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Don’t, don’t, don’t let’s start
This is the worst part
Could believe for all the world
That you’re my precious little girl
But don’t, don’t, don’t let’s start
I’ve got a weak heart
And I don’t get around how you get around
This is the worst gambit I have ever seen. This gambit makes David Xanatos cry to even consider it’s in the same category as something he’d come up with.
Joyce, hon, I know you’re probably tired of everyone questioning your stated preferences, but checking out Carla and wanting your legs to look their best for Dorothy are just adding fuel to the fire.
I will say for two adamantly straight girls this whole masturbation lesson plan seems pretty gay. Like is Dorothy planning on watching Joyce? Is it gay to watch your bestie get off?
Becky and Dina are off-panel, aghast at how bad of a first gay experience Dorothy has planned. They want to intervene, but it’s like watching a car crash.
I first read “car wash” and was forced to pause to consider what if it was about toy cars that stayed in pockets before remembering that there’s no kid here whose pockets need to be emptied of toys.
I’ve definitely masturbated in the same area as friends without it meaning that we were in any way sexually inclined toward each other. It was a completely physical thing that we laughed about while we were doing it. I would include more context that might help explain why this made sense at the time, but I fear that some people would get judgy.
I’m willing to gamble that Joyce is too much of a self-insert for Willis to do a slipshine featuring her. I don’t mean this in a negative way, just an observation based on 16 years* of reading his comics.
I don’t think that’s quite the case…? Like, all the cast are very close to his heart and also he’s drawn Joyce lewds before, Joyce explicitly has sexual desires for Joe, there’s SOMETHING going on twixt her and Dorothy, I think it’s only a matter of time before Joyce is in a Slipshine.
THAT BEING SAID, it would be a huge weird surprise to me if this particular scenario ended up with her in a Slipshine. I think that’s decidedly unlikely and a lot of people would take issue with it.
Laundry machines are such a rip-off. If my dormitory was anything to go by, you’d probably get a better “dollars per orgasm” rate from an actual prostitute.
I was super hopeful it was mostly going to be descriptive conversation and like a *nudge nudge wink wink* if you’re ever *alone* in the laundry room you can sit on a dryer and it feels good
Sorry, meant to also add – she should do that for BETTER results.
I mean, everyone’s built different, but I do not see how vibrations upon her lower vulva is going to do a damn thing for her clit. Even with thighs pressed tightly together, I can’t imagine she’s get more than a light buzz where it counts – nothing close to orgasm levels.
Then again, I know that I use my own experiences to judge what is and is not realistic when I write porn, so perhaps this is based on actual testing. As noted above, everyone is built different, so maybe this works for some people. **shrug**
The best vibe we’ve purchased so far is one of those tiny little ones with the super soft plastic and a bunch of different settings and patterns, and I’m not even sure it wasn’t just a freebie thrown in as a bonus for a larger purchase. Little purple thing is a godssend.
I think this is the most low-key way to ease Joyce into it.
It took me ages after getting out of sex-negative indoctrination to actually be able to *touch* myself. That doesn’t mean i didn’t masturbate, but ways to do it without undressing and without direct touch can be easier.
Easier to cheat than to actually full-on sin (the whole concept of using loopholes not to sin is utter bs, but it’s how fundy christians get by…. or get off)
Honestly I think it’s Dorothy tricking Joyce into a position that Joyce has no reason to avoid (because she has no idea of the sex culture around driers, just as I didn’t before reading the comments on the last few strips, thank you all) but that might work regardless. I wonder what she will do next. Distract Joyce with a theoretical review of masturbation while she waits for the trick to work?
Nothing says safe, sane, and consensual like abusing your mother figure status with your autistic friend to make them ride a public dryer *full of someone else’s clothes* while in her panties where anyone can walk in and watch her possibly orgasm against *their* consent.
Why are people calling Dorothy Joyce’s mother figure that is nonsense nonsense nonsense. They acted like a married couple in the fall and literally pretended to be one recently.
Wull I too am squeaky on the public place thing but on the Joyce consent thing, I think that was settled last strip? She was very verbal on agreeeing to this
People seem eager to ignore this because they want these two to be gay more than anything, but Dorothy has a power and control/obsessive dynamic with Joyce that makes this whole scenario feel like a train wreck in slow motion to me.
Completely agree. Dorothy’s obsession and control/anger when her attempt to exert that control is met with resistance (ie Joyce still wanting to date/sleep with joe) makes me really uncomfortable. D thinks she has the right to insist Joyce make only the choices she seems correct. This also seems to have gotten worse since Joyce’s possible dx. (Which happens all the time…the infantilizing of people with certain dxs). Especially given Joyce’s background surviving sexual assault this is at best inconsiderate and at worst predatory and potentially giving Joyce the message that her body is at the command of others. (And not in a fun consensual way) true Joyce did consent but the power dynamic and angry response that Dorothy had when Joyce tries to exert some boundaries makes that consent not quite consent. (Because there may be fear of the emotional backlash of the other person if she says no).
Yeah as soon as she said it I thought Dorothy was going way to far on this Joe thing. It’s especially uncomfortable that she’s pushing Joyce into doing this knowing what happened to her first semester.
HRT, perhaps? Or maybe Carla wearing a more flattering top or bra.
In any case, curious how this is going to play out for Joyce. Shout-out to whoever called yesterday or the day before that this is going to be a vibe session.
Or she gets a little taller every day, like the golem. Soon she will be unstoppable! (Another school of thought believes that this has already happened.)
At first I thought Joyce was referring to Carla’s muscle bulk, or height.
But yeah. Boobs. If Carla recently turned 18, she may have access now to medical care that would have been harder for her to get as a minor, especially in Indiana.
you can’t say that HRT is the reason why Carla’s rack seems bigger, the fact she had a rack in the first place in the first semester means she’s been on HRT that entire time, and the fact her parents were very accepting and loving means that she’s probably been on hrt since before she even turned 18. HRT gives you boobs but they stop growing once they reach the size your DNA dictates they should be, like with every woman.
so either you’re right and she’s just wearing way better bras, or she got implants, like I was supposed to get at 19/20 but couldn’t cuz covid disrupted hospitals, and will now be getting in about 7 months at 22, at least this is my take as a trans woman that’s about her canonical age.
Breast growth during HRT can come in spurts. We have no idea when Carla was able to start HRT, unless I’ve missed something in the story, so this can still align with her still growing. Could be a surgery too, of course. Either way, good for Carla.
Yeah, I’m almost 5 years in and they are still growing and changing shape and whatnot. It’s amazing what a body can do with a set of chemical instructions and some generalized blueprints full of contingencies
My non-expert understanding is that just like with cis girls, it takes time, so unless she got on hormones very early, she could easily still be growing.
I was thinking someone more dramatic. Like Joe. He lives in their building, right? And idk about their dorms, but mine certainly didn’t have separate laundry rooms per floor/gender.
The dorms at my school weren’t coed (that’s the correct term, right?).
But they did have separate washers and dryers for each floor.
They also did NOT have doors, so this scenario wouldn’t fly regardless unless you just didn’t give a f*ck, which Joyce obviously does.
Well, other than an RA locking it so ppl aren’t doing it at like midnight and disturbing other students, Idk if the average student would be able to if it requires a key or it’s just a regular lock
I have a feeling that Dorothy is just asking Joyce to sit up there for a minute to get the general idea. Everyone else seems to think she’s gonna rail Joyce through some sort of furious multi-orgasmic scenario that takes a long time.
I think she could have bought a 20$ bullet vibe and not done this in the open on top of some rando’s drying clothes.
Because we know Dotty’s going to pull out a white board or a Cloyster plushy to teach Joyce in horrible detail how to flick the bean. and it’ll take longer then the 45 mins that dryer timer probably has on it.
This right here. I think it’s honestly fine for Dorothy to basically say “Hey, sit on this. Feel that vibration? Yeah, that’s good stuff, but it’s probably not gonna do a whole lot. Know what’s even better?” and then they take a trip to the local pervert store to get the mystical and miraculous Cheap Bullet Vibe everyone’s been crowing about.
I wonder if legs are actually subject to the conservation of volume. They’re full of like, tubes and stuff, and can swell and contract based on the ammount of fluid they contain, so it is presumably possible that Joyce’s legs do get fatter when she sits down
It is more likely that her legs compress when she sits down, resulting in a small reduction of total volume (but also the way that that volume gets rearranged looks subjectively ‘fatter’)
I think I see what Joyce was referring to; go back and look at semester 1 Carla. Maybe she is simply being drawn different, or she was wearing a push-up bra, or maybe she is on HRT.
I think that’s it actually. That observation also implies Joyce was stealing glances at Carla’s rack, which really makes her straight claims seem flimsy. As if this storyline wasn’t doing that already.
Is noticing physical characteristics necessarily sexual? I, an ace person, notice prominent physical characteristics, of which people’s various bumps are various. In your world, am I actually bi or a lesbian for this? Am I, perhaps, just wrong about my own state of being?
Not really no. Everyone experiences life differently. The real tell is that Joyce noticed where Dorothy didn’t. It kind of signals to me and makes me question why she would be more aware of Carla’s “growth” if it indeed has occurred.
I would say noticing and looking at various areas body parts is not necessarily sexual. However, looking at those same areas and feeling any arousal or the desire to touch it, that is probably a sexual thing.
Could be envy. “I wish I looked that good.” We’re trained to think that way by countless commercials, as if it wasn’t natural enough to occasionally imagine ourselves idealized in some fashion.
Or it could just be that Carla is rather striking and one is likely to notice any changes.
I think it’s partly since Carla’s height makes Joyce that much more likely to have her eyes at Carla’s rack level, plus we have precedent in that Joyce previously got mesmerized by Billie’s boobs.
Joyce is awfully worried about how she looks to her totally platonic friend Dorothy. Also, please let hi-jinks ensue as soon as Joyce starts to become aroused.
So how long do you think she will need need on the dryer before orgasm? Or do you think that the dryer won’t be enough?
I mean…I also didn’t like for anyone to look at my thighs when I was sitting when I was younger, even my platonic friends lol. I felt like everyone was looking at me thinking I looked soft, chubby, and gross so I didn’t want ANYONE looking
Fair enough, I refused to take off my shirt during high school when I would go swimming because I was fat. Still fat now but doing better, gotta keep at it though.
I would always wear a one piece versus bikini (tho i feel like some cost more even tho it covers less skin lol) and do feel self conscious after gainin weight even if the other person is bigger than me but i’ve never been the top to just wear a crop top and booty shorts even in ‘peak’ shape anyways
I’m bi and I worry about how my body looks around my straight friends all the time and it has nothing to do with finding anyone attractive. self-consciousness is a thing.
Also the lesson from Ma3. Nobody ever locked a door in that comic and people were always bumbling in on people in the act of having sex or a BDSM scene.
At least sitting on the dryer has some plausible deniability of “Oh, Joyce is washing her pants so she has to stick around until they’re done” and could just be sitting there.
It’d be flimsy, yes, but Joyce is often deemed so sexless by fellow students that they’d buy it.
Why do you think Joyce isn’t capable of just walking away if she didn’t want to see this through? People are acting like Dorothy has physically forced Joyce into this
Because Dotty is her mother figure, when Joyce is still fragile from her actual mother being a monster. So she’ll do what Dotty says, because she doesn’t want to disappoint Mother Two.
Like what part of “Telling your SA survivor bestie to strip to her knickers and ride a dryer full of someone else’s clothes while we talk about masturbation in a public place, possibly resulting in her having an orgasm, in a public place” sounds *not* predatory?
Y’know what, I found the through line. Dorothy intends to film a stepmom porno where Joyce gets stuck in the dryer. It’s the only scenario that fits with both the actual events portrayed in the comic and the wild speculation here.
I don’t see how she isn’t. Dotty’s done everything but cut the crusts off her sandwiches for her.
She’s done her doctor visits, taken care of her medication, bought her school supplies, is far too interested in her love life among everything else going on in the comic I’m too lazy to go back and see.
She’s the “Mom” friend, supportive but meddling in everything because she has a need to be the Fixer of Things. Joyce latched onto that because she was adrift without her strict upbringing and needed an anchor.
Now that Dotty’s starting to crack, she’s turning into the heavy, dragging kind of anchor.
You’re putting way too much empasis on the “mom” part and not enough on the “friend” part. Friends are not parents. Doing some things that a parent might do is not going to change that. That’s not how friends work.
What? No. Absolutely not, treating somebody like a child doesn’t magically turn you into a parent figure. That’s just called “condscension”, and I have no idea why you’re conflating the two. Dorothy is not, in any capacity, an actual mother figure for Joyce. No model of friendship or parenthood I’ve ever heard of supports this unhinged claim.
I am genuinely asking where the coercion occurred that wasn’t off-panel, like, where is the actual textual evidence of coercion
Dorothy instructing Joyce is not coercion, we have seen Dorothy instruct Joyce before, it’s just something she does
Dorothy responding very dryly to Joyce’s deflections is also a behavior we know exists between these two
Dorothy glaring at Joyce for blurting out that they’re going to go do sex stuff isn’t browbeating, it’s just Dorothy being annoyed at taking a social pratfall (which Dorothy herself set up with this Rube Goldberg masturbation lessons scheme, but that’s neither here nor there)
Like…textually we have seen Dorothy offer to not do this, and Joyce say she is okay to do this. She’s clearly apprehensive (because this plan is bonkers and Dorothy is not meant to be read as Ethical And Correct here) but she does not take the out, so…the coercion does not, textually, exist???
I think this whole scenario is a grey area. This scene, even this whole comic often has a more exaggerated and humorous tone to events and characterizations. The joke is that Dorothy showed up with a crazy plan to teach Joyce to masturbate that Joyce is nervously going along with because she actually wants to know, but is a very nervous and repressed young woman.
The problem comes when you add the context of other scenes. Mainly the one where Joyce demanded people respect her autonomy and stop talking to her about sex. The problem is we don’t know how much time has passed between panels or how Joyce feels in the moment beyond her surface emotions of apprehension.
There are points to be made on both sides here. Dorothy does act in a position of power over Joyce often. That’s not really their friendship dynamic but Joyce does regularly seek guidance from Dorothy and Dotty could take advantage of that. I think a lot of people see it this way especially coming off the big potential autism development.
My thing is much like Dina’s disdain at being infantilized I don’t think Joyce would appreciate it either. She is an adult and she is going along with this despite countless opportunities even now to back out. That’s what’s important here I think. Joyce can stop at anytime. Dorothy hasn’t manipulated her. She hasn’t browbeat her or talked over her. I think the pacing of the comic is what makes this seem worse than it is. Sure we could have a whole comic where Joyce enthusiastically consents to this plan and maybe in retrospect that should’ve happened, but here we are.
For what it’s worth like most things we just wait and see how this plays out. Just my guess but this probably won’t end with Joyce getting off in the laundry room.
Oh, yeah, this scenario is absolutely a grey area. Dorothy definitely isn’t being about Joyce’s previously established boundaries at the moment and her wacky plan is wack. I, too, have very real doubts that Joyce will get off in the laundry room.
But what you said about Joyce has had opportunities to back out and has expressly not taken them, is to me, here, the key that makes this just Dorothy and Joyce’s Weird Sexual Tension Adventure, not Dorothy Commits Sexual Assault.
IMHO, the fact that Dorothy, pre-warned in previous strips to back off Joyce’s sex life, is now ignoring the fact that Joyce is OBVIOUSLY uncomfortable and being dragooned into this is not enough textual evidence for you?
The first panel of yesterday’s strip sealed it for me. When in the history of the world has a stammered “No, no, th-this is fine …” response to “If you really don’t want to…” EVER meant anything other than “I don’t want to disappoint you but I’m not comfortable with any of this.”
Joyce’s discomfort does not equal textual evidence that she is being “dragooned” or browbeaten or buffaloed into something she does not want, and shouting at Dorothy is not a Limit Break that she has to recharge a bar in order to perform. What you have here is an argument based solely on tone and personal inferences.
Like, for example, when in the history of the world has a stammered “no, no, th-this is fine” response to “if you really don’t want to” ever meant anything besides what you posit? I dunno, the many times it’s been used as shorthand for “I’m eager to have sex with you, other character, but I’m inexperienced and nervous because I have never had a sexual experience before”?
We both have completely valid interpretations of exactly the same dialogue. And that’s fine, like, you don’t have to like this situation. It’s a weird, fucked-up situation! The vibes are rancid and Dorothy’s plan is bad! But, and this is the point, she is not committing sexual assault!
Saying it’s *non-consensual* is a little extreme, and implying that Joyce is less capable of giving consent because she’s autistic is pretty insulting.
Good thing that that isn’t what I am saying, nor like what I am saying.
This is non-consensual because Dorothy overbore Joyce’s clearly stated desire that Dorothy, Roz etc. stop it with the sex talk and leave her the hell alone. Dorothy overbore her refusal of consent.
I do not say that Joyce could not consent. I say that she did not consent.
You are correct that Dorothy ignored Joyce’s wish concerning sex talk.
However, by collecting her laundry, exiting her room, walking down a hallway, being given a verbal out and verbally stating her desire to continue (albeit nervously), stating her intent again when asked, continuing into laundry room, and participating in Dorothy’s plan, Joyce has taken a whole series of actions that indicate that she is consenting to this event.
It’s a terrible idea, because it’s a fucking laundry room and dryers are not sex toys, but Joyce has made her consent crystal clear at this point.
mumbling “no this is fine” is not making consent “crystal clear.” Following a friend after they make a wildly inappropriate demand*, because you nonetheless trust them, is not crystal clear consent to whatever activities follow, ESPECIALLY if that friend tells you to start doing something without even explaining why or that it is, in this case, for sexual stimulation*, especially when she’s not even comfortable with Dorothy looking at her legs right now.
*and yeah, walking in and telling someone “I am teaching you to masturbate,” is wildly inappropriate
** because Joyce clearly does not know why being pantsless in the laundry room or climbing onto the washer is part of masturbating, see panels 2-3
also, I want to be clear, this isn’t all to say “Dorothy is currently abusing Joyce sexually,” because we won’t know until we get a more obvious answer (preferably spoken, so it’s less ambiguous than interpreting facial expressions) from Joyce as to how she feels about it. She could be willing. What I am saying is that she’s not going about this well and has not made certain that Joyce consented beforehand.
ugh I hate to reply again, but I meant to summarize: Joyce might or might not be willing, and neither us nor Dorothy can be sure which, yet Dorothy has already started things.
in a several-days-later addition, I gotta also point out, none of this has to do with Joyce having autism (or rather, probably having autism). This is all bad shit with an allistic or neurotypical friend too. Several commenters keep saying that calling this situation bad is infantilizing Joyce for having autism, and it’s neither about autism nor infantilizing Joyce. It’s about it being shitty to suddenly spring “I am teaching you to masturbate,” on a friend, particularly one dealing with religious and sexual trauma, and shitty to drag them into public, and shitty to use their implicit trust in you to rush this all into happening.
It could have been “I think I should teach you to masturbate, and we should do it now before you’re psyched out by the idea,” and done in one of their rooms, asked “are you sure you’re okay with this?” and with an actual sex toy (or just one’s hands, or something at least more subtle and body safe than a dryer). She could do almost all of the things she’s doing and it would be fine, but instead Dorothy is taking a route toward this that is potentially traumatizing in multiple ways (from Joyce’s lack of informed consent, or from them getting caught, or from Joyce seeing Dorothy has another person who will only think of her in terms of sex).
This is EXACTLY why modern sexual educators are moving to teaching an “enthusiastic consent”/”yes means yes” model — Joyce is going along with someone who’s been pushy and browbeating, and has not definitively said “yes” or expressed any desire for this to happen at any point.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if this were Walky or Danny doing the same thing as Dorothy was, people would probably understand the difference between “coerced acceptance” and “consent” a little better.
I think sometimes the desire to see the Joyce/Dorothy ship sail has fried some brains.
Be interesting to see what how much overlap there is between the “Dorothy is sexually harassing her” and the “Joe has always been good about consent” crowds.
I think they’ve both done some harassing (ie this arc for Dorothy, Joe’s hitting on Rachel in specific), but that Joe is a bit more self aware and would know not to push someone to masturbate (especially in front of him, in public), whereas Dotty, since she is not actually trying to have sex with or touch Joyce, is ignoring that she has crossed a lot of lines.
I also think that (especially after Liz), Joe is more likely to say clearly, “you don’t have to do this, and we can stop at any time,” rather than Dorothy’s “if you really don’t want to-” as she hurries Joyce down the hall.
Not because Dotty’s a monster, but because she is not considering the way she is going about things or paying much attention to Joyce’s response.
I think, ultimately, it all hinges on whether or not Joyce is actually okay with it at the end of this ongoing scene. All of this has taken place over four strips, over four IRL days, in a daily webcomic that frequently takes multiple weeks to get through shortish scenes, and it’s being treated as if we’re probably anywhere near the end of it. And it just feels like that’s been happening more frequently and more intensely, in the past few months or so.
I mean, it was sexual harassment. Mild and non-criminal, sure, but after her express, started desire to be left alone, it crossed an objective line. It’s up to Joyce whether it matters, but it wasn’t a great thing to do even if it all works out in the end.
After that initial interaction, though, Joyce has chosen to engage and respond with Dorothy. It doesn’t mean that first interaction was okay, but it does mean that the rest of this exchange has, objectively, been a consenting one. It’s not enthusiastic consent, and it’s a decent example of why it’s preferable to opt for that higher standard, but it’s at this point it’s down to whether Joyce felt pressured or went along with it happily — her nerves make it extremely difficult to tell from the outside (and probably the inside too) if she genuinely wants to do this or not.
Joyce seems pretty uncomfortable. If someone seems even a little uncomfortable you have to stop. Is that possibly annoying for someone who is consenting but the other party misleads them as uncomfortable? Sure but it’s better to err on the side of caution when you could traumatise someone.
Also Joyce isn’t just autistic, she’s sexually inexperienced. So yes she may reluctantly consent to her bossy friend who should know better. I noted that Dorothy hasn’t even explained the plan fully which seems controlling.
I’m autistic myself and I appreciate someone checking in and saying “hey you don’t have to do X, if you don’t want to. Do you still want to?”. It’s not patronising when we tend to be people-pleasers, anxious and more easily overwhelmed. It’s considerate.
Joyce was not ‘buffaloed’.
Dorothy made a statement. Joyce, after her initial shock, agreed to it. Nervously, yes, but you are allowed to be nervous about something you consent to. That’s how we push our own boundaries.
If you wanna be pissed at Dorothy, fine, her plan is awful, but can everyone stop with the consent thing. The text has demonstrated Joyce’s consent and her freedom to withdraw that consent. There are a dozen other issues with what is happening – but consent is not one of them.
Indeed, I almost checked the date to see if this was an earlier strip, because the comment section is pretty much the same every day right now, word for word. Can we just agree that everyone has stopped listening?
And if this was immediately after that or if Joyce had screamed “leave me alone” in this sequence, no one would disagree, but Joyce was smiling and seemed happy when Dorothy showed up at her door, which at least makes it questionable .
Joyce has consented, if nervously, and I don’t buy for a fucking minute she’s being coerced or buffaloed or browbeaten or that she believes if she doesn’t flick her bean for Dorothy that Dorothy won’t love her anymore. That’s nonsense. I understand being uncomfortable with the whole situation, but Dorothy is not committing sexual assault.
None of this means that Dorothy is doing something smart, or good, or that she should be doing this. The situation is VERY FUCKING WEIRD, it’s a Rube Goldberg Machine designed to teach Joyce about sexual pleasure in the most sexually tense but bizarrely clinical way possible. Dorothy is clearly doing some weird shit for reasons of jealousy and repressed emotions, and Joyce probably shouldn’t encourage her, but her own relationship with Dorothy is complex! I have no idea where they’re gonna end up after this, which I think is kind of the intent, Willis keeping us guessing, dontcha know.
She’s not trying to fix the autism. She’s trying to fix the sexual repression
And she has in fact repeatedly given Joyce opportunities to stop
Like it’s totally fine to still find it gross but she’s not browbeating Joyce here. Nor does autism mean Joyce is incapable of giving or refusing consent. Her brain works different, not she is not a helpless child
Well, and it’s just flat-out rude to the people around you, who might not want to see that sort of thing. I know, I know, we have to respect other people’s cultures, but those cultures also can’t be causing this sort of harm without inherently disrespecting the cultures around them. At this moment in time, in this politically-divided world, I think we need more firm stances like “Dont eat friends in public” and “Stop dissing Carla’s rollerskates”.
These stances, especially that last stance, are what will heal America, and perhaps the entire world. If we could just get people to be more aware of the real harm done by dissing Carla’s immaculately fresh wheels. Also the other thing.
Frankly, for the sake of this planet, I think Carla needs to get a 52-episode skating-centric paranormal investigation anime, with at least 4 different arc-dependent opening/ending themes and an entire soundtrack by Hideki Naganuma.
A lot of people seem to be saying that Joyce consented by going along with it, which is like. Ehhhhhh. Maybe people need to think about the difference between “agreeing to go along with something that you’re being pushed into” and “enthusiastic consent.”
Could it be possible, however unlikely, that Joyce is consenting and conceptually interested, she’s just extremely nervous and clearly understands the scenario is awkward as fuck, and that consent is actually not a binary between “coercion” and “enthusiastic”?
While that’s certainly true (that consent is not necessarily a binary), It’s also certainly true that the further away from “enthusiastic” you are the more of a shithead you are being to the person you’re trying to convince.
What are we counting as “enthusiastic”? Like, if I walk up to someone in a KFC and say “We both got buckets of chicken. Wanna do it?” and they say “Eh. Okay.” in a semi-bored tone, does that qualify? I”m not being a bongo, I’m honestly asking what parameters we’re working with here.
I mean, no, that’s not enthusiastic at all.
Obviously.
Now you can go weighing the differing factors here:
– the lack of prior interaction between you weighs in favor of this probably being okay given lack of context VS Joyce already having told off Dorothy for crossing this line
– the lack of any power differential between you and your KFC bucket paramour VS Joyce, in a way known to Dorothy, having a hard time saying ‘no’ to someone authoritative
– any other relevant data – size differential, what time of day it is, how terrible a KFC we talking here, etc – to evaluate how much of that “meh consent” is actual consent and how much is “please don’t hurt me, potentially violent chicken proposition man”.
No one is pretending this is not a nuanced situation to navigate.
That all said? I would not accept sexual interaction on “eh, okay”, for myself. I’d feel like shit about it if I did.
I’ve had several partners who were victims of SA or who had trauma around authority figures. If they gave me an “eh, okay”, even though we were in a established sexual relationship, my response would be “oh, maybe some other time then, I want you to have fun too”. I have a VERY hard time with someone as ostensibly aware of her actions as Dorothy not understanding that the way she’s acting is really, really uncool on a number of levels, including the consent one. Frankly speaking, given ALL the context (including Joyce already telling her off once for trying to police her sex life, Joyce’s incredible and palpable discomfort around this whole thing, and Dorothy’s own implied admission that she’s trying to prove she’s more awesome than Roz) I cannot imagine Dorothy coming out of this smelling anything like roses, and if she does it’s honestly going to affect my opinion of Willis as an author and human being.
If it was straightforward and simple to navigate these questions, we wouldn’t have evolving standards of evaluating consent and rules of thumb. For me, and admittedly my view is colored by knowing people who have been in more or less this exact situation and ended up with a “trauma, because they felt browbeaten/couldn’t-say-no because she knows more than I do about this stuff”, I have lost basically all respect for Dorothy because AT BEST she’s playing very close to a very dangerous line for bad reasons, even if it does “turn out okay” in that Joyce is not ultimately affected badly by it. It’s the sexual equivalent of smoking at the gas station.
I don’t understand why, of all methods, Dorothy has picked ‘sit on the public dryers in your underwear’. She could have at least, I dunno, bought her a dildo or something if she really just HAD to show Joyce how to do this. Or, just send her some of Amber’s spicy fanfics and let Joyce figure it out herself.
Dorothy was brainwashed as a child by her parents, agents of the Russian FSB, to respond to issues in life with plots from the then-popular sitcom “Scrubs” when certain key phrases were spoken.
When Walky invoked “Elliot Reid”, he inadvertently activated this state.
I’m completely lost too what Dorothy is thinking. Deciding for Joyce she needed to do this was problamatic enough. All I can guess is she doesn’t want to tell Sarah and doesn’t want her walking in but why is the possibility of strangers better?? Does Dorothy think piblic somehow makes her more sex positive?
True, but Joyce doesn’t have her own personal one and I’m not sure if she’d be able to use it appropriately if like, tossed a vibrator and left to her own devices. I think she’d at least need a little run down, maybe a tip or two, and then that’s kinda it.
I mean, it’s as simple as ”This is a diagram of the vulva. This is the clitoris, it’s at the top, above where you pee from. Turn this [indicate vibe] on low, and spend time figuring out if you like it. Don’t try to insert it [if applicable to vibe shape]. Also, pee before and after. Sarah is at class for another hour. Bye, I’m going to my room and putting headphones on while I study.”
Joyce already has read some of Amber’s fics, she probably has her bookmarked.
I imagine Dorothy picked this because it’s a less intimidating method. No insertion, and unlike humping a pillow, Joyce doesn’t need to take the initiative, the machine does.
If Joyce enjoys this, it also opens up the world of vibrating toys, many of which are not terribly expensive, and insertion is optional.
Like, I disagree with Dorothy’s thesis statement that getting off will make Joyce not want Joe anymore, but otherwise, there are merits to the idea of showing Joyce a non-scary way of relating to her own body.
The only correct and sanctioned action would be for Dorothy, upon showing up at Joyce’s door, to be immediately taken down by a Precrime SWAT unit and dragged off in irons.
Well yeah, that’s just how society works. A lot of people seem very certain that Joyce is about to get re-traumatized or something similar, specifically by Dorothy, based on motivations nobody cares about explaining. I like Dorothy, but she’s gotta be taken down.
Still basically annoyed at everything happening here (maybe I’m just too goddamn ace for all this, but come on, that’s a public-use appliance, don’t put your crotch on it) so I’m gonna just go back to safer archives to see if Joyce is right about Carla’s, uh, assets.
…Huh, yeah, she definitely popped up a cup size or so.
Ace person who thinks this is meant to be a funny comedic bit that may build into some critique of the characters while also having some fun along the way, for what it’s worth.
Yeah no this has crossed so many boundaries. But I trust Willis to bring this around and use the uncomfortableness to have this blow up in Dorothy’s face and show that she’s essentially gone nutso
I am not sure the publoc laundry room is the best place for this .Also the TV show Ghosts did a similar plotline with a dryer involving a sexually repressed character.
I recall reading about how in the bad old days women would sometimes discover a form of masturbation and not realize it had anything to do with sex or that anyone else did it. Because society worked so hard at keeping them ignorant about sex.
Now foreseeing a punchline based around Joyce being like that. “Yeah, I know dryer riding is wonderful, but what does it have to do with sex?”
From what I’ve read in early 19th educational literature, the very idea of rubbing, without any conscience of sex, was already strongly forbidden for female children, so guess how it was for grown up women, while the idea of pleasure itself was also forbidden to mention or think of – it is partly the cause for Lady Chatterley to take place around horses (like they were the laundromats of the day) management. Giving that many of today fundie (and not so fundie tbh) ideas are rooted in the beginning of the 19th (rather than in the 18th), you can infer the rest – strangely because the 17th and 18th literature is full of counterexamples, with a society that officially reproves it but actually has many places to be, undercover or not, sexually active, and many many symbols for it, most of them are discarded both by the “science” and “religion” coming…
Wait, so the more I think about this the weirder it seems. Dorothy took Joyce to a public place for this, and then threw Joyce’s pants into a washing machine so that if someone does walk in and it becomes weird Joyce won’t even be able to put her pants back on?
And the intended lesson is that…Joyce should masturbate in public more often? Wha? This is the most insane plan. I almost expect a weird super-fucked up twist like Dorothy has picked out a more acceptable boyfriend for Joyce than Joe and is setting up a meet cute or something.
That’s cause she doesn’t know what she’s doing. This is just a weird lashing out over her own frustrations regarding her romantic life by trying to control Joyce’s.
The point of washing the pants is that it gives her a reason to even be there. If someone DID walk in, it’s just someone doing their laundry and above suspicion.
If she’s just sitting on the dryer without a reason to even be in the laundry room, it’s much more suspicious.
Huh. Looked at a couple pre-timeskip strips, and it’s kinda subtle but I think Joyce is talking about Carla’s bust size? It’d explain why she doesn’t want to clarify what she’s talking about to Dorothy, at least.
Dorothy, this is just dumb. Admit you just wanted Joyce to take her pants off for you on demand and let’s try again somewhere less metallic and exposed.
Ok, real talk, has anyone actually done this? I feel like this is a trope that in 10 years people will be talking about like “lol can you believe writers thought ladies could orgasm from washing machines/driers?” I fully understand how it would feel good—but to the point of orgasm? I dunno, it seems a little porny (“oh yeah, all women orgasm instantly if x, y, z”) masquerading as progressiveness because at least you understand the clitoris exists and that it likes vibrations.
On the other hand, I’m super relieved with the end point here. I didn’t know what Dorothy was up to, but this could have been anything from the PG-13 stuff that we’re seeing (phew) to Dorothy demonstrating how to use a vibrator.
If I caught my wife doing this I’d be very pissed off and I’d let her know in no uncertain terms it’s not to happen again because dryers are reasonably expensive and I’m pretty sure they’re not designed to be sat on when in use
To be clear, when I say “relieved,” I don’t object to the Dorothy/Joyce ship. But unless we’re living inside a porno (and we all want our ships to be in-character and realistic to the plot, right?), Dorothy teaching Joyce to masturbate is explicit terms is…like…sexual harassment. It’s already kinda there, given Joyce’s reluctance. The less nakedness the better, in this case.
To try saying this in the least TMI way possible, both the angle and the type of vibration would be wildly off from doing anything for me, but all bodies are different so who knows. (Though it would be kinda hilarious if it turns out to not do anything for Joyce either.)
Update because this was bugging me. According to Reddit, this really only works with washing machines and only with really, really old washing machines. Like, way older than most households and a college campus would have. Like, to the point if your washer shakes enough to get someone off, it’s broken and you need a new one. Curious if the next few strips recognize this and circumvent the trope.
I can’t speak for washing machines providing pleasure… But I can speak on two accounts:
Washing machine repairs are actually fairly easy (and comparatively cheap); if you have an old machine that shakes/”travels” horribly, it probably means that some part inside is needing replacement… In the case of my washing machine, the part was a trio of plastic stoppers that cost about $15, a couple orders of magnitude less than the cost of a new appliance.
And, on the account of providing pleasure, I have been told by several ladies that one reason they enjoy being the passenger on motorcycles (especially v-twin engine bikes like Ducatis and Harleys) is that it *does* get them excited/aroused. But then, v-twins have a very distinct shake/rattle to them.
I definitely see this working — Joyce is so repressed that this kind of oblique stimulation will be a revelation. Once she realizes that she has some feelings down there, then they can talk about other methods than involve using the hands and other tools.
Sitting on something that’s vibrating does work, washer or dryer or horse. Especially for someone so pent up and inexperienced. But dryers are warm! And a dryer can certainly handle the weight of an average woman, lol. It’s not going to wear out.
Something can feel good without needing to bring you to completion, or else people wouldn’t grind in clubs. Most of them aren’t doing that until they jizz their pants.
It’s kind of weird to be speculating about “in 10 years people will be talking about like”, when a) half the commenters are already saying it and b) it’s not like it’s a new trope. It’s been around for ages. True or not, it’s probably not going to vanish soon.
Okay I don’t… I don’t even want to try to get into the ethics of this or whatever but legit the dialogue in this strip would not be out of place in a femdom exhibitionist scene. ijs
I agree, it reads so much like the introduction to a porn story that I wonder if this will be revealed to be a sexual fantasy of one of theirs. We’ve seen Joyce’s dreams before so it’s not entirely out of the question that this is one.
Joyce looks really cute in that first panel! I have to say I wish this wasn’t happening like this because both Dorothy and Joyce are so adorable right now and it’d be kind of fun if this wasn’t, uh. This
Also think it’s very interesting that Joyce is going along with this. I honestly was expecting her to just … not.
i love how every day ppl here try to debate the ethics/realism of these cartoon characters actions….. they r ur imaginary friends and they are going to have weird cartoon sexy times together its cool man
also appreciate joyce noticing carla in the middle of all this. yes girl have an awakening
Haha yes. I’m here for this silliness and I’m not going to hold these cartoon characters to the highest ethical standards. They are dumb kids after all. I’d also like more fun and unrealistic super hero shenanigans please and no more deaths.
I love how every day, people here try to shit on the idea that you can discuss art, comics, and story arcs with real-world ideas. Or that the situations being described might provoke a deeper discussion about real-world parallels.
God forbid anyone engage with something in a way you personally wouldn’t. Especially without being told how wrong they are!
Yeah, it’s a rom-com webcomic. Sometimes things get a little exaggerated for fun, and people take it so unbelievably literally. They aren’t engaging with the text in good faith.
Yes, coercing an assault victim is super duper fun. Nothing like using someone’s paralyzing fear of their own sexuality to bully them into masturbating for you.
I keep getting back to that whole thing where she talked about having some very confused ideas about “platonic snuggling” or however she put it ‘way back when and her going, “…is THAT what that was?!”
This is honestly some of the most fun this comic has been in a while. It’s cute, a little horny, silly, and clearly building to some critiques of Dorothy.
And my “Valentine’s Day catastrophe where the Dorothy/Joyce ship is finally acknowledged in a single stupid impulsive act that ruins everything” theory is looking more and more promising. >:)
I’m not sure how to interpret Imogen’s Valentine’s Day catastrophe idea as something other than “it would be fun if these characters had a really awkward and potentially traumatizing sexual mistake that was played for laffs”.
Could definitely not be a them problem? Dunno? Really feeling awkward and uncertain about this entire storyline.
Okay, let me go on record here with a rare firm stance: I don’t think this storyline is going to result in either Joyce or Dorothy doing anything to actually-factually traumatise the other. I think Joyce is going along with this of her own free will, even if she’s really visibly nervous (she is), and even if Dorothy is overstepping a lot immediately after being told to step off with the sex talk (she is). I absotlutely, positively, quote me on this, do not think that Willis is going to treat this as a har-har funny goof-’em-up wherein Dorothy looks into the camera and says “Ain’t I a stinker?” and eats a large carrot. I don’t think it’s meant to be something deliberately titillating, at least not the parts everyone is fixating on (Dorothy’s boundary issues). Like, I’m really skeptical that Willis is saying “Dorothy being weird about this is Hot and Funny”.
I really hope you are correct! And your statement would make sense with prior events!
This is just jarring as fuck without knowing for sure and I don’t think “a single stupid impulsive act that ruins everything” has a high chance of fun to me, should it generally occur.
Know what I could foresee as an actual outcome of this?
Joyce comes out of this satisfied and enlightened, and thanks Dorothy for helping her with his.
She then proceeds to avoid Dorothy for the entire rest of their time in the same college, because every time she sees her the memories of this event flood in and she really doesn’t want to think about it actually and DEFINITELY doesn’t want to get caught up in another of Dorothy’s brilliant ideas about getting her less repressed. Even if this one worked, the awkwardness/embarrassment remembering it causes her makes it not worth it.
You could also interpret it as “this would be a compelling dramatic plotline” or “this is my prediction and it would be satisfying if I guessed right”, or as a combination of all three
Also, for the “Valentine’s Day catastrophe” specifically: there’s a running joke about Willis and break-ups or other romantic disasters in Valantine’s Day strips. Not played for laughs, but for drama. Given the pace of the comic, it’s not implausible that this could be leading up to something that might fit.
Annnd I’m done with the comments section (probably the story arc). Entirely sick of the constant and over-the-top objectification of women, and the constant excuses for rape culture and misogyny.
I’m now hoping this is just somebody’s fan-fic. I don’t think Amber does sapphic, so maybe Joyce herself? She’s still caught up in 1990s and earlier it’s ok if she only reluctantly consents tropes? Dorothy is acting like a 1980s-style alpha hero here and not like a real person.
It’s just too awful both from an enthusiastic consent standpoint and a logistical standpoint if it’s real.
I dunno about this. Even setting aside the obvious uncomfortableness of Dorothy being weird and coercive, masturbation does require being relaxed and able to focus on the sensation etc. A public place with lots of distractions, and the possibility that someone might come in, seems like bad conditions for the focus masturbation requires. Also, I really don’t understand why she should take of her pants? Pajamas are soft, she’s still wearing panties, it doesn’t make a lot of difference.
I’m .. really hoping that my trust in Willis isnt misplaced. Because I really don’t like where this is going. It’s really gross and uncomfortable, and messed up, and I want to think that Willis knows and will address this soon… Because this could very well be a jumping off point after 10 years of reading for me…
thirded. so far I trust Willis, and I think this is going to turn into a disaster (whether that’s an isolated disastrous event, or a disastrous effect on their friendship that Joyce discovers more slowly and secretly, idk), but if it’s played for laughs or horniness that’ll be it for me. Even if it somehow goes well it needs a weight.
(1) Joyce likes it and starts sneaking down to the laundry room at night.
(2) Joyce is just getting started when someone walks into the laundry (Joe? Becky?) Joyce then either leaps into an open dryer, or runs out the door without pants, screaming “NO HANKY-PANKY! NO HANKY-PANKY!”.
Does Dorothy have a plan?
A. Get Joyce on the pill.
B. Get Joyce to discover solo sexual pleasure.
C. Joyce gets boy-crazy and ends up having real sex.
D. Dorothy congratulates herself for making Joyce normal.
she said as much, but she is seemingly attempting to achieve that by teaching Joyce about sexual pleasure, which she could decide to go explore with Joe, possibly even more enthusiastically
Every strip that comes out is the only strip that exists. Nothing has come before this, and nothing will come after this. It’s not an ongoing story. Every single word is to be taken at face value and treated as the look-at-the-camera moral summary at the end of a Very Special Episode, with all behavior portrayed as correct, positive, and even aspirational. This is a personal attack.
Dang, I thought there was a whole story arc going on here, about jealousy and sexual awakening and love with all of its hazards, and good intentions being warped by jealousy and bitter loneliness, and a whole interplay of complicated feelings and complex relationships! I was completely off the mark!
assuming this works for joyce and nobody walks in and joyce decides this is actually fine, I don’t think wandering down to the laundry anytime she thinks about boys too much falls under something she’d want to do or something that’s viable to do
however it is very entertaining
Personally, I don’t see the need to take her pants. Being in your undies In a semi public space, even if it’s gender segregated, can be uncomfortable on it’s own, let alone with what dotty is trying to teach her. This is seriously pushing the boundary of friendship, even with the verbal outs dotty has given joyce
1) Joyce has not said “no” to this. She’s done everything but say no. And Dorothy has asked multiple times and Joyce has given her consent multiple times (off-panel, because this is a sitcom and it’s best to get that convo squared away in one panel on the opposite side of the punchline). Joyce only says “no” when she’s asked if she wants to abort the mission. She wants to do this, and she wants a friend she can trust not to kiss her and fundamentally change her relationship to God to help her.
2) Joyce is definitely noticing the boobs – but I don’t think we know that she knows Carla is trans? This could be setting up her finding out about that, which then would narratively lead to Jocelyn’s return to non-patreon screen time?
Okay, but Joyce is a helpless autistic victim who’s mentally incapable of giving or understanding consent, don’t ya know. She’s but a wee innocent child who needs a minder just to walk down the fucking hallway.
(Not you, but there’s a Vibe in the air today that’s starting to piss me off.)
yeah, I wonder if this arc had happened pre-autism mention if everyone would be like ‘yeah! classic repressed fundie learning about their sexuality in college!’ (which it totally still is)
Okay, I wrote this as a response to someone else, but it wasn’t super relevant to the topic at hand, actually, so I’m dumping it here.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but the problem for me is not “is Joyce consenting or not,” but “is the way Dorothy obtained that consent acceptable behavior.”
And I still maintain that “declaring objectively that you’re going to teach your best friend how to masturbate For Her Own Good, despite her initial protestings and after she toldyou to stop scrutinizing her sex life” is a shitty thing for Dot to do, even if she gave a token way out after the fact and even if Joyce ends up going along with it. Like, from a Carla-style sex-repulsed ace I’m already kind of sick of the idea that Joyce’s unwillingness to masturbate is something that needs to be “fixed” (yes I know it’s not the same thing and that Joyce is aKsHuAlLy horny, but the sentiment still feels gross) but this has been a particularly unpleasant scene.
(I also maintain that from a Doylist perspective, it’d be kind of a shitty thing to write if this magically turns out fine and is treated as a good and healthy thing for Joyce, because the message is It’s Okay To Peer Pressure Your Friends With Sexual Trauma Into Semi-Public Masturbation For Their Own Good is a shit-ass one.)
I can’t even begin to think of how to formulate a way of conveying how offensive and borderline infantilizing this is, so instead I’m going to try and clarify that I’m not, like, physically disgusted at the idea of masturbation.
I think that someone not masturbating, regardless of their reasoning or underlying trauama/baggage, is not something that anyone gets to take upon themselves to “fix” unless you’re a therapist who specializes in sexual trauma that said person has specifically reached out for help with or what have you, and that my asexuality is specifically relevant to my perspective on this matter because a lot of people have taken that same fucking attitude to asexuals and it’s really fucking uncomfortable to see it reflected in one of my favorite webcomics, regardless of context.
That is the grossness of the sentiment that I am objecting to. Not that Orgasms Icky or whatever.
Cosigning this as someone who is neither ace nor sex-repulsed. The issue here is not masturbation or orgasms in and of themselves, but the way that Dorothy is not listening to Joyce’s repeatedly and emphatically stated boundaries. Yes, even if she then gives lip service to the idea that Joyce can exit this whenever, no penalty, no big deal. Had Joyce asked for help, well, then maybe we take a field trip to see Roz/talk to someone at the health center/visit a sex toy shop, but she didn’t ask. In fact, she specifically told everyone to butt the hell OUT of her sex life, such as it is. This is uncomfortable and Dorothy is going way too far here.
No, it’s straight-up gross. I maintain if it were any male character speaking Dorothy’s dialogue, the same people who are like “LOL CUTE THEY GONNA LESBIAN I KNEW JOYCE WAS BI FUN GIRL TIMES” would be calling for his head. Something about this particular ship seems to have rotted people’s ability to actually evaluate it from a moral perspective.
That is exactly what has been happening. Remember the dude who was stuck on “Joe will fix Joyce with his penis”? Who was all for Dorothy smashing Joyce’s boundaries if it kept her “safe” from Joe?
You mean the loon who literally got dogpiled for being an absolute bozo the second they posted, most nights? The one who practically nobody agreed with on anything that was actually serious, because they kept coming up with absolutist moral judgements on people based on a first-grader’s understanding of human behavior?
Yeah, their name is Fake Dalai Lama Quotes Guy, and I’m not as down with the lingo as some folks here, but I’m pretty sure they’re explicitly blacklisted.
Re-read: It’s perfectly plausible to ship Joyce and Dorothy AND think this is gross as hell. It’s not the ship that’s the problem, it’s the blind enthusiasm I’m seeing from SOME advocates for it that’s overriding frankly the most uncomfortable this comic has been for me since the time Joyce was assaulted at the party.
That’s a majorly false comparison because no male characters have the same relationship Joyce and Dorothy do. It would be gross for any of them to do this just because none of them have a close enough relationship for it to even be considered. Dorothy is one of Joyce’s closest and most trusted friends, and they (ostensibly) have no sexual attraction to each other. That situation simply cannot exist with any male member of the cast — or any non-male cast members, for that matter. Even with Dorothy’s unique position as Joyce’s friend the beginning of the interaction was pretty gross, but it’s not mediated because she’s a girl, or because ooh gay ships. It’s because they’re close friends, and Dorothy appears to be genuinely trying to help. She… is not doing the best job of it, but intentions count for something in a situation like this.
I totally agree Cheshrin! I do think this would be more of an okay scenario if Dorothy had a conversation with Joyce about it first, maybe telling her that she would be open to teach Joyce how to masturbate if she would like to, and maybe talk through some methods and scenarios beforehand. Even if Joyce is open to the idea (and I think she is, because we know she can and does put her foot down when she doesn’t want to do something), I’d still say this is very problematic behaviour by Dorothy because she doesn’t allow Joyce any agency in deciding when, where, and how it takes place.
It’s nice to see how Joyce is able to notice Carla has changed. This ability she has to see these details is interesting, but her inability to understand what is going on in the laundry shows how clueless she really is about the subject Dorothy wants her to know. This ignorance of her it’s weird and really sad. I mean, I understand what makes Dorothy do what she’s doing.
Y’all. Joyce is not about to be sexually assaulted. She’s not. The second she starts to show actual, genuine discomfort and not this borderline performative “OMG WHAAAAT okay let’s go” reaction, Dorothy’s gonna let up. These two didn’t just meet, they know each other well enough by now for Joyce to set a boundary up front if she needs to and for Dorothy to respect that, especially one so closely related to the time she got roofied. If she didn’t want to go, she would have told Dorothy to fuck off, same as she did maybe a couple hours ago on this very same day. I know people have had real experience with those things, and I’m not trying to downplay that reality, but I’m completely confident that this story is not going to go in that direction.
If this worst case scenario y’all have conjured up actually happens, I’ll post a fucking apology video on YouTube or permanently change my icon to a dunce hat. If that seems flippant, it’s because those are at the extreme end of what I think is at stake here.
Joyce listens to and trusts Dorothy, even if Joyce doesn’t view Dorothy as a surrogate mom she certainly sees Dorothy as someone who knows “more” than she does so of course Joyce is going to do what Dorothy says, more than what she would when it comes to others
Going into someones room and announcing you’re going to teach them how to masturbate is not normal
Telling your socially awkward, sexually naïve friend to partially strip down, in a semi-public place, and then sit on a dryer to, presumably, be stimulated to orgasm is really not healthy behaviour
Most people, let alone someone like Joyce, probably think masturbation is something someone does in private, not somewhere someone like Mary or whoever could walk in and see her getting off
no for real people talking about a “power dynamic” here are just furthering the conversion of legitimate psychological and sociological constructs into buzzwords.
A peer you respect in a context where no other peers are around for their opinions to be relevant is only a power work if you completely infantilize the person in question.
Frankly I see Dorothy going “ok here’s some tips, now I’m gonna stand outside with earplugs and this book and make sure you aren’t interrupted, cheers,” and closing the door. Really do not envision a self-described kinsey zero to take an, uh, “active hand” in her same-sex bestie’s first orgasm. But either way, if Joyce actually wants to stop or take a minute, I think you’re right and she’ll either say so or it will be immediately obvious and Dorothy will back off!
You’re not allowed to want to know what’s gonna happen next. That’s against the ToS. More acceptable behavior would include taking the worst possible outcome and treating it as not only the reality of the comic, but endorsed by the creator and all the other commentors.
…You know, now that I think about it, it certainly seems possible that Dorothy is jealous and doesn’t realize it. While she strives to be emotionally healthy, she’s often unaware of the nuances in her own feelings. This is what makes her vulnerable to rationalizing what she’s inclined to do anyway. In this case, it may not just be that Joe is a terrible choice for a first partner for Joyce, though Dorothy probably indeed believes so, but her passion for this may be stemming from Dorothy’s own unconscious desire for Joyce. Joyce has never had a romantic partner to “come between” herself and Dorothy. And Dorothy is spending an awful lot of time obsessing over Joyce’s romantic/sexual interests.
I’m just sayin’, I’ve never met a straight chick who cared this much about her freshman BFF’s ladybits. Maybe I don’t hang out with enough busybodies and this is extremely normal hetero behavior.
I mean, the chapter title is “Turning Saints Into the Sea”, whiiiich is from a song explicitly about sexual jealousy and feelings getting carried away.
So, you know, I’m pretty sure you’re very much onto something here, to the point I will eat a hat-shaped cake if that’s not the case.
There seem to be a lot of people in the comments here insisting that this is very gay. I’m confused. Do straight people not talk to each other about sex? Do they not seek advice and learning before trying it themselves? Is that why (in my very personal and highly subjective experience) straight people seem to not be as good at it?
No, this is also def a flavor of straight female friendships. Or at least queer/straight friendships.
There’s also a whole set of toxic repressed purity culture straight people who would NEVER have this conversation, but at least in my cohort it’s not strange at all.
I’m bi but didn’t know for a long time so idk if this counts, but among my straight friends convos like what Joyce & Dorothy were discussing weren’t uncommon, ESPECIALLY in college. Which, I think a lot of commentors may be forgetting from time to time.
It’s just a ship. In my view these two have no sexual or romantic chemistry whatsoever. Dorothy enjoys being in charge of Joyce, which has started to turn their relationship toxic. But some people get weak in the knees for toxic relationships, especially ones that are gay, and especially if it involves two straight characters coming out as gay for each other. I can’t explain why, but it’s endemic to all fandom.
A few people have fixated on Joyce looking at Carla’s boobs or being self conscious about her legs around Dorothy as a sign that she is gay, as though women never look at each other or feel self conscious around each other. But they’ll see “clues” everywhere.
Joyce staring at Carla’s chest for several minutes, grabbing her boob and saying “awooga-wooga, what have we here” didn’t seem a little bit gay to you?
NGL – all y’all commenting that this is particularly strange or unethical in a bordeline assault way haven’t been to college. There’s always people who were raised with puritanical and shame-y values regarding sexual purity and the evil-ness of desire/masturbation/sexual health and sometimes they need and appreciate a friend to help them overcome that ingrained shame.
Like. Buying your roommate their first vibrator is a solid common thing.
Not only is this a comic, this is ALSO so incredibly NOT an asexual or sex-repulsed person being ‘taught how to be normal’ (ie allosexual). It’s a repressed person with a lifetime of religious sexual baggage with a friend she trusts – and while I’d LOVE to see more discussion on Dorothy’s subconcious reasoning (I think she’s just as, if not more, jealous of Joe as she is concerned he’s a bad choice in relationship).
You can def argue it’s not her place to decide anything for Joyce in regards to who Joyce chooses to do what with, but you also can’t deny that if your super repressed friend who believes in Fairy Tale True Love suddenly started dating someone who has a lot of casual sex but no on screen relationships at ALL yet – you’d be super not okay with that situation.
Joyce is having fun being a sexual temptress but doesn’t actually have experience with that sexuality. She’s playing with fire when she’s only read about it in fanfiction.
Dorothy feels a confusing mix of responsibility for Joyce’s safety – both physical and emotional – and her own possessive emotions for her friend, as well as Roz’s barbs getting under her skin.
Joyce’s choices are her own, but c’mon. Who doesn’t think that maybe starting with sitting on the dryer is a better first step than climbing Joe like a jungle gym?
But, again, it’s a webcomic about college shenanigans. Chillax folks
This is a trillion miles away from buying someone a vibrator lol. She isn’t giving Joyce a chance to explore this on her own. She actually *should* have bought Joyce a vibrator. That would be normal between close friends. This is not.
The “it’s just a comic” defense doesn’t really hold up in a comic that has extensively covered rape, gun violence, alcoholism, misogyny, sexism of all stripes, murder, suicide, all kinds of abusive behavior and violent bigotry. We as an audience have come to take this comic very seriously because we see our reality reflected in the behavior of these characters.
Shenanigans do occur but I do not see this as amusing at all, just confusing, ambiguous and strange.
I’ve been to college. Nothing like this happened. The closest I’ve gotten to anything like this is the time my roommate’s boyfriend came to visit and she “suggested” that I should go somewhere else for about an hour so they could have sex. Other than that, at no point did my roomies and I buy each other vibrators or teach each other to sit on a dryer to get off.
Comment section seems to forget this is all taking place in college and while maybe your friend group didn’t have discussions like this mine did and plenty of others did. Makes perfect sense, is perfectly normal, and y’all DESPERATELY need to log the fuck off the internet for a few days and get back in touch with reality. Please. These are goofy hormonal college students not fucking saints for you to hold up or derive. Get a grip.
Me reading webcomics 99% of the time: what an interesting update, think I’ll keep my thoughts to myself and see how this plays out
Me after one sip of mango fiesta monster energy: BARK BARKBARK WOOF WOOF ARARARARRRR GRRRR *biting tablecloth, pulls down entire set of plates and silverware* BARK BARK AWOOO *sound of huge claws scratching and clattering as I sprint around the hardwood floor and knock into walls*
As always, fucking love the “You attacking fictional characters makes it okay for me to attack you” crowd. (There’s also the “You defending fictional characters makes it okay for me to attack you” crowd.)
And there are times when I think that makes sense– like, if someone is complaining about a character being queer, yeah, that’s pretty shitty of them. But often, really hating the actions of a particular character doesn’t deserve personal insults.
If I say, “Danny fucking sucks” (which is not actually my opinion, love Danny) and someone replies, “You fucking suck” or something like, “Clearly you don’t have many friends” or whatever, that’s not “matching” or “turn about is fair game” or whatever, that’s escalation.
I agree with this, I think. Like, it’s one thing to say rude things about a fictional character, and it’s completely another to say them about a real person. The character is never going to know that you said their dick looks funny and their Jordans are fake, they’re not real. The person on the other side of the screen is absolutely going to see you saying “Your morals are rotted, you advocate for rape if you don’t hate this, and you’re delusional to the point of being unsafe for general society”, and it’s gonna cause real hurt.
People are getting way too fucking personal over this, and if we could all stop behaving like frothing chimps just a little bitty bit, maybe a real conversation could be had.
A SEMI-SPICY TAKE: Dorothy isn’t trying to get Joyce off right now in the middle of the laundry room. She is, however, trying to get Joyce aware of and potentially comfortable with the related sensory input, especially if, as many surmised, the vibrations of said machine are insufficient for the goal in mind.
I have no particular position (ahem) in the broader discussion about the ethics of this act.
Maybe I’m wrong! I’m sure we’ll find out sometime in February.
Yeah, people are jumping to wild conclusions on the “orgasm” thing. That hasn’t been introduced as a concept in this event, yet. For all we know, Joyce is gonna get up there and say something like “I don’t get it, why do you want me to- Oh, hello. What’s uh, what’s goin’ on down there?” and then Dorothy will calmly explain like a normal person instead of raping Joyce in the laundry room or whatever people are expecting.
OK for everyone making excuses, yes, it’s normal to buy a vibrator for a friend. No, it isn’t normal to drag them to a public place for a first selfie after being told to leave it alone. No, this isn’t Ryan roofie-scarface, but it’s still kind of icky.
And for everyone saying “This is fictional don’t get worked up” what can I tell you. Fiction is a thought experiment for understanding real life – or it wouldn’t make much sense.
All the “It’s just a comic” comments really throw me off. Were we not supposed to take the roofie plotline seriously? It’s just a comic, so it had to have been meant as a haha-funnee right?
Ok, entirely aside from the social aspect of this… is sitting on a washer/dryer to get off really A Thing? I am asexual and my best friend did indeed give me tips on getting off (though she was not present), but I have never once heard of this method. Jokes about bicycles and bumpy roads, yes; jokes about sitting on a running laundry machine, not even remotely. I thought y’all were joking. Genuinely. How on earth is this superior to and less self-consciousness-inducing than, say, grinding on a pillow in the dark. As a random, non-specific example. This seems like such an odd approach; is this how any of y’all learned?
I think I should probably quit reading the comments sections of this comic, because I think it may be actively reducing my enjoyment of the comic itself.
I’m just going to give one more take before checking out of the comment section for the remainder of this particular plot line
Something doesn’t literally have to be creeping on someone or attempting to assault them for it to be creepy and overstepping bounds. Believe it or not there are degrees to this sort of thing
That said Joyce seems to be going along with it, even if her attitude indicates she’s not 100% comfortable with it, and she’s the one who gets to decide if it’s creepy or not
I understand this is a joke but I would love if there was a policy here requiring in-unit washers and dryers. Though I guess we’re luckier than many places just in that landlords must provide a fridge and oven/stove
Part of my concern for this scenario is that it’s so public. Are the laundry rooms not for all genders at this school? At my college, everyone used the same laundry room and Dorothy has Joyce in her panties in a very public space where possibly anyone could walk in, including Joe.
And even if the laundry rooms are gender-divided, given Joyce’s fundamentalist background, I think it’s potentially still too public of a space such a private lesson. Someone walking in and embarrassing her could really set her back in her sexual growth.
(this is in addition to all the debate above about whether Joyce is really consenting to this instruction or being forced into it.)
Also, I’ve seen comments above thinking that the general scenario doesn’t happen or that it wasn’t common in college. So, I want to add that this sort of conversation was something I saw a lot in my first few years of college -people who were unwillingly sexually repressed by their very conservative upbringings finally had space to explore their sexuality, often getting help from friends who had explored their own sexuality much more.
But yes, I see some of the issues in THIS particular case, with Dorothy telling Joyce that’s what’s happening instead of asking her if she’d like this. I can see both sides of the debate:
-some think Joyce isn’t consenting and that due to her upbringing, she will seem like she’s consenting because she obeys the commands, but that’s a conditioned trauma response and she’s not actually consenting,
Or:
-those who think, yes, Joyce is consenting, really wants to do this, but needs that friend who knows her well enough to read all her body language and non-verbal cues to give her what she wants, even though her upbringing tells Joyce she HAS to verbally protest, at least a little.
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 ⋅ 1d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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she’s actual size but she seems much bigger to me
[later: Sarah walks in with a book titled “57 Varieties of Ketchup“]
I guess Joyce is in for…
some dry humour.
(Y’all thought I was going with “a while dried.”)
I guess this is where we add another relevant pun, but I’m coming up dry.
Keep your pants on, I’ll come up with something eventually.
Honestly I prefer a dryer sense of humor
I think the dryer will invoke new humors!
If the dryer works as intended, Joyce will get wetter.
Counterintuitive, but there you go. Or there she comes.
/whatami,twelve?
Not that counterintuitive really – a towel gets wetter the more it dries, as well.
Yes, but that would make Joyce the actual drier, and she isn’t.
So then really – if the dryer works then it’ll get wetter, and Joyce as well! And that means she will have be cum one with the dryer!
Would you say this drier might turn a saint into the sea?
Joyce may not understand what’s happening, yet. But I’m reasonably sure it’ll come to her.
She might be Giant(s)?
What are we going to do unless she are?
Don’t lets start. This is a slippery slope.
Don’t, don’t, don’t let’s start
This is the worst part
Could believe for all the world
That you’re my precious little girl
But don’t, don’t, don’t let’s start
I’ve got a weak heart
And I don’t get around how you get around
From Willis’s brain to your eyeballs! Behold! Dororthy’s Gambit!
I’ll go make popcorn!
🥤
*plays “Race for Sweets” from Adventure Time” on hacked muzak*
You can actually HEAR a Muzak in a laundry with all the machines going?
I said hacked muzak. I didn’t say how I hacked it.
They’re hacked too, to synchronize with the bass line.
Computerized laundry machines? They have those?!?!
It’s a university. With an engineering school. What do you think those folks do? study all day? (See “internet Coke machine”)
Then considering what they’re about to be used for, maybe we could do the girls a solid and swap out the muzak for some dubstep on this occasion.
This is the worst gambit I have ever seen. This gambit makes David Xanatos cry to even consider it’s in the same category as something he’d come up with.
I dunno. Either way, there’s Drama for our entertainment, so he wins again.
It’s not a Xanatos Gambit. It’s not even a Batman Gambit. Face it, it’s more of a Chief O’Hara Gambit.
Its a Gambit gambit. And he’s the worst.
What!? No. The wurst is german, and Gambit is Cajun.
“Look at dis here. I be the thief, chere…and there you go off stealin’ my heart.”
–[Gambit](https://www.angelfire.com/scifi/nextx/quotes2.htm)
Joyce, hon, I know you’re probably tired of everyone questioning your stated preferences, but checking out Carla and wanting your legs to look their best for Dorothy are just adding fuel to the fire.
I will say for two adamantly straight girls this whole masturbation lesson plan seems pretty gay. Like is Dorothy planning on watching Joyce? Is it gay to watch your bestie get off?
And somehow some commenters think these two are completely straight. This plan is so gay I’m surprised Becky hasn’t spontaneously appeared.
Becky and Dina are off-panel, aghast at how bad of a first gay experience Dorothy has planned. They want to intervene, but it’s like watching a car crash.
I first read “car wash” and was forced to pause to consider what if it was about toy cars that stayed in pockets before remembering that there’s no kid here whose pockets need to be emptied of toys.
Gotta give Walky credit, he empties his pockets before laundry day.
we don’t actually have proof for that. Have we ever seen him do his laundry?
Is this going to lead into an unusually clinical, nonerotic, aromantic Slipshine, I wonder?
“aromantic”
cut to Becky staring off into space and muttering something about sensing a great disturbance in the Force
Dorothy plans to scowl, judge Joyce, and repeat ‘this is for Anyone But Joe’ over and over.
I’ve definitely masturbated in the same area as friends without it meaning that we were in any way sexually inclined toward each other. It was a completely physical thing that we laughed about while we were doing it. I would include more context that might help explain why this made sense at the time, but I fear that some people would get judgy.
Indeed, this might very well Joyce discovering she likes girls too. I’m hoping this gets steamy and the result being a slipshine.
I’m willing to gamble that Joyce is too much of a self-insert for Willis to do a slipshine featuring her. I don’t mean this in a negative way, just an observation based on 16 years* of reading his comics.
That said, I wouldn’t gamble much.
*oh god I need to go lie down
I don’t think that’s quite the case…? Like, all the cast are very close to his heart and also he’s drawn Joyce lewds before, Joyce explicitly has sexual desires for Joe, there’s SOMETHING going on twixt her and Dorothy, I think it’s only a matter of time before Joyce is in a Slipshine.
THAT BEING SAID, it would be a huge weird surprise to me if this particular scenario ended up with her in a Slipshine. I think that’s decidedly unlikely and a lot of people would take issue with it.
Adding it to her blushing all path from her room to laundry.
Okay now I’m a little iffy on this.
Right? Bad plan, Dorothy.
Laundry machines are such a rip-off. If my dormitory was anything to go by, you’d probably get a better “dollars per orgasm” rate from an actual prostitute.
I was super hopeful it was mostly going to be descriptive conversation and like a *nudge nudge wink wink* if you’re ever *alone* in the laundry room you can sit on a dryer and it feels good
But like….this is too much
I feel like she could’ve bought Joyce a non penetrative vibrator and it would achieve the same goal.
Bullet vibe. Those ones that look like easter eggs. You can get a decent one for like $20 on sale.
Sorry, meant to also add – she should do that for BETTER results.
I mean, everyone’s built different, but I do not see how vibrations upon her lower vulva is going to do a damn thing for her clit. Even with thighs pressed tightly together, I can’t imagine she’s get more than a light buzz where it counts – nothing close to orgasm levels.
Then again, I know that I use my own experiences to judge what is and is not realistic when I write porn, so perhaps this is based on actual testing. As noted above, everyone is built different, so maybe this works for some people. **shrug**
Yeah, she’s probably gonna need extra help from something (or someone) to finish the job.
*bonk*
Horny jail for you
*Pays the Bail*
The best vibe we’ve purchased so far is one of those tiny little ones with the super soft plastic and a bunch of different settings and patterns, and I’m not even sure it wasn’t just a freebie thrown in as a bonus for a larger purchase. Little purple thing is a godssend.
Hell even a shit one will get the job done once, get the point across
She would have, but I am sort of seeing this as a proof of concept.
If she likes this, then you get the bullet vibrator.
I think this is the most low-key way to ease Joyce into it.
It took me ages after getting out of sex-negative indoctrination to actually be able to *touch* myself. That doesn’t mean i didn’t masturbate, but ways to do it without undressing and without direct touch can be easier.
Easier to cheat than to actually full-on sin (the whole concept of using loopholes not to sin is utter bs, but it’s how fundy christians get by…. or get off)
Honestly I think it’s Dorothy tricking Joyce into a position that Joyce has no reason to avoid (because she has no idea of the sex culture around driers, just as I didn’t before reading the comments on the last few strips, thank you all) but that might work regardless. I wonder what she will do next. Distract Joyce with a theoretical review of masturbation while she waits for the trick to work?
Nothing says safe, sane, and consensual like abusing your mother figure status with your autistic friend to make them ride a public dryer *full of someone else’s clothes* while in her panties where anyone can walk in and watch her possibly orgasm against *their* consent.
Yeah.
Why are people calling Dorothy Joyce’s mother figure that is nonsense nonsense nonsense. They acted like a married couple in the fall and literally pretended to be one recently.
People are taking the term “mom friend” too literally.
Wull I too am squeaky on the public place thing but on the Joyce consent thing, I think that was settled last strip? She was very verbal on agreeeing to this
NOW?
look it’s not called Smarting of Age
People seem eager to ignore this because they want these two to be gay more than anything, but Dorothy has a power and control/obsessive dynamic with Joyce that makes this whole scenario feel like a train wreck in slow motion to me.
Willis specializes in slow motion train wrecks.
Even the Slipshine comics are slow-motion train wrecks with fewer (or no) clothes.
Completely agree. Dorothy’s obsession and control/anger when her attempt to exert that control is met with resistance (ie Joyce still wanting to date/sleep with joe) makes me really uncomfortable. D thinks she has the right to insist Joyce make only the choices she seems correct. This also seems to have gotten worse since Joyce’s possible dx. (Which happens all the time…the infantilizing of people with certain dxs). Especially given Joyce’s background surviving sexual assault this is at best inconsiderate and at worst predatory and potentially giving Joyce the message that her body is at the command of others. (And not in a fun consensual way) true Joyce did consent but the power dynamic and angry response that Dorothy had when Joyce tries to exert some boundaries makes that consent not quite consent. (Because there may be fear of the emotional backlash of the other person if she says no).
Very well put. People seem to think you can’t have an uneven power dynamic without an institutional power structure.
This is 100% NOT about “helping Joyce,” it’s about how Dorothy feels. And this is explicitly laid out when she brings up Joe.
Yeah as soon as she said it I thought Dorothy was going way to far on this Joe thing. It’s especially uncomfortable that she’s pushing Joyce into doing this knowing what happened to her first semester.
Its the focus on Joyces thighs for me.
Also I dont get what she means about Carla.
She means booba
Those must either be some shitty dryers of Dorothy expects Joyce to be particularly …brittle right now, huh?
Dryers OR Dorothy.
Stupid broken forum host forcing me to turn off spell-check.
Thought the dryer needed to be a little off-balance to get the best effect.
So tomorrow we see Dorothy take a pair of running shoes out of her laundry bag and toss them in
In retrospect, instead of replying to myself above, I should have put the above mini-rant as a reply to this thread instead. Whoops.
Front-loading dryers are inherently out of balance. They have a harmonic of several times the RPM of the dryer drum.
HRT, perhaps? Or maybe Carla wearing a more flattering top or bra.
In any case, curious how this is going to play out for Joyce. Shout-out to whoever called yesterday or the day before that this is going to be a vibe session.
Maybe she actually did get taller but we think she is on skates? Maybe HRT.
What if the “Carla is great and I am a bug” line is secretly a curse?
Possibly more of a “gods need prayer” situation. The more people say it, the more powerful Carla becomes.
Carla is great and I am a bug.
“I’m doing my part” dot gif.
Hear, hear! Carla is great and I am a bug.
Wait, she’s a Primal? Pardon me, I have to go uh… do…something.
[Frantic, gradually fading into the distance] Carla is great and I’m a bug! Carla’s great and I am a bug! [Repeat at least 30 more times]
…! Oh no, that’s why Taffy needed all those crystals….!!
Carla is a Russian nesting doll.
But every time you open her up, it’s just a bigger Carla!
I’m thinking it is more like snakes or insects growing by shedding skins. The real reason Carla has a single room.
Carla is bigger on the inside?
Instead of being a car, this time around she’s a TARDIS.
Or she gets a little taller every day, like the golem. Soon she will be unstoppable! (Another school of thought believes that this has already happened.)
But what does the Hostage Rescue Team have to do with Carla’s bust size?
Estrogen does indeed cause boobs to grow larger over time. Whether from ovaries or HRT
The mystery of the Carla’s expanded bust is not a difficult one to solve people.
At first I thought Joyce was referring to Carla’s muscle bulk, or height.
But yeah. Boobs. If Carla recently turned 18, she may have access now to medical care that would have been harder for her to get as a minor, especially in Indiana.
I wonder if Carla was constrained by state boundaries being the daughter of a rich family.
That a Lawyer whose biggest achievement is dismantling Indiana anti-trans laws definitely knows Carla personally and has a lot of her parents’ money sure suggests a lot.
Thanks for the link, re-reading those strips reminded me that Dorothy was weird the last time Joyce had a crush on a guy too.
Given the circumstances I think most people would be weird about it too.
you can’t say that HRT is the reason why Carla’s rack seems bigger, the fact she had a rack in the first place in the first semester means she’s been on HRT that entire time, and the fact her parents were very accepting and loving means that she’s probably been on hrt since before she even turned 18. HRT gives you boobs but they stop growing once they reach the size your DNA dictates they should be, like with every woman.
so either you’re right and she’s just wearing way better bras, or she got implants, like I was supposed to get at 19/20 but couldn’t cuz covid disrupted hospitals, and will now be getting in about 7 months at 22, at least this is my take as a trans woman that’s about her canonical age.
Eh, might just be the college food. Or even an optical illusion caused by her surroundings.
Breast growth during HRT can come in spurts. We have no idea when Carla was able to start HRT, unless I’ve missed something in the story, so this can still align with her still growing. Could be a surgery too, of course. Either way, good for Carla.
Yeah, I’m almost 5 years in and they are still growing and changing shape and whatnot. It’s amazing what a body can do with a set of chemical instructions and some generalized blueprints full of contingencies
Congratulations and best of luck!
My non-expert understanding is that just like with cis girls, it takes time, so unless she got on hormones very early, she could easily still be growing.
I can only assume she’s been on hrt for a couple years given i think she’s 20 and how supportive her parents are
My first guess was top surgery
Again, I’m not an expert, but my understanding is that those changes can take years on hrt, just like they take years during puberty.
Top surgery certainly is a possibility though. She’s got the resources.
Isn’t the laundry room a public space? This seems both unacceptably risky and riske.
risqué, probably
That is the proper spelling, but what about this situation is proper?
(Though seriously, thanks for the correction. I really need help with spelling).
I hope Dorothy locked the door at least but at the same time I can see Becky or Roz walking in on this
I was thinking someone more dramatic. Like Joe. He lives in their building, right? And idk about their dorms, but mine certainly didn’t have separate laundry rooms per floor/gender.
The dorms at my school weren’t coed (that’s the correct term, right?).
But they did have separate washers and dryers for each floor.
They also did NOT have doors, so this scenario wouldn’t fly regardless unless you just didn’t give a f*ck, which Joyce obviously does.
Well, other than an RA locking it so ppl aren’t doing it at like midnight and disturbing other students, Idk if the average student would be able to if it requires a key or it’s just a regular lock
Riskyqué.
as long as you don’t spell it sordidité and know nothing about what it means like 9CL…
Considering how many times I walked in on people having sex in various public locations of my dorm… yeah, pretty likely.
I dunno, Joyce might be into that. Picturing Joe walking into the room might just be the push over the edge.
On a dryer someone is going to come back to empty in the very near future. Truly this plan is fucking flawless.
I have a feeling that Dorothy is just asking Joyce to sit up there for a minute to get the general idea. Everyone else seems to think she’s gonna rail Joyce through some sort of furious multi-orgasmic scenario that takes a long time.
I think she could have bought a 20$ bullet vibe and not done this in the open on top of some rando’s drying clothes.
Because we know Dotty’s going to pull out a white board or a Cloyster plushy to teach Joyce in horrible detail how to flick the bean. and it’ll take longer then the 45 mins that dryer timer probably has on it.
But Joyce wasn’t going to touch a bullet vibe. Or at least not use one once she figured out what it was.
This right here. I think it’s honestly fine for Dorothy to basically say “Hey, sit on this. Feel that vibration? Yeah, that’s good stuff, but it’s probably not gonna do a whole lot. Know what’s even better?” and then they take a trip to the local pervert store to get the mystical and miraculous Cheap Bullet Vibe everyone’s been crowing about.
Now we turn on the dryer and she gets to learn the fun of vibration.
The dryer is already running.
She is off to a good start then!
Not yet, but she’ll get off to one shortly. And maybe develop an exhibitionism fetish at the same time.
Or Joyce will drop out of school to open her own laundromat.
Shouldn’t you go catch it then?
I wonder if legs are actually subject to the conservation of volume. They’re full of like, tubes and stuff, and can swell and contract based on the ammount of fluid they contain, so it is presumably possible that Joyce’s legs do get fatter when she sits down
I think Dorothy meant she was factoring in some of that.
It is more likely that her legs compress when she sits down, resulting in a small reduction of total volume (but also the way that that volume gets rearranged looks subjectively ‘fatter’)
But can they contain more fluid than Jeff Beck?
I straight up do not know how to respond to this so I’m just gonna say I did not notice any significant difference with Carla.
I think I see what Joyce was referring to; go back and look at semester 1 Carla. Maybe she is simply being drawn different, or she was wearing a push-up bra, or maybe she is on HRT.
I think that’s it actually. That observation also implies Joyce was stealing glances at Carla’s rack, which really makes her straight claims seem flimsy. As if this storyline wasn’t doing that already.
I don’t know about “stealing” – in yesterday’s comic it was right at her eye level.
Is noticing physical characteristics necessarily sexual? I, an ace person, notice prominent physical characteristics, of which people’s various bumps are various. In your world, am I actually bi or a lesbian for this? Am I, perhaps, just wrong about my own state of being?
Not really no. Everyone experiences life differently. The real tell is that Joyce noticed where Dorothy didn’t. It kind of signals to me and makes me question why she would be more aware of Carla’s “growth” if it indeed has occurred.
I would say noticing and looking at various areas body parts is not necessarily sexual. However, looking at those same areas and feeling any arousal or the desire to touch it, that is probably a sexual thing.
Could be envy. “I wish I looked that good.” We’re trained to think that way by countless commercials, as if it wasn’t natural enough to occasionally imagine ourselves idealized in some fashion.
Or it could just be that Carla is rather striking and one is likely to notice any changes.
I think it’s partly since Carla’s height makes Joyce that much more likely to have her eyes at Carla’s rack level, plus we have precedent in that Joyce previously got mesmerized by Billie’s boobs.
I noticed, but chalked it up to artistic license.
Or too much Rule 34…
Joyce is awfully worried about how she looks to her totally platonic friend Dorothy. Also, please let hi-jinks ensue as soon as Joyce starts to become aroused.
So how long do you think she will need need on the dryer before orgasm? Or do you think that the dryer won’t be enough?
I mean…I also didn’t like for anyone to look at my thighs when I was sitting when I was younger, even my platonic friends lol. I felt like everyone was looking at me thinking I looked soft, chubby, and gross so I didn’t want ANYONE looking
Fair enough, I refused to take off my shirt during high school when I would go swimming because I was fat. Still fat now but doing better, gotta keep at it though.
I would always wear a one piece versus bikini (tho i feel like some cost more even tho it covers less skin lol) and do feel self conscious after gainin weight even if the other person is bigger than me but i’ve never been the top to just wear a crop top and booty shorts even in ‘peak’ shape anyways
I’m bi and I worry about how my body looks around my straight friends all the time and it has nothing to do with finding anyone attractive. self-consciousness is a thing.
lol i hope there’s a lock on the door. seems unwise to do this in a semipublic place lol
Because after all, the central truth you should learn from DoA is “always lock the door.”
Of course, for maximum comedy, drama, and/or dumb(ing) – they will not.
Also the lesson from Ma3. Nobody ever locked a door in that comic and people were always bumbling in on people in the act of having sex or a BDSM scene.
At least sitting on the dryer has some plausible deniability of “Oh, Joyce is washing her pants so she has to stick around until they’re done” and could just be sitting there.
It’d be flimsy, yes, but Joyce is often deemed so sexless by fellow students that they’d buy it.
Finally some recognition of my “Bigger Carla” theory
Caarla
(Plays “Good Vibrations” on hacked Muzak.)
Carla’s always been taller than most of everybody and like Dorothy said she’s on skates more than half the time. So yeah I didn’t really notice.
Depending on how long she’s been on HRT, her chest is probably still growing over time.
This is not safe nor consensual, and I have very strong doubts that it is sane.
Do not browbeat your autistic friends into masturbating in a public place.
I mean, it’s probably not good to browbeat anybody into masturbating in a public place, really.
Why do you think Joyce isn’t capable of just walking away if she didn’t want to see this through? People are acting like Dorothy has physically forced Joyce into this
Because Dotty is her mother figure, when Joyce is still fragile from her actual mother being a monster. So she’ll do what Dotty says, because she doesn’t want to disappoint Mother Two.
Like what part of “Telling your SA survivor bestie to strip to her knickers and ride a dryer full of someone else’s clothes while we talk about masturbation in a public place, possibly resulting in her having an orgasm, in a public place” sounds *not* predatory?
I don’t agree with the notion that Dorothy is or wants to be Joyce’s mother figure and I’m honestly just creeped out that people keep insisting.
Y’know what, I found the through line. Dorothy intends to film a stepmom porno where Joyce gets stuck in the dryer. It’s the only scenario that fits with both the actual events portrayed in the comic and the wild speculation here.
I don’t see how she isn’t. Dotty’s done everything but cut the crusts off her sandwiches for her.
She’s done her doctor visits, taken care of her medication, bought her school supplies, is far too interested in her love life among everything else going on in the comic I’m too lazy to go back and see.
She’s the “Mom” friend, supportive but meddling in everything because she has a need to be the Fixer of Things. Joyce latched onto that because she was adrift without her strict upbringing and needed an anchor.
Now that Dotty’s starting to crack, she’s turning into the heavy, dragging kind of anchor.
You’re putting way too much empasis on the “mom” part and not enough on the “friend” part. Friends are not parents. Doing some things that a parent might do is not going to change that. That’s not how friends work.
Maybe if it felt like Dotty treated Joyce as more of a friend then a child, I’d be more on board with your stance.
Do you think that Dorothy was trying to be a literal second mom to Walky, for whom she also exhibited many of these behaviors
What? No. Absolutely not, treating somebody like a child doesn’t magically turn you into a parent figure. That’s just called “condscension”, and I have no idea why you’re conflating the two. Dorothy is not, in any capacity, an actual mother figure for Joyce. No model of friendship or parenthood I’ve ever heard of supports this unhinged claim.
No, we’re acting like Dorothy has COERCED Joyce into this. Which she has.
I am genuinely asking where the coercion occurred that wasn’t off-panel, like, where is the actual textual evidence of coercion
Dorothy instructing Joyce is not coercion, we have seen Dorothy instruct Joyce before, it’s just something she does
Dorothy responding very dryly to Joyce’s deflections is also a behavior we know exists between these two
Dorothy glaring at Joyce for blurting out that they’re going to go do sex stuff isn’t browbeating, it’s just Dorothy being annoyed at taking a social pratfall (which Dorothy herself set up with this Rube Goldberg masturbation lessons scheme, but that’s neither here nor there)
Like…textually we have seen Dorothy offer to not do this, and Joyce say she is okay to do this. She’s clearly apprehensive (because this plan is bonkers and Dorothy is not meant to be read as Ethical And Correct here) but she does not take the out, so…the coercion does not, textually, exist???
I think this whole scenario is a grey area. This scene, even this whole comic often has a more exaggerated and humorous tone to events and characterizations. The joke is that Dorothy showed up with a crazy plan to teach Joyce to masturbate that Joyce is nervously going along with because she actually wants to know, but is a very nervous and repressed young woman.
The problem comes when you add the context of other scenes. Mainly the one where Joyce demanded people respect her autonomy and stop talking to her about sex. The problem is we don’t know how much time has passed between panels or how Joyce feels in the moment beyond her surface emotions of apprehension.
There are points to be made on both sides here. Dorothy does act in a position of power over Joyce often. That’s not really their friendship dynamic but Joyce does regularly seek guidance from Dorothy and Dotty could take advantage of that. I think a lot of people see it this way especially coming off the big potential autism development.
My thing is much like Dina’s disdain at being infantilized I don’t think Joyce would appreciate it either. She is an adult and she is going along with this despite countless opportunities even now to back out. That’s what’s important here I think. Joyce can stop at anytime. Dorothy hasn’t manipulated her. She hasn’t browbeat her or talked over her. I think the pacing of the comic is what makes this seem worse than it is. Sure we could have a whole comic where Joyce enthusiastically consents to this plan and maybe in retrospect that should’ve happened, but here we are.
For what it’s worth like most things we just wait and see how this plays out. Just my guess but this probably won’t end with Joyce getting off in the laundry room.
Oh, yeah, this scenario is absolutely a grey area. Dorothy definitely isn’t being about Joyce’s previously established boundaries at the moment and her wacky plan is wack. I, too, have very real doubts that Joyce will get off in the laundry room.
But what you said about Joyce has had opportunities to back out and has expressly not taken them, is to me, here, the key that makes this just Dorothy and Joyce’s Weird Sexual Tension Adventure, not Dorothy Commits Sexual Assault.
IMHO, the fact that Dorothy, pre-warned in previous strips to back off Joyce’s sex life, is now ignoring the fact that Joyce is OBVIOUSLY uncomfortable and being dragooned into this is not enough textual evidence for you?
The first panel of yesterday’s strip sealed it for me. When in the history of the world has a stammered “No, no, th-this is fine …” response to “If you really don’t want to…” EVER meant anything other than “I don’t want to disappoint you but I’m not comfortable with any of this.”
Joyce’s discomfort does not equal textual evidence that she is being “dragooned” or browbeaten or buffaloed into something she does not want, and shouting at Dorothy is not a Limit Break that she has to recharge a bar in order to perform. What you have here is an argument based solely on tone and personal inferences.
Like, for example, when in the history of the world has a stammered “no, no, th-this is fine” response to “if you really don’t want to” ever meant anything besides what you posit? I dunno, the many times it’s been used as shorthand for “I’m eager to have sex with you, other character, but I’m inexperienced and nervous because I have never had a sexual experience before”?
We both have completely valid interpretations of exactly the same dialogue. And that’s fine, like, you don’t have to like this situation. It’s a weird, fucked-up situation! The vibes are rancid and Dorothy’s plan is bad! But, and this is the point, she is not committing sexual assault!
Saying it’s *non-consensual* is a little extreme, and implying that Joyce is less capable of giving consent because she’s autistic is pretty insulting.
Good thing that that isn’t what I am saying, nor like what I am saying.
This is non-consensual because Dorothy overbore Joyce’s clearly stated desire that Dorothy, Roz etc. stop it with the sex talk and leave her the hell alone. Dorothy overbore her refusal of consent.
I do not say that Joyce could not consent. I say that she did not consent.
Meanwhile, Dorothy is trying to fix her.
You are correct that Dorothy ignored Joyce’s wish concerning sex talk.
However, by collecting her laundry, exiting her room, walking down a hallway, being given a verbal out and verbally stating her desire to continue (albeit nervously), stating her intent again when asked, continuing into laundry room, and participating in Dorothy’s plan, Joyce has taken a whole series of actions that indicate that she is consenting to this event.
It’s a terrible idea, because it’s a fucking laundry room and dryers are not sex toys, but Joyce has made her consent crystal clear at this point.
mumbling “no this is fine” is not making consent “crystal clear.” Following a friend after they make a wildly inappropriate demand*, because you nonetheless trust them, is not crystal clear consent to whatever activities follow, ESPECIALLY if that friend tells you to start doing something without even explaining why or that it is, in this case, for sexual stimulation*, especially when she’s not even comfortable with Dorothy looking at her legs right now.
*and yeah, walking in and telling someone “I am teaching you to masturbate,” is wildly inappropriate
** because Joyce clearly does not know why being pantsless in the laundry room or climbing onto the washer is part of masturbating, see panels 2-3
also, I want to be clear, this isn’t all to say “Dorothy is currently abusing Joyce sexually,” because we won’t know until we get a more obvious answer (preferably spoken, so it’s less ambiguous than interpreting facial expressions) from Joyce as to how she feels about it. She could be willing. What I am saying is that she’s not going about this well and has not made certain that Joyce consented beforehand.
ugh I hate to reply again, but I meant to summarize: Joyce might or might not be willing, and neither us nor Dorothy can be sure which, yet Dorothy has already started things.
in a several-days-later addition, I gotta also point out, none of this has to do with Joyce having autism (or rather, probably having autism). This is all bad shit with an allistic or neurotypical friend too. Several commenters keep saying that calling this situation bad is infantilizing Joyce for having autism, and it’s neither about autism nor infantilizing Joyce. It’s about it being shitty to suddenly spring “I am teaching you to masturbate,” on a friend, particularly one dealing with religious and sexual trauma, and shitty to drag them into public, and shitty to use their implicit trust in you to rush this all into happening.
It could have been “I think I should teach you to masturbate, and we should do it now before you’re psyched out by the idea,” and done in one of their rooms, asked “are you sure you’re okay with this?” and with an actual sex toy (or just one’s hands, or something at least more subtle and body safe than a dryer). She could do almost all of the things she’s doing and it would be fine, but instead Dorothy is taking a route toward this that is potentially traumatizing in multiple ways (from Joyce’s lack of informed consent, or from them getting caught, or from Joyce seeing Dorothy has another person who will only think of her in terms of sex).
This is EXACTLY why modern sexual educators are moving to teaching an “enthusiastic consent”/”yes means yes” model — Joyce is going along with someone who’s been pushy and browbeating, and has not definitively said “yes” or expressed any desire for this to happen at any point.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if this were Walky or Danny doing the same thing as Dorothy was, people would probably understand the difference between “coerced acceptance” and “consent” a little better.
I think sometimes the desire to see the Joyce/Dorothy ship sail has fried some brains.
Be interesting to see what how much overlap there is between the “Dorothy is sexually harassing her” and the “Joe has always been good about consent” crowds.
I think they’ve both done some harassing (ie this arc for Dorothy, Joe’s hitting on Rachel in specific), but that Joe is a bit more self aware and would know not to push someone to masturbate (especially in front of him, in public), whereas Dotty, since she is not actually trying to have sex with or touch Joyce, is ignoring that she has crossed a lot of lines.
I also think that (especially after Liz), Joe is more likely to say clearly, “you don’t have to do this, and we can stop at any time,” rather than Dorothy’s “if you really don’t want to-” as she hurries Joyce down the hall.
Not because Dotty’s a monster, but because she is not considering the way she is going about things or paying much attention to Joyce’s response.
“Saying it’s *non-consensual* is a little extreme”
People were saying it was sexual harassment on day one. Apparently I’m a bad person for thinking that’s up to Joyce to decide.
I think, ultimately, it all hinges on whether or not Joyce is actually okay with it at the end of this ongoing scene. All of this has taken place over four strips, over four IRL days, in a daily webcomic that frequently takes multiple weeks to get through shortish scenes, and it’s being treated as if we’re probably anywhere near the end of it. And it just feels like that’s been happening more frequently and more intensely, in the past few months or so.
I mean, it was sexual harassment. Mild and non-criminal, sure, but after her express, started desire to be left alone, it crossed an objective line. It’s up to Joyce whether it matters, but it wasn’t a great thing to do even if it all works out in the end.
After that initial interaction, though, Joyce has chosen to engage and respond with Dorothy. It doesn’t mean that first interaction was okay, but it does mean that the rest of this exchange has, objectively, been a consenting one. It’s not enthusiastic consent, and it’s a decent example of why it’s preferable to opt for that higher standard, but it’s at this point it’s down to whether Joyce felt pressured or went along with it happily — her nerves make it extremely difficult to tell from the outside (and probably the inside too) if she genuinely wants to do this or not.
Joyce seems pretty uncomfortable. If someone seems even a little uncomfortable you have to stop. Is that possibly annoying for someone who is consenting but the other party misleads them as uncomfortable? Sure but it’s better to err on the side of caution when you could traumatise someone.
Also Joyce isn’t just autistic, she’s sexually inexperienced. So yes she may reluctantly consent to her bossy friend who should know better. I noted that Dorothy hasn’t even explained the plan fully which seems controlling.
I’m autistic myself and I appreciate someone checking in and saying “hey you don’t have to do X, if you don’t want to. Do you still want to?”. It’s not patronising when we tend to be people-pleasers, anxious and more easily overwhelmed. It’s considerate.
Just yesterday Dorothy suggested Joyce didnt have to go through with it if she didnt want to and Joyce said it was fine. How is this not consensual?
It seems to me that the form of consent that Joyce gave was not free, but that she felt overwhelmed and carried away by Dorothy’s overbearing conduct.
That is, submitting to being buffaloed is not consent.
Joyce was not ‘buffaloed’.
Dorothy made a statement. Joyce, after her initial shock, agreed to it. Nervously, yes, but you are allowed to be nervous about something you consent to. That’s how we push our own boundaries.
If you wanna be pissed at Dorothy, fine, her plan is awful, but can everyone stop with the consent thing. The text has demonstrated Joyce’s consent and her freedom to withdraw that consent. There are a dozen other issues with what is happening – but consent is not one of them.
Indeed, I almost checked the date to see if this was an earlier strip, because the comment section is pretty much the same every day right now, word for word. Can we just agree that everyone has stopped listening?
When someone screams “Leave me alone!” at you and you keep pressing, what else would you call it?
And if this was immediately after that or if Joyce had screamed “leave me alone” in this sequence, no one would disagree, but Joyce was smiling and seemed happy when Dorothy showed up at her door, which at least makes it questionable .
Oh, so she screamed; “Leave me alone for several hours and then you can keep pressuring me”
Seriously. All the memes about kids advised by their older sisters to leave her alone because she said ‘no’ etc
You can agree to do something you probably shouldn’t do for bad reasons without it being an issue of consent.
This. This this this.
Joyce has consented, if nervously, and I don’t buy for a fucking minute she’s being coerced or buffaloed or browbeaten or that she believes if she doesn’t flick her bean for Dorothy that Dorothy won’t love her anymore. That’s nonsense. I understand being uncomfortable with the whole situation, but Dorothy is not committing sexual assault.
None of this means that Dorothy is doing something smart, or good, or that she should be doing this. The situation is VERY FUCKING WEIRD, it’s a Rube Goldberg Machine designed to teach Joyce about sexual pleasure in the most sexually tense but bizarrely clinical way possible. Dorothy is clearly doing some weird shit for reasons of jealousy and repressed emotions, and Joyce probably shouldn’t encourage her, but her own relationship with Dorothy is complex! I have no idea where they’re gonna end up after this, which I think is kind of the intent, Willis keeping us guessing, dontcha know.
Do not browbeat your
autisticfriends into masturbating in a public place.Fixed it. Joyce potentially having autism puts her at greater risk for being subjected to this kind of thing, but it shouldn’t be done to anyone.
Indeed, you could go to “Do not browbeat”.
The fact that Dorothy believes Joyce ot be autistic and is trying to fix her does, however, make this conduct much worse.
She’s not trying to fix the autism. She’s trying to fix the sexual repression
And she has in fact repeatedly given Joyce opportunities to stop
Like it’s totally fine to still find it gross but she’s not browbeating Joyce here. Nor does autism mean Joyce is incapable of giving or refusing consent. Her brain works different, not she is not a helpless child
They sell vibrators at grocery stores now; Dorothy could buy her one and give it to her as a gift in the box, leave it at that.
Joyce would not use it. She would not even touch it.
This is a very bad execution of a pretty good plan.
This is […] very strong […].
Do not […]eat your […] friends […] in a public place.
Finally, something we can all agree on: eating your friends in public is mad gross, in any context.
Well, and it’s just flat-out rude to the people around you, who might not want to see that sort of thing. I know, I know, we have to respect other people’s cultures, but those cultures also can’t be causing this sort of harm without inherently disrespecting the cultures around them. At this moment in time, in this politically-divided world, I think we need more firm stances like “Dont eat friends in public” and “Stop dissing Carla’s rollerskates”.
These stances, especially that last stance, are what will heal America, and perhaps the entire world. If we could just get people to be more aware of the real harm done by dissing Carla’s immaculately fresh wheels. Also the other thing.
Frankly, for the sake of this planet, I think Carla needs to get a 52-episode skating-centric paranormal investigation anime, with at least 4 different arc-dependent opening/ending themes and an entire soundtrack by Hideki Naganuma.
I would unironically watch the absolute hell out of this, fuck yes, fuck yes times a million.
Yes. If I must respect others’ cultures, then I expect others to respect my culture.
A lot of people seem to be saying that Joyce consented by going along with it, which is like. Ehhhhhh. Maybe people need to think about the difference between “agreeing to go along with something that you’re being pushed into” and “enthusiastic consent.”
Could it be possible, however unlikely, that Joyce is consenting and conceptually interested, she’s just extremely nervous and clearly understands the scenario is awkward as fuck, and that consent is actually not a binary between “coercion” and “enthusiastic”?
While that’s certainly true (that consent is not necessarily a binary), It’s also certainly true that the further away from “enthusiastic” you are the more of a shithead you are being to the person you’re trying to convince.
What are we counting as “enthusiastic”? Like, if I walk up to someone in a KFC and say “We both got buckets of chicken. Wanna do it?” and they say “Eh. Okay.” in a semi-bored tone, does that qualify? I”m not being a bongo, I’m honestly asking what parameters we’re working with here.
It really does no-one any favors to pretend that there isn’t or shouldn’t be a different standard for sexual stuff than other stuff.
It’s a good thing nobody’s pretending any such thing, then. If you read my comment, what I actually did was ask “What counts”.
I mean, no, that’s not enthusiastic at all.
Obviously.
Now you can go weighing the differing factors here:
– the lack of prior interaction between you weighs in favor of this probably being okay given lack of context VS Joyce already having told off Dorothy for crossing this line
– the lack of any power differential between you and your KFC bucket paramour VS Joyce, in a way known to Dorothy, having a hard time saying ‘no’ to someone authoritative
– any other relevant data – size differential, what time of day it is, how terrible a KFC we talking here, etc – to evaluate how much of that “meh consent” is actual consent and how much is “please don’t hurt me, potentially violent chicken proposition man”.
No one is pretending this is not a nuanced situation to navigate.
That all said? I would not accept sexual interaction on “eh, okay”, for myself. I’d feel like shit about it if I did.
I’ve had several partners who were victims of SA or who had trauma around authority figures. If they gave me an “eh, okay”, even though we were in a established sexual relationship, my response would be “oh, maybe some other time then, I want you to have fun too”. I have a VERY hard time with someone as ostensibly aware of her actions as Dorothy not understanding that the way she’s acting is really, really uncool on a number of levels, including the consent one. Frankly speaking, given ALL the context (including Joyce already telling her off once for trying to police her sex life, Joyce’s incredible and palpable discomfort around this whole thing, and Dorothy’s own implied admission that she’s trying to prove she’s more awesome than Roz) I cannot imagine Dorothy coming out of this smelling anything like roses, and if she does it’s honestly going to affect my opinion of Willis as an author and human being.
Thanks for clearing that up and treating the question as a question. I’m pretty satisfied with the answer, it’s very clear and unambiguous.
If it was straightforward and simple to navigate these questions, we wouldn’t have evolving standards of evaluating consent and rules of thumb. For me, and admittedly my view is colored by knowing people who have been in more or less this exact situation and ended up with a “trauma, because they felt browbeaten/couldn’t-say-no because she knows more than I do about this stuff”, I have lost basically all respect for Dorothy because AT BEST she’s playing very close to a very dangerous line for bad reasons, even if it does “turn out okay” in that Joyce is not ultimately affected badly by it. It’s the sexual equivalent of smoking at the gas station.
Well sure but we can all see how that can be twisted into victim-blaming people who are coerced.
If someone isn’t enthusiastic respect that and back off, assume no consent.
If you’re not read as enthusiastic, and the other person backs off respect that and re-establish your consent at a calmer moment.
Thank you!
I don’t understand why, of all methods, Dorothy has picked ‘sit on the public dryers in your underwear’. She could have at least, I dunno, bought her a dildo or something if she really just HAD to show Joyce how to do this. Or, just send her some of Amber’s spicy fanfics and let Joyce figure it out herself.
Dorothy was brainwashed as a child by her parents, agents of the Russian FSB, to respond to issues in life with plots from the then-popular sitcom “Scrubs” when certain key phrases were spoken.
When Walky invoked “Elliot Reid”, he inadvertently activated this state.
Honestly the most reasonable explanation for all this so far.
I’m completely lost too what Dorothy is thinking. Deciding for Joyce she needed to do this was problamatic enough. All I can guess is she doesn’t want to tell Sarah and doesn’t want her walking in but why is the possibility of strangers better?? Does Dorothy think piblic somehow makes her more sex positive?
*public
*pubic
This is not actual masturbation; this is merely a systems check to make sure that everything is functioning in a normal manner.
Besides, Joyce has already been exposed to vibrators, and has at least a rudimentary idea of their purpose.
True, but Joyce doesn’t have her own personal one and I’m not sure if she’d be able to use it appropriately if like, tossed a vibrator and left to her own devices. I think she’d at least need a little run down, maybe a tip or two, and then that’s kinda it.
I mean, it’s as simple as ”This is a diagram of the vulva. This is the clitoris, it’s at the top, above where you pee from. Turn this [indicate vibe] on low, and spend time figuring out if you like it. Don’t try to insert it [if applicable to vibe shape]. Also, pee before and after. Sarah is at class for another hour. Bye, I’m going to my room and putting headphones on while I study.”
I skipped the step of ‘press it near or against the clitoris’ but close enough.
Because the picture already existed?
Joyce already has read some of Amber’s fics, she probably has her bookmarked.
I imagine Dorothy picked this because it’s a less intimidating method. No insertion, and unlike humping a pillow, Joyce doesn’t need to take the initiative, the machine does.
If Joyce enjoys this, it also opens up the world of vibrating toys, many of which are not terribly expensive, and insertion is optional.
Like, I disagree with Dorothy’s thesis statement that getting off will make Joyce not want Joe anymore, but otherwise, there are merits to the idea of showing Joyce a non-scary way of relating to her own body.
If she had, there’d be an outcry: “for Deity’s sake, Dorothy, couldn’t you just have her sit on a dryer? This is sooo over the line!”
All actions are the incorrect action.
The only correct and sanctioned action would be for Dorothy, upon showing up at Joyce’s door, to be immediately taken down by a Precrime SWAT unit and dragged off in irons.
Well yeah, that’s just how society works. A lot of people seem very certain that Joyce is about to get re-traumatized or something similar, specifically by Dorothy, based on motivations nobody cares about explaining. I like Dorothy, but she’s gotta be taken down.
We started out with “I’m going to teach you to masturbate” and somehow it’s getting weirder from there.
This is a very public location!
I think her logic is use the dryer to provide stimulation its still weird.
Especially considering that it’s washing machines that are known for being better for this, not dryers!
Still basically annoyed at everything happening here (maybe I’m just too goddamn ace for all this, but come on, that’s a public-use appliance, don’t put your crotch on it) so I’m gonna just go back to safer archives to see if Joyce is right about Carla’s, uh, assets.
…Huh, yeah, she definitely popped up a cup size or so.
Ace person who is also really annoyed and uncomfortable with the current events highfive!
Three around!
Ace person who thinks this is meant to be a funny comedic bit that may build into some critique of the characters while also having some fun along the way, for what it’s worth.
I’m not all Ace abd this is getting extremely uncomfortable, its bordering on some form of sexual abuse imho
Another allosexual checking in to say – Nope this is awful.
Pan here
Yeah no this has crossed so many boundaries. But I trust Willis to bring this around and use the uncomfortableness to have this blow up in Dorothy’s face and show that she’s essentially gone nutso
Well, the machines are made of enamelled metal. Easy to clean, even disinfect. Designed so. I’d be more worried about the chairs in the food court.
I am not sure the publoc laundry room is the best place for this .Also the TV show Ghosts did a similar plotline with a dryer involving a sexually repressed character.
There was a gag in Mad About You one time, too.
Close up of first panel please Mr. Willis?
I recall reading about how in the bad old days women would sometimes discover a form of masturbation and not realize it had anything to do with sex or that anyone else did it. Because society worked so hard at keeping them ignorant about sex.
Now foreseeing a punchline based around Joyce being like that. “Yeah, I know dryer riding is wonderful, but what does it have to do with sex?”
Once she starts on it, it might not be enough for her to finish. You know what that means.
From what I’ve read in early 19th educational literature, the very idea of rubbing, without any conscience of sex, was already strongly forbidden for female children, so guess how it was for grown up women, while the idea of pleasure itself was also forbidden to mention or think of – it is partly the cause for Lady Chatterley to take place around horses (like they were the laundromats of the day) management. Giving that many of today fundie (and not so fundie tbh) ideas are rooted in the beginning of the 19th (rather than in the 18th), you can infer the rest – strangely because the 17th and 18th literature is full of counterexamples, with a society that officially reproves it but actually has many places to be, undercover or not, sexually active, and many many symbols for it, most of them are discarded both by the “science” and “religion” coming…
Weren’t women encouraged to ride sidesaddle on horses? And bicycling was frowned upon for lots of reasons that being one.
One of the others was that it gave them access to cheaper transportation under their control.
Wait, so the more I think about this the weirder it seems. Dorothy took Joyce to a public place for this, and then threw Joyce’s pants into a washing machine so that if someone does walk in and it becomes weird Joyce won’t even be able to put her pants back on?
And the intended lesson is that…Joyce should masturbate in public more often? Wha? This is the most insane plan. I almost expect a weird super-fucked up twist like Dorothy has picked out a more acceptable boyfriend for Joyce than Joe and is setting up a meet cute or something.
This whole scene makes me think Dorothy has no clue what shes doing and worse she didnt tell Joyce what she had in mind before coming down here.
That’s cause she doesn’t know what she’s doing. This is just a weird lashing out over her own frustrations regarding her romantic life by trying to control Joyce’s.
Yeah that honestly makes way more sense than the idea that this was a calculated decision that was fully and completely thought out.
maybe part of Dorothy’s plan was also to literally trap Joyce into another conversation about why she can’t be with Joe
What, is she gonna stuff her in the dryer?
Naturally, that’s why Dorothy has that mustache she keeps twirling and the top hat on, and keeps cracking a whip.
Also why the alt-text says “Dorothy is going to stuff Joyce into the dryer, and I, David Willis, endorse this behavior.”
The point of washing the pants is that it gives her a reason to even be there. If someone DID walk in, it’s just someone doing their laundry and above suspicion.
If she’s just sitting on the dryer without a reason to even be in the laundry room, it’s much more suspicious.
Joyce was pretty much at boob level with Carla yesterday so I can’t blame her.
I was wondering if we’d get another “safe and warm forever” line.
Joyce, you’re THICC. You’re just gonna have to accept that.
Joyce is thicc-ish. It’s hard to claim she’s thicc when Amber, Jennifer, and now even Liz exist.
She’s on the spectrum of Thiccness. But she’s definitely on it.
Huh. Looked at a couple pre-timeskip strips, and it’s kinda subtle but I think Joyce is talking about Carla’s bust size? It’d explain why she doesn’t want to clarify what she’s talking about to Dorothy, at least.
Yeah, she’s noticed Carla is, to quote Fart Captor, new boob goofin’. HRT paying dividends for our beloved queen!
Dorothy, this is just dumb. Admit you just wanted Joyce to take her pants off for you on demand and let’s try again somewhere less metallic and exposed.
Comservation of volume: Also applicable to art. Take notes.
Joyce is gonna need some reading material… oh no they discontinued Sierra Mist
Ok, real talk, has anyone actually done this? I feel like this is a trope that in 10 years people will be talking about like “lol can you believe writers thought ladies could orgasm from washing machines/driers?” I fully understand how it would feel good—but to the point of orgasm? I dunno, it seems a little porny (“oh yeah, all women orgasm instantly if x, y, z”) masquerading as progressiveness because at least you understand the clitoris exists and that it likes vibrations.
On the other hand, I’m super relieved with the end point here. I didn’t know what Dorothy was up to, but this could have been anything from the PG-13 stuff that we’re seeing (phew) to Dorothy demonstrating how to use a vibrator.
If I caught my wife doing this I’d be very pissed off and I’d let her know in no uncertain terms it’s not to happen again because dryers are reasonably expensive and I’m pretty sure they’re not designed to be sat on when in use
Use the appropriate tool for the job.
To be clear, when I say “relieved,” I don’t object to the Dorothy/Joyce ship. But unless we’re living inside a porno (and we all want our ships to be in-character and realistic to the plot, right?), Dorothy teaching Joyce to masturbate is explicit terms is…like…sexual harassment. It’s already kinda there, given Joyce’s reluctance. The less nakedness the better, in this case.
Uh, how do you know this is the end point?
Every strip is the end point, wym?
To try saying this in the least TMI way possible, both the angle and the type of vibration would be wildly off from doing anything for me, but all bodies are different so who knows. (Though it would be kinda hilarious if it turns out to not do anything for Joyce either.)
Update because this was bugging me. According to Reddit, this really only works with washing machines and only with really, really old washing machines. Like, way older than most households and a college campus would have. Like, to the point if your washer shakes enough to get someone off, it’s broken and you need a new one. Curious if the next few strips recognize this and circumvent the trope.
I can’t speak for washing machines providing pleasure… But I can speak on two accounts:
Washing machine repairs are actually fairly easy (and comparatively cheap); if you have an old machine that shakes/”travels” horribly, it probably means that some part inside is needing replacement… In the case of my washing machine, the part was a trio of plastic stoppers that cost about $15, a couple orders of magnitude less than the cost of a new appliance.
And, on the account of providing pleasure, I have been told by several ladies that one reason they enjoy being the passenger on motorcycles (especially v-twin engine bikes like Ducatis and Harleys) is that it *does* get them excited/aroused. But then, v-twins have a very distinct shake/rattle to them.
See also the song “Go-Kart Racing” by Garfunkel and Oates.
I definitely see this working — Joyce is so repressed that this kind of oblique stimulation will be a revelation. Once she realizes that she has some feelings down there, then they can talk about other methods than involve using the hands and other tools.
Sitting on something that’s vibrating does work, washer or dryer or horse. Especially for someone so pent up and inexperienced. But dryers are warm! And a dryer can certainly handle the weight of an average woman, lol. It’s not going to wear out.
Something can feel good without needing to bring you to completion, or else people wouldn’t grind in clubs. Most of them aren’t doing that until they jizz their pants.
….Feeling kind of judged right now.
It’s kind of weird to be speculating about “in 10 years people will be talking about like”, when a) half the commenters are already saying it and b) it’s not like it’s a new trope. It’s been around for ages. True or not, it’s probably not going to vanish soon.
Okay I don’t… I don’t even want to try to get into the ethics of this or whatever but legit the dialogue in this strip would not be out of place in a femdom exhibitionist scene. ijs
I agree, it reads so much like the introduction to a porn story that I wonder if this will be revealed to be a sexual fantasy of one of theirs. We’ve seen Joyce’s dreams before so it’s not entirely out of the question that this is one.
That’s an interesting thought that hadn’t occurred to me. Thanks for bring it up
I saw this episode of “Ghosts.” (Although it was an off-balance washer there!
No no Joyce, that’s a good thing.
Joyce looks really cute in that first panel! I have to say I wish this wasn’t happening like this because both Dorothy and Joyce are so adorable right now and it’d be kind of fun if this wasn’t, uh. This
Also think it’s very interesting that Joyce is going along with this. I honestly was expecting her to just … not.
i love how every day ppl here try to debate the ethics/realism of these cartoon characters actions….. they r ur imaginary friends and they are going to have weird cartoon sexy times together its cool man
also appreciate joyce noticing carla in the middle of all this. yes girl have an awakening
Haha yes. I’m here for this silliness and I’m not going to hold these cartoon characters to the highest ethical standards. They are dumb kids after all. I’d also like more fun and unrealistic super hero shenanigans please and no more deaths.
I love how every day, people here try to shit on the idea that you can discuss art, comics, and story arcs with real-world ideas. Or that the situations being described might provoke a deeper discussion about real-world parallels.
God forbid anyone engage with something in a way you personally wouldn’t. Especially without being told how wrong they are!
The horror.
On the flipside, though, people get BIG mad over this. That is totally fine to tell people to maybe take a step back and not take it deadly seriously.
It’s fun to debate, discuss, etc, but when people get heated, it’s officially in silly territory.
Yeah, it’s a rom-com webcomic. Sometimes things get a little exaggerated for fun, and people take it so unbelievably literally. They aren’t engaging with the text in good faith.
Or: yes, it’s a rom-com webcomic, and I want the characters to stop doing things that take away the fun.
Yes, coercing an assault victim is super duper fun. Nothing like using someone’s paralyzing fear of their own sexuality to bully them into masturbating for you.
Jesus fucking Christ.
“they r ur imaginary friends
Can you stop breaking kayfabe, please? Nobody thinks these characters are fucking real, that’s absurd and condescending to suggest.
Not gonna tell her why before telling her what to do huh :/
I keep getting back to that whole thing where she talked about having some very confused ideas about “platonic snuggling” or however she put it ‘way back when and her going, “…is THAT what that was?!”
This is honestly some of the most fun this comic has been in a while. It’s cute, a little horny, silly, and clearly building to some critiques of Dorothy.
And my “Valentine’s Day catastrophe where the Dorothy/Joyce ship is finally acknowledged in a single stupid impulsive act that ruins everything” theory is looking more and more promising. >:)
Willis, this? This right here?
This is the problem that has me concerned.
What problem? People enjoying the comic?
I’m not sure how to interpret Imogen’s Valentine’s Day catastrophe idea as something other than “it would be fun if these characters had a really awkward and potentially traumatizing sexual mistake that was played for laffs”.
Could definitely not be a them problem? Dunno? Really feeling awkward and uncertain about this entire storyline.
Okay, let me go on record here with a rare firm stance: I don’t think this storyline is going to result in either Joyce or Dorothy doing anything to actually-factually traumatise the other. I think Joyce is going along with this of her own free will, even if she’s really visibly nervous (she is), and even if Dorothy is overstepping a lot immediately after being told to step off with the sex talk (she is). I absotlutely, positively, quote me on this, do not think that Willis is going to treat this as a har-har funny goof-’em-up wherein Dorothy looks into the camera and says “Ain’t I a stinker?” and eats a large carrot. I don’t think it’s meant to be something deliberately titillating, at least not the parts everyone is fixating on (Dorothy’s boundary issues). Like, I’m really skeptical that Willis is saying “Dorothy being weird about this is Hot and Funny”.
But hey, what do I know?
Congratulations on actually reading the comic and retaining characterization. Whatever you’re drinking, I hope it can be passed around.
Y’know, I haven’t had a drink in months, but goddamn if this storyline isn’t gonna have me reachin’ for a bottle by the end of it.
I really hope you are correct! And your statement would make sense with prior events!
This is just jarring as fuck without knowing for sure and I don’t think “a single stupid impulsive act that ruins everything” has a high chance of fun to me, should it generally occur.
Know what I could foresee as an actual outcome of this?
Joyce comes out of this satisfied and enlightened, and thanks Dorothy for helping her with his.
She then proceeds to avoid Dorothy for the entire rest of their time in the same college, because every time she sees her the memories of this event flood in and she really doesn’t want to think about it actually and DEFINITELY doesn’t want to get caught up in another of Dorothy’s brilliant ideas about getting her less repressed. Even if this one worked, the awkwardness/embarrassment remembering it causes her makes it not worth it.
You could also interpret it as “this would be a compelling dramatic plotline” or “this is my prediction and it would be satisfying if I guessed right”, or as a combination of all three
Also, for the “Valentine’s Day catastrophe” specifically: there’s a running joke about Willis and break-ups or other romantic disasters in Valantine’s Day strips. Not played for laughs, but for drama. Given the pace of the comic, it’s not implausible that this could be leading up to something that might fit.
(Or this could be Walky and Lucy’s year.)
Annnd I’m done with the comments section (probably the story arc). Entirely sick of the constant and over-the-top objectification of women, and the constant excuses for rape culture and misogyny.
Enjoy the cess pool, folks. Have a day.
“What is Nova talking about with the comments?”
*scrolls up*
“…Ah, yeah, no, I get it now”
I’m now hoping this is just somebody’s fan-fic. I don’t think Amber does sapphic, so maybe Joyce herself? She’s still caught up in 1990s and earlier it’s ok if she only reluctantly consents tropes? Dorothy is acting like a 1980s-style alpha hero here and not like a real person.
It’s just too awful both from an enthusiastic consent standpoint and a logistical standpoint if it’s real.
please do not approach every piece of media like you need to break down it’s tropes to solve it like a puzzle.
Why don’t you take care of you and don’t tell me what I can and can’t do?
I dunno about this. Even setting aside the obvious uncomfortableness of Dorothy being weird and coercive, masturbation does require being relaxed and able to focus on the sensation etc. A public place with lots of distractions, and the possibility that someone might come in, seems like bad conditions for the focus masturbation requires. Also, I really don’t understand why she should take of her pants? Pajamas are soft, she’s still wearing panties, it doesn’t make a lot of difference.
I’m .. really hoping that my trust in Willis isnt misplaced. Because I really don’t like where this is going. It’s really gross and uncomfortable, and messed up, and I want to think that Willis knows and will address this soon… Because this could very well be a jumping off point after 10 years of reading for me…
Mmmmmhmmm.
thirded. so far I trust Willis, and I think this is going to turn into a disaster (whether that’s an isolated disastrous event, or a disastrous effect on their friendship that Joyce discovers more slowly and secretly, idk), but if it’s played for laughs or horniness that’ll be it for me. Even if it somehow goes well it needs a weight.
Yup, same here.
Called it!
…hm. :/
Carla: ♫ “I have big bubbs an´ I can not lie. You otha girls can´t deny.” ♫
Two ways this can go:
(1) Joyce likes it and starts sneaking down to the laundry room at night.
(2) Joyce is just getting started when someone walks into the laundry (Joe? Becky?) Joyce then either leaps into an open dryer, or runs out the door without pants, screaming “NO HANKY-PANKY! NO HANKY-PANKY!”.
Does Dorothy have a plan?
A. Get Joyce on the pill.
B. Get Joyce to discover solo sexual pleasure.
C. Joyce gets boy-crazy and ends up having real sex.
D. Dorothy congratulates herself for making Joyce normal.
Well, that’s one heterosexual explanation.
But yet again how would changing into spaghetti straps fit into thar plan?
I mean, I’m not complaining.
I think C. (especially when it comes to Joe) is the scenario Dorothy is actively trying to Prevent.
she said as much, but she is seemingly attempting to achieve that by teaching Joyce about sexual pleasure, which she could decide to go explore with Joe, possibly even more enthusiastically
Oh this might beautifully explode in Dotty’s face.
IIRC WIllis said that Anti-Joyce was a bad character choice so I don’t think so.
Nobody can take from me the strong conclusion that Joyce is, at least, bi.
Every strip that comes out is the only strip that exists. Nothing has come before this, and nothing will come after this. It’s not an ongoing story. Every single word is to be taken at face value and treated as the look-at-the-camera moral summary at the end of a Very Special Episode, with all behavior portrayed as correct, positive, and even aspirational. This is a personal attack.
Dang, I thought there was a whole story arc going on here, about jealousy and sexual awakening and love with all of its hazards, and good intentions being warped by jealousy and bitter loneliness, and a whole interplay of complicated feelings and complex relationships! I was completely off the mark!
Damn, that’s why I never get what’s all about!!! All this time thinking the “dumb” in the title was about me!
“Do my legs look fat to you when I sit down?”
Willis, has my first wife been feeding you wild lines?
Didn’t Joyce get the memo? In our new roaring twenties, big thighs are back IN.
assuming this works for joyce and nobody walks in and joyce decides this is actually fine, I don’t think wandering down to the laundry anytime she thinks about boys too much falls under something she’d want to do or something that’s viable to do
however it is very entertaining
Personally, I don’t see the need to take her pants. Being in your undies In a semi public space, even if it’s gender segregated, can be uncomfortable on it’s own, let alone with what dotty is trying to teach her. This is seriously pushing the boundary of friendship, even with the verbal outs dotty has given joyce
Carla’s boobs. For clarity.
How is someone not gonna walk in on them? Also I’m still mad at Dorothy for bullying her way past several instances of “No.”
Also is the first question Joyce has asked about transgender? Is there a Jocelyn thread in the future? (Hopeful, crosses fingers)
1) Joyce has not said “no” to this. She’s done everything but say no. And Dorothy has asked multiple times and Joyce has given her consent multiple times (off-panel, because this is a sitcom and it’s best to get that convo squared away in one panel on the opposite side of the punchline). Joyce only says “no” when she’s asked if she wants to abort the mission. She wants to do this, and she wants a friend she can trust not to kiss her and fundamentally change her relationship to God to help her.
2) Joyce is definitely noticing the boobs – but I don’t think we know that she knows Carla is trans? This could be setting up her finding out about that, which then would narratively lead to Jocelyn’s return to non-patreon screen time?
Okay, but Joyce is a helpless autistic victim who’s mentally incapable of giving or understanding consent, don’t ya know. She’s but a wee innocent child who needs a minder just to walk down the fucking hallway.
(Not you, but there’s a Vibe in the air today that’s starting to piss me off.)
yeah, I wonder if this arc had happened pre-autism mention if everyone would be like ‘yeah! classic repressed fundie learning about their sexuality in college!’ (which it totally still is)
I’m particularly bemused by the “She yelled at Dorothy earlier, so clearly she’s incapable of refusing her” line of argument.
Joyce only had one yell in her, apparently.
Okay, I wrote this as a response to someone else, but it wasn’t super relevant to the topic at hand, actually, so I’m dumping it here.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but the problem for me is not “is Joyce consenting or not,” but “is the way Dorothy obtained that consent acceptable behavior.”
And I still maintain that “declaring objectively that you’re going to teach your best friend how to masturbate For Her Own Good, despite her initial protestings and after she toldyou to stop scrutinizing her sex life” is a shitty thing for Dot to do, even if she gave a token way out after the fact and even if Joyce ends up going along with it. Like, from a Carla-style sex-repulsed ace I’m already kind of sick of the idea that Joyce’s unwillingness to masturbate is something that needs to be “fixed” (yes I know it’s not the same thing and that Joyce is aKsHuAlLy horny, but the sentiment still feels gross) but this has been a particularly unpleasant scene.
(I also maintain that from a Doylist perspective, it’d be kind of a shitty thing to write if this magically turns out fine and is treated as a good and healthy thing for Joyce, because the message is It’s Okay To Peer Pressure Your Friends With Sexual Trauma Into Semi-Public Masturbation For Their Own Good is a shit-ass one.)
THANK YOU.
Um…. maybe the reason why it still feels gross is because you’re sex-repulsed?
No, it’s gross.
I can’t even begin to think of how to formulate a way of conveying how offensive and borderline infantilizing this is, so instead I’m going to try and clarify that I’m not, like, physically disgusted at the idea of masturbation.
I think that someone not masturbating, regardless of their reasoning or underlying trauama/baggage, is not something that anyone gets to take upon themselves to “fix” unless you’re a therapist who specializes in sexual trauma that said person has specifically reached out for help with or what have you, and that my asexuality is specifically relevant to my perspective on this matter because a lot of people have taken that same fucking attitude to asexuals and it’s really fucking uncomfortable to see it reflected in one of my favorite webcomics, regardless of context.
That is the grossness of the sentiment that I am objecting to. Not that Orgasms Icky or whatever.
Cosigning this as someone who is neither ace nor sex-repulsed. The issue here is not masturbation or orgasms in and of themselves, but the way that Dorothy is not listening to Joyce’s repeatedly and emphatically stated boundaries. Yes, even if she then gives lip service to the idea that Joyce can exit this whenever, no penalty, no big deal. Had Joyce asked for help, well, then maybe we take a field trip to see Roz/talk to someone at the health center/visit a sex toy shop, but she didn’t ask. In fact, she specifically told everyone to butt the hell OUT of her sex life, such as it is. This is uncomfortable and Dorothy is going way too far here.
No, it’s straight-up gross. I maintain if it were any male character speaking Dorothy’s dialogue, the same people who are like “LOL CUTE THEY GONNA LESBIAN I KNEW JOYCE WAS BI FUN GIRL TIMES” would be calling for his head. Something about this particular ship seems to have rotted people’s ability to actually evaluate it from a moral perspective.
It’s really fucked up to suggest that people’s morals are “rotted” just because they ship certain characters. What are you even talking about?
That is exactly what has been happening. Remember the dude who was stuck on “Joe will fix Joyce with his penis”? Who was all for Dorothy smashing Joyce’s boundaries if it kept her “safe” from Joe?
I don’t remember anything of the sort, but no, rotted morality is not what is happening.
You mean the loon who literally got dogpiled for being an absolute bozo the second they posted, most nights? The one who practically nobody agreed with on anything that was actually serious, because they kept coming up with absolutist moral judgements on people based on a first-grader’s understanding of human behavior?
I’m just saying, that guy’s reality-repulsed rambling’s not indicative of the rest of us.
That poster has a name, which has not, in point of fact, appeared in the comment section for the past four days.
Yeah, their name is Fake Dalai Lama Quotes Guy, and I’m not as down with the lingo as some folks here, but I’m pretty sure they’re explicitly blacklisted.
Re-read: It’s perfectly plausible to ship Joyce and Dorothy AND think this is gross as hell. It’s not the ship that’s the problem, it’s the blind enthusiasm I’m seeing from SOME advocates for it that’s overriding frankly the most uncomfortable this comic has been for me since the time Joyce was assaulted at the party.
That’s a majorly false comparison because no male characters have the same relationship Joyce and Dorothy do. It would be gross for any of them to do this just because none of them have a close enough relationship for it to even be considered. Dorothy is one of Joyce’s closest and most trusted friends, and they (ostensibly) have no sexual attraction to each other. That situation simply cannot exist with any male member of the cast — or any non-male cast members, for that matter. Even with Dorothy’s unique position as Joyce’s friend the beginning of the interaction was pretty gross, but it’s not mediated because she’s a girl, or because ooh gay ships. It’s because they’re close friends, and Dorothy appears to be genuinely trying to help. She… is not doing the best job of it, but intentions count for something in a situation like this.
I totally agree Cheshrin! I do think this would be more of an okay scenario if Dorothy had a conversation with Joyce about it first, maybe telling her that she would be open to teach Joyce how to masturbate if she would like to, and maybe talk through some methods and scenarios beforehand. Even if Joyce is open to the idea (and I think she is, because we know she can and does put her foot down when she doesn’t want to do something), I’d still say this is very problematic behaviour by Dorothy because she doesn’t allow Joyce any agency in deciding when, where, and how it takes place.
It’s nice to see how Joyce is able to notice Carla has changed. This ability she has to see these details is interesting, but her inability to understand what is going on in the laundry shows how clueless she really is about the subject Dorothy wants her to know. This ignorance of her it’s weird and really sad. I mean, I understand what makes Dorothy do what she’s doing.
That carla getting bigger crack was a real Humm-vinger!
I’ll see myself out….
Y’all. Joyce is not about to be sexually assaulted. She’s not. The second she starts to show actual, genuine discomfort and not this borderline performative “OMG WHAAAAT okay let’s go” reaction, Dorothy’s gonna let up. These two didn’t just meet, they know each other well enough by now for Joyce to set a boundary up front if she needs to and for Dorothy to respect that, especially one so closely related to the time she got roofied. If she didn’t want to go, she would have told Dorothy to fuck off, same as she did maybe a couple hours ago on this very same day. I know people have had real experience with those things, and I’m not trying to downplay that reality, but I’m completely confident that this story is not going to go in that direction.
If this worst case scenario y’all have conjured up actually happens, I’ll post a fucking apology video on YouTube or permanently change my icon to a dunce hat. If that seems flippant, it’s because those are at the extreme end of what I think is at stake here.
Joyce listens to and trusts Dorothy, even if Joyce doesn’t view Dorothy as a surrogate mom she certainly sees Dorothy as someone who knows “more” than she does so of course Joyce is going to do what Dorothy says, more than what she would when it comes to others
Going into someones room and announcing you’re going to teach them how to masturbate is not normal
Telling your socially awkward, sexually naïve friend to partially strip down, in a semi-public place, and then sit on a dryer to, presumably, be stimulated to orgasm is really not healthy behaviour
Most people, let alone someone like Joyce, probably think masturbation is something someone does in private, not somewhere someone like Mary or whoever could walk in and see her getting off
I am begging y’all not to invent and assume as gospel truth a fucked-up power dynamic between Joyce and Dorothy that does not exist
It literally doesn’t, and I’m honestly baffled where anyone is getting the idea.
Dorothy has been acting like she thinks it does since at LEAST the skip.
>acting like
>she thinks
no for real people talking about a “power dynamic” here are just furthering the conversion of legitimate psychological and sociological constructs into buzzwords.
A peer you respect in a context where no other peers are around for their opinions to be relevant is only a power work if you completely infantilize the person in question.
It is not the W you think it is, it is just infantilization of Joyce
Frankly I see Dorothy going “ok here’s some tips, now I’m gonna stand outside with earplugs and this book and make sure you aren’t interrupted, cheers,” and closing the door. Really do not envision a self-described kinsey zero to take an, uh, “active hand” in her same-sex bestie’s first orgasm. But either way, if Joyce actually wants to stop or take a minute, I think you’re right and she’ll either say so or it will be immediately obvious and Dorothy will back off!
Hoo boy comment section
anyway curious where this is going. Like I get what it’s hinting towards with the drier but curious what will actually happen
You’re not allowed to want to know what’s gonna happen next. That’s against the ToS. More acceptable behavior would include taking the worst possible outcome and treating it as not only the reality of the comic, but endorsed by the creator and all the other commentors.
…You know, now that I think about it, it certainly seems possible that Dorothy is jealous and doesn’t realize it. While she strives to be emotionally healthy, she’s often unaware of the nuances in her own feelings. This is what makes her vulnerable to rationalizing what she’s inclined to do anyway. In this case, it may not just be that Joe is a terrible choice for a first partner for Joyce, though Dorothy probably indeed believes so, but her passion for this may be stemming from Dorothy’s own unconscious desire for Joyce. Joyce has never had a romantic partner to “come between” herself and Dorothy. And Dorothy is spending an awful lot of time obsessing over Joyce’s romantic/sexual interests.
I’m just sayin’, I’ve never met a straight chick who cared this much about her freshman BFF’s ladybits. Maybe I don’t hang out with enough busybodies and this is extremely normal hetero behavior.
I mean, the chapter title is “Turning Saints Into the Sea”, whiiiich is from a song explicitly about sexual jealousy and feelings getting carried away.
So, you know, I’m pretty sure you’re very much onto something here, to the point I will eat a hat-shaped cake if that’s not the case.
You couldn’t pay me to sit on top of a washer or dryer. Those things are so filthy.
There seem to be a lot of people in the comments here insisting that this is very gay. I’m confused. Do straight people not talk to each other about sex? Do they not seek advice and learning before trying it themselves? Is that why (in my very personal and highly subjective experience) straight people seem to not be as good at it?
No, this is also def a flavor of straight female friendships. Or at least queer/straight friendships.
There’s also a whole set of toxic repressed purity culture straight people who would NEVER have this conversation, but at least in my cohort it’s not strange at all.
I’m bi but didn’t know for a long time so idk if this counts, but among my straight friends convos like what Joyce & Dorothy were discussing weren’t uncommon, ESPECIALLY in college. Which, I think a lot of commentors may be forgetting from time to time.
It’s just a ship. In my view these two have no sexual or romantic chemistry whatsoever. Dorothy enjoys being in charge of Joyce, which has started to turn their relationship toxic. But some people get weak in the knees for toxic relationships, especially ones that are gay, and especially if it involves two straight characters coming out as gay for each other. I can’t explain why, but it’s endemic to all fandom.
A few people have fixated on Joyce looking at Carla’s boobs or being self conscious about her legs around Dorothy as a sign that she is gay, as though women never look at each other or feel self conscious around each other. But they’ll see “clues” everywhere.
Joyce staring at Carla’s chest for several minutes, grabbing her boob and saying “awooga-wooga, what have we here” didn’t seem a little bit gay to you?
LOL. Choked on my macaroni.
On January 24, 2023, Taffy was arrested for attempted murder.
NGL – all y’all commenting that this is particularly strange or unethical in a bordeline assault way haven’t been to college. There’s always people who were raised with puritanical and shame-y values regarding sexual purity and the evil-ness of desire/masturbation/sexual health and sometimes they need and appreciate a friend to help them overcome that ingrained shame.
Like. Buying your roommate their first vibrator is a solid common thing.
Not only is this a comic, this is ALSO so incredibly NOT an asexual or sex-repulsed person being ‘taught how to be normal’ (ie allosexual). It’s a repressed person with a lifetime of religious sexual baggage with a friend she trusts – and while I’d LOVE to see more discussion on Dorothy’s subconcious reasoning (I think she’s just as, if not more, jealous of Joe as she is concerned he’s a bad choice in relationship).
You can def argue it’s not her place to decide anything for Joyce in regards to who Joyce chooses to do what with, but you also can’t deny that if your super repressed friend who believes in Fairy Tale True Love suddenly started dating someone who has a lot of casual sex but no on screen relationships at ALL yet – you’d be super not okay with that situation.
Joyce is having fun being a sexual temptress but doesn’t actually have experience with that sexuality. She’s playing with fire when she’s only read about it in fanfiction.
Dorothy feels a confusing mix of responsibility for Joyce’s safety – both physical and emotional – and her own possessive emotions for her friend, as well as Roz’s barbs getting under her skin.
Joyce’s choices are her own, but c’mon. Who doesn’t think that maybe starting with sitting on the dryer is a better first step than climbing Joe like a jungle gym?
But, again, it’s a webcomic about college shenanigans. Chillax folks
This is a trillion miles away from buying someone a vibrator lol. She isn’t giving Joyce a chance to explore this on her own. She actually *should* have bought Joyce a vibrator. That would be normal between close friends. This is not.
The “it’s just a comic” defense doesn’t really hold up in a comic that has extensively covered rape, gun violence, alcoholism, misogyny, sexism of all stripes, murder, suicide, all kinds of abusive behavior and violent bigotry. We as an audience have come to take this comic very seriously because we see our reality reflected in the behavior of these characters.
Shenanigans do occur but I do not see this as amusing at all, just confusing, ambiguous and strange.
92 minutes of standing ovation.
I’ve been to college. Nothing like this happened. The closest I’ve gotten to anything like this is the time my roommate’s boyfriend came to visit and she “suggested” that I should go somewhere else for about an hour so they could have sex. Other than that, at no point did my roomies and I buy each other vibrators or teach each other to sit on a dryer to get off.
Alright, and that’s your own loved experience. Other people’s lives are different from yours.
Ah, the mythical dryer-vibrator.
Comment section seems to forget this is all taking place in college and while maybe your friend group didn’t have discussions like this mine did and plenty of others did. Makes perfect sense, is perfectly normal, and y’all DESPERATELY need to log the fuck off the internet for a few days and get back in touch with reality. Please. These are goofy hormonal college students not fucking saints for you to hold up or derive. Get a grip.
Me reading webcomics 99% of the time: what an interesting update, think I’ll keep my thoughts to myself and see how this plays out
Me after one sip of mango fiesta monster energy: BARK BARKBARK WOOF WOOF ARARARARRRR GRRRR *biting tablecloth, pulls down entire set of plates and silverware* BARK BARK AWOOO *sound of huge claws scratching and clattering as I sprint around the hardwood floor and knock into walls*
As always, fucking love the “You attacking fictional characters makes it okay for me to attack you” crowd. (There’s also the “You defending fictional characters makes it okay for me to attack you” crowd.)
And there are times when I think that makes sense– like, if someone is complaining about a character being queer, yeah, that’s pretty shitty of them. But often, really hating the actions of a particular character doesn’t deserve personal insults.
If I say, “Danny fucking sucks” (which is not actually my opinion, love Danny) and someone replies, “You fucking suck” or something like, “Clearly you don’t have many friends” or whatever, that’s not “matching” or “turn about is fair game” or whatever, that’s escalation.
I agree with this, I think. Like, it’s one thing to say rude things about a fictional character, and it’s completely another to say them about a real person. The character is never going to know that you said their dick looks funny and their Jordans are fake, they’re not real. The person on the other side of the screen is absolutely going to see you saying “Your morals are rotted, you advocate for rape if you don’t hate this, and you’re delusional to the point of being unsafe for general society”, and it’s gonna cause real hurt.
People are getting way too fucking personal over this, and if we could all stop behaving like frothing chimps just a little bitty bit, maybe a real conversation could be had.
Biggest revelation to me in this strip is that Carla is only sometimes on rollerskates. Worldview: shattered.
Believe in the Carla that believes she is on rollerskates, which she believes is “always”.
A SEMI-SPICY TAKE: Dorothy isn’t trying to get Joyce off right now in the middle of the laundry room. She is, however, trying to get Joyce aware of and potentially comfortable with the related sensory input, especially if, as many surmised, the vibrations of said machine are insufficient for the goal in mind.
I have no particular position (ahem) in the broader discussion about the ethics of this act.
Maybe I’m wrong! I’m sure we’ll find out sometime in February.
Yeah, people are jumping to wild conclusions on the “orgasm” thing. That hasn’t been introduced as a concept in this event, yet. For all we know, Joyce is gonna get up there and say something like “I don’t get it, why do you want me to- Oh, hello. What’s uh, what’s goin’ on down there?” and then Dorothy will calmly explain like a normal person instead of raping Joyce in the laundry room or whatever people are expecting.
OK for everyone making excuses, yes, it’s normal to buy a vibrator for a friend. No, it isn’t normal to drag them to a public place for a first selfie after being told to leave it alone. No, this isn’t Ryan roofie-scarface, but it’s still kind of icky.
And for everyone saying “This is fictional don’t get worked up” what can I tell you. Fiction is a thought experiment for understanding real life – or it wouldn’t make much sense.
All the “It’s just a comic” comments really throw me off. Were we not supposed to take the roofie plotline seriously? It’s just a comic, so it had to have been meant as a haha-funnee right?
Ok, entirely aside from the social aspect of this… is sitting on a washer/dryer to get off really A Thing? I am asexual and my best friend did indeed give me tips on getting off (though she was not present), but I have never once heard of this method. Jokes about bicycles and bumpy roads, yes; jokes about sitting on a running laundry machine, not even remotely. I thought y’all were joking. Genuinely. How on earth is this superior to and less self-consciousness-inducing than, say, grinding on a pillow in the dark. As a random, non-specific example. This seems like such an odd approach; is this how any of y’all learned?
I saw it in an episode of Mad About You, that is the extent of my knowledge on the subject
I think I should probably quit reading the comments sections of this comic, because I think it may be actively reducing my enjoyment of the comic itself.
I am surprised Willis has not locked down the comments for this storyline yet, honestly
That might be the best choice for a lot of people, lately. I’ve been getting a little overwhelmed by how harsh it’s gotten, myself.
So many people act as though Joyce has no agency in this. She’s her because she chose to be.
Stop understanding the story, it’s a personal attack on me and my culture.
I’m just going to give one more take before checking out of the comment section for the remainder of this particular plot line
Something doesn’t literally have to be creeping on someone or attempting to assault them for it to be creepy and overstepping bounds. Believe it or not there are degrees to this sort of thing
That said Joyce seems to be going along with it, even if her attitude indicates she’s not 100% comfortable with it, and she’s the one who gets to decide if it’s creepy or not
Wait, they’re involving a dryer that has a third party’s clothes in them?
Dorothy secretly put Becky’s clothes in there when nobody was looking. That’s how she got the idea in the first place. This is canon, I’ve decided it.
their laundry might be an excuse to be in the laundry room in the first place
Everyone will breath a sigh of relief when Dorothy finally leaves for Yale.
This is what Willis is working toward.
Who’s this “Everyone” you speak of? I like Dorothy.
On entering politics her platform of “A dryer in every household” is regarded as oddly specific but generally well-received by the public
I understand this is a joke but I would love if there was a policy here requiring in-unit washers and dryers. Though I guess we’re luckier than many places just in that landlords must provide a fridge and oven/stove
How about a little less of the “everybody” there Pergola. Speak for yourself, not the rest of us.
I am horny for Joycothy. Therefore, my judgements are impractical, non-pragmatic, and without value. Don’t listen to me.
I’m also that, but my judgements are the opposite. Listen to me instead.
yup. sound advice.
Part of my concern for this scenario is that it’s so public. Are the laundry rooms not for all genders at this school? At my college, everyone used the same laundry room and Dorothy has Joyce in her panties in a very public space where possibly anyone could walk in, including Joe.
And even if the laundry rooms are gender-divided, given Joyce’s fundamentalist background, I think it’s potentially still too public of a space such a private lesson. Someone walking in and embarrassing her could really set her back in her sexual growth.
(this is in addition to all the debate above about whether Joyce is really consenting to this instruction or being forced into it.)
Also, I’ve seen comments above thinking that the general scenario doesn’t happen or that it wasn’t common in college. So, I want to add that this sort of conversation was something I saw a lot in my first few years of college -people who were unwillingly sexually repressed by their very conservative upbringings finally had space to explore their sexuality, often getting help from friends who had explored their own sexuality much more.
But yes, I see some of the issues in THIS particular case, with Dorothy telling Joyce that’s what’s happening instead of asking her if she’d like this. I can see both sides of the debate:
-some think Joyce isn’t consenting and that due to her upbringing, she will seem like she’s consenting because she obeys the commands, but that’s a conditioned trauma response and she’s not actually consenting,
Or:
-those who think, yes, Joyce is consenting, really wants to do this, but needs that friend who knows her well enough to read all her body language and non-verbal cues to give her what she wants, even though her upbringing tells Joyce she HAS to verbally protest, at least a little.