested in/what stories they want to tell.
Comparing this to the issue of white men dominating screen over marginalized actors/characters time seems like a stretch. People who have casual sex are not a socioeconomically disenfranchised/marginalized group and differing personal opinions on private intimacy is a very different sort of dynamic than the experiences of people living in a society in which they are heavily, publicly, and consistently harmed and marginalized.
This is one comic, by one person, expressing a story informed by some personal experiences and some fictionalized ones. It’s probably not gonna contain an in-depth look at every single possible style of intimacy ever. And as I said above, it already has done commentary on the idea that consenting adults shouldn’t be judged for having casual sex. So I think it’s unfair and inaccurate to argue that it’s sending the opposite message.
If you’re now arguing that you just want to see more stories about characters who engage in casual relationships, well that’s just personal preference and we all have personal preferences which may or may not ever play out in the story. Not every reader is gonna have their personal story interest be a topic of focus. There are lots of things I’d like to see more of in the media I enjoy. If there are stories not being told that you’d like to see told, you could try creating the sorts of stories and/or art you’d like to see more of! That’s what I do when I want more of a particular kind of content. Stories and art on specific subjects are always best when coming from those who have interest and/or experience in that subject.
Well yes some certainly did. But not all the women Joe objectified viewed him that way. This isn’t just about women who agreed to sleep with him. It’s about all the times he hit on women or ranked them on a list that got passed around, and so-on whether they were comfortable with it or not.
Joe’s first date with Joyce loooong ago before they became friends involved him objectifying her and objectifying other women while on a date with her. Her expectations for how that date (and potential relationship) would go were definitely very different than his. And he definitely did not handle it well at all at the time.
It’s pretty clear he has changed a lot since then though. His past behavior being bad doesn’t mean he can’t be a better person now, and being a better person now doesn’t mean his past behavior wasn’t bad.
I think she’s unaware that he’s been making an effort to change and is operating on his reputation as a horny asshole
Ah, yes, thanks for the refresh.
He WAS for like a day.
Comic time dilation. Joe was at it for *months*.
I believe this is just the natural consequence of knowing him as a horny teenager
She knows him very well from back when he was a total horndog jerk, for most of their lives.
This is the guy who took bets on when Dorothy would break up with Danny (his own bff). And when she did, he immediately added her to the “Do” list, which was a map to where she lived. He made obnoxious come-on jokes all semester in Gender Studies. It’s less that she has a specific beef, and more that she doesn’t know him as boyfriend material.
Plus I doubt they’re friends, not really. They do not hangout. Much like Joyce and Dina they’re more like two people who share a relationship with someone else which causes them to be near each other.
“This is the guy who took bets on when Dorothy would break up with Danny (his own bff).”
This wasnt jerkish. He was trying to warn his best friend he’s about to walk into a death trap. That his girlfriend of 3 years was gonna put him on the choppong block. And danny was totally oblivious to it . Walked right into it.
I can imagine all sorts of conversations Joe tried to clue Danny into over the years, and they all go right over Dannys head.
Literally the last time they interacted on-panel together, Joe was bragging about his ‘sexual notoriety’. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/notinterested/
Because the battle for Joyce’s soul just gained a new contender!
Haha, mom does not approve
Dorothy doesn’t know about Joe’s recent character development?!?
Yeah, I don’t think she’s really had a serious conversation with him in ages.
Assuming she ever has.
You mean the character development which he has consistently backslid on as recently as… *checks notes* Yesterday afternoon?
Nah, the character development is real. I’m not even sure what you’re thinking of as backsliding. Yesterday afternoon would have been the life drawing class, where he was a bit awkward, but mostly not backsliding.
Now, he’s definitely put some effort into to maintaining his old reputation, but we really haven’t seen him hitting on random strange women or updating his list in a long time.
Didn’t say the character development wasn’t real, and the art class was yesterday evening, not afternoon.
So what was in the afternoon then?
That was just what I could think of him doing yesterday.
dorothy hates this lmao
Can you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am…
Would you like to feel you’re acceptable?
Respectable? Oh, presentable, a vegetable.
*saxophone solo follows*
Dumbing of Age Book 13: Ẃ̧̲̣͔̹̐́H̢̻̪͖͙̬ͫ͒̽̌ͯͫY̳͎̌̓̎ͩ̇͑͘
̧̧̟̥̞̼̲̇̓ͩ̑ͤ̎͞
Wow, how did you get your text to look like that? It is crazy!
S̵͍͎̐͒̈́h̸̢͔̻̔̓͘a̸͎͚̞̾͋̓d̴͇͎͖́̒͐o̵̫͓̽̿͛ẃ̸͙͔͎͘͝c̴͚͚͓̓̿͑e̸̢͖͙̒̾̈́l̵̡̞̻̈́̽̓l̴̢̙̓͘̚͜ c̴̦̞͙̓̐̽r̸̠̟̞͑̈́͝e̵̢̙͔̽͒a̴͚̺̽͆͘t̴͙̦͚͌͐͋e̵͕̪̝͛͒̓s̸̘͔͆͌̚ p̴̪͔͙̒͒o̸͇͕͔̐͑͘s̵̢͓͕̔͘ẗ̸͍̫̟́͐̓s̸͔͎̙͑̿͠ u̵͕͕̻͒̽̔s̴̡̼̐͑͜͝í̵̺͓̺̒͘n̸̡̠̫͛͐͠g̸͚͙̪͆́͛ D̴͎̟̓͐͜͝a̵̞͉̼̐̐͊r̵̪̟̘̈́͋͑k̴͔͉̿͐͝ M̵̡͑̈́̚͜͜a̵͖̦̼̔̐̕g̵̝͉̘̈́̀̒i̴̻̠̫̓͒̚c̵̙̠̻̒͒̒
But, seriously, though, CONGRATS! You are one of today’s 10,000 who learned something that “everyone already knew”! Huzzah!
https://fsymbols.com/generators/smallcaps/
This site allows to type in special fonts like this
ᵀʰⁱˢ ˢⁱᵗᵉ ᵃˡˡᵒʷˢ ᵗᵒ ᵗʸᵖᵉ ⁱⁿ ˢᵖᵉᶜⁱᵃˡ ᶠᵒⁿᵗˢ ˡⁱᵏᵉ ᵗʰⁱˢ or 𝓁𝒾𝓀ℯ 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 and many others!
And here is Randall Munroe, to explain the ten-thousand comment!
People need to consume food to life, and our society generally structures this into the concept of “meals,” such as lunch. Geez, Dorothy, you’d think you’d know this.
*live
I dunno, I kinda like “to life” as a verb. Then again, I’m easily amused some days. (Okay, most days.)
Oh hey we were going for the same gag haha.
Jealousy does not look good on you Dorothy
I dont think it’s jealousy so much as it is suspicion of the motives of the person she knows as a misogynistic asshole
It’s *obviously* Joyce setting up Joe & Dorothy for a “meet-cute” lunch! *that’s* the secret Amber told her about Joe. The whole “Joe <3 Joyce" was just a red herring!
I mean, let’s be real. Joe’s waaay less misogynistic then people give him credit for.
He’s never treated anyone lesser, he’s 100% consent driven, even forgoing sex if there’s a doubt about it, *and* he’s never lied to anyone about their banging being anything but a FWB situation. His “Bang List” was ALSO private, and was outed against his will.
He’s admitted his thought process is wacked because his father is a cheating asshole, but HE is not.
Dotty’s doing the thing again.
The act of making a do list, that you give to other people willingly, is scummy in it of itself. Like Joyce said, it could put a lot of the girls there in danger. He’s not a bad dude, but he has done bad things. And yeah he sort of treated woman as lesser, since he just viewed them as people to have sex with at first. That’s why Joyce was happy with being rated a zero, because that meant she was judged based on something that wasn’t her looks.
Yeah, good points. Joe’s never been a woman-hater; just the opposite. He’s been more the lusty Himbo who was just (very) sexually active. Where his biggest fault was, that even though he thought it was private, he rated the women he slept with and gave them rankings.
He actively shared the link to his list out to anyone who wanted it. And people who didn’t. It had an rss feed. He addressed Rachel as 11, the rating he gave her. He constantly talked about his list.
I love Joe but like, let’s not white wash him. Not being a rapist or actively hating women doesn’t automatically make you not misogynist
What thing is she doing? Considering Dorothy’s known him for years and he’s been an obnoxious sex-crazed perv for at least some of that time, she has every reason to be a bit suspicious of his motives right now. She doesn’t know anything about the Joe/Joyce development behind the scenes.
You do know that Joe’s had a Character Arc right? That it involved critiquing all that behavior and stopping most of it?
Canonically, it was a problem and that’s his character growth.
Much of the whole reason he treated women like sex objects was that, thanks to his dad’s influence, he thought he was incapable of having a relationship without cheating and hurting them. His approach kept them at an emotional distance and let him have sex without that risk. It was talking to Joyce, after his apology donuts, that let him see that even that approach was still hurting people.
He’s been working on changing, with some ups and downs, ever since.
Look, Dotty’s face at the last panel is great. Never thought annoyed or angry Dorothy could be so good to watch. Great job, Willis.
Joyces and Joes eating together, mass hysteria
Everything was fine until dickless here turned off the religious dogma containment system
Is this true?
Yes, this man has no dick
The Joyce/Dotty shipper gonna have a loooot to say about that reaction
Similar background-free intermittent “winking out” panels.
“Joyce is MINE.”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/seething/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/disappear/
Well, food can often be seen as a source of fuel for the human body. Your saliva breaks down the compounds into usable ingredients before sending it down to the digestive tract that completely begins breaking down the useful aspects into energy your body can use. Due to the nature of our size and the strength of our minds, humans expend a lot of energy, often times requiring us to eat several times a day to keep up a healthy amount of energy. Now, humans are often known to be a social mammal, and during such periods as eating we often tend to seek out the company of others. This provides two advantages. For one there is safety in numbers and it is easier to be on the alert from predators in a group, or even fight them off if there’s enough of you. And two, forming stronger bonds within the pack will have benefits for the person in the social hierarchy. It also helps increase the human’s chances for finding a mate. In this instance, Dorothy, Joe is attempting to fulfill the the social role of eating within a group, perhaps because he is worried that there is a beast on the prowl, but more likely because he would like to make Joyce his mate, and hopes to form a mating display through close interactions.
It’s a complicated subject but I like to think I’ve got the gist of it.
Joe’s height would provide a boon in spotting predators during feeding time which often leaves prey species vulnerable. I also imagine predators would be more reluctant to approach with the presence of a powerful male in the group. It’s a wise pack strategy to have him along during their graze.
Good observation. It is also worth noting that it actually assists in forming stronger bonds within the pack to allow them to feel safe to let their guard down. Often times coupling in the human species can be a result of both parties feeling “safe” with one another. I’ve studied the Specimen, designated Joe, and I feel as if he was somewhat ostracized from the pack due to his ill social and mating behavior. Perhaps Joe can find his place integrating back into the pack through forming bonds with the more popular “Joyce”.
Ah, getting in touch with your inner Dina I see. I love it! 🥰
Especially given we’re not gonna see her at all during this storyline.
Joe, the gang’s meerkat.
Because he’s…hungry?
I’m loving Joyce and Joe hanging out lol
Me too! He popped on over to hang out with her
Did you notice – Dorothy is not asking “why?” with an question mark she is saying “why.” with a period. That means its not a question – (its a warning?)
When chimps grin, it’s a threat display.
Sometimes it’s the same for humans.
Yeah, the subtext is clearly “Joe, if you’re running game here, I am going to insert you into my own real-life PTSD flashback, with double the cell phone action…”
Well. Hopefully the next thing isn’t Dorothy trying to police Joyce’s friendships/relationships. There are limits to the power even the mommest friend should try to exert.
well like actual mom limitting friendships that’d prolly make ppl double down. other than risking pregnancies/drugs with other ‘troubled teens’, can’t rly control it within class/school rather than just not wanting certain ppl in your home, tho always found it weird (unless there was some racial undertones) for like a ten year old to be a ‘bad influence’ depending lol but i never would’ve been overly rowdy as a guest in someone else’s house, tho on the flip side it’d be sucky to be someone befriended specifically to piss your parents off
I was always the “good influence” kid, which drove friends away. It sucked.
i mean some ppl prolly need to be told to stop certain behaviors but i’d rather hang out with an up tight goody two shoes than someone that’d risk even a chance of dealing with a cop/juvie officer or so lol
I feel like both Joe and Joyce are kinda milking this.
I don’t know that it’s prolonged enough for them to be milking it yet, but they certainly seem to be enjoying it!
Protective mom senses tingling…
Yesterday, I was trying to remember whether Dorothy knows that Joyce and Joe are friends. I was pretty sure she doesn’t know. Now I am 100% certain she doesn’t know.
because he hongry, Dotty
Look at the size o’ that lad. He needs food to power that very large body.
An absolute unit needs an absolute meal, innit
I appreciate that mouseover text because sometimes I check to see if two characters have even met before. I think it was Joe and Sal who met for the first time surprisingly recently.
I think the shock has thrown her back into toddler “Why?” mode.
Dorothy has black speech bubbles now?! TURN UNDEAD!
Joyce has Zombie Joyce Face, Dorothy has Black Speech Bubbles.
“Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.”
No matter wh-what happens, Dorothy, I want you to know that you’ve never done wrong by me.
Jealousy, turning saints into the sea….
Great.
Is “turning saints into the sea” a proverb, or something like that? I just read it in a song, and I didn’t get the term.
Man my mind just immediately went to Mr. Brightside and I feel like it’s not the best time for it.
I meeeeeaaaannn
Dorothy kind of is swimming through suck lullabies right now tho
Seriously though, I’m starting to worry for Dorothy. A lot of her social life seems to revolve around Joyce. She might need to seek some other people as companions beyond her. All she really has is Joyce right now and clearly her girl is growing up and being wooed by the local bad boy.
The root of the problem seems to be that as the ‘mom friend’ she gravitates to people who need help adjusting to college life which has been great for people like early joyce but also means she doesn’t have alot of experience with regular socializing.
I deeply regret not spending more time with people I liked but who didn’t *need* me in college. Dorothy! Don’t make my mistakes! Go to Yale! Make new stable friends!
I’m most worried about her too. The perfectionism and need to appear already mature and stable means her side of traumatic events has not really been expressed or dealt with. Her expectations in life are really high and the career goal priorities are clashing with her personal life needs of relationships and closeness.
She’s no exception to being a teenager who has to grow up and encounter the reality of the world (and more importantly, of herself and her limits) and she has a big choice to make with the application to the other university.
“She might need to seek some other people as companions beyond”
Shes got her acceptance letter to Yale. She’s got short timers disease.
Oh, man… and I was getting short. Four more weeks and out. Now I’m going to bite it on this rock. It ain’t fair, man!
She already got walky offloaded to Lucy. Shes tying up loose ends. She absolutely doesnt want some hanger on like Danny following after her. Looking to cut ties. Make a clean break. And leave.
Course nothing is clean in doa, so…
See, I know logically that Dorothy is viewing Joe as a horny asshole and also irritation with being undervalued
That being said, I would love Dorothy to also be jealous in a romantic sense cause that would be fun
I mean, Joe had little trouble getting constantly laid, for a reason. He’s sort of a casually-jacked Adonis.
Lifehack: all else being equal, signalling willingness to have sex increases likelihood of having sex
There’s a lot hiding behind that “all else being equal” though.
The Dorothy is suspicious…
Did she vent?
To be honest: she really needs to vent a bit…
LOL XD vent is an Among Us reference (’cause I’m an alien parasite, get it?), but hey that works too!
No, and explosive breach of the containment vessel is imminent. SCRAM!
While you don’t have to tell your friends everything, I think Dorothy has cause to be hurt about being kept in the dark regarding (a) Joyce’s atheism (especially as Joyce’s atheist friend!) and (b) Joyce’s odd friendship with Joe, which you may recall dates back to lots of texting last term when Joyce went home.
If I had a friend who was hurt about my own religious decisions I make in private and who I am friends with outside of them… I wouldn’t have that friend for much longer.
You don’t own people just because they’re your friends. They aren’t required to share every aspect of their life with you. It isn’t lying and hiding things to treat certain topics as private until you’re ready to share.
On the other hand, that goes both ways and this is Joyce who teleported to Dorothy in a bathroom to protest that she hadn’t been informed she’d broken up with Walky.
You’ve definitely got a fair point, but Joyce doesn’t have a moral high ground here.
Who cares? It’s not like she was claiming one.
“But she did it first” isn’t a good defense.
If Joyce accepts that kind of possessiveness in her friends (the way Dorothy does) then that’s on her. I personally wouldn’t, and it’s weird to suggest that it’s standard to allow that.
At no point did I bring up moral high grounds, so argue with yourself on that I guess.
“it’s weird to suggest that it’s standard to allow that.”
To be clear, this was in reference to the original comment I responded to. Since that’s what my original comment was about before you responded about points I didn’t make.
Dorothy has not been a fantastically supportive atheist friend to Joyce’s exploration of atheism. I don’t think she’s equipped for it. Her religious experiences are very, VERY different from Joyce’s, and she really does not get what Joyce is going through. I (raised UU, pretty firmly agnostic by college, overall very positive feelings towards my church and my parents’ decision to raise us in it) was similarly clueless about how to support peers with religious trauma who were struggling with their faith or had rejected it entirely, when I was Dorothy’s age. It took many years and a lot of learning to listen before I could start to really understand the enormity of what it meant to find yourself renegotiating your entire belief system when restrictive dogma has been the underpinning of your whole life. (It’s still something that I can only understand intellectually, not emotionally.)
Atheism is *easy* for Dorothy in a way it’s not for Joyce. It does not surprise me that Joyce didn’t confide in Dorothy about it first. To Joyce, Dorothy’s comfortable relationship with her own beliefs is something that she *wishes* she had, something that makes Dorothy cooler, more worldly, representative of the kind of person Joyce wishes she could be, and feels that she’s still falling short of. That’s been one of the undercurrents of their friendship since pretty much the beginning! (See also their bathroom conversation way back when Joyce kissed Ethan and then freaked out about it.)
An atheist friend of mine said he was baffled by the idea of Christians assuming that atheists wanted to be “missionary” atheism. The idea that they had to be ambassadors for something that, as far as he was concerned, was just a fact. It was utterly irrelevant if anyone believed in it or not and he didn’t particularly care.
Which hilariously got him in a fight with a ex-fundamentalist atheist who HATED this view.
“Dorothy has not been a fantastically supportive atheist friend to Joyce’s exploration of atheism. ”
Citation needed.
The only time i recall dorothy pushing back on joyces atheism was wgen joyce had swung all the way over to militant atheism and was using it to trash, unsult, and put down Becky.
At which point, dorothy wasnt complaining about tbe atheism, but the beating of friends.
I don’t want to talk to you.
y’see dorothy, human beings- most creatures on earth, really- need to regularly ingest nutrients in order to live, and often do so at various set times throughout the day. now the exact human customs differ from culture to culture, but in the western world there is usually a light meal around noon or afternoon, which is called “lunch”. sometimes people eat their lunches together, to make it a social event. human beings love their little social events!
any more stupid questions?
Yeah, why did so many of us decide to make a joke where we pretend to explain lunch to a comic strip character?
If there is one thing that commenters on this strip are known for, to me, it’s being utterly impenetrable to the idea, that the characters of the strip are not privy to the absolute totality of all knowledge that the readers have. After all, Joe Is Uncomplicatedly A Good Guy, Now! I know this! Therefore, every character in-universe, knows this as well as I do! The comic showed us, did Dorothy not read the comic?!
Also, Dorothy notably was an imperfect friend recently, which means we are now hyper-focused upon all of the ways she is sometimes unreasonable, and she will remain Villain-Coded to the broader readership until the next person in line behaves Worse Than We’ve Come To Expect For Them. She’s handling aspects of her frienship with Joyce poorly, so she’s a bad person now, and if you don’t think so, you’re problematic. Therefore, it is morally righteous to ceaselessly roast her.
However, given all that I said, it could just be that’s about the sense of humor of this community as a whole. It could be a lot less complicated than what I said.
…Yeah, in this specific case, where the joke was, specifically, about explaining *lunch*, I’m going to say you missed the mark.
Has Joyce not yet written the Moe redemption arch? I know it hasn’t been published yet but I assumed Dorothy got a sneak peek.
because we’re all equally flawless and brilliant and witty and clever and incapable of doing wrong?
I mean I know I am, and if all y’all were doing the same thing it stands to reason…
That’s probably it, yeah.
Crude matter are we, not those luminous beings.
Penultimate panel Joyce is adorable.
I don’t think Dorothy wants to have lunch with Joe.
I mean, she kind of looks like she’s about to chew him up
Dorothy’s known Joe for half her life, sure, but can we say she knows Joe or just the macho sex machine facade? As far as I know currently, the only ones that know the existence of the real Joe are Amber, Joyce, and maybe Dina.
Danny has some clue. Joe confessed he’d never been in a threesome, he just talks a good game.
“You’re practically beaming” Danny noticed. I wonder if Dorothy has ever seen him beam, or if Danny had ever seen it before and told his (then) GF.
Imma guess this is a side of Joe Dorothy has barely, if ever, known him to gave this side.
(Also I have to archive dive QC for Sven Bianchi for research purposes.)
“Joe confessed he’d never been in a threesome, he just talks a good game.”
Jeebus. Is every guy in this comic some kind of weenus?
Joe hasn’t known Joe until quite recently, or at least he’s been wilfully unaware of “real Joe”.
I like Joyce’s expressions in this one. Good stuff.
high school was half dorothy’s life? or i guess they knew each other/were neighbors but weren’t going to the same schools til high school lol. it’s nice that dorothy’s looking out for joyce i suppose, unless she always had a dislike of joe and only tolerated him when she was dating danny
In many parts of the world high school Is from 12/13. Some places have a middle school intermediary.
yeah i supposed ‘middle school’ was called ‘jr high’ in some places. the place i went to had ‘high school’ for two grades and ‘senior high’ for the remaining two lol
I have read DoA since the beginning and I completely forgot they knew each other. Have they ever had a conversation in-strip?
The most recent one was when Joyce and Liz were in Joe’s room, playing video games and and dunking on people who believe in god, until Becky and Dorothy walked in on them
A number, but here’s an early-ish one that happens to reference their history together. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/newmainman/
(also gets brought up several times with Danny when she breaks up with him. Also she interviewed him for the school paper about the sex tape. )
Hope Joyce and Dorothy don’t break up they friendship because Joe…
I know Dorothy’s kinda mad at Joyce, but c’mon Dorothy, Joyce looks happy.
What’s really gonna grab Dorothy’s goat is that Joe, of all people, is making Joyce feel better with herself when she tried to help* her get used to taking birth control the other day.
*Not saying that what Dorothy was doing was helpful or not helpful, just that she perceived it to be beneficial for Joyce.
Ooh, yeah. I hadn’t thought about that, but I’m sure that doesn’t help.
Is she jealous or is it distrust about Joe and vulnerable females?
With no deep prior knowledge of Joe and Joyce’s friendship, Dorothy truly does have every reason to be deeply concerned, given Joe’s history. He’s the exact type of guy, historically, you do not leave alone with your traumatized female friends.
Or, at least, he reads that way. Obviously, Joe only seems rapey. But that’s the exact needle that genuinely disgusting men, are generally trying to thread with their vibe.
Also like. It’s consistent that Joe doesn’t pussy foot around too much about ‘oh but she’s vulnerable’. It’s not his problem if a partner regrets her decision, as long as the regret is post-coital. He’s not about second-guessing a consenting adult’s choices.
Until he started wanting to be more than a once off bad decision.
I mean, the same time you’re probably referring to not second-guessing a consenting adult (telling Danny that it sounds like Danny’s the one assuming what women want, and the “she regrets it now! because she asked you!” or whatever), he also includes ‘was she crying?’ as a time that would be inappropriate to accept consent, so I think it’s not quite that cut and dry.
Haha any of these soggy soupy caterpillar cocoon kids being cut and dry
“Joe only seems rapey.”
What?
Assholish. Shallow. Objectifying. Sure.
But i clearly remember Sarahs sister getting naked in bed with joe and she says stop, and joe immediately stopped, said ok, got out of bed, and waited while she started having an existential crisis and sex shamed herself.
Calling Joe “rapey” is taking out a lot of shades of grey.
“seems rapey” The emphasis is seems.
Joe, especially earlier in the comic, before his attempts to change, gave off all sorts of red flags. He didn’t interact with women except to hit on them. He talked to Sarah about “fixing” Joyce with his penis. He talked about alcohol helping with threesomes. We’ve seen Sarah need to yell at him to get him to back off.
He has certainly changed and as we’ve seen more of his inner conflict, we’ve seen that a lot of that is posturing and we’ve seen why. And, as you say, we saw him put that in to practice with Liz.
But the image that he intentionally portrayed is absolutely someone you shouldn’t trust with a vulnerable friend. He seems rapey. He isn’t, but he seems that way.
I appreciate you for saying it. I like Joe a lot as a character (these days, at least..) but, yeah, thanks for sharing.
You quoted it but seemed to miss the “only seems” part of the post… also all the other context.
Joe yelled at his dad when ambers mom said they were in a relationship. Because joe knows his dad is a serial adulterer and serial liar. . He hates his dad for lying his way into womens pants. It feels like joe has always tried to be honest with what he wants. And he has always taken “no” at face value. He takes a woman’s word as valid. This was one of his first interaction we saw with him and danny where danny thought he knew what was best for a woman than the woman did. And joe said take her word as valid.. Joe doesnt lie or mislead or hide his intentions that i can think of. Asshole? Sure. But he clearly has some kind of code that rapists dont.
*sigh*
You seem to have misread what throwatron (and thejeff, and yumi) said and are arguing against something they did not say.
No one is disagreeing with you about what Joe’s actual behavior and intentions are. They’re just saying his behavior gave off a specific vibe that understandably made people believe he was a potential threat, even if he actually wasn’t.
From Dorothy’s perspective, he’s still the same as he ever was. She knows High School Joe, and College Joe’s public façade wasn’t all that different until very recently. She wasn’t there when Rachel tore into him about how the list was really affecting people, or when he was there for Joyce’s existential crisis. She sees surface-level horndog Joe.
Did Joe try to put the blocks to Dorothy back in high school? Did he succeed?
One simple word – “why” – really gets the brain working, dunnit?
Probably not. I think we would have learned of that by now.
And she was with Danny for the last couple of high school years.
He might well have casually hit on her before that though and she certainly has watched him work and known his reputation.
I think he put her on the list after she dumped danny
I thought danny dated dorothy 3 years before they got to college and she “this is for your own good” dumped him.
If Joe and Dorothy had sex it was either a long time ago or while she and danny were dating
Definitely not while she was dating Danny; Joe wouldn’t have been a knowing party to infidelity. He’s a horndog with scruples.
Bet Dorothy’s gonna go full “I know what’s best for you Joyce and know you better than you know yourself” or however she’s been lately with Joyce and her “choices.”
Hopefully not though.
Justified distrust? Sure. Justified with Joyce? Nah.
HAHAHA OH SHIT DOTTY IS MR. BRIGHTSIDE
Now it’s stuck in my head
Thank you! I love that song haha
Now I get the chatpter title!
Ok, reading the lyrics, I can imagine Dorothy getting really mad, while Joyce and Joe getting something like this:But she’s touching his chest now
He takes off her dress now.
Dorothy has NOT approved of this boyfriend
Uh-oh. Mother does not approve…
I had forgotten that Dorothy and Joe went to school together, so the exposition is appreciated.
Same here. Which is weird, because I definitely know Danny and Joe have been friends forever, and I definitely know Dorothy was Danny’s high school gf. I just don’t automatically fit those things together unless something in the strip reminds me.
Not saying Dorothy doesn’t have a reason to question Joes reason for being there but I wonder how much of her reaction is also due to the bad time shes been having lately and seeing Joe as s sort of lightning rod
“Joe’s here. Joe’s here. Joe’s here.” (Guess the correct flash animation that I’m referencing and you win… nothing!)
Stop throwing garbage on my lawn!
It will take Dorothy a couple more panels at least to process this XD
Dorothy is not taking shit for an answer.
Jealous much, Dorothy?
That’s my story & I’m sticking to it (until Willis tells us otherwise!). If I’m right, it will be interesting that Dorothy may prove that she really knows Joyce well (& that Joyce really has feelings for Joe). Dorothy has never had an ounce of jealousy for Becky or anyone else Joyce clearly cares about less than her.
To be fair~~~~
To be fair, Dorothy hasn’t hung out with Joe much, and hasn’t seen his limited character growth. [Mainly due to her breakup with Danny at the outset.]
While I don’t think the Joyce/Dorothy ship is a thing, Joyce has been confiding in Joe for a long time, emotional labor that Dorothy probably thought was her territory.
Yeah, I think—and also hope, for Dorothy’s sake—this is mostly about her not realizing Joyce and Joe have been developing a rapport for some time now, and being blindsided by the idea that Joyce has another emotional confidante besides Dorothy or Becky.
I do think Dorothy’s been displaying some jealousy over Joyce recently, I just don’t think it’s remotely romantic or sexual in nature. Joyce is her best friend in college and she has a very specific idea of how their respective roles in that friendship function, and recent events have been threatening to challenge both of those things. That’s scary! Especially in the context of Dorothy thinking about leaving for Yale, which is gonna fundamentally alter that friendship, if not end it entirely.
Maybe we will soon discover how hard Dorothy can kick and punch someone, or how loud she can scream full of rage. For her point of view, this is absolute madness with hundreds of red flags and a sure bad end for her best friend. This will be intense to see. VERY intense!
Wait: why does Joyce invited Joe? Like, the idea isn’t ONLY Joe and Joyce have lunch?? Why invite Dorothy.
(I don’t know, I don’t have dating for a while).
I don’t think they’re dating proper at this point. But she knows she wants to spend more time with him, so why not tell him where she is?
It’s not supposed to be a date, it’s supposed to be a hangout just to spend more time together. People often hangout with crushes + friends at the same time.
Joyce’s face. This is My boy he Likes me!
Hey, HEY! Who’s going out to get a case of Boone’s farm while I melt some butter for the air popper? This is about to get good. Oh and someone order a buncha pizza because the backyard smells like a Greatful Dead concert.
In the words of a pirate named Lucius, “Omg this is happening!”
Oh crap black text bubbles. Kinda forgot Dorothy doesnt read the comic and is therefore working on incomplete information.
Panel 7
Joe: “I’m gonna teach Joyce to swallow.”
Possibly with any other hot lady, that would be his tought bubble. Not here.
I mean he’d say it to Dorothy because he likes playing to his old reputation, while forgetting almost no one knows or believes he’s changed. “Her pills. Swallow her pills, get it, cause she has trouble with that and it’s funny cause double entendres”, he’d say next, while shrinking down to two inches tall from Dorothy’s stare.
Joe mama
Aw, c’mon Dorothy, I had faith that you were gonna be an adult about this. Don’t prove me wrong!
Joe and Joyce’s understated glee at the idea of getting lunch together is absurdly charming. They may not have made any decisions about whether or not they’re gonna date, but they’re both just so PLEASED to be in the same vicinity.
I genuinely hope that if Dorothy’s hostile to that, it’s less about refusing to accept that Joe could have grown enough to develop a sincere romantic attachment to someone and it’s not just some kind of “get Joyce into bed” ploy, and more the kind of hostility Dorothy had for Jennifer after Jennifer helped Joyce get that crucial first medical intervention—a frustration that someone else, anyone else, can convince Joyce to do something she needs to do, or get those big friendly happy smiles out of Joyce, at a point when Dorothy is aware her own friendship with Joyce is becoming strained (and she doesn’t know WHY, dammit, after all, Dorothy is TRYING SO HARD and PUTTING THE WORK IN unlike these—these Joyce dilettantes! Who just swoop in! How dare they accomplish something with no effort, when Dorothy is struggling at it!).
Joyce’s type is people that went to whatever high school those two went to
“…Because if I don’t eat a meal between breakfast and dinner I get all cranky by about 3?”
Dorothy isn’t a fan, I think.
In a way I feel like Dorothy kind of needs the roots of severance this semester to really follow through with her college intentions, vs. the “I can’t bear to leave” conflict she’ll end up in when being too firmly rooted in her social circle. I mean logistically IRL that’s probably like 8 years from now based on the existing timescale, but I see the arc with Dorothy being more negative/dark, kind of serving as a foil for Joyce who is more in a position of things looking up (in the assumption that the Joe relationship goes well, through having several problems/issues that she is at least cognizant of and/or has solutions for – glasses, birth control, autism, from having survived through the previous dramatic arc that she was very in the middle of.)
Long term, I’m thinking that the current dynamics could end up leading to a bit more Joyce/Amber interactions through Joe. I could see her being somewhat of a confidant down the road while we’re approaching a conflict between Joyce/Dorothy where Dorothy is going to be the surrogate for the parent figure in her life that Joyce is trying to rid herself of (first her actual parents, then God.)
Dorothy: Joe had a list, Joyce. A LIST.
Joe: i said Im sorry. Im trying to change. I can get you an apology donut. Or some healthier food-apology alternative.
Dorothy: what you did was wrong.
Joe: i know. Thats why i apologized. At least I acknowledge it. Joyce had a guy commit a dozen counts of convictable assault and battery against me, and not a peep.
Joyce: i what?
Joe: yeah, back when you were a fire and brimstone, all premarital hanky panky sends you to hell, old testament beat your children, fundamentalist, you had Mike punch me a bunch of times on our first date. He coulduv totally ended up in jail if adults were capable of inserting themselves into our naratives. But there is a police-are-useless trope field that extends at least 10 miles past campus.
Joyce: oh. Uhm… I’m sorry… And uhm…. apology donut?
Joe: im kinda hungry. how bout an apology bagel.
I guess i should be thankful that Dorothy probably isnt going to get Joe assaulted. But maybe shes a tough on crime president who supports capital punishment and filling prisons with nonviolent offenders. Watch your back Joe. Dont want your health to be a political statement.
I honestly do not blame Dorothy for the skepticism; the Joe she has known, and grew up with, is a predator, and a major creep, and a predator. It is going to take some effort, on Joe’s part, to demonstrate that he is not the same person she knew.
As I said before, Dorothy didn’t miss him.
Joyce really has gotten quite good at making Dorothy angry recently. Though I’m sure Dorothy is unaware of how much Joe has been working to be better lately.
Dorothy and Joyce’s last several onscreen interactions have been pretty unpleasant/stressful; I feel like this might be the wrong time to spring Joe on her. Like, I think it should be nice if Joyce and Dorothy took some 1-1 time to resolve their fights… But I imagine the dynamics will be plenty fun for us to watch instead #dumbing indeed
Yeah and one of the stressful interactions was Joyce ignoring Dororthy (unintentionally) for Joe, so that doesn’t help.
JOYCE! QUICK!! DIFFUSE THE SITUATION BY THANKING DOROTHY FOR GETTING YOU INTO THAT CLASS !!! SHE’S TOO POLITE TO IGNORE YOU !!!!!
Personally I feel like Dorothy is annoyed for multiple reasons here.
There is of course that she has not seen Joe’s character growth first hand, so she is right be suspicious and to feel protective, but also, Joyce has been frustrating and difficult to talk to in multiple conversations which hasn’t been resolved to any degree of satisfaction other than Joyce now being happy again so it’s like she was never even upset and she also used to beg Dorothy for more of her time, and now she’s inviting someone else into it.
Dorothy’s friendship with Joyce right now is not the place for this. And if I was Dorothy, I too, would not be in the best mood.
Dorothy’s possessiveness of Joyce is becoming a problem.
Or wariness of Danny or something
All white text in black bubbles are henceforth to be read in Christian Bale’s batman voice
Joe: to get lunch, i swear to god.
Dorothy: SWEAR TO ME!
OK now I am double- onboard with the Joyce/Joe ship.
Dorothy has feelings~ for Joyce~ hehehehe
I’ll ship that
Dorothy isn’t so easily fooled.
Joyce is giving up her religious indoctrination and has years of sexual repression bubbling up. There have been multiple characters say shes gonna snap and to do the entire football team or whatever.
New Joe might actually be a good fit for this. He isnt some 18 year old virgin fumbling to unhook a bra. He should know what the hell hes doing be now. He seems to actually dig who she is, and thinks shes good looking. When he first saw her on their first date, his eyebrows jumped off.his face. Joyce seems to have at leaat a tiny amount of respect for new joe, and she has definitely thirsted for him at least once, perhaps more.
If Joe can calibrate the socially acceptable amount of thirsting, they could have a great summer fling, but in the winter, and both feel.good about it.
I think Joe should probably try calibrating his thirst level to Becky’s. Probably the closest thirst level any character has thats considered acceptable to most. Becky is a lesbian horn dog, repeatedly says she doesnt see men because she has no interest in them. Joe could probably calibrate to that level, but not carry Beckys religious baggage, and wow that could be something
A crazy, off the charts sex positive, respectful, passionate, relationship.
Assuming she’s willing and able to push past her roadblocks, Joe’s gonna die by snu-snu their first time.
I think he’s already a zombie by snu-snu. Death was too kind for his crimes against womankind. This is his divine punishment. Dominated mind, body, and soul by the Joycatrix. Make him bark like a dog, Joyce!
The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised.
First Joe has to get over his belief – recently reinforced by his attempt to use Liz as a surrogate – that him doing that with Joyce would “ruin” her.
“use Liz as a surrogate – that him doing that with Joyce would “ruin” her.”
Yeah. That pissed me off just a tad. Wtf is up with sudden sex shaming? Jeebus. Your value isnt tied to your virginity or remaing chaste or any other unhealthy religious dogma. I get a person can be overwhelmed by society dumping all that on them and it can sneak up on ya sometimes. But it sure as shit wasnt Joes fault. If joe took on her idea that having mutually consensual sex ruins you, then thats horseshit.
Joe has had Joyce up on a pedestal for as long as he’s known her, and himself down in a pit even longer.
They need to meet in the middle.
Not sure who you’re pissed at there. Liz has much of the same religious guilt with sex that Joyce and Becky have. She wasn’t dumping any of that on Joe, it was aimed entirely at herself, drawn from her own upbringing.
Sure, it’s horseshit and Joe definitely doesn’t think that ruins her, or anyone. But Joe did recognize that someone like Liz (or like Joyce) could go ahead with sex intentionally and still be traumatized by it. And he doesn’t want to be part of that. Especially for Joyce.
“Joe did recognize that someone like Liz (or like Joyce) could go ahead with sex intentionally and still be traumatized by it.”
Ok, first off, liz was traumatized by her parents telling her virgin=good and sex=hell, not by joe.
And second of all, Joe didnt need liz’s meltdown to tell him joyce has a history of violent cult indictrination around sex and that he needs to be careful with her. Joyce showed joe what her childhood looked like on their first date.
joyce had mike repeatedly violently beat Joe for impure thoughts about sex, because Joyces parents repeatedly beat her for impure thoughts about sex.
Joyce’s parents who even now refuse to acknowledge their adult transgender daughter, who went from cult to cult, who raised a self righteous holier than though asshole son who embezzles money from charity, who raised money to bail their christian taliban kidnapping foot soldier out of jail, who stood with righteous indignation when their taliban footsoldier ended up dead trying to kidnap again, those two fucking assholes beat the ever loving shit out of Joyce for impure thoughts about sex and every other sin they didnt like. Mom and Dad both. Guaranteed.
During their first date, while mike was beating Joe for impure thoughts, Joyce was blaming joe for the beatings, saying he deserved them. At the end of it, joyce walked away with righteous indignation that joe deserved all the beatings he got. A few days later, joe mentioned his bruises and possibly cracked ribs, and joyce blamed joe. Thats how joyces parents raised joyce. We catch glimpses of this righteous indignation defending violence from Joyce’s mom several times. Joyce says they hit her with a spoon, and she DEFENDS her parents use of violence. But i guarantee it wasnt just a spoon.
joyces parents violently policed joyces impure thoughts for 18 years and joyce simply mimicked what she was taught when she did the same to joe on her first date.
Joyce has some seriously violent traumatic memories she is suppressing. And joe fucking knows this already.
Suppressing violent memories is the common theme readers can count on throughout most of dumbing of age.
Constantly bailing buckets of water off my horny ship level of thirst?
i understand her skepticism.
the is the “dude, babes right? hot babes. lots of hot babes, and sex, dude. like, so much sex, like… at least 50 sex…. each night!” guy.
i’d be skeptical too if buff quagmire suddenly started hinting at a relationship with someone im worried about.
“Because humans need food to live!”
An unexpected development. I forgot that Dorothy went to high school with Joe. She might be less than impressed by his promise of a new leaf.
Maybe, though she also might know his previous position was that change was impossible for himself.