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But you can give an opinion. Plenty of people have toxic relationships with friends, same as with romantic relationships. You can certainly make it known whether you think some friendship is healthy or not
i mean, it’d be nice if there were wholesome friendships with no mocking at all, but even some casual friendships have some lighthearted teasing (though it is pretty inappropriate if someone were to say “yeah they’re late to our group walk to class today because they were masturbating the last hour”)
But most ppl in sarah’s ‘group’ knows that it’s part of her personality as opposed to just full on ignoring everyone
Yeah… But Sarah is always mean. There’s that whole storyline of her having incredibly bliss the more other people suffer around her. And she can’t take any insults being shoved back at her. She’s a jerk.
Meh. I’d rather have friends like Sarah than friends like Lucy. Friends like Sarah will give you a reality check when you need one. Friends like Lucy will tell you that everything is okay even when things are not okay, not to spare your feelings, but to suppress their own.
Agreed! She was pretty straightforward about wanting to get railed over the last few strips too. And Sarah was kinda pointlessly mean there too. I’d rather have Lucy as a friend.
Lucy is the friend you want to uplift you and make your life easier and make you a better person every day, Sarah is the friend you want when someone needs their ass beat with a baseball bat. (“Someone” includes you.)
Lucy is calling out someone she’s clearly decided is not ‘friend’ material in the first place, largely based on Raidah’s highly slanted breakfast story. Lucy believes that only good people are ‘popular’ and vice-versa. So she’s assuming that Raidah told the truth in all ways, and that Sarah, who has only a handful of friendships, must be wicked in some way.
And Lucy doesn’t know jack about Joyce and Sarah’s relationship up to this point–it’s all second-hand gossip. So, yeah, I’d be fine if Sarah lays into her next strip and pushes Lucy way, way the fork back to the right side of her personal boundaries.
ok so full confessional speed here, I used to very much be a last panel Sarah, my understanding of interracting with my friends was to mock them, make jokes about them or us, anihhilate any weak point etc at any given chance. i was that until i was…. uh maybe 28?
I still enjoy barbs back nad forth, but I’ve finally realized not everyone is of irish and middle eastern descentok with making jokes like that, or being the butt of the joke, or having their honesty and openness rewarded with douchbaggery, even if it is all meant in fun and never serious. when I’m serious about my insults you’ll know it.
but despite being self conisstant and honest about it, I was still the dick in way too many situations, and I’ve learened how to both moderate, and just be a normal and good friend.
I still feel upset looking back at extremely mild teasing that was more about testing the waters than anything else being treated with extreme prejudice. I’m of Irish descent and wow people really very much discriminate against it. Most of my friends are Irish and I prefer it that way. Making friends with people who aren’t is unnecessarily difficult, it gets to the point where literally just telling the truth bluntly is seen as an insult and any form of insult as being a transgression worth ostracizing someone over. That’s ethnic discrimination.
It got to the point where I stoppe bantering entirely not because I wanted to but because I got flashbacks when I tried to.
“Friends like Sarah will give you a reality check when you need one.”
Oh, you mean like the reality check that Lucy is currently in the process of giving to Sarah, at this very moment?
“Friends like Lucy will tell you that everything is okay even when things are not okay, not to spare your feelings, but to suppress their own.”
Funny, I don’t see Lucy telling Sarah that everything is okay, right here, because Lucy certainly doesn’t seem to think it’s okay that Sarah is obviously being an asshole to Joyce right now. And she’s certainly not sparing Sarah’s feelings (or suppressing her own), here. She’s telling Sarah something that Sarah has needed to hear for quite some time, and if Sarah doesn’t like that, that’s a Sarah problem, not a Lucy problem.
Caveat: Lucy and Sarah are not friends in the first place. Lucy herself is drawing that distinction, here–“your so-called friends”.
And that’s important, here, because if Lucy actually WAS Sarah’s friend, she might have been aware that Sarah spent much of the prior semester being judged by Joyce for her own casual masturbation, and that this is basically a little payback. Is Sarah acting out of high motivations, here? No, but her ribbing isn’t rising to the point of Mike-style psychological cruelty, either.
Lucy judging a situation without all the facts and based mostly on her personal view of the world, tho, perfectly maps to her personality and prior conduct, from her immediate decision that Billie had to be the best person ever, because cheerleader, all the way through her obvious decision that Walky is her One True Love.
I’ve got a friend who will state “BRB wank” when he’s not going to respond to a chat for a while, and once you get used to it it’s kind of nice that he’s so clear in his communication TBH.
Does he mean it as in “stuff I need to deal with has come up” or literally “am going to go masturbate until the urge to do so has passed now”? Or have you never asked?
Actually, here, at least, I’d say Lucy IS wrong. What Sarah is saying is not ‘mean’. Mean would be judging Joyce for said masturbatory excess, perhaps even shaming her for it.
Y’know, like Joyce used to do to her. Here, all she’s doing is getting a little ‘welcome to the club’ ribbing in.
Walky didn’t violate any privacy.
Walky is also not claiming that Danny is his friend or vice versa.
Walky was indeed mean to his sister’s boyfriend who was mean to him first. These two should be nicer to each other, just because it’d be nice for Sal if these two could get along, but they’re not friends.
“Imagine that you’re having sex with me when you’re having sex with my sister”
Danny was just cold to Walky, because of Walky’s history of antagonizing him. Walky wasn’t a dick when Lyle crossed the line with his jokes. But Danny says Walky’s name coldly and that gives Walky a carte blanche?
Lucy is being selective on whose meanness she’s responding to with “you don’t have any friends”.
I suspect Sarah’s one of the only people it’s “safe” for her to call out like that. Sarah’s neither close in on Lucy’s normal social circle nor a complete stranger. She’s not wrong, but it may also be a bit of venting she’s afraid of doing elsewhere because of consequences (like still having to live with Jennifer).
Lucy is on her way to the dark side here. Next she’ll be actively spying on our primary cast and spending all her time with the mean kids. The mean kids who never, ever say anything mean to someone’s face … just behind their backs.
Malaya’s pretty toxic if you’d compared her to Sarah yet Lucy seemed to like her well enough (unless she just viewed her as being ‘tsundere’) Even carla had some grating moments, i don’t think she was esp snarky to Lucy but she’s just equally annoying to everyone/not that much malice behind it at least
Lucy, who was recently presented with several claims against Sarah’s character challenges her on a point of fact that is making her uncomfortable.
She’s challenging Sarah in an honest way on something fresh and real. Say what you will about selectiveness but Lucy is showing some good character by openly challenging something she doesn’t like rather than just quietly distancing herself or gosiping.
I agree with you on the facts, but something still makes me uncomfortable about Lucy here. Can’t quite put my finger on ‘why’.
Maybe it has to do with how she’s really not close to Joyce or Sarah, and as such has no idea whether this kinda banter is just how they express their friendship? Or maybe because that ‘so-called friends’ sounds rather like a Raidah quote. Dunno.
I agree with Fridge-logic too but also the uncomfortable thing. I think it is because from our perspective she does look a bit like Raidah’s patsy, so maybe it is second hand dislike.
The only wrong bit is that Lucy generalizes abouyt Sarah acting like this about all her friends. Lucy should only have focused only on the horrific thing she just saw Sarah do to Joyce,
She basically lit up at the prospect of attaching herself to Raidah and company. In front of Sarah. Is Sarah’s reaction paranoid, or is it a perfectly reasonable response to having a known gaslighter in her life?
You know what? Lucy has not been my favorite character for a while.
But Sarah needs this pointed out and her little arc of being even more abrasive than usual needs to stop. Some lines you shouldn’t cross and yesterday’s comic went over a big one.
Agreed, but it’s not Lucy’s place to say this. She barely knows her. I used to “tease” my friends all the time and when a very close friend of mine pointed out for the first time that my teasing was only fun for me and not for my friends, it totally changed the way I interacted with people and made my friendships a lot better. But being told I was mean by someone who barely knew me? I would not have received that well and even now still would be like “fuck off you don’t know me or my relationship dynamics”
That doesn’t speak well of you or your friends at the time. Toxic dynamics are plain to see, and Lucy is absolutely right on calling it out. Perhaps it is that I grew older, but I no longer have patience for meanness or abuse. It is everyone’s duty to call it out as improper when it shows up around you.
Don’t really agree with this. It IS normal for friends to tease each other, and different people with different relationships have a different tolerance for how much is too much. You can easily argue that Sarah crossed a line for sharing information that was too personal, but it’s not like Sarah is openly insulting Joyce levels of toxicity.
But Sarah is at the same time playing on Joyce’s low threshold of mortification in this area and ignoring the impact of doing so. Friendly teasing is sensitive to both the comedic and the emotional aspects of a particular tease. “This would be so funny, and so true, but it’s a better use of intimate knowledge not to say that to her: she’d freak.”
I get the feeling that Sarah would consider this friendly teasing if someone did it to her, but hasn’t applied her knowledge of Joyce’s personality deeply enough to infer that Joyce won’t.
Jumping straight to “She turned you against me” Isn’t really doing you any favors there Sarah. (Though, in her defense, Raidiah DID blatantly attempt to do that)
yup. It’s something Joyce teased her about. Definitely on the table.
But if her plan is to make Joyce a little uncomfortable to wear down her shame response, it’s not a great plan, especially if “a little uncomfortable” means making her petrified with embarrassment in front of her other friends.
I’ve definitely had friendships where saying mean things about each other was a big element. There was some protectiveness, some “no one can say you about this than me,” some “I do not say these things about you to others,” and the big hurts were when those were ignored, but I think we were hurting each other a little bit a lot of the time with our jokes. I prefer the friendships I have now, where much more effort is put into actively saying kind things to and about each other.
FOOL Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my friends.
ORSINO Just the contrary: the better for thy friends.
FOOL No, sir, the worse.
ORSINO How can that be?
FOOL Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me. Now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass; so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused. So that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two affirmatives, why then the worse for my friends and the better for my foes.
ORSINO Why, this is excellent.
FOOL By my troth, sir, no—though it please you to be one of my friends.
I mean, they’re both right. Friends give each other shit if that’s the sort of stuff they’re okay with. I can’t take a lot of teasing, but some people are used to it as a form of affection. Sarah also takes it too far, especially in this instance. Granted, I can’t help but feel that Lucy wouldn’t be saying anything if Raidah hadn’t said what she said to her. She hasn’t said ANYTHING to Billie or anyone she perceived as popular this far. Unless I forgot something, which is totally possible.
Oh boy wait until Raidah tells Lucy that Joyce tried to steal Jacob and then Lucy can have her protective jealous arc worried that Joyce is gonna steal Walky. [Honestly I doubt that plot would happen or that plot thread is gonna come up in that way].
yeah it’d be better if it was one on one teasing, but even if she was having some ‘private time’ to herself, that’s not rly info that should be given to a casual friend group right before class/privacy
though i don’t think lucy would be jealous of joyce /walky considering “you rly don’t think i’m attracted to the smell of his exes?” “it can’t be all the taco bell” esp if her thirst for joe would be obvious. if anything she’d prolly drag them on a double date too
Good fucking point, Jennifer has been super mean to walkie and Lucy hasn’t called her on it to stand up for her own boyfriend cuz she’s desperate for her approval
Seeing a lot of comments about Lucy not calling out Wally for being needling Jennifer it might be that Lucy sees it as a much more balanced back and forth. Where as she just sees Joyce on the receiving end.
This makes sense to me. Billie is outwardly hostile to Walky, so him being a bit of a dick (if we have to use comments mandated harshness of phrase) doesn’t come off as unbalanced. Joyce doesn’t really swing back at Sarah that much, so it can look one-sided and “aBuSiVe” from an outside perspective.
Sarah and Joyce are not friends, they are more like sisters I think. Riding your siblings is more normal and less unacceptable. That being said, Sarah (my favorite character) is being too mean today.
*Sigh* Lucy was so easily influenced after all…like fuck Malay says worse to her all the time yet she’s more than happy enough to see her every time they meet but Sarah is a problem because someone her hung out with for an hour told her not to trust her.
I’ve noticed that in real life, too. people can miss obvious things happening before their eyes but be swayed by gossip or tabloids, as though being told something makes it more believable than seeing it happen. it’s very unsettling.
I mean, particularly when Sarah just publicly humiliated and shamed an alleged friend severely enough that she turned to stone (metaphorically) and is still blissing out about causing her friend pain… yeah, it looks true.
Remember the context of what they told Lucy.
They didn’t tell Lucy Sarah is mean to her friends (which Lucy probably already knows).
What they told Lucy was that Sarah abandons her friends when they become inconvenient.
But this scenario is not that.
Yet, Lucy, as others have mentioned, is calling Sarah out for being a bad friend when she never does that (on panel anyway) for anyone else.
Her doing so implies she’s bringing the bias that she heard from breakfast to this conversation.
Her having a good point doesn’t change that implication.
And if she is bringing that bias to the conversation, then she is in fact working with wrong information as Sarah will literally go to bat for her friends.
She just happens to be a professed misanthrope who doesn’t have many friends.
Sarah is actively proving the bias, whatever it is, with actual behavior. She is, right in front of Lucy’s face, being extremely mean to Joyce purely because she thinks Joyce being ashamed and upset is DELIGHTFUL.
It doesn’t matter whether Sarah will go to bat for her friends, that’s not the issue. And honestly that doesn’t matter. The occasional big gesture does not negate your obligation to be a friend to your friends in general.
I do think it strange for Lucy to be so mad on Joyce’s behalf when she had nothing to say to Raidah on Joyce’s behalf when Raidah told Joyce she looked like shit. Instead, right afterwards Raidah extended a breakfast invite and Lucy practically tripped over her own feet to accept it. There’s definitely bias here.
Yeah, that’s where I’m at with this too. I do think Sarah could refrain from joking like this in front of people she and Joyce barely know. It makes sense in front of Walky, but not Lucy. Lucy should still lay off of Sarah though because she doesn’t know what their relationship is like, and yeah, she likes to kiss up to crappy people
It does matter because the point Lucy is making is that Sarah doesn’t really have friends/care about friends.
That is the issue because Lucy would definitely not say this if she knew.
Would she admonish Sarah with different words?
Possibly, but again, since she has never done it to anyone else, it supports the bias Sarah is claiming.
Lucy *is* letting Raidah influence her opinion of Sarah a lot when she doesn’t have the knowledge (like we do) of just how far Sarah is willing to go for her friends…but Sarah isn’t helping her case by being genuinely mean to Joyce and reveling in it.
If a friend of mine knew something about me that actually seriously embarrassed me, and then immediately told other people about it just for their own amusement, that would be a big problem.
Lucy’s missing a lot of context. As a reader, it very much irks me to see Sarah’s friendships trivialized like this when I know omniscientlyishly that she actually takes them extremely seriously.
On the other, Watsonianly, I can’t really justify Lucy being wrong with the knowledge she has access to. At best, she knows Sarah and Joyce were both part of the kidnapping, and can infer they trauma-bonded? But she doesn’t know about the party or anything else they’ve gone through together.
I mean at this point it’s not just the kidnapping, at this point this entire group has been through more together the most life long friends usually do.
Lucy at the beginning I thought showed enough emotional maturity at the beginning but maybe I overestimated her. As much as I like her who is Lucy to question there bond like that. “So-called friends” sounded so judgmental.
They’re both the asshole, but I’m not heavily invested in who is worse. Things will probably simmer down, it’s cold outside and they’ve got like 13 minutes to get to class. Still, Walky and Lucy have been antagonizing multiple people, and there’s a bunch of drama there just waiting to be triggered.
@newlland For sure, agree, what I meant is that I don’t know how much knowledge of the friend group Lucy explicitly has. She probably knows about the kidnapping bc it was public-ish knowledge, but I doubt she knows about the attempted date rape at the party, for example. Plus any number of things that illustrate Sarah and Joyce’s relationship.
So I can’t blame her for using a term like “so-called friend” even though at first read, it comes across as entirely too harsh to me.
Omfg, Lucy is 100% correct, and Raidah has nothing to do with what Lucy herself is observing,
Sarah is an abusive, sexual-harassing asshole eho has been targetting Joyce to make her uncomfortable with sexual remarks and exposing her private lifr. In any workplace she’d have been fired.
You’ll note I never actually gave an opinion on Lucy’s behavior one way or another. I said I got hung up on one specific part of it, then gave reasons why I find it both reasonable and unreasonable.
While I would never tell someone to stop doing a Dumbing Of Age Comments Crusade, because they’re hilarious, I do encourage you to actually read the comments to which you respond.
Well, I will say: “In any workplace she’d have been fired” is very much a reach.
Classes are not a workplace yo. Sarah does not have the power to make Joyce live in poverty, and so Joyce doesn’t get the same legal protections. She’ll have to make due with normal social contract stuff. For instance, Lucy going WTF at this abuse.
I don’t want to blame the victim here, but Joyce needs to set boundaries. In fact, she needs to learn that she’s allowed to set boundaries. Lucy is doing good to teach Joyce to not let Sarah walk all over her.
YES. Joyce needs to learn to set boundaries, because Sarah has definitely been crossing them. Sarah should also pick up on the fact that this is clearly upsetting Joyce in a more drastic way than her usual ribbing and it is also in a much more public setting than usual. But it can be very difficult to realize you’ve crossed a line without being called out on it.
While I don’t know if Lucy has the correct context for her assumptions here, I do think confronting Sarah in this instance was correct. I hope Joyce does set a boundary around this soon, and without this interaction, I don’t think Sarah would have taken it seriously.
Yeah I guess we could blame Raidah instead of considering that constantly teasing Joyce about something she still is clearly uncomfortable with makes you a bit of an asshole.
Theres an argument to be made that actually teasing Joyce about masturbation IS good friending. Joyce has hangups about wa king that stem from the purity culture of her fundamentalist upbringing that she is EXPLICITLY rejecting and in the process of deprogramming from. Joyce doesn’t HAVE self-concordant reasons to be embarrassed anymore-just a shitty hangover.
There do exist non-purity culture reasons to want your wanking habits to be private. And maybe Joyce will articulate them. But desensitisation remains a pretty useful technique, and Sarah and Walky are a pretty good audience as far as that goes. And Lucy could also do with some purity deprogramming.
Look it’s just an argument that can be made that I haven’t seen in 70% of comments this evening and so am not already bored of.
“Helping Joyce grow a tough skin” is more in the vein of one-on-one teasing IMO. Stuff that helps Joyce confront her hangups or helps her get used to ignoring and responding to small jabs. This is something different.
Sarah is sharing sexual information about Joyce without her consent. That’s… not okay. It’s different from teasing her about her hangups about sex. She is crossing a line here by freely handing out information about Joyce’s sexual habits.
It strikes me as… odd? idk, it strikes me- that there doesn’t seem to be much differentiation by commenters between a public audience and an audience of 2 friends. This situation isn’t *hugely* removed from one-on-one. That’s Walky and Lucy. It’s not posting on twitter.
Is this an internet phenomenon? The blurring of public and private spheres? Is it a neurodiverse thing? Managing attention and social complexity? Is it even real, or is it something I’ve invented?
and man like, the removal of the audience would recast this as a genuine jab, rather than a performative ploy for some kind of social positive. Like. it’s probably not even TRUE. And it’s something that Sarah might say REGARDLESS of its being true! Joyce would react Just Like This anyway! Lucy and Walky, i bet, just think Sarah is teasing, and do not treat this as reliable information. It’s only incidentally even remotely true.
“there doesn’t seem to be much differentiation by commenters between a public audience and an audience of 2 friends.” I feel like this could apply for a lot of the heated comments we get when these college students act like *shock* college students. I’m confused because it seems like some people enjoy the compelling and funny story about this gang flawed complex characters, and then there’s a contingent that seems to want everyone to play nice and shun any character that shows a modicum of bad judgement.
I think this callout from someone outside their friend group may be a necessary step toward Joyce being able to set a boundary. It plants the idea in Sarah’s head that other people see her behavior as cruel. It also plants the idea in Joyce’s head that Sarah can, in fact, be confronted. I really hope Joyce can set a boundary and I really hope Sarah acknowledges and respects it.
It is strange going back to older strips and seeing my own comments from years ago. If I had more time, I would go back to the beginning of the series and read it again, and read the comments.
I doubt the uproar would be as substantial if Sarah said it in the privacy of their room rather than essentially going ‘hey everyone in earshot and especially this specific dude who enjoys torturing Joyce as much as I do, laugh at Joyce about this big-deal-to-her thing she isn’t even okay with discussing privately!’
Yeah it’s not her job and you should say it!
She’s doing it for free which skews the market and that is so unamerican and frankly depraved!
I’m so glad someone has some business sense here.
It’s one thing to tease and joke with just one person, but Sarah is embarrassing in front of others. She delights in being cruel to Joyce in front of others. She’s more nuanced than just a jerk overall as she is protective and loving and sees what she is doing as just a joke… But Joyce is repressed AF and when she’s starting to come out of her shell, that’s a BAD time to be making her uncomfortable with it / mocked in front of others for it.
I mean, both things can be true. Good-natured dragging is a solid part of friendship, but everyone has their limits. This is obviously something Joyce isn’t comfortable discussing in public, and it was shitty of Sarah to joke about it to other people in front of her. Like, I doubt she’d think it was so hilarious if Joyce stood in front of the group and laughed about how Sarah had (maybe still has?) a vibrator named Other Jacob explicitly to masturbate to the thought of their classmate.
When you reach a level of closeness honey roasts and fake mean things are prevelant, but also funny! I’ve got a pair of friends that are dating and they joke all the time “why don’t you love me?” while teasing each other and it’s hilarious. Sarah’s right and She and Joyce have such a close bond that it’s literally key to their dynamic.
So I’ve seen something like this irl, a person wearing their most abrasive self on their sleeve as a like. Defence mechanism? ‘You knew how I was from day one, if you don’t wanna be friends that’s fine but don’t turn around later and pretend like you were mislead.’
I really liked this irl person, and he got on well with most people, but he did tend to burn through a tolerance with people and they’d need to recharge before they’d hang out with specifically him again.
Joyce LOVES Sarah, and Sarah loves Joyce, so like, their relationship is Solid and I think there’s maybe a temptation to rest in that with an ‘i can say whatever garbage and we’ll still be good’, if not full self-sabotage ‘i bet i can break this thing, nothing is this good’.
But they’ll be fine.
It felt prepared even. https://www.dumbingofage.com/cherish/ A spiel about not “jettisoning” people while saying Jennifer and Walky should jettison people.
I didn’t get the impression she fully bought into Raidah’s framing of events, especially after Walky started arguing with Jennifer about the desirable qualities of friends. I feel like I may not know for certain unless Lucy asks Sarah what really happened with Dana, and Sarah answers the question seriously without assuming Lucy will believe Raidah’s version of events regardless.
I don’t think she fully bought into it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sitting there in the back of her mind making her wonder. And today’s “so-called friends” really echoes what Raidah was insinuating.
Some Lucy defenses (coming from honestly being surprised about the things people are going at Lucy for from this):
-Yes, other people have been unpleasant to people around her. In many of these examples, it’s not people who are claiming to be close friends with the people they’re being mean to. People also have breaking points. If Lucy’s ignored something in the past, does it mean she has to ignore it forever? Maybe she’ll go back to ignoring it in other cases. Maybe she’ll start calling it out more. But that’s the future. “You’ve never done x before” is not an automatic reason to not do it now.
-Yes, Joyce ultimately gets to decide what she’s okay with in her relationships. Hopefully, if she feels that what Sarah’s doing is actually okay, she’ll say so, either now to the group or to Sarah later. Also, though, it’s not like Joyce has had a great upbringing around boundaries. Sometimes someone pointing out that the way someone– especially someone you love and who loves you– is treating you is not okay is what helps you recognize that for yourself.
-Someone who is willing to go to extreme actions for you but who still hurts you as part of “play”… still hurts you. We’ve seen this with various characters in this strip. And now we’re at the part where I quote Bojack Horseman, with, “But in real life, the big gesture isn’t enough. You need to be consistent, you need to be dependably good. You can’t just screw everything up and then take a boat out into the ocean to save your best friend, or solve a mystery, and fly to Kansas. You need to do it every day, which is so… hard.”
-I don’t think Sarah is all bad. I think she has many good qualities. As a character, I enjoy reading about her more than I do Lucy. But like everyone, she fucks up. And recognizing that is a chance to grow. And hey, if Joyce is actually cool with it despite what her reaction seems to be, then that confirmation can deepen their friendship as well.
She’s not wrong, though. Not counting the out and out villainous characters, Sarah is one of this comic’s shittier characters. She even derives joy from how miserable the people around her are.
Lucy’s apparent blindness to Malaya’s own shitty behavior doesn’t really change that. Neither does the fact that Sarah took a bat to that one dude in any way absolve just how nasty Sarah tends to treat other people.
I’d also remind people that she set Joyce up to torpedo Raidah’s relationship with Jacob in a way that would have seen the blowback entirely fall upon Joyce. Motivated purely because she was pissed off Raidah was dating someone she was attracted to.
There is a concerning amount of hand waving Sarah’s behavior because she and Joyce are friends. Teasing someone about masturbating in public when they aren’t comfortable about that goes beyond “friends messing with each other” that is shitty and if you think it isn’t I beg you to either be a better friend or get better friends
Joyce is actively working on a personal sexual revolution, and having someone help you find your limits by pushing can really help. It all depends on whether Sarah will stop when Joyce communicates when she found new limits.
I’m not sure ‘in public’ is a fair description of the situation, the only people here are friends of Joyce, close enough friends that this level of intimidate joking could be acceptable. (Is acceptable, from Sarah’s perspective). It’s not like she’s calling it out loud to the whole class or something like that.
Sarah might’ve crossed the line a bit here, but where the actual line is not as easy to define as you might think.
…And you think the people in her class are ‘random people she’ll never meet again’ rather than ‘people that know her’?
I’d also still argue the public exposure is still way worse. Sure, it might matter less if you never meet those people again, but that doesn’t stop the embarassment. Or the risk/fear that people you do meet find out that way. Or the risk/fear that you might one day meet one of the people that found out. At least among friends you’ve already survived most of the judgments and will probably be accepted regardless.
But more seriously / less nitpicky:
This seems less of a direct privacy violation than an easy (and very embarrassing) guess, with only Joyce’s reaction confirming she was (probably) correct. If Joyce had a better poker face she could’ve just denied and/or laughed it off.
Also note that nobody is shaming Joyce for what she may or may not have done. The only amusement is at Joyce’s overreaction at something perfectly ordinary. (Which in turn might help her realize she doesn’t need to be so ashamed of it).
I’m sorry your concept of friendship is apparently so limited that you can’t comprehend this, but plenty of friendships do involve making these kinds of ‘insulting’ jokes about each other. It’s fine, because the underlying context is supposed to be ‘we know each other, we like each other, we know none of this is serious’. It may look like abuse if taken literally (and probably would be if it were serious), but it really isn’t like that. There is no actual malice or suffering involvement.
Again, Sarah might’ve taken it too far here, but it’s not nearly the malicious abuse situation you’re imagining it to be.
Like all unkind people, she has *moments* that seem to redeem her to her friends. These moments, fleeting, are why they should keep her around. But they don’t realize how the bad so outweighs the good.
While the alt text is largely left in jest, I still think it’s worth looking into. Yesterday’s alt text implied that Sarah’s comments made Joyce want to crumble and scatter into dust. What is the worth of a friendship that makes you feel that bad?
If you say something to a friend that makes them want to crumble and scatter into dust, that’s not ‘good-natured ribbing’. That’s some shit you have to apologize for and learn to not do again. Friendship is not an all-access pass for sadism.
At the very least, I don’t remember reading stories about anyone who was perfect. Instead of getting viciously angry at the imperfect characters though, I just enjoy them like a normal adult.
Sal’s just sitting there, thinking about a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats. Instead all the proverbial grenades she could be launching. Crunchy, with the illusion of being healthy, but still very sugary – yum.
If it’s blinking on for a second then off for a second, with random numbers each time, that’s 43200 moments. If there’s two digits for the hour, and two digits for minutes, that’s 10000 possible displays, including a lot of invalid displays (for example: 39:72). On average, it’d be right ~43 times a day, but for a total of around 43 seconds, more instances of being right, but for less time over all.
For a clock to never tell the right time, it could gain time every day. Like when it thinks it’s midnight, it’s actually 12:11, and getting farther from midnight every 24 hours.
and since i am but a helpless moth myself, let me ask, 1) why on for a second and off for a second? what’s your rationale? that’s a funny choice. If you just have it be on all of the seconds, that doubles the odds.
2) going by your logic, if there’s 43,200 random displays, with each one having a 1/10,000 chance of being correct, then doesn’t that mean the clock will be right ~4.3 times a day? not 43? or am i missing something?
and 3), i don’t completely agree with your reasoning. if you glance at an analog clock not knowing it’s stopped, you will typically only be led astray if it’s off by more than, say, 2,5 minutes. So, i’d say a stopped (analog) clock is right twice a day, for about 5 minutes at a time.
So applying that logic to our oddly dysfunctional digital display:
First we’d need to calculate how likely it is for a display to be valid: 1380/10000=0,138. Meaning that 86% of the time, the merest glance will instantly and definitively destroy the clock’s credibility. ouch.
Second, assuming a random number that happens to be valid, how often will it fall within a 5-minute bracket of the actual time? 24hrs/5min=288. So, the chance is 1/288.
So: 0.138*(1/288)*43200=20.7
Therefore, this very specific clock is right(ish), on average, 21 times a day. OK! cool! bye!
…oh wait, no now we need to figure out what that says about Raidah. hmmmm.
but wait! a further nitpick has occurred to me! if this clock only displays hours and minutes, it’s likely it will only refresh every minute, not every second!
so that’s 24*60=1440 displays. oh, and btw i also got that 0.138 figure wrong, it should be 24*60/10000=0.144 as well. so:
0.144(1/288)*1440=0,72
Now Raidah is right less than once a day! and that’s if we get rid of the nonsensical switching off for half the time, sorry HueSatLight that was a silly parameter!
Ouch!!! NOT looking good for randomized digital Raidah!
BUT, wait a sec. maybe we’re being too harsh. Maybe this is a 12-hr clock, after all that’s only fair, considering we’re comparing it to a regular 12-hr analog quadrant. Also, some old digital clocks have the left-most digit restricted to a “1”. So. Given this much more generous setup, and ignoring the first digit which will always be valid, we are now down to 1000 combinations.
The validity criterion gets tricky though, because i feel like we should now accept 13 through 19 for the hour number, because those might be interpreted (incorrectly, as it happens) as the outcome of a 24-hr digital clock. So the only invalid displays will be the 40% where the minutes go over 60. Right?
For simplicity’s sake i’m gonna stick with the 1/288 probability, though in practice any hour between 0 and 12 would be assumed to refer to the current am or pm cycle and so would only have to fall at the right bracket out of 144 possible ones.
0.6*(1/288)*1440=3
wow! this old-school Raidah is right 3 times a day! good for her! that’s even better than a broken analog clock!
This isn’t Sarah “jettisoning” people. This is Raidah’s attempt to get people to jettison Sarah.
It’s Sarah taking teasing too far, she’d probably recognize it on her own and be conciliatory. Like she was with Liz at the end of Trial and Sarah.
This is one of those big sticking points in a friendship that should be ironed out, early on. In the end, the question of whether Sarah is “too much” is Joyce’s to answer.
(I wouldn’t be friends with Sarah, but then, Sarah wouldn’t be friends with me.)
So on this situation Lucy does not know Sarah Joyce’s dynamic is that of sisters and yeah it seems mean hut I have seen my sisters and surgate sisters ( freinds who are close i consider my sisters) say way more vile stuff to each other in jest my younger sister oh boy some of the stuff she says to my older sister goes way beyond Sarah said and yet they still laugh and love eachother.
Yes Sarah is acting shitty she acts shitty alot but Lucy doesn’t have much context here I know she has a brother but that’s a different dynamic and I don’t think she has mentioned a sister.
only honest insight into this is Walky who I hope won’t stir the shit pot I mean there is 50 chance he might actually explain this dynamic.
But to be honest I can’t fault Lucy for saying it’s mean but she and I quote “Out of her element”
Now i get to either see if nobody comments or people comment and tell how wrong I am and how awful a person Sarah 19-20 year old woman is.
You have got a very specific hang up on yeeting that abuse word around.
Sarah crossed a line, but not every line being crossed is abuse and by throwing abuse at it, you’re just trivializing actual abuse. I hope you can find peace on whatever this scenario is triggering in you, but calling a too harsh tease “abuse” is also going too far, like Sarah did.
It being persistent and systematic is what makes it abuse, rather than merely a bad incident.
If a boyfriend was doing similar to his girlfriend, deliberately embarassing and violating her privacy, everyone would be saying for her to dump his sorry ass.
Is Joyce looking as if she’s having fun?
When it’s only Sarah that’s having fun, while Joyce (the victim of said ‘fun’) is horribly embarrassed, how is that different from a bullly having fun by beating up a kid, and proclaiming it all in good fun?
Has Joyce consented to this kind of “fun”?
Again not abuse Sarah is being mean but the thing about Joyce is she acted the same way when Joe confessed his feeling ls to her when Dotty taught her when Amber implied she did. Joyce’s default when confronted with her own personal intimacy is embarsment and denial and Dotty was not acting abusive (albeit creepy) neither is Joe, or Amber this comment is mean but Joyce would probably act the same way if Becky asked if her and Joe had sex.
Joyce tends acts this way when it comes to alot of subjects
well, being mean to a stranger (other than someone bumping into you and then you calling them an asshole but i imagine most wouldn’t care if they did it on purpose) is kinda a dice roll on whether you’d actually get attacked or not but idon’t get close enough to strangers to interact even if it’s friendly small talk
I mostly just give strangers the benefit of the doubt BECAUSE I don’t know them. Like if someone’s really rude to me I just assume they’ve got a fucked up life and they’re taking it out on me. Doesn’t really excuse their behavior but I just don’t have it in me to get all that mad about it most times. I’m VERY polite, regardless.
Guess we also gotta consider that to Sarah, it’s nothing embarrassing. What she finds funny is that Joyce is embarrassed about something completely normal. Of course, she should pay more attention to other peoples lines, but from this angle it seems a lot less mean.
(I guess I kinda empathize a bit, since I have embarrassing memories of trying this ‘banter’ thing everyone was doing, and getting it really wrong by hitting a sore spot… Not on purpose of course, but I’m too dang autistic to figure out where the sore spots are. So I gave up on banter.)
Here’s my take. There are ways to tease people without inducing shame and humiliation. You never now what people are going through, so it’s better to err on the side of boring and considerate over funny and mean. Also, if I wanted to make someone less ashamed of masturbating, I’d confidently own up to it myself, not call them out on it. But I do have a solid 15 years of experience on Sarah, social development continues well into adulthood.
Something to keep in mind is the idea that, were it not for breakfast with Raidah, would Lucy have felt the need to comment? Honest question. Because I’ve noticed some behavior in people, how they treat others, but I usually stay in my lane. Especially if I don’t really know the people involved. Somebody could be having a bad day, people have different dynamics, sometimes people just do their own thing.
I don’t think Sarah should be poking fun at the masturbation, and if I were Lucy, I would address it like ‘hey I don’t really wanna hear about Joyce’s masturbation habits’ rather than trying to go on a Raidah fueled judgement tirade about whether Sarah is good to her friends or not. That’s Joyce and Sarah’s bid’ness. Straight up. If Lucy wants to take Raidah’s side and decide that Sarah is now Satan, by all means walk with different people.
Plus, I don’t think saying ‘Joyce has been masturbating’ qualifies as saying mean things about her. You know who did say mean things about Joyce. Raidah, when she said Joyce looks like shit. THAT is saying a mean thing. Sarah is being shitty ABOUT a thing, but not saying a MEAN thing. Joyce has been masturbating is frankly a neutral statement and not an insult in and of itself. It’s the person involved and the fact that it is in public that makes it mean.
Joyce is upset and ashamed upon hearing her personal private business, where many of her hangups still lie, presented publicly as something to laugh at her about.
Agreeing to disagree. It’s still Joyce’s decision if Sarah went too far or not. Lucy’s only role here is in expressing that she would rather not hear Joyce’s business, and deciding to walk elsewhere/not in Sarah’s vicinity if she doesn’t like her anymore.
I think Lucy would’ve made a more generic comment about Sarah going a step too far. But yeah, her approach here was primed by Raidah’s unreliable narration.
“Be silent” is not what anyone is saying she should have done, “pick her words better” is more fitting when Lucy is making an implication that Sarah isn’t a real friend to anyone, when the worse Sarah did was take a embarrassing joke a bit to far infront of company
Also your using the tearm “abusive” a bit too easily here, if a mistake that measly qualifies as abuse then I guess it’s easy to be the absolute worse friend possible huh?
Your hyperbolic takes have at least been interesting to read. I think you’re going so far into left field you’re in the parking lot with this “abuse” thing, but I’m not gonna lie and say it’s boring.
They’re both overstepping here. Judging by yesterday’s comic, Joyce is really uncomfortable with Sarah calling her out. However, while Sarah may have misjudged how upset she was making Joyce in this instance, she only meant it as gentle ribbing. Lucy is incorrect in judging Sarah to be a cruel person. Sarah would be justified in asking Lucy to apologize, but Lucy would also be justified in saying “Can we check if Joyce is feeling uncomfortable first?” Ultimately, Joyce needs to advocate for herself here.
Will Joyce change the subject or attempt to defuse the situation? Will Joyce defend Sarah and tell Lucy to mind her own business? Will she address Sarah and ask her to be a better friend?
Walky’s reaction was perfect so far. His comment about Joyce’s death was a jab at both Joyce and Sarah going overboard. But what will be his reaction to Lucy’s more confrontational approach?
No she’s 100% in the right here. What Sarah did was a massive violation of Joyce’s privacy. That went far beyond good-natured ribbing into outright cruelty
A friend and I are like that; being outright dicks to each other but then laughing over it right after.
However, I think I would also have a “wtf” moment if she announced to the rest of the friend-group that I was masturbating.
Sarah is a stalwart friend. She’s the kind who would (did) go into battle to protect you from actual harm. But she also, somewhere, learned some pretty bad ideas about friendship. Maybe she didn’t receive much respect growing up, I don’t know. There’s a painful truth in Lucy’s criticism, even though it probably is influenced by Raidah. “That’s what friendship is” sounds like an echo of an excuse someone made when shaming her sometime.
Maybe masturbation isn’t anything shameful to her, but she knows that Joyce is working through some big changes in her thinking and some things are still private. Respecting someone’s privacy is just part of respect.
Rolling over someone’s boundaries to ‘help’ them is manipulative. Maybe you do it when their life is in danger, but not for kicks and probably not because you think you are their unappointed teacher.
Yeah, it’s complicated and well-thought out, which is why I love this comic. If someone were to ask me for a good example of storytelling in comics, my first thought would be to direct them here.
The last couple arcs have been playing with uneven perspectives. Dorothy’s treatment of Joyce and Joe is based on partly on her unhealthy desire for control, which is unjustifiable, and partly on her (or most characters) knowing how Joe has changed, which is justifiable. This is great tension and it tempts us to take sides in a nuanced dynamic where neither side is perfectly in the right.
It’s the same in this situation. If I’m not mistaken, Lucy doesn’t really know Sarah at all, but people like Joyce and Walky have been through thick and thin with her and have accepted her behavior as normal. That dynamic is unraveling because of Lucy’s presence here.
> Rolling over someone’s boundaries to ‘help’ them is manipulative. Maybe you do it when their life is in danger, but not for kicks and probably not because you think you are their unappointed teacher.
Yup. This comment section was busy for days when Dorothy did it.
So does this mean everyone at the all boys Catholic School I went to for JR High and one year of highschool was my friend, and referring to a nosebleed as my period was just good natured ribbing?
Idk, much like how Sarah went “what the hell is your problem with me” to Jennifer when the first thing she did was wretch at her and to get indignant with Joe for telling Joyce that she was using her to try and break up Jacob and Raidah, she seems to have a fascinating tendency for expecting people to put up with her behavior without calling her on it
Also, since I’m a little surprised to see that nobody has brought it up, the “purity culture” thing is clearly a trauma that Lucy shares, too, so seeing Joyce ribbed for it might also rub her the wrong way. I doubt anything will quell the “mad that there’s conflict” crowd, but I still think it’s worthy food for thought.
Then there’s Lucy’s perspective. Horny. Unsatisfied. Spent the night cuddling but nothing more. Maybe masturbation jokes and dealing with horniness hit her and elicited a response.
This one’s a hard one because they’re both right in the regards of what we’ve seen with both characters. As readers we know more than the characters themselves, because that’s our privilege.
I definetely think Sarah’s in the wrong here, but I also remember how I was acting when I was her age (20? 21?) and I had basically just… barely become a person? I remember tons of times where I said things that were way over the line and not realising that it was until later. Sometimes I would come to the conclusion myself, sometimes when other people let me know, and even then I could get defensive and spend some time figuring out that actually, that was not okay of me. I do hope I am more mature now but I still want to grow as a person. Sarah is not always the best in terms of toeing the line between cruelty and just sisterly sniping, and that doesn’t mean that her friends should just accept that from her, but she probably will grow more as a person and learn from her mistakes.
Also to be fair Joyce tends to act this when when it comes to her personal intimacy and sexuality regardless of how mundane it may seem. I mean Joe try to confess his feelings and she leaped into a tree.
No you know what I fucked around with some devil’s advocacy and I have come out backing Sarah For Sure.
This isn’t a public forum! this is Sarah, Joyce, and two of their friends!
This cannot be considered reliable information from Sarah! NOBODY PRESENT THINKS SHE’S SPEAKING IN EARNEST. Even Joyce! Who is pointedly neurodivergent, but who DOES know that she’s masturbated ONCE. ONE TIME.
It is incidental that Sarah’s jibe is even remotely true. Sex teasing is an Established Joyce Interaction. It reliably gets a good reaction, and she has a decent record of establishing genuine boundaries. This is something that makes her uncomfortable but it isn’t Just Of The Table.
There is NOT scope for this in a one-on-one setting! We’ve seen the one-on-one! There was a jab, a BIG reaction, and a warm and loving interaction that capped off with an indication of Joyce’s preparedness to engage in the joke. This is friend who knows the lay of the land doing a friend tease. She’s got a good sense of where The Line is and this, an ol’ reliable mode of teasing with some new zing, in front of people Joyce knows well but has a pretty much Zero Loaded relationship with, does not cross it.
sarah isn’t “toxic” or “abusive” she’s simply imperfect. walky is much more of a flagrant jerk but I don’t call him those words either. can we cool it with the unnecessary and frankly inappropriate therapy speak when it comes to someone just *fucking up*.
its kinda crazy to assume a friendship dynamic. like my best friend and i make fun of each other all the time.
i WILL give it to Lucy, its super not nice to out that your sexually stunted friend popped her masturbation cherry ToT
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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FRIENDS are just ENEMIES who don’t have the GUTS to KILL YOU
Maybe, but whether Sarah is a friend is Joyce’s decision. Nobody else gets a vote.
But you can give an opinion. Plenty of people have toxic relationships with friends, same as with romantic relationships. You can certainly make it known whether you think some friendship is healthy or not
Is it, tho ?
i mean, it’d be nice if there were wholesome friendships with no mocking at all, but even some casual friendships have some lighthearted teasing (though it is pretty inappropriate if someone were to say “yeah they’re late to our group walk to class today because they were masturbating the last hour”)
But most ppl in sarah’s ‘group’ knows that it’s part of her personality as opposed to just full on ignoring everyone
Yeah… But Sarah is always mean. There’s that whole storyline of her having incredibly bliss the more other people suffer around her. And she can’t take any insults being shoved back at her. She’s a jerk.
Meh. I’d rather have friends like Sarah than friends like Lucy. Friends like Sarah will give you a reality check when you need one. Friends like Lucy will tell you that everything is okay even when things are not okay, not to spare your feelings, but to suppress their own.
You shouldn’t confuse abuse with honesty tho. Lucy is being pretty straightforward and calling people out on their bullshit right in this strip.
Agreed! She was pretty straightforward about wanting to get railed over the last few strips too. And Sarah was kinda pointlessly mean there too. I’d rather have Lucy as a friend.
Lucy is the friend you want to uplift you and make your life easier and make you a better person every day, Sarah is the friend you want when someone needs their ass beat with a baseball bat. (“Someone” includes you.)
(Raidah is the friend you want when you’re willing to trade away your personality for money and power.)
Raidah is the friend you want if you have genuine intentions of going into politics…
Straightforward isn’t how I would describe it. She was aggressive towards Danny and Wally’s been feeling pressured.
Lucy is calling out someone she’s clearly decided is not ‘friend’ material in the first place, largely based on Raidah’s highly slanted breakfast story. Lucy believes that only good people are ‘popular’ and vice-versa. So she’s assuming that Raidah told the truth in all ways, and that Sarah, who has only a handful of friendships, must be wicked in some way.
And Lucy doesn’t know jack about Joyce and Sarah’s relationship up to this point–it’s all second-hand gossip. So, yeah, I’d be fine if Sarah lays into her next strip and pushes Lucy way, way the fork back to the right side of her personal boundaries.
ok so full confessional speed here, I used to very much be a last panel Sarah, my understanding of interracting with my friends was to mock them, make jokes about them or us, anihhilate any weak point etc at any given chance. i was that until i was…. uh maybe 28?
I still enjoy barbs back nad forth, but I’ve finally realized not everyone is
of irish and middle eastern descentok with making jokes like that, or being the butt of the joke, or having their honesty and openness rewarded with douchbaggery, even if it is all meant in fun and never serious. when I’m serious about my insults you’ll know it.but despite being self conisstant and honest about it, I was still the dick in way too many situations, and I’ve learened how to both moderate, and just be a normal and good friend.
I still feel upset looking back at extremely mild teasing that was more about testing the waters than anything else being treated with extreme prejudice. I’m of Irish descent and wow people really very much discriminate against it. Most of my friends are Irish and I prefer it that way. Making friends with people who aren’t is unnecessarily difficult, it gets to the point where literally just telling the truth bluntly is seen as an insult and any form of insult as being a transgression worth ostracizing someone over. That’s ethnic discrimination.
It got to the point where I stoppe bantering entirely not because I wanted to but because I got flashbacks when I tried to.
“Friends like Sarah will give you a reality check when you need one.”
Oh, you mean like the reality check that Lucy is currently in the process of giving to Sarah, at this very moment?
“Friends like Lucy will tell you that everything is okay even when things are not okay, not to spare your feelings, but to suppress their own.”
Funny, I don’t see Lucy telling Sarah that everything is okay, right here, because Lucy certainly doesn’t seem to think it’s okay that Sarah is obviously being an asshole to Joyce right now. And she’s certainly not sparing Sarah’s feelings (or suppressing her own), here. She’s telling Sarah something that Sarah has needed to hear for quite some time, and if Sarah doesn’t like that, that’s a Sarah problem, not a Lucy problem.
Caveat: Lucy and Sarah are not friends in the first place. Lucy herself is drawing that distinction, here–“your so-called friends”.
And that’s important, here, because if Lucy actually WAS Sarah’s friend, she might have been aware that Sarah spent much of the prior semester being judged by Joyce for her own casual masturbation, and that this is basically a little payback. Is Sarah acting out of high motivations, here? No, but her ribbing isn’t rising to the point of Mike-style psychological cruelty, either.
Lucy judging a situation without all the facts and based mostly on her personal view of the world, tho, perfectly maps to her personality and prior conduct, from her immediate decision that Billie had to be the best person ever, because cheerleader, all the way through her obvious decision that Walky is her One True Love.
So, yeah, not a fan of Judge Lucy, here.
Something tells me we’re about to find out why.
I’ve got a friend who will state “BRB wank” when he’s not going to respond to a chat for a while, and once you get used to it it’s kind of nice that he’s so clear in his communication TBH.
Does he mean it as in “stuff I need to deal with has come up” or literally “am going to go masturbate until the urge to do so has passed now”? Or have you never asked?
Depends on the friend and the mean thing in particular.
DAMMIT. I gotta quit forgetting gravitar roulette.
Nope. Nope nope nopity nope.
what do you have against blowjob cat?
I prefer my gravitar to be a person. And a ‘not fiction within fiction’ person. I let it go for Julia Gray the other day, but no more!
When you finally win, we’ll all celebrate.
We love season finales of search for Sal!
I think the original comment is true though. Sarah isn’t wrong… Always. She’s not always right either
Lucy is also not wrong.
Actually, here, at least, I’d say Lucy IS wrong. What Sarah is saying is not ‘mean’. Mean would be judging Joyce for said masturbatory excess, perhaps even shaming her for it.
Y’know, like Joyce used to do to her. Here, all she’s doing is getting a little ‘welcome to the club’ ribbing in.
… not sure it’s rubbing for her pleasure.
RIBBING. DAMNYOUAUTOCORRECT that’s too funny to correct…
Dumbing of Age Book 13: Vile and True
Vile and True would be a good desccription of my quality as a friend (I hope), but it’d also be an amazing epitaph.
Or a good name for a rock band.
Ah, Sarah. It’s kind of important to work out a person’s limits with that.
“What is ‘friend'”?
A dirty pile of secrets?…no wait.
It’s secrets all the way down.
Lucy suddenly very (selectively) concerned about people saying mean things because it’s fun.
to be fair saying “oh yeah they were masturbating” crosses a pretty distinct boundary
Walky antagonizes people too is my point, not that Sarah’s not being obnoxious.
I suspect its what and how Sarah said that Lucy has a problem with
Is it more inappropriate than the line “Can’t hate me that much if your dating me with vulva.” That every seemed put off by.
Walky didn’t violate any privacy.
Walky is also not claiming that Danny is his friend or vice versa.
Walky was indeed mean to his sister’s boyfriend who was mean to him first. These two should be nicer to each other, just because it’d be nice for Sal if these two could get along, but they’re not friends.
“Imagine that you’re having sex with me when you’re having sex with my sister”
Danny was just cold to Walky, because of Walky’s history of antagonizing him. Walky wasn’t a dick when Lyle crossed the line with his jokes. But Danny says Walky’s name coldly and that gives Walky a carte blanche?
Lucy is being selective on whose meanness she’s responding to with “you don’t have any friends”.
How “put off” would you have been if he’d said “me with long hair”?
Walky’s passive-aggressvive needling of Billifer is several degrees of mean away from “She’s happy because she jacks off”, methinks.
Walky’s a dick to almost everyone. Sometimes he feels bad about it, and tries to make up for it, but less than Sarah does.
Lucy also makes excuses for Malaya and Jennifer.
Yeah Walky was being worse than Sarah.
I suspect Sarah’s one of the only people it’s “safe” for her to call out like that. Sarah’s neither close in on Lucy’s normal social circle nor a complete stranger. She’s not wrong, but it may also be a bit of venting she’s afraid of doing elsewhere because of consequences (like still having to live with Jennifer).
Lucy is on her way to the dark side here. Next she’ll be actively spying on our primary cast and spending all her time with the mean kids. The mean kids who never, ever say anything mean to someone’s face … just behind their backs.
We also don’t know if Lucy has been privy to Becky no longer wishing to pressure Joyce back into religion.
Malaya’s pretty toxic if you’d compared her to Sarah yet Lucy seemed to like her well enough (unless she just viewed her as being ‘tsundere’) Even carla had some grating moments, i don’t think she was esp snarky to Lucy but she’s just equally annoying to everyone/not that much malice behind it at least
I think Lucy wanted Malaya to like her because she thought Malaya was cool.
With Sarah the people Lucy thinks are cool tell her she shouldn’t like Sarah, and she’s less invested in earning her approval.
Lucy, who was recently presented with several claims against Sarah’s character challenges her on a point of fact that is making her uncomfortable.
She’s challenging Sarah in an honest way on something fresh and real. Say what you will about selectiveness but Lucy is showing some good character by openly challenging something she doesn’t like rather than just quietly distancing herself or gosiping.
I agree with you on the facts, but something still makes me uncomfortable about Lucy here. Can’t quite put my finger on ‘why’.
Maybe it has to do with how she’s really not close to Joyce or Sarah, and as such has no idea whether this kinda banter is just how they express their friendship? Or maybe because that ‘so-called friends’ sounds rather like a Raidah quote. Dunno.
I agree with Fridge-logic too but also the uncomfortable thing. I think it is because from our perspective she does look a bit like Raidah’s patsy, so maybe it is second hand dislike.
The only wrong bit is that Lucy generalizes abouyt Sarah acting like this about all her friends. Lucy should only have focused only on the horrific thing she just saw Sarah do to Joyce,
Eh, Walky called Lyle out on making Lucy uncomfortable like two minutes after meeting him.
You don’t always need to know someone for long to understand if they’re being kind of a prick.
I will also remind of Lucy’s immediate reaction to the prospect of breakfast with Raidah: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/breakfast-2/
She basically lit up at the prospect of attaching herself to Raidah and company. In front of Sarah. Is Sarah’s reaction paranoid, or is it a perfectly reasonable response to having a known gaslighter in her life?
You know what? Lucy has not been my favorite character for a while.
But Sarah needs this pointed out and her little arc of being even more abrasive than usual needs to stop. Some lines you shouldn’t cross and yesterday’s comic went over a big one.
Agreed, but it’s not Lucy’s place to say this. She barely knows her. I used to “tease” my friends all the time and when a very close friend of mine pointed out for the first time that my teasing was only fun for me and not for my friends, it totally changed the way I interacted with people and made my friendships a lot better. But being told I was mean by someone who barely knew me? I would not have received that well and even now still would be like “fuck off you don’t know me or my relationship dynamics”
That doesn’t speak well of you or your friends at the time. Toxic dynamics are plain to see, and Lucy is absolutely right on calling it out. Perhaps it is that I grew older, but I no longer have patience for meanness or abuse. It is everyone’s duty to call it out as improper when it shows up around you.
Don’t really agree with this. It IS normal for friends to tease each other, and different people with different relationships have a different tolerance for how much is too much. You can easily argue that Sarah crossed a line for sharing information that was too personal, but it’s not like Sarah is openly insulting Joyce levels of toxicity.
But Sarah is at the same time playing on Joyce’s low threshold of mortification in this area and ignoring the impact of doing so. Friendly teasing is sensitive to both the comedic and the emotional aspects of a particular tease. “This would be so funny, and so true, but it’s a better use of intimate knowledge not to say that to her: she’d freak.”
I get the feeling that Sarah would consider this friendly teasing if someone did it to her, but hasn’t applied her knowledge of Joyce’s personality deeply enough to infer that Joyce won’t.
Whose place is it, then? Because it has to be someone’s. You can’t just let that toxicity fester on – if you do, you’re complicit.
To that I say “hit dog will holler”
Now there’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a long time.
Jumping straight to “She turned you against me” Isn’t really doing you any favors there Sarah. (Though, in her defense, Raidiah DID blatantly attempt to do that)
Indeed. Let’s hope Raiah doesn’t see any more success in doing that.
Duel of the Fakes
It’s a FAAAKE!
THEY’RE TURNING YOU AGAINST ME!!!!
And honestly, while calling Sarah out here is definitely justified, it’s hard to imagine that Raidah’s attempt didn’t have some influence.
I feel like Raidah barely acknowledged Lucy at all.
To be fair, Sarah knows that Raidah does that. And that Lucy was with Raidah right before Lucy took note of her poor behavior.
She has evidence, and her conclusion is correct.
Except Lucy also has evidence, and her conclusion is also correct.
For some reason all I can think of is Anakin shouting you “Turned her against me!”
*plays “Duel of the Fates” on passing car’s mini TV*
It is the same sentiment of “Did I do something wrong? No, it must be everyone else (including my loved ones) conspiring against me”
It is, but Raidah also is conspiring against her.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you.
Obviously, Lucy doesn’t know that Sarah would literally swing a baseball bat at someone’s head for Joyce, and actions speak louder than words but…
words do speak too, so they’re both right. Oh why can things never be black and white?
As much as I like Sarah, it’s about time to her to drop this schtick.
there is a distinct differentiation between The Banter and Dickishness.
Sarah swung too far because she’s not tailoring her banter for the target.
That bit of banter was perfectly tailored for the target.
Just not so much for the audience.
Depends. Does she want to express “we are friends, we know things about each other” or “you’re an easy target”?
yup. It’s something Joyce teased her about. Definitely on the table.
But if her plan is to make Joyce a little uncomfortable to wear down her shame response, it’s not a great plan, especially if “a little uncomfortable” means making her petrified with embarrassment in front of her other friends.
I’ve definitely had friendships where saying mean things about each other was a big element. There was some protectiveness, some “no one can say you about this than me,” some “I do not say these things about you to others,” and the big hurts were when those were ignored, but I think we were hurting each other a little bit a lot of the time with our jokes. I prefer the friendships I have now, where much more effort is put into actively saying kind things to and about each other.
Dunking on friends is fine, but you need to be more selective, Sarah, on where, when, and who.
ORSINO How dost thou, my good fellow?
FOOL Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my friends.
ORSINO Just the contrary: the better for thy friends.
FOOL No, sir, the worse.
ORSINO How can that be?
FOOL Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me. Now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass; so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused. So that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two affirmatives, why then the worse for my friends and the better for my foes.
ORSINO Why, this is excellent.
FOOL By my troth, sir, no—though it please you to be one of my friends.
Pretty based for my boy Willy Shakes to name the fool “fool” thereby swelling the ranks of his generously honest foes <3
That’s less a name and more of a job description that’s cheaper to print than ‘jester’
(shhh that’s the joke)
(also, cheaper to print? what?! no. don’t be silly.)
He actually does have a name—Feste—which is mentioned once in the dialogue, but the rest of the script refers to him as “Fool” or “Clown.”
God I knew so many 18-20yos who thought that.
And way, way too many people who should’ve been old enough to goddamn know better.
I’m probably gonna bounce for a while and come back to read it in bulk
Sarah used to be one of my fave characters so I leave you with this
https://i.imgur.com/IWii2pl.png
Oooo great art! =D
Nice, real nice.
Oh this is Gorgeous!
There’s quite a bit of artistic talent in this strip’s fan base.
There is.
Wowww that’s lovely
That is so pretty!
I mean, they’re both right. Friends give each other shit if that’s the sort of stuff they’re okay with. I can’t take a lot of teasing, but some people are used to it as a form of affection. Sarah also takes it too far, especially in this instance. Granted, I can’t help but feel that Lucy wouldn’t be saying anything if Raidah hadn’t said what she said to her. She hasn’t said ANYTHING to Billie or anyone she perceived as popular this far. Unless I forgot something, which is totally possible.
Oh boy wait until Raidah tells Lucy that Joyce tried to steal Jacob and then Lucy can have her protective jealous arc worried that Joyce is gonna steal Walky. [Honestly I doubt that plot would happen or that plot thread is gonna come up in that way].
Also, Jennifer* my brain slipped up there.
yeah it’d be better if it was one on one teasing, but even if she was having some ‘private time’ to herself, that’s not rly info that should be given to a casual friend group right before class/privacy
though i don’t think lucy would be jealous of joyce /walky considering “you rly don’t think i’m attracted to the smell of his exes?” “it can’t be all the taco bell” esp if her thirst for joe would be obvious. if anything she’d prolly drag them on a double date too
Good fucking point, Jennifer has been super mean to walkie and Lucy hasn’t called her on it to stand up for her own boyfriend cuz she’s desperate for her approval
Seeing a lot of comments about Lucy not calling out Wally for being needling Jennifer it might be that Lucy sees it as a much more balanced back and forth. Where as she just sees Joyce on the receiving end.
This makes sense to me. Billie is outwardly hostile to Walky, so him being a bit of a dick (if we have to use comments mandated harshness of phrase) doesn’t come off as unbalanced. Joyce doesn’t really swing back at Sarah that much, so it can look one-sided and “aBuSiVe” from an outside perspective.
“It” is a personal & private matter. Sarah went out of her way to humiliate Joyce. Not cool.
Ayyyy my point was made! Thats what being friends means for eachother!
Sarah and Joyce are not friends, they are more like sisters I think. Riding your siblings is more normal and less unacceptable. That being said, Sarah (my favorite character) is being too mean today.
I mean
yeah.
“Big sister.” “Little sister.”
But not regularly, accusatory, or very personal. Is Joyce really still the blonde bi version of Lucy after this?
“And I said ‘what about Breakfast at Raidah’?”
*Sigh* Lucy was so easily influenced after all…like fuck Malay says worse to her all the time yet she’s more than happy enough to see her every time they meet but Sarah is a problem because someone her hung out with for an hour told her not to trust her.
I’ve noticed that in real life, too. people can miss obvious things happening before their eyes but be swayed by gossip or tabloids, as though being told something makes it more believable than seeing it happen. it’s very unsettling.
Someone “popular” told her not to trust Sarah as a friend.
So that means it’s true.
I mean, particularly when Sarah just publicly humiliated and shamed an alleged friend severely enough that she turned to stone (metaphorically) and is still blissing out about causing her friend pain… yeah, it looks true.
Remember the context of what they told Lucy.
They didn’t tell Lucy Sarah is mean to her friends (which Lucy probably already knows).
What they told Lucy was that Sarah abandons her friends when they become inconvenient.
But this scenario is not that.
Yet, Lucy, as others have mentioned, is calling Sarah out for being a bad friend when she never does that (on panel anyway) for anyone else.
Her doing so implies she’s bringing the bias that she heard from breakfast to this conversation.
Her having a good point doesn’t change that implication.
And if she is bringing that bias to the conversation, then she is in fact working with wrong information as Sarah will literally go to bat for her friends.
She just happens to be a professed misanthrope who doesn’t have many friends.
Sarah is actively proving the bias, whatever it is, with actual behavior. She is, right in front of Lucy’s face, being extremely mean to Joyce purely because she thinks Joyce being ashamed and upset is DELIGHTFUL.
It doesn’t matter whether Sarah will go to bat for her friends, that’s not the issue. And honestly that doesn’t matter. The occasional big gesture does not negate your obligation to be a friend to your friends in general.
I do think it strange for Lucy to be so mad on Joyce’s behalf when she had nothing to say to Raidah on Joyce’s behalf when Raidah told Joyce she looked like shit. Instead, right afterwards Raidah extended a breakfast invite and Lucy practically tripped over her own feet to accept it. There’s definitely bias here.
Yeah, that’s where I’m at with this too. I do think Sarah could refrain from joking like this in front of people she and Joyce barely know. It makes sense in front of Walky, but not Lucy. Lucy should still lay off of Sarah though because she doesn’t know what their relationship is like, and yeah, she likes to kiss up to crappy people
It does matter because the point Lucy is making is that Sarah doesn’t really have friends/care about friends.
That is the issue because Lucy would definitely not say this if she knew.
Would she admonish Sarah with different words?
Possibly, but again, since she has never done it to anyone else, it supports the bias Sarah is claiming.
Lucy *is* letting Raidah influence her opinion of Sarah a lot when she doesn’t have the knowledge (like we do) of just how far Sarah is willing to go for her friends…but Sarah isn’t helping her case by being genuinely mean to Joyce and reveling in it.
If a friend of mine knew something about me that actually seriously embarrassed me, and then immediately told other people about it just for their own amusement, that would be a big problem.
I’m hanging up a bit on “so-called”.
Lucy’s missing a lot of context. As a reader, it very much irks me to see Sarah’s friendships trivialized like this when I know omniscientlyishly that she actually takes them extremely seriously.
On the other, Watsonianly, I can’t really justify Lucy being wrong with the knowledge she has access to. At best, she knows Sarah and Joyce were both part of the kidnapping, and can infer they trauma-bonded? But she doesn’t know about the party or anything else they’ve gone through together.
AND Raidah is turning her against Sarah.
my crimes against adverbs are many and multiplicitious
they deserve it. they know what they did.
They know-what-they-did-ly deserve it!
Inevitable, but predictable, revenge of the multiplicitous criminally victimized adverbs.
I mean at this point it’s not just the kidnapping, at this point this entire group has been through more together the most life long friends usually do.
Lucy at the beginning I thought showed enough emotional maturity at the beginning but maybe I overestimated her. As much as I like her who is Lucy to question there bond like that. “So-called friends” sounded so judgmental.
She’s done a couple of things that remind me of what she said to her brother, ““maybe before I had a blind spot when it came to romance, but for the past week, I’ve been hitting it out of the park.”
Sometimes wrong, but never in doubt.
They’re both the asshole, but I’m not heavily invested in who is worse. Things will probably simmer down, it’s cold outside and they’ve got like 13 minutes to get to class. Still, Walky and Lucy have been antagonizing multiple people, and there’s a bunch of drama there just waiting to be triggered.
@newlland For sure, agree, what I meant is that I don’t know how much knowledge of the friend group Lucy explicitly has. She probably knows about the kidnapping bc it was public-ish knowledge, but I doubt she knows about the attempted date rape at the party, for example. Plus any number of things that illustrate Sarah and Joyce’s relationship.
So I can’t blame her for using a term like “so-called friend” even though at first read, it comes across as entirely too harsh to me.
Omfg, Lucy is 100% correct, and Raidah has nothing to do with what Lucy herself is observing,
Sarah is an abusive, sexual-harassing asshole eho has been targetting Joyce to make her uncomfortable with sexual remarks and exposing her private lifr. In any workplace she’d have been fired.
oh, you did reply to me, neat
You’ll note I never actually gave an opinion on Lucy’s behavior one way or another. I said I got hung up on one specific part of it, then gave reasons why I find it both reasonable and unreasonable.
While I would never tell someone to stop doing a Dumbing Of Age Comments Crusade, because they’re hilarious, I do encourage you to actually read the comments to which you respond.
Well, I will say: “In any workplace she’d have been fired” is very much a reach.
Classes are not a workplace yo. Sarah does not have the power to make Joyce live in poverty, and so Joyce doesn’t get the same legal protections. She’ll have to make due with normal social contract stuff. For instance, Lucy going WTF at this abuse.
I don’t want to blame the victim here, but Joyce needs to set boundaries. In fact, she needs to learn that she’s allowed to set boundaries. Lucy is doing good to teach Joyce to not let Sarah walk all over her.
YES. Joyce needs to learn to set boundaries, because Sarah has definitely been crossing them. Sarah should also pick up on the fact that this is clearly upsetting Joyce in a more drastic way than her usual ribbing and it is also in a much more public setting than usual. But it can be very difficult to realize you’ve crossed a line without being called out on it.
While I don’t know if Lucy has the correct context for her assumptions here, I do think confronting Sarah in this instance was correct. I hope Joyce does set a boundary around this soon, and without this interaction, I don’t think Sarah would have taken it seriously.
Fuck off Lucy
Fuck off Sarah
Fuck off stars; Fuck off air; Fuck off noises everywhere.
Fuck off old lady whispering hush?
Fuck off moon.
Fuck off wishing star
Yeah I guess we could blame Raidah instead of considering that constantly teasing Joyce about something she still is clearly uncomfortable with makes you a bit of an asshole.
Theres an argument to be made that actually teasing Joyce about masturbation IS good friending. Joyce has hangups about wa king that stem from the purity culture of her fundamentalist upbringing that she is EXPLICITLY rejecting and in the process of deprogramming from. Joyce doesn’t HAVE self-concordant reasons to be embarrassed anymore-just a shitty hangover.
There do exist non-purity culture reasons to want your wanking habits to be private. And maybe Joyce will articulate them. But desensitisation remains a pretty useful technique, and Sarah and Walky are a pretty good audience as far as that goes. And Lucy could also do with some purity deprogramming.
Look it’s just an argument that can be made that I haven’t seen in 70% of comments this evening and so am not already bored of.
Sarah is helping Joyce grow a tough skin!
“Helping Joyce grow a tough skin” is more in the vein of one-on-one teasing IMO. Stuff that helps Joyce confront her hangups or helps her get used to ignoring and responding to small jabs. This is something different.
Sarah is sharing sexual information about Joyce without her consent. That’s… not okay. It’s different from teasing her about her hangups about sex. She is crossing a line here by freely handing out information about Joyce’s sexual habits.
It strikes me as… odd? idk, it strikes me- that there doesn’t seem to be much differentiation by commenters between a public audience and an audience of 2 friends. This situation isn’t *hugely* removed from one-on-one. That’s Walky and Lucy. It’s not posting on twitter.
Is this an internet phenomenon? The blurring of public and private spheres? Is it a neurodiverse thing? Managing attention and social complexity? Is it even real, or is it something I’ve invented?
and man like, the removal of the audience would recast this as a genuine jab, rather than a performative ploy for some kind of social positive. Like. it’s probably not even TRUE. And it’s something that Sarah might say REGARDLESS of its being true! Joyce would react Just Like This anyway! Lucy and Walky, i bet, just think Sarah is teasing, and do not treat this as reliable information. It’s only incidentally even remotely true.
“there doesn’t seem to be much differentiation by commenters between a public audience and an audience of 2 friends.” I feel like this could apply for a lot of the heated comments we get when these college students act like *shock* college students. I’m confused because it seems like some people enjoy the compelling and funny story about this gang flawed complex characters, and then there’s a contingent that seems to want everyone to play nice and shun any character that shows a modicum of bad judgement.
I mean, Lucy is correct that Sarah’s good natured teasing is….not really good natured.
Sure, friends do raz each other like that, but they need to acknowledge where the limits should be.
i mean, joyce has never outright asked sarah to stop, so
I doubt Joyce a) realizes that she can do that, b) thinks it wouldn’t work, or c) both.
It’s both.
I think this callout from someone outside their friend group may be a necessary step toward Joyce being able to set a boundary. It plants the idea in Sarah’s head that other people see her behavior as cruel. It also plants the idea in Joyce’s head that Sarah can, in fact, be confronted. I really hope Joyce can set a boundary and I really hope Sarah acknowledges and respects it.
I agree. I hope Sarah pays attention to how she really comes off, that Joyce learns to set these boundaries, and all are better off for it.
Also just to really set the record straight Joyce and Sarah taking shots at each other over lewd behavior is nothing new.
Example: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/bailing/
good, I wasn’t just imagining it.
It is strange going back to older strips and seeing my own comments from years ago. If I had more time, I would go back to the beginning of the series and read it again, and read the comments.
You have all the time there is and there’s no deadline or set schedule. Just saying.
I mean, there’s a deadline of ~80 years.
Joyce isn’t taking shots at Sarah in front of her friends.
That interaction was in private. This interaction is in public.
This is true, though the issue that’s being made is what’s being said not if this is the right place.
I doubt the uproar would be as substantial if Sarah said it in the privacy of their room rather than essentially going ‘hey everyone in earshot and especially this specific dude who enjoys torturing Joyce as much as I do, laugh at Joyce about this big-deal-to-her thing she isn’t even okay with discussing privately!’
Lucy, it’s not your job to decide if Joyce is okay with the level of ribbing.
Exactly, thank you. I don’t think Joyce is but she doesn’t need Lucy, who she barely knows, to speak for her
Doesn’t she though?
Does this generalize, do you think that nobody ever needs anyone to to speak for anyone, when they’re seeing them being hurt?
Lucy was just used by Sarah in her abuse of Joyce and you think she should stay silent seeing someone get abused like this?
Yeah it’s not her job and you should say it!
She’s doing it for free which skews the market and that is so unamerican and frankly depraved!
I’m so glad someone has some business sense here.
Indeed, there’s no need to decide; Joyce is clearly mortified.
It’s one thing to tease and joke with just one person, but Sarah is embarrassing in front of others. She delights in being cruel to Joyce in front of others. She’s more nuanced than just a jerk overall as she is protective and loving and sees what she is doing as just a joke… But Joyce is repressed AF and when she’s starting to come out of her shell, that’s a BAD time to be making her uncomfortable with it / mocked in front of others for it.
Yeah, lots of abusers can be protectice of their victims from *other* abusers, just not tbeir own abuse.
I mean, both things can be true. Good-natured dragging is a solid part of friendship, but everyone has their limits. This is obviously something Joyce isn’t comfortable discussing in public, and it was shitty of Sarah to joke about it to other people in front of her. Like, I doubt she’d think it was so hilarious if Joyce stood in front of the group and laughed about how Sarah had (maybe still has?) a vibrator named Other Jacob explicitly to masturbate to the thought of their classmate.
Sarah needs to put herself in Joyce’s shoes and imagine if the latter zinged her out in the open about “Other Jacob” and its name origin.
And Lucy, well, I can’t blame her for believing Raidah at this point. But let’s see how far the scale tips between naivete and savviness.
When you reach a level of closeness honey roasts and fake mean things are prevelant, but also funny! I’ve got a pair of friends that are dating and they joke all the time “why don’t you love me?” while teasing each other and it’s hilarious. Sarah’s right and She and Joyce have such a close bond that it’s literally key to their dynamic.
It only works if everyone giving/receiving the insults is in on the joke and if everyone involved thinks it’s funny.
So I’ve seen something like this irl, a person wearing their most abrasive self on their sleeve as a like. Defence mechanism? ‘You knew how I was from day one, if you don’t wanna be friends that’s fine but don’t turn around later and pretend like you were mislead.’
I really liked this irl person, and he got on well with most people, but he did tend to burn through a tolerance with people and they’d need to recharge before they’d hang out with specifically him again.
Joyce LOVES Sarah, and Sarah loves Joyce, so like, their relationship is Solid and I think there’s maybe a temptation to rest in that with an ‘i can say whatever garbage and we’ll still be good’, if not full self-sabotage ‘i bet i can break this thing, nothing is this good’.
But they’ll be fine.
I do think they’ll be fine long term but Sarah crossed a line here and Joyce needs help telling her so
Rather suspiciously quick to assume Lucy’s bad opinion of her is because of Raidah.
(Did Raidah even mention her during that lunch?)
Yes.
It felt prepared even. https://www.dumbingofage.com/cherish/ A spiel about not “jettisoning” people while saying Jennifer and Walky should jettison people.
I didn’t get the impression she fully bought into Raidah’s framing of events, especially after Walky started arguing with Jennifer about the desirable qualities of friends. I feel like I may not know for certain unless Lucy asks Sarah what really happened with Dana, and Sarah answers the question seriously without assuming Lucy will believe Raidah’s version of events regardless.
I don’t think she fully bought into it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sitting there in the back of her mind making her wonder. And today’s “so-called friends” really echoes what Raidah was insinuating.
I’m interested in what Walky’s reaction is going to be.
Some Lucy defenses (coming from honestly being surprised about the things people are going at Lucy for from this):
-Yes, other people have been unpleasant to people around her. In many of these examples, it’s not people who are claiming to be close friends with the people they’re being mean to. People also have breaking points. If Lucy’s ignored something in the past, does it mean she has to ignore it forever? Maybe she’ll go back to ignoring it in other cases. Maybe she’ll start calling it out more. But that’s the future. “You’ve never done x before” is not an automatic reason to not do it now.
-Yes, Joyce ultimately gets to decide what she’s okay with in her relationships. Hopefully, if she feels that what Sarah’s doing is actually okay, she’ll say so, either now to the group or to Sarah later. Also, though, it’s not like Joyce has had a great upbringing around boundaries. Sometimes someone pointing out that the way someone– especially someone you love and who loves you– is treating you is not okay is what helps you recognize that for yourself.
-Someone who is willing to go to extreme actions for you but who still hurts you as part of “play”… still hurts you. We’ve seen this with various characters in this strip. And now we’re at the part where I quote Bojack Horseman, with, “But in real life, the big gesture isn’t enough. You need to be consistent, you need to be dependably good. You can’t just screw everything up and then take a boat out into the ocean to save your best friend, or solve a mystery, and fly to Kansas. You need to do it every day, which is so… hard.”
-I don’t think Sarah is all bad. I think she has many good qualities. As a character, I enjoy reading about her more than I do Lucy. But like everyone, she fucks up. And recognizing that is a chance to grow. And hey, if Joyce is actually cool with it despite what her reaction seems to be, then that confirmation can deepen their friendship as well.
Noooo a reasonable take aaaaaaaah
^^^
She’s not wrong, though. Not counting the out and out villainous characters, Sarah is one of this comic’s shittier characters. She even derives joy from how miserable the people around her are.
Lucy’s apparent blindness to Malaya’s own shitty behavior doesn’t really change that. Neither does the fact that Sarah took a bat to that one dude in any way absolve just how nasty Sarah tends to treat other people.
I’d also remind people that she set Joyce up to torpedo Raidah’s relationship with Jacob in a way that would have seen the blowback entirely fall upon Joyce. Motivated purely because she was pissed off Raidah was dating someone she was attracted to.
I don’t think she’s blind to Malaya’s Malayaness so much as she thinks she can drag Malaya to the Light through sheer persistence.
There is a concerning amount of hand waving Sarah’s behavior because she and Joyce are friends. Teasing someone about masturbating in public when they aren’t comfortable about that goes beyond “friends messing with each other” that is shitty and if you think it isn’t I beg you to either be a better friend or get better friends
Joyce is actively working on a personal sexual revolution, and having someone help you find your limits by pushing can really help. It all depends on whether Sarah will stop when Joyce communicates when she found new limits.
I’m not sure ‘in public’ is a fair description of the situation, the only people here are friends of Joyce, close enough friends that this level of intimidate joking could be acceptable. (Is acceptable, from Sarah’s perspective). It’s not like she’s calling it out loud to the whole class or something like that.
Sarah might’ve crossed the line a bit here, but where the actual line is not as easy to define as you might think.
Violating her privacy to people that know her is about 100% worse than exposing it to random people she’d never meet again.
She didn’t cross the line “a bit”, she violated it gtossly for her own amusement at Joyce suffering.
Sarah isn’t a friend, she’s an enemy of Joyce. She os hurting her for her own benefit.
…And you think the people in her class are ‘random people she’ll never meet again’ rather than ‘people that know her’?
I’d also still argue the public exposure is still way worse. Sure, it might matter less if you never meet those people again, but that doesn’t stop the embarassment. Or the risk/fear that people you do meet find out that way. Or the risk/fear that you might one day meet one of the people that found out. At least among friends you’ve already survived most of the judgments and will probably be accepted regardless.
But more seriously / less nitpicky:
This seems less of a direct privacy violation than an easy (and very embarrassing) guess, with only Joyce’s reaction confirming she was (probably) correct. If Joyce had a better poker face she could’ve just denied and/or laughed it off.
Also note that nobody is shaming Joyce for what she may or may not have done. The only amusement is at Joyce’s overreaction at something perfectly ordinary. (Which in turn might help her realize she doesn’t need to be so ashamed of it).
I’m sorry your concept of friendship is apparently so limited that you can’t comprehend this, but plenty of friendships do involve making these kinds of ‘insulting’ jokes about each other. It’s fine, because the underlying context is supposed to be ‘we know each other, we like each other, we know none of this is serious’. It may look like abuse if taken literally (and probably would be if it were serious), but it really isn’t like that. There is no actual malice or suffering involvement.
Again, Sarah might’ve taken it too far here, but it’s not nearly the malicious abuse situation you’re imagining it to be.
Excellent point, Lucy.
Now you need to say the same to Becky.
Sarah is cruel.
Like all unkind people, she has *moments* that seem to redeem her to her friends. These moments, fleeting, are why they should keep her around. But they don’t realize how the bad so outweighs the good.
While the alt text is largely left in jest, I still think it’s worth looking into. Yesterday’s alt text implied that Sarah’s comments made Joyce want to crumble and scatter into dust. What is the worth of a friendship that makes you feel that bad?
And no. Raidah has nothing to do with this.
This, fully, for me.
If you say something to a friend that makes them want to crumble and scatter into dust, that’s not ‘good-natured ribbing’. That’s some shit you have to apologize for and learn to not do again. Friendship is not an all-access pass for sadism.
Sarah is pushing Joyce to the edge only when Joyce can handle it, and only on subjects where Joyce has expressed an interest in changing how she is.
Occasionally Sarah misjudges, but then she always corrects her behaviour.
They’re characters in a webcomic. Sarah would be a really shitty friend in real life, but perfect people are boring to read about.
At the very least, I don’t remember reading stories about anyone who was perfect. Instead of getting viciously angry at the imperfect characters though, I just enjoy them like a normal adult.
They should all stop bickering and eat a nice bowl of cereal. Most problems can be solved with a good chat over food.
Sal’s just sitting there, thinking about a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats. Instead all the proverbial grenades she could be launching. Crunchy, with the illusion of being healthy, but still very sugary – yum.
Yes, that has such a great track record in this comic.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/02-ill-leave-you-a-phantom/dinnermusic/
That’s macaroni, a very loaded meal.
More we learn, the more we’ll find that’s just how Sarah learned to socialize. Which’d explain a lot.
Wouldn’t excuse it, but hey.
Listen, Raidah is a vulture that benefits the most from throwing shade to other people
But as they say, a broken clock is right twice a day
Unless the clock is a digital clock the randomize numbers frequently then the probability of it being right twice a day drops significantly.
Does it though? I’d say there’s math involved so who the hell knows!
If it’s blinking on for a second then off for a second, with random numbers each time, that’s 43200 moments. If there’s two digits for the hour, and two digits for minutes, that’s 10000 possible displays, including a lot of invalid displays (for example: 39:72). On average, it’d be right ~43 times a day, but for a total of around 43 seconds, more instances of being right, but for less time over all.
For a clock to never tell the right time, it could gain time every day. Like when it thinks it’s midnight, it’s actually 12:11, and getting farther from midnight every 24 hours.
yay glad to see the nerd-signal’s still working
and since i am but a helpless moth myself, let me ask, 1) why on for a second and off for a second? what’s your rationale? that’s a funny choice. If you just have it be on all of the seconds, that doubles the odds.
2) going by your logic, if there’s 43,200 random displays, with each one having a 1/10,000 chance of being correct, then doesn’t that mean the clock will be right ~4.3 times a day? not 43? or am i missing something?
and 3), i don’t completely agree with your reasoning. if you glance at an analog clock not knowing it’s stopped, you will typically only be led astray if it’s off by more than, say, 2,5 minutes. So, i’d say a stopped (analog) clock is right twice a day, for about 5 minutes at a time.
So applying that logic to our oddly dysfunctional digital display:
First we’d need to calculate how likely it is for a display to be valid: 1380/10000=0,138. Meaning that 86% of the time, the merest glance will instantly and definitively destroy the clock’s credibility. ouch.
Second, assuming a random number that happens to be valid, how often will it fall within a 5-minute bracket of the actual time? 24hrs/5min=288. So, the chance is 1/288.
So: 0.138*(1/288)*43200=20.7
Therefore, this very specific clock is right(ish), on average, 21 times a day. OK! cool! bye!
…oh wait, no now we need to figure out what that says about Raidah. hmmmm.
but wait! a further nitpick has occurred to me! if this clock only displays hours and minutes, it’s likely it will only refresh every minute, not every second!
so that’s 24*60=1440 displays. oh, and btw i also got that 0.138 figure wrong, it should be 24*60/10000=0.144 as well. so:
0.144(1/288)*1440=0,72
Now Raidah is right less than once a day! and that’s if we get rid of the nonsensical switching off for half the time, sorry HueSatLight that was a silly parameter!
Ouch!!! NOT looking good for randomized digital Raidah!
BUT, wait a sec. maybe we’re being too harsh. Maybe this is a 12-hr clock, after all that’s only fair, considering we’re comparing it to a regular 12-hr analog quadrant. Also, some old digital clocks have the left-most digit restricted to a “1”. So. Given this much more generous setup, and ignoring the first digit which will always be valid, we are now down to 1000 combinations.
The validity criterion gets tricky though, because i feel like we should now accept 13 through 19 for the hour number, because those might be interpreted (incorrectly, as it happens) as the outcome of a 24-hr digital clock. So the only invalid displays will be the 40% where the minutes go over 60. Right?
For simplicity’s sake i’m gonna stick with the 1/288 probability, though in practice any hour between 0 and 12 would be assumed to refer to the current am or pm cycle and so would only have to fall at the right bracket out of 144 possible ones.
0.6*(1/288)*1440=3
wow! this old-school Raidah is right 3 times a day! good for her! that’s even better than a broken analog clock!
This isn’t Sarah “jettisoning” people. This is Raidah’s attempt to get people to jettison Sarah.
It’s Sarah taking teasing too far, she’d probably recognize it on her own and be conciliatory. Like she was with Liz at the end of Trial and Sarah.
This is one of those big sticking points in a friendship that should be ironed out, early on. In the end, the question of whether Sarah is “too much” is Joyce’s to answer.
(I wouldn’t be friends with Sarah, but then, Sarah wouldn’t be friends with me.)
So on this situation Lucy does not know Sarah Joyce’s dynamic is that of sisters and yeah it seems mean hut I have seen my sisters and surgate sisters ( freinds who are close i consider my sisters) say way more vile stuff to each other in jest my younger sister oh boy some of the stuff she says to my older sister goes way beyond Sarah said and yet they still laugh and love eachother.
Yes Sarah is acting shitty she acts shitty alot but Lucy doesn’t have much context here I know she has a brother but that’s a different dynamic and I don’t think she has mentioned a sister.
only honest insight into this is Walky who I hope won’t stir the shit pot I mean there is 50 chance he might actually explain this dynamic.
But to be honest I can’t fault Lucy for saying it’s mean but she and I quote “Out of her element”
Now i get to either see if nobody comments or people comment and tell how wrong I am and how awful a person Sarah 19-20 year old woman is.
There’s no dynamic to explain.
Sarah is hurting Joyce and exposing her secrets because it amuses Sarah to do so.
She’s an abuser. If she’s a sister to Joyce, she’s an abusive sister.
You have got a very specific hang up on yeeting that abuse word around.
Sarah crossed a line, but not every line being crossed is abuse and by throwing abuse at it, you’re just trivializing actual abuse. I hope you can find peace on whatever this scenario is triggering in you, but calling a too harsh tease “abuse” is also going too far, like Sarah did.
It being persistent and systematic is what makes it abuse, rather than merely a bad incident.
If a boyfriend was doing similar to his girlfriend, deliberately embarassing and violating her privacy, everyone would be saying for her to dump his sorry ass.
Except its not? Not really
It’s not abusive to poke fun and make fun of your friends now and then, a bit of a dick move maybe but do not trivialize the word like this
Is Joyce looking as if she’s having fun?
When it’s only Sarah that’s having fun, while Joyce (the victim of said ‘fun’) is horribly embarrassed, how is that different from a bullly having fun by beating up a kid, and proclaiming it all in good fun?
Has Joyce consented to this kind of “fun”?
This is a toxic “friendship”.
Again not abuse Sarah is being mean but the thing about Joyce is she acted the same way when Joe confessed his feeling ls to her when Dotty taught her when Amber implied she did. Joyce’s default when confronted with her own personal intimacy is embarsment and denial and Dotty was not acting abusive (albeit creepy) neither is Joe, or Amber this comment is mean but Joyce would probably act the same way if Becky asked if her and Joe had sex.
Joyce tends acts this way when it comes to alot of subjects
It’s not abuse to poke fun at a freind or sibling yes Sarah is being a bit mean making Joyce uncomfortable but it is not abusive.
To be fair, I’m much meaner to my friends than I am strangers. Though I also compliment my friends a lot.
well, being mean to a stranger (other than someone bumping into you and then you calling them an asshole but i imagine most wouldn’t care if they did it on purpose) is kinda a dice roll on whether you’d actually get attacked or not but idon’t get close enough to strangers to interact even if it’s friendly small talk
I mostly just give strangers the benefit of the doubt BECAUSE I don’t know them. Like if someone’s really rude to me I just assume they’ve got a fucked up life and they’re taking it out on me. Doesn’t really excuse their behavior but I just don’t have it in me to get all that mad about it most times. I’m VERY polite, regardless.
I’m re-reading QC and this is very reminiscent of when Raven calls Faye out for being mean (336, 338, 340-343)
Oh word. I was just randomly rereading some QC the other day. A very different time in comics.
it was kind of a whim, but also I’m sick and comic I’ve already read = easiest to read for mind and eyes
It’s always hard for me to read Sarah heavy stories cause she reminds me so much of what I was like when I was her age.
YEP
But she admits they ARE friends.
So Raidah was the new Mike all along?
I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is, Mike has metastasized.
The good news is, your mom’s nickel was well spent
Bantz
Oh, Lucy! “So-called” was mean, and not in a good way.
Mean and true.
When Sarah is hurting Joyce for her amusement, violating her privacy, exposing her secrets; that’s what is called an “enemy”, not a friend
That’s a very limited concept of friendship, and one that Lucy does not apply to her own relationships with other people.
Guess we also gotta consider that to Sarah, it’s nothing embarrassing. What she finds funny is that Joyce is embarrassed about something completely normal. Of course, she should pay more attention to other peoples lines, but from this angle it seems a lot less mean.
(I guess I kinda empathize a bit, since I have embarrassing memories of trying this ‘banter’ thing everyone was doing, and getting it really wrong by hitting a sore spot… Not on purpose of course, but I’m too dang autistic to figure out where the sore spots are. So I gave up on banter.)
Here’s my take. There are ways to tease people without inducing shame and humiliation. You never now what people are going through, so it’s better to err on the side of boring and considerate over funny and mean. Also, if I wanted to make someone less ashamed of masturbating, I’d confidently own up to it myself, not call them out on it. But I do have a solid 15 years of experience on Sarah, social development continues well into adulthood.
Something to keep in mind is the idea that, were it not for breakfast with Raidah, would Lucy have felt the need to comment? Honest question. Because I’ve noticed some behavior in people, how they treat others, but I usually stay in my lane. Especially if I don’t really know the people involved. Somebody could be having a bad day, people have different dynamics, sometimes people just do their own thing.
I don’t think Sarah should be poking fun at the masturbation, and if I were Lucy, I would address it like ‘hey I don’t really wanna hear about Joyce’s masturbation habits’ rather than trying to go on a Raidah fueled judgement tirade about whether Sarah is good to her friends or not. That’s Joyce and Sarah’s bid’ness. Straight up. If Lucy wants to take Raidah’s side and decide that Sarah is now Satan, by all means walk with different people.
Plus, I don’t think saying ‘Joyce has been masturbating’ qualifies as saying mean things about her. You know who did say mean things about Joyce. Raidah, when she said Joyce looks like shit. THAT is saying a mean thing. Sarah is being shitty ABOUT a thing, but not saying a MEAN thing. Joyce has been masturbating is frankly a neutral statement and not an insult in and of itself. It’s the person involved and the fact that it is in public that makes it mean.
Bit of a nitpick, I know.
Joyce is upset and ashamed upon hearing her personal private business, where many of her hangups still lie, presented publicly as something to laugh at her about.
It was a mean thing to say.
Agreeing to disagree. It’s still Joyce’s decision if Sarah went too far or not. Lucy’s only role here is in expressing that she would rather not hear Joyce’s business, and deciding to walk elsewhere/not in Sarah’s vicinity if she doesn’t like her anymore.
I think Lucy would’ve made a more generic comment about Sarah going a step too far. But yeah, her approach here was primed by Raidah’s unreliable narration.
Amazed at how many people think that Lucy should have been silent when she was just used by Sarah as an element in her abuse of Joyce.
Get expelled Sarah, you fucking abusive enemy of anyone you pretend to be your friend.
Go outside.
“Be silent” is not what anyone is saying she should have done, “pick her words better” is more fitting when Lucy is making an implication that Sarah isn’t a real friend to anyone, when the worse Sarah did was take a embarrassing joke a bit to far infront of company
Also your using the tearm “abusive” a bit too easily here, if a mistake that measly qualifies as abuse then I guess it’s easy to be the absolute worse friend possible huh?
Mistake? Joyce had the exact reaction that Sarah expected her to have.
If Sarah had accidentally revealed something that she thought Joyce wouldn’t have minded being revealed, that one would have been a mistake.
This was a deliberate violation, with the expected effects that this violation actually had.
She definitely wanted to get a rise out of her, but the only thing I see as a mistake was airing out personal business in public.
Your hyperbolic takes have at least been interesting to read. I think you’re going so far into left field you’re in the parking lot with this “abuse” thing, but I’m not gonna lie and say it’s boring.
Jesus Christ fuck off, Lucy you little shit.
Abusive assholes like Sarah are the ones that need to fuck off.
They’re both overstepping here. Judging by yesterday’s comic, Joyce is really uncomfortable with Sarah calling her out. However, while Sarah may have misjudged how upset she was making Joyce in this instance, she only meant it as gentle ribbing. Lucy is incorrect in judging Sarah to be a cruel person. Sarah would be justified in asking Lucy to apologize, but Lucy would also be justified in saying “Can we check if Joyce is feeling uncomfortable first?” Ultimately, Joyce needs to advocate for herself here.
Will Joyce change the subject or attempt to defuse the situation? Will Joyce defend Sarah and tell Lucy to mind her own business? Will she address Sarah and ask her to be a better friend?
Walky’s reaction was perfect so far. His comment about Joyce’s death was a jab at both Joyce and Sarah going overboard. But what will be his reaction to Lucy’s more confrontational approach?
More popcorn, please.
yeah definitely can’t wait to see how the other two react
No she’s 100% in the right here. What Sarah did was a massive violation of Joyce’s privacy. That went far beyond good-natured ribbing into outright cruelty
A friend and I are like that; being outright dicks to each other but then laughing over it right after.
However, I think I would also have a “wtf” moment if she announced to the rest of the friend-group that I was masturbating.
This is actually a very nuanced scene.
Sarah is a stalwart friend. She’s the kind who would (did) go into battle to protect you from actual harm. But she also, somewhere, learned some pretty bad ideas about friendship. Maybe she didn’t receive much respect growing up, I don’t know. There’s a painful truth in Lucy’s criticism, even though it probably is influenced by Raidah. “That’s what friendship is” sounds like an echo of an excuse someone made when shaming her sometime.
Maybe masturbation isn’t anything shameful to her, but she knows that Joyce is working through some big changes in her thinking and some things are still private. Respecting someone’s privacy is just part of respect.
Rolling over someone’s boundaries to ‘help’ them is manipulative. Maybe you do it when their life is in danger, but not for kicks and probably not because you think you are their unappointed teacher.
Yeah, it’s complicated and well-thought out, which is why I love this comic. If someone were to ask me for a good example of storytelling in comics, my first thought would be to direct them here.
The last couple arcs have been playing with uneven perspectives. Dorothy’s treatment of Joyce and Joe is based on partly on her unhealthy desire for control, which is unjustifiable, and partly on her (or most characters) knowing how Joe has changed, which is justifiable. This is great tension and it tempts us to take sides in a nuanced dynamic where neither side is perfectly in the right.
It’s the same in this situation. If I’m not mistaken, Lucy doesn’t really know Sarah at all, but people like Joyce and Walky have been through thick and thin with her and have accepted her behavior as normal. That dynamic is unraveling because of Lucy’s presence here.
Oops! “partly on her NOT* knowing how Joe has changed.”
> Rolling over someone’s boundaries to ‘help’ them is manipulative. Maybe you do it when their life is in danger, but not for kicks and probably not because you think you are their unappointed teacher.
Yup. This comment section was busy for days when Dorothy did it.
So does this mean everyone at the all boys Catholic School I went to for JR High and one year of highschool was my friend, and referring to a nosebleed as my period was just good natured ribbing?
I mean, it depends?
No Depends are for incontinence not bleeding
Okay this is just a test to see which Gravatar is associated with which email
That breakfast was only YESTERDAY ?!
Yup. Each chapter of DoA covers one day, more or less.
The first 10 real-world years of the comic covered from the last week of August to the middle of October, DoA time.
Idk, much like how Sarah went “what the hell is your problem with me” to Jennifer when the first thing she did was wretch at her and to get indignant with Joe for telling Joyce that she was using her to try and break up Jacob and Raidah, she seems to have a fascinating tendency for expecting people to put up with her behavior without calling her on it
Also, since I’m a little surprised to see that nobody has brought it up, the “purity culture” thing is clearly a trauma that Lucy shares, too, so seeing Joyce ribbed for it might also rub her the wrong way. I doubt anything will quell the “mad that there’s conflict” crowd, but I still think it’s worthy food for thought.
Then there’s Lucy’s perspective. Horny. Unsatisfied. Spent the night cuddling but nothing more. Maybe masturbation jokes and dealing with horniness hit her and elicited a response.
“She turned you against me!”
“You have done that yourself.”
This one’s a hard one because they’re both right in the regards of what we’ve seen with both characters. As readers we know more than the characters themselves, because that’s our privilege.
I am interested to see where it goes.
oh hell yeah new gravi I love it
I definetely think Sarah’s in the wrong here, but I also remember how I was acting when I was her age (20? 21?) and I had basically just… barely become a person? I remember tons of times where I said things that were way over the line and not realising that it was until later. Sometimes I would come to the conclusion myself, sometimes when other people let me know, and even then I could get defensive and spend some time figuring out that actually, that was not okay of me. I do hope I am more mature now but I still want to grow as a person. Sarah is not always the best in terms of toeing the line between cruelty and just sisterly sniping, and that doesn’t mean that her friends should just accept that from her, but she probably will grow more as a person and learn from her mistakes.
Im on sarahs side here, whats friendship without some friendly bullying
It depends on the friendship and the people involved. “Bullying” is a loaded term
Honestly, I like Sarah, but she needs someone to call her out when she goes too far. So good on you Lucy.
lucy’s right, but sarah’s not abusive or a jerk, she’s just in college and enjoys teasing/needling her friends. she just needs to find The Line.
well, lucy’s second statement is right, the ‘so-called friends’ thing is harsh & she’s not always mean
Eh, she’s a little bit of a jerk. Anything past that is hyperbole and possibly even overdramatic, but she is.
Also to be fair Joyce tends to act this when when it comes to her personal intimacy and sexuality regardless of how mundane it may seem. I mean Joe try to confess his feelings and she leaped into a tree.
No you know what I fucked around with some devil’s advocacy and I have come out backing Sarah For Sure.
This isn’t a public forum! this is Sarah, Joyce, and two of their friends!
This cannot be considered reliable information from Sarah! NOBODY PRESENT THINKS SHE’S SPEAKING IN EARNEST. Even Joyce! Who is pointedly neurodivergent, but who DOES know that she’s masturbated ONCE. ONE TIME.
It is incidental that Sarah’s jibe is even remotely true. Sex teasing is an Established Joyce Interaction. It reliably gets a good reaction, and she has a decent record of establishing genuine boundaries. This is something that makes her uncomfortable but it isn’t Just Of The Table.
There is NOT scope for this in a one-on-one setting! We’ve seen the one-on-one! There was a jab, a BIG reaction, and a warm and loving interaction that capped off with an indication of Joyce’s preparedness to engage in the joke. This is friend who knows the lay of the land doing a friend tease. She’s got a good sense of where The Line is and this, an ol’ reliable mode of teasing with some new zing, in front of people Joyce knows well but has a pretty much Zero Loaded relationship with, does not cross it.
Sarah has angered the Alpha Sweetie.
Sarah refusing to accept any criticism of the way she treats Joyce sometimes is more spot on than Lucy being influenced by Raidah.
sarah isn’t “toxic” or “abusive” she’s simply imperfect. walky is much more of a flagrant jerk but I don’t call him those words either. can we cool it with the unnecessary and frankly inappropriate therapy speak when it comes to someone just *fucking up*.
Yeah you don’t need to use therapy words to describe someone being an asshole. Nothing villainous about being an asshole.
For some reason people liked Mike even though he was pretty much the biggest asshole in the comic.
its kinda crazy to assume a friendship dynamic. like my best friend and i make fun of each other all the time.
i WILL give it to Lucy, its super not nice to out that your sexually stunted friend popped her masturbation cherry ToT